“Digital Junkies in Strange Times” reviewed by Rockerilla

Ran Slavin è un virtuoso del laptop, che si è ormai imposto nella cultura musicale contemporanea come uno strumento a sé a tutti gli e etti. E etti che nel caso della musica di Slavin si palesano in una manciata di pezzi techno dove a farla da padrone è un’ambient “sporca” e spuria nella quale si innestano spunti r’n’b a presa rapida. A farla da padrone nel suo nuovo disco sono ovviamente i 41 mastodontici minuti di Moonlight Compilations, che ricalca certi cerimoniali electro-minimal a base di musica cosmica, industrial, ambient e new age di Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never. Massimo Padalino

“Hiku Komuro, Hikikomori” reviewed by Rockerilla

La Cronica non delude mai con le sue pubblicazioni e anche questa volta fa centro con la cassetta dell’artista spagnolo Durán Vázquez, autore di tracce sperimentali reperibili ovviamente anche in digitale. Il galiziano utilizza software di Windows, vecchi plug-ins degli anni 90, campionamenti da vecchi videogame anni 80 e varia strumentazione per un lavoro la cui ricerca sonora si muove tra isolazionismo ambient, musica concreta
e citazioni da un passato ludico (vedi i suoni dei videogiochi inseriti su un drone nel brano conclusivo di oltre 26 minuti). Gianluca Polverari

“The Wayward Regional Transmissions” reviewed by Data.Wave


This is another chapter in our research project of Ran Slavin’s music, where we are listening to The Wayward Regional Transmissions.

Artwork of the album is very original, we are looking down to the desert’s surface from a satellite, while receiving a transmission or from the command centre. Every single of Ran’s releases is a new step into the unknown territory of sound. Listening to this album you transit to Oriental Abstract Spiritual Music and glitch, combined with experimental ethno-electronic music.

The first track Village mesmerizes with its folklore-like sounds. I don’t know was it in Middle East, India or someone from another planet, who invented musical instrument Bulbul Tarang, played by Ahuva Ozeri. You can listen for hours for its space-like sounds, and combined with the digital technology, this instrument produces
unpredictable and surprising results.

Have a listen to the spiritual and, at the same time, psychedelic track Wayward Initial. Its music levitates your consciousness above the vast space of Sahara desert and once you are ready to cast your eye to the horizon, it introduces a hard glitch, resembling a secret transmission from an unknown radio station directed at you.

Shelters and Peace has another level of sound, introduced by clicks’n’cuts – the air above the desert is hot and static, you are starting to see images of an oasis, jittering with each click.

DAT Beats – first loops and sounds remind us that we are still listening to electronic music. Ironic track Kiosk in Furadis with its colorful flying voices adds its own flavor and the picture turns unbelievably rich: Earth, space, sound, music, color. The only unfortunate thing about the track Hagalil – is that it is the last track of the album and that our Transmission is over.

“Nowhere: Exercises in Modular Synthesis and Field Recording” reviewed by Vital


Ten years ago J. Smolders quit developing work from preconceived compositions, planned into the smallest details. Since them, he has been using ways of work more undefined and fuzzy. While taking these steps, he cultivates states of deep concentration, and then he makes the work with a few quick touches. He uses these elements when he plays with the modular synths and the field recordings. He prepares, and then lets it all flow, keeping the original sounds simple and limiting the overdubs and the editing procedures, according to the main free form concept of “here and now”. The sequences of Nowhere seem to be quite abstract, dilated, filled with hum and static discharges, cosmic hyperbole and crackle, feedback and distortions. The work has strong goals and is strong in its performing too, thanks to the unimpeachable work procedures.

“Stikhiya” reviewed by Vital


Let go theorizing, theories, rational reasoning. Strive for Stikhiya. Or: primitive immediacy. Then and there, organic holistic experiences (may) emerge, dixit Yorgis Sakellariou. It’s where unfathomable and formless forces of perception are at play; awe-inspiring, myth-making.
On his cassette Sakellariou manipulates field recordings from various sources; be it natural or technological/industrial, be it in the field or at home. The crash of a waterfall joins a fridge’s hum in a symphony of clashes and juxtapositions. Scratching and scraping, creepy and crawly, rumbling and bustling the aural zoo maintained by Sakellariou is teeming with lively action.
This projects a power of catharsis in as much as these works bear their elementary building blocks precisely to remain firmly rooted in reality, whilst rearranging these familiarities towards expansions of the real; a rarification, perfecting too – also in size of the sound field and scope of the emotional rapport. Sakellariou’s rawness of sound is worn on his sleeve; a throbbing heartbeat – the sound of what it means to be alive, hearing living – living hearing: here, now and with an eternal glimmer from the noise of stern stuff, from which epic is written. (SSK)

