Black Engine - "Ku Klux Klowns"

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Pascal Battus - "Massages Sonores #2"

L'idée du massage sonore est de créer une proximité particulière entre l'auditeur et le musicien-masseur. Ce dernier auscultera l'intérieur des objets, des matières, pour en dévoiler leur champ acoustique. Dans ce disque de Pascal battus (que l'on retrouve, entre autre, au sein de Phéromone), le massage se fait par contact, comme pour court-circuiter l'air, milieu où se propage l'onde sonore. Ecoute au casque conseillée. (Metamkine)

Il s’agit de produire avec précaution des sons directement dans les oreilles d’une personne.
Pas de concert, pas de salle de concert, pas de "public".
Dans une relation individualisée, le "praticien" produit des sons perceptibles par l'unique contact avec l’oreille. Ne pouvant entendre le résultat, il transmet un secret sonore qu’il ignore lui-même. (P. Battus)

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Andrea Marutti / Fausto Balbo - "Detrimental Dialogue"

By now Andrea Marutti is a well-established name in the Italian world of experimental and electronic music. He runs the Afe Records label, and is best known for his ambient electronic music, although he dabbles also in many other styles. If that isn't enough, he also works together with many others, like Madame P, Aidan Baker, Hue, Sparkle in Grey, Dronaement and many others.

Here he teams up with Fausto Balbo, who started in 1988 Jesus Went To Jerusalem, later Der Tod, but went to experimental with electronic music later on. The album they crafted together shows a deep love for analogue and digital synthesizers, and was recorded in various sessions, but mixed together in a long session, using an analogue mixer.

The overall musical approach is best described as "cosmic" music. Four lengthy pieces of spacious electronics, with a nice rough edges. Not as gently floating about as say everything Tangerine Dream did after the mid seventies, but with that nice experimental touch. Ultimately it all sounds pretty retro, but that notwithstanding, it also sounds like a great trip.

[Frans de Waard]

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Pimmon - "Electronic Tax Return"

Kid 606s Tigerbeat 6 label spreads its wings that little bit further and brings us the latest LP from Australia's Paul Gough, aka Pimmon. With a diversity of sound that fuses an Oval-esque glitched-up ambience with chaos-theory music in the vein of Bernard Parmegiani and Autechre, the sound here is a wide mesh of almost intangible emissions that sometimes create a hub of pops and randomized activity, and sometimes come together to unleash soundscapes that are almost unspeakably beautiful. 'Vovul ll' is one such track, devotees of Christian Fennesz would do well to look into its washes of processed acoustic organisms and floating glitch bubbles. 'Slow Burn Friends' is equally mesmerizing....the gradual encounter of ambience through malfunction is incredibly soothing and deeply evocative. Pimmon, along with Fennesz's Endless Summer, has here created one of the finest evocations within this genre in quite some time. Essential. -djmartian.blogspot.com

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Masafumi Ezaki / Taku Unami - "Manga-Michi"

Manga-Michi is a short, very sparse duo performance by trumpeter Masafumi Ezaki and electronicist Taku Unami. Both musicians tend toward a severe minimalization of the sonic palette and a hyper-awareness of the silences surrounding the quiet sounds they produce. Those sounds are always quite abstract; few casual listeners would identify Ezaki's contributions as having emanated from a trumpet, for example. But the two performers display remarkable empathy, each clearly conversing with the other, thereby softening what might otherwise be an excessively arcane foray. When the volume does well up into even the slightly loud zone, it's as thought there's a momentary flaring of a heated discussion. Unami, especially, is a master at choosing just the right, subtle tone, be it a sine wave, a series of glitch-like clicks, or a serene wash of white noise, to complement his partner or partially fill in open space, always leaving a trace of that space in the listener's consciousness. Fans of the contemporary onkyo scene in Japan as well as those who enjoy the spare beauty of musicians like Taku Sugimoto will discover a lovely world herein.

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G. I. Joe - "Clito's Angels"

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Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek - "Blank Grey Canvas Sky"

This beautiful collaboration features two of the most prolific talents from the current experimental scene, both with reputations of leviathan proportions. For this release, Machinefabriek, based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and Peter Broderick, based in Berlin, Germany (although constantly on the road) set out to push each others limits, and to explore new areas within their own creativity.

The resulting album is a delicately crafted one, with Machinefabriek and Broderick virtuosically combining instrumental compositions, drone, and heartfelt soundscapes with song structures and vocals. Or as Peter Broderick himself put it: "We tried a lot of different things on this album, pushing ourselves to explore new areas... And for me the result is the collection of music I feel most proud of so far."

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