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viewing 1 To 5 of 5 items
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CD
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SIGMA 011
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"Nervure Magnetique's two mountainous tracks shock by bleeding unpredictably out of audible range at both ends. Because track two for example, does not present expected musical progressions beginning with a methodical test pattern format in which basic analog-sounding tones of varying duration and texture are laid down in guileless succession at a drastically low volume leaving you vulnerable to the sonic assault at 12-odd minutes, you are never sure where to set your listening parameters. You must either accept the loss of the shadow or highlight detail or excavate from these extremities with the volume control. Ottavi is not the type of experimentalist so inclined to subtly expand the listeners perceptual horizons as to forcibly prise them open. The experiments he conducts on you have a similarly gaping range from the fuck you boy's noise to a subtle strategy of loosening his grip on the listener's attention so perilously with the low tones at the end of track one that you forget what it is you are supposed to be engaged in. Ottavi knows how to manipulate with the direct physicality of sound. In track one, simply with a slowly building increase in volume, reedy contemplative tones become pressing and forbidding, and effects a complete inversion in scale around the listeners body, moving from it is in you, to you are in it."
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CD
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SIGMA 009
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"This CD is David Haines' second full-length release on Sigma Editions, following his 1999 release Blither. It is comprised of three monumental yet subtle pieces of music, each aptly named after a rock formation or mountain -- Kosciosko, Peak Communism, and Gibraltar, respectively. The three pieces together represent a kind of modern ecstatic dervish music in homage to the benign, unyielding immensity of such isolated and isolating ascensions. They embody both fullness of exaltation and poverty -- poverty in the sense of a restricted means, a limitation of movement, a minimalist form. In half-light objects have the appearance that they are amorphous, multiple outlines and contours forever manifesting themselves. In this music there lies a similar quality. On first listening one might wish to identify a singular source of instrumentation for the music. Are its origins in the piano? strings? horns? harmonium? accordian? or an oscillator? One soon comes to understand that such a singular location is beside the point, that there isn't necessarily one dominant timbre, that the work lies within a shadowland between signal and feedback, and lays open an immense transparency: like a gauzy and radiant fabric of diaphanous folds, fine and translucent, so that behind one tonal layer and its timbre lies veiled another, if not another again; thus creating overall a very tumultuous, protean drone. Within this there exists at least three separate levels or planes of action, perhaps most apparent in Kosciosko -- very low, middle ground, very high -- of which the higher, by nature of frequency, is projected far out into listening space. These are subtle emanations, abuzz with electric charge which tend to coalesce in the ear as random whispers of melody, over and above the main foundations. Despite the live randomness of these three pieces, cycles and patterns are discernible. Some of the rotations are long and tidal, others short and idiosyncratic like eddying whirlpools on the edges of a river. The rhythms are various but often obscure as one process of sequencing is masked, accentuated or cancelled out by the interference of another oscillation pattern. This system of pattern-making and manipulation is intrinsic to the creation of these compositions, however its complexity is hidden by the fact that the note relations are close and dissonant and the layering dense. In Blither what remained as disparate elements of 'classical' piano configurations coupled with an overlay of electronic effect has in Emo become an intrinsic, organic whole, one that has done away with the constructs of a stasis through repetition, replacing it with a stability of constant change. For this reason the music aligns itself by analogy with the potent activity of the natural world, perhaps like the imagined sounds of a convalescing forest, a crystal forming, or a mountain amidst arresting winds. In a contemporary musical climate where software has come to drive the very latest of effects, often for effects sake, Haines has carefully integrated a process of effect into a more traditional arcane musical form, so that such a process works as a force equal to that of any other; in other words it becomes instrumental. A change has taken place in Haines' composition as a result of such an integration. What the nature of this change is exactly remains a matter of subjective perception. What happens within oneself when one integrates previously unconscious contents with the consciousness is something which can scarcely be described by words. It can only be experienced." -- Torben Tilly
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CD
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SIGMA 006
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"K is a collaboration between Dion Workman (one half of Parmentier) and Rohan Thomas (an Australian sound artist) which was constructed during 1999 and 2000 while both artists were living in The Netherlands. Originally sourced from minidisc feedback the physical nature of K's sound lies, for the most part, at the higher end of the frequency range. Its fragile clips and tones are assembled with a delicate randomness that avoids repetitive rhythms yet has a strong sense of development and direction. After the initial impression of the work as ultra minimal, electronic in its sources and coldly calculated in its execution, what unfolds is a work heading elsewhere -- a kind of launching forth of sound. The pieces are mediated just enough to allow for a sense of compositional logic to appear, sidestepping the fuzziness that is a pitfall in some process based work. This is the artfulness within the work: the artist creating a tear or slit in the enfolding firmament like tapping a well spring, but holding the work within the threshold of listenability. K is a sound arena of certain modes belonging to expression: speed and rest, sonorous apparitions, a sense of the inside and the outside, a holding off and a letting go. These events, tied for the listener to memory and emotion, activate a new life for each listening. At certain volumes, the sounds effect on the body has the power to transfer and inhabit organs in ways not often felt. K produces from the most unlikely of sources a new form of folded landscape art untied to the more familiar tenants of what we have come to know as soundscape."
