Posts tagged ‘experimental’
connect_icut – Crows & Kittiwakes Wheel & Come Again (Rev. Lab./Aagoo) LP/CD
—
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)
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.
hmbkr & Magneticring – Live in Vancouver – Nov 17
Quiet City Nov 2011
Oren Ambarchi & Crys Cole, Vancouver, July 10th 2011
Oren Ambarchi & Crys Cole – Two Solo Sets of Electronic Music
July 10th 2011, 8pm
The Western Front, 303 E 8th Ave, Vancouver
Tickets
Advance: $16 General, $12 Students/WF Members
Door: $20 General, $18 Students/WF Members
Discounted advance tickets available via PayPal or in person at the Western Front until 5PM Friday, July 8.
Western Front Box Office Hours: Wednesday-Friday, 12 noon-5PM (604 876 9343)
Buy tickets online
Oren Ambarchi – “Lost Time Not Found Again”
hmbkr, Fake Jazz, March 18th, Vancouver
Fake Jazz March 18th 2011
FAKE JAZZ
featuring
hmbkr
Froghat
Andrea Lukic Presents Exhausted Monologues
Friday March 18th 2011, 8.30pm
The Western Front, 303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver BC
Add it to your Last FM calendar.
“An evening of fearless, underground experimentation by some of the doughtiest musicians in south-western BC. Guest curated by Jeremy Van Wyck, Bill Batt and Anju Singh creators of the dynamic and storied series.
Andrea Lukic Presents Exhausted Monologues
Performed by the bassist/vocalist of Nü Sensae, Andrea Lukic’s project is an unrelenting take on sampling and soliloquy. Through extreme repetition of frequencies, tones and cut-up dialogue customized to suit a variety of emotional states, the project is a mutated version of Exposure and Response Therapy often used by therapists to treat patients with OCD anxieties.
Victoria’s Soma Morse (audio) and Gerald Hogrefe (video) bring their own brand of multi-media experimentation with an audio-visual collaboration of abstract animation in interaction with harsh, atmospheric ambient and dense frequencies.
Finishing up the evening is a brand new supergroup of some of Vancouver’s foremost electronic mavericks. Members of Coin Gutter, connect_icut, Ejaculation Death Rattle and Scant Intone have formed a refined and cultivated approach to digital improvised audio. Their sound incorporates real-time digital signal processing, primal vocals and unconventional tuning systems (just intonation). This will be their debut live performance, with visuals courtesy of Julie Gendron.”
Quiet City 7: March 11th, Vancouver
Quiet City 7
QUIET CITY
Featuring…
Diadem
Myths
No UFOs
Nurse
Tusk
Friday, March 11th 2011, 9pm
W2 Storyeum – 151 West Cordova, Vancouver BC, Canada
(Note new venue!)
No UFOs – “Evidence/Century Park”
Quiet City is a series of deep-listening concerts in Vancouver, focused on live performances of experimental, electronic and improvised music in a comfortable and intimate setting.
Presented by W2 Community Media Arts, Soundscape on CFRO Co-op Radio & Panospria
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=151476771576779
And let’s not forget about the live debut of hmbkr, at the Western Front on the 18th. More on that soon.
Tim Hecker + Loscil, Vancouver, Nov 19
Tim Hecker
Tim Hecker
Loscil
Friday November 19th 2010, 9PM
The Western Front
303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver BC V5T 1S1
In advance: $15 general, $10 Students/WF Members
On the door: $18 general, $12 Students/WF Members
Advance tickets available via telephone or in person at the Western Front (Tuesday-Friday, 12 noon-5PM, until 5PM Friday November 19th, 604-876-9343) or and at Zulu Records (1972 West 4th Avenue, 604-738-3232).
Tim Hecker – “Stags, Aircraft, Kings & Secretaries”
There’s a also a very interesting show happening the night before, at an excellent restaurant in Vancouver’s most awesome neighbourhood. Here are the details of that one:
Ejaculation Death Rattle (with Soressa Gardner)
Pink Island (Lee Hutzulak, Dave Leith, Madoka Hara)
Yellow Thief
Nervous Operator
Thursday November 18th 2010, 8pm
Nyala
4148 Main Street (Main and King Edward), Vancouver BC
$5 door
“Come on out to Nyala for cheap drinks and inexpensive (and tasty) appetizers, plus a an eclectic mix of experimental electronic music,
electronic and acoustic improvisation, a touch of noise and other genres – all home-grown in Vancouver. Nyala African Cuisine has served Vancouver for the last 20 years. We serve a diverse variety of food from many parts of Africa including Ethiopia, Morocco and South Africa, using fresh ingredients found locally in Vancouver. We are a fully licensed eating establishment that serves an excellent selection of wine and beer from South Africa and British Columbia.”
Quiet City (An Apology)
This here blog totally meant to promote the latest Quiet City event to grace Vancouver’s nightlife. Unfortunately, a case of collective amnesia afflicted the massed ranks of Bubblegum Cage III’s editorial staff and we just plain forgot about it.
August 13th? Shit! Didn’t blog it. Didn’t even remember to go. Motherfucker!
Luckily, the ace photographer Steve Louie is still attending absolutely every local show that happens in town, so we were – at least – able to feast our eyes on some photographic evidence of the event. Better still, the videos embedded within this post capture Pink Island’s performance in all its audio-visual glory.
