Adventurous releases from Spain (2015)
An album created only using one single, one minute sound recording containing the sounds of rubbing the edge of a coup of wine with his fingertips. That unique premise, once listened, reveals itself trivial as we accommodate into the lazy hedonism of a summer end and its sonic lanscape. The real tour-de-force is to achieve a musicality with that single element, to achieve colourful harmonies full of contrast and saturated ambiences. And specially, Comelles achieves a beautiful musical dialogue with cello, piano, drums and electric guitar, gathering all together the talents of Sara Galán, Lucy Claire, Avelino Saavedra and Fernando Junquera. They all add and rest, take and put, back and forth talking with the artist.
BLAAST is the duo of Lali Barrière, + Alfredo Costa Monteiro on synthesizers. One Coordinate is their debut on Mathieu Ruhlmann’s Caduc. label.
This is the seventh installment in the “i.r.real” series, the solo project by Javier Piñango, using only a Korg MS-20 analog synth. “i.r.real 7” is an obscure, dense and dry album ravaged with abrupt contrasts. A battle between silences and gritty atmospheric textures against rough gestures unchaining chunks of pure noise. All of this arose from a thorough research of the limits of the MS-20. “i.r.real 7” derails the classic use of the korg synthesizer by prospecting its frequency ranges and exploring alternative was to play with its capabilities. Its all a complex process of noise musicalisation, an open framework of layers and layers of synth lines embracing a sort of sonic narrativity through tension as the key element.
In 1983 three hundred copies of a vinyl LP entitled “Dark Fields” were released as the one and only album by mysterious band “La T”. Since that time, this industrial, minimalistic and complex album has become one of the most representatives pieces of the underground experimental music scene of the late 70s in Barcelona. Xguix, co-founder of the mythical band, has hardly performed concerts, nor released any albums, since then.
A Ragudo album contains a few “easter eggs” for those with keen ears. Fragments of “Recurrence” by Richard Chartier can be found as a creative homage to the influence over Xguix’s work.
December 2013 was the last time Cello + Laptop played live. That happened down Las Ramblas in Barcelona at Eufonic Urbà Festival. Since then an awkward silence expanded till today. In between a certain amount of live recordings, studio sessions and infinite mixes wait in line as orphans the endless hesitancy.
During this long period those files have become a burden, witnesses of the absence of bearing of a project apparently way to easy to re-write. Those files were unresolved issues, segments of an exhausting period of real time composition and production that ultimately lead to a crossroad with far too many options.
Awkwardness followed more awkwardness and many attempts of restarting the project happened. The effort was to big and the laziness of confronting the question: “what to do” won over the will of moving forward.
Finally, the answer was easy: lets do it: fast, clean and neat.
Francisco Lopez – Untitled #274
Untitled #274 was composed by Francisco Lopez and and performed by Kasper T. Toeplitz at GRM Studios in Paris, France.
Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music. For more than thirty years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion.
Kasper T. Toeplitz has worked with academic research organizations, such as GMEM, GRM, IRCAM, and Radio-France, as well as with experimental musicians, such as Éliane Radigue, Zbigniew Karkowski, Dror Feiler, Tetsuo Furudate, Phill Niblock and Art Zoyd . Citing Giacinto Scelsi and Iannis Xenakis as influences, his early work was mostly written for traditional instruments.
Evol – Rave Synthesis Approximations of György Ligeti’s Continuum, Part IV
Written by Stephen Sharp and Roc Jimenez de Cisneros for computer and Roland rompler. No edits. Dedicated to David Vorhaus, author of the famous ORCH5 sample for the Fairlight CMI in the late 1970s, which pioneered the use of orchestral stabs. Published by khalija 2015. Play loud.
Also in 2015, Evol have released a number of 12”, including Flapper That on Diagonal, Melting Pinkness on Hypermedium and Bus 17a on Bus Editions.
“Static” is a short album of abstract concrete music. The main idea was to use “field recordings” from restaurants and coffee shops, mostly the sounds of plates, spoons, knifes etc., as well as sounds recorded while the artist himself was having breakfast. He also uses sets of found sounds, from objects at home. He mixes the different timbres with minimal electronics, trying to give the result a natural feel. For this album he chose 6 tracks out of 12 – the ones that worked better with the concept. The dark drones were composed especially for each theme and then added to the percussive sounds, conveying an abstract, ambient and dreamlike sense.
Barcelona based Rafael Espinosa has made himself a name with a peculiar sound combining academic strictness with physical impact: Deeply resonating sound waves, clicks & cuts and loads of feedback – never overflowing, always following a pattern, an unmistakable theme.
‘Abandoned Memory’ was recorded and mixed by Heezen aka Raul Fuentes between 2009 and 2013, using field recordings, guitar, synthesizers, found objects and found sounds, as he did in his debut album, ‘Secret Speech’. Among these found objects there was an old and deteriorated Czech reel-to-reel tape recorder, and a tape reel in pretty bad condition, with home recordings made in the late 60’s. Memories of their former owners, of which it could be guessed or imagined that were Spanish emigrants who in the late 60’s were living somewhere in Germany, some thing that brings us to the present southern Europe. Some of these recordings and other sounds produced by this artifact: hiss, hum, distortion, etc, have been part of ‘Abandoned Memory’, where in addition, Raul mixes different analog and digital techniques to create impressionist collages about time and ephemeral memories.
Barcelona based artist Alex Alarcón, who has been recording as Sustainer since 2003. His work has appeared on labels such as Italic, Thinner, Enypnion and most recently the digital album ‘Radiolas’ on Room 40. His sound is built around harmonic Ambient drones and in ‘Taps’, we are proud to present a short album of liquiform pieces which started life as tonal household objects, woven into a watery tapestry. During the recording process, Alex searched for every resonant object in his home and found that metal, ceramic and crystal items were of particular use. These were struck with rubber-textile mallets and fed into a loop pedal via contact mics. Once these sounds and tones were collected, they were then carefully polished into fluid timbres, using various techniques. He strived to create a record made entirely from the sounds of his environment, using his home as an instrument. He wanted to create textures that reflected the peace of home which could only be achieved there, since outdoor field recordings can be so noisy at times.