MUSIC

« Senderos de luz y sombras » (2016/20), 30’13 Senderos de luz y sombras (Paths of Light and Shadows) – Commissioned by the French State for INA grm – 2016-2020 In memoriam Bernard Baschet, Bernard Parmegiani and Carlos Pellegrino. A 16-channel piece inspired by astrophysics, the mystery of the pre-Big Bang era and some of the uncanny motions of the unconscious mind, where strangeness meets the ordinary. The themes that permeate Senderos de luz y sombras simultaneously engage the overwhelming, unyielding immensity of the beginnings of the universe and the forces at work in the unconscious mind. What connects these themes are the dark energies operating outside our knowledge, far beyond the conceptual scope of our limited thinking. How to convey all this and build music from these concealed forces? What Beatriz Ferreyra achieves, thanks to her trademark virtuosity, is precisely to summon energies, to bring in the raw forces that govern the laws of Acoustics, so as to trigger sonic storms as one would call the rain, to transform all sound matters into the core of a ritual. Indeed, Beatriz Ferreyra addresses the mind-body reconciliation, for in providing this unique sound and musical experience, with a rare sensitive intensity, the great composer simultaneously invites us to engage in a personal experience. François Bonnet, Paris, 2021

Nicole Lachartre: “Mundus” 3LP box – Metaphon 012 - 2023 Hardboard linen LP box with silkscreened titles, 12 page booklet with track info and text by Vincent de Roguin and Mark Harwood, notes by Lachartre and a rare portrait photo from 1969. Edition of 200 copies Available through the La Scie Dorée webshop First ever release of French composer, musicologist and writer Nicole Lachartre (1934-1991). This 3LP set comprises most of her electronic music and musique concrète compositions recorded in the 60’s and 70’s, all previously unreleased. Lachartre had a classical formation, studied with a.o. Darius Milhaud, Iannis Xenakis and Michel Philippot. Her broad formation and interest as well as her profound commitment and singular vision created a solitary voice even within the field of electronic music and musique concrète, strangely enough unheard till this day. Her first tape composition from 1968 was recorded in Pierre Henry’s Apsome studio and most of her other electronic and electro-acoustic compositions included in this box set were recorded at the IPEM in Ghent.

Thrilled to announce the reissue of Nikolaus Utermöhlen’s ‘Karlsbad’ album, originally released in 1989. Utermöhlen was a founding member of Die Tödliche Doris and this is his sole solo release. A collection of 23 witty oddball compositions for clarinet, accordion, percussion, recorder, violin, guitar, organ. It definitely has a Doris dose but even more so it shines for its totally singular mélange of tribal dada chamber folk, dilettante dissonant poetry, hard to compare with anything else. A slice of flamboyant wellness. The recordings of this album were made for the ‘Georgette Meunier’ film by Tania Stöcklin and Cyrille Rey-Coquais. Issued from the original master tapes and includes the 8 page booklet with engravings from the Karlsbad spa era.

大聖地〈Mille Plateaux〉から〈Leaf〉〈Raster-Noton〉までも横断して数々の傑作を生み出した、Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic)とも並ぶフィンランド電子音楽界の一大ヒーローであり、昨今本格的にリリースを活発化させている鬼才Vladislav Delay。 μ-ZIQが運営する〈Warp〉や〈Hyperdub〉と並ぶエレクトロニック・ミュージックの聖地である〈Planet Mu〉から発表した2022年傑作『Isoviha』をストックしました。彼が住むフィンランドのハイルオト島から北へ1000キロ離れた北極圏の自然と音世界を個人的に考察した『Rakka』の2タイトルと対をなすアルバム。人工文明への回帰を示し、『Rakka』よりも複雑な世界を提示するハイパーモダンなミュージック・コンクレート傑作盤！

