News Dalla Dense Distribuzioni: Cd, Date Di Concerti, etc, etc…In English.Hello, this is newsletter 047 from dense promotion Berlin.
contents:
@C – V3 [CD+Video Cronica] BLACK DICE – Creature Comforts [CD/LP FatCat] BURCH RENDERS & REDUCERS MAMA – Theatermusik [CD domizil] CATARINA PRATTER – Maybe you don’t exist [12″/CD SueMi] DAVID GRUBBS – A Guess At The Riddle [CD/LP FatCat] DIN-ST – yamu d’din [CD/LP Schematic/Asphodel] FIRES WERE SHOT – Solace [CD Asphodel] HYPO – Random Veneziano [CD Active Suspension] KEITH ROWE / OREN AMBARCHI / ROBBIE AVENAIM – Honey Pie [CD GROB] LUC FERRARI – Les Anecdotiques [CD Sub Rosa] LULLATONE – Little Songs About Raindrops [CD Plop] MARTIN SIEWERT – No Need To Be Lonesome [CD Mosz] O9 – Church of the Ghetto P.C. [CD/LP Schematic/Asphodel] PATERAS / BAXTER / BROWN – Ataxia [CD Synaesthesia] RAN SLAVIN – Product 02 [CD Cronica] SCHURER – vexations [CD domizil] SLOWBLOW – s/t [CD/LP Mobilé] SPECTRE – RetroSpectre [CD Quatermass] STENDEC – A study of ‘and’ [CD/LP Expanding Records] STEPHAN WITTWER – sicht 04 etc. [2CD domizil] V.A. – DOMIZIL vs. ANTIFROST live [2CD domizil]
please reply if you’re interested in presenting or reviewing any of the releases
in this newsletter. and please check the territory specifications below.
>>> >>> >>>
@C – V3 [CD+Video-Track Cronica 010~2004] http://www.cronicaelectronica.org
“v3” is @c’s third full length release and their second in Crónica, a label that
they helped to create and maintain. This CD portrays @c’s activity during 2003,
focusing in excerpts of 3 performances from later in the year. These 3
performances are especially relevant because they were the ones with more guest
collaborations. At the EME festival, in Palmela, Portugal, organized by Vitor
Joaquim, @c + Lia performed in a quintet, with guitarists Manuel Mota and João
Hora on the 5th of October. In London, on the 27th of November, at the Atlantic
Waves festival, organized by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, @c + Lia
performed with the drummer Andy Gangadeen. The next day, in Huddersfield, at the
Ultrasound festival, a new quintet, with Vitor Joaquim, a regular guest of the
project. The recordings of these 3 performances were compiled, edited and
(re-)mixed by @c and are now presented in a further chronicle of the project.
Lia’s visuals are heavily minimal and abstract. Not starting from captured
footage or figurative imagery but rather from small pixel-based or geometric
elements, she generates most of the visual output from motion and code. Her
sound-reactive applications are controlled in real time, allowing for a close
relationship with the improvised music and thus becoming a visual instrument
that is integrated in the performances at the same level of any of the
musicians. A remarkable aspect in Lia’s performative work is the way how she
manages to leave the traces of time present in the images, choosing not to work
with full-frame sequences, where each new element or frame deletes the previous,
but rather allowing for the memory of the shapes to stand on screen for a longer
time, almost as if a visual reverberation was happening. This avoidance of the
full-frame, using it as a canvas and not as a lens to an image, leads to a near
than perfect integration of Lia’s work in any space, both architectonic, with
large format or multiple projections in venues, or others, such as the tv
screen.
>>>
BLACK DICE – Creature Comforts [CD/LP FatCat FATCD32]
-> no promo in UK, IT, ES, PT, FR
http://www.fat-cat.co.uk
Following their critically acclaimed ‘Miles Of Smiles’ EP, DFA’s Cone
Toaster 12″, and the 2002 LP ‘Beaches & Canyons’, Black Dice’s new
LP, ‘Creature Comforts’, is released by FatCat this summer. Another
autonomous, stand alone release, it finds the band pushing in yet
another direction, at once unmistakeably Black Dice, and noticeably
different. Recorded with James Murphy/Tim Goldsworthy (DFA), David
Portner (Animal Collective), Nicolas Vernhes (Fisherspooner, David
Grubbs), and Steve Revitte (Liars, Beastie Boys), ‘Creature Comforts’
is something of a departure from ‘Beaches & Canyons’ not only in
terms of sound, but also terrain.
Venturing further into their own psychedelic, increasingly electronic
world, ‘Creature Comforts’ is as immersive, experimental and
structurally unique as its predecessor, but more playful and
accessible, guided by a sense of naïve wonder. Sharing affinities
with Syd Barrett’s Interstellar Floyd jams, Gottsching’s flowing,
hypnotic E2E4, or the repetition of Spacemen 3, as well as displaying
dub, industrial and tropical influences, Black Dice remain as
difficult to pin down as their name would suggest.
Playing alongside contemporaries such as Wolf Eyes, Sonic Youth,
Boredoms, Lightning Bolt, Animal Collective and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and
playing a variety of DFA events may help give some context, but Black
Dice are very much their own band, and something of an anomaly.
