free music for the people!
the kindness comes from david nemeth over at acts of silence:
Googling for information about this trio (Agnès Pe, Po Poy, and Lucía C. Pino) brings up basically nothing other than some incredibly interesting music and videos. Nombradía Pt 1: En Disuse is an album that reviewers should be crowing about — a short ten-song EP of collage music at its finest. Track after track, Román Ramón give us snippets of chaotic sound that become ear candy for the brain, a resonant construct of everything.
“…Akin to listening to the soundtrack of an MR James ghost story.”
this righteous kindness courtesy of incendiary magazine. read the whole review here. and make sure to get the album here.
the kindness comes from avant music news:
“The ensemble supports the solo cello with a thick but porous tissue of sound characterized by shifts in color, texture and density rather than by conventional changes in harmony.”
from recent music heroes:
Sarah J Ritch`s 5-track issue is a crossover album which is managed in a way to lead it up to the consolidation of modern and traditional, doleful cello music and experimental, at times even aggressive electronic or electro-acoustic processings which wake you up from a lethargic state of mind. These minimally treated vibrating impulses are spectacular, filled in with divergent power and intensiveness, however, ultimately ready to ascend or descend into remote, abstract universes.
nice!
and an older one from avant music news:
With Garbage Strike, sound artist John Collins McCormick – working under the name Sky Thing – creates a sonic portrait of post-industrial wastelands. McCormick uses a varied collection of sounds produced by electronics, objects, turntables, industrial detritus, field recordings, and conventional instruments. The five resulting tracks are studies in themes and variations for drones. Blast Place, for example, combines the sounds of friction with what appears to be rocks tumbling in a cylinder; Sheerest (CWTKK) follows with hissing, rattling high frequencies punctuated by the creak of a door on its hinges and the footsteps of a person entering (or leaving) the room. Things a Cat Can Do to a Fence, by contrast, is the sound of motors running down—an actual or quasi field recording of dying factories. All in all, a thoughtful take on a given moment in time.
kind!
the kindness comes from acts of silence.
It’s nice to see that Sarah Ritch has so totally embraced the idea behind netlabels and Creative Commons music with her third release in less than a year. This time Ritch, along with Darren Bartolo and Sam Krahn, got together as Sound Collision Alliance and released several tracks based on a 6-hour session, 53:38 (Pan y Rosas). With Bartolo on gu zheng, Sam Krahn on electric guitar, and Ritch on electric guitar, cello and laptop, 53:38 is heavily string centric though odd sounds and percussion are always prevalent. Most of the tracks are upwards to 15 minutes each and, being improvisation, the tracks vacillate between quiet and loud, noise and unnoise, rhythm and irregularity. Always a wandering journey, 53:38 remains cohesive in its design and manner.
get the album here.
…53″38 dei Sound Collision Alliance, 4 lunghi brani in cui sono le chitarre elettriche e quella gu-zheng (uno strumento tradizionale cinese sistemato a piano, che ha usato anche Fred Frith) a farla da padroni, con un sound molto aderente a certe filosofie post-rock con evidente vicinanza all’avanguardia “da ripetizione” del minimalismo americano, alla “sgangherata” microtonalità di Partch, ai passaggi silenziosi che riflettono concretismo e noise edulcorato. L’album che sembra evocare graficamente la scoperta del bosone di Higgs e che quindi ne potrebbe fornire una sua colonna sonora ideale, è suonato da Sam Krahn e Darren Bartolo (per la parte chitarra) a cui si unisce la stessa Sarah J Ritch al cello e al laptop.
the kindness comes from the blog: percorsi musicali. the full review is here. get 53:38 here.
a brief review/shout out for marina poleukhina’s lp1 from barcelona’s go mag.
Apostando también por la experimentación, pero, más concretamente, por el encanto de las pequeñas estridencias, de los micro-ruidos sordos y de los mini-chasquidos raros, Marina Poleukhina, de Moscú, firma “lp1”, una obra para Pan y Rosas que entusiasmará a quienes sepan que rascando objetos y rayando cosas (con cariño, por supuesto) también se alcanza cierto entendimiento del mundo.
lp1 is here.
this time the kindness comes from the acts of silence blog:
Ritch is a classically trained cellist so her attraction to drones is quite understandable. String Theory is part drone and part contemporary classical.* The album starts out with a short drone piece, “Celli”, which cements in my mind that the cello is the original drone creator. The second track, “400g Live” is a Ritch composition for violin and cello – though the cello is so good at drones, I sometimes wonder if it is not a laptop process these sounds. Carmel Raz plays the violin on this track. The third track is the aforemention drone piece, “16 Days”. With “Sonata de Kinor – 1st Movement”, Aurelien Pederzoli plays violin to Ritch’s cello. This would be the contemporary classical piece which I found to be alive and colorful. The last track is an interesting construction given by it’s title, “Duo for Solo Cello”. This work is filled with wonderful drones and noises. An exquisite way to end the album.
read the whole thing here
hey everyone, sarah j ritch just got an awesome review from time out chicago in which she receives four stars! (out of five, yo!)
The five tracks on String Theory offer a brief overview into Ritch’s development as a composer and skillful manipulator of electronics and cello. Aside from the notated tonal music of Sonata de Kinor and the violin on “400g live,” played by Carmel Raz and captured at an Israeli festival, the three other tracks on the album are played by the composer herself. The free-form noise of the 14-minute Duo for Solo Cello explores the properties of strings, transforming an acoustic instrument into the crackling static of a Tesla coil. The epic “16 Days” constructs an astral starscape of eerie drones. String Theory beautifully captures the ongoing bloom of one of Chicago’s most daring young composers.
read the whole thing here.
the kindness comes from touching extremes.
One’s got to love someone whose family name’s pronunciation sounds like a truncated version of your own. Seriously, this is one of the many “first meetings” reported on these pages, in this circumstance with a cellist and composer who’s also a rare case of academically trained yet open-minded musician (punk is a part of her DNA) and human being (check her thoughts here) but, for some reason or another, hasn’t broken the ice of an inadequate visibility to date. String Theory should definitely help in achieving the goal thanks to its brilliantly multifaceted restraint. On the one hand, Ritch wanders across the galaxy of spectral-motionlessness-cum-throbbing-pulse, remaining there for long moments of magnetic sine wave-induced stasis (“16 Days”). On the other, the classic expertise of this inquiring mind emerges in “Sonata De Kinor – 1st Movement”, a soloist piece replete with echoes from a past age without romantic saccharine. In the middle of silence stands “Duo For Solo Cello”: “delicately strong” music halfway through timbral x-ray and very essential study of melodic collapse, confirming the validity of this woman’s talent which you’re strongly urged to further authenticate by downloading the album (it’s free!) and telling me that I was right (as always, haha).