Italian musician Andrea Belfi has come up with something truly wonderful on his second album ‘Between Neck & Stomach’. Originally trained as a drummer, Belfi created this album over the last four years using two key ideas; the first was that he felt the house he was recording in should be a “living creature with its own voice”. By that he meant that if he was playing something in a room which would cause vibrations or a specific sound, all that should be recorded and emphasized - so you might hear pots and pans rattling as a synthesizer note resonates, or the specific reverb from a bathroom used as the primary part of a track. The other idea was that each piece should be based around one thematic note around which the rest of the track is built. This might sound limiting but over the course of six tracks Belfi shows just how far he can take these themes and how he can mould them to fit his needs. On ‘Extraevil’ what begins as a raucous and frenetic percussion and melodica track halfway through strips down to almost nothing, just a rumble of toms, the melodica drone and the tremble of guitar strings, elsewhere ‘Her Own Desert’ takes a Thomas Koner-style cavernous drone and punctuates it with metallic sounds and bizarre field recordings. The album comes to a close with ‘Footprints’, probably the most traditional sounding track of the six, but it is no less expressive or indeed impressive than the rest. Building melancholy melodies around a glassy hit note and gorgeous percussion this could be the soundtrack to countless European films - in itself an apt summation of all the themes Belfi has approached and mastered over the course of this intriguing album. An engrossing and striking record and one which will lodge itself in your memories for a long time to come.

Boomkat

this collection of works provides a contemporary perspective for the unconventional sounds that can be generated from the guitar. performers were gathered from around the world, from tokyo to texas, norway to turkey, london and beyond. the timbre of this album as a whole is the modern version of the instrument itself, now possessing larger dynamic and harmonic ranges, and seemingly endless possibilities when combined with technology.

furthering the legacy of innovation and expression that the guitar now represents, spectra is a reverberance of living artists creating music for guitar as an acoustic, electric, and meta-instrument.

quietdesign

Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden is a piece by Alvin Curran, recorded in 1973. Weaving his voice, flugelhorn, glass chimes, and synthesizer with the sounds of high-tension wires in Sardinia, swallows in Rome, bees, water, and frog peepers, Curran created music that still sounds unique after 33 years. The piece has an unusual beauty: focussed and expansive, casual and precise, experimental and warmly human. On the eve of Sept. 11th, when something thoughtful and heart-felt seems called for, we listen to this piece in its entirety.

wnyc

Amazon

Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet are both highly respected artists, with small but intensely hardcore followings. Since 2001, they’ve been gradually moving closer towards realizing a collaborative project, and The Breadwinner is the results of two years of recording, reworking and polishing.
Lambkin first entered the public consciousness at 19 when he formed his band The Shadow Ring, in Folkestone, a small town in Kent, England. The band was memorable and built an rabidly passionate fan base because of its sui generis approach, blending elements of folk, noise, cracked electronics, and surrealist poetry, while radically changing the overall formula with each release. A decade of increasingly skewed and inspired work culminated in 2003’s I’m Some Songs, constructed long distance as Lambkin had relocated to the US in 1998. Over the last few years, Lambkin has primarily worked under his own name, most notably with 2007’s brilliant Salmon Run, a precursor to The Breadwinner.

