Dense Promotion News

Hello & greetings from Berlin:

All tracks composed and produced by Durán Vázquez between April and May 2008 in Vigo/Portugal. Mastered by Miguel Carvalhais in August 2009. Cover photo by Pedro Tudela.

Field recordings: Winter 2007, Vigo: Demonstration. Summer 2007, Vigo: Building works; Vigo estuary: Boat travel; Cíes Islands: Boat docking, Seagulls colony, Restaurant; Orihuela: Factory at night. Autumn 2007, Vigo: Alarm. Xmas 2007, Vigo: Siren. Winter 2008, Vigo: Rain, Carnival at school. Spring 2008, Vigo: Alarm, Wind at terrace roof, Loudspeakers at school.

Thanks to Miguel Carvalhais and everybody at Crónica for their support and excellent work. Thanks to Alejandro Durán and Miguel A. García from Larraskito netlabel for their support and advices. Thanks to Berio Molina and Isaac Cordal from alg-a collective for their kind words and feedback. Thanks to everybody at Exp+LIMb0 for their support and friendship. Special thanks to Xesús Valle, Carlos Suárez, Paulo Raposo and Ricardo Reis for their friendship and advices. Most important, thanks to my family at San Amaro for always being there.

All the pieces in Home, Sweet Home use soundscapes as compositional resources that are able to testify a social, historical and geographical context, to which is implicit an emotional and aesthetic component. With electronic synthesis and manipulated recordings, Durán Vázquez developed each composition from the fusion of truth and fiction, employing a well-balanced number of elements that never fill the entire gamut of frequencies but that always develop harmonics that catch the ear of the listener. “Pictures From The Atlantic City Of Vigo” is an electroacoustic composition with several field recordings that are assembled as shots in a cinematographic montage. “Building” uses a series of succeeding recordings that follow from within each other, always finding some conceptual connection point in air, wind and pressure. “Cars” is composed from synthesized sound, developing an artificial soundscape that reminds the sounds of car horns in a city. In “Alarm, Anxiety, Eagerness” we can hear the young boys and girls of a grammar school over the carnival festivities. Their sounds picture an agitation that is characteristic of their age, but it is also the reflection of other social tensions, more complex and buried, that find a link in those other sounds of alarms and sirens. In “Boat Dockage” the studio sounds converge with field recordings of the piers at the Cíes islands, in the Vigo estuary. Finally, “Seagulls” is composed from the recordings of the colonies of birds at the Cíes islands. All the audio montage revolves around the dramatic moment when two adult seagulls attack a younger bird, breaking the peacefulness of the moment.

Written and performed by CHRISTIAN FENNESZ, JIM O’ROURKE & PETER REHBERG

Recorded and mixed at Studio GOK Sound, Tokyo, October 2009

Mastered at Piethopraxis, Köln, December 2009
Photos by Shunichiro Okada (Outside) & Ujin Matsuo (Inside)

That’s right, they’re back!

After a hiatus of almost 9 years the legendary trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke and Peter Rehberg have returned with a new studio album. Technically the first studio album as previous releases were edits of live performances.

They spent a week in Studio GOK Sound, Tokyo to lay down some stunning electronic works. Whereas previously the emphasis was on a chaotic blend of found samples mangled through their mobile computing systems to create a humorous oddball sound, In Stereo implements a more wider instrumental palette of analogue & digital synthesis, guitar, piano, bass and percussion. What they do maintain is the ability to make a near psychedelic audio blend where its impossible to determine who does what.

Released as CD digipack and deluxe gatefold double vinyl which features an extra slice of classic Fenn O’Berg magic beauty.

In Stereo …for you.

Fursaxa is TARA BURKE. Formerly a member of the Silbreeze band UN, Tara started her Fursaxa project in 1999 after UN disbanded. Since then Fursaxa has released six full length albums on the Acid Mothers Temple label, Ecstatic Peace, Time Lag, Eclipse, Last Visible Dog, and ATP. In addition there have been 3 self released CD-Rs and a CD on the her own Sylph recordings. In the summer of 2008 Fursaxa started recording her seventh full length record Mycorrhizae Realm at Hexham Head studio in Philadelphia. This studio recording is a first, as all of the previous releases have been recorded at home on a four track. In addition to recording, Fursaxa has played live music at venues in the US, UK, and Europe, touring with Bardo Pond, Black Forest/Black Sea, Christina Carter, Jack Rose, Spires That in The Sunset Rise, and Brightblack Morning Light, to name a few.

