20 March 2016

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Albums and Singles

Following her acclaimed debut Ett (Editions Mego) and the subsequent Msuic EP (Peder Mannerfelt) Editions Mego is very proud to present the second full length LP by Klara Lewis.

Lewis' skill at sculpting the hermetic shines on Too as she twists her idiosyncratic vision into nine tracks of blurred rhythms and haunted backdrops. Too is a powerful statement where the individual works tread a vast landscape as dour and aggressive elements rub shoulders with warmer optimistic works. Neither looking behind nor forward these works spiral in a time of their own devising, presenting themselves as a most audacious theatre for the ear. With a strong momentum developed from an organic outset the works move into a logic of their own, forming themselves as abstract landscapes, jitered rhythms and even pop like structures.

Too is a deeply engaging display of sound and skewered sensibility which hovers the cusp of reason and eludes the concrete. The results are Lewis’ boldest statement to date.

Out May 27th.  More information can be found here.

20 March 2016

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Albums and Singles

Cloudland Canyon is a band that has seemingly been around forever, remaining constantly in the periphery, yet never quite making much of an impression on me with their reverb-drenched, chameleonic psych/krautrock revivalism.  I always saw them as an almost-good band of people with great record collections who were a bit too self-conscious, over-meticulous, and reverent to fully realize their potential.  On this, improbably only their third album since forming in 2002, they have cleverly punched-up their sound with a lot of fun ‘80s-style electronic grooves, resulting in something unexpectedly resembling a Chris & Cosey/Panda Bear mash-up at times.  That admittedly innovative aesthetic still does not click entirely for me, but the handful of songs that lean heaviest on hooks and retro-dance grooves are quite good.  And some of the other ones are even better.

Medical Records

Cloudland Canyon’s Kip Ulhorn is a rather unique artist, seemingly part gear fetishist, part chameleon, part studio wonk, and part endless jam session.  Given that precarious balance, it actually seems somewhat surprising that Cloudland Canyon have finished any albums at all: it is immediately obvious from the opening "Where’s the Edge" that An Arabesque was a Herculean effort for a two person band to assemble.  Thankfully, Kip and Kelly Ulhorn managed to enlist a bewildering murderer's row of collaborators this time around to ease some of the burden (though I suspect Kip probably still spent months of his life overdubbing, piecing together, and processing tracks).  Returning to fold once more is Spacemen 3 alum Sonic Boom, but he is joined by a number of other folks ranging from the ubiquitous M. Geddes Gengras to former members of Flaming Lips, LCD Soundsystem, and even Big Star(!).  If that is not enough, the cover art was done by a fellow (Brian Roettinger) who was nominated for a Grammy and has worked with Jay Z.  Sadly, Jay Z himself does not appear anywhere in the credits, but that might just be because his record label put their foot down.  While no one involved seems to be credited with anything specific, I think it is probably safe to say that ex-Flaming Lip Kliph Scurlock quickly makes his appearance known with the wild live drumming in the otherwise throbbingly motorik opener.  The rest of the guests tend to generally be well-hidden behind a battery of analog synthesizers throughout the album.

An Arabesque is very conspicuously front-loaded with all of its best songs, which I suppose is very convenient on vinyl.  Krautrock homage "Where’s the Edge?" aside, however, the Ulhorns cover some unexpected territory on the album’s first half.  For example, the Kelly-sung "Try Faking It" is a near-perfect dose of early '90s synthpop: all throbbing and burbling synths, an insistent groove, and some fine reverb-drenched vocal hooks.  The gorgeous title piece, on the other hand, is a dreamy, bubbling, and radiant concoction of hazy dual vocals and expertly manipulated dynamics.  Also, there is some well-used saxophone that further ensures that I feel like I just discovered an incredible deep cut on a forgotten New Romantic album.  The ends start to fray a bit with "Faulting Fate," however.  Just about every song on An Arabesque sounds like a great vamp that has been fleshed out until it feels like a song, but "Fate" feels like the Ulhorns almost forgot to get around to writing a hook to go with their fat, propulsive synth groove and hoped that enough reverb would hide that.  Fortunately, there is a cool bridge where the piece finally comes together beautifully.  The rest of the album does not offer any similar last-minute songcraft surprises, sadly, but the three remaining pieces still boast some legitimate flashes of inspiration.  The best of the lot is "Staying Awake," which sounds like a great Jesus & Mary Chain song that had all of its instrumentation replaced with just burbling sequencer arpeggios, shimmering synth swells, and a booming kick drum.

