Zeitfrei
In the album Zeitfrei the mesmerizing timbre of the classical soprano voice of Maraile Lichdi interweaves with an acoustic and electronic world of sound. The songs are characterized by the concept of the ambivalence of the temporal in music. In the lyrical, sketch-like texts, always vague and associative, the topics of transience, vanity, disorientation, loss of control, alienation, farewell, sorrow and finally the invincibility of time but also the resilience of man, are reflected in polarising…
Time Deferred
Psychedelic visions, blackouts, and blinding lights reveal an unusual, sick, and feverish musicality. (…) Hospital-like beeps transmit a subtle uneasiness, as electrodes applied to the brain draw bewildering tracings. And while Athanasia represents the idea of immortality in Greek mythology, here the gods come back from the dead only to ensure us an existence nurtured by the freezing rays of a black sun. - Massimiliano Busti, Blow Up
Floating Tape
Anne-F Jacques lives in Montreal, Québec. She started running crustacés tapes from 10 years ago, and in last year she stopped it and start a new label named presses précaires. I always love the sound she made, and we traded cassettes many times, shipping always taking too many days. We have not met each other though we have some common friends, and seems it might be difficult in the following a few years. In the summer of 2021, we started talking about some possible collaborations. A collaborati…
gear, gear
Zhao Cong used micro-cassette player, spray, bug zapper, pop rocks, voice, magnetic pickup, microphone and other daily objects.
Text
No Performance is Li Song and Zhu Wenbo. This duo started in Beijing, 2015. They wrote and played compositions focus on acoustic instruments, environment sound, computer algorithm and random sequence. In 2018, Li Song moved to London. In 2020, Zhu Wenbo suggested a recording plan: to write some composition pieces for each other and then perform solo or with local friends. They used one month on writing, exchanged on a same day, then another two months on recording. Finally they got seven pieces,…
Mirror One
Tip! "noel meek is from new zealand. he used creates electronic music. he also runs a label called "end of alphabet". we have never met yet. once in 2016 he asked me to compile an album. i then contact zhu wenbo for expand the idea. the result was the “there is no music from china” compilation. in summer or late spring of 2020, while everybody was trying to understand the pandemic thing, noel emailed me about to record an album together. i said yes, and maybe we can do it this way... but could y…
Two Duos
Tip! “Two Duos” is pressed from cellist Okkyung Lee’s most recent OTO Residency; the first side a duo with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 and the second with Nadia Ratsimandresy on Ondes Martenot. Cut together, the two meetings seem to raise three cellos in the search for expressive voice: the cello, it’s magnetic reproduction, and the dual controls of the machine invented to expand on its musical qualities. On the A side Noetinger’s opening tape hiss establishes a current; an electrical partner …
Scale
Scale, addresses issues of observation, embodied transferences, telepathy and duration employing swipes, knocks, resonators and hypnotic patternings on the acoustic harp with the less controllable sounds of radio waves, homemade synths and feedback. Inspired by the timings and sensations of natural phenomena including daylight’s slow emergence at dawn and the pulsing ambiance of ocean currents. Nature as both utopic and disruptive. Attention is situated in an often luscious, contemplative sonic …
Sound Journeys: Switzerland
Sound Journeys: Switzerland is the culmination of a series of diital EPs focusing on artists engaged in the Swiss experimental music scene, here presented as an 11-track compilation on CD and digital. Airplay so far has been on BBC Radio 3, Resonance FM, WFMU and more. It has been compiled by producer, broadcaster and Nonclassical A&R Nick Luscombe (BBC Radio, Late Junction) following a visit to the country and research into the current activities of Swiss academic music.Nick Luscombe says: "The…
Wat Doen De Handen
"...and again I woke up. rendering Xenakis pale. shifting myself and stuff around in search of security. how to put it to make it to that?"