Over the last couple of years Fursaxa has been collaborating more and more with other musicians as well. Espers member Helena Espvall and Tara have a duo called Anahita, and Sharron Kraus and Tara have the duo Tau Emerald. And in September of 2006 Fursaxa became part of “The Valerie Project”, which was a live soundtrack for the 1970 Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Tara really enjoyed playing with these musicians and decided to engage Greg Weeks, Mary Lattimore, and Helena Espvall, all fellow Valerians, for her next album. Greg recorded the album at his studio, Mary played harp on 4 songs and also co-wrote 2 of the songs, and Helena played cello on 3 songs. It is an exercise in symbiosis.

keen-eyed readers of previous [ parvoart ] press releases will have noticed that amongst references to the label producing ambient, microsound, contemporary classical and dub techno sounds, one other genre was also referred to, that – until now – has been absent from our recordings, namely the much maligned classification ‘post-rock’ much ink has been spilled over the years on this subject, in the last few years most of it bad as its current purveyors seem to be producing something that is more rock than post, ten minute epics going from silence to supernova, eschewing vocals and adding a few strings. basically the name is used to avoid using the even more hideous title ‘progressive rock’ (which in fact most of it is). once upon a time it meant (paraphrasing journalist simon reynolds via wikipedia) “the use of “rock instrumentation” for non-rock purposes but using rhythms, harmonies, melodies, timbre, and chord progressions that are not usually found in rock tradition”. it is this definition that [ parvoart ] seeks to uphold.

this has a double significance for marc osterneier, the man behind parvo 010, the mini album percolate firstly he was a member of the shoegaze/post-rock (there it is!) band should, who released a pair of albums in the late nineties. secondly, and more relevantly to this release, the maryland based musician (who moonlights as a professor at the local university) is now creating – as he puts it – “experimental and ambient compositions often built from skeletal piano melodies and augmented with electronics and acoustic recordings” that evoke ur-post-rock legends labradford in their mi media naranja and el luxo so phase, or later period harold budd, (once he’d dropped the excessive reverb and chorus effects). marc’s description is entirely accurate – percolate is filled with understated melodies played on both acoustic and rhodes piano while the electronic elements – a skeletal beat here, a pad or sample there – are used sparingly to couch the piano, not overwhelm it. and at the emotional core of the mini-album – the tracks clockwork and scratchy these elements are joined by a third – airy, melancholic, twangy guitar worthy of marc nelson, ry cooder or loren connors. And although marc’s stated aim is to create something that “evokes a melancholic stillness”, the mini-album is not monochromatic – penultimate track continuity hints at ambient techno while closer persuasion ends on a wistful, blissful / somnambulistic note, that whilst not ecstatic, seems to hint that maybe life isn’t so bad after all.

[ parvoart ] is honoured to present this release, a beautifully cohesive collection of discreet and discrete tracks that expands on and compliments the palette of sounds associated with [ parvoart ] recordings.

marc is going to be a busy fellow in 2010 – percolate will be followed by another mini album on our good friends hibernate label and a full-length cd album on words on music, the label marc himself has been running with his brother since 1998.

Composed and produced by Marc Behrens in 2007-2008 in Bergen, Oslo and Frankfurt am Main. Basic material recorded in Gloppen, BErgen, on Utvær island, at Brenndalsbreen glacier and close to Røsskleivvatnet lake, Norway. Photograph taken at Fitje (Gloppen), Norway. Cover design by MC & MB.

Sleppet appears on CD by kind permission of Deutschlandradio Kultur. The work was completed in June 2008 for a world premiere broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur, curated by Götz Naleppa.

Sleppet originated from a sound art project in 2007, when six renowned artists – Natasha Barrett, Bjarne Kvinnsland, Steve Roden, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen and Marc Behrens – recorded sounds on a 10-day trip through the Norwegian Westlandet region and used the nature experience for a couple of sound installations and music pieces. Sleppet leads back to Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, for whom contemplation of nature and its influence on the artistic creation had high significance. Sleppet deals with the energy and the transformation processes of the early springtime.

In the frame of the composition, realized exclusively with concrete sound material, Behrens created several parentheses: the first part starts with an unaltered field recording of a clamouring flock of seagulls as exposition, from which this part is further developed. The final part ends with an equally unaltered recording of a springlike forest patch with various songbirds, a few kilometers up the hill in the fjord valley – in which seagulls can be discerned in the distance. Bird song can be heard at other points within the piece, as by-products of recording other sounds, as sound windows into spring.

The second parenthesis consists of the sonic intensity of drones used in the first and the last part – in the first part sounding like a string group alongside acute cymbals, in the last part sounding purely electronic, but always displaying a certain sonority. Such nearly tonal quality does not exist in the middle parts of the piece. Instead of that, the third, rather noisy parenthesis depicts movements of tilting, slipping off and falling, as culminations within the internal structure: a rubble avalanche (the loudest one in a sequence in part 2), and a collapsing part of a glacier (which closely missed Behrens when he recorded melt water drops), after or framed by audible melting.

Acoustic utterances of animal impatience, which belong to nordic spring like the melting of snow and ice, bring forward the composition: besides the clamour of seagulls there is the noise of impatient cattle, still chained inside their stable. The atmosphere of a sheep shed in the final part picks up the theme again, but is almost completely warped by noises from a hydroelectric powerplant and a ferry.
Phases of contraction (loud, dense) and expansion (quieter, sometimes permeable) define the structures of parts 4 and 5. The first three parts show a somewhat more consistent sound impression. At many points in parts 1-4, figure/ground and foreground/background relations are fathomed out.

The great movements throughout the course of the 41-minute piece put focus onto the rendering conscious of accumulating and discharging energies.

In the past thirteen years Mika Vainio has exhibited in some of the major art spaces in Europe, and he has collaborated with both a number of important artists and curators. Since his musical work has been in the focus of attention, his installations have never gained the broader recognition they deserve – without good reason. In the present book, a overview will give a clear outline of this segment of his oeuvre. Also his realized soundtracks for other artists, in the genres of video, film and dance are included. Each work is presented with a significant selection of images (installation views, visuals or sketches) and an explanatory text to deliver its basic idea. In the two essays Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Daniela Cascella – longtime companions and collaborators – delicately introduce Vainio’s conceptions to further enlight the reader’s understanding. On the enclosed CDs one can find a selection of tracks created for the respective installations and soundtracks.

catalogue 92 pages, colour/monochrome

texts daniel klemm, daniela cascella, carl michael von hausswolff

design heimatstuben, raster-noton
catalogue and 2 CD audio

release date: february 2010

CD1: Mika Vainio. Time Examined

CD2: Ø + noto. Mikro Makro

Back in 1999, on the forefront of the Japanese electronic/acoustic microsound scene, was the then two-piece live improvisation band Minamo (two more members were added in 2001 to make the current four-piece lineup). Their live concerts helped pioneer this hybrid of delicate and natural instrumentation with microscopic electronics and subtle digital processing bringing an organic richness to a genre that threatened to remain coldly digital. Fans of Minamo not lucky enough to see them create their music live have enjoyed their studio albums and collaborative releases which captured these performances and processed them into hypnotic drones and electro-acoustic soundscapes.

Durée, their last studio work since 2007’s collaboration with Tape, takes influence from the French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson’s concept of “pure durée,” an idea that one’s consciousness is a constant flow and not something that can be divided, reversed, or measured. Minamo used these ideas in creating their music, despite the contradiction of the time-stamped CD format, to try to subvert the ideas of compartmentalized “time” and “space.” With a strong sense of non-linearity and flow taken from Bergson’s ideas, Minamo have created a colorful, skittering wash of music, noise, and texture that embraces a sense of out-there-ness.

Minamo are YUICHIRO IWASHITA (acoustic guitar, percussion), NAMIKO SASAMOTO (keyboards, saxophone, percussion), KEIICHI SUGIMOTO (electric guitar, computer, nintendo, bells, recording/mixing) and TETSURO YASUNAGA (percussion, harmonium, analog synthesizer, pedals, small instruments). Like all of their music, Durée was recorded during long, live, improvisational sessions and later finessed and mixed in the studio for release. Their process this time around, however, was much more analog than before. While they have always incorporated guitars, computers and synthesizers into their work, Durée captured performances created with an abundance of acoustic and percussion instruments and analog synths, keeping digital effects to a minimum and preferring the dirty sound of guitar pedals. The process this time around came easier due to the natural musical communication built between the members over the past 10 years. Durée simply finds more playing and interaction than editing and programming as compared to previous releases and, according to Sugimoto, is finally the mark where Minamo wants to be, and a template for work to come.

