Lutnahimat . Erosions

Lutnahimat is a London-based project, formed in 2002 by composer/sound sculptor Ian S. After studying music technology in London, Ian has experimented with numerous acoustic instruments including strings, woodwind, brass free-reed and prepared instruments. Not wholly satisfied with the sounds available, he has also built several electronic instruments from scratch and created a variety of recording techniques to go with them. Lutnahimat has been working on soundtracks for short films, sound installations and exhibitions as well as releasing several limited editions on labels such as Entra’cte and EE Tapes. After concentrating at length on acoustic recordings Lutnahimat is currently working on minimal electronic music using purpose-built devices and self-written signal processing programs. For Erosions Lutnahimat used some of these instruments as well sound samples recorded in India and Cameroon

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Toca Loca . SHED

This piece was written for Waka Hasegawa and Joseph Tong, a happily married piano duo. The composer was inspired by their sharing – a piano, a life.

“I wanted those four hands to be as close as possible…holding the keys silently so that when the other notes are played, suddenly those silent keys start ringing…if another duo wanted to play this piece, they wouldn’t necessarily need to be married but it would be great to imagine other pianists getting it on after playing…”

Simon and I have conspicuously resisted its siren song. During passages where our fingers strain to interlock like a sadistic jigsaw puzzle, our hands bearing numerous cuts and scratches, the result of furiously rapid hand position leaps and shifts, we wonder if Dai wasn’t unconsciously describing other, less celebrated aspects of matrimony. Dai also imagined the rapid-fire style of an MTV video depicting the overstimulated life he experienced growing up in Osaka: 6-day school week, 3 days of evening study class, piano, acting, swimming, no days off.

Ma’Mounia (Heinz Holliger)
This is the commissioned work from the 2002 Geneva International Music Competition, which our percussionist, Aiyun Huang, went on to win. The title comes from the Moroccan restaurant in Geneva where the commission was finalized. Rife with extended techniques, the percussionist finds herself at one point screaming at the top of her lungs, trapped in a massive setup played with superballs, rosined bows and metal rods, while the pianist throws cymbals onto the bass strings and the horn player shuns his mouthpiece for an oboe reed – Holliger is not exploring his instruments, but rather demanding of them specific and meticulously selected sounds. Ma’Mounia is a wonderland where timbres and sonorities exchange and merge, back and forth, and instruments describe a dream, and then dream about each other.

Adventuremusic: Love her madly (Andrew Staniland)
This is one of our favourite works to play. Scored for 2 pianos, 5 pieces of wood and 5 temple bowls, this piece also has a tape part which incorporates three elements: recordings of myself speaking (heavily processed), the sound of ice sheets breaking apart in Baffin Island and samples of Aiyun’s temple bowls. There is a sort of ironic juxtaposition, as the latter, often representing meditation and introspection finds itself in counterpoint with one of the more identifiable symbols of climate change. Incidentally, each of the pianos has 5 prepared strings – Simon used masking tape, and I used screws.

Bring Them Home! (Frederic Rzewski)
Like Rzewski’s “The People United”, this work is a set of variations on a theme – in this case, a 17th-century Irish anti-war song, “Siuil A Run”, about a woman whose lover has left her to go to war. Incorporating whistling, leg slaps, and the thumping of chests, pianos frames and boxes, Rzewski creates a militaristic framework, interspersed with variations that conjure different affects – some obviously lamentations, others more abstract, but always returning to some variant of martial regularity. The piece also contains episodic solos, where the players are invited to improvise if so desired. The piece ends quietly, elegiac or perhaps hopeful. Like many of Rzewski’s other works, it speaks of the past, but turns our eyes to the present.

Simon Docking, piano
Aiyun Huang, percussion
Gregory Oh, piano, conductor

Producer: David Jaeger
Artistic Director: Gregory Oh
Executive Producer: Bonnie Wright

Track 1 was recorded by Nick Squire in the McGIll MMR, Montreal.
Tracks 2 and 4 were recorded by Peter Olsen in Walter Hall, Toronto.
Track 3 was recorded by David Quinney in the Music Gallery, Toronto.

Mastering: David Jaeger

Photos: Ian Brown
Graphic Design: Leah Roschke

Thanks Our families, Mary-Ann Griffin and the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, McGill University Schulich School of Music, The Music Gallery, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Peter Olsen, David Jaeger and CBC Two New Hours.

Bios:
Simon Docking
Australian-born pianist Simon Docking has performed both as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Europe. He studied piano in Australia with Ransford Elsley, and holds a doctorate in piano performance from SUNY Stony Brook, where he worked with Gilbert Kalish, and upon graduation was awarded New York State’s Thayer Fellowship for the Arts. “Since 2001, he has maintained a varied freelance and teaching career based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he has also curated the new music series, Kumquat”

Aiyun Huang
Born in Taiwan, Aiyun Huang immigrated to Canada when she was seventeen where she pursued her studies in percussion with members of Nexus. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from the University of Toronto, a Premier Prix from Conservatoire Nationale de Region de Rueil-Malmaison in France. and a Doctor of the Music Arts degree from the University of California at San Diego. She is an assistant professor and Chair of the Percussion area at McGill University. Huang was winner of the First Prize as well as the Audience Award at the 2002 Geneva International Music Competition; the first prize in percussion has been awarded only three times in the competition’s 57-year history.

