Günter Müller / Otomo Yoshihide - "Time Travel"

Günter Müller and Otomo Yoshihide are deeply respected musicians who have known each other for more than a decade. Time Travel documents their initial meeting as a duo.

Swiss native Günter Müller utilizes a range of electronic devices, influenced by his roots as a percussionist. He's been involved with numerous projects and other musicians over the past two decades, including long-term musical relationships with Jim O'Rourke, Voice Crack, Taku Sugimoto and ErikM. Müller has released many records on his own label, For 4 Ears, including his recent solo debut, eight landscapes. Time Travel is his fourth project for Erstwhile, following The World Turned Upside Down, La Voyelle Liquide, and poire_z +. Müller is the ultimate collaborator, relinquishing virtually any claim on a signature sound in an attempt to maximize the potential of each individual project.

Otomo Yoshihide's prolific career has been unified by a primary objective: the investigation of the nature of sound from every conceivable angle. In the mid-90's, he explored the limits of sample-based turntablism, primarily through his band Ground Zero, as well as in collaborations with Christian Marclay and Yamatsuka Eye. Over the last few years, Otomo has become increasingly interested in minimal wave-based electronics, as heard in his Filament, I.S.O, Cathode and Anode projects. Other projects which he is currently involved in include his New Jazz Quintet, as well as an ongoing duo project with Martin Tétreault. Otomo has also composed many soundtracks for movies, and has written numerous articles and essays for Japanese music publications.

Müller and Otomo first met in Matsushima, Japan in 1989 at a show Müller was doing in an abandoned quarry with his band Nachtluft. Otomo had driven four hours from Tokyo to see the performance, and afterwards they met for the first time. They've since collaborated in a handful of contexts, most notably the Filament 2 record on For 4 Ears, with the trio of Müller, Otomo and Sachiko M. Time Travel was recorded in October 2002, just before the AMPLIFY 2002 festival, and marked their first meeting as a duo. Time Travel consists of seven focused, distinct pieces, which combine to create a unique sense of time, slowly but constantly developing and filled with intricate details. Friederike Paetzold's gorgeous design is based on vector distortions of the world time zone map evoking the effects of frequent flying.

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Tasaday - "Con il corpo crivellato di stelle"

Starting with drastic and chaotic rock'n'roll guitar riffs, the music can fall occasionally into ethno-beat or jazzy-influenced impov, just forcing you to change your mind and to be more and more confused. The only constant thing: apocalyptic power as the main thing in the means of ascendancy over the listener. This direction was chosen since early 80s, and it equalizes the origins of new millenium with the prehistoric twilight, ignoring many boundaries and particular styles. Imagine Laibach and Einstürzende Neubauten playing post-rock, or collaged music of O Yuki Conjugate, Sex Pistols and Porcupine Tree, being played forwards and backwards! Or mutated music of pygmean people being transmigrated from natural jungle to the concrete one? Each track contains a surprise, each sound is able to make you shudder, even if the overall harmony isn't destroyed and lullaby your ears with old italian song. Tasaday plays real industrial music using traditional acoustic instruments - what can be more pleasant for advanced in age rebel and what can be more difficult for klubhead-dandy... This album can be described in terms of ecstasy and paranoia of professional musicians, if they will forget everything they learned for the years. It's a disobedience day in the land of your physical body, it's a musical about cannibals being, tribalism and futurism meeting at the last chance, etc etc... The total time is more than hour, and as far as this time goes, the experimental feel is growing, reaching the highest point at last track (following by notorious hidden track!) - the sound is turning to electronic, the rhythm is appearing, the chaotic emotions finally get replaced by chaotic mind.

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OvO - "Cor Cordium"

Drifting in the limbo between the percussive sludge of Jucifer and the surreal assault of Fantômas is OvO, an Italian duo who have been conducting audio terrorism for the past 5 years, stripping metal down to its very foundations and crushing all beneath the power of their live shows. Cor Cordium captures this on record with terrifying accuracy, producing that same gravitational sense of dense claustrophobia but in the confines of your own headspace.

Waves of distorted noise and feedback set an almost constant backdrop to Bruno Dorella’s precision-crafted drumming, made all the more impressive by the minimalistic kit which he utilises, while Stefania Pedretti’s guitar produces some of the most distressing noise ever emitted by a stringed instrument. Then there’s her voice, occasionally possessing the softness of a J-pop chanteuse but more often it’s near-demonic, a nightmarish array of growls, screeches and croaked whispers, guiding a twisting path through this harsh and fascinating journey.

