PERFORMERS Robert Black ... bass David Cossin ... percussion Felix Fan ... cello Christine Southworth ... voice Philippa Thompson ... voice Eddie Whalen ... guitar Evan Ziporyn ... keyboards & clarinets Van de Graaff Generator and Tesla Coils operated by Jeannine Trezvant.
- "The sound of electricity at its rawest and most majestic - sparks, booms, lightning bolts, sizzling corona and low hums from giant motors - intermingle with the sounds of cello, bass, guitar, piano, clarinets, percussion and voice. Christine Southworth created Zap! in 2004 to explore these possibilities, using the Boston Museum of Science's Theater of Electricity as her venue and instrument. Its centerpiece - MIT Professor Robert Van de Graaff's eponymous Generator, was born in 1931 as one of the world's largest atom smashers. It is still the largest of its kind in the world, standing forty-feet tall and producing up to 1.5 million volts of electricity. Zap!, a composition in seven parts, takes the sounds of this machine, two large Tesla Coils, and a Jacob's Ladder, merged with rock rhythms and sweet melodies performed by Robert Black, David Cossin, Felix Fan, Philippa Thompson, Eddie Whalen, & Evan Ziporyn. The resulting music is ... electrifying!"
- "Christine Southworth (b. 1978) is a composer and video artist based in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and musics from cultures around the world, her music employs sounds from man and nature, from Van de Graaff Generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data from volcanoes.
Southworth received a B.S. from MIT in 2002 in mathematics and an M.A. in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition from Brown University in 2006. In 2003 she co-foundedEnsemble Robot, a collaborative of artists and engineers that design and build musical robots. She is the general manager of the MIT-based Gamelan Galak Tika, and has composed several pieces for the group and performed at venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, EMPAC, the Cleveland Museum of Art, several Bang on a Can Marathons, and the Bali International Arts Festival. In 2010, she helped design Gamelan Elektrika for her piece Supercollider, which was premiered at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival with the Kronos Quartet. In addition to gamelan, she studies bagpipe, playing both the Galician Gaita and the Great Highland Bagpipe.
- "Both musicians have been active in the scene of improvised and experimental music for twenty years, both have been astounding their audiences with their intricately developed playing manners. Now they joined their forces on this album.
eRikm, based in Marseille, started his musicial activities as a virtuoso turntablist in early 90s, gradually shifting his focus to more abstract music, sometimes abandoning turntables or substituting them with minidiscs or CD-turntables. His recent record output includes collaborations with Catherine Jauniaux, Norbert Möslang, Michel Doneda, Jerome Noetinger, dieb13, as well as solo albums Variations Opportunistes, Sixpériodes, Stème, Lux Paylettes, Transfall and the most recent Select Archive. Ecotone is his third project for Mikroton, following Stodgy and Mal Des Ardents / Pantoneon.
Martin Brandlmayr, from Vienna, is known for his inhuman capability of overprecise percussion playing which at the same time retain a deep humanity and produce a beautiful sound. He’s the driving force behind the superb trio Radian, who have released records on Mego and Thrill Jockey, the improvising trio Trapist with bassist Joe Williamson and Martin Siewert, the longrunning legendary quartet Polwechsel (along with Werner Dafeldecker, Michael Moser and Burkhard Beins), and other projects like Autistic Daughters (with Dean Roberts and Werner Dafeldecker) and Kapital Band 1 (with Nicholas Bussmann). Ecotone is his second project for Mikroton, following El Infierno Musical quintet’s album with Christof Kurzmann, Ken Vandermark, Eva Reiter and Clayton Thomas.
Opening with an Apocalypse — a dis-covering where everything is assembled anew, where a snare drum gets dismembered. The drums instantly reanimate into a new body without organs, opening a breach, opening a space. The drummer lifts his sticks and hits; a vertical landscape emerges inbetween, unidentified as it first breaks into the ears, as some atmospheric depression: variations in grain, tracing, electronic mass — disparate energy where some new chemistry arises, all between skin and memory. Each impact, each collapsing, each crumbling of the surface sets anew the fiction of the encounter, of the game; devoid of catharsis, but definitely vital."
