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Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Julien Louvet & Damien Schultz - (2019) ST LP

 

213 Records ‎– 213v50

Julien Louvet , owner of 213 Records and member of Devilish Cheat , The Austrasian Goat and many other groups and projects, teams up with sound-poet Damien Schultz for this untitled collaboration. Schultz declaim his verses in an energetic and almost unstoppable fashion over Louvet's electronic layers made with Power electronics elements, harmonium, piano and various electronic trickeries. Best cuts: July 13th and Just a Little Kisses.

Lena Tsibizova - (2019) 3rd Track

 

Baba Vanga ‎– VNG027 

Lena Tsibizova’s album - entitled simply - *3rd Track* hovers somewhere between distant and not so distant memories or, rather, daydreams. It is a dialogue between two people, lead through piano keys, different microphone effects and random walks through wastelands. The album has been born from a collaboration between Lena and her friend Sasha, during her visits to Saint Petersburg from Moscow, where she's based. “Way to Metallostroy” was inspired by a long stroll through a St Petersburg suburb, for instance. "Call To Mind" is a fractured fantasy, a broken ballad unrolling, going forward and backward at the same time. *3rd Track* is an album that creeks, squeaks, and splinters, but is ultimately soaked in blissful melodies, though they rarely abandon the more melancholic of terrains.

Lucio Capece-Marc Baron - (2018) My Trust In You

 

Erstwhile Records ‎– erstwhile 086

While solo improvisational albums can be, and often are, great, the true potential of freely played and electroacoustic music is realized when two or more artists work together, exploring the way each individual’s contributions interact and coexist. No label supports this argument better than Erstwhile, whose extensive roster of duo records spans a staggering range of creative combinations. My Trust in You, a new disc from reductionist composer Lucio Capece and tape improviser Marc Baron, employs an ambitious arsenal of textures and elements, making use of everything from environmental recordings to noise-encrusted tape loops to disarming passages without any sound at all. Opening track “Believe in Brutus” begins the record in a disorienting fashion; it is here that Capece’s and Baron’s interplay is at its most whimsical and kinetic, with crackling chunks of sound quickly rising, falling, and fighting against interjections of bird chirps and complete silence. In contrast, “Black soils- museums without statues” begins a movement toward more patient, droning structures. It’s a trend that continues throughout the remainder of the tracks, culminating with centerpiece “Kneel for your psychoacoustic rights,” whose cathartic beauty is an unexpected treat after a roiling start. My Trust in You initially seems to be among the more immediate of Erstwhile’s releases, but soon reveals that many more layers are in need of uncovering.

Luke Stewart - (2018) Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier

 

 Astral Spirits ‎– AS067

By now if you don't know Luke Stewart you're behind. Stewart is a force on the Washington DC scene not only as a performer (in Irreversible Entanglements, James Brandon Lewis Trio, Trio OOO, Ancestral Duo and more) but also as a booker, promoter, radio DJ and more. "Works for Upright Bass & Amplifier" is a long form piece Stewart composed using written & original improvised structures. He's been performing various portions of the piece live at art exhibitions throughout 2017.

M. Geddes Gengras - (2019) I Am the Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World CS

 

Hausu Mountain ‎– HAUSMO 88

M.GG unfolds an epic, multi-dimensional tapestry of terra-forming electronics ranking among his most vividly abundant and ecologically sound with ‘I Am the Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World’

“I Am The Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World came into existence after M. Geddes Gengras’s father appeared to him in a dream and suggested that he read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. The vivid, post-apocalyptic locales visited in the book, which range from mountain ranges to atomic water pumping stations to interdimensional portals, directly inform the auditory spaces that Gengras draws into life with this album. While ambient music often reaches the listener with a host of external signifiers meant to ground the music in some semblance of the physical world (see: oceanic album art, song titles that evoke specific images), Gengras’s music achieves a rare degree of topographical intricacy by virtue of his wide, dense mixes and the contrasting textures presented by his interlocking tiers of synthesis.

Over the course of five extended sessions that range from 11 to 22 minutes each, the album sinks into passages of near-complete stasis and crests into segments animated by intermittent bursts of melody and muted, techno-adjacent drum tones, settling into discrete atmospheres that percolate at different degrees of rhythmic complexity. All the while, M. Geddes Gengras allows individual elements to generatively interact and twist around each other to the point that no two moments present the same exact sounds. A far cry from willfully repetitive, loop-based ambient music, I Am The Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World extends before the listener as a fluctuating, self-contained biome, with the components of each composition carefully stacked together and charged with their own trajectory through time and imagined physical space.”

Machinefabriek - (2012) Forks CS

 

Banned Production ‎– BP201

A tape with music recorded with tuning forks, steel wool, contact mics, memo recorders, looped cassettes an answering machine tape, a ring modulator and looper pedals. Quite a gentle release.

