MUSIC

Organum ‘RAVEN’ CD, which was released by Siren Records in 2018 was the last piece that Jackman released under the name Organum. He changed the name Organum to Organum Electronics in 2019 and has released five volumes of the albums on Siren Records since then. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ is a development of the quiet nature of earlier Organum works and Jackman decided to release the album under his own name because of a very personal essence. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ is composed of low-key church organ drones, airy tanpura sounds, occasional church bell chimes and chirping birds. It is the most minimal, the most quiet and the most powerful composition Jackman has ever created. The drones continue uninterrupted and you may feel little change in partial listening, but you’ll appreciate the increasing internal dynamic energy that Jackman infused with mindful listening. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ means ‘Stone Tomb Old Bird’ in English translation but the piece is neither an elegy nor a lamentation.

Attention drone fiends! Jörg Hiller AKA Konrad Sprenger re-convenes with Phillip Sollmann AKA Efdemin on Modular Organ System. Released via Hiller's own Choose Records label, it's the first document of the duo's installation piece where they created a self-built modular organ system from tubes, air pumps and vibrating reeds. The results are two deep penetrating, highly potent long-form drone works that sound absolutely colossal, and with a physicality that seems to vibrate every cell in the body. Pure sonic hypnosis.

Recording of Pavel Milyakov’s live performance for the closing night of Cyprien Gaillard’s Dumpty exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris on January 8th 2023. The automaton sculpture, Le Défenseur du Temps was being activated live during the performance. Its mechanical movements can be heard on the recording. guitar, strings resonator, effects, mixing and mastering by Pavel Milyakov cover photography by Max Paul inside photography by Timo Ohler, Oleksandra Trishyna recording by Camille Jamain design by Pavel Milyakov released on Firecamp, 2023 edition of 150

Jake Muir's latest set of soft-focus, sensual electro-concrète, dissolves X-rated gay sleaze flick soundtracks into a shimmering suite of subdued orchestral flourishes and surreal cosmic psychedelia. Back in 2020, Muir put together a 90-minute mix for Honey Soundsystem, blending tracks from Kelman Duran, DJ Olive, Daniel Lanois and Terre Thaemlitz with obliquely camp dialog samples from vintage gay porn. The idea was to represent queer sexuality in a looser, more experimental manner, grazing the super-sensory pleasure of the bathhouse experience and the illicit joy of cruising without getting too self-serious while doing it. The mix was so popular that Muir followed it up with a weightless sequel two years later, and began developing the concept into a proper album, using more samples of music and dialogue, eventually performing the piece at the esteemed GRM as part of their FOCUS #4 concerts alongside work by Eliane Radigue, Folke Rabe and Chris Watson. The album is split into two side-long pieces that wash and ripple with nervous tension and discreet salaciousness. Opening with a familiar, bombastic theater sting, there are echoes of kosmische music and antique experimental electronics on 'Cruisin' 87', that Muir fashions into ASMR-rich puddles of syrupy, back-room ambience. Occasionally we hear lascivious words thru the fog, men mumbling to each other and giggling before the inevitable occurs. That's beautiful," a voice mutters over a dusky cricket chirp on 'Pipe Dream'. "It is," another replies. Muir's sonic response is suitably explicit, like a 1950s Hollywood jump-cut to a train going into a tunnel; the Berlin-via-Los Angeles sound artist takes the whole-body, mutual release of queer sex and interprets it with heady gestures, peppering jazzy rhythmic frostings into basins of skewered drone and gurgling synth. Muir's sound is colored by the pleasure of physical touch, a mussy flux of high frequency scrapes and caresses juxtaposed with woozy, dubbed-out fondles and thrusts. Who said the GRM was buttoned up?

SUMMVS IS THE FIFTH COLLABORATION ALBUM BETWEEN ALVA NOTO AND RYUICHI SAKAMOTO. THE RECORD WAS FIRST RELEASED IN 2011 AND IS THE FIFTH AND FINAL INSTALLMENT OF THE ‘VIRUS SERIES’. THE TITLE SUMMVS REFERS TO THE LATIN WORD “SUMMA” (ENG. SUM) AND “VERSUS” (ENG. TOWARDS), AND SERVES AS A METAPHOR FOR THE WORK BEING ORIENTED TOWARDS A COLLABORATIVE RESULT. THE ALBUM FEATURES “MICROON” COMPOSITIONS CONTAINING RECORDINGS OF A 16TH TONE INTERVAL TUNING PIANO—PIANO METAMORFOSEADOR CARRILLO EN DIECISEISAVOS DE TONO. THE ALBUM ALSO FEATURES TWO COVERS OF THE TRACK “BY THIS RIVER” ORIGINALLY COMPOSED BY BRIAN ENO, DIETER MOEBIUS, AND HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS IN 1977.

Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II continues Black Truffle’s documentation of the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the two works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble founded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the music Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to explore in 2013. Played with e-bows, in these works electric lap steel guitars take on roles akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s. This strikingly elegant pair of compositions would serve as an ideal introduction to Lucier’s late music for a listener as yet unfamiliar with its graceful exploration of beating patterns and other acoustic phenomenon. The two pieces have quite different characters, exemplifying Lucier’s ability to harvest a remarkable range of musical results from closely related compositional procedures and concerns. In Arrigoni Bridge (2019), Lucier uses a technique familiar from earlier works such as Still Lives (1995), where sine waves traced the shapes of household objects. Here, three lap steel electric guitars (played by Oren Ambarchi, Bernhard Rietbrock, and Jan Thoben) follow the form of the Arrigoni Bridge that connects Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. The bridge’s two enormous steel arcs become slowly sweeping pitches, alongside which alto saxophone (Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos), violin (Rebecca Thies) and cello (Lucy Railton) sustain long tones, creating a variety of audible beating patterns depending on their distance from or proximity to the guitars. With its stately pacing, warm middle register tones, and rich timbral variety in the sustaining instruments, Arrigoni Bridge is a beautiful example of compositional reduction producing immersive results. Flips (2020), on the other hand, is more austere. Scored for two lap steel electric guitars (Rietbock and Thoben), double bass (Ross Wightman) and glockenspiel (Trevor Saint), the two acoustic instruments played with bows, the piece zooms in on the range of a major second (two semitones). The two guitars sweep in opposite directions within the range, crossing every four minutes; the double bass and glockenspiel sustain long tones, producing beats of different speeds determined by their distance from the guitar tones. This limitation of the tonal range means the music is often dissonant and forces the phenomenon of audible beating to the surface, resulting in a paradoxical music composed entirely of long tones yet alive with pulsating rhythm. Exemplifying Lucier’s ability to uncover near-infinite complexity within seemingly simple materials, Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II is a fitting tribute to one of the major figures of the experimental music tradition and a testament to the continuing power of his work.

French poet and ASMR auteur Félicia Atkinson has frequently fixated on the elusive interwoven relationship between microcosms and macrocosms -- how even the quietest creative act ripples outward, a whisper with no fixed meaning. The Flower And The Vessel pursues this notion in a more literal fashion, as it was crafted while pregnant on tour. She describes it as "a record not about being pregnant but a record made with pregnancy." Each day and night, finding herself far from home, she asked herself "What am I doing here? How can I connect myself to the world?" The answer gradually revealed itself: "With small gestures: recording my voice, recording birds, a simple melody." In truth there is nothing simple about The Flower And The Vessel. The album's 11 songs span whispering textures, opaque moods, and surreal spoken word, leading the listener through a mirrored hall of beguiling mirages. Atkinson cites a trio of French classical compositions from her childhood as formative influences: Ravel's L'enfant Et Les Sortilèges, Debussy's La Mer, and Satie's Gymnopédies. There's certainly a shade of classicism woven within these tracks; melancholic piano motifs repeat then retreat into a radiant frost of shivering frequencies; processed voices recite cut-up poems and interviews over delay-refracted Rhodes and Wurlitzer; iPad gamelan patterns flutter from meditative to melancholic and back again, offset by pointillist patches of delicate software synesthesia. Much of Atkinson's discography is shaped by speech and the lyricism of language, but The Flower And The Vessel ventures further into silence. Field recordings from Tasmania and the Mojave Desert murmur beneath hushed reverberations of gong, vibraphone, and marimba, softly processed into an elegant emptiness, alternately eerie and serene. Her mode of minimalism has long been one of reduction, riddles, and curation, but here Atkinson's synergy feels close to apotheosis, emotive but ambivalent, a ceremony of expectation and invisible forces. The 19-minute closing collaboration with SUNN O))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley, "Des Pierres," is one of the album's few pieces tracked in a proper studio, but it broods and burns with the same subliminal majesty as the rest of The Flower And The Vessel: an ember in amber, seeds planted in shifting sands. Original artwork by Julien Carreyn, mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering.