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Tender Membranes, the label’s first release from Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electro-acoustic composer Marja Ahti. Active for a decade in the Finnish underground music scene, in recent years Ahti has developed a distinctive approach to patiently unfolding electro-acoustic constructions, documented on a string of solo releases and collaborative projects with Judith Hamann and her husband Niko-Matti Ahti. Working with concrete and instrumental sounds, field recordings, and electronics, Ahti favours neither disjunctive collage nor monolithic consistency; rather, her work is composed of organically unfolding sequences of details and textures, which, as she says, ‘can stretch out or cut fast as long as they have a sense of inner stillness’, a sense that she connects to moments of heightened attention in everyday life. Tender Membranes consists of four lengthy pieces, partly inspired by the image of the senses and mind as membranes allowing for the passage between inner and outer spaces, sensation and its causes, creating a world. Ahti’s unhurried pacing encourages this sense of listening as an opening or surrender to sound, which can often create the impression that the listener is moving through a space zooming in on details. The opening Shrine (Aether) exemplifies this aspect of Ahti’s approach: a bell clears the air with a single long tone, followed by the ambience of outdoor spaces, crackling electronics, an archival recording of a horsefly on a windowpane. Dozens of these moments, varying in length, density, and intensity, move past the listener’s attention, momentarily brought into focus then slipping away. Like those of the masters of the French musique concrète tradition, Ahti’s sounds are not often recognisable, though they might suggest proximity or distance, open environments or closed spaces, the urban or rural, day or night. In Ahti’s work, we do not encounter spectacular metamorphoses à la Parmegiani but rather a state of ambiguity where the listener is often unsure what is organic and what is inorganic, where the careful productions of the synthesizer might end and sounds discovered in the environment begin. What Ahti calls her ‘poetic way of experiencing and organising the familiar and the unfamiliar’ is sustained throughout Tender Membranes, but each piece has its own character. On Dust / Light, human presence is more overt, as what appear to be whispers, singing, and distant speech thread between high frequencies, untraceable drips and pops, and metallic shimmers. In all this there is a melody that you can sing and to which you may dance makes more prominent use of musical instruments, gaining a sombre beauty from half-buried piano chords and organ tones. On the closing Oh Fragrant Witness, a delicate cloud of subtly bending pitches is repeatedly disrupted by a resounding, almost ominous mass of low tones, at once a strange detour from much of what has gone before and an almost classical finale. Arriving in a sleeve reproducing contemporary Finnish photographer Sini Pelkki’s fragmented visions of the everyday, Tender Membranes is a balm to reawaken tired ears.

EMERALD TABLET" and "Echoes" were recorded in 1978 at NHK's Electronic Music Studio by Sohmei Sato, a master of Japanese contemporary music history, and released on Kojima's ALM Records. This is an analogue reissue on one LP from WRWTFWW Records! "EMERALD TABLET" was created by overdubbing harmonics of sounds composed of tubular bells, cymbals and Buddhist bells. EMERALD TABLET" was created by overdubbing harmonics consisting of tubular bells, cymbals, and Buddhist bells. It is Sato's unique fusion of tape music and music concretes. "Echoes" was composed for an event held by the Kawaji Onsen Tourism Association in Tochigi Prefecture from May 20 to 29, 1981. Eight huge loudspeakers were set up on a hill surrounding a stream, and the music was played on an eight-channel tape system, with cables connected to the loudspeakers extending over a kilometer! Limited to 600 copies

“The first series comprises six related movements, usually organised in pairs, electronic sounds with instrumental and more rarely, concrete sounds: Incidences/resonances brings into play controlled resonances akin to sounds of concrete origin in a process that helps to expand the variable electronic sound sources. Here, ‘incidents’ are opposed to one-off ‘accidents’ in the second movement: Accidents/Harmoniques (Accidents/Harmonics). In the second movement, very short events of instrumental origin change the harmonic tone of the continuum they interrupt or overlap. Moreover, the high notes are underplayed, which stimulates the attention given to other phenomena generally hidden by the melodic form applied to the instrumental play. Géologie sonore (Sound Geology) is similar to a flight over an area where different ‘sound’ layers come to the surface one after the other. When seen from high above, instrumental and electronic sounds seem to fuse ... Dynamique de la resonance (Dynamics of Resonance) is a microphonic exploration of a single sound resonating through different forms of percussion. L’Etude élastique (Elastic Study) places together various sounds produced by ‘touching’ elastic or instrumental skins (baloons, doumbeks) or vibrating strings and a number of instrumental gestures close to this ‘touch’, using electronic processes to generate white noise. Conjugaison du timbre (Conjugated Tone), the last movement in the series, uses the same substance to apply rhythmic forms onto a perpetually varying tone continuum. “The second series of movements draws its inspiration from concrete and electronic sources rather than instrumental ones. Incidences/battements (Incidences/Beatings) is a reminder of the first movement in the first series which then quickly moves into Natures éphémères (Ephemeral Natures): ephemeral play on instrumental and electronic sounds, singled out by their internal trajectory rather than by the material itself. Matières induites (Induced Matters): just as molecular effervescence triggers a changes of state, it seems that the different states of these sound materials can be generated by each other or through induction processes. In Ondes croisées (Crossed Waves), the pizz vibrations interfere with somehow ‘visible’ water drops on the surface of a similar material. Pleins et déliés (Downstrokes and Upstrokes) can be listened to as the energies absorbed in the motion of bouncing bodies, while hollow ‘bubbles’ and points bring together some people’s gravity and others’ downwards movements. The work finishes with Points contre champs (Reverse Angle Points). Here, the notion of perspective of the different sound threads weaving a kind of network, or field, traps the occasional iterative elements in the foreground and progressively absorbs them, giving more space for the angle - and the chanted sound - to grow.”(B.P.) 

