No doubt; water is one of the most precious resources we can find: Life on earth is based on water and most of the species are dependent on the molecule H20. Nowadays actually 1 billion people have to suffer from an inappropriate access to drinking water! The constant environmental changes (caused by human beings) result in polluted landscapes where water is lethal; or it even vanishes completely due to a growing desertification. We don’t only see this effect in the Third World, but also in rich industrial countries.
The importance of water as a life granting element and the free access to it fascinated Arszyn to deliver ‘Woda’; a 23 minutes-long collage of falling water and waves, which he recorded at different locations in the city of Gdansk (Poland) between 2004 and 2009. Water is an awesome musical matter to Arszyn. His ‘Woda’ presents water as a wall of sound. ‘And it also generates an awfully rich colour palette, hums or rhythmical sequences at the same time’, he says.
‘Woda’ has been edited, composed and produced by Arszyn from July to August 2009.
Hysteria was conceived with the idea of using sounds of water and earthquakes and creating an eerie atmosphere. The rhythmic quality of some of the soundscapes was made by use of beat-like structures taken from recordings of earthquakes as registered through seismographic institutes. As for the rest: a cave-like atmosphere was intended and in difference to the dark ambient pieces, some are experiments in sheer noise and deconstruction.
The whole of the mini-album is to be seen as one and was done in a relatively short time in the summer of 2007.
Album is released as mp3 (free download) and CD (on Verato-Project)
Harsh Noise / Dark Ambient split by these 3 Spanish acts
BISTURI aka SCALPEL is formed by 3 guys who are here dissecting sounds into a Dark Ambient / Drone atmosphere running for 16 minutes of audio agony dealing with harsh feelings and clinic methods.
VRIL contribution to this split consists of 2 tracks of Harsh Noise using real drums and electronics as a source with an apocalyptic feeling, industrially influenced coupling insanity and high frequencies abuse.
MIXTURIZER track for this split is a 20 minutes long and violent harsh noise wall with no experimentation but feedback and noise dynamic manipulation, lively improvised and recorded late January 2009.
Black Dreams it’s a solo project by Piero – member of band TriploMaltoSe
An aetheric blending of sounds, voice and large rhythmic structure, quite dark but not imposing, though somewhat unsettling at times. Then, musical expression should create a little bit of awe, that is what makes it magical. It briefly locates an indescribably small gland in your primeval brain and activates it, triggering an exponential effect in evoking a sense of your own self, that you were not even aware of. Truly touching in a very subtle manner.
(presentation by Ivan1984 – http://www.jamendo.com/en/user/Ivan1984)
Behind KRK we find Matthew Ostrowski and George Cremaschi, both from New York and both part of the lively improvisation scene. Cremaschi is perhaps the lesser known of the two. He plays contrabass and analog electronics here, whereas Ostrowski plays digital electronics and controllers. I am not sure if Ostrowski picks up the sounds produced by Cremaschi to chance them through the use of computerized techniques. Eight pieces here of pretty wild playing. From on end this is the true world of improvisation, with its free play, rapid changes and everything you shouldn’t do to an instrument (not as told by your teacher), but this goes mainly for the contrabass. Whatever else going on is what makes this more interesting, well, at least for me. This is the electronic component of the music. Things buzz, cracks, glitch, peep and hum. Like all good things microsound meeting improvisation in the world of musique concrete. Its again very lively, energetic, short and to the point. This release last about thirty-one minutes and that seems to me the right length for such vivid music, leaving the listener quite breathless afterwards. Things work best when the two ends, analogue improvisation and computer technique, meet up in the middle. Electronic jazz like in ‘Mateotechny’, but also nicely drone like in ‘Psithurism’. A release full of surprises. (FdW) Vital Weekly 684.
Recorded 2008 at Harvestworks, NYC, released 2009.
Drawing on their more than 40 years of combined experience working in a variety of genres with such artists as Evan Parker, John Zorn, and Nicolas Collins, KRK is a new collaborative project which aims to synthesize and interpret the neo-postmodern musical landscape. Ghosts of reductionism, noise music, free jazz, and the classical tradition all may or may not appear in any given performance. To date, KRK has performed in Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal and the US.
