News From Berlin.
Hallo & greetings from Berlin,
find below our last news for this year.
Read you soon &
all the best for 09,
Ed
MORFROM/. – Around the Corner CD 121234
ANDREY KIRITCHENKO – Misterrious CD Spekk
BENGE – Twenty Systems CD Expanding
BJ NILSEN & STILLUPPSTEYPA – Man From Deep River CD Editions Mego
ERIK FRIEDLANDER – Block Ice & Propane CD Skipstone
EVIL MADNESS – Demoni Paradiso CD 12 Tónar
FELICIA ATKINSON – La La La CD Spekk
GAGARIN – Adaptogen CD Geo
GERT-JAN PRINS – Cavity CD Cavity
HELVETIKONE – Bubble Hum CD Digital Gadget/Front
KAZUMASA HASHIMOTO – Tokyo Sonata OST CD Noble
KENNETH KIRSCHNER – Filaments & Voids 2CD 12k
LEVEL – Opale CD Spekk
MARK FELL – Attack On Silence DVD Line
MATMOS – The West 2LP/CD Autofact
SUM OF R – s/t CD Utech
THE DRONES – Havilah LP/CD ATP/R
V.A./ANDREW KÖTTING – InsideOut CD+book Sonic Arts Network
V.A. – The Risk Of Burns Exist – 10 Years Of…rhiz CD rhiz
./MORFROM/. – Around the Corner
CD 121234 fbl004
http://www.121234.net
http://www.myspace.com/morfrom
Balancing on the edge where sound turns into music, ./morFrom/. corners eight pieces on their second CD, displaying a provocative morph between impro and music concrète. A choice of archived field recordings are put up against improvised guitar, organ and electronics; together they form an intriguing and humorous musical conversation. The result, varying from droney to bumpy and lightweight to gloomy, is surprising, tumbling from completely free into small arrangements and back, nevertheless keeping a nicely-layered mix of events all the way through.
The duo ./morFrom/. (CH) started their cooperation in 2004, after having recognized their interest in Soundscapes and Soundspaces, musique concrète and Punk. JULIEN BAILLOD (guitar, electronics) and JEROEN VISSER (organ, electronix) produced their first ./morFrom/. CD “Here & There” in 2005. Since then they went on tour and did special projects for film, art installations and headphone festivals.
“Around the Corner” was recorded and mixed in the first half of 2008 in the F.ishing B.akery L.aboratories studio in Zürich/CH.
ANDREY KIRITCHENKO – Misterrious
CD Spekk KK017
http://www.spekk.net
http://www.nexsound.org/akir
When I started to think about new album, I wanted to keep up with what I have started to explore in “True Delusion” release and continued in “Stuffed With/Out”. I wanted to introduce something new to the sound – make it more acoustic than electronic. Believe me or not, I wanted to make a jazz record (my way of course) – cinematic, naive and visionary album.
In the new album I choose piano as the main and solo instrument and wanted to make it sound in minimalist, melodic and overtone way. So, when I had some amount of free time in rehearsal rooms of Stockholm’s student chummery I started to make first piano sketches. After those sessions and also collecting piano outlines I made later in Kharkov I decided to continue with an appropriate jazz attribute – drums. After few unsuccessful conversations with local drummers I decided to ask Jason Kahn and Martin Brandlmayer for their participation as I really appreciate their stuff and approach. After their part was done I still had some tracks that wished to have a percussion part too, so I decided to try that out myself and bought a snare and a set up of cymbals. By that time I had wonderful field recordings of insects I made on half-island of Crimea (Ukraine) and they fitted very well with the rest and also with my usual instruments: guitar, glockenspiel, mouth harmonica, auto-harp, Tibetan bowls and objects. – Andrey Kiritchenko
BENGE – Twenty Systems
Book/CD Expanding Records ecdb1:08
http://www.expandingrecords.com
http://www.myspace.com/twentysystems
20 tracks, showcasing 20 different synthesizers, one from each year, covering the period 1968-1988.
Twenty Systems is the latest release from electronica artist and Expanding Records founder Benge and marks his tenth solo album. This project combines an audio CD of new music with a full colour 60 page book containing photos and diagrams of the electronic instruments used, along with a detailed history documenting the development of synthesisers between 1968 and 1988.
