Centering and displacement
To manipulate a recording of the improvised process is to directly dilute spontaneous conception, and thank god for that. Centering and Displacement was composed in the winter-summer of 2008 in Chicago. A body of improvised source material was collected, segmented and organized by a simple chance operation. These segments were then orchestrated into a sound program and arranged by order of the strict composed form. At times, the score also regulated post-recorded effects to manipulate the origin…
Unisono
Eight musicians play the same virtual synthesizer programmed by myself with Max/MSP following a precise score. They start with the same sound but while slowly modifying each parameter they transform it from within, grinding up its entrails. The listener is positioned at the center of a sound at once unique and multiple. The version on this CD is a live recording made at Les Voûtes in Paris in June 2008 by the CLSI (Circle for the Liberation of Sounds and Images) directed by Paul Méfano. Th…
Llum moll
Llum Moll is a multilayered composition made with a manipulated AM radio receiver subjected to interference by LED lamps. The combination of the lamps in tandem with the radio tuned to certain frequencies creates a phantom organ' sound, turning the receiver into an instrument with a peculiar timbre and pitch. The composition was made in two parts. The first was to record and then select fragments with different lengths, pitches and textures. The second was to readjust the pitch of the chosen fra…
Afternoon Summer Sex
Solo project of long-time superstar Mike Connelly (Wolf Eyes, Hair Police) building the perfect negative of his bands - but still walking a similar path of his bandmates' solo work - trading noise for quiet and jolts for scraping echoes. Afternoon Summer Sex - so far the second LP release by Failing Lights for 2012 - is a black swamp full of analog processing, whirling drones, chiming tones and shrouded electronic crackles. A slow-pace listen of minimal repetiton that gives the idea of an eterna…
Raga Ooty / Nilgiri Plateau
Raga Ooty unearths three previously unreleased works (each titled with reference to the area in south India where his mother was born) from Oren Ambarchi's archive, showcasing the rawer side of his solo work between 2006 and 2011. The side-long Raga Ooty unspools a twisting, skittering thread of gritty guitar harmonics over a bed of buzzing tambura drone, creating the same paradoxical impression of simultaneous stasis and forward propulsion achieved by minimalist masters such as Henry Flynt, to …
Fe3O4 - Magnetite
Vainio is back with his fifth album for the esteemed Touch label! Currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (with Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in the beginning of the 90's, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or m…
Shock
Special 2LP version of EM Records' John Cage Shock series, compiled from the three CD releases. Featured works: 26'55.988" for 2 Pianists and a String Player, Piano Music #7, 0'00", Variations II. Performers include: David Tudor, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Kenji Kobayashi, Yoko Ono and John Cage. Includes rare photos and liner notes in Japanese and English, plus commentary by Toshi Ichiyanagi. In October 1962 John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven …
Amalgamation
Reissue of this legendary album from 1970 featuring Hiro Yanagida, Kimio Mizutani, Mototeru Takagi. Number seven on the Japrocksampler Top 50. Divine excessive jazz-rock stylings by this batch of period-visionaries presumably recorded sometime in 1970 by Rudy Van Gelder and Creed Taylor at the Toshiba Records 1st Studio. All of that "real" psychedelic goo gets smeared about quite a bit; acoustic string flap AND electric gonzo-muff battle overdriven organ lines played by said Masahiko and his …
Peace Forest
A breathless exploration into meandering soundscapes made up of distorted guitar drones, heavy layers of synth and restless, tropical drum machine trances, kraut and shimmering drone....Somewhere between Sun Araw, High Wolf and Ducktails, according to the artist “inspired by night rides around Shibuya“. Hot and sultry these nights were, we assume. Absolutely mesmerizing stuff from start to finish. Limited to 250 copies
Aum
A mix of eastern and western styles, acoustic and electric instruments and musique concrete, the German-born Georg Deuter has been sharing his unique style with the world since an early brush with death prompted him to pursue a music career in 1970. Over the years Deuter, who now lives in Santa Fe, has followed his own spiritual path around the globe, releasing dozens of albums in the New Age genre, his most recent being 2010's Mystery Of Light. 1972's Aum, originally released on the Germ…
Plekzationz
