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TsemblaLive @ Lounge Bar
'Tsembla is the musical work of Marja Johansson, a Swedish-Finnish artist operating out of Turku, Finland. Utilizing a wide range of instruments, electronics, objects and manipulated samples, the music of Tsembla rides on waves of warped melodies, fluttering rhythms, abstract voices and mutating textures, crossbreeding the known and the imaginary. Loosely assembled, rough edged compositions, rich in details, come together into odd instrumental miniatures in an almost-pop format, venturing into fourth world territory from a lattering, wheezing and boiling DIY kitchen inspired by Moondog, Ruth White, Raymond Roussel, LAFMS, Jon Hassell, Anton Bruhin, René Daumal, Suzanne Ciani and folk musics of the Andes and Asia.'-- New Images Limited
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Richard SkeltonVéarsa Éan
'Since 2006, UK artist Richard Skelton has been releasing small run documentations of his own musical explorations through his Sustain Release label. These recordings are always exquisitely packaged, in materials and imagery that really invoke the feel of the recordings locked away on the discs. Place and space play a big factor in Skelton’s creative process, transporting the listener to the environment in which the music was originally recorded. The visuals and tactile objects that are always included with the discs facilitate in entrenching the listener further in Skelton’s magical world that is brimming with sensation and history, as its not only Skelton’s music that the listener is experiencing, but how, in fact, he is able to maintain a deep and engaging conversation with his surroundings.'-- collaged
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BlondesWine
'Blondes’ self-titled debut album was one of 2012’s most striking releases. An electronic album rooted in a kind of swirling mechanistic spirit, the sounds didn’t come from traditional forms of dance culture. Yes, there were echoes of house’s rhythmic pulse and techno’s sense of propulsion, but these sounds were all filtered through the Brooklyn duo of Sam Haar and Zach Steinman’s idiosyncratic approach. The sound became something quite special; a transcendent journey through dance’s ghostly otherworld. Perhaps what makes Blondes’ approach to electronic music so beguiling is their background. Both members met at Oberlin College in 2003 and have spent much of their time studying electro acoustic composition while finding ways to manipulate and distort analogue sound. When this approach is applied to making repetitive and hypnotic dance music, it creates a sound that blurs the lines between the body and the mind.'-- music OHM
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CelesteD'errances En Inimities
'Expressionistic, sophisticated, evolved, overflowing, pitch-black. Just a few words, a desperate attempt to properly approach ANIMALE(S), the fifth full-length record of the French combo CELESTE from Lyon. Musically, ANIMALE(S) sees CELESTE developing their metal and hardcore oriented sound in different directions. Their music was always characterised by the interaction of monumental melodies, dark riffs, violent drums and expressive lyrics, but on the new album all these ingrediences are more expressed. The last three years' time has carved out the contrasts in Celeste's music like a stream carves out a rugged canyon. The melodies are more melodic, but also more sparse. Many parts are much darker and more noisy than the past albums. The lyrics are as savage as they can be without being vulgar. At the same time, ANIMALE(S) features exceptional collaborations with artists such as the experimental musician Ben Chatwin from TALVHORROS -- also on Denovali Records - and the composers and sound designers Sabrina Duval and Jean Charles Bastion.'-- post-engineering
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Kemper Norton'Windwept' and 'Golowan' live @ at the Autumnal Nob Out
'The mysterious music of Kemper Norton draws its power from its apparently conflicting facets, which put the listener in a confused but entirely pleasurable state. The sound is formed of acoustic folk miniatures swimming through pools of synthetic texture, while found sounds float to the surface, dredging up tiny hints of dance rhythms in their wake. These ingredients - far from being a casually picked, if natty, selection from the twentieth century's smorgasbord of genres - are stirred together with idiosyncratic focus to produce a strange, heady brew that's neither folk nor electronica, neither analogue nor digital, but something else; boasting new flavours with familiar seasoning. Much, if not all, of Kemper Norton's output is borne of strong, sometimes elaborate concepts that are only fully revealed in sleevenotes. They often focus away from the typically urban concerns of electronic music to face folk's rural heartland, but eschew idyllic, pastoral stereotypes to reveal tales of domestic violence, "party melancholy", burial chambers and the dire consequences of industrialisation for rural Britain.'-- The Quietus
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Croatian AmorJulian