The booklet includes a foreword by Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner)…
‘Presented here are twenty pieces of music created on twenty different synthesisers, one from each year between 1968 and 1988. The purpose of this record is to demonstrate the development of the the synthesiser from the first commercially available systems in the late 1960s to the introduction of fully digital systems in the late 1980s. This is not intended to be a comprehensive history of synthesisers. However, the listener will hopefully gain some insight into the character of each instrument, and on a more general level experience the evolving sound of synthesis over the yearsWhat you hear on each track is the pure sound of an individual instrument. No additional processing, sequencing or effects were applied to any of the recordings. If a system was equipped with an in-built sequencer I made use of it on the particular track, and I often used the process of recordingsound-on-sound, where a track is made up of multiple layers of the same synthesiser recorded in parallel. To put it simply, I wanted to let the instruments speak for themselves as much as possible; to let the instruments influence the way I composed the pieces’ Ben Edwards (Benge)
‘A brilliant contribution to the archaeology of electronic music’ – Brian Eno
‘Indicates what a deliriously desirable thing the synthesis of soundhas historically been’ – The Wire
‘Absolutely cast iron irrefutable proof that synthesisers are better than guitars’ – Vice Magazine
BJ NILSEN & STILLUPPSTEYPA – Man From Deep River
CD Editions Mego DeMEGO 007
Streetdate: January 26
http://www.editionsmego.com
http://www.bjnilsen.com
http://www.helenscarsdale.com/stilluppsteypa
Compiled and mixed in Berlin and Reykjavik 2008
Mastered at Piethopraxis, Köln July 2008
Edition of 500
The boiling up bottomless numbness. Slowly disappearing and so suddenly reappearing. A constant vivid reminder yet as honest as possible. The man from deep river quickly develops between two lonely desperate individuals, and the savage natives around him turn just as quickly against their own mountain god. The ‘illness’ is caused by several deeply depressing circumstances and by the intense difficulty of other sickening circumstances happening around deep river. The underlining of this situation is precise but not quite naturalistic which has only a very limited influence on the god mountain.
Those lovable Nordic heroes are back with a fourth album of intense listening and shined isolationist compositions. In doing so, they have issued yet another brief statement in defense of their research:
“Like another wall of jungle trees Man From Deep River leaves us both stunned and disoriented. It is an environment of high tension but also with moments of temporary insanity and auditory hallucinations. Based on a found tape from 1975, which served as guidance for the compositions”
Man From Deep River opens up a new development in their sound. Melodic passages with sweeping electronics and analogue synthesizers mixed with field recordings and disturbed voices creating a multifaceted piece.
The Swedish born BJ Nilsen defines his work as “focused upon the sound of nature and its effects on humans, and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound.” He has numerous recordings on Touch and has collaborated with the likes of Chris Watson, Christian Fennesz, and Z’ev. The Icelandic citizens Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson are Stilluppsteypa, whose electronic abstractions engage absurd theatrics that mar the pristine surface of minimalism.
ERIK FRIEDLANDER – Block Ice & Propane
CD Skipstone 01
http://www.skipstonerecords.com
http://www.blockiceandpropane.com
Block Ice & Propane is a collection of tunes that evoke images of truck-stops, long, lonely highways, and stark panoramas. Taking his inspiration from American Roots music, Friedlander executes extraordinary finger-picking technique and reverberant tunings creating a new American cello music: lyrical, plain-spoken, and emotional.
“Block Ice & Propane, then, is a boy’s folk anthem – sweet, naïve, intrigued – gathered and transformed through a virtuoso’s adult memory.” Pitchfork
“There’s a breathtaking lyricism at work in these new tunes, but it’s infused with an almost breezy touch: like swirling dust in beams of light..” John Darnielle
“..a magnificent new solo album..” The New Yorker
“If there’s a venerable tradition of American road films, Block Ice & Propane belongs in the associated list of great road albums.” John Corbett, Downbeat
“a supple disc with as much folksy strumming as sumptuous bowing.” Time OUT NY
“..the avant cello album of the summer.” Ben Sisario, NY Times
“Rostropovich one second and Rottweiler the next.” Pitchfork
EVIL MADNESS – Demoni Paradiso
CD 12 Tónar 12T047
http://www.12tonar.is
http://www.myspace.com/evil666madness
“ASIA of Icelandic electronic music Evil Madness (JOHANN JOHANNSSON (4AD), STILLUPPSTEYPA (Mille Plateaux, Ritornell, Staalplaat), DJ MUSICIAN and BJ NILSEN (Touch)) are back with some more diabolic schizo electronic ’70s italo-horror-movie sound.
With their second album Demoni Paradiso they throw in a healthy dose of space madness and one might think that they invented a time machine and traveled 35 years back in time to work on this latest masterpiece. Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Goblin and the likes come to mind when listening to this nightmare concerto. If there is any music that could really make a person want to die for, it would be this album, which sounds like a zombie or a mad scientist controlling a sound generator for the beginning of the album, and by the end a complete “symphony of extinction”. If you are not depressed or horrified by the end of the Demoni Paradiso experience, you have ceased your life function already.”
