John Duncan (born June 17, 1953 in Wichita, Kansas, USA) has operated for decades at the cutting edge of performance, video, experimental music, installation, pirate radio and television. He has played a pivotal role in the development of performance art in Los Angeles, of experimental music as a member of LAFMS Los Angeles Free Music Society, of Japanese noise and pirate radio in Tokyo.
John Duncan
John Duncan (born June 17, 1953 in Wichita, Kansas, USA) has operated for decades at the cutting edge of performance, video, experimental music, installation, pirate radio and television. He has played a pivotal role in the development of performance art in Los Angeles, of experimental music as a member of LAFMS Los Angeles Free Music Society, of Japanese noise and pirate radio in Tokyo.
Bitter Earth
Bitter Earth is the much anticipated, long-in-the-making new album from John Duncan joined by a broad cast of adroit collaborators; Oren Ambarchi, Jim O’Rourke, Smegma, Chris Abrahams, Joe Talia, CM Von Hausswolff, Eiko Ishibashi, France Jobin - all written in dedication to Mika Vainio (who, for avoidance of doubt, is not dead!). It's a remarkable suite of cover versions - from The Gun Club to Nina Simone and Iggy Pop - and original material by an arch experimenter who continues to explore unfa…
The Black Album
'Masami's and my conversations look like heroin addicts talking : A phrase. A five minute silence. Another phrase. A five minute silence. A question. A five minute silence. Another phrase. A five minute silence. An answer. Et cetera.The BLACK ALBUM shows what's going on in our heads.' - John Duncan
Yeah
Restocked Side A: recorded and mixed in 1993 by John Duncan and Jim O'Rourke at Christoph Heemann's studio in Aachen. Final mix in 2013 by Jim O'Rourke in Tokyo. Side B: Stay alive recorded live with Oren Ambarchi and Joe Talia on 9 March 2013 at SuperDeluxe, Tokyo; mixed by Joe Talia.
YEAHJim and I worked fast and furiously in Christoph Heemann's studio to record this, working in shifts, day and night, three days later had it all but finished -- then Jim said 'Let me do just a couple of t…
Conservatory (San Sebastiano)
Referring to the soundtrack for Conservatory (San Sebastian), John Duncan speaks of 'ghost voices', emphasizing a line of research he's followed in the last several years beginning with Phantom Broadcast (2002), the audio work and live concert performances that utilize a shortwave radio transmission intercepted in the course of a single recording: a shadow play that assumes the form of bells resonating into infinity, where they merge and reverberate, morphing into choruses suspended in space. Du…
First Recordings 1978-85 V1.2
The hugely intriguing sound artist and sonic conceptualist John Duncan is subject of a 2nd, sprawling VoD chapter following a first volume back in 2006. Since 1978 Duncan has engaged with a plethora of avant-garde disciplines, amassing a distinguished and exploratory catalogue of sounds on his own AQM and Allquestions imprints, besides many more releases on Touch, Die Stadt, and Planam. He's collaborated with equally inquisitive minds such as The Hafler Trio's Andrew McKenzie, Chris & Cosey, Zei…
There must be a way accross this river / The abject
EVP recordings made in 2009 by Esposito at the onetime home of Duncan in Prospect Heights, Illinois, to which the current resident would not permit entry (though his spouse had previously agreed to it). Heidi Harman, the medium who was present at the encounter, heard Duncan's name specified by the voice. There Must Be A Way Across This River represents Duncan's involvement and processing of the events at his childhood home; The Abject is the result of Z'ev dealing with the occurrences in …
The Tailing
Slow writhing in near-total darkness Intertwining drones from a church organ Movement and sound heavy, thick as oil Erotic and forbidden. Produced and directed by John Duncan, Music by John Duncan - A microscopical audiovisual study on pornography by the great american sound artist - "The calligraphy of the title frame has a distinctly Gothic flourish, and John Duncan taps deeper into that culturally overplayed yet still potent and potentially transgressive tradition as The TAILING unfurls. It'…
Fresh
The zeitkratzer ensemble performing two tracks by John Duncan in a collaboration promoted last year by Podewil in Berlin. A project started over a year ago, the result of continuous and tenatious work over several meetings between Duncan and the musicians, in charge of performing two originally electronic compositions with their acoustic instruments.The 27 minutes of the first piece revisit NAV-FLEX, a composition published last year by Duncan in the double CD with Francisco López, NAV . In zeit…
Nine suggestions
NINE SUGGESTIONS gathers collaborations over the past couple of years between sound installation artist John Duncan and the two members of Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen. Duncan's previous collaborators have included Elliott Sharp, Bernhard Günter and Carl Michael von Hausswolff, and the album is on his own label. As Pan Sonic's reputation would lead you to expect, there's enormous confidence here in the handling of material, whether we're talking about distorted screeching like the st…
Crucible
Crucible is a minute sound installation recorded at an outdoor concert in the tiny village of Topolò on the Italian-Slovenian border in July 1997. Its thunderous opening is literally the sound of a downpour which Duncan harnesses and treats to produce something elemental yet edgily unnatural. Bruce Gilbert's work springs to mind though Duncan has a less synthetic touch. The aquatic theme continues as water drains down pipes, gutters and sewers. Thereafter an eerie quiescence pervades. There is s…
Dark Market Broadcast
Recorded in Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles. Walpurgisnachet recorded with Joe Potts. Purge recorded live at Anticlub, Los Angeles. Live recording engineered by Joseph Hammer. Mastered by John Duncan at Unormori, Tokyo. The result is a terrific industrial album, rusty, acid and distorted soundscape with a massive use of FM waves and voices recorded along with low frequency sounds.
