Gyromancy
Mnemonists eventually evolved into the incredible Biota band. Before they did they released a series of LPs, including the art work that surrounds and informs their approach to improvisation. As Mnemonists their work is darker and more ominous than that of Biota, but the process was still the same: post-processing live improvisation to construct larger works that stood on their own two feet as compositional pieces. Think AMM, Organum, Faust; Mnemonists embraced their strategies but created somet…
Variety
"the piano's harmonic figures meet with computer sounds unexpectedly within a slowly changing acoustic environment. piano pixies sing and dance serenely in a virtual space while the noises from the instrument insitage dialogues with the computer. the music is tranquil, never aggressive and is at almost every moment polyphonic in the good old sense of the word. pretty often, the two musicians play on two different planes so that in spite of the slowness of the whole thing, the resulting complex r…
Adventura Anatomica
** longtime sold out at source, few copies restocked ** A fairy tale world comes to life in sublime fashion on Maja Ratkje’s latest collaboration Adventura Anatomica, a musical work for theatre she created with choreographer/danser Odd Johan Fritzøe and stage designer in November 2005. This is a world of bittersweet fairytales, of wolves and innocent maidens losing their way in a dark wood, a world of fear and despair and joyful ecstasy. In any case, emotions such as these coexist closely in Rat…
The Sleeping Moustache
This curious quintet makes sounds that recall the glory days of Nurse With Wound: long, shapeshifting collages of psychedelic murk interrupted by random outbursts of industrial clatter, nightmarish drones, deeply bizarre audio mutations and tangible masses of sticky audio goop of impossibly vague origin. The Sleeping Moustache consists of five ten-minute tracks interspersed with five brief interstitial tracks. Everything blends together well because nothing blends together well; forced juxtaposi…
Rabbit Run
Keith Rowe: tabletop guitar, electronics Thomas Lehn: analogue synthesizer Marcus Schmickler: digital synthesizer, computer
Honey Pie
Live recording, Musique Action Festival, Vandoeuvre-Les-Nancy, France, May 26, 2001. Thanks to Dominique Répécaud and Nicolas Franer. C+P GROB 2004 Packaged in a six-panel Digipak.
Live at the LU
Recorded in May of 2002, almost a year after Fennesz' surprisingly successful (commercially) release, Endless Summer, one might have expected that this pairing would produce an intriguing collision of opposing forces. On the one hand you have all the pop-influenced, steamily melodic and erotic explorations that Fennesz had developed in the prior years. Countering that, one could readily imagine Keith Rowe as saboteur, finding rifts in the smooth mass to deviously penetrate and deflate. This does…
New York in the 1960s
These recordings are solo efforts on electronic organ - the awesome Vox Continental, guitar and viola as well as collaborations with saxophone player Terry Jennings, violinist Tony Conrad, Velvet Underground guitar player Sterling Morrison and the VU's original drummer Angus MacLise. Thanks to Tony Conrad, who was a co-member in La Monte Young's group The Dream Syndicate, these tapes are finally available to the public.
Songs for Nicolas Ross
The audio material of «Songs for Nicolas Ross» is taken from my travels 2000-2003 in the cities Amsterdam, Baltimore, Berlin, Caudeval, Lausanne, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, St. Pölten and Zürich. As the CD was for the birthday of Alessandro Bianco's son Nicolas Ross, I thought of the pieces as short songs, either as lullabyes or just brief sonic enivornments for him to enter into. I tried to imagine young Nicolas' perception of the sound around himself and his relation to this. This was the s…
Location stories
Janek Schaefer has gained a reputation when it comes to fieldrecording-based soundworks. Using his sonic surroundings, manipulated or not, Schaefer comes up with unique and intimate results. location stories is another collection of found-sound stories, that Stichting Mixer is proud of to release. A: Minneapolis Office Max Messages. A collage of the messages I found left on the display model of a mini digital dictaphone bought at a Branch of Office Max in Minneapolis. In a condensed period of ti…
Zahir
Hiss is an improvisational quartet made up of one Englishman and three Norwegians with an instrumental line-up that is unremarkable enough, but with a sound that is fairly unique. Keyboardist/electronicist Pat Thomas is a veteran of the British free improv scene while guitarist Ivar Grydeland, bassist Tonny Kluften and percussionist Ingar Zach -- though the latter three are younger -- are mainstays of the Norwegian free jazz and improv cultures. The reasoning behind the Arabic-sounding track tit…
Cistern
2005 release ** "Cistern was made in a two million gallon underground reservoir at Fort Worden, a de-commissioned military base overlooking the entrance to the Puget Sound. The space's resonance extended the instruments in a way similar to electronic processing. The acoustic properties of the cistern created new sonic relationships to which the group applied their musical concept. Cistern captures Doublends Vert's first experiences in the sound-world of the cistern. Doublends Vert formed in 2003…
Piano suspenso
Reissue of this 1999 release and out of print since a long time. Some reviews at the time of release : ' After a tentative opening consisting of damp harmonic scrapes, the piece takes off like a single-engined light aircraft when David Maranha kickstarts his four-motored Piano effect and then starts to tease single notes from the bubbling background with his bow. This is a great and physically affecting slab of sound, where the slightest minimal shift causes tectonic plates to groan. It's gravy …
Apertura
Duets for harmonium and whateveraphone. These pieces are starkly out of character for both individuals, but no less excellent.
Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna
In scandinavia, it's not uncommon to hear of someone's mother, grandfather, uncle, or plumber who drank him-or-herself to death at an early age; and the swedish drone artist bj nilsen has felt the alcoholic pangs which may foreshadow his own demise. in recent years, nilsen has turned to his icelandic neighbors Sigtryggur Berg sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson (collectively known as stilluppsteypa) in existential sympathy over the problems of their collective lust for alcohol. drykkjuvisur ohljodanna…
Misiiki
Burkhard Beins: percussion & string instruments. Dirk Marwedel: extended saxophone. Michael Vorfeld: percussion & string instruments.
Le Rire Des Camisoles 1969-1974
Barricade, already known as the roots of ZNR, were a radical French commune formed in 1969 by over thirty musicians / non-musicians around François Billard (saxophone, voices, harmonica) and Gérard Lapeyre (violin) in Marseilles. They had wandered from place to place, changed their members one after another, and gigged on various stages in France around 1970.In 1973, they were split into two Barricades - one is a radically political & anarchic music outfit around François named Barricade Crève-V…
Still Point
Assumed Possibilities comprises of four musicians who understand the meaning and use of understatement and close listening. This quartets non-idiomatic music attains a minutely focused intensity, where the subtlest shifts in pitch, timbre and texture speak volumes. Though sounds sometimes sting and startle,the music carefully colours the aural environment,often hardly modifying the silence... growing out of and merging back into it. The results are detailed, meticulous, precise and responsive. S…
Zwingburgen des hedonismus - Mysterien des hafens
Part 9 of the ongoing re-release series of all early Tietchens albums from 1980—1991 on CD. This combines two seperate releases from 1987 (»Zwingburgen des Hedonismus«) and 1988 (»Mysterien des Hafens« on »Face To Face, Vol. 1«). »Zwingburgen des Hedonismus« was originally released as a one-sided LP on swedish label Multimood and features a singles 21 min. long track composed on a Fairlight CMI. »Mysterien des Hafens« was part of a split LP (the other side feat. Die Form) originally released on …