“We used to be able to fly back before geography and ego” – Youth Speaks, female teen poetry slammer (Bay Area, 2004) This week our Guestmix comes from French sound artist Gaël Segalen whose latest work was reviewed back in November. She’s been on the front lines and out on the fringe for two decades […]
OUT OF PORTO: An incredible new release, years in the making, has just surfaced out of Portugal that celebrates experimental composition, inventive instruments and contraptions and the art of photography. The limited edition set (only 500), Disposofónicos: Acumuladores de Objectos Sonantes, is out via the good people of Sonoscopia, a cultural association in Porto. The […]
Italian sound artist Massimo Toniutti brings his eclectic sensibility to our ongoing Guestmix series (every Saturday in 2020). We fell in love with Black Truffle’s re-release of Il Museo Selvatico and it has since become one of my favorite records. Toniutti’s been exploring sound since the early 80’s and his extensive tracklist will give you […]
mpala garoo | Vaya AdelanteShimmering Mood Records (CD/DL) Dark aural movements comprise Vaya Adelante by mpala garoo. Compliments a la Shimmering Moods Records, the trio delivers an album whose titular meaning is drawn from a letter of William S. Burroughs to Ginsberg. Apparently, the beats were facing the identity crashing effects of mortality and Ayahuasca. […]
Costis Drygianakis | The ApproachHxoi Kato Apo to Spiti (CD/DL) I read the accompanying text simultaneously to listening through The Approach by Costis Drygianakis. I can’t recommend experiencing this contemporary orchestra any other way. Created from January 2018 through January 2019, now presented in a limited pressing of 300 copies. The two-track (each over a […]
Chantal Dumas | Oscillations planétairesempreints DIGITALes (CD/DL) Out of Montreal’s electroacoustic/acousmatic spearhead in sound art, empeintes DIGITALes, comes Chantal Dumas’ debut, Oscillations planétaires [Planetary Oscillations]. With a press kit that reads like a science textbook, the album explores some of Earth’s more intimate phenomena. Some of these oscillations are familiar: quakes and geysers. Other naturally occurring […]
Happy Holidays Everybody! It sort of made sense to go off the beaten track from the repetitious radio rotation of holiday music. I mean I love me some Perry Como, Sinatra (!) and even Mariah’s endless “sparkle” has it’s own je ne sais quoi so to speak – but if I hear “One Little Christmastime” […]
Laurisilva by Laura Agnusdei and Mare di Dirac’s Ophite Diagram were both recently released. This pair of Italo acoustic-electronic releases offer strategic sound art which incorporates wind instruments, mixed with electronic processing. Agnusdei collaborates with several contributing artists who play traditional instruments. Mare di Dirac employs the use of handmade instruments. While the theme of […]
Still und Dunkel | AbandonedHallow Ground (LP/CD/DL) From the opening seconds of searing harsh noise rasp like a contact mic applied to a sheet of metal unto cat-claw-on-a-chalkboard effect, through electronic swells and resting in a spell of quick-clicking, Abandoned (English, ‘quiet and dark’) by Still und Dunkel rips through dynamic (d)evolutionary spaces. I should […]
Funeral Souvenir | La Noche del AnhídridoVerlag System (LP/DL) This re-issue of an original 1987 six track quintessential Spanish industrial noise tape is further fueled with a peppering of other re-issues. Totaling ten tracks, the additional tracks are taken from compilation releases from 2009-2011. With cover art re-contextualizing Ed Clark’s original photo of Graham W. Jackson […]
We’ve scoured the most interesting sounds being emitted of late and have come up with eleven short gems to stir things up. This week featuring new work from: K.Pierco, Paul Weller, Jan Willem Troost & Henry Vega, submeet, Sádon, Mute Duo, Li Yilei, Chantal Dumas, Can Can Heads, Joe Colley and our friend Darren McClure. […]
leastupperbound | domestic tapes Vol.IISecret Press (CD/CS/DL) domestic tapes Vol.II by leastupperbound is now released ten years aged and remastered with an extra bonus track! Saleverio Rosi teams up with Czechian imprint Secret Press to bring forth the cool ambient stuff once delivered by Laverna and Discreetrecords. These tapes, arranged numerically simply one through seven […]
A duo of November releases show the strong and distinct presence by two interesting women who bring something new to the international experimental music circuit. The contributions herein addressed a diverse range from white-noise to trance-ambient and favor longer form tracks. Their spectrum runs from linear to repetitious in noteworthy serenity; electronic and highly processed […]
Yan Hart-Lemonnier | Les Partage Des GriefsAdaadat (12″/DL) Right off the bat, just by looking at album art, you can detect this guy’s sense of humor is intact. But Gallic sound-bender Yan Hart-Lemonnier‘s new 12″ (which runs at 36 minutes) titled Les Partage Des Griefs (roughly translated to Sharing Grievances) has variable tones, from shades […]
Bit-Tuner – Irisia (-OUS) Euglossine – Nightflowers at the Beach of Oblivion (Orange Milk Records)Krzysztof Kotlinski – Please Don’t Go! (Élan Vital) Perimeter O – Lose Direction (Canigou) Cacero Lazo – Kattus Funus (Submarine Broadcasting Company)Ringfinger – Lunar Light (Other Voices) Andreas O. Hirsch – Full Moon Hula Hoop (Makiphon) Yann Tiersen – Tempelhof (Part […]
