adventurous music from secret pockets of the globe
Bruce Hamilton presents 19 experimental mashups of tracks by an eclectic crew of international artists. Musique concrète, improvisation, drones, soundscapes, postminimalism, complexity, and noise all play into the resultant electroacoustic package which is designed to flow as an album.
Strange and beautiful ambient and “pop” tracks from Jeff Fairbanks.
These electronic instrumental tracks are like postcards documenting a character through the ups and downs of everyday life, where the mundane and magical rub shoulders. They explore textures and moods, as short stories or sketchbooks can, resulting in the wide stylistic approaches (cartoon-ish, poignant, atmospheric) presented. The album is not programmatic; rather, the stories are up to the listener.
Nice bit on Daniel Stearns’ Golden Town by the always excellent Christian Carey on S21.
A “reissue” of tracks by Steve Moshier featured in collaborative Los Angeles stage productions between 1983-1992. Hypnotic analog electronic post-minimalism rediscovered.
Spectropol is happy to announce the upcoming “reissue” of some electronic minimalist treasures from the ’80s and early ’90s.
Steve Moshier’s Limestone Gates will include five tracks from “Boy’s Life” (1983); a section from Deliquium in C (1989); and “Sudan” (1992). These pieces featured as “environmental” soundtracks to collaborative theater works that grew out of the fertile art/music scene of downtown Los Angeles.
Analog warmth, a cozy tape hiss and only the essential notes lull one into a lucid meditative state. This is ambient music that seems to be saying something we forgot about.
Composer/sound artist Christopher DeLaurenti [ “…You listen on the edge of your seat, every shout and noise significant…” – Wire] has unleashed, or rather unearthed a new collection of three sound pieces that tickle the ear and the imagination.
Name-your-price download.
These three pieces rely on inefficient, imminently obsolete technology to perforate silence with sound.
“Audio found in the silent 8mm home movies of the Ring family” (2011) captures electromagnetic impulses created by dubbing vintage home movies, randomly ganged one after the other, onto VHS tape.
“The mute right channel of Lionel Marchetti’s Train de Nuit (Noord 3-683)” (2010) is at once an homage and an investigation of Marchetti’s work, composed, unusually, “pour un haut-parleur” (“for one speaker”) and thus heard only on the left channel, in mono, not stereo. Released by Metamkine in 2002 on a 3-inch CD, Marchetti’s Train is a feast of digital errors, recessed dialogue, and juxtapositions (a coughing smoker, the clack of rails, a snippet of “Riders on the Storm”) that startle and delight the ears.
When analyzing this work, I was surprised to find audio submerged in the apparently silent right channel. The mute right channel of Lionel Marchetti’s Train de Nuit amplifies this residue and elevates ostensibly digital black into a series of barbed points with lo-fi grit reminiscent of 8 bit, 11.025 kHz samples.
Remote (2002) is from a series of unedited improvisations with an analog television and sluggishly vintage 1980s-era remote control.
All of these works may be considered as co-compositions. An inversion of ambient music, co-compositions are intended for solo studio listening or can be “fleshed out” in tandem with back- and foreground sounds, preferably those from your everyday life. The mute right channel of Lionel Marchetti’s Train de Nuit is also an apostrophe piece, a composition whose title acknowledges (and I hope honors and brings attention to) the root of the work.
New release date – 11/19/11 – Christopher DeLaurenti: “Perforate Silence: Three Found Soundscapes”
1. audio found in the silent 8mm home movies of the Ring family
2. the mute right channel of Lionel Marchetti’s Train de Nuit (Noord 3-683)
3. Remote
Intriguing work from one of the most creative sound artists in the US.
The physical CDs are finally in hand and are shipping to existing customers on Halloween. If you haven’t already heard this wonderfully bizarre album, now is your chance.
Exotic. Hand-made. Microtonal. Floating polyrhythms. Intoxicating.
Paul Rubenstein performs trios on his invented instruments, each piece showcasing a different tuning/scale. Loosely pulsed, the music transports one into a hypnotic ritual in a land seldom seen.
spectropol records 