Author: bleed Air
Date: 5. November 2021
From the liner notes:
“On the 4th volume of Learning by Listening, Köln-based bleed Air guides us on a strange, sinister survey of primary source audio documents detailing abstruse scientific postulations emerging from contemporary occult branches of Christianity. Suitable for everyone from seminary students to secular amateur scientists, this cassette sees the unorthodox theories set against rich, eerie tape loop drones, sly, laconic guitars and proggy Giallo jaunts conjuring hazy, unsettling surroundings beyond the fuzzy fringes of reality. Topics range from vertebrate anatomy to phonemical history and, while factually inaccurate and indeed frightening, this impressionistic overview provides a mesmerizing and informative introduction to an inscrutable world of anti-information.
bleed Air holds a senior leadership position at the Köln tape label superpolar Taïps and is accompanied on drums by Rose T.”
Learning by Listening is an educational, instructive cassette series designed to bring the information of the world into your home, and your brain. Read more and & listen
Author: bleed Air
Date: 1. October 2021
Concepts of time, in (tape) music.
Time as physical quantity, the nature of time as defined by general relativity, the resulting model of spacetime (German: Raumzeit) and ripples therein caused by gravitational waves. Time dilation, time offset, time measurement. Present, future, past.
An attempt to approach the complex subject of time and spacetime sonically, using devices that allow time manipulation (somewhat): Analogue tape recorders, effect pedals with ‘time’ knobs.
All instruments were recorded to and with (mostly half broken) tape machines on looped reel to reel or endless cassette tapes. On some tracks, these machines were also used as tape echos, mostly by exploiting their saturation, warm overdrive and noise capabilities.
Instruments and sound sources and tools used: Field recordings (Star City Tserkov’ Spasa Preobrazheniya church bells; Mbira, Kalimba, Acoustic Guitar, electric bass guitar, cello bows, human voice, found reel to reel audio that came with used tape recorders I bought), synthesizers.
In a way, this album concludes, albeit in a somewhat noisier, abstract and sometimes deafening way, what I started with the ‘Ogehiko/Yahiko’ cassingle.
Author: bleed Air
Date: 15. April 2021
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.”
Author: bleed Air
Date: 15. April 2021
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 …
Author: bleed Air
Date: 16. February 2021
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.
Author: bleed Air
Date: 4. September 2020
bleed Air’s debut full-length is a mix tape blending dark ambient, playful electronica as well as experimental beat and drone.
A journey into warm, analogue noise, echo and soundscapes, sometimes resembling a soundtrack for a yet to be filmed low budget sci-fi movie. When Robot choirs start singing or broken analogue circuits and filters start doing what they want, it can get wacky, but we think it always remains pleasant to listen. Mostly analogue electronic gear, often of the cheaper and not exactly hip kind, and tape effects were used.
It is recommended to listen to each side of the album in one piece.
bleed Air lives in Cologne, runs this label, loves his Omnichord OM-27 and his tape echo too.