Gregory Oh
Canadian pianist and conductor Gregory Oh holds graduate degrees from the University of Toronto, where he completed his studies with Marietta Orlov as the top graduating pianist, and the University of Michigan, where he worked with Martin Katz. He has served as music director of the San Diego Opera Ensemble, and has also worked with Florida State Opera, the University of Michigan Opera Program, Michigan Opera Works and Lyric Opera San Diego. He has held faculty positions at the Banff Centre for the Arts, both in Music and Sound, and Theatre Arts, where he worked with the Contemporary Opera and Song Training Program. He recently joined the music staff of the Canadian Opera Company.

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ANDRÉ / TOKAR / KUGEL . VARPAI

Their music is best experienced in performance spaces such as churches or concert halls where the sound stage lends itself to an atmosphere conducive to silence and resonance.
Each concert is a singular event exclusively comprised of self composed pieces.

André Pabarciute – voice
Mark Tokar – double bass
Klaus Kugel – percussions

press & booking contact : andre-tokar-kugel@gmx.net

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Lorenzo Senni . Dunno

Produced, edited, mixed by Lorenzo Senni and mastered by Marcus Schmickler, “Dunno” is the very first official release from the 27years old italian founder of Presto!?; his previous release “Early works” (2007) is a collection of old re-edited tracks mainly influenced by early laptop heroes Mego style.

Now with “Dunno” we have a pure computer music record where digital psychedelia meets brutal pulasr synthesis trains and sharp FM streams. Built up with a double approach, “Dunno”, is something between vintage experimentalism of the computer music pioneers and the new digital brutality of fat, acid glissandos and shepard tones in rave style. Using a large palette of computer synthesized sounds and a sophisticated musical awareness he creates ten tracks of beautiful artificial energies and abstract pleasure (Rolf Delley, QJ)

ormat: CD boxed in a deluxe dvd digipack
Lorenzo Senni “Dunno”

total time: 30′ 27″

01) Glowsticking (>>>)
02) 101-103
03) I Dunno (>>>)
04) Pumping geometries
05) Pismo & PG
06) ntitled five
07) Coherent light waves
08) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epBgHEFbrlg&feature=related
09) In high places (>>>)
10)BurgerKings BurgerDreams

limited edition: 400 design: lorenzo senni
release date: 01/09/10 catalog number: P!?014 mastered @Piethopraxis
by Marcus Schmickler

euro 12€ (price include worldwide shipping)

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Gratkowski / Anderskov . ardent grass

Every Red Toucan aficionado knows Frank, a regular on the Label; here, he pairs with brilliant Danish pianist Jacob Anderskov. “Over the last decade or so, pianist Jacob Anderskov has emerged as one of the most exciting and original voices …deeply modern…” Peter Margasak (Downbeat)

Frank Gratkowski – alto sax, clarinet, bass clarinet
Jacob Anderskov – piano

1 – Narrative (10:55)
2 – Diagnose (6:18)
3 – Ardent Grass (6:55)
4 – Asteroids (8:01)
5 – Rasa (5:51)
6 – Devotion (6:37)
7 – Downstairs (6:44)
8 – Sound Check (4:16)

All music by Frank Gratkowski & Jacob Anderskov

Recorded at Loft, Köln, by Christian Heck, October 28, 2009,
except track 1, recorded at Loft, Köln, by Stefan Deistler, September 7, 2008.

JacobAnderskov.dk
Gratkowski.com

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DIATRIBES & ABDUL MOIMEME complaintes de marée basse

After the trio with Phonotopy, but recorded a couple of month earlier, Diatribes proposes with Abdul Moimême a new electroacoustique oriented album, where the instrumentation distinction is lost to the benefit of a sounds ensemble strongly linked by skeazing ropes and under permanent tension. Some metalico-organics imporvisations develloping under harbour influence, superpostion of poetic evocations like an high-tech nostalgia.

DIATRIBES:

Diatribes, a strongly libertarian ensemble, began its existence in a Geneva basement in Winter 2004. Adapting the improvised and experimental music languages of today, the duo is highly reactive, dynamic, percussive and/or textured. Initialy a trio, diatribes became a polymorphous formation, accuratly incomplete, extending each time its spectrum with guest musicians, from freejazz to electroacoustic improv, from loud sound wall to intimistic acoustic details, crossing the road of Barry Guy, Keith Rowe, Jason Kahn, Jacques Demierre, Christian Weber, Ernesto Rodriguez, Tomas Korber, Jean Bord�, Mick Beck, etc, travelling through europe to create new entities, with Adbul Moim�me in Portugal, Hannah Marshall in England, Rafal Mazur in Poland or HKM+ in Germany.

