Stasisfield update

Nearly a year ago I noted the return of Stasisfield as a more active label. Since then there has been an ongoing flow from them during 2008 which has been great to see. The music has traversed the general remit of the label - some electronica (much of it), ambience, a bit of worldy manipulated music (Gregory Taylor's delightful gamelan pieces), improvy (Rammel, Mueller and Schoenecker), experiments (Wincek) lots of lowercased minimalist pleasures based around field recordings and even some 'karaoke' (I don't think). The latest release is Kalte's Lantahnide Series. This is a nicely layered drone album which balances metallic gong-like tones with other subtle sounds, that weave in and out - bells and light scraping, buzzes and hints of field recordings - creating a hypnotic ambience. Just after playing this I happened to play something by Marc McNulty in my .Tiln genre (that was a ground breaking net music source), and there were some interesting similarities. Anyway, well worth pursuing, and as with all the free music on the web - you can make up your own mind.

Bruckner of the Month

John F Berky runs an excellent Bruckner website, one aspect of which is that each month he mines his archive for a symphony to make available as a free download. These can be from vinyl (or even acetate) though some occasionally from CD, and are interesting (eg Hindemith conducting no.7), unusual and of course out of print. Initially they were only available for a couple of months, but John has recently decided to keep 12 months worth up. The recordings are exemplary - no hint of vinyl noise - and provides you with multiple versions of the symphonies for those interested (2 versions of No's 1, 4 and 7, and singles No's 2, 3 and 6). The site is here - for 10 current downloads. There are some other shorter pieces also available elsewhere - follow the side bar.

Twilight Luggage

Following the previous post on Andreas Brandal, available for free download from Twilight are two other Brandal albums:

The dead station is the first Twilight release and suggests some of the positions and directions heard in This is not for you. However it also contains some of the more angular edgy forms that appear on the next album.

Insects is a shorter more recent one (available as a download or a cd-r with extra track and individual print) and uses the burring chirping side of the music to bring a narrower palate that does suggest insects. Integrated with this, though, is a range of other sounds that provide additional depth to the layers of insect - whip tones, slowed voices, musical moments.

Both of these two albums are worth sampling to give you an idea about the eh? release, which to my mind is both broader and more coherent

Lupus Golem is Brandal plus Hans Kristian Senneseth and Bjørn Kåre Berntsen and there is an EP on Twilight - Minotaure. This is a noise trio piece - heavy percussion, dense guitar feedback and more, stomping bass plodding along. Then shifting into slightly quieter, restraints which are soon broken through. Heavy dramatic gothic but also nuanced, this is an intriguing and fun thundering 20 minutes.

The tenor of Twilight Luggage is perhaps suggested by their latest release - Jliat's So what do you think I should do? I haven't been following his Noise series - just noted the reviews - and remember fondly his drone period. This is 30+ minutes of constant harangue: deep jet engines, scratching noise, guitar feedback chords cutting through like laser pulses, occasional computer burble as a lighter sound, and weaving through a distorted crackling which could be speech if you listen really hard (but then the brain will make speech out of sound). A strong emetic which should be taken carefully in measured doses. Not something i would listen to on a regular basis, but once in a while...

Constant

In the tradition of Webbed Hand's Rain series (see blog here) comes the Constant drone exploration. Originally a release on Webbed Hands by Mystified (back reference) it was taken up by Zen Potato Drone company (internet archive here) where a number of people, including mystified put together releases along the same trajectory: in short 'one extended drone sound, though full of interesting artifacts and harmonics'. After 6 releases on that net-label Thomas Park has taken the ball back and released 8 more pieces on his own TreeTrunk label (see link in sidebar) by himself and others including K.M.Krebs. As well he has created Constant Mix - a compilation of the first 10, which gradually dissolve into each other; and C Reider offers Inconstant - which removes the drones and leaves a minimal wonder.