A New York City native, Matthew Ostrowski has been working with electronics since the early 1980s, working in improvised music, music theater, and audio installations, with a continuing interest in density of microevents, rapid change, and using technology to stretch the bounds of perception and experience. He has also worked extensively as an an improvisor, having played with such luminaries as Anthony Coleman, Andrea Parkins, Nicolas Collins, John Butcher, o.blaat, Paul Loewens, Ikue Mori, Anne Wellmer, David Linton, Charles Cohen, Alfred Zimmerlin, and a host of others. His work appears on over a dozen recordings.
His work has been seen on four continents, including the Wien Modern Festival, the Kraków Audio Art Festival, Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, PS 1 and The Kitchen in New York , the Melbourne Festival, and Unyazi, the first festival of electronic music on the African continent. He has received a NYFA Fellowship for Computer Arts, awards from the Media Alliance, Arts International, and many others, and was a nominee for the prestigious Alpert Award in 2006.
George Cremaschi was born in New York City, and studied music and composition there. He has played with, and written for, dancers, rock bands, installation artists, improvisers, poets, film, folk musicians, theater groups, new music ensembles, jazz groups, orchestras, and pop divas.
Greg Goodman, Liz Allbee, Burkhard Stangl, Gino Robair, Kai Fagaschinski, Evan Parker, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Saadet Türköz, Ryuzo Fukuhara, Mats Gustafsson, Lê Quan Ninh and Jon Raskin are some of his favorite people to work with. He has appeared on over 30 recordings on the Apestaartje, Evolving Ear, Black Saint, Leo, Beak Doctor, Emanem, Rastascan, Music & Arts, Nine Winds and 482 Music labels. He currently lives in Tábor, Czech Republic, where he is a curator and administrator at CESTA, an international arts center.
Ed Pinsent – The SoundProjector
Very nice to hear from 1980s veteran American avantster Matthew Ostrowski – it seems like years since I dug his rib-tickling Vertebra record for Pogus Productions. Well, here he be as one half of KRK rattling out some lively digital electronics on Acouasm (ACHEULIAN HANDAXE AHA 0802) alongside his partner George Cremaschi, who wields a huge contrabass plus further live analogue electronic effects for additional perplexment. This record’s possessed of the same sort of unpredictable crackle and lick we’ve been hearing from some of Alvin Curran’s recent crazed cut-up experiments, with the additional bonus of being performed in real time by two very quick-thinking and hipster geniuses. Cremaschi’s quicksilver work on the double bass throws in a connection to the history of free jazz in NYC, but at that point the analogy breaks down. This is another chapter in the international ongoing task to open up undiscovered spaces in the electro-acoustic performance realms, and a great success too. Published on a tiny label owned by an experimental guitarist Hans Tammen, this is well worth clicking on your PayPal button if only just to check out what a track named ‘Humenscrump’, ‘Snirtle’ or ‘Tubicination’ is going to sound like pouring from your hi-fi.
Composed & performed by Zn’shñ (Elvire Bastendorff + Franck Smith) & Nanako – Recorded 2009
Dots &dashes (recording session) by Zn’shñ
N.B. – Sound material of Zn’shñ parts in [3], [4] taken from official cd release : Zn’shñ ++ (odl.9173-656, Odiolorgnette) remix &sound adds by Nanako.
Version for free downloads, no commercial usings can be made from these recordings. 2009 Smith-Bastendorff-Nanako
IF POSSIBLE USE HEADPHONES OR CONNECT YOUR COMPUTER TO A QUITE DECENT SOUND-SYSTEM.
The Ensemble Rue du Nord’s music is shimmering, noisy, subtle, nervous, free. Each musician is involved entirely in the sound, the concentration and the listening, thus taking part in collective construction of a new sound universe. The marriage between acoustic and electronic instruments offers a very rich pallet of timbres and gives to the ensemble its unique identity.