ABDUL MOIMEME:
Abdul Moimême is an active member of the Portuguese improvised music scene, playing regularly with the “Variable Geometry Orchestra” and “Suspensão”, two groups led by violin player Ernesto Rodrigues. He is also member of the Granular collective.
In 1999 he started writing jazz critique in various Portuguese publications including “Flirt”, “All Jazz”, and Jazz.pt magazines, as well as “Publico” newspaper. In 2006 he created “Freemusic”, a blog exclusively dedicated to the promotion of Portuguese improvised music.
In 2009 he published “Nekhephthu” [Creative Sources CS-102], a solo prepared electric guitar CD

abdul moimême: two prepared guitars, metalic objects, springs, cymbals, metronome
d’incise: laptop, objects, various instruments, snare drums, bow, cymbals, gramophone
cyril bondi: drums, percussions, bow, cymbals, objects, small instruments

1. s’amarrer mp3
2. crustacés mp3
3. complainte de marée basse mp3
4. voile et vapeur mp3
5. entre les haut-fonds mp3
6. pavillon noir mp3
7. naufrage mp3

infos txt
cover jpg out & jpg in

Download the complete album in .zip: click here.
(47min08 / 320kbps mp3 / 124Mo)

recorded in Lisbon, august 28 & 29, 2009.
mixed by d’incise.
masterised by Wolfgang Rüfenacht.
font design by Sonia/.

Edited as 500cd, 18x14cm print in thin sleeve, it can be ordered through our online distro, Mitenand, or directly with the following paypal button. [15chf/10euros/14usd, worldwide shipping]

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SOIXANTE ETAGES . Repli-k 07

Un disque brut entre désarticulation rythmique, triffouillages sonores et rock in opposition. Une mutualisation de moyens sonores (jouets, électrophones, radio, guide chant…) qui laisse parfois apparaître la poésie délicate d’Emilie Dickinson, celles plus tranchantes d’Ossip Mandelstam, Robert Walser et Georges Henein… Repli-k 07 est le résultat de plusieurs projets montés démontés remontés dans la tradition de Heatproof Cauldrons for Wanglers.

Bruno Fleurence (pré-montage, accordéons, trompettes, voix…) Dominique Répécaud (continuité historique, guitares, magnétophones, cassettophones, radiophones…) Heidi Brouzeng (voix, clarinette) Hervé Gudin (guitares).

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Elliot Sharp . Binibon

BINIBON is a work of both musical theater and alternative history based on the 1981 murder by Jack Henry Abbott of Richard Adan. Richard was a waiter and the night manager at the Binibon, a cafe and 24-hour hangout on 2nd Avenue at 5th Street in the East Village, a nexus for artists, musicians,neighborhood characters and bohemians true and faux. It was a place that E# spent many an hour drinking bottomless cups of terrible coffee during 1979-81.

Abbott was a talented writer, as well as an imprisoned killer who became the protege of famed author Norman Mailer (Mailer sponsored his release into a halfway house on 3rd Street.) The killing was a an important cusp-point in the history of the neighborhood, its culture, its daily life, its real-estate, and its future. E#’s music draws upon his own compositional and performance innovations that he developed during the time of these events with ties to punk, No Wave, noise, dance, industrial and exotic sounds. Jack Womack is famed for his “Dryco Series” of novels portraying a post-Apocalypse NYC.

Exerpt from BINIBON, a work of music/theater.
Concept by Elliott Sharp, text by Jack Womack. Directed by Tea Alagic.
BINIBON premiered at The Kitchen in New York City, May 2009.
Produced by Beth Morrison Projects

Scenic Design by Zane Pihlström
Costume Design by Jennifer Moeller
Video Design by Janene Higgins
Lighting Design by Gina Scherr
Sound Design by Elliott Sharp

Jack Henry Abbott: Jedadiah Schultz
Ted/Rich: Joe Tapper
Contessa/Suzy: Sonja Perryman
Johnny/Fabulucious: Ryan Quinn

Dramaturgy by Jane Malmo
Stage Management by Kathleen Munroe
Technical Direction by David Taylor
Wardrobe by Jessa-Raye Court

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Anne la Berge Lukas Simonis . Rust Fungus

The La Berge & Simonis duo have finally released their first CD after performing together for over ten years. This is not a “let’s get together and see what happens” kind of thing. They have compiled an impressive backlog of recordings and they have even had some occasional performances, mostly with others involved. Their guest list includes: Richard Barrett, Erhard Hirt, Eddie Prevost and the band Apricot My Lady with the Bohman Brothers. This last project resulted in a CD release in 2009 on Esc Rec: “Newly Refurbished and Tussock Moth”. RUST FUNGUS was recorded between 2007 and 2009. Most of it was done in a session in the WORM venue in Rotterdam, recorded by James Rubery.
What should we say about the music that is not there to be heard? It is improv with added flavors that act as subtle guiding forces. Some are graphic scores, others decisions like “this one shouldn’t be too long”, while others are simply inspired by their titles. (Titles are structures too.)
Lukas Simonis has been playing his version of rock & noise & improvised music for some time now. He cooperated ao. With Pierre Bastien, Goh Lee Kwang, Ivan Palacky, Dave Brown, Eugene Chadbourne and Peter Stampfel. Some of his bands; Coolhaven, Dull Schicksal, Liana Flu Winks, Vril, Faces. He makes sound & music for films, makes (& curates) radioplays and composes for various groups. He also works for WORM, a centre for experimental arts in Rotterdam.

