Catalogue

TO:125 Fennesz – ‘Mosaic’

6th December 2024 » Permalink: TO:125 Fennesz – ‘Mosaic’

Available to order now on bandcamp
Release date: 6th December 2024

Track Listing: [CD – 6 tracks]

1. Heliconia
2. Love and the Framed Insects
3. Personare
4. A Man Outside
5. Patterning Heart
6. Goniorizon

This is Fennesz’s most reflective album to date. Composed and recorded at the end of 2023 and completed in the summer of 2024. Fennesz set up a new studio space, the third one in four years. He had no immediate concept, this time starting from scratch, with a strict working routine. He got up early in the morning, worked until midday then had a break and worked again until evening. At first, just collecting ideas, experimenting, improvising. Then composing, mixing and correcting. Yet the title came early, ‘Mosaic’, which mirrored this process of putting an element into place one at a time to build the full picture, an ancient technique of making an image, before pixels did it in a flash.

This ‘9 to 5′ working routine had already been developed on ‘Agora’ [Touch 2019]. All the other albums before were done differently; a few weeks work, then months in between and another few days or weeks of work. ‘Mosaic’ was done from beginning to end without a break.

Packaged in the now familiar DVD-style case with artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft, there is an echo to ‘Venice’ but 20 years later the division between the land, the horizon and the deep blue sea is more extreme.

Fennesz experiments with unusual time signatures. It’s not obvious, but ‘Love and the Framed Insects’ is in 7/4. ‘Personare’ is somehow influenced by West African pop music from the 1980s. ‘Goniorizon’ originally consisted of six hard rock guitar riffs mixed on top of one another. Then it became this ‘thing’ that somehow opened possibilities for new things to come… all this adds up to a filmic, highly involving and beautiful score of diverse influences and multiple possibilities to be explored by the listener.

Recorded by Christian Fennesz at Seven Fountains/Vienna between January and May 2024
Mastered by Denis Blackham
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd

For more information, you can visit his website here

Reviews:

Fennesz and the Meaning of Ambient Music – Feature in Hearing Things, December 2024 by Mark Richardson

The Quietus, December 2024 by Levi Dayan

CHAIN D.L.K. (net):

5/5

Fennesz’s “Mosaic” is an album as delicate and intricate as its name suggests, piecing together sonic fragments into something vast and immersive. Created with a meticulous, almost meditative process, Fennesz assembled this work layer by layer, as if restoring a forgotten memory or constructing a sonic monument.

There’s irony in its mechanical working routine – the “9 to 5” approach – because “Mosaic” feels anything but formulaic. It breathes in moments of improvisation, taking unpredictable turns. The album’s opener, “Heliconia,” drifts in with a weightless, crystalline shimmer, setting the mood for a meditative yet dynamic sonic exploration. Then there’s “Love and the Framed Insects” in 7/4 time – a rhythmic decision that nods to his knack for subverting expectations, presenting complexity as subtlety. The West African influences on “Personare” are yet another twist, drawing connections between distant musical worlds.

What makes “Mosaic” stand apart from Fennesz’s earlier works – like “Agora” or even “Venice” – is its sense of maturity, a reflective patience. Here, time moves differently. Each track feels like an architectural structure in sound, designed with careful precision,but imbued with an organic pulse. The guitar textures, always a hallmark of Fennesz’s sound, are present but seem more submerged, part of the overall collage rather than the focal point. Take “Goniorizon” for instance: originally built from hard rock riffs, it somehow transforms into something cinematic, a constantly shifting soundscape of fractured beauty.

The beauty of “Mosaic” lies in its contradictions. It is, on one hand, a highly intellectual project built through methodical experimentation with time signatures and structures. Yet it feels deeply emotional, even mystical – an invitation to explore hidden spaces, to hear the whispers of sound ghosts hiding in its layers. The album title echoes this balance: a mosaic is both a constructed image and an organic whole, each piece significant yet incomplete without the others.

With “Mosaic”, Fennesz once again proves he’s not just a musician but a sonic architect, crafting worlds for us to inhabit, even if only for a moment before they dissolve into the ether. It’s an album where science meets dream, precision meets poetry, and sound itself becomes an ancient language we’re invited to rediscover. A real jewel! [Vita Camarretta]

MOJO (UK):

Juno Records (UK):

Christian Fennesz returns with Mosaic, an intricate album that lives up to its name, crafted meticulously layer by layer. Recorded throughout 2023 and completed in 2024, the project marks Fennesz’s most reflective work yet. After setting up a new studio, his third in four years, Fennesz followed a disciplined daily routine, building the album from scratch without breaks. This structured approach allowed him to experiment freely, collecting and improvising ideas before developing them into fully composed pieces.The Touch label is natural home for this release. Some of his most important work has found its way to the label over the past 25 years like 2004’s Venice and 2001’s Endless Summer. Mosaic s has a delicate assembly of sonic fragments, creating a soundscape both complex and organic. The opener, ‘Heliconia’, introduces shimmering tones that float effortlessly, establishing a meditative atmosphere. Fennesz’s unique approach to rhythm shines through on tracks like ‘Love and the Framed Insects’, which features an unconventional 7/4 time signature. Meanwhile, ‘Personare’ draws subtle inspiration from 1980s West African pop, a surprising influence that adds depth to the album’s palette. One of the album’s most intriguing pieces, ‘Goniorizon’, began with layers of hard rock guitar riffs but eventually evolved into something cinematic, showcasing Fennesz’s ability to transform raw elements into magnificent landscapes. While guitar textures remain present, they feel more integrated into the overall fabric of the sound, lending the album a cohesive, filmic quality. Mosaic is both methodical and emotional, blending experimentation with an underlying sense of nostalgia. Another excellent album from one of the best. [Joachim Spieth]

sun-13 (UK):

Whilst weak Christian Fennesz albums simply don’t exist, the Austrian experimentalist’s 2019 release, Agora flickered with the same magic as touchstone releases, Endless Summer and Venice. Closing cut alone, We Trigger the Sun, one of best compositions within the Fennesz oeuvre.

Agora was an album that saw Fennesz go beyond the realm in exploring the origins of ’70s glam, throwing it through the sonic mincer as only he knows how. It was Fennesz showcasing an ability to move beyond the majestic environmental-based inspirations that have served him so well over the year for something even more ethereal.

Mosaic, Fennesz’s much-anticipated follow-up sees the guitarist shift the goalposts once again. Composed and recorded at the end of last year in a new studio space, like Agora, Mosaic is a product engineered via strict routine. But unlike the preconceived ideas and mapping out of concepts that eventually formed Agora, Mosaic’s foundation was built within the working paradigm of nine to five. And through the inner grains, it can be heard. Each of the six compositions that comprise of Mosaic, taking their own flight path.

Heliconia is a unique language in itself. Those glacial-like dreamscapes that Fennesz has crafted throughout the years, transcendental in both sound and feel. You simply know a Fennesz piece when you hear it. A frequency only he knows how to reach, and adopting the 7/4 time signature, Loved and Framed Insects taps into the same vein, conjuring up emotional vistas with psychedelia pulsating at the centre of it all.

Personare is like an electric jolt that echoes from one orbit to another, and while Agora saw Fennesz exploring ’70s glam, here his latest source of inspiration is found within the realms of West African pop music. Meanwhile, the droning undercurrents of A Man Outside are designed for the same monolithic sound systems The Bug has taken assault to over the years – this piece, crystalising the same magic Fennesz’s caught alongside Kevin Martin’s King Midas Sound project in 2015’s Edition 1.

Then there’s Patterning Heart. Quintessential Fennesz, mirroring the imagery Mosaic’s artwork. Effortless shifts in tone and texture, here he pulls the mind to the kind of open space where you completely lose track of everything around you. It’s space that reduces with each passing day, but through sound, Fennesz manages to stem the chaos and speed of this new world.

On closing piece, Goniorizon, what initially consisted of six guitar riffs mixed on top of one another is melted down and manipulated into an illusionary collage of swishes and swirls. As he always does with closing stanzas, Fennesz’s proficiency to zone in and execute the perfect composition makes for something richly hypnotic.

It’s the psychedelic experience Fennesz has always been immersed in. Stripping it back, and Mosaic reveals his deep lying passion for rock music. And by dismantling and reconfiguring it in ways only he knows how, Fennesz makes guitar music sound sexy. While his work has been echoed and pilfered throughout the years, there’s only one Fennesz; his methods of refining tone and texture simply can’t be replicated. Mosaic is further proof of that.[Simon Kirk]

Boomkat (UK):

Billed as Christian Fennesz’s most reflective album, ‘Mosaic’ is a mature, concentrated set of textured guitar granulisations that plays like a sequel to ‘Venice’, with the Austrian artist’s deconstructionist sense of pop melodicism underpinning even his most abstract experiments.

‘Mosaic’ got its title from Fennesz’s labour intensive production approach, where he would build each element separately, slowly assembling a full, vivid soundscape piece-by-piece. It’s the first he’s written beginning to end without a break, working from 9 to 5 each day in his Vienna studio, and although he started without a set concept, there’s a sense that he was at least partly inspired by the recent 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Venice’. This album pulses with the same feeling of wonder, but it’s been tempered by age and experience; if ‘Venice’ was moody and whimsical, ‘Mosaic’ augments those feelings with deeper reflections. Each composition sounds as if it’s been sculpted and stretched even further than before; those heartstring-pulling harmonies still buzz in the background, but they’ve been smudged, prodded and pulled.

Take ‘Loved and the Framed Insects’ as an example, and it doesn’t reveal itself too quickly. Fennesz wrote the track in 7/4, and while its rhythm is hard to discern at first, its momentum – like a pop song played backwards – makes it sound distinct and unusual in the best way. Similarly, ‘Personare’ takes its inspiration from ’80s West African pop music, and presses it through Fennesz’s usual digital meat grinder, turning the levitational melodies into gaseous traces. On ‘Goniorizon’, Fennesz obliterates the memory of various “hard rock guitar riffs”, stacking them on top of each other and extracting the harmonies, transforming them into brokenhearted drones.

Norman Records (UK):

The title of sonic alchemist Fennesz‘s Mosaic refers to the age-old process of assembling something bit by bit, from small pieces to form a greater whole. For the album, he assembled yet another studio space and began grafting with an organized nine-to-five work ethic with zero initial concept. Improvisation and experimentation yielded fresh ideas, working in unorthodox time signatures, pushing his sound ever forward but always with that unique Fennesz magic.

Bandcamp (USA):

There’s never been a better time for a new Fennesz record. Not only are the days getting shorter and chillier for many of us, but the resurgence of interest in blissful, bleary-eyed shoegaze naturally aligns the Austrian ambient maestro’s music with our collective mood shift. Christian Fennesz has been wielding the guitar as a tool for texture since the late ‘90s, collaborating with the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto and creating path-blazing masterworks like 2001’s Endless Summer, bringing a human touch to the digital that debunks inaccurate stereotypes about the numbness of computer music.

Mosaic, Fennesz’s first solo offering in five years, is held together by meticulously assembled grains of detail, much like the millennia-old artistic technique that gives the album its name. In order to make what the album notes dub his “most reflective album to date,” the producer-guitarist adhered to a 9-to-5 workday schedule that allowed for structure and routine, collaging the flotsam and jetsam of his sound design into a horizon-expanding vista that mirrors the meditative cover art. Mosaicconsists of long, slow stretches of ambient drift that evoke a trance-like state; yet for all of its composure, it still teems with electroacoustic life. Listen carefully, and you’ll hear the echoey swash of water on opener “Heliconia”; hand-dryer-like squall and a distant siren on “A Man Outside”; and distortion-crusted footsteps on “Patterning Heart.” All of them contribute to a complex digital ecosystem of its own design. Headphones are a must.

Fennesz buries the record’s varied influences and building blocks beneath intense washes of fuzz and jet-engine noise, rather than exposing them to the elements. “Personare”—which means ‘chant’ or ‘shout out’ in Latin—is influenced by ‘80s West African pop music while album closer “Goniorizon” transforms “six hard rock guitar riffs” beyond recognition, conjuring a bejeweled harmonic sequence that pops up like moss-covered stepping stones in a forest.

For all his future-facing smarts, Fennesz is unafraid of filling his soundscapes with emotion. That tendency makes itself known on Mosaic standout “Love and the Framed Insects,” a decaying track blanketed in reverb and sporting an unusual time signature. Ringing out beneath the processed mulch is a crystalline melody that spreads like a shard of sunlight through parting clouds. Mosaic administers the ultimate antidote to dark nights and bleak times; it is music to get lost in. [April Clare Welsh]

Igloo (Canada):

hristian Fennesz has been one of the most talked about names in experimental electronic music for almost thirty years now, and the reason being is probably because the music has always stayed both consistent and varied. From his own solo catalog, to the large number of collaborations and projects he’s taken part in, Fennesz has essentially made a name for himself by constantly being able to put out memorable music with his unique approach. Starting off with his minimalistic 1997 debut Hotel paral.lel— remastered in 2007 with Editions Mego—Fennesz has since structured his music to be more textured and layered, leaning more towards atmosphere and stretched guitar sequences later in his career. Not forgetting the outstanding Venice—an album that continues to work extremely well, even after 20 years.

His last solo record, Agora, happened to be my favorite of his, as it was a pretty substantial shift in composition; featuring only four lengthy tracks, that LP focused on creating immersive and rather textured ambient pieces, thus also being pretty far from some of Fennesz’s more experimental outcomings, such as the 4g project he took part in with Rowe, Ambarchi, and Nakamura. That left me hoping that his following LP would feature a similar approach, and here we are today with Mosaic.

Mosaic does, in fact, feature a very similar approach to Agora. Longer tracks, which slowly and subtly transform throughout their course, heavily focused on ambience and texture. In contrast, Mosaic is a lot more delicate, as there’s barely any big climaxes or walls of noise to be found. It’s pretty smooth, at parts, which is not a common trait with Fennesz recordings. That’s mainly due to how much this album highlights its open soundscapes, far more than its use of texture and noise, as long and sustained sweeps are far more prevalent than any glitchy details.

Some very characteristic Fennesz touches ::

There are still some very characteristic Fennesz touches though, such as with “Heliconia,” my favorite track of the bunch. It starts off with ambience like I’ve talked about until now, really slow and drawn-out chords that make the first half of the piece really soothing. It’s still very much textured, with some really thin noise being one of the more noticeable timbres at the beginning, but later getting overshadowed by these big chords and some brighter textures of noise. However, “Heliconia” offers a surprising switch in its second half; it’s easy to get lost in a piece like this and think it’s going to grow bigger and bigger for the whole nine minutes it lasts for, but instead it decides to slow down. Fennesz’s signature guitar use becomes apparent halfway in, where some proper strums appear; it is not common to find more traditional guitar playing in Fennesz’s music, even though there’s always been some if you look for it, but this time it’s really, really blunt. It’s an interesting approach too, as said guitar isn’t left untouched, each strum seems to stutter, almost as if it was repeating three or four times in milliseconds. It’s a refreshing touch, and it makes this track super memorable.

sunroof-electronic-music-improvisations-v3

“Love and the Framed Insects” continues the streak of highlights, thanks to the most beautiful textures on the album. It’s an almost dreamy track, not trance-inducing but surely hypnotic. You can catch some really, really sweet guitar slides here and there, and their occasional nature is what makes them so nice to pick up, as they’re not a repeating element like the ones in the track’s core. Disrupting this beautiful calm is a pretty loud section at the midpoint, which isn’t unpleasant by any means, but will open your eyelids in case you were getting carried away by the comfort.

Similar approach is in “Personare,” which is one of the most repetitive and homogenous tracks on the LP. The sudden shift halfway in provides a great contrast to disrupt the monotony, and is easily one of the best parts of the whole record. The really thick and buzzy textures that pop up in this break are seriously great, and I love how the piece maintains that sweet buzzy drone even afterwards, going back to the track’s original loop but with this added meaty whir.

Then there’s “A Man Outside,” the quietest and most minimalistic. It’s the one track that I would confidently say is focused most on its textures than it is one atmosphere, as it also occasionally presents parts where no more than a veil of noise or some clicky sounds make their way in. It is a bit unmemorable as a result, but it does contribute to the variety of the album.

A desolate detour ::

After that desolate detour, the album strikes back with two more comforting pieces, “Patterning Heart” and the closer “Goniorizon.” The former is rather melancholic in nature, and not too dissimilar to “Love and the Framed Insects” when it comes to progression, as it slowly and really subtly changes as it moves forward—each echo seems to be slightly different from the previous, sometimes the noise seems to be just a little bit louder, and there’s some atonal crunches every now and then.

“Goniorizon” leaves even more of an impression, as it features the smoothest and most fluid textures on the LP. It almost feels like taking a bath in sparkling water, though not that I know what that actually feels like; it’s the continuous fluid motion of bubbling noises that makes me feel that way, and it sure is a track you can get lost in pretty easily. It’s so damn pleasant as it is, but it gets even better as it sometimes grows significantly in volume, reaching these brief moments of ecstasy to shake things up.

Mosaic is yet another valid addition to Fennesz’s already spotless catalog. Among the many ambient records I’ve heard this year, Fennesz thankfully reminds us of what ambient music can be when it is done in an original way, rather than offering the usual pulp of clean synth pads with some string arrangements. Truth be told, records like this surely don’t come out of the blue, as the guy has plenty of experience to put on his tapes and has perfected his own style over the years. Mosaic may not be the ultimate depiction of those capabilities, but it sure is yet another winner among his many wonderful LPs; being an amazingly detailed record that is instantly recognizable as no one else’s but Fennesz’s. [Pietro]

Brooklyn Vegan (USA):

There is so much ambient music out there, classics and current stuff being churned out for Spotify playlists, but few do it like Christian Fennesz. Mosaic is his first solo album since 2019’s wonderful Agora* (one of that year’s best) and the sounds of his treated guitar are like catching up with an old friend you haven’t seen in ages, familiar and welcome in all the right ways. His skills are so nuanced, this record really demands headphone listening or a really good sound system, cranked up to a proper volume so that his meticulously designed atmospheres can really swirl around you. (On that note: someone talk Christian into doing Dolby Atmos mixes for his records.) The title came from the process he used this time, piecing together disparate sonic elements that when viewed from the proper distance form awe-inspiring imagery as you listen. There are no seams visible in this Mosaic. Fennesz has a distinct style that, like Robin Guthrie, is so unique that even though it doesn’t change that much from record to record you don’t mind. Especially when he is making two records a decade, every new one is a gift.

Brainwashed (USA):

You can read the article here

De Morgen (BE):

The waves on Mosaic’s cover already indicate: it will be bobbing on foam heads, but keep an eye on that insidious undertow. It would be short-sighted to dismiss this record as ambient electronica. As a rule, it is, but these soundscapes are more abstract. And Christian Fennesz shows himself at his most cinematic as well as emotional. At times the compositions sound effusively raw, another time grand and compelling. The experimental ‘Love and the Framed Insects’ is surprisingly just gorgeous. ‘Personare’ in turn serves as a toned nightmare, but it works just as well as a banger in a techno club or around a fire in a pygmy village. And closing track ‘Goniorizon’ is as enervating as it is hypnotic. Deep stuff.

salt peanuts* (SE):

Viennese sound artist-guitarist Christian Fennesz worked on Mosaic in a ‘9 to 5’ routine in his new Seven Fountains studio space in Vienna but with no immediate concept. He got up early in the morning, worked until midday, took a break, and worked again until evening. Ideas morphed into experimental, improvised themes, sculpted and gravitated into layered compositions, and were tightened and corrected during the mixing process.

The title reflects this intense, working process of putting an element into place one at a time, just like ancient art that takes its time to build a full picture. The cover photo by Jon Wozencroft intensifies this reflective dimension and references the cover artwork of the masterful Venice (Touch, 2004 and 2024), but the division between the land, the horizon, and the deep blue sea is more extreme.

Mosaic follows the last studio album, Agora, which was released five years ago. Fennesz completed the work on Mosaic between January and May 2024. It is a most beautiful, highly immersive, dream-like listening experience. It suggests a nuanced but symphonic web of cinematic-kaleidoscopic sounds – including subtle, seductive noises, and colors, openly emotional but in an understated manner, and orchestrated in an enigmatic, left-off-center way.

Fennesz experiments with subtle, unusual time signatures and borrows ideas from surprising sources. «Love and the Framed Insects» surfs on an elusive, atmospheric 7/4 pulse. «Personare» transforms West African pop music from the 1980s into Fennesz’s idiosyncratic sonic universe. The closing piece «Goniorizon» was based on six hard rock guitar riffs mixed on top of one another, mutated into a resonant, spiraling drone.

Eyal Hareuveni

Tone 86 Philip Jeck – ‘rpm’

28th October 2024 » Permalink: Tone 86 Philip Jeck – ‘rpm’

Release date: 15th November 2024
Available to order now on Bandcamp

Track Listing: [DCD – 16 tracks]

CD1
1. Fennesz – Dancer
2. Gavin Bryars & Philip Jeck – 1 Piste
3. Chris Watson – Saltmarshe Station
4. Rosy Parlane – Stoked
5. Cris Cheek – Clocking Off
6. Claire M Singer & Philip Jeck – Sketch One
7. Gavin Bryars & Philip Jeck – 4 Piste
8. Faith Coloccia – Pleione

CD2
1. Philip Jeck – Mono
2. David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir – I Measure Every Grief I Meet
3. Claire M Singer & Philip Jeck – Sketch Two
4. Jah Wobble & Deep Space – Jeck, Drums, 2 Basses
5. Drums Off Chaos – Keep in Touch
6. Gavin Bryars & Philip Jeck – 8 Piste
7. Chandra Shukla – The Ark Has Closed
8. Jana Winderen & Philip Jeck – Pilots

With rpm, we wanted to join some of the dots of Philip’s life and involve many other collaborators, early and more recent. Fennesz was a friend and kindred spirit on the same label. Claire M Singer formed a new chemistry and partnership and although their plans must now take a different form, Mary found some sketches Philip had laid out using Claire’s organ recordings, for further development. Faith Coloccia & Philip had already released Stardust on Touch in 2021. Their live performance together at 2220arts + archives, Los Angeles in March 2022 celebrating Touch’s 40th anniversary had to be shelved. And in September of that year Iklectik hosted a memorable tribute night with live work from Chris Watson, Liverpool Improvisation Collective, Claire M Singer and others – most of all a dedicated audience who knew and felt that this was a future event and not the end of the story.

