Avant-Garde / Contemporary

SONG 08

For more than a decade, Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto have been coming together in various combinations - duos, trios, and larger ensembles - slowly becoming one of the most noteworthy, understated collaborations in the landscape of experimental sound. In 2015, the trio recorded a brilliant LP entitled “Delivery Health” ‎for Silent Water, laying the groundwork for an enduring project that adopted that album’s title as its name, debuting properly in 2017 with the stunner “Hard Off”. Over the years since, we’ve encountered Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto playing together in Bonjintan, their project with Akira Sakata, and in further collaborations with Eiko Ishibashi and Joe Talia, not to mention O'Rourke and Di Domenico’s prolific work as a duo. A bit more than five years on from “Hard Off”, Delivery Health finally return with “SuperDeluxe!”, a stunning new double LP on Holidays Records. Comprising roughly four years of early activity from the trio that rests at a fascinating juncture of electroacoustic composition, free improvisation, and noise, it’s easily among the most engaging and intoxicating efforts we’ve yet to hear from one of the most dynamic bands working today. Even by the standards of experimental music - international and cross-cultural in its make-up - the collaborations of Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto have always seemed to defy the challenges of geography, coming together with surprising regularity between Europe and Japan. The three represent a remarkable joining of distinct artistic talent and creative vision, the like of which rarely occur. Like its predecessors, “SuperDeluxe!” rides a beautiful line between striking singular creative ambition and accomplishment, and simply feeling like a free-wheeling conversation between friends who have relinquished their egos and presumptions out of a deep sense of mutual respect. Ironically, as forward thinking as it feels, the album is a kind of retrospective rewind, comprising five live documents recorded, of course, at the legendary SuperDeluxe! in Tokyo between 2012 and 2016 across its four sides. Taking us deep into the very beginnings and previously unheard activities (at least for those who were there on these nights) of Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto, the trio weaves a knotted tapestry unfurling as sheets of sound, that sidesteps signifiers and the expectations that one might have of each of these artists on their own. Ranging from brisling ambient passages drawing on latent melodic flirtations, heavy jams on guitar, drums, electronics, and keyboards, and outright, full throttle noise, each moment represents a visionary excursion into the depths of experimental, improvised sound, revealing a shocking sense of real-time dexterity from each player, as much as the collective whole experiments in improvised sound. Absolutely thrilling from start to finish - not that we’d expect anything less from three masters of their art forms - “SuperDeluxe!” is an immersion into the joys of music making, collaboration, and ultimately listening. It’s an album that traverses a startling and unexpected range, new worlds emerge and evolve from within the fog - rippling textural ambiance, harsh interlocking atonality, subtle and delicate interplay - without losing a moment of coherency. Issued by Holidays as a beautiful produced double LP, this is contemporary improvised music at its absolute best.

