Life on the Inside
Limited edition of 300, already sold out at source. David Toop's environmental beauty Life on the Inside is the audio companion (created and recorded in 2015) to French sculptor Pierre Besson's 2014 exhibition D'objets noires et de Choses carrées (Black Objects and Square Things). This 34-minute ambient track was diffused inside of the sculpture and has never been published before. An excellent addition to the David Toop discography and a must for any wide-ranging ambient fan."Musician, write…
Fictions
Two major nuclear disasters, Tchernobyl and Fukushima, left its traces in our collective memory. Their devastating impact on the immediate environment left behind the ghost towns of Prypiat and Futaba. French sound artist Bruno Duplant never visited these exclusion zones. He took their existence as a starting point for an electroacoustic composition to investigate the relationship between fiction and reality. Sonic journalism like Peter Cusack's "Sounds from dangerous places" documents the reali…
Mahler Remix
Mahler Remix was recorded live at RadioKulturhaus, Vienna, in May 2011. This recording is mostly based on samples taken from Gustav Mahler's symphonies. The performance also includes an early version of "Liminality' from the bécs album, released in 2014 on Editions Mego (EMEGO 165CD/LP). Mahler Remixed was a commissioned work performed together with the visual artist Lillevan. The piece was only performed live three times, at RadioKulturhaus in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York City, and Borusan…
Split
Split album of the Berlin based artists Shapes a.ka. Niklas Dommaschk (member of Phantom Horse) and Oliver Koch as Melfi. There’s some peculiar mutuality in the works of Melfi and Shapes that add an unexpected kind of conceptuality to that split tape on hand. Both artists work with machines that are older than themselves, and it is obvious that their approach alleges some kind of antiqueness that sets the listener on the wrong track. There’s an inheritable sadness to all of these tracks, friendl…
Two Variations
Two Variations marks the return to Umor Rex of the Los Angeles based musician & producer M. Geddes Gengras, following his two volumes of “Collected Works” from 2013 and 2014. The two pieces here are the result of Gengras’ continuous exercises and obsession with his modular synthesizer, —technique apart—, “Two Variations” is a new statement, the reinforcement of MGG’s prowess in this area, and how through these machines, he is able to build harmonic music pieces, contours between the electronic c…
Symmetry
The First Three Ricardo Donoso Albums Now Available As A Very Limited Boxset. Ricardo Donoso has composed a new paradigm of ambient music, in which concrete textures and digital synthesis expand on an abstract world in constant movement & mutation. Under a chain of progressive rhythm’s, cinematic textures and elegant melodicism, Donoso’s work pushes through with piercing strength, manipulating a sonic wave through space with nothing but pulse and mind blowing intensity.Although Donoso’s work has…
Tapes Amateurs
Rome. This century. Lola Hudson and Gloria Farr, two artist/performers moving in the darkest circles of the most pagan city in ancient history, decide to burst onto the scene and break the cultural hymen that human history has been creating over the last millennia. The vagina has returned to free souls of the dictatorship of the dance of the Father: patriarchs have been attempting to annihilate women’s sexuality since the dawn of time. Destroy the image and you shall control the story. Go …
20 zonen
Produced in 2010 for a radio broadcast on Germany's hr2-kultur radio, 20 Zonen (20 Zones) is Marc Behrens' homage to Darmstadt, Germany, his hometown, and in particular the city's Kranichstein district, where he grew up and learned to listen. Behrens made recordings in such locations like an equestrian club, a heavy ion research unit, a railway museum, and of trains and airplanes noisily cutting through the supposed serenity of the industrially planted forests around Darmstadt. From time…
Peau Froide, Leger Soleil
Double LP version. Peau froide, léger soleil is the result of a three-year recording process initiated by Mika Vainio and Franck Vigroux after a series of shared live experiences, beginning with a show in Paris in 2012. Their collaboration is an exercise in sensitive intensity, drifting through the whole space between minimalist meditations and maximalist kinetics. Vainio's signature brutalist production resonates throughout the album, constructing a psychic scenario for Vigroux's researches in …
Pain Avoidance Machine
In late 2014, feeling stifled by the negativity of the Australian political discourse, the narcissistic excess of social media, and facing a long summer of migraine-inducing heat, I turned to the prepared piano as a refuge. I was coming out of an intense two-year period of composing for every conceivable instrumental combination, and not sure where to go next. I felt the need to get back to basics, and create something essential, elemental. These pieces are meditations, each with its own …