A work in progress at the time of Philip’s death, Oxmardyke, a project with Chris Watson, saw the light of day as Touch Tone 83 in early 2023 – working on recordings Chris had sent, Philip with laptop perched on hospital bed, almost to the end. There were other artists who wanted to actively contribute further, whether in performance or contributing to this album: Jana Winderen had already sent Philip her recordings of pilot whales and the track you hear was finished in March 2022. Cris Cheek was in Slant with Philip and Sianed Jones, who also sadly left us that same year – their work together predates Philip’s with Touch. Philip owed much in his early years of composing and playing to his collaboration with dancers, theatre and film makers – in particular, a 10 year working and performing partnership with Laurie Booth, Yip Yip Mix and the 20th Century, which toured widely during the 1980s and early 90s. An early audio visual work, Vinyl Requiem (1993) was created with visual artist Lol Sargent, using 180 record players, nine slide projectors and two 16mm projectors producing a live performance on a huge scale. Vinyl Requiem wasn’t exactly about the end of vinyl, but the dawn of some- thing else regarding sound recording and music. It was never a final statement but a testament to the work to come.

Compiled & edited by Mary Prestidge, Mike Harding & Jon Wozencroft
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

For more information, you can visit his website here

Reviews:

A Closer Listen (USA):

Top Ten Experimental Albums of 2024

rpm is an incredible collection, a sonic eulogy for a fallen composer. The double album includes contributions and collaborations with friends, some of which had been planned or unfinished at the time of his death. But of course Jeck’s work is the unifying factor, his brilliance shining through every piece. Gone but not forgotten, Jeck was an originator and a trail blazer, and his influence is heard throughout the industry. A huge congratulations to Touch for this indelible tribute, a gathering of like-minded artists, generous in length and in love. [Richard Allen]

and #14 in the 2024 chart

A collaboration with Chris Watson, last year’s Oxmardyke (which also made our Top 20 list) seemed to be the last work of a great experimenter, Philip Jeck. This year’s rpm is a Festschrift of sorts – a volume of dedications, reworkings, and collaborations that sees an impressive roster of sonic investigators clustering around Jeck’s memory. A master of the turntable, the loop, the manipulation of prerecorded sound, Jeck spent much of his career navigating the complexities and possibilities of memory – which can be tactile, audible, psychological, or otherwise. It is impossible to discern the boundaries between Jeck, the various source materials, the hardware, and the collaborators/commemorators on this album. Of course, that’s part of the beauty. Here we celebrate the ephemeral and transitory nature, not just of sound and media, but of human life itself. [Samuel Rogers]

Ambientblog (net):

Philip Jeck, who passed away in 2022, will be remembered as the godfather of turntablism. He worked with old records and record players, playing them as musical instruments and thus creating a new kind of performance art. His ‘Vinyl Requiem’ (with Lol Sargent) used no less than 180 (!) record players – and won the Time Out Performance Award in 1993. He played and performed with many well-known artists such as Jah Wobble, Steve Lacy, Jaki Liebezeit, David Sylvian – and many, many more.

Touch, the label that released many of Jeck’s albums, now honors the artist with a 16-track double CD of his music in collaboration with an impressive array of artists: Fennesz, Gavin Bryars, Chris Watson, Rosy Parlane, Cris Cheek, Claire M Singer, Faith Coloccia, David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir, Jah Wobble & Deep Space, Drums Off Chaos, Chandra Shukla, and Jana Winderen.

RPM is not a collection of remixes of precious tracks, but a selection of music these artists worked on with Philip Jeck during the last years of Jeck’s life. It is an ode to the versatility and diversity of his music, including restless turntablist loops, calm ambient dronescapes, processed field recordings, dubby bass, and fierce rhythms. In working with so many different artists, Jeck proved himself a musical chameleon: each track is undeniably his, yet it unmistakably reflects the style of the artist he collaborates with.

By ‘joining some of the dots of Philip’s life and involving many other collaborators, early and more recent’, Touch created a monumental tribute to this unique artist. [Peter]

Bandcamp (USA):

The late, great Philip Jeck will be remembered most of all for his monumental works repurposing old records: Vinyl Requiem, Vinyl Coda, Surf, Stoke, and 7. But Jeck was an inveterate collaborator as well, working with forward-thinking musicians from all disciplines. His final album was 2023’s Oxmardyke with field recording legend Chris Watson, but at his passing he had several other projects underway as well. Rpm is a collection of these works in progress along with memorials from some of those closest to him. Among its songs are excellent field recording pieces: Watson appears again with a recording of a train station in the vein of their previous work together. Cris Cheek, his bandmate in Slant, shares what he calls a “domestic elegiac” for Jeck of sounds from an empty 1810 house. Jana Winderen had sent Jeck a recording of pilot whales for him to work with, and the unfinished track appears here. All these and much more are gathered in memory of Jeck, a fitting tribute to a generational talent and a touching reminder of how much work he still had left to do. [Matthew Blackwell]

salt peanuts* (SWE)

British Philip Jeck was an experimental turntablist-composer (1952-2022) who created a unique and personal musical language by playing old records and record players salvaged from junk shops as musical instruments. The double album rpm celebrates Jeck’s seminal work and connects the dots of his career with kindred spirits and close collaborators, including Fennesz, Gavin Bryars, David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir and Jah Wobble.

This album begins with the atmospheric-cinematic «Dancer» by Jeck’s friend, sound artist-guitarist-composer Christian Fennesz, who, like Jeck, releases his work via the Touch label. The suggestive pieces of Jeck with double bass player-contemporary composer Gavin Bryars stress the genre-defying spirit of his groundbreaking work. The pieces with sound artist Chris Watson, who focuses on natural history, are taken from a work in progress of him and Jeck, with Jeck and his laptop on a hospital bed, days before his death, completing his parts for Oxmardyke (Touch, 2023).

Sound artist Rosy Parlane contributed the melancholic, cinematic «Stoked». Sound poet Cris Cheek, who has worked with Jeck in the Slant trio with producer Sianed Jones at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties, composed the mournful and touching «Clocking Off». Electronics composer Claire M Singer planned a joint project with Jeck and began working on her meditative organ recordings, now presented as sketches for further development. Electronics player Faith Coloccia, who has worked with Jeck on Stardust (Touch, 2021), contributed the 15-minute, minimalist yet seductive «Pleione», titled after the Oceanid nymph in Greek mythology, the mother of the Pleiades. Jah Wobble, who collaborated with Jeck (on Wobble & Deep Space, Five Beat, and with Jaki Liebezeit, Live in Leuven, 30 Hertz, 2003 and 2005) contributed the rhythmic «Jeck, Drums, 2 Basses» from Five Beat, with drummer Mark Sanders. This vibe is expanded with the German collective Drums Off Chaos’ hypnotic «Keep in Touch» (with Liebezeit). «The Ark Has Closed» by electronics musician Chandra Shukla is an atmospheric soundscape.

Jeck’s only solo piece «Mono» corresponds with his influential work with visual artist Lol Sargent, Vinyl Requiem (Touch, 2013), where they used 180 record players, nine slide projectors and two 16mm projectors for a huge-scale, live performance that was not a real requiem but a testament to the work to come. David Sylvain, who collaborated with Jeck on his Uncommon Deities (Samdhisound, 2012), and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir anchor the moving, emotional core of this compilation with Emily Dickinson’s poem «I Measure Every Grief I Meet» (Dickinson was one of Jeck’s favorite poets). This thoughtful compilation is concluded with «Pilots», sound artist Jana Winderen’s work with Jeck based on her recordings of pilot whales, and finished just a few days before Jeck’s passing. [Eyal Hareuveni]

TO:126 Cleared – ‘Hexa’

27th September 2024 » Permalink: TO:126 Cleared – ‘Hexa’

Release date: 27th September 2024
Available to order now on Bandcamp: 6th September 2024

Track listing:

1. Hexa
2. Magnetic Bloom
3. Time in Return
4. 53S
5. Sunsickness
6. Ash
7. Oval Waters

Cleared, the duo of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera has re-emerged with Hexa, their sixth release and third for Touch. Steven Hess recorded sessions in the group’s practice space, handing them over to Vallera, who in turn added his home recordings, mixing and manipulating them. The final product provides only the barest of hints to any instrumental points of origin, such is the extent of their intermixture.

Hexa brings the listener interiority and depth, beginning with the slow build of the title track, where chiming details prompt a cycling drone. The “Magnetic Bloom” pulsations give way to granulated smears, while the well-named “Time in Return” plays with repetition and layering. The density in the tracks relents with “53S,” a recording from a train station contributed by the field recordist Chris Watson. The spatial sensations brought by the clanking and creaking offer a respite of sorts before the accretion of processed magnetics resume on the aptly entitled “Sunsickness.” Clouds of static overwhelm the initial melodies of “Ash.” Pulses, bursts, and points of electronics breach the layered blankets and sheets of sound, as with the concluding track, “Oval Waters.”

If you need to identify a genre locale, put Hexa on the side of the street where current electronic music lives. However you categorize the album, it is an absorbing listen front-to-back. Each track emerges with layers peeling and/or accreting and new details revealing themselves. [Bruce Adams, 2024]

All sound by Steven Hess and Michael Vallera
Arranged and mixed by Michael Vallera
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Audio for 53S recorded by Chris Watson

Reviews:

Boomkat (UK):

Cleared’s third album for Touch plays like a faded photograph, with only faint, dubbed-out traces left of any original instrumentation. Killer gear – like a Chain Reaction-coded take on electro-acoustic improv.

‘Hexa’ exists in two worlds simultaneously; the percussive, guitar-led soundscapes that dominated Steven Hess and Michael Vallera’s prior material still feel present here, but they’re reduced to a cinder, echoed into glitchy, rhythmic motifs that buzz and whirr rather than beat and drone. We described their last album, ‘Of Endless Light’ as “low-light dark ambience”, and it sounds like a stepping stone between their earliest material and this latest development. This time around, Hess dubbed sessions alone in the duo’s practice pad, leaving Vallera to add his own recordings and mix and process the results. It gives the album a feeling of distance: distance from the instrumentation, and distance from the process that grounded their formative sides.

The title track lays the groundwork, trapping a hissing, humid atmosphere that’s only ambient if you refuse to tune into its throbbing textures. Deep, throbbing bass hits fill out the low end, and Vallera’s chirring techniques are more Vladislav Delay than Deathprod. The duo’s intentions are revealed even further on ‘Magnetic Bloom’ and ‘Sunsickness’, the former in its dizzy haze of subs and lower-case Vainqueur-style stabs, and the latter with its circumspect pinprick rhythm, that quivers so subtly you could almost miss it on first blush. There are still reverberations of Hess’s elongated bowed cymbal work and Vallera’s dazed guitar fuzz, but they’ve been transformed, or even evolved – ‘Hexa’ isn’t strictly electronic, by any means, but it’s not post-rock either.

Sun 13 (UK):

Cleared’s sixth long-player and third for Touch, Hexa, finds the duo opening new doors that lead to untrodden recesses. In Vallera’s case, it’s his second release in consecutive months, the first being Maar – his collaboration alongside Joseph Clayton Mills which birthed the LP, Airelocks – one of the finest experimental endeavours committed to tape this year.

And Hexa is every bit as thought-provoking. Constructed firstly with Hess’ recorded sessions in the group’s practice space, he then handed the work over to Vallera, who added his own recordings. The amalgamation forms a series of obscure collages that manipulate sound design into something that thaws out the coldness that it can sometimes offer.

While there’s a dark thread that runs through these recordings, the difference here is that Cleared temper it with a sense of hope. Take the eponymous opening track; sonics that are like a recurring cold echo from an abandoned warehouse floor. Magnet Bloom follows a similar trajectory, however there’s more space to manoeuvre; the composition unfurling like a spectre drifting from the same warehouse in search on new liminal space.

Cleared - Hexa

Meanwhile, Time In Return sees Hess and Vallera exploring minimalism to great effect, with a series of soft drones that sooth the deepest parts of the mind. The production, so pure and transparent that takes flight towards the outer regions.

It’s a contrast to 53S – an interlude of the blurred noise of a train station, captured by field recordist Chris Watson. Hessand Vallera adopt a maximalist approach to his findings, with a series of acerbic sonics which splits Hexa straight down the middle like an axe to firewood.

Visual Space: In Conversation with Luggage’s Michael Vallera

Then there’s aptly titled Sunsickness. Reaching for the underbelly of drone where Mark Nelson has inhabited for the last three decades, it’s here where Cleared reshape these brooding soundscapes with dark washes of sound that’s like thick smoke coursing through a tunnel. And while the title of the following track may suggest something similar, Ash is a pulsating rush at altitude. A piece that builds majestically with warm drones that reach a crescendo in the clouds. Again, it’s that hope on the back of despair that sees Cleared like never before.

In many ways, Oval Waters is the perfect closing track. As incongruous as its title suggests, with a series of warped dreamscapes, it sounds like it’s been reversed engineered. It’s this effect that is essentially the embodiment of sound exploration as we know it.

This is why Hexa is another important piece of work in the Cleared memorandum. Hess and Vallera explore the progression of technology and its relationship to industry. Many of these soundscapes, a response to the blue-collar DNA of the duo’s native Chicago, which sees the pair tackling locality from a different angle than most. Through contrasting tones and emotions, the pair conjure up the kind of juxtapositions that are indicative of everyday life. And it’s this that makes Hexa all the more relevant. [Simon Kirk]

Ambientlog (NL):

Cleared is the Chicago-based duo of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera. Hess is a percussionist and Vallera a guitarist – but that’s not something you’d directly guess when listening to Cleared. Both work in various settings as well as as solo artists, but as Cleared the duo has released albums since 2011. Hexa is their sixth album, and the third on the Touch label.

Although both artists are based in Chicago, Hexa is the result of a ‘classic’ collaboration – with Hess sending his recorded sessions to Vallera to further add and manipulate them. In the process, almost all of the references to the original instruments are lost and morphed into new sounds.
Some of the tracks are based on drones, but there are also deep pulsations and heavily dubbed rhythmic patterns. The short intermission-like track 53S, on the other hand, is built from a field recording from a train station that was recorded by Chris Watson (I assume you remember his masterpiece El Tren Fantasma?).

There is a lot to be explored on this album. All tracks are full of details but at the same time have a nice ‘gritty’ sound (as in ‘not too over-produced’ – although I realize that it takes a lot of production skills to create this sound).
These almost industrial soundscapes may be a bit too intense to be called ‘ambient music’ in the classic definition. So: “if you need to identify a genre locale, put Hexa on the side of the street where current electronic music lives”. [Peter]

Magnet (USA):

Cleared is a Chicago duo with fixed personnel but a morphing modus operandi. When Michael Vallera and Steven Hess started out in 2009, their music explored a spectrum between stripped-down rock structures and spread-out expositions of texture. But both of these guys have other places to rock; to name just two among several, Vallera fronts the band Luggage and Hess keeps the beat in Locrian. On Hexa, their third longplayer for Touch, the aesthetic compass that once pointed back and forth between poles now rotates spherically, creating a multidimensional space with a throbbing dub heartbeat.

While many of the album’s sounds were originally performed on guitar and drums in the duo’s practice room, nary a riff or note made it to the finished work. Instead, Vallera used those recordings as raw material. The duo’s played sounds have been broken down at the molecular level, recombined and built back up again to create pieces that are as layered as they are expansive. Take a walk in their fields of resonance, and the ground invariably disintegrates. But instead of falling in, you drift slowly through layers of exploded sound. Bass reports puff up like cumulous clouds, and string and metal resonance flex and flow like air currents. The closer you listen, the more you’re drawn into an expanse that seems boundaryless. [Bill Meyer]

TO:5320 Fennesz – ‘Venice 20’

18th July 2024 » Permalink: TO:5320 Fennesz – ‘Venice 20’

Release date: 23rd August 2024
Available to order now on Bandcamp

Track Listing: [CD – 15 tracks – 58:43]

1. Rivers of Sand
2. Chateau Rouge
3. City of Light
4. Onsra
5. Circassian (guitar: Burkhard Stangl)
6. Onsay
7. The Other Face
8. Transit (vocals: David Sylvian)
9. The Point of It All
10. Laguna
11. Asusu
12. The Stone of Impermanence
13. Sognato di Domani
14. Tree
15. The Future Will Be Different

All tracks written, mixed and produced by Christian Fennesz
Re-Mastered by Denis Blackham
Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft

The 20th anniversary re-issue of Fennesz’s best-selling ‘Venice’, originally released in 2004, is now available as a deluxe version remastered by Denis Blackham, with new and extra tracks not on the previous CD or vinyl versions. Included in the DVD-format edition is a booklet with texts by Fennesz himself, Denis Blackham & Jon Wozencroft, with unseen photographs from the original 2004 sessions. The booklet also reproduces David Sylvian’s original handwritten lyrics for ‘Transit’. This “stunning collaboration with David Sylvian continues where their fantastic duo track on Sylvian’s album Blemish left off. Situated directly in the middle of a mostly subdued listening experience, ‘Transit’ literally bursts out of the speakers accentuating the album’s more pop-like characteristics as well as its more restrained moments.”

Denis Blackham:
“Fast forward to 2024 and here I am again with the same original master mixes I used in 2003 to make a new and expanded version of the album – Venice 20. A little over twenty years later, technology in audio production, recording and mastering has improved substantially, so I was excited to return to this album and give my 2024 treatment.”

Jon Wozencroft:
“…The whole work has a stillness and a stature that is essentially timeless. This is of course exemplified by the collaboration with David Sylvian on ‘Transit’, which, now 20 years on, has all come true. I hoped the cover art to be on the level of a painting, to endure, like the music. It’s mad because I’d never claim to be able to paint, or assume that photographs can endure as long as paintings can. The work with Christian, which continues, always moves me and above all it’s a chemistry, a feeling you can’t quite put your finger on.”

Christian Fennesz:
“Over months, I collected material for the album: short recordings of acoustic and electric guitars, experiments with newly introduced soft synths and samplers, and field recordings, sometimes done on the go and directly in Venice, where I stayed for several weeks. The sound and acoustics of the city fascinated me. From my room, you could clearly hear conversations at night with the window open, but it was uncertain whether they came from the neighbouring house or several blocks away, as if the sound waves in Venice followed their own rules. It was during this time that the idea for Venice as an album title came to me, as a suggestive description of a dignified decline, decay, death, and rebirth. David Sylvian’s lyrics and vocal performance for ‘Transit’ perfectly encapsulated this idea for me. The piece remains a highlight of a wonderful, ongoing collaboration.”

Reviews:

Igloo Magazine (CAN):

You can read a review here.

Vogue (US):

Salt Peanuts (SWE)

Venice is Austrain guitarist-sound artist-producer Christian Fennesz’s masterpiece. It was released originally in 2004, followed by a 10th-anniversary edition (Touch, 2014) with a bonus track, and now its limited edition, 20th-anniversary re-issue in DVD style digipack adds two more pieces and unseen photographs from the original sessions. It was remastered by the original sound engineer Denis Blackham who makes full use of today’s much improved audio production, recording and mastering technology, with liner notes by the graphic designer and Touch label co-founder Jon Wozencroft, who designed the timeless, painting-like cover artwork, and Fennesez himself.

Fennesz composed Venice in the Italian city where he stayed for several weeks. He was fascinated by the sounds and the acoustics of Venice. «From my room, you could clearly hear conversations at night with the window open, but it was uncertain whether they came from the neighboring house or several blocks away as if the sound waves in Venice followed their own rules», he writes in his liner notes. The album title came to him as a suggestive description of a dignified decline, decay, death, and rebirth.

Fennesz collected short recordings of him playing acoustic and electric guitars over months, experimenting with newly introduced soft synths and samplers, and field recordings, sometimes taken on the go and directly in Venice. The recording continued in Vieena’s Amann Studios in January and February 2004. Fennesz hosted fellow Viennese guitarist Burkhard Stangle (who has previously worked with Fennesz as a member of the experimental Polwechsel) on two pieces.

David Sylvian (of Japan fame) wrote the lyrics and sings the beautiful and touching «Transit», a piece that encapsulates masterfully the emotional core of Venice and marked an ongoing collaboration that began on Sylvian’s Blemish (Smadhisound, 2003) and continued on When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima, Manafon and Died In The Wool | Manafon Variations (Smadhisound, 2007, 2009 and 2011). The new booklet also reproduces David Sylvian’s original handwritten lyrics for «Transit».

This remastered version of Venice keeps its timeless magic. Fennesz’meticulously crafted layers of enigmatic yet highly immersive ambient textures sound fresh and draw you immediately into his suggestive and cinematic sonic vision. The music swings between experimental and abstract, and noisy and accessible but keeps its subdued, mysterious atmosphere. [Eyal Hareuveni]

Tone 85 KMRU – ‘Natur’

14th July 2024 » Permalink: Tone 85 KMRU – ‘Natur’

Available on Bandcamp to order
Release date: 26th July 2024

Track Listing: [CD – 1 track – 52:38]
1. Natur – you can hear an extract here

All tracks written, mixed and produced by KMRU
Mastered by Simon Scott at SPS
Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft

When KMRU relocated to Berlin from Nairobi, he was immediately fascinated by the German capital’s relative silence. Back home, he was surrounded by sound: the omnipresent churr of birds and insects, the chatter of passers-by, and the electrical smog belched out by criss-crossing power lines and roaring transformers. In Berlin, this noise was muzzled; pedestrians wandered the streets with headphones in, barely communicating, while electrical cables were hidden away underground, and wildlife retreated from the imposing, concrete jungle. KMRU compares this observation with his visual experiences. Acclimatizing to life in Western Europe, he realized that night, a dusky blue-black lit up by streetlights and shops, offered little contrast with day. Nighttime in Kenya felt more tangible, somehow. After 6PM, when the sun sets, even the dim glow of a screen can dazzle the eyes, which must quickly adapt to the conditions. And as anyone who’s closed their eyes while listening to music will know, the ears also adjust when visibility is impaired, enhancing even the tiniest sounds. So KMRU used this phenomenon to inform ‘Natur’, a billowing long-form narrative that blurs the audible spectrum with an imperceptible sonic universe, contrasting cacophonous electromagnetic soundscapes with more familiar and grounding natural sounds.