Gathering no small amount of press support (New York Times made ‘Cone
Toaster’ their single of the year; ‘Beaches & Canyons’ made Rolling
Stone editors top 5 picks) while remaining provocative and
uncompromising, Black Dice follow their own set of rules, constantly
re-inventing themselves and challenging the listener’s preconceptions.
>>>
BURCH RENDERS & REDUCERS MAMA – Theatermusik [CD domizil 20] http://www.domizil.ch/rendersmama
The Twins Burch Renders & Reducers Mama were born in Paris; their parents were
originating from Cuba (the father) and from France (the mother). After common
formation on the electronic organ with Klaus Wunderlich and studies of the
Algorhythmik at the Institute for Computer Music in Winterthur (Switzerland),
the two musicians developed, mid of the nineties, a very obstinate, electronic
Popmusik, that, particularly in hotel bars at the coasts of Europe quickly
gained broad admiration among listeners.
The twins live at the Riviera now, in the meantime however, they still find a
little time to compose some music for theatre; this has been true for their
bizarre and nostalgic instrumentals for their Polish friend and soul mate
Mariola Brillowska, and for director Tim Zulauf (“Tim Inlet”) and his Plays “Die
Stelle im Park” and “Migranenstadl”.
“Theatermusik” is the second publication/release of the two nomadic organ
players Burch Renders & Reducers Mama for the music label domizil
(unfortunately, their first longplayer got little interest, because of being too
complex in structure, sound, and melody). The CD gathers the music for the Plays
“Die Stelle im Park” and “Migranenstadl” by Tim Zulauf (played around the
Globe), as well as new compositions to Brillowska’s Show “Hotel Supernova”
(guest appearance in “Bad Hotel”, Gessneralle, Zurich). The Songs
‘Bühnenarbeiter’, ‘Sneaker’, ‘Recycling’, ‘Autoerotik’ and ‘Heimatgold’, (all
taken from the Play “Migrantenstadl”) are interpreted and sung by the
actors/actresses themselves: Ingo Heise, Felix von Hugo, Agnes Lampkin and Wanda
Vyslouzilova; the text to these songs were written by Zulauf, and the fine
illustration on the cover was made by acclaimed Zurich Artist Yves Netzhammer.
>>>
CATARINA PRATTER – Maybe you don’t exist [12″/CD SueMi 10] http://sue.mi.cz
Catarina Pratter’s ”Maybe you don’t exist“ is her first release on the Berlin
label SueMi. The music of the Viennese artist is an energetic, dark mix of
isolated home recording and sweaty band rehearsals – with her colleagues from
550 Rondy. This “melange” of electronic construction kit and live experience is
the base on which she built her EP, seamlessly moving back and forth between
your living room and your favourite club – the larger the room, the mightier the
bass and the stronger Catarina Pratter’s voice, circling the ever expanding
soundscape.
The cover of “Maybe you don’t exist” was designed by the Berlin based Swiss
comic artist and musician Chriegel Farner, whose view on the overlaps of love,
death and music provides the record with its congenial wrapping.
Already in 2002, Catarina Pratter released her first solo work on SueMi,
“Marrying and ordinary man”, a mini-LP on 7 inch vinyl – “a lovely solo
mini-mini-album” (Radio FM4, Vienna). The 7 inch format transported seven
tracks, sketching out the musical space she breaks wide open with “Maybe you
don’t exist”. “Digital media dispositions in a club format (…) What else can you
ask for?” (de:bug, 19.7.2002)
Besides her solo projects on SueMi, Catarina Pratter has released two LPs over
the past years, together with Matthias Lichtenegger and Martin Stepanek. The
Viennese band 550 Rondy published “Yes, we’ve got rhythm” in 2001 on Cheap
Records and the album “My critical Hertz” in 2003 on temp.
Pratter is also DJing regularly in Vienna and manages the online label Pilot.FM
All tracks will also be made available on the SueMi website for free downloads.
>>>
DAVID GRUBBS – A Guess At The Riddle [CD/LP FatCat FATCD33]
-> no promo in UK, Italy, Portugal
http://www.fat-cat.co.uk
Throughout a diverse and prolific musical career, David Grubbs has remained a
challenging, articulate, idiosyncratic and unique artist. Recent times have seen
him work simultaneously on both records of songs and records of longer, more
immersive instrumental pieces. “A Guess at the Riddle” falls into the former
category – an accessible, playful, intelligent song-based record that rewards
the listener with repeated listens. His second LP for FatCat, “… The Riddle” is
perhaps Grubbs’ most ambitious and all-encompassing record to date, both
sonically and lyrically, and also in terms of the flow and composition of the
record as a whole. A fresh take on pop, or a pop take on experimental music,
Grubbs’ own music is once again recontextualised, re-presented. It is to David’s
other solo records what Gastr del Sol’s “Camoufleur” was to their preceding
records. Matching experimentation with articulateness, it feels like an
unburdening of sorts. You’ll hear acoustic instruments (David’s piano and Nikos
Veliotis’s cello) brokering peace agreements with electronics (provided once
again by Matmos); full bands going full-bore (with Mice Parade’s Adam Pierce and
Thomas Belhom taking turns behind the drums; David returning to the electric
guitar), and at the outcome you’ll find perhaps David’s strongest collection of
songs yet. David Grubbs’ lyrics have always presented a degree of surface
difficulty, hoping to bring the listener to a closer involvement with the music.
