Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 112 Items

Ambivalence has the tendency to dance to its very own beat because of its implied ambiguity. It’s the antithesis to any kind of middle of the road business. And it’s something that rings particularly true for Joram Feitsma’s sophomore album “Flux“. Giving home to fifteen songs that were composed between 2017 and very late 2020, “Flux“ is the result of multiple years of experimenting with different styles, different tones, different feelings, exposing an emotional spectrum you thought you’ve lost in the fire for good. It’s sensual. it’s sensitive. It’s even a bit otherworldly. It’s a testament to the idea that we’re all capable of immense love regardless of its possible disillusionment and consequential losses. Hand numbered/limited to 200 copies.

When a synth master like Steve Moore joins forces with the legendary KPM, magic must materialise. And so it does with Analog Sensitivity: cinematic, enigmatic synthscapes to both haunt and heal. New York-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/film composer Steve Moore is probably best known for his synthesizer and bass guitar work as Zombi, together with Anthony Paterra. But he is also part of Miracle and Titan as well as being a prolific solo artist releasing music as Gianni Rossi, Lovelock and under his own name. The story of Analog Sensitivity starts with those soundtracks, or more specifically the time in between them. Rather than being commissioned by KPM, this LP comes from music Steve was recording sporadically and tinkering with for over three years during the downtime between his film projects. There were no ideas about what it was nor a plan for how it would be released, or even if it was going to be released at all. However, after Jon Tye invited him to play on the Ocean Moon project for KPM Steve realised that the hallowed library label might be the perfect home for what he had been working on. The people at KPM agreed. Finishing production in late 2019 in Albany, NY, he came up with the track sequencing and suddenly, he had an album: Analog Sensitivity.

A download code is included. Summer OF Seventeen are Monika Khot (nordra, ZEN Mother), William Fowler Collins, Daniel Menche, Faith Coloccia (mamiffer), and Aaron Turner. (sumac, Split CRANIUM).Wildfires plagued Washington state during the summer of 2017, their smoke drifting westward toward the Seattle area and toxifying the air. Shortly before that trauma, Monika Khot, William Fowler Collins, Daniel Menche, Faith Coloccia, and Aaron Turner had gathered at the latter two musicians' House Of Low Culture studio on idyllic Vashon Island with revered producer Randall Dunn. There they cut eight songs that capture the makeshift band's feelings of what Coloccia calls “a kind of doomsday lurking in the background.” It's as if these highly attuned players had a premonition.

A download code is included. First-ever official re-issue of the Ecuadorian composer’s stunning electroacoustic composition “Oeldorf 8” on vinyl and CD. Remastered by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin. Mesías Maiguashca (b. December 24th, 1938 in Quito / Ecuador) is a composer of Neue Musik, especially electroacoustic music, who studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Quito, at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY (1958–65), with Alberto Ginastera at the Instituto di Tella in Buenos Aires, at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne and, after a short return to Ecuador, attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt and the Fourth Cologne Courses for New Music in 1966–67 where he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen. From 1968 to 1972, Maiguashca worked closely with Stockhausen in the Electronic Music Studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne and joined Stockhausen's ensemble for performances at the German Pavilion at the Expo '70 in Osaka. In 1971 he became a founding member of the Oeldorf Group of composers and performers, and began work at the Centre Européen pour la Recherche Musicale in Metz, at Ircam in Paris, and at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. From 1990 – 2004 Maiguashca was Professor of Electronic Music at the Musikhochschule of Freiburg im Breisgau where he still lives today.

To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Luc Ferrari's birth Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of Photophonie, unpublished archives, spanning 1973-1992, revelatory collection of commercial, commission and secret music by electroacoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari.
« Photophonie » (1989) / Music for the photographic exhibition of Alain Willaume.
« Il était une fois » (1973) / Commissioned by the G.M.E.B.
« Trans-Voices » (1992) / Curated by the American Center, Paris.
« Leica » - (1977) / Advertising for the Leica camera.
Affiliated with French Radio’s Groupe de Musique Concrète, co-founder of the GRM with Pierre Schaeffer in 1958, Luc Ferrari (1929-2005), major figure of musique concrète and electroacoustic music, broke away to pave his own path of individualistic expressions of minimalist music, musical theater, field recordings, orchestral music and soundtracks…

