Private Release

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Bernard Parmegiani - (2008) L'Œuvre Musicale En 12xCD

INA-GRM ‎– Ina G 6000/11

Part 1 / 2 / 3

An incredible complete works boxsetwith 33 compositions from 1964 to 2007 with a 92 pages booklet in French and English. The best way to enter into the world of Bernard Parmegiani, French composer of musique concrete, member of the GRM group.
"The Wire magazine recently described this amazing package as "A bargain price treasure chest....containing worlds of inexhaustible spaciousness and strangeness" and, indeed, listening through just some of the 12 cd's included you find yourself drawn into a multi-faceted world of strange sound sources and audio manipulations designed to play tricks on your senses to an extent that has left this reviewer almost paralysed with wonderment. Parmegiani started out working for the French equivalent of the BBC and soon found himself mentored by the founding father of Musique Concrete, Pierre Schaeffer. Making use of technological advances that gave the world magnetic tape and microphones, Schaeffer pioneered a method of taking everyday sounds and transforming them into unrecognisable, detached pieces of music with no identifiable sound source, a style that became known as Acousmatic music.

Parmegiani was hugely influenced by Schaeffer's pioneering work and Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM), the French Radio institution that is often described as the French equivalent of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The work Parmegiani would go on to create would make use of these Acousmatic techniques in creating a body of work which is not only one of the most significant of the 20th century, but also hugely influential on a whole host of musical pioneers that would follow in his wake, with Christian Fennesz, Aphex Twin and Jim O'Rourke being notable disciples. These 12 cd's cover the majority of Parmegiani's musique concrete legacy and include pieces recorded between 1964 and 2007. You can barely believe the immersive and often woozy effect of these recordings, ranging from eerie cut-out tape loops through to popular music plunderphonics and proto-distilled-dub that's impossible to absorb in one sitting. Having so far only made it through half of this gargantuan collection (with the very handy aid of the 92 page book included in the package) - I can safely say that L' Ouvre Musicale is not only one of the most impressive and important collections of music I've heard this year, but also one of the most culturally significant and rewarding.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2020) Violostries LP

Recollection GRM ‎– REGRM 023

Violostries (1963/64), 16'39

Premiered and recorded in April 1965 at the Royan Festival - France, by Devy Erlih (violin) & Bernard Parmegiani (sound projection).

Violostries represents the intersection of several musical research directions, presented as two simultaneous dialogues - composer/performer and instrument/orchestra.

After a short introduction tutti very spatialized:
1. Pulsion/Miroirs: multiplied by itself, the violin is projected into the four corners of the sound space.
2. Jeu de cellules: concertante piece for violin and audio medium, the latter being made up of very tightly woven microsounds.
3. Végétal: slow and invisible development following a continuous time, resulting from an internal and permanent processing of the matter.

Capture éphémère (1967, 1988 version), 11'48

This work was composed in four tracks in 1967 for quadraphonic diffusion.
Remixed in stereo in 1988.
Premiered at the Studio 105 of the Maison de la Radio, Paris, May 1967.
Sounds - noises that circulate as time unfolds - continue to exist despite our recording them.
Breaths, fluttering wings: ephemeral microsonic sounds streaking space, sound scratches, landslides, bounces, vertigo of solid objects falling into an abyssal void, multiple snapshots forever frozen in their fall. As many symbols leave inside us the permanent trace of their ephemeral brushing against our ear.
Some day, a desert, a sound, then never again....
Somewhere, in my head and body something still resonates... resonance, what could be more ephemeral.

La Roue Ferris (1971), 10'45

Premiered at the Festival des chantiers navals, Menton, on August 26, 1971.
Sound projection: Bernard Parmegiani.

La Roue Ferris (Ferris wheel) spins, merging with its own resonance, stubbornly perpetuating its variations. It only sketches a regularly evolving movement around a constant axis. Each of its towers generates thick sonic layers that penetrate each other, producing a very fluid interweaving. The crackling of the origin eventually metamorphoses into sonic threads whose lightness recalls high-altitude clouds, cirrus clouds, haunted by the cries of swifts twirling in the warm air. The wondrous arises and dies off, leaving us with an illusion of duration.

