Out of stock
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SINK
s/t
Andrea Ermke, minidiscs - Chris Abrahams, DX-7 - Marcello Busato, drums - Arthur Rother, electric guitar.
It took 15 years since its foundation to release their first album. Sink was formed in Berlin in 2004. Though their music is improvised, Sink play, perform, sound and feel as a band with a distinct band sound. Their sound ranges from typically Berlin Echtzeitmusik related mixed electroacoustic and acoustic soundscapes which can, but need not, result in a minimalistic groove. Sink already appeared on “Echtzeitmusik Berlin” compilation we produced in 2012.
“Sink” is a perfect blend of diverse sound sources. Rother’s minimal chord playing and guitar arpeggios mix with Abrahams’ masterful knowledge of the depths of Yamaha DX-7 which sometimes emits typically electronic timbres and sometimes he makes it sound like an organ. All this coalesces with Ermke’s sonic intrusions from her minidiscs and Busato’s wide range of playing techniques on percussion and drums, now shadowy, then outbursting. “Sink” is a staggering feast of the joys found in the process of sonic research with their own instruments. A malleable bubble of hovering excitement, romantic slowdowns and joyous refrain. A perfect musical match for your post-Techno after party.
13,50€
Out of stock
CD
FEN
“No one’s island”
FEN (Far East Network) is a group project made up of musicians from Singapore, Japan, China, and South Korea who play improvised music. It was first started on the suggestion of globally renowned musician Otomo Yoshihide in 2008 for a French festival MIMI. Each member is an artist who works individually on the experimental music scene in his respective country. They have been supporting each other's activities by organizing concerts in their own countries, and this relationship became the motivation to form FEN, and to extend their network to react with the reality of Asia in artistic means.
From their activities, they realized that unlike artists in Europe, those in Asian countries had difficulty communicating due to differences in their cultures, languages, historical backgrounds and political situation. FEN originated from their thinking about not only practical and productive but also aesthetic ways to solve this problem. They soon found out that working as an organizer and as an invited artist didn't help them to sustain their relationship. Certainly, a relationship between collaborators with common interests and concerns was more productive than one arising merely from invitation and acquaintance.
They pursue "performing together through improvisation" as a method and "never talk about music" as a private code. FEN is a musical group and at the same time it is a form that maintains unique aesthetics and sustainable relationships in diverse Asian cultures. Also through FEN's activity they explore the aesthetic possibilities of a new form of music which is different from music in the Western world. FEN's goals are to become a foundation and to organize diverse meetings to support other sustainable networks and cultural exchanges among many experimental musicians in Asia. Therefore they withdraw their ego from controlling and designing music.
“No One’s Island” is their third album and the first studio recording. Here they explore the nuances of the current political situations worldwide which is a mesh of inner and outer laws and decisions taken everywhere and all the time such as visa system, and the gap between official political tension and people’s everyday life. All this affects our understanding and expressing, making human condition complex and inefficient. Why human spend so much time for applying visa instead of creating art and listening to each other?
The musicians change their instrument and method without letting the other members know. They almost have never done a rehearsal. They agree with any suggestion from other members. They let go. Here in their first studio album recorded in New York they reproduced their attitude to the strange world with electronic feedback, computer noises and variations of rock guitar motifs. All merge into an unfamiliar structure, an ever-changing and unbalanced form. The album trying to add their own, personal, ways of playing and thus undermining the overall similarity of everything, making the reality no one’s island their own. It’s a voice from no master, an organ within no body, an essential chapter in the body of oeuvres of Otomo Yoshihide, Yan Jun, Yuen Chee Wai and Ryu Hankil.
Otomo Yoshihide: guitar, Ryu Hankil: max/msp, Yan Jun: electronics, Yuen Chee Wai; guitar and electronics.
