Haarvöl’s “Horizons of Suspended Zones” reviewed by Music Map

Haarvöl è il nome di un progetto musicale portoghese fondato da Fernando José Pereira, João Faria e Rui Manuel Vieira.

Pensata e sviluppata come esplorazione delle proprietà del suono, e finalizzata alla definizione di ambienti sonori cinematografici e immaginativi, la proposta del trio trova un suo nuovo manifesto in “Horizons of Suspended Zones”, album pubblicato dalla label portoghese Crónica quest’estate.

Il disco si ispira ad alcun scritti di Hakim Bey, filosofo statunitense che, alla fine degli anni Novanta, parlava del virtuale come un’altra strada possibile per l’espansione del capitalismo, introducendo il concetto di “temporary autonomous zones” per parlare di spazi, fisici o simbolici, in cui le persone possono sottrarsi al controllo sociale e politico dominante, esplorando forme libere di comunità, creatività e relazioni.

Gli Haarvöl dichiarano il proprio intento di creare delle “zone sospese”, sulla scia di queste elucubrazioni, che siano il contrario degli eccessi che la tecnologia offre e consente oggi: suoni nudi, semplici, che si presentino esattamente per quello che sono.

Senza alcun tipo di post-produzione, gli Haarvöl costruiscono un disco contrassegnato da tre elementi fondamentali: ripetizione, silenzio e durata.

Sospeso tra pulsioni ambient, una composizione minimale e un forte afflato sperimentale, l’ascolto di “Horizons of Suspended Zones” è contemplazione, scoperta e riscoperta del silenzio e attenzione per i dettagli.

Il nuovo lavoro firmato Haarvöl, destinato a una nicchia per quanto pregno di significato, conferma l’ottimo stato di salute di una band autentica e pressoché unica nel suo genere. (Piergiuseppe Lippolis)

via Music Map

David Lee Myers’s “Terrenus” reviewed by Chain DLK

David Lee Myers has been called many things – pioneer of feedback music, sonic cartographer, stubborn alchemist of electronics – but with “Terrenus” he plants his machines firmly in the soil. If so much electronic sound gazes longingly at the stars, Myers insists on digging his fingernails into mud and moss, coaxing voices from tangled root systems. The nine pieces here feel less like tracks and more like field reports from a landscape that doesn’t exist, a kind of imaginary ecology built out of loops, delays, and self-fed circuits that breathe like compost piles alive with hidden organisms.

Unlike the piercing shrieks or metallic chatter often associated with feedback, the textures in “Terrenus” flow with a strange softness, like fog rolling over a river delta. Feedback is here less a scream than a system of weather: drifting cloud, sudden squall, sunlight scattering across wet stone. The beauty lies in its indeterminacy – processors turning back on themselves until they generate their own small climates, cycles of decay and regrowth audible in real time. Myers has long been fascinated with these recursive architectures, from his work as Arcane Device through collaborations with titans like Asmus Tietchens and Tod Dockstader, but “Terrenus” is perhaps his most grounded exploration, committed to evoking earth rather than ether.

There’s also a sly humor in calling this earth music. For all its groundedness, it never pretends to be naturalistic – there are no birds, no waterfalls, no literal imitation. Instead, it’s as if Myers is saying: here is geology reimagined by machines, here is soil filtered through delay units, here is the shimmer of lichen captured in a feedback loop. Each track feels like a hand-drawn map without compass or legend, guiding us not toward destinations but through atmospheres – uncertain borders, shifting terrain, a sense of wandering where the ground itself hums back at you.

In the end, “Terrenus” reminds us that the earth is not silent. It buzzes, it resonates, it feeds back upon itself. Myers simply builds the circuits that let us hear it. If we tend to imagine electronics as cold and detached, here they feel damp, fertile, full of breath. These are not machines speaking from the void – they are roots talking to rocks, voltage entwined with loam. And if the journey feels at times bewildering, well, so does walking through fog until the landscape itself begins to hum. Vito Camarretta

via Chain DLK

Ilia Belorukov’s “NRD DRM TWO 2022-2024” reviewed by Music Map

Ilia Belorukov è un musicista originario di San Pietroburgo e attualmente di stanza a Novi Sad, in Serbia.

Da tempo attivo nel campo della musica sperimentale, del noise, dell’elettroacustica e dell’improvvisazione, Belokurov è tornato recentemente per Crónica Records con “Nrd Drm Two 2022-2024”, una raccolta di pezzi realizzati nel triennio in questione con un Nord Drum 2, un sintetizzatore per percussioni con sei canali.

Alla base della produzione c’è l’idea di muovere da un pattern 1-step per indagare le capacità di alcuni elementi, come i cambi di tempo e di frequenze e i riverberi, di alterare la percezione di chi ascolta.

Belokurov ha dedicato ampio spazio a quest’ultimo aspetto, con un focus particolare sull’impiego di algoritmi del riverbero in grado di costruire “spazi artificiali” e di modificare in maniera anche radicale il suono.

