As I sit down to pen these words for Stilluppsteypa's latest vinyl release on the enigmatic Futura Resistenza label, I find myself jumping back a year or two, reminded of the profound impact this Icelandic ensemble has had on the northern landscape of experimental arts for four decades. Emerging in the early 1990s, Stilluppsteypa began their journey as a punk-oriented band with multiple members. However, their insatiable curiosity for the unconventional soon led them to explore more abstract and electronic terrains as a trio consisting of Heimir Björgúlfsson, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and Helgi Thorsson. These Icelanders crafted sound experiments that were uniquely their own, defying the easy categorization and shaped by the distinct longitudes and latitudes they together called home.
Stilluppsteypa's early works, such as Reduce by Reducing (1998), showcased a dadaistic and multi-layered approach to sound sculpting that stood proudly apart from the existing trends of the era, such as Mille Plateaux and its contemporaries. By the time of albums like Not a Laughing Matter But Rather a Matter of Laughs (2000) and Stories Part Five (2001), the group had further solidified their reputation for crafting intricate sonic tapestries that continue to challenge and intrigue listeners drawn to the more abstract.
After Heimir’s departure around 2002, Sigtryggur and Helgi decided to continue as a duo, delving even deeper into the core of abstract and joyous electronic music. Their collaborations with artists such as Benny Nilsen, Melt-Banana and others resulted in critically acclaimed entities, such as Vikinga Brennivin (2005) and Drykkjuvísur Óhljóðanna (2006), celebrated for their innovative approaches to sound and spot on composition.
Now, with this new piece of wax on Futura Resistenza—a Brussels-Rotterdam-based label known for its eclectic, unpredictable, and forward-thinking catalog—Stilluppsteypa continues its admirable mission as the reliable workhorse of European experimentalism, pushing the boundaries of sound to infinity.
Without a shred of hesitation, I can say that the group's whimsical ap
preciation for chaos—the natural state of the universe—positions their music as a true beacon for a kinder future. The entirety of Schokolino Choco Loco stands as a testament to their commitment to embracing unpredictability, celebrating the disorderly beauty and humor that lies within chaos itself.
As you place the needle on the thang, please prepare yourself for a hazy trip through the sonics. These Icelanders invite you to embrace the unexpected — and like nice people they are, they gently give a welcoming smooch to your forehead while at it. Stilluppsteypa's music is not just to be heard but to be experienced, to be tasted, to be touched by.
Welcome to the Boundless Joy that arises when artists dare to venture into the uncharted.
28.1.2025, Pori, Finland
Juho Toivonen
Although Berlin-based musical seekers Jules Reidy and Sam Dunscombe are friends who’ve worked together in numerous contexts over the last decade or so, Edge Games is their first, long overdue collaborative album. Over two expansive, mind-bending excursions the former’s microtonal guitar lines are woven into a gorgeously unstable mass of synthesis, field recordings, and clarinet produced by the latter, but it’s important to note that the recording process was deeply collaborative, with a rigorous yet generous back-and-forth between the duo’s sympathetic aesthetic tendencies. As Dunscombe earnestly jokes, “Think of it as being written by Jam Dundy, a synthetic person who exists when our powers combine.”
In recent years Dunscombe has pursued an adaptation of what she calls a “post-Romanian-spectralist idea of ‘Mass Plasma Synthesis,’” building a thick morass of churning sound from literally thousands of clustered sine waves that creep around using a set of pitch relations, only to be deftly subverted. It’s one of the many ways the project illuminates the album title, creatively and playfully straddling and skirting different edges. This decision gives that crushing din a delicious instability, “a sort of uncanny valley between the linear and the cyclical (the sacred and the profane),” as Dunscombe says. Reidy, playing a custom-made guitar with adjustable frets built by Berlin instrument maker and designer Sukandar Kartardinata, embraces the illusory dichotomy between static and active in the dense electronic foundation with ornate microtonal lines that alternately float atop and burrow within the churning tumult.
"Somewhere beneath the meticulously trimmed lawns of conventional music, a mole is digging. “Huuh, there’s a little mole coming up!?” A small upheaval of dirt, a sudden rupture in order - this is "3 × hullo, hullo", the latest sonic burrow from Jeugdbrand, a project where the absurd meets the sincere, where the intuitive gestures of Dennis Tyfus (piano, organ, vocals, tapes) and Jeroen Stevens (percussion, melodica, organ) are reinforced by the magnetic disruptions of Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson (tapes) and Gerard Herman (loops). It is music that tunnels through genres, scattering soil in every direction, finding freedom in the subterranean.
From the first moments of "3 × hullo, hullo", there is a sense of slow, deliberate emergence - an unfolding, an unearthing. The mole, that ridiculous, poetic little blind worker, is an apt metaphor. “The creature is practically blind. In its head, a pair of eyes perfectly fit for the darkness it is usually stuffed in. Under the surface, there is no light, only smells and sounds.” And that’s exactly how this record operates: an exploration of textures and echoes, of lo-fi transmissions and improvisatory impulse, guided not by vision, but by feel.
Take, for instance, the sprawling “Tomorrow, Tomorrow? I’m Talking Now, Forget About It!” - a title that could be mistaken for an argument in a café, but here unfolds as a loose, almost dreamlike cascade of erratic tape loops and detuned keys, like an old radio losing its grip on the signal. There’s an air of miscommunication, of conversation gone slightly askew. The record often seems to speak in tongues, slipping between fractured melodies, fleeting drones, and the occasional unexpected utterance, as if someone left the microphone on during a séance.
Then there’s the insistence of the title “There’s No Word for Ambient in Dutch”. An ironic observation? A challenge? Or simply a statement of fact? Whatever the case, the track itself is anything but passive - its shifting textures and delicate pulses refuse to settle into the expected. Much like a mole scraping through earth packed too tightly with cement, the sounds on this album navigate a world increasingly resistant to improvisation."
