Electronic / Experimental
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![Eliane Radigue - Transamorem - Transmortem (CD)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/61TSw3TfKzL._AC_SL1174_{width}x.jpg?v=1631178640)
Transamorem - Transmortem (1973)
ARP Synthesizer
“Before the greatest achievement
Before the greatest detachment.
At the limit of the frontier space of the unconscious - tuned waves - "consonant things vibrate together".
Where does the change happen? In the inner field of perception or the exterior reality of moving things in the course of becoming.
"And time is no longer an obstacle, but the means by which the possible is achieved".
Eliane Radigue - June 20, 1973
"Transamorem - Transmortem" was premiered on March 9, 1974 at The Kitchen in NYC, where the music programmer at the time was Rhys Chatham - this was right before his guitar phase. During this period, "Transamorem - Transmortem" was presented along with other compositions by Eliane Radigue in a linear mode of listening, although the piece had originally been conceived, during its composition, as a sound installation. Of course, both modes of listening are possible, and each works marvelously in its own way.
In their original form, Eliane Radigue's works are magnetic tapes. After being played a few times in public, the tape disappears to its case until a release proposal makes it available again through a disc.
During this period Eliane Radigue's compositions became fairly long, some lasting over an hour. Because the tracks could not be edited for some obvious reasons, a vinyl release was unthinkable. It was only in the 90's, with the advent of the CD format, that the long compositions of Eliane Radigue were made available (with the exception of the "Song of Milarepa" LP on Lovely Music, a work already divided into multiple movements and thus able to be fit onto two sides of an LP). For these reasons, the work of Eliane Radigue remained virtually unknown for twenty years - from the 70's to the 90's.
It was in 2004, when she accepted my aid in digitizing her archives, along with Lionel Marchetti, that I discovered "Transamoren - Transmortem." Immediately, I was awed by the majestic grace of this very long tangle of frequencies, this set of seemingly unchanging tones, whose variations are of a delicate subtlety. "Transamoren - Transmorten" is recognizable as one of the most radical of Radigue's compositions, comparable to the first "Adnos," the work that follows "Transamoren - Transmortem" chronologically. Very few transformations, an apparent formal aridity that is then contradicted by the physical play of the frequencies as the listener turns her head gently from right to left, or better yet as the listener moves slowly throughout the music space. Moving through zones of specific frequencies, the listener's body experiences localized zones of low, medium and treble frequencies which vary according to the acoustic properties of the space. As Radigue wrote of "Adnos": "to displace stones in the bed of a river does not affect the course of water, but rather modifies the way the water flows." Here, we find the same meditative tension proposing a peaceful movement through the spaces created by the different frequencies that compose "Transamoren - Transmortem."
Very well-organized, Eliane Radigue's archives are a pleasure to explore, and "Transamorem - Transmortem"'s case contained a mine of information. What excited me most was the short text entitled "Inner Space", which described the ideal conditions under which "Transamorem - Transmortem" should be presented. That is to say as a sound installation.
"Inner Space -
This monophonic tape should be played on 4 speakers placed in the four corners of an empty room. Carpet on the floor. The impression of different points of origin of the sound is produced by the localization of the various zones of frequencies, and by the displacements produced by simple movements of the head within the acoustic space of the room. A low point of light on the ceiling, in the center of the room, produced by indirect lighting. Several white light projectors of very weak intensity whose rays, coming from different angles, meet at a single point".
Eliane Radigue - 1973
I immediately felt that it was necessary to make "Transamoren-Transmorten" available once again, and this time in its ideal form, in trying to follow Radigue's recommendations word for word. It was with this idea in mind that the Cumulus collective (also responsible for the contemporary music festival Why Note) organized the Continuum festival in Dijon along with the art space Le Consortium (one of the founders of which had persuaded the goup Circle X to record their first, mythic EP in Dijon in 1979 - but that's another story!).
The goal was to correctly present some of Eliane Radigue's sound installations, an aspect of her work now completely forgotten. And yet, between 1967 and 1971 her work was often exhibited in galleries of contemporary art, mostly in Paris (Lara Vincy, Yvon Lambert ... ), a reflection of the fact that French people have had a harder time than Americans placing the work of Radigue. She herself hesitated for quite a while to use the word "music" to describe her work, a complex that is familiar to this very generation of musicians, and which is now no longer really a problem. Who would claim that the work of Eliane Radigue is not musical? That would be strange ...