Drawn Only Once represents the New Amsterdam debut for accomplished duo Due East (Erin Lesser, flute; Greg Beyer, percussion) and innovative new music composer John Supko. The album contains two pieces, Littoral, written for the duo, andThis window makes me feel, both coupled with cutting-edge videography byKristine Marx and Don Sheehy, respectively. The pieces explore, among other things, Supko’s interest in field recordings, and computer-generated randomness of harmonies and melodic material. The multimedia pieces are presented in both CD and 5.1 surround sound DVD formats.
-"Littoral melds the lustrous timbres of flute, electronics, and an impressive array of percussion with texts by contemporary Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom and 16th Century English writer Richard Hakluyt. Supko calls Littoral “music of shifting terrains, each with its distinct sense of time and color and space… more alluring than any destination plotted on a timetable.” These impressions are realized by flute alto flute, piccolo, an array of unorthodox percussion instruments, and synthesized field recordings of the sea, Supko’s voice, and the voice of a poet. Marx’s entrancing video accompanies the piece with rapidly changing geometric forms superimposed over transient oceanic landscapes. This window makes me feelis based on Robert Fitterman’s brilliant poem of the same title, which makes use of completions of the poem’s title based on hundreds of Google searches, chronicling a vast range of humane poetic sensibilities. The work includes pre-recorded mezzo-soprano (Hai-Ting Chinn), keyboards (David Broome), and other electronics. Sheehy’s video accompaniment captures the hysteria of the congested cityscape with short clips clandestinely captured on the streets of New York that visually amplifies the pre-recorded poetic whispers of Fitterman’s poem."
- "is a composer of contemporary classical and electronic music, with a particular interest in computer-generated randomness. He claims to seek “constant variety while maintaining constant identity.” He holds music degrees from Indiana University and Princeton University, and is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the Fulbright, the BMI Student Composer Award, and two ASCAP/Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and a Meet the Composer Grant. Supko has written music for the Ciompi Quartet, FLUX Quartet, and NewAm recording ensembles Due East and Newspeak. He is currently an associate professor at Duke University."
MIA ZABELKA is a sound artist, violinist and vocalist from Vienna, who creates hauntingly sensual music and is regarded as one of the leading 21st century proponents of what is known as experimental violin music.
MIA ZABELKA’s projects show her exceptional mastery and a deep understanding of the violin, be it acoustic or electric, solo or as part of a collective.
In her hands the boundaries of this instrument fade and paths to uncharted sonic territory open, as she bends genres, the conventional use of electronics and the human voice to expand the spectrum for her to paint her musical language in.
Live in concert MIA ZABELKA is an electrifying performer. In any context, she has the uncanny knack of commanding the stage and always being the centre of an audience's attention, achieved by the intensity and focus of her performances, rather than any gratuitous showmanship.
At the age of seven, MIA ZABELKA discovered the violin. She was eager to find out how this musical object could produce interesting sounds when touched with a wooded stick strung with horsehair. Zabelka was already able to play works by the fabled virtuoso Nicolo Paganini in her first year of instruction on the instrument and at 12 was the youngest member of the Austrian Youth Orchestra.
During her classical training with Alexander Arenkov, an assistant of David Oistrach, at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, she already began to play with various jazz and rock bands.
With her inborn curiosity for the new and all that was unexpected MIA ZABELKA then turned to the study of electroacoustic music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna , creating a foundation on the basis of which she continues to construct and explore the limits of sound and music in a language entirely her own.
She frames her musical language on the violin from her body’s gestures, i.e. physical movement is spontaneously translated into sound. She also transfers this access to the improvisation with her voice. The violin and her own voice and body are transformed in the process into sound bodies which are at once organic and primal, screaming, lyrical, composed and explosive. The sound of MIA ZABELKA has always been both instinctive and fuelled by a love of melody and microtonality. Zabelka is clearly a woman who knows her instrument – quite literally – inside out, and she’s as unafraid of approaching it with a fresh sensibility and an impassioned commitment to exploration as she is capable of drawing upon an unusually broad range of influences. Zabelka loves to make journeys into the unknown and unexpected sonic territories.
Her openness to the most varied musical directions and eclectic artistic influences have resulted in collaborations with numerous prominent international artists including John Zorn, David Moss, Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Dälek, Audrey Chen, Maria Chavez, Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, Lydia Lunch and Electric Indigo among many others. .
She has been the artistic director of phonofemme Vienna, an international festival of female experimental music and sound art, since 2009.
In 2007 MIA ZABELKA founded the Klanghaus, a center for sound and interdisciplinary art at her house in southern Styria/Austria. The Klanghaus is a meeting point for international and local artists and hosts the Klang.Zeit festival four times a year.
