Episode 195 of Futurónica, a broadcast in Rádio Manobras (91.5 MHz in Porto, 18h30) and Rádio Zero (21h GMT, repeating on Tuesday at 01h) airs tomorrow, June 23rd.
The playlist of Futurónica 195 is:
You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.
One more cassette release that came out on the label Crónica. This record serves best to start exploring the world of the noise music. This is truly a textbook example of experimental electronic music! I had a feeling that I opened the window and a real thunderstorm with heavy rain and wind rushed into the room. Apparently the thunderstorm came from the wastelands, inspired by the opening title track The Waste Land. All three tracks of this release, The Waste Land, Voices from the Coal Mine, My Extra Personal Space, display the author’s most serious attitude towards processing sound. It gives us the impression of listening to a news report from an inexistent city.
I haven’t encountered this kind of records ever since a series of CD releases Mort Aux Vaches; the album The Waste Land surpasses the conventional notion of music by a long shot. The Italian school of noise ever since the days of Luigi Russolo has been a special interest for an in-depth inspection and stays this way even today. This very release, The Waste Land is no exception. Hypnotic time-stretched landscapes, ever-changing noise constructions, an incredible and anxious architecture of sound, strange voices, troubled territories… I have no idea what miraculous method Luca Forcucci uses to create his noisy masterpieces, but you can clearly detect the hand of a true master. Album cover photo by Luca Forcucci, mastered by Taylor Deupree. Crónica, limited edition 100 copies. Krib
via Data.Wave
Une fois encore, le superbe label experimental Crónica, livre à nos tympans une nourriture céleste conçue par l’écossais Graeme Truslove, avec la sortie de son album Intuited Architectures, plongée abyssale dans les souterrains de l’électro-acoustique, gorgée de dérives soniques hantées.
Artiste multi-primé, Graeme Truslove joue sur les paradigmes, composant un monde proche du chaos, où silences et montées abrasives forment un tout cohérent multipliant les pistes et les interprétations. Les dissonances jonchent le sol alors que les grattements étoffent les silences de l’absence.
Pris entre sonorités organiques et électroniques, Intuited Arhitectures n’est pas sans évoquer les recherches d’artistes majeurs du GRM, comme Bernard Parmegiani, Guy Reibel ou Beatriz Ferreyra, entre autres. Subtil de par l’utilisation des sources sonores qu’il transpose et transforme en minuscules organismes vivants, Graeme Truslove crée un monde que l’on semble découvrir au microscope, fait d’amoncellements d’entités aux capacités de mutation impressionnantes. Très fortement recommandé. Roland Torres
In Tel Aviv ist das ein wohl wenig anders. Digital Junkies In Strange Times (Crónica) von Ran Slavin vibriert vor urbaner Anspannung und nervöser Ablenkung. Eine Nachtfahrt aus Field Recordings, durch die Metropole die nie völlig eindeutig ist, in die nie ganz klar ist was als nächstes passiert.
via Groove
Episode 194 of Futurónica, a broadcast in Rádio Manobras (91.5 MHz in Porto, 18h30) and Rádio Zero (21h GMT, repeating on Tuesday at 01h) airs tomorrow, June 9th.
The playlist of Futurónica 194 is:
You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.
Crónica is proud to present a new release from Shay Nassi’s project Mise_en_scene, after the previous 443, Leftovers (Reworked), and 2016’s Primary Fields. Constellation / Deformation is a direct continuation of Primary Fields, putting a stronger emphasis on digital processing. As in Primary Fields, these works are based on a single field recording, in different variations and contexts that lead to an assortment of sonic results and varied interpretations.
Shay Nassi is based in Tel Aviv, where he studied sound engineering. He subsequently put those skills to good use producing music where he delicately integrates elements of minimalism and noise.
Tracklist:
Composed by Shay Nassi.
Mastered by Harel Schreiber.
Photo by Tami Wiesel.
Constellation / Deformation is available as a download through Crónica’s bandcamp page or stream in Apple Music and Spotify.
