Yesterday, the Petcord netlabel released Solid State, a collection of pieces by US-based composer Greg Surges, ranging from electroacoustic to contemporary chamber music for both laptop and traditional ensembles. Having received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honours in composition and music technology, his extensive formal education enables him to pursue a great variety of strategies. As a constant factor, an open form with variable elements prevails, leading to markedly different interpretations of the same work, as demonstrated by the two versions of “153 x 56″. Due to time constraints, the cover art was a solo work of mine (the first one since November last year – all others were co-operations with Marco Cervellin). It incorporated scores and screenshots of Greg’s works and reflects pretty well the music characteristics in my opinion.

Today, the Petcord netlabel released a work by Tim Salden, better known as Osoroshisa with the title Nanimo nai Wakusei. The music could be described as somehow related to drones, but incorporating quite a few influences, so that drone alone would be an inadequate description. Much of the music reflects subjects like loneliness and isolation and the empty planets it is referring to, may as well be synonymous for people in their own world.

The cover art was once again done by Synflict (aka. Marco and me) and required a lot of fine tuning with major changes even occuring in the final drafts. Though some ideas were present from the beginning, progress was rather slow and at some point, the front draft was even close to being abandoned altogether. This seems strange, because the artwork does not look like being the product of fierce struggling.

More releases are coming during the next weeks and I hope to be able to devote more time to updating my site, too.

Today, the latest work of Chilean composer René Muñoz Córdova, La arquitectura sónica de Amacelin & Luyelval (the sonic architecture of Amacelin & Luyelval), was released on Petcord. As part of the cover artwork, a poem by René was included:

Amacelin & Luyelval

Ellos se mueven al igual que los electrones
grabando los eternos caracteres
sobre los interminables muros invisibles.

Luego ellos me hablaron al oído
y me contaron acerca de todo lo que existe al otro lado de los muros
revelándome la existencia de los 9 portales de fuego
que nos conducen a los 4 mundos eternos.

Not everyone is fluent in Spanish (neither am I, mind you), so I thought it might be useful to add an inofficial English translation :

Amacelin & Luyelval

They are moving like electrons
writing down eternal characters
on endless invisible walls.

Then they whispered into my ear
and told me about everything there is on the other side of the walls
revealed the existence of nine gates of fire
which lead us to four eternal worlds.

I’m not sure whether this is an accurate translation, but if not, someone will eventually let me know ;-)

Just two weeks after the last release, another one went live on Petcord, this time featuring an artist that has been played on Leftob for a while and is an excellent match for the typical Petcord sound:

Chilean composer René Muñoz Córdova combines in electroacoustic abstraction with isolated elements from more conventional music genres: Field recordings, vocoder and speech synthesis voices, patches of strings, computer generated sounds, feedback or deconstructed samples of real instruments. In Obras Musicales an aural universe is created where dissonance and harmony can peacefully coexist.

source: petcord site

Apart from the music, Obras Musicales is also interesting, because it features Marco and me in our first appearance as Synflict, a project focusing on netlabel related design and artwork needs. Consequently, the artwork is more lavish than usual, featuring a folded front sheet that also contains lyrics and an inlet for the back of a CD case (requires disassembling of the latter, but is rewarded with a self made CD that can be found quickly on a shelf).

The liner notes already provide a summary of the music, so there is no need to add redundency in this post ;-)

Today, after having seen some rotation on Leftob, a new release on Petcord has finally seen the light of day: Slow Movements by the Austrian artist Fabio Keiner, a work that turns out to be difficult to classify:

It shares some characteristics with Drone, but clearly differs by its lack of inertia and repetition. An alternative approach may be to classify it as Dark Ambient, which again is conflicting with the abstract harmonies which rather bring up associations of crystalline space rather than misty vaults and feelings of distress. The treatment of space and dynamics in Slow Movements also hints at electroacoustic, as is the generative character of the music.

(Source: Release liner notes)

The work gains with repeated listening and interestingly even difficult to understand passages eventually resolve into more than listenable music. I suspect perhaps it is a bit like the eyes’ adjustment to darkness. In the beginning you do not see a lot but after a few minutes, a lot of contures and details start to turn up from the seemingly uniform mass.

There is an ambiguity concerning Slow Movements in that it both refers to interconnected units that define a whole (sometimes returning to previous patterns) and the infinity of variations that neither know a beginning nor an ending. And thus tracks are not remembered and recognised by phrases but instead by their character as a whole.

(Source: Release liner notes)

This is much like listening to a blackbird’s song: You cannot exactly determine a beginning or end, just a constant movement. However, you can immediately identify its characteristics, despite the fact that there is constant variation in its phrases.

The cover art was another cooperation between Marco Cervellin (of Wacky Southern Current fame) and me. The initial idea was a sequence of butterfly movements, which quickly inspired me to build the remaining scenery around it. Some time was spent on improving details and applying requested changes, until both we and Fabio Keiner were satisfied with the result.

My work for a new release is yielding surprisingly good results so far. Normally, much of my drafts are perfectly in line with Sturgeon’s Law, but this time I seem to work more efficiently. I noticed the tendency of going back to smaller sample units and a more synthetic approach, because I feel a need of more control of events within my music, especially finetuning spectromorphological details. Perhaps it is owned to my desire of more clarity and contrast. Also, there is still the thought about Giorgos’ approach of adding room illusion as another musical parameter. I think the degree of abstraction is increasing and the music will move away from its previous idioms as I look for new ways of organising events and creating structures. I don’t know when I shall be finished, as it depends on the number of promising drafts and to what degree I shall be able to get lost in my work, but I think it will be a larger one in terms of duration, but without any ambitions of creating several movements. And rest assured, I’m quite confident that this work won’t ever make it on the Stillstream playlist, just like any of my previous works ;-).