Produced, mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug
13,50€
In stock
CD
Lars AKERLUND – Eryck ABECASSIS
“Falls”
Eryck Abecassis and Lars Åkerlund started their Falls project to investigate the possibilities of achieving instability with synthesizers and electronic instruments. With only one dramatic change in their strategy: they employed both the same branded instruments to do that and it worked.
Eryck Abecassis is a French musician who has been working in diverse areas of music production: producing his own albums and works for chamber orchestras, theaters, installations and cinema. He got commissions from such institutions like INA-GRM, Radio France and Institut Français and played at many festivals like Amplitude, Presences, IRCAM. Now he mostly works with modular synthesizer and computer.
Lars Åkerlund is a sound artist and composer and performer of electronic as well as electroacoustic music hailing from Sweden. With a classical training, he also works in the music underground scene. He founded bands such as P.I.T.T. (among others, with Zbigniew Karkowski) and the Lucky People Center and recently the LLLSD (Lab for Life-Long Sound Dysfunctions) which toured in South East Asia, China and Japan during 2018 and 2019.
He performs solo and in collaboration with other artists, film makers and choreographers. Åkerlund lives in Stockholm working in the studio with computers, controllers and live electronic equipment such as an amplified monochord.
In eight tracks of “Falls” they drive you to the state of ecstasy. Working with a minimal and an accurate attention for the structures, they gain such a level when they lose control of their two Doepfer Dark Energies that it starts hypnotizing the brains. Subliminal thoughts, experiences and sonic hallucinations may suddenly erupt to the surface. Take care when using these powerful and uncompromising musical dream machine which will disorientate you in its subversive sonic masses and spectrum.
13,50€
In stock
CD
Burkhard STANGL & DIEB13
“Jardins des bruits”
Burkhard Stangl: guitar, electronics
Dieb13: acoustic and electronic gramophones and electronics
Burkhard Stangl and dieb13 live and work in Vienna, both being long time protagonists of the local scene as well as travelling and collaborating with musicians from all over the planet. Many of those collaborations and connections have been documented on the double-CD compilation”klingt.org: 10 Jahre Bessere Farben” [mikroton cd 5 | 6] commemorating the first ten years of existence of named online platform, which was founded and is since being run by dieb13.
Burkhard Stangl needs no further introduction being a remarkable and highly acclaimed guitarist. He explores the full range of sonic possibilities on his guitar, its dynamic, harmonic, melodic and noisy spectrum. This adaptability allows him to get to work in a variety of musical contexts, from collective improvised music projects like Polwechsel (until 2004), Efzeg and Schnee to written contemporary music for various ensembles and from solo works to collaborations with Angélica Castelló, Christof Kurzmann, Christian Fennesz and others.
dieb13, also based in Vienna like Stangl, is a particularly active musician, filmmaker, software programmer and theorist. Being a valued improviser and a proven specialist for the musical and technical aspects of turntablism, he played and plays in various groups like Swedish Azz, Efzeg, (Fake) The Facts and collaborated with countless musicians from local and international scenes, among them Billy Roisz, eRikm, Phil Minton, Hans Koch, Mats Gustafsson, Camille Emaille, Anna Högberg, Susanna Gartmayer.
In 2002 Stangl and dieb13 released their duo album “eh”, which gave a very thorough and entertaining insight in the possibilities of interactions between guitars and record players. Now, 17 years later, on “Jardin Des Bruits”, or “Garden Of Noises” they explore and expand the sonic properties of their group sound and include plenty of soundscapes from Paris and Montreuil, where the recordings took place in May 2019. Burkhard Stangl once said that he allows himself to play his special so-called “eh”-tuning only in this project, because of its high emotional tension verging on nostalgia. A pair of tracks on “Jardin Des Bruits” sounds like a farewell to their sonic adventures from 2002 which they masterfully convert to their current musical ideas. Their themes remain particularly alluring and bruitfully fruitful as ever, with each track telling its own engrossing story. This is sharp, focused contemporary music of the kind, where minimalist motifs meet maximalist outbreaks. “Jardin Des Bruits” is another landmark recording made by two of the most prolific experimental explorers of sound and music active today.
