Ellende - No Talent For Living (Stridulum Recordings, 2004)

1 Am I A Coward When I Fear Death? (8:05)
2 Hell Is The Other And The Other Is Me (8:02)
3 In Life There Is Nothing I Fear More Than Death (6:46)
4 No Talent For Living (24:24)

The collective led by a Dutch man in Japan, under the banner 'Ellende' have exchanged enough material to offer a new release, on again a topheavy thematic approach. Going for no less than some insights on 'life, death and fear'. For those who love a good popsong this is not the place to be. Ellende finds themselves in pretty much the same corner as Temperature Within, but are less sophistacted. Four lenghty pieces of dark drones, with in the background a slow rhythmic sample or some stretched out sounds. Way more minimal than the other one, but nevertheless with a moody impact.

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Michael Prime - One Hour As Peyote (Mycophile Records, 2005)

1 One Hour As Peyote (57:57)

All sounds derived from bioelectrical recordings of Lophophora williamsii. Originally broadcast on Resonance FM.

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Giuseppe Ielasi & Howard Stelzer - Night Life (Korm Plastics, 2005)

1 Ruin 1 (7:22)
2 Ruin 2 (7:12)
3 Ruin 3 (4:54)
4 Losing Our Taste For The Nightlife (10:42)

Korm Plastics is proud to present the eigth release in the Brombron series. Originally a co-production between Staalplaat and Extrapool, it is now hosted by co-curator Frans de Waard. In the year 2000 Frans de Waard and Extrapool started the Brombron project. Two or more musicians become artists in residence in Extrapool, an arts initiative in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, with a fully equipped sound recording studio. These artists can work in a certain amount of time on a collaborative project; a project they always wished to do, but didn't have the time or the equipment to realize.

Korm Plastics

"I was introduced to Giuseppe Ielasi over email in 1999 or 2000 (I don't remember presicely), by a guy who ran a music magazine in Italy called BlowUp. He was writing about CDs on my label, Intransitive, and suggested that I get in contact with his friend Giuseppe, who was starting a label called Fringes in Milan. Giuseppe and I exchanged some CDs of our music, corresponded for awhile, and discovered that we had much in common.

Giuseppe came to the US to promote his "Right After" album with Domenico Sciajno, and we got along immediately. We're about the same age, have a similar temperament, play a similar sort of music, are from a similar kind of background, are excited about records, we love to eat, we're both kinda nerdy... yeah, Giuseppe is my kind of guy! We had spoken about collaborating at a few points over the years, but somehow it just never happened, probably because we're so busy with our various projects and labels. So when I was offered a Brombron residency, I thought it would a perfect opportunity to spend some time hanging out and playing music with Giuseppe.

The method we chose was to first proceed to the closest coffee shop for a breakfast of cheese and meat sandwiches (me) and cookies (Giuseppe), then we'd record improvisations for a few hours until lunchtime. I primarily used cassette tapes and Giuseppe used a guitar, but we also both played synths and electronic doodads and microphones, and I made some tape recordings around the city that I brought back in to our improvisations. Our minds were open, and we experimented without deciding in advance what sort of album we might be making. We'd then take a long walk, go to the Nijmegen record shops (where Plurex records are still cheap!), have some lunch, maybe also a snack, and then start to edit out the good bits from the morning. We'd also add some effects and change some parts, use the recordings as source material in a small way. Then we'd return to the record shops to buy the records we hesitated on in the afternoon, have some dinner and relax. The next day, we'd wake up, have coffee, and do it again. Our pace of working and comfort matched quite well. For the final few days of the residency, we started to piece together our bits until they worked as compositions. Then we edited some more until the album emerged.

About the title.... we gave a duo concert at Extrapool as part of the requirements of our residency. There was an art opening happening at the same time, so the gallery was packed with people. It was a lot of fun, but it also made us both feel a bit strange; we're somewhat awkward in social situations, and didn't know anyone at the Extrapool party except for Frans and Roel Meelkop, who drove out from Rotterdam. After our set, we split to go get more fried Dutch snacks. Along the walk, we talked about how we used to go out to parties more often when we were younger, but now we aren't even so old and we generally enjoy staying at home where it's quiet, listening to records and reading. Giuseppe was reminded on the song by Arthur Russell, "Losing My Taste for the Nightlife". Maybe we are. Or, maybe that's just how we felt on that evening. It doesn't matter, really, I suppose."

