Le News Di Dicembre 2005. Click Per Infos.
SILENZIO NEWS – DICEMBRE 2005
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Carissimi!!! – Ecco l’ultimo – magari no! – aggiornamento prima della fine dell’anno! Succosissimo, anche piu’ del solito, ottimo per fare/farsi un bel regalo di Natale IN EXTREMIS! Grandi nuove uscite New Albion, splendide edizioni Die Schachtel, intriganti titoli SUB ROSA, interessantissime uscite per una nostrana e giovane -ma attivissima -etichetta: SMALL VOICES.
E poi, visto che e’ ormai quasi Natale e siamo tutti piu’ buoni, ecco che in fondo alla mail trovate l’offerta speciale SCONTO del 25% su alcuni titoli di catalogo. FATEVI VIVI !
Nel ricordarvi poi i nuovi titoli “Ants” presentati recentemente (da leggere questa prima recensione appena uscita sul titolo di Luca Miti (http://www.sands-zine.com/recensioni.php) vi salutiamo e vi facciamo i nostri piu’ calorosi e sinceri AUGURI DI BUONE FESTE!!!
GA e SC
**********NUOVI ARRIVI**********
SCELSI, GIACINTO
Incantations: The Art of Song of Giacinto Scelsi
Hô — Taiagarù — Sauh – The art of song of Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)
Marianne Schuppe
‘Songs without lachrymose, sentimental lyricisms, being instead “phonetic gestures”, cries, screams, exhalations; pantings, whisperings, cascades of syllables, a carpet of ornaments in sound; lines curling round each other and repeating each other in circles, similar to each other, but not the same; that is why this music is nature-like, why it moves us and moves itself’. Shortly after the death of Giacinto Scelsi in 1988, Jürg Wyttenbach recorded these impressions—impressions that he had received at a performance of Taiagarù and other works by the singer Michiko Hirayama in 1976 (see dissonanz / dissonance No. 18, November 1988, p. 12). Wyttenbach’s description includes a word that is astonishing, for Scelsi’s hagiographers would like best of all to see it banned from discussion of his work: ‘Lieder’ (‘Songs’). The West German discovery of Scelsi in the 1980s was an event of Messianic character that was welcomed in a choice of vocabulary that was correspondingly devoid of inhibitions. He was celebrated as a manifestation that was far removed from the framework of Eurocentric descriptions of music history, in order to be used as a figure of identification by the adherents of a numinous poetics. The ennoblement of Scelsi’s technique as ‘incommensurable composing’ (Heinz-Klaus Metzger) remains the measuring rod used by many today. His music is still regarded as ‘impossible to analyse’ (see, for example, the article on him in the dictionary Komponisten der Gegenwart — Contemporary Composers), which opinion has received dubious confirmation in a furore of ever-growing numbers of musicological investigations of his work—not least as a defence against campaigns waged by certain of his transcribers in an effort to trivialize him.
In this atmosphere, a word such as that used by Wyttenbach has a cathartic effect. Neither Scelsi nor his music came down to us from heaven. Of course, these pieces for voice are not ‘songs’ after the manner of the Western systematisation of different genres, nor are they beholden in any manifest way to any song tradition. But there are characteristics that can support Wyttenbach’s sacrilegious definition, whether it be the unity of the musical character of many of the solo vocal works, their ‘songlike’, often diatonic or pentatonic vocabulary (many of the pieces unfold out of the circling around a simple, ‘analysable’ intervallic core, as for example Hô II or Taiagar IV), the virulence of figuration-like topoi, or the latent presence of simple song forms. It must also be considered, however, that Wyttenbach was perhaps not even thinking primarily of the ‘art-song’ in his remarks, but possibly rather of the ‘chanson’ or other ‘simple’ musical forms of expression.
