“When in Geneva or Zurich the fates decreed
that I should be a poet, one of the few,
I set myself a secret obligation
to define the moon.”
–Jorge Luis Borges

Not sure how we missed this, especially with our recent discovery of the Just Not Normal netlabel. It’s Dennis Moser (aka AldoManutio Abruzzo or usr/sbin), who is hosting an improvised concert for every full moon of the year. The download below is All In A Night In June. Some others:

Wolf Moon Rising
Snow moon
The Lenten moon
The Pink Moon
Full flower

This is a huge project. Make it even bigger by taking part.

(soundcloud|indabamusic|download)

This is the wrong way to introduce music, but, just as wrong? How far behind I am on blog stuff.

And next week won’t be much better. So it’s either this, or I never get around to recommending it at all:

1. Toothpick On Rage by André Pissoir
2. Shadows by Black Winds/Broadcasting Silence
3. Placement And Angles by Chris Lynn/Cedar Lines
4. The Silent Winter by Dark Winds With Broadcasting Silence

That should add a few megs to your iPod. Please enjoy.

by Fred

Spooky — and large, and sometimes triumphant — instrumental work from South Korea, by way of Durham County, England. Make sure to frighten yourself at least once today.

(home|last.fm|stable|download)

by Fred

Resting Bell is very happy to welcome Damian Valles. Damian is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist who creates ambient/experimental works based mainly on solo guitar. He utilizes a wide range of sources to expand his sound which include a variety of percussive elements, piano, and field recordings. Past releases include a full length on the excellent Under The Spire imprint, and a 3″ EP on Standard Form. The latter being the first in a series of limited 3″ releases called “Rural Routes” that he is curating for the label.

His work “Bow Echoes” contains 6 audio-tracks with a duration of about 40 minutes and a 10-minute video for the opening track “Ground Truth”. Compared to his other releases, Damian put his focus more on drone- and ambient-scapes; however, “Bow Echoes” still has a very, very strong melodic center. The dominant washed-out and fading guitar-work give the whole release a touch of beauty and sublimity. Blurry shades, dimly lit landscapes, and warm colours layer and fade into each other. In addition, the video for “Ground Truth” perfectly visualises the sound and feel of the complete release.

(myspace|last.fm|stable|download|download)

by Fred+3

With track titles like “Alice had a boyfriend in her dream (No means yes, and yes means anal),” and “Look at them pelicans fly men! Go pelican!” you likely already have a fully-fleshed idea of what the music sounds like. And you’re right. You’re absolutely right.

The ensemble is named Captan, obvio, and the LP is titled Die Captan, obvio Die!!!. You say you ain’t scared, but we know better.

(myspace|download)

by Fred

A tense and sparse experimental piece from Clinical Archives. “Rhythm” sounds as if Natasha Khan has filmed two mimes — one a baptist, one a bootlegger — running a three-legged race through a china shop, then asked Drums and Tuba to write the soundtrack. Without the drums.

Opening tracks “Strang” and “Piano, The Big Bang Shock Culture” invite the bowler hat crowd into the asylum for ten minutes of goatee-scratching. A few tracks pass, including the aforementioned “Rhythm,” and then it gets weird. In only the best of ways.

(home|myspace|download)

by Fred

Download it for free, here. I just did. And weren’t you just saying you would if I would? So get on it.

Horrible LP title, but that’s what letters to the editor are for. “Desi Watfah” is busy and full of clicks. “Ziko Iko Iko” is fuzzy and industrial and causes me to glare at everything. “Two Teeth In,” aggro and kinetic. “Potroym,” just below.

Download: (“Potroym” by Cursed Chimera)

by Fred

Excellent new stuff from Treetrunk Records, at turns haunting, spacey, noisy, playful, and testy. Download it for free here. Laud or blame co-conspirators Kortane Cortex and Ayato, as is your wont. Straight to the 2010 watchlist.

by Fred

“Apse.” “Carlos Suarez.”

The former? An effortless post-rock band we have covered several times already. I can’t keep their 2006 release Spirit out of heavy rotation. For those new to the site, find their home page here, their Facebook page here, and their Myspace page here.

The latter? One-man tsunami, ethnomusicologist, and composer of our Find of the Year so far (Live Sonar, first reviewed here). At the time I believed the work to be a single live track, but indeed there are several: “Oraculo de la guerra,” “Dialectica de la diversidad y el dogma,” “Metaforas de tempo,” and “O discurso de diversidade,” among others, and hopefully in that order. Listen to them at his Myspace page, here. We hope you’re in a brainy mood, because this is music for museums. By the end of it you may feel obligated to trade out your contact lenses for a pair of spectacles.

Without exaggeration, I haven’t listened to anything else since last December.

This, however, may vie for some attention:

I fell in love with electronic music after hearing Kraftwerk on the radio at the age of ten, back in the days when they still built their own instruments. As a teenager I had a room full of ancient reel-to-reel tape recorders, playing impossibly long tape loops, and a primitive synthesizer built inside a biscuit tin. I have played around with synthesizers ever since, often blending electronic sounds with field recordings. Nowadays most things happen on a laptop, in my mind the most remarkable and powerful musical instrument ever invented. But perhaps not quite as much fun as constructing tape loops used to be.

In recent years I have mostly focused on soundscape composition, but I am also very interested in using electronics in live performance. Summer schools at COMA and Dartington Hall were a big help in learning how to improvise and to perform with other musicians. For a time I was active with LEAPS (the Live Experimental Arts Performance Society), performing regularly in the Cambridge area at a variety of different events. The absolute highlight was performing an extended improvisation in the Cambridge’s Museum of Technology, located in a Victorian pumping station, as part of the Digital-Analogue Cambridge (DAC) Festival in 2001.

More recently, having moved to Dorset, I have been performing with the Safehouse Collective which meets regularly in the Lighthouse Centre, Poole, and the free improvisation group ZAUM. I am also a member of the electroacoustic improvisation duo nemeton and the improvising laptop ensemble No Context. I’ve recently discovered the joys of circuit bending and am now trying to build my own instruments, which is wonderful subversive fun.

I have been a member of Sonic Arts Network for many years, and am also currently a member of UKISC, the UK acoustic ecology group, which is affiliated to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.

Click the link above for a free download of Arish Mell, and click here for the bio.

by Fred

Like Patrick (don’t call him Pat!) just got done saying, we’re up to our chins in snow. To wit, the snapshot above, wherein our everything-and-the-kitchen-sink bamboo is shown all hunched over like an old guy on a park bench. Not necessarily cool with my botanist side, although my photographer side has been having a field day.

For some snowy introspection, try fall asleep to this, by Derrick Hart. Tracks are still, wintery, a bit overcast. At a run time of under 18 minutes, you’ll have it finished in the amount of time you’d need to sample an LP. So just listen all the way through.

(stable|myspace|last.fm|download)