Browse by Label: SONIG (GERMANY)

Artist:	WANG INC.
Title:
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$9.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 004EP

Previously available in the US on Thrill Jockey, that version is now out of print. This is the original German pressing on Mouse On Mars' label, Sonig. "Wang Inc. is a corporation of sound research founded by the Bartolomero 'Bart' Sailer. The laboratories of Wang Inc. synthesize a product with a new concept: the sounds of industrial articles are caught, isolated, manipulated and applied to the final product that Wang Inc. produces. That product is electronic dance music. Bart is a resident of Bologna, Italy who is a student of ancient history and a passionate reader of science fiction. His interest in both the past and future combines to form a description of the present in his music. His favorite sounds are the sounds of objects encountered on a daily basis, those to which nobody pays attention but everyone hears and recognizes. Bart considers his 'masters' to be the futurist composer Russolo and A. Mayer, the famous Italian contemporary 'music concrete' composer.' Wang Inc. performed with Autechre on their Italian tour."

Artist:	LITHOPS
Title:	Sequenced Twinset.Fi
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$8.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 008EP

German pressing on the original Sonig label (this was also licensed to Thrill Jockey for release in the U.S., as THR 12.19). "Lithops is Jan from Mouse on Mars. 'Sequenced Twinset' and "Fi" are two remastered tracks from the early Lithops period in 1995. Beautifully flowing, they leave behind the boundaries between classical music writing, sound programming, and spontaneous music improvisation. Microtonal buzzes, strained melodies, feedback hiss, digital noise events, tape tricks, and dub perversions fuse to become a hybrid lecture of freaked out subtleness. This limited 12" is filled with poetic surgery dissecting, traces of structural complexity, and compositional skill on the surface of pure music." Limited stock.

Artist:	ESOGNOMIG
Title:
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 009LP

"With Mego's Ramon Bauer, Hecker, Tina Frank and Sonig/Mouse On Mars' Frank Dommert, Andi Thoma, Jan St. Werner. An abstract psychedelic-electronic session done in 1998 after a Mouse On Mars show in Vienna. Up to now the weirdest release on Sonig, no beats, far more suitable for fans of Mego. Improvised electroacoustic experimentations, hybrid wooshings, subsequenced crackles, microharmonical adventures, strange, tense, cool and full of superb pranks. DSP extremities from the new school of improvised music." Limited remaining stock...

Artist:	DÜ
Title:	Transformation 19 Mal Einfach Hergestellter Komplizierter Mu
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.50
Catalog #:	SONIG 023EP

"Dü is Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars, Microstoria, Lithops) and F.X. Randomiz (Holosud). Their debut album Slow already gained fantastic reviews, e.g. The Wire: 'an instrumental, electronic masterpiece; a mature pre-Oval example for state-of-the-art sample skills'. Jan St. Werner produced a CD-R with noises and sounds without any digital equipment -- Randomiz digitalized and arranged those sounds and sent them back to Werner--- 6 of those edits can be found here."

Artist:	FORREST, JASON
Title:	Shamelessly Exciting
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 049CD

"Jason Forrest turned heads with his first Sonig release, The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash, a musical rollercoaster ripping through genres like an amphetamine-crazed hobo. It received rave reviews from a respected array of international press -- a remarkable accomplishment for such an odd and ambitious mix of high-speed disco and breakcore with a '70s swagger. The question, of course, was 'can Forrest possibly repeat this success?' A few beats into Shamelessly Exciting and there is suddenly no doubt -- yes, he can and he does it in style! Cascades of sound taken from virtually every form of rock music (hard/soft/punk prog/blues) pour down heavier than ever before. Even more intense is the sound of shattering samples, every single one of them vying for the listener's attention. Forrest sets off fireworks of ideas and references, exuding enormous energy along the way, filling every possible nook with a rocking good time."

Artist:	AELTERS
Title:	Mixitch Mjeuga Djisc
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 051CD

"Aelters, Frenchman and former member of Dat Politics, has described his take on the creative process as 'gentle mutation.' Though his approach to making music has remained consistent over the years, Aelters has definitely evolved where style is concerned. On Mixitch Mjeuga Djisc, the rattling, high-speed breaks of previous releases give way to hardcore disco-tech. The beats have become slower, distorted and heavier. Samples from an astounding range of sources still dominate -- spoken voices, beatboxes, Gameboys, old synths -- but his software now seems beyond human control, operating under the spell of some manic groove generator. The resulting tracks, much like the French themselves, are dense, concrete, often fun and always unpredictable."

