Request: daisuke miyatani – diario

  

From Boomkat:

Some truly exquisite soundscapes in miniature here, from the label that brought you the 17 Pictures album by Wechsel Garland just a couple of weeks back. Daisuke Miyatani’s work takes on fragments of environmental recordings, guitar and other supporting acoustic instruments all finely processed via digital electronics to form a kind of musical sketchbook that brings to mind the shimmering minimalism of 12k/Happy artists like Fourcolor and Piana. ‘Rain Melodies’ and ‘Old Tape’ are to some extent self-explanatory, the former piece setting acoustic guitar plucks against a rich background of rainy day recordings, whilst the latter is a gorgeous duet between guitar and xylophone committed to warm, hiss-heavy cassette. ‘Hum’ is a lengthier track, and that rarest of things: a drone piece that manages to preserve a sense of underlying melody, with harmonious tones suspended in slow motion. An utterly beautiful album from start to finish, Diario comes highly recommended.

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Thilges – La Double Absence

 

Foxy digitalis review: Combining middle-eastern sounds with glitchy electronics is nothing entirely new. Sebastian Meissner under his Random Inc. moniker as well as Ran Slavin already proved that computers and traditional music from the middle east go well together. And Austria´s Thilges provide another fine example of how traditional middle eastern music and modern western styles can benefit from each other.

Compared to Random Inc and Ran Slavin, “La Double Absence” is quite different though. Less experimental than the two aforementioned composers, Thilges take traditional Afghan, Persian and Arabic music and only accompanies them with electronic elements. The center of “La Double Absence” is the composition and texture. Thilges write songs, a lot of them with vocals. The vocals are provided by Zohreh Jooya, according to the label info a well known Afghan singer. Another key player on “La Double Absence” is Asim Al-Chalab whose Oud playing is central to the ambiance of most of the songs on the album. Especially the Oud playing gives them its incredibly dense texture. Thilges are best when the tracks have enough room to build this texture, like on “Hig” or the album ender “Hijaz On D”. And Thilges also prove once again that non-Western music combined with electronics doesn´t have to sound like all those tacky and bland Chill Out compilations that you hear at Starbucks all the time. A worthy addition to the Staubgold catalogue.

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Badun – Badun

From Post-Everything:

Despite this being their debut album, the band Badun has quite a few years on its back as well as a long line of live gigs. It is the fruits of all these years of experimentation and search for a unique sound that now sees the day.

The group makes clear references to Weather Report, Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, the electronic duo Flanger (Burnt Friedman and Atom Heart) as well as Japanese artists like Sora. Still the album proves that Badun is capable of integrating its influences with its own sounds and ideas. The light melancholic tone and the tight style gives the sound a sophisticated touch and makes the album one of a kind.

With the opening tune Turban the album takes the listener by the hand and gently seduces you into Badun’s own universe without pulling the carpet away from underneath your feet.

Here you´ll find room for reflection (Pulsen, Mælkebøtten, Nr. 44 & EF10), galaxies of micro-funk (Kompleks, Myg) and meteoric showers of percussion, wizardry and controlled chaos (Søvnløs & Fyrtårn). All delivered in a non repetitive yet relaxed manner.

In the world of Badun, traditional instruments sound like they are being played by improvising robotic insects. But despite the improvisational elements the music comes across as peaceful if mildly surreal – as the cover indicates.

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Join with HjSplit before opening.

christmas decorations – communal rust

 

Great album from the growing label Comunity Library. Boomkat review:

