BOW
Brussels-based string quintet BOW celebrates musical freedom. Juggling between their own written music and pure improvisation, the ensemble has worked since its creation on a personal and modern approach, digging into their instruments' capabilities and blending a large scope of influences.
Its debut eponym LP, due to be released on Sub Rosa, gathers five instantly-composed pieces that were recorded live by Christine Verschorren in the Echo Collective studio in Brussels. During the day, BOW repe…
ENIAC Girls
Seventy years ago, computers were as big as swimming pools and were programmed by country girls. ENIAC, the world’s first fully electronic, vacuum-tube-based universal computing machine, sported a weight of 27 tonnes and used 18,000 vacuum tubes for calculating. And, each day, at least two of those vacuum tubes gave out. When this machine was presented to the world public in 1946, six young women, most of them maths students from the rural Midwest of the USA, had spent three years inventing a me…
Iteration
Two improvisations from an astonishing Munich performance in May 2019 by the Berlin-based duo of Lucio Capece - bass clarinet, slide saxophone, room acoustics and mini-speakers & Werner Dafeldecker - double bass.
"The two pieces were recorded last year during our live performance at the ‘Offene Ohren’ concert series in Munich. On the disc are two unedited improvised sets. Lucio and I have known each other for many years and play together periodically. So the music was maybe ‘pre-planned’ to some…
Monument of Diamonds
With Monument of Diamonds, Kraig Grady offers a singular entry in the field of microtonal composition, crafting a sound world as immersive as it is otherworldly. The piece, composed in 2020 and realized for a small orchestra of specially built or adapted brass and woodwinds, is structured around the Meta-Slendro tuning - a 17-pitch scale pioneered by Erv Wilson. This tuning infuses the entire work with a crystalline, unfamiliar resonance, letting every phrase and chord shimmer with a sense of sp…
Repetition of the Same Dream
Repetition of the same dream emerged from collaboration under unusual circumstances: during the early Covid-19 lockdown, Clara de Asis and Mara Winter found themselves together in Basel, using both a local church and a midnight tunnel to explore the limits of breath, resonance, and intuition. The album, spanning five works for flute, percussion, and electronics, is shaped as much by its resonant spaces and spontaneous method as by pre-composed material. The duo dissolves rigid lines between comp…
Tunes & Scenery (Hard To Whistle)
**200 copies. Originally released on tape in 1984** Tunes & Scenery (Hard To Whistle) is an adventurous and quite unique work that was originally recorded on an analog four-track in 1983 by the young visual artist and musician Jacques van Erven. The album brings together the surprising combination of analog synthesizers, small Casio keyboards, a mouth harp, ukulele, marimba, and a variety of drums. A kind of hybrid music of contemporary jazz and world music combined with influences of rock and n…
A Place to Hide
Much needed vinylization of an amazing live set, previously issued as a CDR in an edition of 100 by the fine Borley Rectory label. Finally, for the good of all mankind, the music from this great night, opening for Robyn Hitchcock at London's Betsey Trotwood in October 2018, is turntable ready. A Place to Hide begins with the album's one new original tune 'My Reflection Once Was Me.' The song brims with harmonium-iced vocals that cannot fail to bring a certain German-born chanteuse to mind. Built…
Corduroy Road
2020 Re-issue of Keith Kenniff's debut under his Goldmund moniker. Originally only released on CD in 2005 via John Twells' Type Recordings, this album of rare and unusual minimalist beauty is now presented as a vinyl edition for the first time. "Multi-instrumentalist Keith Kenniff is a busy man. He has appeared as Helios on a number of acclaimed releases, including Deaf Center’s ‘Neon City EP’, and released a debut album ‘Unomia’ on Merck records which has appeared on many best of 2004 lists. A…
Scaath Catfish
Songs about the river are a common trope in the history of music. Psalms of being cleansed, being baptized, being redeemed. There are ballads of murder, lost love, jealousy, and all sorts of rank human emotion reflected in the surface of the water. Respect, praise, and worship of the river are other themes often channeled through music as well. Even in the realm of ambient music, digital mimesis of the aquatic is commonplace. Fossil Aerosol Mining Project, in their ongoing archaeological approac…
Peaks
Black Truffle present Peaks by Australian cellist Judith Hamann, her debut release of electro-acoustic music. Known mostly for her live performance work with composers including Sarah Hennies, Yvette Janine Jackson, Alvin Lucier, Tashi Wada, and La Monte Young, here she steps away from the cello, moving into an intimate dreamscape woven from recordings gathered over years of itinerant touring. Peaks is a work in two distinct parts, crossfading between different landscapes and apertures; from roo…
Harbors
**Matte laminate sleeve with black inner reverse print** Over the last 20 years, since its humble launch at the outset of the millennia, Lawrence English’s Room40 imprint has grown into an unmistakable force in the landscape of experimental, electronic, and electroacoustic music, enveloping a vast global context that extends far beyond its Australian roots. Somehow as humble as it is ambitious, with a catalog number into the hundreds - covering an incredibly diverse range of practices, as well a…
Schaum
Faitiche is very pleased to announce the release of a Schaum by Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek. Since their debut Bird, Lake, Objects they have played improvised concerts around the world. Japanese vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita prepares his instrument with various percussion elements as well as metal objects and toys, while Jan Jelinek layers loops made using small-scale electronic devices. Schaum (German for froth, foam) is the duo’s second album.