Anne La Berge is a pioneer flutist/composer, working with interactive computer systems, improvisation and as a leading interpreter of contemporary chamber music. She also writes texts and poems that slide in and out of her compositions and improvisations. She makes music for theater, film, radioplays and concert performances. She is determined to intimately integrate acoustic instrumental improvisation with live electronics and/or the computer as a musical partner.

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Undivided . The Passion

“Passion” is the fourth CD output of Wac³aw Zimpel and at the same time the opening of his Undivided project. Undivided was founded as trio: Wac³aw Zimpel – clarinets, Mark Tokar – bass and Klaus Kugel – but sometimes it will be extended to quartet, quintet or sextet, inviting other musicians for specific realizations. In this case it’s Bobby Few, an American pianist, for years living in Paris. In early sixties Bobby Few performed and recorded with Albert Ayler, but worked with Steve Lacy, David Murray, Alan Silva, Sabir Mateen, Daniel Carter and Frank Wright as well (last autumn he gave concerts with Undivided Quintet – a group extended by clarinetist Perry Robinson).

The Project was born during the Holy Week of 2009 as a concert program for audiences in Poznañ, Toruñ and Gdynia. The CD contains a concert recording from Dwór Artusa in Toruñ.

“Passion” is Waclaw Zimpel’s initiative and composer’s work. Intrigued by passion performances and their musical style he decided to confront with their form and essence, existing from time immemorial in European high and peasant culture. Not all melodic themes were created by Zimpel (He admits in liner notes that some of the melodic themes were adopted or travestied from modern composers), but all arrangements and transcriptions are realized by him.

This music is not meant to express any religious experience. It rather express musician’s reflection about existence, experience and meaning of agony in human existence, it is not their individual statement of belief.
by Wawrzyniec M±kinia

Waclaw Zimpel – clarinetist, composer
He has graduated with mention I.J. Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznan – Poland in Prof. Zdzislaw Nowak’s classical clarinet class. Zimpel studied also at Hochschule Für Musik und Theater in Hannover with Prof. Johannes Peitz. His musical ideas are focused on different forms of improvisation and classical music. He has collaborated extensively with major contemporary improvisers and composers, including Ken Vandermark, Bobby Few, Joe McPhee, Steve Cohn, Christian Ramond, Mikolaj Trzaska, Tim Daisy, Steve Swell, Dave Rempis, Klaus Kugel, Marcin Masecki, Raphael Roginski. His and Tim Daisy’s project “Four Walls” was announced “CD of the year 2008″ by polish internet jazz magazine “Diapazon”.

Undivided:
Wac³aw Zimpel: clarinet, bass clarinet, tarogato, percussion
Bobby Few: piano, percussion
Mark Tokar: bass, percussion
Klaus Kugel: drums, percussion

The Passion:
1. Noc [The Night]
2. Getsemani [Getsemani]
3. Zdrada Judasza [Judas Treason]
4. Król wy¶miany / Zaparcie siê Piotra [Ridiculed King / The denial of St. Peter]
5. Droga Krzy¿owa / Ukrzy¿owanie / ¦mieræ [Way of The Cross / Cruxifixion / Death]
6. Rozpacz [Despair]
7. Zmarwychwstanie [Resurrection]

2010-03-15
more info: www.multikulti.com
more info2: www.waclawzimpel.com; marktokar.info; www.klauskugel.com

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PAUL HUBWEBER & PHILIP ZOUBEK . Archiduc Concert : Dansaert Variations

The whole of a duo concert on trombone and prepared piano, recorded at LArchiduc in Brussels – a bar whose art deco interior is featured on the cover. This is the second CD by this duo following on from the highly acclaimed NOBODY’S MATTER BUT OUR OWN on NurNichtNur. Both musicians are now amongst the freshest exponents of their respective instruments, and they interact with each other superbly. 60 minutes.

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Zed Trio . Lost Transitions

Toulouse-based sax player Heddy Boubaker, along with fellow guitarist David Lataillade and drummer Frédéric Vaudaux, are ZED, a free-music unit that delivers a mix of wild free-form improvisation and punk energy for an hour of high density sound surge. Fasten your seat belts.

Heddy Boubaker, as & bs s
David Lataillade, el. g
Frédéric Vaudaux, dr, perc

Recorded at Studio Le Sous-Marin, Toulouse, France
on October 19, 20 & 21, 2009.
Cover art by Bernard Minier.

