Playing with a Dead Person
When you contacted me about the duos, I thought there is nothing more original than playing with a dead person […] which is curious because Derek Bailey is very much alive, especially when we hear his voice and I feel he's sort of sitting here, in the studio, and he's waiting for me and I'm waiting for him and we're not quite sure what's gonna happen. „Derek and I always wanted to do a duo recording together and we never quite managed that. Within the later years that we were trying to set somet…
Pianophonie
'Forte e piano' is one of Serocki's lesser known and acclaimed works, while 'Pianophonie' is considered his greatest masterpiece. However, it's worth remembering that 'Forte a piano' and 'Pianophonie' are interrelated. It's difficult to imagine the latter without the former. Serocki was born in Torun. He studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano with Stanislaw Szpinalski at the State Higher School of Music in Lódz and graduated in 1946. He continued in Paris, studying composition w…
Pieces of solitude
Natalie Sandtorv is releasing her debut solo album 'Pieces of Solitude' on the 20th of November. Using a voice with an organic interaction with electronics she expresses distinctive poetic sound art characterized by droning tension and intense abrupt parts. 'Pieces of Solitude' is about the many forms of loneliness in both a positive and negative sense, and is therefore particularly suitable as a solo album. The album is imbued by a dark and melancholy mood with occasional massive and intense se…
Melting into foreground
Henrik Munkeby Norstebo, trombone, half clarinet, electronics.Melting into foreground is the second solo album from trombone player Henrik Munkeby Norstebo, and his debut on the SOFA label. The first track is solo trombone. No effects. He is using the whole spectre of his instrument, from pure tones to noise and the barely audible, in an attempt to find the balance between the intuitive and the strictly constructed. About the second part, Henrik says that all the electronic sounds stems from one…
Solo Books
The 8th release on Silent Water's catalogue (although it shows the 009 number, but that's a story to be told another time) is Pak Yan Lau's magnificent solo effort Books. Divided in three parts, as the three different 10 vinyls that host them, it brings all the magic and true imaginative sonic world of Pak Yan, being it on the prepared piano (Book of Wood), on synths & electronics (Book of Star) or on toy pianos (Book of Toy).The purity and the very strong 'naif' commitment that we can hear on t…
Dread Live
Sunn O)))’s feedback architect Stephen O’Malley cranks the amps even louder on his solo vinyl LP Dread Live. This is an extended and extremely loud improvisation for solo guitar (though the colossal heaviness sounds like an army of guitarists). Relentless waves of heavy drones and squeals bombard the listener; the man has turned distortion into an artform.The minimalist electric guitar mantra Dread Live was performed at Studio Helmbreker in Haarlem, Netherlands, September 2013, and recorded…
Hirn Fein Hacken
First of all, really? Is it really 6 years ago that Austrian stalwarts of weirdness and this nucleus of avantgarde hedonism have blessed the planet with their latest full-length album? It is indeed. Yet unbelievable considering how “bulbul 6″ has accompanied us over these years. Well, it must be admitted that there was an undisputed yearning for new stuff arising with every spin and when the Vienna based three-piece announced works on a new album in mid 2013 the joy was unbearable.
And he…
Reorchestrations
This new collection of Joe Acheson's 'Reorchestrations' (including two previously unreleased tracks) takes works by exceptional experimental/classical/folk musicians as source material, and passes them through Joe's studio where they are intricately reworked with the signature Hidden Orchestra composition and production techniques. The result is a cohesive new Hidden Orchestra album, consisting of tracks produced since 2012, and representing the best of the music to come out of Joe's stud…
Schon geht anders
29 tracks of sheer joie de vivre form this manifesto of musical positivism. Reductionist on their acoustic surface, constructivist in their compositional core, the tracks themselves and in their sequence point to a sociological base: a sociology of sound or a sound sociology driven by the rough necessities of political acoustics. Advanced 4-track tape recording techniques struggle with primitive digital technology, thus forming a class of sound which contains itself as an element and attribute. …
A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush
This record should be seen not so much as a tribute to Zbigniew Karkowski than as an ongoing concern to further his work and thinking as they were when he was alive, reacting, and questioning, uncompromisingly. Nevertheless, these are his final recordings, which he made- a homecoming of sorts - in Sweden, at EMS Studios in Stockholm, with his friends Jean-Louis Huhta and Lars Akerlund. Late november 2013. a reminiscence from the 1980s, the creation of the label Radium 226.05 by Carl Mich…