Machinefabriek - (2019) Melodrama CS

 

 Champion Version ‎– CV201911

A question like that is always a nice reminder for something I really like... to focus on a short amount of music. It’s a bit like writing a short story instead of a book. There’s still something of the ‘album feel’ in there; two tracks that are closely related, both part of the same story. But there’s not the issue of having to deal with the arc or dynamics of a complete full length record. In a way, this gives me the freedom to be more explorative and playful, like you could probably hear in my previous Champion Version 7-inch, ‘Snoepgoed’, and in this new one ‘Melodrama’.

‘Melodrama’ started by recording an online drum machine with a dodgy 4-track, then playing that back through a few effects pedals and looping bits of it. The resulting rhythm is the foundation of ‘Melodrama 1’, on which I started to arrange midi instruments onto, very intuitively. What started as something with a sort of lo-fi Autechre feel, to me anyway, became something completely different. Quite cinematic, and perhaps a bit… melodramatic? Well, I guess sometimes that’s how I like it.

 

Machinefabriek with Anne Bakker - (2020) Oehoe 12''

 

Where To Now? ‎– WTN63

Oehoe’, produced in collaboration with viola / violinist Anne Bakker, a classically trained solo artist in her own right, Machinefabriek here has sown a landscape of Anne’s raw violin, viola, and vocal improvisations into a stirring body of work which merges tradition, experimentation, and whimsical curiosity to create a distinctively unique album which is both deeply moving and playfully dissonant in equal measure.

"Given that Anne’s improvised vocals are wordless throughout, it is to Rutger’s absolute credit that he has assembled and transcended these intonations to often devastating emotional effect. Anne’s vocal experiments exude a classical polyphonic antiquity, they lushly hover above her own Reichian minimalist string arrangements, and Machinefabriek’s deeply brooding, cacophonic synthesized soundscapes. Across these 10 pieces we delve into a world which seamlessly moves between a state of harmonious contentment; or a very murky calm, to moments of lively ecstasy, and deep deep down to a vast and brooding melancholy." 

Nate Wooley - (2010) Trumpet-Amplifier LP

 

Smeraldina-Rima ‎– 11

This is one of the strangest records I've listened to in a while, and yet it's also an easy record to give 5 stars to simply because what you hear on this record defies any expectations of what a solo trumpet record, even with an amplifier, would or should sound like. It's this second element, the amplifier, which defines the outcome of Nate Wooley's sound explorations. I use the expression 'sound exploration' as what you hear on this record is anything but music in conventional terms, more an exploration of the sonic possibilities of a trumpet. Wooley investigates the various sounds produced (and not normally heard), brought to the fore via the amplifier, a kind of microscopic sound-view of a brass instrument. Others before have also found new directions on which to experiment such as Evan Parker, Joelle Leandre, Derek Bailey, or more recently trumpeter Alex Boney, and it seems that Nate Wooley is following in the same direction, looking to find new ways of using his instrument.

As for the LP itself. Side One has two tracks : 1) Trumpet A, 2) Trumpet B. Side Two, one track titled quite simply 'Amplifier'. I can imagine looking at this you wonder if it's possible to keep ones attention throughout, and if so are the tracks that different. The answer in both cases is 'yes, no problem'. The opening track takes you a short while to enter into and understand what you're actually listening to, but once you've 'caught on' the rest is just 'sit back and listen'. Even if the sounds are abstract to begin with, little by little you hear Nate Wooley's thinking process unfold as he uses both sound and rhythm in these improvisations which at times sound like early computer generated sound. In fact whilst watching a performance of this music I noticed he not only blows into the trumpet, but sometimes spits, blows at, talks, hits, and sings into his instrument, a more physical approach than the standard playing technique. The three tracks passed by as if in the blink of an eye and I ended up placing the needle back at the beginning as if to confirm what I'd heard, after all did I just hear a trumpet record where no actually brass (musical) note was sounded?

I can recommend this album to all who are interested by new sounds, techniques and their possibilities. Of course if you're into the sound experiments of the likes of Schaeffer, Stockhausen, or even certain moments of Supersilent etc, you'll be quite comfortable with this music, like old friends. I'd love to hear how Wooley and Paul Lytton combine these sonic possibilities in there duo CD reviewed elsewhere. One should note that this is a limited edition of 495 LPs, so if you're interested you better get your copy whilst it's available.

Opening Performance Orchestra - (2019) Creeping Waves IV CD

 

Drone Records ‎– none 

Czech avant-garde and noise music group from Prague, active since 2006. Its seven members have previously collaborated (both musically and otherwise) for almost two decades. The group follows the path of 20th-century avant-garde composers and of Japanese noise music, and is based on so-called “fraction music” and the slogan “no melody, no rhythm, no harmony”. The group has created its own compositions as well as reinterpretations of the works of composers with whom Opening Performance Orchestra feels a kindred spirit.

Ross Alexander - (2019) Memorias Vol. 2 - High Atlas to the Sahara Desert LP

 

Discrepant ‎– CREP68 

Ross Alexander first came to our attention with Memorias Vol.1 - Bugandan Sacred Places, released back in 2017 on Sucata Tapes, it featured a mind altering mix of recorded sounds from a series of visited sites considered sacred within the Bugandan kingdom and session recordings with Ugandan musicians Albert Sempeke and the Nilotika Collective layered with his own original composition using the Yamaha DX7 and programmed FM synthesis. The result being a unique reconfiguration of new age vocabulary with East African traditional sensibilities. The tape quickly sold out and the new Volume of Memorias presented here arrives now on the mother label Discrepant, on Vinyl with an expanded sound palette appropriate to the format.

