Greetings Non-Music lovers,
Here's a roundup of the latest spectular sound works that I've been listening to these last few weeks.
And as always, if you like what you see/hear, please considering supporting these tremendous artists & labels by buying their albums and following them on Bandcamp and/or social media.
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MonoLogue and Matt Atkins - Homework
(Flaming Pines, 2023)
MonoLogue (aka Marie Rose) is an Italian composer, musician and sound designer. Her work moves between soundtracks, sound design for TV series and other sound experiences.
Matt Atkins is an improvising percussionist and visual artist who uses electronics, objects and tape loops in his work.
They are both prolific artists in the field of experimental music and sound art, and have released many works - both independently and through various labels.
'Homework' is their new collaboration album. The idea behind this album was for Atkins to record a series of textures and rhythms (derived from his collection of bells, gongs and rattles) onto magnetic tape, over which Rose conducted a series of alchemic experiments involving water damage, chemical acids and the physical acts of breaking, stretching and re-joining. Very intriguing...
In these improvised lo-fi recordings you will hear a vast array of shimmering gongs, warbling bells, glistening steel cymbals, hollow wooden vessels, crispy clicks, ghostly murmurs, miniature rattles and other hypnotic percussive sounds being scraped, shuffled, rattled and banged - vibrating and softly resonating off various surfaces...while magnetic distortions and tape degradation provide erratic bursts of brittle tortured noise. I think the damage, disentegration and glitchiness of these recordings actually enhance the performances, and add layers of creepiness and distress to these otherwise serene acoustic environments. It's a very physical, crunchy kind of ambience, and a sussurating kind of noise. The final track is simply beautiful.
'Homework' is an album of fragile woozy soundscapes that feel simultaneously peaceful and sinister, mesmerizing and strangely unnerving... meditative improvisations hovering over a foundation of raw tape hiss and audio decay. A very unique sound experiment, and a gorgeous listening experience.
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Kate Carr - Fever Dreams
(Mana Records, 2023)
Kate Carr is an Australian-born, London-based sound artist & field recordist whose work is focused on the links between sound, place and affect, and she works across composition, performance and installation. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wire, The Quietus, and The Guardian. She also runs the sound art label
Flaming Pines.
'Fever Dreams' is an album that was composed during one of the winter lockdowns in London, where she lives. In her own words, it is ''a fantastical, speculative take on high density living''.
Consisting of seven dark claustrophobic compositions, the tones and textures that Carr has created in this album evoke images of bleak concrete structures, grimy apartments, dark sewer systems and mysterious subterranean networks. These quietly unsettling soundscapes are permeated with the feeling of confusion, uncertainty, despair and resignation.
In these recordings you will hear scintillating gongs, haunting swells of atonal ambience, flickering electricity, low evolving drones, swirling rattles, watery echoes, fragmented shuffling sounds, manipulated choral singing, mechanical humming, muddy electronica, fleeting pulses, distant crashes, shimmering steel, and a vast array of glitching noises and other weird sonic abstractions. The sound is constantly and rapidly evolving, and the atmosphere is suffocating and dense.
'Fever Dreams' is an album of bizarre textural dreamscapes filled with claustrophobic confinement, Lynchian surreality and urban gloom. The eerie and unnerving atmospheres in this album make the city sound like a living breathing being, with a mind of its own. It feels like you're observing strange airless rooms and creepy passageways through a floating camera lens. The images are flickering and the power is short-circuiting, yet you're unable to leave. An unsettling yet entrancing listening experience.
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Patrick Corcoran - Stasis
(self-released, 2023)
Patrick Corcoran is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Limerick, Ireland, whose practice includes painting, sculpture, installation, photography, print, drawing, moving image, sound & the written word. He has independently self-released a number of albums under his own name, which can all be heard on Bandcamp.
'Stasis' is a conceptual space-themed sound art album. According to Corcoran, it deals with the notion of coming back (down) to earth and "coming home" after a kidney transplant and medical treatment that Corcoran underwent a couple of years ago. It also encapsulates his eagerness to get going and travel again after the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, along with his own personal interest and fascination with space, space travel and the cosmos.
