Autodigest vol. 4 — A Compressed History of Every Bootleg Ever Recorded


The 4th installment in the Autodigest series of compressed everything: this time around, we are promised all the bootlegs ever.

At a time when the debate on music piracy rages on, it is a good thing to be reminded that the luxurious universe of unofficial recordings is now in its fourth decade and flourishing like never before. If anything, the pressing issue of containing the P2P sharing rampage of official recordings has benefited the underworld: record labels simply cannot be bothered with unofficial recordings when Britney Whatever’s latest opus leaks weeks before release and costs them billions in lost revenue. The irony, of course, is that these free, unofficial recordings are infinitely more exciting than anything Britney Whatever could ever aspire to spit out.

The music on this cassette spans over 40 years and was originally recorded on analogue and digital equipment. We have attempted to distance ourselves as much as possible from the sound of the original recordings. Autodigest Volume 4 is an attempt to reveal all limitations of the source tapes – hiss to the fore, baby!” – Autodigest, 17 Nov 2009.

Very limited release available through Tapeworm and downloadable here.

“Lectures” reviewed by AEMag

Lectures
Dass das ehemalige Mitglied von AMM und der Gründer des Scratch Orchestras, Cornelius Cardew, Vorträge hielt, dürfte ebensowenig bekannt sein wie die Tatsache, dass trotz des schmalen Outputs anscheinend reichlich Material im Archiv zu finden war, welches Piotr Kurek nun unter dem etwas irrigen Albumtitel »Lectures« neu abgemischt veröffentlicht. Zu diesem Zweck erhielt Kurek Zugang zum mittlerweile familiär verwalteten Archiv des während eines Unfalls mit Fahrerflucht verstorbenen Künstlers.

Die Aufnahmen sind brilliante kleine Beispiele für die moderne, aber zurückgezogene Cut-Up-Technik der Neuzeit. Statt dem Cardew-Material mittels moderner DSP zu Leibe zu rücken, spielt Kurek mit Jazzcolorit und Improvisationsliebe seine eigene Version des konzertanten Cardewuniversums. Dabei streift Kurek die stillen Wasser von Nobukazu Takemura ebensowie wie die elitären Frühversuche der Loungemuzak, deren einzige Berechtigung sich im unaufdringlichen Vibraphonmantel äußert. Zwischen den Stücken spielen sich als integrative Zwischenwerke die Lectures ab, Vorträge von Cardew über Jazzmusik und Kunst, narrativ vorgetragen und lediglich ab und an unterbrochen von der gelayerten Grundstimmung feingepitchter Saxophonspuren. Ein Album mit Geschichte, aber auch mit der Hoffnung auf mehr. 5/5

via AEMag

“Sleppet” reviewed by Goûte Mes Disques

Sleppet
Tout a commencé par un voyage entre amis. Mais attention, là où nos voyages entre amis finissent dans des orgies de sexe et d’alcool, ici le propos est tout autre. Et pour cause, puisqu’il s’agit en fait d’un voyage entre scientifiques du son électronique: Natasha Barrett, Bjarne Kvinnsland, Steve Roden, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen (chronique qui permettra aux non-initiés d’en savoir un peu plus à propos du field recording) et Marc Behrens. Bref toute une team spécialisée dans l’electro-acoustique et l’exercice du field recording. Un voyage à six qui amènera notre équipe à poser ses valises dans différents lieux (lac, île, glacier, forêt) de la Norvège profonde pour mieux capter l’essence même de cette nature en mouvement. D’installation sonore en installation sonore, toute notre joyeuse bande remplira sa besace de matériaux sonores bruts, aptes à la grande transformation.

Car pour ce qui est de Marc Behrens, le résultat obtenu par ces séances d’observation et de captation acharnées finira par tendre les bras à la dématérialisation puis à la reconstruction. Et le résultat est stupéfiant. Stupéfiant tout d’abord au vu de l’incroyable démantèlement des corps solides qui fragmente les sons naturels en d’innombrables capsules étanches. On part d’un nombre fini de sons (avalanches et éboulis, chants de mouettes, déplacement de glacier et industries au c¦ur de la vie rurale) pour se retrouver, après segmentation, avec une infinité de micro-sons. Mais stupéfiant surtout à l’écoute de la difficile reconstruction qui s’annonçait. Et là peut virevolter le talent d’un Marc Behrens devenu véritable peintre sonore, sculpteur de sons devenus images : l’Allemand coupe, tranche et réarrange avec une précision tout simplement bluffante. Il photographie les sons venant de même environnements, changeant les angles avec minutie pour resservir ces clichés divergents (et pourtant issus du même objet) au c¦ur d’un même maelström musical, comme dix visions différentes d’un même objet qui produiraient simultanément une musique qui leur est forcément propre, et pourtant commune. Le propos parait un peu abrupt et peut-être incompréhensible sous ma plume, mais un coup d’¦il à la pochette défigurée, et pourtant cohérente, de ce Sleppet éclairera les derniers sceptiques.

Marc Behrens n’en est pas moins un génie du click’n’cut que la production est belle. Véritable maître à penser en matière de sound-art (ou de sculpture sonore c’est selon), le son est tout simplement précis, net et tranchant. En deux mots : esthétiquement beau. Et quand la notion d’esthétique sonore réinvestit avec autant de force le champ des musiques électroniques, on ne peut que se réjouir et saluer l’entreprise. Sorti, sans trop de surprises, chez une des références du sound-design (l’excellent label portugais Crónica), on ne peut que vous conseiller de jeter une oreille à ce projet fou mais réussi en tous points, preuve à nouveau que le field recording et la manipulation sonore ont encore de beaux jours devant eux. 7/10 Simon

via GMD

Tonight: @c + Pierre Alexandre Tremblay live


Tonight in Passos Manuel, Porto, @c perform in a trio with special guest Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.

Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (Montréal, 1975) is involved on a variety of projects, manipulating sound and playing bass guitar. He teaches composition and improvisation at the University of Huddersfield in England. He is a member of the ensembles ars circa musicæ and de type inconnu.


@c (Pedro Tudela + Miguel Carvalhais) have been active for the last 10 years and they are now presenting their new CD in the Baskaru label, “Music For Empty Spaces”.

“Home, Sweet Home” reviewed by The Sound Projector

Home, Sweet Home
(…) if you enjoy field recordings, you can get Home, Sweet Home (CRÓNICA 045) as a free download from the above label. Duran Vázquez has assembled a dense collage of sounds captured in Vigo, a large coastal town in Galicia. His wide-open mic welcomes the rich chaos and noise of all things urban, something which Behrens has taken great pains to avoid in his clipped portrait of naturalistic details. Vázquez also has a habit of adding vague ambient drones to some of these collages and treatments, but myself I prefer it when he just hands us the raw material in an unadorned fashion. Ed Pinsent

via The Sound Projector

“Sleppet” reviewed by The Sound Projector

Sleppet
Another hero of barely-existing music is the great Marc Behrens, whose Sleppet (CRÓNICA 046) began life in 2007 with a bunch of nature recordings made in Norway. Chris Watson, Steve Roden, Jana Winderen and other minimal-environmental geniuses were not far away from him at the time, and the record cover of this nature-worshipping release unfolds to reveal visual cut-ups of a silvery forest. So far, a few superficial skims by my dilatory lugs suggest that the familiar near-silent treatments of Behrens aren’t so much in evidence, but his editing scalpel is still as sharp as ever. These vivid recordings of seagulls, water, stones, sheep and glaciers have been spliced into carefully-planned linear sequences intended to reveal certain conceptual truths about nature. One thing folds into another, layering imaginary transparencies together to solve the enigmas of creation. Sleppet posits a severe and almost bleak view of wildlife, weather and the elements, a view so cold and unforgiving that you can almost imagine yourself wandering alone during the Mesozoic era when you spin this stark twig of a disk. Ed Pinsent

via The Sound Projector

“Sleppet” reviewed by Monsieur Délire

Sleppet
A short album from electroacoustician Marc Behrens. Sleppet evolved from a field recording trip to Norway with other artists. The four-movement work was realized in June 2008 for broadcast on the German radio. It’s a relatively simple piece, but it’s powerful and evocative. Everything and the kitchen sink’s in there: nature’s elements (water, snow, stone), animal life (seagulls, cattle), and human activity (industries), presented as is and severely transformed. And it is in those transformations that Behrens’ artistry lies – the man’s sense of aural plasticity is commanding. Sleppet strays far from the microsonic regions often associated with his music. This work does not try to hide away in the shadows of your living room’s background noise, it unfolds in a grandiloquent way. Nice job.

via Monsieur Délire

“Home, Sweet Home” reviewed by Monsieur Délire

Home, Sweet Home
A free release from the superior Portuguese electroacoustic label Crónica (use the link below to download it). Home, Sweet Home shares seagulls with Sleppet. Duran Vazquez has put together a fine record of treated filed recordings. It doesn’t have the sophisticated aesthetics of Marc Behrens’ album, but it remains a strong work of ambiant electroacoustics with a hyperrealistic touch. It is set in an urban environment (a harbor city, but still), however Vazquez has found ways to temporize the urban beat and highlight the peace and quiet of certain locations.

via Monsieur Délire

Vote for Marc Behrens’s “Compilation Works 1996-2005”

Compilation Works 1996-2005
Marc Behrens’s “Compilation Works 1996-2005” has been nominated for the Qwartz 6 Music Award (in the “Anthologies” category). The public voting has already opened and will remain open until March 15. The awards will be announced in April 2, 2010 in Paris.

To vote for Marc Behrens, all you need to do is to send an email stating your vote for “Marc Behrens: Compilation Works 1996-2005” to anthology_6@qwartz.org.
You can check the list of nominations at Qwartz’s website and if you still haven’t, you can freely download Marc Behrens’s release from Crónica.

New CD release: “Passeports” by Mathias Delplanque

Passeports

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Crónica is very proud to release the new CD from Mathias Delplanque, “Passeports” in association with Bruit Clair.

“Passeports” is composed from various field-recordings realized in transport-related locations across France: train stations, harbors, parking lots and other areas of transit, weaved into dense ambient compositions. “Passeport 3 (Dieppe)” further includes recordings made in a call center in New Delhi, not a place of physical travel but, while operating mostly to Europe and the USA, nevertheless a place of transport. These recordings were the whole of the raw material used in the composition of this album, and were then themselves transported to Mathias’s home, where they were played back into the spaces of the various rooms, so that the mix between the broadcast sounds and domestic noises would itself be recorded to become the final version of the tracks, something that is particularly clear in “Passeport 7 (Nantes)”, the track that concludes the CD. “Passeports” is a work that questions the relations between space and music, between the sound and its space, between the music and its place.

Written & produced by Mathias Delplanque. Cover art by Steve Roden. Master and design by M. Carvalhais.

You can read the Press-release, order the CD directly from Crónica, or download through Boomkat or Zero Inch.