Recent concerts and performances at many international festivals and venues, such as Störung Festival/Barcelona, Donaufestival/Krems, MADE Festival/Umea, Wien Modern Festival/Vienna, Ring Ring Festival/Belgrade, Sajeta Festival/Tolmin, RaRa Festival/Siracusa, Mia Festival/Lisbon, All Frontiers Festival/Gradisca d'Isonzo, CoC Art Festival/Torun, Long Arms Festival/Moscow, VNM Festival/Graz, Mopomoso/London, Sonic Circuits Festival/Washington DC, Issue Project Room/New York, Cafe Oto/London, Nuit d'Hiver Festival/Marseille, strefa monotype/Warsaw, AAVE Festival/Helsinki, Avantgarde Festival/Schiphorst, Henie Onstad Museum/Oslo, Oorsprong Curator Series/Amsterdam, Festival Musique Actuelle/Victoriaville, Audiovisiva Festival/Milano, Flussi Festial/ Italy, Incubate Festival/ the Netherlands, among others.
MIA ZABELKA currently plays solo and collaborates in duos with Audrey Lauro, Gino Robair, Philippe Petit, Sofia Härdig and Zahra Mani, with video artist Mia Makela, in trios with Medusa’s Bed feat. Lydia Lunch/Zahra Mani, Astma feat. Olga Nosova/Alexei Borisov, TRIO Mia Zabelka/ Nikola Hein/ Sebastian Gramms, TRIO BLURB feat. John Russell/Maggie Nicols/Mia Zabelka, PHON feat. Andreas Willers/Meinrad Kneer/Mia Zabelka and Quartet feat. George Headow, Albert van Veenendaal and Raoul van der Weide.
She is currently working on her new solo album “M/2”, which will be released in 2016, as well as on albums in duets with Philippe Petit, Audrey Lauro and Asferico.
From 2015 and freshly discovered, featuring Maya Beiser and composed by Paola Prestini, a new composer to me. - An album that definitely would have been on my 2015 list. (recommended to @RonanM if you're still lurking)
. . ."Paola Prestini’s newest video album,"Labyrinth," is composed of two half-hour long solo works for strings and electronics. The first work, House of Solitude, is performed by violinist Cornelius Dufallo and features Keith McMillen’s “K-Bow,” a bow that has built-in electronic sensors to help guide live electronics. Video art for House of Solitude is by Carmen Kordas. The second work on the album, Room No. 35, is performed by cellist Maya Beiser. . . ."
- "Both pieces in this set explore a wide variety of styles, jumping between rhapsodic, neo-classical and motor driven pop-like sections. Dufallo and Beiser both do a formidable job of keeping up with the genre leaps, adjusting their playing to fit each stylized section. Prestini takes the listener on an almost schizophrenic journey that traverses a wide spectrum of emotion and energy. . . ."
Part One, House of Solitude, is written for violinist Cornelius Dufallo and occurs in an installation-like setting on stage. Three scrim walls are used to project video by Carmen Kordas, who will create a three-dimensional hologram to represent the solo performer’s thoughts including solitude, extreme communication and connectivity, and the ultimate search for one’s self. . . . ."
Part Two, Room No. 35, created by Paola Prestini, Maya Beiser, Erika Harrsch and Michael McQuilken, is a sculptural multimedia experience inspired by Anais Nin’s surrealist novella “The House of Incest” and features the preeminent cellist Maya Beiser. . . ."
Paola Prestini’s music takes the listener on a journey through different life experiences, creating an aural and visual map of the different countries and cultures that have inspired her. These travels sonically reflect the impact that collective identities, cultures and values have when they meet and dissolve in a person whose artistic roots are the collective sum of many parts.
This culminates in a romantic vision told in the form of calls to prayer, spirituals, narrations, and electronic resonances that come together with visuals to create Prestini’s unique voice.
As the Founding Artistic Director of VisionIntoArt, a NY-based interdisciplinary arts company, I have spearheaded, collaborated on and produced numerous new music projects and events for the past ten years. This work has taught me about the balance of respecting others’ ideas, of letting certain ideas go, and how to differentiate between them so as not to compromise artistic integrity. My love in the artistic and executive process is bringing disparate voices together, and allowing the synergy that emerges to grow. I have brought this inclusive vision to all of my curating, with a focus on new music, and interdisciplinary art. I am unswayed by trends and yet excited by all voices; I strive to stay ahead of the curve, and I am tremendously interested in nurturing new talent. I founded my nonprofit, VisionIntoArt, with the belief that artists can provide opportunities for other artists, and that the skills we have as creators can be translated into producing and directing talent.