This does not mean that there is nothing unusual about these songs. Oddly enough, their unusual qualities lie in their instrumental aspect. If one believes the legends (probably true, as it happens), then they are transcriptions of improvised instrumental music (Giacinto Scelsi, Count of Ayala Valve, played, taped what he played, and then had it ‘transcribed’) — though the concept of ‘transcription’ should perhaps be termed more precisely ‘transcomposition’, to use a word coined by the composer Christoph Delz (1950-1993). In a recently published article (‘The Amateur and the Professionals — Giacinto Scelsi, Vieri Tosatti & Co.’ in MusikTexte No. 104, February 2005, p. 27ff.), Friedrich Jaecker argues quite convincingly that the ‘transcribers’ of Scelsi’s tapes did not just have to listen to and notate the undoubtedly ‘musical’ layers (i.e. not just the ‘normal’ instrumental sounds), but also — quite specifically — the unintentional sounds on the recording (the crackling of the magnetic tape, the noises of turning on and off, doors slamming, car horns in the background, and other everyday sonic emissions). This is a convincing indication that it was not just a matter of transcribing tape recordings as faithfully as possible (in which case one could have just left the music as recorded on the tapes), but rather of treating the transformation of the recorded improvisation into another medium itself as an aesthetic process (for which reason I draw the somewhat daring comparison with Christoph Delz, who ‘transcomposed’ into music concrete sounds such as the noise of building sites and the jungle).
This observation is more than a mere matter of musicological nitpicking. For it shows the compositional product in the light of a process of production that one can without doubt describe as an interpretation of sound events — and this is, not least, an observation that can be valuable to the performers of the score. Marianne Schuppe’s singing corresponds thoroughly to the idea of an ‘interpretative transcomposition’ of what is notated, and she was expressly encouraged in this by Michiko Hirayama, with whom Scelsi himself worked closely. As Hirayama has said, Scelsi made clear to his interpreters that a high degree of fidelity to the text was not the most important thing, regarding the manner of phonetizising his music, as developed by him and Hirayama together, as not the one and only valid solution, but rather just one of many possibilities of making his music ‘speak’.
Some of the pieces on this CD are revisions — interpretations — of concrete instrumental solo pieces. The first song of Hô, for example, is a new version of the fourth of the Four Pieces for Trumpet (1956), while the fourth song of Taiagarù (1962) is a vocal version of the third of the Four Pieces for Horn (1956). A piece such as that for trumpet mentioned above is an excellent example of Scelsi’s manner of realizing complexly articulated music on the basis of only a few notes (his famous ‘one-note style’). In other words, the music is not articulated by constant changes of pitch, but in the multifarious changes of articulation itself, and the smallest possible fluctuations of pitch, as for example by often using a mute (‘usare sordina variabile’).
In his subtle differentiation of solo wind notes, Scelsi came upon certain technical hurdles at the close of the 1950s. He soon profited from the possibilities of articulation offered by the human voice, which allows for a fundamentally greater differentiation in the production of sounds. In Hô I, Scelsi, however, does not just succeed in achieving a technical differentiation from an instrumental sound. More fundamental is the shift into the realm of language, in which the chains of sounds cannot simply be reduced to their purely articulatory function. A vocal vibrato possesses a different emotional impact from that of a trumpet, while vowels and consonants and composed-out phonetic structures are not just a matter of tone colour, but have a semantic import. Hô I is the compositional expression of the origin of linguistic sounds and sound connections (an early cantata by Scelsi in fact bears the title The birth of the word). It is an expression of ‘shifting movements of the organs of articulation’ (thus Hans Rudolf Zeller) that is the basis — though in very different ways — of all the pieces gathered on this CD. The eloquent character of these processes does not lie simply ‘hidden’ on the micro-level of the music, but is also brought to expression in the most varied ways — the emotional, affective spectrum ranges from the most intimate, introverted sounds to wild, extrovert gestures, and it is a spectrum that is used to the full in Taiagarù.
Sauh presents a reduction of the figurative riches of the earlier cycles. The two Sauh ‘liturgies’ here are given with solo voice and tape. This is the first time that they have been recorded in two- and four-part versions; using third relationships, the characteristics of a single voice are here given in a stretto with themselves (by means of duplication on tape). This is a matter of the composing-out of many changes of articulation that itself multiplies the possibilities of a specific voice (with its own individual sound profile). This is thus by no means ‘choral music’, but the expansion of a solo voice into a whole band of sound. The possibilities that Scelsi found he could create with a simple solo voice are here simultaneously expanded, are made more flexible. The result is a polyphony, not of the voices, but of their means of articulation and the changes thereof. It is not a dialogue, but an immense differentiation and unfolding of sound transformations that can be perceived intensely, thanks to the reduced scope of the tonal space involved.
