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| MIKROTON: new releases October 2019 MIKROTON CD 76-85 ˚ FIBRRBX01 Formanex with AMM, Christian Wolff, Keith Rowe, Ralf Wehowsky, John Tilbury, Phill Niblock, ONsemble, Seth Cluett, Radu Malfatti, Michael Pisaro, Julien Ottavi, Kasper T. Toeplitz 20 Years Of Experimental Music 10 CDs, Booklet, Box €80 Nantes trio Formanex celebrates 20 years of activism in experimental music with a 10 CD edition full of amazing collaborations with ONsemble (contemporary music group from Nantes and Saint-Nazaire) and composers they have worked with. The box set includes early works by Formanex's own Julien Ottavi, unique compositions created by Keith Rowe, pieces by Kasper T. Toeplitz, Ralf Wehowsky, Seth Cluett, Michael Pisaro, Radu Malfatti, as well as other giants of contemporary music from the last 50 years; such as Phill Niblock and Christian Wolff. A rare collection of CDs, this box set represents a broad vision of experimental music from noise to electronic abstract composition, radical minimalism, contemporary and improvised music. Limited edition of 300 copies! STREET DATE: October 12, 2019 BUY & LISTEN — https://mikroton.bandcamp.com/album/20-years-of-experimental-music MIKROTON CD 86 FEN • Otomo Yoshihide / Ryu Hankil / Yan Jun / Yuen Chee Wai No One's Island CD €13 FEN (Far East Network) is a group project made up of musicians from Singapore, Japan, China, and South Korea who play improvised music. It was first started on the suggestion of globally renowned musician Otomo Yoshihide in 2008 for a French festival MIMI. Each member is an artist who works individually on the experimental music scene in his respective country. They have been supporting each other's activities by organizing concerts in their own countries, and this relationship became the motivation to form FEN, and to extend their network to react with the reality of Asia in artistic means. From their activities, they realized that unlike artists in Europe, those in Asian countries had difficulty communicating due to differences in their cultures, languages, historical backgrounds and political situation. FEN originated from their thinking about not only practical and productive but also aesthetic ways to solve this problem. They soon found out that working as an organizer and as an invited artist didn't help them to sustain their relationship. Certainly, a relationship between collaborators with common interests and concerns was more productive than one arising merely from invitation and acquaintance. They pursue "performing together through improvisation" as a method and "never talk about music" as a private code. FEN is a musical group and at the same time it is a form that maintains unique aesthetics and sustainable relationships in diverse Asian cultures. Also through FEN's activity they explore the aesthetic possibilities of a new form of music which is different from music in the Western world. FEN's goals are to become a foundation and to organize diverse meetings to support other sustainable networks and cultural exchanges among many experimental musicians in Asia. Therefore they withdraw their ego from controlling and designing music. "No One's Island" is their third album and the first studio recording. Here they explore the nuances of the current political situations worldwide which is a mesh of inner and outer laws and decisions taken everywhere and all the time such as visa system, and the gap between official political tension and people's everyday life. All this affects our understanding and expressing, making human condition complex and inefficient. Why human spend so much time for applying visa instead of creating art and listening to each other? The musicians change their instrument and method without letting the other members know. They almost have never done a rehearsal. They agree with any suggestion from other members. They let go. Here in their first studio album recorded in New York they reproduced their attitude to the strange world with electronic feedback, computer noises and variations of rock guitar motifs. All merge into an unfamiliar structure, an ever-changing and unbalanced form. The album trying to add their own, personal, ways of playing and thus undermining the overall similarity of everything, making the reality no one's island their own. It's a voice from no master, an organ within no body, an essential chapter in the body of oeuvres of Otomo Yoshihide, Yan Jun, Yuen Chee Wai and Ryu Hankil. STREET DATE: October 2, 2019 BUY & LISTEN — https://mikroton.bandcamp.com/album/no-ones-island MIKROTON CD 87 Lars Åkerlund / Eryck Abecassis Falls CD €13 Eryck Abecassis and Lars Åkerlund started their Falls project to investigate the possibilities of achieving instability with synthesizers and