Bernard Parmegiani - (2012) L'Œil Écoute / Dedans-Dehors LP

Editions Mego ‎– REGRM 003

Just after Pierre Schaeffer had founded the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1959, Bernard Parmegiani became a member of it. It was a collective of composers, who represented the »musique concrète«, far away from traditional instruments and sounds. Additionally, they helped popularizing elctro-acoustic music, probably one of the reasons why Editions Mego have created a whole sub-label for the group last year. Recollection GRM’s third record includes two tracks by the 75-years-old composer Parmegiani, who is said to be one of the most influential representatives of acousmatic music, dealing with sounds without an audible origin. The track »L’Œil écoute« (ie. »the eye is listening«) was created in 1970 and originally served as part of a video with the same name. At the beginning, the sounds are still very familiar and concrete: trains rattle, bees hum, radio-channels skip; this is how far our own experience allows us to recognize the sounds. After about one third of the 19-minutes-track (there was a CD in 1997 with a 25-minutes-version – what happened to those six minutes?), it drifts of into the unknown. From now on, the listener is on his own and has to create individual pictures in his head, has to learn how to listen again. The track »Dedans-Dehors« on the b-side is from 1977. In its 22 minutes playing time, it contrasts natural with artificial sounds. There are more or less audible references to the elements water, fire, earth and air, created as a natural metamorphosis, liquid, solid, gaseous, all in one movement. And in between, you’ll hear birds singing. It is a bit like a phoenix burning in the glow of the morning sun at sunrise, only to rise again straight away from its own ashes. »Dedans-Dehors« is pure mythology and gets its power from that very source – thankfully, this music can now be purchased again, remastered on vinyl.

Alex Zhang Hungtai, David Maranha, Gabriel Ferrandini - (2018) Eight Black Horses Crown Snake CD

Violante Do Céu ‎– none

"Through me you go into the city of grief, through me you go into the pain that is eternal, through me you go among people lost.

Justice moved my exalted creator; the divine power made me, the supreme wisdom, and the primal love.

Before me all created things were eternal, and eternal I will last.

Abandon every hope, you who enter here.

...after he had taken me by the hand, with a cheerful look which comforted me, he drew me within the secret place [the eternal world]."

-Dante, Canto III, The Divine Comedy

credits

released September 10, 2018

Alex Zhang Hungtai - Voice, Saxophone and Drums
David Maranha - Organ and Drums
Gabriel Ferrandini - Drums

Recorded in Cinema Passos Manuel 10th of March 2017
Mixed by Alex, David and Gabriel in Violante do Céu Studio
Mastered by Tó Pinheiro da Silva in Oeiras on 10th of November 2017
Cover photo from White Noise Book, Interior photo taken at Conservatório de Lisboa, both by António Júlio Duarte

Black Pus - (2020) DEF VESPER

Self Released ‎– none

A series of improvised songs, first thought/best thought, recorded over a few days from 2/18-2/28/20 by Black Pus in LEGO-CITY, Providence RI on a Tascam 424 cassette 4 track. last thoughts from a pandemic-free reality about to dramatically shift. Mixing, minimal editing, mastering and one overdub done with Thee Zebby Manchester at Machine with Magnets. Black Pus 2020
credits
released November 6, 2020

one person band, drums vocals oscillator live document, real time loops. no memory cards no working actually brain memory lots of sugar

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Black Pus - (2013) All My Relations

Thrill Jockey ‎– THRILL 322

Black Pus is Brian Chippendale, who rose to prominence as the drummer of noise rock titans Lightning Bolt and Mindflayer. The first Black Pus CD-R was self released in early 2006, and was a collection of ferocious free jazz, multi-tracked on Chippendale’s cassette four-track. Enamored of the control of recording solo, Chippendale followed with more CD-Rs, and began playing live under the Black Pus moniker. He refined the Black Pus sound over numerous self-released CDs and 2011’s Primordial Pus on Load Records, replacing the saxophone with a drum-mounted oscillator and experimenting with pop structures. The oscillator creates gigantic bass tones that are then fed through a series of pedals. Over the course of the past several years Chippendale has been hand-picked by Bjo?rk and The Flaming Lips as a collaborator, and recruited by Andrew W.K. for Lee “Scratch” Perry’s 2008 album Repentance.

