Friday 1 October sees the release of a new Cassette Single by QST, Frans de Waard’s – as he says – ‘failed attempt’ on producing ambient house music. I must say I’m glad he failed since what he produces as QST (with beats) and Quest (w/o beats) is way better than what the genre name suggests. In simple terms it’s pretty captivating minimal synth stuff.
The QST cassingle will be accompanied by a new bleed Air album, titled ‘time, ferocious’ – the first following the eponymous 2020 debut album. It is an attempt at sonic exploration of concepts of time.
bleed Air concludes the work started with Cassingle ‘Ogehiko/Yahiko’, albeit in a somewhat noisier and more abstract way. Again, all instruments and other (found) sounds were recorded to and with mostly half broken reel to reel and cassette tape machines, fully exploiting their fantastic manipulation capabilities.
Both cassettes will be available from Friday, 09:00 CEST and also offered as a bundle, so that you can save on postage.
P.S.: The ‘time, ferocious’ digital download will be ‘name your price’ for the first couple of weeks.
30 Artists. 30 C-5 cassettes (that’s an intentional, conceptual limitation of 2 minutes and 30 seconds per track). Exclusive B-sides. Individual artworks. 10 hand-dubbed copies per tape will go on sale. Eventually, all tracks will be released on a compilation (digital/cassette), planned for late 2021. That’s the SPT Cassingle series in a nutshell.
Contributing artists: Seffi Starshine, Fae Moonbeam, Cruel Diagonals, moduS ponY, Nicholas Langley, Emerging Industries of Wuppertal, Phirnis, Whettman Chelmets, Aros E-V, Carlos Perea Milla/Melquiades, qualchan., German Army, Stichflamme Dormagen, bleed Air, Ball Geographie, Leaaves, Francesco Ameglio/I Was Listening To Tapes In Tokyo), Tiger Village, The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor, Harald Sack Ziegler, Daniel Saylor, Adderall Canyonly, Jamie Orlando/Zigra, The Tuesday Night Machines, Robin Barnick, Therapeutische Hoergruppe Koeln , QST, Chorchill, Cinchel, Hualun, Ffion, Petridisch … and more.
Stay tuned for more details on the individual releases and artists mentioned over at Bandcamp or here.
CARLOS PEREA MILLA has been creating improvised ambient experiments under the moniker MELQUÍADES since 2016, using tapes, electronics, guitars, harps, field recordings and other sounds. His first two solo albums, ‘Keep A Seed’ and ‘Imaginary Soundscapes / A Map’ were released on CANIGOU RECORDS, the cassette label he has been running from London, Buenos Aires and Málaga. He also co-runs the concert series Bedroom Gigs with Catrin Vincent.
tactile / distante’ was recorded in October and November 2020 in Málaga, right after the change of seasons and right at the start of a new life chapter. This new work is heavily inspired by instrumental and folk music, and artists like Lake Mary, Karen Dalton, John Fahey, Nathan Salsburg, Wall Matthews and Mat Eric Hart.
It’s less abstract and more tangible, but it stays experimental: each part was recorded separately into a tape recorder whilst listening to a metronome, then sent to another tape machine, then into Ableton where the two songs were pieced together, editing the speed and pitch variations caused by the tape. And it has drums for the first time – a lot of drums. ‘tactile /’ features a recording from a conversation I had with Calum Perrin about modes of listening.
Recorded using classical/electric/12 string guitar, tapes, OM-1, pocket piano, zither harp and drums. Photography by Carlos Perea-Milla in Andalucía. Mastering by Adam Badí Donoval.
Chorchill revisits his 2020 album Nachtfisch (for Cologne fellow label Strategic Tape Reserve) and gives two tracks the post-minimalism treatment.
RUHRPOTT DIVER is a remix and sequel of and to FLOODED RUHRPOTT, while MODERN TAVLA (remix of BLEEDING INTO FALL) sheds some light on the backgammon playing habits of mythical Ruhrpott figure Apel Okuyan on who the NACHTFISCH album is centered around.