Chain DLK magazine
Jeroen Stevens – Percussion, Melodica, Organ
Dennis Tyfus – Piano, Organ, Vocals, Tapes
Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson – Tapes
Gerard Herman – Loops
This was originally release on Betalactum in 2004 as a limited edition CDR Of 25 copies & as such, was one of the rarerest items in the Nurse discography.
It has been put back together from its original fragmented form & mastered at IC Studio by Colin Potter, who did the mutating of the voice recordings recorded & cut up by Mr. Stapleton a long, long time ago .
Reissued due to popular demand, this is an edition of 300 copies in a digipack with new Santini artwork.
Possibly one of the strangest Nurse releases of all time. And that's saying something.....
After running IC Studio for over 40 years I’ve accumulated a large store of recordings by both myself and the many people I’ve worked with. I was recently looking for some masters of another band on a hard drive, where I stored tracks that had been transferred from old digital tapes. I noticed the folder ‘Period Remixes’ which I decided to open, as I hadn’t listened to the material for many years. The tracks were remixes of Jonathan Coleclough's 'Period' album, on which I had worked with him when it was released over 20 years ago. These pieces were made before the use of computers became commonplace in studios. They were all mixed live, without editing, using a physical mixing desk and external analogue and digital effects units.
I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard.
And I hope you will be too.
Colin Potter, IC Studio. London 2025
Four pieces by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, a pioneer of “holy minimalism.” The album centers around a never-before-released rendition of “Silentium,” the second movement of Pärt’s most famous concerto, Tabula Rasa, performed by Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry. The group plays “Silentium” at nearly half the speed of the best-known version, released on ECM in 1984. The piece, known for its healing properties for the dying and often used in palliative care facilities (one patient famously called it “angel music”), is breathtaking at half speed, seemingly stilling time itself.
The album compiles some of the most stunning renditions of Pärt’s music ever recorded. “Vater Unser (Arr. for trombone & string ensemble)” is somehow warm and austere at once. A miniature epic. Pianist Marcel Worm’s solo version of “Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka” is as beautiful as anything we’ve ever heard. “Fratres for Strings and Percussion” is one of Arvo Pärt’s most celebrated works. The Hungarian State Opera Orchestra’s version is iconic, filled with emotional playing right on the verge of overly romantic, but never tipping over.
Pärt’s approach to both music and life is as sparse as the compositions he creates. He once said, “I have nothing to say… Music says what I need to say. And it is dangerous to say anything, because if I’ve said it already in words there might be nothing left for my music.” Silentium continues Mississippi Records’ fascination with this great contemporary composer
Clear vinyl.
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Four pieces by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, a pioneer of “holy minimalism.” The album centers around a never-before-released rendition of “Silentium,” the second movement of Pärt’s most famous concerto, Tabula Rasa, performed by Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry. The group plays “Silentium” at nearly half the speed of the best-known version, released on ECM in 1984. The piece, known for its healing properties for the dying and often used in palliative care facilities (one patient famously called it “angel music”), is breathtaking at half speed, seemingly stilling time itself.
The album compiles some of the most stunning renditions of Pärt’s music ever recorded. “Vater Unser (Arr. for trombone & string ensemble)” is somehow warm and austere at once. A miniature epic. Pianist Marcel Worm’s solo version of “Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka” is as beautiful as anything we’ve ever heard. “Fratres for Strings and Percussion” is one of Arvo Pärt’s most celebrated works. The Hungarian State Opera Orchestra’s version is iconic, filled with emotional playing right on the verge of overly romantic, but never tipping over.
Pärt’s approach to both music and life is as sparse as the compositions he creates. He once said, “I have nothing to say… Music says what I need to say. And it is dangerous to say anything, because if I’ve said it already in words there might be nothing left for my music.” Silentium continues Mississippi Records’ fascination with this great contemporary composer
From Where You Came unspools as a series of nocturnal transmissions, altered-state refinements, and vivid stories, rich in vibrant, illuminating qualities. Indexing 19th century programmatic music, mid-’70s jazz, and a distinctively colourful and multi-dimensional approach to composition that embraces improvisation, Coverdale alloys synthesis with live instrumentation in a gesture of reconnection with land and body through sound. Approaching composition as a diagnostic methodology to spiritual ends, she conducts emotional resonance like currents of charge, hard-wiring the purely felt into electronic signals.
Though written and recorded on several continents, including at the GRM Studio in Paris and the Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm, From Where You Came was completed in rural Ontario, Canada. Featuring contributions from multidisciplinary sound artist and cellist Anne Bourne and trombonist Kalia Vandever, the album’s 11 expansive yet condensed compositions incorporate strings, woodwind, brass, keys, software and modular synthesis, inscribing a musical language that resonates animations with unfiltered, striking clarity. Coverdale's own voice melts into air amidst the enveloping swell of the album’s opening prelude: “Everything you know is real,” she sings on “Eternity,” “I’m sorry, life is beautiful… .” As though in response, oscillating vividly between animism and animalism, the album that follows is brimming with life in all its stunning complexity.
Reckoning with the experience of grief, dislocation, and the pressure of total freedom and independence, Coverdale yields supernatural capacity to alchemize tribulation into highly imaginative and inspiring fantasy epics of sound. In the piloted flight of “Daze,” wind choruses dance and twirl in ornate punctuated cycles as dissonant portamentos annotate modulatory ascent to soaring heights, gliding and churning across turbulent gails to new pockets of harmonic plateaus, stabilizing periodically through rhythmic gait for rest. It feels like the joy of flight. In other spiritual quests, sound becomes a feat of physics; physical and subterranean, material, and even destructive, amongst highland drone figures in “Freedom.” Melancholic restlessness and will-summoning entrench furtive flurries of energy on “Coming Around,” skittish, tacit, and reluctantly yearning chimes illuminate a granular “Problem of No Name,” and ecstatic, messy-haired catharsis blurts release through the drummed sample-based sequences of “Offload Flip.”
