New Release: Dan Powell’s “At Cuckmere”


Crónica is proud to present its first release by Dan Powell, “At Cuckmere”.

I’ve been visiting Cuckmere Haven all my life. It’s a special place, not just because it weaves in and out of my family history, but because it’s the only undeveloped river mouth on the Sussex coast.

I visited on 17th February 2017 to record audio and collect objects. This was used as source material for an electro acoustic performance, which was then combined with the original elements to make the piece.

DP

Dan Powell was born in Essex and moved to London in 1988 to study photography at The Polytechnic of Central London. After college he ran a gallery on the Southbank, showed a few installations and was involved in the OMSK collective putting on arts events. He moved to Brighton in 2000.

Dan Powell is a sound artist who uses handmade and proprietary electronics, tuned percussion and a variety of acoustic instruments and household objects to make his work. A lot of the time he likes to work with other people in various combinations, especially with Gus Garside and Chris Parfitt in The Static Memories and Nil respectively. Solo projects include a hand built electronic instrument, and a piece marking 75 years of St. Dunstans hospital.

“At Cuckmere” is now available to stream or download from Crónica, Apple Music, Spotify, and other venues.

Monty Adkins’s “Shadows and Reflections” reviewed by Blow Up


La Crónica continua a dar conto di esperienze artistiche particolari e curate attraverso delle cassete dal formato più che adatto a un minutaggio abbastanza ridotto. In questo caso si tratta di musica per uns installazione di un pitore (Andy Fullalove) nella cattedrale di Bradford in occasione del restauro di un’opera (un paliotto d’altare) del pittore, poeta, designer e architetto William Blake (Ruskin e Rosseti erano sui amici). Il risultato di questa sinergia è una riflessione sulle ombre e sulla lice (Blake fece pure alcune vetrate della cattedrale). Alcuni samples organistici sono amplificati, dilatati, loopati in un liquido tappeto sonoro. (7) Girolamo Dal Maso

Emmanuel Mieville’s “Juryo: Durée de la vie de l’ainsi-venu” reviewed by The Sound Projector


Parisian composer Emmanuel Mieville has shown up here in the past with Four Wanderings in Tropical Lands (field recordings), Concret-Sens (a tribute to classical musique concrète) and Ethers (electronic drone music). On Juryo (CRÓNICA 126-2017), the plan is to explore a Buddhist text called the Lotus Sutra, and he uses this text’s “inspiration cycles” as a basis for structuring the four parts of this work, which includes field recordings from Asia. Mieville has applied intense post-processing and synthesizer sounds to the entire record, to produce four lengthy and ever-shifting continual drone works. Tibetan nuns and Buddhist chants appear in places, along with FM radio broadcasts, and their vocal contributions make a counterpoint to the electronic drones. Further indications of Mieville’s wide-ranging pan-cultural appetites are in evidence, including references to Japanese culture (one track has been influenced by Buto dance) and the writings of Antonin Artaud. Despite all these fascinating points of engagement, Juryo fails to explain any of them to the listener adequately, and the record feels very detached from its subject matter; it isn’t much more than an accomplished piece of process drone. For a far more convincing take on similar themes, I refer you to the work of Tibetan Red. Ed Pinsent

via The Sound Projector

David Lee Myers’s “Superpositions” reviewed by Westzeit


David Lee Myers (früher auch als Arcane Device unterwegs) hat für die MC Superpositions (Crónica) seine Feedback-Apparate in den “sanft”-Modus versetzt und betreibt eine spartanische, aber konsequente Klangsynthese. Relativ wenige Ereignisse aus schmatzenden Schaltkreisen, diese aber bestens organisiert. Kein reines Experiment, sondern durchaus auch “Musik”. Für Menschen mit offenen Ohren. 5/5

David Lee Myers’s “Superpositions” reviewed by Touching Extremes


I just love how David Lee Myers ends his notes for this cassette release, to the point that a quote is inevitable:

“Feedback is far more than a public address system in misalignment; it is a core principle of universal importance.”

He is, of course, referring to the inexplicable criteria of self-regeneration at the basis of that concept of infinity that most people cannot seem to accept, fossilizing themselves on the so-called search of a “beginning” somehow instigated by a theoretical “originator”.

