MUSIC

Jon Hassell, a genius who just released a remastered version of the famous experimental music history "Vernal Equinox" in March of this year as a memorable debut work, "Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)" The latest work, "Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)" has been released!

"Pentimento" means "in a painting, the original image, format, and brush flow that has been modified or overlaid reappear." The term accurately describes his innovative style of "painting", creating a new, indescribable, addictive palette by layering subtle differences.
Given the traditional Hassel, this title can be interpreted in many ways. But perhaps the most plausible interpretation at this point is the human instinct to sing and have fun in the face of repeated difficulties. It's the future blues that sang uncertainties and ever-changing shapes. On this album, Hassel is once again adventuring to create new forms and variants of music, incorporating elements of the "fourth world" of the past. It's a thrilling window-like work where you can see what the world's music will be like in the future.

"Jon Hassell is the most influential composer of the last 50 years. His invention, called'Fourth World Music', gives a deep respect to the music of different cultures around the world. He paved the way. His work had a great influence on other artists, through which his musical tastes changed dramatically. His unique intellectual contribution is also noteworthy. He is a patient and eloquent theorist and a great musician. "-Brian Eno

Jon Hassell's greatness in contemporary music history is comparable to Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, or The Velvet Underground. --The Wire Magazine

Following their recent solo releases Soniscope (Dauw) and Cells #5 (SAUNA 064CS), Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Midori Hirano and Tokyo based string experimentalist Atsuko Hatano have teamed up for their first collaborative full-length: Water Ladder. An intense, multilayered continuation of earlier collaborations (Atsuko was featured on Midori's debut LP back in 2006), the foundation for this new collaborative album was laid when they shared stages in Berlin (Ausland) and Japan in 2019. Working remotely at first, they later recorded parts of the album in Nara's snoihouse (using omnidirectional polyhedral speakers). "As we rallied back and forth with our recordings in the process of creating this album, unanticipated fluctuations and irregularities emerged, coming together into a kind of music with a unique resilience and buoyancy that cannot be confined to existing molds. It was as though we had built a Water Ladder to bridge the gap between us," explains prolific composer and viola player Atsuko Hatano, who's been busy recording solo and with colleagues such as Jim O'Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Mocky, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Takeo Toyama, and Anzu Suhara (Asa-chang and Junrei). Kyoto-born, Berlin-based Midori Hirano, who's also been releasing music under her MimiCof moniker, adds multiple instruments to the ever-changing sonic landscapes of Water Ladder -- an album defined by suspenseful and seemingly suspended compositions that often feel like floating in midair, a sensation the musicians compare to "that distinctive feeling you get from riding a high-speed elevator, where you can no longer tell whether you're going up or down." Devoid of birdsong, the late summer air is nevertheless full of buzzing, whirring, hissing sounds on foreboding album opener "Summer Noise," a cinematic intro with slow-moving piano chords and an ominous build-up over the course of its sprawling eight minutes. Elsewhere, sudden bursts of viola cut through nighttime peace ("Nocturnal Awakening"), followed by "Cotton Sphere" -- which makes the sensation of floating in midair complete: harmonies and melodies rise and form to fall apart again. Whereas the title track truly explodes half-way in, the final "Cascade" brings closure to the electro-acoustic six-track collection: the floating continues. "Water cannot retain its form on its own, and can take any shape as effected by external forces. Its movements cannot be captured by eyesight alone: A body of water that appears to be crashing down into a deep, bottomless waterfall could actually be rising up very slowly into midair," says Atsuko. "This is an invitation for you to cross the ever-transforming Water Ladder built between Midori and myself."

Emily A Sprague’s Hill, Flower, Fog is an illumination of consciousness across six modular meditations. A place, a poem, and a homespun ode to existing in “this cone of time in our universe,” Hill, Flower, Fog channels the here and now and fosters a far-reaching connectedness, or lifeline, from the everyday to the cosmos.

2022 Miasmah edition of the now classic debut album by Deaf Center, originally released on Type records in 2005. Full-lenght album version, includes the tracks that were previously only on the CD edition + a 20 minute side of unreleased material from the same timeframe. Released as a gatefold 2xLP with original extended artwork. ‘Pale Ravine’ is the debut full-length realization of Erik K Skodvin and Otto A Totland under the Deaf Center moniker. More recently known for solo recordings under their own names on the Sonic Pieces label. The album, back then made in their mid 20ies, is an other-wordly sound collagé to Norwegian nature, theatricality and old silent films. The two musicians have looked deep into their own family histories to piece together a dusty and nostalgic epic, blending elements of classical and electronic music with an array of field recordings and a lot of fog.