The obvious critique that can be leveled against An Arabesque (and Cloudland Canyon in general) is that it is quite derivative, albeit in a free-floating, "anything goes" kind of way.  The Ulhorns are definitely a pair that is not at all shy about displaying their influences, but I actually do not mind in their case.  They push all the right nostalgia buttons here and offer more than enough energy and well-crafted hooks to make it work.  A much more significant issue is the overuse of reverb on vocals, as it tends to blur them into just another instrument.  That works in some cases, but it definitely creates distance and has a negative impact presence-wise.  A very vocal-centric song like "Psychic Instant," for example, would work a hell of a lot better if the vocals were not reduced to kind of a soft-focus haze.  Yet another issue is that most of Cloudland Canyon's songs clearly originate from jams and they sometimes fail to mask that.  It would not matter so much if they had a white-hot rhythm section or some incendiary solos, but it does matter when it is just a twinkling synth motif over a straightforward beat.  That can get very dull without strong hooks.  "Rebuilding Capture" is a solid example, as it is basically a one-note motorik groove with vocals that have been flanged into robotic oblivion.  Thankfully, it does not completely fall flat due to some very spirited drumming and steadily escalating atmospheric enhancements, but it is nevertheless the weakest piece on the album (excluding the flickering 40-second-long instrumental closer).  Of course, all of that grumbling is basically about Cloudland Canyon sounding exactly like Cloudland Canyon, which misses a key point: An Arabesque captures them firing all cylinders and is one of the best possible manifestations of their sound that I could hope for.  There a lot of excellent songs here and very few weak ones (and the title track is pure heaven).

• Try Faking It
• An Arabesque
• Faulting Fate

 

20 March 2016

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Albums and Singles

On their second album as a duo, Marco Marzuoli and Alessandro Sergente lay out a reticulated blanket of pulsing guitar tones and modulated electronic pitches dedicated to the moon. Luna’s three programmatic tracks do a remarkably good job evoking their subject. Each one sounds like it has been washed in silver light and painted onto a blue-black canvas. Their shapes are uncertain, as much shadow as form, and they radiate with uneasy energy like they know they hide more than they reveal. Appropriately, the album's every sound hovers uneasily in place, shifting the air and color around it in long undulating waves both oceanic and astronomical.

Low Point

Titles like "From the Village to the Country Under the Moonlight" and "Midnight: Song of Crickets on the Green Hill" bring to mind Luc Ferrari and Presque rien No. 1, less for their titles and more for their intent. Instead of grabbing a few microphones and setting out to capture an audio portrait of a moonlit landscape, Mazuoli and Sergente grabbed a guitar, some pedals, and a fistful of tape and set out to paint an abstract narrative—they call it a triptych—inspired by the quotidian and simultaneously magical passage of the moon through the night’s sky. The titles provide context where Ferrari’s sounds would normally do that job, only Luna doesn’t need much help. If the aforementioned songs fail to inspire images of villages or crickets, they evoke the sharp glow of the lunar surface and the curved shape of the Earth and its satellite with just a few carefully layered tones.

Timbre is the biggest contributor to that success. The guitars are glassy, lightweight, striking, almost uniformly smooth and still restless. It’s an optical illusion for the ears: pay attention to the pattern of the waves from peak to peak and the music will seem stationary. Focus on the descent and ascent of the wave and suddenly it’s an animated affair filled with trembling lines and nervous energy.

