News & Events
A Typical Night in the Pit is a collection of new music by Los Angeles' Nick Malkin. It is an album that finds the artist absorbed in the density and chaos of the urban complex. It is unquestionably an "LA album," but not the LA of hi-fi listening bars and twinkling, Instagram-ready New Age. Rather, Malkin navigates something more akin to the LA found in the films of Robert Altman or Alan Rudolph— overheated, tense, hazy, frayed— with blue-lit, nocturnal compositions that at times recall Mark Isham's noirish scores for those subversive (anti-)Hollywood pictures. Enlisting a revolving cast of LA experimentalists, Malkin has assembled a record that is as chameleonic as it is cohesive, offering up vignettes ranging from the skewed MIDI-jazz of "Sixth Street Conversation" to the skulking menace of "Estacionamiento Privado," before giving way to the wide-eyed, cloudy closer "View From Two Perspectives."
C’mon, let’s go in here and get outta this heat.
More information can be found here.
As Midwife, Denver based multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston plays what she describes as "Heaven Metal," or emotive music about devastation. Johnston began developing the experimental pop project in 2015 while a resident of beloved Denver DIY space Rhinoceropolis. The venue/co-op started in the early aughts and nurtured local artists until 2016, when its doors were shuttered due to high tensions surrounding the safety of DIY spaces (not coincidentally following the horrific Ghost Ship fire in Oakland). Residents were displaced around Denver and artists like Midwife were forced to start over.
However, it was at Rhinoceropolis that Madeline became close with Colin Ward, an artistic confidant and friend to whom her new album, Forever, is dedicated. Madeline comments, "He was my roommate and was the embodiment of that place [Rhinoceropolis] in a lot of ways. We became really close friends there. I was always learning so much from him, about life and being an artist. He was an amazing teacher and friend to me." When Ward passed away unexpectedly in 2018, she turned towards sound to express the indescribable feelings that partnered with her grief.
These mournful sounds ultimately developed into her new album, Forever. The 6-song LP is a latticework of soft-focus guitars and precise melodies– anthems of light piercing through gray clouds of drone. On the track "C.R.F.W.," we hear Colin Ward reading a poem that speaks of a leaf falling from a tree in autumn: "imagine the way a breeze feels against your leaf body while you finally don't have to hold on anymore." Johnston responds with slowly radiating tones, branches stretching out to hold the leaf one last time. "I wanted to write him a letter. I wanted to make something for him in his memory," Madeline says of Forever.
On Forever, Midwife combines ambient and dream pop into nuanced, reverb-soaked music that is equally haunting and moving.
More information can be found here.
On September 12, 2018 Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo and guitarist extraordinaire Jean-Marc Montera joined Maurizio and Roberto Opalio in their hometown Torino, Italy, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the brothers' visionary project My Cat Is An Alien. That evening the stage of Alfa Teatro—a liberty-style, historical theater built in 1928—hosted the live world premiere of this quartet, whose members already collaborated live and on records with each other during the years, yet never all the four together. The quartet live performance followed MCIAA's radical aesthetic of "instantaneous composition," where nothing is defined nor drafted prior to the act of music creation, and every sound and action is shaped around a higher-order scheme dictated by the empathy and synergy of the actual moment of enlightenment. The show was also accompanied by the projection of a brand new cinematic poetry dual film created by Roberto Opalio and previewed on the occasion, whose Super-8 film's relentless flickering and ascending motion worked "ad hoc" to match the music and body gestures of the performance, thus enhancing its transcendental power.
That night Maurizio Opalio (self-made double-bodied wooden string instrument, pedal effects, bell), Roberto Opalio (wordless vocalizations, bodhran, Alientronics, electric guitar, space toys), Jean-Marc Montera (table top guitar, pedals, little gong), and Lee Ranaldo (vocals, electric guitar, bells) moved through still unexplored and unheard music territories.
This music is a pure ecstatic revelation, a unique, powerful and spiritual experience all of its own. Listening to this album we are offered a true epiphany just as uniquely gifted genius improvisers/composers of the past would grace our ears and souls.