Each new narrative finds rootedness in a changing environment, giving a sense this is ecological adaptation made into music, as a way to navigate being in the world. Speaking directly to the rootlessness and alienation of modernity while processing the thrill and pain of being alive, From Where You Came draws immense strength through a commitment to material groundedness, from where we are able to view the scale of our own mythology, the worlds we want to build, and the stories we are determined to tell.
From Where You Came unspools as a series of nocturnal transmissions, altered-state refinements, and vivid stories, rich in vibrant, illuminating qualities. Indexing 19th century programmatic music, mid-’70s jazz, and a distinctively colourful and multi-dimensional approach to composition that embraces improvisation, Coverdale alloys synthesis with live instrumentation in a gesture of reconnection with land and body through sound. Approaching composition as a diagnostic methodology to spiritual ends, she conducts emotional resonance like currents of charge, hard-wiring the purely felt into electronic signals.
Though written and recorded on several continents, including at the GRM Studio in Paris and the Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm, From Where You Came was completed in rural Ontario, Canada. Featuring contributions from multidisciplinary sound artist and cellist Anne Bourne and trombonist Kalia Vandever, the album’s 11 expansive yet condensed compositions incorporate strings, woodwind, brass, keys, software and modular synthesis, inscribing a musical language that resonates animations with unfiltered, striking clarity. Coverdale's own voice melts into air amidst the enveloping swell of the album’s opening prelude: “Everything you know is real,” she sings on “Eternity,” “I’m sorry, life is beautiful… .” As though in response, oscillating vividly between animism and animalism, the album that follows is brimming with life in all its stunning complexity.
Reckoning with the experience of grief, dislocation, and the pressure of total freedom and independence, Coverdale yields supernatural capacity to alchemize tribulation into highly imaginative and inspiring fantasy epics of sound. In the piloted flight of “Daze,” wind choruses dance and twirl in ornate punctuated cycles as dissonant portamentos annotate modulatory ascent to soaring heights, gliding and churning across turbulent gails to new pockets of harmonic plateaus, stabilizing periodically through rhythmic gait for rest. It feels like the joy of flight. In other spiritual quests, sound becomes a feat of physics; physical and subterranean, material, and even destructive, amongst highland drone figures in “Freedom.” Melancholic restlessness and will-summoning entrench furtive flurries of energy on “Coming Around,” skittish, tacit, and reluctantly yearning chimes illuminate a granular “Problem of No Name,” and ecstatic, messy-haired catharsis blurts release through the drummed sample-based sequences of “Offload Flip.”
Each new narrative finds rootedness in a changing environment, giving a sense this is ecological adaptation made into music, as a way to navigate being in the world. Speaking directly to the rootlessness and alienation of modernity while processing the thrill and pain of being alive, From Where You Came draws immense strength through a commitment to material groundedness, from where we are able to view the scale of our own mythology, the worlds we want to build, and the stories we are determined to tell.
The title of this work by Beatrice Dillon is taken from the notion of ‘basho’, developed by Kitarō Nishida, Japanese philosopher and father of the Kyoto school. Kitaro’s ‘basho’ (場所) refers to a fundamental ‘place’ or ‘field’ where things exist and interact. Not just a physical location, but a more abstract space where all experiences, thoughts, and phenomena are interconnected. In Nishida’s philosophy, ‘basho’ is a dynamic, living ground where subject and object, self and world, are not separate but mutually interrelated. Inspired by this, Beatrice Dillon develops a music of a complex nature, that never ceases to constitute itself as pure presentation, constantly re-exposed, reactivating at every moment both the object of attention and the listener who aims at it. Borrowing both its sounds (which have no real origin or internal space) and its idioms from electronic music, Dillon's Basho is a diversion, a rearrangement that places us, through elements that are familiar but suddenly alien, back into a field of pure listening.
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Still Forms, by Japanese composer Hideki Umezawa, draws its sound material from the exploration of Baschet sound structures, instruments developed by the brothers Bernard and François Baschet in the 1950s that have since been highly prized by the world of contemporary musical creation. These structures were presented at the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair, and some remained in Japan. Through various recording sessions, in Japan but also in France, Hideki Umezawa re-explores the fascinating sonic potential of these atypical instruments to include them in a highly mastered composition where sounds of acoustic origin and electronic textures respond to each other, as in the distorted reflection of the resonators of the Baschet structures. Still Forms is thus a tribute to, and a journey through time through, the incredible power of inspiration and invention of these sound structures, but also a sharpened proposal of contemporary electroacoustic composition that knows how to renew itself without denying its origins.
Neon green vinyl (!)
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In the depths of Geneva’s Fonderie Kugler red-lit-boudoir, stand four grand pianos surrounded by divinities. The two elder Erard brothers are tuned down a quarter tone lower than their neighbours, a twin pair of gleaming and valiant Yamaha’s. Charlemagne and Seppe both sit facing each other, managing the 428Hz tuning from the tip of their left hand, while the right hand controls the conventional 440Hz machine. This four-piano fantasy was born a few years ago, when these two gentlemen met around a carillon, and realised they had a common “passion for unusual tunings and the playing of multiple pianos”. This microtonal duo first premiered at the Bijloke in Ghent (2019), and has since remained slightly concealed until Konnekt provided the little spark to reignite this mystical-keyboard-beast. When the two pianists swap places, during a short moment of inhabited silence, we get a chance to taste what seems to lie beyond the notes. Perhaps the key to appreciating and sharing beauty is magicallyyy mysterioussss after all.
In the depths of Geneva’s Fonderie Kugler red-lit-boudoir, stand four grand pianos surrounded by divinities. The two elder Erard brothers are tuned down a quarter tone lower than their neighbours, a twin pair of gleaming and valiant Yamaha’s. Charlemagne and Seppe both sit facing each other, managing the 428Hz tuning from the tip of their left hand, while the right hand controls the conventional 440Hz machine. This four-piano fantasy was born a few years ago, when these two gentlemen met around a carillon, and realised they had a common “passion for unusual tunings and the playing of multiple pianos”. This microtonal duo first premiered at the Bijloke in Ghent (2019), and has since remained slightly concealed until Konnekt provided the little spark to reignite this mystical-keyboard-beast. When the two pianists swap places, during a short moment of inhabited silence, we get a chance to taste what seems to lie beyond the notes. Perhaps the key to appreciating and sharing beauty is magicallyyy mysterioussss after all.
