The Watchful Ear (blog)

Izvrstan blog: field recordings, eksperimentalna elektronika, noise i sl.


www.thewatchfulear.com/

CHRISTOPH KORN - SIMEON

CD Wandelweiser A lovely example of a very simple idea put into action. Christoph Korn is a sound and mixed media artist from Germany of whom I had not heard of before this release on the Wandelweiser label, but seems to work in a vaguely conceptual manner with his creations sometimes exploring ...

2JUNE 12, 20130

LEE PATTERSON, VANESSA ROSSETTO - TEMPERAMENT AS WAVEFORM

CD Another Timbre Caveats first, this is an album by two friends of mine released on a label owned by another friend who I occasionally do design work for. Try as I might to the contrary, objectivity will I guess naturally be more difficult to achieve. Read on with this in mind. So this album is ...

4JUNE 9, 20130

RLW - FALL SELIGER GEISTER

CD Dirter / Black Rose At first I wondered how the title of this great new album from Ralf Wehowsky may reference that of Helmut Lachenmann's second string quartet, which is named Reigen Seliger Geister. Not being a German speaker I did a quick web translation which revealed "seliger geister" to ...

2JUNE 7, 20130

DEDALUS, ANTOINE BEUGER, JÜRG FREY

CD Potlatch A discussion was held around the time of this disc's release, a discussion that has been held over other releases in the past, ,about whether the external, accidental, incidental sounds that creep into the recording should be welcomed or not. This lovely little CD, by the French quartet ...

5JUNE 5, 20130

JOE PANZNER, GREG STUART - DYSTONIA DUOS

CD ErstAEU The first release on Jon Abbey's new offshoot of his Erstwhile label then, a new imprint that seeks to be somewhat mysterious about its identity and intentions. We are meant, I guess, to ponder over the cryptic meaning of the label's acronym name, AMM style. Slightly more peculiar to ...

4MAY 26, 20130

CATHERINE LAMB, BRYAN EUBANKS - UNTITLED 12 (AFTER AGNES)

CD Sacred Realism I haven't owned a television for about fifteen years now, but prior to that, I owned just two TVs in my life. The first of these I bought when really young, second hand at a car boot sale or something similar. It was a very beautiful old box from the sixties, black and white, ...

TIM BLECHMANN, MANUEL KNAPP - VIII

CDr Nada I have for quite a while been a staunch supporter of the work of Tim Blechmann in these pages, and his ongoing collaborations with Manuel Knapp in particular, so it was a real pleasure to receive a further instalment of their duo work here a little while ago, a disc named VIII on the ...

SEIJIRO MURAYAMA, KAZUSHIGE KINOSHITA - 59:01.68

CD Ftarri Will we ever run out interesting conceptual ideas for making CDs? The music on Kazushige Kinshita and Seiji Murayama's duo disc on the Ftarri label appeared a good few months ago now, but I have only recently found the time to spend with it. The release is credited as a duo, with the ...

SARAH HUGHES- ACCIDENTS OF MATTER OR OF SPACE

Suppedaneum CD The first release on the very promising new Suppedaneum label in Chicago comes from a friend of mine, Sarah Hughes, so when I say that I think this one of the best things I have heard so far this year you are free to apply the appropriate caveats as you see fit. <

KEVIN DRUMM - HUMID WEATHER

Self released CD Around the turn of the millennium I was a big fan of Kevin Drumm's music. His first two or three albums, and some of his collaborative releases were highly influential on me, and I followed his every move. Then, at some point, he released what is probably his best known, and most ...

PST - LIVE IN ROME

CD Auditorium An unexpected release this one, a 2005 recording of the Prévost/Tilbury incarnation of AMM alongside an Italian trombonist named Giancarlo Schiaffini, released this year under the trio name PST on an Italian label that seems to primarily release DVDs featuring artists as diverse ...

BRUNO DUPLANT, PEDRO CHAMBEL, JAMIE DROUIN - FIELD BY MEMORY INHABITED 1 & 2

CD Rhizome-s Now this is a very nice CD. Once again its a release involving the French multi-instrumentalist Bruno Duplant that was probably created one way or another over the internet as the musicians involved are all in different countries. The liner notes indicate that the music here  is ...

MANUEL MOTA - RCK

5CD Box Dromos The inevitable thing when writing about Manuel Mota's work is that the usual list of comparisons is pulled out. So, Derek Bailey, Taku Sugimoto, Loren Connors, Tetuzi Akiyama, John Fahey etc... That's those out of the way first. The thing is, these comparisons are inevitable ...

ATOLÓN - CONCRET

CD Intonema The trio of Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ferran Fages and Ruth Barberán have been making music as a trio on and off for more than a decade now. This is (I think) their fourth album together as a trio, but they have appeared together in quite a few other group formations along the way as ...

EVA-MARIA HOUBEN - LANDSCAPES 1-4

CD Diafani Landscapes is one of ten new releases self-published in a short period of time by the Wandelweiser associated composer Eva-Maria Houben on her new Diafani label. The way the new label has started reminds me a lot of the first weeks of Radu Malfatti's similar B-boim imprint, when the ...

CHRIS ABRAHAMS, SABINE VOGEL - KOPFÜBERWELLE

CD Absinth Records When I leaf frustratedly through the heaps of stuff here I still have to listen to, pipe organs, for reasons I don't fully understand come up a lot more than they used to. Chris Abrahams' name seems to arise often as well, as the Australian pianist (and on this occasion pipe ...

CHRISTOPH SCHILLER, LEE DANZEISEN - 47°13′N7°E

Creative Sources CD One of who knows how many releases on the Creative Sources label sat awaiting my eventual attention here right now, Christoph Schiller and Lee Danzeisen's 47°13′N7°E might just be the only improvised spinett duo I'm ever likely to hear. In truth, before I first heard ...

BHOB RAINEY - WHEN YOU TALK, YOU HEAR FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Vinyl Self release A somewhat different release tonight. Bhob Rainey is perhaps best known as one half of the improvising group Nmperign, in principle a saxophonist but he has also produced a body of very good electroacoustic composition. When you talk, you hear from the other side falls into ...

TWO FROM JOHN BUTCHER

Bell Trove Spools CD. Northern Spy Records Winter Gardens Vinyl. Kukuruku Recordings Music can obviously be many things to many people. The music that saxophonist John Butcher makes across these two solo albums will, to many, sound confusing. To others it will be a challenge, an annoyance, an ...

EVA-MARIA HOUBEN - ORGELBUCH

CD Wandelweiser One of what I think totals ten recent releases by the German composer Eva-Maria Houben, Orgelbuch is the one amongst them not released on her own new Diafani label, appearing instead at the end of last year on Wandelweiser. Orgelbuch is an intriguing release. For the composit...

HILDEGARD VON BINGEN : JOHN CAGE

CD Wandelweiser And so on. As if to remind us that releases on the Wandelweiser label certainly do not all sound the same, or are particularly silent, this recent release from the label sounds quite unlike anything else the imprint has issued, and, despite containing in part works by John ...

KOSTIS KILYMIS - MORE NOISE AHEAD

CD Entr'acte So the most recent album by the London-based Greek musician Kostis Kilymis, who, for the sake of the necessary caveats can also be considered a good friend of mine. The album, released on Entr'acte and named More Noise Ahead contains ten shortish tracks put together with an array ...

absence makes the heart grow fonder

TARAB - SHARDS OF SPLINTERS - FRAGMENTS OF SCRATCHES/KILLUSTIKU KILLUD - KRIIMUDE KILLUD

CD Semper Florens The subtitle of the website belonging to Tarab, AKA the Australian sound artist Eamon Sprod reads "careful arrangements of sonic rubbish". This description describes his work well, and at the same time goes some way to point towards what I enjoy most in field recording work ...