COMPUMA has released his long-awaited first solo album "A View" on his own label <SOMETHING ABOUT>.

This is an full-length album based on the music for the play "View" commissioned in fall of 2021 by the theater group "Blue Egonak" based in Kitakyushu. The album contains 9 original songs and 2 dub mixes, totaling 11 songs, newly reworked with co-producer hacchi (Urban Volcano Sounds / Deavid Soul).

In addition to his inexhaustible DJ and music selection activities, COMPUMA has released a number of collaborations and remixes, including a 2007 album
as Smurphies' Fearless Bunch [Smurph-Otokogumi] (reissued on vinyl in 2021) and its predecessor Asteroid Desert Songs [ADS], as well as duo works with Ken Takehisa (KIRIHITO)). COMPUMA has also released a number of collaborations and remixes, but this is his first album as a solo artist. Recently, his DJ trio "Akuma no Numa" with Dr. Nishimura and Awano, has been getting a lot of attention, and their performances have been introduced on radio shows overseas.

The sound, including electronic sounds, field recordings, and the space between them, evokes a variety of landscapes, and that quietly stimulates your imagination. It is a work that will have a unique presence in the next wave of the new age ambient/environmental music revival that has been emerging in the global ambient/IDM scene.

One of the two dub mixes included on the album, "Vision(Flowmotion in Dub)" is a re-work of "Flowmotion(IN DUB)" which will be included in  "Midnight is Comin'", a compilation curated by ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U scheduled for release in May on the Singapore label Midnight Shift. The other dub mix is a version of "View 2", done by Naoyuki Uchida who is known for his work on LITTLE TEMPO, Oki Dub Ainu Band and more recently GEZAN's "KLUE".

Album is mastered by Soichiro Nakamura of Peace Music, who has worked with Shintaro Sakamoto, OGRE YOU ASSHOLE, and countless artists. Artwork is by Tomoo Gokita, a world-renowned painter who is also known in Japan for his jacket art for META FIVE and TOWA TEI. Design is by Satoshi Suzuki. Gokita and Suzuki, both of whom have worked on COMPUMA's previous products.
(text by Yusuke Kawamura)

LIL MOFO

Includes Download Code for the live recording and a new remix "View 2 Electro" (remix of "View2" from the
album "A View").

Compuma : Electronics, Synthesizer
Naoyuki Uchida:Dub Mix
Kiyotaka Sumiyoshi:Movie

"A View" release party held at WWW Shibuya on Sept.30 2022 has been reproduced on video. Video footage
was added to the live recording from the show.

