Musique Concrete / Electro-Acoustic & other...

Started by FreakAnimalFinland, February 21, 2010, 11:31:57 AM

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Duncan

Definitely, though that's why SONM is such a great site, despite its flaws (one of which is having to wade through aeons of shit to get to the gems).

Would also like to mention that josef anton riedel thing mentioned earlier is great.

acsenger

There's a bootleg label called Creel Pone that releases CDR replicas of more or less obscure electronic/electroacoustic/musique concrete LPs from the 50s to the 80s. I just counted and I have 23 of the roughly (I believe) 150 releases so far. I haven't heard most of them yet, but there are some real gems among the ones I have:

- Thorkell Sigurbjornsson: La Jolla Good Friday I-II
- Pythagoron™: s/t
- Cecil Leuter: Spectacular Stereo Sounds

A great label, and one that highlights the existence of quite unknown artists working independently of the musical centres of those days (e.g. INA-GRM, WDR, American tape music centres).
They have releases by several of the names mentioned in this thread, like Josef Anton Riedl.

Andrew McIntosh

Is Creel Pone still going? I seem to recall reading somewhere that it had stopped. Couldn't find much information one way or the other.
Shikata ga nai.

acsenger

QuoteIs Creel Pone still going?

I'm not sure. I think Mimaroglu Music Sales always has their new releases and the latest stuff they're selling is from a year ago. That doesn't mean there haven't been newer releases that have since sold out. I have a friend who has collected almost all of them and I seem to recall him saying it's still going, although there's no regular release schedule.


Zeno Marx

Kaija Saariaho - Six Japanese Gardens & Trois Rivieres Delta 2002 on INA-GRM is an impressive album.  If you're interested in this type of music through a percussive perspective, this would be a good album to try.
"the overindulgent machines were their children"
I only buy vinyl, d00ds.

pentd

so we played a HÄKKI gig last thursday in oulu. it was an evening of "nordic sound art" etc... before us there was a "concert of electronic composition" where veteran elektroprofessor Jukka Ruohomäki presented some of his students' works. wow top caliber EA stuff. basically you sit in the middle of the room, there were  2 stereo speakers in front and 2 in back. then someone presses play, the piece starts, but the authors stood at the mixer and "drove" the sounds around the room. stuff swooshing from front left to rear back etc, powerful granular kung-fu axion shit, sometimes like putting your head in a washing machine full of bricks. also some pieces pretty close to your favorite dark ambient kvlt artist. except they're not on some embarassing goth label but academic compositions with equally embarassing liner notes. ha!!

trivia for reaper users: sir xenakios was one of the performers. he's written some plugins for reaper and the xlent hourglass software. like so:

https://xenakios.wordpress.com/

that dude couldn't look more like a mad professor.

so these guys delivered some heavy academixmindfuck music: teemu ontero, marko suorsa, paavo impiö, jukka ruohomäki, teemu lindgren, anssi laiho
and bonus fsu/diy "electronix rainforest" sounds from jaakko junnila


Jaakko V.

#37
Quote from: pentd on August 21, 2016, 03:23:16 PM
so we played a HÄKKI gig last thursday in oulu. it was an evening of "nordic sound art" etc... before us there was a "concert of electronic composition" where veteran elektroprofessor Jukka Ruohomäki presented some of his students' works. wow top caliber EA stuff. basically you sit in the middle of the room, there were  2 stereo speakers in front and 2 in back. then someone presses play, the piece starts, but the authors stood at the mixer and "drove" the sounds around the room. stuff swooshing from front left to rear back etc, powerful granular kung-fu axion shit, sometimes like putting your head in a washing machine full of bricks. also some pieces pretty close to your favorite dark ambient kvlt artist. except they're not on some embarassing goth label but academic compositions with equally embarassing liner notes. ha!!

trivia for reaper users: sir xenakios was one of the performers. he's written some plugins for reaper and the xlent hourglass software. like so:

https://xenakios.wordpress.com/

that dude couldn't look more like a mad professor.

so these guys delivered some heavy academixmindfuck music: teemu ontero, marko suorsa, paavo impiö, jukka ruohomäki, teemu lindgren, anssi laiho
and bonus fsu/diy "electronix rainforest" sounds from jaakko junnila

Was going to write about this event also. My personal favourites were probably Marko Suorsa's compositions. I find it quite amazing that there are some loners living in the north of Finland, doing world-class electroacoustic composition, completely on par with works by let's say... more renowned INA-GRM people, without pretty much no-one knowing. Apparently Suorsa has self-released his material on CD ('Konkreettista Musiikkia'), but there is not even a Discogs entry on the guy. On a mission to get my hands on the record ASAP...