JONAS KOCHER, GAUDENZ BADRUTT - STRATEGY OF BEHAVIOUR IN UNEXPECTED SITUATIONS

CD / Free download Insubordinations This delightfully titled album from the Swiss duo of Kocher (accordion) and Badrutt (electronics) is available as a CD, or as a free to download file from the label. It is not then necessary to pay for this music, but I thoroughly recommend that you do. A ...

CREMASTER & ANGHARAD DAVIES - PLUIE FINE

CD Potlatch Less fine rain, more of a seething stormy cauldron. Pluie Fine is a release three years in the making, the result of recordings swapped backward and forward between Cremaster, who are Barcelona based omni-musicians Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Ferran Fages and London based violinist ...

VARIABLE FORMATIONS. CAFÉ OTO, FEBRUARY 16TH 2013

I guess it was always inevitable that Saturday night's concert at Café Oto would produce exceptionally beautiful music. The six musicians that curator Simon Reynell brought together were each skilled performers whose normal areas of activity showed considerable overlap. The plan was for establis...

MARK SO / PATRICK FARMER - SPLIT CASSETTE

Windsmeasure Cassette I've written before more than once, and most recently in the latest issue of The Wire, about my admiration for Ben Owen's packaging for his Windsmeasure label. The job he has done for the little cassette tape I am writing about tonight is as nice as ever. Really beautiful ...

REED EVAN ROSENBERG - AT THE END OF AN ENDLESS STREAM

Accidie Cassette The first thing to note here, is that, try as I might, research however hard as I can, I haven't a clue how the raw materials for this forty minute long, two halved composition by the American computer musician Reed Evan Rosenberg were sourced. The tape states that the audio here ...

STEPHEN VITIELLO - DOWSING

Farpoint Recordings Vinyl Stephen Vitiello is a Richmond, Virginia based composer (sound artist?). This handsomely produced, vinyl only release came out late last year on the Cork based Farpoint Recordings label. The disc couples Dowsing,  a stereo mixdown of a gallery installation work that ...

KLAUS FILIP, TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA, ANDREA NEUMANN, IVAN PALACKÝ - MESSIER OBJECTS

Meenna CD A Messier object is a name given by a once prominent astronomer for objects often seen in the sky that were mistaken for comets. Frustrated  by them, he made a list of them so that they could be ignored in future. The four musicians here each use instruments that perhaps many would ...

VARIOUS - WANDELWEISER UND SO WEITER

Another Timbre 6x CD box Annoying but necessary caveats out of the way first- I am thanked in the liner notes of this box set, for my logistical and moral support to its curator and publisher Simon Reynell. This support amounts to driving a few musicians and bits of equipment about from time to ...

JÜRG FREY REALISED BY R. ANDREW LEE - PIANO MUSIC

CD Irritable Hedgehog More than a decade ago now I spent an exciting few weeks visiting the Sound 323 record shop in London purchasing as much of the then relatively young Wandelweiser label as I could get Mark Wastell to order in for me. One of the releases I hoovered up back then was the first ...

MATT EARLE, JASON KAHN, ADAM SUSSMANN - DRAUGHT

CD Consumer Waste Some recordings of improvised music work because they exude a certain sensuality- a sensation of the music sliding and intertwining around itself to create something that feels organic, almost animalistic- an alive, constantly changing lifeform. Usually, when I feel this way ...

ANONYMOUS - IMPROKUP!

DVD containing 30 hours of audio files. w.m.o/r or stream here. This is an interesting release. Its also the only recording I have written about here without actually hearing all of it, given that the work consists of a DVD containing thirty hours of audio files, which I began playing early ...

JOHN BUTCHER, MATTHEW SHIPP - AT OTO

CD Fataka John Butcher is one of my favourite musicians to watch live. I have been fortunate to have seen him play quite a bit over the past few years and it is always a captivating experience, for reasons I can't quite pin down. Beyond his incredible skill with the sax there is something about ...

EDÉN CARRASCO, CHRISTOF KURZMANN, LEONEL KAPLAN - CASA CORP

CD Dromos Given that the same old discussions about the impact of overt politics in experimental music have resurfaced on the internet again today, this is a timely (though coincidental) CD to be writing about this evening. Casa Corp is the title of a trio release on the Dromos label by Edén ...

CHIPSHOP MUSIC WITH TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA - PROTOCOL

A couple of things to say about this release before any serious review- firstly the usual caveats given that I consider all of the musicians here to be friends, was present at the live concert in Dublin that forms half of the release, and spent some time socialising with them around the West Irish ...

2012 AND ALL THAT.

So I kind of knew that the minute I relaxed my 'write every day' rule then it wouldn't be difficult for me to lapse into long periods of inactivity here, but trust me, if I had continued to post daily here over the last few weeks the content would have been either all unbearably unreadable apology ...

KEITH ROWE - SEPTEMBER

CD Erstwhile ErstLive Keith Rowe's most recent contribution to the Erstwhile label is a live recording of his New York performance from 11/9/11, a concert that coincided with the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre. The recording is, predictably, superb, if incredibly ...

0DECEMBER 6, 20129

SARAH HUGHES, KOSTIS KILYMIS - THE GOOD LIFE

CD Consumer Waste OK, so caveats out of the way first- Sarah Hughes and Kostis Kilymis are both good friends of mine and I heard an early version of this album a while ago. Take these facts into account before you read on, but beyond this I have no connection to this release at all. So The Good ...

D'INCISE - ARE FISHES NIHILIST? (ALL THIS IS NOT REALISTIC)

3" CDr Kaon Now here is a really very nice little CD. I have written quite a few times, pretty much always enthusiastically about the music of D'incise, the laptop/objects/textures musician best known as one half of the Diatribes duo. It has been a pleasure to be able to follow his work and hear ...

RADU MALFATTI, TAKU UNAMI

CD Erstwhile ErstLive A live recording then of a meeting of two of my favourite musicians, though in the case of one of them, Taku Unami, one wonders if musician is still the apposite term. By the time these two performed together in New York in September 2011, Unami had primarily stopped working ...

THE DOGMATICS - THE SACRIFICE FOR THE MUSIC BECAME OUR LIFESTYLE

Vinyl Monotype One redeeming pleasure that comes from the current resurgence of music released on vinyl (and in my opinion probably the one one) is that we get to hold big square record sleeves in our hands again, twelve inch design opportunities rather than little jewel case booklets. Such a ...

PETER BLAMEY - FORAGE

CD Avant Whatever When I was around nine or ten years old, I pulled the power chord from the back of my trusty radio cassette player one evening only to feel plastic casing at the end of the lead fall apart in my hands and who knows how many volts shoot up my arm for a second. Once I had gotten ...

EVENTLESS PLOT - RECON

CD Aural Terrains Eventless Plot is the name given to a trio of Greek musicians who appear to wish to remain nameless. Looking through both the liners to Recon, their new album on the Aural Terrains label, and the trio's own website, no mention is given of the group's names. The only hint offered ...

ANGUS CARLYLE, RUPERT COX - AIR PRESSURE

CD and booklet Gruenrekorder Why do so many albums of field recordings come attached to books of writing about their creation? What is it about this area of music that seems to attract long texts to accompany the audio? Perhaps the current trend for aligning field recording with the pointless ...

RICHARD KAMERMAN - NONE FOR THE MONEY

CD Copy for your Records Richard Kamerman is probably about as good an example as can be found of the new breed of (mostly) younger American improviser/experimental musicians. Kamerman deploys a sense of playfulness in most of what he does, from the consistently amusing, often long, even unwieldy ...

MARTIN KÜCHEN - HELLSTORM

Vinyl Mathka The Swedish saxophonist Martin Küchen is a really nice guy, but also an intense individual whose music has always had a deeply serious undertow to it. Hellstorm, his new vinyl release on the Mathka label is filled with dark musical imagery reflecting horrific events from Berlin and ...