CD version. This recording contains seven remixes by UK-based artist and electronic musician Mark Fell of the first three 12" singles released on the record label Sensate Focus in 2012. These were called 10, 5 and 3.3.... The first of these, 10, was itself a reworking of materials from an earlier project by Fell and Terre Thaemlitz, released on Comatonse Recordings in 2012. The seven remixes were written and recorded in June 2012 at the Upper Lounge, Chatham Street (UK) using a MacBook Pro ru…
Sentielle objectif actualite
CD version. This recording contains seven remixes by UK-based artist and electronic musician Mark Fell of the first three 12" singles released on the record label Sensate Focus in 2012. These were called 10, 5 and 3.3.... The first of these, 10, was itself a reworking of materials from an earlier project by Fell and Terre Thaemlitz, released on Comatonse Recordings in 2012. The seven remixes were written and recorded in June 2012 at the Upper Lounge, Chatham Street (UK) using a MacBook Pro ru…
Con-Struct
When M=Minimal asked Andreas Reihse to produce a Con-Struct album for them, he didn't hesitate to accept. Andreas Reihse, member of Kreidler and solo artist is one of the most important representatives of the post-Kraut generation, he also knows and loves the music of Conrad Schnitzler. The result is this second Con-Struct album. The composition "Con-Struct 9" opens this work with epic spheres -- deep electronic music that only can be produced being an admirer of Conrad's sound aesthetics. …
Tender
Backwards is proud to present the new album by Clara Engel, the Canadian musician with the warm and dreamy voice, also known for the intimate and melancholy character of her compositions, heartfelt and passionate. "Tender" is a sort of manifesto of Clara's way to conceive music: her songwriting is intense and fraught with emotions of the broadest range; her melting lyrics bring us back to the "poetry in music" by artists as Jacques Brel or contemporary balladeer Antony Hegarty. Listening to the …
Grapes and Snakes
Grapes and Snakes is the first collaborative work of two of the most respected American underground experimental/noise artists, Aaron Dilloway and Jason Lescalleet. Using purely analog synths and tape manipulation, they build a foggy psychoacoustic mass that lies between dynamic yet patiently treated tape-music and industrial howl. Aaron Dilloway has been releasing and recording music since the age of 16. He was a member of experimental bands Couch, Galen and Universal Indians. He is a form…
Normalette Surprise
180 gram LP version. 1980 the zeitgeist played into the right hands. And who held the aces? In Bureau B's game, Moritz R®, Frank Fenstermacher and Pyrolator aka Der Plan. Tired of convention and full of enthusiasm, they encountered an audience who felt just the same. And with record companies too ponderous to sign up Der Plan, the wonderful Ata Tak label was born of necessity. Normalette Surprise is the second album by Der Plan, released in 1981, a good year after their Geri Reig debut. It i…
Rekkez
Limited edition of 250, with full color 23 by 33 poster designed and painted by G.Loli. Mutamassik (= tenacity in Arabic) is the musical avatar of Giulia Loli, who merges Egyptian percussions with hardcore breaks. The result, sometimes dubbed Sa'aidi hardcore & Baladi breakbeats is a mutant, syncopated form of instrumental hip-hop. The history of Giulia Loli herself is marked by fluid borders, being born in Italy of an Egyptian mother, moving to the United States in her childhood, staying in Egy…
Phantom Horse
Phantom Horse is the duo of Ulf Schütte and Niklas Dommaschk from Hamburg and Kiel (home of seminal Digitalis Recordings artist Jürgen Müller). Schütte is a (part-time) member of Datashock, Black To Comm, Aosuke et al and has recently released his modular synth explorations under the Alien Radio moniker on a (sold-out) Dekorder split-LP with Keith Fullerton Whitman and a 4-way split 7" with Köhn, Ducktails and Peaking Lights on Kraak. Dommaschk plays guitar, synth and electric piano.
With…
Dawn Undefeated
Failing Lights self-titled album on Intransitive Recordings marked a turning point in Noise Music's one-way street of loudness, aggression and primal chaos; a tendency that can also be detected in the recent solo and duo output by his bandmates Nate Young and John Olson (Regression, Stare Case, et al) and the latest albums by contemporaries like John Wiese and Spencer Yeh.
As Marc Masters observed in Pitchfork: "If this is a trend, pinpointing when it began is probably impossible. But for …
Hylyt
Tomutonttu is the solo disguise of Tampere's Jan Anderzen, head of Kemialliset Ystävät and (part-time) member of Avarus, Tuusanuuskat and the Islaja band. Anderzen is one of the focal points of Finnish underground music for the past 15 years with a zillion releases on some of the leading underground labels worldwide (Fonal, Ultra Eczema, Ducktails/Real Estate member Matthew Mondanile's New Images, Beta-lactam Ring, FatCat, Beniffer, etc.). Tomutonttu is one of his longest running …