Mastered by Naoyuki Uchida ( except “View 2 Electro” by hacchi )
Produced by Compuma for Something About Productions 2023
Design : Satoshi Suzuki

Aclod is the first fruit of the telekinetic long distance collaboration between Juho Toivonen and Loren Chasse. The artists shared environmental recordings from Coyote Wall, Washington and Pori, Finland to create music for an implied landscape that is located neither here nor there. Toivonen and Chasse began working together in 2021 after Toivonen reissued Chasse`s seminal field-recording based album “Synthesis Of Neglected Places” on his label Akti. Working on the reissue, the artists noticed that they shared a similar interest towards the microscopic details of sound and that they both actively listened and immersed themselved in the everyday sonic experience of their surroundings. One thing soon led to another and they realized that they had created a new 30-minute piece, Aclod. Hive Mind are excited to present this deeply immersive work which seemlessly blurs environmental and natural sound from the two outdoor recording locations with ephemeral whispers of melody recorded on melodeon, metalophone, gong, guitar, Juno synth, water bowls and pebbles. * * * * Loren Chasse is based in Portland, Oregon and has a long history in the underground and experimental music scene having been a a key figure in the Jewelled Antler Collective. Central to his practice is an interest in listening in the moment and a deep and reverential attention to the sound-worlds of our immediate surroundings. Juho Toivonen is from Pori, Finland and currently runs the Akti Label as well as performing in Free Tala and improvisational collective, Vahvistusharha. His recent solo releases on Ikuisuus and C/Site have been garnering some well-deserved attention over the past couple of years.

Historically informed violin player, prize-winning street musician, new age experimentalist, chamber ensemble performer and conservatoire deviant. The career of Valentina Goncharova (b. Kyiv 1953) shares parallels with those associated with the broader new music movement of the 20th century and the dissemination of home recording technologies. Valentina’s was a youth spent immersed in the world of classical music study under soviet rule, first in Kyiv and later in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) from the age of 16. With the supervision of professors M. Vayman and B. Gutnikov she learned concert violin and developed alternate playing styles alongside skilled pianists. A student of the Leningrad conservatoire during the years 1969 through to 1983, her repertoire included music for violin and later expanded to contemporary music composition. The improvisatory nature of free jazz and then budding experimental rock circles also intrigued Valentina during this period in Leningrad. Departing from the rules of the conservatoire, she briefly performed in underground rock clubs alongside future members of the industrial group Pop- Mechanika (Popular Mechanics). This perpetual state of flux is central to the variety found within ‘Recordings Vol. 1’, though as opposed to any degree of uncertainty Valentina’s practice is one in flux by way of earnest curiosity. Pushing further into an exploration of solo electro-acoustic sounds, she took to home taping on a modified Olimp reel to reel recorder. Intrigued by the manipulability of dubbing and the fresh sounds of DIY effects chains, Goncharova developed pickups alongside her husband Igor Zubkov. Her infatuation with the music of Stockhausen, Xenakis, Ganelin Trio and Pierre Boulez channels through considerations of space and erratic sound design, the three movements of ‘Metamorphoses’ embodying this textural approach to musique concrete. The compositional skills developed in Leningrad unfold in the romantic gestures of ‘Higher Frequencies’, whilst manipulated cello combines with synthesise keys across ‘Passageway To Eternity’. The slow, pulsating drone soundscapes recall the likes of Robert Rutman’s US Steel Cello Ensemble or even deep listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. The juxtaposition of written notation and improvisatory flare is central to Goncha- rova’s sound world. This period of home recording documents a confluence of minimalism, free form and flirtations with new age tropes (inc. bell chimes and cavernous vocal mantras). Experimenting with unusual performance techniques, such as shouting into amplified cello strings, Valentina’s home studio functioned as a place to foster full artistic and creative freedom away from any academic strictures. Relocating to Estonia in 1984, and in parallel to the deeply personal music of ‘Recordings Vol. 1’, Valentina performed at jazz festivals and gave classical concerts across Eastern Europe. In a sense, the recordings on these discs offer only a glimpse into her lifelong body of work. Over the past few decades she has taught at Tallinn Music College, expanded and updated post- Soviet popular music repertoire, collaborated with the Russian Philharmonic Society of Estonia and given concerts and charity events alongside the Catholic Church. Hers is a life dedicated to the exploration of sound, a career forged through careful study and ceaseless intrigue. In a time where technological interconnectedness has allowed for music of the past to be continually mined and evaluated through new lenses, Shukai present an artist whose tendency for private home-taping had allowed recordings to go unheard for thirty years.