And as a Mystified/Park by the way, there are two 'disks' of early techno from Park's Auto-Cad project available. Quite different but you can see some influences and suggestions of his current directions.

weblabel update

A quick note on a few things happening in some of the labels I keep a watch on. The quiescent-for-2007 Stasisfield has continued with the reawakening (resurrection is perhaps appropriate) and now has 5 releases this year ranging from soundscapes to improvisation and the gentle musical ambience of the latest Gregory Taylor's Two maps of Danaraja, a drifting MAX-MSP gamelan piece that intrudes lightly into the environment.

Then there is the trans>parent radiation subdivision of bremsstrahlung recordings which releases MP3s ahead of later actual releases (at which time the freebies are archived). Again, there has been a ramp up in recent times - a nice sonography from Asher and Ubeboat, and just recently Shinkei with Biostatics which takes recordings from bio-electricity and amplifies them as a skittering pleasure.

Treetrunk has been active with some new Mystified amongst other things, and of course TestTube is unstopable: a musical juggernaut.


And then a new one I found recetly Robotopera which only has seven releases to date but it seems like a very enjoyable and broad exploration that takes in lowercase, glitch and microsound, but also extends into some very musical techno/electronica. Not sure where it emerged from or how long it's been around, but these releases are worth looking for.

An update on We7 - I have scoured it pretty well and have got some good classical, lots of ELP, interesting Tangerine Dream and some other bits and pieces. As I thought, the ads are 'easy' to get around and the selection not bad. Some things are country limited (I can't get the Kinks or Nice) and there is development going on. Things diappear too - King Crimson's Power to believe was there I am sure (I have a copy) but can't find it agin (the related ep was not available to Australians)

Krebs, 833-45, russian netlabels

A new release by Kreb's alter-ego 833-45 gives me a chance to mention him again and also to repoint people to some labels I mentioned in an old notes.

At the base link, Net Audio provides access to three netlabels which are based in Russia. Electrosound (up to 41 releases) is a varied electronic label, featuring mainly local acts. Broad in range it is an interesting one to keep an eye on. Share my wings seems mainly electronica and rock, and to be honest I haven't explored this one yet. Musica Excentrica is the final element and presents less mainstream music (self-described as 'avantegarde post-music in non-entertainment genres') it has also featured more non-Russian names - Philip Samartzis, Joe Colley/Jessica Rylan/Kevin Drumm, Kenneth Kirschner, Kim Cascone, plus more on a couple of compilations - and some better known Russian ones (CD-R, Species of Fishes and Alexei Borisov) and the 12 releases to date are a diverse and exciting collection.

The latest of which is 833-45's Tunguska, a 16 track album that is now available. I know Krebs is very excited by this release which he sees as a culmination of the 833-45 sound. This is a combination of harsher, edgy glitch ambient electronica often with samples in the background - voices speaking, the wonderful Conet recordings - over which a delicious electronica plays created from crackles, tones, small sounds and some beats. It opens with Outremer, a harsh buzzing, arctic winds: the buzz breaks into a sort of beat, fast hihat joins in, some clicks, a crackling voicelike shimmering: short tonal highlights are a sampled melody, a voice in the mix as it builds intensity: it bubbles along, with a sampling almost buried before fading into an electric wind and crowd noises. These continue into Laldaboath where a choir of strained scraping notes ebbs and flows in an industrial soundscape, voices sliding into a gentler ambience that again continues into Outermost sphere that becomes pulsating unsteady radio buzzes with more distant galactic radio shows hidden within (we can see two working themes here - tracks that meld together and the undercurrent of voicesounds). Amethyst is a harsh buzzing colony of tones rising and falling against each other. A bit further in, and Alamut is a recording of a lost orchestra broadcasting into the ether, while a Beacon pulses under gentle developing electronica while drills build a pulsating force that builds and then fades away leaving chattering bleeps and layered people. The Conet is strong in Surrounded by halos, accompanied by drifting sheet metal ambience. And so on through this strong and varied album that shifts between harsh edged and drifting ambience, some beated techno and lyricism, and totally listenable. Beautifully balanced, Kreb's is justifiably proud of this one. Drop over to Russia and pick it up.