Recorded at Instants Chavires and the streets and metro trains of Paris and Montreuil in May 2019.
13,50€
Out of stock
10 CD boxset
FORMANEX
“20 years of experimental music”
Nantes trio Formanex celebrates 20 years of activism in experimental music with a 10 CD edition full of amazing collaborations with ONsemble (contemporary music group from Nantes and Saint-Nazaire) and composers they have worked with. The box set includes early works by Formanex’s own Julien Ottavi, unique compositions created by Keith Rowe, pieces by Kasper T. Toeplitz, Ralf Wehowsky, Seth Cluett, Michael Pisaro, Radu Malfatti, as well as other giants of contemporary music from the last 50 years; such as Phill Niblock and Christian Wolff.
A rare collection of CDs, this box set represents a broad vision of experimental music from noise to electronic abstract composition, radical minimalism, contemporary and improvised music.
85,00€
Out of stock
CD
The PITCH & SPLITTER ORCHESTER
“Frozen Orchestra (Splitter)”
The third release of the 24-piece Splitter Orchester is, like its predecessors, a collaboration. This time they team up with the The Pitch, a quartet consisting to 3/4 out of Splitter Orchester-members. “Frozen Orchestra (Splitter)” is their latest compositional effort in translating the quartet’s language to a large format ensemble utilizing the sensibilites and possibilites of Splitter Orchester’s electro-acoustic instrumentation.“Frozen” thereby indicates a very slowly moving field of harmonic relationships consisting of so-called pitch sets, which are augmented by noise sets, that is, non-periodic sounds organized in equivalent relationships. The score guides the group through various defined states of frozen surfaces where each player makes individual choices from a set of intervals or noises and thus constantly shifts harmonic weight and textural quality. In the multicoloured sound of Splitter Orchester, the planar drones receive an iridescent depth. Monochromatic fields of sound grow out of the continuum, its steady flow letting them vary almost unnoticeably.The Pitch : Koen Nutters double bass, Boris Baltschun electric pump organ, Morten J. Olsen vibraphone, percussion, Michael Thieke clarinet.Splitter Orchestra : Burkhard Beins percussion, Anthea Caddy cello, Anat Cohavi bass clarinet, Axel Dörner trumpet, Kai Fagaschinski clarinet, Robin Hayward microtonal tuba, Steve Heather percussion, Chris Heenan bass clarinet, Mike Majkowski double bass, Matthias Müller trombone, Magda Mayas clavinet, Andrea Neumann inside piano, mixing board, Simon James Phillips piano, Julia Reidy guitar, Ignaz Schick turntables, oscillators, electronics, Mario de Vega objects, electronics, Sabine Vogel, flutes, Biliana Voutchkova violin, Marta Zapparoli tape recorders, reel to reel tape machine.500 copies.
12,00€
Out of stock
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CHESTERFIELD
“Consuelo”
Angélica Castelló paetzold, recorders, tapes, electronics, cello, viola. Burkhard Stangl guitars, piano.The “score” or inspiration for this CD was a solo concert of Burkhard Stangl at the Reheat festival at Kleylehof in 2014. The theme of the performance was the song Bésame Mucho by the Mexican composer Consuelo Velázquez.Chesterfield then took the recording and recomposed it, and composed new pieces mixing everything with old and new recordings, home recordings, accidental recordings, live performances ... all Chesterfield from 2013 till now ... a Chesterfield diary of songs, of noise, of longing and dreaming.“When I wrote the song in 1941, I had never kissed anyone; it was all a product of my imagination,” the Mexican composer of Bésame mucho, Consuelo Velázquez, commented on the making of her ballad. With her musical kissing fantasies Velázquez electrified those pathways of desire and longing that – even though impossible – take us back to the paradise of the first kiss; and she inspired hundreds if not thousands of interpretations of her song. To understand the phenomenon of Bésame mucho properly, if at all, it helps to see things through the eyes of Joseph Conrad, who thought of kisses as being what is left from the language of Paradise.300 copies.