The careful application of interference helps too. Minor tones and a faint electrical texture, like the washed-out hue of an old television screen, complete the picture. There are rolling hills somewhere in these sounds, maybe crickets too, but more noticeable are the landscapes, the trees jutting up into the blackness of the sky, haloed by their own internal light, blurred shadows, white stone, and a grey presence that almost slips into daylight near the end. The details of a nocturnal stroll are lost in these wider strokes, but the mood of a place, and the mood of a kind of seeing, are captured with supernatural clarity.

samples:

• From the Village to the Country Under the Moonlight
• Midnight: Song of Crickets on the Green Hill
• Night Climb to the Mount Analogue

 

20 March 2016

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Albums and Singles

In a continuation of an amusing trend begun with 2014’s stellar Feeling Tropical Feeling Romantic Feeling Ill mixtape, Demdike Stare have yet again coaxed another odd non-Shapes release out of the singular Mica Levi.  This one is perhaps even stranger than its predecessor, as it is centered around an infectiously skittering and warbling 2-step "single" that Levi and frequent collaborator Tirzah released to YouTube all the way back in 2011.  The rest of Taz and May Vids is filled out with a few other excellent Tirzah collaborations, a Demdike Stare remix of a Tirzah collaboration, and a couple of very different outliers.  While the Brother May-assisted "More Red" is admirably bonkers, the primary appeal of this EP is definitely the murky, poppy, and beautifully warped Tirzah pieces.  Admittedly, it seems like Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker had quite a struggle in collecting even a mere EP's worth of material (the three Tirzah songs add up to barely 8 minutes), but these scraps from the vault offer some dazzling (if fleeting) glimpses of Levi's skewed and inscrutable pop genius.

DDS

Mica Levi is an artist that I have always had a very hard time wrapping my head around, as she seems to effortlessly bounce from one direction to another with the only consistent thread being that she sounds like absolutely no one else who is working similar territory.  She also seems at times to be like the creative equivalent of a broken fire hydrant, either spewing out great ideas too quickly to fully explore them or else presenting them in a fractured, over-caffeinated way.  However, her incredible score to Under The Skin stands as a very convincing counterargument to that theory.  The Taz and May Vids EP, however, does not: these (barely) 7 songs are basically one tossed-off stellar idea after another, which is simultaneously wonderful and exasperating.  For example, the piece that birthed the entire release ("GO") is essentially just a decent beat, the word "go," and a completely generic chord progression at its core, but that meager content is executed absolutely brilliantly and audaciously.  For one, the chords sound like they are coming from a broken calliope.  Secondly, it is piled with chopped and gibbering vocal snippets that sound absolutely deranged and hallucinatory.  Sadly, it all lasts just two minutes, but that is more than enough to make a huge impression: "GO" lies in the lunatic nexus in which a circus, a precocious child who has eaten too much sugary cereal, Aphex Twin’s "Windowlicker," and a seizure all gloriously intersect.

"Dare You," also featuring Tirzah, is built from similarly bizarre and minimal content, sounding like someone chopped up a percussion loop from Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation, then decided to slow it way down and make it seem seasick.  While not nearly as strong as "GO," it does feature an absolutely killer break where it settles into a heavy, shuffling groove.  Unfortunately, "Dare You" does not even manage to hit the two-minute mark, so it is nice that there is an extended Demdike Stare remix at the end of the album.  Canty and Whittaker do not do anything particularly transformative with the material, but they do a fine and reverent job of stretching it out, focusing on the best part (the great beat), and downplaying the weaker aspects.  The third Tirzah collaboration ("Trip6Love"") is even less of a complete song than the other two, but its clattering percussion and fuzzed-out jabbering happen over a very cool and obsessively repeating loop of fat synth swells.  In fact, it sounds like Levi and Tirzah just decided to go crazy over an extremely promising Under the Skin piece that somehow did not make the cut for the soundtrack.  Elsewhere, "More Red" is another wonderfully brainsick stand-out, sculpting a clanging industrial percussion loop, sirens, and pitch-shifted rapping into something so relentlessly annoying and one-note that it almost becomes brilliant.  Almost.

