★23Five Incorporated
Take All the Ships...
The title to this album from Tarab (nee Eamon Sprod) is striking enough in its allusions of damnation, with a watery grave a potential outcome from human activity impacting the earth. So, it may be stating the obvious that the corroded locations where mankind has scarred the surface of the earth feature prominently in the work of this Melbourne based sound artist. The residual elements of these sites become the agents for metaphor and allegory in Tarab's work, documented through field recording …
Sub
**Limited edition of 500 copies** The most enigmatic of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe, Marc Zeier is the man behind G*Park; and here, he presents his first major album since the acclaimed 2008 album of cryptic electro-acoustics entitled Reuters. Many years in the making, Sub is a sprawling masterpiece of modern day musique concrete, reflecting the early pioneers' use of razor cut tape with a grandiose revelation of an existential horror. Zeier describes this album as the manifestation of amorphous cond…
I’m Lost
A schizoid-concrete opus of environmental sounds heightened, stimulated, decontextualized, and teased into a psychic puzzle of industrialized and post-industrialized detritus, I'm Lost marks another milestone in the ever impressive catalogue from Australian sound-artist Eamon Sprod, who adopts the moniker Tarab for his endeavors. The title is one that explodes with a multitude of meaning. There's the geographical frustration in losing one's way as the surrounding landmarks fail to match with wha…
Aeral
In working with sound, video, and installation, Richard Garet has made an artform of interference. In previous work, he's employed photosensors to control a particular audio signal through the erratic nature of a violently pulsing abstract film. He's flooded a performance space with fog to disperse multi-channel video work into an ephemeral yet sculptural mass, accompanied by an equally diffused sound design. And here on AreaI, Garet continues his ongoing research with electromagnetic disturbanc…
Thought provoking III
Thought Provoking III is the final document from the electro-acoustic composer Helmut Schäfer who died in 2007. The Austrian artist spoke of his work as "characterized by the use of very intense and direct musical language which powerfully describes his personal experience and reflections on society structures, the blindness of modern and informed masses and everyday functionalism in between civilization." That intensity of expression manifested itself through performances and collaborations tha…
33 RPM: 10 Hours Of Sound From France
An exhibition companion compilation to SFMOMA's 2003 listening room program 33 RPM: 10 Hours of Sound From France, curated by Laurent Dailleau. 33 RPM's Compact Disc companion features compositions from Kasper Toeplitz, Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe Havel, Laurent Dailleau, Mathieu Chamagne, pizMO, Jean-Philippe Gross, and Mimetic. Comes with a 24 page booklet and original program details.
Variable Resistance (Ten Hours Of Sound From Australia)
An exhibition companion compilation for the exhibit of the same name at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held September 7-17, 2002. Packaged in a standard jewel case with an O-card and a 24-page booklet.
JUJIKAN - JAPAN
An exhibition companion compilation to SFMOMA's 2001 listening room program JUJIKAN: 10 Hours of Sound From Japan, co-curated by Atau Tanaka, Ryoji Ikeda, and Shunichiro Okeda. JUJIKAN's Double Compact Disc companion features compositions from Tamami Toro, Pain Jerk, Yasunao Tone, Nerve Net Noise, Otomo Yoshihide, Atau Tanaka, i.d., Masonna, Kozo Inada, Ichiro Nodaira, Hanatarash, Yuji Takahashi, Ryoji Ikeda, Merzbow, Kazuo Uehara, Astro, and Testuo Furudate. Comes with a 20 page booklet and ori…
Radio ghosts
'The name Tim Catlin may not be terribly well known amongst the avant-guitarist circles; but his recorded output clearly stands amongst the best that Glenn Branca, Keith Rowe, and Jim O'Rourke have mustered from their six strings hard wired into the histories of electroacoustics, minimalism, and post-punk experimentation. Based out of Melbourne, Catlin is a guitarist who incessantly tinkers with the mechanics of his instrument, envisioning it as alternately as a mimetic sculptural object and a p…
World as will II
Legendary composers Zbigniew Karkowski and Tetsuo Furudate complete their second installment of World As Will. This powerful collaboration results in a furiously intense music with Wagner-esque orchestrations and instrumentation with vigorous electronic manipulations, voice and mastery. A truly epic piece of work.
Wind keeps even dust away
'Eamon Sprod (aka Tarab) professes a romantic attachment to the notion that the world is falling apart, a terminal process only enhanced by the intrinsic obsolescence from the output of consumer culture. Yet, this Australian sound artist is not one to wallow in the nihilism of such poetics, rather he counterpoints these thoughts with the allegorical implications of his nom de plume. Tarab is an Arabic word that doesn't readily translate into English, but it might be best defined as the ecstatic …
55 pas de la ligne au N°3
Long-time San Francisco based sound artist, internationally known from his extensive discography as Crawling With Tarts, releases his first full length solo work. 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 is a microscopic study of dense sonic landscapes buried within antiquated turntable motors. Gendreau, an acoustician by profession, utilizes high sensitivity accelerometers to map detailed frequencies from a variety of old turntable motors and mechanics. This is a rare exhibition of the creative potential wit…
Our telluric conversation
'23five Incorporated proudly presents Our Telluric Conversation - the second collaborative album from John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff. This is an album which Duncan describes as having been galvanized by magnetism. In a semantic sleight of hand, Duncan and Hausswolff reveal magnetism through a duality of meanings. One on hand, they speak of the physical phenomenon of charged objects that exert an attraction or repulsion upon other objects; yet on the other, magnetism can be defined t…
Aperture
Bischoff qualifies his work as the realization of a reflective intention, where he determines sonic structure not only through the predetermined elements which go into a piece, but also through the active process of listening to the music as it happens and responding accordingly. Aperture opens the possibility for multiple readings through a series of diverse techniques ranging from additive synthesis to FM synthesis to sampled-based processes. Each of the pieces within the album was recorded in…
Soundmatters
'Soundmatters is the first major compendium of the recordings from French-Canadian sound artist Jean-Francois Laporte, including his highly acclaimed composition Mantra. In balancing formal precision and intuitive expressionism, Soundmatters results in a series of visceral compositions that build upon the traditions of minimalism, graphical composition, and phonography. Laporte reveals his colossal talents for experiential composition through deftly processed recordings of tumultuous windstorms …
Vinyl anthology
In 1986, an Australian fellow by the name of Andrew Curtis posted an advertisement in a couple of record shops around Melbourne expressing a desire to start a band with somebody who shared his interests in Industrial music. The only person who answered the ad was Philip Samartzis, who has since gone on to international acclaim for his pristine electro-acoustic compositions published through Staalplaat, Synaesthesia, and Dorobo. Back in the late '80s, the Curtis and Samartzis collaboration result…
Live in San Francisco
With his ongoing pursuit of an 'absolute concrète music,' Francisco López has recontextualized the sounds of the world around us by pushing these sounds to their polar extremes. At times, he has imposed gaping silences and eradicated all but the slightest traces of musicality; at others, he has turned the placid wash of rainforest insect chatter into mechanically toxic drones and twisted a gentle breeze into a hurricane force blast of raw sound. The ambient din of the urban environment, human vo…
The glass sponge
Coelacanth is 23five's very own Loren Chasse and Jim Haynes. On their debut 23five release,The Glass Sponge, Coelacanth sets textural flutters, squeaks, and scrabblings in motion. These brittle events punctuate the boundless excursions of minimalism brought to life through elegaic bell tones, ghostly feedback, and tuning fork resonance, all spiralling together into translucent drones.