12,00€
In stock
CD
Angélica CASTELLÓ & Jérôme NOETINGER
“Disturbio”
Angélica Castelló, paetzold, tapes, radios, electronics. Jérôme Noetinger, revox, radio, tapes, electronics.“Disturbio” is the debut album by duo Angélica Castelló and Jérôme Noetinger. This dense masse of noise and sonic rites is the result of a 3 day recording session in Vienna in 2016. Sometimes it’s impossible to figure out who’s playing, as if they were two on the same tool and instrument: They both use tapes and Castelló’s breathy playing on the Paetzold flute mimics the rotation of Noetinger’s Revox and vice versa, there is a a big collection of samples and loops, radios and field recordings on their cassettes and tapes, with which they create cinematic atmospheres with magic and hidden diaphanous voices. “Disturbio” is also a study on vibrating surface tremors, earthquakes, strong tectonic movements, shakes. Somehow apocalyptic and reflecting on the beauty of a world where the human is no more than a memory and just a distant sound.Angélica Castelló is a Mexican and Austrian composer, sound artist, performer, curator and teacher. Her sound work and compositions concentrate on fragility, dreamworld and the subconscious. Performs continuously solo or in cooperations everywhere between Mexico City and Vienna. Numerous compositions for ensembles, radio works as well as installations that operate at the interface of music, performance and visual arts. Several releases on labels like Mikroton Recordings, Interstellar records, Mosz and others.Jérôme Noetinger founded Cellule D’Intervention Metamkine in 1987, with French cinematographer and performer Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel. They have performed with Nachtluft, Voice Crack, Tom Cora, Keith Rowe… He has collaborated with longtime partner Lionel Marchetti since 1993 and is a member of avant-improv orchestra MIMEO. He founded and runs the record label and distributor Metamkine (curating its “Cinéma Pour L'Oreille” collection) which has been our partner since the date of foundation of Mikroton. He mostly plays the tape recorder Revox B77.300 copies.
12,00€
Out of stock
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Günter MÜLLER / Kurt LIEDWART / Norbert MÖSLANG
“Ground”
Günter Müller iPods, electronics, Kurt Liedwart electronics, Norbert Möslang cracked everyday-electronics.“Ground” was recorded in Ground Hodynka Gallery during Swiss Noise festival in 2017. The music they played is playful, analytical, mentally disturbed where they mix a wide selection of timbres, textures and sonic entities to form propulsive rhythmically based layers of perfectly arranged chaos and ecstatic order.Norbert Möslang had been playing in Voice Crack duo with Andy Guhl in 1972-2002, they’ve been working with “cracked everyday-electronics”, modifying and recontextualising the use of home electronics. After the split he continued working solo and in different musical combinations using “cracked everyday-electronics”, among them a duo with eRikm with whom he played in duo from time to time since 2002. He released numerous solo albums as well as collaborations with Günter Müller, Jason Kahn, Ralf Wehowsky, Tomas Korber, Aube, Christian Weber, Katsura Yamauchi. He is part of Signal Quintet and MKM. “Ground” is his fifth album on Mikroton after “Stodgy” with eRikm, “Five Lines” with Casey Anderson, Jason Kahn, Günter Müller and Mark Trayle, “sale_interiora” with Kurt Liedwart and Ilia Belorukov, and “Instants // Paris” with MKM.Kurt Liedwart, a Moscow-based musician and curator of Mikroton Recordings, developed his own art and sound that cross genres, mixing music practices such as electroacoustic and improvised music, noise and glitch, and art movements such as actionism and Fluxus. He plays a wide-ranging array of instruments such as analog synthesizers, electronics, light-controlled electronics, electromagnetic devices, laptop, sinewaves, field recordings, percussion processed electronically in real time.Günter Müller, formerly a percussionist and known for his unique explorations of the possibilities of drums and percussion using electronic devices and self-built instruments, now concentrates on his setup of two iPods and electronics. For thirty years he’s been a part of innumerable projects, including long-term musical dialogues with many musicians like Jim O’Rourke, Norbert Möslang, Andy Guhl, eRikm, Oren Ambarchi, Toshimaru Nakamura, Keith Rowe, Ralph Steinbrüchel, Philip Samartzis, Alfred 23 Harth, just to name a few. He used to run the critically acclaimed For4Ears, a label for improvised music. This is his fifth release on Mikroton, following his solo album “cym_bowl”, “Limmat” with Jason Kahn and Christian Wolfarth, “Five Lines” and “Instants // Paris”.300 copies.
