Toshiya Tsunoda - "Ridge of Undulation"

“The vibration of a thin metal plate and the huge waves of a vast seashore... similar phases can be observed between them... like wrinkles on clothes remind us of mountain ridges.”

New release from Japanese Toshiya Tsunoda who was the first artist to be released on Häpna in 1999. This household name in the art of fieldrecordings has produced a discography of highly sublime recordings capturing the finest details of sound, and Ridge of Undulation is no exception. This new work is exploring sonic phenomena of very different magnitudes, from roaring waves at sea to experiments with high frequency sine waves and vibrating objects. Piezoceramic sensors were placed on the objects and the vibrations were transmitted in voltage, which can be recorded.

Toshiya Tsunoda is a Yokohama based artist who has studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music. Tsunoda is concerned with the relation between sound space and cognition space and the hidden beauty in the tiniest sonic details. Since 1994, he has been operating the WrK label, which he co-founded with Minoru Sato. He has previously released works on the WrK, Selektion, Lucky Kitchen, Staalplaat and Häpna labels. His work has been shown at the ICC, Tokyo, and the Kawasaki city museum, among others.

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Alessandro Bosetti / Antje Vowinckel - "Charlemagne, la vue attachée sur son lac de Constance, amoureux de l'âbime caché"

Two electro acoustic compositions from Alessandro Bosetti from 2000 and 2002 and a recent text sound composition of Antje Vowinckel. It is very fine composed abstract music that starting from microscopic sound details develops organic and highly dynamic although very reduced structures. All the pieces make an extended use of silence, space and very small, carefully shaped, sound particles creating a feeling of natural “breath” and flow. Although this music shares some techniques with the “musique concrete” it goes much beyond in giving new musical life to sounds and suggesting new approaches in listening perception. For those who know Alessandro Bosetti for his activities as improvising saxophonist in the new minimal scene with Phosphor, Annette Krebs and others and for his text sound compositions won’t be difficult to recognize his very personal way in organizing sounds whatever he operate in electro acoustic music, improvisation or acoustic and radio arts contexts. Also hearing the piece of Antje Vowinckel, could be a surprise for those who know her as one of the more significative and granted author of new experimental radio plays in Germany.

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Gert-Jan Prins - "Risk"

With "Risk" Prins creates a brutal world where electrical breaking points become blasting moments of sharpened sensual attention. His unique self-developed electronic system uses radio- and transmitter technology, and creates strong noises with great physical energy."I try to squeeze the self created feedback sound till it's on the edge of exploding, but it's also the fascination for the chaotic instinct of my machines, that they create shifting rhythmical
patterns, as well as a sound of liquified rockmusic, the media inherent found fragments of speech/music, and a seemingly acoustic world cooking in between drum-, wind- and stringsounds.

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Pietro Grossi - "Combinatoria"

A comprehensive guide to the core recordings of one of the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical musicians from Italy, this 2-CD BOX Deluxe Edition captures Pietro Grossi original vision, presenting a wide selection of his studio early recordings, beautifully re-mastered to preserve the enduring quality.
Pietro Grossi used to playfully define himself as pigro [lazy], but he wasn't lazy at all! Few musicians have been working everyday at such a cracking pace, creating, teaching and writing, and when we listen to his music we should bear in mind how this complex figure of musician, cellist and composer, and also visual artist, has developed creative thinking in a path where a blend of very different aspects organically cohabited.
Since the late '50s Grossi was convinced of the potential of the 'new sound' and was totally obsessed with pioneering it, to the point where he would found the S 2F M (Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Firenze) in 1963 - which made its headquarters in Florence at the Conservatorio, and then in his apartment! - spending days and nights on end splicing tapes and working with various modified machines to create his abstract soundscapes. The two CDs features his first analogical electronic music, as well as some S 2F M studio works by colleagues such as Vittorio Gelmetti, Gruppo NPS ( with Teresa Rampazzi) and Albert Mayr, while the second disc is focused on the prototype computer generated sound synthesis.

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Indigesti - "Sguardo Realtà"

zzi: Intro vocale, Astratto concepimento, Sguardo realtà, No al sistema, Nessuna ragione, Sentimento altruista, Mai, Intro II, Detesta!, Crea veleno, Mass media, Polvere fastidiosa, Intro III, Silenzio statico, No al sistema, Crea veleno, Mai, Polvere fastidiosa, Mass media, Detesta!, Nessuna ragione, Sogni a doppie vie, Sentimento altruista, Astratto concepimento, Sguardo realtà, Silenzio statico
note: 27 pezzi. Pezzi 1-14 registrati dal vivo a marzo 1983 al "P.E.O. studio", Vercelli, stessa sessione di registrazione della tape "Sguardo realtà"). Pezzi 15-26 registrati il 30/31 giugno 1982 al "Vico's studio" di Alice Castello (Vc), stessa sessione di registrazione dello split Indigesti / Wretched. Pezzo 27 tratto da un concerto al Virus (20 novembre 1982) con Rappresaglia e Banhof. Il cd è uscito in due diverse versioni con copertine differenti .