I am also currently the Creative Director for National Sawdust, a Brooklyn based venue slated to open in 2015. Bringing this venue to life has brought me great joy, and it’s performances have landed on New York Magazine’s Best of the Year list, and our programs partnerships have been thrilling.
I am a composer, a producer, and a teacher. My influences range from Zorn (his music, his life) and Glass, to Beethoven, Palestrina, and folk music. I have dedicated the past fifteen years to collaborating, and I have learned that collaboration can be an arduous process, and it is the balance of respecting people’s ideas, how to let certain ideas go, (and how to know which ones you will not let go) that allows you not to compromise your artistic integrity. Collaboration is an art in and of itself that can only be learned by doing it, making the necessary mistakes. My role in the process is my love of bringing disparate voices together, and seeing what emerges from the synergy. I continue to evolve because I see how different people ingest these new experiences-their rawness to the experience often enlightening certain parts of the collaborative process that were not clear to me before. Each artist’s passion for their ideas reminds me that redefining the boundaries in collaboration is a lifelong process and is absolutely connected to the project at hand, and that even in the hardest collaborative processes, ones identity is not lost, only rediscovered and reaffirmed.
Literature has played a huge role in my writing-it has always been my first collaborator; I love painting music on these canvases-the ideas on the page invite me to play and to think. It began with Neruda and Borges at a very young age, and now, I am actively reading the blog of astrophysicist Mario Livio, pouring into Jung’s Red Book, and am rediscovering the epic, Gilgamesh and the poetry of Brenda Shaughnessy.
When I write, after an initial process of often puzzling mechanical work (finding the language I want to use, and the outside sources that will be incorporated), I am in a state of flow: I often cannot remember the details of writing. It is as if all the years of experience come together to transport me through the process of expressing the cumulative inspirational sources into the musical concept at hand. These moments pay for all the hard work! They are the best moments of my musical life, and even though each musical project has a different entry point, that moment of flow occurs in each experience.
Freshly discovered because of the brilliant Jasmine Guffond:
-
- "A long awaited release from Sydney's Minit culminates in a masterpiece collection of spectral drone music.
With their unhierarchical approach to the use of 'found' sound, a
fuzzed out electric bass line sits neatly alongside field recordings of
atmospheric hum - their individual sound qualities overriding their
semiotic value, so that each sound, representing a layer, shimmers and
swells within Minit's evolving, sonic habitat.
Now Right Here, the title track as well as the album, is about being
caught in the moment. From fragile harmonic and melodic intonations to
towering, ecstatic drones and electrical disturbances this album
captures a balance betwen noise and harmony, excitation and calmness,
distance and intimacy - drawing you into a hypnotic, psychedelic
sound-world that belongs uniquely to Minit. Now Right Here is a fragile,
immersive and emotional album."
- "Minit is Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly formed in Sydney in 1997.
They use electronic, digital, sampling and mixing technologies to
manipulate recorded and "found" sound and to transcend conventional
instrumental approaches to musical composition.
Minit's debut full-length cd ‘music’ on the Sigma Editions label in
1999 saw them tour throughout Europe the same year alongside Vladislav
Delay, Parmentier and D. Haines. In 2000, they released the ‘cc/bb’ lp
on Sigma Editions and toured Europe again with a Sigma staple of
artists. Minit have released a 7" on Cologne-based label Tonschacht,
and individual works on various compilations including Motion: Movements
in Australian Sound on Sydney-based label Preservation.
Guffond and Tilly also collaborate on soundtracks for film and
surround sound design projects for gallery and museum-based
installation. Previous to Minit, Guffond was a member of improvised
ambient electronic duo Hiss who independently released a CD in 1996.
She also played bass in the electronic/rock group Alternahunk recording
and releasing a CD on the Dual Plover label in 1997. Tilly's musical
career began in New Zealand in 1990 with the rock group The Garbage
& The Flowers releasing a single on US label Twisted Village in
1991, a full-length album on US label The Now Sound in 1997 and several
songs on NZ and UK compilations before Tilly moved to Sydney in 1993 to
pursue interests in sound art and installation."