Naoto Taguchi, originally from Sapporo and currently living in Tokyo, is an audiovisual artist with a strong musical background (having played the piano since his early childhood) who is also interested in programming, photography, design in general and spinning records as a DJ. Locating himself inbetween a triangle of minimalist electronica, dubmatics and quirky experimental sounds his latest release on test tube entitled untitled 9 fragments ordinaries sound materials concentrates on the experimental side of his oeuvre.

The main concept consists of chopped sound snippets that were rearranged in a way they exhibit musical qualities despite a rather unmusical approach (A technique pioneered by Oval in the last century). The sound elements are not exactly repeated and therefore subtile changes prevail with each layer added and substracted as it is characteristic of a Minimalist music approach. Naoto Taguchi’s focus is keeping a snapshot of a moment just like on a photography that slowly reveals its details as the viewer gets lost in it. Untitled 9 Fragments Ordinaries Sound Materials uses the brightest colours for painting its soundscapes I’ve come across for a long time. It breathes the atmosphere of a sunny day at the coastline with sparkling reflections of waves in contre jour and seems to leave troubled thoughts and conflicts behind. This brightness finds its equivalent in patches of crystalline sounds slowly passing by like fibrious, wind torn cirrus clouds.

That these fragments are not charged with meaningful titles or philosophical instructions can be seen as a boon and the strong suggestive motifs enforcing intense associations made any kind of instructions superfluous anyway. The only thing I could see some room for improvement is of a technical nature: The tracks have apparently been limited a bit too much and as such most dynamic differences were levelled with a notable pumping effect on former sound spikes. Apart from this minor issue, Naoto Taguchi’s Untitled 9 Fragments Ordinaries Sound Materials is a truly wonderful release, probably one of my favourites of 2008, which demonstrates that even music rooted in tonality can exhibit most interesting structures if a skilled musician sets no limits to his imagination.

Update 27/12/08: Whilst the TestTube liner notes for today wrote about a late Christmas gift, the release was well in time for Leftob audio cast regulars, since I added the release to the playlist on December 24th – 3 days ahead of the official release date ;-)

It was about time for another Petcord release and really high time for the first release not by Giorgos or me (Petcord goes public, widening its scope – giving in to peer pressure ;-)). Steven Deacid from Cologne performs as Night Drone his Drifts 1-4 series. Apart from doing the cover artwork, I also contributed a reconstruction of Drift 2, which does not exactly sound like the rest of the tunes and is therefore easy to spot ;-).

Perhaps a few words about what can be expected:

Drifts 1-4 marks the beginning of a series of pieces that focus on deep saturated timbres and sustained tones blending into another. Sparsely arranged and yet successfully managing to escape monotony by constantly changing sound characteristics, an approach well known from Minimalist music. Drifts 1-4 prioritises the creation of a cinematic vision, a constant stream of floating association freely defined by the listener.

And more specifically:

[Drifts 1-4] takes analogue synth sounds characteristic of 90ies IDM electronica, but uses it within a Dark Ambient inspired context without any percussive elements. Because of this crossover, floating tones see constant modulation, addition and subtraction of overtones, as well as more distinct thematic progression. Due to sparse arrangements, Night Drone is capable of reaching clarity in blending tones and approaches sci-fi soundtrack quality, where others get lost in mushy reverberation and awkward sound clusters

source: Petcord liner notes

The release has a bit of a longer history, too: Originally planned for October, we had the idea of adding “demix” versions. One by me and another by Giorgos. Giorgos’ however was not able to complete the tune in time, so it was omitted. As a result of some discussions, the project name and the entire scope of the music changed and so did the cover artwork. But nothing that prevented the release from finally happening ;-)

Bogdan Dullsky, a Russian artist born in a remote part of Siberia near Lake Baikal and currently living in Moldova, is better known under his moniker Quest.Room.Project. His mixture of improvised abrasiveness and conscious construction has garnered some attention. Especially his releases on Entity and Test Tube were met with critical acclaim for their originality. On Freedom Reflex (One), the principal mixture still persists, however with a more transparent and distinct structure. Or, as Bogdan himself told me in his own words a couple of days ago:

The rhythmic structure is in everything, but in the course of “ascension”…
In the presence of close examination… This structure becomes thin,
aspiring to universal Anahata Nadam… Sounding of one pure tone (note)
means the whole composition at studying… A vertical and a horizontal of
sound space… A ratio of harmonics 1:2:3:4:5 etc… All it, at tone fall,
will look as rhythmic structure similar habitual…

Freedom Reflex (one) will soon be released on CD-R on setola di maiale and I really recommend looking into this release, because it seems to me a highlight in Bogdan’s oeuvre.

Here comes a new release by me on Petcord called Frontal Grid. Well, I wrote every now and then about my progress and how the finished release is supposed to sound like. For a change, I quite met my criteria and improved dynamics and the degree of abstraction. As a side effect, the music is more consistent concerning how it treats themes and spins their development further. But I unlike my previous plans, Frontal Grid again comprises of four movements which are more related to each other than those of Decay.

What will follow after Frontal Grid? More work, of course :-). There are some ideas I like to investigate more thoroughly, like ways of incorporating “natural instruments” into the computer generated mess I produce. I guess, this can only work like treating the source like any other. Not playing some voices by score, but instead reconstruct passages from unrelated snippets. Perhaps deliberately creating anomalies that could not be reproduced with a live player. The first movement of Frontal Grid is such an example, where I recycled several piano snippets.

We shall see…