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Belong - "Colorless Record"

New Orleans dream weavers Belong, the duo behind one of my favorite ambient releases of the decade, 2006s October Language, return with a covers EP consisting of 4 interpretations of some rather obscure psych gems (the most notable being Syd Barrett's "Late Night"). Hidden beneath the layers of static and guitar waves is where you'll find the hint of vocals (a first for Belong), piped in from the originals, which come across more like ghostly transmissions than actual words. Here's 19 minutes of soul cleansing music.

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Brendan Murray - "All The Little Three Inch CDRs Are Dancin' In Heaven, My Dear"

Brendan Murray is a self-taught musician living in Somerville, MA. He has actively recorded and performed with electronics since 1999.

He regards his music as a balance between spontaneous sound making and compositional rigor, with an emphasis on drones and repetition. He records and processes instruments and tapes until all traces of instrumentality are blurred, leaving only large blocks of pure sound.

Murray has also toured extensively throughout the United States as a solo performer and as a member of various improvising ensembles. He is actively involved with long distance collaborations with musicians and sound artists such as Seth Nehil, Richard Garet and Chuck Bettis.

He is also a founding member of the group Ouest, with longtime friends and collaborators Jay Sullivan and Howard Stelzer.

Other activities include playing drums and guitar in the rock band Paper Summer, composing music for film and occasionally presenting a concert series in the Boston area; “Uppercase Sound”, which features upcoming and established electronic musicians from New England.

He has recorded four full-length CDs, four cdrs and two cassettes for various record labels in the United States and Europe.

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Luminance Ratio - "Like Little Garrisons Besieged"

LUMINANCE RATIO is a collaborative effort joining sound artists Eugenio Maggi (Cría Cuervos, Slave Auction), Gianmaria Aprile (Ultraviolet Makes Me sick, Fratto9under the sky records) and Andrea Ferraris (Airchamber 3, Ur,Ulna, John Russel, Sil Muir). “Like Little Garrisons Besieged” brings them far from their respective discographies and finds them sailing in the apparently quiet waters of free-folk, electroacoustics and minimal drones. The music, resulting from live sessions and painstaking studio work, is meticulously thought to combine electronics with analog/traditional instruments: laptop, acoustic and electric guitars, cardiod and contact microphones, vibraphone, melodica, glockenspiel, minidisc, rimshot and cymbals, analog synth, percussion, kaoss pad and pedal effects.
Featured on this release is Paul Bradley (Twenty Hertz, Monos, etc.)’s personal reinterpretation of their collective work, assembling an expanded “remix concrète” out of the single tracks.

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Be Maledetto Now! - "Abisso Del Passato 2"

Be Maledetto Now! is the duo of Be Invisible Now! and Maledetto/Nihil is Me (former guitarist of post-hardcorers With Love). Their first work as a duo was released on cassette in 2006 by LongLongChaney/8mm Records. After three years where they continuosly jammed and recorded togheter they are now releasing their first proper album called Abisso del Passato, which is separated in two parts, the first comes on a 180gr LP and the second on a limited edition CD.
Instrumentation used is mostly analogue synthetizers and effects, plus some treated guitar and objects.

The main inspiration behind BMN! music is old sci-fi literature and movies ( Forbidden Planet and it’s marvellous pre-moog soundtrack above all) both as entarteinment and as social criticism like in Philip K.Dick works. It’s the idea of science fiction of yesterday, seen through nowadays future perspectives, the reverse of retro-futurism.

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Gianni Gebbia / Stefano Giust / Xabier Iriondo - "L'edera, il Colle e la Nebbia"

Gianni Gebbia _ alto sax _ flute _ crackle box
Stefano Giust _ drums _ cymbals _ objects _ crackle box
Xabier Iriondo _ mahai metak _ electronics _ crackle box

special guest on track 07 _ Bart Maris _ trumpet

Recorded live during an acclaimed tour in april 2007. Improvised music with great tension. On track 07 the Belgian trumpeter Bart Maris had joined the trio.