The 2006 Continuum festival in Dijon saved four sound installations from the dust (an expression that Radigue uses to describe her archives): "S=a=b=a+b" (1969), "Omnht" (1970), "Labyrinthe Sonore" (1970) and "Transamorem - Transmortem" (1973). The first two installations are composed with feedbacks, the two others with the sounds of the ARP 2500 synthesizer. Each one is based on a strategy of specific spatial presentation, but that's also another story ...
Now it's your turn to enjoy this enveloping electronic space ...
![Eliane Radigue - Vice - Versa, Etc. (2CD)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/748a5f2975378f05e6b259bd39d64d48.image.550x550_{width}x.jpg?v=1631177251)
Eliane Radigue; feedback on magnetic tape Includes archival photographs and liner notes.
"1970 was an important year in Eliane Radigue's musical life since it was the year just before she acquired her ARP 2500 synthesizer. Since 1967, she had been using the feedback as a material; feedback from two tape recorders reworked through intensive studio techniques: slowing down, alteration, superimposition, montage.
"In 1970, the last year she dedicated to feedback, several milestone pieces saw the light of day: Omnht, a wonderful sound installation for three out-of-phase tape loops and wall-mounted loudspeakers; the theoretical setting of Labyrinthe Sonore (eventually premiered at Mills College in 1998 in collaboration with Pauline Oliveros, Maggie Payne and William Winant, among others); Opus 17, one of her first compositions in fixed duration (according to Rhys Chatham, a decisive piece that would change his own compositional career); and Vice-Versa, etc…, which appears to be her very last feedback loop composition.
"Vice-Versa, etc… was conceived as a sound installation setting similar to S=a=b=a+b. A single magnetic tape can be played at any speed, a stereo tape of which allows three playings: left channel alone, right channel alone, left and right channels together. These different channels can be overlapped/crossed over as much as possible, at any speed. Thus the piece reveals itself in its whole dimension, its infinite grace.
"In its content, the piece is the most minimal that Eliane Radigue has ever composed. Feedback is horizontally sustained, time is suspended, vibrating with organic and subtle pulsations. The fastest playthrough, in just 2:42, weaves a graceful continuum of uncanny depth, somewhere between the sonority of feedback and a glass harmonica. Played slowly, at 13:41, it takes us into an universe of low frequency vibrations felt as much by the guts, the ribcage and the whole body as by the eardrum: the signature sound of Eliane Radigue. Between these two extremes, many delicate shadings/variations appear simply through speed modulation. What is striking about this work, which may arguably be one of Radigue's most important compositions, is the extraordinary quality of the tones obtained from such a rudimentary material. It is hard to believe that the composer was yet to begin working on her ARP, since the sonorities heard on Vice-Versa, etc… are surprisingly similar to those she would go on to produce with her synthesizer.
"Vice-Versa, etc… is a minimal work which possesses an infinity of possible variations, a secret object containing the seeds of the oeuvre to come, and a discreet turning point linking the composer's two important working phases, an extremely subtle cross-fade between her feedback loop period to her ARP period.
"Originally, only ten signed and numbered copies of this little boxset containing a magnetic tape and a handwritten note were released - needless to say this is a work that has been nearly forgotten! We have decided to reissue this object as a double CD, with the tape played respectively forwards and backwards, at four different speeds, corresponding to the standards of the tape recorders of the time. This will allow dedicated listeners to experiment with simultaneous playback of the work's different versions, recreating the conditions of the original installation. For lazier listeners, a simple play through provides complete satisfaction, a listening experience that loses itself in the ineffable and discreet beauty of these four variations." ~ Manu Holterbach (translated by Maxime Guitton)
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![Else Marie Pade - Electronic Works 1958-1995 (3LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/pade_yellow_large_f97811ee-b788-4981-9f65-62347978fd3e_{width}x.jpg?v=1631171262)
Else Marie Pade's Electronic Works 1958-1995 is a heavy duty three LP set which was restored, mastered and cut at Dubplates in Berlin under the watchful ears of curator Jacob Kirkegaard. These monumental works are presented, for the first time, pressed on audiophile grade heavy duty vinyl where they belong. Audiophile grade 3LP is pressed in an edition of 500 copies.
