Column One: Entropium
Five compositions by the Berlin based electroacoustic / industrial collective Column One in stunning interpretations by Zeitkratzer, recorded live at Berghain during MaerzMusik 2012. Within their nearly 2 decades of existence, zeitkratzer have gained high reputation for their unique approach, their outstanding and internationally acclaimed members and their adventurous projects that include collaborations with noise musicians like Merzbow and Zbigniew Karkowski, rock’n’roll experimentalists like…
Ina Hudba: Experimental Studio Bratislava Series 1
Milestone!!! Incredible historical recording never issued in any format ever. It is the first release of Slovak composeres that were active in the 60s and 70s, a missing link in the history of Musique Concrète."In 1965 the Experimental Studio Bratislava was founded by the Czechoslovak broadcast service. The Studio Bratislava was quite independent from the headquarters in Prague and in some ways competed with it. Composers like Peter Kolman, Jozef Malovec etc. started on a “do it yourself” level…
Travel
Jun Konagaya is best known as GRIM, but in 2012 he published a story and CD called “Organ” about a young girl called Magnolia and a monster called Gamahead. “Travel” presents the second part of the story. Several years have passed and Magnolia has set out on a journey, where she records the many things she sees and hears. It is unclear whether her journey is real or imaginary, and as she wanders between dream and reality she stumbles across some ruins in the middle of a forest. Her feet carry he…
Sintetizzatrice
Sintetizzatrice is the first recorded document of the collaboration between veteran DJ and producer Donato Dozzy and female vocalist Anna Caragnano. Through his solo work, and in his collaboration with Giuseppe Tilleci (Neel) asVoices from the Lake, Dozzy has achieved some of the most remarkable vistas contemporary electronic music has seen since the turn of this century. By removing himself from his areas of mastery to shift his focus on the voice, he has achieved a new peak with Sintetizzatric…
Sonnet
The sound of the fifth Benoit Pioulard full length is lush and verdant, a temperate rain forest of ear ecstasy that reflects the environment surrounding the artist. A mostly instrumental work, it is an adept melding of song and sound, melody and texture, the intangible and the palpable, that in an abstract sense recalls the more fractured and loose end of the 70's krautrock movement."The basis of the album was a series of field recordings of tones and unintentional harmonies that I made in the s…
Whispers
‘Whispers’ was co-produced by Bob Gilmore, who sadly died before the disc was released. The CD is dedicated to Bob’s memory. Bob was a longstanding champion of Frank Denyer’s music, and wrote the notes both for this CD and for the previous Another Timbre release of Denyer’s Music for Shakuhachi.Here is an excerpt from Bob’s sleevenotes for the ‘Whispers’ CD:“The experience of listening to Frank Denyer’s music is extraordinary, quite distinct from other aspects of our contemporary musical lives. …
Extinguishment
In some experimental music circles melody is virtually verboten, but you have often embraced it in your work. Do you feel that you are to some extent going against the grain in this?AG: First off, I think melody can be defined separately from harmony. I think of melody as a single voice or layer, and with multiple layers, I like them to overlap in non-structured ways. I am interested in homophony more than polyphony or harmony, where if you take a cross-section through these independent lines y…
Acid Tracts
An expanded double vinyl edition of Ralph Cumbers aka Bass Clef's acclaimed 2013 cassette Acid Tracts, originally released in late 2013 via Cumbers' own Magic + Dreams label, its seven dense and immersive club tracks comprising his most expansive and multi-faceted work to date. They meld his modular synthesizer's hard-edged tones with grinding drum machine rhythms, traveling from the anarchic techno of 2012's Reeling Skullways album still further outward into the void. Acid Tracts represents the…
Fires Frame the Silhouette
Cremation Lily is the project of UK-based Z. Zsigo. For the past five years, Zsigo has been consistently working under most people's radars with his distinctly personal take on power electronics, developing a modest cult following and a respectable catalog of releases through his Strange Rules label. In 2012 the project was brought to the attention of Steve Underwood from Harbinger Sound who subsequently released the Fertility Servant 7" and the project began to gather a more visible live presen…
String Studies
Deas is the new moniker of London-based guitarist Cameron Deas, and String Studies, his first LP of all electronic-based material, is unlike anything else he's released. Recorded at home between February and March of 2014, the 8 pieces on this LP were recorded live with very few overdubs, with Deas's 12-string acoustic guitar used as a sampling source to trigger and in turn be manipulated by a modular system. The immaculate production and scalpel-sharp twists and turns found within the music dis…
