MP3s

[Music] Mary Halvorson & Noël Akchoté – Mary Halvorson & Noël Akchoté

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

I have to admit that I’ve been waiting for such a release to come about for a while now. Noël Akchoté, perhaps the most prolofic guitarist working in improvisational music today (and maintaining astoundingly high quality throughout each release) pairs with NYC-based Mary Halvorson, a guitarist I have only become acquainted with this past year. This is a purely improvised duet, with no rehearsals, recorded in Belgium this year.

For those who already collect the work of Noël Akchoté, this will be another treasure to add to your collection. As for Mary’s work, this is a fine introduction, which makes me want to delve into her solo work.

[Music] Is Bandcamp the Holy Grail of Online Record Stores?

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I’m a big fan of Bandcamp. So much so that I not only have a personal account with them, where I’ve bought over 630 albums, but I’ve also released 9 albums on my own online label. They have a great model to work with, and are the equivalent of an incredible indie record shop, but they need only to develop a social media platform in order to allow people to really connect. Otherwise, Bandcamp is really something else.

The New York Times writes about them here.

[Music] RLW / PAAK – Zur Arbeit I

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From Attenuation Circuit’s Bandcamp site:

Ralf Wehowsky and Peter Kastner, aka RLW and PAAK, present their third collaborative album in a series of concept albums dedicated to various subjects. This record, their first on attenuation circuit, is about work, and as on the previous records (about food and religion, respectively), the titles, liner notes, and the sound itself suggest a rather sarcastic take on work, or more precisely, the situation of working people today.

Ralf Wehowsky has been a fixture on the international experimental scene since his 1980s work with P16.D4 and related projects on the Selektion label. The fusion of electronic sounds and non-musical, musique concrète material is characteristic of much of his work. Peter Kastner, working both in improvised sound and visual arts, brings a low-fi approach to jerrybuilt sound objects to the collaboration. By contrasting everyday noise that might well have been recorded in a factory, or factory canteen, with startlingly artificial, almost deliberately cheesy harpsichord and mellotron sounds, they create a tension between a nostalgia for beauty and the barrenness of everyday life, in three pieces, or perhaps movements. The liner notes leave no doubt as to what the three movements stand for: The 19th century with its mass exploitation of industrial workers (courtesy of a quote by Karl Marx), the 20th century with its progress toward more social security for working people, and the 21st century, which sees an erosion of solidarity as neoliberal policies take away social benefits such as rent-controlled housing.

Crap Marxist verbiage, but great music, as always.

[Music] Simple Minds: From Beauty to Bombast, the early 1980s — Progarchy

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For those of you who read progarchy, you know that we often (maybe not often enough, but often) review things that are, at best, vaguely prog. We often veer into art rock and art pop. My favorite genre outside of “straight” prog is progressive pop such as PET SOUNDS, SONGS FROM THE BIG CHAIR, and […]

via Simple Minds: From Beauty to Bombast, the early 1980s — Progarchy

[Music] Benjamin Aït-Ali – Ballet and Other Works

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This release, by French experimental music composer Benjamin Aït-Ali, is, and probably always will be, the shortest release I’ve had the privilege to review. Ballet and Other Works clocks in at around 3 minutes, but as with the legendary Cinéma Pour L’Oreille series released by Metamkine in the early 1990s, the compositions waste no time in getting to the point.

Aït-Ali is among a new vanguard of composers who will take the flame from the legends of electroacoustic music such as Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle. It sounds like a tall order, but I’d challenge you to study his work. You can listen to Ballet and Other Works here, via OBS Records, based in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, or at Benjamin’s Bandcamp site. More samples of his work can be heard via Soundcloud.

[Music] Silber Records: New Guitar Experiments, Lo-Fi Pop, & Post Punk from Azalia Snail, Electric Bird Noise, & Dyr Fazer

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From our friends at Silber Records!:

Hello,

Hope all is going well with you. You may have already heard about it on Facebook or Twitter, but last month my parents’ basement flooded destroying about a fourth of the physical inventory, but if you even mildly follow the music industry you know that physical sales have been in dramatic decline for ten years so I am trying to play it positive as making me clear out some trash rather than $10,000 worth of CDs. My main regret of the experience is it really highlights that I should have done lower press runs the first 15 years & then I could’ve helped more bands. Live, learn, & move on, right? The future looks good. Anyway, we’ve got three new releases for you.

