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.
July 21, 2012
new Brendan Byrnes album out July 28
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:
July 11, 2012
Lark [markings] now available!
Lark [markings] is an album of exploratory duos from woodwind player Paulo Chagas (Portugal) and ‘mosesa 2′ inventor/performer Wilhelm Matthies (USA). Each artist composed a graphic score for multiple recorded interpretations; these tracks are complimented by free improvisations.
The mosesa 2 (shown below) is a one-stringed instrument with variable bows & resonators, providing Matthies with a surprisingly large palette to paint sound with…a good thing given Chagas’ expansive and virtuosic instrumental range. The collaborative result is a playful, violent, warm, haunting, humorous, menacing, and surreal. It’s a musical funhouse. Available as a name-your-price download from the Spectropol Bandcamp site.
June 28, 2012
Lark [markings] out on 7/11/12
an album of free improvisation and graphic score interpretation from Paulo Chagas (Portugal) and Wilhelm Matthies (USA).
May 8, 2012
Golden Town on Renewable Music
Very thoughtful review from the ever interesting Daniel Wolf.
May 1, 2012
Elle avait raison Hathor live!
Vincent Berger Rond and cohorts will perform a rendition Elle avait raison Hathor (recently released on Spectropol) live in Montreal this Saturday, May 5.
April 17, 2012
“Axe” electric guitar compilation now available
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.
April 3, 2012
new Vincent Berger Rond: Elle avait raison Hathor
Out today (4/3). Inspired by mythology, this collection explores notions of womanhood. With the Quebec-based composer’s characteristic “spasmacousmatic” cutup textures guiding form, this is an electroacoustic chamber music that is both disorienting and utterly engaging.
March 23, 2012
out now: city of the asleep – winter in tumultua
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.
March 18, 2012
GOLDENBATS II is out
In Farouche Voidness,
ZANTH!
Ferrum Catastrophae
Tethered To “All Seed”,
Strata And Raad,
Quanta Eyes Wings Grow,
Off The Backs Of Golden Bats!
GOLDENBATS II is a twenty-six minute musical journey. Vast, lovely and large, it transitions from a bleak, dark and brooding stormy night into a new dawn of contentedly chorusing whippoorwills.
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Living in a megalopolis can be daunting to say the least. GOLDENBATS II is about time, healing, channeling creative energies and giving birth. The work was composed as a means for personal self-healing and empowerment both by the act of its creation and by the subtle memeplex it introduces upon repeated listening. The package design, etc. are all extensions of these ideas. The work was never intended to be released to the public though now through some fortunate external interest you’re reading these words and hearing these sounds.
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Geoff Duncanson and Dennis Meade have been performing and recording music together for the better part of a decade. They’ve been friends ever since their public school days in Yonkers, NY. Dennis has recorded music for the Imminent Frequencies label along side Asa Osbourne, Spencer Yeh, Jon Wesseltoft, and Jacob Long. Geoff was a member of the long standing New York experimental sextet Blue Velvet. That ensemble has performed along side Octis (Mick Barr), Mary Timony, Growing, Aloha, Medications, Child Abuse, Beauty Pill, Behold… The Arctopus, and many others. Geoff has performed most recently banging “resonant rocks” together in an impromptu performance on the streets of Kingston, NY with Pauline Oliveros during the 2011 O Positive festival. Both Geoff and Dennis have played in Sun Son Sun with James Zandoli and Victor “Poison Tete” (Rat At Rat R).
spectropol records 