RHODRI DAVIES - WOUND RESPONSE

Vinyl Alt.vinyl "and may the freed bear bathe his body amid the flows of the frozen north and not languish in the aquarium of distilled water in the academic garden" The above quote, from Malevich's Suprematist Manifesto is reproduced inside the extremely beautiful silkscreened cover to Rhodri ...

MICHAEL PISARO, TAKU SUGIMOTO - D MINOR / BB MAJOR

Slubmusic CD This new release, a collaborative composition by Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto, both guitarists and composers with a history of producing quiet music behind them, is unlike their first collaboration from last year in that rather than being a duo work it contains a recording of a ...

0OCTOBER 23, 20120

JOHN TILBURY - FOR TOMASZ SIKORSKI

CD Bocian / Bolt Joint release. I'll be honest, before purchasing this release I had not heard of the Polish composer Tomasz Sikorski,  Scouring the internet for information on him reveals little more beyond a lengthy list of works covering orchestral, chamber, electronic/tape and solo instrum...

STEPHEN CORNFORD, PATRICK FARMER, JASON KAHN - BRISTOL

Cassette and Download Pilgrim Talk Caveats first then- this cassette on the Pilgrim Talk label involves three musicians I consider to be friends, two of them very good friends. When Jason Kahn toured the UK back in February I had something to do with his tour, driving him about a bit. I also ...

MURMURATION AT CAFÉ OTO. 13TH OCTOBER 2012

I think I was one of the few who actually didn't think that last night's monumental affair of a concert organised by Simon Reynell in London was likely to produce music of any great value. To be clear, this wasn't because I didn't rate the musicians on display very highly- quite the contrary, the ...

AMM - TWO LONDON CONCERTS

CD Matchless A new AMM album then, always a welcome arrival, capturing two relatively recent London performances from the duo of Eddie Prévost and John Tilbury. one of which I attended, and the other I could not. Both capture really rather wonderful sets of music, the first, from the As Alike ...

A DELUGE OF TIM BLECHMANN

Tim Blechmann, Manuel Knapp - ivvvi Tim Blechmann - Honne Tim Blechmann - Sine Tempore Free Downloads Moka Bar The last couple of weeks have seen three new releases on Tim Blechmann's Moka Bar netlabel, two of which are solos by Blechmann, and the other, which in itself is a set of three ...

SEBASTIAN LEXER, CHRISTOPH SCHILLER - LUFTWURZELN

CD Matchless Old and new. This new CD on Matchless by Sebastian Lexer and Christoph Schiller keeps bringing these opposite ends of a spectrum to mind. If Schiller has taken an old instrument, a spinet, and approached it in new ways, then so has Lexer, whose Piano+ digital enhancements of a ...

MATT DAVIS - GHOST / LIGHT

Cassette Field I am currently trying to write an essay of sorts for these pages about how physical displacement to a different environment perhaps causes you to listen differently or approach sound in unfamiliar ways. I wonder if such thinking might be applied to the various members of the ...

STREIFENJUNKO - SVAL TORV

2x Vinyl Sofa Music There is something about Sval Torv, an impressively attractive twin vinyl set on the Sofa label by the Norwegian duo Streifenjunko that is really hard to pin down with words, but somehow slips into your consciousness after listening for a while, something subtle and oblique ...

CHOI JOONYONG - DANTHRAX

CD Trigger! Oh boy. So Ryu Hankil has started a companion label to his Manual imprint, called Trigger!, specifically to release tracks that could be categorised, albeit a little loosely, as dance music. The second release on the label is something called Danthrax, a disc by Choi Joonyong, made ...

A NEW LICK OF PAINT

So as you might have noticed, I have redesigned The Watchful Ear again. This is the fourth look that the blog has had now, if you count the barely designed at all first incarnation of the site. I have redesigned the site this time for a number of reasons. As I have now stopped writing here every ...

MIKE MAJKOWSKI TREMOLO

CD and Download Avant Whatever Mike Majkowski is a young Australian double bass player. This new release on the Avant Whatever label is his second solo CD following a disc on creative Sources a few years back. It is technically a remarkable album, but its also very enjoyable to just listen to as ...

TWO FROM ENTR'ACTE

Glenn Bach, John Kannenberg - Dispersal Patterns. CD Entr'acte E119 Aside from what I gleaned from a few minutes' googling, I know nothing about the musicians behind the first of these two releases issueded on the Entr'acte label. There are two tracks here, which, to paraphrase the press ...

0SEPTEMBER 23, 20120

RYU HANKIL, HONG CHULKI, NICK HOFFMAN - SONNE

Vinyl and Bandcamp Download Pilgrim Talk Sonne is a vinyl or Bandcamp enabled download release on the Chicago based Pilgrim Talk label. The disc contains two fifteen minute long tracks recorded in a concert setting in Seoul, 2009 by the trio of Seoul based Ryu Hankil and Hong Chulki alongside ...

CHRISTINE ABDELNOUR, BONNIE JONES, ANDREA NEUMANN - AS:IS

CD Olof Bright This new release on the Olof Bright label includes some interesting liner notes by Thomas Milroth that point out how improvised music has changed over recent years as the new connections offered by the internet and by easier global travel have opened up the potential for musicians ...

WEDNESDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER

So the trip to the Isle of Skye was stunning. The island was everything we hoped for and more, and the rest and complete break from both music and the internet in general that I managed refuelled the batteries nicely. Somewhere in me I have something to write about the experience of Skye, and in ...

0SEPTEMBER 20, 20120

MY FAVOURITE ALBUM - BEN GWILLIAM

My favourite album by Ben Gwilliam aged 31 & 10 months.  Annihilate this post Its sort of funny to look over a stack of cds, vinyls, tapes and the malarkey and think that there is one within that pile that stands above all for me as a favourite singular thing. In actual fact, I don't ...

0SEPTEMBER 11, 20121

MY FAVOURITE ALBUM - LUTZ EITEL

My favourite record of all time: Miles Davis, Someday My Prince Will Come, 1961. It’s not open for internal debate, really. I first heard it close to 30 years ago, listened to it innumerable times and never once took it off, or later out, of the player. It was one of the first records I bought ...

0SEPTEMBER 10, 20120

MY FAVOURITE ALBUM BY MICHAEL PISARO

Bach: the Goldberg Variations, played by Glenn Gould (1955) I imagine most of us hear our favorite albums when we are young. Our introduction to the constellation of musical worlds is usually through a single point, which nonetheless sketches the whole state of the impossibly rich and daunting ...

0SEPTEMBER 9, 20121

MT FAVOURITE ALBUM - RICHARD SANDERSON

Faust – The Faust Tapes – (Virgin Records 1973) When I first came across this album, as a 14 year old, a couple of years after its release, I was amazed by the amount of rule breaking there was, even within the context of “progressive rock” –  the cover was back to front, with the ...

0SEPTEMBER 8, 20120

MY FAVOURITE ALBUM BY BRUNO DUPLANT

Luc Ferrari - Presque Rien What is your favorite album ever? What a simple, but vast and complex subject/question! So much music, so many sounds (through my window, my every day life, my dreams), composers, musicians could provide the answer to this question. So much... In fact, almost anythi...

0SEPTEMBER 7, 20120

MY FAVOURITE ALBUM BY JACQUES OGER

Miles Davis - Bag's Groove If I were asked which CD by Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Keith Rowe or Michael Pisaro I prefer, I would not hesitate and most likely it would not take me more than a few seconds to come up with an answer. But my favourite album ever, I don’t even have to think about it ...

0SEPTEMBER 6, 20122

MY FAVOURITE ALBUM - RICHARD PINNELL

Keith Rowe, John Tilbury - Duos for Doris. Like, I would imagine is the case for the vast majority of people reading these pages, choosing a single favourite album to write something about is nigh on impossible. On any given day I could change my mind over what is my favourite album. Certain ...

