Mykel Boyd is one of the leading lights in experimental music and drone, and has done so much to promote the genre that it is (pleasantly) hard to keep track of his releases. He is paired with Brume (the working name of French composer and long-time contact Christian Renou) who is, frankly, a legend in the cassette culture scene. The album is a fine take on electroacoustic music with an ominous vibe floating throughout these pieces. Perfect to get lost in thought with.
Prepare yourselves for January 19, ten days from now! The legendary Scanner (Robin Rimbaud in real life) has a new album out, “…a tribute to the early 1960s library music culture, applying crude techniques of electronic composition, using a mix of hardware and software. It explores a kind of musique concrète, electroacoustic character, in an otherworldly cinematic fashion.” This will be a departure from his more experimental work, and should be a joy to listen to. It will be released on Alltagsmusik, “a new label to release Scanner albums.”
No wishes, no hopes for the year, just a pleasant way to gently slide into 2024. We launch with Jeff Gburek’s latest release, of which he provides notes on his Bandcamp site: “Still Life with a Question Mark came together as an album rather quickly after I discovered loops unused from an older project fit very well with the latest work I’d done in seclusion at Dom Sztuk, Kęszyca. Captures of VLF radio (ionospheric geomagnetic crackling impulses), hydrophone recordings from Solacz pond, frame drums, zither played with ebow, looped guitar and string passages, synthesizer, shortwave radio, textures of leaves, wood,…
Valerio Cosi is an Italian composer I’ve had the pleasure of following for many years online, but this is the first time in a while that I have seen his work commercially available. It is a fine example of musique concrète, and is active enough to keep you engaged throughout it’s 30 minutes in length.
Jeff Gburek’s latest album is not a departure from his carefully crafter work, but a continuation of his honing sounds together, weaving them in a way that the early musique-concrète composers could not have imagined. Drones, pulses and the sounds of Burgas, Bulgaria, are blended to produce an immersive soundscape. Yet another fine work.
Friends and readers, thank you for indulging your scribe a well-needed rest after 1,000 days of activity. We relaunch with one of the most gorgeous electroacoustic recordings I’ve come across in a while. María Cristina Kasem is a composer and violinist from Argentina who has an extensive body of work in academic experimental music. These three works are eerie, but so incredibly engaging that the sounds managed to soothe my ears. A very pleasant find.
This is perhaps one of the most beautifully stunning acousmatic works I’ve ever heard. Every percussive strike of the piano had me transfixed while listening, so much so that I wasn’t able to do my normal routine of working while listening to music. Our dear friend Benjamin Aït-Ali took a bit of time away from composer serious music, but has come back to it with a vengeance. It’s a gripping work, this.
empreintes DIGITALes are the finest record label in Canada specializing in electroacoustic music, acousmatics and musique concrète. It pleased me to see that they are putting up their albums on Bandcamp, and I ended up being doubly rewarded by finding a composer who is new to me. Léa Boudreau describes herself, rightly, as, “…(a) circuit maker, sound crafter, immersive environments builder.” This particular album is lively and energetic for an experimental music album. I have to say it’s a difficult one to describe, so do click on the Bandcamp link and enjoy the sounds.
Our dear friends at Lost Tribe Sound have on offer an ambient album perfectly designed for headphone listening by a project new to me called Drawing Virtual Gardens, a Belgium-based artist called David Gutman. From the promo material, which does a wonderful service introducing David’s work: “At the core of Drawing Virtual Gardens ’22:22,’ there is a keen sense of the nocturnal, and a blurring of lines between the waking and the dream state. Focusing on small synchronous events within these hypnagogic periods, Gutman takes inspiration and translates them into musical cadence. Blankets of dense sub-bass coat minimal dub-like rhythmic…
William Ryan Fritch’s lastest disc is the, “second in a three-part series reflecting on the many calamitous water crises affecting life on this planet.” Cohesion is a bit darker than the previous album, Polarity, but there is a more organic feel to it. From Fritch’s Bandcamp site: “In contrast to ‘Polarity,’ which was largely created by synthesized and electronic signals being transformed into acoustic phenomena. ‘Cohesion’ was constructed solely from acoustic instruments (baritone and alto saxophones, oboe, contrabass clarinet, bassoon, tuba, etc) mic’d and processed live to behave and sound like synthesized and/or sequenced sound sources. Using multiple contact mics,…