Where “The Spectrum Between” marked his relocation from Chicago to New York with
a collection of songs about a new city and new love, “Rickets & Scurvy” was made
immediately in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and it feels like it.
Following a gap of almost two years, “A Guess at the Riddle” finds the shock of
that previous album ripened into anger. The task here is to find the right
words. The record opens with “Knight Errant,” a song about going AWOL: “I’ll
choose the next / I’ll choose whatever’s next / I’ll choose the nearer stopping
place.” If this song were a single, the cover image would be the army helmet
from “Full Metal Jacket” with the phrase “Born to Kill” changed to “Knight
Errant.” “Your Neck in the Woods” reports on insularity: “What’s new in your
neck of the woods? / I’m curious because people here don’t care / Don’t kid the
conscience.” “One Way Out of the Maze” is a laundry list of
responses to an unnamed conundrum, culminating with the singer again settling in
to watch Robert Bresson’s “A Man Escaped”: “Returning from the dead / I see this
film again and again / About breaking out of prison / With a safety pin and a
bit of straw / I watch it when I can’t otherwise do.” “Hurricane Season” and
“Coda (Breathing)” end the record with an ominous squall and quiet gasps.
(Designer Kim Hiorthøy got it right with his striking cover artwork.) In
between, there are songs of escape, worlds of words unto themselves. “A Cold
Apple” is a meditation on a fifty-year-old photograph. “You’ll NeverTame Me” is
an anecdote from an Iggy Pop concert. Novelist Rick Moody (writer of The Ice
Storm and Purple America) – who also plays with Grubbs and Hannah Marcus in The
Wingdale Community Singers — contributes lyrics to two songs (“Wave Generators”
and “Hurricane Season”) and collaborates on a third. Finally, “Magnificence as
Such” is a cover of one of (Red Krayola leader) Mayo Thompson’s finest and most
underrated songs – a song about the staying and slaying power of beauty. David
Grubbs is set to tour Europe in September.
>>>
DIN-ST – yamu d’din [CD/LP Schematic/Asphodel LTD SCH041] http://www.schematic.net
Digital hardcore has long been revamped. Gone are the days of overt dogmatism
and intangeable style. Welcome to bouncecore. Welcome to the dancefloor. DIN-ST
is stepping up to the decks.
After bubbling up on labels like Ambush, Tresor, Warp [“Mercedes Bentley vs.
Versace Armani”], Tigerbeat6 and Kool.Pop, following remixes for Tocotronic and
collaborations with Peaches, with endorsements from The Bug’s Kevin Martin, Paul
PM, Kid 606 and DJ
Scud, DIN-ST is ready to drop his debut full-length via Miami’s celebrated
Schematic label in tandem with their SF partners, Asphodel.
DIN-ST [Dynasty, aka DIN, aka DJ Maxximus, aka Fever, aka F. Stader] tips club
culture over like a four-hundred-pound speaker cabinet, slicing party sounds
into wild-style minimal/broken rave/bounce mash-ups. As Senator Joseph Biden’s
Rave Act receives Congressional approval, the party moves abroad, reborn under a
Berlin overpass, sexy, broken, funky and punk. Empty factories are slathered in
bootytrave shellac, and before it cakes onto aluminum sheeting, it’s set on
fire. Hip-hop steez work on P.L.U.R. sentiment under PA/laptop/turntable
configurations.
They call it “possible sound” and “fresh-techno”: raw, deep trax mounted on
cinder blocks and run in neutral until it smokes and cracks. Technoid squibbles
underneath while freyed chords sizzle from the vocal stabs running down gutters
of noise and panic. Stone-like synth shakes the screws out your speakers. A
garbeled MC drowns in the mix. The party is out of control. Something has
happened. Something has broken. – David Day
>>>
FIRES WERE SHOT – Solace [CD Asphodel ASP2022] http://www.asphodel.net
FiRES WERE SHOT are an experimental guitar duo hailing from Austin, Texas.
At once contemplative, haunting and disheveled, the band’s second release,
Solace, continues to set forth the abyssal, effected acoustic guitar sounds
found on their debut release, Form the Hearth, self-released on the band’s own
Its Only Me imprint in 1998.
Solace is a collection of complex emotions, warm guitar tones, and textured
noise. Each genre-defying song contains image-evoking soundscapes, guitar
melodies, and has the gritty quality of spontaneous performance. This is not
drone, electronic, or ambient;
it is very analog, very experimental, and extremely cinematic, evoking the arid
geography of the band’s southwest Texas home. Featuring the talents of
guitarists John Wilkins and Clay Walton, FiRES WERE SHOT have been compared to
everyone from Windy and Carl to Roy Montgomery and most appropriately, Austin
neighbors Stars of the Lid. An absolutely compelling live outfit, FiRES WERE
SHOT will be playing select events in the US to support Solace’s release.