However, energy – and, consequently, sound – does not need anyone or anything else to evolve, operate and heal (Roland Kayn would approve). On occasion its invisible form is rendered perceptible, courtesy of selected individuals who – for a change – might not be interested in making an audience believe they’re the owners of the unknown. Myers, either under his real name or the Arcane Device pseudonym, has been studying these processes alone, as every discerning human specimen should. He never talked too much to made us aware of his discoveries: the music truly speaks for itself.

Electronically generated waves have a unique way to respond to the sentience of someone who deeply respects what will always remain a mystery for earthbound creatures, in spite of the latter’s delusional “progress”. They are pliable, harmonically rich, ceaselessly beautiful. The oscillations, in conjunction with sequential structures devoid of regular “patterns”, produce geometries that no word can carve in the stone of semi-illiterate presumption. As in the bulk of Myers’ releases, the eleven tracks of Superpositions offer a chance for relinquishing the pomp of intellectual grandeur and stick to what really constitutes the nourishment of our very being.

Merging stasis and movement through textural transformations appearing to the ears as utterly natural phenomena, Myers broadens the palette of knowledge without burdening one’s consciousness. An evident confidence with superior layers of understanding is directly proportional to the skilful organization of acoustic events that lots of wannabe scientists disregard as “bizarre noises”.

Well, levels do not exist for nothing. Massimo Ricci

via Touching Extremes

Monty Adkins’s “Shadows and Reflections” reviewed by Music Won’t Save You


Pressoché in contemporanea con “A Year At Usher’s Hill“, il suo lavoro neoclassico-ambientale maggiormente impressionistico, Monty Adkins propone due lunghe tracce su cassetta, realizzate in sinestesia creativa con il pittore Andy Fullalove.

Come gli strati di colore danno forma a un’immagine, così l’artista inglese lungo i venti minuti ciascuna di “Sounds Of The Shadow” e di “Sounds Of The Sun” dispiega una sequenza di chiaroscuri sonori sotto forma di esili drone e risonanze incorporee. I temperati contrasti che ne risultano si soffondono nelle spire di un’ambience espansa e profondamente meditativa, propellente liquido per tutti i sensi.

via Music Won’t Save You

Yiorgis Sakellariou’s “Stikhiya” reviewed by Musique Machine


Greek composer Yiorgis Sakellariou creates deep listening electronic pieces in a dynamic musique concrete style. His first releases came in 2013. As of 2017, he has found a home on the excellent Crónica label, which released many of my favorite artists of recent years including @c. His 6th full length, “Stikhiya” is made up of two pieces, sides A and B, each roughly 18 minutes in length. It is a very limited edition of 100 copies, and a cassette only release.

It is a subtle, dark soundscape with heavy use of field recordings / natural sounds, and a distinct absence of synthesizer. There are many permutations of rushing, billowing air, air forced through tubes and blowing through the leaves of trees. There is a general feeling of weatherbeaten desolation, as if all the sources of all these sounds were ruined debris from a deserted shell of a building, collapsed in on itself and rotted with rain. I can hear that it was recorded in a wet, cooler climate from the texture of the sounds. Cracks of thunder and heavy rain are clearly audible at several points.

Yiorgis’ equipment is occasionally aimed at man-made creations as well, particularly heavy machinery. There are distinctly industrial touches: muffled clangs of distant metal objects, restlessly shifting pink noise, forceful blasts of compressed air mechanically released from pipes. These are woven in amongst natural sounds with a satisfying density and rapid pacing uncommon for avant garde music.

The timbres are crystal clear and complex, leaving room for a world of emotional inference. The crisp vividness of the album is striking to the point of making it immediately likeable. The three dimensionality of the acoustic space is nothing short of amazing, likely the result of using handheld stereo recorders. Digital processing is kept largely to a mininum, transparent so as not to make itself too obvious, with the exception of a couple acoustically detached, purely electronic sounds, such as the noise as the end of side A.

This album is an absolutely wonderful experience, an ode to nature and natural sound captured in vivid clarity, with no excess, nothing cheesy to distract from its replayability and depth. The mind’s eye runs wild to hear these sounds in an isolationist context. It is among the most perfectly paced and expertly produced musique concrete albums I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. I personally think it deserves a wider distribution. Josh Landry

via Musique Machine