Delivering the long overdue follow up to their brilliant 2015 outing, Arco, the duo of Giovanni Di Domenico and Jim O’Rourke return to Die Schachtel with Immanent in Nervous Activity. Understated and elegant – enlisting the contributions of Eiko Ishibashi and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto – across the album’s two sides Di Domenico and O’Rourke slow time, deftly weaving tension into restrained sheets of tonality, texture, and harmonic dissonance, producing a startlingly beautiful intervention with the temperaments of experimental sound practice that shifts the borders of electroacoustic music and high minimalism. Issued on vinyl in a limited deluxe edition of 400 copies, housed in a sleeve with an original artwork by Bruno Stucchi/dinamomilano and complete with a large format poster, Die Schachtel is thrilled to deliver another defining statement by one of the most exciting partnerships in the contemporary landscape of adventurous sound. While less than a decade apart in age and equally diverse in the range of practices they have embraced over the course of their respective careers, Giovanni Di Domenico and Jim O’Rourke each represent the creative high points and ambitions of two very different generations. Initially emerging in Chicago during the late ‘80s and based in Japan since the mid-2000s, for more than three decades O'Rourke has carved a relentless path through the field of experimental sound, creating a body of work - hundreds of albums deep - that refuses any form of stasis and obligation to genre or idiom. He is an artist driven by a singular quest, his endless curiosity driving him to constantly forge into uncharted, visionary realms. Italian born and Brussels based, since his appearance on the scene during late ‘90s and early 2000s, Giovanni Di Domenico has constructed a striking solo practice that bridges numerous forms of improvised and electroacoustic music, all the while rigorously working within various ensembles - Abschattungen, AufHeben, Bonjintan, Cement Shoes, etc. - and intimate collaborations with Akira Sakata, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Chris Corsano, Joe Talia, and others. Di Domenico and O’Rourke have retained a regular and fruitful working partnership over the last decade, collaborating within the groups Bonjintan and Delivery Health, as well as a handful of jointly billed ensembles, but their 2015 LP, Arco - an investigation into waiting and patience as means toward musical form - was the first to encounter them as a duo, and marked an unquestionable high point within this collaborative body of work. Seven years on, their latest outing, Immanent in Nervous Activity, picks up where its predecessor left off; a second chapter informed by the territories of creative exploration that each has traversed since. Immanent in Nervous Activity rides the razor’s edge between bristling electroacoustic wizardry and the constrained structures and harmonic interplay most often encountered within musical minimalism. Begun in a studio not far from O’Rourke’s home in Japan with Di Domenico simultaneously playing piano and Rhodes organ, as the sessions gathered steam - O’Rourke’s deft hand processing and delivering electric interventions - the duo was joined intermittently by Eiko Ishibashi on flute and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto on snare drum, radically expanding the pallet of sound sources at their disposal. In its final form, produced via a rigorous and lengthy process of mixing, Immanent in Nervous Activity operates in two movements. The first rests largely in acoustic realm, with Di Domenico’s fluidly percussive piano and organ lines offering structure and harmony to the delicate textural interventions of Ishibashi, Yamamoto, and O’Rourke. Together they collectively weave a hypnotic tapestry of tonality and texture that inexplicably bridges the challenges of avant-gardism with the pure pleasure of pop. The second movement - constructed by O’Rourke from the material generated by the sessions - shatters form to an elemental and sprawling state, slowly distilling the remnants into an otherworldly, sonorous ooze that fully departs the earthy zones for pure, electroacoustic abstraction. Over the glacial evolution of its side-long duration, tension builds as material sources and the presence of each artist’s hands draw in and out of focus, droning and abrading within a vast expanse of pointillistic nature that renders itself subservient to the sweeping force of the whole, seemingly rethinking the terms and possibilities of electroacoustic music in real time. Joining the conversant vision of two of the most striking voices within the field of contemporary sound, Immanent in Nervous Activity is issued by Die Schachtel in a very limited edition of 400 copies on high quality black vinyl, sleeve printed in Italy in deep black and metallic silver on extra matt white heavy cardboard, including a black/silver limited "zepelin" 30x90cm poster, original artwork + design by Bruno Stucchi/dinamomilano.

sound of the drizzle hitting the skylight, summer bonfire at la caillère, chimes in le bono’s cinerary garden, pat patrol’s phone beep beep, a jogger, a tap, patrick’s bees, the oven before cooking the pizza, a regional express train, a hst, a belt sander…

Síntomas de techno : Ondas electrónicas subterráneas desde Perú (1985​-​1991) Symptoms of techno: Underground electronic waves from Peru (1985-1991) This compilation presents for the first time various underground techno groups and projects that emerged in Lima in the mid-1980s. Projects such as Disidentes, Paisaje Electrónico, T de Cobre, Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí, Cuerpos del Deseo, Círculo Interior, Ensamble and Reacción were responsible for introducing styles such as techno-pop, EBM, industrial and minimal synth in Peru. Coinciding with the explosion of punk in Lima and the appearance of the so-called Rock Subterráneo [underground rock], these techno groups shared the same DIY spirit, performing in many punk concerts and even creating their own fanzines, and, above all, opening a space for other types of sonic experiences. Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí and Paisaje Electrónico were also the parallel projects of the members of Narcosis, the iconic punk band, one of the founders of Rock Subterráneo. Disidentes and T de Cobre brought extreme sounds to local electronics: viscerality, mechanical rhythms and the use of Casiotones or synthesizers, which resulted in an atypical sound that, in turn, portrayed a critical time in Peru, and which has made them an unavoidable reference for any historical account of techno and industrial music in Latin America. The title of this compilation is inspired by the name of a concert held in Lima in 1991, considered to be the first techno concert to have taken place in Peru. Even though not all intervening groups were doing techno at that time, they did share the fact that they all used keyboards. Four of them, however (Cuerpos del Deseo, Ensamble, Círculo Interior and Reacción), were in fact affiliated to an electronic sound (techno-pop, EBM). The concert was a sign of the diversification of musical styles in Lima's alternative scene, and in particular of the emergence of a micro scene, for which the concert Síntomas de techno [Symptoms of Techno] represented an important step towards the development of a local culture of electronic music during the 90s. Many of the recordings included here are extracted from demos with limited circulation, practically impossible to find. Other tracks are unpublished pieces which come from the private archives of the artists themselves. The compilation has been made by Luis Alvarado and is part of the Essential Sounds Collection, with which Buh Records is making available a vast archive of avant-garde Peruvian music. This compilation is published in vinyl format in a limited edition of 300 copies, with extensive information and visual documentation. Mastered by Alberto Cendra. Art by René Sánchez. Cover photography by Rogelio Martell. This project was awarded with funding from the Economic Stimuli program of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.