Genre descriptions such as ‘liturgy’ or ‘evocations’ betray the fact that Scelsi did not regard his songs just as an instrumentally motivated microscope in sound, but accords to them a real ‘function’. Although he eschews ‘comprehensible’ words, he nevertheless — in his songs as in his instrumental music — wants to give linguistic expression to something. Peter Niklas Wilson is quite right when he describes Scelsi as an ‘Expressionist’, as a ‘conversationalist’ in sound, whose rhetoric begins with the very character of sound itself — these remarks being made specifically with regard to the Four Pieces for Orchestra (1959). The ‘inner’ sound that is so often and so extensively conjured up is not celebrated ominously, but relinquished. In her interpretations here, Marianne Schuppe is careful to express the ‘direct speech’ of Scelsi’s music — and this succeeds clearly, for example, in the parlando passages of Taiagarù. The introspective, meditative side of Scelsi’s music is clearly overestimated. It is this thoroughly hedonistic speech-character, which defies popular desubjectivization rituals, that finds a real ‘voice’ in Scelsi’s music.
—Michael Kunkel
Sauh I-IV (1973) -Liturgy for voice with magnetic tape (1. I 6:39 2. II 6:15 3. III 6:47 4. IV 6:54) / Taiagarù (1962) – 5 invocations for female voice (5. I 2:53 6. II 2:15 7. III 2:58 8. IV 1:54 9. V 3:01) / Hô (1960) – 4 melodies for female voice (10. I 1:52 11. II 2:42 12. III 3:27 13. IV 2:43)
CD; New Albion; EU 15,00
ZIPORYN, EVAN
Typical Music
Pondok (2001) is Indonesian for a cottage, such as the tiny bamboo hut I lived in during my first stay in Bali in 1981. I arrived unprepared for the cultural and sensory overload I encountered. I would sit on my porch, transcribing music, smoking clove cigarettes, listening to the shortwave, and trying to make sense of it all. Twenty years later, this piece imagines a different level of repose. Each movement is based on a particular aspect of Balinese music, taken in its own direction to the point of no resemblance. “Fragrant Forest” borrows an attitude toward pacing and phrasing from the first scene of the shadow play; “Tree Trunk” builds on a rhythm buried in the texture of beleganjur marching music; “Ginoman” abstracts from the immobility of the introductions to classical lelambatan; “Gebyog (Husk)” combines the intense rhythms of west Balinese female rice pounding music with the serene postures of its performers. The piece is dedicated to Sarah Cahill.
Piano Trio – Typical Music (2000) was written for the Arden Trio. Before this piece I generally wrote for unusual combinations of instruments, and I wasn’t sure what to do with this archetypically classical combination. As I was writing it, I saw Burmese master drummer Kyaw Kyaw Naing perform at a Unitarian Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. Most of his playing that day accompanied song or dance, until finally the well-meaning hostess announced that Kyaw Kyaw would play a solo, no singer and no dance, “just a piece of typical music.” The piece is dedicated to Martin Bresnick, my teacher and friend, whose own piano trio serves as a lofty pinnacle of pure music.