12,00€
Out of stock
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MKM
“teplo_dom”
Norbert Möslang cracked everyday-electronics. Jason Kahn analog synthesizer, radio. Günter Müller ipods, electronics.Jason Kahn, Günter Müller and Norbert Möslang, all from Switzerland, comprise MKM trio, spontaneously founded in 2006 in Tokyo during their Japanese tour. They immediately achieved very fine results and collaborate since then. Their sound hovers between the at times harsh rhythmic noise of Norbert Möslang’s cracked everyday electronics and the rich sonorities of Günter Müller’s percussion-based samples and electronics. Jason Kahn’s work on analog synthesizer bridges these two worlds, adding high frequency interference and processed short wave radio input. Mikroton released numerous albums with their participation and “teplo_dom” is their sixth album on our label and third release after “Instants // Paris” released in 2016.Discomfortingly solacing “teplo_dom” works like a treatment in the harshness of contemporary human life, sometimes soothing you with clusters of abstract timbres, sometimes poking you with distorted maelstrom of sound masses. If the tracks recorded in dom which means “home” in Russian, were mixed, “teplo”, in Russian meaning “warmth” or “cosiness”, remained without manipulation and you can hear how the trio builds a foggy psychoacoustic mass that lies between dynamic yet patiently treated drone music and industrial howl.300 copies.
12,00€
Out of stock
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TRIO SOWARI
“Third issue”
Burkhard Beins percussion and objects. Bertrand Denzler tenor saxophone. Phil Durrant modular and software synthesizers.On their new album Third Issue Trio Sowari continues its musical investigation of asymmetric structures and multilayered ambiguities. Gravitation, Suspension, Exploration and finally Levitation, the four tracks on this CD present different fields of interactive possibilities. No signs of dystopianism or retrotopianism here, but undaunted and spirited ways of facing a complex and bewildering present. Bertrand Denzler on tenor saxophone, Burkhard Beins on percussion with Phil Durrant now also involving a modular next to his software synthesizer, which contributes some additional grain to the group’s sound.300 copies.
