Issue 81: Faust - Freakatronica 1971-74
Viva freaktronica! For this edition of Electronic Sound cover stars are the legendary Faust, the wildest and weirdest of the 1970s krautrock outfits.
Erosion
Tip! *100 copies limited edition* Erosion is a sprawling yet focused love affair with the bass drum, allowing myriad objects to playfully interact with its grand form. Kevin and Jacob engage with the instrument in an entirely unrelenting way, traversing textural, pointillist sections, as well as rippling metallic drones. Notice’s admiration of Kevin and Jacob’s work goes back to circa 2008, with Kevin’s album with Tetuzi Akiyama and Christian Kiefer on the much-loved Digitalis Industries, and J…
Red Cross
**70 copies** A little bit more than a decade ago, we were introduced to the music of Filipe Felizardo. In all those years we’ve learned about his chameleon-like ability to adapt different states of mind and perception to the way he plays guitar. “Red Cross” is his last declared homage to the late John Fahey, but also a record representing all the imprisonments and liberties of living during a lockdown. The two tracks in this release exist in two different moments. “there’s an endness to it” is…
Propellers In Love
Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Arnold Dreyblatt founded the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration…
Miracle
Dovetailing and combining the rich harmonics of Michel Doneda's soprano and sopranino saxophone with Pascal Battus' rotating surfaces--mechanisms from small consumer electronics and their like put in motion and in contact with resonators and vibrators--this French improvising duo create fascinatingly shifting, unusual textures and sonic environments.
Parallel Traces of the Jewel Voice
Tip! Parallel Traces of the Jewel Voice by dj sniff is a project that takes inspiration from historical narratives and personal memories constructed around The Jewel Voice Broadcast (Gyokuon Hoso) that took place on August 15 of 1945. Contrary to common belief, Emperor Hirohito did not speak live on air to announce the surrender of Japan on this day. Instead, two lathe-cut discs with his recorded voice were skillfully mixed and played by NHK engineer Shizuto Haruna. Haruna’s proto-DJ/turntablist…
Prince of Parrot Shooters / The Aqueducts of Channel Island
In an interview for The Wire magazine back in January 2012, Spencer Clark claimed that one the most important "lesson" learned while performing with The Skaters was "stay true to your imagination". Taking this life motto at heart, Clark's world today is still a place of wonder and myth, conveyed through a myriad of aliases and invocations like Vodka Soap, Fourth World Magazine or Typhonian Highlife. Always the wide-eyed mystic and searcher of the netherworld, Clark surfaces again on Discrepant s…
Impressões de Outra Ilha
A globetrotter in the most pure and respectful sense, away from the trappings of neo-colonialist ventures and predatory tourism, Discrepant head honcho Gonçalo F. Cardoso returns to his Island impression series to offers us another glimpse of his deep, abstract impressions of (an)other island. After passionately collecting the sounds and lives inhabiting the main Island of Zanzibar, Unguja, released through Edições CN back in 2018, Cardoso now dwells into the Malaysian heartbeat of the Borneo fo…
Elders
Tip! Elders is the debut release from Ensemble Nist-Nah, a nine-piece percussion group led by Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie. The diverse group of French musicians that make up Ensemble Nist-Nah – whose collective experience encompasses traditional Gamelan performance, contemporary composition, noise, jazz, and everything in between – perform on drum kits, traditional and junk percussion, and a complete set of Javanese Gamelan instruments. Though building on the f…
Island On The Moon
Dirk Serries (worldwide renowned for his ambient alter-ego Vidna Obmana from 1984 till 2007) returns to this expansive sound universe with a new collaborative album that redefines the genre. Together with alto saxophonist Trösta the duo delivers a breathtaking album just in time to comfort, soothe and challenge in these darker times. Island On The Moon is a symphony of harmony, depth and nuance. A solace drenched in melancholy and light, made without the aid of computers but by the hands of two …
Pink Flag