'Croatian Amor has progressed like an expanding sphere, encompassing all the neighboring sounds it encounters in its experimentation. Starting with the most stark and minimal industrial release, Brother, Sister and heretofore culminating with The World, Loke Rahbek and whoever else is behind one of the most unique bands associated with the label Posh Isolation have created not a linear narrative, but a logarithmic one. The themes and motifs explored become more defined on each release, but are vaster still: sexual identity, gender identity, and body dysmorphic identity issues and problems. These issues are not evoked as mere fetishism, but are held up to the light, exposed and expressed through sound, words, and the meaning behind grinding tin foil across a contact microphone. While not everyone would agree, I think the members of Croatian Amor would see Europe as a distinguished place for discourse about issues like these.'-- sputnik music
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Felix KubinLightning Strikes
'Felix Kubin actually began playing music at 8 years old, when he studied piano, organ, and glockenspiel. In 1980, he acquired a Korg MS-20 synthesizer and his recordings took off from there. He began experimenting and recording a variety of tracks, adding his own bizarre lyrics to them. In 1982, he formed a band with Stefan Mohn called Die Egozentrischen 2. In 1984, they played a legendary live show at the Möbel Perdú in Hamburg, a small multifunctional gallery founded in the early 80s by a.o. Claudia Schneider-Esleben, who happened to be the sister of Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk). They were only 15 years old. Although Alfred Hilsberg of the notorious ZickZack label (Palais Schaumburg, Die Toedliche Doris, Einstuerzende Neubauten) had planned to release Felix Kubin’s early music in 1985, it took another 20 years until the French label SKIPP and the German label A-Musik put out a selection of tracks for the first time. The press was raving about Felix’s music which gave rise to an increase in his popularity.'-- Minimal Wave
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Rhys ChathamDrastic Classicism Revisited
'Rhys Chatham's Harmonie du Soir has no melodies; there are barely any descents or ascents of tone, yet the mastery of rhythm, volume, and accentuation exhibited by Chatham and his six-guitar ensemble in the title track imbues it with enough variation and potency to hint at the kind of sublime narrative that would be denuded to the point of evisceration by something so crudely explicit as a tune. Such sublimity isn’t of the transmundane order conveyed by, say, Glenn Branca’s Symphony No. 2 or “The Ascension,” since the piece is grounded more in rock tropes than classical, yet the absence of tonal articulation still nonetheless intimates an experience suspended just beyond the effable. The album is nothing but dynamic intensity and textural density. It’s an insurgent denial of the importance of pitch and a single-finger salute to the expressivity of melody.' -- tiny mix tapes
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pattenAviary
'It might not seem easy to make sense of patten. “Abstract” is a word that often gets thrown around when talking about experimental music, but patten’s sounds are genuinely intangible, amorphous and seem to be constantly in flux. Familiar sounds become foreign, foreign sounds seem familiar, and it’s impossible to say where one thing ends and another begins. Fittingly, patten is also an anonymous artist—and that’s genuinely anonymous, rather than just elusive. Nobody knows his name (he’s only ever given it as “D”), and finding a photograph of him with a visible face will prove impossible, meaning that pinning any biographical narrative to his discography is impossible. But unlike a lot of reclusive or publicity-shy producers, patten is keen to speak about what he does as an artist, and talk about it confidently. He thinks about what his music means from a conceptual perspective before a musical or personal one, which is perhaps what makes his sound so refreshingly non-referential.'-- The Fader
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Rashad Beckerlive @ PAN ACT Festival
'Rashad Becker makes a living with his ears. As engineer at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering, he's mastered and cut a massive amount of dance, electronic, and experimental albums (his credits include at least 1200 records). He’s built a reputation for creating great-sounding vinyl, so it’s no shock that the first record of his own music sounds great, too. Traditional Music of Notional Species, Vol. 1 is thoroughly clear and precise. Everything on it is boldly legible, and though there are tons of sounds intersecting and overlapping, nothing is blurry. It’s as if Becker’s mastering his own brain and transferring what he hears in his head with little if any generational loss. It’s all pretty unpredictable, sure, but he’s always in control of his busy mix. You can start by gawking at his surprising, hilarious, exhilarating sounds, but you’ll likely find many more reasons to return.'-- Marc Masters, Pitchfork
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InnodeRotor
'A new project headed by Austrian musician Stefan Németh, who was previously a member of Radian and Lokai, and is also a co-founder of Mosz Records. Together with drummers Steven Hess (Pan American, Locrian) and Bernhard Breuer (Elektro Guzzi), Innode explores the spaces between noise, rhythm and silence based on a grid concept that exposes rigid structures to orchestrated disorder. It's a rhythmic chess match no less, introspective and strategic, but such is the unpredictability of the destabilised sonic environments Nemeth generates, that it's fascinating to observe and participate in.'-- collaged