Vooruit 17.05.2015
A live recording, made during the Ultra Eczema Strafstudie night at Vooruit in Ghent, one of the most beautiful ballrooms in Flanders. Four turbulent parts blended across two sides. It is sometimes hard to hear who’s doing what here: vocals and strings, tapes, bells and percussion become an oddball of dust, blown into the narrow streets of improv; none of the ‘free music solo rules’ are obeyed here. Somebody else, living in that same street as it were, mentioned that ”it sounds like a whol…
Opgenomen Verantwoordelijkheden
** sold out at source ** This album is the result of 10 years of preserved sounds, vocal blubber, field recordings and printed leftovers. These elements are collaged together into a travelogue of sorts, departing from Vom Grill’s (or Dennis Tyfus) bedroom towards the bar across the street — a short journey indeed! — where a destroyed piano is pushed by Jos Steen onto Bert Pels and DT, who crawl out from underneath clad only in kids’ accordions. “I’m going over to the over side” -- where Gre…
The Electronic Hole
The Electronic Hole (1970) is a raw, noisy, droning, and completely mesmerizing album recorded by Phil Pearlman between the first Beat of the Earth album (RAD 001LP) and Relatively Clean Rivers (ASH 3007CD). Pearlman assembled The Electronic Hole in 1969. Recorded in local studios during off-hours, the album is entirely different from Beat of the Earth, as it abandons a free-form improvisational approach in favor of "compositions," including a wild cover of Frank Zappa's "Trouble Every Day." …
The Beat of the Earth
Two foundational documents of American private-press psychedelic rock emerge from decades-long shadows, deeply illuminated chapters authored by prototypical "terminally unique" Southern California artist/seeker Phil Pearlman and two of his early, briefly extant bands.From 1967, Phil Pearlman (The Electronic Hole (RAD 002LP) and the majestic Relatively Clean Rivers (ASH 3007CD)) leads a free assemblage of local Southern California acid-heads through loping Velvetica tribal incantations. The Bea…
Les Soeurs Noires
Les Souers Noires LP by Timo van Luijk with Daniel Duchamp and Dominique Vermeesch. Released by Editions Delvoyeurs for the exhibition "Les Soeurs Noires" by Dominique Vermeesch. Side A contains a piece by Timo van Luijk and Daniel Duchamp. The B side has an etching by Dominique Vermeesch. Edition of 500 copies.
Etrurya
The freaky merge of Psycho, Italo and Disco beats, drawn by synthesizers and drum machines dated 1980, driving you into a fancy trip of shady scenario.Lamusa is an Italian producer who loves create melancholy mirages; there is a warm quality to his sounds, it’s warped, glossy stuff that is innocuous for just long enough to make you feel uneasy, like glimpsing an alternate pop universe.Recently selected for Red Bull Music Academy Paris 2015.Acid, darkness, overnight mermaids swimming at 100b…
A Portrait
A Milestone, this is it! Selecting illustrative works from the lifetime of a creative person is a daunting task; doing so with a singularly individual artist like Harry Partch is all the more difficult. In the more than four decades since Partch’s death, interest in his both his life and his compositional output has continued to grow, and there remains a place for documents that can offer insights, suggest paths, and give new life to that creator’s endeavors.Even as duplicate instrumental ensemb…
Four Organs/Phase Patterns
Steve Reich remains one of the most important figures in 20th century music. Though he studied at the prestigious arts institutions Julliard and Mills College, by the mid- 1960s Reich set about dismantling the very orthodoxy that he had been trained in. Forming a new musical language based on repetitive processes, Reich became established as part of the so-called 'Big Four' of New York minimalists (along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass). Reich's influence can easily be seen tod…
Porta
Umanzuki is the youngest act to emerge from the current Italian Occult Psychedelia milieu. What was born as some sort of exotic free-jazz combo with the Sonic Birds EP, quickly developed into Tropical Nature Of Tiaso, a 35 minute-long improvisation built upon minimal electronics, diluted sounds and reduced synthetic rhythm. Porta, their newest effort, explores one more artistic metamorphosis. Focusing on a EP format the Florencebased trio has been able to shape the looseness of its prev…
Kalash Tirich Mir
German Army is a duo from somewhere just outside of Los Angeles, CA, in the dehydrated and dilapidated outskirts of San Bernardino County. Little is known about them, but what you need to know is this: a prolific non-stop stream of countless releases in all formats in less than four years for labels like Opal Tapes, Handmade Birds, Belten and Chondritic Sound. A truly weird approach that mixes up early industrial and exotic infatuations, cheap gear electronics and world music soundbites, …