Vancouver, Canada-based Scott Morgan, who records as Loscil, has uploaded a dozen stunningly beautiful drones and drone extractions to the netlabel known simply as One (one.dot9.ca), under the general heading stases. Some of the tracks, like “biced” (MP3), have a slight pulse that suggests they might veer into minimal techno, though they never do. Others, like “micro hydro” (MP3), are too vibrant, too ecstatic, to really be called drones, and bring to mind the otherworldly noodlings of Louis and Bebe Baron. The best, like the elegant opening cut, “cotom” (MP3), are so refined that you’ll just want to loop ’em forever. Loscil is best known for his albums on Kranky, the latest of which is due out in May. More info at loscil.com.
Super-Silent MP3s
Asher composes music that’s a kind of sonic equivalent to our colloquial understanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal, in that the more attention you pay to it, the more it changes. Whereas with most music, the louder you play it, the more it fills the room you’re in, with Asher’s music, as evidenced on two recent netlabel releases (at earlabs.org and con-v.org), the higher you turn the volume knob, the more the music seems to dissipate, as if by increasing the loudness you’re tearing the music’s fragile fabric to shreds.
Both releases consist of a trio of tracks, none shorter than 11 minutes, one closing in on 20. It’s immersive music, but of the shallow-pool variety. Still, as our moms warned us, you can drown in an inch of water. And Invariably the Blue, the release on Con-v, could be a series of field recordings from abandoned industrial sites, where only the most essential activities are left running, and even then only at maintenance level. These aren’t drones, in that they’re inherently rhythmic, it’s just that those rhythms are so microscopic and quasi-subaural that they take on a transparent quality.
Only as a matter of contrast do the three untitled compositions on Asher’s Earlabs release come across as organic and varied, with more diversity packed into the 17-minute third track (“1/6/04”) than into the nearly 40 minutes of And Invariably the Blue. Asher describes his process in an email to Jos Smolders, head of Earlabs, that serves as that release’s liner notes: “there is a constant textured sound and then other sounds which come in and sort of rise out of the texture.” Of course, the extent of these variations is purely relative. The sounds are of the sort (twitchy little noises, halos of synthesis, distant rumbling) that could easily be drowned out by a microwaving burrito or a neighbor’s viewing of a sports event.
Benny-Bartok Remix MP3s
The latest Iron Chef of Music competition is among its best yet. That number 43 outshines many of its predecessors in sheer listenability is expected, since it’s built on a sample of Benny Goodman playing Bela Bartok (MP3). For each Iron Chef of Music competition, musicians are assigned a shared sample from which they build a unique composition in a set amount of time. In the past, this has involved a Strawberry Shortcake record, the theme to the movie Robocop, and a field recording made in China, among other sonic mystery meats. The very first Iron Chef of Music competition, which took place back on June 7, 2003, took as its source material a MIDI remake of the theme to the TV show MacGyver. MacGyver provided a smart debut for the series, since he’s the patron saint of homebrew gadgetry devised under pressure.
The latest Iron Chef of Music competition involves takes by 13 musicians on the reedy, archive-quality recording of Goodman playing “Contrasts,” an aptly named piece he’d commissioned from Bartok; “Contrasts” probably sound likes a proto-mashup itself, the Jazz Age classicist performing something by the folk-infused classical composer, but the truth is even stranger than any potential fiction: that’s Bartok playing the piano himself on the recording.
The best of this particular competition retain evident elements from the original, like Mike Shusta‘s deliberate investigation of some pizzicato sections (MP3), something MNSN does to more muted effect (MP3). Bringing to mind Buddy Holly’s use of strings in the recording studio, Spamtron turns the sample into fodder for something utterly poppy. Only Butternuts pushes it into industrial-techno overdrive (MP3), and though the sound is appealing, it’s out of place if you think of the 13 tracks as a collection.
Xmark tweaks a clarinet riff into the stratosphere, but keeps the source material recognizable (MP3). Octopus Inc‘s is less a remix than a rearrangement (MP3), and had one only heard Silversmith‘s take, which is my favorite, you’d think the original sample had been salvaged, half-warped, from the dustbin of the early 20th century. In fact, it’s readily available on CD (amazon.com). More info at ironchefofmusic.com, a subset of kracfive.com.
Cepia Glitch MP3
How glitch went from an experimental manifestation of technological unease to a kind of cozy comfort music is a tale for another day. For now, one can simply download a file like Cepia‘s “Hoarse” (MP3), off the forthcoming Idol Tryouts Two collection from the Ghostly International label, and enjoy its rapid-fire textural abrasions, little sonic indiscretions that move from surface noise to rhythm as the song unfolds, taking a moment for the inevitable little break of a bridge, so you can collect yourself before the thing rasps out wildly toward the end, reminding you of a not so distant past when this sorta thing was anything but familiar. The album, which also features Loscil, Christopher Willits, Richard Devine, Matthew Dear and others, is due out next Tuesday, March 7. More info at ghostly.com.
Musique Concrete Remix MP3s
The long-running, if long quiet, netlabel No Type is back. A quick glance at its archives suggests that the last significant update to the site occurred in July of last year, and the announcement via email this week of new No Type material included the following side comment: “we haven’t seen that since… since… well, we won’t say, that’d be embarassing.” (Spelling the word “embarrassing” incorrectly seems par for the course.)
Making up for lost time, the label unleashed six new sets, which will take some time to get through. The most eye-catching to start with is a 14-track tribute to musique concrete figure Francis Dhomont, in time for his 80th birthday. Fifteen musicians (two, Nuthre and Jon Vaughn, in collaboration) have taken various Dhomont recordings and techniques, and produced close to an hour and a half of recordings. Dhomont was an early figure in musique concrete, of making meta-music, in which the recording was the beginning, not the end, of the production process. Heard here are such familiar Dhomont ingredients as quick cuts, intense quietude, moments of shock’n’awe and occasional references to remnants of traditional instrumentation, like the splatters of trombone on “Io (Chiaroscuro),” as refracted by No Type regular A_dontigny (MP3).
There are also beats that sound more contemporary than their originator, as on a track by Diablatomica, though even there attention is paid to having the electric percussion come and go, so it’s less a rhythmic bedrock for the piece than it is an element unto itself (MP3). (Diablatomica also cues up an orchestral remain, a held note that bleeds into something processed and otherworldly.) The additional tracks represent work by Kevin M Krebs, Books on Tape, Infoslut, Philemon, Le Chien borgne, Julie Rousse, Chris Degiere, Headphone Science, Camp, Noah Sasso and Sam Shalabi. In related news, prices on No Type’s physical CDs have been reduced by 50 percent. More info at notype.com.