- Howard Stelzer. Cambridge, MA (USA)
December 2005

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Ultra - Dedicated To Hans Bellmer (The Ajna Offensive, 1999)

A Abandoned
B And... Forgotten

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Peter Cusack & Max Eastley - Day For Night (Paradigm Discs, 2000)

1 Peep Show (9:37)
2 Day For Night (8:05)
3 Zero Day To Zero Night (4:54)
4 Cast (5:05)
5 Roomshine (4:52)
6 Arc Light (1:42)
7 Shade 1 (3:12)
8 Shade 2 (3:33)
9 Nest Of Wasps (6:23)

Day For Night is the culmination of 25 years of recording work by Cusack & Eastley, who have assembled a tapestry of recycled sounds and an archive of environmental recordings for this remarkable disc. While Cusack has spent his career in the studio and in performance groups, sound artist Max Eastley is probably best known for his collaborations with David Toop and Thomas Koner. Much of Eastley’s work is in making audio documents of his kinetic sculptures, meaning that amongst the atmospheric location recordings on this album, there are elements generated by motorised sound installations that give the listener an eerie sense of displacement: the vaporous cymbal drone of the title track gives way to the looped field recordings of campfires and distant squawking birds of its counterpart, ‘Zero Day To Zero Night’. The album closes on the actually rather terrifying ‘Nest of Wasps’, sounding very much informed by early musique concrete. The close-up recording of the wasps’ buzzing and rasping is modulated to the point where they seem to become saw wave synthesizer drones. Unnerving stuff, but a fittingly effective end to a powerful collection of electroacoustic works.
Boomkat

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Mandible Chatter - The Drone EP (Drone Records, 1999)

A1 The Myth Of Progress (5:26)
A2 Intraference (3:18)
B1 Palm Sunday (4:03)
B2 Barnyard (2:25)

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Tarkatak - Skärva (Drone Records, 1999)

A1 Skärva (7:59)
B1 Oroa (8:21)

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Alio Die - The Way Of Fire (Drone Records, 1999)

A The Way Of Fire (9:44)
B Thank You Lucky Star (8:31)

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Aglaia - Three Organic Experiences (Hic Sunt Leones, 2003)

1 The Mysterious Fish Named Kun (23:32)
2 The Tribe Of The Flying Monkeys (16:31)
3 Seven Ancient Glaciers (27:25)

Yet another remarkable find on Hic Sunt Leones. Drifting and peaceful Ambient music from Italy, in which evokes watery images with discreet ethnic elements.
EQM

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Uton - XXX (Gold Soundz, 2004)

1 Untitled (8:10)
2 Untitled (8:24)
3 Untitled (8:00)
4 Untitled (10:19)
5 Untitled (7:59)

As someone who regularly talks about the forests and green aspects of Tampere, Finland, I also acknowledge that there's another side to the city. Industrial spires rise in the cold blue air and spew black smoke into the skies. This cold, sterile part of the city is a major aspect to its functionality as a Finnish meteropolis. However, most of the music coming out of Tampere that I know and love focuses on the other side - the mystical forest gnome dances. Bands like Avarus, Kemialliset Yst?v?t, Master Qsh, and others, all embody this; it's engrained in their bones. And then there is Uton. I have long admired the cryptic sounds coming from the Haamumaa HQ, and Uton has never failed to explore a variety of landscapes with his music.

"xxx" burns down the forests and passes out on the charred ground. This is desolate music. In these glacial explorations, Uton reminds us of the industrial districts of his home city. The first track isolates the wail of machines and stretches it to infinity. Harsh edges are sanded off to minimize the damage done to your eardrums. Feedback scrawls are looped around and pulled tight, making this a greasy, cohesive mess.

