Plenty of new music to be had this week from Laetitia Sadier and Storefront Church, Six Organs of Admittance, Able Noise, Yui Onodera, SML, Clinic Stars, Austyn Wohlers, Build Buildings, Zelienople, and Lea Thomas, plus some older tunes by Farah, Guy Blakeslee, Jessica Bailiff, and Richard H. Kirk.
Lake in Girdwood, Alaska by Johnny.
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As Scratched Glass, Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf (alongside Jon Lukens) has released two stripped down tapes riddled with obscure sounds and intricate, nuanced production. Minimal, yet rich; dark, yet inviting, they were a study in contrasts and contradictions. For Big Other, he not only has opted for the vinyl format, but also working under his own name. Indicative of change, the record is certainly a different sounding one based on his previous work. With the integration of rhythms and the vocal contributions of Jarboe, but still featuring just the right amount of abstraction, the final product feels like the natural evolution of a composer/producer who had already set a high water mark before, but continues to push ahead.
The abstraction and use of unidentifiable sounds that was so prevalent with Scratched Glass are still apparent throughout Big Other, but for most of the six pieces presented here it is used sparingly to flesh out the more commanding sounds of drums, voice, and guitar.The low contrabass rumble that opens "Thrown Into Being" would not have been out of place on one of those earlier cassettes, but the live percussion and distorted guitar that are later added make for a very different sound.The pummeling drums and buzzing guitars result in a brilliant sense of tension that builds and builds before relenting to elegant, electronic spaces.
The album's centerpiece, "New Heart," is cut from a similar cloth, but with Rosendorf going off in an entirely different sonic direction.Twinkling passages of electronics lead off as Jarboe's vocal is delicately weaved in.Her wordless performance recurs throughout, befitting the simultaneously dark and inviting mix of various instruments and treatments.As before, Rosendorf brings in commanding drum rhythms, processed to give an undeniable level of intensity and demonstrates his simultaneous skills in sound design as well as composition.With a massive sense of depth and swirling electronics and voices, it is as ominous as it is beautiful.
On the other side of the record, Rosendorf eschews the prominent rhythms for greater variations of tone and texture that may be somewhat different overall, but complement the first two pieces perfectly."Several Days Later I Got Up the Nerve to Look at Myself in the Mirror for the First Time" begins calmly enough.Droning electric piano is complemented with jagged, metallic FM bells and chimes giving a bleak melodic accompaniment to the textural hum.On the surface it is all pleasant, but there are hints of a repressed, malicious force that is just there waiting to be unleashed. Around the midway point, that darkness breaks through in the form of harsh guitar and electronic processing that pounds through the initially lighter mix.Again he works with contrasts, alternating between the softer and harsher sounds throughout.
The album ends on a three-song suite that again demonstrates Rosendorf’s penchant for working with contrasts and juxtapositions.The first segment, "Shegiah," is a surprising mix of slightly jazzy piano and contrabass.He is working with conventional sounds, but with the skeletal production and sparse arrangement, there is a distinctly morose quality to the piece.In the transition to "Golden Repair" he drops the sparseness for a surge of distorted cello and electronics instead.Brought in tastefully, the dissonant sounds envelope much of the sound that preceded it.By the concluding "A Shield of Ceilings in the Drift" Rosendorf brings everything full circle with the distortion retreating and the piano returning, fleshed out with additional instrumentation and production to close on a calm, somber note.
One of the strengths of Big Other is Rosendorf’s deftness in blending together a myriad of sounds and moods, often into a single piece, perfectly and effortlessly.The smoothness in the transition from the pounding, suspense score rhythms of "Thrown Into Being" into a delicate electronic conclusion is performed expertly, and the simultaneously sacred and profane sounds of "New Heart" are so expansive and diverse all within a single piece.With Scratched Glass, Rosendorf proved himself an expert at creating idiosyncratic sounds and complex, multifaceted production, but with Big Other he has pushed that into a beautiful, multidimensional colossus of a record that is as complex as it is unique.