In these recordings you will hear subsonic rumblings, desolate echoes, cosmic winds, authentic NASA field recordings, alien ambience, fluttering noises and deep space drones. The atmospheres that Corcoran has created/assembled in this album are undeniably dark and eerie...but they're also so mesmerizing, immersive and trance-induing. It really takes you out of your surroundings, and leaves you feeling like you're drifting in deep space.
'Stasis' is a dreamy and meditative sound journey through the dark cosmos. It's best enjoyed alone, in a quiet environment, free from all earthly distractions and noise. A wonderful sound art album, and a relaxing and fascinating listening experience.
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Manja Ristić - tailless tarantella lifted its head
(self-released, 2023)
Manja Ristić is a violinist, sound artist, field recordist, published poet, curator and researcher from Belgrade, Serbia. She is mostly active in the field of electro-acoustics, instrumental improvisation & experimental sound related arts, and has released many albums - both independently and on reputable record labels.
'tailless tarantella lifted its head' is a collection of five sound works based on poems that Ristić wrote on the themes of love and loss. It's part of an ongoing series called 'Stories Untold'.
Track 1 (Dubrovnik) begins with a mournful sustained organ drone, slightly undulating, rippling sadly along... until you eventually hear the sounds of a luscious field recording emerging out of the mix. Twittering birdsong, human movements and other environmental noises reverberate beautifully within this sombre soundscape, until the rapid pitter-patter of rainfall fills the foreground. As the track comes to its end, you will also hear the faint sound of male singing coming floating in from the distance, and then the sudden crack of thunder...
Track 2 (Avala) begins with beautiful ethereal ambience and swirling abstractions. That quietens down and you will hear soft tranquil underwater crashes before the ambience gradually returns with a bit more intensity. Around the midway point you will hear some flickering electricity, accompanied by broken radio transmissions and scratching sounds, before the running water comes back into the mix with a softly pulsating ominous drone, and then it all eventually fades away...
Track 3 (Zemun) begins with crunching footsteps, an ominous drone and some singular ambient tones, rising and falling. There's also some brooding wind-like noise blowing in the background. Then the footsteps stop and it's just a ghostly soundscape with some faint steel percussive hits, echoing and resonating eerily. Towards the end of the piece, the windy noise increases and dissonant ambient tones shimmer away...
Track 4 (Zadar) begins with the ebbing and flowing of some instrument or device I'm unable to distinguish. This is accompanied by distant wails of feedback and (what sounds to me like) fire crackling, or possibly more rainfall? More watery sounds emerge as the track progresses, and the intensity of the noise builds and builds and becomes more intricate and complex. In the latter half of the track, things become gradually quieter and more peaceful, but the atmosphere remains unsettling and rather mournful...
Track 5 (Mostar) is the longest track of the album and it filled with wonderful water sounds. These serene recordings of water lapping gently over rocks and pebbles are so immersive and meditative. There's also the faint subtle accompaniment of something crackling, which sounds like static electricity.
Ristić has also added some gorgeous reverb to the sounds (along with some other subtleties) to create her own personal (and surreal) audio environment.
'tailless tarantella lifted its head' is an album of minimalistic ambience, beautiful field recordings, plaintive sound art and abstract noise experimentation. These immersive audio collages will enrapture and envelope you, and leave you wanting more. A marvellous listening experience.
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Jane Rigler & Nathan Wheeler - Inflorescence
(Dasa Tapes, 2023)
Jane Rigler is a Colorado-based flutist, composer, educator and producer who's known for her innovations in new flute performance, techniques and unique musical vocabulary.
Nathan Wheeler is a Colorado-born composer, improviser, choreographer, media artist, and educator whose work focuses on hybridizing the contemporary, the traditional, and the imaginary to synthesize stunning new approaches to art making and community building.
'Inflorescence' in their collaborative album for the experimental
Dasa Tapes label.
