New Arrivals
Kaleidoscope
The idea for the Kaleidoscope works came from the composers' memories of playing with the prismatic toy of the same name as a child. The toy, of course, consists of colored beads in a tube of mirrors, whose reflections generate complex symmetrical patterns that change dramatically in density and texture as the tube is turned. With these pieces the aim was to emulate such dynamic spatial activity through sound, distributing fragmentary materials in space and immersing the listener in a rich and e…
Kartacz
If I were to look at the ideas promoted by the Experimental Studio against Ma e Instrumenty's practices, I would refer to the concept of music which is - for certain reasons - 'impossible' studio electronic productions, preparing instruments, using and editing tapes - all those practices once broadened the perspectives of the art of sound. However, the 'unreachable' sound combinations produced by Ma e Instrumenty could also be considered as an attempt to overcome the 'impossibility' in music. Ho…
Return from the centre of Earth
Recording during concerts in Chicago by Mikolaj Trzaska - saxophones, bass clarinet; Steve Swell - trombone; Per-Åke Holmlander - tuba; Tim Daisy - drums
Stone North
Mastered by Keith Souza & Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets, Pawtucket RI. Estuary Ltd. is proud to present Stone North, internationally-renowned sound artist Ed Osborn's first full-length album since 1989. For this album, Osborn - whose work is included in the permanent collection of SFMOMA and has been presented at ZKM (Karlsruhe, DE), Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Belfast, NI) and the singuhr-hörgalerie (Berlin, DE) - has culled together a collection of r…
Mantricoom
About 1 hour and a half of droning doom/ dark ambient on 2 cd in a de luxe handmade packaging by Luigi Mennella. As a long, phlegmatic journey towards annihilation, "Mantricoom" opens the door to a new perception of the union of ecstatic rapture and pain. With this rotten, obsessive, lysergic double album Croce (ex-keyboard player from metal combo Power Symphony) starts a new path among the meanders of the most viral sludge core, the meditative drone doom and a post-industrial sound corroded by …
Zemsta Plutona
Felix Kubin looks a lot like an alien on the cover of this set – and sounds a fair bit like a space visitor in the music as well! The work\'s got this very cool blend of electronics and playful rhythms – served up in a style that really takes us back to some of our favorite German work of the post-punk years – particularly the music of Der Plan and Pyrolator, both of whom would be a great comparison to Kubin\'s work! The tunes are catchy and playful, but also have this undercurrent of darkness t…
Soundtrack
Sax legend Mats Gustafsson teams up with experimental artists dieb13 and Martin Siewert. There's a distinct fusion approach to the album which results in many a dissonant moment with Gustafsson's jagged sax leading the way through the shrouded clouds of machine generated mess. Despite the overall hysteria embracing the improvisations, the trio manages to create calm areas in this storming affair, and thus making a nice contrast to the ever growing turbulence.
The fauna and flora of the Vatican City
The "fauna and flora of the Vatican City" is the 6th release of Tobias Schmitt’s pet project Suspicion Breeds Confidence. The record is a continuation and development of the eclectic and complex music presented on its predecessors: polyrhythmic beats, abstract electronica, processed field recordings and conventional instruments are blended into a homogeneous and wide-ranging elaborate result. Moments of highly structured music meet flow-of-consciousness like improvisation meet poppy melodies. Th…
Force Fields And Spaces
1994 CD release, recorded Jan/Feb 1981 at Darlington College of the Arts, Totnes, Devon, UK. Fantastic recording of some very repetitive and zonked trombone-fueled electronics from this Phill Niblock affiliate, straddling the devide betwixt Stuart Dempster's cavernous echo patterns and terry riley's horn-tape meditations lyou can hear echoes of the same approach i used on ‘playthroughs’ very clearly on 'part iii'. which is pretty amazing as ive only just discovered this now ... another piece of …
Terra Subfonica
As a composer and sound artist often working closely at the nexus of radiophonic art, environmental sound and electroacoustic music, one of my primary interests is in the exploration of relationships between people and the incredibly rich sonorous environments they populate. In particular, the sounds that exist all around us, however that are often out of earshot (or at least not listened to in any conscious manner), as with the sounds beneath us as we tend our daily lives. Terra subfónica is a …
Bug Music
There has been rhythm on this planet for millions of years longer than humans have opened their mouths to sing. Long before birds, long before whales, insects have been thrumming, scraping, and drumming complex beats out into the world.