“Wendy Carlos hands Fabio Frizzi a synth from 1979 at Connie Plank’s studio and asks him to put on red cheek make up, crash Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here with a pet rain cloud imported from Fulci’s studio, and replace their fingers with zombie bodies” – Bonnie Banks, Brutalsfx
FELICIA ATKINSON – La La La
CD Spekk KK018
http://www.spekk.net
http://www.myspace.com/lowfifelicia
“La La La” was recorded at home in Paris and Brussels.
As a multimedia artist more than a full time musician, I decided to use rough materials of recording and mixing such as Garageband free software, in a democratic and playfull way, with the instruments that were at home, such as piano, acoustic guitar, glockenspiel and field recording from the room.
The songs were done by improvisation, then edited with sometimes the help of Sylvain Chauveau, in the aim of keeping something very oral, inspired and spontaneous.
Some pieces have been presented before as a sound installation in real space. I like when there are connections and echos of the same piece in different mediums such as installation, recordings, texts, sounds.
The lyrics are in different languages in this idea of playing with the different levels of knowledges and images. One of the song, “Schnee Part”, is the reading of a poem by Paul Celan, “Unlesbarkeit”, in the “Schnee Part” antholgy. It is read in German as many time as i needed to understand it.
The last song, “Lonesome as the Sun” is based on the guitar of David Daniell, a great guitarist from Chicago i met with Sylvain in New York City.
Chanting and playing “La La La” was for me at the same level as drawing or writing: something to measure the present time and the perspective of the vanished, as a memento mori. – Felicia Atkinson
GAGARIN – Adaptogen
CD Geo Records GEO 012
Streetdate: January 29
http://www.gagarin.org.uk
http://www.myspace.com/ggrn
ADAPTOGEN is the latest album from GAGARIN released on GEO records. It comes as the culmination of an incredible year of creative activities from the intrepid musical space explorer. 2008 has seen him contribute atmospheres, synth and drums to Pere Ubu’s performance of UBU ROI at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, electronics, beats and production to acclaimed releases from label mates Raf and O, and Roshi ft Pars radio as well as festival dates including Glastonbury on drums with the legendary Suns of Arqa.
ADAPTOGEN is a development from previous releases including last album ARD NEV showing further exploration of a recurring theme in gagarins work – the collision of urban and pastoral soundworlds. The sound of the album is edgy, littered with crackles and noise but also featuring aching melody and moments of blissful calm.
GAGARIN’s history as a musician is well documented. He started out, as dids ( a drummer), in Manchester cult band Ludus, before embarking on an extended working relationship with Velvet underground legend NICO, recording and playing also with JOHN CALE, ERIC RANDOM, MOONTWIST, SUNS OF ARQA, BILL PRITCHARD and many more. For the last 10 years he has worked with DAVID THOMAS and PERE UBU, in a variety of roles – remixer, synthesist, samplist, sound designer and has contributed several pieces to Ubu’s forthcoming Ubu Roi album. Over the last twenty years DIDS has played across the globe from a shamanist festival in Siberia to Tokyo clubs and Scottish castles.
As graham dowdall he has a parallel career as a community music educator which has brought him into close working contact with numerous London GRIME crews who have benefited from his sonic radicalism as well as musical experience. He runs workshops for “hard to reach” young people, adults with special needs and teaches at Goldsmiths College, Univ of London.
As Gagarin he has released three albums, several EPs and numerous tracks on a variety of labels including u – cover, echo, click click drone, smallfish and his own geo imprint. He has played many many live gigs across several countries and is a regular on the London electronica scene where his uniquely live approach using drumpads and hardware sampling has gained him a good following and considerable acclaim. His last album – ARD NEV received critical acclaim from THE WIRE, ROCKARILLA, GROOVE, FUTURE MUSIC and many more. This was followed up in late 07 by a 3″ ep – AGRICHEM released by smallfish.
ADAPTOGEN is a full length ten track album with tracks ranging from the glitchy downtempo melodictronica of straiff to the clanking urbanism of ‘den bosch, via the free-jazz drone clash of B PLAS, the distorted ambience of aconite and a huge melting pot of sounds gathered from field recordings, classical samples, synths, improvisation and live and programmed grooving. The album is released in a lovely CD digipack of shimmering rust colours.