"The sounds outside became concrete music, and in the evening I could imagine that the stars and the moon and the sky uttered sounds and those turned into electronic music." Else Marie Pade
Else Marie Pade (born 1924 in Aarhus, Denmark; currently living in Copenhagen) is a precious golden gem in the world of contemporary electro-acoustic music. She is a true pioneer of Musique Concrete and electronic music recorded on tape. She is Denmarks first lady of electronic music and her piece Syc Cirkler (Seven Circles) became Denmark's first electronic piece to be performed on the radio.
EMP's search for sound began in early childhood when she was isolated in her bed for long periods of time due to illness. There she would lie and listen to the sounds around her just as she did years later when she was imprisoned for spying on Nazi compounds in Arhus. Once released from prison she became a piano student at the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen but chose to instead pursue the nuances of her inner sound world after hearing Pierre Schaeffer in 1952. She began studying with him not too soon thereafter. Her first electronic composition premiered in 1955.
![Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte (CD)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/WER6009_{width}x.jpg?v=1630731493)
The contact between electronic sound and live instrumental sound, and the contact of the moment 'now'.
Contacte means contact. It is the contact between the electronic sound and the live player (instrumental sound), and also the contact of each moment of what Stockhausen calls the 'instant form'.
Regarding the 'momentary form,' Stockhausen said in a late-night music program on West German Radio in Cologne on January 12, 1961: "In recent years, a lot of music has been composed that is far from a form with a dramatic finale. There are no climaxes, no signs of climaxes, and no stages of development in these works. Rather, they suddenly and violently build up and try to maintain the 'peak' until the end of the work. It is always at a maximum or minimum, and the listener cannot predict how the piece will progress. It is not a moment that is part of a passage, nor is it a part of a constant duration. The concentration on the 'now' creates a vertical line that breaks the horizontal concept of time and leads us to the timeless..."
As the listener listens to the booming sounds coming from various directions, dark noises, percussion instruments, piano sounds, etc., the listener is freed from this world dominated by time flowing inexorably, and has a very dense and mysterious musical experience.
There are two versions of "Contacte": one for electronic sounds only, and the other for electronic instruments, piano, and percussion.
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![NTsKi - Orca (CD)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/EM1199CD_{width}x.jpg?v=1628487731)
NTsKi is a Kyoto-based artist and musician. She began making music while living in the UK and began working in earnest in 2017 after returning to Japan. She works seamlessly to create tracks with gentle but somewhat eerie vocals and a mixture of diverse musicality. In 2021, she was selected by Bijutsu Techo as one of the newcomer artists who will open up the 2020s. Her collaboration with 7FO, released through EM Records, was selected as one of the best of the year by Shintaro Sakamoto. In addition to her self-produced works, she has participated in the works of Giant Claw, CVN, Shokuhin Matsuri a.k.a foodman, Dengaryu, KM, etc., and has released through overseas labels including TAR and Orange Milk. Also, she has contributed music to the Japan Pavilion hosted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry at SXSW 2019, where Yoichi Ochiai was the general director, virtual singer te'resa, and an Australian bag brand. On August 6th, 2021, her debut album "Orca" will be released via Orange Milk / EM Records.
![Thomas Koner - Nuuk (CD)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/MP27LP_fa4b46e3-5cd8-427b-ae54-ca4b6d39af5d_{width}x.jpg?v=1628152460)
![Ryuichi Sakamoto - Minamata (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/MLR411C_{width}x.jpg?v=1627531602)
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The album also features remixes by Kuniyuki, Bartosz Kruczynski, Knopha, Yoshiharu Takeda and more. The album "We hear the last decades dreaming" (SAGCD035) is the first release under the Chari Chari name in 18 years and marks the return of the independent label "Seeds And Ground" by Kaoru Inoue, who has been active as a DJ and producer for over 25 years. In addition to a series of remix EPs (three analog releases) from "We hear the last decades dreaming" (SAGCD035), the first album under the Chari Chari name in 18 years, a new album with additional unreleased tracks has already arrived.