Riki Hidaka + Jim O' Rourke + Eiko Ishibashi, a rare combination of musicians who represent the current domestic scene, present a delicate and bold music. The musical work "Oki Oishi" by Riki Hidaka, Jim O' Rourke, and Eiko Ishibashi consists of two 20-minute pieces based on studio sessions by the three artists.

Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series. In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 great artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls, available individually or as a bundle. Each record is limited at 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl featuring an original track of 20 minutes on one side, and a laser engraved artwork on the other. Each contained in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and each coming with a print of the artist artwork.

Yoshi Wada and EM Records presents the first-ever, world-premiere release of Earth Horns With Electronic Drone, recorded live in 1974. Combining four of Wada's self-made "pipehorns" (made from plumbing materials, over three meters in length), with an electronic drone tuned to the electrical current of the performance space, this is a lost masterpiece of early minimalism, placing Wada rightfully in the pantheon with La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, Maryanne Amacher and Alvin Lucier. Recorded live in Syracuse, New York, this recording captures the room-filling complex overtones generated by the ever-shifting interplay of the breathing horns and the constant electronic drone. This is a music of ritual hypnotic power, its heavy low-end mass and sense of change within constancy engendering a meditative transcendency. Earth Horns With Electronic Drone is the fourth and ultimate release in Em Records' Yoshi Wada series, a must for all fans of minimalism, heavy drones, ritual, mystery and world-shaking transcendence. From an original performance of almost three hours, the CD features a 77-minute excerpt. The full performance is also available as a 3LP set (162 minutes). From Earth horns to beyond the firmament: prepare to be elevated! Pipehorns constructed by Yoshi Wada; electronic equipment designed by Liz Phillips and Yoshi Wada; Electronics: Liz Phillips; Pipehorn Players: Jim Burton, Garrett List, Barbara Stewart and Yoshi Wada. 96khz/24bit digitally remastered, including a booklet with text in Japanese & English, and a reproduction circa-1975 Fluxus poster by George Maciunas.

The long-awaited reissue of Wada's 1985 LP Off The Wall, recorded in Berlin and originally released on the esteemed FMP-subsidiary SAJ label. A minimalist yet majestic monsterpiece ("massive," as Tom Johnson declares in his perceptive liner notes), Off The Wall features Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ, and percussionist Andreas Schmidt-Neri. The original album consisted of two side-long pieces recorded on successive days by Jost Geber, who captured the power and dynamics of the quartet without losing the meditative delicacy of the bagpipes and the intricacy of their interplay with the homemade organ (constructed by Wada), resulting in a slowly-evolving mosaic of combination tones and overtones. Simultaneously static yet changing, rooted and ethereal, homespun and alien, ancient and very modern, the music is created entirely with acoustic instruments but has "electronic" textures at times, yet is very warm and human, always pulsing, shifting and mutating. Em Records is pleased indeed to release Off The Wall for the first time ever on CD, with the bonus track "Die Konsonanten Pfeifen," a slightly earlier recording with Wada and Hankin on bagpipes and Kevin Newhoff on percussion, originally released as a cassette.

“YIAN” (燕), means swallow in Chinese, and is part of “Siew Yian,” the name given to Chua by her parents to preserve her connection with her Chinese heritage. Just as the migratory songbird lives between places, so did Chua, the artist living in the in-between of the English, Malaysian and Chinese cultures that make up her heritage. In the absence of Mandarin as a mother tongue, music became a way to express the parts of herself that couldn’t be described in words; “YIAN” emerged as a way to heal.

A deeply introspective and fully realized vessel of creative expression (Chua self-produced and engineered eight of the ten tracks), “YIAN” emerges as less an album than a worldview, a commitment to learning and uncovering one’s own selfhood honed over Chua’s lifelong reconciliation with her own personal history and identity.