>>>
HYPO – Random Veneziano [CD Active Suspension ACD09]
-> Promo only in Germany, Spain, Italy
http://www.activesuspension.org
French man Anthony Keyeux comes back w/ another falsely heterogeneous collection
of songs, for its 3rd album “Random Veneziano”, a hectic blend of bubble-gum pop
bits, bedroom orchestra, messy glicks’n’cuts, noisy pop overtones, synthetic new
wave waste, plunderphonic hijacking… Hypo twists and strangles pop music,
proudly violating sacred boundaries and conventions. Far from today’s overdose
of technology, he keeps doing things his own way and develops genuine treasures
of imagination with rather minimal means. Introduced by the English label
Spymania (Jamie Lidell, Squarepusher…) in 2001, Hypo, aka Anthony Keyeux from
Paris/ France, followed his own playful-electro peregrinations releasing the
“Jingles & singles EP” as well as the “Karaoke A Capella” album on Active
Suspension in 2002. Nearly 2 years after its last opus, he comes back w/ another
falsely heterogeneous collection of songs, for his 3rd real album “Random
Veneziano”, a hectic blend of bubble-gum pop bits, bedroom orchestra, messy
glicks’n’cuts, noisy pop overtones, synthetic new wave waste, plunderphonic
hijacking… Hypo twists and strangles pop music, proudly violating sacred
boundaries and conventions. Far from today’s overdose of technology, he keeps
doing things his own way and develops genuine treasures of imagination with
rather minimal means.
>>>
KEITH ROWE / OREN AMBARCHI / ROBBIE AVENAIM – Honey Pie [CD GROB 648] http://www.churchofgrob.com
Honey Pie, recorded live in France in May 2001, is the second part of our
three-part series with recordings documenting the cooperation of Keith Rowe and
Oren Ambarchi. Part 1 was the CD Thumb (GROB 432, recently re-released,
Rowe/Ambarchi/Avenaim in a quintet with Oren Ambarchi/Sachiko M and Otomo
Yoshihide); part 3, which will be released in nine months, will document the
first real-time duo gig of Ambarchi and Rowe.
If Thumb was about something like “absence in presence,” about, well, the artsy
trick of improvising like a quintet and sounding simply like a duo, then Honey
Pie is a dynamic, powerful 40-minute recording. The static intimated at the
beginning and lasting for four or five minutes is cautiously preserved by the
musicians – Rowe and Ambarchi on guitars, Avenaim on percussion, all three on
live electronics – and this static is transformed in a constantly changing
process. On Thumb, the tension was produced using static (via an endless
extension of a “something”) and therefore “disappointed,” we hear on Honey Pie
tension sans phrase. At first there is no drone, no GREAT SOUND, upon which the
musicians can comfortably retire (the great sound, which then originates in the
process of the improvisation is rich and complex in itself). They improvise
without flourish, develop small structures of a nearly motive-like character.
Thanks to this, the stringency, too, of Rowe’s flatness is questioned, albeit
softly. Honey Pie thus leaves the impression of a near playful, loose session.
Listen to it loudly!
>>>
LUC FERRARI – Les Anecdotiques [CD Sub Rosa SR207]
-> no promo in FR, UK, Benelux
http://www.subrosa.net
Luc Ferrari: “I have made works that more or less depart from purely musical
concerns.
Some of them call for a meeting between different branches of what may be the
same tree.
The problem is to express in different ways the passing ideas, feelings and
intuitions;
to observe daily life in all its realities whether they be social, psychological
or sentimental. These could come out in the form of texts, instrumental works,
electro-acoustic compositions, journalism, films or shows.” Luc Ferrari’s
diverse work and aesthetics continue to have a singular impact on the young
generations of electronic musicians and artists. The corpus of his work is
immense and includes hundreds of compositions of all kinds. Les Anecdotiques –
his last composition – is a vast sound-film of more than an hour who explores in
15 steps the intensity of re-composed sounds from his continual travel around
the world – with electronic additional structures.
>>>
LULLATONE – Little Songs About Raindrops [CD Plop PLIP-3010] http://www.inpartmaint.com/plop
Lullatone is a solo project by Shawn James Seymour originally from the US now
based in Nagoya, Japan, Lullatone creates small melodies that are adorably
delicate and precise. Though,hardly “minimal” by the electronic standards of
today, Lullatone’s tiny compositions a characterized by a subtle nature on a par
with the works of Steve Reich and Erik Satie. In 2003, Lullatone released
“computer recital” on Audio Dregs Recordings. The album received much praise for
its charming ability to mend unadorned sine tones (the most simple type of sound
wave) into a small symphony of childlike melodies. 2003 also saw the release of
Lullatone’s “my petit melodies” from Childisc Recordings. Lullatone’s most
recent CD “little songs about raindrops” continues in the vein of the previous
two, in terms of its gentle nature. It is soft and subtle, like clouds and
cotton. However, for this album, Lullatone has moved away from the sine tone and
instead used a tiny orchestra of toy instruments to reproduce the pitter-patter
of raindrops. little songs about raindrops features guest appearances from
Keiichi Sugimoto (fonica / minamo), Yoshimi Tomida, Yusuke Asano (asana), and
others. Lullatone has appeared on numerous compilations from throughout the
world, and has also toured in America and Japan.
>>>
MARTIN SIEWERT – No Need To Be Lonesome [CD Mosz 002] http://www.mosz.org
„Born in Saarbrücken/ Germany 1972, Martin Siewert is living and working in
Vienna for a few years now. Besides his improv and composing activity in both
acoustic and/or electronic contexts his work includes pieces for theatre, film
and dance as well as various remix and soundinstallation commissions.