The piece was composed in 2022, and since then KMRU has made it a live staple, tweaking and reshaping it as he performed on tour with Fennesz, and with the London Contemporary Orchestra at Southbank Centre. “I became it,” he says. “I merged with it on a performance level.” The experience allowed KMRU to sculpt not only the album’s crucial dynamics, but its philosophy. Following up records like 2020’s acclaimed, field recording-rooted ‘Peel’ and last year’s synthetic, ethereal ‘Dissolution Grip’, KMRU makes a decisive step forward. ‘Natur’ is KMRU’s most uncompromising work to date, crackling to life from dense clouds of static and intimidating, dissonant drones. Using electromagnetic microphones, he uncloaks the commotion hidden by the digital era’s ambiguous stillness, juxtaposing roaring, mechanical growls with microscopic glitches and tranquil, electrical wails. When environmental recordings do appear, they’re used as transitions between the thickets of harsh noise; sometimes hard to identify, they subconsciously remind the listener that behind the wall of sound there’s a natural world in constant communication, continually adapting to the fluctuating ecosystem.

KMRU sees ‘Natur’ as a way to reconsider what technology actually is and how it changes our perception of reality. This can be abstract, or more basic – like wearing rubber soled shoes to walk on asphalt, or using a leaf to drink water in a swamp. “Nature is connected with technology, and we’re so connected with nature that we adapt,” he says. “It’s like being blind, but still seeing.” On ‘Natur’, KMRU allows us to visualize a concealed landscape, one that’s teeming with life and in dialog with mechanization.

Reviews:

Bandcamp (US):

Best Field Recordings of 2024 by Matthew Blackwell

Though his work centers around field recording, the Kenyan artist Joseph Kamaru has always had the heart of a composer. His breakthrough album, 2020’s Peel, combined environmental sound with emotive electronic pieces, while last year’s Dissolution Grip re-synthesized waveforms taken from field recordings so that the originals haunted the album like memories. Natur, though, is pure field recording, though you might not know it by listening. Waves of electricity buzz and vibrate, building to crescendos and then crashing down again into staticky ambience. These sounds were gathered with electromagnetic microphones from the streets of Berlin. In KMRU’s native Nairobi, power lines and transformers buzz in the streets and mingle with conversation, birds, and insects. Upon moving to Germany, he noticed how Berlin buried its power grid, banished its wildlife, and cloistered its population into apartment blocks. Natur summons these constituent parts back into the open, making technology’s confrontation with nature explicit. Though the album’s overpowering electrical hum suggests tech may be dominant, a closer listen reveals that wildlife is always at the margins, making itself heard through the noise.

and Best Ambient of 2024 by Ted Davis

Joseph Kamaru, who records as KMRU, has quickly ascended to the foreground of the avant-garde, thanks to both his academic methods and conceptual approach. He continued to roll out albums at a steady clip this year, one of which was a notable collaboration with The Bug’s Kevin Richard Martin. But my favorite KMRU of the year was Natur. The 52-minute track is an homage to the stillness of his adopted home in Berlin, contrasting it with the bustle of his native Nairobi. A grainy hum, peppered with skittering field recordings, shifts from a sharp rattle to a fathomless void. Tweaked over tour dates alongside Fennesz, Natur emphasizes KMRU’s dynamic simplicity.

The Wire (UK):

‘Natur’ consists of a single piece derived from Kamaru’s experiments with electromagnetic frequencies. Evoking the work of Christina Kubisch, the piece reflects on the voices hidden inside our urban infrastructure and electronic devices. Static noise gives way to unexpected harmonies, rattling bass and birdsong. “The whole album is based on this recording I did with an electromagnetic microphone. It’s an interesting project because I performed it live for 2 years,” he says. Kamaru met Touch’s Mike Harding when on tour with Fennesz in the US, back in 2022, but the process to get the composition ready took its time. I ask how it feels to arrive here, considering that pivotal train journey in Kenya and the influence of Chris Watson, as well as all the other artists who have contributed to the label’s legacy. “Touch is a ‘listening’ label….They took a whole year just listening to the record and I appreciate that. I feel like it’s the perfect place for this kind of work”. [Ilia Rogatchevksi, feature June ’24]

Igloo Magazine (CA):

The listener is transported in a rolling ambient vastness connected to natural elements and morphed field recordings, for a breathing, lively and emotional embrace which progressively reaches a mesmerizing climax.

Kamaru and I must say probably the most stupendous successful story in the latest development of electronic ambient music. In less than five years Kamaru obtained high praises from major indie labels in the place (Editions Mego, Mute, Touch) reaching a position which makes him a dignified leading figure in intricate and intimate electronic music with a drone flavors.

I’ve rarely seen the reputation of a sound producer edified so quickly in the musical league. It would be definitely interesting to grab some infos from Kamaru himself to know more about his musical trajectory and to understand better what makes his production a strong asset for nowadays and future of adventurous electronic music with a dense chilling impulse. KMRU is a project which is quite inevitable for those who browse new materials and new sound signatures in the ambient (at large) galaxy. KMRU also collaborated with a handful of numerous experimental music and ambient artists, including Seefeel but also Abul Mogard (I actually discovered his music through this specific collaboration back in 2020 for the label Vaagner).

Soberly entitled Natur is welcomed by the emblematic Touch imprint for a beautifully conceived/packaged edition. Natur is built as one extended piece processed as an assemblage of micro-sounds, abstract noises, and sinuous sound waves intertwined with the sonic background. The general tendency makes it intellectually meditative but less accessible than his previous release Dissolution Grip (OFNOT, 2023). An almost fuzzy feeling rises at the surface, especially during the first 15 minutes of the album then the listener is transported in a rolling ambient vastness connected to natural elements and morphed field recordings, for a breathing, lively and emotional embrace which progressively reaches a mesmerizing climax. Micro noises are always rampant but without being that harsh. The ending almost offers a cerebral mantra-like and spaced-out reverbed ambience to connect with the cosmos and universe as a whole. A mysteriously rumbling, cryptical and ascetic musical journey to lift the spirit.

Natur is highly recommended to followers of Touch (notably with artists such as Jana Winderen for the dynamic communication between sound mapping / sound ecology with sonic sound spectralism) but it can also seduce lovers of contemporary minimalism with a radical droning edge such as Tony Conrad, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Kevin Drumm, and Ellen Fullman. [Philippe Blache]

Boomkat (UK):

KMRU’s most visceral and satisfying full-length, ‘Natur’ is a departure from his more pastoral, drone-based work, tweaking invisible electromagnetic squeals and rumbles into searing noisescapes and evocative orchestral moans. Seriously elevated gear, essential listening for anyone into Christina Kubisch, Fennesz or Kassel Jaeger. When he was working on ‘Natur’ back in 2022, KMRU found himself hung up on the difference in noise between Berlin where he now lives, and Nairobi where he grew up. At home, he was in a wide open, chaotic landscape where whirring generators were swallowed into a din of natural sounds; in Germany meanwhile, it felt manicured – nature was hidden behind perfectly sculpted streets and tower blocks, as if sound had been internalised. He reflects this reality by exposing the invisible, using specialist microphones to record the electromagnetic din that’s constantly buzzing around all of us.  It’s a nicely paced, cautious journey, introducing the soundscape on the bone-rattling ‘Natur 1’ as a sequence of static-drenched, dissonant transmissions before adding a level of order on ‘Natur 2’. Here, his vision begins to take shape: clouds of white noise part to reveal silence, and the unsettling feedback squeals begin to form harmonies. But KMRU never dips into what might be described as ambience; his most full-on deployment to date, he uses the dynamic intensity of extreme noise to help characterize his theme, shocking us into a realization that we’re surrounded by constant electronic chatter. And after reaching an ear-numbing, bass-heavy crescendo, he pulls back a little on ‘Natur 3’, mixing subtle environmental sounds into the insectoid glitches and electrically-charged fizzes. Using flute-like synthesized dips and wails, KMRU creates a bizarre, sci-fi tinted atmosphere, using his unique perspective to step away from the genre’s fantasy orientalisation towards a prophetic inside-out view of a possible global future. It all comes to a head on the epic 20-minute closing track ‘Natur 5’; where birdsong has evolved into a cybernetic churr, into melancholy whines that slip and slide alongside powerful, punctuating bass thumps. He strips each sound for parts, pulling out the low end and letting the electriity buzz to the surface once again. It’s powerful material that works as a neat thematic companion piece to Christina Kubisch’s relatively sedate electromagnetic symphony ‘Stromsänger’.

and

When Joseph Kamaru moved from Kenya to Germany, the first thing he noticed was the silence. Nairobi was full of talking people, chirping birds, and chirruping insects, and buzzing electrical lines and transformers. In comparison, Berlin was dead quiet, especially at night. But this was a false silence; the electrical grid was there, but hidden underground; the people were there, but locked in their apartments; nature was there, but pushed to the outskirts of the city. These elements became the component parts of Natur, a 52-minute composition that explores the differences between Kamaru’s native and adopted cities. The overwhelming sonic signature of the album is the hum and static of electronics, usually unheard by the human ear, that KMRU sought out with electromagnetic microphones. Over the course of months of touring with this piece, Kamaru edited and re-edited these sheets of noise until he “became” the piece, in his words. The result is a perfectly calibrated symphony of electronic sound that moves seamlessly between ambient lulls and dramatic crescendos. But natural sounds hover in the interstices of the fuzz and the feedback, suggesting a different relationship between city and country: the urban environment is recast as a technology for keeping nature at bay, but whether in Nairobi or Berlin, technology eventually fails. [Matthew Blackwell]

a closer listen (USA):

Which city is louder: Nairobi or Berlin?  The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is Nairobi.  A relocation from one city to the other inspired KMRU to start thinking about the differences in his environments, such as the difference between wearing shoes and going shoeless, or the wide night sky over one location obscured by light pollution in the next.  Crucially for a recording artist, the two homes sounded different.  On Natur he seeks to capture the contrasts of dueling biophanies.

As the Touch imprint writes, Natur is “KMRU’s most uncompromising work to date.”  It’s certainly denser and more abrasive than the artist’s ambient works, although the single, fifty-two-minute track possesses segments of intense beauty and interiority.  Listeners will be hard-pressed to estimate which sources stem from which location, as the composition also includes electromagnetic frequencies and amplified technologies, often hidden even from those who use them.  The entire piece becomes a treatise on the natural and the unnatural, and the compromises one makes in order to enjoy the trappings of “modernity.”  When one has lived in multiple places, which noises sound the most like home?

As the piece begins, one hears creeping electronic tones, the 21st century already in motion, relentless and unstoppable.  Wires crisscross cities, bearing messages, power, connection.  One does not normally hear external drone apart from feedback, a sound quickly quenched should it appear in one’s household.  Yet one may also grow acclimated to such sounds, as most have done with their screens.  KMRU’s gift is to make such sounds musical, so that when they grow in volume and insistence, they become alluring rather than distracting.  One leans in to hear more; and just then, the sounds recess to reveal a bank of field recordings that may have been there all along.

The mind recalibrates, asking the old questions about paradise and parking lots.  Do we miss the sounds of nature (natur?), and what they represent?  Is the loss of visible stars a small price to pay? And on the other hand, how much is too much?  In some cities, non-stop construction guarantees that no day, short of a nuclear pulse, will sound placid.  Midway through the piece, flocks of birds become audible for the first time.  Will anyone feel nostalgia for the sound of birds in the wild, or have they become so integrated into the urban landscape that one forgets their global diversity? Some of their calls even sound electronic, a reminder that some species mimc even the sound of our phones.  A child cries in the electronic wilderness, seemingly unattended.  Or is it a saw?

By the time the composition edges into a slow, steady drone, it imitates the hum of a city ~ indeed all cities.  A mourning dove attempts to break through the drone and fails.  Would we rather have mourning doves or streaming services?  The answer is obvious.  Natur offers the sound of the new nature: the aggregate of sounds humans now consider natural, no matter what their source.  If the piece sounds lulling rather than unsettling, the damage may already be done. [Richard Allen]

and

Top Ten Drone of 2024

Recalling Maryanne Amacher’s claim that all cities have a key, on Natur the artist who records as KMRU responds to the sounds of place. Prompted by a move from one city to another, the album explores those qualities that soundtrack urban life in the 21st century. The sound of electricity, technology, electromagnetic frequencies begin almost immediately and extend throughout the over 50 minute run time of the album’s single composition.  The result is a soundscape cum meditation on what we hear and what we don’t hear. The composition’s drone and haptic frequencies are occasionally interrupted by the occasional field recording of birds or a child, but those sounds are the exception. As we noted in our original review of the album, there are moments of beauty on the album, but the listener is primarily enveloped in the hypnotic swoon of the electronic soundscape, making those moments of interruption all the more remarkable. [Jennifer Smart]

and #9 in the overall 2024 chart

Have I ever mentioned my horseshoe theory of German efficiency? I’ll let you fill in the details, but when Joseph Kamaru left Nairobi to study in Berlin, he was surprised at the silence that shrouds the supposed capitol of European nightlife, shocked also by the lack of contrast between day and night. Since breaking through with Peel (2020), KMRU has been prolific in his output, including solo records as well as collaborations with Aho Ssan, Echium, and Kevin Richard Martin. Earlier this year, KMRU extended his album Temporary Stored, which transformed materials from the sonic archive of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium, by inviting his contemporaries to respond to the historical archive. But Natur is a solo artistic statement, a composition that has been honed by years of live performance. The first half wades through digital noise, mildly abrasive and at times harsh, Natur evolves as natural sounds begin to emerge from the haze, a thick synth drone pulsing slowly along. But this is no simple bifurcation, no dialectic that find resolution. Natur transforms the contrast KMRU perceived between Nairobi and Berlin into a more universal statement on how our perception of reality is shaped by our relationship with technology. [Joseph Sannicandro]

The Quietus (UK):

What does the modern world sound like? The question evokes numerous answers; blaring car speakers, engine motors, loud cellphone conversations, nightclub noise and the like. To the extent that KMRU incorporates surface-level sounds in his music, such as on 2020’s Peel, they tend to capture more intimate sounds and nature recordings. However, his latest album Natur captures this environment in a different sense, focusing on the hidden symphonies underlining the hustle and bustle of urban life.

The record opens with a dense sea of glitchy static, calling to mind the sorts of frequencies that can be harnessed when operating a shortwave radio near electrical appliances such as computers and mobile phones. While radio static has long been incorporated in experimental music, it is often used in a chance-determined context, notably by John Cage. In the context of Natur, the static has a clear narrative, speaking to the deeper sonic language pulsating through the networks of communication and transportation that make modern life possible.

When the static subsides and chirping nature recordings come into the foreground, the result feels less like a reprieve from the storm of noise and more like a stream emerging from its waters. The piece metamorphosizes into sticky, almost dublike sounds, building a palpable sense of tension along the way before settling into an ominous drone. The drone persists long enough that it shifts from simply setting the mood to taking on an almost psychoacoustic effect, which, like the usage of electromagnetic frequencies, calls attention to the wider sonic elements that can be understood through deeper listening. All the while, noisy static textures continue to weave around the music until, towards the end of the piece, they move to the foreground, overtaking everything else.

Much of the piece could be heard as an interrogation of nature and technology, far from an uncommon theme in experimental music. Naturstands out in that it is less about the conflict between the two and more about their mutual evolution. Nature and technology are not dueling forces to place against each other, but a continuum that needs to be reckoned with. This is not to say the music recognizes nature and technology as one and the same, or that there isn’t any tension between the different elements. Rather, KMRU seems to understand nature and technology as a duality comparable to music and noise. The two are inextricably linked, and their differences lie more in individual perception than anything else. The first step towards understanding their dualism is listening. [Levi Dayan]

Pitchfork (USA):

8.0/10

Every city has its own sound—literally. Beyond whatever music might get played there, every place on earth emits a set of frequencies that is completely unique. For Joseph Kamaru, these identities are as distinct as skylines. “Soundscapes reveal a lot about how people think and behave,” he recently told Resident Advisor. He notices them when he goes somewhere new and explores them in his music. Often, they make him think of his home city, Nairobi.

Kamaru moved to Berlin in 2020. Since then, he’s recorded over a dozen records that position him as a master of esoteric sound: a blend of ambient, drone, noise, and field recordings, defined by tactile sound design and an emotional palette that runs from haunting to serene. In 2022, he composed what would become As Nature, a live show inspired, as he put it in an email, by “the electromagnetic sounds and hidden noises in Nairobi that are so present that the inhabitants of the city become connected with them.” He played it again and again at experimental events across Europe, tweaking it until he formed an intense bond with the music. “I became it,” he says.

Natur, which arrives on the UK label Touch, is the album version of that performance. In its attempt to capture ineffable qualities of his home city, it is also a personal record. It is, like much of Kamaru’s music, subtly political as well, shifting the focus to an East African city in an art form dominated by Western bias. More than anything, though, it shows his unique way of hearing the world around him in extraordinary detail, and shaping those impressions into a surreal musical work.

A single, 52-minute piece, Natur bobs and weaves through crackling noise and balmy ambience. For Kamaru, the sound of Nairobi at night is all about electricity, from the hiss of open transformers to electrosmog—sounds inaudible to the naked ear but captured by Kamaru’s electromagnetic microphones—all set against a darkness deep enough to be broken by low-lit iPhone screens. In its calmer sections, Natur serves up whispers, birdsong, footfalls and muffled crowds, humid drones and barely-there melodic loops. In its more chaotic sections, frequencies wail, whoosh, and crash. Above all, they buzz. At times the album feels like a gallery of the countless distinct forms electrical buzzing can take.

Ambient as much of it is, the result is the opposite of background music. Natur is a voltaic odyssey, a ghost train rumbling, twisting and floating through this aural rendering of Nairobi at night. Kamaru has written about what he calls “activated listening,” a closely intentional form of listening that Natur demands of its listeners from its opening section, a swelling wave of electrical currents that crests just before it short-circuits. Perhaps because it took shape as a live performance, this is a dynamic, ever-evolving composition, one that moves through a sequence of scenes as distinct as they are abstract.

Take the passage about 15 minutes in, when a barrage of white-hot frequencies mercifully gives way to a haze of soothing, natural sounds. Kamaru follows this pattern for much of the record’s first half, swerving through a thicket of noise, then slipping, at just the right moment, into a stretch of relative serenity. After a while, the two modes blur together into something droning and hypnotic.

Every moment along this drifting path is bursting with vivid detail. Layered together or presented in turn, Kamaru’s sounds are carefully sculpted and lovingly displayed, artifacts of the invisible world his work explores. It’s usually hard to tell field recordings—presented as-is or embellished in the studio—apart from sounds entirely of his creation. Still, the record demonstrates something Kamaru senses more easily than the rest of us, which is the richness and drama of everyday sounds. Natur helps us hear what he hears. [Will Lynch]

Das Filter (Germany):

Joseph Kamaru ist ein Meister der Soundscapes. Mit „Natur“ thematisiert der Kenianer die vermeintliche Stille der Stadt.

Es geht um Perspektiven. Um Konzentration und das Abschweifen im Tunnel des Fokus. Mir ist das in den vergangene Tagen selbst immer wieder aufgefallen. Ich wohne in einer vergleichsweise ruhigen Straße mit für die Gegend minimalem Durchgangsverkehr. Die Läden öffnen spät, die morgendliche Stille wird nur selten unterbrochen. Die Müllabfuhr kommt gegen 6.30 Uhr, ganz egal welcher Dienstleister nun seine dicken LKWs durch die Straße manövriert. Danach wird es wieder still. Sogar das Management der poshen Privatschule nebenan hat es irgendwie geschafft, den SUV-Eltern zu verklickern, dass man sich nicht gegenseitig anhupen muss. Jetzt, in den Sommerferien, ist es noch stiller. Das verändert meine Wahrnehmung von Musik und Sound. Als Schreibtischarbeiter brauche ich eine Klangtapete, die präsent genug ist, um in meinem Gehirn anzukommen, darf aber gleichzeitig nicht stören, bzw. die Oberhand gewinnen, z.B. mit Beats oder Vocals. Stille, die keine Stille ist. Damit kennt sich KMRU aus. Dass er bislang noch nicht auf Touchveröffentlicht hat, ist eigentlich kaum vorstellbar.

Auf „Natur“ beschäftigt sich KMRU musikalisch mit den unterschiedlichen Wahrnehmungen der Nacht und ihrer Atmosphäre, bzw. den atmosphärischen Störungen, die die Zivilisation und ihre Errungenschaften über die vermeintlich stillen Stunden wirft – von Klang bis Licht. So zumindest meine Interpretation des etwas blumigen Pressetextes. Zum Glück spielt der tatsächliche Trigger für diese Kompositionen keine Rolle. Die fünf Stücke sind so dicht wie leer, so laut wie leise, so rauschig-noisig wie deep und emotional. KMRU schichtet die Drones und Field Recordings mit derartiger Verve, dass man sich nicht nur mit Hochgenuss darin verlieren kann und möchte, sondern sich parallel dazu die Pulsader ritzen möchte, um sich so viel elektromagnetische Strahlung wie nur irgend möglich in den Blutkreislauf zu pumpen. Das Kratzen des Digitalen, das Restgeräusch der Stromerzeugung, der Überspannungsschutz von Schaltkreisen: All dies kippt KMRU in seinen Rechner als Input. Das Output ist eine unberechenbare 360°-Attacke auf alle Sinne. Wenn Joseph Kamaru es mit den Aufnahmen seiner elektromagnetischen Mikrofone bitzeln lässt, klingt das wie ein Angriff der Killer-Ameisen – eine klangliche Abstraktion, die Oscar Salas Arbeit für Hitchcocks „Die Vögel“ wie Fahrstuhlmusik klingen lässt.