Ngaben (for Sari Club) (2003) is for full Balinese gamelan and western orchestra and was written in response to the Bali terrorist bombing of October 12, 2002. I had just begun working on a very different type of piece for gamelan and orchestra, but the printed images of Balinese women crying and praying at the blast site overwhelmed me. Suddenly, musical cross-culturalism meant something far different than it had. The ngaben cremation is the last and most important life ritual in Balinese Hinduism. Like a traditional New Orleans funeral, it covers a wide range, not all mournful. Loss is acknowledged but subsumed by the far more important task of releasing the soul from the body. The procession itself is serious, chaotic and circuitous: the raised, highly ornamented sarcophagus is spun violently at all intersections so as to confuse evil spirits. The subsequent burning frees the soul to await its next incarnation. This Ngaben follows the same course, with these two sections fused together by a central kebyar, the highly charged, ametric-but-synchronous tutti which characterizes modern Balinese music. As with Balinese temple rituals, the musicians fill the room—the strings envelop the gamelan on the stage, while the winds are arrayed across the balcony, behind the audience. Kebyar is often translated as a blossoming or lightning flash, but it also means ‘explosion.’ It arose in response to the bloody Dutch takeover of Bali at the dawn of the 20th century; that tragedy sparked a renaissance of art and cross-cultural exchange on the island which has lasted until this day. This piece, a response to the violence which starts this century, is a small offering in the hope that the east-west exchange will continue undaunted. —Evan Ziporyn
Pondok (Sarah Cahill, piano) – Piano Trio / Typical Music (Arden Trio) / Ngaben (for Sari Club)(Gamelan Galak Tika
New England Conservatory Philharmonia-Dante Anzolini, director)
CD; New Albion; EU 15,00
VITIELLO, STEPHEN & TRONZO, DAVID
Scratchy Monsters and Laughing Ghosts
with Michael J. Schumacher
“I’ve never been sure if I hear sounds in my dreams. I’m glad to know that she does. This is a record that I’ve wished to make for a long time. It seemed less likely as my own interests have moved away from guitar and more towards field recordings and site-specific sound installations. Meanwhile, my friend Mr. Tronzo has stayed as true to the electric guitar and slide as ever. That said, he is a guitar player who sounds like no other and I am more than honored by the collaboration. These tracks were assembled through dual improvisations, followed by files, loops and mixes mailed back and forth. Somewhere in the middle, we invited Michael J. Schumacher to come in and add piano tracks. Michael’s improvised tracks now feel as crucial as any of the other elements. As much as this may be an experiment, we hope it is one that you will enjoy as much as we enjoyed making it.” —Stephen Vitiello
CD; New Albion; EU 15,00
KYR, ROBERT
Violin Concerto Trilogy
with Third Angle New Music Ensemble, Ron Blessinger, Denise Huizenga, Pacific Rim Gamelan
“…a trilogy of concerti…on the nature of…”
This recording presents a trilogy of violin concerti with titles beginning, “On the Nature of…” The concerti explore the archetypal themes of love (No. 1), harmony (No. 2), and peace (No. 3). In each work, the violin soloist is an adventurer who sets out on a journey of discovery that is filled with challenges and surprises. The music of each concerto is a spiritual landscape that encompasses an array of thoughts and feelings ranging from the lyricism of the reflective music in the first concerto, to the boisterous energy of the finale of the second, to the balance of musical elements at the end of the third.
Violin Concerto No. 1—On the Nature of Love (1996) – Thirteen variations on What Wond’rous Love is This
for violin and string orchestra / Violin Concerto No. 2—On the Nature of Harmony (1999) – Transformations for violin, Balinese gamelan, and chamber orchestra / Violin Concerto No. 3—On the Nature of Peace (2002) – For violin and chamber orchestra
CD; New Albion; EU 15,00
DOCKSTADER, TOD
Aerial Volume 2
This release is the second (Vol. 2) in a 3 part series – Vol.1 has been released in March 2005 inside a slipcase. Vol 2 and 3 will be released separately and packagedin individual standard jewel cases that will conveniently fit into the slipcase providedwith Vol.1 – Volume 3 to be released early 2006. ‘This return of Dockstader is something to cherish, not just because his output has been so limited and scarse but because what we do have is so intriguing, persuasive and cliche-free; the music of an inspired explorer who trails in nobody’s slipstream’ THE WIRE
CD; Sub Rosa; EU 14,00
MALANGA, GERARD
Up from the Archives (from the Factory)
Also know as a seminal photo archivist of the pop culture, Gerard Malanga (Andy Warhol’s main assistant, superstar & and closest friend at the Factory from 1963 to 1970) edited for Sub Rosa a selection of his audio documents from the early 60’s to the 90’s and invited some of his friends [Iggy Pop, Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth, dj Olive] to be part of this vivid archive mixing the past (WS Burroughs, Angus MacLise, Jack Kerouac…)with the present and the future includes a special booklet with photo portraits & poems + an introduction by Gerard Malanga.
CD; Sub Rosa; EU 14,00
SHEA, DAVID
The Book Of Scenes
Return of the prodigal son: our favourite New York composer is back home at Sub Rosa. This new CD consists in scenes with specific atmospheric tracks; a kind of open book, an open music film… and in the same time a true composer work of high level classical sampler music.
CD; Sub Rosa; EU 14,00
AA.VV.