Just to note there was a bunch of new stuff on Clean Feed at eMusic first thing this morning (ie, probably posted yesterday) - The first 8 or 9 on this list sorted by release date. I know nothing about any of them, except that Clean Feed is always worth checking out. Can these all really be "new releases"?
Since 1960 the composer Arne Nordheim has enchanted
both musicians and audience with a unique soundscape. His music may be
considered a source to the later Nordic Sound of electronica. Today's
DJs might not willingly announce "Grandfather taught me this", but
that's actually the case!
Nordheim's music is recently re-vitalized by publications like Dodeka and Electric by the renowned Norwegian label Rune Grammofon, and Nordheim Transformed
by Biosphere / Deathprod. CIKADA DUO and 2L now bring you the world
premiere recording in surround sound, as originally intended by the
composer.
CIKADA DUO is Kenneth Karlsson (piano/synthesizer)
and Bjørn Rabben (percussion). They are joined by Åke Parmerud
(elektronics) and Elisabeth Holmertz (soprano) in this production of
Arne Nordheim's music. Take the stand within the percussion and let
yourself be embraced by electronica, vocal and synthesizers in an
extreme surround sound recording, produced by the GRAMMY-nominated
Lindberg Lyd
- has been one of the most
conspicuous figures in the musical landscape of Scandinavia during the
past fifty years, and is recognized as a very successful pathfinder. He
has written works in most genres, inspired by the general European
search for new sonorities within the traditional body of instruments.
Nordheim was absorbed by the electro-acoustic medium for a period,
during which purely electronic works alternate with soundscapes which
electrophonic sounds are opposed to percussion or other acoustic
instruments. In 1997 Arne Nordheim was elected honorary member of the
International Society for Contemporary Music. Both Nordheim and CIKADA
have been awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize in respectively 1968
and 2005.
The CIKADA DUO has a desire to unite fresh
interpretations of existing works with new pieces written specially for
them; an ambition to combine an acoustic sound world with the best that
the electroacoustic has to offer. The Oslo-based Cikada Ensemble was
founded in 1989 and is considered one of Europe's leading contemporary
music groups. The ensemble consists of ten musicians, and under the
Cikada banner, Cikada Duo is one out of three autonomous formations. In
2005 The duo has worked with many composers including James Dillon,
Rolf Wallin, Richard Barrett, Carola Bauckholt, Bent Sørensen, Arne
Nordheim, Sven-David Sandström, Jon Balke, James Clarke and Kevin
Volans. They have over the years built up an extensive repertoire of
Italian works by composers such as Giacinto Scelsi, Luigi Nono, Luciano
Berio and Luigi Dallapiccola
La vie en prose is Michel Chion's first musical work composed in the 2000s.
Thanks to musique concrète ways and means, it fulfills the composer's childhood dream of composing a Symphony of Energy
in four movements of sharp contrasts. There’s no narrative in this one
hour and a half long Symphony, but a cast of characters, some vocal,
instrumental themes and sounds that circulate, disappear, pop up,
stretch, decline and lose themselves in time.
This work features analog and digital sounds that have been carefully collected for 40 years.
"Peppered
with deadpan allusions to genre classics and pop music, humorous
asides, some bold juxtapositions and often absurd shifts in register,
and unexpected detours, (...) [La vie en prose] sustains its duration
admirably, with expert control of pacing and momentum, interweaving a
celebration of the sonic fortuities of everyday life with a surgical
investigation of the perceptual process of hearing." The Wire #327, Nick Cain, May 2011
Recordings from Gypsy villages in Ukraine, Moldavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria
Exile and movement are
central to the Roma identity. Their history is written in an universal
language: music. Played and sung, handed down spontaneously from
generation after generation, it ignores national borders.
The Soundwalk Collective
followed the course of the Danube and of the music of the Roma, with its
combination of Eastern and Western influences, from the Black Sea Delta
to the river's source in Germany. From ghettos to mahale, on the trail
of the Sons of the Wind, recording heart-rending songs, mournful
violins, tinkling cimbaloms, the gutsy tones of brass bands.
Sounds accompanied by the
words of the Elders, the rustling of long skirts, the wind in the delta
plain, and, always in the background, the rumbling of the river. This is
the origin of the sound poem Sons of the Wind.
The Soundwalk Collective is
an international art collective based in Berlin & New York City.