Pas Maar Op Want Deze Tas Is Van Zorro
**2022 stock** In their own contemporary version of ’L’ Histoire du Soldat’, Plan Kruutntoone and Reinier van Houdt roam the rough edges of holes in plaster, at home in a dangerous world. Sleeping in the flag, accepting their free daily buns. Gratefully learning from Igor S. and Sonic Y. while upholding the red flower. Together with Garshin they inspect the ward. And with Rosa; dear and beautiful retarded alto. And Chleb; singer with the wooden voice. And Zorro cares for all. Esc.rec. releases '…
Expeditions
Tip! "Since 2014 I’ve had the luck, possibility (and guts?) to dedicate my life to exploring some parts of the world, driven both by curiosity and needs. The chosen way (the only one possible, for me) has been to undertake long tours. Jumping on this adventure, with no idea of what to expect, requires open brain, ears and good adaptability. What I have found since, is an endless count of good and bad experiences (which would not have probably happened as much, if I’d stayed at home). The people …
Cure And Mound
“Thanks to Anton Mobin and his ‘prepared chamber’, a wooden box with strings, objects, and amplification. An instrument not unlike Tore H. Boe’s ‘acoustic laptop’. It is also an instrument for which we don’t know what it will sound like, unlike the piano, played by Martina Verhoeven, even when she plays the piano less traditionally; techniques that go back to John Cage and his prepared piano. Verhoeven divides her attention to both the keys and the inside of the piano. In the prepared chamber of…
Rhythm Ace & Slingerland
Rhythm Ace & Slingerland, a co-production by Ni Vu Ni Connu and Galerie Max Hetzler, is one of numerous collaborations between longstanding friends Oehlen and Johansson, following from their 2003 album Shotgun Wedding, also featuring Mayo Thompson of Red Krayola. This album explores how art infuences music and vice versa – a question often explored in Oehlen’s work. The idea originated from Johansson’s visit to the artist’s studio in 2018. Oehlen showed the drummer his collection of rhythm machi…
Lamenti Dall'infinito
"If this quartet most resembles a jazz band among these Berlin recordings, it might be in its speculative assembly. [...] It’s akin to a novel, Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, designed with multiple reading sequences, or Nanni Balestrini’s Tristano, in which the order of paragraphs is different in every single copy." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Liz Allbee trumpet John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Ignaz Schick turntables, sampler, electronics Marta Zapparoli tapes, reel to reel tape machin…
Shaped & Chased
Tip! "Lehn and Robair are particularly well-matched. Lehn is a musician who came to electronics from the piano, while Robair’s resources include both electronics and percussion. Each matches readily with acoustics and circuitry and creates a remarkable bridge between the two with Butcher, whose saxophone playing can assume both percussion and oscillator-like characteristics." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Thomas Lehn analogue EMS Synthi AKS Gino Robair …
Counterfeiting in Colonial Connecticut / a lot of tiles (trivial scan)
XI Records is very pleased to announce the release of a 2 CD set of Michael Winter’s music organized by guitarist Elliot Simpson. Each CD features a single composition, demonstrating different sides of Winter’s work. The first, Counterfeiting in Colonial Connecticut, is a socially-engaged piece written for Simpson and in honor of George Floyd. The second, a lot of tiles (trivial scan), derives music from a set of mathematical tilings (often referred to as tessellations). The album art features r…
Fernweh
Fernweh is the new tape by Danilo Ligato. Danilo Ligato is an Italian sound artist, musician and composer
Fernweh it’s passing musicFernweh it’s passing musicFernweh it’s walking musicFernweh it’s the noise of my memories Fernweh it’s the flaking of surfacesFernweh it’s a mysterious distant light Fernweh it’s the search for an intimate stillness Fernweh it’s a long nocturnal hugFernweh is it the nostalgia of the distance Fernweh it’s a fight in defense of silenceFernweh it’s a deep and shared sl…
For Trainspotters Only
Tip! As part of Ann Eysermans's For Trainspotters Only project, a vinyl record of the same name was produced on which various locomotives can be heard in different constellations.On the A-side are Prelude and Fugue for 4 diesel locomotives and harp. These compositions consist solely of locomotive and harp sounds. Both instruments were explored from top to bottom to extract their sonic qualities according to (often very strange) rules of counterpoint. Macro and micro sounds blend into melodies, h…
Swarm
New release for Warble, Berlin-based duo by Brad Henkel and Miako Klein. Trumpet and recorder in their elemental form (tubes and air) envelop the space with a magnified environment of harmonizing and clashing timbres. Whistling overtones, percussive thumps, shrieking voices. Walls of sound, nervous twitches, burrowing moles.