Inflorescence is defined as the arrangement of flowers on a branch or a system of branches. It is determined by how the flowers blossom on a stem, the arrangement on the stem, how many blossom together, and the timing of the growth.
This album consists of nine improvised performances, titled after technical/botanical terms related to inflorescence. Both players are very respectful of the open space and natural ambience of the sounds and textures they create, which gives the performances such a relaxed and dream-like quality. The radiant flourishes and magical trills of Rigler's flute (sometimes organic and raw, sometimes heavily processed through an Ableton Live patch) drift delicately through the soundscape, mixing and merging with Wheeler's intriguing array of experimental noises that come from a Sidrax organ, a Volcra drum, various effects pedals and a Monome Norns Shield. Throughout the course of the album you will hear muted flutters, shuddering swells, hollow rumbles, shimmering chimes, surreal rattles and crackles, airy resonances, atmospheric vibrations, trembling drones, windy ambience, rapidly fluctuating frequencies, digital bleeps, eerie echoes, erratic electronic glitchiness and other bizarre sonic abstractions. I can't claim to understand the technicalities of how this music was made, but the tranquil textures and fascinating sound experimentation had me hooked from beginning to end.
'Inflorescence' is an album of wonderfully minimalistic, quietly meditative and achingly beautiful soundscapes created by two skilled and disciplined artists. These spacious audio environments and serene atmospheres are so soothing and restorative, and makes for a gorgeous and unique listening experience.
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A Vibrant Struggle - Static Fever
(Grisaille, 2023)
A Vibrant Struggle is the experimental noise trio of Norwegian musicians Sindre Bjerga & Jan-M. Iversen, and Dutch sound artist Steffan de Turck, who are all respected and reputable solo artists in their own right.
'Static Fever' is their latest release on the wonderful experimental tape label
Grisaille, and falls under the umbrella of 'The Molten Snow Tapes Vol. XII'. It honestly took me a few listens to get into this album, but when it clicked - it clicked hard. It consists of four parts, four immersive noise improvisations...
Track 1 starts with frantic machine-like stuttering noise, which subtly shifts, evolves and fluctuates as the track progresses. The frequency and intensity of this distorted noise increases and decreases, while drone-like rumbling slowly emerges out of the mix. At times it sounds like the primary noise is thinning out and disentegrating, while the background is alive with tremulous feedback and shimmering resonances.
Track 2 begins with a bouncy demented sounding metronome-like clicking, which is accompanied by an eerie scratching, static humming and soft wails of high frequency feedback. As the piece progresses, the clicking changes into a techno-esque rhythm, and you will hear some kind of groaning-like noises, and muted pulses enter the soundscape, which eventually fades away and all you're left with is these lonely scratching sounds...
Track 3 begins with some raw lo-fi environmental noises. You will hear sounds of human activity - walking, shuffling, shifting, etc... Eventually, undulating waves of feedback and mechanical grinding can be heard... and something being violently rattled. I have no idea what that is. The piece ends with the faint and gentle sounds of tingling bells and/or chimes, echoing and reverberating away...
Track 4 is the longest track of the album. It begins with an array of dark dissonant sounds and erratic bursts of distorted feedback with ominous silences in between. Eventually the feedback becomes more prominent and there's some kind of bizarre creaking sounds occuring. Then you will hear a warbling synth (or maybe an organ?) emerge like something out of an old 50's sci-fi movie. As the piece progresses, the noise intensifies and becomes more aggressive and desperate sounding until the entire environment is shimmering and glimmering. In the second half of the track you will hear (what I think is) nasty wailing electric guitar distortion, which almost sounds like a grass strimmer, while a deep ominous drone gradually comes into focus. This quietens down into an unsettling stillness before the noise builds up into a fierce and shuddering intensity towards the abrupt ending.
'Static Fever' is a weird, haunting and compelling record of improvised noise and sound art experimentation. Constantly fluctuating from quietly unsettling to frighteningly fierce - this album is a baffling yet brilliant album to get lost in.