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Lamneck / Fabbriciani Winds of the Heart

Perhaps if Gulliver had met a Gypsy musician in the course of his travels and had been lucky enough to hear her in a spontaneous duet with a flute-playing giant, there might be some precedent for the music on this disc. As it is, we can be sure that will never have heard anything much like this before. The musical conversation is animated, alien, and timeless.

Wind superstars, Roberto Fabbriciani, flutist, and Esther Lamneck, clarinetist, came together in the summer of 2008 to explore the sonic possibilities of the HyperBass Flute (a plumber’s demented fantasy) and the Tárogató (a Hungarian reed instrument). It is easy to fall in love with these bizarrely lovely instruments, their emotional colors, and expressive resonance.

The exploration of extreme low sounds has always intrigued Mr. Fabbriciani (the world authority on extended flute techniques and collaborator with the likes of Stockhausen, Ligeti, and Messiaen). With this instrument he has discovered not only a new sonic universe for the flute but new ways of sound production. The rich and colorful dynamic range of the instrument is enormous and allows him to move fluidly from softest breath sounds to the loudest of percussive effects. From multiphonics to vocal polyphony, the expressive possibilities for this instrument are extraordinary.

The Hungarian Tarogato, a distant cousin of the clarinet, has one of the most beautiful sounds of any woodwind instrument. Ms. Lamneck, artistic director of the NYU New Music and Dance Ensemble, knows her way around it, cajoling arpeggios, slides, and circular breathing techniques out of it to leave you breathless.

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Eric La Casa . W2

We think that we « make a journey » but soon enough it’s the journey that makes – and unmakes – us.” (Nicolas Bouvier, “l’usage du monde”)

When I listen today to these pieces, I hear, of course, a geographic inventory of all the places I encountered. Above all, though, and as if by default, I hear the sonic journal of twelve years spent recording sound.

My relation to the sites wasn’t based on a desire to « document » but it is worth noting, however, that a « sound story », more trivial perhaps, has instituted itself, expanding and commenting on my musical journey: that of a man listening.

Moreover, it has never seemed more obvious to me that listening is always situated in what I would qualify as the extreme present, that is, the instant when listening, landscape and time become one.

Bouvier was right : the more we journey, the more the journey transforms us. Fascinated by water and by wind, these agents of transformation, activators of change, became, during those twelve years, my principal, almost exclusive, subjects, wherever I happened to be. Progressively, a methodology, informed by cartography, gave my way of working a certain determinism without, however, breaking my intuitive relationship with the landscape. This also informed my conception of that which is sonic (le sonore), and its importance: being

inside, at the very heart of movement. Listening, without drawing breath, led me beyond my preconceptions – and into the depths also, along with all my recording gear: I remember very well my fall into the cold water of a waterfall’s plunge pool. That was in 1991…

Listening to water or to wind is to bring one’s attention to bear on the perpetual motion of things, a living alchemy, the pulsing of the world.

Eric La Casa, Summer 2010

WATER
1. Les pierres du seuil part 4
2. Les pierres du seuil part 5
An exploration of the wide variety of water territories (from droplets in a cave to powerful ocean waves), in two movements, forming a single composition.
3. Les pierres du seuil part 2
At the emergence of a body of water and air, an effervescence
4. S’ombre part 1
The alchemy of water and stone, summer
5. Spirale 3
The geophony of a river : a meandering journey, marked out by windmills
6. Les oscillations part 2
Waves, oscillations …. an opening up of the landscape
7. L’Inspir du rivage part 2
Ressac… when the sea and the rocks come together

Total running time : 74 minutes

WIND
1. Dans le feuillage du lointain, la clameur d’un bruissement
At the boundary with background noise, an ineffable tumult
2. Les pierres du seuil part 6
Listening to the wind’s journey through the landscape
3. Quelque chose de cela, le désert part 1-2
A distressed wind in a still life landscape
4. Les pierres du seuil part 8
A factory entrance, air expelled by machines
5. L’air au fond rouge
The density of air, a city’s distant rumbling
6. Les aubes sont navrantes
A false northern landscape, cold and hostile… a drama

Total running time : 75 minutes

Credits
Water
1. (1999)
2. (1999) from “Les Pierres du seuil 4-7″ CD . Edition… (USA). September 2000
3. (1998)
4. (1999) excerpts from “The stone of the threshold” CD. Groundfault Recordings (USA). November 1999
5. (2003) Unreleased. Commissioned by The River House [?] at Saint-Georges-de-Montaigu (France)
6. (2004) excerpt from “Les Oscillations part 1&2″ CD. Fringes Recordings (Italia). May 2005
7. (1999) from Explorer series, 7″. Production : Povertech (USA). September 1999

Wind
1. (1998) from “The sound of nature – the nature of sound” compilation. Kaon (France), July 2001
2. (2000) from “Les Pierres du seuil 4-7″ CD . Edition… (USA). September 2000
3. (2000) from “Quelque chose de cela, le désert part 1-3″. Collection Mémoires (France), May 1999
4. (2001) Unreleased. Originally composed for Halana magazine (USA)
5. (2001) from “Sul” compilation, a tribute to Chris Marker. Sirr.records (Portugal), June 2002
6. (2008) excerpt. Unreleased. Originally composed for Clédat & Petitpierre’s performance