'Flipperen' takes the randomness of pinball and turns it into music. Using recordings from old pinball machines, the music mixes chaos and structure, reflecting the Fluxus spirit of play and chance. It's a wild ride through sound, where things don't always make sense--but that's the fun of it.
During the quiet and strange Covid days, Suzana Lașcu, Robert Kroos, and Reinier van Houdt began a recording project based on the soundbites of pinball machines. They visited the empty Dutch Pinball Museum in Rotterdam and captured field recordings of machines from the 1960s to the 1990s. From these, they selected 28 samples to serve as thematic starting points for what they called 'game pieces,' recorded in two sessions at Sonology Studios in The Hague. The recordings were then shaped into sound collages using cut-up techniques and probabilistic processes.
The project is titled 'Flipperen,' released under the name 'Ilinx.' 'Ilinx' refers to a form of play described by Roger Caillois, which creates a temporary disruption of perception, similar to vertigo or trance. The trio’s improvisational approach intentionally follows this principle.
The samples were chosen to highlight how the ball moves through the pinball machines. The sound design reacts to its journey, capturing how it interacts with the machines and the elements inside.
Pinball is a game that combines control and randomness—each action leads to an unpredictable result, and the outcome is always uncertain. The ball bounces around, following its own path, guided by chance and momentum. This sense of unpredictability is reflected in the music, where the sounds are both structured and random. By combining recorded samples with processes that incorporate chance, the music mirrors the chaotic movement of the pinball, showing how disorder can form patterns and meaning.
The unpredictable nature of pinball connects to the work of avant-garde artists like the Fluxus movement, who embraced randomness and unconventional methods. This project delves into the tension between control and chaos, where play and randomness become tools for reimagining sound itself. It flows unpredictably, like the disorienting dance of a pinball bouncing between unseen paths.
The album cover features 'Pinball Wizard II' (1973) by Dutch Situationist Jaqueline de Jong, who once described the "flipside of existence" where time is bent and forms are constantly in play, much like the pinball itself. Jaqueline bought a pinball machine she named 'Gaucho' in 1972, and playing it gave her "wonderful and idiotic sensations," reflecting the same chaos and playfulness that runs through this album. She generously allowed the use of her artwork before her passing in June 2024.
Vernon composes a cinema for the ears. Something uniquely textured and immediately present. I think of The Dramaturgy of Decay as a sonic equivalent to the ruined films of Bill Morrison (Decasia, 2002) or Peter Delpeut (Lyrical Nitrate, 1991). I hear the tape, the sound of the medium – and I hear it disappearing – I see the end coming. And yet the disappearance is not tragic. There is a vein of humour gently running throughout the album. For all their eeriness, Vernon’s soundscapes carry with them something comfortingly familiar – something delicate and tender like the Super 8 films of Jonas Mekas.
Vernon has long been fascinated with home-recordings and the urgent poetry of the everyday. On The Dramaturgy of Decay we hear snippets of audio letters, messages left on answering machines (“Pouring From Hollow to Empty”, “The Years Simply Dissolved”). The messages get reworked and rearranged, slowed down and taken apart. Somewhere people are forever clapping, laughing. Tentatively playing the piano. Singing uncertainly. Vernon patiently excavates the real, revealing a soundscape of the forgotten, the buried, the invisible.
Everything in The Dramaturgy of Decay speaks of death – of the irreversible passing of time, of vanishing places and voices – of that which will not return. His work captures the infinitely slow yet resolute movement of erasure, the empty place where something used to be. It also reflects the wider destruction of our environment.
Yet there is no necrophilic impulse here. As Vernon converses with the lost, the transient and the dead, it seems to me he is tirelessly extracting life from them. And he reveals not their deadness but rather the quick, living eternity of instants. The Dramaturgy of Decay is a reflection on time through sound. But, most importantly, it is extremely beautiful music. Not quite of this world and, yet, not of any other world. It is music for the here and now.
Elodie A. Roy, January 2024
Among its many qualities, music relies on a special force: transcendence. When we listen, we are placed in a different reality, where sound is a vehicle for a much higher meaning. Naturally, not all music is capable of such a thing. But a few musicians clearly stand above as special – as soon as we hear them, we know that their music flows, floats and transcends.
Dialogues and shadows, the second recording by the duo of Gonçalo Almeida and Pierre Bastien emanates a distinct and intriguing sound from the beginning, inducing our listening toward a world that goes way beyond a succession of notes and timbres. We hear it and it's there, this mysterious matter that touches us. We hear a dialogue, a connection, and a shadow of luminescent presence.
Both musicians are based in Rotterdam, and they share an ethical common ground, with an endless list of collaborations, recordings and the same passion for a music that should always point in new directions. Throughout this recording, we are taken into a conversation where the listener plays a significant and active part. With constant changes in the mechanical instruments and a rich harmonic content of polyrhythmic counterpoint, the duo sets a base for subtle melodic phrases, that appear surprisingly from different sources – Bastien’s pocket trumpet, Almeida’s double bass, or their custom-made instruments and devices. As we listen, we move towards a personal fictional narrative, accompanied by these abstract sonic entities that guide us through the record. Their presence is highly visual too, as our imagination is immediately filled by Bastien’s instruments coming to life along with a multitude of strings played by erratic movements of the bows, almost like a tribal dance from a culture that never existed.
In this strange and beautiful world, we are constantly surprised by the next element that will face us and transcend its physical projection, in an elegant invitation to the unknown. The unknown we seek constantly throughout all our lives. So, let the sound be the light that guides us in our shadows.
