The Onement label is inviting the audience in the hall of WIELS on Friday 8th March for a listening session of its newest release: a recording of English pianist John Tilbury performing a series of short pieces by Howard Skempton (« John Tilbury Plays Howard Skempton », Onement #5). Tilbury is well-known since the 1960s for his interpretations of the music of Morton Feldman, Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, and for being one the key figures of free improvisation, notably with cult band AMM (pioneers of european improv).

But this recording is really special: like every release on Onement  it’s a one-copy vinyl record! The object is totally unique and will not be reproduced, which makes it a real collector item. Like for all the Onement records, the packaging has been created by graphic designer Nicolas Couturier.

The concept behind the label, founded in 2006 by musician Sylvain Chauveau, is inspired by the world of painting. The works are not reproduced and when a painting is sold, only the owner possesses it and even the painter himself has usually no access to to it. The uniqueness of the object is part of its strength.

The idea in Onement is to do the same with recorded music. Since their invention recordings have been meant to be reproduced. The time has come to try to use the recorded medium in different ways.

The name Onement comes from a series of pieces by American abstract expressionist painter Barnett Newman. This series (Onement I, II, III, IV et V) shows a thin vertical line over a monochrome background.

The aesthetic choices of the Onement label go towards experimental musics such as modern composition, free improvisation, minimal drone, musique concrète, field recording, with releases by Keith Rowe, Robert Hampson, Yannick Franck and Antti Rannisto.

The label’s website: www.onement-label.com

‘The Lost Park’ is a project including film, music and poetry by Maria Barnas.

Side a is with music by Peter Lunow.
Side b is with sound and music by Nathalie Bruys.
Design: Felix Weigand

D 15€

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Anarchic Rehearsal & Sessions 72. Willy Roggeman Solo and Willy Roggeman Jazz Lab. het balanseer.

Sessions 72 is a historical document, full of exuberance, humor and mistakes. The release of these recordings makes it possible to compare this ‘action music’ with the characteristics of the recent solo album Anarchic Rehearsal. Forty Years of existential knotting and signs of wear on the human carcass have past between the euphoric group achievement and the recent solo idiosyncrasies.
A solo recording on saxophone, like Anarchic Rehearsal, is always what the French call ingrat, because the dialectics in structure and active processes are assigned to one monodic instrument. But it also invites the listener to explore the spherical qualities of music that usually aren’t distinguishable in a performance by a more conventional group of musicians.

Sessions 72 – WR Jazz Lab 3 & 4-Unit was recorded August 30 and September 1972 and released 12 December 2012. Comes on 180 grs vinyl. Edition of 200 copies. Includes download coupon. Published by het balanseer.

D 20 €
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Anarchic Rehearsal – Willy Roggeman Solo was recorded on September 8, 2011 and released 12 December 2012. Comes on 180 grs vinyl. Edition of 200 copies. Includes download coupon. Published by het balanseer.

D 20 €
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transmediale 2013 BWPWAP

BWPWAP (Back When Pluto Was A Planet) is the catalogue of the 2013 transmediale festival.

transmediale is a Berlin-based festival and year-round project that draws out new connections between art, culture and technology. The activities of transmediale aim at fostering a critical understanding of contemporary culture and politics as saturated by media technologies. In the course of its 25 year history, the annual transmediale festival has turned into an essential event in the calendar of media art professionals, artists, activists and students from all over the world. The broad cultural appeal of the festival is recognised by the German federal government who supports the transmediale through its programme for beacons of contemporary culture.

Editors, Translators: Kristoffer Gansing, Teresa Go, Sabine Weier, Lina Zuppke
Editorial Coordinator: Lina Zuppke

368 pages
German / English

D 12€

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The Wire’s crucial review of the last 12 months in underground sound and music, including the releases of the year, opinions and reflections from a host of musicians and critics, and analyses of 2012’s most significant audio culture trends.

Editor: Chris Bohn
Language: English
Pages: 100
Size: 28 x 23 cm
Binding: Softcover

Price: €8.00
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AZURAZIA, «Lowering the Mediterranean, irrigating the Sahara»: the first volume of “original soundtracks produced for film which doesn’t exist yet”. Produced in Morocco during the summer of 2011, this record contains tracks made out of local music in North Africa and field recordings, transformed and remixed. Welcome to the Azurazian world, along the lowered Mediterranea by the Gibraltar dam, and follow the adventures of Ghazi Van Keering, searching to learn the new Daseinphilosophy in wasted landscapes. A print art work is included with the record.