Since 1998 Siewert´s special focus is on abstracting/ deconstructing the
electric guitar and expanding its sonic possibilities by means of mostly dated
analog technology. His current collaborations include Trapist (with Martin
Brandlmayr and Joe Williamson), EFZEG (Boris Hauf, Burkhard Stangl, Dieb13,
Billy Roisz, Martin Siewert), the highly acclaimed Duo with Radian´s Martin
Brandlmayr („Too Beautiful to Burn“ on Erstwhile Records) and a variety of
appearances together with artists like Werner Dafeldecker, Christian Fennesz,
Pure, Franz Hautzinger, Taku Sugimoto, Oren Ambarchi, Sun, Philip Jeck, Dean
Roberts, Kevin Drumm, Wayne Horvitz, Tony Buck, Didi Bruckmayr, Helge
Hinteregger,….
However, Mosz is proud to present Martin Siewert´s first solo record, which is
not only his first solo recording, but also what we would call another side of
Martin Siewert: In contrast to his work to date, „No Need To Be Lonesome“
focusses on melodies and, most importantly, grooves, and can be considered
popmusic to a certain degree. Basically generated in the studio with an obscure
selection of analogue synthesizers, electronical equipment and guitars, this
album is more about the beauty of songlike structures than about abstraction
itself. This might be confusing for the ones who know Siewert´s discography, but
simply shows an artist, who is active in different domains of contemporary
music.
>>>
O9 – Church of the Ghetto P.C. [CD/LP Schematic/Asphodel SCH043] http://www.schematic.net
Church of the Ghetto P.C. is an aural experience of jaw-dropping agog, like
reading a new language, a kind of graffiti action-script dedicated to all the
industrial back-alley disjecta of our Bill Gates-induced modernity. Sharing
slang with the Schematic crew, o9 can still talk minimal with the Raster-Noton
label, noise-therapy with Mego, and knows the uprock narratives of Warp’s great
masters. o9’s voice has the whole idiomatic spectrum intact and yet still the
gospel truth is that o9 has a vocabulary all his own. Nothing can prepare you
for his application of shamanistic sound, those calked beats and rhythm
clusters, that catechistic technical polish that brings beaming luster to
screen-frozen darkness.
Considering the near anonymity of the o9 project-he’s gone live at one Warp
party in the UK and toured bruised America. And, given the fact of his so few
releases – singles and compilation appearances on revered labels such as
Planet-Mu, Nophi, and of course, Schematic – the question remains: Who the hell
is o9 and where did the apostles of Schematic discover his burning laptop to
release this first awesome full-length?
Church of the Ghetto P.C. is a stunning and convulsive ripple of deep-membrane
funk and syntactical synth notes. It’s not old school, it’s old testament, not
high-tech, but high priest. It’s as important as the fucking Bible. Cracking the
egg code on total beat typography, o9 has written the first hard-driven
masterpiece of this new dead-end, face-to-the-terminal century. – Lee Henderson
>>>
PATERAS / BAXTER / BROWN – Ataxia [CD Synaesthesia syn009] http://www.synrecords.com
Prepared piano, percussion and prepared guitar combine to formulate an
impulse-based meta-instrument on this startling debut from Melbourne trio
Pateras/Baxter/Brown. Consisting of composer/pianist Anthony Pateras,
percussionist Sean Baxter and electroacustic composer/guitarist David Brown,
Ataxia (meaning the loss of muscluar
co-ordination) explores a distinctive sound world where timbres rebound and melt
within an elastic performative framework.
Dynamically oscillating between delicacy & brutality, Ataxia contains everthing
from textural assault to contemplative explorations of space. On “Bulbous”, the
trio create a constant, jerky stream of barely recognisable sounds. In St Chi,
silence is sliced by explosive microsonic gestures, eventually creating an
acoustic mutant licking at the speaker cones. On the closing track
Hexadactlyly, the listeners face is slammed against the piano strings, thrown
into percussive chaos before sinking back into an ambiguous oubliette of spacial
dialogue. With the overall language falling somewhere between the structural
integrity of Feldman and Xenakis, the texutral gymnastics of Hecker and Merzbow,
and the dynamic fluidity of AMM and Polweschel, Ataxia will appeal to dot-heads,
patch-monkeys and improv junkies alike.
ANTHONY PATERAS, ROBIN FOX, MARK HARWOOD live:
18/05 AT – Rhiz, Vienna
19/05 SL – Club Gromka, Ljubljana
20/05 SL – a4, Bratislava
22/05 FR – ZET@Blockhaus DY10 , Nantes
23/05 FR – Confluences, Paris
25/05 FR – Annexia, Toulouse
27/05 FR – Zoobizarre, Bordeaux
28/05 ES – MEM, Bilbao
29/05 PT – ZDB, Lisboa
30/05 PT – Maus Habitos, Porto
04/06 CH – Cave 12, Geneva
08/06 DK – Subotnik@Kirken i Møllegade, Copenhagen
09/06 DE – Ausland, Berlin
11/06 FR – Festival des Musiques Innovatrices, Saint-Etienne
>>>
RAN SLAVIN – Product 02 [CD Cronica 009~2004] http://www.cronicaelectronica.org
Ran Slavin’s Tropical Agent / Ears in Water is the second installment in
Crónica’s Product series.