Fennesz Mania!
This year, Christian Fennesz has displayed a renewed willingness to collaborate. A decade or so ago, early in his career as a solo electronica artist, Fennesz seemed to be releasing collaborative CDs on an almost weekly basis, documenting various one-off improv configurations. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he made a point of announcing that he would be avoiding such collaborative projects in future, preferring to concentrate on his solo work. FennO’Berg, his ongoing trio with Peter “Pita” Rehberg and Jim O’Rourke, was scheduled to continue but – somewhere along the line – even that fell by the wayside. The 2010 release of In Stereo – the (excellent) third FennO’Berg album – was a welcome surprise, then. Even better, In Stereo has been followed by a handful of other commendable collaborative releases. It’s like the old days – only the quality control seems to be somewhat more stringent.
Actually, this is a simplification of the storyline. Over the last few years, Fennesz has been edging his way back into the fray, with collaborations that have ranged from the unlikely (a live duo with Mike Patton) to the sublime (Till the Old World’s Blown Up & a New One is Created – a glorious trio album with Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayr). Still, his 2010 collabs are enjoying a relatively elevated public profile, which may reflect Fennesz’s confidence in their quality or may simply be an upshot of his ever-growing commercial viability.
On - Something That Has Form & Something That Does Not
Something That Has Form & Something That Does Not (Type, LP) is the latest album from On, the duo of Bubblegumcage III favourite Sylvain Chauveau and Steven Hess of Pan American/Labradford. On’s modus operandi is to improvise raw source material, which is then turned over to a third-party producer for transformation into a coherent album. The duo’s previous LP, Your Naked Ghost Comes Back at Night, was produced by Nordic dark ambient overlord Deathprod. This new one is handled by – you guessed it – Christian Fennesz.
It’s a fairly unassuming album, built around some stealthily abstract loops, which occasionally cohere into rather surprising, jazzy rhythms. What Something That Has Form… lacks in impact, it more than makes up for in charm. The music here emits a subtle magnetic attraction; an almost subliminal hypnotic power that recalls Jan Jelinek’s excellent Kosmicher Pitch album. It’s one of those LPs you’ll keep coming back to, almost without realising how into it you really are. Definitely worth heading right over to Forced Exposure to order a copy – particularly as the vinyl is limited to 500 units. If you’re not yet convinced, you can stream the whole album via the Type website.
Fennesz Daniell Buck - Knoxville
Knoxville (Thrill Jockey, LP) is a live album recorded at Tennessee’s Big Ears festival. It pits Fennesz’s laptop against drums courtesy of Tony Buck from The Necks and the guitar of one David Daniell. This is a rather more strident venture than the On LP but – perhaps by the same token – a slightly less satisfying one. Like the aforementioned trio album with Dafeldecker and Brandlmayr, Knoxville mixes free improvisation with epic post-rock. But – in that trio – Fennesz was matched by players who shared his natural diffidence and hesitancy. Here, the jazzy drums and chiming guitar often threaten to drown out Fennesz’s subtle digital atmospherics. Knoxville is a fundamentally satisfying, often beautiful album – it just needz moar Fennesz.
Hmmm… Having said that, perhaps some of those guitar parts are Fennesz. Probably a good sign that it’s hard to tell. Oh and on the album’s standout track – “Antonia”– he really gets to shine. All told, then, Knoxville is another essential purchase for Fennesz fans. It’ll be released by Thrill Jockey on August 24th.
There’s more! Don’t sleep on that Oneohtrix Point Never remix featuring Antony (he of the Johnsons) – it’s phenomenal! And if you live in North America, do whatever you can to see the great man on his continent-wide tour this autumn.
Sylvain Chauveau – Singular Forms [Sometimes Repeated] (Type) 12″/LP
Sylvain Chauveau - Singular Forms
Sylvain Chauveau certainly is an eclectic fellow. Maybe this kind of thing is perfectly normal in France but – in the mind of an anglophone – a career spanning orchestral minimalism, austere digital electronica and Depeche Mode covers seems impressively diverse.
This blue-vinyl LP (well, it plays at 45RPM and lasts about 30 minutes but Type is marketing it as a full-length album) encompasses a number of Chauveau’s musical interests. It’s a collection of art song, set to stark, piano-led arrangements and disrupted by a storm-front of computerized chaos.
On dropping the needle, the comparison that immediately springs to mind is David Sylvian’s recent work. Actually, the similarity is a little too close for comfort. You half expect to glance back at the cover and realise that the artist’s name is, in fact, David Sylvian Chauveau. Ahem.
The EP has other faults. The pared-back arrangements occasionally leave Chauveau’s ever-so-slightly ESL lyrics a little exposed. Also, it could be argued that coloured vinyl wasn’t the wisest choice – quality-wise – for a record that relies so heavily on clear, ringing sounds and passages of near silence.
None of this seems to matter, though, when Singular Forms really starts to hit home. The songs are absolutely beautiful, the arrangements subtly dissonant and the electronics absolutely glitch-perfect. The overall effect is vividly dreamlike – an effect perfectly captured by the startling video for “The Unbroken Line”.
So, in spite of its faults, this is a more-than worthwhile release. It’s one of the bravest and most brilliant records of the year so far. You can listen to the whole thing at Soundcloud then buy it at Forced Exposure.
Bubblegum Cage III 