Browse by Label: MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)

Artist:	EMPIRE, ALEC
Title:	Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MP 023CD

Empire's 4th album, from 1996. "Another step in the ever-evolving art of Alec Empire. Not a mere interpretation of easy listening and jazz, Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5 is full of humor and gusto; an all-out destruction of musical forms and their genesis in jazz. Entering a field in which there is neither perspective nor limit nor outline nor center, Empire uses the power of repetition as a mechanical forces that pursues an infinite movement. Speed and slowness of beats and the strange use of jazz keyboard patterns reconstruct a smooth space. In one lone effort, Alec Empire has invented space jazz." Limited stock of this now deleted release.

Artist:	VA
Title:	Electric Ladyland IV
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MP 039CD

"To understand the music of Electric Ladyland one needs to consider its cultural and political context. Electric soul for rebels. This ostensibly simple statement articulates some of the complex micro-political processes that are involved in electronic music. The music is involved in history but the tracks on Electric Ladyland are existing without the privileged position of language as the main authorized means of communication. There is no pre-dominant code, no signifier that predetermines how the listener should physically or mentally respond to the music. Electric Ladyland destroys the conservatism of Hip Hop. But the sounds are also deterritorialised in relation to musical tradition. Trip Hop always uses the cliches of musicality (Jazz, Ambient, etc.) and Electric Ladyland allows to move away from the conservative forms of Trip Hop to new investments of desire. The response to the music of Electric Ladyland becomes how to continue an intense flow. Desire comes up against the special forms of capitalist music business and it is not surprising that Electric Ladyland is highly underrated in the mainstream music press. The compilation opens an intense field for experimentation which is used by hardcore terrorists Alec Empire and Panacea, NY's finest in illbient DJ Spooky, noise terrorists Techno Animal and Zulutronic, and the 'Hip Hop' minimalists of Brooklyn's Wordsound label and DJ Vadim.

Artist:	DUCA, CURD
Title:	Elevator
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MP 047CD

"New album after the success of his compilation series Easy Listening Vol. 1-5 and the transformation of Richard Wagner sounds on Switched On Wagner. This new release is not hi concept art, it is electronic mood music for listening or even electronic cool jazz and it is more complex than the Easy listening series. Elevator also contains the effort to build up rhythm without drum machine and sampled grooves and the samples are not integrated in a rhythmical framework. Every sample used by Curd Duca's music has its own quality and sounds totally different in the original context. It is about sounds and textures and Curd Duca's music stands for the purity of timbre. Important are not the cultural context and some significant associations, every sample has its own rhythm and timbre combined with metallic 'Rauschen' and low frequency basslines. The tracks on Elevator cannot be separated ?- they are creating a beautiful context. Elevator shows Curd Duca as the perfect cut-up artist."

Artist:	DUCA, CURD
Title:	Elevator 2
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MP 066CD

"Subtitled 'electro acoustic mood music', Duca´s new Elevator album transcends the style he once established in his Easy Listening series. Starting with one of his trademark psychedelic tracks, it soon veers off into uncharted territories of digital explosion, non-metric pulses, jazzy cut-ups and mindblowing transitions-executed with a casual precision that makes even the most experimental tracks highly listenable. Curd Duca's music is at once lavish and parsimonious, synthetic and soulful. He is able to put his hands on a piece of chrome and make it radiate with warmth. Elevator 2 airy and elegant, at times rough and scratchy and off the scale: It is quite a journey."

Artist:	STURM
Title:	Die Glocken Von Sturm
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	MP 067LP

Awesome vinyl-only extended 3 track EP, following up the self-titled full length Sturm album on Mille Plateaux (MP 60). "Sturm is a project by Cologne artist Reinhard Voigt who is part of the Kompact scene. Basic structures on this maxi contain heavy loops, repetitive keyboard patterns and microscopic effects. It is fragile music, music without center. Regardless of genre, dance or ambient, sound are travelling through time and space."

Artist:	NEINA
Title:	Formed Verse
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MP 072CD

Neina is a unit produced and assembled by Hosomi Sakana, a keyboard player and producer active in Japan's music scene. The unit is comprised of an unrestricted and irregular lineup. Neina is the word for 'song' in Ainu, the language of the indigenous people of Japan. After graduating from the conservatory, Hosomi commenced his career in 1984 as a professional keyboardist for a variety of artists and bands. Before long his talents as a programmer, arranger, and producer came to the attention of many; and the number of artists with whom he has collaborated since, in performance and recording, has exceeded one hundred, the number of records he participated in easily over two hundred. Alongside accomplishing a busy schedule of support work, he has continued tirelessly in pursuit of the challenge of his own mode of expression, mainly in his own studio. Meanwhile as an arranger, continuing to work with ever-increasing variety of musical instruments utilizing digital technology has led him to new methods of working. The vast information contained within the digital world and the often, almost organic logic within it, as well as the image it holds of chaotic and limitless possibility, grew to fascinate him. Eventually, all this came into being in the shape of Neina. Techno, drum 'n' bass, noise, ambient, all the music of recent years, and its rapid progress and proliferation, has brought an anticipation for the emergence of the next, new music, for both the enthusiast of the floor and the contemplative in the living room. Neina brings a new musicality into digital weirdness, one step further than projects like Oval and Microstoria. Neina also involves new processes of production, distribution, and reception."

