The next freely available release i want to explore is Devotion, by US musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. It’s a 20-minute fantastical work that lives up to its title by suggesting varying forms of ecstatic focus.
Tag:
noise
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Today’s piece of freely available music is by British ambient musician Daniel W J Mackenzie, aka (via some partial name reversing) Ekca Liena. November in Flight was originally released over a decade-and-a-half ago, on a bonus CD included in Mackenzie’s 2011 album Slow Music For Rapid Eye Movement. It’s a …
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Heteromania is a collaboration between sound artist Conure (aka Mark Wilson) and cyberpunk poet Kenji Siratori, originally created around the start of 2007, but subsequently unreleased, so Wilson made it available online in 2011. While i’m only familiar with a relatively small amount of the extensive Conure back catalogue, i’ve …
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i feel like i’m emerging from a bomb shelter. For the last two days i’ve been immersed in the Golden Dolden Box Set, a huge self-released compilation by Canadian composer Paul Dolden. Usually, the task of retrospective falls to curators and writers, but in the case of this box set, …
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i’m no lover of vinyl. Quite the opposite, yet some of the best musical creations i’ve ever heard all stem in some respect from its archaic world of spin and surface noise, pop and crackle. A full decade ago i was marvelling at Cosey Fanny Tutti and Philippe Petit’s miniature …
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The latest field recording in my Outside-In project comes from Icelandic composer Davíð Brynjar Franzson. His recording was made a few days ago in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, and in contrast to the previous recordings i’ve featured, it’s something rather different, primarily because i think it’s fair …
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Being in a state of lockdown, as we currently are in the UK and in many other countries, i’ve recently found myself returning to the library of field recordings that i’ve made over the years, using them as a kind of ‘escape’ into the environment during a time when it’s …
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There aren’t many new releases that require you to free up huge chunks of time in your schedule, but then Roland Kayn isn’t like many composers. Two years ago, 14 hours were required to explore the vast expanse of his A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound, which i ended …
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In recent years, one of the most vividly memorable Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festivals was 2017, when the work of Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski was prominently featured. Huddersfield is in fact the only place in the UK that i’ve ever had the opportunity to experience Karkowski’s music performed live, which suggests …
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One of my absolute favourites at the most extreme end of pretty much all musical continua is Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski. Karkowski died just over five years ago, and digesting his legacy is something i’ve been attempting to do since his passing. While there are plenty of available recordings of his …
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CD/Digital releasesFree musicThematic series
Brothomstates – Untitled; Stephan Mathieu – A Microsound Fairytale
by 5:4The next recommendations in my series looking at free internet music are a pair of pieces exploring extremes of computer-mangled audio. The first is a new release from Finnish composer Lassi Nikko, better known as Brothomstates, and even writing his name in the context of a new release – something i never …
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“We like to give you the maximum, from which you can subtract.” Aaron Einbond’s closing words before the first concert at the Noise In And As Music conference, organised by Einbond and Aaron Cassidy, which took place at Huddersfield University’s Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) last weekend. Einbond’s …
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For the last mixtape of 2013, i’ve decided to explore music in which speech is paramount. Within a musical context, spoken words can jar in much the same way as an actor breaking the fourth wall, unsettling us by (ostensibly at least) withholding abstraction in favour of direct reference. The …
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It’s 1 July, so here’s the new mixtape, focusing on the intense genre of drone. Drone music suffers the same kind of malaise as more generalised ambient music—immobility and drift as tacet apologias for a dearth of imagination and subtlety of ideas. But these 21 tracks offer an insight into …
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Yesterday’s listening was confined to a single album, Merzbow‘s Door Open at 8am. Annoyingly, i felt distracted while listening, so i don’t feel i’ve engaged with it adequately; i’ll try again soon, perhaps as part of my journey into Masami Akita’s work. This morning i spent time with OM Electrique, …
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When any series comes to an end, it’s an emotional experience, and so it was yesterday when the last two CDs in Andrew Liles‘ 12-CD Vortex Vault series dropped through my letterbox. Black Pool and Black End mark the conclusion of an amazingly prodigious cycle of discs, released once a …