Ryoji Ikeda - 0ºC (1998)

"Ryoji Ikeda's 2nd CD for Touch, his 3rd solo CD, follows the classic +/- and a year's world tour with performance artists Dumb Type. OºC is an exploration at the edge of one's perception - an extension of +/- and the next step. C adds a velocity axis and a density axis to factors, Oº amalgamated numbers, structures, frequencies and sounds". Touch Press Release

"The Japanese Composer Ryoji Ikeda uses the humblest scraps of electronic communication to cobble together his music: a tiny, narrow pop, like a single particle of radio static; a fax-connection screech; a bell-tone as soft as a feather against the eardrum; a drum-machine beat slammed up to super-speed, making a short, single block of noises, and a CD player skimming across a selection, catching glimpses of a song. It's not ambient music; there are no long, enveloping tones. And its not dance music, because some selections have as much as five seconds of silence between each sound. But there's always a building narrative to these pieces. They get longer as the disk goes on, and the listener grows increasingly comfortable with Mr. Ikeda's strategies: but by bit, the composer reveals his logic. And in his own oblique way, he's dramatic". NY Times

C (1997-8)
1. C1:: check
2. C2:: cacoepy
3. C3:: circuit
4. C4:: contexture
5. C5:: cuts
6. C6:: counterpoint
7. C7:: continuum
8. C8:: can(n)on
9. C9:: cadenza
10. C0:: coda (for T.F.)

0º (1998)
11. 0º :: zero degrees [1]
12. 0º :: zero degrees [2]
13. 0º :: zero degrees [3]

Produced by Ryoji Ikeda.
Recorded & Mixed at CCI Studio, Tokyo 1997-8.
Released by Touch in 1998.

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The Hafler Trio - Fuck (1992)

"Fuck is the second part of a projected trilogy that begins with Masturbatorium, and for which the third part has not been released as of early 2001. While Masturbatorium used sounds generated by performance artist Annie Sprinkle in a sonic investigation of female sexuality, Fuck concentrates on male sexual energies, using sounds leading to the brink of male orgasm from Andrew McKenzie, in addition to various atmospheric frequencies and field recordings. As with the trilogy's first part, the liner notes go into some detail about the sonic origins and the overall purpose of the piece, its specific practical intents, and its relationship to investigations into sexual energy.

Unusually, McKenzie directs that the recording be played at maximum volume, and that the CD player be in strict accordance with left and right channel connections. With the correct playback configuration, the ominous low drone opening shakes the room, and when the various fast rhythmic layers are added in, the piece takes on an overwhelming aura seldom found in other Hafler Trio releases. A looped bass vocal alternates between the two channels in the second track, exercising the separation McKenzie mentions. Given the sexual intent of the piece, one might suppose that it would start slowly and build, but in fact the opposite is the case. The beginning is the loudest, densest, and fastest, with an overall tranquility and lightening as the piece progresses. Its unity of purpose makes it one of the better Hafler Trio releases, although the cover art and subject matter make it for mature listeners only".
Caleb Deupree, All Music Guide

"The first piece can be seen as an abrasive experience in deep-breathing oppressive terror-technonoise, somehow reminiscent of both Gerechtigkeits Liga and Porter Ricks; the second piece finds the "trio" in more familiar ground, reducing the scope of sonic assault to create a slow, bass-based progression from multilayered noise to total darkness". The Juju Unintelligible Reviews

Performed by A.M. McKenzie & Zbigniew Karkowski

link@320 +++Removed By Request; See Comments+++

Phill Niblock - Touch Works, for Hurdy Gurdy and Voice (2000)

Niblock achieves his effects through multitracking of live and processed tracks and sampling, all based on original performances on acoustic instruments. He creates an aural illusion of continuity, like the perpetual gush of a waterfall, for instance. In reality, his ingenious layering methods mean that all kinds of infinitesimal but crucial structural and sonic shifts are taking place on a cumulative basis.

The album opens with 'Hurdy Hurry', a stunning hurdy gurdy piece constructed from samples of Jim O'Rourke's playing, recorded in New York at Robert Poss' studio (Band of Susans). This medieval stringed instrument played by cranking a resined wheel seems tailor made for droning, and O'Rourke has been known to drone on himself a bit in ages past. This makes his own early droneworks 'Remove The Need' and 'Disengage' seem like mere practice, but that practice has certainly paid off handsomely. At a cursory listen 'Hurdy Hurry' might seem like fifteen of continuous drone, but Niblock weaves together held tones with exact mathematical relationships to each other, and there is a constant slow evolution and almost imperceptibly gradual increase in mass as the piece unfurls.

It continues with two different versions of what could be Niblock's masterwork, a vocal piece 'AYU'. The letters A, Y and U are hummed by baritone Thomas Buckner and arranged into a continually shifting corridor of sampled sound twenty four voices thick. The second version adds a live throat singing performance from Buckner, pitch shifted one and two octaves down and multiplied fifteen times over. Imagine massed temples of Buddhist monks humming universal nirvana alphabet keys condensed by a sampler into the digital cyberlanes. Niblock is described as 'the forgotten minimalist' in the extensive and illuminating sleevenotes, which include an interview discussing his sound reproduction techniques. After hearing this, it's all the others that'll be more likely to slip from memory. - Graeme Rowland

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Evan Parker + Lawrence Casserley - Solar Wind (1997)

"I approached Solar Wind by Evan Parker (soprano Sax) and Lawrence Casserley (signal processing instruments) without looking at covers, titles or liner notes. Waves of acoustic, electronic, analog and digital cyclic delays, inseparable music expanding in all directions at once. Particles/waves of sound some with no discernible mass, shooting through. My perception is without pause for association. The intended equal with the unintended. Muffled bottom end and difference tones are sieved from the colliding systems above. I go looking for Parker in this mist - his instrument has expanded into a metasax. Four minutes into the second track he suddenly emerges, the rasp of his reed chased by an attentive delay which diffuses into overall washes and strangely vocal-like side effects. Computational number crunching produces digital glitches and pops that provide a topography, a surface, like the dust in Duchamp's Large Glass. Serene long tones against a faint tapping evolve into sculptured slithers of shimmering unstable filtered tones. At one point there are lots of raucous little harmonized Parkers sounding like my modem. Foreground and background crossfade as new distortions evolve.

This music mimics natural open-ended systems because this is a chaotic natural phenomena itself. The byproducts of process are everywhere, nagging difference tones and the gritty dirt of chaos. Gated turbulence is engulfed by searing long tones that fry your ears with intensity (phased sherbetty tingly sensations). Key clicking foregrounds with power and presence: digital drips in a sea of bright white sound. It's an awesome CD. After listening I peruse the photos of Karen Mirza, Jon Wozencroft's design, the quote from Borges in the booklet and the ambiguous titles. None would have harmed my experience." Jim Denley, Resonance

1. Pachacamac
2. Epicycles
3. Coyolxauhqui
4. The Central Region [for Michael Snow]
5. Tlaloc
6. Solar Wind

Evan Parker - Soprano Sax
Lawrence Casserley - Signal Processing Instruments

link @320 (back again)

Read an article by Casserley himself on the technical apparatus behind this recording here.