Since 2000 they have been sonic nomads, embarking on never ending
journeys from the desolate land of Bessarabia to the desert of Rub al
Khali. By exploring and documenting the world around us through its
sounds, the Collective abstracts and re- composes narrative sound pieces
through fragments of reality to form distinct audible journeys.
The Collective's live
performances are diverse and often site and venue specific. They use a
combination of custom-cut vinyl records with multiple turntables, tape
machines, laptop computers or custom designed modular systems. Although
sound and music are the primary forces in the live setting, projection
of video specific to each performance piece creates an environment that
is unescapable and unique. Live performances are also transformed into
temporary or permanent installations.
Aesthetic refinement and
conceptual narrative is paired with a performative impulse, making
Soundwalk Collective's shows intimate and powerful. The Collective's
recent installations and performances were shown at Centre Georges
Pompidou (Paris); New Museum (New York); National Museum of Singapore
NMS; ARMA 17 (Moscow); Berghain Panoramabar (Berlin); MUDAM
(Luxembourg); Florence Gould Hall (New York); CTM Festival 2013 &
2014 (Berlin) just to name a few.
Just back from holiday travels, so 'scuse if mentioned before but worth noting that Tzadik seems to have returned to eMusic, after years of absence. I don't know much about this label, so will be interested to hear from those who do! Dave S. shares some thoughts in this messboard thread
Just back from holiday travels, so 'scuse if mentioned before but worth noting that Tzadik seems to have returned to eMusic, after years of absence. I don't know much about this label, so will be interested to hear from those who do! Dave S. shares some thoughts in this messboard thread
Jay ! ! ! Wow ! ! ! and all the rest of it ! . . . From the drop:
Four startling studio compositions by an
extraordinary young French composer. Born in 1980, Pierre Yves-Macé
began as an improviser, played in jazz-rock prog bands, studied
classically, accompanied dance classes and has composed electronic music
for theater, dance and the martial arts. Faux-Jumeaux, his first CD
release, brings the aesthetics of French romanticism into a head-on
collision with sampling technology, electro-acoustics and minimalism. A
lyrical, adventurous mix of styles and sounds, this is an astounding
debut recording by a strange and wonderful new musical mind.
"Tzadik....there's goes a booster pack." ...And a bit!!! I've just finished 1 booster and now this. Not sure the label was ever available in the UK previously. Hell I had to visit the Downtown Music Gallery! Many thanks for the heads up Doofy. My wife's divorce lawyer will be writing to you shortly.
Mondo Fluido collects two major compositions from Christina Kubisch
which, until now, have been unreleased. Extensive liner notes &
photographs detail the origins of the work. Heavy drones and deep
emotions run through these newly discovered pieces.
"In 1980 I
had the possibility to make some professional recordings on an eight
track tape in an Italian sound studio for the sound track of the film
"Liquid movie" by Fabrizio Plessi. Some months after having finished the
sound track I listened to the material again and suddenly felt the
desire to make a new piece out of the material, which would be free of
the limitations of a cinematic sound track. I made several new
downmixes of the eight track tape and treated some of the sounds with a
speed control device, one of the few tools which I had available in my
own studio at that time. The sound sources are flute (alto and bass
flute) played by myself, the sounds of swinging plastic tubes in the
air, the recordings of the windscreen wiper ("tergicristallo") of my old
car, the sampled sounds of glass and of my own breathing. Just pure
instrumental sounds and some "field recordings", no electronics.The
piece is a quiet piece of ambient music, an acoustic landscape,
unspectacular and yet intense. I called it "fluido", which is the
Italian word for liquid or fluid. Then I forgot about it. The tape
was in my archive all these years with the remark Mono Fluido on the
spine. Only recently I decided to digitize it, despite the mono tag, and
I listened to it again. Eventually I thought the piece deserved to be
published after almost 30 years. Although mono is kind of a dinosaur
in the world of multichannel fiction I like the simplicity and clarity
of it and I hope the listener might share this experience." - Christina Kubisch
- "Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists.
Trained as a composer, she studied painting, music (flute and
composition) and electronics in Hamburg, Graz, Zürich and Milano, where
she graduated. Her work can be described as the “synthesis of arts” -
the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual
arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between
material and form on the other. Kubisch is best known for artistically
and innovatively using techniques such as magnetic induction and
ultraviolet light to create and realise her work.Since the 1970’s
Kubisch has been experimenting with electromagnetic induction and was
one of the first to use this method for creating sound installations.