GERT-JAN PRINS – Cavity
CD Cavity 01
http://www.gjp.info
http://www.myspace.com/gertjanprins
Gert-Jan Prins: electronics, timpani
Recorded & mastered at the Prins Studio, Amsterdam, NL, 2008
Concept & artwork by Gert-Jan Prins
Graphical advice: Bas van Koolwijk, Manel Esparbé i Gasca
It’s an exclusive, handsigned and numbered limited edition of 250 copies
Prins’ handwork, “geprägte”, and painted cover and cd
“The “background” spirit of this record goes back to my first solo release Noise Capture (1998). I was curious how some of my older self-built electronic instruments would sound now. In combination with my latest experiments with electronic vacuumtubes and timpani, it led to a more cooled down work in a niche of my own domain.” GJ Prins
Gert-Jan Prins has been known for twenty-one years as one of the most challenging sound artist in the Netherlands. He is an autodidact who focuses on the sonic and musical qualities of electronic ‘noise’. In his work, Prins makes connections with modern electronic club culture, occupying a radical position with his investigation of electronic sound and its relationship to the visual. He also creates links with the performance art and machine art of the 1980s, which reshaped the legacy of industrial society to produce threatening, yet sometimes also sublime, encounters with technology. Recently The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NL has expanded the collection with the installation Break Before Make: the Cavity Version by Gert-Jan Prins.
HELVETIKONE – Bubble Hum
CD Digital Gadget/Front DGF#5
Streetdate: January 23
http://www.digital-gadget.de
http://www.virb.com/helvetikone
Approximately five years after Helvetikone released his first EP on Digital Gadget/Front, the mysterious Berlin artist returns with a full length album.
Bubble Hum appears softer, more melodious and mature than his earlier works, but doesn’t fail to confront the listener with healthy frostiness and asperity. Bubble Hum is a well-defined counterpoint to all electronic music calling itself “experimental”, while merely lulling us to sleep… not to mention the dead boring minimal techno of these days.
EDUARD MÜLLER, the man behind Helvetikone, has been everything but lazy over the years: His composing is closely linked to the evolution of Renoise, the famous tracker software he programmed and takes care of every day. The worldwide Renoise community is growing, and so is the music of Helvetikone: Bubble Hum offers a raw dose of passionate electronic music no one can rebuff.
Bubble Hum by Helvetikone marks the first CD-Release on Digital Gadget/Front, it will soon be followed by a full length by Jeff Pils.
KAZUMASA HASHIMOTO – Tokyo Sonata Original Soundtrack
CD Noble Records CXCA-1239
http://www.noble-label.net
http://www.myspace.com/kazumasahashimoto
“They were supposed to be leading a normal life. But something crept unexpectedly into their lives and turned this family into one of disharmony. Will there be a day when this family can ring in harmony again?”
Tokyo Sonata is a film portraying the typical family of modern day Japan and is an exploration into a new genre for world renowned director KIYOSHI KUROSAWA. The widely acclaimed film which received the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2008 Cannes International Film Festival is also the first film score created by artist Kazumasa Hashimoto and NNoble is proud to announce the release of its original soundtrack.
The minimal but heartwarming harmony created by the mellotron, piano, guitar and noise synchronizes brilliantly with the film to bring more strength to the world of Kurosawa. In addition to the film scores that brought colorful impression to the film, the album includes many unreleased pieces written for the film as well as a cover song of “Clair de lune” by Claude Debussy, an artist much respected by hashimoto and a piece that can also be heard in parts of the film. It is a soundtrack and a Kazumasa Hashimoto original album that can be enjoyed by hashimoto fans and movie fans alike.
As the title Tokyo Sonata indicates, music plays a central role in the film and kazumasa hashimoto took on this challenge with solid respect. The result is a collection of lean music that preserves the raw essence and core of the melody which help to guide the film to perfection, a monumental piece that celebrates the artist’s entry into new horizons as a composer of film music.
Kazumasa Hashimoto biography
Born in Tokyo. Composer/ Musician.
kazumasa hashimoto has released 4 albums to present including Euphorium released from noble records in December 2007. Until now, the artist has received 5 stars in a review by Germany’s De:Bug magazine, his music has been used by the BBC television, and his work has been taken up widely by Japanese and overseas media in Europe and the United States.
In June 2007 kazumasa hashimoto performed in Europe’s largest festival of electronic music and multimedia art, the Sonar festival in Barcelona, and has been spreading his music actively on a global scale.
In addition to his own work, hashimoto created music for the movie Tokyo Sonata (director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa), an award winning film in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2008 Cannes International Film Festival and continues to unleash his spectrum of talent as a music producer for commercials, theater, and other artists.