0SEPTEMBER 5, 20120

WEDNESDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER

So this is my final daily post here, for now at least. Julie and I leave for Scotland, via the Lake District in the morning and will not return until the 18th September. I have set up seven posts that will automatically appear (hopefully). Each of these, apart from the first one, which will appear ...

0SEPTEMBER 5, 20120

TUESDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER

No post tonight. I have been charging about all evening since getting home from work trying to sort my life out enough to be able to go away for ten days, as we will be on Thursday morning. This evening I have been writing my own personal entry in the "What's your favourite album?" series of posts, ...

0SEPTEMBER 4, 20120

TAKEFUMI NAOSHIMA, MITSUTERU TAKEUCHI, TAKEHIRO HIRAMA, KANICHIRO ODA - 4

CD Encadre Its been a good while since I wrote about anything thoroughly conceptual, but then its been a while since I received anything here from the Encadre label from Japan. Recently released though is the fourth in the series of discs by the four musicians/composers/troublemakers Takefumi ...

WILL MONTGOMERY / ROBERT CURGENVEN SPLIT ON WINDSMEASURE

Vinyl Windsmeasure So back to reviewing music then, after a few days off from here to review some music. Some of what I have been writing about over the last few days for The Wire was released on vinyl, and so today, as I still had my turntable plugged in and dusted down I went to the pile of ...

0SEPTEMBER 3, 20120

SATURDAY 1ST SEPTEMBER

As I write this I have just finished writing the fourth of four pieces that I hope will all make it into the next issue of The Wire. Its been a tough few days fitting all of this in around my equally busy day job, but then what would this blog be without a regular dose of the "poor tired reviewer's ...

0SEPTEMBER 2, 20120

FRIDAY 31ST AUGUST

I don't know what to write here tonight. As I said yesterday, I don't think I will write a review for these pages until Sunday evening because I am working hard to finish quite a bit of work for The Wire. I am enjoying writing quite a bit at present, and am very much looking forward to overhauling ...

0AUGUST 31, 20122

THURSDAY 30TH AUGUST

OK, so as things have turned out I have found myself with quite a bit of writing to do for The Wire over the next few days, so, given that I want to do things properly, and magazine deadlines are tight, I don't think I will be able to write a review post here now until Sunday. The future for this ...

0AUGUST 30, 20120

JASON LESCALLEET SONGS ABOUT NOTHING

2CD Erstwhile I should probably start by saying that as today's double CD has been described repeatedly in internet circles as amongst the best albums released in a while, I potentially approach it differently to I might approach an album I had heard nothing about, by a musician who may be new to ...

TUESDAY 28TH AUGUST

No post tonight. I'm partly getting myself into the groove of writing only three days a week, which will begin in September, and also working on a few other bits and pieces tonight for various other projects. While it will be odd not having to come and log in here and write some drivel or other ...

0AUGUST 28, 20120

DANNY MCCARTHY - THE MEMORY ROOM

Book and CD Farpoint Recordings One of the interesting things I have tried to find writing about over the past year or two is how our memory works with sound. As Radu Malfatti's music lead me to think about how short durations of time can play games with how we remember sounds (Is this pitch the ...

SPILL - FLUORESCE

CD Monotype Tonight another release from Spill, who are the Magda Mayas and Tony Buck duo. This, I think their third duo release together is named Fluoresce, and has appeared on the Monotype label in a nicely designed and illustrated sleeve. For this release the usual piano/drums instrumentation ...

SATURDAY 25TH AUGUST

Utterly exhausted tonight, and so not going to write a review, rather head off to bed with a book. I am looking forward to taking ten days off of work soon, not only for the rest and the chance to visit a new place with Julie, but also I am looking forward to not having to write these slightly ...

0AUGUST 25, 20120

BARRY CHABALA, BONNIE JONES, LOUISA MARTIN, TISHA MUKARJI, TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA, GABRIEL PAIUK

CDr Another Timbre Tonight's CD is one I have been pondering over for over a month now- a recent release on the Another Timbre label by an internet-connected sextet "project managed" by the New Jersey guitarist Barry Chabala. Unbalanced in, unbalanced out was put together over a period of time by ...

D'INCISE - PRAIRIE

2CDr Obs "When it gets boring it gets interesting. How far can one go with a very simple idea?" So reads the opening line to a new double CD album by the Swiss musician D'Incise, who is one half of the group Diatribes. Prairie contains four long tracks, each of which vaguely follows the concept ...

FERRAN FAGES - LLUM MOLL

CD Entr'acte On the way to work in the car this morning I listened through to Ferran Fages' new release Llum Moll on the Entr'acte label. About ten hours later, I went back to my car to drive back home. I got in, turned the key, had a quick drink of water before settling down for the hour long ...

TUESDAY 21ST AUGUST

No post tonight as I am busy working on writing for elsewhere and relistening to the BBC recordings of last week's Cage Prom, which you can hear, until Friday, at the BBC iPlayer site, and I really recommend you do as it was a fine evening of performances, and the BBC's coverage of it here, while ...

0AUGUST 21, 20120

KOJI ASANO - TRAVEL COUPONS

CD Solstice A day off today, spent mostly in Oxford buying walking clothing with my better half and buying books with musicians. I now have everything I need for eight days on a Hebridean island. Tonight I have spent some time with a CD I have had here for a little while that has confused me ...

CYRIL BONDI, PHONOTOPY - KOMATSU

CD and free download Insubordination Komatsu is the title of a rather nice new album on the consistently strong Insubordinations net label by the duo of Cyril Bondi (floor tom and objects) and Phonotopy, the artist name of Yann Leguay, who is credited with Cracked Electronics, which on this ...

MITES - PASSING RESEMBLANCE

CD Copy for your Records The music of Mites, who is Israeli Grisha Shakhnes, reminds me of a sensation I also have while listening to Jeph Jerman's music- a kind of strange disorientation that comes partly out of the feeling that I should be able to recognise many of the sounds that appear in ...

FRIDAY 17TH AUGUST

Well its approaching 2AM and Julie and I have only just got in from a long night in London attending the John Cage celebration Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert was actually very good indeed, some parts very strong, others not so much, but on the whole a very enjoyable and impressive ...

0AUGUST 18, 20122

GINTAS K

Cassette Copy for your Records So tonight I returned to the cassette tape by Gintas K released not that long ago by the Copy for your Records label that I played a few times yesterday. The tape does not seem to have a title, and the name Gintas K is the musician name of Lithuanian digital/elec...

WEDNESDAY 15TH AUGUST

No review again today I am afraid. I have actually spent a couple of hours with some music today, a tape by Gintas K on the Copy for your Records label, but after listening through to it three times I found myself still staring blankly at the computer screen wondering what I might or might not ...

0AUGUST 15, 20120

TUESDAY 15TH AUGUST

Pleased to finally get a day off of work tomorrow after what I think has been seven straight days slog. Its been nice late tonight to sit then with an album I have played on and off over the last month or so, when I'm in the right mood for it. Tonight after a strenuous day at work and a nice dinner ...

0AUGUST 15, 20120

MONDAY 13TH AUGUST

No review tonight I am afraid. My day has been pretty rubbish from start to finish, but it ended this evening with a very long wait in my car in a traffic jam that saw me not get home before 10PM, and with a headache. If I learned anything from last night it is to not try and write reviews when ...

0AUGUST 13, 20120

MUURA - TAPE

Cassette Organized Music from Thessaloniki I worked twelve hours today, and fell asleep soon after arriving home, only to be awakened again by the phone fifteen minutes later, so its with a heavy head and a grumpy outlook, not helped at all by the revolting disgrace that is the Olympics closing ...

ALLON KAYE - TINY FASCINATOR

Cassette Senufo Editions Pretty tired tonight after a long day at work, with a twelve hour shift to come tomorrow still. So maybe a brief review tonight of a shortish C20 cassette that came out a little while back now on the Senufo Editions label. I get a lot of music sent to me by Allon Kaye, ...

