Asher & Ubeboet - A Map Of The Ocean (TRANS>PARENT RADIATION, 2008)

01 A Map Of The Ocean 40:25

Asher with Ubeboet in a collaborative work. Ubeboet is Miguel A. Tolosa, who has his work released on Twenty Hertz, Non Visual Objects, Zeromoon as well as his own Con-V label. Their collaborative work is another fine example of what I wrote above. Here it's all field recordings, or so it seems, which pop up every now and then. Water sounds, people talking, perhaps cars passing, but by and large it's covered with 'dirt' - hiss, static, processed central heating system humming and such like. They create a dense, moody, but also rich texture of small events that cross each other. Thicker than is usual with this kind of music, they do a fine job. Both of them are clear examples of how this particular niche operates.
Vital Weekly

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released as a free download but the site seems down and it was requested...

Asher - Landscapes Elsewhere (CONV, 2006)

1 Where The Blue Appears Not Quite Blue (20:08)
2 There's No Color Besides A Blue (6:29)
3 The Traveller Pierced By Arrows (6:09)
4 Last Rays Of A Painted Sun (20:09)

landscapes elsewhere is Asher Thal-Nir’s third release on netlabel Conv coming after “graceful degradation” (cd-r) and “invariably the blue” (mp3). It’s also the follow-up to “Directions” (cd-r) released by Leerraum. A noticeable difference in this newest album when compared to the aforementioned is the inclusion of more harmonious and organic elements. But Asher’s music is more than just about sounds - it’s also about images, perception, and emotion.

Having listened to landscapes elsewhere two things come to mind. The first is the soft chroma of a favorite color - grayish-blue - a diffused and pleasant hue, that I find very soothing. The second is the most enjoyable season to me - Indian Summer (actually an atypically stretch of temperate and sunny weather occurring in late Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere) - with its comforting warmth and subdued, hazy sunlight. Asher has said that he is reluctant to talk about his music and a little reflection on my part reveals why. The music that he composes is more than just about him and the sounds and the minutiae of their creation. More importantly, it’s about the listener and about how the sounds are interpreted and what affect they have on the listener.

On the surface level I can easily describe the music because all listeners will hear similar sounds although we might use different words to describe them e.g. soft, harmonious gently resonating above a layer of the light static pop-and-crackle of an old vinyl record coupled with field recordings of watery noises, birds, and other organic sounds and even traces of a subtle, but noticeable, high frequency droning whine. The album consists of four compositions: “where the blue appears not quite blue” (1) and “last rays of a painted sun” (4) both exceed 20 minutes in duration while “there’s no color besides a blue” and “the traveller pierced by arrows“ (2 and 3) are considerably shorter each being near 6 minutes in length. As is with much of Asher’s work, there is an unmistakable homogeneity between the compositions which gives the album a very coordinated ambiance, but concentrated listening reveals enough divergence between the compositions so that each stands on its own.

landscapes elsewhere has the quality of being variable relative to the listener‘s present state of mind. As I write this review, the weather is unusually pleasant here in the Midwestern United States for this time of year and life is good right now. The sounds as I perceive them from listening to these compositions in this existing moment are relaxing and emotionally reassuring. Were the weather more unfriendly or life more difficult, my experience of the music might be considerably different. How we perceive the music is partly colored by the present moment.

If you’ve enjoyed Asher’s other works, then landscapes elsewhere will not disappoint you. If you’ve found his previous work to be too minimal and abstract for your tastes, then you will be pleasantly surprised with the inclusion of more harmonious sounds and field recordings which make for an overall more organic release.
Earlabs

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Asher - Directions (Leerraum [ ], 2006)

1 Untitled (15:45)
2 Untitled (16:30)
3 Untitled (18:30)

Compositions ultra minimalistes discrètes mais denses....