KENNETH KIRSCHNER – Filaments & Voids
2CD 12k 1050
http://www.12k.com
http://www.kennethkirschner.com
A subdued chord, and a subsequent quiet. A hovering drone, followed by a compelling absence of sound. True to its title, Filaments & Voids is comprised predominantly by one or the other: by carefully constructed audio of lingering delicacy or by singular silences of ambiguous depth. Over the course of two discs and nearly two and a half hours of music, composer Kenneth Kirschner focuses the listener’s attention on the silence inherent in his sounds, and the sounds implicit in silence. Like the night sky evoked by the album’s title, the music heard on Filaments & Voids is a broad and dark space inhabited by dispersed and luminous materials.
Filaments & Voids is a 2-CD collection of Kenneth Kirschner’s music featuring liner notes by Disquiet.com’s Marc Weidenbaum and photography by Taylor Deupree.
Kenneth Kirschner was born in 1970 and lives in New York City; he releases his music freely online through his website, kennethkirschner.com. His work is also available on CDs such as September 19, 1998 et al. (12k, 2003) and Three Compositions (Sirr, 2006); his most recent release is May (Room 40, 2008), based on a concert with Taylor Deupree recorded live in Lisbon, Portugal.
LEVEL – Opale
CD Spekk KK016
http://www.spekk.net
http://www.myspace.com/sicomm
OPALE was recorded during a period of personal turmoil, and creative turbulence. I wanted to follow the Level | Cycla release with a fresh perspective, and a new formula. Having created Cycla from piano and keyboard sounds generated using software which I then subjected to various treatments and deformations, I wanted to create something less fractured, less manipulated. I called upon my good friends, Linden Hale, and Keith Berry to provide me with original piano samples to use as source material, which I then fed through the sampler, but this time attempted to keep to the original spirit of the source material, adding my own digital touches and textures as I went along.
Opale represents a singular line of thought, and a singular approach, so I suppose in some sense, all of the tracks actually comprise one piece, broken into several parts. The pieces all represent “the Frozen Moment” Šas the hands of time are unrelenting, waiting for no man, I am sure many of us have ached for time to stand still during moments that are particularly poignant, perhaps, or maybe, mourning the loss of a loved one, we could hold on to these precious moments with them for just a little longer. I have experienced these moments on several occasions, and having lived a humdrum, and pressurised existence, sometimes I yearn to be able to stand back, relax, and savour precious moments for much longer than they actually last in order to gain a greater appreciation of their beauty and magnificence. Opale represents these precious moments, and simultaneously worships and mourns their passing. – Barry G. Nicholas / Level
MARK FELL – Attack On Silence
DVD Line 037
http://www.12k.com/line
http://www.markfell.com
Attack on Silence brings together a series of works by British artist Mark Fell exploring the relationships between geometry, color, and waveform. These works have been shown around the world as performances, installations, and in print.
For the past decade Mark Fell has been one of the leading innovators in the fields of experimental electronic music and sound art. Combining interests in experimental music, contemporary art, computer technology and philosophy, his work has been performed and exhibited internationally to wide critical acclaim. Mark Fell is one half of SND.
Sacred geometries, and their sonic equivalents, are said to mirror the micro and macroscopic structures of the physical world; the complex harmonies of the Tibetan singing bowl, like the patterns of the Mandala, allow access to the deepest levels of the consciousness inducing meditative states that transform the very being of their participants. In the modern reciprocals of these technologies the shift is one of teleology. The sacred metals and antique art of the singing bowls give way to the magic of digital synthesis as sacred geometry gives proxy to psychophysiology and the cognitive neuroscience of brainwave entrainment.
Drawn from these sources-with mutual ambivalence-and realized through a distinct aesthetic minimalism, intricate combinations of form, color and sound are projected through a series of transitions, sometimes gradual, sometimes abrupt, sometimes giving way to sustained tones and repetitions. In a process of ever-emerging horizon-an attack on silence and a space for silence-the potential arises to be ensconced or alienated, a space for enchantment, for anxiety, for profound boredom or for reverie.
Are these phenomena affirmations or reconfigurations of the subject-routes to an authentic, spiritual or otherwise-or are they essentially physiological? Are they aesthetic distractions or intrusive technological interventions-pointers to dystopian possibilities? Are we being enlightened? Examined? Entertained? Enmeshed?
Recorded at The Music Research Centre at the University of York (UK) and SND studio Sheffield 2007 and 2008. Digital coding and mastering by tez in NTSC. Audio presented in both stereo and 5.1 Surround option formats.