A Fragile Geography
Rafael Anton Irisarri's A Fragile Geography is a record cast in a climate of unsteadiness and transition, reflecting upon the current state of everyday living. Recorded over 2014 and '15, the record bears the marks of difficult terrain -- personal, political, social, and cultural. It tips its hat to the complex and unpredictable dynamics of the contemporary world, correlating concerns both macro and micro. Compositionally, the music mirrors the tensions of contemporary America, contrastin…
Interlacing
Ross Manning is one of Australia's best-kept secrets. Since 2010, Manning has been behind a series of increasingly profound explorations into light and movement. These installation works seek to reveal spectrum and frequency in patterns that often go unrecognized. With Interlacing, his first LP for Room40, Manning showcases his deeply personal sonic works. Having been an active experimentalist for much of the 2000s across Australia, with projects such as 4 Layers of Nine, Sky Needle, and F…
Obscure Tape Music Of Japan Vol. 12: Miniatures Of Concrete Works
Edition Omega Point presents work by legendary Japanese composer Joji Yuasa -- one of most important composers in Japan after World War II. "Nadja, Twincling in Stars" (1963) is the incidental music, by NHK Radio, based on "Nadja" by Andre Breton who made "Declaration of Sur-Realisme." The actual chart of constellations was played by three players (violin, piano and vibraphone) which was used as the music score. Birdsong, electronics, and sound generated from inside the piano using music c…
Compendium
Late in 2011, Celer and Machinefabriek teamed up and recorded the 7" 'Maastunnel / Mt. Mitake', to coincide with their tour in The Netherlands. They then decided to make it into a trilogy of 7" singles, all self-released in limited editions. Now, Irrational Arts has compiled the six tracks of the 7"s onto a CD‚ titled "Compendium (Collected Singles and Remixes)". The CD also includes a new, additional track by Celer and Machinefabriek, and remixes by Stephan Mathieu, Sylvain Chauveau and …
Mangala
2016 restock. Mangala is a composition from 1986. After composing it Airaksinen told he went to Pori jazz festival. He told, he picked same moods in Miles Davis and Urban Sax as in his composition.
We've seen a lot of oddities reissued over the last few years, but few come close to capturing the bewildering brilliance of this bizarre album, resurfacing now on a first-ever vinyl pressing of this gem. angala is completely different world and time, maybe out of time. It is complex and exiting. Ki…
What Matters Is That It Matters
Simon Whetham is an acute listener, a field recorder, a thinker, a globetrotter, and a mobilizer. However, he is also a sonic cook. Wherever he goes, he picks up sounds and atmospheres as if they were exotic ingredients. And for 'What Matters Is That It Matters', he made us a stew, slowly simmered until all the flavours come through.'What Matters Is That It Matters', Whetham's first album for Baskaru, is slow music. And slow music deserves to be taken in slowly - you don't wolf comfort fo…
Different Selves
Shapednoise is Italian producer Nino Pedone, and since emerging in the early 2010s he's built a name for himself issuing music that bridges the gap between the basement and the club. Noise and techno are proven bedfellows at this point (for better or for worse), but Pedone pushes harder and further, and Different Selves, as the title suggests, is his most diverse and challenging work to date. Fusing the industrial grind of early Godflesh (Justin K. Broadrick even makes an appearance on openi…
Clifford Darling, Please Don't Live In The Past
Severed Heads are one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, incorporating elements of ‘industrial’ noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. After many line-up changes featuring Garry Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knuckey, Severed Heads was…
La tentation de saint-Antoine
Another master piece from Michel Chion reissued by Nuun in this serie directed by Lionel Marchetti. 'Concrète series by Lionel Marchetti. A concrete melodrama consisting of a prologue and nine tableaux adapted from Flaubert. With Pierre Schaeffer (as St Anthony), Michèle Bokanowski Ennoïa, the Narrator), Art Leroi-Bibbs (the Preacher), Korinna Rahls-Frisius (the Queen of Sheba), Michel Chion (the Announcer). Jointly commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the INA.GRM and radio Fra…
Attacca
Attacca (1985-86) for solo percussion and tape, commissioned by the International Encounters of Contemporary Music, Metz, France. Week-end (1982) commissioned by INA-GRM. Lumina (1968) for 12 strings and tape. Gam(m)es (1961) commissioned by the Strasbourg festival.Ivo Malec (born 30 March 1925, Zagreb) is a Croatian born French composer, music educator and conductor. One of the earliest Yugoslav composers to obtain high international regard, his works have been performed by symphony orchestra…