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Friedrich Goldmann - "Late Works"

Friedrich Goldmann Late Works is specially produced for The Wire by the Macro Recordings label, marking the 70th anniversary of the birth of the German composer by compiling unreleased recordings of his last key works.

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Noel Akchoté - "Perpetual Joseph"

Guitarist Akchote's effort stands out, though, because of his active involvement in the process. Lots of drone-based music is worked out in advance, and has the sterility of the laboratory about it (this is true even of legendary drone artists such as LaMonte Young.) You set up your apparatus, you turn it on, you tune it...and then you walk away. But Akchote's drones maintain an interesting tension between permanence and mutability.

This CD is the third in an ambient solo guitar series (following Alike Joseph and Simple Joseph), and for the most part, each of the four long tracks on the CD consists of a single note - or rather, chord -- which Akchote alters over the course of time by adding or subtracting harmonics, dampening, pitch-shifting and making minute adjustments to volume. Akchote also exercises more obvious physical control at times, either audibly flipping switches to cut or attenuate a tone, or tapping on the amplified guitar strings.

The four tracks seem to be arranged loosely in terms of increasing dynamics, with the first offering almost imperceptible changes, while the fourth is the most blatant (and generous) in its use of distortion, harmonics and pitch-shifting. The third and fourth tracks also introduce regular rhythms through the use of string tapping (track three) or a recurring harmonic pulse (track four), which gives them a somewhat livelier ambience.

Throughout, there's something quite meditative about Akchote's approach to his material. He doesn't seem to be playing for an audience as much as conducting some sort of personal investigation into the psychological and spiritual properties of sound. The result is not going to be to everyone's tastes, but it has integrity, depth and a kind of austere beauty.

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Okkulte Stimmen Mediale Musik

A collection of audio documents of paranormal phenomena including trance speech, direct voices, clairvoyance, xenoglossy, glossolalia, ethnological material, paranormal music, "rappings" and other poltergeist manifestations as well as so-called "electronic voice phenomena". worth a listen because of the variety of "paranormal" material presented and gathered. the spoken word audio recordings are mainly in german or english spread in a 3 cd set.

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Claudio Rocchetti - "Another Piece Of Teenage Wildlife"

Taking plaintive tones of drone music and early electronic and tape experiments, 3/4hadbeeneliminated former member Claudio Rocchetti has absolutely defined a sound, building a subtle, majestic landscape. Using awide variety of instruments (synth, tone generators, organs, guitar, tape machines) he creates an absorbing sound that is mainly layers of loopsfading in and over each other, ethereal vocals, repetition, melody, noise. An emotional resonance with a tinge of melancholia that permeates every moment
and creates a sense of longing and nostalgia.

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Attila Faravelli - "Underneath The Surface"

Since the very first notes, this music appears to be about memory, decay and subversion. It is a deep investigation on the ability of sounds to freely attract or reject each other, in accordance with their own nature and disposition, and still maintain their meaning. Combining dense, multilayered sheets of synthetic sounds, treated bass, electronic percussion, the six tracks reveal their non-architectural principle as the music develops through warm textural details, reverberations, underlying melodies, like microscopic events happening in a dim light underneath the surface.

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Achim Wollscheid - "Airs"

Although it's not quite like catching this electronic performer live, it is a nice artifact to own.
I've only been to one Wollsheid performance, an installation where various mechanisms placed around the room would click in rhythmic patterns triggered by laptop computer software. All the while, in various corners music would eminate from speakers - the sound sources being both of the computer and primitive tape loops being threaded and re-threaded during the entire performance. This CD from Mille Plateaux captures the audio from a performance last May by Wollscheid at Radio X in Frankfurt, Germany. For 60 minutes, broken evenly into six 10:00 minute tracks, Wollscheid plays with various nightmarish music. Vinyl record sounds, low-end primitive instrument drones, gongs and percussives become combined with sound effects, pulses and rhythms, and random unrepetitious patterns of pings, beeps and sonics. Unpredictable and imaginative, it's got a beautiful flow and would sit nice next to a full collection of Wollscheid recordings of similar performances. Alas, many of these recordings are for the most part quite difficult to locate.

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Merzbow - "Music for Bondage Performance"

Music for Bondage Performance brings together all of the elements of Akita's involvement with music and performance. His association with RIGHT BRAIN caused him to form RIGHT BRAIN AUDILE, the sonic counterpart to the RIGHT BRAIN videos. This has opened another dimension to the music of MERZBOW, being more subtle in its aural expression of the visual imagery presented by the performance.