Christmas Decorations is the seasonal (well, it’s only a few weeks late!) moniker of Nick Forte and Steve Silverstein, who in their time have managed to rack up a couple of releases for the ever-lovely Kranky label and a recent appearance on 12k, but here they are on Portland’s homely Community Library, and there could be no better place for their hazy vision of electrically manipulated rock music. Following hot on the heels of the killer Project Perfect album, ‘Communal Rust’ is a more than appropriate continuation of ComLib’s exploration into experimental (but never exclusively so) sound. Drone, minimal, guitar manipulation – call it what you will but I suppose it is always going to have a chiselled out pocket of followers and appear a little out of reach to the rest of us. However Forte and Silverstein have dropped in enough references throughout this record so that even the most academically challenged among us should be able to throw in a line and crawl on in. In ‘Closer to the Carpet’ beneath the digital hisses and crackles I can hear New Order or the Cocteau Twins, ‘Aphid Text’ shows there’s something of Robert Johnson deep down below the hotwired drum machine gurgles and on ‘Twig Harpoon’ I’m sure I can hear the ghosts of shoegaze-heroes Slowdive somewhere in the haze. This is the closest I think you can come to a digitally produced counterpart to the current new-psychedelic-folk scene, while the forest dwellers are throwing down their abstract improvisations on 4-track tape, Forte and Silverstein have done the same with a laptop and the results I think are utterly captivating. Notably, over the last two years or so laptop producers have sought to distance themselves from the tired sounds of Germany circa-2000, that over-done glitch we all got so sick of, and ‘Communal Rust’ is the perfect example of the new wave of digital sound. Instead of disregarding digital production altogether, the duo have instead modernised their output, and they’ve managed that by looking back, by plumbing the depths of music history. A startling and somewhat calming listen, let these fragments of time take you piece by piece into a distant world – gorgeous, and highly recommended for fans of Tim Hecker, Machinefabriek or Aaron Martin!

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Antiguo Autómata Mexicano – Kraut Slut

 

Pitchfork Review:

Late last year Ángel Sánchez Borges released a mini-album of ethereal drone-pop under the name Seekers Who Are Lovers. Seekers could be considered a side project for Borges if he didn’t have so many things going on at once; he’s also an experimental video artist of some renown, and now returns as Antiguo Autómata Mexicano, the name he uses for instrumental journeys into beat-driven minimalism. In 2005 he released his debut AAM record Microhate on the German label Backgroung; follow-up Kraut Slut is his first release for the Tijuana-based label Static Discos.

Given the titles of the album and the first track here, “Rother, Dinger, You, and Me”, you might guess you’re in for a concept record. And “Rother” certainly delivers on that score, channeling the spirit and the sound of classic Neu! with almost frightening accuracy, but doing so in an even more compact and completely digital package. It’s basically a cover tune, but covering a sound as opposed to a song; Borges programs a simple series of pulses to mimic the interplay between Dinger’s stark and insistent drum pulse frames Rother’s buzzing, carefully picked guitar. Both the idea and the execution are fantastic.

But Kraut Slut doesn’t stay long on the motorik road. “Mitte” sticks with sharp, crackly beats but drapes over them a soft curtain of static and lush chords suggesting a much more amorphous and dreamy headspace. It has the pulse of techno, but in terms of mood “Mitte” is closer to the shadowy and sensual world of his Seekers work. Same goes for “Extirpe” which is mostly slow-drift synthetic drone, with just a few percussive beeps and rips lurking in the shadows, while “Harm and Jazz” kicks up so much digital dust it the foreground, a constantly shifting collage of machine noise and buzzes, you can barely make out the steady bass and drums moving somewhere behind. “Malandro de Culto” and “Ill Stijl” are Borges’ excursion into more dancefloor-oriented techno, and the latter especially, with its precise but busy array of bleeps, is a particularly focused beam of forward-moving energy.

So then, album title and opening track aside, what exactly binds these disparate elements into a single project? Borges seems most drawn to micro-leaning computer music as a way to conjure atmosphere; there’s a lot of suggestion in Borges’ music, hints at various possibilities, and you never get the sense that the technology– always at the forefront considering the persistent use of glitches and noise– is the music’s subject. On its own, Kraut Slut is an evocative sampling of the potential of computer-based minimalism with a handful of fantastic tracks; considered along with Borges’ other recent work, the record makes him seem an even more compelling artist worth following closely.

Mark Richardson

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Raster-Noton

hey everyone, i wanna say sorry ’cause i mislabeled the signal link on the previous post(it was a link to the frank bretschneider’s rhythm album), so please ignore here is fix to what was here before, the corrected shit with also the link to the equally fantastic frank bretschneider album:

New Raster-Noton release, the album Robotron from the Signal project. Here is the release:

Raster-Noton’s flagship signal – olaf bender, frank bretschneider and carsten nicolai – is something like the reference group of one of the pivotal labels of new minimal electronic music. but although only having released one cd so far, their sessions and concerts have been very influential until today. some of those tracks of the past years now result in a compilation that joins the work of the three masterminds of raster-noton, but not like a simple aggregation of egos, much rather like a conversation in which every discourse modulates the other and in the end it is not possible anymore to distinguish between each individual contribution. in this sense, signal would be a superego that serves a process in which the rule, coincidence and interaction play equal parts. this blends into an open and democratic music that has some of kraftwerk’s melancholy in it. thus, signal are their spiritual heirs.