Nel corso dei tredici brani, la centralità del synth per percussioni consente al disco di conservare coerenza e di mitigare, almeno in apparenza, un approccio sperimentale comunque forte, mentre l’ostinata ricerca del concetto di spazialità del suono si percepisce e si lascia apprezzare.

Di contro, con le uniche variazioni reali presenti nei tempi e nelle frequenze, l’ascolto potrebbe risultare ostico sulla lunga distanza. La certezza è che “Nrd Drm Two 2022-2024” richiede un ascolto attento e meticoloso, oltre che una certa familiarità con l’ambient sperimentale, ma il suo fascino è fuori discussione. (Piergiuseppe Lippolis)

via Music Map

Matilde Meireles’s “Loop. And Again.” reviewed by Musique Machine

Loop And Again is a CD album themed around magnetic fields. It blends recordings of said fields, drone texturing, sudden pitch rising detail, and general field recordings. The three tracks featured are eventful, moody, at times atmospherically jarring- with a sound that dips in electro ambience, pressing drone texturing, and even droned out avant jazz.

Matilde Meireles has been active since the late 2019’s, with five albums to her name to date. From 2024, Loop And Again, focuses on magnetic fields, intricate wiring arrangements, and their interconnectedness with the shifts in the surrounding landscape. It’s part of X Marks the Spot, a larger project which used sound to map specific telecommunication boxes—only those emitting an audible drone—in the city of Belfast between 2013-2019.

We open with “Introducing Variables”, which is the longest track here at twenty-one minutes. It begins with a blend of subtly piercing drones & the sound of rushing water. As we move on, we get darts of bird and motorbike field recording- which are ebbed by growing & more piercing electro drone pitches- nicely breaking the initially feeling of sinister disquiet, though this does return again, though with the constant threat of sudden seared tone twists.

“Magnetic Fields” is next- this comes at just over the thirteen-minute mark. It opens with a hauntingly wavering and slow-fading in- taking in two or three mid to high drone pitches. As it grows, you can make out a more hovering & jittery hissing tone- this is added to by higher electro pulse hits. Later, we get the addition of rushing water- as the pitch hits seem to start to split & disappear( for a time).

Finally, we have just over eleven minutes of “Cross Parade with Fingal, Bronagh, Paul and Tullis”- I say this is the most interesting/ surprising of the three tracks. It begins with a woman speaking, before a blend of distant knocking & searing appears (possibly a mic up coffee machine). At around the three-minute mark, what sounds like a stretched trumpet or horn tone is added- this switches between being grainy & playful, to more droned out. All the while, this vague harmonic/ mind range drone is carried on. Towards the end, the female voice reappears, with a male voice, as the pair talks about cooking a dish.

As a release, Loop And Again often puts the listener in a state somewhere between intrigued, strangely soothed, and on the cusp of building tension. With a creative use of sound art, field recordings, and subtle instrumental detail. Roger Batty

via Musique Machine

Simon Whetham’s “Successive Actions” reviewed by Musique Machine

Successive Actions takes in sixteen tracks built around recordings of motorised devices, sourced from obsolete consumer technology. Track lengths vary between one and eleven minutes, with the recordings moving between textural studies, erratic blending of several different elements, and all-out/ intense sound crafting.The CD album comes presented in a dark blue card gatefold featuring what looks like lines of tiny ‘T’ ‘s set out in a series of vertical lines.  The release appears on  Crónica and can be purchased directly from here.    Since the early 2000’s  Mr Whetham has been sonically active. His work often utilises environmental sound, employing a variety of methods and techniques in order to obtain often unnoticed and obscured sound tendencies. He also explores ways of creating physical traces of sound and transforming energy forms. He has performed/exhibited internationally, has received a large number of commissions and awards, has many published composed works, and regularly collaborates with other artists.We open with the track “Action” which is a blend of low-key drilling tone sweep, several layers of ragged tone buff, and a few moments of thicker tumbling rip. As we move on, we have “Redaction” with its mix of circular scape, bumbling hiss, and busy/close-up like insect-like fumblings.Later on, we have the slurred pitch stabs, rolling drone clutter, and small motor clutter of “Compaction”. There’s the purring chop, firing electrodes, and the loose slicing of “Counteraction”. Or the knocking scarp, electro buzz/ simmer, and circular grain detail of “Abstraction”.Throughout Successive Actions, Mr Whetham certainly mines some worthy tone / textural detail. I personally felt it would have been nice if there had been a larger range of different types of textures, as well as more thought put into the compositional elements- yes, I know it’s primarily noise, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have that element present. Roger Batty

via Musique Machine

New release: [MONRHEA] + AGF’s “INvolution”

We’re happy to announce the release of the new album by [MONRHEA] + AGF, “INvolution”, now available to download or stream from Crónica’s Bandcamp.

Monrhea and agf met online, as admirers of each other’s productions on Soundcloud. They later collaborated in the Darmstadt summer course program “Sonic Writing & Soundings”, curated by agf and Cedrik Fermont. In 2023 they met in person in Darmstadt for the performance of the pieces created in the summer course program.