„Natur“ ist eine Bomberstaffel der Nullen und Einsen, etwas, was nur digital entstehen konnte als ultimativer Take des scheinbar ewig gültigen Mensch-Maschine-Spiels. Ein mutiger Abriss aller Ambient-Konventionen, aller Schönfärberei, aller instagrammierten Wohlfühl-Tipps. Und ist dabei doch so offen und einladend, dass der Stacheldraht am Eingang dieses sonischen Irrgartens nie zusticht. Würde man diese Musik an die Betonwände des Berliner Humboldt-Forums werfen – der Schloss-Nachbau würde in der Spree versinken. Würde man diese Musik auf die Ruine der NSA-Station auf dem Teufelsberg werfen – der Kalte Krieg würde wieder richtig kalt. Und würde man schließlich dieses Album morgens um zwei Uhr im öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk spielen, würde die schläfrige Besatzung des Schaltraums als Wächter:innen über die Frequenzen umschalten auf Radio Luxemburg.

Alles richtig gemacht, KMRU. Genau richtig.

Electronic Sound (UK):

Kenyan Ambient [! – ed.] artist KMRU is often described as someone who is basically strapped to his hand-held field recorder. On ‘Natur’, you’d be forgiven for thinking the gadget he’s wielding is a Geiger counter or a ‘Ghostbusters’ PKE meter, rumbling off the scale as he wanders towards unseen radiation or spirits. More than any of his previous works, ‘Natur’ rattles and buzzes with a sense of emerging uncanniness, as though his recorder has discovered some strange and concealed energy alongside the sounds.

Comprising one, elongated, almost hour-long soundscape, it crackles with constant electricity like the faulty wiring of a building seeping its prickly charge into a room. Between undulating static and buzz, KMRU drops intermittent patches of respite, clear birdsong and ambient climatic rumble, which provides a brief moment to process the newly exposed haunted sounds. If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, “who ya gonna call”? If you want to find the weird sonic traces of hidden ghosts, definitely KMRU. [ST]

Bandcamp (USA):

From an outsider’s perspective, Berlin’s music scene is synonymous with endless weekend ragers scored by hypnotic techno. But away from its hedonistic corners, the German capital is permeated by a sense of unlikely placidity, offsetting its hard partying spaces with historic parks and peaceful riverfronts. Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist KMRU’s latest is inspired by his adopted city’s stillness and consistency—especially compared to the exhausting thrum of his Kenyan hometown. Where his last album, a collaboration with The Bug’s Kevin Richard Martin, was disquieting and brash, Natur is meditative and sparse. But an inescapable current of anxiety dwells beneath the five movement, 52-minute piece—as if to serve as a faint reminder that even the most casual downtown train ride could somehow go awry on the whim of technology. Using static hums to ponder differences in life between continents, Natur emphasizes KMRU’s ability to make instrumental music that packs the punch of a well-considered essay.

Pitchfork (USA):

The Best Music of 2024 So Far

RIYL: Electromagnetic radiation; the whirring of a computer booting up; deep listening; Fennesz; attuning to the sonic underworld of the metropolis; the soundtrack to Blade Runner 2049; wireframe glasses; immersing yourself in the drama of everyday sounds.

Stereogum (USA):

Top 5 experimental albums of 2024

For this ominous-yet-animated suite of static, Berlin-via-Nairobi sound artist KMRU uses electromagnetic microphones to reflect the invisible signals of city life. This means steady hums are swarmed with high-frequency chirps, crackling prickles twitch nervously like the flitting off exposed wires and the supposed pulses of life come in and out of focus. [Christopher R. Weingarten]

MOJO (UK):

TO:117V Jacaszek – ‘Gardenia’

2nd June 2024 » Permalink: TO:117V Jacaszek – ‘Gardenia’

LP + DL – 9 tracks – 48:29

Available on Bandcamp
Release date: 7th June 2024

***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL

Track listing:

1. Waterhole 05:50
2. Mmabolela 06:19
3. Riverbed 03:20
4. Red Dust 04:30
5. Dawn 06:14
6. Bones 05:23
7. Nidus 05:55
8. Nebula 05:35
9. Ruins 05:23

GARDENIA is an existing land located at the Limpopo province of South Africa, right at the border with Botswana. The place’s real name is Mmabolela and it’s a private nature reserve covering 6500ha of subtropical savanna and part of Limpopo River.

In November 2019 I had a chance to visit the location and participate in an annual residency for composers and sound artists called ‘Sonic Mmabolela’, initiated and curated by Francisco López.

We lived in an isolated property in the middle of savanna having a unique opportunity to exist in undisturbed touch with the African wilderness.

All the natural sounds later used to create Gardenia were captured there – during longtime recording sessions over the virgin interior of Mmabolela Reserve.

The album’s field recording content was selected from several hours of birdsong, calls of frogs, insect noises, sounds of trees, bushes, grass as well as non-living natural elements like stones or shells.

These field recordings were later digitally processed and used as part of 9 musical arrangements.

However the recording sources and the location of Gardenia is defined, it was not my intention to document a South African natural soundscape nor create any other kind of strict concept album.

All I do in my work is an affirmation of beauty hidden in various aspects of the Creation. (MJ)

Recorded, composed and produced by Michał Jacaszek
Photography + Design: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Francisco López

Special thanks: F. López, Ch. Kubisch, B. Ellison, and all Sonic Mmabolela 2019 team and staff

Reviews:

Datawave (USA):

The legendary British label Touch has just released a new work by Polish composer and sound sculptor Michal Jacaszek. The general idea of Michal’s approach is a combination of classical music and modern electronic textures. Gardenia in this case, is a bit different from his previous work. This time, the main sound source of the album is field recordings.

Last year, he went to an annual art residency Sonic Mmabolela in South Africa, curated by famous Spanish sound artist and scientist Francisco Lopez. Right next to the Botswana border, there is a place called Mmabolela, located at a big private nature reserve in the Limpopo province, covering 6500ha of a subtropical savanna and a part of the Limpopo River. It is easy to imagine how rich the sonic environment of this far land can be! Hours of recordings of birds, insects, frogs, trees, bushes, grass, as well as stones and shells have been digitally reworked and rearranged into nine tracks of highly concentrated and beautiful atmospheric music.

It is necessary to stress that Gardenia by Jacaszek is not typical music for chilling and relaxation, based on the sounds of wild nature mixed with melodic ambient or new age. It is a much more interesting and serious sound research of a skillful compositional approach to minimal electronica, abstract melodic clusters, soft noises and ambiences, acoustic sounds flavoured partly by enlightened melancholic moods. According to Michal’s notes on the album, his intention was ‘not to document the sound world of South Africa or to create something conceptional… All I do in my work is an affirmation of beauty hidden in various aspects of the Creation’.

dogrando.net (UK):

It’s the best part of a decade since I last encountered Michał Jacaszek. Glimmer is one of those records I’ve been dead into, then kind of forgotten about, then been delighted to rediscover all over again. I seem to love it a little more each time around.

I kind of fell in love with Gardenia on first listen. It’s a sparse piece. The sound sources are varied, but their application is restrained, hesitant almost, often stutteringly so. There are fragments of melodies, which come and go lightly. And while this isn’t a straight-up field recording composition, the field recordings play a critical role here: these were sourced in Mmabolela, a nature reserve in Limpopo, South Africa, at a residency curated by the maestro Francisco López (who also mastered the record). It seems tediously prosaic to call this music atmospheric, but that’s very precisely what it is. At the risk of gushing: this is a work of deep and subtle magic, and I look forward to discovering and rediscovering it over years to come.

I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Modern Classical / Ambient.

TO:124 Richard Chartier – ‘On Leaving’

29th May 2024 » Permalink: TO:124 Richard Chartier – ‘On Leaving’

Artist: Richard Chartier
Title: On Leaving
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Catalogue Number: TO:124
Street date: 24th May 2024

You can order this CD album here

Track Listing:

1. variance.1
2. variance.2
3. variance.3
4. variance.4
5. variance.a

Mastered by Denis Blackham
Photography & design: Jon Wozencroft

About Richard Chartier

Richard Chartier is a Los Angeles-based artist/composer considered one of the key figures in minimalist sound art. Chartier’s works explore the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception, and the act of listening itself.

Since 1998 Chartier’s critically acclaimed sound works have been published on labels including Room40, Editions Mego, Important Records, Touch/Ash International, mAtter, Raster-Noton, 901 Editions, his own imprint LINE.

He has collaborated with William Basinski, ELEH, France Jobin, Robert Curgenven, Taylor Deupree, AGF, CoH, Yann Novak, Asmus Tietchens. As Pinkcourtesyphone he has collaborated with Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kid Congo Powers, harpist Gwyneth Wentink, AGF, and Evelina Domnitch.

Chartier’s sound works/installations have been presented in museums and galleries internationally. His performances have occurred live across Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Chartier’s compositions have accompanied dance works by noted choreographers Ohad Naharin, Cristina Caprioli, Dustin Klein, and Marco Blazquez).

Since 2000, Chartier has curated his influential label LINE, publishing over 150 editions documenting the compositional and installation work of international sound artists and composers who explore the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism.

the tree in a breeze
too much movement to focus
on a single leaf

dedicated to Steve Roden (1964-2023)

For over a quarter of a century, sound artist and composer Richard Chartier has interrogated an ever deepening thread of minimalist sound that meshes questions of stasis, pulse and timbre. The results of this work is some of the most quietly intense compositions of this century. His is a music of subtle variation, unwavering concentration, and also patience. This five part work created between 2020 and 2022 is dedicated to his friend and fellow sound artist Steve Roden.

“I first became friends with Steve Roden (and later his wife, Sari) back in 1998 when my first album ‘direct.incidental.consequential’ was released. He was one of the first group of artists to whom I sent the album. Almost instantly he had been there on the other side of the phone (or email) and ever since.

His way of listening and attention to details (no matter how small) was inspirational — the clarity and complexity of his understated and only seemingly simple compositions, engaging. Underneath it all, ‘the less’ truly opened your ears to ‘the more.’ Steve saw and heard everything between the noise, no matter how faint.

Some of the last times I was able to see Steve were right before the pandemic. The effects of his advancing Alzheimers were present, still somewhat subtle, but increasing. I am still regretful that we were unable to spend more time together prior to his succumbing to his condition’s cruel effects. Another regret is not engaging in the collaboration we had both talked about for YEARS. ‘We should really start on that sometime soon’ Steve and I would say with each passing year.

I worked on the compositions included on this album as Steve gradually slipped away from communication. He was not in my life like he had been before. During this time it became apparent that these pieces were for Steve. A reflection of his ability to find beauty in the most minute details. Even when finally reviewing the final masters after his passing, I tried to think about how Steve would listen.

What would Steve hear in the details? His effect on this album is strong… the accumulation of influence and inspiration. This album feels organic and warm and was developed during a time when his absence in my life increased. That warmth is reflective of the nature of who Steve was himself, his friendship, and his visual & sound work.

on listening… on loss… on leaving…

As Steve and I mutually suggested… for quiet amplification or headphone listening.”

Reviews:

Boomkat (UK):

Dedicated to his fellow sound artist Steve Roden, Richard Chartier’s Touch debut is a quiet contemplation that zeroes in on the microscopic details, bringing rough, inclement textures out slowly from somnolent, psychoactive drones.

When Roden passed away last year, Chartier was already almost finished with ‘On Leaving’. The two artists had been friends since 1988, when Chartier had released his first album, and had been close ever since. So when Chartier visited Roden before the pandemic, and observed how he was slipping away from the effects of Alzheimers, he realized could reflect Roden’s impact on his life with a series of contemplative compositions. This is patient, cryptically complex material, and some of the most stealthily emotional work Chartier has penned to date. It’s an album that’s minimal – Chartier asks us to listen on headphones or at the very least at a low volume – but not without movement. Like Roden, Chartier exerts a meditational level of focus on his soundscapes, coaxing us into deep listening with subtle rhythms and tonal shifts that occur almost imperceptibly.

This isn’t music that can be skipped through or placed in the background, it requires attention – the kind of concentration that can bring out its oblique movements and furtive textures. The first 10-minute piece is surprisingly organic; it’s not obvious what Chartier’s source material might be, but the gustiness suggests the outdoor environment or at the very least, some kind of obsolete technology. He cautiously blurs in synthetic sounds, never overwhelming the atmosphere with drama, but retaining a pregnant nervousness that shifts into the center of the frame on the thrumming ‘variance.2’. And by ‘variance.4’ the noise has subsided completely, leaving raw, undulating sub bass that curves underneath barely perceptible synth quivers. It’s a charming but unrelentingly intense analysis of loss and regret that doesn’t ever forget the humanity and warmth of its subject.

Igloo (USA):

Richard Chartier’s On Leaving is an excellent album comprised of subtle, minimal, old-school drone pieces dedicated to the late Steve Roden. “Variance.1” begins as a light noise whir accompanied by glitchy, reverberant clicks. Gradually an oscillating two-tone pattern, run through a sort of flange effect, is added—hearkening back to music from the original peak of drone music, before the turn of the millennium. “Meshing questions of stasis, pulse and timbre,” as the press-release states accurately.

“Variance.3” starts with a lower-pitched murmur. Washes of noise, in soothing cycles, are mixed with this low drone. The track is calming both in that the humming sounds are consistent and cycle with some regularity. The volume increases throughout, and about halfway through, a sense of progression is suggested by the appearance of a higher-pitched tone.

“Variance.4” also begins with a deep, steady vibration. Listening more carefully, we begin to notice subtle, higher harmonics. A deeper oscillation cycle is brought forward, throwing the static nature of the drone in question. Tonal phrases are combined, resulting in a humming pulse. The track ends with a graceful, slow fade.

Overall, On Leaving contains a set of vintage variances, soothing drone tracks that are in ways abstract yet deceptively organic in nature. Minimal composition together with low pitches and recursive sets of sound contribute to this soothing effect.

ambientblog (NL):

Of course, Richard Chartier and Pinkcourtesyphone are the same person – but there is a distinct difference in the music released under these names. As Pinkcourtesyphone, Chartier presents a somewhat ‘tongue-in-cheek’ side of music, more emotional, with perhaps some slightly ‘campy’ themes. Or, as Chartier himself says: ‘more musical’. But Pinkcouresyphone’s output should be taken as seriously as the work released under his own name – which is a sound art more minimal, spatial, and abstract perhaps.

With these two (almost simultaneously released) new albums the differences (as well as the similarities) can easily be explored.

On Leaving is dedicated to Steve Roden, who died in 2023, suffering from Alzheimer: “Steve saw and heard everything between the noise, no matter how faint”.
“I worked on the compositions included on this album as Steve gradually slipped away from communication. He was not in my life like he had been before. […] on listening… on loss… on leaving…”

With this background in mind, the five variances get a dark touch, but in itself, the music is free of such emotional value. It is also intensely quiet and peaceful. The ‘implied silence, finely structured and in some cases cyclical’ requires listening at low volumes or on headphones.
One question remains, however: ‘What would Steve hear in the details’?

Stadt Revue Mag [Germany]

[trans:

Music opens up spaces of sound, provides us with a refuge from the chaos of everyday life, where we can organize our thoughts and draw up plans, even utopias. The new album by sound artist and composer Richard Chartier, who has worked in the past with William Basinski, AGF and Cosey Fanni Tutti, among others, will be released on the British label Touch, home to many visual musicians. Chartier has always freed himself from the prevailing attributive and adjectival expectations of music by understanding his music not as a dialog with the outside world per se, but as an introspective questioning of what it does to sounds when they are oriented towards themselves. These are minimalist compositions whose static hardly vibrates and whose timbres change only slowly.

“On Leaving” is an album in five acts, on which Chartier, coming from an intensive dialog with his friend Steve Roden, who died of Alzheimer’s disease in the course of production, deals intensively with the presence and absence of sound sources and sounds, drawing our attention to the endless level of micro-sound particles, including (seemingly) soundless passages hidden in the depths of his music. A music that, contrary to all these rather abstract explanations, sounds seductively warm and inviting. [Thomas Venker]

Touching Extremes (Italy):

Selfishly speaking, one of the things that hit a nerve when, last year, I heard of the passing of Steve Roden (born, like this writer, in 1964) was to learn that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. A disease that – mentally, and somewhat erroneously – is typically associated with a state of advancing old age. I unconsciously connected this information to some minor défaillances encountered in recent years that, truth be told, annoy yours truly not a little, considering my disciplined lifestyle.

Thus I found extremely relevant the pairing, proposed by Richard Chartier in the liner notes of On Leaving, of the worsening shape of Roden who slowly “slipped away from communication”, and his renowned propensity to seize the details, albeit minute, of whatever lies in the sonic interspace. Especially the supposedly “mundane” sounds, containing within themselves cues and codes for the comprehension of processes and phenomena that elude the conventional intellect. Beyond physiological issues, a proportionality may exist between the incremental transformation of musically endowed human beings into the very sounds they pick up, and the corresponding progressive relinquishment of the corporeal quotidian, coupled with a realization of the ineffectiveness of spoken transmission.

It’s a suggestion that grows more compelling as one navigates the five “Variances” that constitute this release, superb exemplifications of Chartier’s perceptual and compositional sensibility. A prolonged exposure to mesmerizing repetition is enhanced by minimal matters rich in cryptic repercussions. The acoustic surfaces can appear nearly seamless, but they’re still hiding a wealth of pulsating components and dynamic nuances. They can only be caught in complete stillness or, as suggested, using headphones (and, the reviewer adds, they must be of a high quality). The listener’s reluctance to determine the source of this beauty has always been part of the equation with Chartier’s output. It is a condition that should be respected at all times.

On the other hand, a limitative definition of what resounds in our kernel represents the futile attempt by deluded individuals to grasp universal laws that would work with or without silly anthropocentric pretensions. Chartier’s audio art – and the same was true of Roden’s – is expressed via the scanning of an awareness-charged silence, uniquely rippled by currents of echoing wisdom. It is the reason why we’re here, all the more inwardly driven, headed toward a purpose in which the word “physicality” acquires its proper connotation exclusively through the resonance of vibrating particles. [Massimo Ricci]

TO:5320S Fennesz – ‘Sognato di Domani’

10th May 2024 » Permalink: TO:5320S Fennesz – ‘Sognato di Domani’

Artist: Fennesz
Title: Sognato di Domani
Label: Touch
Format: DL only
Catalogue Number: TO:5320S
Barcode: 5050580826403
Street date: 10th May 2024

Fennesz releases a new digital single, “Sognato di Domani”, on 10th May. It is available to pre-order now from Bandcamp. Further details below.

Track Listing:
1. Sognato di Domani (6:38)

“Sognato di Domani” is a new recording made by Christian Fennesz, completed in the context of his upcoming album due for release later this year. In parallel with making new work, we are planning to present a 20th anniversary release of “Venice”, which will be ready very soon in its remastered splendour. “Sognato di Domani” fitted the complexion of this earlier 2004 classic quite exactly, and in many ways revitalises it. The track you will hear on the “Venice 20” CD is an edited version of the digital release we present now: the full version. The photography is an out-take from the footage captured for “Liquid Music”, made in 2001 and planned for the technically impossible DVD release in 2005.

RGB02 Fennesz + Wozencroft – ‘Liquid Music ll’

28th March 2024 » Permalink: RGB02 Fennesz + Wozencroft – ‘Liquid Music ll’

Liquid Music ll features a full-length video by Jon Wozencroft, an extract of which you can view above. The download bundle also includes audio of the soundtrack, by Fennesz. This is a Bandcamp exclusive release.

This release is now available here

The film was made for Fennesz’s live performances on the Touch 2001 tour (with Hazard/Heitor Alvelos and Biosphere/Jony Easterby) and the first version eventually released on a Touch 30 USB stick in 2012, from an incendiary performance at Brighton Gardner Arts Centre which centred on material from the Endless Summer release, amplified to the max. A DVD release was scheduled in 2005 but this proved impossible to master due to the fast–moving nature of the footage… once compressed for the demands of the format at that time, it looked like a pixelated jigsaw.

The DVD was to be partnered with this quite different set by Fennesz at the 2004 Norberg Festival in Sweden, shortly after the release of Venice, but totally improvised, including few traces of that release. Liquid Music II is now available for the first time and is “the extended version” to take account of the longer set times and the continued synergy that it gave to Fennesz’s live performances. Christian’s performance was trance-like in comparison to the Brighton gig three years earlier and is in itself an essential document of his developing sound.

The footage was filmed on Hi-8 and mini-DV between 1995 and 2001 and is intended as an analogue to the fast moving developments of digital media and its distribution at that time. With this in mind, none of the footage benefits from any post-production nor processing, it is as seen through the lens of the camera which often involved dangerous positioning, close to the edge of rivers and rocks to get a forensic capture of the movement. A tripod was impossible; at times the camera is almost touching the water.

I call it a film and not a video because the inspiration was from classic avant-garde interventions by such luminaries as Stan Brakage, Peter Kubelka, Guy Sherwin and others, who always shot on celluloid. I did it on camcorders because there was no budget to use a Bolex and it was simply a question of what was practical, portable and a kind of guerrilla action when the weather was favourable. In addition, it was becoming a big thing at the time for ‘electronic’ musicians to use digital video projections to frame their naked-laptop performance situations, but I felt Fennesz did not fall into this perceptual grid, his music having a romanticism and a harmonic force that was more timeless and would be neutered by the latest software aesthetic.

The film challenges the notion of sync between sound and image, so that every time it was projected, and every time Fennesz played, the connection would be different and the chemistry personal to each member of the audience. In that way it becomes a live conversation and not simply a ‘show’ nor wallpaper for the music.
[Jon Wozencroft, March 2024]

V33.80 – ELEH ‘KICKTILE’

30th November 2023 » Permalink: V33.80 – ELEH ‘KICKTILE’

Released 30th November 2023
You can buy from Bandcamp here

Following a suspended project with Iklectik in 2021, ELEH presents a 22 minute recording KICKTILE in support of the venue’s current struggle for survival. Touch releases the track as a digital download on bandcamp to coincide with the benefit concert on 6th December 2023, ‘To Have and to Hold’, with all proceeds going to Iklectik. KICKTILE was previewed at the Jon Wozencroft/Bruce Gilbert sound seminar on 29th November.