Locations [1994 - 2007]
France
Water
Ardèche (steps in the Pissevieille brook / rain on a car / summer rain)
Athee-sur-cher (river Cher in full spate)
Bedoues (river Tarn)
Berry (oozing in a watertank)
Bruxelles, Belgium (machine for rinsing out photographs)
Choisy-le-roy (artificial rain in an industrial zone)
Crotelles (Rain, under an umbrella / brook and brook pipe)
Darnetal (rain on container)
Dieppe (music school organ)
Dunkerque (swelling sea with lighthouse / dunes / sand in wind)
Dunkerque-Sollac (air-cooler / ore in motion)
Epeigné-sous-bois (outflows in trenches and reverberating pipes / water, air bubbles, at the edge of a field)
Grenoble (wall dripping in the 102 venue , during a soundcheck for Cellule Metamkine)
Haute-Savoie (Nant Bruyant brook / violent rain on a car)
Hennequeville (“tubular sea” / heavyflood-tide on a concrete platform)
Le Semnoz (rain falling on a small covered market)
Lozere (Gorges of the river Tarn)
Nouvellière (in a farm, rain after a storm,)
Paris (hail on window / rain and storm in inner courtyard / oozing in a tunnel / outflow in inner pipe / the Ircam anechoic chamber : hand sliding on skin and microphone in mouth ) Paris (in a cemetery, rain, under an umbrella)
Plaisians (foot in dried herbs)
Pordic (distant helicopter / wind in a cornfield )
Port Jehan (waves and peebles)
Vendée (the “Grande Maine” and “Petite Maine” rivers)

Wind
Céré-la-ronde (in a wood)
Choisy-Le-Roi (airplane flying overhead, water cleaning station : electrical waves, water-pump engines / ventilations)
Dieppe (music school : organ)
Dunkerque-Sollac (ore in motion / foundries / hot rolling mills / blast furnaces)
Epeigné-sous-bois (in an oak forest)
Hennequeville (North Sea)
Lussault-sur-loire (fir forest / grinder in the distance / a windy day in a forsaken house / a stormy )
Montlouis (a stormy night / train in the distance)
near Neuil (a forsaken farm)
Paris (Salpetriere chapel and Notre-Dame-des-champs church : organs played by Jean-Luc Guionnet / portable DAT recorder motor / Strasbourg-St-Denis metro station : electrical waves / seeds in motion)
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (empty goods trains)

and three locations in Europe :
Water
Rovinj, Croatia (lightning / rain and storm in an inner courtyard / rain on an open window frame / along the sea shore)

Wind
Rovinj, Croatia (inner courtyard and wind under door / thirty-story tower, radio waves / strong wind in marina)
Anvers, Belgium (a pedestrian tunnel and elevator)
Dundee, Scotland (in the harbour)

2 x Audio CD
140 minutes+
Release date: November 2010
18 Euros + shipping

click HERE to make your order

Related resources:
Also by Eric La Casa
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet: La Creuse

Geographically connected
Jean-Luc Guionnet: Non Organic Bias
Eric Cordier: Osorezan

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thorsten soltau . weiss – rezykla

based on single sounds of the album “rephlex” of the nuremberg
artist weiss, thorsten soltau constructed two minimal compo-
sitions, that transform the roots of the rhythmic motion in weiss
music into digital granulate structures.
weiss on the other hand remixes the single tracks of soltaus
revised new version and creates an atmosphere similar to
“rephlex”, that comes full circle with the arrangements on both
sides.

rezykla contains as well the conception of the same length: all
pieces cover a maximal length of precisely five minutes.

order

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CHARLOTTE HUG & FRED LONBERG-HOLM . FINE EXTENSIONS

It takes two.

Two gears, two springs, two mechanisms. Two strings, two hands, two people.

The activity of calibrating requires two parts, a variable and a standard. Through the relativity of comparison (here’s a gear, here’s another; how do they fit together?), components can be adjusted to function properly, to run smoothly and mesh in perfect tandem. That’s the way a machine can be fine-tuned.

The Charlotte Hug / Fred Lonberg-Holm duo is a machine of sorts. Not, of course, in the sterile, robotic, functional sense, but in the sense that together they enjoy a rare kind of calibration, a fine-tuning that one hears infrequently in improvised music, only from the very best collaborators. That they are string players means they come equipped – and burdened – with a lot of baggage, the kinds of classical associations from which it can be difficult to break free. The fussiness of intonation and phraseological inflexibility that one associates with everyday string players is nowhere to be found in Hug’s incisive, spectral viola, or in Lonberg-Holm’s rich, earthen cello.