More information can be found here.
"Steven Stapleton;s iconoclastic Nurse With Wound project now enters its fifth decade, marked with this lavish boxed set of all-new music titled Trippin' Musik. Consisting of three vinyls in dayglo orange, yellow and green, the collection comes with no tracklisting and no indication of what order in which the listener ought to listen to it."
-via Norman Records
Tentatively out November 29th on United Dirter.
"Mechanosphere is Cam Deas' abstract yet poignant second album exploring ideas of rhythmic dissonance and head-spinning proprioceptions for The Death of Rave. Following directly from his cultishly-acclaimed mini-LP Time Exercises, which was surprisingly deployed in Richie Hawtin's recent "CLOSE COMBINED - LIVE" mix and hailed as "Holy F#ck-What is This?!?" by Brainwashed, his new album applies rich polychromatic colour to his signature rhythmic constructions with a greatly heightened emotive traction and broader appeal while only going deeper on his radical ideas about the fundamentals of sound and composition. Big recommendation if you're into Autechre, Xenakis, Ligeti, Rashad Becker.
Using a computer-controlled modular synth, Cam takes the simple idea of layering pitches in multiple tempi to Nth degrees, resulting in a sensational and warped sense of temporality and gravity-defying physics. Effectively placing pitch on a scale in a similar way to Conlon Nancarrow's player-piano programming or even Ligeti's famous metronome experiment, Cam explores solutions to the problem of grid-locked linearity, or at least perceptions of it, by effectively ripping the rug from under electronic music convention to make his music appear as though in perpetual freefall, or a process of omnidirectional contraction/expansion that never quite resolves - always the same, ever different.
In Mechanosphere listeners effectively navigate through the music by a loose means of pattern recognition, picking out accentuated kicks and hits that pierce thru Cam's incredibly dense swells of endless metallic tone. But where his Time Exercises LP was unreservedly abstract and emotive in an alien sense, his follow-up practically sounds as though aliens have developed a form of 3D midi folk-jazz or court music for bacchanals and spiritual reasons.
From the vertiginous scale of "Ascension," thru the the jaw-dropping hyper stepper "Slip," to the controlled chaos of "Reflect, Deflect," and ultimately the deeply solemn yet discordantly lush finale of shearing metallic pitches in "Solitude," Cam offers an often shocking and ever fascinating grasp of electronic music’s potential to relate hard-to-communicate but intuitively felt ideas to the body and emotions. It's a sober but incredibly wondrous sound, and only confirms that Cam's seismic stylistic transition this decade from preeminent, post-Takoma 12-string guitar player to visionary synthesist was certainly worthwhile."
-via Boomkat
Out now on The Death of Rave.
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.
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.
Michael Gira - Vocals, words, acoustic/electric guitar, production. I started Swans in NYC in 1982 and have been the primary songwriter, singer and producer throughout the years. In the early years I played bass, but later switched to guitar. During the years of Swans hiatus (1999 - 2010), I released several albums by and toured with a group called Angels of Light.
Kristof Hahn - Lap steel, various guitars throughout, backing vocals, generous and insightful advice on mixes and arrangements. Kristof first became involved with Swans in 1989, was a principal contributor to Angels of Light, and a core Swans member 2010 - 2017. Kristof's other musical ventures have included the Rock 'n' Roll Noir band Les Hommes Sauvages and Kool Kings (with Alex Chilton). He's currently working on an instrumental record for Lawrence English's label, Room 40. He holds a master's degree in Political Science, and when Swans doesn't pay the bills, he translates books for a living. Kristof's presence, on and off tape, is pivotal to this record. Kristof lives in Berlin, Germany.