Artist:	STURM
Title:	Sturmgesten
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	MP 074LP

Double LP version, last copies; deleted on CD. "Sturm is a major project of Reinhard Voigt who released already one album and one maxi on Mille Plateaux. Sturmgesten, the new album, is the third part of his homogeneous creative power. In comparison with his first album the new one is more consistent and Reinhard is producing without compromise. The album is the result of concentrated working, manifestation of darkness and seriousness without losing a specific pop appeal. The affinity to Gas, a project on Mille Plateaux by his brother Wolfgang Voigt, is amazing. Sturmgesten varies continuous returning sounds. The album works with the possibility of creating a fascinating atmosphere with one special idea. Music through time travelling. Clarity, purity and intensity of sound are the main aspects of Reinhard Voigt's new album."

Artist:	CRANK
Title:	Heftibag
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MP 075CD

"The first Crank album, Wanton Phenomena, was hailed by The Wire magazine as 'a staggering album... a stunning advance for U.S. electronica'. Just months prior to that album release, the artist Danny Zelonky introduced the lavishly-praised Approximate Love Boat album under his LowRes moniker on the Plug Research label. Now, Mille Plateaux presents a third, all-new album, Heftibag, which continues to build upon the many innovations of the above-mentioned releases. Although Heftibag is again an entirely electronic collection, the fact of being electronic no longer seems to be so central to the work. And, though again evoking jazz, hiphop, Cuban and electro-acoustic themes, the music strives neither for faithfulness to reality nor complete abstraction, though it allows itself to draw near both poles over the course of the album. Crank enlists a superb Swedish artist known as Smyglyssna to produce a remix for this release, and the result is a most perceptive reinterpretation of the lovely/ugly track 'Mala Vista', which perfectly complements the very particular landscape of Heftibag." Limited stock.

Artist:	CURD DUCA
Title:	Elevator 3
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MP 084CD

"Marks a new level of Curd Duca's art of the digital cut-up and advanced sample-based soundscaping. The subtitle 'digitalanalog mood music' refers to its mostly analog source material and its affinities to jazzy digital improvisation and the non-mechanistic sensibilities of late-romantic classical music, also employing a rather expanded notion of mood. In 48 (!) tracks, a wide variety of sounds, textures, and rhythms, floats by and mysteriously coalesces into a stylistically coherent work, transcending contradictions between experimental and emotional, intellectual and enjoyable.Elevator 3 is atmospheric concept art: light and dark, complex and simple, laid back and elegant."

Artist:	PLURAMON
Title:	Bit Sand Riders
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	MP 091LP

Double LP version. "The heterogeneous mixture of remixers and styles here is not accidental. By selecting remixers and their way of working (pluralistic), the individual components which are essential for the monistic Pluramon sound are highlighted clearly. There's the fat, dark rock of the Scottish band Mogwai, but also an airy track from Sensorama: working with guitar sounds & processing the sounds of the laptop master Hecker (Mego); or the melodic approach of the British High Llamas. As a band, Pluramon moves between electronic and guitar instrumentation and not least because of this is regarded as one of the most interesting acts internationally. Today, even the more obscure Lo-Fi bands work with digital equipment, i.e. with 'electronics'. Many of the discourses concerning this topic and the points which emerged from it have long been their focus. Unlike the first Pluramon album from the year 1996, when hard disc recording made the search for references to one's medium urgent, today music can be refined with the entire range of technical equipment in the digital domain. Therefore the latest Pluramon release Bit Sand Riders is a remix album. The bands who have been invited for the remix challenge are: The striking Sensorama of L'age d'Or as well as London's High Llamas; Mogwai,'the best guitar band 99` (Viva 2); F.X. Randomiz, the hyperactive electronic freak and M. Schmickler's label colleague; Hecker, processing sound in Mego style; Matmos, who is known for playful drum & bass from San Francisco on Matador; electro mastermind Atom Heart (Rather Interesting); the New Yorker Lee Ranaldo, the guitarist from Sonic Youth; SND, the minimal techno heroes from Sheffield; the noise evangelist Merzbow from Tokyo; and a remix from Pluramon themselves, on the vinyl version, there is an additional mix of Cristian Vogel which has already been released on 12"."