Following the unpublished works of the Ukrainian/Estonian musician Valentina Goncharova, Volume 2 of Shukai’s archival project sits in direct contrast to the solo works of Vol. 1. Spending her youth studying classical music first in Kyiv and then in Leningrad, Valentina began her musical career with rigorous compositional study and concert violin performance. This long player of duets as such casts a light on Goncharova’s experiences with early free jazz, democratic improvisation and introductions to pure electronic sound. Where Vol. 1 explored her home studio experiments and flirtations with musique concrete and new age, this volume seeks to give audience to similarly DIY recordings developed in collaborative environments away from the conservatoire. Properly documenting sessions revolving around smoky jazz cafes, art galleries, salons and theatre venues across Riga and Tallinn, these seven pieces add to the historical narrative of the soviet era avant-garde and show the broader spectrum of Valentina’s work. We begin in Riga with an adapted score for a delicately unfolding violin drone, voice and saxophone performance produced by Valentina and Alexander Aksenov. Describing the nineties as temporarily narrowing the content of cultural life and thus nullifying the interest of free improvisation in both Tallinn and Riga, Valetina’s bond with the multi-instrumentalist and theatre director Aksenov led to decades of close friendship and several demo recordings such as ‘Reincarnation II’. Their initial chance meeting at a jam session set in motion various cross-country performances and experimental theatre works. With its focus on extended harmony, it is perhaps ‘Reincarnation II’ that most recognisably follows on from Shukai’s first volume. Across the rest of the disc are collaborative duets with Sergei Letov and Pekka Airaksinan respectively, the three tapes with Letov an example of recordings as a ‘rehearsal process’. These evenings spent in Moscow apartments and St. Petersburg art studios challenged Goncharova’s preconceptions of musical expression; “I was surprised by his (Letov’s) artistic language. He composed here and now music that was so intellectually advanced that it was quite comparable to the compositions of my fellow students. Only, to achieve such a result, it took months for them. So, for the first time, I took part in free jazz collective creativity” (2020). Atypical violin/saxophone techniques and light, difficult to place percussive textures interplay across the three duets with Letov, the sense of spatiality alluding to the very nature of the recordings. They strike ultimately as private, freeform experiments with sound, never intended for the listener but documenting a practice which explores the dichotomy of improv’s ‘non-professionalism’ and its potential freedom from trained performance. Just one curious corner of Valentina’s musical path, they are included as a deliberate variance to the tapes with Pekka Airaksinen, an already well-regarded composer, early synthesiser fanatic and Finnish radical. At their time of meeting, Pekka had diverted his attention from punk-indebted noise and free jazz groups to a pursuit of spiritualism via contemporary electronic technologies. Already familiar with the ‘Buddhas of Golden Light’ LP, Valentina found in his work an attraction to the sacred and, after an encounter at a 1988 Helsinki festival dedicated to futurist art and literature, she prepared to visit his studio. After a failed attempt to record a joint album, fragments of the tapes are presented here, highlighting Goncharova’s first real experience of electronic music making in a compositional sense. The result is a marriage of stunning organ tones, processed violin murmurs and progressive minimalism a la Terry Riley or La Monte Young. Fragmented guitar and additional keyboard patterns push and pull through delay units in unison with Valentina’s two violins, at times mimicking the howl of the wind or even the human voice. Once again, the duality of the indistinguishable unfamiliar vs. the harmonic familiar. Recordings 1987-1991 Vol. 2 completes Shukai’s dive into the sound world of an important yet overlooked artist working within Soviet era electroacoustics.

The French electronic composer Bernard Parmegiani, one of the most important figures of the French music research group [INA-GRM] founded by Pierre Scheffer, has influenced Aphex Twin, Autechre and Keith Fullerton Whitman. In 2008, to celebrate GRM's 50th anniversary, compiled with 12-CD collection of electronic music works that became very popular and is now hard to find. Winner of the President of the Republic Award at the French ACC Disc Awards(!) A 92-page booklet (in both English and French) is included. This is a must-have for all fans of electronic and experimental music.