An important album of this year. Jim O'Rourke is an alchemist of sound who has earned a great deal of respect beyond the framework of the scene. This 2020 piece for string trio is dedicated to Apartment House, which is known for performances by such luminaries as John Cage, Linda Catlin Smith, and Philip Corner. The performance was also done by them. This is a 58-minute long piece of chamber music minimal drone. This is a masterpiece with a profound minimalism that is typical of Another Timbre's work.

A 4-hour work recorded at Steamroom (composer’s studio) between 2017 and 2018.
Detailed and delicate electronic layers, processed instruments, and ambiguous field recordings come together in a slow-moving, fascinating kaleidoscope with multiple reflections and wrong turns, always in constant state of flux. The finely crafted art of subterfuge.
“To magnetize money and catch a roving eye”, four CD’s – a hypnotic, multi-faceted, labyrinthine piece which flows as slowly as a river while speeding back through memory, and shows all the talent of Jim O’Rourke.
Composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist, born in Chicago in 1969, Jim O’ Rourke is a veritable chameleon, working at the frontiers of very diverse musical genres.

Dewa Alit, Bali’s master of contemporary Gamelan composition, returns to Black Truffle with Chasing the Phantom, presenting two recent works played by the composer’s Gamelan Salukat, a large ensemble that performs on instruments specially built to his designs, using a unique tuning system that combines notes from two traditional Balinese Gamelan scales. Alit explains that the ensemble’s name suggests “a place to fuse creative ideas to generate new, innovative works” and both compositions demonstrate the composer’s ability to wring stunning new possibilities from variations on the traditional Gamelan ensemble. While using familiar elements of Balinese Gamelan music, such as unison scalar melodies and stop-start dynamics, Alit’s music is overflowing with harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral inventions, the latter often facilitated by unorthodox playing techniques. “Ngejuk Memedi”, an English translation of which gives the LP its title, results from Alit’s reflection on the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Balinese culture, particularly in the way that belief in the phantoms or spirits known as ‘memedi’ are shared through social media using digital technologies. Embodying this uncanny co-existence, the opening passages of the piece are at once immediately recognisable in their use of the metallophones of the Gamelan ensemble and strikingly reminiscent of electronics in their timbre and movement. At points, what we hear seems to have been fragmented with digital tools, or even to originate in some incessantly glitching DX7. Short melodic figures loop irregularly, with the ensemble splintering into polyrhythmic shards before unexpectedly recombining for intricate unison passages. After several minutes of this manically tinkling metallic sound world, the metallophones are joined by drums for a meditative passage of lower dynamics, as the uniformly high pitch range explored in the opening sections gradually opens up to include resonant low gong hits. Recovering some of the manic energy of the opening, but now enhanced with the full range of percussion, the piece weaves through a series of tempo changes to a stunning passage of rapid-fire melodies and ringing chords that sweep across the metallophones, their unorthodox tuning creating complex clouds of wavering harmonies. “Likad”, written during Covid-19 lockdowns, channels anxiety and uncertainty into musical form, resulting in a piece that, even by Alit’s standards, is stunning in its complexity and the virtuosity it demands of Gamelan Salukat. Its opening section is perhaps most remarkable for its mastery of texture, with rapid transitions between dry, muted strikes and metallic shimmers calling to mind the use of filters in electronic music. At points, the complex irregular repetitions of short melodic patterns, where the music seems to get stuck or be suddenly interrupted by a skip, recall the mad sampler works of Alvin Curran or the skittering surface of prime period Oval more than anything familiar from acoustic percussion music. Moving through a dizzying series of twists and turns, the piece ends with a majestic sequence of chords possessing an almost hieratic power. A major statement from a radical contemporary composer, one cannot help but agree with Alit when he sees Chasing the Phantom as an answer to the “question of the future of Gamelan music”.

