Old Castle (Robin Storey/Rapoon)

Old Castle are a trio consisting of Robin Storey (Rapoon, Zoviet France), Robert Pepper (Pas Musique), and Shaun Sandor (Promute).  The three met in 2011 when they performed in Brooklyn at Cafe Orwell.  They have been collaborators ever since. They have released several albums comprised of duos (Ultramail Productions, Alrealon Musique, Zoharum) but this is the first time they conspired as a trio to make 13 tracks of industrial, experimental, electronic, mind-bending compositions.

More information can be found here.

4045 Hits

Andreas Trobollowitsch, "Ventorgano"

Subtly changing overtone layers and fragil polyrhythms based on the Ventorgano, a self-developed electroacoustic synthesizer.

The Ventorgano consists of guitar strings, wooden resonating bodies and converted fans which use cello-bow hair instead of propellers to set the strings into oscillation.  Rotating speed, string tension and attack can be adjusted progressively, allowing the player to control micro-rhythmical elements and subtle changes in the overtone spectrum.

As in Trobollowitsch's previous works, the production process of the Ventorgano is based on improvisations to be used as basic materials. The two pieces, as heard in the album, were developed by a later processor selecting, combining and cutting these basic materials, always by maintaining the nature of the instrument and focusing on the gradations in-between rhythm and drone.

More information can be found here.

3867 Hits

Gareth Davis & Duane Pitre, "Nótt"

Nótt is a 34-minute long collaboration album, consisting of one epic slowly evolving drone, named after the personification of the night, the grandmother of Thor, taken from the Norse mythology.

Nótt is a beautiful gathering of two musicians. On the one hand you have the electronic drones of Duane Pitre and on the other hand you have the bass clarinet soundscapes of Gareth Davis. The musicians managed to record something very minimal but also very powerful.

More information can be found here.

3955 Hits

A Winged Victory for the Sullen, "The Undivided Five"

Purveyors of contemporary ambient and electronic inspired music, A Winged Victory for the Sullen make a bold return on new album “The Undivided Five”. The pair, made up of Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, have created iconic film scores and forward-thinking ambient groups, releasing a series of game-changing records for Erased Tapes and Kranky. On The Undivided Five they rekindle their unique partnership for only their second piece of original music outside of film, TV and stage commissions, creating an album that channels ritual, higher powers and unspoken creative energies. Their fifth release (following their debut album, two scores and an EP), they embraced the serendipitous role of the number five, inspired by artist Hilma af Klint and the recurrence of the perfect fifth chord.

This album sees them create bold new work built on their foundations in ambient and neoclassical. Since their 2011 self-titled debut, the duo have emerged as part of a much-lauded scene alongside peers like Max Richter, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Tim Hecker and Fennesz.

This album sees them pay greater heed to the small details in their sound than previously, something they say has been encouraged by the move to a new label. It’s been their first opportunity since their debut to create something that’s solely guided by their ideas, and it represented an opportunity to call back to that first outing while also building on the various ways in which they’ve grown. "We understand that times have changed," they say. "We have evolved, but we also didn't want to forget the beginning."

They channel influences such as Debussy, nodded to in the opening track, whose big chords and complicated arrangements inform a lot of their approach – parts that sound simple but require great skill to execute. Likewise, the artist Hilma af Klint – one of the first abstract Western artists – informed their ideas about drawing on spiritual influences to shape their work. "It's like an invisible hand guiding things," they say.

The start of recording sessions for the album were marred by the death of one of their closest friends. Within weeks after the funeral O'Halloran found out that he would be expecting his first child, and it was soon after that a visit to see the art of af Klint brought home a profound realization of life, death, the afterlife, and the spaces in between. She belonged to a group called "The Five," a circle of five women with a shared belief in the importance of trying to make contact with spirits, often by way of séances. This chimed with the duo's unspoken approach to collaboration, and nudged them to return to their writing process centered around the harmonic perfect fifth; the five senses, the divine interval – The Undivided Five.