(And this is NOT a Russian rip-off MP3 site, but a portal to some great music)

More Mystified

Following from the blog of 9 January some more on Thomas Park aka Mystified.

First, as noted at the end of that post I had only scratched the surface of his discography by focusing on Webbed Hands and Tree Trunk. By closely scrutinising his text discography (on the mystified site) I found a heap more. Regular readers of &etc across the years will know I am a bit of a completist where time, money and downloads allow. So I have been gathering these from a welter of labels (Nishi, Dreamland, Smell the stench, Jon7, Enough, Batman and Robin, Earthmantra, Blackflower, Infinite Sector, Dark Winter, Negative Sound Institute, Benekkea, 20kbps, non-quality audio, TZP drone, Kahvi, Sine fiction, 4 4 2, Umbrella, Roil noise: is them all I think) [and will have to temper my urge to then download the rest of the labels - way too much music]. There are at least 45 releases available free from these sites on top of the thirty odd from Tree Trunk and Webbed Hands.

Recognising that this is a simplification there have been three 'phases' to Mystified's career to date

• the first saw releases on Webbed Hands and a variety of net labels
• then there was a greater focus on his own label Tree Trunk, but with other net labels getting a good look in
  
• while currently cd-r and real label releases are coming to the fore.

Basically a fairish overview, but noting that there are still current web releases. Another simplification would be to suggest that the earlier stuff is more beaty, contains more samples while latterly there has been more minimal ambient. I would also venture to suggest that Mystified places his releases: the Nishi stuff is nicely beated and perhaps reflects the Autocad (Park's previous incarnation) relationship with Rapoon; while 20kbs is more dubby (an interesting label, its name describes its download aesthetic - small lo-fi); Umbrella noize has a couple of albums featuring sonography. Again, there is more here than is possibly to reasonably review, and all I can suggest is that you sample a fair whack of it as there is a host of high quality ambient, dub, grooved, minimal, sonographic music on offer. As analysed below they combine shorter tracks and often a broader diversity (eg Puzzle Street on Jon7 has moved from a groovy piece through some sonography (and back to it now) to AM layers which is extremely minimal: a hum and the end groove of a record).

(More generalisations - Mystified swings between long album length works and shorter collections of tracks about 6 minutes or less in length; a further generalisation - these collections are more common on the 'other label' releases. As of my collection today, 60% of the tracks on Webbed Hands/Tree Trunk are less than 5 minutes compared to 88% on other labels; the data for less than 7 minutes is 73% and 95% [it's the scientist in me! - I would do it by year too if I had the data.])

A problem that Mystified has created for himself, however, is why would anyone buy any of his releases? With so much on offer on the web, for free, purchasing may seem a poor second cousin to some. Reasons to buy however would include - better sound quality; having an actual artefact (which is important to some people); attracting people with a penchant for collecting something nearly unique by having a small run; and recognising that there will be a small but dedicated (and fluid) group of people who like the music so much they want as much as possible, another reason for smaller runs as this is not a huge market (but it is amazing how much product a prolific artist like Muslimgauze or Merzbow can sell). Anyway, in response to my previous review, Mystified has sent me two of his recent cd-rs.

Hazy Waves came out on Cloud Valley Recordings (cv-30) which is based in Canada and has runs of generally less than 50. Simple packaging that includes a track list, the cd-r is hand artfied and contains 9 songs in 43 minutes. In many of the long-form Mystified works there is a static minimalism: exemplified by Constant, which spawbed a series by other musicians, or his take on Rain. This disk contains what sound like fragments captured from longer works which have been going before you heard these bits and will still be going while you are listening to the next track. They fade in and then fade out. These are lovely pieces, Wavelength drifts in an eno-ish way exemplifying the structure here: a lovely tonal work playing over a soft buzzing - a juxtaposition seen throughout. Transmutation is whooshing over a watery flow; Fuzz drone has musical tones which surface through the fuzzy hiss and deep thrumming; Many legs with oscillating pulses, chattering and vinyl crackle-spatter. Another aspect is heard in Bring rain where a roiling cloud of sound is constantly moving forward without arriving, Amorphous is an amorphous subsonic rumbling, while the title track features a rapid chittering that sounds like a whooshing that softens and becomes more whooshy, again with tones deep within - as with much of this minimal ambient there is a psycho-acoustic quality where your brain creates other sounds from within the stasis. The edit from Chronos has more variability in its short presence, and is a fine conclusion to a nice little album (edition of 33 - hurry).