Highly recommended for music fans interested in birds and animals.
A concert where composers compete with birds

Birds have been singing long before humans started making music. While humans create perfect music calculated and thought out, birds naturally produce strange tunes.
Composers have attempted to express natural phenomena and certain types of noise, but birdsong has been turned into music all over the world, each with their own ingenuity. In addition to Renaissance and Baroque paintings, you can also enjoy modern bird depictions by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Britten.
Furthermore, I listened to "Carnival of the Endangered Species" made by Vincent Bouchot by punning on Saint-Saëns' work. In the style of a classical suite, it draws unfamiliar animals, and the ending with "Humanity" is also meaningful and makes me think about various things. The booklet is full-color and has detailed explanations of various birds and animals.
La Réveuse is a period instrument group founded in 2004 by Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrault. Although he mainly works on works from the 17th and 18th centuries, he has become a hot topic for composing works with themes that combine music and current affairs.

[Recording information]
1. Purcell: Prelude to Birds from "Fairy Queen"
2. Van Eyck: England's Nightingale - from "The Flute Paradise"
3. Theodor Schwarzkopf: Sonata in imitation of Nightingale and Cuckoo: Allegro/Gigue
4. F. Couperin / La Revouse: Nightingale in Love ~ from "Clavesin Songs Volume 3"
5. Jean-Baptiste Bousset/La Réveuse ed.: Why, sweet nightingale - from "Ale Volume 14"
6. Monteclaire: Chirping - Concert No. 5 for 2 flutes
7. F. Couperin/La Réveuse ed.: Lamenting Bunting - from "Clavesin Songs Volume 3"
8. Colette: Cuckoo
9. Saint-Saens/Vincent Bouchot: Cuckoo in the depths of the forest - from "Carnival of the Animals"
10. Britten/Vincent Bouchot Arr.: Cuckoo from "Friday Afternoon"
11. Rameau/Vincent Bouchot: Hens
12. Saint-Saëns/Vincent Bouchot: Hens and Roosters from "Carnival of the Animals"
13. Ravel/Vincent Bouchot: The Queen's Pottery Doll Redronet ~From "Ma Mère Roi"
14. Vincent Bouchot: Carnival of Endangered Species
Prelude: Sorrow of the Pangolin
Armando: Javanese Slow Loris
Courant: old poultry dodo
Intermezzo: Lesomira 63
Sarabande: white and black owls
Gavotte: Indian gharial (crocodile)
Intermezzo: Lesomira 92
Varus Twist: Sea Cucumber
Jeeg: Mankind, its evolution

Recorded in Lary 7’s legendary apartment studio Plastikville over nearly a decade, Larynx is the first full-length retrospective of the East Village icon’s hybrid music and engineering practice. The record mobilizes 7’s array of homemade instruments, which he ‘frankensteins’ together from offcast and outmoded bits of technology. An ode to the long-lost Canal Street junk shops he frequented in the 1970s and ’80s, Larynx brings together numerous thrift finds and sonic inventions used in his theatrical performances and installations. To play “le concretotron,” a board covered with twenty years worth of unspooled magnetic tape, 7 runs a tape head topographically over the flattened strips, picking up snippets of their recorded contents. The spring tree, another of his contraptions, is simply turned on and left to its own devices; feedback loops cause the amplified coils to resound in space and slowly increase in volume. The track “Mechano-Bleep” features a pattern generator constructed from a telephone sequence switch, 150 oscillators from an electric accordion, a sewing machine motor, and an early computing system called a “select-a-board.” Meanwhile, antiquated electronic instruments abound—7 employs the Ondioline, a precursor to the synthesizer; a Philicorda organ; and a homemade Trautonium, among other gadgets. Following Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Raymond Scott of Manhattan Research, 7 adopts a painstaking editing process that is entirely analogue. With lacquer cut directly from reel-to-reel and mastered by Paul Gold, Larynx is, in 7’s words, “the sound of the twentieth century going haywire.”

The Gerogerigegege, the Japanese avant-blues music that has been attracting noise music lovers all over the world, is now available on long-awaited vinyl from The Trilogy Tapes, a limited edition cassette released last year by the popular fashion brand CAV EMPT.