Chorchill is an electronic music project by Matthias Cingoez on MIDI, synthesizer, sounds, acoustic bass and aerophone. Minimalistic and melodic pieces influenced by the softer side of Krautrock and film music.
Justin Watson, 1/3 of The (wonderful) Incidental Crack invited me to a guest mix on his (and Spenser Tomson’s and Becca’s) Gated Canal Community show on Manchester’s (equally wonderful) Reform Radio.
‘Ihre Meinung ist uns wichtig‘ is the artist’s debut under his Stichflamme Dormagen moniker and, in Vital Weekly’s words, “a most curious piece of voices, chanting exotically, along with wooden drum percussion and line hum for electronic component (…)” as well as “urgency and weirdness at work.” (www.vitalweekly.net/1294.html)
Stichflamme Dormagen is the mischievous incarnation of Rudi Baumgärtner, a music producer born and raised in the city of Remagen, in western Germany.
Not much is known about Baumgärtner except his attempts to self-publish criminal stories under the moniker Sulke Diebler and his deep mistrust of public transport.
In 2006 he took part in a macramé class. Baumgärtner makes his living from soundtracks for local adult film productions. He spends his free time in his little garden in the Remagen suburbs, where he breeds rare slug species.
— THE CASSINGLE SERIES —
30+ Artists. 30+ cassette singles with an intentional, conceptual limitation of under 3 mins per track, exclusive B-sides. Individual artworks. Merely 10 hand-dubbed copies per tape will go on sale. Eventually, all tracks will be released on a compilation, planned for late 2021. That’s the SPT Cassingle series in a nutshell
Following the long sold-out ‘Blessing of the Hand-Sanitizer’ cassingle, superpolar Taïps is very happy to present the first full-length release by prolific and versatile artist Simon Proffitt, here under his Carnedd Aur moniker.
Here’s Simon’s take on ‘Beetles’:
“After a few years of exploring drones / tones / field recordings (as Cahn Ingold Prelog), fictional ritual trance (as The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor) and the outer limits of acoustic instrumentation (as Simon Proffitt), the Carnedd Aur project came about as an answer to the question of whether I was capable of writing electronic pop music.
It turns out that I am not – at least, not yet – but what arose instead was actually far more satisfying. Armed with just a MicroKORG, bought years earlier for a one-off gig in a swimming pool and then not used since, I set about trying to make shorter pieces with a focus on rhythm and melody of the kind that my parents (harsh critics of my other work) might not actually like, but might at least understand as music.
Carnedd Aur translates into English as Gold Cairn, a sort of Welsh-language take on Cahn Ingold Prelog.
I’ve long been fascinated by evocative common names for species (mushrooms, moths etc), and especially so in the case of beetles – these names add a layer of mystery and magic to creatures that are well known from a distance but fascinating and alien when viewed close up. It seems to me that there’s a definite link between shuffling drum machine rhythms and busily meandering insects, between shimmering synth pads and shiny, multi-coloured wing-cases.”
Emerging Industries Of Wuppertal’s Cassingle debut. Recorded by a sales intern of fellow Cologne Strategic Tape Reserve, who occasionally produces music for a nearby industrial association to use during meetings and celebrations.
To quote the artist “Dip your toes into the sparkling pixel pond and listen to more synthetic octopus noise …” and add, from my side, “by the visiting the release page embedded below or TTNM’s lovely Youtube channel.”
Oops. A maxi cassingle. Phirnis aka Kai Ginkel’s super dark, noisy and haunty tracks are awesome, but impossible to squeeze into two minutes and thirty seconds. So for once I break the otherwise strict rule. Further info on the BC release page …
“‘Carapace’ and ‘Oneiric Amplitude’ (Side B, bonus track) are tracks composed entirely from my voice. Here, I’m exploring themes of the subconscious, namely the dream state and its ability to communicate vital shifts within our healing before our conscious mind becomes aware of them”, says Megan Mitchell.
She composes unsettling, ethereal music under the alias Cruel Diagonals. A jazz and classically trained vocalist, Mitchell performs and creates in numerous capacities.
