Grisha Shakhnes | Being ThereUnfathomless (CD/DL) Recorded in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel the new recording from Grisha Shakhnes is uniquely set apart from other field recordings in that it is that of both indoor and outdoor sounds, contained and free. These sounds penetrate through personal space and were sometimes incidental. Shakhnes explains his making of Being […]
Botho Cochois | Viscous Cottonself-released (DL) For a presumed debut, described as having: “sharp-edged drones which enshroud electroacoustic rustle and fragments of field recordings” this new self-released, download-only from German sound-collagist Botho Cochois is dead on the money with the senses-working-overtime title, Viscous Cotton. Five engaging tracks of spatial drone that seems to be filtered […]
Line Spectrum | BrumaGlacial Movements (CD/DL) Line Spectrum is the moniker of Ukrainian artist Oleg Puzan, someone who is new to me, but I’m excited to have made the discovery with this new release on the Glacial Movements label. Constructed from meticulously manipulated field recordings, the five tracks making up Bruma are impressive soundscapes from […]
Reynols | Minecxio Emanations 1993-2018 Pica Disk (6xCD & DVD/DL) “Outstanding and far-out experimental exaggeration” Retrospective box sets are informative think-tanks! Lovely introductions or remembrance collections, bearing the task of showcasing the whereabouts of an artist, in an enlarged manner. Reynols, an Argentinian experimental band, hailing from Buenos Aires, formed in 1993 as Burt Reynols […]
Hüma Utku | GnosisKarlrecords (LP/DL) “Pilgrimage chronicles, transmuted into mesmerizing sounds” Hüma Utku is an electronic composer hailing from Istanbul, Turkey and currently based in Berlin, Germany. Her work involves exploring the possibilities of how sound textures and rhythm can be used to evoke a sense of ancient within abstract electronics. Having released material under […]
Torba | Musica Convenzionale Edizioni Aaltra (CD) Mauro Diciocia is Torba, and Musica Convenzionale is his eighth or ninth solo recording (but his first official CD release), give or take some collaborations along the way. It is also my personal introduction to the Italian sound-collagist’s work. Here he has produced a singular thirty-nine minute track […]
Francisco López & Miguel A. García | Ekkert NafnCronica (CD/DL) These two artists spent time collecting a pool of sounds together before individually exploring their own direction with them. The album title, Ekkert Nafn, is a mash-up of two Icelandic words that effectively translate as “no name”, and this abstract, mysterious title is certainly fitting […]
Nicholas Maloney | Water Studies Somewherecold Records (CD/DL) Mississippi-based Nicholas Maloney brings his debut solo EP via Somewherecold Records, two Water Studies (Study for Moving Water and Study for Still Water). It’s also limited to only forty-five copies if you dig bespoke handmade and numbered discs. Recorded in Iceland as well as on the Pearl […]
Kate Carr | City of Bridges (DL)Lieven Martens | Deo Gratias Triginta Sex (DL) Longform Editions is a label dedicated to the slow-burning and the slow paced. The label was realized in response to so much of today’s bite-sized listening habits, where streaming has encouraged listeners to dip in and out of albums like a pick […]
Pedro Chambel + Bruno Duplant | Wald Archive Officielle Publications (CD/DL) In Montreal-based label Archive Officielle‘s fourteenth edition in just a few years Wald shows the publisher’s great attention to detail. This is our very first listening session with this particular imprint, and it’s an earful and a half. This is the collaborative duo of […]
Juan Antonio Nieto | Dry Grass Marbre Negre (CDR-PRO/DL) On the first recording on the Marbre Negre imprint from percussionist and artist Juan Antonio Nieto, we experience the resolute textural quality to the sound of this longtime collaborator (Shakermoon, Alphaville). Nieto incorporates a range of field recordings and other electronic effects throughout for an atmosphere […]
Footfalls – A Soundwalk Series Flaming Pines (USB/DL) This nifty gadget arrived in the mail looking like a compass in a little tin jewel box, and folding out into a usb fob emblazoned with a fully-fledged recording including three field recording compositions by Nick Luscombe, Maria Papadomanolaki and Virgilio Oliveira respectively. This is appears to […]
Aros E-V | Return Journey self-released (CS/DL) A unique, short tape of electronic sounds made up of two tracks of tape loops, field recordings, and digital processing – running at just about twenty minutes. It’s got a chill vibe, fairly warm tones and lots of crackle and hiss, referencing the source. This Minnesotan, now based […]
Thomas Tilly | A Semiotic Survey Ferns (CD/DL) French field recordist Thomas Tilly releases his latest on the oft overlooked, but incredible non-profit imprint, Ferns (Paris). Consisting of seven new pieces, this kicks off with a minimal jutting pitch which leads to a similar call by outdoor crickets and cicadas, and the somewhat pleasant crackle […]
Kate Carr is a sound artist whose work investigates our relationship with the natural world, and explores place and non-place, being and imagining. Her music is often composed using field recordings and sounds sourced from location. Besides her recorded output and live performances, she has contributed to artist residencies that have taken her all over […]