Pressed by: Grautag Records

D 20 €

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Ein neues Magazin aus der Schweiz, das sich theoretisch mit Gegenwart beschäftigt. Denn Vergangenheit ist nicht mehr und Zukunft gibt es nicht, «bis man sie als etwas Gegenwärtiges erlebt», so die Experimentalmusikerin Laurel Halo, die in der ersten Ausgabe im Kontext der Denkrichtung des Magazins zitiert wurde. Praktisch geht es vorrangig um die gegenwärtige Clubkultur in und um Luzern.

Inhaltsangaben zweikommasieben #5:

Derrick May – «It’s Love, Man!»
Warum Gibt Es So Wenig Weibliche Djs [Clubgeflüster]
Die Patchwork-Philosophie Der Solar Bears
Light Asylum [Einwegkamera]
Proto-House [Music Box]
Deetron 02:30 Uhr, Interview Auf Berndeutsch
Die Discokugel [Gegen:Stand]

Publisher: Zweikommasieben Magazin
Language: German
Pages: 38
Size: 23 x 15.5 cm
Binding: Softcover

Price: €8.00
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“With our eyes firmly set on the future rather than the past, it’s sometimes surprising to stop and catch our breath for a moment only to realise, ‘Blimey! We’ve passed issue #30 already!’ Meaning: High time for our second collector’s box set mono.archiv #02, gathering mono.kultur issues #16 to 30 in one pretty and screenprinted box, in that strange grey/blue/green hue which tends to lean towards one or the other depending on the time of day. Once again including a sweet little wrap-around (water!), and once again your very last chance to get your hands on beloved issues such as Miranda July or Ai Weiwei, which have been well and truly sold out for what feels like years. Strictly limited to 150 copies, and 150 only.”

mono.archiv #02:
Miranda July
Paweł Althamer
MVRDV
Michael Ballhaus
Dries van Noten
Tilda Swinton
Ai Weiwei
Sissel Tolaas
Cyprien Gaillard
Dave Eggers
Manfred Eicher / ECM
Ryan McGinley
Bless
Chris Taylor / Grizzly Bear
Chris Ware

Size: 21 x 16 x 6 cm
Weight: 1.2830 kg
Price: €95.00

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Sounds Like Silence. John Cage – 4’33” – Silence Today. Spector Books

The title of this book and the exhibition it documents—Sounds Like Silence—is ambiguous. On the one hand, silence effectively “sounds”—or as Cage put it, “There is no such thing as silence.” On the other hand, sound needs silence in order to be heard. Even if complete silence does not exist, every sound implicitly conveys the notion of silence: there is no presence without absence. The double meaning of Sounds Like Silence therefore touches upon the central issues at stake in this project: what do we hear when there is nothing to hear; to what extent do we long for silence; and how much silence can we cope with—provided it even exists?

John Cage’s 4’33” (four minutes, thirty-three seconds) premiered on August 29, 1952. This book presents new theoretical writings and artistic works referring to this groundbreaking work, together with original scores and the composer’s own variations, derivatives, and sequels of the “silent piece” in the years from 1962 to 1992.

ISBN: 978-3-940064-41-7

28 €

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Sleep. Grouper. Fillip Editions

**Edition of 800 white 180g vinyls housed in a PVC-lined innersleeve with glossy cover** Breathtaking stuff from Liz Harris presented by Canadian publication, Fillip with suitably refined production values. This edition of ‘Sleep’ is a fragment of a longer composition (we could imagine it exponentially longer) first performed at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2011. More recently the label organised its performance in an abandoned polar bear enclosure at Vancouver’s decommissioned Zoo and now it finally reaches yours and our ears like some cathartic cloud of harmonised tape symphonics that just floated across the Atlantic. It’s difficult to say exactly what the source material is – it could be vocals, it could be synths – but that’s beside the point, and whatever it is, it’s one of the most beautiful things we’ve heard all year.

Size: 31 x 33 cm
Weight: 320 g
ISBN: 978-1-927354-06-3
D 20€

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