FRIDAY 10TH AUGUST

No post tonight, for a few reasons, one of which is that I am busy trying to finish some design work I took on recently, but also this blog's server seems to be playing up a bit this evening, and its frustrating trying to get a post written without everything freezing up for a moment or so. Emails ...

0AUGUST 10, 20120

THURSDAY 9TH AUGUST

Its hard not to compare the music I am writing about tonight to the music I wrote about yesterday, given the proximity of the two reviews to one another within this blog's timeline, and also, to some degree given the shape and form of the music. Catherine Lamb's three bodies (moving), a forty-five ...

0AUGUST 10, 20124

WEDNESDAY 8TH AUGUST

Its never easy for me personally to write about the music of Morton Feldman. I never quite manage to find words that come even close to doing it justice. I find it even harder to be able to describe what it is about one recording of Feldman that sets it apart from any others. The past couple of ...

0AUGUST 8, 20120

TUESDAY 7TH AUGUST

No review post tonight I'm afraid, my evening off, which I am spending with Julie. We've cooked, (well, Julie has) and enjoyed some homemade pasta and now, after we have both finished long days at work its time to put the feet up with a chilled drink rather than think about listening to, or writing ...

0AUGUST 7, 20120

MONDAY 6TH AUGUST

Just two guys playing acoustic instruments in an old chapel. In some ways, that's maybe all you need to know about Michel Doneda and Nils Ostendorf's recent release Cristallisation on the Absinth label. The brief liner notes printed on the sleeve bring home to us the weight of detail that underli...

0AUGUST 7, 20120

SUNDAY 5TH AUGUST

Some straight down the middle improv tonight then courtesy of Christoph Schiller and Birgit Ulher's Kolk album on Another Timbre. Schiller plays spinet, a modified, prepared version of the early predecessor to the piano, and Ulher plays trumpet, with a radio, speaker and assorted other items added. ...

0AUGUST 6, 20120

SATURDAY 4TH AUGUST

Well who knows what the hell to make of this... Dancing in Tomelilla is a new release on the Hibari label credited to the Cool Quartet with Lina Nyberg featuring Eric La Casa. The Cool Quartet are Axel Dorner, (trumpet) Zoran Terzic, (piano) Jan Roder (bass) and Sven-Ake Johansson (drums). The ...

0AUGUST 4, 20120

FRIDAY 3RD AUGUST

Tonight a CD on the SOFA label by a group named Muringa, who are Klaus E.Holm, (alto sax and clarinet) Tor Haugerud, (percussion, drums) Kim Myhr (zither, contact mice, glockenspiel, singing bowls and guitar) and Martin Taxt (tuba). The album is named The Unknown Knowns and is essentially acoustic ...

0AUGUST 3, 20120

THURSDAY 2ND AUGUST

No review tonight. Instead I will do something I haven't done much of in a while and plug some bits and pieces by friends I quite like the look of (the bits and pieces, not the friends...!) Just when I keep thinking to myself that there isn't much happening concert-wise this year things keep ...

0AUGUST 3, 20120

WEDNESDAY 1ST AUGUST

I wonder how many reviews of this new release on the Potlatch label will open with a line wondering why an acoustic accordion trio are named 300 Basses? A good few I imagine. The trio here are Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Jonas Kocher and Luca Venitucci, and this disc of six tracks is named Sei Ritorn...

0AUGUST 2, 20122

TUESDAY 31ST JULY

An interesting album tonight from a composer whose name I am aware of but whose music had not crossed my path until this release. Arturas Bumšteinas is a Lithuanian composer and visual artist who has quite a body of work behind him despite his relatively young age of 30. Three Sixteens is a new ...

0AUGUST 1, 20120

MONDAY 30TH JULY

Tonight's CD is a really difficult one to review. Fabula is a disc by the quartet of Axel Dorner, Ernesto Rodrigues, Abdul Moimeme and Ricardo Guerreiro on the Creative Sources label. I've enjoyed listening to the CD on and off over recent days, but there are a number of issues arise when I come to ...

0JULY 30, 20120

SUNDAY 28TH JULY

A day off of reviewing today after four straight days of lengthy reviews, much of it spent just sat reading while I caught up on a load of listening. Work has been pretty tough for the past few weeks, and there doesn't look like there will be much respite over the next few weeks either, so with ...

0JULY 29, 20120

SATURDAY 28TH JULY

A Congregation of Vapours is the recent, and to date most impressive album by the Dublin based composer/improviser/sound sculptor Fergus Kelly. Released on the Cork based Farpoint Recordings label, this set of eight pieces highlight some subtle and very welcome changes in Kelly's solo work. If ...

0JULY 29, 20121

FRIDAY 27TH JULY

So tonight a CD on the Another Timbre label by the trio of Angharad Davies, (violin) Tisha Mukarji (piano) and Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (zither). Outwash was recorded in a church London last year. I attended a concert by the trio at the same venue a few hours after this album was recorded, and ...

0JULY 28, 20123

LANCE AUSTIN OLSEN - THIEF

Free Download Infrequency So, oddly, as the site received its 333,333th visitor sometime today, so the Visitor counter feed at the bottom of the page started doing odd things and, on my computer at least, is showing two different counts, similar but a few hits different. Strange. Anyway this ...

WEDNESDAY 25TH JULY

So to Crosshatches, the recent release by the long-distance duo of Toshiya Tsunoda and Michael Pisaro, two of my favourite musicians/field recordists/composers together for the first time on an album created using the internet as the bridge across the Pacific ocean. A long work, divided into eight ...

0JULY 25, 20120

TUESDAY 24TH JULY

I'm sorry, no post tonight. I am really quite exhausted after a couple of long tough days at work and not getting much sleep last night, primarily due to the horrible humidity that suddenly hit us yesterday after many weeks and months of rain. Tonight I sit and type this while close to just falling ...

0JULY 25, 20125

STEPHEN CORNFORD, PATRICK FARMER, LEE PATTERSON AT V22

So, right, what is there to say about yesterday afternoon's concert at the old Peek Freans biscuit factory in London beyond mere description of the event? Its difficult to know precisely. Some description is certainly needed to get a handle on what we were presented with. From the outset I felt a ...

SUNDAY 22ND JULY

Just home, earlier than usual, from a London concert, but this one started at half past five and ended at eight, which makes it one of my favourite concerts of all time. Why can't more Sunday gigs happen at these hours? Anyway despite being home earlier I'm still a little too tired to write about ...

0JULY 22, 20120

KOSTIS KILYMIS - I STAYED IN THIS ROOM FOR A YEAR

Free Download Compost and Height Tonight some thoughts on a film I have seen screened a couple of times, once as a looping installation at the Audiograft Festival in Oxford back in February, and once just last weekend at a semi private screening of the film, alongside another one, projected ...

FRIDAY 20TH JULY

So tonight a release named, excellently, Tsstt! from the latest batch to flow out of Poland's Monotype Records, a release by the quartet of Xavier Charles, (clarinet) Jean-Philippe Gross, (electro-acoustic devices) Franz hautzinger (quartertone trumpet) and Lionel Marchetti (Revox B77 and shortwa...

0JULY 20, 20120

THURSDAY 19TH JULY

Today was a miserable day. Apart from the fact it has been grey and wet now for about a month, and today just followed on in the same suit, Julie has gone down with the virus I had a few days back, work was tough, my back aches a lot and I poured coffee into my lap this evening. Ah well, only ...

0JULY 20, 20120

WEDNESDAY 18TH JULY

OK, so much better tonight after a relaxing day spent working at snails pace on a CD sleeve design and listening my way through a lot of music today.Tonight's review then is of one of the most recent batch of discs from the Another Timbre label- an album named Chantier 1 by the trio of Pascal ...