Dada Anti Dada Merz
featuring Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters, Hans Arp. Edited by Marc Dachy (Dada specialist), this is a complete cd build on the 3 axes of the european Dada avant-garde : 3 major artists who read their own texts. Hans Arp was close to Tristran Tzara when he created Dada in Zürich. Kurt Schwitters one of the major figure of the german avant-garde and Raoul Hausmann one of the creator of Dada in Berlin. This is the first time that the 3 mighty artists appear together on one record.
CD; Sub Rosa; EU 14,00
AA.VV.
LunaPark 0.10 – Avant Garde Voices 1912-1973
Original recordings from Guillaume Apollinaire, Vladimir Maïakovski, James Joyce, Richard Huelsenbeck, Kurt Schwitters, Gertrude Stein, Antonin Artaud, Tristan Tzara, Camille Bryen, Marcel Duchamp, E.E. Cummings, Brion Gysin, Julian Beck, Gherasim Luca, François Dufrène; Pierre Guyotat, Augusto de Campos.
CD; Sub Rosa; EU 14,00
PRIMA MATERIA
The Tail of the Tiger
“As is the case with La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music, David Hyke’s Harmonic Choir and Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening Band, Roberto Laneri has had a life long penchant for the droning mysteriosa of the Sound Current and with the Prima Materia ensemble he has expressed it in a disciplined, expansive and singular way.” Terry Riley, 2005
In 1977 an obscure Italian private label issued a record that sounded like it came from outer space. A long and dense trance-inducing drone of sustained notes, rich with overtones and harmonic embellishments, coming from a space so vast and unexplored that seemed almost of non-human, even electronic nature. Paradoxically, each and any molecule of that sound was produced using only the most original and archaic instrument, the human voice. The name of the group was Prima Materia (First Matter), a project that took shape in 1973 in San Diego, and the record – “The Tail of the Tiger” – was issued by the Ananda label, owned by Roberto Laneri, Alvin Curran and Giacinto Scelsi. The record soon disappeared and over the years it became almost a legend among collectors and experimental music lovers.
The musicians of the group Prima Materia individually researched and developed unusual vocal techniques (originally used in Tantric rituals in North India, Mongolia and Tibet), based upon the use of overtones coupled with a special state of inner concentration, which was the essential condition for both the emission and control of long-sustained and complex vocal sounds. Their capacity to sustain a note for what seems an eternity, and then continue to provide endless variations generated a continuous and sustained drone of sound, in which the overtones are clearly perceived.
This unique compact disk presents the complete “Tail of the tiger” recordings in a digitally remastered version, including two live concerts held in 1974 in Berlin and in 1976 in Rome. A totally fascinating journey into the realm of pure sound.
Deluxe digipak CD, complete with a 8-page informative booklet plus an astounding 16-page exploration of “visual overtones” printed on tracing paper in full color.
CD; Die Schachtel; EU 15,00
CLEMENTI, ALDO
Punctum contra Punctum
On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Die Schachtel is proud to present “Punctum Contra Punctum”, a deluxe compact disc box dedicated to Aldo Clementi, one of the most important figures of Italian music of the 20th Century.
Born in Sicily in 1925, he studied piano and later composition under the guidance of teachers such as Goffredo Petrassi and Bruno Maderna, who also introduced him to electronic music at the RAI Studio of Phonology in Milan.
Like many composers of the period, he employed serial technique early in his work, to abandon it later on in favor of a very personal, ingenious and unique method for creating new music. Blessed with extraordinary skills of invention and assimilation, Clementi may be the one living composer for whom “genius” is not too strong a word. His musical language is extremely articulate and profound, resulting in a fascination with obsessive repetitions, collages, canons, and incredibly complex rhythmic textures which have to be heard to be believed. At the same time his music maintains to stay fresh, dynamic and highly enjoyable.
CDBOX – Silver-foil design on matt white paper CD-box edition, complete with a lovingly designed 64-page booklet in English and Italian.