Alva Noto’s award winning score for the 2022 German documentary film This Stolen Country of Mine directed by German filmmaker Marc Wiese features nineteen compositions to be released on NOTON in July 2023. The documentary film explores the question of a state’s sovereignty in the face of foreign powers. The film portrays Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country’s resources to Chinese investors. Alva Noto’s music subtly accompanies the struggle of a mountain village, immersing us into the film’s narrative and pathos. Across nineteen compositions, the music exposes and holds back when the images and statements of the protagonists speak for themselves, reflecting the dark shadows and the glares of hope of communal resistance. The documentary was the recipient of the German Documentary Film Music Award 2022.

Demdike Stare reunite with guitarist Jon Collin for a new album of concréte dreamweaving performed on tape, pedals and a homemade Swedish nyckelharpa - a type of keyed fiddle. More psychedelic than either of the trio's previous records, 'Minerals' drops the blues to dive headfirst into the smudged folk wellspring, touching on the pastoral ambience of Andrew Chalk via Loren Connors’ immersive drift and Tongue Depressor's subterranean drone expeditions. With the trio all hailing from the Pennine moorlands just above the manc sprawl, Jon Collin & Demdike Stare’s shared musical expression understandably reflects a parallax purview that follows leylines between lusher nooks of the inner city and windswept, barren landscapes. Never ones to play it straight, the Swedish Nyckelharpa - a sort of hybrid viola/hurdy gurdy - is deployed deep into a mix of oblique soundscaping, seeping into a swirl of field recordings, screwed spoken word and phosphorescent drones pinging with tape delay. Split into two distinct sides, the album opens with a scrape of wood and metal that introduces us to the nyckelharpa. Scratching its surface and strings, Collin reveals its peculiar tonality, while Demdike cut through its dissonant textures. Like ancient campfire rituals recorded to decaying 1/4" tape, the music on ‘Minerals’ feels as if it's in dialog with the past, shuttled into the present by abstract processes. By the side’s third act, resonant gongs billow around pitched wails that eventually collapse into silence. The second side is more spirited, opening with a thumbed kalimba cut through reverberant strings that recall Arthur Russell's iconic echo-drenched recordings. Through elaborate concréte techniques, Collin's ancient fiddle dissolves into a ferric gloop that’s slowly pulled apart like toffee, taking it to a place where you can no longer really tell what you’re listening to or how it was made. In fact, unlike pretty much everything we’ve heard from Demdike before, the material here feels mechanical rather than electronic, making for one of the most impactful, unusual releases in the vast sprawl of their catalogue thus far.

XKatedral proudly presents the split full-length album Four Works by Stockholm based composers Linus Hillborg and Theodor Kentros. Four Works consists of two pieces by each composer with music written and recorded during 2019-2021. Two pieces for organ and electronics, a piece for violin and electronics and a piece for bass clarinet and electronics. Since both composers on this release mainly operate within the field of electroacoustic music these four pieces deviate from the composer's ordinary practice to a certain extent. However, they still retain an imprint shared with both composers' larger body of work.

Not Waving explores grief, gratitude, and new beginnings on "The Place I've Been Missing" Renowned Italian musician Alessio Natalizia, AKA Not Waving, reaches new heights with his latest album, "The Place I've Been Missing." This deeply personal and introspective collection of songs delves into themes of grief, the fragility of existence, and the profound process of learning to bid farewell. "The Place I've Been Missing" is a poignant journey, written and recorded by Natalizia, with captivating guest appearances from long time collaborator and friend Marie Davidson alongside Ecstatic label mates Spivak, more eaze, and Romance. Unrestrained by conventional notions, Not Waving's sound defies easy categorisation. From enigmatic electronic soundscapes to dissonant symphonies, from syncopated beats to soothing melodic interludes, these 10 fragmented compositions are a testament to Natalizia's creative fearlessness. Over the span of 10 years, Not Waving's music has undergone a restless evolution, defying easy categorization. The soundscapes within "The Place I've Been Missing" traverse genres, featuring elements of crepuscular synth-pop, slowed-down strings, baroque guitars, shot through with layers of harmonic noise and hazy ambiance. "The Place I've Been Missing" is an audacious endeavor, straddling the fragile line between chaos and harmony, listeners are transported to an ethereal dimension, delving deep into realms of introspection.