TO:121 Claire M Singer – ‘Saor’

5th October 2023 » Permalink: TO:121 Claire M Singer – ‘Saor’

Artist: Claire M Singer
Title: Saor
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Catalogue Number: TO:121
Street date: 3rd November, 2023

You can order this CD album from 6th October 2023, here

Track Listing:

1. Cairn Toul
2. Pressure
3. Càrn
4. Outside
5. Forrig
6. Stops
7. Braeriach
8. Above and Below
9. Saor

Written and performed by Claire M Singer

Mastered by Denis Blackham
Artwork by Jon Wozencroft
Photography by Ash Todd (front and inside) and Seàn Antleys (back)
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.

Claire M Singer has announced details of the first release in a triptych of albums. Saor [pronounced Sieur: meaning ‘free’ in Scottish Gaelic] perfectly encapsulates Claire’s experimental approach to the pipe organ, exploring rich harmonic textures and complex overtones which create ever-shifting melodic and rhythmic patterns, conjuring visions of the Scottish dramatic landscapes which inspire her. It’s her 3rd album for Touch, after ‘Fairge’ [2019] and ‘Solas’ [2016].

“Saor follows two narratives: my trekking across the Cairngorm mountains in Aberdeenshire through the granite plateaux, corries, glens and straths, and my exploration of the 1872 organ built by Peter Conacher & Coy, Huddersfield in Forgue Kirk, Aberdeenshire where many of my ancestors lie.”

Tracks that are directly influenced by the Munros of Scotland, such as ‘Cairn Toul’ and ‘Braeriach’, are both majestic and sublime in their scope, sitting alongside interludes that more generally allude to the instrument: ‘Stops’, ‘Pressure’, ‘Above and Below’.

When writing her first organ commission in 2006 Claire approached the instrument as a sound source rather than how it is conventionally played. She has never had a lesson in her life and developed her own way of playing, including using straws or chopsticks to hold down the keys so she can manipulate the wind through the stops. About 90% of her sound, she says, involves her having one hand or two on the stops – having a full physical relationship with the instrument, continuously tweaking and exploring the mechanical stop action as she progresses her melodies.

Much of the album was written or recorded in Claire’s home county, at Forgue Kirk in Aberdeenshire. A church she hadn’t discovered before, in a remote spot, up a slight hill near a small cluster of houses. A friend recommended the organ to her and she later found out from her mother that many of her ancestors were buried there. “I had this weird stars aligning moment – during my residency at Forgue I spotted a gravestone propped up in the pews which was being restored, and it was Peter Forsyth, one of my relatives.”

Across the album, tracks flutter, pulse and build into and imposing mass. Some suggest texture and weather, using electronic processing and distortion. Others rely on the organ itself for heady atmospheres, while Saor’s title track goes even further; recorded at Orgelpark, Amsterdam, an international concert hall for organists, it uses five instruments in layers that span four centuries. Claire also plays cello, mellotron and harmonium on the album, and there are contributions from strings (Patsy Reid), trumpet (Brian Shook), clarinets (Yann Ghiro) and French horn (Andy Saunders).

Saor is an adventure bringing the same sense of elation as the journeys Claire made on foot to the summit. “When I’m alone at the top of a Munro, I feel completely free. It’s the most exhilarating feeling to be up there with nature looking at this vast landscape. I hope Saor conveys how that feels, and carries people with those feelings.”

Saor is generously supported by Arts Council England, PRS Foundation’s Composers’ Fund in partnership with Jerwood Arts, the Friends of Forgue Kirk, the Richard Thomas Foundation and Orgelpark, Amsterdam.

Reviews:

A feature in The Drouth here (by Neil Cooper)

Boomkat (UK):

Singer knows her way around a pipe organ better than most. Not only is she Music Director of the organ at London’s Union Chapel, she runs the UK’s only organ festival, Organ Reframed, and has been writing for the instrument for over a decade. Saor (meaning ‘free’ in Scottish Gaelic) is her second proper album for Touch, and is a triumph of not only technique but composition. In her hands, the pipe organ is expressive, not just an aesthetic pointer to our liturgical past, and she layers harmonies that charm and bewilder as they slowly evolve. This isn’t a loose set of dirges, it’s a deftly balanced, deceptively complex symphony that uses the inherent power and spiritual theater of the instrument to evoke pure emotion.

Singer was motivated by two particular themes: her walks in Aberdeenshire’s Cairngorms, and her experience getting acquainted with the 1872 Conacher organ, an instrument that arrived in Forgue Kirk, where many of her ancestors are buried, shortly after the Church of Scotland allowed it to be used again after over 300 years. This personal resonance is apparent on the album’s opener ‘Cairn Toul’, a weighty composition that starts by establishing the tonal quality – wavering, ghosted drones – before adding thematic heft.

Unashamedly grandiose, it’s music that captures both the imposing, mountainous landscape and the solemn mass of history, sounding contemporary in its approach but aware of its historical function. She helps set the scene with short skits, recording the environmental creaks, clanks and hisses that help us lock into her location. They make the longer, more lushly crafted pieces sing louder and more clearly, so when we hear ‘Forrig’ after the brief ‘Outside’, a quick chirp from the surrounding natural world, it sounds all the more angelic.

And on ‘Above and Below’, Singer adds stubbly, distorted textures and rhythms, bending her organ sounds underneath woody clatters and blown-out hits. The centerpiece is the title track though, an almost 25-minute hum that cleverly only implies its magnificence. Singer waits a good 13 minutes before slipping from cautious drones into dense, powerful motifs, and when the drop comes, it’s like a message straight from the heavens. You can almost touch the fog.

and in The List here

Composer Claire M Singer takes a somewhat unconventional approach to playing the organ. She tells us how the Scottish mountains have influenced her musical style and fed directly into a new album

Foxy Digitalis (USA):

Gonzo Circus (Belgium):

Das Filter (Germany):

Saor is my album of the year. It moves me like nothing else has taken me in the last twelve months. The elongated build-ups, the sheer power and power of the through-composed drones that develop step by step and chord by chord lay a cloak of silence over everything with beats. Saor is an anthemic superlative of euphoric restraint. The way the musician combines her organ playing with mellotron, trumpet, cello, clarinet and electronics is absolutely masterful. Sometimes bright and radiant, sometimes dark and threatening, sometimes deliberately noisy. Saor is a chamber liberation move.. [Thaddeus Herrmann]

Amazon (UK):

One could use a myriad of adjectives to describe Saor or to be more precise one could try ones upmost to describe ones listening experience of Saor…but I feel it would be like trying to describe or intellectualize ones listening experience …the pleasure of that listening experience. However, I could say, there are some pieces on this album that almost brought tears to my eyes, that I felt an overwhelming sense of beauty, at times I felt as though I was immersed in light, then slowly unearthed from that experience or sensation …I could say Saor is like a composition of arresting music, the notation of an interior voyage or I could simply say this album is beautiful, very beautiful …just sit down by yourself and listen to it! [Jamil Ahmad]

No. 1 in iTunes

Groove (Germany):

1767, 1872, 1877, 1922, 1925, 2009, 2018: Das sind die Baujahre der Orgeln, mit denen die schottische Komponistin Claire M Singer ihr Album Saor aufgenommen hat – ein zeitlicher Bogen, den der Techno einfach nicht schafft. Singer hingegen schafft auf ihrer fünften Veröffentlichung (wenn wir alles mitrechnen) einiges, wenn nicht sogar alles.

Saor bedeutet so viel wie „frei”, und um Himmels willen setzt Singer mit ihren dronigen Entwürfen die Segel für die Überfahrt gen Freiheit! Die Musikerin schichtet Harmonien und Strukturen so reduziert-mitreißend, wie es Jóhann Jóhannsson nur selten gelang, selbst vor seiner Hollywoodisierung. Mit einem Wechselspiel zwischen Hell und Dunkel, Episch und Bedrohlich, Leise und Laut zersägt Singer auch die letzten morschen Planken der hölzernen Achterbahn mit Endlos-Loop. Das ist deep und in höchstem Maße emotional, dabei aber nie anbiedernd oder banal, sondern zeitgenössische Stringenz im Dienste eines Flows, der das Versinken in den eigenen Gedanken zum Kategorischen Imperativ macht. Ich habe mein Testament geändert. In der Trauerhalle wünsche ich mir „Forrig” auf voller Lautstärke, zweimal hintereinander.

Boomkat (UK):

further (UK):

Influenced by trekking through the Cairngorm region of northern Scotland and an 1872 pipe organ installed in a church in Forgue, Aberdeenshire, Saor finds Claire M Singer reflecting on the topography of her homeland, as well as ruminating on existence itself. Many of Singer’s ancestors are buried at the church in Forgue, and the vast Cairngorms expanse would be largely unaltered from when they were alive. That gives these pieces the notion of things staying the same, but at the same time always changing. This is expressed in beautiful, thought-provoking pieces like ‘Cairn Toul’, through long, unmoving held notes on the organ over which more fluid moments are laid. The album’s 25-minute title track is nothing short of mesmerising, its organ drones rising gracefully like one of the mountains and plateauing with hopeful, joyous interventions. Singer is currently raising funds to help the restoration of the Henry Willis organ in the Union Chapel In Islington, which is featured on Saor – to donate, go here. Thanks to Mike and Zoe. 

T33.22 Youmna Saba – ‘Wishah وِشاح’

3rd September 2023 » Permalink: T33.22 Youmna Saba – ‘Wishah وِشاح’

Artist: Youmna Saba
Title: Wishah وِشاح
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Catalogue Number: T33.22
Street date: 6th October, 2023

You can order this CD album here
and the vinyl version here

Track Listing:

1. Akaleel’أكاليل
2. Ba’oud بعوض
3. Al khayal الخيال
4. Ahad أحد
5. Tareeq طريق

Written and performed by Youmna Saba
Recorded and mixed by Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut
Produced by Youmna Saba and Fadi Tabbal

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.

Wishah (‘Veil’ in Arabic) is a composition in five stages, written by Youmna Saba between 2021 and 2022, for voice, oud and electronics.

Following her previous solo works Njoum (2014) and Arb’een (40) (2017), this album marks a significant turning point in Saba’s journey. Created after leaving Beirut and settling in Paris, Wishah reveals a profound shift in her musical expression, informed by rigorous research in the sonic properties of sung Arabic phonemes and their role in shaping synthesised electronic sounds.

The album employs a digital extension for the oud, a concept developed by Saba in her research project Taïma. This device enhances the oud’s sonic range, seamlessly integrating synthesised electronics. It also amplifies subtle, often overlooked sounds generated during playing, such as resonances and fingerboard friction.

The composition is organised into five distinct stages, each contributing to a process of gradual revelation. As the tracks unfold, they strip away layers of constructed emotions and perceptions that have been intricately woven over time, to expose a space that no longer exists. Wishah is a farewell to home.

The oud digital extension used on this record was developed by Nicolas Canot, and produced by Césaré – Centre National de Création Musicale, as part of the research project Taïma, by Youmna Saba.

Youmna Saba (Beirut 1984) is a musician, composer and musicologist. Her current research focuses on instrument and space resonances in different sonic and musical contexts. With four albums to this date, she has collaborated with musicians of different musical expressions such as Kamilya Jubran, Floy Krouchi, Mike Cooper and the Neue Vocalsolisten ensemble, and has taken part in numerous artist residencies. She is the laureate of the first sound residency at Quai Branly Museum, Paris (2022-2023) with her research project and installation La Réserve des Non-Dits, now on view at the museum; and a laureate of the music residency program at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2020-2021).

Reviews:

Utility Fog (Australia):

And finally, venerable UK sound-art label Touch brings us our third Lebanese artist tonight, with a remarkable new work from Beirut’s Youmna Saba, now based in Paris. Saba is an accomplished oud player, found on many other artists’ releases (such as Oiseaux-Tempête). On Wishah her oud’s sound is technologically extended, to amplify every string squeak and body tap, and further integrated with sympathetic electronics. The works range from abstract processed sound to delicate oud fingerpicking, and most tracks patiently reach a place where Saba brings in her emotive vocals. It’s an immersive, moving listening experience.

Musique Journal (France):

You can read a feature by Pierre France here

Beyond the Coda (France):

Wishah , on Touch, is the last album marking a significant turning point in Youmna Saba‘s journey. Created after leaving Beirut and settling in Paris, Wishah reveals a profound shift in her musical expression, informed by rigorous research in the sonic properties of sung Arabic phonemes and their role in shaping synthesised electronic sounds.  The album employs a digital extension for the oud, a concept developed by Saba in her research project Taïma.

As well you have to visit Youmna Saba’s installation concerning La réserve des non-dits at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. The artist went to capture the breath of musical instruments in the heart of the ‘instrument tower’, a protected and optimized environment to ensure the proper conservation of the Museum’s collection of musical instruments. The installation offers a zoom on the micro-sounds emitted by these instruments in their passive state, their resonances, their voices. It is a way of revealing the inaudible, of exhuming traces of sounds and other residual images, of transcribing their unwritten stories, the information that these instruments capture and record in their bodies, as close as possible to their material.

[Wishah, sur Touch, est le dernier album marquant un tournant important dans le parcours de Youmna Saba. Après avoir quitté Beyrouth et s’être installée à Paris, sa pièce Wishah révèle un changement profond dans son expression musicale. Cette pièce relève d’une recherche rigoureuse sur les propriétés sonores des phonèmes arabes chantés et leur rôle dans la formation de sons électroniques synthétisés. L’album utilise une extension numérique pour le oud, un concept développé par Saba dans son projet de recherche Taïma.

Egalement visiter l’installation de Youmna Saba concernant La réserve des non-dits; au Musée du quai Branly. L’artiste est allée capter le souffle des instruments de musique au cœur de la ‘tour des instruments’, un environnement protégé et optimisé pour assurer la bonne conservation de la collection d’instruments musicaux du Musée. L’installation propose un zoom sur les micro-sons qu’émettent ces instruments dans leur état passif, leurs résonances, leurs voix. C’est une manière de révéler l’inaudible, d’exhumer les traces de sons et autres images résiduelles, de retranscrire leurs histoires non-écrites, les informations que ces instruments captent et enregistrent dans leurs corps, au plus près de leur matière.]

The Wire 2023 Round Up:

Foxy Digitalis (USA):

A five-part composition for voice, oud, and electronics that lingers like an illuminated phantom hovering in our periphery. Youmna Saba’s voice is timeless, each whispered tome finds its way into the stars before the sting wears off. Rushed passages send out glowing tendrils to cut through the darkness, simmering with an endless vitality that captivates the senses and leaves us wondering what’s to come. Organic resonance shuffles beneath a well-worn sheen, oud notes hanging longer than a single breath.

Structured into five discernible stages, Wishah guides us through a gradual process of revelation, deconstructing memories and barriers that have built up through the ages. Saba carefully peels back those layers, finding an empty shell at the center, the place where home once existed. Each word stings. Caustic, atmospheric drones hollow out the last remnants, leaving our thoughts trailing into the endless night. A stunning album. [Brad]

Tone 78 Jana Winderen – ‘The Blue Beyond’

21st July 2023 » Permalink: Tone 78 Jana Winderen – ‘The Blue Beyond’

Vinyl LP with Fine Art Print – 2 tracks.
Release date: 4 August 2023. Buy ‘The Blue Beyond’ on Bandcamp.
Mastered and cut by Jason at Transition.
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft.
Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary.

Track listing:

A: The Art of Listening: Under Water
B: Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux

Edition of 1000 copies, the first 100 copies numbered and signed by the artist.

The record offers edits of two sound compositions for installations, ‘Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux’ (2019) and ‘The Art of Listening: Under Water’ (2019).

‘Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux’ was first presented at Art Basel in Basel from 13 to 16 June 2019. A live performance of the piece was given at HEK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) on 11 June 2019. ‘The Art of Listening: Under Water’ (2019) was first presented in the Rotunda, Collins Park, Miami Beach, in the context of Art Basel in Miami Beach, from 4 to 8 December 2019. ‘The Art of Listening: Under Water’ installation was made in collaboration with Tony Myatt. It travelled to the Lenfest Center for the Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, from 3 to 13 February 2022.

Winderen’s practice focuses on sound and knowledge production. The artist seeks to raise awareness of the environmental issues we face as a society.

Audemars Piguet Contemporary collaborated with Winderen on two new sound installation compositions. The first, ‘Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux,’ was developed during two field trips to Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux, at the heart of the Swiss Jura, where Audemars Piguet has been based since 1875. On these trips, Winderen captured sounds in the waters of the Lac de Joux and in the Risoud forest.

When Audemars Piguet Contemporary invited the artist to present a second composition for exhibition in Miami Beach, Winderen proposed a site-specific sound environment.  For ‘The Art of Listening: Under Water,’ Winderen used sounds recorded in the Atlantic Ocean in the Miami area, as well as sounds from the Barents Sea around the North Pole and the Tropical Oceans to expose the constant underwater presence of human-created sound today.

In both pieces, the artist offers a unique opportunity to listen closely to the underwater inhabitants of a specific region and to reflect on how human activity interacts and interferes with aquatic and also terrestrial life in a seemingly beautiful and visually calm environment.

Jana Winderen often draws the fish, amphibians and plankton she meets. This release also consists of a drawing of two fish that probably would never meet; the pike from the freshwater Lac de Joux in the Jura Mountains and the snapper from the saltwater environment by Miami.

Reviews:

a closer listen (USA):

While spinning The Blue Beyond, I couldn’t help but hope that Jana Winderen and Manja Ristić might one day meet and become friends, if they haven’t already.  The distance from Oslo to Belgrade is approximately 2500km, but the interests of these sound artists align.  They share a fascination with underwater sound, turning a keen ear to sounds occurring beneath the surface: brine shrimp, coral reefs, shifting seabeds but they also share a deep concern for the scourge of noise pollution: sand pumps, motors, industrial dumping.

If humans beings are incensed by the cacophony of construction, lawn work and traffic, why would we suspect sea creatures to be any different? The deep agitation caused by noise pollution affects feeding patterns, breeding and migration and while humans can at least complain, sea creatures can do nothing but endure.  A plane flying overhead may be a minor annoyance to us (and especially to most field recordists), but a constant parade of motorboats over a mating ground leads to fewer children and in some cases, extinction.

In The Blue Beyond, the intrusions are always near, but seldom dominant, like annoying neighbours who at least stay on their side of the fence.  Unfortunately, their noise becomes our noise, and in this case, we are the annoying neighbours.  Engines can be quieter (think of stealth submarines), if only the manufacturers might find the motivation.  On Side B, the biophany decreases every few minutes as the anthropophony increases, in the same way as all conversation ceases when a fire engine races by.  But whenever there is no human intrusion, the richness of the sonic tapestry is revealed.

‘Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux’ was recorded in the waters and forest of the Swiss Jura, the first of two commissioned pieces by by Audemars Piguet Contemporary.  The piece begins in innocence, with lapping waves, cawing birds and underwater crackle (sonically close to the sound of fire).  At times, the wind produces a drone; but what do ocean dwellers know of wind?  Only a minute in, the first motor arrives, and is noticed.  The local citizens react, as does the home listener.  On the LP, the sound is as soft as an old refrigerator hum; in real life, it may have been deafening.  Scant minutes later, the relatively benign sound of chimes precedes a louder engine, creating a stark contrast.  The forest creatures emerge in its wake.  Winderen’s composition highlights the pas de deux, the interaction noticed by only one party, the other impassive.

‘The Art of Listening: Under Water’ was recorded earlier, but appears here on Side A.  This piece combines recordings made in the Barents Sea and the Miami Beach area with ‘Tropical Oceans.’ Impressively, the piece was presented in Miami Beach, one of the most commercialised slices of real estate on the planet.  (Think spring break, Heat culture, an influx of tourists and Miami beats compilations.)  Will the local human beings, known for being anything but subtle, respond to such a warning?  They should, as their seemingly carefree mode of life has already been affected.  Only one week ago, the local water temperature hit a record 97 degrees (36C), affecting the local coral, algae and sweltering fish.  The sea mammals at the center of the composition seem to be crying, although we know we are anthropomorphising; if they are not boiling in Miami Beach, they are losing their glacial habitats at the North Pole.  Even Santa is sweating.

