Fragments and compositions of Kyle Bobby Dunn
Fragments and compositions of was Canadian composer Kyle Bobby Dunn’s first foray into miniature works for strings, piano and analog processing. Composed during periods when the young Dunn was found sneaking into music buildings at various music academies and universities in Canada and the U.S. During this time Dunn was known to recruit friends and colleagues into impromptu recording sessions, capturing layers and verses in places as mundane as his bedroom and bathroom. The piano renditions were…
Large Electric Ensemble
Large Electric Ensemble is Ex-Easter Island Head's fourth release on Low Point and their first piece for massed electric guitars and percussion. Following on from Mallet Guitars Three, Large Electric Ensemble sees the group expand to include twelve prepared electric guitars and drums to create a vast wash of amplified strings and droning overtones. Commissioned for the first World Event Young Artists (WEYA) festival held in Nottingham, UK, during September 2012, the piece was developed alongside…
Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 - 4
The Black Mill Tapes volumes 1-4 are now available on one epic triple CD set featuring over 40 tracks of material, now completely remastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy. Lurking in the shadows between deep house, slow techno, Carpenter soundtracks and classic electronica, these sibling albums transcend genres with hallucinatory, shape-shifting effect, trudging from the pastoral whimsy of the first volumes to a darker, less certain point on the horizon. They could just as easily soundtrack a thrill…
Lickin'
Veronica Vasicka's unterwelt divining rod points out these industrialized zingers taken from French duo, D.Z. Lectric & Anthon Shield's 1985 tape, 'Confessions D'Un Masque'. Obviously inspired by the electroid lust of Throbbing Gristle, the later disko aktions of Chris & Cosey, and Suicide's stripped down swagger, their re-titled 'Lickin'' LP presents eight tracks oscillating between raging, wiry electronics and darkly romantic themes with an almost schizoid distribution of energies. For the DJs…
A slab about being held captive
Louis Johnstone has carved out a distinctive production style from noisy, often heavily compressed but surprisingly subtle recordings under a number of aliases, such as Dem Hunger for Leaving Records. His Wanda Group releases have made him one of the more reliably fascinating names in freeform noise and electronics, with a spate of standout releases in recent months for the likes of Notown, Opal Tapes and Where to Now. This new adventure on NNA is especially changeable, a long, thin thread of so…
Principles of inertia
Stefan Jaworzyn continues his return on Blackest Ever Black, Kye, and his own, revived Shock imprint, with some freaky, almost funked-up gear for the excellent Trensmat label. Miles from his best known releases with Skullflower and Whitehouse, 'Principles Of Inertia' is focussed on roiling rhythms and scratchy, ghoulish modular synth noise ripe for deviant industrial discos and mouldy bedrooms. It's a spitting, virulent pack of four crackers veering between the squirrelly synth spurts and breakb…
Sprang
Adventurous Belgian percussionist Eric Thielemans makes a fairly unusual entry into the Miasmah catalogue with the surprisingly positive sounding album Sprang. Thielemans has actually appeared on the label earlier - as guest percussionist on Kreng´s debut album L´Autopsie Phenomenal De Dieu. Although you can recognize the sound on this record, the main focus of Sprang is to revert to the pure joy of sound experimentation and letting go of your foothold. Thielemans's previous exercises in expandi…
Journey to the light
"Recorded in Northern California in 1984 and released in a micro edition by the Creative Sound imprint in January of the following year, Mark Banning’s Journey to the Light is a lost gem of private issue New Age music, an impossible-to-find album that is more spoken about than heard and deserves to be recognized alongside established classics of the genre. Incorporating processed electric guitar, zither, voice and field recordings, it is unabashedly beautiful music—two side-long pieces that feel…
Club Music
The Diagonal dynamo returns to his label on a combustible trio of 'Club Music' trax, including a crackshot collaboration with Russell Haswell. Powell's first 12" for the label since 2012's 'Body Music' arrives a year since his 'Fizz' 12" for Liberation Technologies and a killer for The Death Of Rave - with a couple of scintillating remixes for Ike Yard and Silent Servant in between - to mark his clearest, canniest statement of intent, wrenching ideas twoc'ed from New Beat, Hardcore Jungle, Post-…
An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music - Vol 1
Subtitled: First A-Chronology 1921-2001. At last, the Sub Rosa label re-issues the highly-acclaimed Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music collection. Containing early and contemporary classics as well as pieces that had never been heard before. Volume 1 begins in the 1920s with the Russolo brothers, and examines each decade in turn -- Varèse, Cage, Schaeffer, Xenakis, the great pioneers crafting the first traces of a music that was markedly revolutionary: electronic music, created from no…
