New Arrivals
Sum things
the new album by the über-prolific and often esoteric Z'ev sees this musician leaves the drums aside and focus on long, slightly noisy and constantly rumbling low-frequency drones. Dark and brooding, but clearly grittier and dirtier as, let's say, Lustmord, "Sum Things" is a decidedly atmospheric album in the truest sense of the word, but will also appeal to anybody interested in dense, carefully laid and deep drone works."Through an element darkly… In the fall of 2005 Z’EV began dipping deep in…
Life Is People
Bill Fay is one of English music's best kept secrets. At the dawn of the 1970s, he was a one-man song factory, with a piano that spilled liquid gold and a voice every bit the equal of Ray Davies, John Lennon, early Bowie, or Procol Harum's Gary Brooker. He made two solo albums but his contract wasn't renewed, which left his LPs and his reputation to become cult items. But he never stopped writing, the music kept on coming. Now, in his late sixties, he has produced Life Is People, a brand …
Planetary Unknown
"It's a great summer for music, with some excellent albums just released - and more reviews to come ... Let's start with the great David S. Ware and his new quartet, a great quartet, with William Parker playing the bass as on all other David S. Ware albums, with Cooper-More on piano instead of Matthew Shipp, and with Muhammad Ali on drums (the latest in a long list, with Susie Ibarra, Guillermo E. Brown, Warren Smith, Whit Dickey, Hamid Drake, ... and quite a phenomenal list at that).It is no do…
Portrait
The works of Clemens Gadenstätter are a wonderful example to evidence how an analytical approach to the phenomenon of hearing may result in music that sincerely moves its listeners. This production, entitled “Portrait,” represents a kind of screen capture of Gadenstätter’s oeuvre. Portraits are sometimes given away as presents in order to convey something of the essence of whom or which they portray. Clemens Gadenstätter’s music is perfectly suited as such a gift. …
Off-Road
"Cheerful Mats was dragged into the studio last year by David Grubbs for the ostensible purpose of contributing to a Thicket-in-the-works. The pair instead became terminally sidetracked with recording the two lengthy duets for harmonium and tenor saxophone and harmonium and fluteophone (Mat's invention -- a flute with a reed mouthpiece) that make up Apertura. Listening to Apertura, the first question is 'who is doing what?' It's not certain that even the artists themselves know." Two long …
Consequenz
Commercial Schnitzler? How quickly, how prematurely are opinions and judgements bandied about when an artist suddenly changes the form of his work. Conrad Schnitzler fell under such a cloud when, after 1978, his songs, for a time at least, did not exceed the catchy compactness of pop songs, while their harmonies and rhythms seemed to be drifting towards pop. Produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Dream) the Con (1978) album and the Auf dem schwarzen Kanal 12" EP (1980) ushered in this phase, …
Comme
Billy Gomberg (b 1979, Chicago) is a musician and video artist living in Brooklyn, New York. His studio practice incorporates analog synthesis, digital treatments, acoustic recordings and custom programming that gives rise to electronic sound caught gazing at its own physicality, acoustics in love with their own abstraction. Billy's debut CD release displays abstract and complex dimensions of texture and tone that might make more sense at first on a subconscious level before it will on a conscio…
Out of the past
'Featuring Derek Bailey on electric guitar and Steve Noble on drums & cymbals. Recorded in a London studio in February of 1999 and not released until now.'
Hibakusha
Cyclic loops agglomerates resting on static drones intertwined by flashes of electronic frequencies; algorithmic manipulations of undefined sound materials moved by bouncing delays and recurring panoramic space variations; a sequence of metallic waves in continuous tonal variation, heavy dissonances and sonic stratifications in progressive and pseudo-randomic composition/decomposition; desolate silences corrupted by resounding echoes of entangled electric rhythmic impulses... Longly awaited re-e…
Prayer Wheel
The Prayer Wheel, like this CDR, spins prayers into the ether. Book of Shadows combines psychedelia, experimental music, and the pursuit of spiritual understanding, all performed together in the eternal present. For the Prayer Wheel release Sharon and Carlton Crutcher are joined by longtime guitarists Aaron Bennack, Jonathan Horne (Plutonium Farmers), and Douglas Ferguson. Also appearing on this release are percussionist Johnny McCollom of the Primordial Undermind, theremin player and fil…
Chantal
An inedite work by the great composer Luc Ferrari: 'chantal, ou le portrait d'une villageoise' 1977-1978. Stereo magnetic tape. Mastering: Jérôme Joy, Meriol Lehmann-Avatar.