Lescalleet has gradually and painstakingly built a compelling discography over the past decade. He uses reel-to-reel tape decks to explore the textures of low fidelity analog sounds and the natural phenomena of old tape and obsolete technology. He is one of a growing list of master producer/musicians, whose skill lies as much in reworking, assembling and mastering the material available as in creating it (or helping create it) in the first place. He has worked with such wide-ranging artists as Ron Lessard, Joe Colley and Phill Niblock, and has released a string of superb solo discs in Mattresslessness (Cut), Electronic Music (RRR) and The Pilgrim (Glistening Examples). This is his second release for Erstwhile, after 2001’s Forlorn Green (w/Greg Kelley), and his third is already in preparation, a duo with Bhob Rainey, planned for release in early 2009.
The material for The Breadwinner was recorded at Lambkin’s house in upstate NY, over two recording sessions. The duo treated the entire building and its surrounding grounds as a studio, welcoming in outside sounds, which were later kept or eliminated as they felt appropriate. The subtitle on the front cover is “musical settings for common environments and domestic situations”, layering numerous submerged fragments to find beauty in everyday life.
“Jason Lescalleet’s influence was palpably present long before the average Joe knew how many L’s were in his last name (or could successfully google it). He spun tape loops with nmperign from the get-go, frequently signified the endings of his characteristically foundation-shaking performances by hurling a nearly indestructible, hundred-pound Peavy amp across the stage, and provided the bulk of the “disaster” in legendary drummer Laurence Cook’s “Disaster Unit 2000″. But as the smoke cleared and the Peavy met its demise in a white-walled room, it became apparent to an awful lot of people that Lescalleet was making some amazing music; beautifully constructed symphonies of decay born of an intimacy with items and ideas lesser minds might discard: tape machines, lo-bit samplers, the tedium of everyday life. His ability to evoke powerfully complex emotional experiences from such muck made a collaboration with Graham Lambkin practically inevitable.
Composer Walter Marchetti once made a statement to the effect that he was seeking to reach the “bottom” of music. Some more diligent attention to this task might lead him to the music of Graham Lambkin. Already marking out a glorious bottom with his former band, The Shadow Ring, Lambkin has pursued a music so removed from prescribed aesthetics that one is flooded by the beauty it seems to ruthlessly avoid. He puts the mundane to tape and carves out its horror, its sweetness, and its unsettling ambivalence. Shrouded in a disarming naiveté, the music leaves the listener ill-prepared for its very adult take on being-in-the-world. We are fortunate that humor can be so black, that we may surrender happily and willingly to an experience not many artists are willing or capable of delivering.”-Bhob Rainey

erstwhile records

Graham Lambkin/Jason Lescalleet microphone, tapes, Casio SK-5

Finnish composer Sasu Ripatti returns in late summer with Tummaa, his first album as Vladislav Delay since 2007’s Whistleblower. The new album marks a significant shift in emphasis in this acclaimed musician’s work, reflecting a renewed interest in jazz and acoustic performance: Tummaa is far more organic and live-sounding than anything he’s done before.

Ripatti is considered a genuine musical maverick; the devotion inspired by the depth, innovation and emotional volume of his music is passionate in the extreme. While he has largely shunned the limelight since emerging as a producer in Helsinki in the late 90s, his prolific output (as Delay, Luomo and Uusitalo, as well as collaborations with partner Antye Greie (AGF)) speaks for itself.

His accomplishments include collaborations with a vast array of musicians and singers such as Craig Armstrong, Black Dice, Massive Attack, Towa Tei, Jake Shears, Robert Owens and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Since returning to live in Finland in 2008 after seven years in Berlin, Sasu Ripatti has begun to emerge more fully as the identity behind this decade of fascinating, although somewhat clandestine endeavours, coinciding with a return to Ripatti’s first love of performing as a percussionist.

With a wide range of experience with record labels throughout his career (from major labels with the Luomo project and the cream of the underground via Mille Plateaux, Chain Reaction, Force Tracks, and BPitch Control among many), Ripatti has for the last five years released works on his own Huume label. So it’s with great pride that long-time admirers The Leaf Label welcome Ripatti for his landmark latest release as Vladislav Delay. It marks the beginning of a new chapter in the Sasu Ripatti story.
“I wanted to take a new direction with Vladislav Delay, with more acoustic sound sources,” he explains. “I avoided as much electronics as possible, wanting to bring myself closer to my background as a drummer and percussionist.”

