PHASE: Jason Kahn/John Mueller

JASON KAHN / JON MUELLER
Phase
FSS

Phase is one long track, just under 40-minutes. It is fueled by a big deep breath, then flooded in exhaust. Jason Kahn and Jon Mueller are both notable names in experimental sound composition, and this is most certainly something that pairs both of these gentlemen’s less gentle sides. It’s harsh without being quite abrasive, stirring a sense of robust dizziness. Flingco Sound System (or FSS) is Chicago-based, and they are growing a cadre of artists who sort of bleed their medium to a degree, driving into terrain that is challenging and peculiar. This record is built on frequencies struck from gongs and other acoustic percussion. If you were walking in the forest after sundown and this came on you’d swear you were about to be abducted, and may run for the hills. But since you were up there, no escape would be a safe haven. It’s flair is in its redundancy and subtle curve of volumizing the blur of drone. An asthmatic’s worst nightmare. But even half way it doesn’t let go for even a brief pause, and just then you may start to admire the range and sensitive cascading of metallic velocity. Unnerving and gutsy into the final eight or so minutes when things slowly come back down to Earth.

Grace Jones – Stillness @ the Speed of Light

The exhibition took place in London during April and May at The Vinyl Factory. To see more about what they do check out the incredible slideshow documentary by The Guardian. See more about photographer/light artist Chris Levine‘s limited editions here.

Black City Teaser

Somnium by Robert Rich

There’s an increasing number of odd and interesting apps out there that further extend the tendrils of the electronic music community. One such newly released app is Somnium, created by 14 year old John Bergin (get it for $.99 here). Featuring the work of ambient composer Robert Rich this was built for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The app creates a mood for long-duration listening by playing hours of randomly crossfading loops, selected from the original Somnium audio tracks. The user interface is very simple, just a slider that determines how slowly the loops move forward.

Yen Pox – Blood Music

YEN POX
Blood Music
Malignant Records

Here is the re-release of the stunning dark ambient work by Yen Pox, Blood Music. Fifteen years after its original format this double disc edition is more than welcome, and released by the same label no less. Here it combines a two and a half hour expansion with additional bonus material that was originally only on cassette and 7″ vinyl. Steven Hall and Michael JV Hensley are Yen Pox and their sound is chilling, drowse-inducing, very dark. Blood Music puts you in this place where you virtually levitate. Tracks like Twilight Eternal and Infinite Domain infiltrate a sense of being expanded in mid air, and once up there you’re dangling only by your subconscious. If you might imagine yourself dead center on a runway while a jumbo jet is coming your way, full frontal you may meet half way on Descent. The atmosphere really captures this air of the depression of gravity, going down, down, way low. Illuminati is equivalent to an automated underwater carwash, drenched in the flickering and faded depths of the deep, plenty to obscure your peripherals and increase slumber. Blood Music mixes metaphors by crossing the push/pull divide between a slow-motion thrill ride and an echo chamber of mirrors where you must strategize escape. The flow of Virus places you in a cacophonous open space where the air pressure forces and sucks making it nearly impossible to ground yourself from either falling or ascending. As Hollow Earth rumbles along, a cascading wave of drone drives a sense of alarm to the edges of the room. The space quickens with a vibrancy that is sensuous in shape cloaking itself in mysterious background noise. With each step you become witness to the strange, eroding abyss.

Thicket

From Interval Studios (makers of superDraw) Morgan Packard talks about the new multitouch program he and Joshue Ott created called Thicket, a fun user-driven a/v app for your iPhone or iPad!

Bleep (12k)

For over a dozen years now, Taylor Deupree‘s 12k label has been releasing quality abstract and minimal-electronics that “shift between the musical realms of gentle, pastoral ambience, dissonant noise collage and micro-techno”. Here’s a new sampler (only $4.99), for the uninitiated. This one is curated by artist and labelmaster Deupree, featuring an exclusive track put out by Bleep!

