Ambient/Ruin
Gravetemple was formed in 2006 as a side-project of the band Sunn O))) by Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O'Malley and Attila Csihar. The group formed initially to tour in Israel in the summer of '06, creating several recordings which eventually became The Holy Down album, which was released on Southern Lord Recordings in 2007. At the time of the Israel tour, the Lebanon War started and was in action. In summer '08, the trio reformed together with the addition of Australian drummer Matt "Skitz" Sander…
Undefined
Undefined is the first collaboration between artists Richard Chartier and Yann Novak. For this piece the artists chose to collaborate in a way that was less about concept and more about the act of listening. The piece began with Chartier creating an unfinished work and sending it to Novak with no explanation, just the instructions to add to it, subtract from it, or a combination in order to finish the piece. Novak was then to send the recording back to Chartier for a simple approval or rejection…
Blue.Hour
Yann Novak Blue.Hour explores the high contrast colors created in the landscape during “l’heure bleue,” the period of twilight each evening when there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. Directly following the ‘Golden Hour,’ know for its diffused yet powerful light, the Blue Hour retains the diffusion but lacks the strong light source giving this period of the day an especially melancholic and meditative atmosphere. Blue.Hour is presented here in stereo with some compositional elemen…
Circadian Rhythm, Sleep Disorder
LOGOS “The idea of dedicating a record to sleeping disorders hit my mind as an illumination when two tracks were already done and I was trying to find out their obscure sense. The more I searched for it the more I couldn”t sleep at night. Composing during nightime, through headphones, is a kind of sleep treatment for me. In a big city like Rome silence is a nearly nonexistent condition; only at night I seem to have the silence I need to concentrate, but some lonely car running down the road alwa…
Split LP
Ensemble Economique and Heroin In Tahiti are an outstanding pairing for a split LP" It’s a well-known story: the bluesmen sold their souls at dusty crossroads back in the old days. Far less is known about a younger generation’s deal with the devil, their affinity towards dark forces and black magic. Their hypnagogic highway to hell and success goes en route Tahiti where souls no longer can be sold because they’re already lost in secret Voodoo rites. The music that springs from having experienced…
Luftbobler
Gatefold double LP version. Brimming with subversive energy, searing wit and gallows humor, Luftbobler is the debut album by Dinos Chapman. Consisting of 13 tracks of electronic "Schlampige Musik," Luftbobler is the result of a decade of experimenting with sound. Inspired by insomnia, horror movies, and boredom, and made in a DIY fashion in the basement of his East London home, Luftbobler reflects Dinos Chapman's interests in the industrial pulse of Throbbing Gristle, willful experimentatio…
V
Given how prolific Barn Owl have been in the past, it's surprisingly to learn that it's been over 18 months since "Lost in the Glare," their last proper full-length. In the interim Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti have issued a variety of solo albums, but the duo has also used that time to augment the sound palette of Barn Owl with electronics and synthesizers. Thankfully, the same blackened soot and scorched psychedelia are still prevalent, they just reach deeper timbres and more expansive textures…
Drones
In the beginning there was the piano. As soon as he had mastered the basics, Jean-Philippe Goude discovered the spell of melancholy while working on a little musical piece: an etude ringing out in the style of a somber hymn. Not the dead meat smells of somberness that, according to Picabia, serious people emit, but the earthen gravity of an abyss dug by life itself. Everything is the result of this bedazzlement. At 11 years old, Jean-Philippe Goude closed his eyes. When his eyelids finall…
Vergezichten
Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek is a master of self-made sound and time-stretching, sensitively handling organic recordings and samples on countless releases, and regards preset sounds in an organ or a cheap keyboard as a tonal find, as a part of the cacophony of everyday life. These bontempi-rhythms plus the computer-stretched sounds of saxophone (Espen Reinertsen) and voice (Mariska Baars) are the base elements of "Vergezicht 1" and "Vergezicht 2." It is stunning how Zuydervelt man…
Anxiety
Anxiety is the full-length follow up to Autre Ne Veut's 2010 self-titled debut, which was for many the definitive post-millennial Failure Pop statement outside of time and style. Autre Ne Veut rivaled other lovelorn 'missteps' such as Marvin Gaye's Here My Dear and Big Star's Sister Lovers. If you didn't hear the connection, you weren't listening closely enough. Be that as it may, ANV brazenly decided to make it easier for people with his post-canonical return. No longer playing the role o…
Ectoplasma
Software Recording Co. presents Tropa Macaca's fourth release, Ectoplasm. The ambient-noise duo of André Abel and Joana da Conceição have been going strong from their Portugal home base since 2005, while lunging out into the world with releases via Qbico and Ruby Red. The following to 2009's Sensação do Princípio on Stiltbreeze, Ectoplasm finds Tropa Macaca creating a quantic fantasy sound not unlike a cybernetically enhanced Taj Mahal Travellers interpreting a lost chapter of One Hundred…
Burnt Up On Re-Entry
Burnt Up On Re-Entry is an infinite space where dark psychedelics are crafted using a combination of raw electronics, manipulated samples & heavy rock guitar. The song craft remains centered around a heavy melodic & melancholic core, which has been prevalent across the entire Boduf Songs canon.