— Gustavo Costa
Renowned for her percussion genius, Limpe Fuchs surprises with a rare venture into her classical roots – the piano. Despite her extensive musical career, documented piano performances have been scarce until now. In this album she transcends time and expectation, diving into the instrument's essence. Her rhythmic finesse as a percussionist leaves an indelible mark on each keystroke. Join Fuchs on this intriguing late venture into the world of piano and savour every note on this unique and raw artistic encounter.
Christof Migone's 'Wet Water (Let’s Dance)' immerses you in a mysterious soundscape, characterised by electronic noise and watery flows. Each piece explores inarticulation and the struggle to communicate, challenging traditional notions of sound and language. In the work captured in this collection, the relation between elements is abstract, entangled, puzzle-like in its weirdness, and all the more rewarding for that.
The four pieces constituting The Release (Into Motion), which take up the entirety of disc two, are different, more conventionally ‘musical’ in structure and style, but still sharing, as with all of Migone’s work, a conceptual sensibility and feeling of underlying logics at work. In each piece, layers of roughly pitched electronics tones flow into and around each other, as if mirroring the dynamic surfaces, continuous motion, interference patterns, and interacting currents of ocean waves. These sounds derive from a performance work in which Migone held a tomato frozen in a block of ice in his mouth while it slowly melted over more than thirty minutes—a painful looking exercise, based on the documentation images. How such an endurance ritual produced these sounds is mysterious and oblique, but at the same time highly suggestive. Like so much of the work captured and documented in this collection, the relation between elements is abstract, entangled, puzzle-like in its weirdness, and all the more rewarding for that.
— Joel Stern
What is - or rather: what could be - a "Pruttipal Index"? In books, libraries and databases, an index is usually a concise overview or inventory. It suggests that this album could be a mini-encyclopedia of the work of its makers. In economics, indexes are measurements of the current state of an economy; which, in the case of this album, could be a vitality metrics of the Goodiepal & Pals/GP&PLS/BananSkole collective that produced it. In semiotics, an index is a sign that functions as a trace (like smoke as an index of fire). Because of their technology, vinyl records are indexical (with their grooves being indexes of sound waves), but in addition, this album could also be seen as a series of sonic traces, or footprints, left by the various activities of GP&PLS and Pruttipal over the eight years of their collective existence.
Everyday life, creative and social practice, learning and experimentation are constantly interwoven in these recordings. This is reminiscent of other experimental living, learning and music-making communities since the early 1970s, such as the French experimental ICEM/Freinet schools.
While the solo artist also known as Goodiepal can still be heard on this album - in spoken tracks and what sounds like half-improvised electronic pieces -, s/he has become gradually disguised and dissolved. The "Pruttipal Index" is thus a record of their latest self-reinvention, as they have been reinventing themselves periodically since the 1990s, including their latest identity Pruttipal, taken from the Danish word "prut" meaning "fart". Pruttipal may have become a boring old fart, or the fart may be a joke on the perceived noises of experimental music or the seeming casualness of the recordings.
There is, audibly, an eclectic stylistic mix of theater, group improvisation, choirs, folk music and children's songs, campy-ironic modular synthesizer electronics, highly-produced art rock and no wave jazz, heavy metal, techno, punk and catchy Scandinavian dance pop tunes interspersed with mock-conspiracy podcasting. Much of it could be called functional music derived from collective social performances to be reused for new collective social performances.
This is the seventh and last release in the Die Stadt CD series. Even though David Jackman gets the credit in the title, the music itself is pure Organum electronics—dense, noisy, and exactly what fans would expect. Emerging as a meditative gesture within the long and enigmatic arc of David Jackman’s output, Steadfast stands as both a summation and a deepening of concerns that have occupied him for decades. Issued as a double CD by Die Stadt, the release captures Jackman—best known for his work under the Organum moniker—at a moment of stark clarity and quiet force. His legacy, shaped through collaborations with figures like David Tibet and Steven Stapleton, has always occupied a space between austerity and intensity, drawing on minimalism, drone, and ritualized abstraction to forge a language uniquely his own.
Across the two discs of Steadfast, we find a music that is neither strictly acoustic nor electronic, but something in between—an environment, a slow unfolding. Analog synthesizers swell and recede like distant weather systems; field recordings and incidental sounds rise with spectral insistence before dissolving again into silence. There is a patience here, a sense of refusal, of staying with the sound long after others might have let go. Moments verge on the imperceptible, only to bloom suddenly into passages of engulfing texture.
Rather than a document of change, Steadfast feels like a portrait of duration—of persistence in listening and making. It does not seek to impress but to inhabit; it asks for time and gives it back in kind. For those familiar with the ceremonial gravity of Organum or the liminal poetics of Nurse With Wound, this work may feel at once familiar and startlingly new—a quiet epiphany from one of the most singular voices in experimental sound.
"Music and musical releases can be controversial for many reasons. Lyrical content, shocking covers, too loud, too quiet: David Jackman’s music is controversial for none of these reasons. His music isn’t noisy or silent, with no lyrical content or a shocking cover. I am not on any discussion group online and never was, but I can imagine a discussion with the topic: “Is David Jackman doing the same thing over and over again?”. I don’t know the answer, but I can guess. We can say the last few releases (and I am discounting his Organum Electronics releases; they are in a different league) contain the same musical elements.