Steve Barsotti – Along These Lines

STEVE BARSOTTI
Along These Lines
Mimeomeme

Limited to a short-run of only 200 copies this is Steve Barsotti at his most minimal and intimate. The Seattle-based composer has dreamt up some extremely subtle music as heard on the breezy effort Boundaries. Snail-paced, poker-faced, it plays on something suspicious lurking behind a door, something lifelike gently squirming, perhaps inebriated. Barsotti appropriates instruments to build new tools that scope, draw wind and stretch his soundscapes, often built on field recordings. The manipulation of tartly clomping horse hooves is paired with the corroded zap of vintage LP grooves creating a timewarp on Bridges. The flare of highly amped strings, the repetition of strumming and fierce rummaging make for a fresh blend of mismatched sounds that somehow come together despite the lack of harmony. In fact, it is going in and out of a formula that makes this record stand out. On Terraces (which began as a collaboration with Perri Lynch) there are inflections of Maeror Tri and early Kapotte Muziek. It’s dizzying, repetitious, filled with rough scuffs and percussive mishigas. We experience a close-up from the perspective of a lifeline, a breathing tube connected to a polluted city. It’s pretty dark stuff, and tough as nails! While the ambience throughout could quiet a beast, it is when the noisy activity flows into cacophony that turns this whole into bliss, where loose ends meet.

LISTEN

Ambient – The Software

Ambient is a new is a brand-new Max/MSP Standalone software for Vista/XP/Win7 (Mac version in development) designed by Christopher Hipgrave and Mike Podolak. It is advertised as a soundscape generator able to produce a myriad of various sound textures with modules including:

* Ambient reverb
* Granular sampler with random pitch function
* Tape delay
* Amplitude envelope with a trigger speed control
* Multi-mode filter
* 3 pitch shift controls for adding extra layers

All tracks released by Audiobulb Records below were made with Ambient. It’s now available for under $20. Check out the press release (.pdf). Sounds so good!

Christopher Hipgrave – Slow, With Pages Of Fluttering Interference by Low Point

Gilles Aubry – S6t8r

GILLES AUBRY
S6t8r
Winds Measure Recordings

Berlin-based Swiss artist Gilles Aubry has recently launched this powerful recording in a limited edition of only 300 copies (take note) on Brooklyn-based imprint, Winds Measure Recordings. These small editions are packed in incredibly lovely letterpress packages which are elegant. On S6t8r the music is broken into three parts. The proceedings start off as a wide-open windy cavern, rushing air through spaces, like tubes and empty corridors. In fact, the recording was made at Stralau 68, an empty building. With this flow going strong Aubry adds a percussive clanging of something being played with, say on a concrete floor, and handles the crackles, hiss and unexpected quite expertly. His minimal cadences shift just enough to keep you alert for further listening. As things progress to Part 2 the sudden heightening in the curve of decibels becomes readily apparent. Like an elongated warble of organic scraping, muted in a gray mix that is as once warm as it is somewhat frightening. This would depend on your own personal space or backdrop of course, but it is an encompassing, if not monotonous work that fills the room to its perameters, but knows when to quit. It’s like riding bareback on railroad tracks that are only partially greased. Further listening draws the ear to something sparking the extra terrestrial, glowing, pulsing. And about 3/4 into the piece something extraordinary happens at this juncture, something cinematic, anticipatory, yet completely mysterious. A rush, a gush of powerwashing hiss, but only in brief, draws you into this dwindling falling sensation. A great recording for headphone listening as there are so many augmented branches in the changing atmosphere, taking appropriate breaths between these steps, dousing you with an artful mix. As in much ambient/drone music this one has plenty of lead-in build-up, heightening the fullness of each of these 13-minute plus tracks before he starts to tinker with the brighter tonalities, as heard in the final track here. Aubry adds sine waves that polarize and part the quietude, and waits until nearly the end to do so. It’s laced with such a high tone taking you outside the entire spectrum of everything previous, fading out in the final seconds, leading the listener to believe that perhaps there will be a sequel….