“Senzatempo” became a lockdown record. In 2019, a year after our last concert as a trio with Christian Fennesz, the release of his “Agora” and our first publication for Touch – “Elusive Balance” – we met in Milan. We talked about ongoing projects, the evolution of our musical language and, as is often the case when we are all three together, the more frenetic and superficial aspects of contemporary society, the difficulty of letting ideas and projects mature and how music could still play a constructive role in that context. We left each other with the intention of talking at a distance about a new project, to be developed calmly, without any hurry. In the months that followed, after e-mails in which we continued to discuss the project, we decided to work on the perception of time and to focus our attention on those periods of life in which time tends to dilate, to lose its boundaries, dedicating ourselves to the project without the fear of resting on indefinite moments of stasis – trying to take the time of creation as an ally, making the most significant ideas 'sprout', distilling emotions and crystallising them slowly. Catapulted into the first wave of the pandemic, we began to work at a distance, We exchanged different types of sound materials, sometimes raw sometimes more structured and with Christian we tried to give musical form to a surreal calm, at the same time as magmatic, uncertain emotional states. In this phase of collective confusion and almost total isolation, the first drafts of 'Senzatempo' and 'Movements I' were born. In both tracks, we tried to structure chordal waves and melodies inlaid with counterpoints with broad architectures and sinuous movements, in a sort of 'rubato', with the idea of creating an orchestral breath to the entire album. ‘Senzatempo’ is characterised by a dream melody with a dense and continuous dialogue between a sharp guitar and percussive sounds floating on an abstract and flexible pulse. ‘Movements I’, later transformed into a two-part suite, is airy and meditative; an initial acoustic shock leads to a melody resting on relaxed chords and enveloping sounds studded with noise, glitches and fragments of field recordings. After this initial work, we wanted to organise a studio session, but pandemic restrictions forced us to postpone and leave the music to mature further. The following summer, thanks to a residency project for young artists centred on the Senzatempo project and conducted by Christian and ourselves in central Italy, the opportunity arose for the first time to play the material produced thus far, and to experiment and focus on new musical ideas. In November 2021, after a concert we did in Turin, we finally devoted ourselves to the drafting of the album in a studio session lasting some days. The final versions of the first two tracks were created, with the addition of a second part to ‘Movements I’, and ‘Floating Times’ and ‘Motionless Image of Eternity’ came into being. In ‘Floating Time’, clouds of micro-sounds envelop an iridescent, sinuous melody in a sonic space delimited by sculpted percussive sounds. Lost memories seem to resurface. The end of the track takes up the beginning in a kind of ‘rondo’. ‘Motionless’ is counterpointed by telluric percussive sounds in a complex and detailed atmosphere. It seems as if nothing is moving in this sea of sound on which the guitar floats, when in fact everything is in motion in a simmer of textures and melodies that embroider counter-songs to the main refrain. The music of 'Senzatempo' moves in balance between composition and improvisation. It is a symphonic work for an imaginary orchestra in which melodies, counterpoints, dynamics and sonorities define a structural breadth reminiscent of classical music.

Across 8 concise vignettes, Chantal Michelle alchemizes acoustic instrumentation with a spectrum of layered feedback and field sounds, depicting fractured beauty amongst a precarious reality. Michelle’s work is characterized by intoxicating juxtaposition and enriched with an array of source material to construct immersive narrative. Much of the work here was recorded during her time in New York City, perhaps a pre-requisite to the heightened tension at play. Opening with lucid choral vocals, a mysteriously seductive anaesthesia disseminates before evaporating into surging feedback, vocals dissolving as quickly as they appeared. It’s this oscillation between states that permeates throughout the work. Whether it’s the esoteric rumbling of acoustic drones, or the radiant fusion of distorted chords amongst the warming sounds of tropical atmospheres, moments of serenity are conjured up in a space so bliss that their endings incite an immediate nostalgia. Fleeting melodies are pierced by shattering cries of feedback; gossamer tones engulfed in saturated noise. Amongst the instrumentation, buzzing field sounds tremor with hyperreal peculiarity and hallucinations shape noise into sounds of the familiar; the rumbling of an overheard aeroplane or the whirring of distant grasshoppers. Similarly, recurring motifs elicit a false sense of security in their subliminal familiarity, soon exposed as echoes, a reverberation of what was left behind. At the approaching climax, the blissful onset anaesthesia has worn off, interrupted by a powerful chorus of deep, gothic synthesis that fuels post-apocalyptic fever dreams, an unnerving and mesmerising symphony. The unresolved tension leaves us in a state of delirium, questioning if the tranquillity we experienced was ever really there. Michelle was immersed in Fleur Jaeggy’s 'The Water Statues' whilst recording, and its imprint is woven into the sonic fabric of 'Broken to Echoes'; a sublime liminal dream-state, pervaded by haunting visions. It’s a view of the world captured from inside the enclosure of a cell membrane. Through translucent mesh, we see the billowing tension of our surroundings, protected only by the most delicate walls.

