MUSIC

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism.

Following 2017’s acclaimed 2LP “Patterns of Consciousness”, “Ecstatic Computation” is the new full-length LP by Caterina Barbieri. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged.

Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion. Is this propulsive music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly enhanced and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation this question lies mute aside the thrilling and perplexing moment of the matter at hand.

Double-LP version. The musical vortexes of Caterina Barbieri rewire time and space. Listening to the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso has felt like traveling at light-speed and slow-motion all at once since 2017's breakthrough Patterns Of Consciousness. 2019's acclaimed Ecstatic Computation pushed even further with the lead single "Fantas". Far beyond any new age trope or modern synth trend, her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact. Marking the debut album on her new label light-years, Barbieri now delivers her most profound work yet -- a journey through inner-space as vast as a universe and as intimate as a heartbeat. Spirit Exit is Caterina Barbieri's time machine, primarily composed with a modular synth rig she thinks of more like a mechanical fortune teller. Whereas previous releases were constructed on lengthy tours, capturing only snapshots of continually evolving works, Spirit Exit represents the producer's first album fully written and recorded in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It was during this extended isolation she found inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time, but united in their strength at cultivating vast internal worlds. St. Teresa D'Avila's foundational 16th century mystical text The Interior Castle, philosopher Rosi Braidotti's posthuman theories and the metaphysical poetry of Emily Dickinson act as thematic anchors throughout Spirit Exit. Spirit Exit crystallizes Barbieri's densely layered, blindingly bright synth arrangements while introducing stunning new elements that feel as if they've always belonged. Strings and guitar flawlessly thread into the composer's web of modular patches, while her revelatory singing voice often cuts right through them. Melodies remain Barbieri's great passion and obsession and on Spirit Exit they grow as large as planets before cracking into atoms. The sweeping "At Your Gamut" perfects the producer's dramatic, slow-burning openers, but in her first ever use of sampling, it later gets crushed, accelerated and unrecognizably transformed into the ghostly hook surging through "Terminal Clock". As the album closes on "The Landscape Listens" -- a song that approaches death with all the gentle grace of Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)".

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism.

Following 2017’s acclaimed 2LP “Patterns of Consciousness”, “Ecstatic Computation” is the new full-length LP by Caterina Barbieri. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged.

Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion. Is this propulsive music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly enhanced and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation this question lies mute aside the thrilling and perplexing moment of the matter at hand.

There it is...!!! This is one of the best of the year, it's amazing, really. Six tracks and 48 minutes of superb ambient synthesizer raga! New York-based Arushi Jain is an Indian-born, US-based composer, modular synthesizer player, vocalist, technician, and engineer. Focusing on reinterpreting his roots in Indian classical music through the lens of electronic music, she continues in the spirit of electronic music legends such as Suzanne Ciani and Terry Riley, while personally exploring her own musical heritage and upbringing, reconstructing ancient sounds within a contemporary framework. This album is intended to be listened to during the sunset hours, thereby inviting the listener into the depths of their own being. This album is similar to the ethereal and devotional appeal of labelmate Ana Roxanne, but is more cosmic and cosmic in nature. It's heavenly meditation music. As you would expect from Leaving, they bring in great people after such strong names as Sam Gendel and Green-House. I can't take my eyes off the vibrant LA scene any longer. Her music is also a celebration of Indian culture, and for this occasion, she is asking for donations on her bandcamp release page. Limited to 300 copies.

The Expanding Universe is the 1980 debut album by composer and computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. The original album is reissued here as a massively expanded 3LP or 2CD set, containing all four original album tracks plus an additional 15 tracks from the same period, nearly all previously unreleased and many making their first appearance on vinyl in this brand new 2018 edition. Since this album's first reissue in 2012, it has gone on to be widely established as a classic of electronic, ambient, and 20th century classical music. Some of the well-loved works included in this set are "Patchwork", the "Appalachian Grove" series, "East River Dawn" and "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds", which was included on the Golden Record launched on board the Voyager spacecraft. The pieces comprising The Expanding Universe combine slowly evolving textures with the emotional richness of intricate counterpoint, harmony, and complex rhythms (John Fahey and J. S. Bach are both cited as major influences in the original cover's notes), all built of electronic sounds using the GROOVE system at Bell Laboratories during the 1970s. The 3LP vinyl edition was cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin.