Within this black goop arises an interconnected beauty. By the time the gurgling glow of the third track emerges from the burning steam, you are completely drawn in. Underneath this high frequency hum is chaos, always looming, always present. But it never overtakes the piece. The glossy finish is always at the center of your attention; keep your focus there, you won't be lost or destroyed. Magic happens here, but in a different, manmade way. Inside these massive factories, creation is taking place. Each hand that works each machine, putting parts together, is like its very own god of creation. Instead of seven days, this process lasts forver.

Uton's "xxx" is a subtle reminder that within every place, there are dichotomies at work. In order for these forests to thrive and exist in Tampere, it needs the industrial complexes to produce the goods that fund the parks. It's a modern circle of life, and without it we would no doubt be lost. These archaic drones show another side of Uton, and prove that he is capable of performing at high level within any context. This is perfect for those cold winter nights as it aurally depicts everything that they are.
Foxy Digitalis

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Loren Chasse - Hedge of Nerves (Anomalous Records, 2002)

1 Untitled (2:23)
2 Untitled (9:25)
3 Untitled (9:42)
4 Untitled (12:29)

Oval, Disc, Autechre... Lots of folks like that digital glitch stuff -- we do too -- but how 'bout some analog 'glitch'? Good old fashioned record crackle! AQ friend and fave sound artist Loren Chasse's new solo release, his first for Anomalous, totally delves into the realm of crackle, from records and beyond. For details, we may as well quote directly from the label's press release (since our own Allan wrote it!):
"The work of sonic artist/investigator Loren Chasse (solo, Thuja, id Battery, Coelacanth and various manifestations of the 'Jewelled Antler collective') usually involves the documentation and manipulation of minute sound events (rubbings, scrapings, clickings) involving found objects and natural phenomena, emphasizing unexpected perspectives and connections. Even when performing in the psychedelic improv outfit Thuja, his 'instruments' primarily consist of contact mics, a mixer, some rocks and twigs, and his imagination. Loren's processed field recordings are fragile and full of strange beauty and feeling.
"Hedge of Nerves is dedicated to a friend of Loren's who dearly loves the sound of record crackle as it mingles with the music from a record's grooves. He also enjoys the sound of record crackle alone, as when an LP cycles on its run-out groove. Compact disc reissues of early 20th century ethnic music 78s, or Portishead, or Philip Jeck: if it's got that crackle, he likes it! So, this friend asked Loren to make him a recording of vinyl surface noise only, one that he could DJ with, mixing with non-crackly musical sources, to create virtual scratchy records. For this reason, the idea was to avoid any obvious looping, but to make a continuous, unbroken and organic field of crackle. Thus inspired, however, the project soon turned into more than that, as Loren decided that it was more interesting to emulate the sound and texture of record crackle using other sources. The resulting cd indeed begins by utilizing sounds from a scratchy old 78 rpm disc (one recorded by Loren's grandfather in the 1930s at NBC Radio) but also explores more 'elemental' crackling sounds derived from fire and wind and water, from rustling branches, waves, and sand. Hedge of Nerves is dynamic, moving from loud crinkly-crackly storming sound-swarms to the sounds of a wilderness quietly bristling. It's a mesmerizing expanse of hiss and drone, buzz and click, with hints of melody (from his grandfather's 78). The originating idea of surface noise is ever-present, but upon closer examination that 'surface' proves quite deep, something within which the listener will become submerged, blissful and fascinated. Hedge of Nerves is a masterpiece -- just ask Loren's grateful crackle-loving friend, who files it with the best of Philip Jeck, Jonathan Coleclough, M. Behrens, Troum, and other masters of detailed drone constructions."
As you might have guessed, that friend of Loren's is of course our own Allan...and he really does love this disc!! (And he did manage to use an advance version of this to DJ with at the Beyond The Pale festival last year -- it goes really well with Bo Hansson, actually.) Even if you're usually wary of some avantgarde academic "experimental" sterility, try this out anyway, it's warm and organic and inviting in a way many glitchy, noisy things are not, like a bonfire on a desolate, foggy sea-shore.
Aquarius Records

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Loren Chasse - Fantasy Apparition (S'Agita Recordings, 2002)

1 Fantasy Apparition - Part 1
2 Fantasy Apparition - Part 2
3 Fantasy Apparition - Part 3
4 Fantasy Apparition - Part 4
5 Fantasy Apparition - Part 5
6 Fantasy Apparition - Part 6