MATMOS – The West
2LP/CD Autofact FACT06
http://www.a-fact.com
http://www.brainwashed.com/matmos
Autofact is pleased to announce the release of “The West”, a five song CD/2XLP by the San Francisco electronic duo Matmos. On this, their third release (originally released in 1999) Matmos collaborate with a diverse selection of friends to create an unusual hybrid of digitally constructed acoustic music. Imitating but transforming rock, country, and folk gestures, “The West” reaches territory similar to recent work by John Fahey or Gastr del Sol from a perversely opposite end of the spectrum: instead of making organic music that draws upon electronic texture, this is electronic music that feels organic (organica, perhaps?) both in its sound sources and in its construction.
Instead of the bizarre sound sources that Matmos have used in the past (amplified crayfish nerve tissue, rubber clothing, hair), the musique concrete elements on “The West” have an everyday quality: a phone rings, a car starts, the pages of a book are turned, water drips, a cigarette is smoked. Very quiet, familiar sounds are amplified into strange new shapes.
Despite their temporary flirtation with traditional instruments, Matmos’ conceptual antics remain: in a Cage-ian gesture, a dice game determined the selection and content of the tiny sample snippet clouds within the first song “Last Delicious Cigarette”, with dice rolls selecting records by Penderecki, Minor Threat, Enoch Light, Mandrill, a “Costar” record with Fernando Lamas, and a recording of a Heidegger lecture. The resulting song starts off as tongue-in-cheek turntablism and ends in a ditch with a dark scraping drone. “Action At A Distance” pits Dave Pajo’s tranquil guitar figures against the distorted noise of water dripping on a heavily amplified copper sheet. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the crisp pages of a Bible turning. “Sun On 5 at 152”, an ode to a favorite strip of freeway, flickers between gentle repetitions of Mark Lightcap’s acoustic guitar and discrete, unnerving digital edits before bursting into full drums/banjo/violin/cello orchestration and peaking with thirty seconds of drum and bass. The final song “The West” ambitiously fuses distinct sections into a continuous 20-minute road trip across quasi-country, kosmische space music, electro, krautrock, free jazz, and full-on noise. Once only available on the cd version, the 2xLP edition now boasts an added track, “Tonight, The End”, a sleazy take on stripper jazz featuring Jim Putnam (of Radar Bros.) on trumpet, Rick Brown (from Run On) at the kit, and Mark Lightcap’s talents on the peck horn.
Matmos is Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. The band members biographies reflect their brainy, decentered approach to electronica- Daniel is currently teaching at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore; Schmidt taught 12 years in the conceptual art department of the San Francisco Art Institute (now a homemaker). In addition to collaborations with KK Null and the Vinyl Communications wildbunch, (as DISC and IAO Core) and with the Kronos Quartet, Bjork, Terry Riley, Wobbly, Pluramon, and writing books about Throbbing Gristle and learning to cook, Matmos have also recently toured the U.S. with Lesser in support of their recent “Supreme Balloon” album for Matador Records.
“The West” by Matmos features additional guest players from members of Slint, Tortoise, Palace, Zwan, Neurosis, Amber Asylum, Swans, Radar Bros., IAO Core & Lesser.
SUM OF R – s/t
CD Utech URCD025
http://www.utechrecords.com
http://www.sumofr.ch
RETO MÄDER: Bass guitar, strings, electronics, piano, effects
CHRISTOPH HESS: Manipulated turntable
ROGER ZIEGLER: Harmonium, effects
Sum Of R is a Swiss band project whose members are influenced by different kinds of noise, folk, doom, experimental and lumbering metal music. First planned as a side-project of electro-acoustic musician Reto Mäder aka RM74, it grew into a collective consisting also of Roger Ziegler and Christoph Hess, both members of analogue noise band Herpes Ö DeLuxe, the latter also known for his turntablism experiments as Strotter Inst. Mäder and Ziegler also run the label Hinterzimmer Records.
SUM OF R construct/deconstruct sound in ways that infest and cloud the interior of the mind. The implements: electronics, bass guitar, piano, harmonium and Lenco turntables. The science: deep pulsations, organic drones, melodic feedback accompaniment, vinyl loops, analog sound sources, reversed audio, haunting vocal treatments. The sum: a living, breathing organism that sustains varied levels of function without ever losing its holistic unity.
Presented in a heavy black matte digi printed with silver ink. Includes silver/black fold out insert. Photography by Rik Garrett. Edition of 750.