Loris S. Sarid is an ambient composer and artist born in Rome but now resides in Glasgow. His previous release, "Music for Tomato Plants", was a quiet exploration of kalimba, glockenspiel and plucky synths. On his debut LP, "Seabed-Sunbath", Loris submerges into aquatic terrain with an expanded palette of virtual pianos, soft horns, kalimba, strings, synthesized voices, textural field recordings and a wide array of soothing electronic tones. On “Oats with Sarah” and “Lobster Island”, he also incorporates live performance with collaborators on cello and voice. Many try to use computers to write human sounding compositions but Loris works in the inverse, emulating computer generated songs via his personal touch. The final results are mesmerizing, peaceful, distinctive and varied. "Seabed-Sunbath" is the sound of contemporary electronics bubbling underwater, flowing between ecosystems and settling into a quiet oceanic basin.

2022 repress of this deluxe boxset. The first disc is a remastered version of the 1990 Virgin CD reissue of Correlations, recorded and mixed at Panne-Paulsen Studio, Frankfurt, in 1978 by Mick Glossop and originally released by Virgin in 1979. The second disc is the first release of Phantasus, Manuel Göttsching and Udo Arndt's original 1978 recording and mix of the album that was partially re-recorded and totally remixed to become Correlations (Phantasus was Göttsching's intended title, which he changed to Correlations after UK fans told him that the English can't pronounce "phantasus"). The third, fourth, and fifth discs are The Making Of, which includes a 12-page booklet. Performed by Manuel Göttsching (guitar, synthesizer, sequencer), Lutz Ulbrich (guitar, synthesizer, piano, mellotron), and Harald Großkopf (drums, percussion, synthesizer).

"The phenomenon of the sound and music created here is very mysterious. These pieces of music, created without any intention of being published, reached my ears without warning. Of course, this happened because I have lived a life devoted to a certain kind of music, but there is a chance I would never have listened to them in my life. But, they came to me. Now they play over and over in my listening space - blending into the air that surrounds me. Vibrating. It is as if they had always been there from a long time ago." Chee Shimizu (Organic Music, Japan)

Vlad Dobrovolski (S A D, 12th Isle, GOST ZVUK) is 1/2 of S A D, a band previously released as on Muscut and GOST ZVUK, an upcoming band LP on 12th Isle, came up with his solo album called Playbacks For Dreaming.

Multi-media mystic Andro Gogibedashvili aka Saphileaum’s latest slate expands his “spherical ambient” lexicon into increasingly celestial terrain, inspired by visions of galactical oases, sparkling starscapes, and elemental serenity. Ganbana takes its title from a Georgian word for ‘cleansed by water,’ which aptly characterizes the album’s six liquid-tribal compositions. Rolling oceans of hand percussion flow below soothing swells of electronics, streaked with ocarina, insects, and sitar. Snippets of mantric voice occasionally cut through the devotional trance but otherwise Saphileaum’s world is one of solitude and ascent, attuned to a time and space outside our own, where “a second is a century, and a century a second, as the waterfall of cosmic nectar is poured over your being.”

Companion offering to the recent LP, Aquarealm: Sub-Aquatic Compilation interweaves an array of new album tracks with a selection of discography deep cuts for a one-hour saga of shape-shifting aquatic bliss. Drawing on the classic X.Y.R. palette of Formanta Mini, Korg M1, FX, a loop station, and field recordings, the mix’s 16 songs slipstream seamlessly despite being sourced from across a decade of work – testament to the constancy of its creator’s vision and the renewable vastness of his muse.

After travelling to India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bali and Java in his younger days, Cybe released three cassette tapes. "Tropisch Verlangen” now compiles a series of ten wonderful handcrafted analogue electronics from those tapes, sounding like lush fields of electronic wheat swaying in voltage controlled wind. It reads as a musical travelogue from a Dutch musician from Haarlem, who listened to way too much Gong and went searching for inspiration, sound recordings and instruments in the East in the early eighties. Right up my alley, and hopefully yours too.