robotron was recorded at voxxx studio/chemnitz, unit/tokyo, palast der republik/berlin between 2001 and 2006.

post production was done at villa massimo/rome and raster-studio/chemnitz.
here is the signal link

frank bretschneider is a member of signal and is releasing this great album, also on Raster-Noton. The label release:

„rhythm“ is neither pop nor avant-garde, but deals simply with the basic principles of any modern music: rhythm.

frank bretschneider takes his, never simple, but all the more heartfelt relationship to rhythm and it’s complexity, to an intense inventory and, this time, works less out of suspenseful abstract sounds, than out of grooves. the terseness and precision of previous works remains, as well as a preference for high-voltage sounds halfway between noise and tone. new is the assemblage of the material. a combination of programming, composition and construction, which draws a clear distinction to his preferred loop-based work on foregone albums, is connected with bretschneider’s very idiosyncratic aesthetic of digital sound: controlled and objective. the whole follows simple mechanical states: on/off, forward/backward, up/down, slow/fast, loud/quiet, dull/brilliant, soft/hard and is characterized by the absence of any romanticism. still this return to the elementary, the fundamental, does not diminish the music to dance-floor functionality, instead bretschneider always stays emphatically musical and manages to generate sophisticated and complex rhythm-structures, which respectively induce minimal deviations in frequency and timing relationships to generate a surplus of funk.

in all, „rhythm“ is probably bretschneider’s most direct, clear and concentrated work yet.

frank bretschneider works as a musician and composer in berlin. since 1996 he has published a number of albums for raster-noton, mille plateaux and 12k. the music for „rhythm“ was created between june 2006 and march 2007.
rhythm link

Cordouan – Love

Cordouan is Axel from sweden, active in several projects. With Cordouan he creates deep and melancholic songs that might remind you of Tarentel and Windy & Carl.
No Matter how though you think you are, sit back, push the play button and be prepared to enter the beautiful world of melancholy. The very personal nature of the album only adds up to this..

A gorgeous release, with equally stunning artwork to make it something not to be missed.

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John Wiese – Soft Punk

Pitchfork Review:

John Wiese – Soft Punk

8.0

Soft Punk is the first full-length album released by California harsh noise and parasympathetic drone aesthete John Wiese on New Jersey’s Troubleman Unlimited, an eager imprint that’s been treading the turbulent waters between sonic abstraction and punk aggression for a decade. Through TMU’s small-batch/good-records approach, bands like Growing and Double Leopards share shelves with Meneguar and Panthers (not to mention Glass Candy, Tussle and The Walkmen), meeting somewhere near the fuck-all eruptions of Wolf Eyes and now in the careful and meticulous, feverish and intoxicating noise of Wiese. Recorded between 2002 and 2005, Soft Punk is a zenithal intersection of everything Wiese has done right for the past decade: Collagist tendencies meet drone hyper-abilities; assaulting glitches and glissandos come buried between near silence and hair-raising volume; beauty is refracted through sonic brutality.

The title Soft Punk seems to have two functions, then: Like its brilliant cover art by Kaz Oshiro– three bright pink Marshall amplifiers that are, as the back cover shows, simply stretched-canvas, three-dimensional paintings of such fantasy gear– Soft Punk suggests looking and listening again, of rethinking that ugly noise/punk divide. Just when you think you have a handle on Wiese, he’s onto something else. There’s always a next level here. No, this isn’t punk, and it’s not soft. But it’s not simple sheets of harsh noise, either. Wiese’s constant push and pull and his eventual acquiescence to let things build and burn are capable of rock’s epiphany and articulation, even if it’s “just a bunch of god damned noise” in the end.