This summer, I read Kenji Miyazawa's children's story (illustrated by Takeshi Motai), "Gauche the Cellist" (1934, illustrated by Takeshi Motai, 1956). Just a few days before I made this recording, I was on stage. As a result, I had to be in the same state of mind as Gauche at the beginning of the story. It was not a good feeling, but I knew it was not a coincidence that this book was in my possession, so I read it again and again, looked at Mr. Motai's picture of the raccoon boy again and again, and headed for the park before dawn. The only instrument I used was a Hapidrum, and the sticks were mallets that looked just like the ones the raccoon boy was holding...Juntaro Yamanouchi

A new LP collection of incredible performances by the virtuosa of theremin, Clara Rockmore, accompanied by her sister Nadia Reisenberg on piano. Recorded in 1975 and never before released on vinyl, this compendium features stellar performances of compositions by Bach, Chopin, Schubert, Gershwin and more, and even features a cello ensemble on a few songs! Some of the finest examples of Clara Rockmore’s unrivaled art - rich with bittersweet moments of air, electricity, human grace and emotional composition all merging into some new thing that is transcendent of time and genre. 160 gram vinyl comes in old school tip-on jacket and includes an 8-page booklet of interviews, photos, and insights with Clara Rockmore, Nadia Reisenberg, Robert Moog, and more.

Soave Records dusts off in limited edition the psych/synth album by Doctor Steven T. Birchall recorded in 1973 in Indiana, U.S.A. with the following equipment: VCS-3 (The Putney) by EMS, Ampex MM-1000 16 trk, dbx noise reduction, SpectrasSonics Console, Studer A80 Recorder, Eventide Clockworks, Instant Phaser, Cooper Time Cube, EMT Reverb. The absolutely penetrating high tones of the opening track 'Music Of The Spheres' announce us that we are on board, passengers in the hands, or perhaps better to say in the mind, of Birchall who aims to go beyond those "normal" boundaries that we call reality. It is a new world of music that still amazes after half a century. A higher stage of truth projected into the cosmos. Cover art by Earl. E. Hokens..

Music and noise composed and recorded on the photoelectron synthesizer ANS by Edward Artemiev. LP and CD remastered in San Francisco, CA in May 2013. Exclusive photo book with unreleased images of the movie set and essays about music and cinema of the duo Artemiev/Tarkovsky. The cd has the same vinyl tracklist.

A1 Part I     2:48
A2 Part II    2:32
A3 Part III   2:22
A4 Part IV   3:13
A5 Part V    2:27
A6 Part VI   7:18
A7 Part VII  3:55
B1 Part VIII 2:56
B2 Part IX   1:26
B3 Part X    0:38
B4 Part XI   2:09
B5 Part XII  1:42
B6 Part XIII 4:44
B7 Part XIV 0:44
B8 Part XV 4:36
B9 Part XVI 6:19
B10   Part XVII     1:21

In 1981, encouraged by Jac Berrocal, Axolotl (Etienne Brunet and Jacques Oger on saxophones and clarinet, Marc Dufourd on electric guitar) recorded an album of French-style free music as iconoclastic as it was unsettling: free improvisation, jazz, no wave, contemporary, punk… a dance of labels which leaves plenty of place for the direct expression of a monstrous trio of regenerated agitators! The axolotl is a species of salamander native to Mexico, living in a state of larva and having the capacity to regenerate damaged organs. This brief introduction doesn’t tell us if the axolotl sings. But, for the one that concerns us here: yes indeed. In Paris, at the end of the 1970s, Etienne Brunet and Marc Dufourd would improvise regularly, inspired by some other saxophone-guitar duos: Claude Bernard-Raymond Boni firstly, then Evan Parker-Derek Bailey. When Jacques Oger (a saxophonist whom Brunet had met at a workshop given by Steve Lacy at the Châteauvallon festival in 1977) joined the duo Brunet-Dufourd, Axolotl was born. Iconoclastic, the trio was bound to please Jac Berrocal, and he proposed to record their first album on the label ‘D’avantage’. In spring 1981 three days were just enough for Oger (tenor and barytone saxophones), Brunet (alto saxophone, bass clarinet and ‘things’) and Dufourd (electric guitar) to complete Axolotl, the first album by a group which would record … two. If there was a collective of iconoclasts, the trio would be there with some relatives: Alterations, Fred Frith, John Zorn, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet… and then because we mention a collective, Axolotl steps (considerably) beyond the domain of free improvisation to lean towards jazz (“Illusion”, “Paris, froissé”), No Wave (“Ombre pilée”, “Trottoirs défunts”), contemporary (“Oreiller”, “D’autres seuls”), and even what we could call … acid fun (“Dehors”). Above all, Axolotl wanted to really get to grips with sound via an expression as direct as it was liberating, as can be heard on “Ozone, flocon, torsion”, producing a noise that, even today pierces the brain. All we can hope is that now, thanks to this wonderful reissue, listeners will be able, like the axolotl, of regeneration.