Far from the Bregovic like Balkan music stereotypes, the Ensemble Rue du Nord last project presents for the first time in Switzerland some of the most active and promising musicians of the Balkans emerging experimental scene. Since 2007, the ERN intensively collaborated with these musicians, doing concerts in Mostar, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Sofia, Skopje and Pristina within the framework of the “Swiss-Balkan Creative Music” project.
The aim of the Swiss-Balkan Creative Music Project is to developp new links between swiss and balkan musicians in the field of contemporary improvised music.The working sessions will give the musicians the possibility to explore new and fresh practices in electro-acoustic improvised music. The music is made of sonic architectures, colours and textures and moves between pure sound and abstract noise complexity.
The project is realised in 3 phases : April 2007, November 2007 and spring 2008. For the first and second phase, the Ensemble Rue du Nord is travelling and meeting different local musicians. The third phase will permit to have several concerts in different cities and mix the balkan musicians in the spirit of the « Company Weeks » by Derek Bailey.
collective free improvisation:
“the encounter between swiss and balkan improvisors, and between acoustic and electronic”
Benoît Moreau: clarinet
Laurent Bruttin: bass clarinet
Jonas Kocher: accordion
Miran Zrimsek: cello
Dragos Tara: double bass
John Menoud: guitar, electronics
Svetlana Maras: piano
Robert Roza: no-input electronics
Lukatoyboy: toys, sampler, electronics
David Tabachnik: sound
“Mantis was carried over the tumult of the dark and turbulent waters by a bee. The bee, however, became wearier and colder as he searched for solid ground, and Mantis felt heavier and heavier. He flew slower and sank down towards the water. At last, while floating on the water, the bee saw a great white flower, half-open, awaiting the sun’s first rays. He laid Mantis in the heart of the flower and planted within him the seed of the first human being. Then the bee died. But as the sun rose and warmed the flower, Mantis awoke, and there, from the seed left by the bee, the first Bushman was born” – San people creation story.
Positioned at different points, mostly one hive at a time, between four hives out of ten in this particular apiary. What we are hearing I think boils down to four things, although if one wished, the list could go on for miles.
The physical material that the microphones “are in touch” with, in this case wood, and on track 05 a ceramic stopper.
The position on the build in relation to the activity inside the hive at any one time, which is densely interconnected to the atmosphere of the air. During this recording the air was charged with static, making the bees more aggressive than usual, the insects sensing the infrasonic shifts coupled together with the barometric pressure, cuasing them fly to the safety of their particular hive.
The proximity of the microphones in relation to actual physical contact between insect and transducer, this contact is usually the bees forewings, and perhaps the tarsus if they land on the microphone
Whilst I do not deny there there are many factors indwelling to my own particular methodologies throughout these recordings, I feel that due to the minimal editing and interference**, these pieces in their multiplicity represent perhaps a truer ear within the soundworld of these wonderful insects (an appendage that is almost always overlooked within reference to behaviour and other factors studied) than one that is chopped, rearranged, stitched, and processed. A more anthropic auditory document made by myself of honey bees has been released by the organised music from thessaloniki label.
**The placement of microphones in recording situations like this I have long felt to be more important than the processing and assemblage that inevitably ensues. I often spend much longer just sitting and thinking about where to attach them than I do anything else.
Perhaps these recordings fail in light of the thoughts presented here. If that is the case I would simply like to state that the thoughts and joy that these various recording processes have presented to me are enough to keep me smiling and listening , in awe of such phenomena and the myriad elements unknown to us, long may it stay that way.
Juan Castañon – Guitar / Bruno Angeloni soprano sax
all music by Angeloni/Castañon
recorded at CSO il Cantiere,Rome, Italy
december 24 and 31, 2008
produced by impromuzak collective
cover art by Bruno Angeloni
Californian Matt Davis has crafted a collection of three tracks exploring methods of improvisation. From Santa Ana’s straight-up reverb-drenched drone, to Butterfly Bush’s melodic underpinning and Copper Doors (Anodized)’s processed field recordings, each of these pieces presents a singular idea, a fragment of thoughts and processes which add up to a cohesive – and profoundly satisfying – whole.