electronic instruments. With only one dramatic change in their strategy: they employed both the same branded instruments to do that and it worked. Eryck Abecassis is a French musician who has been working in diverse areas of music production: producing his own albums and works for chamber orchestras, theaters, installations and cinema. He got commissions from such institutions like INA-GRM, Radio France and Institut Français and played at many festivals like Amplitude, Presences, IRCAM. Now he mostly works with modular synthesizer and computer. Lars Åkerlund is a sound artist and composer and performer of electronic as well as electroacoustic music hailing from Sweden. With a classical training, he also works in the music underground scene. He founded bands such as P.I.T.T. (among others, with Zbigniew Karkowski) and the Lucky People Center and recently the LLLSD (Lab for Life-Long Sound Dysfunctions) which toured in South East Asia, China and Japan during 2018 and 2019. He performs solo and in collaboration with other artists, film makers and choreographers. Åkerlund lives in Stockholm working in the studio with computers, controllers and live electronic equipment such as an amplified monochord. In eight tracks of "Falls" they drive you to the state of ecstasy. Working with a minimal and an accurate attention for the structures, they gain such a level when they lose control of their two Doepfer Dark Energies that it starts hypnotizing the brains. Subliminal thoughts, experiences and sonic hallucinations may suddenly erupt to the surface. Take care when using these powerful and uncompromising musical dream machine which will disorientate you in its subversive sonic masses and spectrum. STREET DATE: October 2, 2019 BUY & LISTEN — https://mikroton.bandcamp.com/album/falls MIKROTON CD 88 Andrea Ermke / Chris Abrahams / Marcello Busato / Arthur Rother Sink CD €13 It took 15 years since its foundation to release their first album. Sink was formed in Berlin in 2004. Though their music is improvised, Sink play, perform, sound and feel as a band with a distinct band sound. Their sound ranges from typically Berlin Echtzeitmusik related mixed electroacoustic and acoustic soundscapes which can, but need not, result in a minimalistic groove. Sink already appeared on "Echtzeitmusik Berlin" compilation we produced in 2012. Andrea Ermke is a sound artist from the so-called Berlin scene. An autodidact, she has been working with a sampler, minidisc players and a mixing board since about 1997. She has developed a very personal and uncompromising style of collage. She has worked and collaborated with such artists like Jim Denley, Dorothea Shürch, John Butcher, Annette Krebs, Margareth Kammerer, Ami Yoshida. Chris Abrahams doesn’t need any introduction. He is best known for his work as a pianist in the minimalist trio The Necks. On Mikroton we released several albums featuring him: “Hammeriver” with Clare Cooper, Christof Kurzmann, Tony Buck, Tobias Delius, Werner Dafeldecker, Clayton Thomas, “None Of Them Would Remember It That Way” with Lucio Capece, “We Who Had Left” with Alessandro Bosetti and “Echtzeitmusik Berlin”. Marcello Busato is a multi instrumentalist from Milano, Italy. He moved to Berlin in 2003 and since then became a prominent and in-demand member of the Berlin improvisation scene. “Sink” is his third album on Mikroton following “Echtzeitmusik Berlin” and Margareth Kammerer’s “Why Is The Sea So Blue”. Arthur Rother is a guitarist and was born 1970 in Alkmaar, the Netherlands, grew up in there and moved to Berlin in 1989. Together with Andrea Neumann, Christian Kesten, Fernanda Farah and Derek Shirley he curates events at labor sonor since 2003. He is also the maintainer of the website echtzeitmusik.de, a prominent event calendar for the experimental music scene in berlin. That’s his second album on Mikroton after “Echtzeitmusik Berlin”. “Sink” is a perfect blend of diverse sound sources. Rother’s minimal chord playing and guitar arpeggios mix with Abrahams’ masterful knowledge of the depths of Yamaha DX-7 which sometimes emits typically electronic timbres and sometimes he makes it sound like an organ. All this coalesces with Ermke’s sonic intrusions from her minidiscs and Busato’s wide range of playing techniques on percussion and drums, now shadowy, then outbursting. “Sink” is a staggering feast of the joys found in the process of sonic research with their own instruments. A malleable bubble of hovering excitement, romantic slowdowns and joyous refrain. A perfect musical match for your post-Techno after party. STREET DATE: October 2, 2019 BUY & LISTEN — https://mikroton.bandcamp.com/album/sink MIKROTON CD 89 | 90 Joke Lanz / Jason Kahn / Norbert Möslang / Günter Müller / Christian Weber kangaroo_kitchen Double CD €19 In 2018 Mikroton Mikroten