Touch Records has introduced so many experimental recording composers to the world in its 40 years of existence that it’s hard to keep up with them. This latest release by Saudi-American composer Bana Haffar immediately spins a web for you to get tied into her shimmering compositions. Found sounds and acoustic instruments feel and sound perfectly balanced, a feat made more impressive since this is a live recording.
I remember the Beijing lockups very well, as I lived in the city during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Some residents in Beijing, including the trio of Li Jianhong, Wen Zhiyong and Deng Boyu, made incredibly good use of the time and recorded an album of music combining free improvisation, electronics and ancient instruments such as gudi (bone flute) and trumpet. A sonically stunning album.
Respect to WV Sorcerer Productions (巫唱片), who continue to release quality Chinese new music.
Our friends at Unexplained Sounds Group continue their ambient and experimental music travelogue series, this time concentrating on wonderful Latin America. From their Bandcamp site:
“After almost 6 years from the latest compilation focused on experimental music from Latina America, finally Unexplained Sounds Group publishes a cd release including, in addition to some of the musicians who participated in the initial project, many other artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile and Venezuela, thereby providing evidence of continuous aesthetic research beyond all conventional barriers.”
Our friend Sonologyst (Raffaele Pezzalla) has released his first project of 2023, and it’s a deep listen, taking the existence of electrons as its subject matter. From his Bandcamp site:
“As the theory of the atom, quantum mechanics is perhaps the most successful theory in the history of science. It enables physicists, chemists, and technicians to calculate and predict the outcome of a vast number of experiments and to create new and advanced technology based on the insight into the behaviour of atomic objects. But it is also a theory that challenges our imagination. It seems to violate some fundamental principles of classical physics, principles that eventually have become a part of western common sense since the rise of the modern worldview in the Renaissance…”
You can read more at the site by clicking the link above.
Ani Zakareishvili has produced a work of genius – something that feels like it would have fit in the classic movie The Shining, with its surreal, hazy feel to it. From Warm Winters Ltd.’s Bandcamp site:
“Tbilisi, Georgia-based artist Ani Zakareishvili joins the Warm Winters Ltd. roster with a hazy, phantasmic EP titled ‘Fallin’. Centred around crackling piano loops and edited snippets of Eartha Kitt’s interview from 1982, Zakareishvili ponders on the meaning of “falling in love” and reveals a deeply resonant layer of her work. This is hypnagogic, hushed music, untroubled yet profound, which somehow waltzes past you in the blink of an eye. Unhurried, it blooms with grace and fades with equal ease. A wonderful introduction to the work of Ani Zakareishvili, who will share more of her work via the label in 2023.”
A weird and gorgeous work.
Zhuang Zhou is the pinyin transliteration of Chuang Tzu, the Chinese taoist philospher who lived some time during the 4th century B.C. during the Warring States Period, and was part of a movement where Chinese philosophy enjoyed an explosive period of development. He is the subject of the album being reviewed, and it’s nice to have composer Pete Swinton bring his name up after such a long absence.
Why he is mentioned in relation to the music is a mystery, as the first six tracks, according to Swinton himself, are meant to imitate insect sounds. After a deep listening, I have to say that this is one of the most organic experimental series of tracks I’ve heard in some time. There are pulses which feel alive, surrounded by sounds which remind me of Berlin School electronics. There is a deep, enveloping warmth to the tracks, and one should pay special attention to album as a whole, as Swinton notes that it is “concerned with the transmutation of the species.”
A bit about the subject of this album – From Wikipedia:
Chuang Tzu (pinyin: Zhuang Zhou [莊子]) was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States period, a period of great development in Chinese philosophy, the Hundred Schools of Thought. He is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi, which is one of the foundational texts of Taoism.
Worthy, and as engaging a listen as I’ve had all year.
UPDATE: A reader called Vincent Marsolais advised me of the following:
“Actually, Chuang Tzu transliterates as Zhuangzi 庄子. Zhuang Zhou 莊周 in Wade-Giles would be Chuang Chow.”
Correction noted.
Today is an auspicious day, as I’m proud to say that this is the 700th consecutive post this blog has produced since January 1, 2021. The release is one I held onto for such an occasion, as Jeff Gburek, heavily featured on my site for the astounding quality of his work, pairs with Pete Swinton, a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Java, Indonesia. The music has a hazy, lo-fi psychedelic rock quality to it, and the pieces on this album feel alive. You get the sense that you’re not only listening to the album, but it’s crawling inside of you. It’s one of the few albums I’ve heard which made my arm hairs stand on end, and it literally gave me the chills hearing it. Organic music that makes itself at home in your veins as well as your brains.
Today’s wee sonic adventure comes from a Berlin-based composer called Niobe Poitier. What fascinated me about this release was that she was using the voice of my favorite author, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, his voice and his works as his source material. The feel of the tracks, especially The Other (El Otro), are otherworldly. Some of the most satisfying headphone listening I’ve had in a good, long while.
Fresh recordings have been delivered by Jeff Gburek, and there are a few more in the pipeline, apparently, so 2022 will be a busy year for one of the blog’s favorites. From Jeff’s Bandcamp site:
“Five Broke Downe Homesick for the Open Road Medley Blues came to me as the title for tracks I recorded in October bounced off of various field recordings from the Summer 2022 . They are all recorded spontaneously at various locations. One can hear domestic and wilderness noises in the backgrounds (1), campfires, foxes or wolves, crickets (3). The tracks are mostly raw juxtapositions of field recordings/improvisations and dubbed improvisations in other locations without any editing, such that I’ve kept the recording artefacts (turning on the machine and turning it off) inside the final mixes. The final track (Abu Simbal) features a prepared guitar I call the Pseudo-Oud: an old acoustic guitar from which I stripped off some frets, supplied it with an odd assortment of strings, gave it a large metal wood screw atop plastic canister-lid as a bridge and played it quite close to the microphones to get this spacious reverberant sound. In the spirit of DIY and live experience of natural environments and the stardust we are made of.
__JG__”
Once an Industrial music icon during his time performing in Cabaret Voltaire (pre-disco), Chris Watson now records natural sounds with such skill that he makes something that goes well beyond ‘ambient’ music. As a tribute to his work, Touch Records commissioned several artists, including recently reposed ones like Philip Jeck and Mika Vainio, and supplemented by Fennesz, Biosphere and Watson himself.