PIVIXKI is a world-first melding of physical pianistic acrobatics and blitzing grind drumming, courtesy of musical chameleon Anthony Pateras (Tzadik, Editions Mego) and Max Kohane (punk/grind royalty from Agents of Abhorence, Cut Sick, George W Bush and Far Left Limit). From spacious doomscapes to blasting textures, this disc presents a unique take on the jump-cut duo format, exploding with ear-wrenching intensity and classy performances. Recorded at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s studios in Melbourne by master Melbourne avant-engineer Chris Lawson, and mixed by Chicago legend Casey Rice, this is a must for those who love their music fun, confronting and slightly insane.
Pangea works with harsh sounds giving it a floating and hypnotic sense. The collaborative nature of spanish composer Juan Antonio Nieto has taken him into different journeys. What happens when the continental drift process suffers inversion? The union of intangible terrains is becoming more clear each second. At this point, we know that language is truly unstable and absolutely turbulent. We would like to be in control and arrest this flux of events that surround us.
Pangea is based in Madrid, Spain.
A massive continent of sound once united when structures were inexistent. Pangea reminds you of those times before each of the component continents were separated into their current configuration… If you allow it, these forms are capable to join disperse theories and hypothesis in the depths of your mind.»- Sebastian Alvarez ( taken from the Pangea Myspace http://www.myspace.com/juanantonionieto )
The band started in the mid `94. Planned to create “noise”, but play kind of noisy-noise-core w/ a drum section, two basses and voice. Stopped to use the instruments they started to play only/mainly many different materials, equipments, garbage, junks and things, people didn’t need (as like metals, woods, glass, plastics, papers), prepared electronix, various microphones, tape deck, pedal effectors, drum module, mini disc, samples, turntable, etc…
Band activity under name NAPALMED was stopped on january 2005, but in june 2006 band rises up with a new line up, of the previous formation only Radek Kopel remains.
V.Sequí plays clarinet, flutes, spanish guitar, loud, melódica and loops
Simoneta Perelló plays percussions on “399 golpes”
Pedro Montalván plays piano and percussions on “399 golpes”
David Diaz plays cello on “linea X”
Antonia Funes plays voice on “funcle”
John Mason is, as you might expect, a close relative of Jon 7 and JMMIII. Jon 7 has a contentious colleague (interactions with whom he still values highly) who had offered him a release of “Guitar Music” for Time Theory. The offer was rescinded though due to Jon 7′s failure to respond immediately. “Guitar Music” was instead offered to a Dutch label, and promptly was never brought up again (though it may have done well where it landed. we just don’t know).
NOt easily out done, Jon 7 commissioned John Mason to construct an album of ‘guitar music’ for a different Dutch label (the now famous and defunct Okkulth, who in it’s unmercifully short lifespan revolutionized a new area of dark ambient drone and noise). Upon submission of “Gammatria” Okkulth came to an end, and it was never released.
Upon reflection this was a bit of a good thing: Mr. Mason had entirely forgotten the methods he used to make the album, and had described it entirely incorrectly to Okkulth HQ.
What you hear here in this release are only two instruments, a Hondo electric guitar (a Japanese surf-guitar, if you will) and a phillips head screwdriver. the rest is just ‘special effects’.
Other artists are encouraged to continue the long fight to prove Decca wrong, guitar music is not “on its way out.” Not when it can take such forms as this.
In Mid-2009, mystified asked some of his peers if they would try remixing his sounds. He was especially happy with 9 of these remixes, and wanted to release them together to give people a chance to listen.
These 9 remixes vary in style but all are high in quality and all do exciting things with the sounds of mystified.
So, about 1 and 3/4 years ago, I finished a super long ambient track for my Zondagmorgen (remember this?!) project, entitled La Fin du Monde. My intentions, at the time, were to release it though IMP. That never happened, and it’s been sitting on my hard drive ever since. I pulled it out, on a whim, this morning and listened to it on the bus today. It’s actually better than I remember, so I thought I would send it your way to see if you would be interested in including it in as an upcoming JNN release.
It does take courage to record a solo CD on bass clarinet. But Jason Stein knows exactly what he is doing. Being a very active member of the Chicago new music scene, his solos are not songs, per se, nor displays of bravado or ostentation. As Art Lange writes in his liner notes, “his are, to my ear, spontaneous etudes… Stein’s solo improvisations are not abstract exercises. They are literally about the way he plays the bass clarinet, how his breath filters through it and is transformed into degrees of pitch, texture, tone color, percussion, and voice…”
This album is inspired by Marcel Gherman alias Megatone’s father’s book “Language In The World Of The Unspoken” about animal language. An excerpt from the book is added. Admiring nature’s beauty and perfection we become closer to a deeper understanding, to an inner truth that defies all conflicts and suffering of our harsh human world.
The mysterious language of living light
“…In the captivating book by famous soviet naturalist V.V. Lunkevich “Biology for fun” we find the following text, which seems to be, by its colourfulness and diversity, even more majestic than any fairytale scene: “He saw an extraordinary image. In front of him are passing by, sometimes in compact groups, sometimes one by one, some strange beings: at first they seem like umbrellas or bells – they are small size medusas, spreading a light sometimes blue, or green, or yellow, or purple. Among these moving lights floats peacefully, without signs of hurry, a giant medusa with an umbrella measuring 60-70 centimeters in diameter. A little farther there are fishes spreading light. As a lightning passes the moonfish, which indeed seems like a moon on the background of the other luminescent fishes. One of the fishes has “burning” eyes, another has on its head some kind of appendix, whose edge is like a lighting bulb, another one has a long wire hanging from its inferior jaw, like a little “lamp”, and other fishes “burn” completely, this because of some organs situated along their bodies like lighting bulbs spread on a string… On the bottom of the sea, among rocks and algae there are lurking mollusks and luminescent worms. On their bodies they have bright lines, spots or points shining like diamonds in light; on the openings of the underwater rocks throne starfishes also flooded in light, here also we find a lobster that lightens its way with its gigantic eyes, seeming like spread out telescopes, examining its hunting terrain.”
The phenomenon is not less interesting when it is witnessed by a sensitive observer situated out of the water. This is how K. Paustovski saw it: “The sea was burning! I started to watch carefully. Even now I can’t believe that what I’ve seen was real. In such cases people tend to say that reality seems like a dream, but it’s not true. The sight in front of me seemed more wonderful than the most beautiful dream. The sea was simply burning. It seemed that its bottom was made out of marble lightened from below by a moonlike fire. The light was spreading to the horizon and there, where the darkness became like a violet ink, the sky was shining as if it were covered by a silver fog. The large line of light faded slowly. But after a short period of darkness, the sea transformed itself again into a sky full of stars, unknown, dropped to our feet. Billions of stars, hundreds of Milky Ways were floating under the sea. Fading out, they dived to the very bottom, or relightened, rising to the surface. The eye discriminated two types of light: one still, balancing slowly on the water, and another – all in continuous motion, slashing the water in rapid and violent flashes. It was the awakened fishes agitating underwater. The white fire was spreading out towards the beach and you could see clearly the bottom of the sea. Stones and tin objects were covered by a thin burning layer… I was witnessing one of the greatest phenomena in the world”.”
…”I first explored P_SH with his EP’s on Tru Type Sounds net-label – “Herret EP” was a good signal to keep an eye on this guy,
and his second mini-album “Ll & Pii” was no disappointment – very enjoyable, and a great source of inspiration; shortly after, I was introduced to Vasya and he gave us a great demo called “Piece of Overloads” for top- 40.org…”…
Unfortunately, we never had a chance to release it – not that we didn’t like it, no, it simply never happens.
Circles was composed with a tape recorder loaded with air organ, piano and fiel recordings samples. All the samples were manipulated by digital processing in a laptop to create the repetitions, textures and timbres that build the tracks.