Da sich die Machtgier
Compiling the results of what was originally intended to be a compositional collaboration between John Duncan and renowned sound artist Asmus Tietchens, Da Sich Die Machtgier… transcends its tumultuous creation to stand as a distinctive addition to the catalogue of both artists "Asmus Tietchens proposed that he and I work together years ago — many years ago. For a variety of reasons it didn't happen , and at this point I don't remember any of them. Finally we agreed to start: I asked him to send…
Phantom Broadcast
Following the records made in collaboration with Francisco López and the instrumental ensemble Zeitkratzer, John Duncan returns to solo work and to exploring further the sound source he's always preferred, shortwave. We know nothing about the actual radio transmission that Duncan picked up on 18 April 2002 in the course of a single recording that gave life to this work. Only shadows remain, taking on the aspect of bells, resonating into infinity, together with reverberations and apparent choruse…
The Nazca Transmissions
** Limited to 380 copies, with embossed total-black cover, insert and full-color inner sleeve with wonderful space images of the Nazca Lines. ** On Christmas Eve, 2004, John Duncan received a mysterious email from an archaeologist working at the site of the Nazca Lines in Peru. He claimed to have discovered, and over time recorded, a variety of sounds actually generated by the enigmatic lines themselves. Familiar with Duncan’s “Infrasound-Tidal”, composed from source recordings taken from tides,…
Incoming
Long out of print, John Duncan's release Incoming continues his work exploring the inner qualities of electronic drones in conjunction with shortwave radio, itself an extension of his work in pirate media, including both radio and television. The title track builds from metallic scrapes, layered with intense electronics, garbled vocals, descending electronic whines reminiscent of the final section of Karlheinz Stockhausen's masterpiece Hymnen, shortwaves, white noise, and digital pops. It is one…
John See soundtracks
CD including the full soundtrack from 'Move forward' and all soundtracks from the limited-edition picturedisc LP 'The John See Series' released on RRRecords.
s/t
Released in conjunction with a live performance that took place at the 'Lagerhaus' Bremen on 26. September 2003. Exclusive tracks by all three artists. John Duncan's 'The Gossamer Dispatch' is another fine example of his work with Shortwave sounds and a sort of more aggressive version of his acclaimed 'Phantom Broadcast' CD. C.M. von Hausswolff delivers a spoken word piece for the first time 'The way The Breeze Lays'. 'The Gobblestone Is The Weapon Of The Proletariat. No 8' by Leif Elggren is a …
Auftauchen
John Duncan: Mayday (1983) / Le Donne-Bhennet: Might Find Land 1980) / Tom Marioni: Drum Crushing (on Sand Paper) ( 1978). Edition of 99 copies.
Untitled
Released in conjunction with a live concert on the 2. October 2005 in the“Lagerhaus' Bremen”. The 2x7inch feat. four exclusive tracks for this project. Z'EV provides another intense mix of material which partly originates from a live recording from the “Atonal Festival” in Berlin back in 1983. Side B feat. John Duncan with a strange static sound-noise piece, whereas both Aidan Baker on Side C and Fear Falls Burning (a new project by Vidna Obmana) on Side D give fine examples of their slowly buil…
Our telluric conversation
'23five Incorporated proudly presents Our Telluric Conversation - the second collaborative album from John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff. This is an album which Duncan describes as having been galvanized by magnetism. In a semantic sleight of hand, Duncan and Hausswolff reveal magnetism through a duality of meanings. One on hand, they speak of the physical phenomenon of charged objects that exert an attraction or repulsion upon other objects; yet on the other, magnetism can be defined t…