The other is Escaping Physics, the first release from Sentient Recognition Archive, in an edition of 50: 11 songs in 49 minutes. Again, these are short, often excerpts, but seem more enclosed than Hazy. A couple of tracks reflect the cover image and have a watery theme - both Freak of physics and Pulsar 2 have a dolphin or whale like sonar sweeping through with undertows of humming ambience. Another group suggest site recordings: wind blowing on a microphone in a storm (Class conflict 2) with a high cycling, a wind swept building softly shudders in Shuffle drone and rain over a melody is The ocean inside. Roww has a voice-processed-ish rhythm with rachets and tones and a Tuvan-ishh growl offers Mild alarm with a swirling wind over. The other three tracks - Class conflict, Mild alarm 2 and Revving - are all a bit more edgy with high tones, buzz saws or drones. So again a fine range of styles across this and slightly more available.

To be honest, neither is dramatically diffrent from releases that can be garnered from the web - but these are quality recordings at high fidelity. And worth having.

Mystified - Thomas Park - Treetrunk

It's like a game of checkers - one position leads you to another. A while back I blogged about the netlabel Webbed Hands, particularly the Rain series. Three in the group particularly captivated me - by Mystified. Which led to a wider search across the web.

First of all there are some other Mystified (real name Thomas Park) releases on Webbed Hands, some solo and some collaborations. But there is also a pointer to his own label Treetrunk which is based in the wonderful Internet Archive (and which I had also obliquely visited while completing my K M Krebs collection). Mystified's home page has some, though limited, information on both himself and the label. (and there's the now obligatory MySpace page - I must be getting to old, but I don't get the social networking side - but it does give you a chance to listen).

Mystified's music is an interesting mix of ambient and techno styles. Following the minimal structure of his entries in the Rain series, releases such as Constant or Free Passage focus on subtle changes in the layering of ambient noises (some dense, others more minimal). Seen also in Texture (with Stephen Phillips) and Intrigue (with Flores). To my mind this is one of Mystified's greatest strengths - some of the earlier releases, such as Electronic Ragtime are closer to the world ambient genre and are less 'unique'. Though are then used to great effect when combined with radio sounds and samples in Screams in Space

However, in addition, Mystified is also a phonographer and many of the releases are based around found and recorded sounds - Nocturne, Cavern of Tile, Mutescape (which mellows the sounds of the city) or South City Spring for example use these as the primary component, while Audio Paintings uses other components as well. These (and a compilation I included in the Webbed Hands review) are great examples of the power of phonography/sonography.

There is also more standard keyboard/tonal ambience such as Music for Infants and Clockwork. These pieces have an aleatoric feel that relates to Mystifieds aims to create fractal music: seen in Fabrication and a series called Fractal Diner (1 - 3 on Treetrunk; whose releases are primarily by Mystified) that feature slowly modulating delicate ambiences (there is also Fractal Reflections on Webbed Hands). Many of these reminded me (positively) of Brian Eno.

As an introduction two mixtapes are available - Oddities (a collection of pieces released across various labels and formats) and Big Shoulders (an homage to Chicago and composed over tracks created over an extended time)- which make a good starting point.

While most Treetrunk releases are by Mystified (in the normal way of weblabels) some others have also been released, including K M Krebs, Akashic Crow's Nest, Edward J Poley, Tim Doyle and the very flexible Tribe of Astronauts - all of whose interests seem to intersect with Mystified's.

