Tuesday 28 September 2010

new release on engraved glass


Jez riley French - 'dawn chorus - north & south banks'

ltd edition taiyo yuden cdr mounted on art card

*limited edition release featuring recordings made along the banks of the river Humber in east yorkshire. The recordings were made for a durational performance as part of 'seeds & bridges' 2010 & the cd comes mounted on the art-card flyer for the event. For this release I have composed a 64 minute single piece using the unprocessed recordings - mostly recorded on the north bank near to Flaxfleet *


postage options





3 new discs from the Taurion river project

a series of three 3inch cd releases from the Taurion river project. Just given these a few days listen & they are well worth getting ! Click here to order these discs & do click here to visit the Taurion river sound blog.


JU10 - « Gisements (1) »

Third issue of the CD series « La Rivière », « Gisements (1) by Marc Namblard is a new work from and inspired by the series of recordings made around the Valley Taurion.


Review in vital weekly

Just what 'prises de sons' means I don't know, but my best guess would be that that it means gathering of sounds, which was done by Cedric Peyronnet and Marc Namblard. He has a CD 'Chants Of Frozen Lakes' (reviewed in Vital Weekly 624), and then was never heard of again, by me that is. Here the two men recorded sounds from Vallee du Taurion, and Namblard is responsible for editing the sounds into a piece of music. He does that with great care and lots of help from the computer. The frequencies are all pushed up to the limit, and all sorts of plug-ins are used to make a lively piece of soundscaping. Namblard uses the tactic of collage, which is means there are sudden shifts and changes in the material, which add a great vibrant thing to the music. At times we recognize the field recordings, water, insects, rain, and at other times there is a lot to guess about it. A great, refined piece of music, highly dramatic and very lively. Excellent. (FdW)


--------------------------------


FE10 - igilagiilal aglalgal (was brought together in baidars)

  • from field-recordings by Cédric Peyronnet in the Taurion river valley, France
  • sound sources: aircraft, crickets, cicadas, grasshoppers, snow, ice, environments studio work from february to september 2009
  • title in Atkan Aleut, Eskimo-Aleut language spoken on Atka island in the Aleutian archipelago, North Pacific
  • photographs by Cyril Herry

This work has been composed 2 times, because a first version of it went completely cancelled out due to something like a digital crash. The second version thus takes on where the first one disappeared and from most of what was thought of and decided about it during the first 4 months of work. Then it developed it into a perhaps more complex texture, yet still following the same principle of timbral and morphologenetical sieve and enhancement of peculiar traits of the original field-recordings. The final result is a slow evolution of a sonic galaxy revolving around a limited sound material array, yet never making use of the same local structures and morphologies.


--------------------------------




AO10 - « Taurion concret »

Forth issue in the CD series « La Rivière », «Taurion concret » by Lasse-Marc Riek is a new work from and inspired by the series of recordings made around the Taurion Valley.

  • Photographs by Yves Lapeyre

Lasse-Marc Riek

Lasse-Marc RiekLasse-Marc Riek (1975, Germany) uses different forms of expression in his producing. His works are interdisciplinary and can be conceived as groups of works of both visual art (action and conceptual art) and sound art. His art of sound can be described in terms such as acoustic ecology, bio acoustics and soundscapes. Here, Riek uses acoustic field recordings, storing them with different recording media, editing, archiving and presenting them in different contexts.

Since 1997, he has operated internationally with exhibitions, releases, concerts, lectures, workhops, awards, projects and given guest performances in galleries, art museums, churches and museums. Contributions in public media as well as in podcasts. Scholarships and artist-in-residence programs realised in Europe and Africa.

Since 2003 founder member of the audio publishing company Gruenrekorder, focusing on soundscapes, field recordings and electro-acoustic compositions, and in this connection, acting internationally with artists and scientists.

Member of the Forum Klanglandschaft (World Forum for Acoustic Ecology ), Verein zur Förderung von Phonographie und Experimenteller Musik (Society for the Advancement of Phonography and Experimental Music) and the Wildlife Sound Recording Society.

Saturday 25 September 2010

Ben Minto - recordings from Wildeye weekend.

Ben Minto, a sound designer based in Stockholm, has uploaded some of the recordings he made on his recent time at Wildeye including examples of hydrophone & coil pick up recordings:

click here to listen

Thursday 23 September 2010

forthcoming....