The fascinating team of remixers includes Kuniyuki, a treasure from the north (Sapporo) who has been active overseas, and Chida, a veteran house DJ who has opened up DJ gigs overseas on his own. Chida, a veteran house DJ who has been active in the underground scene for a long time, and Mamazu (Hole & Holland), a DJ/producer who has been very active in the underground scene in recent years. The album also includes two tracks of self-rework by Kaoru Inoue himself.
Also based in Warsaw, Poland, Takeda's rave-revival sound production under the name Earth Trax has become a hot topic, and under his own name, he has been releasing excellent new music on the popular German digger label Growing Bin. "Bartosz Kruczyński, who is based in Warsaw, Poland, and has released two excellent New Age-style albums under the name Earth Trax, and Knopha, a popular underground DJ in Xiamen, China, whose two previously released analog EPs sold out in an instant. The album also includes a number of reworks by overseas artists.
![Grouper - A I A : Alien Observer (LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/EJZ_HUYWwAApSXx_039068c9-affa-4320-b3ad-4c2917ca0aab_{width}x.jpg?v=1626511360)
![Drum Off Chaos - Centre (12")](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/0a1eefd8215af2485d628e4922d89467.image.550x550_{width}x.jpg?v=1626509037)
Master drummer Jaki Liebezeit was very pleased that the craft of drum making has not changed much over the course of time. Be it that a skin is stretched over a drum with cords or bolts or be it that the skin is out of plastic or animal hide – the principle remains the same: Either enclose a hollow space without which there would be no sound (just imagine a drum filled with clay!).
The same applies to the perception of rhythm.
Everything is reduced to the essential: the hollow space in the centre.
It is the invisible that matters.
All tracks on the second Drums Off Chaos EP revolve around this vacant space in the middle.
A centre that is filled with – nothing.
The focus is on abstract, grooving drum music.
Rhythms are reduced to their elementary nucleus to such an extent that they can be perceived as clearly singular but also as universal.
And something emerges that follows universal laws such as gravity, ergonomics and acoustics.
“Play what the drum demands,” was one of Jaki’s sayings.
Together with him, Drums Off Chaos took this to heart. The EP centres on rhythms that are based on simple numerical relationships allowing their richness to unfurl from within.
![Grouper - A I A : Dream Loss (LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/grouoe_{width}x.jpg?v=1626507058)
![Eduard Artemiev - The Mirror / Stalker (LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/ab84a09aa6f20909c33268a9b4e8be02.image.550x550_{width}x.jpg?v=1626501492)
It comes as no surprise that Andrei Tarkovsky, master of Soviet cinema, turned to composer Eduard Artemiev to score his two lyrical and haunting films, The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979), as he had done for Solaris (also available on Superior Viaduct).
Artemiev’s magnificent soundtrack to The Mirror is the natural follow-up to Solaris. Dense, slow-moving, and often disorienting mood pieces with Baroque sensibilities resonate beyond the film’s dream-like images. For Stalker―Tarkovsky’s other science fiction masterpiece―Artemiev was inspired by Indian classical music and employed layers of synth tones, flute and tar (a traditional Iranian stringed instrument) to create a central theme as spellbinding as The Zone, a setting in the film where laws of physics no longer apply.
Superior Viaduct presents the first-time official release of these two astonishingly unique soundtracks. Recommended for fans of Lech Jankowski’s music for Brothers Quay films, BC Gilbert & G Lewis and Oneohtrix Point Never.
• First-time official release of original soundtracks for two classic films by Andrei Tarkovsky
• Follows the recent release of Artemiev’s acclaimed soundtrack for Solaris
• Recommended for fans of Philip Glass, Aphex Twin, Tim Hecker
![Neotantrik (Suzanne Ciani, Sean Canty, Andy Votel) - 241014 (Clear Vinyl) (2LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/VHSX015-COL_{width}x.jpg?v=1626419032)
Synth legend Suzanne Ciani, Demdike Stare's Sean Canty & Finders Keepers' Andy Votel come together on this killer hour-long 2014 synapse popper of a collaboration pooling the occasional group’s esoteric collage-based approach into a remarkably foreboding session pregnant with a dread that’s never quite resolved. Think Vladimir Ussachevsky, Todd Dockstader, Spectre and Company Flow melted thru the Deutsch-Italo industrial DIY tape era and funneled thru an almost impenetrable fog of Ann Arbor basement noizze.
