Organized Music From Thessaloniki Releases New Albums from Enrique R. Palma and Socrates Martinis

Organized Music from Thessaloniki has released two new albums today. The first comes from Enrique R. Palma, one of the label heads of Lengua de Lava. His album is entitled Contenance and the press release describes the album as such:

Contenance presents a fleeting marriage between the immediate and the conceptual, featuring as it is captures of solo improvisations, but brought together under a unifying tone of approach to the music that runs deeper than a surface exploration of techniques. Similarly, the sounds themselves offer a seamless montage of varying approaches, ranging from computer noise, to acoustic improvisations performed by Palma and his collaborator Javier Beci. Brought together by this holistic electroacoustic sensibility that permeates the material, the results are difficult to pigeonhole under one tradition, maintaining instead a vibrant potency at their core. What remains is a fascination with edges, residues and decay; a meeting point of sound experiences, an object brought together by the traces left from a series of visitations. Like the feel of humid air just before the rain carries both the memory of the past and the anticipation of the future, the music here carries manifold possibilities within itself.

The second new album comes from Socrates Martinis and it's entitled Under the arches of her voice. The press release for the album is as follows:

The tools [Martinis] employs, objects, found sound and field recordings, cannot help but root the music into place – there are clear traces of the environments that surround the myriad sounds of friction, clangs, noises and thin sizzles that shape the narrative of the tracks. But this could be any place. The snapshots Martinis arranges are abstracted and shaped into an unassuming poetics of observation, with the action progressing and cutting from one microscopically detailed sound-moment to the next. The first track (‘Under the arches of her voice love echoes through metallic cylinders’) sets the tone with an extended survey of the quotidian, the listener’s lens shifting to a different scene only once a certain grounding has already been established. Subsequent tracks linger similarly, but often also jump more freely from a moment to the next, releasing the album from any obligation of storytelling, and instead developing a rare warmth of presence and immanence.

You can hear excerpts from both albums above. Both albums come in a limited run of 100 copies. Contenance can be purchased hereUnder the arches of her voice can be purchased here.

Speculations Editions Releases Debut Album from matías coduri

 
 

Speculations Editions has released a new album from Buenos Aires-based artist matías coduri. The album is simply titled matías coduri 2015 and features recordings made during the final hours of 2015. coduri has been creating music for more than a decade but matías coduri 2015 is his debut release. You can listen to an excerpt of the first track above. The full album can be downloaded at the Speculations Editions website here.

Mappa Releases Adam Asnan's 'Carriers, PA'

 
 

Mappa is a new record label that launched last month with the release of Jeph Jerman's 34°111'3"N 111°95'4"W. They've just released a new album from VA AA LR member Adam Asnan entitled Carriers, PA. The title refers to two specific techniques that Asnan utilized on the album's six tracks:

Carrier (I-III) - Two interconnected ring modulators, recorded directly from the 'carrier' outputs - the internal signal used to modulate an external signal against, controlled with a potentiometer. For some reason, it bore a lot of inexplicable effects to that signal when patched in a particular way. 

PA (I-III) stands for phantom artefacts. It was a technique of sending phantom power to a device that also offered phantom power (which was powering a stereo pair of mics) and the subsequent 'electro-static' sounds that it would produced, and various recordings of amplified hum and detritus.

You can stream the album above via Mappa's Bandcamp page. There, you'll be able to purchase Carriers, PA—either digitally or as a limited edition cassette—as well as read more information about the album.

New Albums from Gabi Losoncy and Joda Clément Out Next Week on caduc.

caduc.'s first new albums of the year are coming out next week on March 15th. One record comes from Gabi Losoncy and is entitled Judgment. This marks the first time Losoncy has been on caduc. The second new album comes from Joda Clément and is entitled Sea Songs. Joe Panzner handled the mastering for Sea Songs. You can stream samples from both albums above under their respective album cover.

Both albums are limited to an edition of 100 CDs and come with a custom bookmark. You can pre-order the albums now on the caduc. site here. It's significant to mention that caduc. offers discounted prices for purchases involving two or more albums.

Pre-orders for Sarah Hennies' 'Gather & Release' are Now Available

Sarah Hennies is releasing a new album on Coppice's label, Category of manifestation:. The album is entitled Gather & Release and will be out on in April. You can listen to excerpts from the album's two tracks above. The press release for Gather & Release is as follows:

Gather & Release is the result of years worth of composer Sarah Hennies’ exploration of the vibraphone in synthesis with her experiences of identity, obsession, anxiety, tension, grief, and loss.

Over the course of an hour, Hennies entangles highly focused percussion playing with field recordings, sine waves, signifiers from her personal & family history (including a 20+ year old recording of her grandfather reciting poetry), and bilateral stimulation, a tool for anxiety release and a major component of EMDR therapy (a branch of psychotherapy that focuses on relieving the patient of disturbing memories as a treatment for psychopathology).