Trained as a jazz drummer, Ripatti abandoned his instrument ten years ago. “I quit mainly because there wasn’t really a platform for me to do what I wanted and it’s naturally very rewarding to be able to do that now, coming at it from totally different angle as my playing and concepts have been strongly influenced by the electronic music as well as other urban music styles.” Outside of his work as a solo artist under various nom de plumes, Ripatti has also begun performing live as a drummer again, as a member of the Moritz von Oswald Trio (with a forthcoming album on Honest Jon’s) and in his own band the Vladislav Delay Quartet (featuring Mika ‘Pan Sonic’ Vainio, double bassist Derek Shipley and Lucio Capece), who will record an album later this year.
“This was also a big part of me getting back to playing percussion and drums,” Ripatti says of the Moritz von Oswald Trio. “It’s really inspiring and challenging what I can do with the trio, bringing very unique sounds, metal sculptures and handmade instruments and fusing them into what Max Louderbauer and Moritz are doing with electronics. It’s just my first love and strongest as well. I just love hitting things… making sounds physically without needing a power plug.”

Tummaa essentially features a live trio – Ripatti on percussion, Argentine musician Lucio Capece on clarinet and saxophone, and acclaimed Scottish soundtrack composer and arranger Craig Armstrong on piano and Rhodes (Ripatti previously collaborated with Armstrong on the 1995 album The Dolls, along with Ante Greie). Ripatti set the tone, recording his drum parts and then inviting Capece to his studio to improvise alongside the drums. Armstrong offered recordings of pure solo piano playing he had made for the project. From these two sound sources, Ripatti began composing and arranging, and wrote a whole suite of music.
“With this project and these sounds I try not to let any outside influence come through and just fully trust my instincts to make the music I really need to bring out and hear. I try not to think or analyze, I just go at the moment and play as I feel. It’s the introverted and slightly darker side of me, the anti-pop persona that comes out on this project.”

Created during the winter while Ripatti and his family were living on a remote island in the Baltic Sea within the Arctic Circle, he explains that “Tummaa means dark or darkness, which reflects the music on the album somehow but also the fact that I worked on the album during ‘kaamos’ time of the year in Finland. Kaamos time really gets dark from December to February where you only have few hours of light per day. I really liked that and the whole winter enormously.”

The results are jaw-dropping. Venerated as a master of rhythm and a true artisan of the studio (the photos of his immaculate analogue studio from The Wire’s 2008 cover shoot had gear hounds aquiver) capturing resonant, organic and acoustic sounds and coercing them into unearthly cadences and foreign textures that are unlike anything else – yet irresistibly hypnotic. (His disclosed past as an enthusiast for mind altering substances comes as no surprise). Ripatti’s love of jazz is also never far from the surface.
“Jazz has been the most influential thing in my life without a doubt. Musicianship, creativity, pushing the limits, improvisation… I think no matter what type of music I’m making my jazz roots and appreciation of it plays a big role. There are some exceptional things that happened during the 60s and 70s that are very important to me. What some of the greats did shaped the future of music so strongly. Miles Davis, but also John Coltrane, lots of drummers, Bill Evans and his trio…”

Tummaa’s compositions are engaging and engulfing, whole worlds of sonic wonder and journeys into the deep that will leave you gasping. The constant push for more honest and revealing emotions abut against the same desire for absolute integrity of the sonic qualities. It’s a heady combination.

Armstrong’s waterfall piano and Rhodes infuse ‘Melankolia’ with sweeping emotion amid the tension and intensity of Ripatti’s fractured, almost industrial percussive fragments, anticipatory fizzes and low-end hums. In some ways, this is a very gentle introduction to the incredible galaxy of sound contained on ‘Kuula (Kiitos)’ (translated as ‘Bullet (Thank You)’), where glimmering piano bleeds into the fabric of Capece’s strangled bass clarinet and muffled soprano sax, entwined with a scattering of grainy beats.