noise matrix unleashes material from the same sessions as noisembryo and counterpart 'hole' and selected recordings from the time period. 
 originally released as a bonus disc on the definitive ’noisembryo' 2xcd edition noise matrix absolutely can’t be missed for fans of this period of noise deity merzbow. When people ask where to start with merzbow or the entire 90’s noise movement in japan - this is an answer! 
 masami akita’s surrealism of the past stands prominently relevant to this day combining the expansive textures of electronics, effects, aluminum soaked winds of the tokyo metropolis and metals. presented in deluxe wide spine metallic reflective ‘mother of pearl’ jacket. digital download code included.

INFO is pleased to announce Voices Fill My Head, Kristin Oppenheim’s second double LP release on the label documenting her early sound works from the 1990s. Recorded between 1993 and 1999 in her Brooklyn studio, Voices Fill My Head features eight pieces composed solely of the artist’s voice. For listeners who were fond of Night Run, Oppenheim’s first release on the label, this record reveals yet another important chapter in Oppenheim’s oeuvre.

Since the early 1990s, Oppenheim has produced vocal compositions for gallery and museum settings, making compositions not as music, but as repetitious sound installations designed to drift back and forth across wide stereo fields. Oppenheim’s installations saturate space, touching on fragmented memories that blur the lines between reality and abstraction.

Kristin Oppenheim is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for installation art based in performance, film, and sound. She is represented by greengrassi in London and 303 Gallery in New York.

9ms is the duo of Simon Popp and Florian König. On their wide ranging debut album ‚Pleats‘ the tech-savvy drummers offer grooves from the dubbier realms of World Music and Krautrock - some meditative and light, some thick as wall and steady as a clock. The album was recorded live in a large wooden hall in the Bavarian Alps with only three microphones. Using various infrared and magnetic field sensors, Popp and König were able to translate their movements into control voltage, which they then used to trigger and tweak synthesizers and a myriad of effects. A way for two humans to become one with their mystic machinery.

The music on this recording is performed by a kind of fictitious chamber ensemble situated in an imaginary room outlined by textures that alternate between gestural foreground and passive landscape. The three pieces contained within this release are tied together by sharing similar harmonic material and instrumentation and could ideally be perceived as parts of one long performance stretching through the two sides of the record. The textural room in which this musical performance operates is unreliable, unstable, constantly shifting in size and activity from sparse and open to dense and claustrophobic. Inside this non-euclidean performance space a chamber ensemble made up of zithers expanded through analog tape transposition, harmonium and organ, double bass, digital FM, feedback-convolution and Serge modular synthesizer perform a music made from justly tuned intervals arranged in a way that blurs the distinction between traditional minor and major tonal harmony in favor of harmonic progression within an essentially modal framework. In terms of the material used to make these pieces, essentially all non-harmonic sounds are contaminated field-recordings. They have gone through a sort of feedback process between digital and analog, or acoustic, processing where field-recorded material has been edited, processed and re-amplified and recorded again in acoustic spaces that shape the character of the material and imprint acoustic identities on the recordings. The tonal instruments were treated in a process analogous to this - harmonic material built from recordings and digitally generated synthesis was recorded, transcribed, rearranged and overdubbed again with additional electronic or acoustic instruments to form a composite electroacoustic instrumental sound.

Released for the first time in 2009, ‘utp_’ is the third installment of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s V.I.R.U.S.'s series. It was commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Mannheim, Germany. The flowing 10-section multimedia work derives its shape from a rasterized structure of the southwestern city, founded in 1608. The recording documents the work’s debut performed by Ensemble Modern at the National Theatre in Mannheim. The music embraces the electronic, piano-based palettes, an expanded array of avant-garde chamber instrumentation and natural timbres. It combined the digital visual score created by Carsten Nicolai and Simon Mayer, and lighting design by Nigel Edwards.