The last sounds on Side B are those of buzzing bees and a passing plane.  While the bees take the foreground, the plane has the final word.  There will be another plane; but one day, there may be no more bees. [Richard Allen]

Norman Records ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Bandcamp (USA):

Jana Winderen’s work is quite literally immersive: with a background in fish ecology, she records underwater environments to bring awareness to human impacts on aquatic wildlife. The Blue Beyond collects two pieces commissioned for Art Basel events in Basel, Switzerland, and Miami Beach, Florida. ‘Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux’ was recorded in the Risoud forest and the Lac de Joux in the Swiss Jura and combines terrestrial birdsong and insect chirps with the waves of the lake to create a calm, meditative soundscape. ‘The Art of Listening: Under Water,’ meanwhile, features recordings from the Atlantic Ocean around Miami, the Barents Sea near the North Pole, and tropical oceans. Ocean sounds, from the chittering of small sea creatures to the groaning calls of seals, interact with those of unknown origin—at times, there are mechanical clanks and hums; at others, persistent guitar-like buzzing. While sonically fascinating, this is also an alarming demonstration of the effects on marine animals’ ability to communicate as their habitats are filled with artificial noise. [Matthew Blackwell]

Bandcamp: Best Field Recordings of 2023

Jana Winderen’s subaquatic field recordings have already produced several classics in the genre, and The Blue Beyond adds to her impressive discography. Comprising two pieces commissioned for Art Basel events in Basel, Switzerland, and Miami, Florida, it features animal sounds taken from site-specific locations in the Alps and the Atlantic Ocean. ‘Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux’ begins on land with sounds captured in the Risoud forest before submerging into the Lac de Joux, where we hear strange insects along with the rumbling of a boat engine. ‘The Art of Listening: Under Water’ combines recordings from the Atlantic, the Barents Sea, and several tropical oceans. Amid the crackling of tiny sea creatures is a persistent buzzing like an EBow on a guitar—evidence of man-made mechanical interference. The Blue Beyond provides a startling glimpse into environments that none of us are likely to visit, but where humans nonetheless have an outsized impact. [Matthew Blackwell]

A Closer Listen (USA):

When diving below the surface, one is amazed at the wealth of sounds and the distance at which they travel.  For decades, Jana Winderen has been exposing these sounds to ears above water.  The two installation works on The Blue Beyond serve as a celebration of marine activity and a warning about sonic pollution; if the sound of motors is unwelcome to those listening to a record, imagine how threatening it might sound to a resident of the seas. [Richard Allen]

Neural (Italy):

The Blue Beyond includes two compositions the Audemars Piguet Contemporary, a prestigious Swiss watchmaking company, commissioned to the artist Jana Winderen. In the first track, “The Art of Listening: Under Water”, the idea she developed was a sound environment with the record of sounds in the Atlantic Ocean in front of Miami, and in the Barents Sea around the North Pole and the tropical oceans, with the goal to underline the constant submarine presence of sounds the man created. The final installation was made in partnership with Tony Myatt, a sound artist, engineer and academic, a specialist in the production of spatialized audio and presented at the Art Basel Miami. “Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux” was developed during two sound explorations in Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux, in the heart of the Swiss Jura, where Audemars Piguet is based since 1875. In these excursions, Jana Winderen captured the sounds of the waters at the Lac de Joux and in the Risoud forest. In both the compositions, the experimenter works to make us listen carefully to the sound emissions of the underwater inhabitants of a specific region, implicitly suggesting that, as in every environment, the human activity interacts and interferes with the water and terrestrial life. An operation that paradoxically made possible the meeting of two different species of fishes, the freshwater pike of the Lack of Joux and the snapper of Miami, who lives in the salty waters. Thanks to its techniques that stimulate the collective imagination, the art makes potentially possible any meeting, and already the paleolithic ancestors were worrying for the extinction of their preys, while the first farmers must be committed to keep the soil fertile. The theme of environmental sustainability is a complex concept, that needs adaptations and solutions that might go beyond the momentary trends, showing the contradictions between what we do and what we can later observe in nature. In this record the beauty of the result, full of sophisticated and slightly disturbing sequences, makes us think in a sensorial manner about this kind of contradictions. [Aurelio Cianciotta]

Tone 83 Philip Jeck & Chris Watson – ‘Oxmardyke’

31st May 2023 » Permalink: Tone 83 Philip Jeck & Chris Watson – ‘Oxmardyke’

Artist: Philip Jeck & Chris Watson
Title: Oxmardyke
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Catalogue Number: Tone 83
Street date: 16th June, 2023

You can order this CD album here

Track Listing:
1. Oxmardyke
2. Barn’ – click to listen
3. Beetroot Train
4. Coop
5. Drum
6. AH
7. Bridge
8. Salt End
9. Spurn

Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering
Photography by Chris Watson. Cover design: Jon Wozencroft

With thanks to Mary Prestidge, who writes:

“At the end of January 2022 Philip was taken to A&E at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital suffering from severe back pain and was admitted for investigations. In the hospital ward, with some strong pain relief, he could more comfortably rest, mostly horizontally. During the day he could be angled slightly toward a sitting position.

Over the following days, aiming to make sense of his current predicament, Philip regained a tiny level of normality. With his laptop in place he tapped into familiar territory and, when finding the most favourable times, listened to and worked with the sound files that Chris Watson had sent him.

During these brief, intense spells Philip gave all to his ear and heart to guide and shape the music forming at his fingertips. Oxmardyke is the album which resulted from this collaboration.”

Chris Watson:

“Philip’s laugh was infectious. Our conversations would usually begin with exchanges around the enthusiasm we had for each other’s work and the respect we shared for other Touch artists. However, as we were most likely to have met over drinks at the Philharmonic Dining Rooms in Liverpool the evening would gradually dissolve into convivial disarray. What did emerge from these soirées over recent years was a desire to find ways and means for us to collaborate at a place where our ideas converged.

In 2017 I was recording along the north bank of the Humber estuary and one morning driving back from Faxfleet I was stopped at the Oxmardyke rail crossing. The gates were down. After setting up a microphone array by the tracks for a passing freight train the signalman shouted an invitation to climb up into the gate box to make some more recordings.

Over the following weeks I made several return trips to Oxmardyke and gathered a broad palette of recordings. I discussed the sounds, stories and history of the site with Philip after a show and we were both excited by the potential of making a work together.

Philip was drawn to the ancient history of the area from 6th century Anglo-Saxon times to the Knights Templar and how the sounds, rhythms and textures from those periods may still inhabit the contemporary landscape. My thoughts took inspiration from ‘The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens and the painting ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ by Joseph Mallord William Turner. We agreed to share ideas and exchange tracks.

Oxmardyke gate box has now passed into history.

I hope my contributions may frame Philip’s exceptional work.” [August 2022]

Reviews:

The Quietus (UK): 21/100 Albums of the Year

Boomkat (UK):

Before Philip Jeck passed away last Spring, he worked with Chris Watson on material the field recordist collected from Yorkshire’s Oxmardyke rail crossing, bringing out the region’s ancient rhythms and blurring them into the contemporary landscape. 

Watson and Jeck had long been fascinated by each other’s work, and while they collaborated here and there, Oxmardyke is their only full-length outing as a duo. It began when Watson recorded material on the north bank of the Humber estuary in 2017; he stopped at the now defunct Oxmardyke rail crossing and set up his microphones alongside the train tracks so he could capture the sound of a freight train, before the signalman invited him up to the gate box to record more detailed audio. After returning to the site to gather more recordings, Watson connected with Jeck and the two began to plan their collaboration, diving deep into the history of the region to embellish the environmental recordings. The two shuttled tracks back and forth, ruminating on its themes, and when Touch’s Mike Harding notified Watson of Jeck’s illness, they quickened the pace.

“I sincerely hope that my contributions may frame Philip’s exceptional work,” Watson writes. He didn’t have to worry – the music is a fitting coda to Jeck’s estimable canon, swaying between realism and abstraction as dazzlingly vivid field recordings transform into glassy drones and chugging engines become thudding, ancient rhythms. The title track plays like a blueprint; allowing only the gentlest drones to poke through the duo’s impressionistic haze. On ‘Beetroot Train’, what sounds like a 4/4 kick intensifies and decelerates into a painterly mess of vamps and twanging, pitch-fucked plucks. The duo nudge into horror territory on ‘Coop’, stretching bell sounds that ring out across the expanse of countryside, losing tense harmonies in billowing clouds of sonic vapour.

It’s a folk horror soundtrack that’s of the land, but also lashed to each artist’s specific set of skills. Watson’s pristine snapshots are the ideal way to broadcast a here and now that sings of our era’s post-industrial conflict, while Jeck’s contributions add a pinch of magick that’s hard to quantify. ‘Drum’ is a perfect example, all dense, industrial whooshes and hoarse whirrs punctuated by birdsong and barely-audible musical traces. On ‘AH’ the music is even more tense and foreboding, with railway signals forming incessant rhythmic circles, train horns bent into swooping melodies.

Needless to say, if you enjoyed Mark Jenkins’ recent ‘Enys Men‘ soundtrack, or recent material from Akira Rabelais, this is gonna hit a sweet spot. But there are few other artists able to capture such a peculiar (and particularly British) mood. It’s like hearing an audio treatment of M. R. James’s most unsettling short stories – tales that leave you in a cold sweat.

The Quietus ALBUM OF THE WEEK 15.06.2023:

Across The Tracks: Oxmardyke By Philip Jeck & Chris Watson

The final album from the late Philip Jeck is a touching collaboration with master field recordist Chris Watson, focused on a level crossing near Hull.

When Chris Watson travelled by the Oxmardyke rail crossing in 2017, he found its sound to be enticing. So he returned to the place for a few weeks, gathering new tape with each excursion. These field recordings sound of industry and nature in harmony – as trains rush by and birds swarm around them, chirping through the metallic scratches and gusts of wind and dust. He later sent these recordings to his friend Philip Jeck, who took them and transformed them using his laptop, creating impressions of the place through tactile sound. Jeck’s resulting mix, Oxmardyke, finds a careful balance between the two artists’ quintessential styles, mixing Watson’s crisp field recordings and Jeck’s broad-stroked swathes of sound.

Jeck and Watson, both mainstays of the Touch record label catalogue, were longtime friends. In his liner notes accompanying the release, Watson remembers how he and Jeck got to know each other over drinks at the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, indulging in a good bit of merriment but also discussing making music together someday. After one post-show conversation about the sound and history of the area around the Oxmardyke crossing, it was clear that Watson’s Oxmardyke rail crossing recordings could be a good fit for uniting their visions, particularly blending Watson’s interest in recording the world with precision and Jeck’s curiosity about how the past may still haunt the present.

Oxmardyke came to fruition just before Jeck’s untimely passing in 2022, during moments in which his pain subsided enough that he could work on his laptop. The music he makes here reflects his classic textural sound and collaborations like 2021’s Stardust, in which he distorted recordings made by Faith Coloccia that revolved around motherhood. To make Oxmardyke, he took the sounds Watson captured – many different bird calls and metallic screeches of passing freight trains – and toyed with them, ultimately creating eerie music. Jeck’s penchant for vivid sound bolsters Watson’s keen eye for the most affecting sounds of nature, unearthing the emotions hidden inside of them.

Place feels both literal and metaphorical on Oxmardyke. When thinking about this music, Watson cites JMW Turner’s ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ as an inspiration; the painting depicts the clash of nature and industry in sullen earth tones, not unlike the recordings he captured. Jeck cites Oxmardyke’s history of the Knights Templar of the sixth century; he imagines their ghosts still floating around the place. The music often feels reminiscent of these artefacts, playing with the push and pull between past and present and electronics and nature, but much of the album’s sounds are razor-sharp, made of pointed strokes that carve out the edges of each image they create. In an interview with Ged Barry, Jeck noted that he likes to paint with sound; in practice, his music mixes colours together to create sweeping odes. Here, the hues he chooses often feel dark, reminiscent of the long-gone history that inspired him, while pristine fragments of the field recordings pop in and out of the fold.

The balance between cinematic sound and intricate detail is most evident on tracks like ‘AH’, where a chorus of birds, trilling in high pitched calls to each other, give way to a pulsing siren. It’s an ominous track: rolling, percussive sounds give way to thunderous swathes of sound that often feel alarming. But when those electronic noises pull away, what’s left is chattering birds. You might imagine the serenity of watching them fly above you or pick at the grass nearby. Elsewhere, razor-sharp sounds slice through Watson’s recordings, disrupting the placid landscapes he captured. Tracks like ‘Bridge’, which is glassier, still features piercing metallic scrapes that slice and shock; the music is never in one place for two long, as jarring moments disrupt every silence, bringing with them a harrowing feeling.

While Oxmardyke is layered and intricate, there’s a sense of hollowness and ominousness that rings throughout. The phrases that interweave and braid together on each track often fade out, leaving a hole in their wake. Tracks like ‘Barn’ sound cavernous – the music here is made of rounded pulses and some shrill squeals that circle around them, but when they disappear, all that’s left is a sense of lamentation. ‘Drum’ builds from a glossy surface, only to fall away into a bunch of shards that splinter like broken glass. It evokes both fear and appreciation, like how beauty and destruction go hand-in-hand when outside.

But perhaps the most moving moments are those in which the music leaves space for quiet reflection. Nowhere is nostalgia stronger than on the closer ‘Spurn’, which drops us in what feels like a peaceful setting of birds and gentle breezes. In contrast, fiery drones circle around them, creating a filmy sound that almost drowns out the recordings – but not quite. It’s as if an idea is just coming in and out of focus; it’s almost complete, but a few pieces are missing. When the track cuts out, all that’s left is the feeling of a memory that’s almost close enough to grasp, yet too far away to hold. [Vanessa Ague]

and No. 28 in Best Albums of the Year so far [1st July 2023]:

Oxmardyke came to fruition just before Philip Jeck’s untimely passing in 2022, during moments in which his pain subsided enough that he could work on his laptop. The music he makes here reflects his classic textural sound and collaborations like 2021’s Stardust, in which he distorted recordings made by Faith Coloccia that revolved around motherhood. To make Oxmardyke, he took the sounds Chris Watson captured – different bird calls and metallic screeches of passing freight trains – and toyed with them, ultimately creating eerie music. Jeck’s penchant for vivid sound bolsters Watson’s keen eye for the most affecting sounds of nature, unearthing the emotions hidden inside of them.  [Vanessa Ague]

The Wire (UK):

The Oxmardyke Gate Box lies on the York to Hull railway line which bisects the East Riding of Yorkshire. Or, rather, it used to. The site was decommissioned sometime around 2018, but while it was still functioning in 2017, sound recordist and musician Chris Watson made a series of recordings, inspired by the railway imagery of Charles Dickens’s The Signal-Man and JMW Turner’s Rain, Steam And Speed. Philip Jeck died in 2022, but before his death he was able to collaborate with Watson on what would become Oxmardyke.

The album begins with the title track, the twitter and chirp of birds momentarily interrupted by the sharp alarm sound of a railway crossing about to become active as Jeck drifts cirrus-like textures across the scene. Rather than warning the arrival of a train, these translucent electronics indicate that something else, something older than the railway infrastructure is present here. On ‘Barn’, Watson’s climatic sounds are matched with a steam powered rumble, while ‘AH’ whips up the clang of old industry across chattering gulls. Rather than Dickens or Turner, these pieces evoke more closely the uncanny tales of LTC Rolt or Robert Aickman, Jeck’s additions burrowing beneath Watson’s surface residuals to find something stranger in the soil.

The most striking aspect of Oxmardyke is the sense of loss running through it – knowing that Jeck passed away after creating the record combined with the fact that the location itself is now no longer in use, that reaction is to be expected. That sense feels physically ingrained in the pieces: ‘Coop’ sounds as though its drones are seeping away into the earth, while the more caustic ‘Drum’ scours it to ensure any traces are erased. While Watson’s input catalogues a sense of recent loss, Jeck’s murky electronics probe deeper, making contact with everything that has soaked into the ground where Oxmardyke’stands. [Spenser Tomson]

Salt Peanuts (Sweden):

Oxmardyke is the final work of British multimedia artist and pioneer turntablist who passed away untimely in March 2022, and is a true homage to his exceptional sonic vision.

Jeck, while being hospitalised due to severe back pains, mixed and edited field recordings that his close friend, sound artist Chris Watson (known as a founding member of the experimental Cabaret Voltaire band) recorded at Yorkshire’s Oxmardyke rail crossing over a few weeks. This album is Jeck and Watson’s only full-length album as a duo.

Watson discussed with Jeck the sounds, stories and history of the site, and both artists found inspiration from different sources. Jeck was drawn to the ancient history of the area from the 6th-century Anglo-Saxon times to the Knights Templar and how the sounds, rhythms and textures from those periods may still inhabit the contemporary landscape. Watson took inspiration from The Signalman by Charles Dickens and the painting Rain, Steam and Speed by Joseph Mallord William Turner.

Jeck and Watson managed to create an untimely and quite tangible, cinematic story about a meeting point of nature – with many types of bird calls – and modern industry’s rhythmic patterns – the processed sounds of freight trains. This meeting point may sound at first innocent and peaceful but Oxmardyke suggests more highly nuanced, abstract, impressionist and unsettling reflections and perspectives – and, obviously, vivid sonic layers and resonating pulses – about the clash of industry and nature. Furthermore, this album focuses on how the history of this specific location still haunts its present. Especially now that the Oxmardyke gate box has passed into history. [Eyal Hareuveni]

Bandcamp (US):

Oxmardyke is the last album by the late, great Philip Jeck, completed during moments of relative comfort while in the hospital at the end of his life. The album resulted from conversations Jeck had with friend, field recordist, and longtime Touch colleague Chris Watson. Watson had stopped by the Oxmardyke rail crossing in Yorkshire to record a passing train when the signalman invited him into the gate box to continue recording. For several weeks in 2017, he returned to create a series of recordings of trains passing and of the surrounding environment. While Watson was fascinated by the trains themselves, inspired by Charles Dickens’s story ‘The Signalman’ and J.M.W. Turner’s painting ‘Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway,’ Jeck expressed interest in the natural sounds that persist there from the Anglo-Saxon period to today. On the record, Watson captures the modern clamour of the crossing in brilliantly clear recordings. Jeck then overlays slow-moving phantasms of hum and static, as if the area is haunted by its long history. Oxmardyke is about metaphorical crossings as much as literal ones – crossing over distances, crossing through time, crossing one another’s paths in life – making the album both a fitting farewell from Jeck and a beautiful eulogy from Watson. [Matthew Blackwell]

a closer listen (US):

Oxmardyke is both heartrending and inspiring, suffused with a melancholic character revealed only by the backstory.  The ears receive it as a celebration of life.  These are Philip Jeck‘s final sonic offerings (although we may yet hear unreleased work from the artist).  Chris Watson relays the tale with heartfelt words.  Watson had made a series of recordings at the Oxmardyke rail crossing and after some conversation had shared them with Jeck, who was fascinated by the area’s history.  In January 2022, Jeck was admitted to the hospital.  In precious, all-too-brief moments, he found relief from the pain, sitting up, working with these sounds on his laptop: remembering who he was, perhaps reflecting on his legacy, sharing his talents with the world for what would be the final time.

It is impossible to separate the contributions of the artists on this record, nor would we wish to: Oxmardyke is a collaboration of mutual friendship and respect.  Jeck’s groundbreaking work with turntables and loops has already found a place in music lore, while Watson, perhaps more than any single artist, has helped to bring field recordings to the attention of the mainstream.

One can only speculate on Jeck’s thoughts, but it’s reasonable to guess that he may have felt an affinity with the Oxmardyke gates, knowing that they had since closed, while their sonic echoes remained.  One recalls the history of the crossing through sonic prompts, in the same manner as listeners now recall Jeck, making this set all the more poignant.

Jeck slows sound, then magnifies it, like a scientist returning to a slide.  In ‘Coop,’ the loops are pulled like taffy, while the birdsong is crisp and clear: a collision of nostalgia and reality. ‘Drum’ drops hints of sonic ballroom into a mist of squawking seagulls.  Notes emerge as if from a locked basement.  A train passes, seemingly without slowing.  When the brakes are eventually applied, no one seems to depart.  Is this a ghost train?  If so, it echoes Watson’s own ‘El Tren Fantasma‘ (2011), the attention of ‘AH’ diverted to rustling tracks and descending glissandos, like fading signals.

By ‘Salt End’ the rain has begun to fall, but life goes on, despite the title.  The clouds are closing around Jeck.  The sirens are starting to sound.  The artist says, “I still have more to give,” and he does.  A distant announcement is made.  Perhaps Jeck hears it as a boarding call: but not yet, not just yet.  There are still greetings and goodbyes, arrivals and departures.  One can imagine the artist rising from his bed, taking a last look around, and boarding the last train before the station itself is closed.  Watson enters the room, sees his final notes and completes his final elegy.  In the final piece, the train horn sounds as the waves crash against the shore.  Both fall silent; all falls silent.  But their sounds are not forgotten. [Richard Allen]

The Wire 2023 Round Up:

Electronic Sound (UK):

37/50 in the annual releases chart

Bandcamp: Best Field Recordings of 2023

Philip Jeck’s passing in March 2022 was an astonishing loss to experimental music, but this collaborative album between Jeck and legendary field recordist Chris Watson is a welcome last statement. Having planned to collaborate with Jeck for years, Watson finally exchanged recordings with him after learning of his condition in the hospital. The files he sent were recorded at the Oxmardyke rail crossing outside of Hull, England, and featured passing freight trains as well as the surrounding countryside. From his hospital bed, Jeck used moments when he felt most comfortable to focus on these tracks, transforming Watson’s crystal-clear recordings into soundscapes that hum and whisper with eerie beauty. According to his partner, Mary Prestidge, “During these brief, intense spells Philip gave all to his ear and heart to guide and shape the music forming at his fingertips.” We’re eternally thankful that he did. [Matthew Blackwell]

A Closer Listen (USA):

Stop. Look. Listen. Beware of trains. If sound waves vibrating just below our range of hearing can produce hauntings and feelings of dread, Philip Jeck seems to conjure up ghostly visitations through the careful manipulation of field recordings taken by Chris Watson at the Oxmardyke rail crossing on Tongue Lane in Yorkshire. The sense of transcendence is evident in the interplay between natural and mechanical sounds where the spacious aural environment recreated points firmly to what lies beyond. Oxmardyke is a result of sympathetic resonance between two sound artists, testament to their unique connection. [Gianmarco Del Re]

and 9/20 2023 chart in the same publication:

Oxmardyke would have appeared on this list even if it weren’t the last work by the late Philip Jeck, but that fact undoubtably lends extra weight to this collaboration with Chris Watson. Jeck edited and manipulated Watson’s recordings from his hospital bed (not unlike the production of J Dilla’s Donuts), though this is not necessarily palpable in the music itself. The long-in-the-works collaboration between two titans of the underground is, perhaps more to the point, the result of a collaboration between two friends. Beyond his work with Cabaret Voltaire and Hafler Trio, Watson has become internationally recognized as one of the world’s premiere field recordists, as comfortable recording wildlife sounds for the BBC as creating sound art installations. Watson gave recordings made at the Oxmardyke rail crossing to Jeck, who was fascinated by the area’s history, including connections to the Knights Templar.