CD; Die Schachtel; EU 15,00
Z’EV
Rhythmajik
Since the 1970’s Z’EV worked in a variety of media and was one of the founders of the cultural movement now known as ‘Industrial’. After several releases on important label like Die Stadt, Staalplaat, Touch, Soleilmoon, Tzadik, Subterranean, Dossier, Cold Spring, etc…, and great collaborations with artists like Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca, Psychic Tv, Genesis P-Orridge, Organum, The Hafler Trio, John Zorn, La Fura dels Baus, etc……, we are very pround to presents new Z’EV studio album recorded in Los Angeles in 2003-2004. This audio material accompany the Italian edition of “Rhythmajik” (RHYTHMAJIK: Practical uses of Number, Rhythm and Sound). Z’EV, percussionist extraordinaire, played his homemade instruments (gongs, hand-made metal percussions, titanium plate, low steel drums). Z’EV proved to be a sensitive and skilled master of his instruments, creating complex rhythms and varied timbres… Experimental percussive industrial music… Don’t miss this magical album!!! Z’EV is a pioneer! The disc is packaged in a special cardboard digisleeve with varnished images. Limited edition of 1000 copies.
“SmallVoices asked me to provide some audio materials to accompany their edition of rhythmajik. They suggested that perhaps there could be an audio ‘statement’/’demonstration’ for each chapter. I thought long and hard about this and eventually took a look back at the work itself to see what i thought it would want. basically rhythmajik is more about numbers and a ‘new’ way of relating to them than it is about any particular style of drumming. and it deals with these numbers in two ways.” Z’EV
CD; Small Voices; EU 14,00
WANDER
Wander
Wander are Freek Kinkelaar and Frans de Waard, also known as Beequeen. Since changing Beequeen’s musical direction in the summer of 2000 (drones out and ‘popmusic’ in). However, since they both love drone music, they founded Wander in 2001. In Wander they explore drone music in it’s widest possible form, with each new release exploring a specific concept. Wander will release their music on various formats, but every format only once. Each release is called Wander, and there is a total absense of any information on the cover. So far they have released a 10″ on their own Plinkity Plonk label, a LP for En/Of, a split 7″ on Plinkity Plonk (a split single with Beequeen), a CDR on XZF and a 7″ on Edition… and a forthcoming split 7″ recorded in collaboration with Andrew Liles.
The material was recorded in the analogue studio Geluidswerkplaats Extrapool in late 2004 and early 2005, using a wide variety of vintage synthesizers (juno 60, korg MS20, roland SH 102 and Arp synthesizer) and a Philicordia organ. The four long pieces breath an atmospheric, pastoral sound of slow and deep evolving drones. The CD was mastered by Raymond Steeg of The Legendary Pink Dots’ fame. The images on the cover and the disc were made with the help of Elise de Waard. Released in a special cardboard package with varnished images. Strictly limited edition of 600 copies only.
Wander live performances are as rare as hen’s teeth. So far two took place: providing a new soundtrack to Derek Jarman’s ‘In The Shadow Of The Sun’ and a gallery-show in Amsterdam (to much ignorance of a snotty and arty audience – but then we wouldn’t have expected otherwise)
CD; Small Voices; EU 14,00
BIANCHI, MAURIZIO
A M.B. Ienh Tale
The brand new release of Maurizio Bianchi (M.B.). Similar to his early experimental bionic – industrial masterpiece like “The Plain Truth”, “Armaghedon”, “Endometrio” and “Carcinosi”, this album presents eight decomposed tracks with slow, obscure and meditative music… Cold atmospheres and reverberating piano… Really one of Maurizio Bianchi best work to date!!! Dedicated to all the meditative people who is living in the environmental paradise.
CD; Small Voices; EU 14,00
KINETIX
Selected e_missions
Since 1999, KINETIX is the new moniker of Gianluca Becuzzi, artist active since the first half of the 80’s. This CD includes material written during the first years of KINETIX artistic activity (2000/2002). It’s constituted by six tracks (identified by graphic signs) presented in totally unreleased versions. This work can be considered as KINETIX official debut; the start point to approach to the KINETIX aesthetic and artistic dimension. “Selected E_Missions” presents a collection of deep and wrapping digital soundscapes, dotted by micro-noisy granular material, resonant fields where time and space humble themselves in a single perceptive continuum. Contemporary, abstract, cold, minimal, dense, intense and evocative drone music.