“The Concert” is the first discographic collaboration between percussionist Alexandre Babel and visual artist Latifa Echakhch. The record is intimately linked to the eponymous exhibition presented at the Swiss Pavilion during the 59th Venice Art Bienniale. For her exhibition in the Swiss Pavilion, Latifa Echakhch created an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allowed the visitor a complete perception of time and of his own body. What is the origin of rhythm? How does the body perceive time? How does the mind rearrange it? Can we substitute one perception for another, the visual for the sound? Can fragments of memory go back in time and recreate a different story? Her proposal entered a dialogue with the building around it, designed by Bruno Giacometti. The artist revisited its architectural programme as well as the prototypical progression of these exhibition spaces, originally defined for the display of classical art. She appropriated the entirety of the spaces, simultaneously exploring continuity, movement and sequence. Their relationship to light, and the different sounds that emerge from them. Yet the exhibition was entirely silent and the musical composition “The Concert” functions as its sound rendering, by following a similar path. This one-sided vinyl is a complementary and inseparable partner piece to the exhibition and its eponymous catalogue, the latter having been published in April 2022 by Sternberg Press. The music features field recordings made at the Swiss Pavilion itself as well as pre-recorded percussion sounds and significant contributions by the Berlin-based musicians Jon Heilbronn, Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Nikolaus Schlierf. The record, available only after the closing of Latifa Echakhch’s exhibition offers a concluding phase to the project. The resonance of its sensory score. It reactivates the experience of the physical journey of the installation, without imposing itself as a transcription or an illustration. Through texture, temporality and its totality, the record stands as a resonance of the rhythms that have structured the pavilion, the harmonies that have composed it and the sounds that have inhabited it.

Foam On A Wave is proud to present the first international issue of this chameleonic, shapeshifting record, from one of Hungary's most prolific musician and film composers, János Másik. At times it calls to mind 23 Skidoo, Talking Heads and The Pop Group, at others it sits in its own corner of the room. 1989 was a revolutionary year. For many in the West the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the Autumn of Nations; the End of History and the triumph of progress. In Hungary, the year saw the Round Table Talks establish a new multi-party democracy and the effective end of communist rule after 40 years - Rendszerváltás; 'regime change'. It's hard to ignore these cataclysms while listening to Trance Balance. After all, its initial release was on Hungaropop, 'one of the first privately owned, independent labels launched after the liberalization of the market in Warsaw Pact-era Hungary' (we highly recommend delving further into their remarkable catalogue). Is music always an expression of the shifting political landscape? Or does it exist beyond it? These are all questions that percolate as the needle drops. Freud, a ghost from the Dual-Monarchy, runs in streams through the album sleeve. Trance Balance itself is reminiscent of a trip, transporting the individual through a semi-conscious dreamland. Synthesisers woosh and swirl overhead. The percussion is propulsive. Voices take on the guise of characters, guide-like, beckoning. There are Brechtian interludes where the musical fourth wall is punctured. At points, the listener awakes to playful refrains, bohemian folk song and calypso detours. This is a masterwork of musical surrealism - an act of pure intuition - free and honest. A manifesto in all but words. We'll let you decide how much it has to do with politics.

The beauty of Bach playing that can only be reached by modern piano - Nobuko Kondo, who embodies this beauty, recorded the masterpiece "Die Kunst der Fuge" from her later years. The well-honed intellect and body that lucidly multilayers the movement of the voices approach the musical existence located at the extreme north of counterpoint. From the opening note to the final silence that suddenly arrives, this is a gem of a performance that sustains a tension filled with penetrating intention and serenity.

Nobuko Kondo
D. in Instrumental Music from Tokyo University of the Arts. D. for her thesis and performance of Stockhausen's piano music, and received the Bunka Hoso Music Award. She was awarded the Bunka Hoso Music Prize, and studied at the Berlin University of the Arts as a scholarship student of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) from 1986 to 1988, graduating with the highest honors. He won a prize at the Busoni International Competition and was awarded the Nancy Miller Memorial Prize at the William Kapell International Piano Competition in 1990. He has performed with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Haydn Orchestra (Italy), Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo University of the Arts Orchestra, and many others. In 1993, she began the recital series "Piano Music of the 20th Century". In recent years, she has also concentrated on the works of J. S. Bach, especially her recitals in 2000 and 2005 of the complete works from "The Well-Tempered Clavier, Volumes I and II", which were highly acclaimed. She has also released the CDs "J.S. Bach Toccata Complete Works," "New Viennese Music School Piano Works," and "Nobuko Kondo Plays J.S. Bach" (specially selected for "Record Geijutsu"), which have been well received. In April 2017, he spent a year in Berlin as a long-term overseas trainee at Kunitachi College of Music, where he conducted research focusing on Beethoven's piano works. She is currently a professor at Kunitachi College of Music.