During the past couple of years, San Francisco's Loren Chasse has split his time equally between textural minimalism, as found on his exceptional solo album "Exfolia Motors", and organic improvisations, as heard in Thuja as well as several other bands on the Jewelled Antler label. Yet, Chasse has released a couple of limited CD-Rs that bridge the two at times conflicting headspaces. "Fantasy Apparition" is one of those cross-pollenizing albums from Chasse, showcasing a good deal of sustained harmonium built into half melodies amongst Chasse's signature environmental abstractions, where low creaking drones emerge from blustery loops of slowed down cricket choruses and the hiss of burning wood. As always, Chasse contextualizes these field recordings and contact microphone striations with an amazing sense of mystery.
Aquarius Records

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Glassine - Birds Are The Life Of The Sky 1995-1997 (Jewelled Antler, 2001)

** sorry no cover art **

1 Lyca
2 Above The Wings Is Heaven
3 Orchard
4 Birds Are The Life Of The Sky
5 Kingfisher
6 Dust Is Falling
7 White Sands
8 Blight
9 Doorways

Pre-Jewelled Antler project of Glenn Donaldson

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Ov - The Moon Is Down (Jewelled Antler, 2006)

1 The Chambers Of The Hand (8:43)
2 Spiritual Magnetism (3:56)
3 The Earth Was Once A Giant Animal (3:08)
4 Song Inside The Bower (1:43)
5 The Moonlit Door (8:11)
6 The Moon Is Down (7:40)
7 Devoted Realms (8:51)

This is a monumental occasion, the return of Jewelled Antler, after a seriously lengthy hiatus. This is the first Jewelled Antler cd since the last Of record, The Quartz Pond, way back at the beginning of 2005. It also marks the debut of newly married duo Ov, which just so happens to be sound artist Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelacanth, Of, etc.), and former aQer Christine Boepple (Whysp, Skygreen Leopards Skyband, Kyrgyz, etc.). You know that whole 'beautiful music together' thing, but wow is that the case with The Moon Is Down. The first two tracks are lengthy abstract soundscapes of bells and chimes and gongs and percussion. The amazing thing is that the final result doesn't necessarily sound all that percussive, instead Chasse and Boepple manage to smooth the sounds into a dreamy billowy fog, with tinkling bells, reverberating chimes, it's like floating through a slowed down sculpture garden, huge pieces of metal slowly swinging, and gently rubbing up against each other, sending soft ringing tones to float softly across the gauzy landscape like dry leaves on a summer breeze, underpinned by slow low end pulses, smears of glistening shimmer and a constellation of glimmering tinkles. There are lilting guitars too, but plucked and strummed so sparely, they almost just sound like more chimes.
The record shifts gears after that, drifting from one dreamlike sound to another, a rich and exotic tribal landscape, huge swells of crystalline fuzz beneath fluttering flute melodies, primitive shakers and hand drums, and what sounds like forest sounds, drifting in and out of the mix, a world of alien lullabies, super distorted melodies over warm warbling woodwinds and textural percussion that sounds more like the crinkle of plastic, a gentle stream of fuzzy organ, buzzing harmonica, plink plonk guitar melody, pocket full of coins jangle, all bathed in a soft focus shimmer and some Eno-esque melodic ambience constructed from a dense assemblage of notes and tones, rich and oversaturated with tonal color, delicate minimal guitar strum and a mesmerizingly reedy hypnotic high end flute melody hovering in the background.
The final track is mostly made up of field recordings when the pair were on a trip to Germany, they were strolling through the quiet streets when suddenly the town's church bells began ringing, more and more, from every direction, a glorious cacophony, here there is a brief interlude part way through, a wheezing organ breathing out a fuzzy melancholy melody, but it quickly drifts away, leaving the record to fade out with just the distant pealing of bells. Wow!
Packaged in a beautiful hand printed sleeve, a strange angular crystalscape on the front, a mysterious symbol on the back, each sleeve with a different color ink and different colored paper. Includes an insert with liner notes and an image of some mysterious multi horned instrument on the other. As with most things like this, SUPER LIMITED!!!
Aquarius Records

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Horticultural Compass - The Apparition Of Bees (Jewelled Antler, 2005)

1 Plant Navigations, Part I
2 Moss Urn
3 The Primeval Glaze
4 Trilobites
5 The Grasslands
6 Plant Navigations, Part II

A friend of mine recently said that he actually has been enjoying some of the Jewelled Antler side-projects even more than some of the 'main' stuff recently. I am not really sure I agree on that, but what such a statement proves is that this loosely knit group of San Francisco-based musicians continues to be able to churn out exceptional music at the drop of a coin into a hat.