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Adam Zuckerman - The Hand, The Grid, And The Red Breeze
(NCTMMRN, 2022)
Adam Zuckerman is an experimental musician based in Los Angeles, CA. He works with acoustic, electronic, and environmental materials in the creation of scores, recordings, performances, and installations. At the core of his work is an understanding of music as having a uniquely immediate connection with the pure sensation of sound.
This album consists of two long-form compositions in which Zuckerman amplifies the internal dynamics and slow transformations of a single, typically very quiet sound - namely an e-bow on the acoustic guitar.
Track 1 starts off with a series of long-sustained frantic string vibrations, backed by a single fluctuating drone. The rapid rattling is totally mesmerizing. It almost sounds like a screw being loosened by a power drill. As the piece progresses and evolves, you will hear slight subtle shifts in the tones and timbres being produced. Zuckerman achieves this bizarre sonic effect by sitting by the guitar and gradually slackening the strings, which subtly changes the orientation of the e-bow.
By the midway point of the composition, the vibrations have gradually decreased in speed and intensity, and the overall tone has changed to a lower pitch. This transformation continues, and these microscopic sounds get slower and slower towards the end of the track, creating a slightly unnerving and sinister atmosphere, before it ends abruptly, and you're left with the hushed sounds of a serene nature field recording.
Track 2 kicks in with similar vicious and erratic vibrations to Track 1, but this time higher in pitch and frequency, and delivered with more of a sting...occasional bursting into high whining feedback, as opposed to the low drone feedback of the previous composition. It feels like having my ears attacked by mechanical bees. By the midway point it sounds like screaming white noise...until a distinct change in tone and frequency gives out a noise comparable to an electric buzzsaw for the second half of the piece. As the track starts rushing towards its end, a strange but welcomed harmony starts rising out of the harsh dissonance. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it's pretty amazing. And like Track 1, this composition ends with another serene nature field recording.
'The Hand, The Grid, And The Red Breeze' is a uniquely captivating mixture of experimental noise and avant-garde sound art. In this album, Zuckerman has tapped into an intriguing method of producing such a wild and powerful sound from this quiet and gentle musical instrument. A rich and intriguing listening experience.
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Nicholas Maloney - Three Phases
(Open Colour Imprint, 2023)
Nicholas Maloney is a prolific sound artist currently based in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds a MA in Experimental Sound Practice from University College Cork (Ireland) and a BA in Recording Production from the University of Southern Mississippi. Working across a variety of aesthetics, Maloney’s work seeks to engage an expansion of perception through focused interaction and communion with medium. He has released a lot of works - both independently and through various small record labels.
'Three Phases' is an album consisting of three long-form abstract sound compositions. The source material for these compositions came from field recordings that Maloney took on his daily post-lunch walks to the nearby Sevenmile Creek field. Due to its close proximity to a busy road, the beautiful sounds of nature aurally blend with the not-so-beautiful sound of traffic and general noise pollution. In this album, Maloney has transformed and transmuted these recordings (through various generative processes) into surreal/imagined abstract soundscapes in which the listener can fully immerse themselves in, wherever they happen to be.
In these recordings you will hear minimalistic stretched-out plains of rippling sound, blankets of soothing shimmering noise, low-end rumbles, fluttering hums, ambient audio hiss, soft gurgling drones, undulating waves of dream-like tones and textures, and flickering bursts of static...over which (if you listen really closely) you will hear a river flowing, distant traffic sounds, crunching footsteps, gusts of wind, shuffling body movements and various other subtle sonic abstractions.
'Three Phases' is a beautiful album of serene and meditative soundscapes that transports the listener to imaginary dream plains. A mesmerizing and immersive listening experience.
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Grisha Shakhnes - This is not where it ends
(Gertrude Tapes, 2023)
Grisha Shakhnes is a Moscow-born composer & sound artist. He's lived in Israel since 1992 and currently resides in the city of Holon. His work has been issued both privately in limited handmade CD-R editions, and internationally - independently and through various record labels.
'This is not where it ends' is an album of abstract sound collages - each one dedicated to a writer or poet that inspired Shakhnes through strange times. Recorded during the tail end of lockdown in Israel, this album is filled with the sounds of an urban environment.