 

I started Void Ov Voices in 2006 to create ritualistic music for the moment, to play only live performances while capturing and interfering with the energy of the space and the time of the location.

The first time I travelled to Lebanon was in 2008 for one particular reason: to visit the Trilitons and the giant Monoliths of Baalbek. I was deeply impressed by the level of ancient civilisations engineering technology and the intense magical atmosphere of the whole area.

I have been fascinated by ancient ruins, prehistorical sites and monoliths for a long time. In the last decades, I visited many of these places around the world. I always felt this very particular fine physical energy among those ancient ruins, which interestingly opened my imagination and mind’s eye. Besides that, all these structures are footprints of a forgotten high advanced technology and civilisations. Moreover, these masses of stone often lie in alignment with astrological events and sacred geometry.
The Trilitons of Baalbek are extraordinarily special to me as they are pure evidence of technology from before the Roman period, a technology which could lift and transport blocks of stones, each weighing around approximately 900 tons (which equals approximately the weight of 900 VW Golfs, but in one piece!). To do that transportation itself today would be a huge challenge even with our cutting edge technology, if it’s possible at all.

There is a massive plateau in Baalbek made of these sized stones, on top of which the Romans built their famous Jupiter Temple, considered to be one of the largest Roman structures in the world.
Baalbek used to be called The City Of The Sun in ancient times, and I might have one theoretical question: could it be connected to the story of The Tower Of Babel?
There are many stories and theories around these mystical places. But, those stones have been just standing and waiting there in time and space throughout history. And they will be there till the end…
To make recordings as close as possible to these unique structures always triggered my mind.
When finally I could make a recording outdoor on the top of the “Stone of the South” in Baalbek, I fell into a trance kind of meditative state of mind, in that welcoming an enormous ancient energy which is present and is also captured on these recordings. Music is magical itself on many levels as it goes through all of our bodies, not only through the sensations of our ears.

As years passed, I researched Baalbek more. One of Hungary’s most significant painters, Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar (1853-1919), was also deeply touched by the same spot in Lebanon. When I dug more into Csontváry’s life story, I found many similarities between his and my personality and artistic philosophy. He was profoundly spiritual yet not religious. He was an apothecary and scientist who started to paint in his middle age only because of a transcendental impulse he received. He gave up his pharmacist career and, for the rest of his life, focused only on art and painting to fulfil his soul’s desires and not for any other earthly or egoistic reason. He never had an exhibition, and he never intended to sell any of his paintings. He became a vegetarian and an outsider of society. Towards the end of his life, he even wrote some advanced philosophical writings challenging the hidden hands behind the governments and world leaders. Unfortunately and typically, he was only recognised decades after his death. His paintings were forgotten and almost sold as canvas to cover trucks after WWII. Then, at the last minute of an auction, somebody recognised their artistic value, bought up and saved these priceless paintings, which was like a miracle itself. Csontváry is now considered to be one of the most critical and influential Hungarian painters of all time! Sometimes I wonder how much invaluable art might have disappeared through the dark times of our history.
Anyway, Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar and Baalbek gave me such deep inspiration that in 2012 I decided to travel back to Lebanon to the same ruins to Baalbek to create a ritualistic recording and try to capture that energy for myself and for forever.
I chose this rare painting from Csontváry called “Sacrificial Stone” for the album’s cover artwork. He painted this surrealistic painting in Baalbek too. No debt to me that he was inspired by “The Stone Of The South”, which became the “Sacrificial Stone” in his vision.
When I first saw that painting, I could not believe my eyes: in Void Ov Voices, I use blocks of sounds repeatedly to create a wall of sound. I could not visualise my music better than Csontváry on this beautiful painting.

I was not sure if I should ever release this personal recording but thank my friend Stephen O’Malley’s strong inspiration through the years. Finally, it can happen.

– Attila Csihar
Budapest, September 2021