The limited edition CD will come in hand-sewn packaging. You can find more information about Gather & Release, as well as pre-order it on the label website here

Ex-Nihilo Records Releases a Performance of Antoine Beuger's "Peckinpah Trios"

 
 

Ex-Nihilo Records has just released a new album. It's a performance of Antoine Beuger's "Peckinpah Trios" from Guillermo Torres (synthesizer), Tomás Gris (melodica), and David Area (sine waves). You can stream the full album above or on the Ex-Nihilo Bandcamp page here. The album is also available as a 'name your price' download. "Peckinpah Trios" was written by Beuger in 2004 and features 50 individual pieces. Each piece has one performer play three tones, one play two tones, and one play one tone.

In related news, Ex-Nihilo released a performance of Beuger's "monodies pour mallarmé" from Tomás Gris this past December. You can download and stream that recording here.

Mikroton Releases Five New Albums

 
 

Mikroton has just released a batch of five new records. All five albums are currently available as digital downloads on their respective Bandcamp pages. The five albums that were released are:

MIKROTON CD 45: Kurt Liedwart / Phil Raymond - Rim
MIKROTON CD 46: Keith Rowe / Martin Küchen - The Bakery
MIKROTON CD 47: Norbert Möslang / Ilia Belorukov / Kurt Liedwart - sale_interiora
MIKROTON CD 48: Strøm (Gaudenz Badrutt / Christian Müller) - X
MIKROTON CD 49: Serge Baghdassarians / Boris Baltschun / Burkhard Beins - Future Perfect

You can find more information about each album on their respective album pages on the Mikroton website, as linked above. You can also stream samples from each album above. Physical copies of each album are currently available for pre-order and will be shipped around March 21st.

Listen to the Lightbulb Ensemble and Ghost Ensemble Perform Pauline Oliveros, Ben Richter, and Brian Baumbusch

 
 

The California-based record label Indexical has just released a live recording from the Lightbulb Ensemble and the Ghost Ensemble. The performances took place in Brooklyn this past October and includes works by Pauline Oliveros, Ben Richter, and Brian Baumbusch. You can stream the entire album above or at their Bandcamp page here. The album is available as a name-your-price download and funds will go towards future Indexical concert recordings.

Stream R. Andrew Lee's Performance of Adrian Knight's Obsessions

R. Andrew Lee has a new album coming out on Irritable Hedgehog on March 4th. It features a performance of Adrian Knight's "Obsessions" and pre-orders for the album are currently available at the Irritable Hedgehog Bandcamp page.  However, you can stream the entire album right now at I Care If You Listen. There, you'll see information regarding upcoming concerts from R. Andrew Lee. An excerpt of the album's liner notes, which were written by William Robin, is as follows:

Eclecticism often suggests a grab bag: the frenetic postmodernism of John Zorn, the symphonic collages of Gustav Mahler. But the music of Adrian Knight instead exhibits two seemingly distinct, fully formed, and intriguing artistic personalities. There is the composer of still and beautiful piano works such as “Abide With Me,” which unfolds dreamily in the manner of Harold Budd, and long-form experiments with sine tones, like the transfixing “Världens Undergång.” And then there is, inexplicably, the cryptic songwriter and lead singer of garish nightlife bands, saturated with the supersonic glitter of 1980s New Wave. Though Knight’s “Obsessions”—a placid, repetitive, and ultimately haunting work for solo piano—initially resembles the former in sound, it is also saturated with the strange and violent spirit of the latter. 

“Obsessions” is both absorbing and self-absorbed, its serenity betraying a darker impulse. “All my life I’ve struggled with bad habits, routines, patterns, obsessions,” Knight writes in a program note. “Whether a form of mild self-flagellation or a mindless desire for normalcy and structure, they rule my life…If the piece is about anything, it is about me, and it is about itself. It’s stuck in its own stupid routine. The fact that it ends is its only victory.” Even as Knight calls it a “stupid routine,” the music enchants more than it frustrates. In several extended sections, the composer develops on the phrases that open the piece, a sunken cathedral of rippling chords that alternate with silence. A couple minutes in, he unveils a “lamentation” motif: a drooping of two chords, punctured by rests, which he calls “the main obsession of the piece.” The music is developmental but never quite fully develops; it is a theme and variations, or perhaps a rondo, but cast as a kind of unhealthy fixation on a set of musical materials rather than an unfolding narrative. 

Pan y Rosas Discos Releases C. Reider & Jeph Jerman's 'Pop Variations'

 
 

Netlabel Pan y Rosas Discos has released a new collaborative album from C. Reider and Jeph Jerman. The album consists of a single 30 minute track comprised of edited vinyl pops and crackles. C. Reider wrote the following about the album:

in 2015, my friend jeph jerman sent me a very lovely lathe-cut record. one side has a twelve minute track of the pops and crackles that are typical of vinyl records. all of the sounds in pop variations were derived from that recording, using various techniques, like running the pops & clicks through a de-clicking algorithm, or slowing down the recording to the point where you can hear the needle bouncing at each pop.
-CR

You can download the full release from the label's website here.