Larry Mullins - Drums, vibes, orchestral percussion, Mellotron, various keyboards, backing vocals. Larry (AKA Toby Dammit) is a trained symphonic percussionist and all-around consummate musician. He played through the 90s with Iggy Pop and later with The Stooges. He played with Swans in the late 90s and was a main contributor to Angels of Light. He is rumored to have been involved with The Residents. His varied and numerous credits also include a stint with Silver Apples as well as recently, Shakespears Sister. His current main job is playing keyboards with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I decided immediately to ask Larry to contribute to Leaving Meaning after watching the German TV series Babylon Berlin, and suddenly, unbeknownst to me, there was Larry as the main focus of various cabaret scenes, drumming behind a huge kick drum in his inimitable style. After laughing in shock for perhaps half an hour, I decided to contact him. We hadn't been in close touch for a long time and I'm elated I reached out. Larry lives in Berlin, Germany.
Yoyo Röhm - Electric bass, double bass, various keyboards, piano, backing vocals. Yoyo came to my attention through his work with Kristof and Larry in Berlin. In addition to his excellent bass playing, Yoyo's ears were invaluable in helping to sort out many of the arrangements. Yoyo plays with numerous left field musicians around Berlin and also works with Mick Harvey on his Serge Gainsbourg recordings and tours. Yoyo, Larry, Kristof and I rehearsed in Berlin for 3 weeks prior to recording. Yoyo is a true Berliner - gruff and determined on the outside, a marshmallow inside. He was a great musical resource for this record.
The Necks - (Chris Abrahams - piano, organ; Tony Buck - drums, percussion; Lloyd Swanton - double bass). I have been an avid Necks fan since I first saw them perform at a Big Ears Festival in 2010. They subsequently played with Swans at a few shows in Australia. Their live performances and recordings are just about any superlative you can think of - mesmerizing, transcendent, sublime. Their music is entirely improvisational - it's my understanding that they have no idea what they're going to play before they start. And yet, mostly using rudimentary jazz trio instrumentation, they manage to fashion burgeoning and ever-evolving, immersive clouds of sound that utterly envelop the listener as the music unfolds. I'm beyond honored and humbled that they agreed to perform the basic tracks for 2 of my songs (The Nub and Leaving Meaning). Their performances were then delicately, and (I hope!) tastefully further orchestrated upon in Berlin. Tony lives in Berlin, and also played drums on the song Some New Things.
Anna and Maria von Hausswolff - Choral backing vocals. Anna is blessed with a soaring voice, lyrical acuity and increasing facility with the church organ. I was impressed recently to learn that she often travels around Europe and visits churches unannounced, where she talks her way into being allowed to use the resident organ - some of them rather massive, I imagine - and plays and explores for hours. Her searing records and live shows reflect the courage of her imagination and have garnered her increasing, much deserved recognition. Maria is an accomplished Swedish cinematographer and director of photography. In 2017 I heard Anna and Maria singing together at a sound check for a special song they were doing in Anna's set, was instantly enthralled, and resolved at that moment to ask them to participate together on a Swans recording. I'm delighted they agreed to come to Berlin and record for me. They were a joy to work with! They live in Scandinavia.
Ben Frost - Guitar, synthesizers, sound manipulations. Ben's adventurous sound-craftings, sometimes harrowing and sometimes delicate and quite musical, and his powerful live shows, have afforded him much recognition of late. I've also been highly impressed with his soundtrack work for the HBO series, Dark. He's an extremely talented arranger and composer. His mission for this record was intentionally ill defined. I basically wanted his ears and sensibility, with no particular part or instrument in mind. I arrived at his studio in Reykjavik, Iceland, put up the songs, and he played what he thought a song needed. I was pleasantly surprised to discover his unique approach to the electric guitar as well as his synth work. Ben also was quite helpful with arrangement and mixing ideas. Ben lives in Iceland.