The EP is rounded out by a couple of incidental pieces, the 52-second "Intro" and 3-minute "Chimes 7."  Unsurprisingly, both are quite strange.  I would probably like "Intro" quite a lot, however, if only its plinking and lurching calliope groove had been given a chance to blossom into something more rather than just abruptly ending.  "Chimes 7," on the other hand, maybe goes on a little too long (a truly rare crime for Mica).  It does feature some great twanging and rusted-sounding string textures though.  All of that basically adds up to an alternately disorienting, dazzling, frustrating, and fascinating mixed-bag of an EP: the better moments are legitimately great, but they are always far too short-lived and it is quite clear that Mica did not lose any sleep worrying about songcraft.  Taz and May Vids reminds me of one of those bonus "sessions and outtakes" discs that are often appended to classic albums by folks like Miles Davis, but in this case, these are sessions and outtakes are from a great album that does not actually exist.  That said, I like it anyway: it is not fully formed by any means, but it is both original and inspired.  Also, it is certainly more visceral and attention-grabbing than some of Mica's other releases.  The only caveat is that it is definitely the musical equivalent of a delicious junk food fix rather than a satisfying meal.

• GO (with Tirzah)
• Trip6love (with Tirzah)
• Dare You (With Tirzah)

 

14 March 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Matt Elliott’s first release under the Third Eye Foundation moniker now sits at a full two decades ago. What is most striking is the fact that, considering how deeply rooted in the era drum 'n' bass/jungle music sounds now, Semtex is largely still as fresh sounding today as it was then. Because of less reliance on the overused "Amen" and "Funky Drummer" loops (though they appear), Elliott produced a work with significantly more depth and nuance, which is why it seems much more timeless than its contemporaries. Reissued here with a bonus disc of demos from the same era, and a lengthy selection of downloadable extra material, it is a nearly four and a half hour revisiting of one of the seminal albums of the mid 1990s.

Ici D’Ailleurs

Semtex was one of the first attempts to transfer the distinct sound of a genre heavily associated with dance clubs and the last antecedents of rave culture into a distinctly different, colder and more diverse one.While many associated with the ambient dub/illbient access made similar attempts (a notable amount of Justin Broadrick and Mick Harris related side projects come to mind), Semtex was one of the first fully realized attempts.

Part of what helped Elliott cultivate the Third Eye Foundation guise was his barebones approach to recording.In an era where synths were becoming extremely complex and computer recording and processing were becoming a reality, Semtex was recorded on a venerable old four track cassette recorder, using mostly a guitar, effects, and rudimentary sampling.By avoiding technological clichés and focusing on the overall composition, rather than the gimmicks, the album is all the more richer 20 years later.

Right from the opening of "Sleep" the style is set:bent guitar melodies and distortion paired with extremely hard-hitting percussion that blends together wonderfully, rather than being all about the beats.That is not to say that the high BPM chaotic rhythms of the drum ‘n bass scene are insignificant, however:"Still-Life" is wonderfully underscored by a chaotic cut up rhythm section, but that it is not the sole focus.An up front passage of guitar, low vocals, and a broken AM radio breakdown in the middle of the song keep it from being anything close to predictable or stagnant."Next of Kin" keeps the sputtering rhythms, but they are buried in a ton of reverb, with ghostly vocals appearing distant in the mix.

The second disc's bonus tracks sound exactly as I expected them to:rough and at times more like experiments than actual songs, but still of a strong enough quality to not be simply there for historical value."Alarm Song," for example, showcases Elliott's early flirtation with crunchy drum loops, but with an erratic and unpredictable tempo and an overall more open mix."Sleeping" features stiffer drum machine like beats with watery crackles and droning organ sounds, so similar to what was finally released but not fully formed.The same can be said about the nest of swirling melodies and processed voices on "Shard" that are consistent with the main album’s sound, just missing the rhythmic structure and thus not sounding quite complete.

The additional download-only material is even rawer, both in its composition and presentation.Culled from cassette demos dating back to 1991, many of the pieces (some nearing a half-hour in length) seem to draw from both the growing isolationist variation of ambience, but also the harsher noise world, such as the feedback loops and echoing churn of "A Cry for Help" that at times seems like a nod to the Broken Flag axis of artists.For what they are, they are extremely well done, but it also makes sense to place them as downloadable ancillary material, rather than using the limited physical space.