The Product series aims at confrontation and fusion through releasing two works
in a single CD, added by a special guest to produce the artwork. Regarded as
experimental publishing, or otherwise, simply as the return to the split
strategy of the vinyl in a digital medium, the Product releases work as
mini-compilations that stand from the synergy between both works, turning the
release not in a mere sum of parts but rather in an emergent product of them.
Ran’s beautiful pieces carefully balance micro and macro composition,
recognizable timbres and alien sounds, all laid out in landscapes of
immeasurable beauty, scenarios with a mediterranean feel that is at once so
familiar and distant to us. Like on a clear and sunny day, the horizon is
unshadowed and the eye reaches far away, exploring a music that “in its
conscious refusal of the visual, carries with it visions that are more beautiful
than images could ever be.”
The cover art for Product 02 was created by Jewboy Co. (Yaron Shin), designer,
typographer, animator, photographer, illustrator, artist and human being also
living in Tel-Aviv, Israel.
>>>
SCHURER – vexations [CD domizil 21] http://www.domizil.ch/schurer
“vexations” (french, “to vex, torment”), in reference to the famous composition
by Erik Satie, is some kind of homage to an instrument, that has been overtly
influencing in the history of music all over the world ever since its early days
of life: the piano. to speak so, it is not exactly piano music one can find on
this CD, but rather a piano which is interpreted as an apparatus with inherit
programmatic, that, sent trough an array of delicate digital disruptions, is
more a subject to/for a musical search/re-search, focusing on the love affair
for this instrument, as well as for the computer and its creative digital
transformative strengths.
the disc outlines 28 sketches, ideas, compositions and re-inventions in a
methodic, but very sensuous way: moreover, rather than being interpretations,
these pieces are shaped as originals, but originals that evoke “ancient times”
(epoch, general) and deal with the occurrence of memory as well as “remembrance”
(personal, distinctive): they are artefacts resembling other “originals” and
could be interpreted as either performative or psychological: how is it, that
something, on a medium, record, book, ect., that is not existent, neither
culturally nor symbolically in the initial stages of a medium, could be a recall
or recollection of a former emotional state, that has been stored in it since
it’s debut listen: repetition is used, here, as a code to insist on this certain
quality (which is crucial to Saties original “vexations” composition…). it is
therefore some kind of machine that has it’s own mind and memory, a kind of some
3rd body, that interacts with the listener, sub-and-consciously.
bernd schurer (aka teleform), in exploring his very unique and poetic
“metamusical” approach, manages this task in carefully disposing fragments of
melodies as well as whole compositions in an cyclic way throughout the disc:
they start off as vignettes or compasses to be mirrors of delicately distressed
and filtered digital miniatures, that sometimes eradicate its reference but
never lose connection to what is supposed to be the key of this kind of
memory-automaton here: the melody. they are certainly romantic, at times very
fragile, sometimes apt rendered abstractions to the point of a labyrinthian
elegance: they seem to be some kind of playful nocturnes, bearing the knowledge
of their disappearing as well as their short, imperfect flicker, their beautiful
span of life and their emotional evocativeness, breaking down their slippage in
a cultural loop generating inquiry.
>>>
SLOWBLOW – s/t [CD/LP Mobilé mob4]
-> promo only in France, Greece, Portugal, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe
http://www.mobile-rec.de
The Icelandic duet, slowblow (Orri Jónsson and Dagur Kári Pétursson), has been
active for almost a decade. They have made their mark on the Icelandic
underground scene with a certain kind of friendly dust-music. They exhibit a
uniquely Icelandic aesthetic of home-made, lo-fi analog tinkerings, which both
musically and lyrically blend together the everyday and the fantastic. The bands
distinctive personality and their delicate and personal songs have already been
developed on two albums, Quicksilver Tuna (1994) and Fousque (1996). They have
worked with Emiliana Torrini, played together with múm and their song „Is Jesus
Your Pal?” has been covered by Gus Gus and 4AD Records founder Ivo Watts.
They’ve also provided the soundtrack to the internationally acclaimed film Nói
Albinói. The film was written and directed by slowblow’s Dagur Kári and received
many awards at film festivals around the world last year. Orri on the other hand
has
engineered múm’s new album Summer Make Good, whose singer Kristín Anna
Valtysdóttir also provides vocals to four of the ten songs on slowblow – the
first internationally released record of the duet on which they have worked over
a period of eight years. Slowblow like the element of pop and melody in their
music while at the same time they have a fetish for breaking things and working
against the grain. „We cherish the surprise elements of ‚mistakes’ and hold on
to them like jewels in our recordings”, says Orri. For each of the songs on
their self-titled album they tried to build a
personal soundscape by recording them in a number of different places in and
around Reykjavík and with various instruments. They both play whatever
instruments they can get their hands on, whether it be an old harmonium organ, a
musical saw or the more conventional guitar, bass and drums alongside kalimba,
xylophone and even a mechanical sewing machine. For the song „Cardboard Box”
they recorded fireworks
for the ambience and had Kristín sing her part in Orri’s mothers closet-size
bathroom while Dagur performed a handrail-solo on the staircase under which the
bathroom was located. „Hamburger Cemetary” on the other hand was recorded in
Dagur’s parents house where they also invited a string quartett to play and
later added some noises
from the wooden floor in Orri’s living room. Orri: „Quite a few of the
recordings are made leaving the tape rolling (skip the 1/4″ tape discussion)
while teaching the other players the songs. Then, when they have almost gotten
it, we stop the tape and use the last take.”