By far the most immediately striking piece is the woody, resounding animal honk of ‘Mustelmia’ (meaning ‘Bruises’) where a defiantly springy, bouncy array of volcanic beats and liquid gulps and pops erupt in response to Capece’s eerie tones and textures. While ‘Musta Planeetta’ (‘Black Planet’) is a more meditative play across the keyboard timbres, ‘Toive’ (‘Wish’) builds into a crescendo of throbbing, submarine percussion, Capece’s horns like distant wildlife in a tropical forest. ‘Tummaa’ has a cavernous dub sensibility, all ricocheting percussion and the Rhodes distilled to stabs or glistening feedback reverberations. ‘Tunnelivisio’ (‘Tunnel Vision’) burrows even deeper into the echo chamber, lending a psyche-cinematic drama to the album’s finale.

It’s not often you find yourself both dumbfounded and emotionally spent by listening to an album, but Tummaa is a feat of uncommon musical power and magnetic force. Once introduced to Sasu Ripatti’s hypnotic world, you won’t ever want to leave.

The limited edition double vinyl LP of Tummaa is cut from high quality 24-bit audio masters, using DMM.

LEAF

In its “Blue Serie”, the label Thirsty Ear releases the first compilation of the famous and unique Vision Festival in New York.
Since seven years, this community and multi-arts festival (music, dance…) programs, in particular, some of the most interesting musicians of the actual improvised music and avant-garde jazz scene.

Recorded live during the 2002 edition of the festival (May 23rd to June 2nd), this nine titles compilation presents musicians usually accustomed of the Blue Serie, like pianist Matthew Shipp, double bass player William Parker or viola player Mat Maneri, but also vocalist Ellen Christi, saxophonist Douglas Ewart… without forgetting the brillant last ten minutes of the record : a solo improvisation of the German double bass player Peter Kowald - unfortunately deceased a few months after the recording.

The audio CD is completed by a DVD on which you will find video footage of each band - sometimes mixed with images of the great live painting of Jeff Schlanger.

In short, this compilation is an excellent way to familiarize oneself with these musicians representative of a creative, innovating and very actual American scene.

ARTISTS
Muntu; Dave Burrell and Tyrone Brown; Billy Bang Trio; Douglas Ewart Quintet; Matthew Shipp String Trio; Karen Borca Quartet; Ellen Christi Quartet; Kidd Jordan / Fred Anderson Quartet; Peter Kowald

Jazzloft

Colin McLean /Andy Moor - Everything But The Beginning (unsounds U17)
The first release from Andy Moor and Colin McLean since they disbanded Dog Faced Hermans 13 years ago . A collection of ‘live ‘ recordings of improvisiations over a period of three years in collabortion with several dancers that took place in Amsterdam at OT 301. Andy’s unmistakable guitar blended with live sampling and electronics from Colin, creating a dark filmic atmosphere.

Unsounds

AMM’s “at the roundhouse” has always been a kind of a mythical recording especially for the cycles of the early british/free improv scenes as it was an obscure 7″ issued on incus some 3 decades ago and ever since was a hard to find item. It wasn’t though until a couple of years when eric @ anomalous showed an evergrowing interest in obtaining infos & recordings around the ices festival of 72 where the
actual amm set took place and almost a year when he announced the forthcoming cd reissue of the amm’s entire set of that festival from which the grooves of the incus 7″ were cut. gotta admit that my knowledge for ices festival was almost zero and was thanks to eric that did I learn infos about it I must also admit that regarding the whole festival thing I wished eric or someone could track down more infos, etc plus more recordings in order to do a kind of a retrospective box or something like that reissue, without meaning to underestimate the reissue of amm’s music of course. the introductory cd booklet notes work as a great guide to it and lots of weird scenarios were born in my mythoplastic imagination around it. but coming to the recording itself. Is a documented era of amm’s mark 2, where for nearly 5-6 years the super improv group is down to 2 members, eddie prevost on percussion and lou gare on sax. the duo that issued the memorable “hear and back again’ lp in the early 70’s (reissued on cd on matchless) and to be honest must be one of the amm eras that don’t work that good for me. an era that today sounds more affiliated to free jazz to my ears rather than the bizarre free improv nature am looking for. this doesn’t mean that that the recording is kinda jazzy nor expect to listen the standard free jazz patterns of that era instead I think that captures the atmosphere of the more classic free musics live spirit of that time. - Nicolas in absurdities#10 Frans de Waard in Vital Weekly 413