Durée, which will be released worldwide on January 12th, 2010, has the distinction of launching the new design of the 12k digipack which subtly updates the austere white package to a more unified and understated play between simple type and photography.

high up – 900m above sea level – in the jura mountains of eastern france, the winters can be bitterly cold, and the snow lies on the forested slopes for months at a time. in an arrondissement that boasts a population density of 50 people per square km (remember, this is central europe), one imagines it is also very often very quiet. or put more accurately, the ‘silence’ reveals a wealth of sound that elsewhere would otherwise be masked by human activity. welcome to neve’s world.

centigrade is an appropriate title for neve’s debut mini-album on [ parvoart ], as (low) temperature is something that permeates throughout this release, which incidentally this time isn’t restricted to the audio realm: although the visual element of [ parvoart ] has always been as important as the aural one – with the cover art playing an important supporting role to the music contained therein – with parvo 011, we have taken this to a new level by starting the release not with an audio track but a flash gallery. 2°C, conceived by the artist provides an appropriate visual companion to the music.

neve describes centigrade as “sweet, moving sine tones, hazy sound waves, discreet music surrounding you… simultaneously inside and outside, close and far away, both accurate and blurry, like the sound of walking in the snow or the feeling you have while watching at the sun through the branches of a tree.” as far as centigrade is concerned, this translates into a richly detailed ambient excursion that reveals something new with each listen, not unlike the more restrained moments of pan sonic‘s aaltopiiri. release. when the artist refers to these pieces as “micro sound sculptures”, the immediate association is with the ice variety. hushed drones form a bed upon which various textures and half melodies – some from identifiable instruments, many not – float by, immersing and beguiling the listener – to quote the artist again “it is as much a time / space experience as a sonic experience as while playing i want to make the listener surrounded by sound, in a place where the time as no meaning.” indeed although several tracks are of only short duration (2 minutes) deep listening certainly makes this release seem longer than the timer on your cd player says it is.

as such, centigrade is in good company with previous [ parvoart ] releases from duncan ó ceallaigh and stephen spera or the [ parvo ] art compilation. a further slice of neve appears on the second [ parvoart ] compilation advent released concurrently with centigrade.

neve also records under the name sink with a more upfront IDM sound and releases on the arbouse, bee rec and fueradeserie labels.

This release comes out on the label empreintes DIGITALes based in Montréal. Established 1990, this label is widely considered as the world leader in electroacoustics. In 2010 it celebrates 20 years of activity and a catalogue of more than 100 titles.

DVD-Audio – Advanced Resolution: Surround 5.1 (MLP 44824) + Stereo (4424)

DVD-Video [NTSC, multi-region]: Surround 5.1 (DTS, Dolby Digital) + Stereo (4824)

DVD-ROM: MP3 (320 kbps), AAC (320 kbps) files

Mastering: Dominique Bassal

1-10 La rage (2004-05) 49m08s, Stefan Schneider, drums

11-15 Brûlé 12m21s

16-25 Incubation 12m30s

26-30 La rage [mouvement] 5m08s

Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (Montréal, 1975) collaborates on a variety of projects, manipulating sound and playing bass guitar. He teaches composition and improvisation at the University of Huddersfield (England, UK). He is a member of ars circa musicæ, and de type inconnu.

He launched his first acousmatic album, Alter ego, in 2006, the first album of ars circa musicæ in 2007, and the seventh album of [iks] in 2008, the contemporary jazz ensemble he directed for eleven years. He has a strong interest in mixed music, especially in its concert presentation. He also works on pop music projects in studio as producer and bassist, composes videomusics and develops sound design programs.

He spends his spare time (sic), pursuing his interests in reading and photography, and with his family. In addition, as founding member of the no-tv collective, he does not own a working television set.