After Monrhea invited agf to an online workshop and a lecture to Nairobi artists, they started dreaming about a production collaboration and developed the application of the mathematical concept of Involution in music and run with it remotely between Hailuoto and Nairobi. Their first sessions in this project happened during March 2024, the season during which Monrhea’s Kikuyu culture marks the new year and the beginning of a new season. Their work then focused on creating pieces that celebrated the rain, Spring, rebirth, the inversion into a new season. This line of inquiry led them to come across the concept of self inversion, involution.

Involution is explored in the context of various disciplines. In Psychology, Sociology, or Anthropology, but also in Biology and Medical sciences, in the natural phenomena of arising and passing away. Involution is a natural process of maintaining balance and order, and can be a formula to restoring balance.

“INvolution” is now available!

David Lee Myers’s “Terrenus” reviewed by African Paper

Gerade erscheint bei Crónica das neue Album “Terrenus” von David Lee Myers. Das Werk versteht sich laut Label als Erkundung rein elektronischer Klänge, die jedoch nicht ins All gerichtet sind, sondern auf die Erde: “Terrenus” wird ausdrücklich als „earth music“ verstanden, nicht als „space music“. In seiner Ausrichtung knüpft es an “Frontier” (2022) an, ebenfalls eine Arbeit, die bewusst „am Boden bleibt“. Die Stücke rufen dem Künstler zufolge ferne, wolkenverhangene Landschaften und nebelige Flussufer hervor und lassen an vage gezeichnete Karten denken, die Erkundungen durch unklare Territorien anleiten.

Vom Label heißt es: “Myers is well known for his focus on feedback principles in music creation. It is true that this can result in shrieks of cacophony and siren wails, but not necessarily, as seen here. Delays and other processors are force-fed their own outputs via matrix mixers, samples are captured and looped randomly, and joined by various other electronic elements to create soft beds of abstract sound.” David Lee Myers lebt als Klang- und Medienkünstler in New York City. Mehr als sechzig Veröffentlichungen unter seinem eigenen Namen oder als Arcane Device liegen vor, dazu zahlreiche Kooperationen, unter anderem mit Gen Ken Montgomery, Merzbow, Toshimaru Nakamura, Asmus Tietchens und Dirk Serries. “Terrenus” ist bereits sein viertes Album auf Crónica und erscheint als CD sowie zum Download.

via African Paper

David Lee Myers’s “Terrenus” reviewed by radiohoerer

Beim Anhören von David Lee Myers‘ „Terrenus” musste ich ein wenig an Brian Enos „On Land” denken. Wenn auch nur entfernt. Könnte das nicht eine Übersetzung in das Jahr 2025 sein? Für mich ergeben sich da durchaus Parallelen. Was denkt ihr dazu? Aber auch ohne diesen Verweis auf Eno ist die elektronische Musik von David Lee Myers sehr beeindruckend. Ich folge gern den verschlungenen Pfaden seiner Musik, die uns ins Unbekannte führen.

„Terrenus“ ist eine Erkundung rein elektronischer Klänge, und obwohl viel elektronische Musik als „Weltraummusik“ charakterisiert wird, lässt sich „Terrenus“ viel treffender als „Erdmusik“ beschreiben.

Dieses Album folgt ähnlichen Linien wie David Lee Myers‘ „Frontier“ (2022), das ebenfalls fest mit beiden Beinen auf dem Boden steht. Es beschwört ferne, wolkenverhangene Landschaften und neblige Flussbetten herauf, und man kann sich leicht vage gezeichnete Karten vorstellen, die Entdecker durch diese undefinierten Gebiete führen sollen.

Myers ist bekannt für seinen Fokus auf Feedback-Prinzipien bei der Musikproduktion. Das kann zwar zu schrillen Kakophonien und Sirenengeheul führen, muss aber nicht, wie hier zu hören ist. Delays und andere Prozessoren werden über Matrix-Mixer mit ihren eigenen Outputs gefüttert, Samples werden aufgenommen und zufällig geloopt und mit verschiedenen anderen elektronischen Elementen zu weichen Klangteppichen aus abstrakten Klängen kombiniert.

via radiohoerer

New release: David Lee Myers’s “Terrenus”

We’re extremely proud to welcome David Lee Myers to Crónica for the fourth time and to present his new album, Terrenus.

Terrenus is an exploration in purely electronic sound, and although much electronic music is characterised as “space music”, Terrenus is much more accurately portrayed as “earth music.”

This album follows along similar lines to David Lee Myers’s Frontier (2022) which also keeps its feet firmly on the ground. Faraway cloudy countrysides and foggy riverbeds are conjured up, and one can easily imagine vaguely drawn maps intended to guide explorers through these ill defined territories.

Myers is well known for his focus on feedback principles in music creation. It is true that this can result in shrieks of cacophony and siren wails, but not necessarily, as seen here. Delays and other processors are force-fed their own outputs via matrix mixers, samples are captured and looped randomly, and joined by various other electronic elements to create soft beds of abstract sound.

Terrenus is now available as a limited-release CD or as a download from Crónica.