In the shape of Horticultural Compass (Samara Dun, Rob Reger, Donovan Quinn, Buffy Vice Sick & Glenn Donaldson) we get ceremonies of celebratory string massage, layered field recordings, swirling drones, beautifully plucked guitar plus the regular myriad of exotic instrumentation. The Apparition of Bees sounds distinctively Jewelled Antlerish but still quite unlike the other combos I?ve been fortunate to treat my ears with. Sometimes they border the haunting realms of Thuja?s improvised music, in others we get a glimpse of the Franciscan Hobbies? caterpillars of majestic oak beauty and at the most melodious and structured we get to experience a similar kind of slightly bent, mellow organic psychedelia as Glenn Donaldson does under his various tree monikers.

There's a loose and highly improvised approach to drones and quietly tinkling noise present here, and what makes it work so successfully is that the band just lets things wander wherever it?s natural to go next. I wouldn?t yet place this dark, slowly unfolding aural mystery up there with the best work of Thuja or the Franciscan Hobbies, but I wouldn?t be surprised if that has changed the next time we get to hear these guys.
Foxy Digitalis

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Af Ursin - Aika - Un Réveil Sidérant dans le Passé Décomposé (La Scie Dorée, 2008)

A1 Esclarmond
A2 Marche Arrière
A3 Sortilège
B1 Ombre Oubliée
B2 Un Réveil

the music is something of a departure for timo ; instead of a suite of drone-oriented string pieces, this appears to be an electro-acoustic construct, utilizing recordings of chamber-music, ghostly vapor-trails of distant voices, and radio / telemetry noises to evoke a feeling akin to “electronic voice phenomena” ...
Mimaroglu Music

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Af Ursin - Aura Legato (La Scie Dorée, 2005)

A1 Rêverie En Mineur
A2 Capsule Détachée
B1 Tableau Fluide
B2 Aphanes

Signé Timo Van Luijk, un bel album de boucles, de drones et de mélodies lointaines à base de percussions, cuivres, claviers...
hinah

Timo Van Luyck releases a new LP as Af Ursin, if I'm not mistaken his second or third. Van Luyck produces all the sounds himself on his records, which are finely woven together. He plays electronica to process sounds from a flute, voices, glass harmonium and on side two even, a drum-machine and bass guitar. Here, on this side, things are jumpy, perhaps even a bit krautrock like, which doesn't sound unlike old HNAS records. But for the most part this record (four lengthy pieces in total) contains wonderful extended drone music, that is alike some of the UK counterparts, but Af Ursin adds a much more musical dimension to it, through a much clearer use of instruments and a likewise much clearer production. Great stuff for those who like expand beyond the 'ordinary' drone music.
Vital Weekly

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The Wind Harp - Song From The Hill (United Artists, 1972)

01 Beginnings
02 Spring Songs
03 Solstice/Summersong
04 Turnings
05 Harvest
06 Winterwhite
07 Circle’s End
08 Fire
09 And Earth
10 And Air And Water

Now here’s a pretty unusual record that has come to my attention recently. Issued in 1972 as a double LP set, ‘Sounds From The Hill’ purports to represent the sounds produced by a gigantic ‘wind harp’ erected on some desolate hilltop by a hippy commune in Northern California, as illustrated by the rather beguiling and old fashioned (even for 1972) cover photograph reproduced above.