I copy from my last review, “A drone, Shruti-like, some low gong sound, the occasional bang on the piano, a church bell and some crows flying overhead”. The crows may have flown away, but the other elements are there. I also wrote, “The drone is continuous here; the others appear irregularly. The whole work is slow and majestic. The music has a funeral aspect, like a black-and-white picture from an Edgar Allen Poe story. It is very similar to much of his recent work, and it is hard to figure out the difference(s). All of this fits my pop-art theory. I love this mystique and playing around with similar ideas and notions. I am sure this mystery will never be unravelled” - Frans de Waard
David Jackman (Organum) presents "Flames of Fire", a mesmerizing 47-minute composition titled 'Flames of Fire & Stars of Lighte the Sun Ariseth'. The piece unfolds with a metallic hum, evoking the resonant vibrations of a sitar, before dissolving into vast, shimmering drones that stretch into infinity. Departing from his work as Organum Electronics, this recording embraces a more organic sound while retaining subtle electronic textures. A sinuous, undulating tone weaves through the composition, swelling and receding into the depths of the frequency spectrum, creating an immersive and meditative experience. Jackman reintroduces the resonant gong sounds that have defined his recent output, culminating in a surge of controlled noise toward the piece’s climax. Limited to 500 copies in a striking digisleeve featuring exquisite artwork by Jonathan Coleclough, this release is a must for devotees of deep, immersive soundscapes.
"The drones here are heavier, submerged in an orchestral darkness... A vast, nebulous mass, both mechanical and immense, painting a sonic portrait of bleak grandeur—a fitting soundtrack for shadowed times." — Vital Weekly
The four pieces that compose Réminiscences, a masterpiece if ever there was one, create the equivalent of a human day, from dawn to night, from call to cry, from meditation to revolt, through the clash of the sounds of human and natural activities. Simply unique and grandiose.
Jean-Claude Eloy (1938) is a French composer with a classical background who moved away from the structures and models that had carried him until then (models imposed on contemporary music through various institutional and official hegemonies) to create, from the early 1970s onwards, long electroacoustic frescoes, vast poems of sounds and noises between Western and Eastern traditions, the main aim of which is to liberate the sound imagination.
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« To achieve these four works (Incantation, Confrontation, Contemplation, Oppression-Liberation), I relied on the sound elements used for the creation of my former work Yo-In, from which I recycled all the electroacoustic parts created at the Institute of Sonology of the University of Utrecht in 1979/1980. I relied also on the huge amount of samples and recordings of percussion instruments made at my request by the japanese percussionist Sumire Yoshihara, in 1979, at the Studio of Electronic Music of Radio NHK in Tokyo ; a studio where I had worked a lot in 1977/1978 (realization of Gaku-no-Michi).
This, for the purpose of transforming this work into an entirely electroacoustic work, freed from the heavy practical constraints of the 1980 version (sound theater for an imaginary ritual), produced with the wonderful participation of Michael W. Ranta.
In other words, my aim was to refocus on the most characteristic sound sources of this work : sirens boats ; sounds from nature (solfatares, volcanoes, wind, rain, waves...) ; african bird song ; noise from machines and factories ; not to mention the many samples of metal, wood and skin percussion instruments...
With this new composition, I turn my back on the « live » aspects that were strongly present since the creation of Yo-In and i have good chances of making the listener focus on the « power of listening », on perception, on the concentration of consciousness around the concrete sound phenomena that were at the source of this work. We are now dealing with a celebration of sound, an acoustic celebration, through the many metamorphoses of its materials and the specific theme of each work. »
Jean-Claude Eloy
Réminiscences (2017-2019)
Incantation 77’20
Confrontation 79’30
Contemplation 71’40
Oppression-Libération 78’40
Total length : 307’ (5h 07’)
Production: Studio Eve-Défense (composer's home studio) 2017/2019.
Sound materials taken from previous works: “Yo-In”, electroacoustic realization at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht University (1979/1980).
Samplings of percussion instruments:
- Sumire Yoshihara, electronic music studio (Denshi Ongaku Studio), NHK, Tokyo (1979).
- Gaston Sylvestre (skin percussion instruments), Paris (1979).
- Michael Ranta, Asian sound, Cologne (metal percussion instruments). Conny's Studio, Neunkirchen (1984).
Various contributions of recorded sound material: Michel Fano, Daniel Deshays
5 panel digipak + 24 page booklet
(extract cd1)
(extract cd4)
3LP + 8 page booklet in silkscreen printed linen box.
*One of Romania's most important composers in the last half-century, Octavian Nemescu (1940-2020) is among the few that were not "part of the system", managing to survive and compose in a world that felt more and more "empty", fragile, confused and scarce in prophecies. The mystical approach to his art defines Octavian Nemescu as an essentialist who believed in the power of archetypes in which he found inspiration. His pieces always start from an idea that has spiritual, cosmogonic implications and involves synthesizers, samples from nature and the "ison" (drone) inherent in the spectral current. When defining "meta music" or "imaginary music", Nemescu was an advocate of looking from above, from the top of the mountain. Silence is very important in his work in order to keep the sound flowing and to reflect on the sound from before, as a space, as a pause for thinking. Nemescu put forward another kind of music: a song that has not yet surfaced through human voice, any musical instrument, orchestra or other electro-acoustic means: an intimate, interior, introverted inner sound that focuses on the individual and the imagination. Imaginary music is a reaction, it comes in contrast to the spectacular, it is anti-show. For him, music had a ritualistic function, it served no cultural purpose. This 3LP set collects eight pieces for variable ensemble, tape and electronics, composed between 1968 and 2015, selected together with Erica Nemescu, who also mastered the tracks. Most tracks have been previously released on different CD's but never before on vinyl.
3LP + 8 page booklet in offset printed slipcase sleeve.
*One of Romania's most important composers in the last half-century, Octavian Nemescu (1940-2020) is among the few that were not "part of the system", managing to survive and compose in a world that felt more and more "empty", fragile, confused and scarce in prophecies. The mystical approach to his art defines Octavian Nemescu as an essentialist who believed in the power of archetypes in which he found inspiration. His pieces always start from an idea that has spiritual, cosmogonic implications and involves synthesizers, samples from nature and the "ison" (drone) inherent in the spectral current. When defining "meta music" or "imaginary music", Nemescu was an advocate of looking from above, from the top of the mountain. Silence is very important in his work in order to keep the sound flowing and to reflect on the sound from before, as a space, as a pause for thinking. Nemescu put forward another kind of music: a song that has not yet surfaced through human voice, any musical instrument, orchestra or other electro-acoustic means: an intimate, interior, introverted inner sound that focuses on the individual and the imagination. Imaginary music is a reaction, it comes in contrast to the spectacular, it is anti-show. For him, music had a ritualistic function, it served no cultural purpose. This 3LP set collects eight pieces for variable ensemble, tape and electronics, composed between 1968 and 2015, selected together with Erica Nemescu, who also mastered the tracks. Most tracks have been previously released on different CD's but never before on vinyl.
