This week's series of episodes features images from Asheville, NC, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene this past week.
Please consider donating to the various organizations in and around the area.
Episode 714 features music by Pan•American, Maria Somerville, Patrick Cowley, The Gaslamp Killer and Jason Wool, Der Stil, Astrid Sonne, Reymour, Carlos Haayen Y Su Piano Candeloso, Harry Beckett, Tarwater, Mermaid Chunky, and Three Quarter Skies.
Episode 715 has Liquid Liquid, Kim Deal, Severed Heads, Los Agentes Secretos, mHz, Troller, Mark Templeton, Onkonomiyaki Labs, Deadly Headley, Windy and Carl, Sunroof, and claire rousay.
Episode 716 includes Actors, MJ Guider, The Advisory Circle, The Bug, Alessandro Cortini, The Legendary Pink Dots, Chihei Hatakeyama and Shun Ishiwaka, Arborra, Ceremony, Ueno Takashi, Organi, and Saagara.
Factory Benelux presents an expanded 3x disc deluxe edition of The Guitar and Other Machines, the sixth studio album by Manchester ensemble The Durutti Column, originally released by Factory Records in 1987.
The origin of The Guitar and Other Machines was the Christmas present given by Factory founder Tony Wilson to Durutti mainman Vini Reilly in 1985. “He gave me another kick and bought me a load of electronic instruments,” revealed Reilly at the time. “I never dreamt of getting into this electronic thing, and I struggled and fought and stayed up til half seven in the morning and really worked on it. I know that Tony’s got this vision and I persevered. And I found a way of using a sequencer that isn’t like New Order – it’s my way, and it’s my music.”
Produced by Stephen Street (The Smiths; Morrissey), the album also features percussionist Bruce Mitchell and viola player John Metcalfe. Remastered in 2017, this new FBN edition restores all three bonus tracks included on the original Factory CD, being experimental pieces written and recorded with Jez Kerr and Simon Topping of A Certain Ratio.
Disc 2 gathers together a wealth of associated recordings, including the rare Greetings 3 EP (released only in Italy), non-album tracks such as Our Lady of the Angels, LFO Mod, and the exquisite acoustic instrumental Catos con Guantes. Other tracks on Disc 2 include various mixes of When the World (a video single at the time), oddball Jefferson Airplane cover White Rabbit (recorded in LA on a whim with guest vocalist Debi Diamond), and several ‘sporadic recordings’ which revisit themes first heard on the original album.
Disc 3 is an in-concert recording of the band taped at the famous Bottom Line club in New York City in October 1986, along with two further live tracks taped at the WOMAD festival in August 1988.
The 3xCD set is housed in a clamshell box with individual interior wallets. A double disc vinyl edition is also available, featuring the core studio album on Disc 1 and live versions of selected album tracks on Disc 2.
A double gatefold vinyl edition will also be released with the core album on Disc 1, and live selections on Disc 2
Home Age is the first proper Eleh full length since 2012's Homage To The Pointed Waveforms. Packaged in a deluxe gold on black heavy duty letterpress jacket made by Studio On Fire in Minneapolis. Edition of 500. Also available simultaneously is a new split LP between Eleh & Christina Kubisch.
These three new pieces seek to expose the inherent musicality of pure electrical currents via high resolution Serge STS synthesizers. Like early Eleh work, Home Age is inward looking and deliberate but also slowly emotional and revealing as if peering blurry eyed through a window. Melody, harmony and counterpoint are suggested but not revealed.
Musique Hydromantique is the second solo album by Tomoko Sauvage archiving many years of her performance-based practice on the waterbowls – the natural synthesizer of her invention, composed with porcelain bowls filled with water and amplified via hydrophones (underwater microphones). While her first album Ombrophilia (released on and/OAR in 2009) was studio-recorded /composed work, Musique Hydromantique is about experimentation and improvisation with the environment – acoustics affected by the architecture, temperature, humidity and the human presence.
For more than ten years, Sauvage has been investigating the sound and visual properties of water in different states, as well as those of ceramics, combined with electronics. Water drops, waves and bubbles are some of the elements she has been playing with to generate the fluid timbre. Since around 2010, hydrophonic feedback has been an obsession for the musician – an acoustic phenomenon that requires fine tuning depending on the amount of water, a subtle volume control and interaction with the acoustic space.
"Calligraphy" was recorded in a genuine echo chamber, with about 10 second reverbs, situated in a former textile factory. Like an endless exercise to draw perfect curves and forms floating in the air, the subaquatic feedback frequencies are pitch-bended with the mass of water sculpted by a hand changing its quantity. "Fortune Biscuit" is about the singing bubbles emitted from the pieces of 'biscuit' (porous terra-cotta). Depending on the texture of the surface, each biscuit makes different sound : insect and animal voices in a forest, motors, crying babies changing pitches and rhythms while absorbing the water… "Clepsydra" (meaning "water clock") features Sauvage's classical technique, a random percussion with dripping water. She tunes the waterbowls by adding and removing water, making flowing glissando, to find the balance point in ever-changing tonalities.
Just as the flow of water is subject to a number of variables such as temperature and pressure, water clocks mark a time that is shifting and relative. However, slowness dominates throughout the album as a result of favoring the full resonance of the instrument, leading to a path to experiencing timelessness.
Hydromancy is a method of divination by means of water. Unpredictable bubbles and water ripples become oracles. Evaporation and acoustic space constantly play a chance operation. Through primordial materials and ritualistic yet playful gestures, Musique Hydromantique questions contemporary divination.
All the tracks are live-recorded without electronic effects or editing. They were recorded during the night or very early in the morning and the whole album is to be listened to during that period of a day.
An expanded 2xCD edition of the classic album from Tuxedomoon member Blaine L. Reininger, originally issued by Crepuscule in 1984 and now newly remastered from the original analog tapes.