David Rothenberg decided to investigate the resounding beats of cicadas, crickets, katydids, leafhoppers and water bugs in his unusual third foray into music made with and out of the animal world. After working with birds and whales, he now tackles the minute …
East Music for Wax Cylinders
Erich Moritz von Hornbostel was an „armchair ethnologist“. Due to his bad health the musicologist was unable to travel to faraway countries. Instead he sat at his desk in the Dorotheenstraße in Berlin and received the world through his phonograph. On from 1900 the world’s music arrived at his office in the form of more than 16.000 wax-cylinder recordings from all over the planet. Due to an edict by the Prussian Emperor all German trading as well as scientific expeditors were bound to travel with…
Morne diablotins
What did the Caribbean islands – acoustically- look like before the arrival of Columbus? With this question in mind I took a short trip to the National Park of Guadeloupe and to Dominica, one of the most preserved island of the Lesser Antilles, which still retains some of its primary forest on the slopes of its volcanic peaks. I crossed the paths of the ‘Jaco’ and ‘Sisserou’ (the endemic species of parrots), met some local insects and tree frogs, but unfortunately failed to find any ‘Mountain Ch…
Terra Prosodia
- Currently about 6000 languages are spoken on the world. Most of them will disappear soon – and together with them a meldodic richness of human expressivness. However, the fact, that dialects and disappearing languages are only spoken by a few people has one advantage: only if one does not understand the contents it is possible to really listen tot he sound, saying far away from their homeland these languages unfold their musical enchantment (charme?). What you find are melodies that nobody …
Ancestors
Styles Upon Styles follow that ace BAT single with three stealthy, motorik techno mutations from Mexico City's White Visitation. 'Permanent Swing' synchs swirling machine patter and rolling square bass as a tentative opener for the tight, latinate shuffle groove and subtly ascendent chord and guitar slivers of the Moritz Von Oswald-esque 'Home', and 'Blood Revision' cruises out on a gauzy autobahn/highway tip coming off like a technoid cousin of Willie Burnett's Black Deer gear.
Broken iteration
The Japanese percussion player who lives in Europe has three fields of interest: 1, non-idiomatic improvisation (that includes idiomatic researches about it, or workshops on it). 2, electro acoustic composition. 3, plural disciplinary collaboration (with words, images, body movements etc) and it would seem to me that these four pieces here are a combination of 1 and 2. [] Murayama's playing is very minimal and we do recognize indeed the element of percussion instruments, and Murayama explores hi…
Making real
Making Real, an exercise in creating reality. Created by Gerritt Wittmer in 2012-2013. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Featuring the artwork of painter Nicola Samori. Gerritt Wittmer is a sound and performance artist based in Oakland, California. His work often articulates abstract narratives through vocal expression, body performance, and intense theatrical lighting. He has performed and recorded as Gerritt, Ginnungagap (with Stephen O'Malley and Tim Wyskida), Deathroes (with Sixes), and has perfo…
A vacant lot to be in
Jason Zeh is a hands-down master of cassette tape and cassette playback devices. Using magnets, metal, plastic, car stereo tape adapters, cassette players without tape, cassette tape loops, modified tape decks, and sand paper (among other devices), Zeh creates two tracks that swim through hiss, grit, and wavering, fractured soundwaves to create some of the most engaging audio I've had the pleasure to hear. This recording reflects not only Zeh's dedication to mastering and refining his source mat…
GAU
In March of 2012, nearing the end of a tour together through the Netherlands and Belgium, Celer, Machinefabriek, and Jan and Romke Kleefstra gathered in a country studio, spending an afternoon improvising to record Gau. Recorded by the old hardcorerocker Jan Switters at the Landscape studios in Gauw, situated in the countryside in the midst of Friesland, the place was surrounded by green fields with idle tractors, few trees, buzzards and only massive farmhouses dotting the horizon. From the almo…
The Hebrides suite
How does history - past lives and past events - leave sonic traces and how can we hear them? The Hebrides Suite is the result of an attempt to answer this question and the culmination of composer Cathy Lane's three decade long engagement with the Outer Hebrides. The Outer Hebrides form a 130-mile long archipelago about 40 miles off the north-west coast of Scotland. There are more than 200 islands but only a few are now inhabited. In the 2001 census the total population of the islands was 26,502.…