>>>
SPECTRE – RetroSpectre [CD Quatermass QS146]
-> no promo in FR, UK, Benelux
http://www.quatermass.net
RetroSpectre is not a greatest hits collection, rather, as the title suggests, a
journey back through an ILLustrious career spanning 10 years, 5 full-length
albums, and numerous singles and remixes. In fact, most of the selections here
are some of Spectre’s more obscure productions culled from various compilations
and B-sides as well as a few previously unreleased treasures from the vaults of
The Other Side. Hand picked by The Ill Saint himself and digitally remastered,
these tracks sound even better now than they originally did.
Not many artists working in the hip-hop idiom have attempted to build a career
on instrumentals, but, then again, Spectre’s aim has always been to blow away
all preconceived notions of what music is, and wreak havoc on your mindstate.
Since his opening salvo, “Crooked,” which first appeared on 1994’s
critically-acclaimed Crooklyn Dub Consortium: Certified Dope, Volume 1
(WordSound) and subsequently became the title-track for the WordSound film of
the same name, The Ill Saint has consistently elevated his art with something
original, innovative, daring, demented and downright dope.
Often misunderstood for the esoteric and occult knowledge forwarded in his
moody, exotic beatscapes, Spectre stands alone in the musical field as a sonic
shaman conjuring up images of the Unknowable and providing a gateway to The
Other Side. While his sound is often described as apocalyptic, the end only
marks a new beginning in his constantly evolving cycle in progress. Dark clouds
reveal their silver lining in Spectre’s motto, “Only In The Darkness Will You
See The Light,” an ethos that acknowledges the inherent dualities of life–ying
and yang, positive and negative. Only when you have experienced the abyss, with
its four devils–jealousy, envy, hate, and greed–can you fully appreciate the
love that lies above all. Indeed, The Ill Saint, is a spiritual brother. But
hiswork can also be described as paranoid, claustrophobic, and foreboding,
a fitting reflection of the world today where terrorism and plagues, Big brother
and big business have reduced humanity to a sorry state. Spectre’s solution is
anarchy, if only in the mental.
For, in the end, music is only music, and sound, the abtract. This realm cannot
be intellectualized or criticized (especially by those pundits who do not make
music themselves, but take potshots at someone else’s creation from behind the
lines of print). It can only felt subjectively on an individual level, from one
heart to another. In a world where rhythm is business, Spectre’s art is warfare.
Take a trip to the Other Side, where all things are possible.
>>>
STENDEC – A study of ‘and’ [CD/LP Expanding Records ecd15:04/eva7:04]
-> no promo in UK
http://www.expandingrecords.com
A study of ‘and’ is the debut album from Ben Edwards and Paul Merritt as
Stendec.
For almost four years Ben and Paul have been working together on their Expanding
Records label releasing electronic music by various artists from around the
world.
During this time they have also worked together on their Stendec project
providing tracks for a 7″ on Expanding and one on Static Caravan, they also
provided a track for the Cactus Island compilation ‘Friends we have met along
the way’ and have done remixes for David Mooney, Fibla and Charles Atlas. They
are also are part of the Autres Directions ‘cities’ project representing their
home town of London. Ben also records as Benge and collaborates with Douglas
Benford as Tennis.
The cd version of the album includes all the tracks they have put together
during this period including both 7″s, the track for the split 10″ and the track
included on the compilation.
>>>
STEPHAN WITTWER – sicht 04 etc. [2CD domizil 22]
http://www.wittwer.mu
http://www.domizil.ch
Swiss experimentalist and sound artist Stephan Wittwer has, after his
internationally acclaimed audio work «streams» on Grob (which was worth a
honorary mention at 2002’s Ars Electronica), now released his first album, a
double cd, for the Swiss domizil imprint; it is an album that contains moments
of sublime beauty and softness, most of all, the long piece «sicht 04» on disc
number 2 is a surprising work of almost meditative calm, scanty sketchiness and
sensuality. Over the duration of this piece, long sustained synthetic drones and
sounds of a detuned steel string guitar, that are partially layers of prime
number harmonics resulting in bell-like sounds that are clashing tonal systems,
fill out the listening space.
The musical material on sicht 04 ect. is by degrees based on ideas and samples,
the musician has developed for work of the visual artists Peter Fischli and
David Weiss in the last decade (their ultra slow slide show installation
«Sichtbare Welt»). Moreover, the composition LSRMstereo» on the ect. Disc, is a
two channel version of a commissioned work for the listening room at 2003’s
Taktlos Festival in Berne, where it’s multichannel version was presented, among
the work of other artist like Alvin Curran, Christian Fennesz, Otomo Yoshihide
or Steinbruechel.