So much of the beat driven music of this era has not aged well:I know to this day any time I hear one of the overused rapid fire drum loops my brain immediately thinks "this sounds so late 1990s", but Semtex is one of the exceptions.While yes, the drum 'n' bass elements do channel a specific era, it is the remainder of Matt Elliott's approach to composition, drawing from a variety of different sounds and styles and culminating in a lo-fi, but perfectly fitting aesthetic that makes this album so strong.Even 20 years after it first appeared, Semtex sounds like the work of no one else, and with the significant amount of additional content included, it makes for a perfect excuse to revisit one of the classic albums of the 1990s.

samples:

• Sleep
• Alarm Song
• A Cry for Help

 

14 March 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

My first experience with Svendsen's work was his W/M debut split release with guitarist Christian Winther. Even though it was their first official release, both were well-established Norwegian artists who approached their respective instruments in ways that generated strange and unexpected sounds from them. Svendsen's newest work expands upon that, with four performances using only double bass, but played with a physicality and performance that blurs the lines between Svendsen himself and the instrument he plays.

Nakama Records

The centerpiece of Forms & Poses happens to be the first song on the album, "Vita."At just shy of 20 minutes, this single composition comprises nearly half of the album.Looking at the title’s two possible interpretation:one being Latin for "life" and the other shorthand for an artist's collected works and experience, both apply perfectly.Beginning with deep, clean string sounds, Svendsen builds from a simple, yet rhythmic basis.The repeating bass rhythm he plays is expanded upon, emphasizing both the individual notes and the hard, percussive playing.

It is from this template of percussive bass (that sounds extremely similar to a full rhythm section) that he continues to work from.His rapid, repetitive playing builds tension, with variations on his approach creating sounds that resemble bass guitar, drums, and even synthesizers, though the only effects that seem to be here is a small amount of reverb.The piece hits a peak of intensity and then he begins to draw it back in.The performance never relents, but the sound becomes lighter and more melodic, transitioning to a subtle conclusion that makes for a perfect encapsulation of Svendsen's virtuoso playing and ear for strong compositions.

The three shorter pieces that follow feature him going in other directions with his playing, further demonstrating his ability and proficiency."Aria Prefix M-" is largely built upon plucked, muted bass strings.At first the volume is rather light and the overall feel spacious, but he slowly increases the volume and intensity to the dynamics.By the end he is bending notes left and right, but still within the confines of a clear compositional structure.

"Forms & Poses" stands out distinctly with its overall more experimental and collage-sounding approach.The piece erratically stops and starts throughout, with bits of voice sneaking through.His playing is all over the place:the song was compiled from recordings of him playing with his hands, feet, body, and a more conventional bow, and so there is an intentionally jumpy feel to the piece.It finally closes in a wonderful rhythmic/melodic progression that is sadly too short.The concluding "Chidori" features Svendsen in a different approach:here his playing stays largely in the higher registers at first, with abrasive scrapes that almost mimic a violin.The varying pitches and playing do not sound too significantly removed from a modular synthesizer piece, oddly enough.Eventually he brings the pitch down to a more conventional bass range, resulting a wonderful combination of low end drone and rapid fire weirdness before concluding the piece on a fitting chaotic note.

Forms & Poses may feature only a single instrument and a basic amount of processing and editing, but the most captivating moments are clearly the result of Svendsen's playing.The physicality he brings to the performance is where the album especially shines, and very few can manage to make a single instrument sound like such a diverse and varied ensemble.While I feel the slow burning, tension building moments of "Vita" are the definite standout, the remaining pieces as well are just as exceptional in showing the distinctly different styles in which he can play and perform, peerless in his composing and instrumental ability.

samples:

• Vita
• Forms & Poses
• Chidori

 

13 March 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

ANOHNI has collaborated with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke on the artist's latest work Hopelessness.