Some of her most well know works include the Electrical Walks series,
where audience wear magnetic headphones, specially designed by Kubisch,
with built-in coils that respond to electrical fields in the
environment. Tapping into the electrical fields that result from light
systems, anti-theft security devices, surveillance cameras, cell phones,
computers, antennae, automated teller machines and other electric
devices, she uses these visible sources to create unique and new sensory
environmental experiences.
In the mid-1980s, Kubisch began to
incorporate light as a compositional tool in many works, for example in
the installation Skylines at the documenta 8, Kassel; the underground
installation Klang Fluß Licht Quelle on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and
more recently Licht Himmel a permanent light sound installation at
Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany. Since 2003 Kubisch has begun to work
again as a performer and collaborates with various musicians and
dancers, one of whom is Lotta Melin, with whom she will be
co-facilitating the Lisbon workshop. An internationally recognised
artist, Kubisch has shown work at major international exhibitions and
festivals (Venice Benniale, documenta 8, Kassel, Ars Electronica, Linz,
Sydney Benniale, Sonar, Barcelona and Sonic Boom, London) performing
around the world she has received numerous grants and awards and her
music has been realised on various labels such as Cramps Records and
Edition RZ. Kubisch has been visiting professor in Maastricht, Paris and
Berlin and since 1994, is currently the professor for sound art at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Saarbrücken, Germany."
For bass flute, harp, cymbalum, cello and four-track tape
commissioned by Festival d’Automne à Paris 2012 Stephanie Chatet: Flute
Nicolas Carpentier: Cello
Esther Davoust: Harp
Simon Drappier: Double Bass
Maxime Echardour: Cimbalom
Camille Giuglaris: Cello
Cédric Jullion: Bass Flute
Pierre-Yves Macé: Electronics, Piano, Samples, Treatments, Studio Processing
Augustin Muller: Vibraphone
Rafaëlle Rinaudo: Harp
- "Commissioned by the Festival d’Automne à Paris 2012, Segments et Apostilles was written for the wonderful players of l’Instant donné. “Apostille” (apostil) means: what is appended on a previous text, in the form of a footnote, of a marginal note. Sometimes, what is said there, while being seemingly hidden, happens to be at least as important as what appears in the body of the text. In my composition, where electronics “footnotes” are continually appended on a musical text made of instrumental fragments, one is unable to say which part is leading and which is following the other. If not the sound, at least the composing method has to do with a previous piece of mine, Circulations (2003-2005): I first wrote drafts for each instrument, then recorded them separately, composed a tape part out of the sounds, on which finally the instruments were invited to play. Here the (almost) constant clicking of electronics acts like an index of how it was all made (cutting, moving, sequencing sonic blocks), as well as it brings the typical sound and "guests" of experimental electronic music into the context of written chamber music. The electronic is nothing here but an atmosphere or a background texture: it is an integral part of the musical discourse, each note of which being notated on the score. As the composition took shape, both “segment” and “apostille” became the names I gave to two different types of material: the first consisting in a sharp dialogue between the whole ensemble and electronics, and the second, duets associating an instrument to the “ghost” of another one."
- "Visions' is the title of this artist.cd. Visions in which the past and
the future merge, are the subject of the 'Apokalyptische Vision 2000 für
Chor, Sprecher und elektronische Klänge' [Apocalyptic Vision 2000 for
choir, narrator and electronic sounds] the texts of which have been
taken from the Book of Revelations in the New Testament. This work was
created at the suggestion of R. Kreile, cantor of the Dresdner
Kreuzchor, who gave the first performance of this work with his
choristers with great devotion. 'Lumière cendrée' has to be considered
in an intuitive sense, an electronic composition the title of which
means 'Reflection of the light of the Earth on the Moon'. Metallic
sounds and singing voices (Tibetan monk/boy's voice) form the basis of a
multi-layered musical discourse. The work was commissioned by the
Festival Synthèse 2002 Bourges. The other two compositions bridge the
gap between non-European countries. 'Kyoto Bells', a work of light
sounds, full of resonance, the transparency of which possesses a
strongly spiritual character, was created for the 1200th anniversary of
the city of Kyoto. Characterized by an illusionary character, 'Trance or
Lamento di Bali' is a work in which I used original samples of a
gamelan that I had recorded during my study trip through Java and Bali
and that are a testimony of a living culture full of subtlety and
vitality."