Melt is the debut full-length album by Blank Gloss, the Sacramento duo of Patrick Hills and Morgan Fox. Attentive listeners will recall their lovely contribution to Kompakt’s Pop Ambient 2021, “Of A Vessel”, which reappears here; others might know their 2020 mini-album, January, released on the stylish Miami label Night Young. With Melt, Blank Gloss make a heavy contribution to Kompakt’s ongoing explorations of the hundreds of hues of Pop Ambience. A lush dream of an album, it’s a remarkable index of the gilded eternities that you can magic from a reduced tonal palette: glistening guitars, ruminative piano, warps and weaves of subtle drone and hum. The two members of Blank Gloss met through their shared involvement in punk and experimental music. Fox’s band had recorded at Hills’ Earthtone studio a number of times; they hit it off and made the decision to explore making music together. Their initial explorations resulted in their mini-album, January; for Melt, they aimed for something more minimal and improvised. “We tried to go into it without many preconceived notions,” Fox recalls. “We tried not to overthink what was happening or spend too much time hyper-focused on any one thing. We found it more enjoyable to make and to listen to when we just let whatever was happening happen.” This process freed Fox and Hills to make music that’s guided by intuition, inhabiting the moment and reaching for the next surprising possibility. The long reels of e-bow guitar that wind through opener “Those Who Plant” ease the listener into an album that says plenty by doing less: witness the dream scripts that play out through pieces like “Hollowed Out” and “Of A Vessel”, the gentle weightlessness of “Almost Home”, or the clusters of guitar, expressive yet restrained, that sculpt “Rags” into being. It’s an album that feels sui generis, somehow, much as it clearly sits within a number of fields – pop ambient, touches of new age and drone music. Some provisional clues, though, for music that echoes Melt’s loveliness: the humble ambience of the artists on Cold Blue Music; the eventless horizon of Bark Psychosis’ “Pendulum Man”; the emotive pointillism of Labradford; some of the snippets of song that drift through Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook’s Sleeps With The Fishes. Like all of this music, Melt embraces a radical ambiguity, one that allows the listener to enter the frame and inhabit the corners of the duo’s music. There’s pleasure and joy here too, of course – you can hear it in the ease of the playing and the beauty of the melodies that Blank Gloss carefully dapple across the tonal field. Reflecting on the sessions for Melt, Fox sums it up perfectly: “Being able to sit together in the little room and document the process of experimentation and bouncing ideas back and forth was really fun and rewarding. I hope that comes through on the album.”

The story of each re-release begins with the original. In the late 90s, Uwe Zahn (Arovane), along with Robert Henke (Monolake) and Stefan Betke (Pole), began releasing music on Torsten Pröfrock’s (Dynamo) newly launched DIN label. This was a very inconspicuous undertaking, but fans of the flourishing IDM, glitch, and constantly evolving abstract techno genres quickly picked up on the quality of sound coming out of Germany. After a few successful EPs, Zahn began working on his debut full-length, Atol Scrap. The release was a success, at least in the underground circles, where followers of the melodic harmonies, stuttering off-beat rhythms, and, most importantly, advanced sound design feverishly consumed the imprint’s output. There was only one thing missing – the album was never pressed on vinyl, and for decades remained in the digital domain. The fans, of course, inquired. There were multiple offers on the table, but Zahn retained control until he was assured that it was properly attained. “I thought of taking everything into my own hands and releasing the record myself,” says Zahn, “but at the end of last year, Matthias from Keplar asked me to re-release Atol Scrap on vinyl.” The label and its owner revolve in the Morr Music universe, and so it made sense for Zahn to trust the platform to treat the record right.

Listening to Atol Scrap over twenty years later it is inane not to admit how well it has held up. Where other genres clearly aged, becoming stale, bland, and dull, the music on eleven tasty tracks still keeps the neurons tickled with each note. More than an echo of the past, the bottled sound truly has matured. Many of the newly evolving techniques are recognizable on the album. “I created the digital artifacts with a digital multi-track recorder, the Fostex D80,” recalls Zahn. “The thing had a scrub wheel with which I could achieve wonderful glitch effects by winding through the audio data. I have sampled and further processed these artifacts.” And this approach is still embedded in Zahn’s sound design. “I still use my 24-track analog desk from Tascam to mix my audio. I love to use hardware synths and samplers. I’ve definitely built upon my studio experience in the 90s.” From this debut to the most recent output, Arovane’s sound has evolved to become more intricate, detailed, and pronounced. “My music has become much quieter and much slower. But that’s probably also due to the noise in the world.” And just as Atol Scrap reminds Zahn of the past, retaining charm preserved in a container traveling through time, it also jitters memories of long ago, when we were twenty years younger, less experienced, and bold. For me, among the many records of the time, this album held a special place in life, my heart, and many CD boxes moved across the world. And now I’m only happy to restock the vinyl space, where Atol Scrap belongs among the beloved records. Welcome home. - Mike Lazarev

Try and up that feel-good jam and ride worlds with spinning city’s. Now delete scene. Where’s the fucking high?!