Festival offered a special occasion to record five important musicians from the Swiss experimental music scene. Joke Lanz was born in Basel in 1965 and now lives in Berlin. He is a pioneer of the electronic independent scene and a crossover artist whose work spans improvised and experimental music, noise and turntablism, performance art and musique concrète. In addition to theatre and film music, radio works, installations and objects, there are two constants in his work: turntablism – making music by manipulating vinyl records; and his action project “Sudden Infant”, which was transformed into a trio in 2014 after 25 years as a one-man operation. “kangaroo_kitchen” is his first album on Mikroton. Originally from Los Angeles, multiinstrumentalist Jason Kahn has lived in Europe since 1990, he plays a wide range of instruments like percussion, drums, synthesizer, laptop, guitar, and voice. He has performed or recorded with musicians such as Günter Müller, Norbert Möslang, Kim Cascone, Arnold Dreyblatt, Steve Roden, Dieb13, Richard Francis, Ryu Hankil, Jon Mueller, z’ev and many others. He ran the Cut label from 1997 to 2008, releasing 25 albums. “Kangaroo_kitchen” is his sixth album on Mikroton after “Limmat” with Günter Müller and Christian Wolfarth, “Planes” with Asher, "Five Lines" with Casey Anderson, Norbert Möslang, Günter Müller and Mark Trayle, “teplo_dom” and “Instants // Paris” with MKM. Norbert Möslang had been playing in Voice Crack duo with Andy Guhl in 1972-2002, they’ve been working with “cracked everyday-electronics”, modifying and recontextualising the use of home electronics. After the split he continued working solo and in different musical combinations using “cracked everyday-electronics”. He released numerous solo albums as well as collaborations with Günter Müller, Jason Kahn, Ralf Wehowsky, Tomas Korber, Aube, Christian Weber, Katsura Yamauchi. He is a part of Signal Quintet and MKM. “kangaroo_kitchen” is his seventh album on Mikroton after “Ground” with Kurt Liedwart and Günter Müller, "Stodgy" with eRikm, "Five Lines" with Casey Anderson, Jason Kahn, Günter Müller and Mark Trayle, “sale_interiora” with Kurt Liedwart and Ilia Belorukov, and “teplo_dom” and “Instants // Paris” with MKM. Günter Müller, formerly a percussionist and known for his unique explorations of the possibilities of drums and percussion using electronic devices and self-built instruments, now concentrates on his setup of two iPods and electronics. For thirty years he’s been a part of innumerable projects, including long-term musical dialogues with many musicians like Jim O’Rourke, Norbert Möslang, Andy Guhl, eRikm, Oren Ambarchi, Toshimaru Nakamura, Keith Rowe, Ralph Steinbrüchel, Philip Samartzis, Alfred 23 Harth, just to name a few. He used to run the critically acclaimed For 4 Ears, a label for improvised electronic music. This is his seventh release on Mikroton, following his solo album “cym_bowl”, “Limmat” with Jason Kahn and Christian Wolfafth, “Five Lines” with Casey Anderson, Jason Kahn, Norbert Möslang and Mark Trayle, “Instants // Paris” and “teplo_dom” with MKM, and “Ground” with Norbert Möslang and Kurt Liedwart. Christian Weber studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz and at the Bruckner Conservatory Linz with Adelhard Roidinger, as well as with Ernst Weissensteiner in Vienna and with Mark Dresser in New York. Weber focuses on electroacoustic improvisation (EAI), chamber music, jazz, pop and rock. In his music these different styles influence each other continuously. Weber's cooperation with various musicians such as Lol Coxhill, Peter Evand, Pierre Favre, Charles Gayle, Hans Koch, Peter Kowald, Joachim Kühn, Oliver Lake, Urs Leimgruber, Irène Schweizer, Eliott Sharp, Otomo Yoshihide and many more is documented on over 100 recordings. This is his second album on Mikroton following Michael Thieke Unununium’s “Nachtlieder”. Two tracks of the album were recorded respectively in Kaliningrad and Moscow with no concerts in Kaliningrad and a premiere gig in Moscow. “kangaroo_kitchen” is a masterclass not only in instantaneous sound design and dynamic range, but also in sonic depth. Five musicians work for the first time in such a mesmerizing manner as if they have been working together for years. The weaving in rich and complex meshes of tone clusters and noise loops, Russian radio invasions seamlessly blending with sonic creatures from turntables and skillful double bass playing. A wide array of striking timbres and sounds wash over one another, at times sounding like innards of a factory, at other times like originating from outer limits of space. STREET DATE: October 2, 2019 BUY & LISTEN — https://mikroton.bandcamp.com/album/kangaroo-kitchen write your comments about the article :: © 2019 Jazz News :: home page |