Crónica Recordings presents Urban Dialog by Tamtam. Tamtam is the Berlin based duo of Sam Auinger and Hannes Strobl who, in their own words, refer to their music as a “practice where the environment becomes the instrument and instrument becomes the sound environment.” While artist blurbs can often mislead, in the case of Tamtam, it’s a description that’s fittingly accurate.
Available in CD and digital formats, Urban Dialog explores a variety of….well….urban situations. Bustling traffic, night creatures chirping away, a dying car engine, billowing exhaust fumes, footsteps on concrete, inaudible voices, powerlines, raindrops, heavy machinery and many other familiar sounds present themselves throughout 51+ minute full-length.. A variety of acoustic and electro-acoustic sounds, crispy electronics, and other sonic detritus coalesce into a wonderfully hypnotic collage of sights and sounds. You can tell a lot of painstaking care and attention was given to every single detail of Urban Dialog, producing just the perfect balancing act between the field recordings and the instrumentation.
I have a deep love for field recordings. They allow my mind to run wild and peer into windows of far off distant places. From the exotic landscapes to urban decay, field recording based albums kind of make me feel like I’m taking a vacation without having to leave my home. Urban Dialog, is another fantastic entry into the ever-widening catalogue of experimental field recordings. Hal Harmon
via Musique Machine
Here’s a sombrely presented CD (pro-pressed and printed) on Crónica. The imagery, and explanatory notes on the back cover, suggested to me that Juryo: Durée de la Vie de L’ainsi-venu koxx might be an album dominated by field recording, and whilst it very much is, in one sense, sonically it’s really quite different. The album is largely constructed from field recordings from across Asia, sometimes processed, sometimes raw. The second, third, and fourth tracks are inspired by a chapter of the Lotus Sûtra – a famous text of Mahâyâna Buddhism – whilst the first, Tanit Astarté, ‘is a quotation from Antonin Artaud’s book Héliogabale, and refers to the moon goddess, as described in Phoenician myths.’
This first track, does indeed stand apart from the rest of the album, to the extent that I wonder whether its inclusion was a good idea, really… This isn’t because it’s inferior in any way, but just that the remaining three tracks together might have been a more coherent, stronger release. Regardless, Tanit Astarté is quite similar to its companions: droning electroacoustic sounds, alongside more kinetic sections. The only issue I have – and it’s not only very personal, but also rather fundamental – is that the actual sounds themselves are not always interesting. Indeed, across the entire album are sounds which remind me of a certain effect filter, which produces a resonant timbre not unlike a steel drum. It’s possible that many of the sounds are just field recordings processed in this way, and certainly that would account for some of the wonderful movement that it is to be found on Juryo. However, it’s unfortunately simply a sound that I don’t enjoy, so Tanit Astarté – for all of its swirls and intricacies – is not something that will ever stay in my stereo very long.
The remaining three tracks fare much better. This is in part due to the interspersing of recognisable field recording elements amongst the synthesized sounds. So, folded in with the drones and modulating judders, we can also hear: flutes, street sounds, waves (or trees in the wind…), religious ritual, animal noises, voices, and the radio. These anchor the more abstract elements, and provide welcome colour in the tracks, which are all to the longer side of things. Whilst there are definitely melodic elements at work – the beginning of Taisi Funeral has a dreamy feel – the pieces are overwhelmingly textural and abstract. However, rather than exploring anything abrasive or frenetic, or minimal or quiet, Mieville occupies a tangled middle ground – tangled in the sense that Juryo is at points minimal, quiet, (nearly) frenetic, (nearly) abrasive, but never in thrall to any one direction. (Perhaps the most abrasive elements are the odd drop-outs (or cut-offs) during Murasaki, which jolt the listener, although frankly in an annoying way.)
Initially, I was very non-plussed with this album, but after many listens, I’ve come to appreciate it’s depth. It’s not an easy listen, there are no cheap thrills here, but it’s a release that covers quite a bit of ground – as long as your ears can excuse that certain sound that mine can’t… Martin P
via Musique Machine