Brainwashed and Negative Capability Editions are proud to exclusively premiere the new album by Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf, Big Other, and the video for "New Heart." The entire album can be streamed via Bandcamp by clicking here before its release on August 21. "New Heart," (video available here) featuring guest vocals by Jarboe, showcases her expansive voice, adding a human element to the menacing, swirling electronics and guest performer James Joyce’s powerful drums. As Rosendorf began to construct the piece, he says he could hear the ghost of Jarboe's voice throughout as he was composing and mixing, persuading him to ask her to participate. Also an accomplished visual artist working with the likes of Axebreaker, Locrian, and Retribution Body, the accompanying video directed by Rosendorf was filmed during COVID-19 quarantine.  Traveling through a forest, he captures both the isolation and terrible gravity of our current shared experience, but also the potential of hope and new life. Big Other will be released on limited vinyl and digital via Negative Capability Editions on August 21.
Sound In Silence is happy to announce the return of Eternell, presenting his new album Imagined Distances.
This is his second release on the label after the highly acclaimed, and already sold out, album Still Light back in 2018.
Eternell is the ethereal and meditative music project of Ludvig Cimbrelius, based in Höör, Sweden. Since 2014 he has released several sublime albums on his own Eternell label and a compilation on Stereoscenic Records, while he is also known for his ambient/dub techno Purl project with releases on labels such as Silent Season, Dewtone Recordings, Archives, A Strangely Isolated Place, Databloem and many others. During the last decade Cimbrelius has also released his music under his own name and various monikers such as Alveol, Surr, Rust, Illuvia, Ziyal, Xpire and others.
Imagined Distances is made up of six long-form tracks with a total duration of something more than 75 minutes. Cimbrelius’ intelligent arrangement blends layers of airy synths, warm pads, drifting guitar melodies, subtle bass rhodes and indistinct dreamy vocals, resulting in one of his most accomplished works to date. Carefully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), Imagined Distances is a wonderful album of blissful ambience, restful soundscapes and intricate textures, which appeals to all fans of artists such as bvdub, Jónsi & Alex, Warmth and Moshimoss.
Sound In Silence is proud to welcome back [.que], presenting his new album And Inside.
This is his second release on the label after the highly acclaimed, and already sold out, album Wonderland back in 2017.
[.que] is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Nao Kakimoto, based in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2010 he has released ten albums and many EPs and singles on labels such as Schole, IntroDuCing! and his own Embrace. He has also composed music for many film movies, television commercials, websites and exhibitions.
And Inside is his eleventh full length album and consists of ten tracks with a total duration of about 35 minutes. Started taking shape during the recording sessions for his previous album, And Inside expresses a deeper and more personal aspect, reflecting the inner world of [.que]. Harmonizing the warmth of acoustic instruments with delicate electronic textures, [.que] creates an emotional album full of nostalgic melodies, dark atmospheres and complex rhythms. Mastered by Shigeharu Ieda of One Day Diary, And Inside perfectly blends gorgeous twinkly folktronica, joyful dream-pop and elegant post-rock and it’s a must-have album for fans of artists such as The Album Leaf, Message To Bears, Miaou and Epic45.
Martial artist, philosopher and actor Bruce Lee famously stated "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." Lee’s words were not merely pretty poetry, he lived them. Tengger are pan-Asian duo Itta and Marqido with their young son RAAI, and like Lee, Tengger craft their music in the same way they live their lives: with intention. They have built their principals—and fan following—after many years touring and living on the road, recording their music surrounded by unfamiliar cultures and environments. Self-described as EPT (Electronic Psychedelic Traveller) music, their name translates to "borderless sky beyond description" in Mongolian, and their music paints landscapes in the mind. Nomad is no exception to this rule, and their latest brings their philosophy, their music, and their moniker to a majestic head, offering an album of journey and movement that encourages flowing around the claustrophobia and confinement of 2020.
Tengger interweaves drone, ambient, psychedelia, the Krautrock influences of Kraftwerk, Cluster and Steve Reich, and new age music painted with environmental sounds. They craft their music with Itta’s harmonium, divine vocals, and toy instruments, along with analog synthesizer from Marqido. Based on this description, it is easy to confine them to Tangerine Dream ambient meanderings, but Tengger reject this notion, explaining their music as "landscape poetry". Known as Shansui in Japanese, this concept is worth exploring for this album.
Shanshui poetry refers to the movement in poetry influenced by the ancient Chinese "shan shui" (landscape) painting style of repeating mountains and water images. The art’s purpose serves not to create perfect replications as seen by the eye, but for opening windows to the viewer’s mind, breaking artistic conventions of "proper" color, light, shadow and brush strokes. Three basic components are in Shan shui paintings: Paths, the Threshold, and the Heart. Paths are never straight and always meander to help deeper the landscape through which it travels, mimicking the patterns created by nature. This path leads to a Threshold, a place that provides welcome, whether it is the mountain itself or the shadow cast by it. All natural lines should flow inward to the heart, serving as the focal point.
The gorgeous waterfall seen on the album cover is the first hint at this philosophy. Opener "Achime" (translating to "morning" in Korean) uses bird songs and other field sounds, with lyrics that translate to "the heart to greet this morning that will never be again." Tengger has explained the song is about travel: both the water’s travel, and our own inner travel, our nomadic wanderings in a search for life’s meaning. Song titles "Bliss," "Water," and "Flow" add further brushstrokes to the sound landscape. The individual sounds by themselves lend atmosphere, but when brought into relationship with each other, the songs offer rustic terra firma.
Bliss is all over this album, with a calm and compassionate vibe through the six songs that feels like a warm embrace. I have only one complaint; with the entire EP clocking in at just over half an hour, the time constraints don’t offer the songs room to expand, and sometimes seem like excerpts of broader experiments that, in other contexts, could work their magic over hours instead of minutes. The ten-minute closing track "Flow" showcases this: angelic vocals make their entry and move in and out, floating over an underlying layer of synths. Layers of sound build in waves, while the sound of flowing water appears, fades and reappears as the focal point with natural movement through the music.
This is music that offers exploration of sound, environment, and self. Lee also said "Life is an ever-flowing process and somewhere on the path some unpleasant things will pop up: it might leave a scar, but then life is flowing, and like running water, when it stops it grows stale. Go bravely on, my friend, because each experience teaches us a lesson." Just as Lee’s words serve as a hopeful reminder today, Nomad thankfully exists in the brutality of 2020, an oasis of calm in the storms.
Luminary Pauline Oliveros passed away in 2016, her career spanned fifty years of boundary-dissolving music making. This previously unreleased concert recorded in 2009 has been unearthed for release on Spleencoffin in 2020. Here she plays her accordion and her expanded instrument system along with collaborator Alan Courtis on unstringed guitar and fx.
This concert is an eruption of controlled cacophony. The pieces are improvised, messy, powerfully loud, and in your face. Most sounds are as if made by a mad scientist, with "traditional" musical ideas few and far between. Dissonance wins the day, with many insistent chord clusters of mishmashed notes bleated insistently and at high volume. While I believe this sound emanates from accordion, it sounds like the scraping of metal on metal. The accompaniment shudders voluminously as the sounds of an amplified muffler fill the space of the room.
Telematic Concert leaves me feeling shocked by the sheer assault of it all, but also open to the deeper listening that Oliveros would’ve wanted; a careful hearing and re-hearing that allows me to acquaint myself with the strange contours of this alien and startling music, until listening again yields to familiarity and appreciation.
"I am very happy to let you know that my next album, Cantus, Descant, has been announced today! Cantus, Descant is a double LP spanning 17 tracks and over 80 minutes of new works for pipe organ, reed organ, and electric organ. It will be released on September 18 via Late Music.
This is an album about welcoming and reconciling impermanence and endings, about suspending the private within the collective, about states and moments of being. I spent a little over two and a half years making it, working with a special group of organs in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Chicago, Vancouver, Copenhagen, and in my home studio. For the first time, I am even offering two songs! This is a very personal record that has occupied a deep part of my world for some time and it means a lot to be able to finally share it. As always, thank you so much for listening, it means the world to me."
Lucrecia Dalt presents No era sólida, an introspective path to unworldly surroundings where self becomes sound, and a compass for the searchers of musical possession.
For her follow-up full-length to 2018's Anticlines, Dalt relinquishes control of the corporeal to reach imagination's outer realm. Where Anticlines framed the physical processes of matter changing state, No era sólida observes a transition in Dalt herself through the emergence of Lia: an apparition, or second self, of the artist as pure gesture and mimetic transgression.
In spectral suspension, Dalt becomes the medium between herself and Lia. No era sólida is a meeting place between these phenomenal and noumenal worlds: a diverse if not complicated landscape, but without a single solid form in sight. Swelling with cosmic oscillations and rhythmic tremors, the album’s sound materializes through new experiments with harmonic distortion in tape delay and Dalt's continued abstraction of percussion and pulse.
This atmosphere of auditory illusion is lush for vocal experimentation. In a mood stirred by griot singer Fanta Damba, Dalt produces wordless vocalizations guided by Lia's unconscious impulses. These ethereal murmurs channel a Surrealist’s automatism as Dalt dissolves language into an evocative collection of glossolalia. Her voice, possessed and processed, weaves through moments of No era sólida like a duplicitous organism playing hide and seek.
Each song identifies a different state experienced by Lia, opening with "Disuelta" ("dissolved") and transforming through pieces such as "Seca" ("dry"), "Ser boca" ("to be mouth"), and "Espesa" ("thick"). As the record progresses, Lia seems to emerge from primal, sensory states to the sentient and active conditions of "Revuelta" ("revolt") and "Endiendo" ("to understand"). These transitions signal a process of becoming, as Dalt conjures, and nurtures, a dormant being into life.
When No era sólida reaches its final title track, the spell of spoken tongue is broken and Lia can talk. Returning to the musings familiar to listeners of Anticlines, Dalt voices in her native Spanish a question posed to her by Lia: "Can paralysis transform a person into a thing?" The forbidden being fumbles lyrically through the nuances of her existence and newly-discovered senses, and wades through melodies of crystalline breathing and clicks of static like dust on a cylinder.
Lia's poetic reflections on the panspermia echo her origins, having come from some other ether. As a lifeform seeded through sound, the very essence of Lia is embodied in the exploratory instincts of her creator Lucrecia Dalt, an artist whose innate sonar system traces the far reaches of musical experimentation.
Lucrecia Dalt's No era sólida is available September 11, 2020 on vinyl and digital formats. As with Anticlines, a limited artist edition, designed by Will Work For Good, will accompany the vinyl release. Once again, a portion of proceeds from No era sólida will benefit Tierra Digna, an organization dedicated to the defense of Colombian communities affected by economic policies that violate human rights and devastate the environment.
Low-key synth & keyboard studio album by Swedish all-rounder Gustaf Dicksson. Limited edition of 300 copies with insert.
From the early days of the found-sounds recordings (like the downright scary Unga Röster album and the hilarious Mandys Bil 7"), the homespun kitchen recordings/tape collages of the still-going Idiotmusik series to the more carefully elaborated and precise Leendet Från Helvetet and Knutna Nävar albums, the massive Livets Ord dropped like a bomb when it originally surfaced as a self-released cassette in 2018.
Heavily based on synths and keyboards and clocking in on no less than close 70 minutes over 4 LP-sides, this is arguably THE epic album from the cluster around the Förlag För Fri Musik empire. Gustaf Dickssons' fascination for christianity/religious assemblies shines through once again, the title Livets Ord ("The word of life") derived from the Swedish free church/sect with the same name that was based in Uppsala between 1983-2013 and casting a pastoral shadow over the ambient music of the album. While dabbling with a long tradition of kosmische musik and private-pressed new age wonders, Blod's now patented sound of a Björn Isfält-gone-sour still lingers throughout the entire recording. A cornerstone in contemporary Gothenburg underground music. Featuring guest appearances by Emelie Thulin and Jerker Jarold.