December 10th-12th: teaching on wildlife sound recording course (wildeye) alongside Chris Watson, Norfolk

later in 2010:
q-o2 - bruxelles
moks - estonia
berlin
field trips to France & across the UK

2011:
April/May: teaching on advanced wildlife recording course alongside Chris Watson, Norfolk

later in 2011:
possibly (hopefully): tour of Korea, China & Japan

new release - Ben Owen '05012009 FP'


ben owen - 05012009 FP
CDr and 3 letterpress printed insert cards
edition: 50
08-2010

tracklist::
1. two pipes 2 14:24
2. walk wind rain 06:25
3. ceiling mid level 2 22:48
4. in hull 17:23

to listen to excepts click here

firstly, this release (as with all the seasonal & winds measure label releases) is quite simply a work of art. The letterpress cards that make up the physical aspect of this are a joy to look at. I have long since wondered about the reality of the art worlds interest in sound & given that this release is limited to 50 copies & indeed that most releases of sound / musical art are limited & rarely sell more than a couple of hundred copies, it does rather reveal the fact that this area of the arts is not taken as seriously or is as valued as work in other media. Can you imagine a limited edition print by any contemporary visual artist selling for $14 ? does rather make a farce of the art worlds claim to have taken sound to it's heart. Still what can you expect from folks who by & large have an appallingly mainstream taste in music & little, if any interest in experimental forms.

So, back to this cracker of a release by Ben Owen. The four recordings were made on the frying pan light ship on the Hudson River, New York & as one might expect there are creaks & groans of the water bound metal as it is constantly shifted by the tides. There are strange, ghostly howls on 'two pipes' & a lull of trapped water on 'in hull'.

Clocking in at just under 62 minutes, what one gets with this work of art is a simple & clear impression of being in the water, but stuck, unable to move & anchored. The skills Ben has employed in leaving the recordings to speak for themselves, in the choices of location & duration of each track have resulted in a very fine work indeed. To be honest, given that I am so heavily involved with field recording I have long since grown tired of recordings that seem to be attempting to say more about the artists idea of how to be an artist rather than their interest in & enjoyment of the sounds they are capturing & for me this release adds to the proof of the value in that creative standpoint.

Buy it while you can ! & remember you've just bought a genuine work of art for next to nothing & in so doing have also supported Ben's on going series of releases on the two excellent imprints he runs.


Wednesday 8 September 2010


four extracts from recordings made on the recent Wildeye sound recording course in Norfolk (where I am a tutor along with Chris Watson)....for those interested in spending a few days exploring field recording, eating nice food & meeting nice folk these courses are really good value....

1) dawn chorus (recorded with an NT4 & sound devices 702)

2) pond life (recorded with one of my JrF hydrophones & a sony minidisc recorder)

3) steam train (recorded with NT4 & sound devices 702)

4) train points wire (recorded with one of my JrF contact mics & a sony minidisc recorder)

to listen & download these files click here

Wednesday 1 September 2010

new release on mystery sea:

Blindhæð "Laguna Sunrise"

Behind Blindhæð hides S/, a belgian sound composter & distiller...his creations based on field recordings, various electronic treatments & manipulations, and an amalgam of both, show a sheer depth & multidimensionality through detailed textural & spatial developments. With only a downloadable compilation on Ruidemos, and a vinyl on Ini.itu, whose lenghty titles give away a love for "terracing", recontextualization, and a consummate art of a story into a story, Blindhæð has already achieved to build a cohesive singular complex universe where Mystery is omnipresent... a negation of all easy short cuts, and a yearning for a refined sense of aesthetic, permanently supported by perceptive observation & empiric practice...
Blindhæð transforms his intimate world into a vulnerable pregnant sound experience...

Swallowed up into the strata,
Dragged by some distant memories,
aware of their driving force,
small debris uncoil their tales...

Wood is cracking,
Low ground is breathing,
Various modulations of an invisible constant...

Scrutinizing beyond,
"Laguna Sunrise" exhales life, disrupting time,
illuminating the moments,
the bareness of a shore,
the slightest cracks,
in a festival of shimmers...

Blindhæð_front_sleeve

MS61
cd-r ltd to 100 numbered copies
artwork + design + treatments by Daniel Crokaert - supervision, source material & photo insert : S/

ear room has just posted an interview with Francisco Lopez - click here to read....