Comments
Robert Black ... bass
David Cossin ... percussion
Felix Fan ... cello
Christine Southworth ... voice
Philippa Thompson ... voice
Eddie Whalen ... guitar
Evan Ziporyn ... keyboards & clarinets
Van de Graaff Generator and Tesla Coils operated by Jeannine Trezvant.
Christine Southworth created Zap! in 2004 to explore these possibilities, using the Boston Museum of Science's Theater of Electricity as her venue and instrument. Its centerpiece - MIT Professor Robert Van de Graaff's eponymous Generator, was born in 1931 as one of the world's largest atom smashers. It is still the largest of its kind in the world, standing forty-feet tall and producing up to 1.5 million volts of electricity.
Zap!, a composition in seven parts, takes the sounds of this machine, two large Tesla Coils, and a Jacob's Ladder, merged with rock rhythms and sweet melodies performed by Robert Black, David Cossin, Felix Fan, Philippa Thompson, Eddie Whalen, & Evan Ziporyn. The resulting music is ... electrifying!"
- "Christine Southworth (b. 1978) is a composer and video artist based in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and musics from cultures around the world, her music employs sounds from man and nature, from Van de Graaff Generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data from volcanoes.
Southworth received a B.S. from MIT in 2002 in mathematics and an M.A. in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition from Brown University in 2006. In 2003 she co-foundedEnsemble Robot, a collaborative of artists and engineers that design and build musical robots. She is the general manager of the MIT-based Gamelan Galak Tika, and has composed several pieces for the group and performed at venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, EMPAC, the Cleveland Museum of Art, several Bang on a Can Marathons, and the Bali International Arts Festival. In 2010, she helped design Gamelan Elektrika for her piece Supercollider, which was premiered at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival with the Kronos Quartet. In addition to gamelan, she studies bagpipe, playing both the Galician Gaita and the Great Highland Bagpipe.
Southworth's compositions have been performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Indonesia by ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Gamelan Galak Tika, Calder Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gamelan Semara Ratih, California EAR Unit, Andrew W.K., and Ensemble Robot. She has received awards from the American Music Center, UCross Foundation, LEF Foundation, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), the MIT Eloranta Fellowship, and Bang on a Can and has been a fellow at UCross Foundation and The Hermitage Artist Retreat.
She has four recordings available on Airplane Ears Music: Zap! (2008) and Gamelan Galak Tika: Bronze Age Space Age (2009), Christine Southworth String Quartets (2013), performed by The Calder Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Gamelan Galak Tika, and Face the Music, with support from the American Music Center CAP Recording Grant, and In My Mind and In My Car (2013), for Evan Ziporyn on bass clarinet, electronics and video."
http://www.kotekan.com/video/zap.shtml
Holy shit !
Neos Music 2008
eRikm & Martin Brandlmayr - Ecotone
eRikm cdj & electronics
Martin Brandlmayr drums
Mikroton Recordings 2014 - Bandcamp
New Amsterdam 2011 - Bandcamp
JOHN SUPKO
- Link.
https://soundcloud.com/miazabelkamusic
- An album that definitely would have been on my 2015 list.
(recommended to @RonanM if you're still lurking)
- Much more at Visionintoart
ps- Oops, that was EDT.
- Staubgold 2004
This link is much better.
- The Elliot Sharp seems to be new.
https://cleanfeed-records.com/product-category/new/
http://www.emusic.com/browse/album/all/label:1502920/?sort=newest
- Fatcat is back with an abundance of old stuff, also here:
130701 (FatCat Records)
Flash Sale: eMusic Endcap
Soundwalk Collective - Sons Of The Wind
- Asphalt Tango Records 2014
There's also a video here:
Thanks, @Brighternow
From the drop:
- Tzadik
Important Records December 2010
Stephanie Chatet: Flute
Nicolas Carpentier: Cello
Esther Davoust: Harp
Simon Drappier: Double Bass
Maxime Echardour: Cimbalom
Camille Giuglaris: Cello
Cédric Jullion: Bass Flute
Pierre-Yves Macé: Electronics, Piano, Samples, Treatments, Studio Processing
Augustin Muller: Vibraphone
Rafaëlle Rinaudo: Harp
- PIERRE-YVES MACÉ
L'Instant Donné
- More Jentzsch at Emusers
Absolutely breathtaking !