0JULY 19, 20120

TUESDAY 17TH JULY

Sorry, not at all well tonight. I had to stop the car on my way home to be sick and have got worse since. Just a virus of some kind, but I am not feeling at all well tonight and my headache is such that staring at this screen any longer than necessary is unbearable. If I feel well enough int he ...

0JULY 17, 20120

EDDIE PRÉVOST''S 70TH BIRTHDAY CONCERT

OK, so some kind of round up of the weekend's musical events is in order, but really, having taken in I think a total of seventeen different pieces of music/film over the two days there is no way I can write about every one of them, so an overview of each event is all I am likely to manage, ...

0JULY 17, 20120

SUNDAY 15TH JULY

OK, so its 1AM and Julie and I are only just home from two quite intense days of music in London. Saturday night we went to Café Oto, where we attended a very busy and very humid 70th birthday celebration concert for Eddie Prévost, which included some strong performances, not the least of them ...

0JULY 16, 20120

SATURDAY 14TH JULY

An early apologetic post today, as I am about to head into London for a couple of days of concerts, beginning this evening with a gig at Café Oto to celebrate Eddie Prevost's 70th birthday. I'm not taking a computer with me, and Julie and I are staying in London overnight so I won't be able to ...

0JULY 14, 20120

FRIDAY 13TH JULY

Tonight a typically oblique little Cdr on the reliably creative Copy for your records label, this one the fourth in their series of "fan" CDrs, which consist of a small 3" disc encased within a clear plastic 5" outer disc, which the label then paint in a garish yet somehow quite attractive manner. ...

0JULY 13, 20120

THURSDAY 12TH JULY

Tonight a CD by Francisco Meirino and Michael Esposito entitled 01" Ghosts of case file 142. I have a few difficulties with this particular release. not because of how it sounds, which is actually quite good, but with the claims of where the source material originates. The album contains a single ...

0JULY 12, 20122

WEDNESDAY 11TH JULY

Not at home again tonight, enjoying a couple of night pampering at the hands of the woman I love. Tonight here's another boring old flyer from a concert way back when. I'm not actually sure which year this one comes from. I am guessing around 2002, maybe slightly earlier. The event was one of a ...

0JULY 11, 20122

TUESDAY 10TH JULY

No post tonight as Julie and I are taking an evening to relax, eat and drink cider in peace and quiet. I was going to post an archive flyer photo again tonight and add a few nostalgic, but generally boring words on it after, but instead I have just heard th news that our community of music has lost ...

0JULY 10, 20120

MONDAY 9TH JULY

So to another example of music being made by musicians oceans apart and having never met in person. This one is I think the first virtual meeting between two of this way of working's most recognised and prolific musicians, Barry Chabala in New Jersey, USA and Bruno Duplant, somewhere (I think) in ...

0JULY 9, 20120

SUNDAY 8TH JULY

Tonight the first of a couple of CDs I have picked up recently by Mites, which is the working name used by Grisha Shakhnes, a musician I have distantly known for a few years now, and who lives in Israel, though if I remember correctly he originates from somewhere in Eastern Europe. His instruments ...

0JULY 9, 20120

SATURDAY 7TH JULY

Tonight some thoughts on a quite remarkable release that, to do it real justice needs a lot of writing and a more structured listening schedule, but alas I haven't been able to do that this time. The release is an eight Cdr set (yes, eight) on the wonderful Windsmeasure label containing thirty-one ...

0JULY 7, 20120

FRIDAY 6TH JULY

And so a return to reviewing CDs, which given just how many are piled up here right now is a good move. Tonight an unusual and curious release on Mattin's w.m.o/r label, a live recording of a composition by Esther Ferrer named Concert ZAJ pour 30 ou 60 void. The piece is a vocal work for massed ...

0JULY 6, 20120

THURSDAY 5TH JULY

OK so the strains of the last week or so have now taken their toll and tonight I feel incapable of anything other than collapsing into bed, so that is what I aim to do just as soon as I have hit the publish button on this post. Writing about the Anonymous Zone project was very difficult for me, for ...

0JULY 5, 20120

THE ANONYMOUS ZONE PT.3

Free Download Another Timbre And then so to the third and final set of four pieces that make up the initial launch of Another Timbre's Anonymous Zone series of free downloads. Writing about these pieces of music has been really difficult. Last night I was so tired I was near to passing out, ...

THE ANONYMOUS ZONE PT.2

Free Download Another Timbre So to the next four tracks at the Another Timbre Anonymous Zone. Before talking about them though, some thoughts about my writing yesterday. i set ou tho try and discuss the music, and not slip into the game of trying to identify which musicians are responsible for ...

0JULY 4, 20120

THE ANONYMOUS ZONE PT.1

Free Download Another Timbre Tonight, and the next two nights, I am going to write about elements of a wonderful new project launched by the Another Timbre label, named The Anonymous Zone. The project consists of a series of shortish tracks uploaded to a page at the AT site as 320kbps Mp3 files ...

0JULY 3, 20120

SUNDAY 1ST JULY

So today I drove Radu back from Sheffield to Heathrow, and then on home myself, a four and a half hour road trip all together, and one fuelled entirely by inordinate amounts of coffee. This evening, on arriving home I fell asleep within minutes and stayed asleep for a good few hours, such is how ...

0JULY 2, 20120

SATURDAY 30TH JUNE

So another extremely full day of sitting listening to other people working hard making music, some seven hours of it or so today, maybe around ten pieces of music played by a group of extremely talented musicians. I am however utterly shattered, and typing this whilst still finding the energy to ...

0JUNE 30, 20120

FRIDAY 29TH JUNE

So, I am writing this post from Simon Reynell's living room, listening to the gently percussive sound of his computer printer spewing out half a rain forest's worth of scores to be performed by various musicians tomorrow over in Huddersfield. Today was a quite beautiful day spent in a church in ...

0JUNE 29, 20120

THURSDAY 28TH JUNE

Well its 1AM and I'm not long home after an exhausting but also thoroughly enjoyable day. It started off with a long drive out into the north of the county to a remote village church where we recorded Radu Malfatti solo, followed by the concert back down in Oxford city centre, which despite ...

0JUNE 29, 20120

WEDNESDAY 27TH JUNE

OK, so Austrian / Swiss composers and musicians have been successfully collected from their respective airports and delivered to their accommodation in West Oxfordshire ready for the concert tomorrow evening and recording sessions throughout the day. The journeys were smooth, and a very enjoyable ...

0JUNE 28, 20120

TUESDAY 26TH JUNE

OK, so this is the first of what will probably be four or five days without a CD review here as I undertake a few  days of what will most likely be highly enjoyable travelling and music-listening with some very wonderful musicians. I don't think I will be writing in any detail at all about many of ...

0JUNE 27, 20121

A NIGHT IN AN OLD BISCUIT FACTORY

So last night's concert at V22 organised by Simon Reynell's Another Timbre label then. The evening took place in the cavernous, natural echo chamber that is the old Peak Freans biscuit factory in Bermondsey, South London. (I can sadly report that a thorough search did not produce even the crumbling ...

0JUNE 26, 20120

SUNDAY 24TH JUNE

Just home tonight from a rather great concert in London at the impressive V22 space in South London. This was the first time I had been able to get there, despite there being several concerts that have taken place there of late I would have loved to have attended had I been able. The venue is a ...

0JUNE 25, 20120

SATURDAY 23RD JUNE

Utterly shattered tonight after a long week that followed several other long weeks. I have a week off of work now, which will in itself be busy with other musical activities, but at least my mind can switch off of the manic day job for seven days and I can unwind a little. Tonight a CD by a very ...

0JUNE 23, 20120

FRIDAY 22ND JUNE

Not a CD review tonight, but a DVD-Audio review, which in itself is something of an achievement for me given that I don't own a DVD player or a TV. To play the The Smith Quartet with John Tilbury's new release of music by Morton Feldman I had to hook the audio-out of my other computer up to my ...