The album was also shaped by the breadth of locations in which it was created, helping to shape its nuanced sonics. In addition to O'Halloran and Wiltzie's respective Berlin and Brussels studios, the record took shape across six different sites. They recorded orchestral samples in Budapest's Magyar Rádió Studio 22, re-recorded album parts in Brussels' Eglise Du Beguinage's unique, reverb-heavy surrounds (where Wiltzie has performed with Stars of the Lid and, in 2018, organized a tribute concert for Jóhann Jóhannsson), experimented with overdubs in Ben Frost's Reykjavik studio, and recorded grand piano parts in a remote woodland studio in northern Italy. The duo pay close attention to the micro-level of sound, and each of these places was chosen for the qualities which could enrich the finished product. And its in Francesco Donadello's studio in Berlin, where all of the previous AWVFTS material has been mixed, that the album was run through the studio's analog board, binding the record's different parts together.

It was their connection to Jóhannsson which partly shaped the direction of their new album. They were asked to create a remix for him, which he heard before his death in 2018, where they unlocked a new process in terms of how they work. They recomposed the strings, using modular synthesis, old synths and string and piano arrangements, a method they applied to album opener "Our Lord Debussy." "It's about going into the DNA of music and taking different strands," they say.
The album is their debut for Ninja Tune, and comes as change is underway for O'Halloran, moving from Berlin – hence the title of "Keep It Dark, Deutschland" – after a decade in the German capital. He's headed to Iceland, the country where the pair shot their latest press photos and which is an important locale for both of them. The wide-spanning connections which have shaped the record are testament to their deep roots as artists. This album's powerful energy is driven by the deep-rooted bond between them.

More information can be found here.

3980 Hits

Big Blood, "The Daughter's Union" reissue

Recorded a bit before the last Big Blood slab we released — Operate Spaceship Earth Properly (FTR 385) — The Daughter's Union represents the true introduction of Caleb and Colleen's daughter, Quinnisa as a full member of Big Blood. The Maine-based duo had been using Quinnisa as their secret hard rock weapon for quite a while, so it is gratifying as heck to see her finally get her due!

In their new fully-fledged trio guise, Big Blood puff themselves up like a most splendid glam rock peacock, fairly bursting with readymade-riffs and inspirational high-kicking energy bursts.  Initially, this can seem a bit odd, given Big Blood's historical appreciation of bizarre folk-derived textural-psych.  But heard in the context of their musical evolution, this move appears as just another roost along a trail that involves a whole lot of mountains and woods, with the occasional meadow-based rock festival stirred into the mix.

By covering tunes by The Troggs and Silver Apples, Big Blood make it abundantly clear their interests are as far from catholic as their influences.  Although it also seems that they are able to successfully transmute even the most thumpy-ass high-heel pumping into a move that is draped in moss and mystery.

I can hardly wait to hear their track-by-track cover of Led Zeppelin II.  I always thought those songs would sound better sung by an actual woman.  Know what I mean? – Byron Coley, 2019

More information can be found here and here.

3723 Hits

Deathprod, "Occulting Disk"

Occulting Disk is an anti-fascist ritual. Recorded in Oslo, Reykjavik, Cologne, Berlin and Los Angeles between 2012 and 2019. It is the first Deathprod album to be released since the 2004 album Morals and Dogma.  Liner notes by Will Oldham.  LP cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin.  Artwork by Kim Hiorthøy and Helge Sten.

"I remember driving over a mountain with my mother, she was in the passenger seat and we were being mauled and cuddled and battered and fried by sound; together. We were together experiencing something previously unimaginable, and we were facing the same direction, and we were moving through space and time knowing that a geographic destination some way ahead would bring an end. And the sound surrounded us, and for once our mutual silence was loaded with good. Because we were in the presence of each other, and we knew so much about how we had failed each other (it wasn’t a mystery any more), and we knew how we had maimed others when we worried too much about ourselves, how we had contributed to the faults of others simply by focusing in instead of out. Our mutual silences were laden with what that could only be called love. I used to hear love in music until I learned to hear love in sound."  (Will Oldham)

More information can be found here.