CD; Small Voices; EU 14,00
KINETIX
White rooms
Kinetix is the new moniker of Gianluca Becuzzi (LIMBO). Kinetix second official release on SmallVoices, “White Rooms” is a work which conjugates radical electronica and expressive power in a unique formula made of stylised and very personal minimalist sound-design. The relationships between physical space and acoustic space constitute the main theme of this double-CD, packaged in an elegant digipak. “White Rooms” is a limpid digital gallery through which the listener is invited to discover bright and resounding spaces, white flats inhabited by concrete sounds, ultra-frequencies, noises, voices and silences. An aesthetic experience placing itself beyond the genres in territories of pure contemporary avant-garde.
The relationships between physical space and acoustic space constitute the main theme of this work. We can subdivide the tracks composing “White Rooms” in four sections distributed in two compact discs. The first CD (CDA) includes the first three sections, each of them made of three tracks. The second CD (CDB) includes the fourth section made of only one track. Each section considers a single dimensional aspect of the physical space to freely translate it into sound-design in conformity with the following order:
CDA – A-section: Inside the room (presence of sound) / Outside the room (absence of sound) > Volume of sound. / AA-section: Length of the room (length of the sound event) > Time. / AAA-section: Height of the room (height of the sound event) > Frequencies.
CDB – B-section: Volume of the room (resounding space) > Space. / The B-section is specifically planned for a sound installation, conceived as it follows: the only track which constitutes this section, made up of frequencies at the limits of the audible range, is played simultaneously through couples of loudspeakers placed inside three empty rooms of different form and size. Inthe composition, the author didn’t use any artificial reverberation: this way, the differences in the listening we can experience inside each room is only determined by the spatial variable. In transit through the three rooms, the listener can essentially hear “the sound of space” itself. As a matter of fact, the author inverts the usual order in which the composition should be played in a space, letting the space play the composition.
2CD; Small Voices; EU 19,00
LE FORBICI DI MANITU’
Terrore nello spazio
Ritorna una delle più eclettiche ed enigmatiche formazioni della penisola, con una singolare sonorizzazione – commissionata in origine dal festival Invasioni di Cosenza – che tributa omaggio al film stra-cult Terrore nello spazio (1965) di Mario Bava, l’indimenticato maestro del gotico all’italiana (La maschera del demonio, La frusta e il corpo,
I tre volti della paura, ecc.), geniale e ironico innovatore del cinema a basso costo apprezzato e rivalutato all’estero prima che in patria. Ispirandosi liberamente alla vicenda delle astronavi Argos e Galliot, attirate su un pianeta morente da ectoplasmatici alieni-vampiri che per fuggire su altri mondi si appropriano del corpo degli astronauti trasformandoli in morti viventi, le Forbici di Manitù hanno realizzato un arguto ibrido di fascinazioni cinematografiche retrò “di serie B” e colte inflessioni infrageneri, contaminando campionatori ed elettronica analogica ad una strumentazione che allude al jazz (flauto, clarinetto, conga, vibrafono) e disseminando le partiture di surreali montaggi di dialoghi prelevati da pellicole d’epoca (in cui Monica Vitti può trovarsi a dialogare con Barbara Steele o Franco e Ciccio), ad evocare gli anni del boom economico.
Dall’ironica introduzione swingante di Razza in estinzione alle incalzanti tastiere gobliniane di Invasioni, dallo spiazzante lounge-jazz di Space Spiders alle brumose e stilizzate liquidità ambient-orrorifiche di Una notte di 21 ore, passando per lo struggente requiem cameristico di La colonna flessibile e il lavico electro-beat di Pianeta di sangue, ancora un lavoro felicemente inclassificabile ad opera di uno dei segreti meglio custoditi dell’underground italiano. Come ciliegina sui titoli di coda, cortocircuitando cinema di genere e film d’Autore, troviamo poi una disinvolta versione di Eclisse Twist, canzone lanciata nei ’60 da Mina e originariamente scritta da Ammonio (pseudonimo di Michelangelo Antonioni) e Fusco per il film L’eclisse, a riassumere il clima di romanticismo apocalittico dell’intera colonna sonora immaginaria: “La radioattività / un brivido mi dà / ma tu, ma tu / di più, di più”.