0JUNE 23, 20120

THURSDAY 21ST JUNE

Tonight, another new release on the Infrequency label run by the Canadian duo Lance Austin Olsen and Jamie Drouin. This one is a duo disc containing seven short improvisations by Drouin, playing modular synth and radio, and the German flautist Sabine Vogel, who also adds stones to flute on the list ...

0JUNE 21, 20120

WEDNESDAY 20TH JUNE

No review today I am afraid. I have been busy with a million other things today, and while Cds have been playing in constant rotation and preparing me for several reviews to finish this week, I haven't had the time today. So as the archive flyer posts seem so popular (ahem) here's another one. ...

0JUNE 21, 20120

TUESDAY 19TH JUNE

I seem to have had a headache for two days now, I think because I am just overtired through working too hard and trying to get too much done that maybe I don't need to, but its been ages since I moaned about how tired I am at the start of a review, and I know how some people miss my complaints. ...

0JUNE 19, 20120

MONDAY 18TH JUNE

Bellows is the duo of Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti, and Reelin' is the excellent title of what I think is their second album together. I wrote about the first one here.  Reelin' is released on the Entr'acte label which has a close ongoing relationship with Ielasi's various projects. The ...

0JUNE 18, 20120

SUNDAY 17TH JUNE

No review tonight. I have been working hard writing all day, trying to figure out a short essay for the programme I hope will accompany the upcoming concert I have organised in Oxford in less than two weeks time. Details can be found by clicking on the box ad over on the left there, but then you ...

0JUNE 18, 20120

FVRTVR - GOBI WOW

Vinyl Never Come Ashore Hmm, what to make of this one. This vinyl disc arrived here a couple of months ago now, but was shamefully overlooked by myself as it disappeared under a pile of other records, only to be retrieved today when I did some tidying up. I have managed to give it a few spins ...

FRIDAY 15TH JUNE

Daylight is the name of a new CD on the Emanem label by the duo of John Butcher (tenor and soprano sax) and Mark Sanders (percussion). Now, John Butcher is right up there amongst my favourite saxophonist's I enjoy watching/hearing live. Down the years I have seen/heard him in a number of different ...

0JUNE 16, 20120

THURSDAY 14TH JUNE

Tonight a CD from a duo of musicians based (I think) in Sydney, Australia who I had not heard of before but have been really impressed by their debut release. Black Cracker are the duo of Rishin Singh (trombone) and Jon Watts (Mixer) and their debut release incisions is the first disc on Sam ...

0JUNE 15, 20120

WEDNESDAY 13TH JUNE

Tonight's CD is another recent release on the Consumer Waste label by the Barcelona based duo Cremaster, who are Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Ferran Fages. This disc, titled Live at Audiograft includes a single twenty-six minute live set recorded at said festival in Oxford just three months ago. I ...

0JUNE 13, 20120

TUESDAY 12TH JUNE

I'm averaging about five reviews a week at present, which is a good rate I think, but that does mean that I take two nights off a week, which means that these old archive concert flyers will come thick and fast for a while, at least until I get bored of scanning them. This evening after work Julie ...

0JUNE 13, 20121

MONDAY 11TH JUNE

Compilation releases don't really work all that well with the way I usually write this blog. I either cut down my waffle considerably (yeah, I know...) or write so much nobody could ever get to the end of the post conscious. I have actually opted out of writing about compilations all together run ...

0JUNE 12, 20121

SUNDAY 10TH JUNE

Tonight a new CD on the Consumer Waste label by the Chicago-based duo of Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer who perform under the name Coppice. Holes/Tract is a four track album that sees the duo work with shruti box and a modified boom box tape player with tape loops. Quite an intriguing combination ...

0JUNE 11, 20120

SATURDAY 9TH JUNE

The answer to the failing Greek economy seems to be to move it to Oxford, UK, if Kostis Kilymis' Organised Music from Thessaloniki label is anything to go by. In the last year since Kostis arrived around here his label has issued a fair number of releases, with two more having been pushed into my ...

0JUNE 9, 20120

FRIDAY 8TH JUNE

So maybe this wasn't the best choice of CD to try and write about near the end of an exhausting week. The most recent disc in the Heresy Records label's catalogue is a realisation of Manfred Werder's score 2009(2) by Miguel Prado and Werder himself. It isn't, shall we say, what we might normally ...

0JUNE 9, 20123

THURSDAY 7TH JUNE

No post again tonight I'm afraid. Julie has rescued me from my gruelling schedule tonight and I am spending the vending with her cooking, eating, drinking decent wine and relaxing. I was up at 4AM for work, and have been overdoing it the last few days so an evening of winding down is in order. The ...

0JUNE 7, 20120

WEDNESDAY 6TH JUNE

I have now worked twenty-four hours in two days, with today being particularly stressful mentally. So excuse the quality of tonight's review and ignore any increase above the usual high number of typos and sections that make no sense whatsoever. I have spent a little time over the past few days ...

0JUNE 6, 20120

MONDAY 5TH JUNE

No post tonight, primarily because I returned to work in the early hours and put in a thirteen hour shift before wearily wandering home tonight. I'm afraid after a few days off the shock of such a day took all of the energy out of me and this evening I have been able to do little of any use at all. ...

0JUNE 6, 20120

MONDAY 4TH JUNE

An odd day today. After sending roughly sixty thousand emails this morning trying to resolve my website curation problems once and for all I found myself in a position when I could do no more whist I waited for my DNS settings to propagate. If you know what that last sentence means then get in ...

0JUNE 4, 20120

SUNDAY 3RD JUNE

In some ways today followed the same course as yesterday, my blood pressure levels and general mood shot to pieces by the irritation that is website design, and in particular the complete incompetence of web hosting companies to be of any support whatsoever. Suffice to say I am in the process of ...

0JUNE 4, 20120

JODA CLÉMENT, TOMASZ KRAKOWIAK, PAU TORRES - NORTH NORTH

Free Download Homophoni Such a frustrating evening after a pleasant day. Not being at work I managed to avoid all mention of royalty and ridiculous associated celebrations and after sleeping in for too long I managed to knuckle down and work on the download shop framework I am working on for ...

0JUNE 3, 20121

DAVID PAPAPOSTOLOU - QUARTETS

Free Download Compost and Height Verrry tired tonight after a hellish day at work trying hard to avoid all mention of royalty but failing miserably. I badly need to just go and get some sleep, but have spent some time over recent days with another free download from the Compost and Height label ...

0JUNE 1, 20120

THURSDAY 31ST MAY

0MAY 31, 20120

PATRICK FARMER - ACK OBJECT FORTH AND OVER

Free Download Compost and Height Hot, humid and harassed all day today at work, with the sudden outbreak of thunder and heavy rain we had mid afternoon not long enough or effective enough to break the heavy atmosphere here that has me right now sat under an open window with any iced cider to hand ...

0MAY 30, 20120

ADAM SUSSMANN, MATT EARLE, MASSIMO MAGEE, JOHN PORTER, TIMOTHY GREEN - AT REAL BAD MUSIC

Free Download Homophoni A further free download review tonight then, this time taken from the wealth of good free music available at the excellent Homophoni site. I like the way Homophoni do things, releasing music quite slowly, despite the lower costs involved compared to physical release ...

0MAY 30, 20120

DOMINIC LASH - EROGEN

Free Download Compost and Height So tonight I am really tired, having worked a ten hour shift after only really getting to sleep around 4.30AM. I was in bed for two, but the heat and humidity here, coupled with an overactive mind meant `I didn't fall to sleep until just a couple of hours before I ...

0MAY 28, 20122

SUNDAY 27TH MAY

Apologies for another apology of a post, but its nearly 2AM and I am not long in from attending a concert in London with Julie. Because trains out of London are a nightmare at weekends we experimented this evening by driving to the outskirts of the city an then getting a tube train into the centre. ...