Late last year, ANOHNI, the lead singer from Antony and the Johnsons, released "4 Degrees," a bombastic dance track celebrating global boiling and collapsing biodiversity. Rather than taking refuge in good intentions, ANOHNI gives voice to the attitude sublimated within her behavior as she continues to consume in a fossil fuel-based economy. ANOHNI released "4 Degrees," the first single from her upcoming album Hopelessness, to support the Paris climate conference this past December.

The song emerged earlier last year in live performances. As discussed by ANOHNI: "I have grown tired of grieving for humanity, and I also thought I was not being entirely honest by pretending that I am not a part of the problem," she said. "'4 Degrees" is kind of a brutal attempt to hold myself accountable, not just valorize my intentions, but also reflect on the true impact of my behaviors."

The album, Hopelessness, to be released world wide on May 6th 2016, is a dance record with soulful vocals and lyrics addressing surveillance, drone warfare, and ecocide. A radical departure from the singer's symphonic collaborations, the album seeks to disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics. ANOHNI will present select concerts in Europe, Australia and the US in support of Hopelessness this Summer.

"Hopelessness is the genius of Anohni and her masterful songwriting. The long low sexy beats, the skittering colorful and playful rhythms surround her voice, which is the silky center. Anohni has replaced the stories of abandonment, pain and desire with the biggest issues of our time. This revolutionary move is truly astounding. She understands the disasters of war, climate collapse and totalitarianism in its many new forms. She understands media and she understands groove. Hopelessness is an entirely new mix of love and power, sex and despair delivered with her heavenly voice and incantatory melodies." -- Laurie Anderson, NYC 2016

More information can be found here.

13 March 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Much-celebrated Kompakt staple The Field returns to the spotlight with new album The Follower, his fifth full-length offering after From Here We Go Sublime, Yesterday And Today, Looping State Of Mind and Cupid's Head. Swedish soundsmith Axel Willner is well-known for his mastery when it comes to the allusive layering of loops, but it was with his last album Cupid's Head that a newly-found, somewhat pressing snappishness started to replace the soft-hued sonics of his ambient-infused techno, imbued with a darker mood and stronger footing than before. A carefully gauged balance of stoic motorik and gloomy drones was key here - just as it is for The Follower which goes even further in blurring the lines between concrete experimentation, body music and precisely laid-out arrangement, leading to one of the most rhythmically and texturally engaging listening experiences in Willner's catalogue.

"As always when starting a new album, I wanted to do something that sounds fresh, but doesn't stray too far from what I have so far done as THE FIELD - and that's always the tricky part", says Willner, adding that "the whole album came around through experimenting with a lot of new recording equipment and gear". That source of inspiration seems to have worked rather well, with title track "The Follower" opening on a surprisingly muscular groove and setting the tone for what could be considered The Field's most floor-attuned work yet - a raw bounce dripping with foggy acid and marching percussion catches long-standing fans off-guard while providing a perfect entry point for curious newcomers. Pulling no punches, Willner's knack for entwined drones and mutating loops is very much in place, but finds powerful support in an excitingly sturdy bassline and guitar-like screeches. It's been a few years since The Field's band dissolved, which led to more club-oriented live gigs - an experience that definitely informed The Follower's sound without interrupting this very personal continuum of expressive means. This is ambient techno on steroids, with a dose of metal machine music for good measure.

Follow-up cut "Pink Sun" quickly finds its pace with one of these perpetually rotating hooks Willner is known for, while "Monte Veritá" specializes in tunefully glitched vocal samples with accompanying bass workout - a powerful and propelling album build-up that finds its first moment of introspection with the mountainous "Soft Streams," an exciting synth journey that emits both ethereal and kinetic propensities.  "Raise the Dead" presents The Field's focused sonic storytelling at its minimalist best, gyrating around a basic motive for a while before joining an earthy beat and opening up the sunshine roof. It's a winding, hypnotic track that also works particularly well as transition to the album's remarkable closing chapter: the slow-paced "Reflecting Lights" shows Willner at his most refined, evoking his often-quoted appreciation of Wolfgang Voigt's ambient project GAS as well as an obvious fondness for kraut synthesists and their trance-inducing exploits. "The Follower is about old myths, finding utopia and how mankind repeatedly makes the same mistakes over and over", explains Willner, but he remains an artist who prefers keeping things uncommented and the mistery intact - his latest full-length certainly doesn't need more introductions: it evidently shows a maturity and consistent evolution of The Field's trademark style of creation, but may very well be considered one of his most vibrant and visceral outings yet.