A biographical entry in Finnish - with amazing academic formalism guaranteed. ;-) Got to love this.

QuoteMarko Suorsa (s. 1977) säveltää elektronimusiikkia lähtökohtanaan konkreettiset äänet. Jo koululaisena hän kuunteli Darmstadtin koulukunnan säveltäjien musiikkia ja tutustui sitä kautta myös Karlheinz Stockhausenin elektronimusiikkiin.

Suorsa aloitti kokeilut elektronisen musiikin parissa Oriveden opistossa. Hän opiskeli elektronimusiikkia ja musiikin teoriaa Oulun konservatoriossa Jukka Ruohomäen johdolla.

Ensimmäinen konservatorioaikana valmistunut teos Verstas (2001) esitettiin samana vuonna Ung Nordisk Musik -festivaalilla Tanskan Århusissa.

Suorsaa ovat kiinnostaneet myös muut esittävät taiteet ja erityisesti äänen ja liikkeen yhdistelmä. Hän on tehnyt yhteistyötä tanssija-koreografi Jouni Järvenpään kanssa, aluksi improvisoivana soittajana ja vuodesta 2000 säveltäjänä. Yhteistyön tuloksena ovat syntyneet mm. teokset Peilitär (1998), Säännöt (2003), Kuolema (2005), Aurinko on perseestä (2007), Suo (2009), Betonilähiö (2007/2010), Mätäkuu (2011) sekä Kitka ja kuusi muuta (2014). Useat teokset ovat saaneet ensiesityksensä Uuden musiikin lokakuu -festivaalilla, Kitka ja kuusi muuta Turun Barker-teatterissa.

Vuonna 2014 Suorsa julkaisi cd-levyn Konkreettista musiikkia, jonka sävellykset ovat vuosilta 2009 - 2014. Levyn teoksista Kitkan (2010) äänimaailma on lähtöisin pääosin styroksin kappaleista. Organisoituja ääniä (2014) on aiempien töiden käyttämättä jääneistä aineksista koottu teos. Kuolema (2009) on omistettu Kalervo Palsalle, jota Suorsa pitää hengenheimolaisenaan. Muita sävellystyön inspiraation lähteitä Suorsalle ovat kalevalainen mytologia ja pohjoisen luonto.

Lähteet:

Marko Suorsa: Konkreettista musiikkia -albumin tekstivihko.
Kimmo Pihlajamaa: Suo kuokitaan yhteistyössä. Uuden musiikin lokakuu -tiedotuslehti 2009.
Pia Kaitasuo: Rhythm and blues. Kaleva 11.7.1998.
Esko Aho: Leikkaa ja liimaa on oululaisten paraatilaji. Kaleva 17.5.2001.
Sirpa Heikkinen: [arvostelu], Kaleva 2.2.2003.  



WCrap

Quote from: Salamanauhat on August 21, 2016, 03:42:14 PM
My personal favourites were probably Marko Suorsa's compositions. I find it quite amazing that there are some loners living in the north of Finland, doing world-class electroacoustic composition, completely on par with works by let's say... more renowned INA-GRM people, without pretty much no-one knowing. Apparently Suorsa has self-released his material on CD ('Konkreettista Musiikkia'), but there is not even a Discogs entry on the guy. On a mission to get my hands on the record ASAP...

yes it seems he is completely ungoogleable for non-finns. is there anything to listen to online? or a contact address?

A.R.GH

I'm currently exploring Francisco López's works, I really like the double CD "Machines", great compositions made of field recordings of machine sounds as the title suggests (clockworks apparently and other mechanical sounds i can't identify). I love the crystal clear clarity of the sound, amazingly recorded and put together. I think is a perfect album to start getting into this style for someone who enjoys industrial music.