This is all free music - varied but with a underlying strength and focus. I've enjoyed all the pieces I have downloaded - and now have all of Treetrunk (except number 7: one complaint is that there is no 'master list' of releases and an Internet Archive search hasn't brought it to light) and all the Mystifieds from Webbed Hands (including collaborations) - and find them very satisfying particularly for the deep minimal ambience that pervades many of them. (Mystified has also had many real releases, but I haven't heard any of those). Anyway, my advice is to try some Mystified: it's free and I am sure you will enjoy most if not all of it.

PS doing an internet archive search on Mystified I realise I have a lot more to collect - at least another 20! Expect an update eventually

When two become one - Iod

Among the net-labels in my 'watch' bookmark folder were two providing a very pleasant mix of ambient and gentle techno: StandardKlick and Eko: run out of the SRM label. These two have been closed (though all releases are still available on the new site) and replaced by a new one - Iod.

The first release is a minimal ambient/techno ep by d'incise Eloge de l'usage et de la lenteur which fits with the general feel of the labels: softly erupting tones, some electro-futzes and an overall feeling of relaxed restraint.

I assume the label will continue with a similar roster, which has seen albums by Alexandre Navarro, Daniel Maze, Kenneth Kirschner, Letna, Marcos Romero among others whose names are perhaps even less familiar. ANyway, the new label and its precursors are worth looking into: and it is always nice to be around for the birth of a new one.

Stasisfield Redux

Resurrection is related to a different feast, but we have a Christmas present from Stasisfield - after a long period of silence I noticed a new release this morning - which had been there since December 17.

SF6001 The sonics of art spaces is a compilation that was originally curated by John Kannenberg at the end of 2006 for a London radio program. These tracks and some additional ones are now available for download. As the name implies, this is recording of various art spaces (SFMOMA, Tate modern, Tesla and more) some of which have been processed and others are quite raw. For example, Kannenberg's Sketching Notre Dame facade includes the sound of pencil on paper as well as the surrounding crowd, while For Mark Rothko is subtle throbs, pulses and quietness.

Some well known names appear - a lovely performance of 4'33" by Steve Roden in the Schindler house, and Glenn Bach provides a number of small snapshots. Others create or compose excellent works: My Fun do indeed seem to have fun at the Tate, or Anne Guthrie at Beacon NY.

A welcome return from a respected web label.

Webbed Hands

I mentioned this label in the Krebs post - Oneirmancy which I reviewed as a CD-R and his Mystery Sea release had both been re-released here. At 80+ releases it is a big ask to look at, but a couple of things caught my eye.

Some history, the label was created by C P McGill and his brother, in the first instance for CP to release material under about 6 pseudonyms, but has since expanded to include a range of other artists. Release 73 is a McGill anthology which (along with his Rain albums) gives you an opportunity to taste his various personae, which are quite divergent: some ethnic ambience, a bit of more industrial.

On other things, a single release compilation - Far Afield - number 55 should be pointed to. A double album of sonography/phonography based pieces. Other than Quiet American I hadn't heard of any of the artists, but there is 32 tracks of subtle and diverse envronmental ambience here, with differeing levels of processing on the pieces but retaining the original sense - whether it be city, country or specific sound that has been captured. A lovely release curated by Fred Yarm

I mentioned in the Krebs post the Rain series. This is an expanding sequence of meditative/relaxing pieces each about an hour long, and with a theme of rain (surprisingly) initially. To quote the site:

"Each Rain is a CD-length ambient recording ideal for listening to while relaxing, working, or socializing. Typically the recordings in this series are minimalistic soundscapes, with motifs played out cyclically and repetitively, rather than progressively, in order to induce a relaxed state of mind."