Matchless Recordings

From the desolate hills of Albuquerque, New Mexico comes self-styled black ambient overlord William Fowler Collins. Brought up in New England and educated in San Francisco, the constant traveling has given his music a rare patience and focus and a distinct connection with the sprawling American landscape. Like Earth’s seminal ‘Hex’ before it, ‘Perdition Hill Radio’, his second full-length, invokes the ghosts of a lost America and drags the rotting carcass of country music through a swamp of noise and drone.

With a love of both experimental ambient music and ear-splitting black metal, Collins has arrived upon a grim hybrid of both. Black ambient might be the best description as this is neither one nor the other, inhabiting a lonely space in-between. The chugging, blown out treble and isolated darkness of Xasthur is all present and correct, but there are also echoes of William Basinski and Deaf Center hidden amongst the clouds of radio static. These rare cracks of beauty are what make ‘Perdition Hill Radio’ such an arresting listening experience, and what sets it apart from so much that has come before.

There is a shadowy link between the compositions of William Fowler Collins and fellow Type artists Svarte Greiner and Xela; all three share a similar fascination with the darker side of the ambient spectrum. Collins however manages to re-frame this darkness to suit the sun-baked mountain tops of New Mexico, and it’s all the bleaker for it. As crows circle an anonymous skeleton and brightly coloured lizards retreat into their dark corners, there could be no better soundtrack than this. Dark, doomy and with no escape from the pounding sun up above – ‘Perdition Hill Radio’ is a truly cinematic record.

Type Records

Another in the series of Koner’s self-consciously chilled and mysterious albums created with the use of treated cymbals, Nunatak Gongamur truly pushes the bounds of not merely ambient music, but music in general. Consisting almost entirely of dark drones and bursts, separated into 11 separate untitled tracks but essentially one extended piece, Nunatak Gongamur takes as the source of its inspiration the ill-fated Scott expedition to the South Pole. Celebrated at the time as a glorious defeat in the war of man against nature, later investigation demonstrated Scott to be a charismatic but ultimately flawed leader, blinded in particular by some astoundingly incompetent judgments on his part. One of them, the use of ponies (plant-eating animals sent to a continent where their fodder didn’t grow anywhere), is noted with the cover art. Koner’s composition falls somewhere between a requiem for the loss and waste of the expedition and a haunting, extremely inhuman evocation of the endless snow and ice fields of Antarctica that the core members of the expedition struggled through and died in. The swathes of deep echo and occasional crumbling rhythm create an aura of paranoid fascination, at once weirdly soothing and increasing the nervous tension every chance it gets. When Koner adds variety to the music, the effect can almost be shocking — consider the sudden distorted whines on the third and fifth tracks, which with its slight echo treatment and the rumbling background moans could almost be a disturbing cry for help. Other times, tones barely lurk in the mix, only on the edge of hearing, like being caught in an endless cavern where something curious hides in the dim distance. The killer touch is the use of space throughout the album — silences of various lengths maintaining the air of mysterious threat. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
C 2008 All Media Guide, LLC

There are two different editions of this CD. The booklet is identical, the CD prints appear very similar, but they are pressed at different plants. The main difference is the backcover. The first edition does not have a barcode and no reference to Staalplaat, but the original Barooni P.O.Box address instead. Also it features the credits “roland spekle, sonnenstudio, cem studio” - whatever that means. This repress comes with c/o Staalplaat address and barcode, but without the extra credits.

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