Lean Left, Volume 1
Earlier this year The Ex toured with a wonderful brass section, which comprised saxophonists Mats Gustafsson and Ken Vandermark, trumpeter Roy Paci and trombonist Wolter Wierbos, fleshing out the core quartet. Thrilling as that show was, however, the horn section were deployed firmly in counterpoint to the Ex’s rhythm throughout. Lean Left is another matter entirely. Recorded live in Amsterdam in March 2008, it’s an exhilaratingly vivid and spontaneous workout focused on just two or three…
Alto saxophone
Masahide Tokunaga: alto saxophone. Recorded by Taku Sugimoto at Studio Slubmusic, Tokyo, October 4, 2009. Mastered by Taku Unami. Drawing by Reiko Shioda
Login
When, years ago, I read Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" I was struck by a part of the novel... Harry Haller, the main character, is walking through a passage with endless doors. As he opens each door he is thrown into a new, unknown, mysterious dimension; a life between the real and the virtual world."Login" is an imaginary journey through the web, where one can explore new realities - or different views of well known stuff - on a thin line between truth and fiction.For this sound project I've used…
Alberto Boccardi
Soundscapes that alternate unstable vibrations of the earth’s surface to static animal references. Acoustic instruments, electronics, voice and field recordings, in the first work by Alberto Boccardi, tell emotional phases grown from the memories but living in the present. The use of sound is purely functional to instinct, and to the desire to define the boundaries of otherwise ephemeral images.Alberto Boccardi (1980) engineer and electronic musician he go…
Serpentement
The very old catfish, covered in moss, that live in the depths of the lake, never go up towards daylight and disdain any bait that nature offers them.They are only attracted by the oddest shapes that fishermen can invent, shiny and silvery blades in the shape of a human hand that, attached to their line, dance a jig; or also a bat made of red glass with hooks treacherously sewn inside their wings'. G.Meyrink. Instruments: mechanical metronome with bell, harmonica reeds, six string banjo, amps, m…
Perdition Hill Radio
2nd full-length from self-styled black ambient guitar overlord. Like Earth's seminal "Hex" before it, this invokes the ghosts of a lost America & drags the rotting carcass of country music through a swamp of noise & drone. The chugging, blown-out treble & isolated darkness of Xasthur is all present & correct, but there are also echoes of William Basinski & Deaf Center hidden amongst the clouds of radio static.
Black Ohms
An edition of 500 numbered copies. Thank Expo ‘70, O Lord, for the drones you are about to receive. A deep quivering of transcendental electronic mantras pulsates to the patient beat of the third Bardo. Slow, shape-shifting ambiences expand like groaning baritone crystals crawling out from sub-oceanic ooze. Psix pstring psychedelic pspews bisect the curve of extraterrestrial buzz with a surprising terrestrial fluidity until bioluminescent fish gather to choke out quiet hymns around the th…
Cellos
The association between Ulrich Mitzlaff and Miguel Mira promises an unforeseeable sound meeting. The specific, personal and different ways of their distinguished expression is the base for their very dynamic and interactive music. They create sounds where the improvisation moves with great fluency between the establishing of textures and abstract musical ideas and the switching in the musical discourse to singular, rhythmic and melodic affirmations. They construct the sonar explorations using th…
For/Not For John Cage
Line is pleased to announce the upcoming release of a elegant new sound work by Australian artist Lawrence English, inspired by John Cage.In 2011, anticipating John Cage’s centenary, I began thinking about how to approach a work that might act as a homage to the aspects of his life and work that have inspired me over the past two decades (ironically, those in which he has been physical absent, but philosophically more present than ever). John Cage, with that beaming smile and trademarked c…