Classical Music Tape 12 Items

Subminiature, the new live album by Philadelphia instrumental chamber folk ensemble Hour, comes fresh off the heels of 2024's 'Ease the Work' and provides a capstone for the band's oeuvre to date, brandishing new material alongside longstanding arrangements of pieces from 2018's 'Anemone Red' and 'Tiny Houses', the inaugural releases of Dear Life Records.Across this collection of recordings harvested over two years of extensive DIY touring, bandleader/composer Michael Cormier-O'Leary demonstrates a deep understanding of the character of his shifting ensemble and its players. Subminiature also serves as a hard worn tour diary, cataloguing concerts that were affectionally curated to highlight the strength of the music; at once adventurous and melodic and insistent upon spaces that encourage deeper connection. These tours saw the group performing in movie theaters, on islands, in machine shops and parking garages, crowded bars and living rooms, churches and theaters. Invariably, the music expands and contracts to match the space the ensemble is performing in. Recorded on a range of recording devices, this impressive live album highlights the focus and dynamism of a hardworking, fluid ensemble.For Fans of Dirty Three, Bill Frisell, Eiko Ishibashi, Penguin Cafe Orchestra,Mogwai

Ear World, out February 24th on Brooklyn-based record label 29 Speedway, is a collection of sound collage works by experimental cellist Dorothy Carlos. Her debut album ranges from song-like to abstract, incorporating site-specific sound installation work originally premiered in both 16-channel and quadraphonic formats. Voice and cello are reconstructed through glitch techniques to take on a digital form that is flirtatious and fleeting. Carlos is an experimental cellist active in Chicago and New York. Her work utilizes extended techniques and digital manipulation, merging free improvisation and computer music. She is interested in digital techniques as an opportunity to construct imaginary realities and capture a sense of intimacy.

Solo performances have been presented internationally by Experimental Sound Studio Chicago, Big Ears Festival, default, Center for New Music and Associated Technologies (cnmat) at UC Berkeley, Chicago Jazz String Summit, and Bemis Center. Her work has been featured in The Wire, New York Times, and The Quietus and released digitally with D.O.T. Audio Arts and American Dreams. Dorothy holds a Bachelor’s degree from NYU where she studied classical cello and anthropology and an MFA in sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Tracks 2-4 “My Ideal is Windy” quadraphonic installation commissioned by Experimental Sound Studio and the Chicago Park District.

Track 8 “Alter, alter” 16-channel installation premiered at the Chicago Laboratory for Electro-Acoustic Theater (cleat).

Ben Glas (b. 1992) is an experiential composer based in Berlin. Through ephemeral compositions Glas' work questions preconceived notions between the acts of passive hearing and active listening. In seeking to discover open ended forms of music and pragmatic listening perspectives, Glas' compositions focus on the realms of subjective perception and cognition, via the use of acoustics, psychoacoustics and space as tools for sonic composition. His work has been exhibited and performed internationally, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (pica), Glasgow's Radiophrenia Festival, the Soundwave Biennial (sf) and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (cica). He is currently receiving his M.A. in Sonic Studies at the UdK.
Ben Glas writes… "Anonymous Sextet for Perverted Piano is a conceptual performance piece that combines a traditional grand piano, six long-distance remote controlled vaginal/anal vibrators and the prolonged use of the piano's sustainer pedal.
The six vibrators were strategically (and preparedly) placed atop of the strings of a various grand pianos (and one harpsichord), while random strangers around the globe connected to and operated the sex toys remotely. After the random and unwitting performers had befriended and synced-up with a catfishing account linked to the six individual vibrators and controlled by three different smartphones, they then sent vibrational patterns and pulses to stimulate their assumed target. The then-kinetic vibrators bounced, slid and bopped aleatorically through the tonal possibilities that the piano and piano's soundboard itself permits. The piano's sustain pedal was held down throughout the performance, elongating the triggered notes and the good vibrations.
All tracks on side A are performed by those unwitting performers, while side B's single track was performed with (more than) a little help from my friends (Anonymous (1), Genesis Victoria, Harry Hudson-Taylor and Hayden Dean)." – Ben Glas, Berlin, 16 February 2023.