The second full-length album from Rashomon (aka Guapo founding member MATT THOMPSON) follows 2007’s The Ruined Map (Film Music Volume 1). Inspired by John Krish’s scaremongering public information broadcast The Finishing Line (1977), the record is a sonic re-imagining of the film as a haunted meditation on the power of memory, drawing the listener into a claustrophobic sense of unease and mounting horror. An amalgam of library music, 1970s prog soundtracks, musique concrete and spectral jazz, the music of Rashomon is by turns creepy, terrifying, artless then all the way back to creepy again. This instalment in the ongoing Film Music series is a continuation and reassessment of the ideas expressed on The Ruined Map, applying filmic techniques to music to express the discontinuities of forward-thinking narrative cinema.

Instrumentation: Mellotron, MiniMoog, guitar, percussion, organ, Fender Rhodes, bass, vocal, sinewaves, bowed psaltery, zither, violin, vinyl.

Rashomon is the solo project of London-based Matt Thompson. Established in 2004, the Film Music project was instigated as an attempt to apply filmic processes to music – re-imagining the underlying psychic meanings of the films, rather than creating soundtracks per se. Mixing together prog rock, electronic noise, waltzes, East European folk, trad metal, drones, psych rock and free jazz, the music is similar in intention to soundtrack innovators such as Toru Takemitsu, Jonathan Bepler and Ennio Morricone.

In the summer of 2008, Rhys Chatham visited Bern, Switzerland for a Guitar Trio performance together with local musicians that the club had recruited for him. They rehearsed during the day and played a fabulous show that night. Rhys was blown away by the skills of the drummer and bass player and talked about plans to form a trio – half a year later he was back in Bern and introduced Julian Sartorius (drums) and Mago Flueck (bass) to new compositions he brought along. Beat Unternährer on trombone joined as guest musician.

Reto Mäder recorded many hours of these sessions on a multi-track machine. Over the next few months, Mäder listened to the recordings, separated the wheat from the chaff, selected the best parts and made pre-mixes. He even mixed different parts of the takes together and sent them to Rhys, who noted what he wanted to have changed or replaced. After more than 100 hours of work, a brand new Rhys Chatham album was finally mixed and mastered.

Some tracks are only slightly modified from the original recordings, with just a few effects added or small sections from other parts of the recording sessions mixed in. Other sections emerged purely in the mixing studio and were created from different parts of the sessions. And some sections were complemented by extra instrumental tracks played by Mäder himself.

The result is an album of new Rhys Chatham tracks with this band – something you haven’t heard since the Die Donnergötter recordings of the 80s.

Biographical notes:

Rhys Chatham emerged from the dazzling New York art and punk scene, but has lived in Paris for the last 20 years. In the 70s, he integrated a rock band line-up with contemporary minimalist composition. After his studies with Morton Subotnick and La Monte Young – one of the inventors of minimal music – he began to play regularly with Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine, two of the earliest exponents of drone music and, like Chatham, key players of American minimal music. Then a gig in May 1976 in Manhattan at CBGBs by The Ramones changed his life, and he began his long love affair with the electric guitar.

You will find Chatham’s name in history books as part of the so called No Wave scene. Besides people like Arto Lindsay, Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Bill Laswell, Arthur Russell or Brian Eno, he is reckoned as an important influence for bands like Sonic Youth or Godspeed! You Black Emperor, resulting in members of these bands taking part in his recent Guitar Trio revival performances.

Over the last twenty years Rhys Chatham has attracted interest with his stunning guitar orchestra live projects for 100, 200 and sometimes even 400 guitarists (in front of Sacré Coeur in Paris). He still performs his legendary 1977 composition Guitar Trio regularly all over the world with locally recruited musicians. The title of a 3 CD-boxset of 2008 says it all: Guitar Trio is My Life.

JULIAN SARTORIUS is one of the most sought-after improv jazz drummers in Switzerland and plays also often in rock and pop bands.

MAGO FLUECK is part of Bern’s Garage Rock scene and currently also plays in an aspiring Dub Electronica band. Besides that he regulary plays music for theatre productions.

BEAT UNTERNÄHRER has been a free-improv activist for many years and has taken part in many different jazz projects in Switzerland.

RETO MÄDER is one half of the Hinterzimmer Records management and musically active as RM74 and with his band projects Sum Of R and Ural Umbo

http://www.myspace.com/uralumbo

Companion EP to the s/t debut release. Utilizing source material from the original recordings, Latent Defects is an meeting of bleak atmospherics and wintry incantation.