Now, given that this was released by a major label, presumably to take an early bite out of the post-hippy ‘new age’ market, you’d be forgiven for suspecting it might all just sound like a bunch of bloody wind-chimes or something. And who knows, perhaps such mellow meanderings were even what the harp’s creators were aiming for. But thankfully Mother Nature had other ideas, and ‘Songs From The Hill’ is actually a pretty remarkable document of dense, organic womb-drone, exhibiting the kind of chilling distance and remorseless tonal purity that music created by human hands is rarely able to replicate, however hard contemporary noise/ambient artistes might strive for it.

It is undoubtedly a spiritual sound, just not in a way that I suspect either the record company nor the hippies were anticipating. Certainly anyone sticking this on to accompany a meditation session or drug trip would get more than they bargained for; bummers, paranoia, bloody noses; all are possibilities. For however much we may be taught to view nature, and atmospheric conditions / weather systems in particular, as an entirely beautiful, harmonious system through which we can gain understanding of ourselves via an impression of dissolution within it’s patterns, it swiftly becomes clear upon dropping the needle that the sounds emerging from this here Wind Harp were REALLY FUCKING MALEVOLENT.

Most of the eleven tracks, arranged thematically according to seasons and the elements, begin with tones suggestive of the unsettling amplified silences developed by Alan Splet and David Lynch for use in the latter’s films. Over this float warped, low-end theremin type sounds and variations on the kind of ‘futuristic engine hum’ tones rendered ubiquitous by a thousand b-movie flying saucer / laboratory scenes, all darkened and elongated for a particularly woozy, nightmarish quality. Before long, tension seems to build, and a kind of full-spectrum aural sandpaper begins to accumulate, ebbing and flowing with the gusts of the winds, occasionally starting to resemble some creepy, organic Merzbow nastiness.

This is not the sound of the gentle, refreshing wind that weaves through orange groves on a lazy afternoon and blows through the hair of steadfast labourers and sullen hippie girls, that’s for sure. What’s tinkling the ivories here is the kind of wind that spreads bush fires, that blows through ribcages in Death Valley. Wind that freaks out timid kids who leave the windows open at night, that drags intrepid sailors toward their watery doom and…. well you’re connected to the same collective unconscious as I ma, you dig up the imagery to finish off this paragraph.

The Harp itself must have been quite a piece of workmanship to produce this variety of sinister sound, assuming the recordings presented here are honest representations of the wind doing it’s thing amid what looks to be a apparatus of metal strings and wooden sheets(?). I suppose it’s possible that someone might have been on hand to alter the arrangements of the harp on the fly to create variations in tone, although the singularly relentless quality of the drones presented here would tend to suggest otherwise. On the other hand though, it does seem that a degree of post-production has been applied to these recordings; occasionally we hear oddly incongruous sounds such as tolling bells and rustling grass which put me in mind of the kind of stuff that has a tendency to turn up on other, more dubious commercial ‘ambient’ records. It certainly seems likely that the more ‘effective’ (by whose criteria god only knows) sections of the master recordings have been blended and segued together, both to fit the record’s spurious seasons / elements track listing, and also perhaps to avoid the total monotony of listening to the wind blowing in the same direction at the same speed for hours on end.

Regardless of questions of authenticity though, The Wind Harp certainly makes for a hell of a listen, and comes recommended should you be feeling a little too comfortable in your life, and in need of a glimpse of the blind, chaotic and ultimately destructive natural forces at the mercy of whose temporary placidity we erect our fragile civilisations. It would also be just the ticket for soundtracking eerie, low budget horror movies and invoking lesser Cthulhoid deities. Or so I would imagine.
Stereo Sanctity blog

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Mutrone

Reçu un mail il y quelques de temps de Camilo de Mutrone / Received a mail sometimes ago from Camilo of Mutrone:

Our last work is CENTINELA, you can download from the web. Theres is four more albums between ep´s and lp´s.... ALL FOR FREE DOWNLOAD!!!

P.D. Centinela is a free jam session and direct recording, 9 songs in 3 sessions..... for this album we just work with our "electronic" instruments, like an MPC 2000, Nord synth, sampler, midi controller, and a Electric Bass Guitar with pedal effects.

www.mutrone.com
http://www.myspace.com/mutrone
http://www.lastfm.es/music/Mutrone

Oblivion Ensemble - PhonoRecord (Drone Records, 1998)

A Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled

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