0MAY 28, 20120

SATURDAY 26TH MAY

Caveats first, I have quite recently released a CD of Jean-Luc Guionnet playing a church organ. Therefore I have held off until now of listening to, and subsequently writing about tonight's CD, which is a rather wonderful CD of recordings of Jean-Luc investigating a particular organ in France ...

0MAY 26, 20120

KAMTCHATKA - NATURE OF SONOGRAPHIC FEATURES

Cassette Circuit Torçcat So hot here at the moment, unbearably so at times. Give me grey and chilly any day. Anyway tonight I played a cassette (yep, they keep coming) on the Bacelona based Circuit Torçat label. The tape is credited to Kamtchatka, who are the duo of Pau Torres and Alfredo Costa ...

THURSDAY 25TH MAY

No review tonight as I have spent the day split between cursing this blasted heat and working on the details and poster design for the concert at the end of June that I have part organised. This is a really exciting event for me. I have never really wished to be involved in concert promotion, but ...

0MAY 25, 20120

WEDNESDAY 23RD MAY

So hot here today, and subsequently really humid tonight. I am writing this sat under an open window enjoying a cold bottle of alcoholic ginger beer and munching on crisps so that the sound of them crunching in my mouth mixes with nicely the music i have been listening to this evening, even ...

0MAY 23, 20120

TUESDAY 22ND MAY

A few years back I received a short twenty-minute long recording in the post from either Bonnie Jones or Andrea Neumann, I forget which of the two. In my typically apathetic and disorganised style I took a while to get to listen to it, but enjoyed it enough to tentatively offer to release it as a ...

0MAY 23, 20122

MONDAY 21ST MAY

Very late tonight as I start to write, so excuse me if this post is a little short. A spot of brevity will probably do me some good anyway. Tonight's disc is a Cdr on the Ilse label named 9 times 5 by the quintet of Bruno DuPlant, Lee Noyes, Anders Dahl, Christian Munthe and Massimo Magee, musici...

0MAY 22, 20120

SUNDAY 20TH MAY

Unfortunately I don't have a review in me tonight again. I have been working hard all day on three or four projects simultaneously, which probably wasn't the best way to approach them, but then I was never any good at organising my creative life. I have polished off a couple of Wire reviews, part ...

0MAY 21, 20122

PHIL JULIAN - TRANSCRIPT

Cassette Obsolete Units A strange, dreamlike day today, mostly spent wandering about glad that last week was over and promising myself I would get some solid work done but never quite raising the energy to do so. Hopefully tomorrow. I have listened to both a CD and a cassette tape tonight, ...

FRIDAY 18TH MAY

Tired tonight, but wanted to write about a very nice CD i have been playing off and on for a while but have just not had the chance to write about. Sam Pettigrew's Domestic Smear is another CDr release on the increasingly impressive AvantWhatever label based in Melbourne, Australia. I didn't know ...

0MAY 19, 20121

THURSDAY 17TH MAY

I am working hard tonight on a few pieces for The Wire, so alas I don't have time for a review here this evening. There is just about enough time for a smidgeon of self promotion of a kind. Over at his Just Outside blog the good Mr Olewnick has written reviews of the new Cathnor releases. Then I am ...

0MAY 17, 20121

WEDNESDAY 16TH MAY

Tonight's CD is an interesting one, a release by the French trio of Pascal Battus, (Electric guitar) Lionel Marchetti (Electricity) and Emmanuel Petit (Electric guitar). Titled La Vie Dans Les Bois (Life in the wood/forest?) the disc captures a live recording of a concert made alongside the Buto ...

0MAY 17, 20120

TUESDAY 15TH MAY

Every so often I get a large parcel of new releases arrive from the Creative Sources label, and each time I always end up feeling bad because although I play all of them at least once I only ever write about three or four of the discs each time. I have an awful lot of time for the CS label, what it ...

0MAY 16, 20120

MONDAY 14TH MAY

I started today feeling not all that much better than I felt last night, but getting ten hours sleep (rare for me) did certainly help, and by the time I had got to work today I was feeling much better. This evening after finally getting some food inside me I feel better again, so you finally get ...

0MAY 14, 20120

SUNDAY 13TH MAY

Sorry, I am not at all well this evening, suffering from sickness, headache and quite extreme dizziness. I will edit this post tomorrow when I can stand staring at a screen for longer. Apologies. Edit- Thanks for your patience. I really wasn't too good last night. Not sure what it was, either ...

0MAY 13, 20120

SATURDAY 12TH MAY

No post of value tonight. I am utterly exhausted after another long week at work, and want to get to bed early enough to be able to get up early and ensure tomorrow ends up a productive day rather than see me spend it slumped in a vegetative state wondering what hit me. I have plenty to be getting ...

0MAY 12, 20120

FRIDAY 11TH MAY

Knot Invariants is the title of the third album by Helena Gough, the British computer musician/composer who has been a resident of Berlin for the past year or two, though will be moving on again shortly. The album is the result of a project commissioned jointly by the Sound and Music organisation ...

0MAY 12, 20121

THURSDAY 10TH MAY

I think I have written here before about how I consider the duo of Seymour Wright and Sebastian Lexer to be the nearest thing we have, besides of course the Prévost/Tilbury duo, to a continuation of the spirit, sound and approach of AMM. All of the elements are there. They have each spent more ...

0MAY 11, 20120

WEDNESDAY 9TH MAY

A bit of an unusual post tonight. I have spent the evening over at Julie's, and so have got home too late to write a CD review, but instead I am am going to post my brief liner notes from a CD that fell through my letterbox this morning. Nie is an album by Axel Dörner, Ernesto Rodrigues and ...

0MAY 10, 20120

TUESDAY 8TH MAY

Well its almost a week since I last wrote a CD review, so I had better do one this evening. In truth, after the weekend's musical excesses (about twenty live sets in four days) I have been a little burned out, but have found the energy and time this evening to return to a CD I started listening too ...

0MAY 9, 20120

FREEDOM OF THE CITY 2012

It has been good to relax a little today after four days of hectic concert going. I have spent today resting, trying to shift a headache and cooking some nice food while listening to some of the CDs that arrived here while I was away. Tonight though, as I am going to write a little about my ...

0MAY 8, 20120

SUNDAY 6TH MAY

So I am home now after a few days in London and in total some eighteen sets of music over the past few days. We left the Freedom of the City festival a little early tonight, simply because it finished late and we had to catch a train. I am used to having to run to catch the last one on my own, but ...

0MAY 7, 20120

SATURDAY 5TH MAY

Another brief post then while Julie makes the coffee and feeds me chocolate buttons. We have not long got back to our hotel after the first night of the Freedom of the City festival, ,which has, as ever, been an intriguing mixed bag of music, and a lot of it too. I am particularly proud of Julie ...

0MAY 6, 20120

FRIDAY 4TH MAY

OK, so a brief post tonight as I am in a London hotel room with Julie and it is really rude for me to be online and ignoring her for long, especially given that  I have just asked her to sit in a very small, windowless and airless basement room full of people and listen to two sets of pretty loud, ...

0MAY 4, 20120

SEIJIRO MURAYAMA, SARAH HUGHES ET AL IN OXFORD

So this evening Julie and I attended a concert in Oxford, held at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop. I had a small part to play in the organisation and promotion of this little gig, and spent much of today with the various performers, primarily helping them buy trousers, and so I'm not really in a ...

0MAY 4, 20122

WEDNESDAY 2ND MAY

There aren't many CDs of music that focus on drones and theatre of droning sounds that I enjoy all that much. Eliane Radigue's work might be the only consistently strong example that springs to mind. I share a strong admiration for Radigue with Lucio Capece, whose new (and first) solo album ...

0MAY 3, 20120

LOAD MORE