French field recordist Bruno Duplant presents an album of quiet, lowercase soundscapes for the Verz label. Consisting of three tracks, there is a subtle repetition at work that lulls the listener into some very weird spaces. Opening track “première” purrs and whirs for its duration, with strangely hypnotic loops that occasionally wobble out of sync. […]
Jon Wesseltoft & Balazs Pandi | Terreng Moving Furniture Records (LP/DL) Soft Close-Up begins with a meager alarm, set right into a pleasant bit of abstract jazzy percussion and perhaps the lift of a helicopter. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of effects that kickoff Terreng, the latest from collaborative duo Jon Wesseltoft (electronics) & Balazs Pandi […]
Jared Sagar | Tombland + BRB>Voicecoil | Reclaim Here are the two latest editions from the always rightly curated Brussels-based Unfathomless, focused on phonographies, field recordings and other microsounds — both available on CD (limited + special editions) and downloadable via Bandcamp. Reclaim is broken into three parts. brb>voicecoil (Kevin Wilkinson) collected his organic source […]
Marja Ahti | Vegetal NegativesHallow Ground (CD/DL) There is something wonderfully structured about Marja Ahti’s emotive ‘Vegetal Negatives’. A warm and organic tableaux that courts both the familiar and the strange, each of its elements appears rendered with a loving and meticulous hand, an approach that feels on the surface as if it should be […]
René Aquarius | Isle Zona Watusa (CS/DL) This is the latest from Dutch drummer René Aquarius (of Dead Neanderthals) on Barcelona-based imprint Zona Watusa. Isle is a single thirty-four minute journey giving “the listener the feeling of being all alone on an island” that “combines field recordings (Germany and Sweden) and a series of notes […]
Ludwig Berger | Inumaki, EsuzakiVertical Music (CS/DL) I have previously described Ludwig Berger as a field recordist with an unusual interest in apparently dull sounds, and as if to prove a point, he presents us here with a recording of a tree. Not a lush, bustling forest, nor a windswept gully, not clever things being […]
Eric La Casa + Eamon Sprod | Friche: TransitionSwarming (CD/DL) Borders, frontiers, boundaries. These words have gained a certain relevance in today’s western society. With a fearsome diffusion of nationalist movements and sovereign ideologies, the medieval sense of fixed land division obstructs the path towards liquidity and permeability and towards the establishment of a real […]
Papillon | Cercueil Flottant Sucata Tapes/Discrepant (CS/DL) A wild loop as if primates are screeching into a microphone traipse over a tripping beat. A radio-type narrator speaks in few words through static. Les Radiadeurs de Mika is an unusual opener on the latest from Papillon, Cercueil Flottant. This blend of experimental effects and field recordings […]
Francesco Michi & Pietro Michi | Poesie Eugrughe Canti Magnetici (CS/DL/BK) In this edition of forty, the Firenze-based duo named Michi (father and son, Francesco Michi & Pietro Michi) have delivered a half-hour long piece of intensive minimalism based on installation work originally presented in 1992. Poesie Eugrughe deals with the non/existence of virtual populations […]
Chi Factory | The Mantra Recordings Astral Industries (2xLP/DL) Dedicated to the life and work of Robert Lax (1915-2000), the American “dreamcatcher” poet who lived on Patmos, Greece. The recording is eighty-four minutes in length, consisting of four equal parts that are part chant, part field recording and most definitely all in a hazy dreamstate. […]
Ludwig Berger | CargoCanti Magnetici (CS/DL) Field-recording is a curious art. It is a discipline of many modes, many temperaments, and one marked by a fundamental dichotomy – it is when it flaunts its purest, most authentic form, that it is at its most amorphous. ‘Cargo’ is ostensibly a recording of nothing. The world it offers […]
Espacio Profundo | Laniakea Zona Watusa (CS/DL) A field recording of croaks and caws casts the setting for Laniakea (or “immense heaven” in Hawaiian) which is named after a supercluster in the galaxy. On their third tape since 2015 Espacio Profundo wastes no time on Calotriton Arnoldi creating an incredible depth of atmosphere, with cowbells […]
Cruel Diagonals | Pulse of IndignationDrawing Room Records (CS/DL) Cruel Diagonals is the musical output of Megan Mitchell, who is described as a field-recordist and vocalist – though it is the latter of those two disciplines that seems to take precedent here. I am not familiar with her work, however Pulse of Indignation appears to […]
Luna Monk | Silent Odes Shimmering Moods Records (CD/DL) Ahhhh, the great outdoors! Or some semblance thereof. When Fall from Grace opens it is as if this Luna Monk, an Afro diaspora artist, has captured a tiny star and is slowly drifting back down the celestial belt towards civilization. Impactful, refreshing ambient wafts through like […]
Bruno Duplant & David Vélez | Our Seasons Reverse Unfathomless (CD/DL) The duo opens instantly with creaking trees, crickets, gulls, in the wide open outdoors by the seashore. The listener is in a wild setting of field recordings on the long-playing singular work, Our Seasons Reverse. They have most definitely managed to capture every facet […]
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