EURYBIA is the second solo album by Italian artist Francesca Heart. The result of a compositional process that began in summer 2020. The work is the product of a series of intimate imaginary projections and aural engagements with a number of geographical sites scattered across the Italian landscape. Places which have resonated with Francesca during various personal travels and pilgrimages, due to their extramundane and often even mystic significance. The most outstanding / iconic being the cloisters and gardens of San Gregorio Armeno’s monastery in Naples and the Nympheum of Villa Giulia in Rome. Indeed the whole record seems to bring the listener constantly together with the overwhelming, tender presence of the surrounding environment. Seemingly permeated with a feeling of refreshing musky moistures or textured with soft, wet soil, EURYBIA reminds us of walking barefoot near the lush architecture of some ancient, overflowing fountain or amidst the continuous flows of shallow rivers’ bedrocks informing the album with strong physical, sensory qualities. Myth, senses, and imagination become anchors of artistic and healing expression as well as forms of romantic escapism from an ever complex world. On the whole, EURYBIA’s seven tracks alternate dense enmeshment of sounds and melodies with sparse, forthright single-instrumental devotional hymns, working as a personal cartography of ephemeral audio monuments to human, transcendental, and mythographic landscapes. Influences connected by means of nuanced ascendance going from classical New Age music and Video Game soundtracks to digital phone ringtones. The fluttering arpeggios used as the main compositional device coalesce together into an experience of relaxing trance which is yet a glaring, audacious work. クレジット

Everything Pale Blue is the first collection of ambient music by New York City-based composer and Au Revoir Simone keyboardist Annie Hart. Performed on analog synthesizers and processed through daisy chains of delay, reverb and loop effects, Everything Pale Blue’s warm, sonorous tones and trance-like, minimalist arrangements recall the work of pioneering electronic music composers Wendy Carlos, Éliane Radigue and Brian Eno, as well as German Kosmische Musik groups of the 70’s like Kraftwerk, Cluster and Tangerine Dream.

Throughout Everything Pale Blue, Hart’s gentle arpeggios and playful melodic figures echo the harmonies and rhythms of our natural world, from the cycles of flora, fauna and weather patterns to the orbits of celestial bodies. Everything Pale Blue’s four gorgeously expansive instrumental tracks reward patient listeners seeking calm, melody and meditation.

Annie Hart explains:

“I began composing Everything Pale Blue in November 2020 at an artist’s residency near Oneonta, New York called Aunt Karen’s Farm, which was funded through a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, whose mission is to support arts created by people with children. Normally, it’s a hub of activity, but due to COVID, it was just me, and for part of the time, my family, sharing an open, empty farm space; a true retreat. At first I was a bit bored by the same scenery every day in such a gloomy, wet, gray season, but after a while I started seeing the minute daily changes in the nature around me. Every day I went on walks through fallow fields spiked with mown straw, sometimes wet with mud, sometimes caked with snow, and on some magical days, encased in crystalline ice. I started seeing the trees around the farm as individuals, with their own personalities. I saw the leaves change on the ground from yellow and brown, to dry brown blowing ones, to wet, dark brown precursors to soil that would then nurture the same trees they came from. Obviously, in New York City, we see trees every day, but it is incredibly rare to witness their symbioses with each other and the soil and animals. I started noticing the differences in the bird songs of each species and their various moods.

“At the start of my residency, I visited Green Toad Bookstore in Oneonta where I was drawn to the 33 1/3 book on Another Green World by Geeta Dayal. She’s a great writer and laid Eno’s processes and philosophies out in an incredibly tangible way. I savored that book and bought AGW on iTunes and would listen on repeat while I ate my suppers. I had intended to use my time at the farm to finish recording a pop record, but I soon started sliding out of the typical song structure mentality and sliding into a playing/listening mentality. And I mean “play” in the childish sense. I brought my Oblique Strategies cards that I got for my birthday and I started just going to the recording studio I’d set up in the farmhouse’s living room and doing wild experiments.

“I’d brought along a few of my analog synthesizers (a Minimoog Model D, a Sequential Prophet-6, a Yamaha CP-20) plus some delay, reverb and loop effects. I started to think about just how meditative, playful and creative I could be within small parameters. I composed “Somebody Moves, Nobody Talks” like that, with the idea of how to make my own version of Eno’s studio with tape going around the room, looped on pencils.

“It was incredible to see the shift in my mentality over the time at the farm. To go from gripping and holding to just playing; allowing myself the freedom to create without guilt or responsibility, to see the shifts in my abilities as a composer and musician. It was absolutely magical and I consider that month an incredibly formative one that I am so lucky to have been able to attend and appreciate.”