Cruel Diagonals is an outlet for destructive sample processing, vocal exploration, and a palette for inter-media contemplations and applications. Influenced by early experimental filmmakers such as Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger, Cruel Diagonals has been described in cinematic terms, evoking moods and montages of an eerie, surrealist timbre. Warped field recordings and layered vocals incite a beckoning to a phantasmagorical, metallic-tinged state of existence.
Aros E-V is the ambient music project of sound artist Ryan Evans. Using tape loops, field recordings, and digital processing, he creates slow sound pieces that underline the passing of time.
‘In Time’ and ‘In Space’ are edges and breaks. Assembled with guitar, four-track, and digital processing, They trace the negative space between miniscule sonic vignettes.
A minimal synth EP, garnished with harsh noise, composed entirely on a Yamaha DX7. Despite the minimal setup, it creates an intense, sometimes uplifting, sometimes eerie atmosphere.. We believe that you’ve rarely heard the DX7 like that before.
Artist Robin Barnick sold his DX7 a long time ago – it was a rocking DX7IIFD in excellent shape… and yes, he regrets it, a lot. There was just too little space in his apartment and he thought the NI FM7 would do too. Far from it. Here’s what he has to say about the album:
“At the time, I guess it was around 2001, I was trying to program the DX7 and accidentally deleted all of the presets when I started to experiment with emagic’s SoundDiver. Every single patch was reset to the “Init” sound, a simple sine wave.
OK, never mind, I thought, and then got hooked when I started manipulating this ultra simple patch live, with the help of Sounddiver’s quite impressive capabilities.
I was fascinated by how easy it now was to elicit experimental sounds from this otherwise difficult-to-operate machine. I didn’t care about sequencing, so this is just me, playing simple chord progressions and notes with the left hand and manipulating them with my right hand on the mouse, twiddling SoundDiver’s faders. All was recorded live on Minidisc (in mono).
At the time I really wasn’t sure whether the music was good at all, so I put the MD aside … and forgot it. When I remembered it again some time ago, I spent endless hours searching – all my MDs were there, just not this one. When I was about to give up, I rediscovered it, edited the material and subsequently processed the tracks with some few effects.”
Robin Barnick resides in Niederkassel-Lülsdorf-Ranzel, in the lovely rural-industrial no one’s land between Cologne and Bonn, in the wild, wild western part of Germany and at the heart of Europe.
The following text is more or less freely stolen from ihrtn.net.
I Heart Noise is a record label, a Youtube channel and a blog based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. They put out physical records and digital compilations, book/film live shows, write reviews and conduct interviews with artists/independent record labels.
They also have a sister label called Fish Prints (which I really like and regret that I haven’t included it in my mix) that puts out records by Barbara Morgenstern, After Dinner, Lida Husik and many others.
Ogehiko is a layered four track cassette tape loop., The artist does not exactly remember how he created the main sound element (with one of his synths, he believes). He however recognises use of the Fostex’s lovely pitch wheel, which he digs a lot.
Yahiko is a reel to reel found sound tape loop, played at various speeds and sometimes also slowing the reels down by hand, eventually processed with an aged digital pitch shifter/delay pedal. The artist, due to his continual confusion while splicing the 4-track tape), no longer knows whether the basic drone sound is playing forwards or backwards.
I first came across modus pony’s music on a split tape released by Cologne’s Strategic Tape Reserve. His genre-spanning, intricate guitar/bass/synth arrangements immediately stood out (of course next to the artist behind VLK, whom we’ll welcome soon as part of this cassingle series too). Because of its complexity, “Systemmetry/2Systemmetry” could be perceived as a concept album condensed to two times 2.5 minutes. However, this time, the multi-instrumentalist reveals even more of his experimental side – bubbling analogue synths compete with free jazz guitar scales and it’s not clear who’s gonna win this gentle battle. Btw: Does your tape have auto-reverse? This is the opportunity to use it. moduS ponY resides in California, USA. – bleed Air