Artist:	DELAY, VLADISLAV
Title:	Anima
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MP 095CD

"From his home in Helsinki, Finland, Delay has brought forward a new directive into the sounds of dub and minimal electronics, placing him as one of the premier artists involved in the recent wave of electronic dub hybrids (aka Pole, Kit Clayton). He is also behind the popular Deep House project Luomo and the techno act Uusitalo. Now Vladislav Delay returns with Anima, the follow-up to last year's critically acclaimed Mille Plateaux release Entain and Mutila on Chain Reaction. Anima is an opus of over 60 minutes, a continuous mix that reveals itself beyond audio design. Delay succeds in developing his new methods of production and altering music as it is typically translated. Rather than familiar electronic traits of looping sounds, Anima continually develops in an organic flow, thus giving the interpretation that perhaps the music is less a digital excursion and more an instrumental development. Vladislav Delay is setting on potentials, effects and impulses of the never heard. Imagine a new world of audio." Limited stock.

Artist:	RIP-OFF ARTIST, THE
Title:	Pump
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MP 105CD

"Matt Haines, a.k.a. the Rip-Off Artist, releases his seventh album on Mille Plateaux. This album, appropriately entitled Pump, is a story of oil and love, petroleum and sex. A world in which hard iron meets soft earth, and deep pressures are relieved. Prior to his music career, the Rip-Off Artist worked for several years aboard an off-shore oil-drilling platform off the coast of California. Working for weeks at a time in twelve-hour shifts, surrounded by the constant din of sea and machine, the crew of the platform are extremely isolated. Gut-wrenching loneliness and frustration permeates the atmosphere, and the crew (both male and female) think constantly of home. Close relationships onboard are discouraged, and so the 'roustabouts' and support crew naturally turn to thoughts of distant spouses and lovers. This sexual tension is obvious in the names of tools and machinery used by the oil industry. Odd words such as 'swage nipple,' 'downhole,' 'stuffing box' and 'packing gland' expose the emotions attached to mere objects. These words become titles of music about longing in the midst of grindingly hard work. The Rip-Off Artist captures this bizarre juxtaposition of flesh and metal on Pump."

Artist:	SLAVIN, RAN
Title:	Insomniac City
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	DVD/CD
Price:	$20.50
Catalog #:	MP 127DVD

A multi-media art project from the rejuvenated Mille Plateaux label. The DVD disc (two-sided, both NTSC and PAL formats; for worldwide viewing) features a 40-minute feature film written & directed by Slavin. The CD features 77 minutes of post-clicks'n'cuts atmospheric sound design that acts both as a soundtrack to the movie and a completely separate audio listening experience.
Insomniac City is a cinematic project in parts which morphs, changes form, story and length as it develops, by Israeli audiovisual artist Ran Slavin. A time-specific video, this Mille Plateaux release features the latest episode, Insomniac City [vers3]: Did I die? Did I kill? A man suffering from insomnia tries to recall how he had been shot in one of the city's underground car parks. A fragmented nonlinear stream of events that encompasses day and night, Tel Aviv is spliced through chaotic observations, a vague notion of reality, physical and mental spheres, drifting between the known reality and a hallucinatory one. The movie blends urban spaces and modes of perception. It encounters estrangement, loss of identity, loss of memory, dreams and floods, a gun, futuristic architecture and artificial islands. Through the memory of the figure at play, an exploration of the city spaces takes place, as the city is experienced through an obscure labyrinth of insomnia fighting to distinguish real from unreal. It explores through video and sound possible scenarios of a city in transit, shifting and decaying while checking the boundaries of inner and external worlds, documentary and fiction, present, dream and future, architecture, physical and metaphysical. Insomnia dictionary translation: Chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time. A periodical suspension of the functions, as well as of those of the voluntary and rational soul; that state of the animal in which there is a lessened acuteness of sensory perception, a confusion of ideas, and a loss of mental control, followed by a more or less unconscious state. This is the soundtrack and movie all in one.

Artist:	PROGUE, EDITH
Title:	Timeline
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	MP 128CD

Edith Progue is the project of Paris-based musician, Bernie Swell. After having formed izdatso as a gathering of musicians and visual artists in 1999, Bernie Swell has slowly but surely moved to a more minimal approach towards digital composing. Painters like Rauschenberg, Rothko, Kuroda and Japanese architect Tadao Ando can be cited as major influences along with musicians like Steve Reich, Eric Satie and Alva Noto. Timeline consists of a chronological report of the different moods experienced by the composer over a 24-hour period of time spent in an apartment overlooking the dark waters of Canal St. Martin in Paris. The dreamy environment created by the melodic sound of an acoustic piano is only troubled by the intrusion of a few micro-electronic beats and sounds. The softness of the instrument can be compared to the white walls of an art gallery that would feature basic technological sounds as art objects. The music was created as an attempt to reconcile the noisy environment that surrounds day-to-day modern urban life with the inner peace that can eventually be found through meditation. While listening to these pieces, you might leave the TV or radio on, or hear a cell phone's new message alert, a fridge sub-bass might rumble or, more simply, an opened window on a busy street would constructively mix with these hypnosonic soundscapes, revealing the hidden art behind any intruding noise/sound manifestation. This is truly the soundtrack to domestic bliss, easily integrated into your daily sound-routine.

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Artist:	STEEL
Title:
Label:	MILLE PLATEAUX (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MP 016CD