Bird, Lake, Objects
Queried on his favourite word in the German language, Masayoshi Fujita will pick ‘getragen’ – without a sliver of hesitation. Further questioning will reveal that he loves the term’s semantic signifiers, its inherent sense of “expansive, deep, quiet and sombre.” And yet, ‘getragen’ leaves plenty of room for interpretation: depending on context, it might also indicate wearing apparel or the state of being carried – two more mundane interpretations that I would rather keep from him.
Does Masayoshi…
Undercurrent
Black Truffle announce Undercurrent, the new LP from the long-running Milanese duo of Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti. Following on from high-profile releases on Boomkat Editions and Shelter Press in the last few years, the eight untitled pieces making up Undercurrent continue the pair's hypnotic and disorientating practice of improvisation based on tape loops. Often sitting halfway between electro-acoustic technique and beat-based production, the music of Bellows obliquely recalls aspects of h…
This Valley Of Old Mountains
This Valley Of Old Mountains quietly creates the folklore of an imaginary land. From a hemisphere apart, Taylor Deupree and Federico Durand share simple sounds with complex stories. Their music balances an edge between translucency and exploration, focusing on obscurity, repetition and a shared fascination of the mountains between them. Recorded in La Cumbre (Córdoba, Argentina) and Pound Ridge (New York, US) between July 2019 and April 2020.
South from the Future
**Limited edition cassette. Risograph artwork** The debut album by C. Blumberg (living in Berlin DE) is a series of composite images. Anecdotes with distorted perspectives. Documents or maps - impressions...? However if you look a bit closer you see something very different, quite like a technologic fantasy.
The second track, 神奇森林上海 (tr. Shanghai Magical Forest), holds a certain key to enter the psyche of the album. Here Blumberg is inspired by a photo found on Flickr. The author of the photo ga…
Voor Anderen
**Edition of 150 copies on risograph sleeves** After having released several albums under his Oaktree moniker, de Roover decided to continue under his own name. New name, new music. Where Oaktree combined electronic music with neo-classical elements, his new direction is more centered around abstract, yet playful, sound design. His new EP continues in the same vein but offers a more minimal and quiet approach compared to his first full-length album Leaves which saw the light last year. Voor ande…
Function
‘Function’ is an aesthetic exploration of digital audio at an elemental level: a sequence of quantized amplitude values. The entire sonic material in this series are generated through a custom-designed program that takes a mathematical function as input, and based on a set of pre-defined criteria, outputs the function as a digital waveform. Accordingly, each track in this series is named after one mathematical function, where the function itself is used as the only sound-generating engine. These…
Grafts - Expanded Reissue
Here it is: the extended, two-sided edition of Grafts, aka the greatest. A sublime and quietly hypnotic work belied by steadfast conceptual rigour, Grafts (the A-side) is deployed in three parts of cascading yet plaintive multi-instrumental gestures, expanding on the processing and self-temperament techniques explored on Coverdale’s 2014’s A 480 into a more encompassing palette. Uncompromisingly distinct while redolent of modal minimalism, 70s new age, and folk music, Grafts effectively blurs di…
De Overkant
**Edition of 50 copies in original recycled, silk screened sleeve, signed and numbered.** A suite of spellbinding ambient folk meditations from Timo Van Luijk, the boss of Belgium's exquisite Metaphon label. A regular collaborator with the likes of Andrew Chalk, Raymond Dijkstra, and Christoph Heeman, among others, Timo operates at the core of Belgium's current avant-garde and experimental circles. Produced and released under his Af Ursin alias on the La Scrie Dorée label set up for such purpose…