★Ferns Recordings
Elektra Bidasoa
** Edition of 200 ** A collaborative project between two seasoned sound artists dedicated to a profound listening of sonic phenomena. Created with original recordings from power plants along the Bidasoa river in the Basque Country, Erkizia and López have built vivid, straighforward and transformed sound environments from a myriad hums, rattles, crackles, and drones from the wide variety of machinery and industrial electrical facilities inside the power plants. A macro and microscopic journey int…
Animast
** Edition of 200 ** Ferns Recordings proudly presents Animast by Francisco López. Few albums would be as fitted for vinyl release as this one. Drawing on both analog-material and digital-immaterial undisclosed sources, “Animast” plays with the sonic textures and responses most suited for the characteristics of this particular analog medium: noisy crispness, compositional ‘loopiness’, contrasting sharp-and-thick textures and cycling dynamics. A must for experimental heads and adventurous DJs ali…
Dirge
** Edition of 200 ** Daniel Menche has yet again utilized a piano to create a vast and immense storm of noise and drones. In 2011 he created a piano noise album titled “Guts” that was the sound of a piano being violently attacked and then electronically treated. Ten years later Daniel Menche worked with a grand piano that was in tune and located in a very acoustically sound studio. With carful elegance and care Daniel Menche wove long horse hairs in between the longest strings of this grand pian…
Aatma
**150 copies** Aatma is the re-imagining of my recent journey into Mumbai through sound, place, and moment with a Nagra SD recorder. The work was composed immediately upon my return while these things were, in a very real sense, still resonating in my mind. Part 1 is the arrival. Echoes of the shanka can be heard from a distant past across the Arabian Sea, as waves wash debris ashore and push you deep into the tumult of the city. Here you may experience the current of life and ride old trains in…
Stratégies Obliques Ø
Tip! **Limited edition of 200 copies on white vinyl** Over the last few years, we’ve been graced by a steady trickle of material from Steve Roden and Small Cruel Party, each drawing to power and creative rigor of both artists into the forefront of our minds and hearts. Now, the French imprint, Ferns, delivers an incredible split LP, Stratégies Obliques Ø, encountering these two veteran experimentalists weaving startling tapestries of sonic abstraction, created by deploying Brian Eno and Peter Sc…
Primal Fictions
**200 copies** “Primal Fictions” may sound like the early work of a literary novelist, but words are not Daniel Menche's chosen form of expression - instead, sound and noise form the foundation of his 30 year dedication to abstract sonic exploration. “Primal Fictions” (LP) released by Ferns Recordings is a prime display of Menche’s unique approach to field recordings and electronic manipulation. An earthly marriage of the acoustic and electronic worlds, “Primal Fictions” is a stunning example of…
Tropical Amnesia Two & Three
All sound recorded November 2007 in/at/around Mamori Lake, Amazonas, Brazil. Material culled and assembled December 2007/January 2008 in Seattle.
"His music consists of an ever-changing, intricate web of sounds defining spaces in constant transformation. It is very detailed, very present. Transitions between soundscapes, sometimes very slow and very gradual, sometimes very surprising, keep his music going; often different strata of time are present simultaneously. Matt is a master in building an…
Squenun
“We somehow tried to use sounds as idioms. Turning them upside down and back again, make them collide with each other’s distorted mirror image, let them mean everything one would usually not think them to mean. “Careta” meaning someone who acts like someone they are not. A sound, in music, usually one would say doesn’t mean anything, but the sound of the word “word” does (if you have learned English). But, a collaboration allows to pretend it would mean something else and language is but a colla…
Milk Thistle
"During the period I worked the most on these, summer 2018, I was reading the Daoist Zhuangzi and some Stoics. That material is likely why this CD has to do with detachment and inaction, as well as unspecifiable emotions. The synthetic/concrete sound relationship seems post facto to engage with the above. Inside and outside interpenetrate and relate in tension – openness, suffering, trouvailles and surprises of sound and feeling. The composition involved many layers of mixes, seemingly to do wit…
Bidödaren
**200 copies** Bidödaren means Beekiller, approximately... In Swedish there is a double meaning; bi is the insect bee (in English), but also has the meaning of something like a "side-effect". Like if the killing of bees is just something being done beside doing something else... Includes exclusive tracks by Unken Reflex, Joe Colley, Daniel Menche, Small Cruel Party, Tarab, BJ Nilsen, Toy Bizarre, Steve Roden.
Cava XI.XI.86
**300 copies** Ferns Recordings bless us with a due re-issue of Massimo Toniutti's Cava XI.XI.86, originally self-released on cassette by the author in 1987. In its original form, Cava XI.XI.86 was a concept album split into two parts, Side 1 formerly called Gravi (tracks 1-4) and Side 2 Le ghiaie (tracks 5-7). These recordings constitute the first part of an ideal trilogy that, passing through Km. Piccolo Cardine (1988), will arrive to Il Museo Selvatico (1991), which is widely considered as th…
Resin, Parched, Chthonic
Last copies, don't sleep. It's a new year. What better way to to kick it off than with some incredible sounds from a not too distant past, via Fern Recordings. Since launching during the middle 2000s, the Paris based imprint has shown an incredible dedication to under-celebrated efforts of underground sound, offering particular focus to works of field recording, experimentalism, and drone. Their latest release, a long overdue reissue of Small Cruel Party's legendary Resin, Parched, Chthonic, ori…
Islands of Sleep
Lovely archival work with sublime slices of musique concrète courtesy of Small Cruel Party, aka Seattle composer William Ransone. In his own words, this is “Manipulation of physical objects in acoustic space and a great deal of concentrated activity. Even in pieces involving dense sound at high volume the resultant effect is one of intense calm.”Small Cruel Party's work is focused on the inherent mysterious and beautiful quality of sound itself, with the emphasis on noninstrumental sound source…
Terroir (miniCd)
All source material recorded in Krems, Langenlois, Kalvarienberg at Schönberg am Kamp at, April - September 2016. Recordings made of the terroir, harvest and fermentation during vinification. Original four channel version presented at the opening of Drahtsicht, an outdoor sculpture by Günter Wolfsberger, 9 October 2016. BJ Nilsen Is a sound and recording artist. His work is based on the sound of nature and its effect on humans. He primarily uses fieldrecordings and electronic composition as a wo…
Ecstasy Shorewed Its Petals With The Full Peal Of The Bells
'Last summer, while in Paris, I was given a beautiful small bell as a gift. it has been a constant sounding companion ever since. At times, during my travels, I would shake it to bring certain spirits forth, and at times it would ring on its own, living in constant motion in my pocket or my bag. As with some of my earlier works with single sounds (the lamp, chair, splint series and the tea cups in winter couplet) I wanted to see what such a simple singular object could generate, as well as if so…