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…
Drumming in the Dark
Neuma presents Drumming in the Dark by Steven Schick. Engineer, Josef Kucera. Production assistance: Roger Reynolds and Terry Longshore. "In 1938 when John Cage formulated his famous dictum, "Percussion is revolution," I doubt that he had my mother in mind..." - Steven Schick
Pocket Music
James Caldwell’s creative life is the embodiment of the principle, Start at Home. In his case that is not only Macomb, Illinois, but even more precisely, in his pockets. Whereas some might consider music to be a soundtrack to their lives, an add-on, Caldwell reaches deep into the spaces around him for sonic potential and helps it emerge. For more than twenty years I have pursued a sporadic project of making small musique concrète pieces. The original set used sounds I made with things I found in…
Archimedes - A Planetarium Opera
From Mantua and Bayreuth to warehouses and wilderness, opera composers have often created dramas for particular kinds of spaces. Now add planetariums to the list. That hemispherical stage of scientific wonderment is the perfect venue for James Dashow’s monumental opera, Archimedes. After witnessing some epic laser and electronic music shows that took place in science museum theaters, Dashow – a distinguished electronic music pioneer – decided this venue would be perfect for bringing the Ancient …
Justinian Intonations
Floating miasmic vapors. A chorus of mystery monks. Flights of Angels. Clouds and swirls of echoes. Weightless sounds that swirl and eddy and carry you downstream on your timeless journey to sleep, to death, to birth? It started with a clap – actually three – recorded as acoustic test tones inside one of the many ancient cisterns beneath Istanbul (Constantinople back then). Philip Blackburn then analyzed and stretched the reverb of the space as it were by an electron microscope that revealed the…
The Bewitched: A Ballet Satire
Dramatic moments of enlightenment – when the mask is dropped and truth revealed – are found in tales from the Buddha and Euripides to Scooby Doo and Star Wars. And few artists have been as fascinated by niggling the clueless or deflating the stuck-up as Harry Partch (1901-1974). As a lifelong outsider, the conformist society he experienced and the narrow-minded attitudes (not to mention musical delusions) that permeated it, are themes to which he often returned. In the 1950s, seeing a world that…
Rhythm Voice
The Swedish dancer, choreographer, and performer, Greta Lindholm, has remained, since her emergence during the late 1960s, a singular and unique force on the global contemporary dance scene. Having developed a synthetic and experimental approach to movement and generative sound, her boundary pushing body of work can be understood as a celebration of the body and its languages, and their intimate relationship with the voice; using primarily foot drumming and vocal rhythms, her body is transformed…
5 S-Bahn
** Blue vinyl, edition of 500 copies ** Mastered by Rashad Becker for this vinyl edition, ‘5 S-Bahn’ finds Lucy Railton rendering a sublime, haunting impression of Berlin made in early Spring 2020 for our Documenting Sound series of sonic postcards from around the globe. It’s essentially a recording of a world-renowned cellist duetting with the S-Bahn outside her apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, playing with, thru, and against the atmosphere of Berlin in spring during lockdown, capturing a scene th…
Verses
Another Timbre presents Verses, five chamber and solo works by the Canadian composer Barbara Monk Feldman. "I have been thinking about what is inside and what is outside. The everyday life and tragedy of what goes on around you, and the fact that to accomplish anything you need the isolation in the studio - I think about this moral issue. And then on another level, I think about an inside and an outside for art itself, and how ephemeral that is.... What I am looking for is a way to notate the mo…
Ballad
Two pieces for cello and piano by Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, both performed by Anton Lukoszevieze (cello) and Kerry Yong (piano). "In Ballad (45 minutes in duration) I was extending myself into a longer work; I wanted to make a work that could be the entire concert, that could unfold over a longer time. With Through the Low Hills (10 minutes), I was working with a very restricted vocabulary in a process of constrained variation, working and re-working just a few elements. I felt like …
Me Hollywood
