The Magnetic Headache
Blood is dripping from my stereo and my ears. Blood stereo submerges its listeners in horror vacui. The awfulness of emptiness is made audible in all its horrific detail. This album can be construed either as a radio play for exhausted ears or the ideal soundtrack for waking up from a disturbing nightmare. Reality refuses to return this early in the morning and all that remains is a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. Voices wander around in your head, somewhere there is the creaking of …
Beautiful blood
One of the most exciting experimental music artists currently active in North America, he has earned a growing following around the world. This recording is what you might expect—insanely powerful drone based music composed of the richly layered sounds of different instruments & field recordings, allowing the listener to pick up on new sounds & subtleties with every listen. Incredibly unusual music that takes influence from both ambient & noise circles & blends them to fantastic results. A very …
A Final Kiss On Poisoned Cheeks
Another ridiculously limited LPs from Table of the Elements celebrating not only their 15th anniversary but also the humble guitar itself. This time we have a one sided, etched blue slab of wax from the unshakable Oren Ambarchi, a man whose name has become synonymous with quality electronic production. In recent years he has been seen next to Stephen O'Malley and the Southern Lord lot, but here we find him back to doing what he does so well - a gorgeous long-form guitar drone piece taking in all…
Six Guitars
As with this week's excellent Ateleia & Benjamin Curtis LP, this beautiful Table Of The Elements LP comes on single-sided clear vinyl with a Savage Pencil etching on the flip. It's just as good as its counterpart too: as suggested by the title, the side-long piece piles on an armoury of guitars, accumulating a huge amount of sonic density, but never in an oppressive way. Instead the melding of electric and acoustic tones create a huge, warm network of sonorities, consolidating this band's positi…
Baghdad Batterie
Table of the Elements continues to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the second installment in its Guitar Series. On 'Baghdad Batterie', Ateleia and Benjamin Curtis fuse splendidly, as perfectly synchronized audio alchemists, and when they dip their axes in a vat of liquid soundscaping, the transmutation is complete: thick, glistening beats throb and undulate, without a tell-tale twang in sight. Baghdad Batterie is a fabulous piece of laptop psychedelia, and certain to delight fans of Curtis a…
Same Places (Slow Version)
Wafting, vaporously, from the suffocating heat of New Orleans, Belong shimmers like a mirage: vaguely discernable, yet always at the edge of an unobtainable horizon. Collaborators Mike Jones and Turk Dietrich employ a singular and remarkably inscrutable studio technique (Dietrich's remix skills extend to Nine Inch Nails' "The Frail") to wholly liquefy source material - here electric guitars - into wave upon breaking wave of sound. Comparisons are frequently made to William Basinski's notorious "…
Strung
Table of the Elements continues to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the third installment in its Guitar Series Vols. 3 & 4. Peripatetic composer, performer, improviser, and designer Jon Mueller is a busy guy, and both the rock and experimental music scenes are the richer for it. As a drummer he propels the ecstatic whorl of Collections of Colonies of Bees and the occasional guitar army of Rhys Chatham; alternately his solo project, Metals, is the most harrowingly intense percussive barrage yo…
La Nuit Electrique
Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Hototogisu) rears Zaimph's vile head once again on La Nuit Electrique. A raspy, delicate instrumental passage begins like a crippled music box. Elegant and soporose. Blackened guitar and amplification apprise the rest. Acrid feedback hangs in the air and vocal modulations clot inside dark rivers of current. The night electric
Nysa
Nysa represents a compendium of turbulence and singularities. The sound for drunken states on mythic mountains. A studio reshaping of several live performances with custom computer programs, gestural input devices, and circuit-bent electronics. It was assembled throughout 2006 in Providence and mixes human aktions with the performance systems: Needles(s), High, Maenads, and Augur. Each system utilizes a physical approach for exploring the hidden and creating the esoteric with digital audio. Hand…
Aphotic Leech
Aphotic Leech is the first movement in a series of ever changing modes which make up what Half Makeshift has slowly become. A bath of heavy drone and bitter piano chords strewn over top of subtle glitch work and manipulated percussion, Aphotic Leech trades malice for despair and shuns any probable hope. Created in November of 2006 from austere piano pieces, string fragments, a live percussion specimen and other various arrangements, this piece grew to be much larger than originally intended thro…