Soft Punk is a statement of process, too. Under the name Sissy Spacek– which he uses for both solo work and collaborations– Wiese manipulates and processes his own recordings and spews them back as ultra-damaged, something-like-punk, more-like-noise spasms. Here, he’s sampling his punk rock friends again, stacking those sounds– crowd cheers, drum rolls, drumstick counts– on top and inside of his own. During “Snow Pit”, Wiese concentrates on snippets from Olympia trio Die Monitor Bats, using a live set’s beginnings, ends, and screaming innards as heavy construction paper and bright crayons. He drops drumstick counts into the mix four times, sprinting in wildly different directions after each. It’s either “One, two, three, four, NEAR SILENCE” or “One, two, three four, OH SHIT! LOUD!” Take your chances, sucker.

Much like Japanese electronic composer Ryoji Ikeda, Wiese excels in making clean, precise cuts between drastically different sounds, building a drop-dead dynamic capable of stepping from almost-absent rumbles and hums to furious noise bursts. This is apparent on “PS2″, where Wiese uses bait-and-switch, build-and-kill mechanics as his chief compositional tool. He buries valleys into peaks and somehow finds peaks that are higher and more rugged with uncanny persistence. A machine-gun rhythm reverses into a glitchy spasm, then settles into a pressurized monotone before ducking into near-nothingness. None of these sounds lasts for more than three seconds, but such vacillations never seem rushed with Wiese. He’s always in control, the master of a sonic domain that reaches far-and-wide, high-and-low with enthusiasm and magnetism. It’s as though he collects a world of sound and spits it out piecemeal– methodically, dramatically, emphatically– through a morphing matrix designed for ricochets. Falling in love with a sliver of sound only to be slapped senselessly by something totally unrelated? It’s as maddening as it is exhilarating.

But the proof is in Soft Punk’s center: During a three-track, mid-album stretch, Wiese eases into a neon pink drone, a beautiful sound that he just won’t leave alone. He bends and shocks it, reshapes it, piles drums on top of it, overdrives it, and eventually altogether destroys it. When the track expires with a blitz of malformed waves, Wiese builds a perfect, long-tone aubade reminiscent of Jason Lescalleet’s work on “The Pilgrim”. For those who haven’t heard it, “The Pilgrim” was Lescalleet’s gorgeous 74-minute farewell to his deceased father, all gentle tones fanfaring gradually into outer space. For three minutes, Wiese sings a similar sigh, perhaps letting the body of the punk rock he’s setting on fire burn away at the midpoint. And then, as he should, Wiese thrusts all of his weight into “New Wave Dust”, perhaps the album’s most chaotic, relentless, damaging track.

Power electronics? Oh my. Punk rock? If only.

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Jodi Cave – For Myria

After days without posting, it’s good to be back with such a good record.

From Boomkat:

After the boundless sub-bass ambience of Pjusk’s excellent Sart album, 12k returns with a very different take on the microsound genre. For Myria marks British sound artist Jodi Cave’s debut for the label, but those lucky enough to have caught his early CD-R output or his contribution to last year’s Blueprints compilation (also on 12k) will have some idea of Cave’s remarkable credentials as a composer. His greatest strength lies in the treatment of the more tactile-sounding electroacoustic sources, often towards the higher end of the frequency spectrum – not quite in the dog-troubling sonic strata occupied by Richard Chartier mind you, but rather the more delicate range of concrete sounds you might associate with someone crumpling a dried up autumn leaf in their hand. Consequently, but for one or two notable instances, there’s not a great deal of bass in Cave’s work. Far from being a criticism, that’s merely indicative of the fact that there’s so much detail in the sound world of this album that any increase in bandwidth would knock the whole affair out of proportion. Instead, the listener is treated to some of the most astonishingly high fidelity acousmatic soundscapes you’ll hear anywhere. Take the 9-minute opener ‘For Myria (One)’: spectral high frequency sounds are shaped into melodious drones from which vast swathes of unexpected texture are revealed. The crowning moment comes when all sounds ebb away leaving a pronounced wave of crackle occupying a luxuriously wide stereo field. It’s a wonderful balance between electronic sound sculpting and the art of field recording, the source material having been ingeniously obscured just enough to give it a touch of the ethereal without compromising its rich timbre. But for one (untitled) piece focusing in on harmonium drones and floorboard-rattling percussive plunges, the album sticks to the theme of quiet yet very physical-sounding electroacoustics, taking in recordings of (at least what sounds like) running water, birdsong and creaking incidental acoustics, all woven together into an immaculate sonic patchwork. Magnificent.

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Request: iron & wine – the shepherd’s dog

not the usual sound for this place but beautiful anyway.

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