Baby Dee - Lead vocal on The Nub, supported by her friends Fay Christen and Ida Albertje Michels, and Jennifer Gira. Dee has released numerous records (one produced by Bonnie Prince Billie, I think), and if you don't know them, you should! The first time I saw her she was riding a unicycle in circles outside the now-defunct Avant club, Tonic, in NYC, playing a ukulele (or accordion?) and singing with great mirth. I saw her set that night and was won over. She's since toured with Swans several times. Her music could loosely be called neo cabaret, but more accurately she's totally unique and a great performer and songwriter, graced with a powerful voice and high-end ability on the piano, accordion and more. I wrote The Nub specifically for her to sing. I was stymied for words to the main guitar figure to the song, and suddenly she popped into my mind, floating through the universe in diapers, sucking milk from the stars. The song wrote itself. Dee lives in The Netherlands.
Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost - Jeremy: Santur, hi-hat, fiddlesticks, accordion, engineering; Heather: Stroh violin, violin, viola, fiddlesticks, engineering. Together, Jeremy and Heather comprise the band A Hawk and a Hacksaw. (Jeremy played at one time with the bands Neutral Milk Hotel and Beirut). Again, if you don't know their music, you should! They've released several records. It's Balkan/Gypsy influenced, somewhat psychedelicized, with great singing, playing and melodies. They're each multi-instrumentalists and they intrepidly travel the world, both touring and simply exploring the Balkans, in search of adventure and master musicians of the region, some of whom they simply befriend, others whom they record. They toured with Swans a while ago, and I've had it in the back of my mind to ask them to record on a record since. I travelled to their home studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented the songs, and did the same thing I did with Ben - I said, "Now what?" You can hear them on several songs on the record, sometimes subtly, at other times more pronounced. In any event, it's great to have such a pair of wonderful humans on the record.
ADDITIONAL MUSICIANS:
Dana Schechter - Dana played bass on the song 'Some New Things'. Dana was a core member of Angels of Light. Her current band is Insect Ark. It's rather heavy and great. Will be working with Dana more soon in the future and very pleased we reconnected recently.
Jennifer Gira - Backing vocals throughout and cameo vocal on Sunfucker. Jennifer has sung backing vocals on the past few Swans albums as well as lead vocal on the song When Will I Return? on the last Swans album, The Glowing Man. She's also of invaluable help on mixing and arrangement decisions.
Cassis Staudt - Accordion and harmonium. Cassis was a core member of Angels of Light. She moved to Berlin some time ago and we lost touch. Cassis is a composer of music for films in Berlin. I'm very happy to be working with her again.
Norman Westberg - Electric guitar. Norman played on a few key moments on this record. Norman has been in and out of Swans since the beginning (mostly in) and was a core Swans member in 2010 - 2017. We'll continue to work together into the future, absolutely. Norman releases solo instrumental records through Lawrence English's Room 40 label. We're touring (each solo) together in Eastern Europe soon.
Christopher Pravdica - Bass guitar, sounds. Chris played at pivotal moments on this record. He was a core Swans member in 2010 - 2017. We'll continue to work together in the future, absolutely. Chris has recently been enlisted by Jamie Stewart for his band Xiu Xiu.
Phil Puleo - Phil played hammer dulcimer on the song Amnesia. This might be considered a severe underutilization of his considerable talents as a drummer, but there's more to come quite soon. Phil was a core member in Swans 2010 - 2017 and played as a member of Swans in the late 90s and contributed to Angels of Light.
Thor Harris - percussion, trumpet, clarinet, sounds, bells, gizmos, additional vibes. Thor drove up from Austin to record for me at Heather and Jeremy's place in Albuquerque. Always a highpoint to be in the presence of this committed musician and friend. Thor was a core member of Swans in 2010 - 2016 as well as Angels of Light. Certainly, more to come! Thor has his own happening combo, Thor and friends, and they make seductive and beautiful records and tour often. He also has recently been recruited by Jamie for Xiu Xiu.
Paul Wallfisch - Paul played piano to great effect here and there on the record. Paul was a touring member of Swans in 2017. He works with the glorious human chanteuse Little Annie. He's also a musical director for theater productions in Germany, and recently landed a very fancy-pants job as musical director/composer for a theater production at a historical theater in Vienna.
Thanks to All!!!!
MG"
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.
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.