Electric Bird Noise: Nighttime Tides
Electric Bird Noise is back with a 32 minute epic ambient guitarscape. Longtime fans who loved the Le Vestibule era of EBN should definitely check this one out. Feel the pull of the ocean as the fog rolls in, or is it a smoke machine?
Buy or listen on Silber: http://www.silbermedia.com/ebn/nighttime.shtml
Buy or listen on Bandcamp: https://silbermedia.bandcamp.com/album/nighttime-tides
Listen on Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/6Vi7uO0NXwR7vpuUgSb4fD
Special! – Download all 8 EBN releases on Silber for just $12! Half-price! – http://www.silbermedia.com/sale

Azalia Snail: Dream Dazzler
We’re super happy to work with lo-fi queen Azalia Snail again here at Silber. She made a 5in5 of lo-fi dance jams & such. Dive in to the broken toy daydream.
Buy or listen on Silber: http://www.silbermedia.com/5in5/as-dreamdazzler.shtml
Buy or listen on Bandcamp: https://silbermedia.bandcamp.com/album/dream-dazzler
Listen on Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/6FJSxVKn1ZDGYH3czPs8l8

Dyr Faser
Dyr Faser is Eric Boomhower & part of Boston’s growing lo-fi post-punk/proto-goth scene. Taking notes from godfathers of the genres like Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Suicide, Durutti Column, & Coil – Dyr Faser blends it all together & gives you five one minute shots that hit you like $2 shots at an after hours bar. You can’t help but nod your head to the drum machine rhythms as you wait for the creature lurking in the darkness to destroy you. Don’t worry; the monsters have always been your friends.
Buy or listen on Silber: http://www.silbermedia.com/5in5/dyr-faser.shtml
Buy or listen on Bandcamp: https://silbermedia.bandcamp.com/album/dyr-faser
Listen on Spotify: https://play.spotify.com/album/37Ypl00iqiUZEdbrd90WvY

We still have some download codes left for anyone who orders a physical copy of any of the Lycia or Lycia related releases (Mike VanPortfleet, Tara VanFlower, Black Happy Day) through Silber to get a free download code for the new Lycia album A Line That Connects.
http://www.silbermedia.com/lycia

New Releases coming soon from Cloaca, Ms, Koyl, Fullness Off Lack, Jon Dawson, Moodring, Hotel Hotel, Lum, Premature Burial, DR, & more in the coming weeks. A batch of comics about Robert E Howard coming soon. & of course inevitably a new QRD. Also thinking about re-starting the Silber Blog, let me know what you’d want in it – http://silbermedia.com/blog/?p=6231

Thanks for your interest & support & spread the word about the new releases if you can & if you want to be taken off the mailing list just let me know.

Hrt
Brian John Mitchell
www.silbermedia.comhttps://www.facebook.com/silbermedia
http://twitter.com/silberspy
https://play.spotify.com/user/silberspy

[Music] 幾何学模様/Kikagaku Moyo – Kikagaku Moyo

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2918072900/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/

Thanks to a visit with my friend Joe, whose music taste is impeccable for things like drone, old prog and Killing Joke, I figured I’d spend my evening looking for good, psych-y, droney things to listen to.  Kikagaku Moyo caught my attention by sounding like a slightly more updated version of Acid Mothers Temple. A good, stony listen.

[Music] Machinefabriek & Philippe Petit – Angry Ambient Artists Vol​.​1 — Yeah I Know It Sucks

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artists: Machinefabriek & Philippe Petit title: Angry Ambient Artists Vol.1 keywords: ambient drone electro-acoustic industrial noise Manchester label: Forwind http://www.forwind.net/ On side a there is the very angry ambient artist named ‘Machinefabriek’ with an angry ambient track named ‘Graniet’. The high pitched beeps do certainly hit a nervous angry nerve in my very angry ambient […]

via Machinefabriek & Philippe Petit – Angry Ambient Artists Vol.1 — Yeah I Know It Sucks

[Music] Various Artists – Summer (from a closer listen blog)

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Earlier this year, the Bigo & Twigetti label asked its artists to contribute a personal reflection of summer. This compilation is the result. Summer is a potpourri of presentations that opens up the question, “What does summer sound like?” For this listener, summer sounds like the opening track, Pavel Karmanaov‘s “Michael Music”: ebullient, with sparks and ocean droplets […]

via Various Artists ~ Summer — a closer listen