Night Air was recorded in Brussels in 1983, shortly after Reininger left Tuxedomoon, in collaboration with former Sleepers guitarist Michael Belfer. Other guests include Steven Brown and Winston Tong of Tuxedomoon, and Marc Hollander of Aksak Maboul. The final mix was supervised by Gareth Jones, famed for his work with Depeche Mode, Einsturzende Neubauten and Wire.
The part-instrumental album offers a sequence of bittersweet expatriate vignettes. "I suppose I should be grateful to the capital of Europe for providing the seed around which so much of my spleen could crystallize for so many years," explains Reininger, who hailed from Colorado via San Francisco. "Brussels provided me with such a rich source of melancholic poetry."
The 10 core tracks on Night Air include popular single Mystery and Confusion, as well as Birthday Song (originally performed by Tuxedomoon), the elegiac Ash and Bone, and the exquisite baroque pop of A Café au Lait for Mr XYZPTLK. The 6 bonus tracks on Disc 1 include Windy Outside (a collaboration with Mikel Rouse), The Sea Wall (performed with Durutti Column) and two versions of Crash, written by Reininger and Belfer in 1980 for Tuxedomoon, and subsequently remixed by The Residents.
Disc 2 preserves a previously unreleased live recording from Bologna, Italy, on 19 March 1984. Billed as the Spiny Doughboys Review, the 14 song set includes songs from Night Air and Broken Fingers.
The deluxe 2xCD set is housed in a 6 panel digipack. Cover photography is by Charles Van Hoorick, with liner notes by Reininger, Belfer and Gilles Martin.
For their latest album, the duo of Andrew Chalk and Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin) take an unexpected detour from their impressive run of limited self-released albums for an appearance on Stephen O'Malley’s eclectic Ideologic Organ imprint. To honor this auspicious occasion, the core line-up is fleshed out with returning collaborators Tom James Scott and Jean Noël Rebilly, as well as pedal steel guitarist Daniel Morris. In all other respects, however, Vieux Silence is every bit a traditional Elodie album, unfolding as a flickering impressionist dream that seems to emanate from a time and place totally unlike our own. As an album, it does not necessarily tower above the rest of Elodie's consistently fine oeuvre, but the title piece might be the single most achingly gorgeous piece that Chalk and van Luijk have recorded together to date.
Stelzer/Murray is the duo of Brendan Murray and Howard Stelzer, two stalwarts of the Boston noise / experimental scene over the past two decades. Both artists have long been friends and both artists have never shied away from collaborating with avant-garde musicians hither and yon. Yet, this marks their first collaborative work together. Better late than never, we say.
Stelzer brings to the table an array of mangled and partially demagnetized tape; and Murray brings his knack for compacted harmonics, obfuscated field recordings, and long-view compositional strategies. An irradiated, almost Kirlian glow permeates Connector through the duo's slow accretions and erosions amidst the soaring crescendos of compacted tone and vacant shadows of mechanical thrum. On occasion, rasping saw tooth frequencies and oblique synth-noise phrases stridently pop in a clinical opposition against the field of hiss. Screaming cascades from ice storms. Tape symphonies from urban blight. Life-support machines at the point of obsolescence.
In describing the process of building this album, Stelzer reflected, "When you've known someone for this long, the act of collaboration is like conversation over dinner; you don't fuss over it or worry about it; it's stress free, even instinctual like exhaling."
"Deepchord's latest album on Soma, Auratones, sees a return to a more techno sound. A foray into deep, organic, cinematic dance music; subterranean bass, intercepted alien transmissions, and stripped down dance-beats meld with sheets of sounds that roll over the listener like waves lapping up on the shore. Shimmering, watery, brain hemisphere synchronization tones caress and melt stress away. Dancefloor-friendly tracks that work equally well in one's private listening space; immersive music with a distinctive aquatic quality.
Inspired by Detroit and Berlin's dance genres, but tempered by more ambience/atmosphere than one would expect from those genres. Music without harshness or rough edges; Fuzzy, out-of-focus, soft-sounds that slip in and out of the listener's consciousness. Auratones uniquely melds current dance rhythms with lushness and spirituality. Synesthetic sounds that trigger sensory experiences in cognitive pathways other than hearing: smells of perfumes, thoughts of colors, and altered perception of time and space. Psychoacoustic, cerebral, electronic listening music for those wanting a different experience than the current harsher, darker dance trends are offering.
Responsibly made gentle music designed from the ground-up to have a positive effect on the nervous system and leave the listener invigorated and recharged. Chi-building sonic balm. Timeless, exotic dance tracks for a new school of electronic music enthusiasts who are searching for beautiful sounds, crafted with a higher purpose in mind. Recorded during April-June 2016 in Barcelona Spain, then further mixed/processed/assembled in Port Huron Michigan in early 2017."
Nocturnal Emissions has been one of the best kept secrets of the industrial genre since the 1970s.
Led by Nigel Ayers, the band was one of the first to use tape cutting, avant-garde art, and underground video works to create a stage experience that was being cultivated by like-mindedartists like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire.
The band moved on to using samplers and electronic noise in their early '80s work, creating a twisted funk sound that would go on to influence everyone from Foetus to Negativland. They still utilized their former tricks, upping the ante with extremist performance art and more professional video displays. The group avoided signing to a major label, instead focusing on releasing their own music more effectively. They followed this path into the '90s when they started Earthly Delights, an incredibly detailed website that promotes their various ideologies (they are strongly against the British monarchy and believe that citizens should have unlimited access to space travel) and constant release schedule. The band has released countless tapes and CDs of their material, and continue to unleash their noise through their website. Nocturnal Emissions is a compilation of classic tracks from the early to mid '80s.