Wire were born at the dawn of punk, but they became the quintessential art band. In the three closing years of the 1970s, the English quartet had one of the greatest opening runs of any band, shifting to post-punk before punk began to go stale and forging three masterpieces in a creative furnace so hot it burned out by the end of 1980. Those albums-- Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154-- still sound remarkably fresh, and have been re-mastered and reissued with their original vinyl tracklistings, …
All Is Well
*200 copies edition* In its own way the music of British duo brothers Mark and Clive Ives—known creatively as Woo—seemed destined for a digital world that the internet offers. They began making music together decades ago, but it’s only been within the last decade that they’ve started to receive the critical acclaim they rightly deserve. Their music is largely instrumental (though not always the case) and is perhaps the best example of “mood music” I can think of. Occasionally it’s meditative and…
Issue 77: Can. Inside the Krautrock Kaleidoscope (Magazine)
We're heading for the dark side of the krautrock kaleidoscope with this month's Electronic Sound cover stars, the inimitable Can. Prompted by the release of 'Live In Stuttgart 1975', the first in a series of archive Can gig recordings, we speak to Irmin Schmidt about the band he created with Michael Karoli, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit towards the end of the 1960s. As we try to deconstruct their wholly unique brand of sonic voodoo, Schmidt reveals the inner workings of Can, together with his…
Issue 76: Chris & Cosey (Magazine)
We're marking 40 years of the one and only Chris & Cosey in the new issue of Electronic Sound. Our cover story is an in-depth interview with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, who look back over the highs and lows of their incredible musical partnership, which they formed straight after Throbbing Gristle imploded. The fact that Chris and Cosey are a couple has always been central to everything the pair have done, including the 20-odd albums they have released under a range of different guises, …
Night Calls
Second Sleep presents Mercury Hall's latest release Night Calls. Mercury Hall is the solo project by the label's founder Matteo Castro, one of the most relevant figure in Italian noise scene. With this solo project, Castro delivers long excursion of concrete music.
Le rêve, l’ombre et la vision
Seven sound-paintings inspired by the poems of Finnish writer Eeva-Liisa Manner and the paths of the Deep North which revolve around the boreal circle, those lakes, shores, cliffs, fjords and large forests inhabited by other lives, other presences than ours. Le rêve, l’ombre et la vision is constructed from field recordings of natural phenomena at various open sites: echo in a wooded valley, geyser, cliffs rocks, glacial lake sculpted by a forgotten glacier, fire, landscape after freezing rain, …
The Mermaid's Purse: Live at Chatham College, 1976
In 1976 the Entourage Music and Theater Ensemble reached a creative zenith. The nomadic troupe had just released The Neptune Collection, its iconic second album for Moses Asch’s Folkways Records, and decided to present the music to audiences across the rust belt in its most miasmic, elemental form. Extended stretches of full-group improvisation mingled with folk-tune like melodies during these performances, which featured multiple dancers spontaneously interpreting the music, at times in elabora…
The Ear Cannot Be Filled With Hearing
Abschattungen is the band Giovanni Di Domenico formed to pay hommage to everything that goes under the name ‘funk’. Strong grooves are laid under a forest of psychedelic textures and intense melodies, filling the auditory space with dense metaphysic dance movements. Taking inspiration from albums as Sun Ra’s Lanquidity and Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza’s Feedback, black music inspired pulsations are fused with contemporary music’s sensibilities and the power of free jazz, resulting …
Half-Dragged
Henry Birdsey is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and audio engineer based in New Haven, CT, working primarily with the pedal steel, lap steel, microtonal organ, violin, and homemade instruments. Educated by microtonal theorist and composer Kyle Gann, among others, Birdsey has emerged as a prominent voice in the avant-garde music scene over the last several years. Touring extensively in the United States and abroad as a solo act and as half of Tongue Depressor with Zach Rowden, Birdsey has dev…