3506 Hits

ZONAL, "Wrecked" (Justin Broadrick & Kevin Martin)

ZONAL, the brainchild of Justin Broadrick (Godflesh/Jesu/JK Flesh) and Kevin Martin (The Bug/King Midas Sound) present their monumental Relapse Records debut, Wrecked.  ZONAL continues where their previous collaboration Techno Animal left off, and combines a brutal ongoing obsession with beats, bass, dub, drone, noise and riff.

Under their new guise, the enigmatic duo push the parameters and atmospheres that have earned them critical acclaim further and deeper; ZONAL's sound has become ever more corrupted, corroded, slower and lower; with the theme of exploring inner/outer space acts as the gelling agent for this shockingly monolithic sound. Anyone who witnessed their sonic destruction and lyrical detonation c/o MOOR MOTHER at both ROADBURN and UNSOUND festivals will not be disappointed by the slo-mo meltdown.

Releases October 25, 2019 on Relapse.

3749 Hits

Boduf Songs, "Abyss Versions"

Boduf Songs' seventh album and first on Orindal Records marks the Ohio-via-Southampton home recording project's most detailed production yet, voyaging into deeper recesses than ever before. Abyss Versions will see the light of day on October 4, 2019.

Mat Sweet, the solitary figure behind Boduf Songs, has spent the better part of fifteen years cultivating an idiosyncratic strain of quiet menace, augmenting library-hushed vocals and brooding guitars with psychedelic flourishes from processed loops, field recordings, and distant, subliminal atmospheres.

Subtly acknowledging Boduf Songs' beginnings, Abyss Versions echoes motifs from the first Boduf Songs album (2005's Boduf Songs on Kranky Records), forming its own secret, circular path, encapsulating the journey from there to here. Sweet's background in doom metal still seeps into the quiet, pensive world of Boduf Songs via mood and tone, balanced by shades of the fingerpicking mysticism of his first four albums. As always, the music of Boduf Songs is steeped in a palpable sense of darkness and dread, offset by a gorgeous and discreet sonic beauty. There is much prettiness here, albeit within an inescapably unsettling frame.

Throughout the album, sonorous melodies mix with the grind of drum machines, esoteric bleeps and bloops, and reversed tape experiments, all in counterpoint to the morphine-addled guitar and grimdark velvet vocals. There are haunting, dreamlike elements, the aching time/no-time uncanny sad-charms of some far off Gene Vincent/Chet Baker number never recorded from an alternate Lynchian universe. Sounds emerge into the light then fade back into the darkness as repetition and hypnotic drone play against the movement. Forward and upward, we move without moving.

Abyss Versions is full of love, and the expanse of things outside of us, the slow, elegiac stir of echoes, the mixed blessing of memory, the sensation of rot and longing. A letting go. A refusal to let go. The static that carries you off, the swell of feeling that is delicately tuned away, the whisper of consciousness, snuffed gently out. An opium dream, curling smoke spiraling into the blackness of a dimmed room's ceiling, meditations on mortality and the void for those who travel by night.

Releases October 4, 2019 on Orindal Records.

3527 Hits

Clarice Jensen, "Drone Studies"

Drone Studies main photo

Clarice Jensen is a composer and cellist based in Brooklyn, NYC. As a versatile collaborator, Jensen has recorded and performed with Jóhann Jóhannsson, Stars of the Lid, Owen Pallett, Max Richter and numerous others. As the artistic director of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), brought to life some of the most cherished works of modern classical music, including pieces by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Gavin Bryars, Dustin O’Halloran, and more.

Jensen now follows her debut album For This From That Will Be Filled with Drone Studies, highlighting Jensen’s improvisational prowess, venturing even deeper into the meditative mire but with more organic, naturally expressive air.