Another Timbre presents Me Hollywood by Oliver Leith. 5 chamber works by UK-based composer Oliver Leith, performed by Explore Ensemble. Cover drawing by Susan Te Kahurangi King. ‘Me Hollywood’ sees a hired ensemble soundtrack their patron's evening. He is hoping, or, knows even, that the music will elevate each banal gesture. Films will eventually be made about him, so he’s just making it happen now, his life is filmic, it just needs a score, he drinks, he sings, he plays the piano, he cares for…
Summer
5 chamber works by James Weeks, beautifully performed by Explore Ensemble. An album of interlinked pieces that form a sequence. James Weeks says "I was aware of tying the pieces together as a set, by continuing and extending certain poetic ideas, ways of using and combining instruments, and ways of thinking about material....Things like the use of mixed instrumental duos, which comes from Violet-Violute, the use of a slow-moving or static background harmonic layer, which comes from Summer, the o…
Lazzaro
Spellbinding electro-acoustic constructions born from stringed instruments, percussive onslaughts and emotionally charged song craft. Maselli's uncanny skill to create non-conformist drama recalls the wind swept post-rock oblivion of Set Fire to Flames at their most layered and dense, The Haxan Cloaks doom-ridden worlds of grain and texture and the edge blurring of instrument and electronics so expertly honed by Emptyset. “There’s no solitude in art, since it truly only exists in the light of th…
Assassin Reverie
** 2021 Stock ** Arte Quartett: Beat Hofstetter, soprano saxophone; Sascha Armbruster, alto saxophone; Andrea Formenti, tenor saxophone; Beat Kappeler, baritone saxophone Terry Riley, vocals, piano and harpsichord (Uncle Jard) A free spirit, maverick par excellence, creator of a personal compositional style that has spawned entire generations of epigones, Terry Riley (b 1935) embodies the best aspects of the American pioneer spirit, the positive and uncorrupted image of America (and California i…
Last Afternoon
** Edition of 200 ** The second release on Constructive is ‘Last Afternoon’ by Japanese composer Takuma Watanabe. Having studied at Berklee College in the USA he is currently living in Japan where he composes for film using a string ensemble founded by himself. This is Watanabe’s first full length artist album. ‘Last Afternoon’ features collaborations with American vocalist and composer Joan La Barbara known for her recorded works with John Cage, Morton Feldman, Robert Ashley and composer and so…
Fringe Benefits 1977-1985
** 2021 Stock ** Entropy Stereo Recordings presents Fringe Benefits by Jon Rose. Two CD's (almost 150 minutes) worth of archival material from the 70's and 80's handpicked by Jon Rose with detailed liner notes. The music constitutes his experimental work in Australia with many home made instruments.
Dynamics of the Impromptu
** 2021 Stock ** Entropy Stereo Recordings presents Dynamics of the Impromptu by Derek Bailey, John Stevens and Trevor Watts. These pieces run the gamut from whispery low key musings through enraging or boisterous call and response. The moods constantly shift and evolve as Watts, Bailey and Stevens purvey musical structures that defy logic. Emotions flare up as in "Impromptu Dynamics #6". Arguments or debates are imminent. The sensibilities of unity and collaboration resurface as the music seems…
Remote Viewing Ensemble
** 2021 Stock ** The Remote Viewing Ensemble are a Michigan based experimental or avant-garde group and feature such instrumentation as: Prepared Guitar, Tapes, Cheng, Bone Guitar and Wood Flutes to cite but a few. This band also takes on another identity, which is The Northwoods Improvisors. This collective of experimentalists dabble in many different genres, some of which may be considered "World" or cross-cultural music yet the gist or perhaps motivational forces gravitates towards free-think…
Angel's Flight
Angel’s Flight is the new album from highly-acclaimed producer and composer Biosphere. Ever since he debuted on Origo/Apollo with the groundbreaking ’Microgravity’, now thirty years ago, Geir Jenssen has been a major force in ambient techno, steadily building a catalogue that’s rivalled only by few. After three wonderful albums on Biophon (2018’s ’The Hilvarenbeek Recordings’, that has Jenssen samplng a broad palette of Dutch farm sounds is a total store favorite) the Norwegian maestro has now l…
Magneto Mori: Vienna
** Limited edition of 200 ** A fragmented sound portrait of Vienna constructed from found sounds, buried tapes and field recordings. In Magneto Mori sounds from Vienna’s past and present are conjoined in a stew of semi-degraded audiotape. Using a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder sounds from around the city were recorded direct to tape over a two-day period. This tape was then cut into fragments and buried in a hole in the ground with a number of souvenir fridge magnets that erased the portion…