Kevin Drumm & Adam Golebiewski | The Last Minute or LaterUznam (CD/CS/DL) Is The Last Minute or Later a meditation on death or simply about the pulse of life? In just about an hour the two venerable players here, Kevin Drumm (electronics) and Adam Golebiewski (percussion), issue a wielding dissertation in four parts, each unique […]
Jen Kutler Disembodied Eyevee (LP/DL) Jen Kutler is a multidisciplinary artist and performer from upstate New York. She uses sounds and objects that are sexual or feminine in nature for sound sources and then modifies and transforms these sounds using outside means of electronics. For her past works she has used a modified dildo fashioned […]
Gabriele Mitelli | The World Behind the SkinWeInsist! Records (CD/DL) The release contains two poetic prose premises (written by Nicola Di Croce and Rob Mazurek) however, the four track album The World Behind the Skin by Gabriele Mitelli remains shrouded in suspense, harsh-romanticism, even with hints of passive-aggression. The self-aware sonic abstractions take on a […]
We will deliver our weekly podcast one day early this week due to the holiday. Above are the cast of international players. Speaking of which, Toneshift will be in Paris on holiday this upcoming week taking in all the culture française. Expect more right here where the future of music is presented one record at […]
Coil | Stolen & Contaminated SongsSPK | Zamia Lehmanni (Songs Of Byzantine Flowers) Two important reissues from seminal experimental outfits Coil and SPK are coming in the next few weeks and each will be released in a few formats: bronze, gold and bone vinyl, sparkling shiny cd and such. These were originally released in 1986 […]
Here are two space-oriented experimental electro-ambient albums released in October. One follows in November. While each graft rhythmic beats and melodic undulations, the three conceptualize space very differently. Nonlin by Steve Hauschildt (released October 25) conveys a vacuum-effect at odds with nature’s patterned regenerations. Released October 13th, Collecting Space by QST (Frans de Waard) presents […]
Void Hands | Split Shapes & Divisive ModelsFractal Meat Cuts (CS/DL) Rhythmic oscillations and electro-click generate the ‘unforeseen order’ that Richard Knight (with Jürgen Ehrmann) concoct via Void Hands’ Split Shapes & Divisive Models. Ironic as the artist namesake is, the handling of audio mixers is nob-crankingly lacking of vacuity. The sour no-input calculations drip […]
Erik Levander | InåtForwind (CD/DL) Swede Erik Levender presents Inåt (translation: Inwards). Listeners have about thirty seconds to self-reflect before being pummeled with a devastating drop. The synth-tones like wire; meshed together to form uneasy quakes. High-pitched frequencies counter-weight luridly grim moments of de facto doom. The cover art (Katharina Ira Allenberg) suggests a stoney self-examination; the […]
Overlay | TraceTone List (DL) Having recently become privy to (and enthused about) the rugby world cup currently underway in Japan, I also learned of the Haka dances that occasionally precede a match. This has nothing to do with Overlay’s Trace/Venn release on Tone List (October 29th) aside from the fact that there is an […]
DC33.33 | Ibis Color Milletpan y rosas (DL) As if the eurotrack fidgeting in the improved audio isn’t enough, this reviewer is thoroughly confounded by the express association Dave Gabriel (DC33.33) shares with Imelda Marcos. If this is some kind of quack at the food poisoning fiasco of Marcos’ 90th birthday celebration in the Philippines […]
Seasons (pre-din) | Distortions of a CellForwind (CD/DL) If within the first few moments of Distortion of a Cell one is not enraptured by the rhythmic noise and pulsating mechanical beats, listeners may have neglected the grand contemplative noise that Seasons (pre-din) generates in this cathartic odyssey. The first three tracks evolve in a theme […]
Just as the temperatures begin to cool some, the ears begin to warm to what’s coming next. Four phenomenal experimental electronic albums from around the globe all release on Friday October 25th, 2019, oh – that’s today! Giulio Aldinucci | No Eye Has an Equal99 Chants (CS/DL) No Eye Has an Equal by Giolio […]
Maeror Tri (1988-1997) was the prior identity to work by Stefan Knappe (Baraka H), Martin Gitschel (GLIT[s]CH) and Helge S. Moune – Knappe and Gitschel would continue on as Troum, who are still quite active. Their prolific brand of ambient/drone is one of the unsurpassed in the field and it took the incredibly ept Polish […]
Swine | Blood MonthMuteant Sounds (DL) Terrific drawn out swells, like the wake of a slow-cruising barge or a very large school of marine life, epitomize Blood Month by Swine. Aquatic lurking hisses and gurgles form the eerie ambiances produced by the unique instrumentation within this album. One can recognize the sax (Tim Hill) presence […]
Dans les arbres | VolatilSOFA (CD/DL) Volatile may refer to this single track album’s recording situation – live, a first for Dans les arbres. The prolifically touring quartet offers a recording set of fifty three minutes and change. Though the structured improv is airy, spacious and largely sparse, there isn’t a dull moment. Right away […]
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