CD; Small Voices; EU 14,00
LE FORBICI DI MANITÙ
Tagliare
(featuring: EMMA PEEL SONS, MAISIE with PLOZZER, TECHNOGOD, ERASERMEN, VALVOLA & MAC DONALD DUCK ECLAIR, DUOZERO, MANA ERG, DJ BALLI, LLOYD DUNN, ROD SUMMERS, T.A.C., MASSIMO GIACON, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS, TEHO TEARDO, DUOZERO)
Veterans of the Italian experimental scene, Le Forbici di Manitù celebrate in their own peculiar way twenty years of underground activism through an album recorded live in their cellar, offering new arrangements, essential and direct, of (nearly) all the “songs” in their back repertory, appeared from 1983 until today on a dozen of different releases (cds, compilations, rare cassettes and singles). Laying aside for this time conceptual electronics, noise-oriented audiogames and imaginary soundtracks, the atypically affable voice of Manitù Rossi guides us through an heterogeneous collection of surreal ballads of desperate love and disconsolate odes to the most despairing normality, grim dark songs about serial killers and nervous psycho-funk hymns inspired by old b-movies, touching elegies to deceased Pop artists and sad reflections on the state of indie music. As a bonus, covers and hommages between the lines to The Associates, Nico, The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Wire and Cocteau Twins.
On the second cd we find instead remakes and remixes of other songs by Le Forbici di Manitù, recorded in the studio through a network of friends and special guests. We hear the enthralling G-Pop of Valvola & Mac Donald Duck Eclair and the deviant electro-funk of Technogod and Erasermen, the bizarre avant-punk of Maisie (with the plagiarist Plozzer) and the rarefied ambient dub of Teho Teardo. And let’s not forget the tour de force of the hallucinatory title-track Tagliare (literally “to cut”), an electro-rhythmical sequence by Le Forbici di Manitù reworked by several international artists (Mana ERG, DJ Balli, Lloyd Dunn, Rod Summers, T.A.C., Massimo Giacon, Nocturnal Emissions) and then mixed in a phenomenal cut-up dj set of over 23’, performed by Marani and Taver of DuoZero.
An ironical and amusing autocelebration from the part of a band rooted in the do-it-yourself tradition and in networking culture, confronting and taming the “song format” with the same unbridled fervour and fantasy with which Bugs Bunny enters the Plaza de Toros.
For this project Le Forbici di Manitù were: Manitù Rossi, Gabriella Marconi, Teresa Zucchini, Sabrina Lodi, Enrico Marani and Vittore Baroni.
2CD; Small Voices; EU 19,00
THE HAFLER TRIO
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing
“ONLY THE HAND THAT ERASES CAN WRITE THE TRUE THING” is a set of four “rituals” (plus one locked groove) using four voices for four very different purposes, all on two 10″ clear vinyl records with gatefold sleeve, shadows, and titles. It uses some new techniques for voice processing developed by THE HAFLER TRIO within the last two years, based on the properties of resonances of voices to affect acoustic space, and the meaning behind The Utterance. Something to hand down to the grandchildren.
This amazing album was packaged in a luxurios gatefold jacket pressed in heavy cardboard. Copies of the last 500 copies editions in TRANSPARENT/CLEAR vinyl. Heavy white MATT cardboard gatefold cover with black script and silver images.
Tracks: 01 — and there I was hoping the door would go – 02 — who is the mother of the sun? – 03 — our wishes are commensurate with the time of your birth – 04 — a endless holiday (or “vacation”) in uchronia.
2×10″; Small Voices; EU 20,00
***OFFERTA SPECIALE NATALIZIA***
Solo fino a fine anno e solo fino ad esaurimento scorte e per i soli titoli già presenti in magazzino, ECCEZIONALE OFFERTA: 25% di sconto sulle seguenti etichette:
STARKLAND – FROG PEAK – NEW WORLD – EMF – DEEP LISTENING PUBLICATIONS – POGUS – XI RECORDS
premettiamo che, per alcune delle etichette i titoli al momento in magazzino sono pochi (XI-EMF..), ma… pensiamo sia una offerta da non perdere e comunque irripetibile, almeno,…….fino a Natale 2006! Accorrete!!
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SILENZIO distribuzione / ants records
Via Filippo De Grenet, 26
00128 Roma Italy
tel & fax +39 06 508 2556
http://www.silenzio-distribuzione.it
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