«Leerraum» (the name of the Swiss label behind this release) translates to «ullage», «voidage» or «head space» respectively, so one can place a safe bet on expecting a certain amount of minimalism when it comes to aestethics (the label logo merely consist of an open and a closed rectangular bracket, and the album comes in an elegant white picture-frame-like cardboard sleeve with the record company’s letters engraved in its back, a smooth and shining white inlay with nothing but a few formal production credits and some silvery ants crawling around the place, as well as a (you guessed it!) white CD, carrying the album title), print run (a mere 150 copies will be pressed – period), marketing and public relations (a tiny amount of promos sent out has resulted in a tiny amount of reviews and meta-information) and music. But even within this clearly defined space, «directions» is a testimony of a new stripped-down philosophy of listening.

«Asher lives in Boston, USA» is all the leerraum-homepage has to say about this disc’s creator, but after absorbing its sounds, it seems as though these words are indeed everything that needs to be said. To be more precise, words are a distraction when trying to describe «directions» – and there are more reasons to that than the fact that you need to be very quiet to actually hear something at all without turning up your stereo full-notch. There are three tracks here, all of them around a quarter of an hour long and with striking resemblances. The basic building blocks are crispy vinyl crackling, low bass hummings, ondulating drones, intermittant waves of warm feedback and occasional high-tone clusters. It is the way they interact, their pitch and their funtionality which differentiates the individual pieces: «01», with its regularly pulsed cuts and spacious backdrops has a very open character, gently coaxing the listener forward and introduding him to this world in white. On «02», a black gauze veil covers the eyes, syruppy feedback fills the cavities between the increasingly heavy breathes of sound and burps of sine waves appear from nowhere. The potentially alarming ambiance is however softened by the continual substantiation from its undefined genesis to a state of vivid liveliness, bustling with a plethora of parallel lines of progression. The atmospheric deepening reaches its climax in the final part of the trilogy, which cools down almost to the point of absolute zero, with particle movement restricted to a minimum – the crackling has slowed down considerably and suddenly becomes the music’s axis, around which all other elements flow like lava in a cotton candy machine. Words fail in this territory, because there is nothing left to talk about – the mind drifts through phases of comfort and estrangement, while the body sits in silence.

There are two phenomena which need to be imparted here: While one should suspect such discreet compositions to vanish completely from the radar of consciousness, they create an extrememly dense net, which soaks up the observer entirely – you will find it hard turning this off again. And secondly, the closer one listens, the less random the structures appear and the more one discovers beautiful and imaginative details. Even when there seems to be nothing happening at all, there are invisible currents running through a meticolously carved-out riverside. This «Leerraum» isn’t emtpy at all!
Tokafi

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Asher - The Depths, The Colors, The Objects & The Silence (Mystery Sea, 2007)

1 Partly Framed In Sunlight (19:58)
2 The Blue Gently Linked (24:20)
3 Plastic Dusk (22:05)

La base du matériel travaillé ici par Asher est constitué de field recordings d'environnement urbain (sirène de police, voitures, appels de voix) qui constratent grandement avec les morceaux intimes qu'il obtient...

asher thal-nir resides in Somerville, Massachusetts... in recent years, he has emerged as one of the most interesting & singular sound artist, shaping aural microlandscapes of a new nature...
His works are based on recordings of acoustic & electronic instruments, manipulated location & found recordings... He already saw a lot of his sound miniature studies published on various well known netlabels (12k/Term, Laboratoire Moderne, Con-V...) and had some CD-Rs out on Con-V & Leeraum... he is also about to launch his own label named SOURDINE...

asher thal-nir feeds his music with the everyday sounds as a root for emotional stimulus... it uncoils nonchalantly in long eroded tapes of granular texture & uneven surfaces, dust varnished ribbons...
the emphasis lays often on scratches & tears put to the fore, tending to draw an extremely minimal rhythmic structure, mirror of a frailty & language of invisibility...
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On "the depths, the colors, the objects and the silence", asher embraces an hazy ocean of memory, tracing a path beyond obliteration...
Things are perceived through a numb veil, carrying the residues of a former superficial life, trying to connect with an evanescent world, an inner frame...
This is a sort of reverse microcosm...
For this shift in meaning, abandon all preconceptions & thoughts of usual grasp... you'll then be able to "rewrite" the book, and feel differently...
Mystery Sea

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