I'm not very well versed on musique concrete and the like, but started doing some research on the style, I'm checking the other artists mentioned in this thread.

pentd

very humbled bout the opportunity of hearing 5 nights of TORBA on the road. top level crude EA noise made with tapes, some samples, looper pedal + reverb.

https://torba.bandcamp.com/

as good as it gets. i hope the plans for an album with (all?) the old tapes works out sooner than later

acsenger

Lately I've been exploring Roland Kayn's music, which has been nothing short of a revelation to me. He was a German composer who lived between 1933-2011. It's a shame he's little known, as his electronic music (he wrote contemporary classical music, too) is the best electroacoustic/electronic music I've ever heard. His music is unique; he very rarely utilised the kinds of sounds and motifs that are characteristic of academic composers. Often, his music is a kind of very intense ambient, with huge blocks of sound shifting constantly (I don't like ambient, but I can get totally lost in Kayn's music). The vast, expansive sense of space that's characteristic of his music is just amazing.

It seems Kayn's name has become somewhat more well-known after the release in the last couple years of the "A Little Electronic Milky Way Of Sound" 16xCD box set and the 3xLP reissue of "Simultan". While I like these works (although, ironically, his most well-known and easiest to get release, "A Little Electronic Milky Way Of Sound", is the least exciting in my view), the real deal for me are the CDs he released on his own label, Reiger-records-reeks. This is a lot of music: 12 double CDs and one single CD, not counting his contemporary classical works. He classified his music into several categories: cybernetic music (these are the CDs I least like at the moment, but I haven't really familiarised myself with them yet), electroacoustic music and what he termed multiplex sound art (almost all of these works contain surprising elements, like samples of techno-like music or classical music).

If I had to pick a favourite of his works, it'd be "Gärten Der Lüste", which is a totally unique electroacoustic piece. Play it on a good hifi at night (which suits the music's atmosphere) with no distractions of any kind, and you'll be transported to a strange place. It's as if you're walking through a dense, organic, constantly changing and alien environment at night with various sounds and sound textures surrounding you at different distances. I'm reminded of the movie Annihilation where the protagonists enter a strange world. "Gärten Der Lüste" is like being in such an alien and mysterious world. (Unfortunately there are no sound samples from any of his CDs on his own label on YouTube.)

I highly recommend Kayn to noise fans and people into strange and innovative electronic music (some of his early works as well as parts of the above-mentioned 16xCD box can be heard on YouTube). And for those who already like his music, there are good news concerning reissues: following "Simultan", the rest of Kayn's mythical and impossible to get LP box sets from the '70s and '80s will also be reissued by Die Schachtel ("Tektra" should be out this spring), and Reiger-records-reeks will release a CD box this year.

Zeno Marx

There was a miniburst of interest in Kayn in the 90s when Anomalous dug up some vinyl box set copies of Makro I-III, Infra, and Tektra.  The latter two didn't last but a minute, and Makro was sold out shortly thereafter.  I can't remember if Soleilmoon stocked the Barooni reissue of Tektra before or after that.  You couldn't find Kayn anywhere, and that obviously didn't help with interest.  It's interesting that it seems like he's still only experienced a small bit of attention in a way Harry Bertoia has.  Different...but not all that different at moments.
"the overindulgent machines were their children"
I only buy vinyl, d00ds.

acsenger

#43
Quote from: Zeno Marx on March 31, 2019, 07:12:40 PMYou couldn't find Kayn anywhere, and that obviously didn't help with interest.

It's true that one reason for his obscurity must be the lack of availability of the early vinyl box sets and the basically non-existent distribution of his self-released CDs. Aside from Discogs (where they ain't cheap), you can pretty much only buy them from his daughter on kayn.nl, and they're a bit pricey too. I wonder why they're not distributed. Oh, and the 4xCD reissue of "Tektra" on Barooni is long out of print and very expensive too.

Zeno Marx

Luc Ferrari: Complete Works by Brunhild Ferrari

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44148847-luc-ferrari

This is the first English monograph of legendary French musique-concrète pioneer Luc Ferrari (1929–2005), founding member of Groupe de Recherches (GRM) with Pierre Schaeffer—the group and studio dedicated to the electronic medium that changed composition forever. This sumptuous volume includes facsimiles of Ferrari's original compositions, notebooks, and the first English translations of his writings, including poetry and fictional works and correspondence, as well as a special full-color section that includes the composer's own collage artwork.
"the overindulgent machines were their children"
I only buy vinyl, d00ds.