The Target Has Disappeared
*200 copies limited edition* Australia-based baroque violinist Lizzy Welsh has recorded three new compositions for solo baroque violin—the astounding result of a decade-long process of commissioning repertoire of such work during her doctoral research. Each of the works on « The Target Has Disappeared » initiates an intimate conversation between Welsh and her instrument, outlining the contours of memory and loss, weaving together fragments of old and new traditions in the sound of gut strings.
Mouths Without A Head
*200 copies limited edition* Music composed in resonance with Orlando di Lasso’s ‘Prophetiae Sibyllarum’ (ca 1555-60). The Sibylline Prophecies are a 16th century collection of vocal motets that could be considered prophetic, because they open up the music of its time to chromaticism beyond diatonality, posing new challenges to tuning. On the other hand, the sung text is an unambiguous appropriation of ancient Greek Sibylline oracles, claiming these predicted the coming of Christ —a fictional re…
I.A. Maastunnel
I.A. Maastunnel' A handmade art object of the work has been published in a limited edition of 50 copies by label Aloardi. It is a wooden pack made with the laser cutting technique, in a design based on the maps of the Maastunnel. It contains an USB pendrive with the documentary, including a bonus audio track, and an audio tape with the soundtrack.
Music Now For Harp
Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the first international reissue of Ayako Shinozaki's hard to find LP "Music Now For Harp" released in 1974 by Nippon Columbia. The LP was released on the label's cult "Master Sonic" series and features Shinozaki's harp soundscape on works by renowned composer Toru Takemitsu and Katsuhiro Tsubono. The highlight of the album is the spaced-out liquid 25-min ambient epic 'Heterodyne' featuring cult musician Takehisa Kosugi (Taj Mahal Travellers, Group Ongaku) on…
Arc of Day
The bones of a bird, stripped of flesh and feather, give no sign of the heights and depths a living bird can reach, the lengths it can travel, or the songs it can sing. The same is true of the bones of the human hand. For all their strength and delicacy, seeing them skeletal and stark obscures our knowledge of the rhythmic energy with which they engage space, the burdens they can bear, the music they can produce. Yet, in both bird and hand, the foundation of grace and motion remain. Music above …
Durch Den Vorhang Gehen = 穿过屏风
The term ‘acousmatics’ refers to the tradition which tells us that the Greek philosopher Pythagoras gave his lectures from behind a curtain, whereby visual information was withdrawn off the screen and the audience could concentrate on listening. Listening to acousmatic music is not a static process as if the listener is aware of something hidden behind such a curtain. In the case of acousmatics, the sonic events reverberate through the curtain, beyond where they actually are produced, meeting up…
Eidolon
To understand tuning systems, to peer into the infinity of microtonal compositional strategies, is to imagine a sense of musicality that extends far out beyond the familiar harmonies of the western ear. Iranian composer Siavash Amini, a self-confessed tuning obsessive, has dedicated much of his musical investigations over the past half decade to unlocking new relationships between harmonic events. Moreover, he has sought new timbral relations too and in doing so has honed a particular sonic-aest…
Fen
*100 copies limited edition* Fen is a selective evocation and invocation of a Kildare fenland. Focusing on the vocalisations and physical communication sounds of three bird species, it is comprised of field recordings of Grasshopper Warbler, Sedge Warbler (both Summer migrant breeders) and Snipe (resident breeder), alongside tuned percussion and synthesiser textures. As a birdwatcher and sound recordist the communication and language of birds fascinates me. The singular sounds made by the these …
Anthology Of Electroacoustic Music From Finland
*200 copies limited edition* There is a long tradition of Electroacoustic music in Finland beginning in the 1950’s with the experimentation of tape music. Finland’s first electronic musical instrument the "Sähkövalopiano" or "Electric Light Piano" was built before this in 1894. It was constructed in the Polytechnic Institute (now Aalto University) in Helsinki. Finland also has a tradition of blending archaic traditional music in the contemporary music scene. The Kalevala tradition for example da…
The Pels Organ and Hemony Carillon
A double CD with location recordings - recorded by Christophe Albertijn - of organ and carillon music plus a 32 page booklet of/for the unveiling of Katharina AW, a relational artwork by Joris Martens.
Oxmardyke
Philip Jeck sadly passed away at the end of March 2022. But before he died, he was able to work on some audio files sent to him by Chris Watson, who writes: "In 2017 I was recording along the north bank of the Humber estuary and one morning driving back from Faxfleet I was stopped at the Oxmardyke rail crossing. The gates were down. After setting up a microphone array by the tracks for a passing freight train the signalman shouted an invitation to climb up into the gate box to make some more rec…
Winds of Change
Abstrakce recover this lost gem recorded in 1999 and published by Keliehor himself in a very short-run CD named "Create Music", which had almost no diffusion.
Desert Dictionary
300 copies limited edition* Desert Dictionary navigates sonic territories oscillating between language and landscape, between notation and noise. Voices responding and contributing to a complementary narrative, connecting personal memories, political considerations and psychological effects of a landscape seemingly empty and quiet. Adjacent, beneath and intertwined a modular synthesizer score based on field notes – a synthesized soundscape appearing as imaginary field recordings, at the same tim…
babel
Dauw presents 'babel', the debut album from Belgian duo Zonderwerk. The duo’s name means ‘’without work’’, but it also comes from “bijzonder werk”, where bijzonder is particular, special, unique. They like to work with images/paintings that are “bijzondere werken”, odd works.
Call Back Carousel
“This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” (Don Draper)
Eye of the Sea
*300 copies limited edition* Recorded in correspondence throughout a calamitous and uncertain 2020, “Eye of the Sea" is a collaborative record made by Tom James Scott of the United Kingdom and Svitlana Nianio of Ukraine. Active since the late 1980s, Nianio has released a treasure trove of diverse and beguiling music under her own name, as a member of the legendary Ukrainian experimental unit Cukor Bila Smerť, and in collaboration with the late musician and instrument maker Oleksandr Yurchenko. F…
Lisova Kolekciya
*2023 repress. 300 copies limited edition.* Svitlana Nianio has been active in the Ukrainian and Polish underground music scenes since the early '90's both as a solo artist and a prominent member of the now disbanded avant-rock outfit Cukor Bila Smert (Sugar White Death). Her music draws on aspects of modern composition and traditional Slavic music, with songs and experiments from that early period culiminating in the 1999 album Kytytsi (Koka Records, Poland). Prior to that in 1995, Nianio recor…
Moments at the Re-engage
*Limited edition of 100 copies.* The British producer Alex Smalley (aka Olan Mill) has been active for more than a decade building his signature through nature as the central theme across emotional journeys through beautiful ambient melodies. Moments at the Re-engage —his first publication in Umor Rex— was created for a performance in Thüringen, Germany. On the night, while the audience was floating in mineralized neon water, the sound was being diffused across submerged speakers. Multiple synth…
A Heavenly Touch
Claire Rousay's new album "A heavenly touch" fuses piano, percussion and recordings on the field in a silent and transgressive mix. Originally released on cassette in April 2020 by Already Dead Tapes, this marks its first appearance on vinyl, mastered by Andrew Weathers. Fundamental to understanding the evolution of Claire Rousay as an artist.
Soft Focus: Volumes One
Pastoral moods, pastel modes, daydream verve, colors in complement, slightly dissonant, outdoor airs, shadow underleaf, gravity's touch, falling rain, solemn distances, memento mori, the wandering mind...Soft Focus is two volumes of a musical experiment that intended to go one way and went another. A project that sought song form became a process that discovered tonal movements through unexpected environments and atmospheres. I hope you enjoy! -Wednesday