When they play together, they become a unified machine, not because they do the same thing or play in unison, but precisely because they each have a part and they play it. And they play it together, as if the music was coming from a common place or meeting in a common place, part of a crystal clear operation the logic of which is fine-tuned in the moment of its unfolding, by means of listening and responding and initiating. And more listening. They have the reliability of a Swiss watch, its innards all working towards the single goal of keeping time, but in this case it’s not mechanistic in the same way, the parts are all constantly changing, morphing, the one little gear is growing bigger or shrinking or getting more teeth or differently shaped cogs, so the other gear has to adjust immediately to keep up the proper torque.

Some Oulipo writers have insisted that any system, any procedure designed as a constraint for writing, needs to ‘creak’ a little. That is to say, it has to swing, to give a bit; the gears have to change shape, if only to keep things interesting. There’s a lot of creaking going on here. Listen as Hug goes low, laying down a growling drone, meanwhile Lonberg-Holm squeaks and pops up top. Intensity and excitement, fission energy compacted into a chamber twosome.

Exactitude without fuss, and with a bit of creak – that’s fine-tuning. A good reminder: It takes two.

JOHN CORBETT (2010)

CHARLOTTE HUG viola & voice
FRED LONBERG-HOLM cello

Digital concert recording made in Zürich (WIM)
by Christian Wolfarth – 2009 March 30
Total time 52:49

All previously unissued

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Luís Lopes . Humanization 4tet Electricity

Following his Humanization 4tet’s debut in 2008, Portuguese guitarist Luís Lopes joins forces again with Rodrigo Amado on tenor sax and González brothers Aaron and Stefan on bass and drums for a new muscular set where free jazz meets rock meets blues at the crossroads. Enjoy the ride!

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Lol Coxhill & Roger Turner . Success with your dog

Although Coxhill and Turner have worked together in various combinations for over 40 years, this is the first album to feature them as a duo. The main part is a concert recorded in Brest on a 2003 French tour showing their unique take on soprano saxophone and percussion duo improvisation. The remainder is a more minimal performance from a more recent London concert. All previously unissued. 58 minutes.

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Gail Priest . Presentiments from the Spider Garden

Combining field recordings, vocal manipulations, instrumental material and extended digital methodologies,Gail Priest has created a haunting cabinet of curiosities that works beautifully as a full length listening experience. Sometimes sparse and abrasive, at other times luxuriously grandiose, Presentiments from the Spider Garden is a kind of neo-speculative history, an album that challenges, charms and transports the listener to a mirror-world of revolutionary battles, natural histories and strange alchemies.

Presentiments from the Spider Garden is available in digitally from online stores such as
iTunes | eMusic | Endgame Records Store
Presentiments from the Spider Garden is also available in a beautiful gatefold CD format designed by Gail Priest, you can order the CD from Endgame Records Store.

Launch Party for Presentiments from the Spider Garden
Sat 6th of Nov @ Hardware Gallery (263 Enmore Rd, Enmore)
7.30pm -11.30pm, $8

To launch Presentiments from the Spider Garden, Gail Priest and fellow experimental audio cohortsJon Watts & Raven (Peter Hollo) shall be performing live sets alongside audio-visual collaborators Sounds of Homes (Tegan Northwood, Shane Fahey & Honi Ryan). The launch shall take place in the intimate setting of the Hardware Gallery (263 Enmore Rd), doors open 7.30pm for a 8pm start. Hope you can make it down for this lovely evening of new sounds and visuals.

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VA . Teatime

The 1975 release of the TEATIME LP introduced the outside world to five of the ‘second generation’ London-based improvisers: STEVE BERESFORD (piano & toys), NIGEL COOMBES (violin & low grade electronics), JOHN RUSSELL (electric guitar), DAVE SOLOMON (percussion) & GARRY TODD (tenor saxophone). The main contents are two brutally-edited quartet performances (one without Todd and one without Coombes), plus a complete saxophone/guitar duo, all from 1975. There are also two very short percussion codas from the previous year. Added to the CD is a no-holds-barred guitar/percussion duo from 1973. The music is a pleasure in itself as well as being of historical interest. Unlike the ‘first generation’ that tended to perform in groups with fairly stable personnels, the ‘second generation’ tended to change line-up every gig, inspiring Derek Bailey to start his Company series.
Reissue of Incus LP 15 with additional material. 53 minutes.

GARRY TODD tenor saxophone
NIGEL COOMBES violin & low grade electronics
STEVE BERESFORD piano & toys
JOHN RUSSELL electric guitar
DAVE SOLOMON percussion

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Empty Flat Resonance . mushroom:geometry EP

Listening to this EP is part of an experience that help you to reach a certain level of consciousness. It will let you loose your space and time references and redefine your inner geometrical structures. Each songs is 5 minutes long. You can adjust them to perfectly fit with your mind by slowing or speeding up the tracks with an appropriate audio software.

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Zbigniew Karkowski / Kelly Churko . Infallibilism

All Tracks recorded live
Track 1 Recorded August 12, 2008 at Super Deluxe, Nishi Azabu by Cal Lyall.
Track 2 Recorded May 3, 2008 at Soup, Ochiai by Taro Noguchi.
Track 3 Recorded September 28, 2008 at Soup, Ochiai by Taro Noguchi.
Track 4 Recorded February 8, 2009 at Roots, Keonji by in-house sound engineer .

