Pascal Battus, Bertrand Gauguet, and Éric La Casa Release Chantier 4

Pascal Battus, Bertrand Gauguet, and Éric La Casa have released the newest edition of their Chantier releases. Chantier 4 is released on Swarming, a label founded by Éric La Casa, Philip Samartzis, and Jean-Luc Guionnet. You can listen to the final track on the album, "Philharmonie 3", above. The album was recorded in Philharmonie's building site in 2013. The following note comes with the album:

Since 2010, the building site has been a space where we question our practice, like workers. Improvising with the background noise of the site, the myriad sounds of machines, the gestures and words of the workers, our research unfolds over multiple sound territories, ranging from acoustics to anthropology.

You can see the tracklist below. The album is available to purchase from the Swarming Bandcamp page here.

Chantier 4 tracklist:

1. Philharmonie 1
2. Philharmonie 2
3. Philharmonie 3

BBC Launches BBC Sound Effects Database With 16,000+ Freely Downloadable WAV Files

BBC has launched a database entitled BBC Sound Effects which, at the moment, contains 16,016 sound effects freely available to download. You can browse through the thousands of sound effects here. All files are available for use under the RemArc license, which you can view here.

All files come as WAV files and range from "A large Circular saw cutting 12-foot planks" to "Restaurants: Large Canteen, quiet, loud hiss of steam". The site also comes with a convenient search function,

Diego Behncke Releases New Album on Gauss PDF, Soundtracked New Short Film Playing at Cannes

Chilean musician Diego Behncke recently released his newest album Alalia on Gauss PDF. It features twenty tracks of playful electroacoustic noodling and skittering noise. You can listen to the first track "00 Ormolu" above. The entirety of Alalia is available for free download on the Gauss PDF site here (direct download link here). All tracks are WAV files and the download comes with a .pdf file.

The 71st Annual Cannes Film Festival will be taking place next month. Included in the International Critics' Week section of the festival is a film from Felipe Gálvez named Rapaz. Diego Behncke created the soundtrack for the film. You can find more information about Rapaz here. Behncke has previously released albums on Speculations Editions and Presna Manual.

Catriel Nievas Releases New Album 2015

Argentinian musician Catriel Nievas has released a new album entitled 2015. As hinted by the title, the album was recorded in 2015 between May and November. The album features 19 tracks of varying lengths that move between quotidian field recordings and unassuming guitar playing. That's the album cover above, and you can stream the entire album via Nievas's Bandcamp page here.

Earlier this year, Nievas released an album with Iván González on Impulsive Habitat entitled Neblina. Last year, Nievas collaborated with Joe Wheeler on Balance, an album released by Marginal Frequency.

Black Truffle to Release New Album by Joe Talia, Pre-Orders Available Now

Earlier today, Oren Ambarchi announced on Twitter that pre-orders for a new Joe Talia album are available now. The album is entitled Tint and will be released on May 4th on Ambarchi's Black Truffle. Tint marks the first solo album from Talia in over a decade.

Talia was inspired by Jean-Claude Eloy's Gaku-No-Michi for the album, and was created throughout several months while in his new studio in Tokyo. The album is said to be "an electroacoustic suite" featuring sound that range "from minimalist austerity to kosmische lushness" and makes "extensive use of his own recordings of his new home". You can pre-order the album now on Forced Exposure and Kompakt. In preparation for Tint, revisit tracks from Gaku-No-Michi and Talia's collaboration with James Rushford, Manhunter, below.

Ghost Ensemble Announces New Album and Tour, Hear Performance of Pauline Oliveros's "Angels and Demons" Now

Indexical has announced a new album from Ghost Ensemble entitled We Who Walk Again. The album features three compositions from three different composers. The first track was composed by Ghost Ensemble member Sky Macklay and is entitled "60 Degree Mirrors". It was inspired by "subtly shifting repetitive-yet-distinct geometric-mosaic patterns, multiplying and beautifying whatever objects live within the kaleidoscope."

The album also features the first officially released recording of Pauline Oliveros's "Angels and Demons". Originally composed in 1980, "Angels & Demons" features a text score which states that "any sound that has been heard inwardly first may be made." Players are to take on the roles of Angels (a representation of "the collective guardian spirits of this meditation") or Demons (a representation of "the individual spirits of creative genius"), and are able to switch between the two during the performance. You can hear the track above. The song also appeared on Live at Pioneer Works, an album featuring live performances by The Lightbulb Ensemble and The Ghost Ensemble. 

We Who Walk Again also features a composition from Ghost Ensemble founder Ben Richter entitled "Wind People". Writing about the piece, Ricther states that his hope was to "draw a sense of peace and comfort from our smallness, transience, and fragility in the face of an overwhelming immensity, the music mirroring the constant ebb and flow visible when zooming in or out to quantum or geological time".

Ghost Ensemble will also have tour dates throughout the next month. You can view see the tour dates below. We Who Walk Again will be officially released on May 18th. You can pre-order the digital album and 12" LP on Indexical's Bandcamp page here.

