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3" CD
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AN 009CD
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"Remove the chugging rhythm of the blues and you are left with the wail; that slow motion ghostly gasp of sorrow and bad omen. The high and lonesome sound of something wicked on the horizon is ingrained in this trio's shadowy and disembodied take on the blues. New York experimental music veteran Alan Licht, who has explored similar territory in his beautiful duo with Loren Connors, is joined by Australian sound artist Oren Ambarchi and Japanese improviser Tetuzi Akiyama at the 2004 Bomb the Space festival in Wellington, New Zealand. Using guitars, the trio create an alien and minimal free-blues drone. Akiyama and Licht both revel in the spirit of blues guitar, intertwining high melodic lead lines and creating clusters of tense tone. Ambarchi is a master at low end drift, and here the repeating low tones serve almost as a mutant version of a 12 bar anchor. All three players are deft at combining emotion with abstract playing (Licht's Rabbi Sky, Ambarchi's Suspension, and Akiyama's pieces for theWooden Guitar series just to cite a few), and this set is an exemplary instance of engagingly emotive yet free playing."
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CD
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AN 007CD
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"Structurally founded on conscious allusions to 'pop', 'ambient', 'electronica', but imbued with a high degree of critical distance, Ateleia music destabilizes classic notions of form and process in pursuit of a unique idea of song. Subtle melodies emerge snakelike from deep within floods of shimmering multicolored static; densely layered strata of interference rupture into moments of tonal clarity, only to be subsumed into the next span of shifting sound. Incorporating source material from a host of collaborators, skewed and reconfigured into a framework of constantly changing and decisive movement, the debut album from Ateleia (James Elliott) reveals a developed sense of composition and pacing across a range of approaches and textures. All eight of these tracks focus on elements of structure -- and the decay of structure -- with both the formed and the formless vying for space. The resulting sound is dense, angular and hypnotic, like watching red thread slowly twitch in the pulse of the tide."
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3" CD
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AN 006CD
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Featuring: Mattin, Eddie Prévost, Mark Wastell, Margarida Garcia, Rhodri Davies. "For London's Freedom of the City Festival Mattin's Sakada materializes in a big band incarnation. Unexpectedly, the larger the group, the smaller the sound. In contrast to Sakada's dense previous recordings as the trio of Mattin, Prévost and Rosy Parlane, here the expanded Sakada navigate a more restrained and open territory. Droning passages rise and ebb in blocks, the sound folding over on itself, while minute textures dance on the edges. The emphasis on bowed sounds (Prévost's cymbals, Davies' harp, Garcia's bass, Wastell's objects and Mattin's computer casing (!!!)) brings to mind the slow churning of a Morton Feldman composition, yet mutated further into the realm of the unexpected and abstract. This recording finds a group as attuned to the space in between as they are to each other. An intense document of precisely restrained improvisation."
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AN 004CD
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"Dion Workman (of Sigma Editions) produces a confounding piece -- terrifyingly intrusive yet completely subtle, deep with texture and layer although monochromatic in character. Ching is a complex work of grey shadows and glaring light, an exemplar of aggressive digital minimalism. Its harsh textures coexist with the open-ended pulsation of extended tones and overtones, playing with the listener's tolerance. What sets Ching apart from simple noise is Workman's attention to minute detail, as well as the piece's mesmerizing structure. This short (20 minutes 37 seconds) and exhilarating work builds with calculated motion, suddenly bursting into silence, only to reconfigure itself, similar but different, in a quiet dance of amassing sonic shards."
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CD
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ANSI 001CD
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Co-release with Sigma Editions. "A stunning work from Australian intermedia artist Joyce Hinterding, Spectral is based on celestial field recordings of magnetic fields and weather satellites made with a custom-built antennae. These phenomena were recorded in the isolated wilderness of Bruny Island, Tasmania, and later appeared as the sound element in 'The Levitation Grounds', an audio/video installation with artist David Haines. The result is a complex universe of mysterious interference, ghostly transmissions from unfathomable places, disembodied static, and failed communication. What is manipulated sound and what is straight sound remains unknown -- this is musique concrète of the spheres."
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