12,00€
Out of stock
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Kurt LIEDWART / Julien OTTAVI / Keith ROWE
“L’Or”
Kurt Liedwart modular synthesizer, cracked everyday and homemade electronics. Julien Ottavi computer. Keith Rowe guitar, electronics.“L’Or” is a polyptychal album recorded during Sanatorium Of Sound 2017 festival in Sokolowsko in Poland. “L’Or” means “gold” in French and both tracks were called with words with the same meaning: “Aurum”, in Latin, and “Золото”, in Russian. Two tracks comprise around five hence the polyptychal theme of the album, some of them sound harsh, some resemble quiet zones. Keith Rowe takes the middle area between Kurt Liedwart’s work with modular synthesizer and cracked homemade and everyday electronics and Julien Ottavi’s preoccupation with his computer and objects. The structure looks really similar like a caduceus, ever evolving lines, vibrations, sonic clusters around Rowe’s clicks and occasional whisper of his guitar and radio. The album takes a no-man’s land between EAI, noise, minimal electronics and contemporary music.Keith Rowe is mainly known as the pivotal and crucial musician standing in the forefront of the first wave of the European free improvisation, co-founder of AMM in 1965 and inventor of tabletop guitar playing techniques which remained his central sound tool until now and which he extended with a lot of electronic and other gadgets and devices. It’s his fifth release on our label following “Shifting Currents” with Bill Thompson and Rick Reed, his composition “A Quartet For Guitars” performed n 2013 with his Nantes colleagues Emmanuel Leduc, Anthony Taillard and Julien Ottavi, the quartet which is known as NG4 Quartet, and “The Bakery” with Martin Küchen.Julien Ottavi is founder, artistic programmer, audio computer researcher and sound artist of the experimental music organisation APO33. Ottavi studied drums, percussions and photography at the Art school of Nantes. Since 1997 he develops compositions for voice and computer. His background is in sound poetry (Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidseick, Kurt Schwitters, Jaap Blonk), he is influenced by the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Morton Feldman and Giacinto Scelsi, by ‘musique concrete’ (Pierre Henry, Michel Chion Luc Ferrari), and also by noise (Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski, Bernard Günter). He is founder and member of Formanex, an electroacoustic quartet that performs chamber music from twentieth and twentyfirst-century composers, they play graphic scores by composers like Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Christian Wolf, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Jerome Joy, Kasper T. Toeplitz and Ralf Wehowsky. “L’Or” is his second release on Mikroton after “A Quartet For Guitars”.Kurt Liedwart, a Moscow-based musician and curator of Mikroton Recordings, developed his own art and sound that cross genres, mixing music practices such as electroacoustic and improvised music, noise and glitch, and art movements such as actionism and Fluxus. He plays a wide-ranging array of instruments such as analog synthesizers, electronics, light-controlled electronics, electromagnetic devices, laptop, sinewaves, field recordings, percussion processed electronically in real time.300 copies.
12,00€
In stock
CD
Jérôme NOETINGER & SEC_
“La Cave Des Étendards”
Jérôme Noetinger revox reel-to-reel recorder, electro-acoustic devices. SEC_ revox reel-to-reel recorder, feedback system, laptop.“La Cave Des Étendards” or “The Cave Of Standards” is a wordplay between Cave12 and Standards, two venues where they recorded the concerts which became the foundation for the tracks of the album. “L’orecchio Di Dionigi” is a cave in Siracusa with a special echo that allows to hear from the entrance any sound from the inside; in the past it was probably used as a prison because of its aural properties, very useful to control what the prisoners said. “Le chateau Est Une Oreille” is inspired by Italo Calvino’s text “Un Re In Ascolto”, written for Lucian Berio, where he describes sound narrative of a castle from the position of a paranoid king. You can use these references as a way to enter the cinematic world both musicians created with multiplicity of tape sampling and the use of extra tools to make the music as complex and inter-refential as possible.Jérôme Noetinger founded Cellule d’Intervention Metamkine in 1987, with French cinematographer and performer Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel. They have performed with Nachtluft, Voice Crack, Tom Cora, Keith Rowe… He has collaborated with longtime partner Lionel Marchetti since 1993 and is a member of avant-improv orchestra MIMEO. He founded and runs the record label and distributor Metamkine (curating its “Cinéma Pour L’Oreille” collection). He mostly plays the tape recorder Revox B77. This is his second album on Mikroton following “Disturbio” with Angélica Castelló.SEC_ is the moniker of Mimmo Napolitano, electronic musician and composer from Naples, Italy. With his tape recorder Revox, that he uses in a very physical and unconventional way, SEC_ has brought new nourishment to the Italian experimental panorama, pushing the musique concrete and the acousmatic sound outside the academic boundries, mixing them with more spontaneous musical practices (power electronics, no-input feedback, electroacoustic improvisation). He plays in solo or in collaboration with Aspec(t), Jérôme Noetinger, Andy Guhl, Dave Phillips, Valerio Tricoli, Olivier Di Placido, Ken Vandermark, Dario Sanfilippo.300 copies.
12,00€