SUM OF R LIVE
18/12 CH Clair Obscur Filmfestival, Basel
26/01 CH Bad Bonn, Düdingen
THE DRONES – Havilah
LP/CD ATP Recordings ATPRCD31
Streetdate: February 13
http://www.atpfestival.com/atp-recordings
http://www.thedrones.com.au
The new world of The Drones is an exotic place, one populated by dark corners, rarely explored avenues, sparse canvases and dense, exhilarating peaks and troughs _ and that’s just the neighbourhood surrounding their recording studio.
Actually it’s not just a studio. It’s a house in the middle of a forest that the Melbourne band’s singer GARETH LIDDIARD and bassist FIONA KITSCHIN, his partner, discovered in January this year and decided to make their home. Once settled, they realised it was also the perfect setting to record The Drones’ fourth album, Havilah, which will be released in Australia by ATP Recordings on September 20.
The splendid isolation in which Havilah was created lies in the foothills of Mt Buffalo, once goldfield territory, outside the town of Myrtleford in country Victoria.
In February Liddiard began writing new songs for the album there. Two months later guitarist DAN LUSCOMBE, the Drones’ most recent addition, and drummer MICHAEL NOGA joined Liddiard and Kitschin to rehearse the new material.
Then producer and engineer Burke Reid (The Mess Hall, Gerling) lugged his recording gear through the door and off they went _ two weeks flat out _ until it was done.
“It’s like a little world unto itself in the forest,” says Liddiard. “It’s a beautiful place. You can’t always find a good spot to record, but if you can find a house like this that’s a bonus.”
Havilah, like everything The Drones have done, is an album of contradictions, where bombast meets beauty, melancholy wrestles with violent guitars and singer Liddiard’s incendiary voice lights up his angular poetry, this time on the nature of, in no particular order, the moon (Penumbra), divorce (The Drifting Housewife) and the acquisition of godlike power and the cult of John Frum (I Am the Supercargo).
It’s an album that’s brimful of the innovation and artistic integrity that has made The Drones one of Australian rock’s most critically acclaimed acts here and overseas during the past four years.
It was that spark of originality and blunt-edged chaos that won the Melbourne band the inaugural Australian Music Prize in 2006 for their breakthrough album Wait Long By The River and Your Enemies Will Float By.
That same need to push boundaries took them to an old mill in Tasmania to record the follow-up album, 2006’s award-winning Gala Mill, and in 2008 their invention, innovation and isolation have combined to produce the fireworks of their most accomplished work to date, Havilah (the name, in case you didn’t know, refers to a biblical land near the Garden of Eden and the valley in which the album was recorded).
There are vaguely familiar nods to Neil Young’s paint-stripping guitar spasms on Supercargo and Oh My, while the deliciously meandering pop dirges of Suicide and the Velvet Underground echo in Careful As You Go and Luck in Odd Numbers.
The outstanding ballad here, Cold and Sober, is a song The Drones have recorded several times during their eight-year reign without it ever making the grade.
“This time it just worked,” Liddiard says. There’s also the relative immediacy but still complex structure of the first single The Minotaur, Liddiard’s scathing rant on the wasters of the world, while the lengthy opening Nail It Down perhaps best reflects The Drones’ grand scope, flitting as it does between acoustic ambience and rumbling rock ‘n’ roll meltdown.
It’s melancholic, certainly, but Havilah, in its tone and its delivery, is also a celebration. It’s a more positive statement than its predecessor.
“Gala Mill is pretty fucking depressing,” is Liddiard’s take on that particular work. “It’s not like going on a summer holiday. This time we were ready for something that was less of an ordeal every time we had to play it. And I wanted to write songs that were a bit more abstract, so you can make up your own mind about them.”
Once you’ve been around these 10 songs for a few hours, it’s not hard to make up your mind about them. They are bold. They are romantic. And they are dangerous.
V.A./ANDREW KÖTTING – InsideOut: a Psyche and Its Geography
CD/book Sonic Arts Network
http://www.sonicartsnetwork.org
InsideOut: a psyche and its geography charts the inscape of one of Britain’s most celebrated artists and experimental film makers, Andrew Kötting. This CD and accompanying publication mirrors the ‘highly idiosyncratic’ style he has become known for; experimenting with format, texture and sound to “transport an audience to a place…where possibly they’ve never been before”.
This CD is a soundtrack. Self-contained dramas that coagulate into the shifting and amorphous structure of Kötting’s psyche-ever present in his own work. Contributions from film makers, poets, artists, musicians, friends and family create something beyond just a collection of music chosen from personal taste, but a document of an artist’s life.