Recorded in Bern & Chicago, 2009
Mix & Master by Reto Mäder at Hinterzimmer, Bern

1. Unknown Chemistry

2. Like A Supine Form

3. Deeply Afflicted

4. Behind The Curtains

5. Elastic Curve

6. Final Acousma

Total playing time: 33.50

Ural Umbo is RETO MÄDER (Sum Of R, RM74) and STEVEN HESS (On, Haptic, Pan American) electrifying internal music through a broad spectrum of instrumentation. Horns, piano, organ, harmonium, bass guitar, strings, electronics, drums and percussion guide the formation of black, subliminal melodies and slow feedback accompaniments. Each piece consumes the organic and dynamically balanced process that created it. With a nod to 1960s horror movie scoring Mäder and Hess displace sound from the veil of the supernatural and coax it back to our world.

Presented in a heavy black/white sleeve with white translucent paper overlay. Photograph by Rik Garrett.

Recorded in Bern & Chicago, 2007-2009

Mix & Master by Reto Mäder at Hinterzimmer, Bern

1. stephen spera ~ other places to be
2. will long ~ no.4, melting underfoot
3. neve ~ morgan
4. john r carslon ~ no time, no place
5. m ostermeier ~ sagewood
6. porzellan ~ frozen feet
7. r kitch ~ siskiyou
8. duncan ó ceallaigh ~ sa geimhreadh
9. alpe ~ tête nord des fours

anyone who has followed [ parvoart ]’s releases over the past 2 years will pretty much have nailed the label as the soundtrack of october to march – autumnal maybe, wintry for sure. and not wanting to be untrue to ourselves we present our second compilation advent, a meditation and celebration of all things wintry.

new york is a pretty cold place in winter as anyone who’s been there can tell you. resident of that city stephen spera opens advent with a suitably seasonal sound collage that proves he is the hitherto overlooked link in an axis linking william basinski to kenneth kirchner – not surprising as stephen is friends of both artists. for will long, one half of acclaimed duo celer it has been a devastating year, with the tragic death of his wife and musical partner dani banqet-long. we are honoured that will found the muse to record this brand new work – one of his first since dani’s passing. this piece has great very personal meaning, as the field recording that permeates the track is of will – alone – taking one of the dogs the couple own for a walk through fresh snow last winter. the paradox of being alone and not alone, past and yet present (as memories) fuels this bittersweet track. the entire release is dedicated to her memory.

someone who is also not unacquainted with snow is french artist neve, who lives high up in the jura mountains in eastern france. his track morgan is a deceptively fluid, complex recreation of his environment using the blend of improvisation, field recordings, loop manipulations, analogue hardware and DSP processing that made his mini album on [ parvoart ], centigrade, so captivating.

2009 was a difficult year for many people, and this is reflected in the personal mood of both john r carlson‘s and porzellan‘s tracks. interestingly both of utilize the same palette – piano and strings, but to differing ends – john’s no time no place, recorded as a stark live improvisation in the rehearsal halls of the schwerin state theatre foregrounds the piano over a solitary violin line, sounding almost like anton webern had he remained just within this side of conventional scales, whereas porzellan takes his baroque violin as the basis of frozen feet, electronically manipulating his lines into a fog of melancholy through which the piano tentatively emerges.

[ parvoart ] hasn’t featured very much guitar on previous releases, something we changed with m. ostermeier’s  percolate mini album – he returns with another slice of calm beauty with sagewood. the tremolo organ pad and airy guitar should please anyone with more than a pleasing interest in mark nelson‘s pan*american project. the serenity of snow is similarly reflected in fellow american and first time [ parvoart ] artist r.kitch‘s siskiyou – two interweaving guitar lines, bathed in tremolo and delay float in the space between the durutti column and loren connors.

