Posts tagged ‘electronica’
connect_icut – Small Town by the Sea (Aagoo) 2×12″/CD/DL
Small Town by the Sea (Aagoo, 2014), is simultaneously connect_icut’s most accessible and most ambitious album. It’s the first to feature a truly solid rhythmic underpinning (aka beats) but it also packs in all manner of epic song structures, processed field recordings and general psychedelic madness. Dedicated to connect_icut’s home-base in Vancouver, Canada, Small Town by the Sea twists familiar environmental sound tropes (bird song, ocean waves) into new shapes, creating an uncannily powerful sense of place and time. As with all connect_icut productions, the results are both enveloping and ominous. The album is being issued in two completely different versions – a tight, punchy mix for CD/download and another, more expansive mix for vinyl. To provide the deepest, most immersive sound possible, the vinyl version has been cut as two 45rpm 12″ singles.
- Listen to “Tennis Players” on SoundCloud
- Listen to “Bathroom Mirror” on SoundCloud
- Listen to “74 Guitars” on SoundCloud
—Praise for Small Town by the Sea
- “It is a gripping-by-the-throat beauty.” – Caleidoscoop
- “Six intriguing tracks and each one is effective and reflective. Smart and resilient electronic music from a different mental space.” – Babysue
- “A perfect album for those who are driven by curiosity.” – Paperblog
- “With adventure aplenty while rich in sounds and effects, this album dwells in being one hell of a seaside resort excursion.” – Penny Black Music
- “More than an album – a real psychic journey.” – ImpattoSonoro
- “Has a pleasant weirdness that sparks your imagination without giving you a headache.” – WRUV
- “It’s a place for daydreamers, deliberately instigating lapses in concentration.” – Rock-a-Rolla
Recommended if you like: Actress; Burial; Vladislav Delay; Demdike Stare; Fieldhead; Forest Swords; Holly Herndon; Monolake; Oval; Rhythm & Sound; Andy Stott etc.
connect_icut – Crows & Kittiwakes Wheel & Come Again (Rev. Lab./Aagoo) LP/CD
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The new connect_icut album – Crows & Kittiwakes Wheel & Come Again – is now available on LP (with deluxe eight-page booklet) and CD. The most intense and cosmic expression of the connect_icut sound so far, it anchors all manner of granular chaos and glitched-out abstraction in a solid foundation of three-chord pop. But don’t take our word for it: listen to a couple of songs on Soundcloud or watch the video for “Imperial Alabaster”.
And here’s where you can mail order a copy:
- Buy the LP from Aagoo (North America)
- Buy the LP from Rev.Lab (Europe)
- Buy the CD from Rev.Lab (Europe)
- Buy the LP or CD from Midheaven (North America)
- Buy the WAVs/MP3s from Juno
Distribution in North America is courtesy of Revolver. In the UK, distro is via Code7 and it’s through Orkhestra in mainland Europe.
Recommended if you like: Oren Ambarchi, Black to Comm, Kim Cascone, Sylvain Chauveau, Dalglish, Greg Davis, Vladislav Delay, Ekkehard Ehlers, Lawrence English, Farmers Manual, Fennesz, Ben Frost, Lee Gamble, Gas, Katie Gately, General Magic, Tim Hecker, Holly Herndon, Giuseppe Ielasi, Klimek, Machinefabriek, Stephan Mathieu, Mountains, BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa, Oval, Rosy Parlane, Pita, Roly Porter, Sébastien Roux, Sohrab, Tape, Rafael Toral, Tujiko Noriko etc…
Praise for Crows & Kittiwakes Wheel & Come Again:
- “Excellent” Simon Reynolds
- “A faultless album for those who want to immerse themselves totally in the flow of their own consciousness, for those looking for healthy and lawful means to cross the barriers of the senses.” Libero (Italy)
- “An overwhelmingly great album!” Caleidoscoop (Netherlands)
connect_icut – “Blonde Sound Forever” (CSAF) Video
Another slab of degraded digital detritus from connect_icut. This one is from an upcoming album called Blonde Sound. Watch this space for more details.
Oval + Cat = Win
Markus "Oval" Popp & a Friend
What more could you possibly need?
Oval – “Driva (Live in Vancouver 10-2011)”
Fennesz Wozencroft – Liquid Music (Touch) USB Drive & Tim Wright – 8 Switches (Entr’acte) USB Drive
USB Drives!
The shelf life of the humble USB stick as a format for audio/visual art seems limited at best but – for now, at least – it’s a pretty nifty way to package high-res content. The frame rates of these releases’ visual components are so high that the viewer might be forgiven for starting to feel like s/he could reach right into the screen. And the packaging is, in both cases, certainly remarkable.
Liquid Music is a collaboration between Touch head honcho Jon Wozencroft and Bubblegum Cage III hero Christian Fennesz. Wozencroft’s visuals consist mainly of digital video close-ups of rushing water, often with a “stripey” effect similar to what you might see were you sitting too close to a tube TV. Very evocative, actually.
It seems to be the same set of visuals Fennesz used at Seattle’s Decibel festival back in 2006. The audio portion, though, comes from a live set dating back as far 2001 and draws heavily on Fennesz’s never-bettered Endless Summer album. Basically, it sounds like a less noisy version of the great man’s Live in Japan album, which may seem a little redundant but who cares when the quality’s this high?
The packaging is another matter. The drive comes in an appallingly tacky black velveteen back with a lace drawstring. It looks like it should contain plastic unicorn models for an off-brand role-playing game. What were they thinking??? The drive itself is more appealing, being the general size and shape of a credit card, with a neat little section that folds out to plug into your computer.
In any case, if you’re a Fennesz fan, you’ll want to own this.