We Who Walk Again tracklist:

1. 60 Degree Mirrors (Sky Macklay)
2. Angels and Demons (Pauline Oliveros)
3. Wind People (Ben Richter)

Ghost Ensemble tour dates:

Apr 20 - New York, NY at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music
May 17th - San Francisco, CA at Center for New Music
May 19th - Santa Cruz, CA at Indexical (Wind River)
May 20th - Paso Robles, CA at Lefondusac Winery
May 22nd - Los Angeles, CA at Basic Flowers
May 23rd - San Diego, CA at Bread & Salt (Athenaeum Art Center)

Edition RZ Announces Two-Disc Jakob Ullmann Album

Edition RZ has announced a new two-disc album featuring compositions from Jakob Ullmann. Müntzers stern / solo II is the name of the album and its two respective pieces.

Both tracks were performed by Dafne Vicente-Sandoval on bassoon in 2016. "Müntzers stern" was originally composed in 2014 and 2015, and is part of a larger work entitled "steine, feuer, sterne". "Solo II" was originally composed in 1992 after Ullmann was inspired by a meeting he had with John Cage in 1990. The piece is part of a series of works entitled "Buch der Stille 1".

This album marks his first since Fremde Zeit Addendum 4, which was released in 2013 on Edition RZ. Last year, he performed "Some Of "The Harmony Of Maine"" on the triple disc John Cage album Klang der Wandlungen. Müntzers stern / solo II does not currently have a release date. You can find more information about it at the Edition RZ site here.

Flaming Pines to Release Compilation of Ambient Music from Vietnam

Flaming Pines is set to release a new compilation of ambient music from Vietnam. It's titled Emergence and features ten tracks by currently active Vietnamese artists, non-Vietnamese artists currently residing in Vietnam, and people who have collaborated with Vietnamese artists in the past. The album is accompanied by the following excerpted statement:

The first generation of experimental musicians appeared in Hanoi in the 1990s. Late 2000s and early 2010s, the second generation of Vietnamese experimental musicians started developing.

Up until now the local scene is still lacking resources, awareness and appreciation for experimental music in Vietnam. Our emergence is not only to claim our musical identities but also to open up new possibilities, exploration and potential future collaboration. For us, experimental music is a direct way to construct our sonic language; to freely express a complex range of personal experience, thoughts and emotions.

The album comes out April 25th both digitally and on CD. You can listen to a track above and pre-order the album here.

Emergence tracklist:

1, Đỗ Tấn Sĩ - The morning seems so strange today
2. Tri Minh - Love I (feat. Trinh Minh Hien)
3. Sound Awakener - Duskiness
4. Xo Xinh - Conversation
5. No Time - The Sum Of Little Things
6. Tam Pham - Nỗi buồn với biển
7. Humanized - Parallel Astroid
8. Nguyễn Đỗ Minh Quân - Rush
9. Nguyễn Hữu Hải Duy - Walk (Doze Off)
10. Dee.F - If I could stay reasonably sane (original mix)

No Response Festival Announces Lineup: Keiji Haino, Body/Head, Ikue Mori, More

No Response Festival returns for its third year, and have announced its full lineup. The two-day festival will run on Thursday, June 21st and Friday, June 22nd at Woodward Theater in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Thursday will be headlined by Kate Gordon and Bill Nace's Body/Head project while Friday will be headlined by  Keiji Haino. Thursday's lineup also includes Ikue Mori, Joe & Joe (a duo performance from Joe Potts & Joseph Hammer), and Haley Fohr of Circuit Des Yeux. Friday's lineup is rounded out by To Live and Shave in L.A., Robert Turman, and Olivia Block. Advance tickets are $25 per day and will be $30 day of show.

The festival will also be screening "Johnny Vortex presents D street: Avenue Of Fear," a performance art work written and performed by John Bender, Kate Gallion, and Jason Tannen in 1985 (58 min). There will also be screenings of music videos for Dementia Precox that were directed by Jud Yalkut. These screenings will take place across the street from Woodward Theater at the Mini Microcinema. These screenings will be free.

In addition to all this, No Response Festival will host a show featuring John Wiese & Joseph Hammer on Saturday, June 23rd at Torn Light Records. The show will be $5.

Tickets and additional information about No Response Festival can be found on their website here. Co-founders John Rich and John Lorenz also talked with WVXU about the festival. You can listen to that here.

No Response Festival Lineup:

Thursday, June 21:
Body/Head (Kim Gordon & Bill Nace)
Ikue Mori
Joe & Joe (Joe Potts & Joseph Hammer)
Haley Fohr (Solo Vocal Performance, Circuit Des Yeux)

Friday, June 22:
Keiji Haino
To Live And Shave In L.A.
Robert Turman
Olivia Block

New Albums from Caroline Park and Taneli Viljanen Out Now on Glistening Examples

Glistening Examples released two albums last week. The first comes from the Vancouver-based Caroline Park and is entitled Live Your Best Factory Life. The album is said to deal with the "tensions that persist: physical frictions, muscles trying, and the body that continues to labor to survive." You can find more information and listen to the album via the Bandcamp page here.

The other album released last was Taneli Viljanen's Metallisilmä, Haaksirikko. Viljanen hails from Finland and their album is "an assemblage created out of many disparate and heterogenous sound sources." You can find more information and listen to the album via the Bandcamp page here. Viljanen released three tapes on Pai throughout the past few years.

Earlier this year, Glistening Examples released an album from Thomas Tilly as well as the 19th volume of Jason Lescalleet's This Is What I Do series.