This dense 11-disc retrospective of Pauline Oliveros' early and unreleased electronic work includes her very first piece made for tape in 1961. Organized chronologically, this set not only documents Pauline's earliest electronic music but it also functions as an early history of electronic music itself. Follow as she participates in the establishment of the legendary San Francisco Tape Music Center and then moves to University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio, Mills Tape Music Center and University of California San Diego Electronic Music Center. This tenth anniversary edition is packaged in a clamshell-style box containing all the tracks from the 2012 edition spread out over 11 CDs each housed in single pocket sleeves. A 36-page booklet includes extensive liner notes and essays from Pauline Oliveros, Alex Chechile, Ramon Sender, David Bernstein, Corey Arcangel.

Pauline Oliveros was a composer, performer, humanitarian and an important pioneer in American music. Acclaimed internationally, she forged new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, sonic philosophy, teaching and meditation she created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly affects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it. Pauline Oliveros built a loyal following through her concerts, recordings, publications and musical compositions written for soloists and ensembles in music, dance, theater and inter-arts companies. She provided leadership within the music community from her early years as the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (formerly the Tape Music Center at Mills), director of the Center for Music Experiment during her 14-year tenure as professor of music at the University of California at San Diego to acting in an advisory capacity for organizations such as The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, and many private foundations. She served as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College. Oliveros was vocal about representing the needs of individual artists, about the need for diversity and experimentation in the arts, and promoting cooperation and good will among people. She was honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros' commitment to interaction with the moment went unchanged. Oliveros passed away peacefully on November 24, 2016 but her sonic legacy and philosophy continues to grow and inspire.

"On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level." --John Rockwell

First emerging during the early years of the new millennium, over the last two decades, the Palermo born, Munich based composer, Valerio Tricoli, has forged a singular path within experimental sound practice, continuously rethinking the relationship between electroacoustic composition and narrative possibility. Say Goodbye to the Wind, his first LP with Shelter Press, stands among his most poetic and groundbreaking efforts to date. Across three intricate, deeply personal works of concrète music - dense with themes drawn from J.G. Ballard, Samuel Beckett, theosophy, and the temporal blur of DMT - the composer blurs the boundaries between the tangible and abstract, weaving complex allegories for the self. Exploring auditory phenomena and the narrative potential of electronic and acoustic sound sources, Valerio Tricoli’s work - as it has appeared across a carefully executed body of solo recordings, as well as noteworthy collaborations with Stefano Pilia, Dean Roberts, Thomas Ankersmit, Hanno Leichtmann, and numerous others - rests at the shadowy juncture of internal and external worlds; a meeting place where the synthetic and organic give way to utterances of the existential, psychological, physical, and occult. Most commonly created on a Revox B77 reel-to-reel - manipulating, live sampling, and real-time editing / mixing of field and studio recordings - in Tricoli’s hands, estranged moments of sonorous ephemera transmogrify and intertwine as metaphorical and allegorical sums, far greater than their parts. Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s sixth full-length, gathers three works of musique concrete, thematically bound by notions of absence, loss, stillness, and release. The album’s title is taken from a story by J.G. Ballard, set in the desolation of a holiday resort that rests among a landscape of endless rolling dunes that are populated by ʻsound sculptures’ and monsters. The otherworldliness of this reference is further expanded by the depth exposed by the many possible implications and meanings implied by the combination of words; wind being a metaphor of the breath of life, and its absence meaning death. If the wind is a storm, what is the abstraction that remains in the absent void when it leaves? Historically, one of the primary pursuits of musique concrete is the transformation of everyday sonority - field recordings, found / incidental sound, etc. - into abstractions of profound meaning and weight. While this process unquestionable played a heavy hand in the composition of Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s approach to the idiom sets the stage for something entirely unique. Not only are the practices of tape music applied to field recordings, but to the sounds of piano, synthesizers, objects, and the composer’s voice, in addition to interventions by Ecka Mordecai on cello, Lucio Capece on soprano saxophone, and Ida Toninato on vocals. Further expanding to potential of meaning, are the references - literal and abstract - that guided each work into being. The album’s opener, Lo Spopolatore, draws its title from Samuel Beckett’s short story Le Dépeupleur, translated in English as The Lost Ones. Formed from dense but spare prose, the story describes a world consisting of a flattened cylinder, where each inhabitant is “searching for its lost one”. Devoid of plot, Beckett frequently repeats certain phrases and bits of information, setting up both conceptual and structural mirror’s Tricoli’s work, which weaves , from a multitude of sonorous fragments - field recordings, voice, and diverse instrumentation - a similar sense of density within its minimal expanses; clusters of textures forming as haunted ghosts, shifting between pure abstraction and conscious imprints of the sources from which they were drawn, before drifting into a space of placid, ambient calm. It is arguably the versatility of possible meanings, harnessed by Tricoli from his sound sources, through which the composer’s greatest talents come to light. Say Goodbye to the Wind’s second composition, Mimosa Hostilis - the name of a Brazilian plant which contains DMT - begins with same recording as its predecessor, made of his son’s breathing, a few months after his birth, in the Sicilian sea wind. In place of abstract images of place and the futility of being, Tricoli pursues something closer to a state of mind. An expanded or exploded consciousness that encounters the self, bleeding into and becoming a natural environment. “A jungle of contrasting noises and perceptions, of childhood memories that translate without coherence into adult desires.” Here Tricoli treats his sources with pointillistic precision, intermingling vocal and minimal instrumental gestures into a polyrhythmic patter that transforms commonplace sonority into aural echos of wind, rain, the shadowy species within. The album’s final work, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus, is a love song in a dystopian world. Its title is taken from the name of the first paper published by Otto von Guericke - a 17th century, German scientist, inventor, and politician - relating to his experiments with the Magdeburg hemispheres, a pair of large copper hemispheres, that were used to demonstrate the power of atmospheric pressure. These two mated objects are a metaphor for the work’s theme; two halves which become a sphere by the power of the void, the void that they contain, or the void that they embraced. While no less oriented around the abstract possibilities activated by field recordings, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus is the album’s most explicitly musical work. Warbling instrumental sounds and vocal interventions, bent by the hand tape manipulation, push toward heightened states of drama and tension, pushing and pulling against a vast pallet of textures drawn from the natural word and beyond. A masterstroke of contemporary musique concrète and auditory conceptualism, dense with metaphor, allegory and meaning, Shelter Press is thrilled to present Valerio Tricoli’s ‘Say Goodbye to the Wind’. Issued in a limited edition CD and Digital, mastered by Rashad Becker, with artwork by Mårten Lange.