"The Organ that Made You Bleed" presents a succinctly striking suite that opens in medias res, awakening in a howling chorus of disembodied tones. This tragic ocean of estranged sound ebbs and flows, almost unnoticeable growing in a swell of hymnal hysteria. The calmly chaotic frenzy soon gives way into a layered composite of deep drones and tidal textures. Hopeful harmonies clash with eerie dissonance, suggesting the deeply human balance between darkness and lightness. It’s a magnum opus told in a sequence sketches, and each new turn is a cavern of radiant resonance.

"One Bee" perfectly foils the A-side with an insomniatic interplay of pure tones and richly repetitive cello phrases. The piece begins as a blank canvas, simultaneously empty and brimming with potential. One by one, solitary tones reveal themselves in the foreground until forming a small choir of complementary combinations. This beautifully odd ritual plays out in slow motion as Jensen’s cello performs a tight loop of emotionally expressive notes.

Taken as a whole, Drone Studies a harrowing set of deep listening that uncovers new gifts with each repeated listen.

More information can be found here.

3649 Hits

Theodore Cale Schafer, "Patience"

Patience main photo

Patience is the debut full-length album by Sante Fe-based artist Theodore Cale Schafer.  Alternately murky and narcoleptic and bristling with grit and light, this collection of eight pieces is a delicate play of contrasts.  Impressionistic settings unfurl with an unhurried gait, opening with the dreamlike disorientation of "Gold Chain" in which a degraded location recording gives way to a soft web of treated piano motifs.  Schafer's compositions are sumptuous yet unfussy, recalling perhaps the concise, vignette-oriented tape works of Andrew Chalk, which seem to prioritize spontaneity and ephemerality over preciousness and decorum. This approach yields substantive results, as on "It's Late", which marries a dolorous, clanging guitar sketch to the sound of change jostling in the pocket of a walker and the laughter of friends or passersby.  This is diaristic music - rough-hewn, confessional, and teeming with possibility.

More information can be found here.

3789 Hits

Rrose, "Hymn to Moisture"

Hymn to Moisture explores embodiment in natural phenomena by playing with microtonal and unstable tunings, shifting overtones, and integrated modulations that make it difficult to separate tone from noise. Evoking wind, water, rock, and flesh, the album occupies multiple spaces simultaneously: abrasive and tranquil, propulsive and meditative, familiar and alien. It shows an equal reverence for techno pioneers such as Jeff Mills, Pan Sonic, and Plastikman as it does for composers such as Eliane Radigue, Laurie Spiegel, and Phill Niblock.  Hymn to Moisture is Rrose's first solo album, and it unfolds with the scrupulous care and patience that defines all of Rrose's auditory experiments. The album marks the artist's most refined work to date.

Since its inception in 2011, the Rrose project has spawned over a dozen vinyl EPs on Sandwell District, Stroboscopic Artefacts, Infrastructure, and their own Eaux label as well as three collaborative albums with Bob Ostertag (on Buchla 200E modular synthesizer), Charlemagne Palestine (for two pianos), and Lucy (as Lotus Eater) respectively. A fourth album-length project on Seattle’s Further Records saw Rrose reinterpreting and extending James Tenney’s monolithic 1971 piece "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion" for solo gong.  Hymn to Moisture is Rrose's first solo album of original material.

Releases November 8, 2019.  More information can be found here.

4008 Hits

I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral, "Inside the Cathedral Sessions"

All twelve "Inside the Cathedral" sessions from Season 1 (2019).

These sessions were recorded and filmed live in my music research lab and then broadcast weekly on my YouTube channel.

I FEEL LIKE A BOMBED CATHEDRAL is
Amaury Cambuzat: Electric Guitar with Effects plus Heartbeats.

More information can be found here.