Schwarzhagel
Klangmutationen are an mystery. More could be said about what their music isn't than what it is. Hailing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the underground experimentalists pierce the veils of Eastern and Western music. Recalling early sets on FMP as well as the Takayanagi-Abe axis of Japanese free music, Schwarzhagel is the sound of a spirit falling past its own life after death, forever
Sparks
this is the last CD by Italian artist Roberto Paci Dalò belongs to the innovative exponents of the European contemporary arts scene with projects created in music, performing arts, visual arts and film. A pioneer in the use of digital technologies he lives between Rimini (Italy) and Vancouver and has been recipient of the DAAD Fellowship. Since 1985 founder and director of the performing arts group and production house Giardini Pensili. Since 2006 artistic director of Velvet Factory - a space fo…
MILLESUONI. DELEUZE, GUATTARI E LA MUSICA ELETTRONICA
Questo volume offre per la prima volta al pubblico italiano la storia dell'incontro tra la filosofia di Deleuze e Guattari e la musica elettronica. Una storia che comincia, forse, quando Deleuze partecipa nel 1972 alla registrazione del disco Electronique Guerrilla del gruppo rock sperimentale Heldon, prestando la sua voce a un frammento di Umano, troppo umano di Nietzsche.Per ripercorrere questa storia, complessa e ricca, Emanuele Quinz esplora alcuni concetti-chiave a partire dai quali Deleuze…
Imitation of Life / Double Indemnity
Two classic Y records reissued on the Unheard Music Series; hardcore improvised music by Beresford (Slits, Premiere U.K. Jounalisto), Honsinger (cellist extraordinaire), Toop (experimental Genius/author) & Kondo (Japanese improv legend). Originally released in 1980/81, never reissued before. With bonus tracks, new liner notes by Beresford.
Memory & Money
With a lineup of five turntablists, cello, sampler, and vocals and led by avant genius Otomo Yoshihide, this is not your average group. In fact, this strange blend of over-the-top plunderphonics at times sounds as dense and chaotic as some of John Oswald's work, but done live rather than through meticulous layering and overdubs. The music is not just completely incoherent noise, on the other hand, but rather quite organized in its own way, as everything from national anthems to easy listening re…
1968
You know how sometimes people try so hard that they do not wish their early moments to be seen nor heard? Such is the case with Gérard Manset and his first recordings which, as it were, represent some of the best psychedelic chansons in existence and in league with such luminaries as Gainsbourg, Polnareff and Ferrer. Ill-conceived timing with the May 1968 student riots in Paris doomed the fate of his Animal on est Mal EP and self-titled LP, and both are now as rare as truffles. However, his popu…
The Vilnius Explosion
This new label start with a record 'The Vilnius Explosion' by great Swedish multi-instrumentalist Mats Gustafsson (baritone and slide saxophones, alto fluteophone), who gave a memorable performance on 9th February 2008 together with the leading contemporary Lithuanian jazz musicians - Liudas Mockunas (soprano, tenor and baritone sax), Eugenijus Kanevicius (bass), Marijus Aleksa (drums) and Arkadijus Gotesmanas (drums).
Visions of Doing
Pierre Bastien is well known for his orchestra of musically gifted robots. Driven by electric motors, the machines deliver stuttering rhythmic loops. These unsteady tempos constantly fluctuate, imbuing the songs with an emotional and honest quality not found in much of today's loop-based music. The nine tracks on Visions of Doing have been selected from Pierre Bastien's soundtracks to Karel Doing's films. Pierre Bastien on Visions of Doing: 'The compositions presented here in homage to Karel Doi…
The Ancient Balance to Control Death
Tetuzi Akiyama's contribution to the portrait series, The Ancient Balance to Control Death is a departure in a career of departures. In addition to Akiyama's trademark improvised, blues-infused, guitar work, the ep features intense multi-layered vocals. The end result is a collection of unique Japanese blues that could only have come from one of Japan's most distinct and creative improvisers.
Forerunners - Swedish Electronic & Concrete Music 1955-65
With Karl-Birger Blomdahl: Mimamusik (1959). Bengt Hambraeus: Doppelrohr 2 (1955). Rune Lindblad: Formation (1958-59), Optica 2 (1960). Arne Mellns: Nite Music (1964). Sten Hanson: Fruits de mer (1962). Åke Karlung: Antihappening (1962). Leo Nilsson: Skorpionen (1964). Ralph Lundsten: Atomskymning (1964). Bengt Emil Johnson: Enmans Gubbdrunkning (1964). Lars-Gunnar Bodin: Den heter ingenting, den heter nog 'Seans 2' (1965). The cd includes a 16 page booklet with texts by Sten Hanson.