adventurous music from secret pockets of the globe
The new xenharmonic album from Joel Taylor is here! Stream the first half, or download the entire package (name-your-price) at the link below.
The download includes the equivalent of a double album, as well as three music videos and PDF liner notes with photography by Linda Hungerford.
Interesting and positive review of Brendan Byrnes’ Micropangaea in the excellent Igloo Magazine.
…and a nice little take on V/A: Whatcom Weird Vol. 1 from Whatcom County’s own What’s Up! Magazine.
Chris Vaisvil has an excellent breakdown of City of the Asleep’s Spectropol release from March.
Check out this interview by Paul Matthis. They discuss Brynes’ Micropangaea, the evolving state of microtonal music & more.
Having sold out the initial CDR edition in just over a week, the album is now in production for a second batch. It’s also available as a name-your-price download. Get a copy at the purchase/download site.
Brendan Byrnes has crafted an alluring concept album of prog/avant/electronica exploring tuning systems and imaginary terrain. Check it out via the animated site at micropangaea.com.
Or download/purchase it directly from bandcamp.
coming 7/28!
An arresting collection of microtonal electronica and avant-rock by Los Angeles-based composer/instrumentalist/producer Brendan Byrnes. The eight tracks each explore a different tuning system and are based on imaginary locations or features of Micropangaea, a fictional continent that will form on earth in the distant future. Byrnes, with the help of Michael Day, Brian Saia, Mike Horick, and a microtonal guitar ensemble, pulls the listener through instantly compelling song structures while pushing sonic boundaries. Liner notes for the album will presented uniquely in an animated website designed by Kerstin Hovland (TBA). —–brendanbyrnes.com—–
listen to a sampler here:
This long-awaited collection of experimental tracks featuring electric guitar is finally out for download and purchase.
Prepared guitar, computer processed, fretless, alternate tunings, noisy ambient, composed layers, unplugged-electric, controlled feedback, free improvisation, interlocking loops, virtuosic lines, shimmering drones, haunting melodies.
With Kavin Allenson, Tigress and the U-Fraidees, Bruce Hamilton, Mark Hamilton, Bill Horist, Neil Haverstick, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Steve Moyes, Marco Oppedisano, James Ross, Roger Sundstrom, Chris Vaisvil, the Michael Vick Trip, and Jordan Watson.
This compilation celebrates the electric guitar and its creative use with a collection of varied tracks that provide a small snapshot of what some artists and composers have been doing in 2010-2012.
Despite only eighty odd years of use (and even less as a widespread instrument), the electric guitar has been a major force of musical invention, forging new genres of music and new sonic territories to explore. Musicians today have a rich history to draw upon: Les Paul and other early masters, the various and celebrated icons of blues, rock, jazz and fusion; and several decades of guitarists extending their instruments through preparation and modification, processing, new playing techniques, and different tuning systems.
The music on this album is informed by the aesthetic, timbral, compositional and conceptual innovations of Derek Bailey, Adrian Belew, Glenn Branca, Robert Fripp, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Rowe, and Elliott Sharp, to name but a few. Yet there are always more things to say, more avenues to explore, and more artists popping up to advance down these paths.
The long-awaited twelfth release from COTA and the first on Spectropol [SpecT 10], winter in tumultua is a scattered narrative depicting a world in chronic upheaval. It is told through a patchwork of sonic textures–glitchy noise wrapped around meandering ragas, atonal piano jazz decaying into industrial film scores, acid-washed ambiance being rudely displaced by chugging kraut-rock. Through these disparate tableaux, the unifying thread of a mathematician’s sensibility is woven, in the form of unusual time-signatures and the microtonal scales found within the unusual 17-tone equal temperament (a natural but unconventional alternative to the usual 12-tone equal temperament). Extensive liner notes are included in the download.
city of the asleep is the pseudonym of Oakland-based musician Igliashon Jones.
daniel stearns’ new and mind-boggling full length is now available.
[SpecT 03]
Download comes with 7-page PDF with text and pics highlighting the psychological context for the album’s creation.
Physical CD version will ship in October.
Daniel Stearns has created the first video for the upcoming Golden Town album (out Aug. 10), a rather psychedelic expansion of the 5th track: hE wENT ThaT wAY. Enjoy!!