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12"
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SIGMA 008
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"'cc', the 'a' side of Minit's second release on Sigma Editions, develops through a slow and deliberate build up of subtly differentiated tonal layers. The need to listen with close attention is established in the first seconds through a scarcity of elements: simply a single regulated pulse, clear and insistent, repeated amid a barely perceptible atmospheric hum. The track then unfolds through a sub-division of this originating loop, quietly branching into a harmonic fifth and double time. And in this, different rhythms emerge and submerge, taking predominance in turns, although it is not clear whether this predominance is occurring within the music, or is determined by your own shifting attentions or your position within the stereo field. Eventually comes a twist: out of this fabric of accidental and partial cadences springs a piece of deliberate melody. Its beauty is such that you may begin to look forward to this moment when the notes harness themselves into elegant poignancy, in the same way that you wait for the chorus in a pop single. In contradistinction to how one would listen to stripped-back minimalism, actively; here you wait in passive expectation for particular sensations to be delivered to you. Study any object which has an element of ornament, and the same relation would be revealed: examining the scratches and anomalies on the smooth silver band of a ring, for example, you come to the emerald or the sapphire. Suddenly there is a more familiar beauty laid before you. It is embedded in the whole, but is of a different nature: its nature is to seduce. Minit craft enchanting sonic objects. These objects are not difficult in the traditional 'assault' form. The coherent movement between parts which ask for different kinds of attention from the listener, gently fractures 'listening' and signal what is rich and unusual and experimental, not only about this track, but about Minit's whole musical project."
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12"
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SIGMA 007
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"For those familiar with the output of Vladislav Delay it should be obvious upon hearing Conoco's Kemikoski that this is another product from Delay's Helsinki studio. Conoco is, in fact, the name that Delay was making music under before any of his music had been released and the tracks constituting Kemikoski (Koski, Keppi and Ventola) are recent reworkings of material first developed in 1996/1997. Chronologically Kemikoski could be placed either as the first or last release in Delay's discography but stylistically it fits more comfortably between The Kind of Blue EP (Huume, 1997) and his debut full length release Ele (Sigma, 1999). The tracks 'Koski' and 'Keppi', in particular, share many of the same interests that Delay explored with Ele, from the length of the tracks, 20 and 16 minutes respectively, to their methods of construction. These two tracks hint at consistent beats more than they hold them and when the rhythm is allowed to solidify its deconstruction begins again almost immediately. Delay's refusal to 'ground' the music could be seen as an attempt to evade the hypnotism of techno and the refusal to leave the music free enough to float, an attempt to evade the dreamy and disinterested listening state encouraged by ambient music. As with Ele a strong dub influence is evoked by the immersive quality of the delay soaked sounds. With 'Ventola' Delay's concerns shift towards those of The Kind of Blue EP and to a lesser extent his 1999 release on Chain Reaction. Here a jaunty and jaundiced techno is experimented with. If techno has been typified by a kind of health, an ease of production, listenability and danceability (the proliferation of minimal techno in recent years would seem to support this view) then it is only natural that some producers are embracing an unhealthy state where even the most basic tenets of techno are repeatedly attacked and weakened. Delay is certainly among the techno producers who show little regard (or is it, in fact, the highest regard?) for the tradition of techno. The tradition is used as the base for formulating the parameters of an experimentalism that necessarily calls for the negation of that tradition. An outright dismissal of everything developed within the tradition would be as senseless as an uncritical acceptance of it and it is for this reason that even in this 'impoverished' form it still resembles, and warrants the name, techno."
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