Black Sea was the follow-up album to Venice (Touch, 2004), and was originally released in 2008; Stylus Magazine's Nick Southall wrote: "Fennesz does with sound what Stan Brakhage did with film, altering its very fabric and texture, employing disorder and error as forms of communication and expression. He forces you to learn a different method of perception and interpretation, to look beneath the chaos that seems to govern the movements of life and find the patterns beneath." Fennesz's career has come a long way since Instrument, his debut for Mego in 1995, and his first solo album Hotel Paral.lel which followed in 1998. Endless Summer (Mego, 2001) brought him to a much wider audience and Venice underlined his mastery of melody and dissonance. His songs usually embody the skillful application and manipulation of dense sonic textures with a genuine feel for the live, and real-time. Black Sea features guitars that rarely sound like guitars; the instrument is transformed into an orchestra. Fennesz lists the elements used to make the compositions: "Acoustic and electric guitars, synthesizers, electronics, computers and live-improvising software lloopp." On "Glide," Fennesz duets with New Zealand's Rosy Parlane, whose work is also released on Touch. Fennesz also teams up with eMego artist Anthony Pateras whose prepared piano features on "The Colour of Three." Fennesz pushes his work into a more classical domain, preferring the slow reveal to Venice's and Endless Summer's more song- based structures. Jon Wozencroft's artwork makes visible this carefully hidden world resting beneath the surface of "the first impression." A series of shots, taken in quick succession as the tide recedes, reveals a world of specific activity only visible at a particular time and place, histories appearing and disappearing.

Second outing from Jaeger and O’Rourke following the release Wakes on Cerulean on Editions Mego in 2017. Covering a vast terrain with delicacy and poise this new release unveils a spectral showcase for all manner of deep abstraction. The first side positions itself somewhere between stoned komische synth and more nuanced electroacoustic tactics, all weighted by a melancholic undertow. The second side builds on the tension of the former as an undulating drone teases all variety of matter to rise and fall amongst the foreign space it inhabits. The effect creates an enormous sense of deep space before subsiding into a smaller more anxious flickering world. All manner of machines fold into play; digital machines, industrial and analogue machines. The seemingly random yet ordered nature of events is reminiscent of the behaviour of the natural world providing this machine driven release a convincing organic feel. Whether invoking mirrors, distant galaxies or a pond of frogs it is a delightful challenge to focus and locate what is nature and what is nurture. To play this loud is to immerse oneself in a fascinating journey which carries the listener through an array of dizzying emotional states.

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.

Time bends for Imaginary Softwoods, the solo guise of producer, songwriter, and synthesist John Elliott. Though he’s working on new recordings daily, Elliott’s process for the construction of his albums moves at a much different interval, stretching out over months of considerate listening, revision, and waiting patiently for the right combinations and clashes of elemental forces to materialise on their own. The Notional Pastures of Imaginary Softwoods continues Elliott’s practice of zeroing in on what he wants to say with an album over the course of countless sessions that span multiple years, this time paying even more attention to locating the emotional through-line that connects the various pieces. The eleven-piece album vibrates at a low, unbroken cycle through all of its articulations. The bubbling neon dots of “North of Roswell,” double vision stumble of “Mr. Big Volume,” underwater music box trickle of “Portable Void,” and clear headed Arctic daybreak drones of “Diagram of the Universe” are all linked by a gentle, fluid hum. The brief moments of anxiety and long stretches of calm both feed back into the same center of gravity, becoming conjoined reflections of one another as they cycle through. After bending to find this specific universal frequency, time evaporates altogether, and longer zones like the glimmering “Almond Branch” become indistinguishable from Elliott’s signature miniatures, some of which stick around for less than a minute. The Notional Pastures of Imaginary Softwoods is a document of the universe as we comprehend it, designed to vanish as soon as it is felt.

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.