Ranie Ribeiro's artistic journey has taken on new dimensions and disciplines. Formerly known by his DJ moniker D-Ribeiro (4Lux, Meda Fury), Ranie Ribeiro has solidified himself as one of the Netherlands' most unique harpists. Whereas his past releases could be defined by up-tempo, warm, and joyful beats, Ribeiro now presents his first full-length harp record, Contemplation--a delicate collection of unassuming harp compositions and improvisations. A record that has gone through multiple iterations, shapes and life-changes, Contemplation plays out like you're sitting in the room minding your own business as Ribeiro's playing fades in-and-out from the corner, accompanying your thoughts, your chores, your life as it all passes you by. In a musical world where over-processing and manipulation obfuscate intent and feeling; Contemplation is vulnerable. Putting his stake in the ground and claiming his artistic space, Ribeiro refuses to let insecurities stand in his way and his music comforts you so much it'll empower you to feel the same. Words by Gregory Markus

Familiar sounds are questioned, boundary areas explored - through classical instruments, electronic production, avant-garde approaches, improvisation or links to visual expressions.

Familiar sounds are questioned, boundary areas explored - through classical instruments, electronic production, avant-garde approaches, improvisation or links to visual expressions.

Familiar sounds are questioned, boundary areas explored - through classical instruments, electronic production, avant-garde approaches, improvisation or links to visual expressions.

New age for the suburban city, spun from a poor planting in the suburbs or from an apartment room along the national highway. "Suiyu" is the first album by Hajime Orikawa, a musician living in Chiba. From side A, which is composed of home recordings and environmental sounds in a room at home, and contains a lo-fi yet theological resonance, to the title track "Suiyu" which exceeds 15 minutes and where various instruments such as autoharp, electronic piano, Moog synthesizer, organ, and tenor saxophone beautifully blend with a free-spirited singing voice like a wild rabbit running through the fields, the melancholy of the suburban city floats gently. The cassette version includes a DL code for “Ikkojiteki,” a collection of outtracks, along with a DL code for "Suiyu".

d'Eon is Montreal-based composer / producer Chris d’Eon. Since beginning his musical practice in the 2000s, his unclassifiable catalog has presented us with baroque keyboard performances, digital chamber music, hi-definition beatmaking in the pop and R&B idioms, glitchy abstractions composed with chance operations and digital hyper-fragmentation tactics, and all manner of experiments that attest to his drive to reach the outer limits of eclectic composition. d’Eon is perhaps best known for his releases on the dearly missed experimental electronic label Hippos in Tanks, including a split EP with Grimes called Darkbloom in 2011, which planted his post-classical minimalist works along an influential cultural spectrum with labelmates like James Ferraro, Arca, Dean Blunt, Laurel Halo, and Oneohtrix Point Never. Leviathan, d’Eon’s second HausMo release, follows Rhododendron (2021), continuing his triumphant return to pressing music on physical formats.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes a melody reach listeners with a sentimental quality, yet d’Eon channels his instincts as a composer and his breadth of knowledge in music theory and harmony to nail this exact feeling time after time on Leviathan. His penchant for re-interpolating motifs in multiple pieces and his deliberation in sequencing his compositions into a diverse overarching flow imbue his digital chamber music with a holistic narrative quality, creating a multi-movement program of cohesive classical works as much as an album of electronic music.

d'Eon's music has long touched on religious themes. Leviathan shies away from overt religious or philosophical gravity, retreating instead into the realm of personal listening music. During the time of the bubonic plague in Europe, music was expanding out from strictly liturgical venues and into the home — music neither for worship nor for dancing in public. It is in this way that d'Eon's electronic compositions are not sacred, nor are they dance music.

This collection of electroacoustic vocal and piano improvisations was recorded in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico in the midst of the hottest month in recorded Puerto Rican history (it has since been replaced by a more recent date). While it is certainly not traditional piano and vocal improvisational performance by the strictest definition, in many ways this series of recordings acts as a return to fundamentals in spontaneous sonic exploration with very minimal processing in post-production. With piano and voice being the first instruments learned by the artist as a child, much of these improvisations act as a vehicle of a positive form of musical regression. The challenge at hand is to create a sound as full and textural as that of a fully electronic production across tens of channels, but only through three: piano, voice, and granular synthesis. This is a series of improvisations surrounding the topic of 21st century austerity, focusing specifically on the liberatory nature of certain technological innovations that most in the Global North now take for granted. How can you create art when you're worried about whether the food in your fridge will remain fresh past the evening when the power has been out all day? How can you remain in constant contact with your family and friends when all communications providers are at capacity in the midst of a Hurricane or other natural disasters? As there is no telling how long the power grid is going to remain functional in the oldest colony on the planet, it’s crucial that digital art and performance be produced here and now with the tools available, right up to the very point when they no longer are. Pianovoz Electroacústica places this nowness front and center, it can speak for itself as creative music, but illustrates the need to continue working even as the safety nets surrounding you begin to crumble all the more. More importantly, this series of improvisations acts as a warning: the Global North will only be able to ignore these realities up until the point at which they arrive at their doorstep. The time to make prepar