Most of the tracks on the ect.» CD use algorithmic or probabilistic methods for
their creation; there is nearly no «live» guitar playing on it, but some
disembodied sounds of this instrument are omnipresent. The music was developed
mainly at the computer, utilizing the programming language and environment
SuperCollider, often with stochastic processes in use, which lead to a different
rendering of the compositions each time the program code (or in other words, the
score) gets executed – therefore, the versions on the CD itself, are
un-repeatable and unique.
>>>
V.A. – DOMIZIL vs. ANTIFROST live [2CD domizil 19]
Feat. Coti K., Ilios, Jason Kahn, Marcus Maeder, Bernd Schurer and Steinbrüchel
http://www.domizil.ch
http://www.antifrost.gr
Last Spring, domizil was doing a small audio performance tour with the greek
label antifrost: This tour was made part of Coti K. and Ilios, antifrost
operators, as well as Jason Kahn (cut.fm), Marcus Maeder, Bernd Schurer, rm74
and Steinbrüchel (domizil). These concerts were recorded by Jason Kahn and are
now available as a’ Soli ‘ – and ‘ Duets ‘ – double CD set on domizil.
The co-operation between domizil and antifrost turned out to be very productive;
the aim of exchange is crucial to both labels and the musicians involved; this
could be observed for example in the concept compilations ‘full/void ‘ and
‘suffer/enjoy ‘ from antifrost, to which Jason Kahn and Bernd Schurer did make
contributions, or the invitation to BIOS/Electrograph Festival in Athens.
To that extent, the two CDs offer an interesting view on the mode of operation
of the musicians involved and the dynamics of improvised interaction between
them, in opposing/confronting the “soli” sets to the “duets”.
Many Thanks are due to “Popkredit der Stadt Zürich” for financial support and
enabling the release of this work, as well as to all of the organizers of the
events/performances.
ANTIFROST ARTISTS LIVE:
13-14-15/05 GR – YELP dance company with ILIOS, Roes, Athens
15/05 ES – CREMASTER at Confluencias Festival, Huelva
27/05 GR – TEXTURIZER at Small Music Theatre, Athens
04/06 GR – ILIOS at Synch Festival, Athens
05/06 GR – FRANCISCO LOPEZ at Synch Festival, Athens
>>>
LIVE DATES
GIARDINI DI MIRO Live Dates:
08/05 IT – Brescia – Free Muzik
16/05 IT – Firenze – Stazione Leopolda
19/05 DE – Stuttgart – Schocken
20/05 DE – Strausberg bei Berlin – Plugin Festival
21/05 DE – Hamburg – Molotow (w/ Nitrada)
22/05 DE – Offenbach – JUZ Sandgasse
23/05 DE – Marburg – Cafe Trauma
28/05 IT – Mancalacqua (VR) – Mancalacqua Rock Blues
26/06 IT – Bergamo – Jestrai
02/07 IT – Scisciano (NA) – Farcisentire
LALI PUNA [Morr Music] + Support: ALIAS [Anticon]
20/05 DE – Berlin, Volksbuehne
21/05 DE – Hamburg, Knust im Schlachthof
22/05 DE – Bremen, Kulturzentrum Lagerhaus
23/05 DE – Dresden, Star Club
24/05 DE – Wuerzburg, AKW tbc
25/05 DE – Stuttgart, Schocken
26/05 DE – Cologne, Gebaeude 9
27/05 DE – Frankfurt/Main, Mousonturm Studio
28/05 DE – Leipzig, Conne Island
29/05 DE – Neustrelitz, Immergut-Festival
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE [FatCat/Paw Tracks] 06/05 UK – London – TBC
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND TRIO [Thrill Jockey]
06/05 CR – Zagreb, KSET Klub
07/05 IT – Padova, Sala dei Giganti
NITRADA [2nd Rec]
21/05 DE – Hamburg – Molotow (w/ Giardini di Miro)
19/06 DE – Offenbach – Moschee (w/ American Analog Set)
TORTOISE [Thrill Jockey]
28/06 UK – Glasgow, Arches
29/06 UK – London, Astoria
01/07 NL – Groningen, Swinging Groningen
02/07 NL – Den Hague, New Forms/Static X
03/07 FR – Nantes, Scopitone
04/07 BE – Werchter, Rock Werchter
05/07 FR – Paris, Le Trabendo
06/07 LX – Esch-zur-Alzette, Kulturfabrik
07/07 DE – Düsseldorf, ZAKK
08/07 NL – Amsterdam, Paradiso
09/07 DK – Aarhus, Voxhall
10/07 PL – Warsaw, CDQ
12/07 AT – Wien, Szene
13/07 HR – Zagreb, Tvornica
14/07 IT – Prato, Anfiteatro Pecchi
15/07 IT – Ferrara, Piazza Castello
17/07 DE – Ferropolis, Melt Festival
18/07 DE – München, Muffathalle
19/07 DE – Karlsruhe, Zeltival
20/07 DE – Darmstadt, Centralstation
21/07 DE – Berlin, Museumsinselfestival (with Lambchop)
22/07 DE – Hamburg, Fabrik
MUSIKTRIENNALE COLOGNE, connected#6: Switzerland
05/05 DE – w/ Norbert Möslang, Bernd Schurer, Ralph Steinbrüchel, Jason Kahn
RADIAN [Thrill Jockey] 15/05 DE – Amplify 2004, Berlin
>>> >>> >>>
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