Best known for his idiosyncratic approach to vinyl manipulation, Jeck digitally manipulates Watson tape in ways that call into question the supposed distinction between the natural and the non-. On some tracks Jeck’s touch is subtle, others less so, but Oxmardyke is a true collaboration, sounding like both and neither at the same time. The backstory of Oxmardyke the album, like the history of Oxmardyke the place, lends additional significance to these sounds, but true to the calibre of these two artists, the record stands on its own as a deeply compelling work of art. [Joseph Sannicandro]

TO:123 Bana Haffar – ‘Intimaa’

7th March 2023 » Permalink: TO:123 Bana Haffar – ‘Intimaa’

LP + DL – 7 tracks

Release date: Friday 19th May 2023 – you can pre-order your copy here on May 5th 2023

Track listing:
1. Clearing
2. Elemental
3. Ahi Al Samaa
4. Lifter
5. Save This Manual For The Future
6. Sit Still
7. All that is sometimes not considered

Survival is change

intimaa’
from a deep place of un-belonging
searching and searching

Recorded and mixed by Bana Haffar in Asheville, North Carolina between June 6th and July 18th, 2022

Artwork & photography by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Simon Scott @ SPS Mastering
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.

intimaa’ (belonging in Arabic) is a documentation of pieces composed for Touch’s 40th anniversary celebrations in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz in the Spring of 2022.

Pulling from ongoing research in weaving and textiles, the pieces are informed by the interchangeability of the weaver’s process with the sequencing of sound – from sourcing and preparing materials to be woven (recording, editing, and formatting samples), preparing the loom (programming the sequencer), and finally, weaving the cloth (playing back, manipulating, and recording the sequence).

Reviews:

Perfect Circuit (USA):

If you’re hanging out on Perfect Circuit’s blog (which…you are), it seems reasonable to assume that you’re familiar with Bana Haffar. Haffar is a staple figure in modular synth culture, in no small part due to the fact that she is one of the co-founders of Modular on the Spot – an LA-based periodic synth picnic/concert/happening that has since taken on new life in other cities and countries.

Despite this connection to a now-nearly-ubiquitous aspect of ‘modular synth culture,’ Haffar is actually, in our estimation, quite unlike many modular synth artists. While the modular synthesiser is a primary tool in her creative process, her inspiration doesn’t necessarily stem from the instrument itself: instead, extramusical concepts inform the processes she uses to create music. As a result, her music feels like it transcends the all-too-common pitfalls of music made with modular synthesisers. It’s much more than the ‘I just got a new module, here’s my album’ approach – her music is patient, thoughtful, and controlled by an underlying process that, despite many unexpected and occasionally disjunct results, feels cohesive.

In interviews, Haffar has pointed to the art of weaving as a primary inspiration and turning point in the development of her own musical processes. In 2019, when living in Asheville, North Carolina, she was commissioned by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center to create a piece for percussion quartet. Ultimately, she took inspiration from Anni Albers – a textile artist and printmaker who taught weaving at Black Mountain College. By studying Albers and the process of weaving itself, Haffar was able to devise a means by which weaving drafts – grid-like two-dimensional templates for weaving – could be translated into rhythmic structures. By deepening her personal understanding of weaving, Haffar was able to develop a sense of relationship between the patterned structures of everyday objects and the music she was creating…and weaving is still a central concept in her music-making.

Her latest full-length release intimaa’ إ​ن​ت​م​ا​ء‘ (released on Touch) follows along this trajectory. Intimaa’, or ‘belonging’ in Arabic, serves as a central theme for the music. Haffar’s sonic tapestries have an evocative, gradually-evolving, searching quality –constantly changing, never settling. Dissimilar materials overlap one another; sounds rhythmically collide and stretch beyond one another’s boundaries; peaceful ambiences dissolve into effervescent textures while rhythms stumble past one another.

Powerful work from one of the most thoughtful living modular synth composers, intimaa’إ​ن​ت​م​ا’ is a series of spaces that invite contemplation. Perhaps Haffar’s most meditative and engrossing work to date, this is deeply introspective music – turn it on if you want to get lost in thought and guided gently to some not-so-certain destinations.

Alan Haselden (UK):

Bana is a sound artist in her 30’s who lives in the US and is originally from Saudi Arabia. This 35-minute LP intimaa’ is seven electronic pieces made by both digital and analogue means. The pieces are drone-based with warm yet foggy and emotive sounds. The feel is a curiously ambivalent one and thus I’m not sure whether the pieces are a yearning for a better way ahead or whether they signpost an affirmed path towards comfort and resolve. Insistent, asymmetric, skittery rhythms; shrill, squiggly noises of fine resolution, and disruptive sampled musical snippets infiltrate the second and fourth pieces; and the sixth piece, titled ‘Sit Still’, embeds languid, dreamy vocals amidst a reverberant texture wash. If there is influence by veteran electronic artists Christian Fennesz and Autechre, then all the better, but, whatever, I think Intimaa’ is a creation of Bana’s own methodology and own experiences.

Tone 80 OZMOTIC | FENNESZ – ‘Senzatempo’

3rd March 2023 » Permalink: Tone 80 OZMOTIC | FENNESZ – ‘Senzatempo’

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LP + DL – 4 tracks

Release date: Friday 14th April 2023 – you can pre-order your copy here

Track listing:
1. Senzatempo
2. Floating Time
3. Motionless
4. Movements l – ll

Recorded 19/21 November 2021 in Turin, Italy at Superbudda studio
Audio engineer: Edoardo Fracassi

Cut by Jason @ Transition
Photography + design: Jon Wozencroft

Senzatempo became a lockdown record. In 2019, a year after our last concert as a trio with Christian Fennesz, the release of his Agora and our first publication for Touch – Elusive Balance – we met in Milan. We talked about ongoing projects, the evolution of our musical language and, as is often the case when we are all three together, the more frenetic and superficial aspects of contemporary society, the difficulty of letting ideas and projects mature and how music could still play a constructive role in that context. We left each other with the intention of talking at a distance about a new project, to be developed calmly, without any hurry.

In the months that followed, after e-mails in which we continued to discuss the project, we decided to work on the perception of time and to focus our attention on those periods of life in which time tends to dilate, to lose its boundaries, dedicating ourselves to the project without the fear of resting on indefinite moments of stasis – trying to take the time of creation as an ally, making the most significant ideas ‘sprout’, distilling emotions and crystallising them slowly.

Catapulted into the first wave of the pandemic, we began to work at a distance, We exchanged different types of sound materials, sometimes raw, sometimes more structured and with Christian we tried to give musical form to a surreal calm, at the same time as magmatic, uncertain emotional states. In this phase of collective confusion and almost total isolation, the first drafts of Senzatempo and ‘Movements I’ were born. In both tracks, we tried to structure chordal waves and melodies inlaid with counterpoints with broad architectures and sinuous movements, in a sort of ‘rubato’, with the idea of creating an orchestral breath to the entire album.

Senzatempo is characterised by a dream melody with a dense and continuous dialogue between a sharp guitar and percussive sounds floating on an abstract and flexible pulse. ‘Movements I’, later transformed into a two-part suite, is airy and meditative; an initial acoustic shock leads to a melody resting on relaxed chords and enveloping sounds studded with noise, glitches and fragments of field recordings.

After this initial work, we wanted to organise a studio session, but pandemic restrictions forced us to postpone and leave the music to mature further. The following summer, thanks to a residency project for young artists centred on the Senzatempo project and conducted by Christian and ourselves in central Italy, the opportunity arose for the first time to play the material produced thus far, and to experiment and focus on new musical ideas.

In November 2021, after a concert we did in Turin, we finally devoted ourselves to the drafting of the album in a studio session lasting some days. The final versions of the first two tracks were created, with the addition of a second part to ‘Movements I’, and ‘Floating Times’ and ‘Motionless Image of Eternity’ came into being.

In ‘Floating Time’, clouds of micro-sounds envelop an iridescent, sinuous melody in a sonic space delimited by sculpted percussive sounds. Lost memories seem to resurface. The end of the track takes up the beginning in a kind of ‘rondo’. ‘Motionless’ is counterpointed by telluric percussive sounds in a complex and detailed atmosphere. It seems as if nothing is moving in this sea of sound on which the guitar floats, when in fact everything is in motion in a simmer of textures and melodies that embroider counter-songs to the main refrain.

The music of Senzatempo moves in balance between composition and improvisation. It is a symphonic work for an imaginary orchestra in which melodies, counterpoints, dynamics and sonorities define a structural breadth reminiscent of classical music.

Reviews:

Headphone Commute (UK):

…an expansive sonic architecture, balancing exquisite composition with space for improvisation…You can read the full review here

a closer listen (UK):

One day soon we may hear the last of the albums produced during the pandemic, but not yet.  In the physical sense, this period was responsible for a blossoming of music; in the psychological sense, it highlighted the experience of time distortion, which was then translated into music.  Drone seems the perfect genre for such perceptions, incorporating long, slow passages with undulating curves and incremental changes in timbre.  Over time, the listener realises that movement has taken place, although it is often unnoticed while unfurling.

Enter Ozmotic and Fennesz, who exchanged files while isolated and were able to meet in person once the crisis eased to put the finishing touches on this album.  The extension of time allowed the ideas to germinate, the notes to marinate into tones.  A profound sadness seeps into the title piece, as orchestral tones gather and dissipate.  High-pitched tones enter, heralding light percussion: time markers that distinguish this segment from others.  The guitar joins the procession, tentative at first, then assertive; but never frantic, never rushed.  Then a return to the beginning – but still something has changed: if not in the music, at least in the listener.

Floating Times seems a perfect title for the past three years.  One year of the pandemic felt like two.  Holiday and milestone celebrations were postponed.  Days, months and finally years were dislodged.  The track begins with soft static, blooming mid-piece into melody: a fragile heart still hoping to soar.  An electronic pulse quickens with expectation, then fades, the static reemerging.  For the second time, a track cycles back to the start, like samsara, providing hope of exit without an obvious path.

Is there a more drone-like title than ‘Motionless Image of Eternity?’ The title is tongue-in-cheek, since the track does move, and possesses both form and ending.  The centre may seem nebulous, but a nebula also shifts – though such movements are imperceptible to the naked eye.  The closing ‘Movements’ seems to counter the preceding title, although ‘movements’ has a double meaning.  The track is composed as two movements, but the trio shares that it is also filled with “sinuous movements, in a sort of ‘rubato’, with the intention of creating an orchestral breath to the entire album.”  Breath became a central theme of the pandemic, from those gasping for ventilator breath to George Floyd’s infamous “I can’t breathe.”  While not directly referencing such associations, in a self-proclaimed ‘lockdown record’ they are difficult to escape.  The fact that the closing tempo is the most obvious, the persuasion the most upfront, provides a sign of progress; society is again in motion, albeit wondering if it is moving in the right direction. [Richard Allen]

The Wire (UK):

Senzatempo is like meditating on the edge of an abyss. An overwhelming stillness, majestic and dangerous. [Leah Kardos] – the full review can be read here

Uncut (UK):

MOJO (UK):

Juno (UK):

Not everyone will realise it, but Torino is one of Italy’s best-kept secrets and most fascinating cities. Even less will know that, for a brief period after the country we see today unified, its grand boulevards and statement palazzos made up the nation’s very first capital. A forgotten chapter that gave way to periods as an industrial powerhouse, economic centre of the Piedmont region, and then urban decay followed by population decline, with scars still very much visible in many areas. Not least those on the outskirts, where derelict spaces still offer a glimpse of what was, and everything that came before that.

A resident of the town, Ozmotic met with Christian Fennesz down the road (well, about two hours or so by train) in Milan ahead of setting to work on their latest collaborative project, S e n z a t e m p o. There, they apparently mused on philosophical ideas like evolution of musical language and the uneasy relationship deep dive artists such as them have with a world that wants to go faster, now, and stop for nobody. Nevertheless, the final album is every bit a product of the Torino studio in which it was recorded, in one long session which –  by the sounds of it –  must have got pretty intense.

Dark, futuristic ambient would be one way to describe what’s here. And that’s precisely the point. A city that lays claim to a highly experimental grass roots electronic scene (see: industrial noise maker Bienoise, albeit he’s technically based in the rural surrounds), these sonics invoke images of quiet desolation, post-human worlds, places filled with the ghosts of machines. Strange soundscapes that are at once unnerving and beautiful, the real question is whether the images it conjures are actually of tomorrow, or simply memories of yesterday. [MH]

Sun 13 (UK):

“…Shape-shifting elusively with sonic vignettes designed for late nights and dark rooms, alongside Fennesz’s distinctive guitar noodlings, Ozmotic pivot seamlessly in what matches up to the expectations many of us had when news of this collaboration surfaced…” You can read the full review here [Simon Kirk]

Salt Peanuts (SE):

Senzatempo (timeless in English) is the second collaboration of the Italian multidisciplinary, electronic duo OZmotic – soprano sax and electronics player Stanislao Lesnoj and drummer, objects and electronics player SmZ – with Austrian avant-guitarist and electronics player Christian Fennesz. This album is described by this ad-hoc trio as a partly composed, partly improvised symphonic work for an imaginary orchestra in which melodies, counterpoints, dynamics and sonorities define a structural breadth reminiscent of classical music. You can read the full review here [Eyal Hareuveni]

Ondarock (Italy):

You can read the full review here

Rockerilla (Italy):

lee-king (Japan):

www.ele-king.net/review/album/009180/

Electronic Sound (UK):

In one intensely productive session in Turin, Italian electronic wizards OZMOTIC and Austrian guitarist Christian Fennesz birthed the majority of Senzatempo. The opening title track sets the tone for the album – synths swell with majestic, restrained power, then Fennesz glides in, a shark fin piercing the waves, before the whole thing erupts into an overdriven, reverbed-to-hell beast. With distinct, yet utterly complementary sound
palettes, on the likes of ‘Floating Time’, OZMOTIC and Fennesz have forged unique soundscapes that are by turns graceful and epic. [AT]

Headphone Commute (UK):

Out of all of the negative and adverse comes something positive and desired – a record of expansive pseudo-orchestral movements wrapped in electronic microsound and glitch. The negative bit here is the onset of the pandemic, during which many of the musicians found themselves in isolation. And the positive, of course, is the newly found ways of collaborating together and creating something beautiful along the way. Such is the case for this ‘lockdown record’, where OZMOTIC and Fennesz found themselves to be a distance apart, exchanging ideas over a period of time that became this aural conversation on the perception of time. Working remotely on these ideas, the trio proceeded “to focus our attention on those periods of life in which time tends to dilate, to lose its boundaries, dedicating ourselves to the project without the fear of resting on indefinite moments of stasis – trying to take the time of creation as an ally, making the most significant ideas ‘sprout’, distilling emotions and crystallising them slowly.” Conceptually, that’s all fine and well, but what about the music? What has been bourne out of this effort, and what’s here to love?

Over the course of just four long-playing pieces, spanning a total of thirty-five minutes and change, Austrian composer Christian Fennesz and Italian multidisciplinary duo OZMOTIC, weave a textural blanket of symphonic progressions pierced by high-pitched micro tones, deep rolling bass, and sprawling guitars. The album immediately reminds me of the sonic palette explored by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, except where the distant piano drops are replaced by amplified strings and the surgically pristine clicks are modelled by synthesised chirps. Soft frequencies and distorted sounds are joined in a union of gorgeous and raw, atmospheric and noisy, reverbed and cut, and this cohesive cacophony of all-encompassing onslaught creates an exquisite space in which one simply rests. These post-classical movements are constructed with ‘chordal waves, and melodies inlaid with counterpoints with broad architectures and sinuous movements’, disregarding all tempos like one single breath. The result can be an overwhelming kaleidoscopic experiment, but it can also be truly musical, and that’s what I truly enjoy.

The music of Senzatempo moves in balance between composition and improvisation. It is a symphonic work for an imaginary orchestra in which melodies, counterpoints, dynamics and sonorities define a structural breadth reminiscent of classical music.

This is not the first collaboration of this trio. In 2015, they released AirEffect on Folk Wisdom. A year later, Fennesz appeared on Ozmotic’s ‘Liquid Times’. Meanwhile, Fennesz last put out ‘Agorain 2019′ on Touch, which has subsequently won my praise as one of the best albums in ‘Music For Sonic Installations In The Cavern Of Your Skull,’ which he followed up with two live recordings, one ‘Live At The Jazz Cafe’ (Touch, 2019) and the other ‘Live At Empty Bottle,’ Chicago (2020, self-released). So yes, one can almost say that this is the first record from Fennesz in the last four years. This album came out on April 14th, and, unfortunately, as of this writing, the vinyl copies are already all sold out. But digital, of course, is still available, and arguably, it is just as good. I highly recommend this album, and I’m sure I’ll see it appearing on these pages again, celebrating the best music of this year.

 

TO:122 Travelogue – ‘Bali’

22nd February 2023 » Permalink: TO:122 Travelogue – ‘Bali’

CD – 5 tracks – 48:37

Release date: Friday 24th February 2023

Track listing:

1. Kecak! (Sanghyang)
2. Rahajeng Semeng
3. Sekala Niskala
4. Gong Ageng
5. Ramayana Melukat

Available to order on Bandcamp

Mastered by Denis Blackham
Photography by Jon Wozencroft + Travelogue
Design: Jon Wozencroft

Recorded 6-16 February 2020 in Uluwatu, Ubud, Badung, Mount Batur and other locations in Bali, Indonesia.
Composed and mixed at the Castle in Stockholm, Sweden and at Dissimulata in Asheville, NC USA, 2022.

Travelogue [Bali] is the second in an ongoing series of collected international audio diaries (Travelogue [Nepal] was released by Touch in 2020). The premise is quite simple: the two meet at a mutually agreed upon destination along with the facilitation of something to record audio of these experiences on. The intent is to capture and augment these sonic documentaries of their travels which then are sculpted into soundtracks. This is done by sourcing the culture, environment, persons or events that make their voices available.

In February 2020, CM von Hausswolff and Chandra Shukla met in Bali, Indonesia, over the course of 9 days. Recordings were made at Pandawa Beach, Green Bowl Beach, Melasti Beach Ungasan, Uluwatu Temple, Pasar Senggol Gianyar, Pengosekan Kaja Ubud, Badung Market, Kintamani and Mt. Batur, Puri Saren Agung Ubud, Mandala Suci Wenara Wana (Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary) Ubud, Pura Tirta Empul Tampaksiring, Pandan Beach and Kelingking Beach Nusa Penida.

Special thanks to Dewa Alit and Salukat Gamelan, Dewa Sakura, Elisa Faires, Ivan Seng, Shannon Batten, Kecak Uluwatu, Made Surya and Dewa Aji Mangku. Also thanks to Ulrich Hillebrand and Gregor Krause.

Reviews:

Igloo Magazine (USA):

This album of many bits of recordings, Travelogue [Bali], in many ways, seeks to honour the original artists and these fascinating spiritual communities, as well as create an interesting world house listen… read the full review here [Robin James]

Ambientblog (Netherlands):

Travelogue (Bali) is the second release in a series of ‘collected international audio diaries’ presented by Carl Michael Von Hauswolff and Chandra Shukla, the follow-up to 2020’s Travelogue (Nepal).
‘The premise is quite simple: the two meet at a mutually agreed upon destination along with the facilitation of something to record audio of these experiences on.’

This time, all sound sources are recorded in various locations in Bali: beaches, temples, markets, forests, mountains, etc. etc.
But beware: this is not exactly the kind of archival recording to preserve a specific cultural environment. The recordings are used as source material to create sonic sculptures rather detached from the original culture. In fact, they are actively morphed into quite an otherworldly trip.

The album kicks in rather relentlessly with a sonic modification of the Sanghyang – a traditional sacred Balinese dance, based on the premise that an unseen force enters the body of an entranced performer. You can almost literally feel that in the Kecak chanting, and even more so with the ghostly modifications of von Hauswolff and Shukla.

The following tracks are somewhat more ‘environmental ambient’, but the atmosphere remains mysterious and brooding. After three instrumental tracks, a mysterious vocal chant is reintroduced. It’s unclear what this chant is about (except for Bali residents, I assume). When the album finally concludes, it may leave you wondering what exactly you were listening to.

Bali’s nature feels like paradise, I know. But if I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes, I would hesitate to visit the island based on these soundscapes. And this is definitely meant as a compliment to these soundscapes by von Hauswolff and Shukla. [Peter Van Cooten]

Anxious (Poland):

Travelogue [Bali] jest drugim z serii zebranych międzynarodowych audiopamiętników (Travelogue [Nepal] został wydany przez Touch w 2020 roku). Założenie jest dość proste: obie strony spotykają się w miejscu, które zostało uzgodnione przez obydwie osoby, wraz z ułatwieniem w postaci czegoś, na czym można nagrać dźwięk z tych wydarzeń. Intencją jest uchwycenie i wzbogacenie tych dźwiękowych dokumentów z ich podróży, które następnie są kształtowane w ścieżkach dźwiękowych. Odbywa się to poprzez pozyskiwanie źródeł kultury, środowiska, osób lub wydarzeń, które udostępniają ich głosy.

W lutym 2020 roku CM von Hausswolff i Chandra Shukla spotkali się na Bali w Indonezji w ciągu 9 dni. Nagrania zostały wykonane w Pandawa Beach, Green Bowl Beach, Melasti Beach Ungasan, Uluwatu Temple, Pasar Senggol Gianyar, Pengosekan Kaja Ubud, Badung Market, Kintamani i Mt. Batur, Puri Saren Agung Ubud, Mandala Suci Wenara Wana (Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary) Ubud, Pura Tirta Empul Tampaksiring, Pandan Beach i Kelingking Beach Nusa Penida. [Artur Mieczkowski]

Salt Peanuts (SE):

Travelogue [Bali] is the second in an ongoing series of collected international audio diaries of Swedish composer and conceptual audio-visual artist CM von Hausswolff (known by our younger readers as the father of Anna von Hausswolff) and American electronic musician Chandra Shukla, following Travelogue [Nepal] (Touch, 2020). The premise was and still is quite simple: von Hausswolff and Shukla would meet at a mutually agreed-upon destination with the necessary means to record these experiences. The aim is to capture and later augment and sculpt these sonic documentaries into soundtracks. This is done by sourcing the culture, environment, persons, or events that make their voices available.

