“Acute Inbetweens” reviewed by Boomkat

Acute Inbetweens
Since meeting in 2006 in Australia, experimental electronic types Lawrence English (he of Room40 fame) and Stephen Vitiello have been collaborating by e-mail, sending ideas, sketches and sounds back and forth and allowing compositions to grow organically. This process is hardly new, but rarely has it been refined to the level evident on ‘Acute Inbetweens’. The two artists’ ideas are very different, but their personalities and strengths fuse with a graceful bliss as Vitiello’s tempered field recordings and English’s peculiar modular hiccups form harmonic clouds of electronic sound. It would almost be rude to simply pass the record off as another excursion into the already well-populated drone genre; the subtle hands at work here make this a far more ‘composed’ experience than many of English and Vitiello’s peers. While the overwhelming sounds can occasionally be dissonant and confusing, repeat listens reveals carefully planned pockets of notes, and hidden, reverberating rhythms. A synthesizer record where synthesizers can barely be heard, a field recording album where the recordings are pushed into far-off realms of gaseous intensity or a drone record where the drones are far from static? ‘Acute Inbetweens’ is a deeply difficult record to classify, but one which amazes and excites in equal measure. Recommended.

via Boomkat

New CD release: “Acute Inbetweens” by Lawrence English + Stephen Vitiello


Since their initial meeting in Australia during 2006, Stephen Vitiello (USA) and Lawrence English (AU) have enjoyed a long distance collaboration orbiting around the joint passion for field recordings and modular synthesis.

Exploring the points of convergence and divergence between electricity and environment, the duet’s “Acute Inbetweens” is a collection of works derived from hazy environmental memory, imagined landscape and field recorded actualities. It’s a blurring mist of encountered spaces, recreated by means voltage controlled.

Like the spatial inspiration that guides the record, “Acute Inbetweens” pace is tempered and during certain pieces borders on a sense of timelessness. Pieces such as “La Voix est absente” unfold with a pacing of the lauded opening Lotus flowers at Sinobazu-no-ike pond, individual elements revealing themselves in subtle arcs of sound, swelling into a rich harmonic whole. By contrast “Exposure in Relief” is a more robust and pulsing work in which micro melodies spiral into one another.

“Acute Inbetweens”, sharp moments diffused in time.

Now available directly from Crónica and from selected retailers and online distributors.

New podcast: Emmanuel Mieville

HK KL
These is a sound mixed journey through south-east Asia, recorded in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, Hong Kong and one close island.The significant sonorous aspects you can hear are the Hong Kong tramway (called “ting ting” by locals, because the driver hits that bell now and then). Also from Hong Kong is the traffic signal for blind people (beeps). The birds are from Kuala Lumpur, as the street voices, the industrial noises are taken on Cheng Chau island, in fish market with ice cutting machines, and Chinese fishermen talking. All electronic elements are taken from a composition released an a 3″ CD, on Lona records, a Hong Kong label.

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Download here or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

“strings.lines” reviewed by Goûte Mes Disques

strings.lines
Strings.Lines est quant à elle très certainement l’une des plus grandes Å“uvres du compositeur Canadien. C’est donc avec une certaine logique qu’on la retrouve sur Crónica, l’une des figures de proue mondiale du sound-design et de l’avant-garde électronique. Collectionneur acharné de diapasons acoustiques, Nicolas Bernier en fait l’un des thèmes de Strings.Lines : le musicien a préalablement fait parler ces engins pour obtenir une gamme extrêmement variée de tonalités, allant des plus graves au plus aiguës (parfois même à la limite de la perception humaine). Cet étalage d’ondes sinusoïdales, dont le symbole est une ligne (Lines) , a été agencé dans un concerto à géométrie variable, déjà en lui-même admirable. Puis il y ce travail sur les cordes (Strings). Emmenés par Pierre-Yves Martel et Chris Bartos, la viole de gambe et le violon ont eu pour mission de venir s’intercaler – parfois de manière instinctive, parfois de manière mathématique – dans ce monde fait variations tonales. L’attaque sur les instruments est particulièrement brillante, et donne à ces cordes un rendu cru et extrêmement poignant. Tout ces matériaux (Strings + Lines) a ensuite été réarrangé sous la forme de cinq pièces électro-acoustiques. Le résultat est à tomber raide : à l’image de ce “Line (B)”, Strings.Lines est à la fois lyrique, intime, violent et prenant, le tout dans un fourmillement de détail qui nous permet de découvrir et redécouvrir ce disque à chaque écoute. Un vrai grand classique, qui témoigne de l’habilité de Nicolas Bernier à s’ouvrir à des pans musicaux plus durs, plus contemporains, sans perdre un gramme d’émotion.

via Goûte Mes Disques

Futurónica #30


Episode 30 of Futurónica, a broadcast in Rádio Zero (every two weeks, on Friday nights, repeating on Tuesdays at 01h) airs tomorrow, March 11th at 21h (GMT).

The playlist for Futurónica #30 is:

  • Iannis Xenakis / Les Percussions De Strasbourg, Pléïades: Mélanges (1979, Pléïades)
  • Luís Antunes Pena / Nuno Aroso: Quadro III (2009, Technicolor)
  • @c / Nuno Aroso + Miquel Bernat: 88 (two firsts) (2011, Fuga 15 Años)
  • Lê Quan Ninh: Ustensiles Horizontaux (1997, Ustensiles)
  • Luís Antunes Pena / Nuno Aroso: Quadro II (2009, Technicolor)
  • Iannis Xenakis / Les Percussions De Strasbourg, Pléïades: Peaux (1979, Pléïades)
  • Maddalam Keli (1998, Ritual Percussion of Kerala — Vol. 1: Kshetram Vadyam)

You can hear Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir.