★Antiopic
Amnistia !
Los Angeles collective Ultra-red (previous releases available from Comatonse, Mille Plateaux, Fat Cat, and Beta Bodega) come forward with an intense, playful and urgent commentary on the rights of undocumented immigrant workers. Using the May Day 2000 rally which took place on Wall Street in New York City as the sound source from which the group craft this suite of compositions, this 20 minute EP energetically brings the immediacy of the workers' situation to the fore. Ranging in style from fine…
Never give up on the margins of logic
For London's Freedom of the City Festival Mattin's Sakada materializes in a big band incarnation. Unexpectedly, the larger the group, the smaller the sound. In contrast to Sakada's dense previous recordings as the trio of Mattin, Prévost and Rosy Parlane, here the expanded Sakada navigate a more restrained and open territory. Droning passages rise and ebb in blocks, the sound folding over on itself, while minute textures dance on the edges. The emphasis on bowed sounds (Prévost's cymbals, Davies…
Employment patterns
The debut solo release by Need Windham, founder of concrete agit-prop duo Presocratics (ex-Table of the Elements). A subtle new tape work constructed solely from the critically hated and rejected parts of Presocratics compositions, employment patterns places itself far from the reserved monochrome of its contemporaries, distinguished, with a sly nod to Morton Feldman, through terse probing of tonal degree and compositional identity. Need Windham's fluid pop sensibility glares through the work's …
Sem
If it's initially difficult to identify these two pieces as based on location recordings, you may just have to take David Daniell's word for it. But whether or not these pieces aurally signify the times and locations specified in their titles, they do speak to a steely-unto-meditative concentration and an obsession with the irreducibility of individual sound events—the non-identity of the similar. All of which moves... gradually, gracefully... to conclude in an earthy layer of strings. These are…
North six
North Six is a mind-bogglingly great trio recording from two adepts and an up-and-coming interventionist. Definitively old-school noise in inclination, the performers repeatedly set bombs and deviant devices of their own making against each other, stoking a great astral spat. A wild plume of electric-fire smoke invades the performance space as Ranaldo's guitar is repeatedly speared by silver darts of electronics. This tactic only serves to illuminate those moments where the six-string suddenly s…
Alvin Lucier
The work of Alvin Lucier needs little introduction. He is certainly one of the most innovative composers of his time, a pioneer and central figure in the world of experimental and electronic composition and performance. His early work, alone and in conjunction with Robert Ashley, David Berhman, Gordon Mumma and others in the Sonic Arts Union -- which Lucier helped found in 1966 -- is musically rich while simultaneously exploring the many physical and psychic effects of sound. Pieces such as I Am…