Composer Corneliu Cezar (1937-1997) was a distinctive personality within the Romanian post 1960 avantgarde: a visionary of music, a thinker and a prophet, a richly gifted artist also active with writing, poetry, painting and astrology. Cezar was an activist rediscovering the natural resonance of sound within a different historical context, and he embraced the recovery of authenticity as a reaction against the artificialized culture of serial doctrines. When, after 1975, the spectral music trend became official in Paris, with much fuss and remarkable support from musicologists, nobody knew that this trend had already been practiced by a small group of Romanian composers led by Corneliu Cezar for ten years. The four electro-acoustic pieces on this album (privately released on CD in Romania in 2000), recorded with little means between 1967 and 1975, display the incredibly strong ideas of a truly visionary artist. Everything Corneliu Cezar has done during his short earthly life bares the shade of authenticity.
Auryfa and Metaphon present Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982, a lavish six-CD box set collecting Costin Miereanu's legendary series of self-published cassettes and LPs from 1982 and 1984. Culminating four years of meticulous work, this project breathes new life into these recordings, remastered from the original tapes by Stephan Mathieu and accompanied by restored artwork and a comprehensive essay by Vincent de Roguin. Born in Bucharest in 1943 and naturalized as a French citizen in 1977, Miereanu occupied a singular position within the French new music landscape -- one foot in the establishment, the other in a world of deeply personal, boundary-pushing creativity. Alongside his intricate orchestral works and demanding academic career, he also produced the semi-improvised solo performances and electroacoustic compositions featured in this collection. Drawing inspiration from Erik Satie, film soundtracks, semiology, Romanian folk and art music, Gilles Deleuze, avant-garde literature, Terry Riley, and atmospheric phenomena, these twelve pieces were crafted using an array of synthesizers -- Minimoog, Polymoog, PPG Wave, Prophet-10 -- supplemented by piano, organ, and a handful of other instrumental sources. Their textural palette and occasional whimsy bear affinities with 1970s meditative synth music, yet they eschew psychedelic excess or cosmic grandeur. Instead, they reveal a vibrant, nuanced complexity that becomes more apparent with each listen, rooted in Miereanu's extensive musical studies and commitment to the ideals of 1960s experimentalism. Within that period's context, this music ultimately sails in the same sonic currents as Harold Budd and Brian Eno's collaboration, and the output of David Behrman, Alvin Curran, or Laurie Spiegel. Originally released on Miereanu's own Poly-Art International/Records and initially met with limited attention, these recordings have since gained underground acclaim among new generations of listeners. They offer a rare synthesis of accessibility and formal ambition, reflecting Miereanu's unwavering pursuit of artistic freedom, a world away from the high culture dogmatisms inherent to the European modernist tradition. His wide-ran-ging associations -- from the spectralists (Horațiu Rădulescu, Tristan Murail, and Gérard Grisey) to mavericks such as Giacinto Scelsi, Luc Ferrari, and Walter Marchetti, as well as the French underground electronic music scene (including Philippe Besombes and Jean-Louis Rizet, who engineered much of this music, and Richard Pinhas) -- help illuminate his unique artistic position.
While not anomalies in a career that could hardly be described as normal, these recordings hold a special place within Miereanu’s body of work. Few composers of his generation, particularly in France, have covered such a broad spectrum, with works for instrumental ensembles, opera, ballet, and radical tape music (Luna Cinese in 1975 on Cramps Records) but also performances, videos, and sound installations. Yet these wondrous modal keyboard fantasies remain among his greatest accomplishments. Consistently original and captivating, they possess an undeniable magic, standing as some of the most essential yet overlooked documents of French minimalism, early ambient, and nonconformist contemporary music from that era.
All music composed by Costin Miereanu and originally released on Poly-Art International ⁄ Records in 1982 and 1984
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John Duncan's "SAXMIX" is one massive piece of contemporary experimental music, which lets noise collide with free jazz and extreme minimalism. Duncan is a master when it comes to these things, and he is an artists constantly evolving, mutating and challenging. The sax thing then? JD has invited some of his fav sax players to collaborate with him; Mats Gustafsson, Antoine Chessex, Martin Escalante, Dror Feiler and Ulrich Krieger. Did I say MASSIVE? Well, it is.
Scheintot is a new debuting trio consisting of Mats Gustafsson (sax/flute), Henrik Rylander (mixing desk) and myself on Korg MS20 which might be my fav synth ever, or right now at least. This is weird stuff. Not sure where this is going but I guess you will enjoy it if you are into stuff we have done before, but this sits comfortably in its own corner, and we are not smart enough to be ashamed over sounding so infected.
Nice cover by Tochnit Aleph boss Daniel Löwenbrück.
Hot stuff, basically!
Joachim Nordwall, November 28th 2024.
Edition: 200 on black/transparent splatter vinyl
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Dischorealism was initially intended to be a conceptual work about ”milk” but we quickly got tired of the idea and the result was partly something completely different. Nevertheless, partly the same in the sense of sucking the life out of somebody, exploiting and over consuming trust in any form. Dischorealism explores the cost of dual nature and circulates around themes such as friendship, sex, violence and drug abuse.
Dischorealism is IMAGE and SOUND and a collaboration between Vanligt Folk and videoartist Tobias Toyberg. This is the SOUND part of the collaboration.