The making of Travelogue [Bali] began in February 2020 when von Hausswolff and Shukla met in Bali, Indonesia, and over the course of nine days captured recordings of traditional and contemporary gamelan ensembles in 13 locations, assisted among others by Dewa Alit (check his recent album with Gamelan Salukat, Chasing the Phantom, Black Truffle, 2022) among others. In 2022, far away from Bali. von Hausswolff at the Castle in Stockholm and Shukla at Dissimulata in Asheville, North Carolina, composed and mixed the five pieces of Travelogue [Bali]. 

The album takes Bali’s refined and centuries-old, ritualist musical traditions and transforms them into psychedelic, fantastic soundscapes that investigate and play with our notions of sonic perception. There are only subtle echoes of gamelan music’s highly resonating and hypnotic pulses. But Travelogue [Bali]suggests a highly personal and imaginative perspective on an ancient and sacred tradition distilled through modern Western schools of minimalism, electronic and noise music. Von Hausswolff and Shukla came with a most immersive listening experience from this arresting journey. [Eyal Hareuveni]

Bandcamp:

Travelogue [Bali] is the second instalment in Carl Michael von Hausswolffand Chandra Shukla’s series of audio diaries, following their previous entry from Nepal. In February 2020, the duo met in Indonesia to record their trip through the temples, beaches, mountains, and parks of Bali. Over nine days, von Hausswolff and Shukla visited landmarks around the island including the Kelingking Beach, Puri Saren Agung (Ubud Palace), and Mandala Suci Wenara Wana (Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary). They recorded a gamelan orchestra, a Melukat purification ritual at Pura Tirta Empul Tampaksiring, and a Kecak dance – a ceremony consisting of upwards of fifty men chanting in polyrhythm to reenact a tale from the Ramayana Saga – at Uluwatu Temple. But be warned: this is not a documentary representation, as Hausswolff and Shukla edit the pieces and add reverb and delay to unreal effect for a result that’s akin to the soundtrack to a fever dream. [Matthew Blackwell]

Bandcamp: Best Field Recordings of 2023

For the second installment of CM von Hausswolff and Chandra Shukla’s travelogue series, they met in Bali, Indonesia to record for nine days. During this time, they documented key features of Balinese culture, including a gamelan orchestra, a Melukat purification ritual, and a Kecak dance. They then blended, layered, and digitally manipulated their recordings, wrapping them in a dreamlike haze. The result better represents the memory of their travels than the events themselves, with the album’s soft tones and blurred edges inviting the listener to travel through a half-real, half-imagined Bali. You’ll want to take the trip again and again. [Matthew Blackwell]

Neural (IT):

One of the subgenres of field recording that is probably most appreciated by audiences not accustomed to the practice, is audio diaries, sound works where the artist’s experiences in specific places are documented. Audio diaries are a return to the original function of phonography, ethnographic work for documentation that, thanks to technological development, has become an independent art form.

For this travelogue, the focus is on the island of Bali. CM von Hausswolff and Chandra Shukla dive into the spiritual traditions of the island, documenting a variety of sounds to produce an immersive and engaging listening experience.

This travel diary is the second for the two accomplished field recordists, following on from one recorded in Nepal’s Kathmandu valley. The Bali recordings were captured over nine days, and include temples, beaches, markets, lakes, volcanoes, palaces, shrines and natural parks, each site resonating with its own unique identity, all situated within a wider complex environmental ecosystem.

Carl Michael von Hausswolff has been using the recorder as the main instrument for his compositions since the seventies, while Chandra Shukla, an intermedia sound artist with a background in classical Indian music, has previously collaborated with Genesis P-Orridge, Psychic TV and The Master Musicians of Jajouka (an Arabian orchestra who became famous thanks to the attention of Brion Gysin, Paul Bowles, and William Burroughs).

Travelogue [Bali] is a delightful, exotic and introspective hymn to animism and the laws of nomadic existence. The profound relationship between nature and its many rhythms clearly inspires the two artists who wonderfully capture and express all of its inspiring, natural complexities.

Spire 10 Ted Reichman – ‘Orgelwerke’

6th January 2023 » Permalink: Spire 10 Ted Reichman – ‘Orgelwerke’

DL – 4 tracks – 39:38

Release date: Friday 20th January 2023

Available to order soon

Track listing:

1. fond du lac
2. rondo
3. american dream
4. geisterorchester

Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Simon Scott @ SPS

Orgelwerke began when composer Ted Reichman picked up a pile of rare organ vinyl from a library’s discard box. As he listened to this forgotten music late at night, he developed a process of transformation. He digitised them, turning them into loops and gestures, then reshaped them with tape, broken amplifiers and analogue echo boxes. It became something like a ritual, an exhumation of long-unheard music reanimated as glacial drones and ghostly symphonic movements – the sound of the cathedral transmuted into an enveloping shadow of pulsation, echo and glitch.

Ted Reichman composes electro-acoustic music, open-form pieces for improvising musicians, and film music. His long career in music goes back to his first recordings with Anthony Braxton in the early 1990s and his deep involvement in New York’s music community in the 2000’s. He was the original curator at Tonic on the Lower East Side of NYC, which became one of the world’s crucial venues for avant-garde music. He has made recordings for Tzadik, Skirl, and Tripticks Tapes, and produced and mixed albums for Wendy Eisenberg, Steven Long, Lina Tullgren/Alec Toku Whiting and many other experimental musicians. His film scores include Rick (with Bill Pullman and Sandra Oh), The Memory Thief, and the award winning documentaries <> and Missing In Brooks County. He has been on the faculty of the Jazz Studies and Contemporary Musical Arts departments at the New England Conservatory of Music for over ten years, where he has developed a new curriculum on recording.

credits:

Recorded and mixed at Subtext Sound System
Thanks to Jason Coleman, Steve Long, Alec Toku Whiting, Tyler Gilmore and all at the MIT Radio Society

Reviews:

Burning Ambulance (US):

Composer Ted Reichman also has an album of organ music out this week, sort of. The genesis of Orgelwerke was a stack of organ LP’s he grabbed from a library’s discard box. He began to pluck chunks of the music out, turn it into digital loops, then warp and process and recontextualise it into new pieces. The four tracks on the CD run between seven and 12 minutes, and they have a kind of William Basinski meets Thomas Köner meets Angelo Badalamenti’s-Eraserhead-soundtrack quality. The tones fade slowly in, and hover in a kind of glimmering but also gradually disintegrating cloud. There are multiple layers of things all happening at once, so it’s like being surrounded by organ players at times, and each track builds to a kind of ecstatic crescendo before washing away like the tide going out. If you play this loud enough, it’ll probably shake your speakers off the shelf. [Phil Freeman]

Ambientblog (Netherlands):

Over the years, the church organ has become quite a popular instrument in experimental music settings. No real surprise, knowing the extreme dynamics the instrument has: it can go from whispering silence to intimidating thunder within seconds. And its natural habitat, a reverberating church, always adds an extra dimension to the experience.

But for his Orgelwerke (Organ Works) Ted Reichman took a different approach to the instrument. Finding ‘a pile of rare organ vinyl in a library’s discard box, […] he digitized them, turning them into loops and gestures, then reshaped them with tape, broken amplifiers, and analogue echo boxes,’ and you can simply trust a composer who studied experimental music and ethnomusicology with people like Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton to come up with something interesting!

But at the same time, this music does not sound like a usual church organ recording. The source is altered and modified to a different sonic entity, even if it still has its recognisable roots in the original instrument. In a fascinating way, these loops and soundscapes become ‘non-electronic electronic’ music.

The original recordings are looped into drones, but not the minimalist kind of drones: there is quite a lot happening here. The twelve-minute closing track Geisterorchester (Ghost Orchestra), especially, unleashes the full power a church organ is capable of, while also including the original sounds of a lightly scratched vinyl recording.

This is not exactly ‘ambient’ music: it requires active attention to be fully appreciated. So, perhaps, best file it under ‘power ambient’ – because it works best when played LOUD.

Orgelwerke is a download-only release; there is no physical edition. [Peter van Cooten]

Nieuwe Noten (NL):

En uiteindelijk hebben we die zingende klankwolken van Reichman, muziek die de drone van deze albums het meest dicht benadert. We beginnen met ‘Fond du Lac’. Eerst een stil hangende klankwolk, verderop een vaag ritmisch patroon en naar het einde toe wegebbende klanken. Uiterst langzaam komt ‘Rondo’ op gang, steeds verder winnend aan klank. Veel variatie zit er verder niet in dit stuk, alleen krijgt de muziek halverwege een wat meer vliedend karakter. En even geleidelijk als de muziek opkomt, neemt hij tegen het einde ook weer af. ‘American Dream’ is ongeveer de helft korter maar verschilt verder niet zo veel van ‘Rondo’, ook hier gebeurt dus opvallend weinig. Het meest kleurrijk is nog ‘Geisterorchester’ waar het album mee besluit. Vooral opvallend zijn hier de hoge tonen.

De albums zijn (deels) te beluisteren via Bandcamp en daar ook te koop. [Ben]

T33.21 Anthony Moore – ‘CSound & Saz’

20th November 2022 » Permalink: T33.21 Anthony Moore – ‘CSound & Saz’

CD – 1 track – 30:37

Release date: Friday 2nd December 2022

Available to order now

Track listing:

1. CSound & Saz

Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft

Anthony Moore (b. August 1948) is a composer/musician, now based in the UK, formerly professor in Cologne for sound art and music working on the social and technical history of sound. He operates across many genres; ambient drone, musique concrète, electroacoustic, songwriting and immersive, multi-channel sound installations. He continues to compose, perform and release work on various labels such as Touch, Drag City (Chicago), P-Vine (Tokyo) and others.

Anthony Moore recently conducted a lengthy interview with Julian Cowley for The Wire, which appeared in their October ’22 edition in the form of a 6 page feature length article.

‘Touch.40 live at Iklectik’.

“I received an invitation to perform at the 40th anniversary gathering, June 2022. Previous works for the label, Arithmetic in the Dark and Isoladrone2020  illuminated the landing strip for a new work. It should be continuous – a further play on moving and remaining. I wanted to balance the digital output of a CSound orchestra with an analogue instrument and chose the Turkish saz, a sound I’ve loved and lived with for the last 6 decades. I prepared the ground for the live performance with a graphical interface for CSound and an e-bow for the Saz (along with some short pre-recordings of picking and strumming). Then, a few days before the concert, I got Covid. On the suggestion of Jon and Mike I recorded a live performance-for-one, (myself at home) which was played back at Iklectik. Unedited, unchanged, here it is.” (amoore st leonards 220807)

Three pairs of thin, wire strings on the Turkish saz are struck, and the resulting sound is harmonised, filtered and then sustained in an infinite but gradually shifting chord of harmonics. In addition, an ebow is used to excite the strings in realtime. This sound is natural, untreated, and adds layers to the sustained chord. Subsequently, two Csound programmes running in parallel are ‘fed’ the natural sound of the saz and the output is heavily effected with filters, resonators, vocoders etc. These sonic gestures are allowed to take over as the original chord fades to leave the more transparent sounds of the Csound outputs. The organum returns with much more warm, low end. The saz transformations thin out to leave a keening call. And finally the last minutes are filled with a deep chord which fades to silence.

Reviews:

Nieuwe Noten (NL):

Aan het begin van ‘Csound + Saz’ slaat Anthony Moore zijn saz aan, een snaarinstrument uit het Midden Oosten en aansluitend volgt de drone. Veel meer klinkt er niet de eerste dertien minuten, dan deze bijzonder lang uitgesponnen klanknevel. Zo nu en dan slaat hij hooguit nog eens een snaar aan, om het geheel nog iets meer body te geven. Of zoals La Monte Young, de grondlegger van dit type muziek, waar iedereen die met drones werkt schatplichtig aan is, het uitdrukte: “Draw a straight line and follow it”. Pas voorbij die dertiende minuut verandert het stuk, dat in totaal iets meer dan een half uur duurt, wat van karakter, krijgt het wat meer gelaagdheid, iets dat zo rond de achttiende minuut nog een keer gebeurd, maar de drone blijft een constante. Drones waren in het westen halverwege de vorige eeuw overigens nieuw, iets dat geenszins het geval was in veel andere culturen. Waaronder die in het Midden Oosten. Dat Moore hier juist een saz kiest, is dan ook niet zo heel vreemd.

Alle albums zijn te beluisteren via Bandcamp en daar ook te koop. [Ben]

Tone 82D Philip Jeck – ‘Resistenza’

15th November 2022 » Permalink: Tone 82D Philip Jeck – ‘Resistenza’

DL – 2 tracks – 1:02:50

Mary Prestidge writes: “I’m recalling the joy Philip had in spinning 70s disco dance music for my 70th birthday bash in 2018.

Philip’s experiments with turntable and vinyl began over 40 years ago using these 12″ singles. It marked a moment of belief that he could take these sounds further…

Play on…”

Philip Jeck’s birthday 70 years ago today, 15th November 1952

Release date 15th November 2022
Now available

Track listing:

1. Philip Jeck – Live in Torino 35:33
2. Philip Jeck & Jonathan Raisin – The Long Wave, Live at Liverpool Philharmonic 27:27

Photography & design by Jon Wozencroft

Reviews:

Dusted (USA):

Touch has never been about staying in the past, so it makes sense that the firm would experiment with new formats. Resistenza is a digital-only recording issued on what would have been the 70th birthday of the late Philip Jeck, whose passing was just one of those that has made 2022 an especially rough slog. It’s simultaneously a bit sad and quite poetic that the first (and hopefully not last) posthumous release by an artist whose work was all about the stubborn physicality of vinyl would be a non-physical edition. It comprises two live recordings, both made in 2017-18.

The more recent is Live in Torino, a fittingly ephemeral sequence of sounds snatched from old records and manipulated into ghostly scraps that spin and bob like the luminous traces left by deep sea fishes. ‘The Longest Wave,’ which was recorded in Jeck’s home town of Liverpool, is quite the opposite. Jeck is joined by Jonathan Raisin, whose piano trills augment Jeck’s already lush flow. The best moments come when the turntablist breaks out some sub-aquatic bass figures that ballast Raisin’s delay-dampened drizzle of notes. [Bill Meyer]

Avant Music News (USA):

The singular talent of Philip Jeck was a thing to behold.  Hearing this posthumous document of two live performances I can’t help but think hell… this guy deserves to stand on the same pedestal as some of the great sound organisers like Parmegiani, Bayle, and Ferrari.  The word ‘organiser’ is not enough though.  Parm, Bayle, and Ferrari were composers… composers of the highest order, plain and simple.  Jeck was too, but he just chose to do it without the typical tools of the trade of the GRM (and others) crowd.  A couple of cheap, heavy-duty workhorse turntables and a large collection of old vinyl records are all one really needs to know about Philips’ M.O.  This was the basic stuff that was augmented by an equally basic Casio sampling keyboard and other mundane delay and looping stomp boxes and… that’s it.  That’s what it took to deliver the world to his doorstep and damn…did he make full use of it!

Resistenza is released by Touch (the label that has made it possible for the world to hear his entire catalog of works) on what would have been his 70th birthday.  It grants us a front-row seat for two live performances that further cement Philip Jecks’ particular genius… not that it needs cementing as any listen to past albums would attest to.  The first track, simply titled ‘Live in Torino’ is a 36-minute sonic walk through an amorphous cloud of memory, nostalgia, triumphant joy, and deep melancholic beauty.

The first time I heard the ‘Live in Torino’ set I just let it have its way with me.  I knew I was in for some of that special kind of weirdness that only Jeck could provide, and it was there.  You know… how he drapes everything in a patina of ‘the good ole days’ where life held a certain potential… personal to each listener but common in the way that somehow, things were better back then.  It’s that hauntological future… the one that somehow got away, and you start asking yourself how in the world did I get to this point, in the here and now?  This is all a Jeck-ian trademark and it’s present in everything I’ve heard from him.

So yes, in that respect ‘Live in Torino‘  is new/old Jeck.  Something that a fan would expect.  Crazy that the expectation is there to begin with… like, ho hum, another typical Philip Jeck walk down memory lane and oh, have a raw emotional trigger point to mull over in the process.  Sure, that happens all the time in music, right?  RIGHT?

So, the write-up could pretty much end here by saying Resistenza is a must listen.  Music that succeeds this strongly at the ‘feelings’ level should be and IS enough… full stop.  But, after going through my own little catharsis, further listens were of a more analytical nature… I know, imagine that?  I wanted to try and disassemble the music and search for that element that makes it tick.  ‘Live in Torino’ ebbs and flows and, within its many moving parts is the walking path a listener can take that holds them all together.  The changes that the piece goes through, and there are quite a few… all work together in painting that memory-stimmed panorama I spoke about above.  Funnelling down, it’s the quiet little details, the workers within the music that are the essential building blocks.

The controlled use of the clicks, pops, and scratches in the records he uses, the choices of old, haunted ghostly sounds from those records, the speeds in which he plays them, the way he piles these sound events on top of each other as they loop into infinity, the way he fades from one motif to another… I don’t have the foggiest idea technically what he’s doing but the hard listens I’ve done were incredibly fascinating, in a mind-bending sort of way.  What makes the music tick?  Well, that’s the wrong question.  It just does… and somehow Philip Jeck has tapped into it.

The second piece on the album, ‘The Long Wave‘, Live at Liverpool Philharmonic is a 27-minute duet with pianist Jonathan Raisin.  In contrast to the many faceted dips and swerves in ‘Live in Torino’, this piece has Jeck sticking, at least for the most part to providing a mid to high-range drone as a bedrock for Raisin’s piano excursions.

The piano is placed high in the mix, certainly higher than Jeck’s electronics so it’s harder to key on whatever detail he’s bringing into the piece other than a sense of smooth smears of sound.  This sympathetic base serves its purpose because… by way of contrast, the piano seems to be the star here.  Raisin’s playing uplifts this piece into the cinematic zone.  I’m occasionally reminded of pianist Ketil Bjørnstad’s water-themed albums from the 90’s on ECM.  The Long Wave, while lacking in the ghostly, time folding within itself moments of ‘Live in Torino’ still works wonders.  It taps into the limbic system from the direction of something more… hopeful.  A sense of yearning, or longing for a redemption that just might be within grasp.  We can all use some of that!

Resistenza is a superb document showing two different, but equally great faces of Philip Jeck.  This release comes with my HIGHEST recommendation. [Michael Eisenberg]

The Wire (UK):

It feels more appropriate than ever to avoid the word elegiac with Philip Jeck’s first posthumous album, released on what would have been his 70th birthday. It always seemed a bit pat while he was alive, borderline crass with his afterimage yet unfaded. But fading afterimages of lost things were somewhat his métier – along with the poetics of surface. Resistenza calls the latter to mind, but it invites reflection on any facet of Jeck’s quiet profound and abiding influence.

Jeck’s multimedia projects reflected his fine art background. See ‘Vinyl Requiem,’ a semi-automated scratch orchestra of up to 180 rescued Dansette turntables playing locked 12″s, addressing obsolescence kinetic sculpture, the arrive, the found object or readymade, etc. But his albums were arguably more analogous to painting. A few brittle millimetres of deteriorated plastic could convey pristine shallowness or unfathomable depth, or both, depending on technique. The caveat being that said technique recognises the material’s prevailing tendency to do whatever it wants, regardless of dexterity.

Resistenza features a 35 minute piece live recording from Turin, Italy in 2018. At its most touch sensitive for roughly the first quarter, its cascading patinas of tiny reverberating nicks accrue around a minimal harmonic progression. More slated flaring sound is introduced methodically, as though feeding into a sonic loom. Subaquatic impressions ascend, stretched guitar picking teeters and heartsick strings swell, while maintaining the perfect lightness and tactility of something on or immediately below a surface.

The second piece, titled ‘The Long Wave’ and recorded at Liverpool Philharmonic in collaboration with pianist and composer Jonathan Raisin, is harder to square with Jeck’s oeuvre than the first. By necessity, he seems to forfeit his signature permeability, shoring up against the depth and resonance of Raisin’s piano, just so the piece doesn’t sound like a gale force wind conversing with a spiderweb. It’s a polite and considered exchange, but on somewhat compromised terms. [James Gormley]

Nieuwe Noten (NL):

Meer minimalisme en meer van het Engelse Touch. Twee musici die volledig met elektronica werken en dit combineren met veldopnames. Onder de noemer ‘Resistenza’ bracht Philip Jeck twee live opnames uit en verder hier aandacht voor het bijzonder subtiele ‘Evergreen’van Patrick Shiroishi. Beide albums zijn louter te verkrijgen als download.

Rustig stromende klanken in ‘Live in Torino’, een kabbelende drone. Iets verderop afgewisseld met veldopnames van stromend water en dieren die ik niet direct kan thuisbrengen. Het is vredig, maar tegelijkertijd ook spannend en abstract. En het is dat wat deze muziek onderscheidt van ambient. Qua tempo verschilt het niet veel, maar de muziek van Jeck, of van Cleared, dat hier gisteren voorbij kwam, mist dat spirituele, esoterische wat ambient vaak kenmerkt. Hier gaat het er echter anders aan toe, zeker de muziek van Jeck heeft regelmatig eerder iets chaotisch over zich, terloops en willekeurig. Dat we zo rond de twaalfde minuut van dat ‘Live in Torino’ toch ineens in een meeslepende klankstroom terechtkomen doet daar niets van af. Want rond de twintigste minuut viert de abstractie weer hoogtij en is van de ritmiek weinig meer over. Wat volgt is overigens een prachtige scene met als basis een klassiek stuk voor koor, op originele wijze door Jeck bewerkt. Op ‘The Long Wave, Live at Liverpool Philharmonic’ krijgt Jeck gezelschap van pianist Jonathan Raisin wat het stuk een volledig andere lading geeft. Terwijl Jeck een sfeervolle geluidsomgeving creëert horen we Raisin sterk verdichte patronen spelen. Een prachtige combinatie die leidt tot een bijzonder spannend en stuwend muzikaal landschap. [Ben]