In terms of simple object value, though, it can’t hold a candle to Tim Wright’s 8 Switches. In typical Entr’acte style, this release comes in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag. The drive itself is an astonishingly elegant little brushed-metal number, with the relevant artist, title and label details engraved upon it. This thing is a seriously gorgeous piece of industrial design.
The A/V content is pretty bloody fantastic too. A mixture of op-art graphics and classic Mego/Raster-Noton-style digital electronica, similar to Theo Burt’s phenomenal Colour Projections DVD ROM (also on Entr’acte) but with the psychedelic head-fuck quotient turned waaaay up. Those of you who are prone to seizures might want to avoid this one. The rest of you need to buy it right now and get ready to pumpchaosintoyourmind.
To be fair, 8 Switches does have its share of sparse, contemplative moments. Still, the overall effect is quite brain-bending and the fact that it’s all delivered via an almost weightless little nugget of brushed metal is genuinely uncanny.
Oneohtrix Point Never & connect_icut, Vancouver April 11
“Daniel Lopatin a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never has been of our favourite artists here at Twee Death for a few years, so we’re very pleased to announce that the Brooklyn-based Software/Mexican Summer and Editions Mego recording artist will be making his first ever appearance in Vancouver…”
“Oneohtrix Point Never’s A/V performance will be preceded by a set from UK electronic artist Connect_icut, who is currently residing in BC. DJ Pop Drones will be spinning records from his massive vinyl library while renowned video feedback artist Merlyn Chipman controls an immersive visual environment…”
“Wednesday 11 April 2012 at 9:00pm, W2 Media Cafe, 111 W Hastings St, Vancouver.”
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/117755421682235/
Last FM event: http://www.last.fm/event/3243071+Oneohtrix+Point+Never
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Sleep Dealer”
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Nil Admirari”
connect_icut – “Imperial Alabaster (Long Version)” (CSAF) Video
“A song from an album in progress, working title: Crows & Kittiwakes Wheel & Come Again.
Yes, it’s supposed to look like that. Digital lo-fi, innit.
Shot on a regular photo camera by Kris, starring Heidi. Video editing and music by connect_icut.
For more connect_icut, visit csaf-records.com.”
The Automatics Group – Summer Mix (Entr’acte) CD
The Automatics Group - Summer Mix
The new album from The Automatics Group is pretty upfront about its sample sources – each track is named according to the mainstream pop and house acts it borrows from (Swedish House Mafia, Deadmau5…) But anyone expecting a mash-up epic along the lines of Kid 606’s The Action Packed Mentallist Brings You the Fucking Jams is going to be severely disappointed.
Rather than cheekily re-contextualizing his source material The Automatics Group’s Theo Burt diffuses it into a Fourier-transformed mist of hiss and hum. The only recognizable element left over from contemporary dance-pop is the steady four-on-the-floor beat. But even this is reduced to a series of ornately minute clicks and pulses, which have more in common with late 90s glitch-techno. Indeed, the most obvious points of reference here are GAS and Basic Channel.
That doesn’t quite cover it, though. As the album title may suggest, this music avoids the deep-in-the-woods dankness of GAS or the skunky fug of Basic Channel, delivering a ravishing blue-skied clarity. This clarity is all the more remarkable given the claustrophobic, over-compressed sound of the music music Summer Mix samples. The whole album has a sense of presence unusual for a 2010s digital production and the dynamic range is startlingly wide by any standards.
All of which makes it easy to speculate about what The Automatics Group might be trying to say with this project. Perhaps this is an attempt to suggest a more open, unashamedly cerebral alternative to contemporary pop’s bullish insistence that you must party hard. But it would be frankly wrong to impose this here blog’s ideological agenda on such a simply, stunningly gorgeous record.
And in any case, the Group has provided a fairly detailed explanation of the rather extraordinary process used to create the album, which suggests that a formalistic focus on pure aesthetics is the goal here – certainly, no other agenda is stated or strongly implied. You can read it at the label’s website, where you can also purchase a copy of the CD, which comes vacuum-sealed within a beautifully-designed antistatic bag, as Entr’acte releases generally are.
VIVO Video Bar Featuring Loscil & connect_icut
Loscil - Endless Falls
Video Bar: Winter Social
@ VIVO Media Arts Centre, 1965 Main Street, Vancouver BC
Friday Feb 24, 8pm-midnight
FREE
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/364733666879587/
Last FM: http://www.last.fm/event/3203262+Video+Bar%3A+Winter+Social
A chance to drink and socialize accompanied by background music from…
connect_icut (9:05-9:50) | http://connect-icut.com/
Sparse improvisations on a virtual Fender Rhodes, sampled live and arranged using custom-built generative music software. Dreamy and disorientating, if all goes to plan.
connect_icut – “Two Rios (Explosive Mix)”
Loscil (10-10:50) | www.loscil.ca
This incarnation of Scott Morgan’s loscil project features remixes of past works and premiers of new creations with live, improvised accompaniment by long time collaborator, Jason Zumpano on Rhodes piano. With a penchant for slow moving, low level, nearly static compositions, loscil carves out a soundtrack for hidden worlds and creates a listening space dually suited to deep listening or purely subconscious absorption.
Kristen Roos (11-11:45) | www.kristenroos.com
Kristen’s live performance will involve using his voice and small percussive instruments manipulated with looping, delay, pitch and filtering pedals, to create a kind of psychedelic wallpaper, as background music for conversation at the bar.
Programmed by…
Fieldhead | www.fieldheadmusic.com
Fieldhead produces ambient/electronic music that delights in tape hiss, geography, bleak landscapes and decaying analogue loops.
Bubblegum Cage III 