Split Animal Sculpture
Infinite Greyscale presents a new long-form composition by Jan St. Werner, Split Animal Sculpture, a companion piece to the artist’s ongoing Fiepblatter series on Thrill Jockey, Jan St. Werner (Mouse on Mars, Lithops, Microstoria, Von Südenfed) has been at the forefront of forward thinking electronic music for over twenty years. As an artist concerned primarily with sound as a sculptural material, St. Werner has also exhibited his work in museums and his numerous collaborators include Rosa Barba…
Two shadows
Migrations In Rust is Jesse Allen. As a member of the Red Light District collective in Queens, NY (which has included some of the best in modern experimental musicians such as Yellow Tears, Pharmakon, John Mannion, Diaphragm, DJ Dog Dick and a slurry of other side projects, solo projects and collaborations), former member of the Cathode Terror Secretion and current performer in Cowards, in addition to producing and performing under the guise of several other solo projects (Hollow Seed, Goldeater…
Histrionic
The inimitable Estonian ex-pat takes inspiration from current hood, Brooklyn, in the darker, beguiling pop contours of her 3rd album proper. The challenging yet gratifying arrangements of 'Histrionic' are testament to both her consistency as a boundary-pushing artist, and an enduring belief in the role of pop music as a model for incisive cultural commentary and observation. Her sound here is more layered, spacious than previously heard, yet denser than ever, crammed with uncanny lyrical observ…
Temple Room
Matt Hill aka Umberto returns to the spectre of 'Temple Room' from his 'Prophecy Of The Black Widow' (2010) album for extended and alternative dancefloor versions. On the extended version he's doubled the track length, giving himself more time to tease out the kinky disco vibes with camp, Jamie Principle-esque synth runs and, whilst the Silvio mix locks into a stompng, Hi-NRG wiggle.
World Arena
The West Coast’s weirdest hidden-treasure trio, Bronze, have plied their molten composite of serpentine metro-gnomic drumming, oscillator raga, hash-oil free verse, and pendulum bass patterns for seven shaded years, but sonic documentation remains sparse. The new decade, thankfully, has seen them reversing this deficit, first with 2011’s Copper LP, and now with World Arena, which unfolds another octagon’s worth of their signature spellbound, smoke-ringed, psych-fusion explorations. Tracked at th…
Lowlife
Eclectic selection running from midnight jazz moods to swinging house and dusted downbeats. As much as Los Angeles gleams in the global mind as a gateway to dream fulfillment and televised wealth / fame amalgams, it’s equally a desert of disappointments. Hence the dead-end yoga cults, under-the-bridge tar dealers, valley burnouts, Inland Empire night-stalkers and seas of destitute Eastside lowlifes. This vibe is central to Afterhours’s languid, nocturnal musical vision, which has evolved from sl…
City of Sweat
German steamroom wrecking crew LX Sweat returns from a winter of festival dates and self-symbiosis to lay out an impressively realized full-length debut of voidist club fantasia, equal parts Screw bootlegs, slow-jack synth freestyle, and degraded phaser wash. City of Sweat spirals through a judgement night of weird, codeined lust, luxury hallucinations, overdosed syrup rituals, and long, blurry nights stumbling home through alleys in the rain. Like last year’s Sweat Sweat Sweat cassette, this ne…
Draught
Earle and Sussmann are best known for their minimal electronic work as Stasis Duo but this disc sees them in far more bracing mode for this all electronics trio. Recorded while Kahn was touring Australia in 2009. Matt Earle works with blank media including samplers, mixers, turntables and tapedecks. He has a solo project under the name Muura, and plays in the groups Stasis Duo and Xwave (with Adam Sussmann), xNoBBQx and Sun of the Seventh Sister. He also runs the Breakdance the Dawn record label…
What's That For, Mate?
* Hand-numbered edition of 100 in recycled cardstock sleeve with envelope. * Recorded in March 2010, What's that for, mate? Is one of the first recordings the duo (Jack Harris & Samuel Rodgers) made together. At this time the two worked with a combination of no-input and acoustic feedback, digital processing and phonography. This recording sees a discourse resulting from the amalgamation of and conflict between the analogue and the digital, the gestural and the static, and multiple recorded spac…
Impermeability
Improviser and composer Laurent Peter - one half of Diatribes, co-ordinator of the Insub Meta Orchestra and co-curator of the Insubordinations label - has been a important figure in the Swiss Experimental scene for some years now. This new solo composition, although assembled from studio recordings, conjures gurgling volcanic pools, teeming with myriad amphibians and insects.