Edited at Higashi-Nakano, Tokyo.
Mastered at C Squared, Los Angeles, California.

Thanks to www.kenaxis.com for software.

Artwork & design by Yoko.

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
30 minutes+
Release date: Sept 2010
12 Euros + shipping

click HERE to make your order

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Nicolas Bernier strings.lines

“strings.lines” came to life from an obsession for old and forgotten objectmatter and the desire to produce music that exists in between the new and the old. The staring point to the composition of this work were acoustic tuning forks. In 2007 Nicolas Bernier became fascinated with this object/instrument of particularly beautiful design, and started a collection of all the different kinds of tuning forks he could find. Some of these reached 21Hz, near the lower-limit of human hearing, some others produced extremely high frequencies, all of them became tools and instruments for improvisation through electroacoustic transformation, in a process of discovery. These improvisations were at the heart of a composition stage that was developed for almost two years. At the heart of the project was a state of mind leaning towards the restraints imposed by the tuning forks.

The “lines” in the title originates from here: from the constant pitches imposed by the tuning forks. They produce sounds that are perceptively close to sine waves, graphically represented by lines or sinusoids, the elementary sounds of electronic music and obviously the perfect musical object to draw a music around the boundary of electronic and instrumental music. The tuning fork is also a symbol of centuries of occidental music making that culminate with western tonal music, and the preservation of that symbolism was an important part of the second stage of the composition process, involving two string players, Pierre-Yves Martel on viola da gamba and Chris Bartos on violin. During the recording sessions, the instrumentalists were requested to play close to a single pitch, exploring the wood, the attacks and the resonant qualities of their instruments, while following some of the motives that had already been composed with the forks. The pieces presented in this edition are studio compositions of layers from the two stages of the work, blending both worlds while trying to keep a sense of the original materiality and timbres, but not refraining from using other sounds and sources whenever necessary.

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Markus Eichenberger . Halbzeit

“We enter an open landscape, rich in impressions, and then leave the beaten track. Here and there we notice something that merits closer inspection. After a shorter or longer pause, we venture a little in another direction. We might simply take the day as it comes and without concern let everything that has been and that we have experienced go to the winds. Or perhaps perceive the singular aspects shown by this landscape with an acute awareness. Use them to recall past events and experiences, thus enriching the feeling of simply being in the present moment.

When we listen to Markus Eichenberger’s solo improvisations Half Time, we feel that he is taking us along with him on such a journey of discovery. A journey into the day’s events, but no less a foray into a landscape of memory. The intimate wealth of sounds produced by his instrument, the clarinet, evokes the most diverse associations. For Eichenberger, it is not the instrument of a virtuoso who wends effortlessly through all the meanderings of Alpine folklore, classical music and swing. He almost has us perceive the oscillating column of air in his instrument with an astounding clarity. He gives himself time to listen precisely to every tone, as it were from various acoustic angles, in all its colour and fullness of register. He swells the spaciousness of a sound, lets acoustically complex events arise, illumines each tone in several distinct ways, at times sings softly along.

We hear melodies, with simple intervals, whereupon memories arise spontaneously: of nature or meditative experiences, or melodies engraved deeply in our collective cultural memory. Only a few sounds, and the entire tradition of the instrument resonates along: classical, jazz Ð but not least also Alpine folklore. Indeed, the longer that we penetrate into Eichenberger’s improvisations by listening, the more do we have the feeling of being present at a solemn act of memory. In a completely contemporary spirit, the clarinettist brings forth melodies of the most diverse origin that have so far accompanied him in his life. And they are completely integrated in today’s world, in his eminently individual, singing, corporeal tone language. Only rarely do they really feel like a citation, such as when elements of Albert Ayler’s Ghosts suddenly appear in rare dynamically highlighted moments. Or when the German folk song Thoughts are free surges boldly into the foreground.

Otherwise, Markus Eichenberger treats such Çculturally-loadedÈ melodic material in a refined and differentiated way. He turns the idea of memory into a sensual experience. Sidney Bechet’s Petite fleur may be heard, but from a context that now has little in common with the origin of this wonderful melody. In the same way, fragments seem to emerge from their secret hiding-places, of BŽla Bart—k or Charlie Haden, from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s A-major clarinet concerto, the familiar Swiss nursery rhyme Chumm, mir wei ga Chrieseli gwŸnne, Willow Weep For Me, and Anton Webern’s Goethe songs Opus 19. They appear almost imperceptibly, blend with the present moment, and suddenly the passage of time becomes apparent to the senses, as we move into the future with alert ears and a wakeful mind.”-Alfred Zimmerlin, from the liner notes

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Paolo Sorge TETRAKTYS Electric Guitar Quartet . TETRAKTYS

Enrico Cassia, Fabrizio Licciardello, Giancarlo Mazzù, Paolo Sorge – electric guitars

A short clip from our first studio session

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