via Vital

“Intuited Architectures” reviewed by Vital


From Scotland Graeme Truslove bridges the divide between fixed-medium electroacoustic composition and performance based on improvisation. From meticulous structuring of aural mosaics with sonic impulses placed at exactly the right time, place, texturing et cetera, Truslove moved into the realms of the recording and manipulation of these works. Consequently and rather ironically, as technology advanced, these treatments of performances in themselves became montage-performances, which turned to be possible source material for further performance, montage and composition.
With an ‘ensemble’ of energetic electronics, brimming with activity, slowly modulating, finely attuned in terms of texture and timbre (ranging from polished glistens to rough and raw barbs and wires), augmented with double bass, Truslove explores musical time and musical time scales. It’s all on display here, pretty much easy to hear in full frontal focus. That is: the evolution of synthetic tones, textures and timbres from Truslove’s performative-algorithmic machines. And also: the tweaking thereof, the searching, embellishment and/or destruction – the immediate present and the slowly unfolding development – the sound in and of itself and the placement in something much (infinitely?) larger. Size-wise by the way not per se in terms of a filled out, drummed up, jazzed through jumble or huge through-composed symphonic effort, but above all in terms of strategies of time.
Long lines and thin spikes and fat bubbles and short gurgles for example bounce around in short-term presences, but together these also weave and bob in and out of an almost droning aural field out of time, beyond eternal music, too. It’s thanks to Truslove’s amazing touch for timbre and timing Intuited Architectures retains a splendid organic touch and feel, carving out a fascinating niche somewhere in the corner of acousmatic and electroacoustic music where the greats of the musique concrète meet ‘classical’ composers. A must-hear for all fans of the releases by INA-GRM, Recollecion GRM and Unsounds. (SSK)

via Vital

Futurónica 191


Episode 191 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, April 28th.

The playlist of Futurónica 191 is:

  1. Ø, Sisään (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  2. Ø, Hornitus (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  3. Ø, Kuvio (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  4. Ø, JL-CSG I (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  5. Ø, Muuntaja (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  6. Ø, Hion (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  7. Ø, Twin Bleebs (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  8. Ø, Erit-Samat (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  9. Ø, Lasi (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  10. Ø, JL-CSG II (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  11. Ø, Radio (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  12. Ø, Asuntola (1994, Metri, Sähkö)
  13. Ø, Dayak (1994, Metri, Sähkö)

You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.

“Hiku Komuro, Hikikomori” reviewed by Chain DLK


On paper, you might assume an album structured from old Nintendo game sounds and 1990’s-era VSTs would be cheeky chiptunes- but this Durán Vázquez album is nothing of the sort. ‘Hikikomori’ is social reclusion and while the atmosphere here is insular, and isolated, this isn’t the sound of somebody playing computer games. This is tense drone soundscape work- beatless, hollow, resonant, drawn-out synthetic tones with washes and twinkles.

The work has two sides, LP-style. On the first side, there are five tracks, four of which share the same name, “Solus Ipse”. The first of these has a glass-like wailing tones at the top end are so harsh that they are sometimes painful, telling you this work won’t function as an ambient chillout affair, the second introduces gradually crescendoing notes of tension and confusion. The third is more mellow, with distant string-like ebbs and occasional fragile percussive sounds. Brief interlude “Koroshiya” brings a hint of ethnic flute tonality, before the final “Solus Ipse” revisits the earlier disquiet.

The second side is a single 26-minute work, “Segunda Natureza (trebón, paxaros, electrostática)”, where the retro-chiptune sounds are really heard. This is mostly a more playful piece, still essentially a drone base but lighter, with arpeggio patterns, 8-bit-style percussive moments and occasional single-step bass notes akin to having somebody in the next room playing a classic NES. Moods do shift throughout, with some sections more sombre and the latter sections more sparse, but this piece manages to feel both more unique and more inventive.

It’s an album of two halves in which the second half is more recommendable than the first, but overall it’s a noteworthy take on the solitary drone soundscape form. Stuart Bruce

via Chain DLK

“Hiku Komuro, Hikikomori” reviewed by Vital


Three new releases from Crónica take the listener from Portugal to Greece to Scotland. Geographically dispersed as the origins of these composers may be, the works hold a firm common Crónica thread in serving aural tapestries amongst the best in avant-garde contemporary music on the verge of composed acoustic and electronics music.
Durán Vázquez work a full year on his tape Hiku Komuro, Hikikomori. Asking himself questions, holed up with his gear. Can we know an aural world outside our own; the one we hear in our head? The one ears tell us is there; we hear inside? Is hearing a product of outside phenomenons getting in or could it be that we can never really know what goes on outside – i.e. not within our own brain, mind, soul. Solus Ipse. Wandering alone – never in real contact; or, oh well… that than is as much the real contact as we can get. It doesn’t get any more. That’s not to say it’s a good or bad thing in and of itself. It just is. And we cannot know, for sure. Really.
Vázquez conjures plains and fields of sparse instrumentation. Very high pitches are never thinning out the spectrum, which one might expect. Nor do these glistening glass organ like shimmerings and piercing tones project eerie connotations. These frequencies are those of which resonance is made. A transportation of rumblings and murmurs, pulling on the soul’s strings like perpetual high droning of eternal movement. Here dark skies are pushed away. Not per se to let the sunlight in, but to wipe clean the crowded and muddied slate. Vázquez seems to be aiming for an aural tabula rasa – far from emptied out or minimally reduced. His quintet of works on the a-side promote vistas of zen gardens with slight breezes and birds singing in animated dialog with an idiosyncratic stillness of ease always present – back- and foreground.
In his Galicia based studio Vázquez composes his works using samples of old video games as prime source materials, together with FM synthesis and other synths. On the b-side his acousmatic soundscaping has been impregnated with gentle use of bleeping noises and swooshes reminiscent of arcade space battle. The gently bubbling, slowly creeping tar- or lava like structure gives way to multiplicities of translations; the full spectrum from highly advanced sci-fi technological down to purely natural meadowlands teeming with wildlife. Like a fascinating soundscape of field recordings from field yet uncharted, unseen, unheard – most likely only existing inside Vázquez’ and our own head(s). (SSK)

via Vital