Memorias Vol.2 - High Atlas to The Sahara Desert is the logical progression of Volume 1. - based on a series of field recordings Alexander made during a trip through the High Atlas Mountains and into the Sahara Desert in 2018. The aim of the trip was to visit a gathering of nomadic musicians at an oasis close to the Algerian border. Like Memorias Vol1. the recordings made on the trip were then later processed, layered and arranged with original compositions. Where Vol1. had clear nods to New Age music this volume explores the more ambient side of 80’s Industrial sound.

Rüdiger Lorenz - (2015) The Syntape Years 1981-1983 5xLP

 

Vinyl-on-demand ‎– VOD134

Rüdiger Lorenz is a german electronic Synthesist and inventor of several modular synthesizer systems. In the likes and manner of Conrad Schnitzler , Edgar Froese, Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius he started producing unique, exceptional electronic soundscapes and experimental hard to find comparisons for.

He is one of a very few outstanding artists that seem to never have receive the recognition and fame they should have deserved for their artistic output over 3 decades. Even more important for VOD-Records to write proper history and honor his works in form of a 5LP-Set.

The focus of this Box is set on his 4 earliest Tape-Works released in the early 80’s on his own label; Queen of Saba, Silversteps, Wonderflower and Earthrise.

Queen of Saba was also licensed and released on Werner Pieper’s Transmitter Kassetten who also distributed many of Conrad Schnitzlers Tape-Works. Earthrise (a compilation of his early works and several newer compositions was released on the British YHR-Tapes (York House Recordings)-Label run by David Elliot.

Rüdiger Lorenz became interested in electronic music and Moog Synthesizers already in the late 60’s. By 1972 he built his own first Wersi-Organ, followed by various amplifiers and effect Boxes.

In 1977 he constructed his first synthesizers from an Elektor Formant Kit. Until his death in the year 2000 he owned 38 synthesizers including three large self-built modular systems

In the late 70’s and early 80’s he became a member of the IEMA (International Electronic Music Association established by James Finch of the Nightcrawlers)

And was starting to run his own Recording-Studio named Lorenz Park Studio. He then became an essential part and pioneering member of the international DIY & Cassette-Culture Community in the early 80’s and contributed to releases such as Inkeys and Idiosyncratics.

With the well established international contacts he and another german synthesist, Peter Schäfer, he started the Tape-Label Syntape and released more than 30 releases in the coming 5 years. By 1983 and fort he coming 5 years he took the next step and started to produce several Vinyl-Releases on his newly established Syncord-Label. Many of them in limited editions and high on collectors-demand.

araabMUZIK - (2021) TRAP SOUL EP

 

 Genre Defying Entertainment – none

araabMUZIK emerged at a time when electronic music and hip-hop were reuniting. At the top of the 2010s, the EDM trap sound took over the world but araabMUZIK was certainly one of the few who kept it grounded to its roots. He'd chop up EDM samples on an MPC in the way that many of the forefathers would sample soul and breakbeats, transforming it into a whole new sound for a new generation.

The rapper returned with his latest body of work that encapsulates this notion titled, TRAP SOUL. The five-track EP explores both sides of araabMUZIK's influence for an atmospheric eighteen-minute sonic journey. No features, just araabMUZIK left to his own devices on this one.

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AraabMuzik was inspired by heavyweight rap producers Dr. Dre, Swizz Beatz, and Just Blaze, but is known to incorporate samples from high-gloss trance singles into his output.

The Providence, Rhode Island native, born Abraham Orellana, creates hard-hitting beats swathed in dramatic strings, spiked with repetitive piano and synthesizer vamps, and switches between stripped-down and layered arrangements to equal effect.

During the latter half of the 2000s, he broke into the Dipset camp, where he contributed productions to tracks by the Diplomats, Duke Da God, Jim Jones, Cam’ron, and Vado, and he went outside the crew to assist Capone-N-Noreaga on 2010’s The War Report 2. The same year, he issued a mixtape of instrumentals, a volume in the Instrumental Kings series, and followed it in 2011 with Electronic Dream — a dance album featuring samples of tracks by Jam & Spoon, Ian van Dahl, and Kaskade.

During the next few years, he released numerous mixtapes and EPs as recordings by the likes of 50 Cent, Troy Ave, and Azealia Banks, which featured his productions, reached the public.

He survived shootings that occurred during a pair of attempted robberies in 2013 and 2016.

Later in 2016, he released Dream World, his second proper album. That same year he lent his production skills to Joe Budden’s Rage & the Machine album before returning to his own music in the spring of 2017 with the “Wanted” single featuring Nevelle Viracocha.


VA - (1998) Blood & Guts CS

 Self Released ‎–  FLAC