Circles is a collection of drones and textures inspired in low speeds and turns of the magnetic tape.
Arturo Ortega (Piscis) 1982 Guadalajara México
Arturo Ortega is (Piscis) a musical Project created at the dawn of 2003, oriented towards sound-experimentation, performance and electroacoustic music. Piscis has performed in Mexico’s most important cities and in several alternative music festivals such as the Digital Culture International Festival âMusic, Sound and New Technologies (Mutek)- 2d and 3d edition in Mexico
The project’s output has been shown in numerous venues in the country and albums have been released in labels of Russia, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico and USA
In 2007 Arturo Ortega assembles AMP-RECS, a label devoted to composition and distribution of alternative experimental music with 50 artists from around the world and 30 albums available for free download. He also partakes in the organization of cultural events such as concerts, expos and collaboration in audiovisual material.
Seven completely improvised solos on strictly acoustic instruments. [AR11] Seven Solos is being released as a physical object – a CD-R in a slim DVD case with full original artwork (jacket + CD-R label) by Massimo Magee, with an authentic handmade charm. The price is US$10, and it will be handled through PayPal. If you would like to get a copy of this, the first (and possibly last, we’ll see how it goes) physical release from [Array], please click the ‘Purchase [AR11] Seven Solos’ link below. Please also send an email to ArrayWeb ::–AT–:: gmail.com with your postal address, just in case. The first 7 people to purchase this release will also receive a bonus floppy-disc copy of “Instants I”, a selection of 3 sound instants by Massimo Magee.
I’m not going to be releasing these in any fixed number, just until either I get fed up with making copies, or people stop buying them, whichever comes first.
1: Solo Trumpet
2: Solo Tenor
3: Solo Clarinet
4: Solo Harmonica
5: Solo Sopranino
6: Solo Piano
7: Watching the Rain (for kmh)
featuring Rodrigo Amado
The Great Bydgoszcz Concert
“In March of 2008, my sons and I got on board a northbound airliner that would take us first from Dallas to Minneapolis, then Amsterdam, and finally to our long-awaited destination, Warsaw. Zbigniew Szwajewski and I had worked on the possibility of our touring northeastern Poland for a few months, and it was about to happen. At the same time, in Lisbon, Portugal, saxophonist Rodrigo Amado was boarding a plane which would take him to Warsaw where he would meet us for our second tour together.
We’ve always had a great time playing with guest instrumentalists, but Rodrigo is more than a guest – he is like a brother to all three of us, and a fine improviser as well… stronger and stronger all the time, as you can hear in this recording. As for my sons Aaron and Stefan, I’ve been playing music with them for ten years now in Yells At Eels – in May of 2009 we celebrated our first decade together – and they are monsters on their instruments (as jazz musicians like to say), and a real joy to play with.
We were warmly met at Warsaw’s Frederic Chopin International Airport by Jarek Polit, owner of the finest jazz and blues record store in Poland, Rubikon, and our translator/caretaker in Warsaw, Joana ‘Asia’ Chojnaska. From that moment on, the four of us were treated like royalty, every need met the second we mentioned it. The audiences were right with us from the first note, and they completely filled the venues where we played, cheering us on at every turn, and coming up to talk to us and congratulate us on our music. And although Zbig is a busy industrialist, he drove us everywhere, taking care of problems, checking us in and out of hotels, making sure we were awakened at the right time to make our daily treks to the different cities where our concerts were to be presented, feeding us the best food at the right time, and just generally preparing everything in advance so that we didn’t have a care in the world, except for playing the best we could for our newfound (and in some cases, long-standing) fans. Our thanks to Zbig, Asia, Jarek, and our driver Jacek, as well as the presenters at the concert halls and clubs where we played in Warsaw, Pozna?, Bydgoszcz (Mózg especially, where this was recorded), Gdynia, Olsztyn, and then again in Warsaw, where the legendary Tomasz Sta?ko was in attendance.”-Dennis Gonzalez