Hustling some of Neotantrik’s most amorphous gestures, ’241014’ is a four-segment movement of reduced Buchla treatments, destroyed vinyl loops and scraping foley suspense; like a cosmic dream diary layered into a collage of drones and clatters. Little in Ciani's extensive catalogue has hinted at what's on display here; the joyful lullaby-pop of "Seven Waves" or metallic alien soundscraping of "Flowers of Evil" are only hinted at. She instead paints new sonic vistas, allowing space for her collaborators to make themselves known; Votel's chiming toy autoharp and Bubul Tarang (a Punjab string instrument) add a distinctive flavor, while Canty's grimy drones and noise-soaked textures drizzle pitch-black molasses into the cracks and crevices. Together, the effect is a bit like hearing Philip Jeck improvising over Popol Vuh's peerless Moog-led debut "Affenstunde" or Demdike Stare knocking out impromptu reworks of Tangerine Dream's abstrakt early run.
Perhaps unusually, the trio have still never set foot in a studio together, exclusively maintaining their practice in-the-moment and on stage when schedules intersect. So it’s all the more remarkable that their improvisations naturally find a democracy of role and such a heightened level of intuition, beautifully converging their thoughts to mutual, open-ended conclusions that leaves billowing room for interpretation. In a most classic sense, it's like the sensation of sleep paralysis or dream/nightmare ambiguity, with a level of suggestiveness that’s disorienting from end to end.
For the first time the recordings are now available in high fidelity (there was a tape version a couple of years back) - now remastered by Rashad Becker to better represent the otherworldly scope of their actions on stage, from the NWW-like queues and drone of ‘Scanned Accents’ and keening silhouette of ‘Second Action,’ to new sections of subaquatic Porter Ricks-like murk in ‘Anti-Contraction’ and the levitating webs of synth and tactile, sampled textures in ‘Last Canción.’
Tape music and synth music have long shared a passionate embrace, and here turntablism coolly slides in on the action. Canty and Votel's background in beat tape assembly and crate digging pays off: they're keenly experimental creators but bring an unfussy sense of rhythm and performance that's miles beyond any facile repetition of a nostalgia for vintage glory. Combined with Ciani's delicate Buchla work - it’s a unique proposition.
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![DJ Food - Kaleidoscope + Companion (4LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/AHED030_DJFood_J_{width}x.jpg?v=1626344240)
![DJ Food - Kaleidoscope + Companion (4LP)](http://meditations.jp/cdn/shop/products/AHED030_{width}x.jpg?v=1626344240)
Limited color vinyl (Marble Orange & Red)/ Gatefold sleeve specifications.
The opening "The Ents Go To War" has a gloomy arrangement and heavy drums, "Skylark" has a hypnotic dance between the bassline and the snare, and "Zoom Zoom" has a whimsical percussion. The airy synthesizer is impressive. In addition, "Kaleidoscope Companion" is full of moments that fans will be surprised at. The big band meets easy listening "Hip Operation" was reused in the first version of Sukia's "Feelin'Free" remix, and "A Strange Walk" was included in the compilation "Xen Cuts". An unreleased version of the remix. "Stealth" is another version of the Gentle Cruelty Remix of "The Aging Young Rebel", also included in "Xen Cuts".
Another version of DJ Food's signature song, "The Crow (Slow)," extends the melodic theme to a calm soundscape that eventually blends into another dub version. The 13-minute-long "Quadraplex (A Trip To The Galactic Center)" is made by stitching together various takes from different synthetic tracks. Closing Kaleidoscope Companion, Boo Hoo is an early short version of The Sky At Night that conveys the cinematic mood of the album.
It's not a new DJ Food album, it's an album that wasn't born at the time. In another reality, these songs may have been on Kaleidoscope, but now, 20 years later, they will be released as an adjunct to the original album. --Strictly Kev
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