More information can be found here.

13 March 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Room40 is proud to continue the publication of a series of editions from American guitarist and composer Norman Westberg.

Best known for his work with the seminal outfit SWANS, Westberg’s output beyond that group is sprawling and restless. His name recurs and ripples through many interconnected micro-histories surrounding New York City’s music and art scenes. From appearances in film works associated with the Cinema Of Transgression, through to his participation in bands such as The Heroine Sheiks and Five Dollar Priest, Westberg’s name is woven deeply into the fabric of New York over the past three decades.

MRI is the result of Westberg’s encounters with the heavy medical scanning technology following his recognising diminished hearing. ”I started to notice a loss of hearing in my right ear,” Westberg explains, “and decided that it was high time that I had it checked out by a professional. The audiologist confirmed the uneven hearing loss and recommended an MRI. The purpose of the MRI was to make sure that there was not something other than my own aural misadventures causing the uneven loss.” This record is a coda to this experience. Recorded in 2012, it is a collection of reductive rolling guitar pieces that are embedded strongly in the American Minimalism tradition.

The newly mastered and post-produced edition also features a brand new piece, "Lost Mine," recorded in 2015 as an echo of the processes that led to the original recordings. It follows the reissue of 13 in late 2015.

From Lawrence English:

“Norman Westberg’s guitar playing with SWANS has influenced a generation of musicians across genres. I can personally attest to how his particular approaches to that instrument, in creating both harmony and brute force, have challenged and ultimately influenced my own sonic preoccupations.

What Norman has created with his solo works is an echoing universe of deep texture and harmonic intensity. His solo compositions generate an affecting quality that drives the listener towards reductive transcendence.”

More information can be found here.

13 March 2016

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Albums and Singles

SN Variations is proud to announce the release of a new EP curated around the primordial and enigmatic music of Giacinto Scelsi.

Alongside a new recording of his intimate "Duo for Violin and Cello," the EP features a new work by Chris Watson inspired by Scelsi’s explorations of "pure sound" and a breathtaking shakuhachi honkyoku performance by Joe Browning.

Born into an aristocratic family in Italy in 1905, Scelsi's creative peak arrived in the 1960s after years of research into Buddhist chant and other aspects of Eastern spirituality. His work languished in obscurity for most of his long career, but its pioneering investigations of microtonality and pure sound have exerted a deep influence on contemporary composers and electronic artists including Mica Levi, Richard Skelton and Fennesz. Against the crowded polyphonies of much post-war academic modernism, Scelsi powerfully advocated for the primordial and the esoteric, for the acoustic interplay of pure frequencies.

"The Duo for Violin and Cello" dates from Scelsi’s most fertile period and was composed at the same time as seminal works such as "Anahit" and "Elegia per Ty."  Despite a modest combination of just two instruments, the innovative use of double stopping and extended playing techniques creates a huge, vibrating microtonal form.  In this new recording, Aisha Orazbayeva and Lucy Railton execute a meticulous performance of this complex score.

Chris Watson responded to the piece with sculpted field recordings of insects made originally on a boardwalk in the middle of the Borneo jungle. "Invertebrate Harmonics" imaginatively links the pure sound world of Scelsi to pure sound worlds found in nature. This piece is from a larger installation work "Notes from a Forest Floor," which was played first at the ICA last June as part of the event ‘MusICA –Exploring Sound and Authorship’.

Finally Chris records a traditional shakuhachi honkyoku piece - "Honshirabe" - one of the pieces forming the historic repertoire of the wandering Zen Buddhist monks known as the Komuso.  This performance by Joe Browning is one of exquisite subtleties, resonating with Scelsi's mature work while pointing to its widespread historical antecedents.

More information can be found here.