James Rushford tops over a decade of solo and collaboratibve work with Oren Ambarchi, Crys Cole, Will Guthrie, Graham Lambkin and Klaus Lang on this fathoms-deep, psychedelic treat, a next-level arrangement of microtonal drone, decaying concréte fuzz and windswept, somber melancholia recorded for the Shelter Press label.

James Rushford impressed earlier this year with his excellent Black Truffle collab with Will Guthrie "Real Real World", and he here heads further into the nether-realm on 'Lakes From The Louvers’, an album that draws its inspiration from the interplay of shadow and light he observed on the surface of the lake and through his window while at an artist residency at La Becque on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Rushford's detailed sound particles and concrète world-building echo the tantalising shimmer of light on water, with amplified movements, synthesized squawks, pings and harp notes rippling across the length of each track. It’s music that accurately represents the landscape but is far from ambient - instead Rushford sculpts soundscapes that demand patient, attentive listening. 

The slow-moving, deliberate processes that Rushford has been honing over the last 15 years betray a sensitive ear, swerving pretentious, exclusionary art for arts sake nonsense. This is electro-acoustic experimentation with a beating heart, designed to trigger thought and self reflection. Just clap yr ears around 'Hyaline Apples' as it melts buzzing clouds of synth into jagged harp plucks and woodblock percussion, or standout track 'The Bise' and its disquieting haze of microtonal bliss. When the album comes to a satisfying close on 'Dents Du Midi', it feels like the finale of a muticolored odyssey, as tangled synth notes fold in on themselves like an MC Escher painting. Futuristic and ancient, 'Lakes From The Louvers' is a breathtaking album that unspools with the patience it no doubt took to create.

A seminal figure in the history of 20th century avant-garde, yet sinfully overlooked, Wolf Vostell unleashed ideas - those running wild through his debut LP "Dé-coll/age Musik", which remain a slap to the face, more than half a century after they were set into play. A founding member of Fluxus, an early instigator of Happenings, an innovator of video art, Vostell was equally one of the most radical and irreverent practitioners in sound that the world has ever known.