Artist:	SUN OK PAPI K.O.
Title:	Orchestre Philharmonok
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 053CD

"It goes without saying that Orchestre Philharmonok (what is this Belgian obsession with orchestras?) presents music that has -- seriously -- never been heard before. Scratch Pet Land's influences are never too far away, but Laurent Baudoux raises his cocktail of broad bass, game boys, metal guitars, trashy keyboards and cracking beats to the next level. Bizarre string instruments from the Far East twist and turn in the grooves, yet most of the album sounds fabricated from some new synthetic miracle plastic. A musical dilettante and professed non-virtuoso, Sun Ok Papi K.O. creates music with the innocent attitude of the enthusiast, free from any impulse to repeat or mimic. Orchestre Philharmonok is like club culture without the club or avant-garde without the music theory. It's got the unmistakable, euphoric appeal of authentic fan admiration, unburdened by cliché or stylistic reference, probing ceaselessly for unexplored turns at an incredible speed."

Artist:	DJ ELEPHANT POWER
Title:	Scratch The Hulu
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 058CD

"Nicolas Baudoux's (aka DJ Elephant Power) 2004 solo album No Si, Ni So was more than just an enjoyable debut. Almost en passant, the album redefined the job and the self-image of the DJ. Baudoux is the legitimate successor to the turntablists who dominated the mid '90s but without the battle attitude or b-boy posturing. An anti-perfectionist, Baudoux performs on the verge of complete loss of control; his tracks are anything but tight, yet they groove like hell. He constructs monumental grooves from tinny hip-hop samples, coaxes grime from electric guitars and layers jolty drum patterns, pumping distorted bass and clanging string instruments to create some radical dynamics. As one half of the duo Scratch Pet Land, Baudoux belongs to a posse of Belgian artists known for their improvisational electronics and absurdist humor. Scratch The Hulu has plenty of both."

Artist:	VA
Title:	Sonig Comp.
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	SONIGUS 001CD

"This compilation is striking in that it has collected artists such as F.X.Randomiz, Microstoria, Lithops, Mouse On Mars and also C-Schulz & Hajsch, who work, albeit very differently and yet in conceptually and biographically related ways, on expanding the concept of electronic music. Sonig began several years ago as the label on which Mouse on Mars and Lithops brought out their music; music that otherwise appeared nowhere else; music that was too important to be thrown under the typical cycle of publications and therefore was only available on vinyl. By last year, however, it became apparent that Sonig was more than a musicians label serving as a pressure nozzle for the overflowing productivity of its owners. Andi Toma & Jan St. Werner (Mouse on Mars) and Frank Dommert (Entenpfuhl, a-Musik) started a maxi series that used the classic techno format, the Maxi, to publish extremely independent and highly unusual, well yes, dance music (or what one considers the parallel universe in which Voice Crack are stars). Records from Wang Inc. and Vert, who are both on the compilation, are found here as well as a smash from Mouse on Mars and a fervently longed for sign of life from F.X.Randomiz. It has long been clear that Sonig is not only about Mouse on Mars. Even now a scope is emerging that stretches from electro-acoustic concrete music (C-Schulz & Hajsch) and dance music produced with the means and instruments of electroacoustics (Wang Inc.), through dynamic and complex group processes served with great clarity (Microstoria, Dü), hits for another era (F.X.Randomix, Mouse on Mars) and desktop improvisations (Scratch Pet Land), to idiosyncratic music that indulges in a happy funky isolationism (Lithops) or subtle reminiscences on Keith Jarrett's Cologne Concert embedded in a hypermodern setting (Vert)." Contains only exclusive tracks.

Artist:	CATANI/CHRIS IMLER/JORINDE VOIGT, PATRIC
Title:	Lemniscate
Label:	SONIG (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$33.00
Catalog #:	SONIG 078LP

"The lemniscate is, fundamentally a mechanism for the infinite. A lemniscus or 'ribbon' that chases itself in a figure of eight describes the repeated and unending journey of the unbounded. Jorinde Voigt draws structures energized by real and imagined possibilities to investigate finite boundaries of systems. She frames and moderates these investigations with spatiotemporal data, information on speed, volume, and an overlaying of sequences. Her notations embrace the concept that elements of equal value co-exist in a logic and proportion of their own. In 2008, following Voigt's concepts, composers Patric Catani and Chris Imler, developed the 'lazy 8' of the infinity motif at Watermill-Center, NYC, a laboratory for performance, in the form of an acoustic 'cluster.' The looped composition formed of 16 chapters, snakes around 7 points realized using a multi-channel arrangement of 6 loudspeakers and thus describes the shape of a lemniscate through pure sound. To enable home listening, the multi-channel installation has been mixed down by the artists as a stereo version. LP in a limited edition of 260 copies."

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