[ parvoart ] tea boy / gopher (and label owner) duncan ó ceallaigh offers a sparing but evocative winter soundscape by means of a piano improvisation over a slowly evolving loop and sampled vinyl strings, which fades to allow french artist alpe to provide a breathtakingly beautiful update on brian eno’s another green world, the analog synths and e-bow guitar creating an uplifting and modestly epic (if anything can be as such) mood to close the set on an optimistic note.

the artwork for advent is integral to the release – to mark the end of the first series of [ parvoart ] releases, the cover takes a different form to its predecessors, and If it looks vaguely familiar, it is because it is a deliberate homage to joy division‘s elegiac atmosphere single. this, combined with the photo taken by dóc at a graveyard in a village near to [ parvoart ]’s  wismar HQ and the extensive use of white all seemed a dignified response to dani’s passing as well as being thematically appropriate.

as we hope you will agree, advent is a remarkably consistent and unified piece of work for a compilation album. in our humble opinion advent is an even stronger release than [ parvo ] art, and its themes of looking to the past and future, and of melancholy and hope make it a satisfying, fitting and very personal conclusion to [ parvoart ]’s ‘0’ series of releases. [ parvoart ] recordings is again very grateful to all the artists for their contributions and to you for listening.

This release comes out on the label empreintes DIGITALes based in Montréal. Established 1990, this label is widely considered as the world leader in electroacoustics. In 2010 it celebrates 20 years of activity and a catalogue of more than 100 titles.

DVD-Audio – Advanced Resolution: Surround 5.1 (MLP 4824) + Stereo (4824)

DVD-Video [NTSC, multi-region]: Surround 5.1 (Dolby Digital) + Stereo (4824)

1. Nicolas Bernier – Writing Machine (2005) 15m29s

2. Darren Copeland – Let Me Out (2006) 34m59s

3. Francis Dhomont / Franz Kafka – Brief an den Vater (2005-06) 17m03s

4. Louis Dufort – Hi_Res (2005) 13m37s

5. Gilles Gobeil – Ombres, espaces, silencesŠ (2005) 23m00s

6. Robert Normandeau – Palimpseste (2005, 06, 09) 14m53s

7. Barry Truax – The Shaman Ascending (2004-05) 15m45s

8. Hildegard Westerkamp / Rainer Maria Rilke, Norbert Ruebsaat – Für Dich – For You (2005) 20m56s

YANNIS KYRIAKIDES was born in Limassol, Cyprus in 1969 and as a result of the military occupation in 1974 emigrated with his family to Britain. After travelling for a year with his violin in the near east, learning traditional music, he returned to England to study musicology at York University, later being drawn by the music of Louis Andriessen to move to The Netherlands, with whom he studied under at the Hague Conservatory. At that time he also had the inspiring opportunity to collaborate as composer on three projects with the maverick conceptual sound artist Dick Raaijmaakers and the director Paul Koek. He currently lives in Amsterdam, with his wife and son.

As a composer he strives to create new forms and hybrids of media, synthesizing disparate sound sources and exploring spatial and temporal experience. He has focused in the majority of his work on ways of combining traditional performance practices with digital media. The sensory space where music happens is a particular preoccupation, and for this end a way of bypassing the conventional structures of how music is presented is sought. The question as to what music is actually communicating is also a recurring theme in his work and he is often drawn to the relation between emotion and language and how that defines our experience of music.

He regularly composes works for ensembles such as ASKO (NL), Icebreaker (UK), Ensemble Integrales (D), and MAE (NL) , of which he is the artistic director. Other collaborations include MusikFabrik (D), Orkest de Volharding (NL), Nozferatu (UK), Palmos (Gr), London Sinfonietta (UK), LOOS (NL), Percussion Group Den Haag (NL), Zephyr Quartet (NL), Esprit Ensemble (CA), Nsemble (RU), Ensemble Cantus (Cr), and others. As an improviser he is involved in the Amsterdam electronic improv scene, he has a regular duo with Andy Moor (the Ex) called Red v Green, and is a member of the dance-music improvisation group Magpie Music Dance.

In September 2000 he won the Gaudeamus composition prize for his composition a conSPIracy cantata – which was regarded by The Wire magazine as ‘a modern classic in the making’. Together with Andy Moor and Isabelle Vigier he founded and runs the CD label for innovative new electronic music, UNSOUNDS. Current teaching activities include ‘visiting lecturer’ at Birmingham Conservatory (UK) and ‘composer in residence’ at HKU, Utrecht School of the Arts (NL).

We are not responsible for the contents of external internet sites.

Thanks for reading & best wishes

Dense Promotion
http://www.dense.de

http://www.myspace.com/densepr