It starts off with a deluge of rainfall and passing traffic sounds. Soon you will hear a shimmering accordian-like drone drifting into the mix. This melody disappears after a couple of minutes, and more watery noises and various background rumblings being to occur...
Throughout the rest of these compositions you will hear different types of rotary devices and (possibly industrial) mechanisms - rattling, grinding and pumping away, quiet snippets of human conversation, beautiful birdsong, vehicles honking and whooshing past, percussive rumbles, wooden rattles, indistinguishable noise, distant murmurs of street singing (or possibly a nearby radio playing?), a cellphone vibrating, an engine chugging and water splashing and swirling, all against the aural backdrop of the hustle and bustle of city life.
'This is not where it ends' is an intriguing and remarkable album of urban field recordings and abstract sound experimentation. If you listen closely, there are many interesting things going on in these rich and lively soundscapes - both big and small. This album forces you to pause whatever you're doing and pay close attention to it. A fascinating listening experience.
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Yoshitake Kawai - Bussei
(tsss tapes, 2023)
Yoshitake Kawai is an experimental musician and sound artist from Kyoto (Japan) who mainly works with avant-garde noise and modular synthesis. 'Bussei' is an album of four abstract, improvised sound experiments, recorded in Sapporo and Kyoto in 2020.
On Track 1 you will hear layers of percussive gurgling, tiny rattling and soft ambient crackling that pan around an empty soundscape. The subtle reverb and electronic processing makes it very hypnotic, and rather beautiful. As the piece progresses, it gains volume and intensity, creeping its way back and forth across your brain.
On Track 2 you will hear windy pulsations and ominous vibrations bursting forth in erratic rhythms, before more high-frequency noises come hissing and squalling through the mix. Eventually things calm down a bit and the noise element starts to sound more like broken radio transmissions. The sound patterns never repeat. It really does sound like some device that's intermittently trying to come back to life.
On Track 3 you will hear layers of muted rumbles and thumps on the far left and right - some soft, some violent...whilst the centre of the soundscape is taken up with a variety of steel scrapes and thin whistling type noises - some of which sound like they come from hollow vessels. Towards the end of the track there are random bleeps of glitchy melody. Very interesting.
On Track 4 you will hear a bubbly trembling texture, surrounded by hissy scrapes and bizarre sonic crackling. Again, it sounds a bit like broken radio transmissions...but maybe a bit too abstract and organic sounding. As the track progresses, the scraping noises change frequency and pitch, permeating the track with a more surreal aspect.
'Bussei' is a minimalistic and fascinating album of raw abstract sound collages. It feels totally spontaneous and free, yet it also displays a lot of discipline, intelligence and restraint. This is a fine example of beautiful avant-garde sound art.
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Lee Hannah - Summer Solstice
(Healthy Tapes, 2023)
Lee Hannah is a Naarm-based librarian, musical artist, field recordist and educator whose practice involves a hybrid of field recordings, new age synthesis and ecological composition. Whilst Hannah's previous album 'Mirror Reflections' was more of a musical/ambient affair, 'Summer Solstice' focuses more on field recordings and sound collage.
In this album, Lee Hannah captures a fluid landscape of 35° heat during summer solstice. It was recorded on the lands of the Peramangk, Kaurna, and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people.
In these recordings you will hear tranquil cacophonies of summer birdsong, murmurs of human conversation, passing traffic noises, flies buzzing in the heat, crunching footsteps, beautiful ocean sounds, the familiar rustling and shuffling of various kitchen utensils and appliances, the ticking of a metronome, fragments of radio samples - all against a backdrop of sweet ambient tape hiss, which varies in frequency and intensity throughout the course of the album. Although a lot of this album is definitely non-musical - these sound collages are broken up by delicate minimalistic piano pieces, which adds more emotional weight to an already beautiful album.
'Summer Solstice' is a warm, hazy and dreamy album of tender musique concrète, meditative field recordings and sweet languorous ambience. This is wonderful ecological sound art, and such a soothing listening experience.
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