Live At Skymall
Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler have formed a trio that can truly be called a supergroup. As solo artists, all three members are among the most renowned of Berlin's electronic musicians. When playing together as Groupshow, the three instrumentalists -- themselves largely informed by minimalist sensibilities -- engage with the idiom of free-form collective improvisation, which has a long tradition in Germany dating back to the days of Fluxus and Krautrock. Consequentially, t…
Diversions 1994-1996
2015 repress, originally released in 2012. The 30-minute Diversions 1994-1996 EP is made up entirely from samples from the collection of Lee Gamble's jungle cassette mix-tapes. The audio has been subjected to analog and digital deformations, while trying to extract, expand upon, and convey particular qualities emblematic of the original music. The effect is that of a musical body scan, all that is solid melts into air. Sounds are unearthed, dissected on the operating table, melted and unloc…
Unseen Worlds
1994 release, Late-eighties works re-released by Spiegel's own label, after the demise of the original imprint Scarlet Records"I had started as an improviser, largely self-taught and playing by ear on "folk" plucked instruments. Once I began a formal study of music, only after college studies apart from music, I had to learn to adjust to writing silent notes on paper with a dim hope of possibly eventually hearing them played by others, though my lack of keyboard skills with which to compose and …
Obsolete systems
finally restocked: 2001 release. An overview of Laurie Spiegel's electronics works, ranging from 1970 to 1983. Utilizing analog synthesizers (Buchla 100, Electrcomp 100), tape, digital synthesis, Echoplex, Bell Labs' GROOVE Hybrid system, etc. Comparable to classic 70s-era Schnitzler streaming, this is a very memorable document of this obscure composer's best works. "Laurie Spiegel, electronic music pioneer, has been working with cutting-edge electronic instruments since the 1970s. She has…
The Temple Recording
I am currently making recordings like this: I go to a certain place and choose an object Ð mainly it is a landscape, which is interesting to me. I fix a stethoscope with a small built-in air mike onto my temples. The position of the air microphone can be set anywhere near the ears, but I feel that our temples are the best and only place for that. The stethoscope captures vibrations of my muscles and blood flows. Because of the nature of the air microphone, environmental noises are recorded, t…
O kokos tis anixis (Grains of spring)
The ancient Greek philosophers thought that the world is constituted of a series of grains of space and time. When I walked around Miura Peninsula in the springtime, I felt the same way - the quality of the space and the time seemed to be formed by a series of grains of sounds. Each place has its own unique character. You could label it as a particular quality of the place. The quality of the sound.'-'This is one of my trials to present a 'subject' as a piece of work - which can be called…
Cry
Cry was recorded in a shed at Taieri Mouth between 1998 and 2000 and then released by Emperor Jones on CD in 2000. Alastair has always been one of the most admired yet paradoxically ignored musicians from the New Zealand underground since he first started out in The Rip on Flying Nun Records in the early 1980s. Having already worked with the incredibly talented New Zealander otherwise known as Michael Morley, it seemed natural for MIE’s next step to go on to work with Alastair on getting …
The Mineral Victim
After a lengthy silence, Chora’s Ben Nash came back recently with an album made entirely on his computer, and now here’s another one which seems to have been made with a combination of computer and guitar, carving out slow melodic soundscapes with glassy, patient drones, disembodied voices and a whole variety of tones which swell and recede for quite an ominous, organic-sounding psychedelic thrum.There are two lengthy pieces on here, on the first side there’s ‘From 80 Fathoms’, which is quite sp…