Get your own – Open publication
Andrew Kötting
Born in Kent, 1959. Studied BA Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, London, 1984; MA in Mixed Media, Slade School of Art, London 1988. In 1989 collaborated with Leila McMillan in setting up BadBLoOd & siBYL studios in the French Pyrenees.
One of his first attempts at filmmaking, according to a Premiere profile, “involved inserting iron filings in the shape of religious icons into his penis and then drawing them out again”. For his degree film, a short called Klipperty Klop (1986), Kötting ran round and round a Gloucestershire field pretending to ride a horse.
Over the next ten years, Kötting directed a number of experimental shorts, often produced via the London Film-Makers Co-op.
Kötting’s first feature-length movie was Gallivant (1996). A “highly idiosyncratic” documentary, it records a journey the director took clockwise around the coast of Britain accompanied by his 85-year-old grandmother, Gladys, and his seven-year-old daughter Eden. Eden was born at Guy’s Hospital, London, in 1988 with a rare genetic disorder – Joubert Syndrome – causing cereberal vermis hypoplasia and several other neurological complications. The growing closeness between these two and the sense of impending mortality give the film its emotional underpinning. Gallivant was premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where it won the Channel 4 Best New Director prize.
Kötting’s second feature, This Filthy Earth (2001) was loosely adapted from Zola’s novel La terre, the film is set in a rural community somewhere and sometime in the north of England. Kötting summed up his aim as “trying to show the landscape in its full beauty and brutality”. Since then he has completed Mapping Perception (2002), a short ‘science, film and art project’ inspired by his daughter Eden. Kötting still sees himself as essentially a performance artist. “Even to this day,” he says, “I wouldn’t think of myself as a feature film-maker. I’m just making longer pieces of work.”
Most recently Kötting has returned to working within the gallery context see his In the Wake of a Deadad . www.deadad.info a piece of work which led to his being shortlisted for the Derek Jarman Award 2008.
Tracklisting
Ansuman Biswas “Klytaimnestra Washing Herself”
Jem Finer and Jeremy Banx “Tarred and Feathered Heart”
Dryden Goodwin “Extract from City Theme 01”
Dryden Goodwin “Extract from City Theme 02”
Alex Rodgers “An ‘Evil’ is a Hay Fork With 3 Prongs”
Band of Holy Joy “Cold Blows the Wind”
DM Bob and Jem Finer “She’s So Strange”
Christian Garcia “Air”
Gamine “A Good Hand” {Extract}
Sukhdev Sandhu and Scanner “Tomorrow Muffle”
John Irvine “Drunk and Running Around the Town”
John Roseveare and Andrew Kötting “Song For Eden”
Matt Hulse “Louyre”
NG Smith “Yes, My God – The Maurspechte At Work – 1989 Berlin Wall”
Max Richter “Fragment”
Run Wrake “What is that?”
Nicky Hamlyn “Braun 4729, Stereo”
Toby McMillan “Mapping Perception”
Andrew Kötting and Toby McMillan “Nucleus Ambiguous”
Tony Hill with Sally Goode “A Sense Of Place”
Joey Kötting “D…E___A…D”
Bell Helicopter “Enough’s Enough”
V.A. – The Risk Of Burns Exist – 10 Years Of…rhiz
CD rhiz 010
http://rhiz.org
the vienna based venue and bar rhiz was celebrating its 10th anniversary in may 2008 and released a compilation cd including live tracks from shows throughout the past 10 years. all tracks on this cd have been taken from the rhiz live recordings archive.
the tracks of fennesz, pita+jade, gustav, bulbul + maja osojnik, nitro mahalia + dieb13, the very pleasure (fritz ostermayer (fm4), oliver welter (naked lunch)) are exclusive on this cd, they haven’t been released anywhere else yet.
Tracklisting:
01 BLURT – Down In the Argentine
02 NITRO MAHALIA + DIEB13 – isbn 3-205-98507-9
03 PITA+JADE – pjrz080112
04 WIPEOUT – We Don’t Even Pay For This
05 GUSTAV – Hard Life
06 THE VERY PLEASURE – Live In Heaven
07 SLUTA LETA – Forest Of the Moon
08 SCHLAMMPEITZIGER – Prädigitaler Volksstuhlhänger
09 FENNESZ – Northern Gate
10 BRUCKMAYR – Did You Really Love Me?
11 VOLCANO THE BEAR- Did You Ever Feel Like Jesus?
12 FELIX KUBIN – Wir alle sind Qualle
13 ELECTRONICAT – Till I Die
14 BULBUL + MAJA OSOJNIK – Strange Fruit
15 BERNHARD FLEISCHMANN – Take Your Time (solo version)
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