Yves De Mey’s music comes in many shapes, swaying from sparse to packed, and everything in between. But always with a strong focus on details, on the grains of what eventually becomes a solid entity, a resonant construction. Precise sound design and elastic rhythms are key, whether it’s in his solo work or in collaborations. In the past he has worked with Peter Van Hoesen as Sendai, and more recently he started Grid Ravage, a trio with Louis Evrard on drums and Gino Coomans on cello.
Since 2009, De Mey had a string of releases on a wide range of labels. Line, Sandwell District, Opal Tapes, Spectrum Spools, Editions Mego, Latency, Entr’acte, Stellage, Superpang, his own Bandcamp (obviously)… an ever-growing list of outlets allowing for a broad palette of styles and moods. There’s also been a vast amount of live shows at respected festivals and venues; CTM, Atonal, Labyrinth, Mutek,… to name but a few.
During office hours, De Mey works as a sound designer, sound editor and re-recording mixer. And in the last few years he added (live) mixing and mastering to his service package.
The Velocity of Anguish was recorded over the course of a few weeks, multitracking a fairly renowned bass and lead module through some loopers, spring reverb tanks and a Koma Elektronik Field Kit. It’s a perfect fit for De Mey’s other single instrument releases (i.e. Exit Strategies I on Entr’acte…)
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‘Low Fidelity’ was commissioned by Anna Koch / Weld with support from the Swedish Arts Council for the performance Insisting On. Sneak premiere for Issue Project Room, Saint Vitus Bar, Brooklyn, USA in December 2015. First performance at Weld, Stockholm, Sweden in February 2016.
‘Invocation I’ is an excerpt from a live recording at Inter Arts Center, Malmö, Sweden, January 2017 based on Lindström’s ‘giant electronic feedback set-up.’
‘The True Laptop Quartet’ is named after a set of instruments built on electromagnetic feedback principles. Both the instruments and the piece were commissioned by Bergen Assembly 2016 for Tarek Atoui’s Within project. Track recorded at Sentralbadet, Bergen, Norway, June 2016 with Mats Lindström overdubbing on all instruments. Official world premiere: September 1st 2016 with Tarek Atoui, Espen Sommer Eide, Mats Lindström and Kaya Molsen as the musicians.
‘Light Vessel 21’ was a collaboration with Anna Koch and presented as an A/V installation on board the historic LV21 vessel. LV21 saw most of her service off the Kent coast on the Varne and East Goodwin stations. The piece was commissioned by Töne Festival, Kent, England. World premiere: June 20th 2014.
‘Sotto il Ponte’ was recorded live, with Alba G. Corall on live video, at Huset Under Bron, Stockholm, Sweden in February 2014.
‘Shadow of the Dutchman’ was an overture to the Wagner opera in a version for three pianos and live electronics. The piece was commissioned by Folkoperan, Stockholm, Sweden. Its debut performance was in February 2013.
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Unreleased material composed by Bernard Parmegiani in 1992. Lac Noir - La Serpente is part of Emmanuel Raquin-Lorenzi's Lac Noir, a composite work inspired by a serpentine female creature or "snake-woman" that he saw in Transylvania in 1976, with a total of 33 pieces using various media, 24 by himself and 9 by other artists. All the materials used in Lac Noir were gathered on the land of the snake-woman between 1990 and 1992. The first coordinated broadcast ran from June to October 2019, like a theatrical display of media.
"At the end of May 1992, in Provence, in his Summer studio not far from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Bernard Parmegiani played the first musical moments he had worked on from the sounds he and Christian Zanési had collected in Negreni in October 1990. A few days after this listening session, on 4th June, I wrote him a letter. I didn't mean to take control of what was to become the ninth movement of his composition, but to share with him some of the resonances I had heard in what he had composed, which mingled with my dreams and memories of the Transylvanian snake-woman, and outlined possible concordances with the other pieces underway for Lac Noir. In the midst of the garish chaos of the fair and its spectacular stunts, there could spread out -- still, silent eye of the cyclone -- the long waters of a lake. Calm waters. Patches cool but sensitive as skin. Between the waters there flows and ripples, there shows up and dives again a snake-woman born of the still waters. A sweet, good serpent whose song -- strange and melodious, sensual, yet already tinged, as if bitten by the black depths, with bitterness; that of prescience, shading it with melancholy -- is her very undulation, the rings of which appear, together or in turn, the way translucent veins overlap, slither over one another in a moving braid of metamorphoses." (Extracts from notes by E. Raquin-Lorenzi)
Unreleased material composed by Bernard Parmegiani in 1992. Lac Noir - La Serpente is part of Emmanuel Raquin-Lorenzi's Lac Noir, a composite work inspired by a serpentine female creature or "snake-woman" that he saw in Transylvania in 1976, with a total of 33 pieces using various media, 24 by himself and 9 by other artists. All the materials used in Lac Noir were gathered on the land of the snake-woman between 1990 and 1992. The first coordinated broadcast ran from June to October 2019, like a theatrical display of media.
"At the end of May 1992, in Provence, in his Summer studio not far from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Bernard Parmegiani played the first musical moments he had worked on from the sounds he and Christian Zanési had collected in Negreni in October 1990. A few days after this listening session, on 4th June, I wrote him a letter. I didn't mean to take control of what was to become the ninth movement of his composition, but to share with him some of the resonances I had heard in what he had composed, which mingled with my dreams and memories of the Transylvanian snake-woman, and outlined possible concordances with the other pieces underway for Lac Noir. In the midst of the garish chaos of the fair and its spectacular stunts, there could spread out -- still, silent eye of the cyclone -- the long waters of a lake. Calm waters. Patches cool but sensitive as skin. Between the waters there flows and ripples, there shows up and dives again a snake-woman born of the still waters. A sweet, good serpent whose song -- strange and melodious, sensual, yet already tinged, as if bitten by the black depths, with bitterness; that of prescience, shading it with melancholy -- is her very undulation, the rings of which appear, together or in turn, the way translucent veins overlap, slither over one another in a moving braid of metamorphoses." (Extracts from notes by E. Raquin-Lorenzi)