Again, McGill kicked of the sequence but now a range of artists have had an in put and there are over 20 releases. People have approached it quite differently

• Saluki Regicide kick off with three similarly structured works - a soft industrial rumbling and elements that drift over - bird calls, snatches of music (an old instrumental, Middle Eastern), environmental sounds, voices and occasional synth crackles that defined the series, and from which it has developed
• Akashic Crow's Nest appeared early and again more recently - first with gently drifting and then bubbling swirls of electronica and synths.
• Mystified has produced 3 very minimal pieces that could be brushed percussion or manipulated rain sounds, an electronics sussurus, while in Rain 3 (his first) it was guitars;
• Djinnistan plays with ambient recordings of water, insects and deep ambient thrums (Rain 1), gentle tones and simple percussive tinkles (Rain 3) and more electronics and rhythms in Rain 2;
• Ghostheory layers ambient-industrial tones;
• Krebs' two are shimmering electronics;
• Tree Helicopter wash a radio signal, simple drums, skitters, gtr/synth chords into a mesmeric atmosphere;
• Tribe of Astronauts are minmalists - electronic crackling in 1 and deep washing throbs in 2;
• SpoonPhase drift with drips, burbling background winds and delightful highlights;
• Rolling Calf Sinfonette go with water, simple percussion and glistening wind tones warbling in 1, harp-samples, grumbling, high-hats over water in 2 and suggestively ethnic percussion, some rocky scrapes, high tones and subtle electronica in 3 (no water)
• subtle manipulated image-sounds form the basis of the shimmering and subtle pulse crackles and chirrups over a melodic bed of Akashic Crow's Nest soft rain
  

The fact that most people have moved away from the water/rain theme and stayed with the cyclical soundscape side of the project has kept this set of releases fresh and interesting - together they form a very satisfying ambience

The label has also pointed me in the direction of Mystified's Treetrunk label: more later

13 songs mixtapes over

The thirteen songs mixtape adventure is over - the last (13th) release is available now. Still recommended and available for downloading the set. 12.rec has got too much on to keep doing them. a shame but thanks to them for what we have

A new Roden

Another release spot in my sights is 12ks online sublabel Term (http://www.12k.com/term/)

Till my visit today there had been 15 releases, but two new ones have appeared. Off The Sky with four tracks of guitar ambience. And Term 17 - a 'lost' 30 minute live recording by Steve Roden from Berlin in 2004 (entitled Amnesia, because he seems to have forgotten it). Some loops come from the same source as the 5hour Soundwalk recording, but it is a different and additional piece in the Roden ouevre - very welcome.

a few web labels

I have admitted to liking free music, am an awful addict completist and now have a massive download (compared to the past). One of my favourite web-labels is still going strong - No Type (http://www.notype.com/drones/accueil.e/) and is now well over 100 releases, plus more in the Sine Fiction and Annexe sub-labels. One thing I like about it is the variety - you can go to the No Type playlist, wack it on random and lust about relax. I say just about, as there is a little bit of Noise though there!

My recent wanderings have identified a number of labels (in a label watch folder and I open them all every now and then). Here are a few which may interest

Test Tube: http://www.monocromatica.com/netlabel/releases.htmThe most active label I have come across - now up to 96 with upcomings already. I downloaded the lot, but you can buy a DVD or CDs of past releases. The sounds are varied - ambient, techno, some jazz, all with very nice covers (for those with cover flow). There is a mix-tape which could give you some idea as to what it's like. I will admit I haven't listened to all 2.2 days, but have enjoyed whats gone through.

And speaking of mix tapes, the Collective Commons has led to a fair few going on. My favourite is
thirteen songs (http://thirteensongs.net/Main.htm) which ranges across the web to create
themed and wide ranging compositions. Again, a good way to test some labels and artists.
Another label which is growing at a fair pace is Alg-a (http://www.alg-label.com/) - also broad ranged with 36 very different productions, and 4 mixes which extend beyond the label itself.
A final one to mention tonight. Vitalis Popoff has put together a small but intriguing selection in Telescope (http://www.telescopelabel.net/relases.php?) which is a Polish electronica, IDM, ambient label. Two large compilations give an interesting perspective on the label.

Just some thoughts - I might expand on my 'label watch' list later - the Russians and more.