A Certain Frank is the Düsseldorf based duo of Frank Fenstermacher and Kurt “Pyrolater” Dalhke. Through the 80s and early 90s, they made speedy, wild coldwave as Der Plan, releasing music on their own label Ata Tak (which also released Oval’s wonderful debut ‘Wohnton’!). In the mid-90s, influenced by a lifelong love for the exotica and tiki bar jazz of Martin Deny and Les Baxter, the two formed A Certain Frank. Hence, the sounds of A Certain Frank are far warmer, sensual and sultry than that of Der Plan. “Without You,” from their 2001 album ‘Nothing,’ approaches something like Sade across its pulsating, truly gorgeous six minutes. And the New Age composition “Naïve,” from A Certain Frank’s 1996 debut ‘No End No…’ (and appearing on DSPs for the first time courtesy of your friends here at ULYSSA), drifts back-and-forth between enchanting flute lines and brooding, synth stabs. And then, there’s “Nothing,” a shadowy triphop earworm that stands confidently alongside the work of Skalpel or Portishead. Yes, A Certain Frank is that good and, sadly, that overlooked. In fact, taken altogether on ‘Ulyssa presents: A Certain Frank,’ it becomes quite clear that their austere dada experiments in electronic lounge and jazz are as curious and captivating as more celebrated albums like Nuno Canavarro’s ‘Plux Quba’ and Björk’s ‘Debut.’ The time has come to give A Certain Frank its due. ‘ULYSSA presents: A Certain Frank’ is the first time any of these songs have been released on cassette and the first time songs from ‘No End No…’ have come to streaming services. ULYSSA Season 2 begins here. Sploosh.

2021 restock; LP version. 180 gram vinyl; 350gsm gatefold sleeve; includes download with "The Doctrine Of Eternal Ice". Originally released by Side Effects in 1986, Zamia Lehmanni was the third (and final) core SPK album and was Graeme Revell's first truly solo project. He was in a period of transition, somewhere between the industrial noise of the early years and his later award-winning soundtrack work. On the day before this was first released, this style of music, now ubiquitous (especially in soundtracks), did not exist. After Information Overload Unit (1981) cleared a space for subsequent explorations, and the environmental percussion and anchored mutilated sound collages of Leichenschrei (1982), the "body without organs" was fully eviscerated. Graeme felt "industrial music" was becoming ossified and needed to be taken into radically new territories: "post-industrial". The track "In Flagrante Delicto" (mastered as originally intended here) was later used by Revell for his work on the soundtrack for the 1989 film Dead Calm, which won him Best Original Score from the Australian Film Institute. Unavailable in any format since Mute's 1992 CD edition, Cold Spring Records now present this landmark album on newly remastered CD, and on vinyl for the first time since 1986. Approved by Graham Revell, this release comes with new artwork by Abby Helasdottir and is remastered by Martin Bowes (The Cage). New liner notes from Graeme Revell, 2019.

Architecture, music, mathematics. From the series Recollection GRM, which reissues the INA-GRM works, the history of Greek-French people who controlled a large amount of uncontrollable sounds by architecture and mathematical methodologies and transformed them into music with unparalleled strength. Introducing contemporary music composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001).

Constructed the Philips Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair (1958). Also included is'Concret PH', which was performed using 400 speakers, along with Edgard Varese's blockbuster electronic music "Poem Electronique" at the Philips Hall. You can't taste this tingling sensation that is ejected from a very esoteric and incomprehensible range that incorporates mathematics into music. Others, such as the chaotic concrète'Bohor'dedicated to Pierre Schaeffer, are a number of sound images that make you feel as if you are looking at a complete building in front of you.

Habitat, an environmental music collaboration by Berlin based composer Niklas Kramer and percussionist Joda Foerster, is inspired by the drawings of Italian architect Ettore Sottsass. Each of the eight tracks represents a room in an imaginary building.

In Habitat the duo layers, loops and merges sonic textures and patterns into fluid blocks without the restraint of statics. African log drum, Bolivian chajchas, vibraphone, kalimba and various other percussion instruments are processed, pitched, harmonised and filtered through modular synth and script based sample cutting to form a collage of asynchronous layers.

By using acoustic instruments and expanding their sound into abstract shapes, Habitat evokes a vague intimacy, a curious state of comfort in the unknown.

Swedish composer Ragnar Grippe gets an old collection released on Dais Records (Genesis Breyer P-Orridge And Thee Early Worm, SRSQ). Written in 1981 for an avant-garde theatre piece but only now seeing the light of day, Symphonic Songs finds Grippe marrying atonal Buchla experiments with a string section equal-parts Schnittke and Schoenberg. Artwork by Ascetic House founder J.S. Aurelius.