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Wolf Eyes - "Dread"

Finally Wolf Eyes crowning achievement, a piece which captures the potential of the band like no other release by them has before. Dread is a world where Negative Approach has gotten in a fist fight with Throbbing Gristle and spat out the heaviest punk rock record ever made. The first time I heard punk rock, it was this sound, pure noise with people screaming at the top of their lungs, tearing into every part of me. Determined to find exactly what was at the bottom, I listened over and over and slowly found more and more each time. Dread is such a record. Amazing the first time and even more mind blowing with each listen. Like many BULB releases that have come before it, this will be one of those records that will stand the test of time and certainly be called a classic, in any genre. NOT a noise record, NOT an experimental record, this is Wolf Eyes as they are.

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Bun-Ching Lam - "...Like Water"

"Bun-Ching Lam's extended composition '...Like Water' is an evocative and imaginative work, as sensuous as its title. A native of Macau, now living in NYC, Lam has studied composition with Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Robert Erickson, and has been previously commissioned to compose for the Arditti String Quartet, Ursula Oppens and Fritz Hauser." Performed by the trio of David Abel (violin, viola), Julie Steinberg (piano) & William Winant (percussion). "'Like Water' consists of short self-contained movements. It makes reference to images of water and its various manifestations such as ice, steam and mist."--Lam.

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K11 - "The Sacred Wood"

K11 (aka Pietro Riparbelli) is a very good sound-sculptor continuing the long tradition of Italian Ambient Industrial artists ...
This special album was recorded at the enchanting park of Monsters of Bomarzo.
The park of Monsters of Bomarzo was devised by the architect Pirro Ligorio (he completed the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Rome after the death of Michelangelo and built Villa d'Este in Tivoli) on commission of Prince Pier Francesco Orsini, called Vicino, only to vent the heart broken at the death of is wife Giulia Farnese.
The park was born in 1552 as "Villa of Wonders" to be the only one of it's kind in the world.
Incredible but true, the Park of Monsters remained in complete oblivion till 1954 and only few people was aware about all the fantastic treasures contained within the park for over 400 years !
K11 was recording the soul of this park of Monsters and Wonders and after re-working the sounds he delivers us a trip between reality and dream.
Psychadelic, ritual ambient music from an other space, from an other era, from an other land...

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Brendan Murray - "Resting Places"

“i composed resting places on and off over three years. it was originally conceived as four separate releases that could be heard in succession. after the first piece, “garden,” was completed and released as a cd-r on kissy records using a markedly different mix, idecided to force the structure on the listener and present all four pieces at once.

the pieces are all inspired by thoughts about sloth, leisure and expiration and how all of those things might inform one another. that simple, severerealization that we have when we are really young: 'we are dying from the second we are borne.' it’s not meant to be as weighty as it sounds, but i tried to use that perplexing and morbid thought to inform these pieces. the result is not a serious meditation on mortality by any means. these are not requiems or “drones of death”. i wanted to use these very vague (and overused) concepts that everyone has to contemplate as starting points for the tone that informs all of these pieces: how do specific locations help us to feel alive and confortable or confused and dying or both? what happens to the places we live and die in when we leave them? do they feel anything?

this cd is very different from my first one, not now, which was much more about tentative and suspended moments. it’s much louder and warmer and more succinctly addresses the musical concerns (repetition, drones, deliberate editing) that have interested me since i started making music on my own some 10 years ago.

from a technical perspective, almost everything on this cd was played live in some form or another. “garden” and “bed” were composed entirely on the computer from samples of instruments and cassette tapes. i then pared down the compositions into minute loops for live performance. “shore” and “tomb” were created in the opposite fashion. i created loops with the phrase samplers i use live from various sources (acoustic and electric guitars, cassette tapes of field recordings and sounds from transistor keyboards and radios) and played the pieces as a whole. i then edited those live recordings on the computer. these are pretty simple methods; however, it took me three years to make up my mind as to what should go where.”-brendan murray.

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If, Bwana - "Fire Chorus"

Fire Chorus is a work of “construction”. If, Bwana (alias, or, as you prefer, “personification”, of Al Margolis), presents a sound form starting from the concept of “perception”. His concept of electroacoustic music doesn’t belong to the idea of “appropriation” (which is behind the gestures of many people now working with natural, non-musical, or “other” sound sources). If, Bwana uses his raw materials as animated objects,letting them appear and disappear in his own sound structures. He creates an environment for the sounds, mixing “music” and noise, human voices, landscape voices, machine voices. The four long tracks on this album are four explorations and, perhaps, four different sound “constructions”. Chimes is a long, continuous immersion, from the inside to the outside. Fire Chorus paints a picture such as those of Hieronimus Bosch, a kind of imploded soundtrack for a complicated and distorted world. Day 8: McKenna’s Brain is a collage with a strong theatrical aspect, joining metallic sounds to “details” of foreign languages. Accidentally Angelica, is a long,concluding, nocturnal path, a symbol of the eternal If, Bwana’s wandering thru the mists of a panorama of archaic but modern sounds.

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Christian Marclay - "Records"

Records 1981-1989 is a fascinating collection of Marclay's work during the 1980s, the results of hours of home recordings -- using up to eight turntables and various other instruments of his own making -- plus many live performances (one track comes from a nationally televised appearance on the David Sanborn/Hal Willner program Night Music). Marclay did much more than just scratching and sampling for these tracks -- "One Thousand Cycles" uses an increasing variety of repeated samples and clicks to create a complex rhythm of its own, while "Pandora's Box" varies the speed on its array of plunderphonics. (Though the latter sounds like an easy contemporary of late-'90s major-label turntablist LPs, it was originally released on a 1984 avant-indie compilation from Sweden that also featured Sonic Youth and Live Skull.) ~ John Bush.

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