First released in 1982, "Dé-coll/age Musik" draws from material dating between the late 1950’s and early 80’s - the results of Vostell’s application of décollage, the near perfect inversion of collage. Rather than gathered and assembled sounds - as with Musique Concrète, these are the result of subtractions from a former whole - the death of one, giving life to the next.

Swelling from the past, Vostell’s efforts pull the rug from beneath the common history of structured sound. A singular body with no loyalty, producing shocking results. A grinding confrontation - an intoxicating immersion in sound - as brutal as it is ecstatic - an exercise in joy. "Dé-coll/age Musik" assembles the essence of a creative spirit which is rarely known. Each work as radical and fresh today as the moment it was made.

It was created for the "FORESTRO SUMMIT" event space held at Forest Limit in Hatagaya, Tokyo in January 011. The sound was selected from natural environmental soundscapes, sound effects, low frequency, electronic music, and experimental music. It is a 70-minute mix including silent time, which is connected to "SOMETHING IN THE AIR" in 2012, which I personally started to experiment with during this period. I tried to create a "sound prescription" worldview that is not ambient, experimental, new age, or healing, but rather a guide to the air and space, a "sound prescription" that you can listen to and feel with your free senses and imagination, while stimulating your perception to a good degree. It is a record of the first phase of the mind-drawing challenge to explore the space between music, song selection and mix arrangement. Ten years after the recording, we felt that the appeal of this mix could be better conveyed by listening to it on cassette tape. Compuma

In 2000, Henri Pousseur was asked by Philippe Samyn, a Brussels-based architect who liked to work in collaboration with other artforms, to lend his support to the plan for the construction of a business complex by one of the most important building enterprises in the country. There were four low buildings arranged like different parts of a medieval castle-village, grouped around a kind of large open central court. Leaning on the suggested image, Pousseur immediately suggested that the first spinal-column be composed of an electronic carillon, sounding in variations every hour, thus marking the hours between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Henri Poussuer imagined then a connection between Nivelles-time (a city 40 km south of Brussels, where this large project would be situated) and the time of the entire planet and the more or less metaphoric sonic and musical realities attached to it. He made on the one hand the 16 hours of a theoretically complete day of work (from the cleaning service up to the last research in the office) correspond to the 24 hours of a complete terrestrial revolution. He then divided the globe into eight large north/south "slices," themselves divided into three perpendicular "rings": north, center, south, with the understanding that only inhabited lands were taken into consideration. To each of the 8 "great hours" of the total duration, Pousseur associated three regions, one of each ring (north/central/south) set out as far apart as possible on the terrestrial globe. Over a background of a fairly continuous variety of noises which are perpetually evolving: sea, fire, city, swamp, industry, forest, etc., there are ethno-musical samples from one region or from several regions involved, more or less worked over by all sorts of numerical methods which vary their capacity to be recognized as quasi-traditional music. This work once finished (realized in the studio of the composer's son Denis), Pousseur made a synthesis on three discs by superimposing the landscapes (a bit in the manner of the previous Etudes paraboliques) in 16 Paysages Planetaires. The titles of the landscapes express by their contraction the simultaneous or alternate presence of several regions; for example, "Alaskamazonie" is self-explanatory. Something like "Gamelan Celtibere" is a sort of play on something between the West Coast of Europe with the Indonesian archipelago and even the northern part of Australia. Continuing like this you could find it amusing to reconstruct the circumplanetary movement of the work. Michel Butor wrote the luminous prose-verse alternating poetic structure which accompanies these landscapes. His text is included in the 60-page documentation booklet, also featuring two long essays by Henri Pousseur: "Paysages Planetaires" and "Atmospheric and Cultural Sources for Each of the Landscapes." Finally, with this work, Henri Pousseur makes an homage to all the singers and instrumentalists, sound engineers, ethnic musicologists and editors who have either produced, or gathered and transmitted, all the marvelous musical invention which inspired and nourished the work and which, with the sounds of the world, of nature, of society and of industry, are supposed to represent a kind of formal summing-up of life's multiplicity. All the images, obtained through extensive digital treatments, were conceived and manipulated by Henri Poussuer. Housed in a heavy cardboard slipcase with 3CDs and a 60-page booklet.