All My Relations is constant forward motion and audible physicality. Chippendale’s furious drumming style is ever present and instantly recognizable, but the pop element, which Chippendale explored in more contained ways on earlier Black Pus releases, is more fully integrated. Tracks like “1000 Years” and “Hear No Evil” bear a snarl and a smile, the sound of wild abandon that is both aggressive and inviting. Chippendale creates maximalist music out of the simple elements of drums, vocals, and an oscillator triggered by the kick drum, looping and repeating phrases and rhythms in a way that can only be called meditative. The album closes with “A Better Man,” an almost ten minute epic that expertly alternates between the minimal pulse of the kick drum and oscillator and some of the most voracious and unrestrained drumming on the album.

For the first time with any group he’s been a part of, Chippendale fully embraced the studio to realize All My Relations. He entrusted recording and producing to Keith Souza and Seth Manchester (who have worked with The Body, Battles and Skull Defekts) at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket, RI. All My Relations retains the expansive, primal sound of Chippendale’s earlier recordings, enhanced by the clarity of the studio. Black Pus has attained vicious transcendence.

Bob Mould - (2020) Blue Hearts

Merge Records ‎– MRG730

Legendary singer-songwriter-guitarist-bandleader Bob Mould has announced the release of an explosive new album. BLUE HEARTS arrives via Merge Records on Friday, September 25
BLUE HEARTS is perhaps the most directly confrontational work of Bob Mould’s four-decade career, a raging 14-track collection described by its creator as “the catchiest batch of protest songs I’ve ever written in one sitting.” Produced by Mould at Chicago’s famed Electrical Audio with longtime collaborator Beau Sorenson engineering, the album – which once again features backing from the crack rhythm section of drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy – nods to the veteran singer-songwriter’s groundbreaking past while remaining firmly planted in the issues of the day. Where SUNSHINE ROCK captured Mould at his most “violently happy” (according to Rolling Stone), BLUE HEARTS is both seething and pointed, the raging yin to the previous album’s positive yang. The acoustic opener, “Heart on My Sleeve” catalogues the ravages of climate change, while “American Crisis” – written initially for SUNSHINE ROCK but deemed “too heavy” by its writer – spits plainspoken fire at the people who fomented this catastrophic moment in history: “I never thought I’d see this bullshit again / To come of age in the ’80s was bad enough / We were marginalized and demonized / I watched a lot of my generation die / Welcome back to American crisis.”

Elsewhere, the political and personal collide on songs like “Everyth!ng to You,” “The Ocean,” and the salaciously autobiographical “Leather Dreams,” the latter two composed earlier this year during an epic three-day writing binge prior to January 2020’s sold-out Solo Electric tour. As volatile, hook-laden, and aggressively honest as anything in Mould’s remarkable canon, BLUE HEARTS is fueled by a pervasive sense of déjà vu, its angry anthems of today equally informed by his experiences and memories of the early 1980s. Back then, Mould was a self-described “22-year-old closeted gay man” touring with the one and only Hüsker Dü as AIDS consumed his community. Leaders – including the one in the White House – seemed content to let the epidemic kill a generation. No wonder Bob Mould found his mind wandering back…

“We have a charismatic, telegenic, say-anything leader being propped up by evangelicals,” he says. “These fuckers tried to kill me once. They didn’t do it. They scared me. I didn’t do enough. Guess what? I’m back, and we’re back here again. And I’m not going to sit quietly this time and worry about alienating anyone.”