3935 Hits

Eliane Radigue, "Chry-Ptus" vinyl reissue

Eliane Radigue - Chry-Ptus - 2LP - PRE-ORDER

From the original press release:

"Chry-Ptus (1971). Originally two tapes which were to be played simultaneously, with or without synchronization, which does not affect the structure of the work, but creates changes in the game of sub-harmonics and overtones.

Three variations on this piece were performed at the New York Cultural Center in 1971, with variations of amplitude and location modulation as well as synchronization. Realized on the Buchla Synthesizer at the New York University.

The booklet contains a text by painter Paul Jenkins, who also realized the watercolor on the front cover, written on occasion of Radigue's first concert in New York, April 6th, 1971."

"It's with the Buchla that I constructed Chry-Ptus, a piece made up of two tapes with an analogue duration, 22 or 23 minutes, which could be played either simultaneously or with a slight time difference, so as to establish slight variations every time the piece was played. I spent the first months eliminating everything I did not want; I even used a notebook in which I tried to determine a writing system resembling chemical formulae."  Eliane Radigue

Out October 11th on Important Records.

4048 Hits

Have A Nice Life, "Sea of Worry"

"I can stay up late whenever I want… but other than that, it’s nothing like I thought. I guess I thought I'd know what I'm doing by now… but I know nothing."

Have A Nice Life was formed in a time of Dan's and Tim's life that reflected concerns with depression and suicidal ideation. As the following for the project has grown, and Dan and Tim have aged and faced new life challenges with family and careers, their new album Sea of Worry reflects just that.  Dread is the primary theme that is woven throughout Sea of Worry – the dread of aging, children growing up, and an increasingly uncertain future.   However, Sea of Worry is Have A Nice Life at the peak of their powers; Dan and Tim's unmistakable chemistry coupled with a propulsive backing band catapults them into the stratosphere.  These 7 tracks ebb and flow with noise and melody, and are so well-crafted it's near impossible to get them out of your head.  More concise and perhaps more straightforward than their past releases, Have A Nice Life has found new focus and discipline on Sea of Worry and the album is a triumphant addition to their ever-evolving discography.

Sea of Worry will be released via The Flenser on November 8th 2019.

Have A Nice Life was, is, and always will be Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga.  Have A Nice Life is also Myke Cameron (bass), Rich Otero (drums, synths, programming), Joe Streeter (guitar), Cody Kestigian (live visuals).

 

3772 Hits

Benoît Pioulard, "May/Altra"

Benoît Pioulard’s monumental EP May was originally released through his imprint (Disques d'Honoré) digitally and as a limited edition cassette that quickly sold out.

This LP features the May EP in its entirety (side A) and the Atra EP, which encompasses four brand new, previously unreleased tracks (side B).  Atra is Latin for "black;" this collection is intended to be a blustery penumbra against the verdancy of the May EP.

Releases September 10, 2019 on Past Inside the Present.

3995 Hits

Maninkari, "L'océan rêve dans sa loisiveté (Third Session)"

Maninkari's third session of L'océan rêve dans sa loisiveté.

All selections composed, improvised, recorded by Frédéric & Olivier Charlot : santoor, cimbalom, duduk, viola, synths, frame drums, percussions, cello, melodica, jaw, harp, voice, zither.

Claudie Ponget and Catherine Marmet : voice, drone

More information can be found here.

4283 Hits

Razen, "Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk"

Razen celebrate their 10 yr anniversary with Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk, an album that takes a paragraph from CG Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections as a reference point to set off a journey that goes from light to dark, from day to night, from life to death, and back.

As much a reflection of primal imagery and rituals of knowledge as a way of coming to terms with anxieties about the chaos of the night, the album concerns itself with the question: who - or what - are we in the moments before (re-)birth, before waking up, in the state inbetween darkness and light?

On Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk, the wind instruments and organ stabs of band leaders Kim Delcour and Brecht Ameel are expanded with Pieter Lenaerts' five-string double bass and sarangi, Jean-Philippe Poncin's bass clarinet and chalumeau, and Paul Garriau's hurdy-gurdy.