Charlemagne Palestine's majestic 1976 work The Golden Mean, originally performed by Palestine on two pianos, is revisited here as The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn, a new collaboration between Palestine and enigmatic musician Rrose.
March 2018: the Festival Variations in Nantes commissions Charlemagne Palestine to reinvent The Golden Mean for two pianists. Palestine chose Rrose to join him in this new rendition of the work. Together, they performed The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn onstage at the main opera house in Nantes -- the sumptuous Théâtre Graslin – with extraordinary results.
The concept of the 'golden mean' goes back to the roots of mathematics, and ancient Greek philosophy. It is an important work in the Palestine mythos, embodying his total immersion in the power of the interval. "It's probably his most systematic work . . . a step-by-step journey through the intervals of the octave," says Rrose. "When we rehearsed it, we were noticing how each interval is like a universe of its own -- with its own history, emotions, and sonic qualities all mixed up together. Every time you move from one interval to the next, it feels like moving into another world.
I love the interval," Palestine told me in a recent interview. "I love when it plays with itself. That's what I learned from organ musics too. You can just do an interval, and if they're just slightly out of tune with each other, then they shimmer . . . they play themselves. And it sounds like somebody's playing lots of notes. In your ear, it's like an aural phenomenon . . . that's my whole concept. I make something that then does itself somehow. It continues by itself. So I don't have to always be there. And that makes my music a little less egocentric. So there's more space. Also for the listener — the ear plays with these things, and you're not always being given orders. Your ear isn't given orders all the time of what to listen for."
Beautifully recorded, with mastering by Rashad Becker of Dubplates and Mastering, The Golden Mean + Sheeenn feels expansive, radiant and hypnotic, opening new ears to its enduring mystery.
Rrose adds this note to listeners: "Do not focus your attention on the notes being played, but on the ocean of overtones swimming, suspended, overhead, brushing against one another, kissing one another, melting into one another.

Musique Plastique (Visible Cloaks, Pedro) rescue a nearly lost soundtrack to a Belgian avant-theatrical work from the 80s. For fans of Nuno Canavarro, Roberto Musci and Vito Ricci.
Like the wings Daedalus crafted for his son Icarus, John Gilbert Colman’s score for sampler, voice and chamber orchestra almost melted away completely, disappearing into the tides of time.
The album originally served as the score to an avant-garde production of the Greek myth that toured the Belgian theatre circuit in 1986. Director Guy Cassiers cast the play with 45 developmentally disabled actors enrolled at the Krauwelenhof school in Antwerp, working for six months with the young actors (aged 12-17) to discover and develop their talents, creating (by all accounts) a deeply moving piece of visual theatre. Rather than using dialogue, Cassier used movement, costumes and music tell the fable, words were only present as text fragments within the score, spoken by members of the chorus or sung by Rolande van Der Paal. Colman's compositions elevate the experimental narrative with broad shifts in mood, utilizing a pop-concrète style by incorporating sampled squeaking balloons, environmental recordings, tuned percussion, drum computer, and voice to accompany the traditional small chamber instrumentation. The music is reminiscent of other avant-theatrical pieces from that era by Nuno Canavarro, Milesi & Bacalov, Todd Barton, Vito Ricci and Roberto Musci, while standing on its own as a unique and moving piece of minimal music. Remastered DMM pressing.

The crossover between electronic music and classical composition has never been in more vibrant and dynamic health. Multifarious musician Emika explores this fertile ground on her ambitious new opus 'Melanfonie': her first orchestral composition, some four years in the making.
Funded by a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign that exceeded its target by an impressive €25,000.
While many rebel from their classical training never to return to it explicitly, Emika has always been attracted to the potential and freedoms offered by the symphony form. As well as taking inspiration from her electronic music background in composing the music itself, Emika also applied some of production and playback principles from that realm to create a piece whose every element has been carefully considered.
Emika is on a quest to try and change what we mean when we talk about ‘classical music’. For her, the magic of the ‘genre’ is about the instruments themselves and more importantly the people who play them; not the restricting traditions and conventions of the classical world itself. I want to change the face of classical music and give it a more honest and real image. It is time we had something other than pomp and circumstance and avant-garde squeaks and pops.”

After his impressive and acclaimed work with "For Now I Am Winter" and "The Chopin Project", multi-instrumentalist and composer Ólafur Arnalds goes on a journey in his home country Island for his latest album. He recorded seven songs within seven weeks in seven different locations together with local artists and friends like Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir (Of Monsters And Men) and Einar Georg Einarsson, influenced and inspired by each surrounding. The album also contains another bonus track „Study for Player Piano“.

Unreleased Neo Classic tracks by Max Richter. Hauschka, Johann Johannsson, Dustin O’Halloran, Sylvain Chauveau, etc. on Fat Cat's sub label 130701.