Bondage in Japan, in fact bondage per se, is a much misunderstood art form. It has been a part of the Japanese culture for many centuries. The beauty and nuances, indeed the contrast with the western perception of beauty, that are inherent in the act are often overlooked by the general populace and sensationalised to be brutal, violent or pornographic.

Music for Bondage Performance is the most complete presentation of the music and visual forms of Japan's MERZBOW. Prepared over a number of years, it brings an insight into a culture not often understood yet discussed and often much maligned. It is hoped that knowledge brings understanding.

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Toshiya Tsunoda - "Extract from field recording archive#3 Solid vibration"

Toshiya Tsunoda (角田俊也) is a Japanese sound artist best known for his detailed field recordings. His work is concerned with the relation between sound space and cognition space, and often investigates stationary waves formed by fixed conditions in closed systems. Toshiya Tsunoda is a founding member of the influential WrK collective and has previously released CDs on the WrK, Selektion, Sirr, Korm Plastics, Lucky Kitchen and Hibari labels. He also works with sound installations.

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Aube - "Reworks Maurizio Bianchi Vol 1"

A superb work of re-editing and re-composition of original material by Maurizio Bianchi, that saves the distinctly experimental aim of the music by the hystorical italian artist, renewing it in surely less extreme and hard but equal new form, unquestionably catching and sure effectiveness.

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Giuseppe Ielasi - "15 Tapes"

“15tapes” is a suite of 15 short pieces, very different in character and dynamics, edited from improvisations on various tape machines. the music was recorded during the year 2009, and then edited, recomposed and mastered in tübingen, april 2010. total lenght 20 minutes. artwork by alessandro brivio, beautifully letterpressed by ben owen / middle press.

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Earthless - "Sonic Prayer"

he first long player of EARTHLESS is opened frankly with drums warming up the hypnotic web soon being veawed by repetitive bass. A chaotic guitar sound wall approachs, and the sound is treated at some points beyond normal guitar sound. After the needed room is reserved with the entry, a powerful stoner rock riff theme is introduced, then followed by truly great acid rock guitar solo. In the second track a short mantra in oriental sounding chords starts to grow as downtuned heavy stoner riff progressions, later evolving again to fine acid guitar solos and closed by reprising the riff themes.

The guitar player Isaiah Mitchell is in my opinion very talented and imaginative solo guitarrist, the professionally performing rhythm section mostly keeps the set together. I think it is an achievement to lead a twenty minutes excluding jam track with solo instrument in an interesting manner. The overall sound of this group is also really pleasant to listen, an association of an expanded treatment of THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE's "Driving South" BBC Session track is born in my mind, also live sound of CREAM with less-adventurous rhythm section is another thought as comparison.

So if you like guitar driven heavy psychedelic rock music, where long jams are borne from simple rules and vivid imagination, this record will probably please you.

(taken from progarchives)

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In Zaire | The Skull Defekts - "Split"

Introducing In Zaire, the improvised live performance of Claudio Rocchetti, Alessandro De Zan (G.I. Joe, Orfanado) and Riccardo Biondetti (G.I. Joe). They mix dub-funk rhythms, tribal percussions, indian and electric bass guitar melodies, arabic and psychedelic voices and minimal-introspective electronic sounds. The trio is at its first vinyl appearance after having been selected for the Vuoto netlabel catalogue.
On the flip, leading the way, The Skull Defekts. Given the band members pedigree (drummer Henrik Rylander was a co-founder of Union Carbide Productions, guitarist Joachim Nordwall was a member of Kid Commando, while percussionist Jean-Louis Huhta has been a key character in the Swedish underground music scene since the mid 80's) and their previous collaborations (Pan Sonic, Lasse Marhaug, Damo Suzuki and Wolf Eyes), the Swedish quartet defnitely needs no introduction. Four new tracks, four new noise experiments crawling into Kraut-ish jams, industrial drums, drone machines and effects.

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Michael Mantra / Rod Modell - "Radio Fore"

The long awawited reissue of this classic album originally released by AMPLEXUS in 2003. Sold out for years, finally you have the choice to hear these fabolous "suspended-sounds" from two masters of ambient music. Published in jewel box with totally restored artwork. A must!!!

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