The album sees the group explore new straight-to-the-gut emotional territory, while simultaneously showcasing Razen's intuitive, continuous investigation of the acoustic properties and resonant possibilities of churches and chapels in the countryside around Brussels; after Remote Hologram (2014) and The Xvoto Reels (2017), this time the St. Agatha Church (St.-Agatha-Berchem) functions as the conduit for Razen's acoustic sound jolts.

With the past ten years entirely devoted to the search for archetypical timbres and connotations by improvising on Early Music instruments, it's no wonder that the world of Razen would one day collide with the world of CG Jung and take his writing as an inspiration.

A sonic hex tour de force from this unique ensemble, Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk is a present-day, nocturnal emitter of the Coleridge quote that opens Jung's Memories:

"He looked at his own soul with a Telescope. What seemed all irregular he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds."

Brecht Ameel: Church Organ, Bouzouki
Kim Delcour: Single Reed, Tambourine, Shawm, Tenor Recorder,
Bass Recorder, Bagpipe
Pieter Lenaerts: Double Bass, Sarangi
Jean-Philippe Poncin: Bass Clarinet, Chalumeau
Paul Garriau: Hurdy-Gurdy

More information can be found here.

4060 Hits

David Berman, 1967-2019

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Our hearts go out to the friends and family of David Berman, a beloved cult figure who was one of the most brilliant and poetic lyricists of his generation.  He was best known as the sole constant member of Silver Jews, which he formed with Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich in the late ‘80s.  Though Malkmus and Nastanovich were soon drawn away by the demands of their other band Pavement, Berman kept the band going with a shifting array of like-minded collaborators (1996's The Natural Bridge with New Radiant Storm King is a personal favorite).  Throughout it all, Berman remained a deeply reluctant live performer with an open aversion to touring, though he occasionally did public readings of his writings.  Consequently, he surprised everyone by finally touring with Silver Jews in 2005 in support of Tanglewood Numbers.

Berman released one more album after that tour, then famously ended the band in 2009, vowing "to stop before we got bad" and planned to instead devote himself to undoing the influence of his lobbyist father ("I am the son of a demon come to make good the damage.").  Eventually, however, Berman was drawn back to music, unveiling a new project (Purple Mountains) that debuted on Drag City in July.  At the time of his death, the ensemble was poised to embark upon their inaugural US tour.

Many wonderful tributes have been written about Berman's life and work this week.  This is an especially fine one:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/david-berman-made-us-feel-less-alone

7099 Hits

My Cat Is An Alien, "Spiritual Noise, Vol. 2"

"Spiritual Noise" is how My Cat Is An Alien baptized their own music and intermedia work at the beginning of their third decade of activity. 

Volume 2
in the ongoing "Spiritual Noise" series is a further step ahead in the unheard new music territories of MCIAA. 

Released on the new Antigravitational imprint, the record label & multimedia platform created and curated by MCIAA and set up with gallerist and publisher Marco Contini, the album was designed following principles of seriality and of installation art: the vinyl LP takes the shape of a multimedia object which displays a proper artbook mounted on the cover jacket, giving access to cinematic poetry films and extra contents for a fully immersive experience.

More information can be found here.

4293 Hits

Edward Ka-Spel, "The Moon Cracked Over Albion"

A year in the making in complete secrecy, the intention was to spring The Moon Cracked Over Albion without any warning or preview upon an unsuspecting World.  In fact, personal anticipation scuppered that plan and here is the finished article a little ahead of time.  Conceived and recorded in a nation (a World?) so tragically divided, it could fall apart, it's hoped that just a few seeds of hope and optimism can be sown over the course of the time you'll spend in this peculiar World.

The CD is in production right now.  An expanded vinyl edition is planned for early 2020.  Please note that Track 10 is the exclusive 4th side for the coming vinyl edition.

More information can be found here.

4523 Hits