Acolytes
Acolytes is the self-titled debut album by London-based enigma D. Shan. Following up a puzzling (yet well received) 7" on The Pheromoans' label Savoury Days, Acolytes sees Shan develop his sound into areas of greater fidelity, complexity, and a unique non-linear approach to songwriting. Reference points could be drawn towards Art Bears, the Cold Storage scene, The Residents, and the Ralph Records roster, but they would all fall short because ultimately Acolytes is a highly unclassifiable record …
Sounds Of Iceland
This recording takes you on a round trip of Iceland. The aural journey starts westward from the island’s south in the cold early spring. After a side trip into the West Fjords, our route traverses the north of the country at the height of summer, followed by an excursion into the interior highlands before a short stop in the East Fjords. As the sound trip nears its geographical starting point, autumn and winter make their appearance before the journey comes full circle.The recordings do not feat…
3 amps
Katsuyoshi Kou is an improviser who performs frequently, mainly in venues around Tokyo. Currently he's also gaining a great deal of notice as the director of MultipleTap, a project (launched in 2014) that takes large groups of Japanese improvisational/experimental musicians overseas to hold live events. Toshimaru Nakamura is an improviser who performs throughout the world using his no-input mixing board. This CD is comprised of three pieces performed in concerts by Kou and Nakamura at Ftarri, To…
Halfway to White
With Folio, Touch introduces a new series of bespoke hardback book and CD publications, produced to the highest specifications. This first release, Halfway to White, is a collaboration between singular photographer Joséphine Michel and acclaimed musician and sound artist Mika Vainio. Joséphine Michel's images reframe our perception of the visual by exploring the notion of "sonic photography," as she exposes her subjects according to the resonance of the noise-fields felt at her chosen loca…
Empty Airport
The title of Empty Airport, Chra's second LP and her first on Editions Mego, may be read as a reference to Brian Eno's ambient classic, though this time we find ourselves in a territory of transit that sounds like a dystopian swan song on civilizatoric debris -- a heterotopia emptied of human remains, with only ghostly echoes behind. Chra aka comfortzone foundress Christina Nemec has traced out a post-anthropocene area in which acoustic entries of field recordings are stratified in layers …
Communist Dub
"Communist Dub is Pan Sonic member Ilpo Väisänen's second solo album for Editions Mego (Asuma having appeared 2001). This striking new release is a statement against technocracy and the erosion of human community. Whilst Jamaican dub and ska are often cited as an influence on Väisänen's work, this album utilizes dub as strategy as opposed to genre -- the precise manipulation of sound and the removal of all extraneous material to create a disorientating landscape of austere spaces. Pulled in…
Electric Lucifer Book II
The original Electric Lucifer was released back in 1970, and basically invented electronic music as we now know it. Bruce Haack was ahead of the entire electronic music game! Over the years, that album (from 1979) has been hailed as one of the most important in modern music, and is seen as a sacred thing to many, many music nerds. What a lot of people don't know is that Bruce Haack continued to make amazing music well after Electric Lucifer, and a decade later actually recorded a follow up, aptl…
Outer Planetary Church Music
A friend of Aguirre recalls meeting Tim Robertson by chance in a thrift store in Barcelona, while eyeing a dusty Hammond organ: "He was born in Honduras, but moved out of there at a young age to several other countries such as Perú, France, and Norway. His parents were devoted to some religious organization and they were spreading the word all around. The last place they were sent to was Barcelona, hence the reason he was there. He learned to play the keyboards as a kid and performed in c…
Trance-Formations I Ancient Minimal Meditations
A forgotten classic! 2015 repress of the 2011 reissue of the original 1986 cassette. Pressing of 400 copies on 180-gram vinyl in full-color thick cardboard sleeve. Created between 1981 and 1985 by JD Emmanuel, a new age composer who has received a lot of praise from people like Lieven Martens and John Olsen. These recordings signify Emmanuel's praise to the course of the day. Starting off slowly with morning synth meanderings, walking through midday, running in the evening, and closing the …
Fantasy In Orbit
Sold out at source, few copies available - Even before the landing of men onto the moon or any space travels, majestic Tom Dissevelt captured the essence of the space mood and science fiction aesthetic. Fantasy in Orbit draws the blueprint for a future sound, later recognized as "Electronic Music," as simple as that. The music is this jaunty space-age swirl, with synthetic oscillations and bubbling textures, creating what is one moment playful, the next menacing, as they struggle to reign in …