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Glorior Belli'Negative Incarnate' live @ Hellfest
'Glorior Belli crept out from the temperamental suburbs of Paris in December 2002. What started as a notorious duo soon became a remarkable Beast, acting as a beacon for everyone looking to free themselves of the influence of the Demiurge. Over the course of four full-lengths, the band has progressively developed to become a more sophisticated musical entity, while conversely exploring the devolution of black metal’s heritage. With a captivating mix of bluesy, heavy stoner grooves, doom-laden lyricism, retro prog-rock flourishes and some thickly distorting sludge, the band has reaffirmed the diabolical principles of black metal while avoiding its most mind-numbing clichés. Lyrics and themes explored over the years reveal a sincere inclination for rebel-ism and developed sense of poetry. The experience would be described as an intriguing and almost hypnotic journey through dark deserts and evil fields with Lucifer as personal guide.'-- collaged
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Gabriel Saloman Adhere pt. 1
'Gabriel Saloman is a multidisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada, who works in sound, text, visual medium and socially collaborative forms. He has been composing and performing experimental music for almost two decades both individually and in a variety of collaborations. He is best known for his work with Pete Swanson in the Portland, USA based free-noise project Yellow Swans. His current projects include Chambers, a live dub collaboration with M Red (Lighta! Sound, Low Indigo), and Diadem, an exploration of chance and divinatory processes in musical improvisation with Aja Rose Bond. Saloman's individual work explores noise and soundscape as a form of resistance and path of emancipation from an authoritarian social order. He works in a variety of mediums, moving through gallery installations, web projects, live performance, recorded music and spatial intervention. Recently he has begun composing for contemporary dance, exploring the possibilities of collaboration between choreographer, dancer and musician.'-- Miasmah Recordings
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ÄÄNIPÄÄMirror of Mirror Dreams
'ÄÄNIPÄÄ sees Pansonic's Mika Vainio team up with Sunn O))) figurehead Stephen O’ Malley. Both, of course, have serious pedigree: the former with two decades worth of experimental electronic solo releases under the Ø alias and his own name, the latter across a string of solo and collaborative (Nazoranai, KTL, Lotus Eaters) releases. ÄÄNIPÄÄ's album Through A Pre-Memory is out on Editions Mego, and it features material taken from three years worth of recording sessions. The four-track LP was laid down at Einstürzende Neutbauten’s studio in Berlin, and, according to the label, should be listened to with the following edict in mind: “MAXIMUM VOLUME YIELDS MAXIMUM RESULTS”.'-- Fact Magazine
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p.s. Hey. ** Adrienne White, Hi, A! 'Tard just keeps raking it in!': What a great sentence. Kudos. And, God, so weirdly true. Yeah, I don't know what the metro shutting down thing is about. To disable suburban kids' ability to train into Paris and maraud around under the excuse of drunkenness and a party atmosphere? Ah, a shame that it's not a ball full of real gumbo. I guess it would be cold and unappetizing from sitting up at the top of the ball-lowering structure for hours anyway. But still. What's Muses? I feel like I should know that. I'd love to get to N.O. I'll try to figure out a way. I might be going to the big annual ventriloquist convention this year in Kentucky as part of the research for this ventriloquism theater piece I'm writing for Gisele, and that's, well, not next door but close. I'll try. I'd love to. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Yeah, since you posted the FN video, I looked into it, and it is hers! What a great thing to get to see it. I'm sure she'll be fine with you posting it. I'm going to see her in Japan, and I'll ask, but I'm sure she's cool with it. I only love clothing on other people. Even before my allergies started up in '91, I dressed low-key shabbily. Ocean regions are nice. I'm from LA, so ... In fact, I think Paris is the only place I've ever lived that wasn't on an ocean. Weird that I'm so okay with merely the Seine and the canal. ** Antonio Heras, Hey, man! Really awesome to see you! Thanks a bunch for supporting TM's crazy stack. Hugs back from cloudy Paris. How are you doing? What's new? ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. I agree with you about those two scenes. Any opportunity to get to watch Taylor Mead be himself is a major treasure. And Bill Murray's bit is typically sublime. ** Steevee, Hi. No, I'm not worried about that at all. Whatever we do is going to be absolutely nothing like what von Triers and Noe are doing, that's for sure. I plan to avoid the von Trier like the plague. I've given his stuff way, way too many chances already. I dread being swamped by the hype and social media blather about it. I'll go back and find what you wrote on Isaac Florentine's films. I hope the interview goes really well. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben. Oh, yeah, you sort of can't have anything by or to do with Sade without long stretches of bogging down, I guess. I hope the Skype session goes really well today and is positively revelatory. ** Brendan, Big B! How's it? HNY to you, buddy! That's funny ... someone here was commenting just, I don't know, a week ago, less, about the occult-ish backgrounding of JPL. I intended to go research that, but then I forgot. It does sound like total post fodder. I'll make a note. Hold on. I just did. Yeah, my dad was kind of heavily involved in the beginnings of JPL, but I can't remember the details at the moment. I don't remember him mentioning anything occult-y, but he was kind of allergic to occult stuff because my mom was a bit of an occult-y person. I think you planting a garden in your yard is a purely positive image and anecdote. You're an artist, man. Your yard is a studio, no? Why wouldn't the earth be your material as well as an intriguing assignment? So good to see you, bud. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. So great: it, yesterday, the effect, the high, the coming down, the whole thing. Thank you and blessings on you, sir. ** Flit, Whoa, nice. Dude, broken record, I know, but you write so good. The dance with need must be handled intricately or something, for sure. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron! Oh, cool, I think I might actually be here in Paris during the festival. It's squarely in the window between my Japan and Patagonia/Antarctica trips. I have to go to Germany for a few days, but I think that'll be a sideswipe rather than a roadblock. Cool. So, I'll get to see it, and see you too! I've marked my calendar. Everyone, if you're going to be in Paris in late January and/or very early February, you might very well want to check out the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, and, particularly, the screening of filmmaker and d.l. Aaron Mirkin's short film 'We Are Not Here' based on one of the stories in the Lonely Christopher book that was the most recent release in my Little House on the Bowery series/imprint. So, try to do that. Here's info on the film/screening as well as on the festival in general. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hey. May? Oh, I hope I'll be here. I should be. I'll have a ton of reasons to be here working on stuff then. Cool, it would be great to meet. I didn't know about the Unpleasant Meeting Festival, no, and, whoa, what a fucking line up! Roedelius, Luke Fowler, Maja Borg, Heatsick, one of today's stars Mika Vaino, Aki Onda, etc, etc. Which one of the entries is Joe's band? Yeah, that festival is a total must. Thanks a lot for the alert. Sweet. ** MANCY, The video was/is really mega, man! One of your very best if not even the best yet, I think. I cycled it a few times. Great, kudos, great! Man, I love what you do! Add my crossed fingers to yours re: the studio assistant job. Let me know what happens. ** Misanthrope, I read that it was snowing there or around there. A wallop or something, no? Or are you inside the wallop zone? I envy whatever degree of snowfall you're getting. We haven't had the most fragile, tiniest flake of the stuff here yet. I wonder if we will. But I guess I'll get my fill of snow in Antarctica. Or of ice, or whatever that place is made up of. Ugh, shit, about the Medicare thing. That's savage. ** Keaton, Hi. It seems like it's getting easier to steal movies. But I can't remember the last time I did. I ask savvy people to do it for me. What am I talking about anyway? Weird. Glad you liked the slaves. They were a particularly dark bunch, I think. Now you've made me take time out of my day to try to find a twink painted like Grump Cat. Online, I mean. Any tips? ** Creative Massacre, Hi, Misty! Thanks on behalf of Thomas. My new year is pretty damned good so far. Really glad yours is too. High five. It seems like 90% of the people I know in the States are really into 'Game of Thrones'. I haven't seen even a second of it. My TV has been broken for six months or something so, even if they show it here, and they must, I haven't watched. So, all I know about it is that it's kind of fantasy/edgy and sort of weirder/better than a lot of TV, which means I don't know much about it at all. I guess I'll catch up one of these days. Enjoy! ** Cassandra Troyan, Hi, Cassandra! Oh, shit, feel better pronto. And, yeah, I'm being so slow with you-know-what. If I don't send it today, you have my permission to lop off my head, or to find some French person to do that. Weird antics ... any of them shareable? A foot of snow, sigh, envy, sigh. That Vimeo link leads to something of yours? Way cool! I'm so there! Everyone, do yourself a totally massive favor clicking this link and, thenceforth, watch a video called 'SHAME DREAM' by the incredible artist and writer and so much more Cassandra Troyan that's part of a new series she's making. Really, really do it. Thanks, and, yeah, get well, like, now, please? ** Cap'm, Hey, pal! Always a great pleasure! That outfit sure sounds like an infiltrating insider to me, not that I know any academics. Oh wait, of course I do. What's the backstory on your infiltration mission, if I might ask? ** Finis. I made a gig for you today of music I've been listening to and liking a lot of late. Unless you're dead set on traditional song structures and rock bands and all that tired old stuff, ha ha, you might find some things to love up there, who knows? See you tomorrow.