Post California

Posted in music, Tapes on February 29th, 2024
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Post California, a project led by an ex-member of A V G V S T, uses samples of distorted pop music, vaporous layers and exaggerated, almost noisy sound treatments to produce a sort of after new wave. Their music is at times shaken by nervous beats, at other times drowned in streams of ambient and sprinkled with flashes of industrial.
Post California’s second album, View from a View, is a collection of six tracks based on random sampling, collage, and hypnotic synth and guitar micro-loops, wrapped in reverb and damaged by compression.

Soleil of Persian Square design screen-printed on organic cotton t-shirt.

Available in sizes L and XL in black and gray colors

Music by Post California
Artworks by Pierre La Police, from the Parpalate series
Design by Myriam Barchechat / factformfiction.com
Limited edition cassette, printed and duplicated at La Fabrique du Nouveau Printemps, Toulouse 2023

URGENCE MORT SUBITE was composed for Nicolas Milhé’s video installation Milton, 2020.
I Saw a Rope in Your Eye was composed for Laura Gozlan’s video installation Mold II, 2014.
Omninight Technologies contains samples from Edward Levy by A V G V S T, 2012.

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Belong to Me

Posted in music, performance on February 26th, 2024
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Vibrational Semantics Series

Vibrational Semantics explores the voice’s ability to shift seamlessly between signification and sorority, from speech sound to noise. Questions of linguistic ambiguity, embodied voicing and feeling/meaning are investigated in relation to the place and presence of the performed voice.

The project is part of Samuel Brzeski’s ongoing artistic engagement with Lydatgalleriet, involving several newly commissioned text works curated by Samuel and commissioned by Lydgalleriet.

Author: Daniela Cascella

Publisher: LYDGALLERIET

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[The User] – Symphony #2 For Dot Matrix Printers (vinyl)

Posted in music, Vinyl on February 20th, 2024
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Symphony #2 includes reworkings and remixes from Symphony #1 and new material composed while in residency at Hull Time Based Arts, UK 1999 and on tour 1999-2001.

Performance for fourteen dot matrix printers played by an orchestra of personal computers from the early nineties and conducted by a similarly obsolete file server, based on text files composed and orchestrated beforehand.

Track 12 (in keeping with the concept of the cd) is not simply an untitled track. The printers are not printing anything – the track simply consists of the amplified hum of all 14 printers, and then they are all manually switched off, one by one.
credits
released June 1, 2020

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Anatomie of a Bird. Romain Bertheau. (Cassette)

Posted in music, Tapes on February 17th, 2024
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Anatomie of a Bird. Romain Bertheau. (Cassette)

“After two organ albums dedicated to combinations of sound, rhythms and auditory illusions, here is a very different object.
These 4 pieces are basically improvisations based on skeletal micro-compositions, generally less than a dozen chords. Played on the same organ as my previous recordings, I tried this time to emphasize the harmonic colours, the choice of registers and inversions, the intonation, the textures and modulations.
Composed in the morning and recorded in the evening the same day, I let myself go as the takes went by towards a more and more vaporous and melancholic universe.
The album is played entirely on the Italian style organ built by Jean Daldosso. It was harmonized in the church, which allowed the organ builder to optimize the power and the sound balance of the organ in relation to the building. A simple microphone in the middle of the church.”


– Romain Bertheau.

Tracks:

  1. Chlamydophila Psittaci. (Take 1) 08:48
  2. Trichomonas Gallinae (Take 4) 05:44
  3. Cryptococcus Neoformans (Take 2) 09:04
  4. Chlamydophila Psittaci (Take 5) 05:48

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Wiggle – “Best of” USB Drive

Posted in Japan, music on January 2nd, 2024
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Wiggle “Best of” USB Drive
A USB drive disguised as a cassette tape created for the Berlin concert at Panke Gallery in 2023. Contains tracks selected from all of their releases to date (1996-2023) as well as a megamix of most of their songs.

Handmade by Gil Kuno using glitching techniques on a laser cutter.

Wiggle “Best of 1996-2023”

01 Boik
02 Warning
03 Daisuki Me (Alternative Mix featuring Sexy Funko)
04 Signal Fault (featuring Cristian Vogel)
05 Feedback
06 Headbash (featuring Ken Ishii)
07 Krictl
08 Wadjala Spirit (featuring Ken Ishii)
09 Pejuta (featuring Tatsuya Yoshida [Ruins])
10 Let It Wiggle (featuring Ken Ishii)
11 Fridgeon
12 Amphibian
13 Discoship
14 Megamix

Wiggle members (past and present): Gil Kuno, Simon Bennett, Brett Boyd, Tatsuya Oe, Linda, RinaRina, Murochin, Eiichiro Suzuki

Wiggle website: wiggle.band


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All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (Special edition). Soundwalk Collective. Analogue Foundation

Posted in Film, music, photography, Vinyl on November 11th, 2023
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LIMITED ART EDITION WITH ORIGINAL ART PRINT FROM NAN GOLDIN, SIGNED BY THE ARTIST 

Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated film »All the Beauty and the Bloodshed« is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. Told through intimate interviews, photography, and footage, central to the story is her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis. The film cuts to the bone with its incandescent celebration of life and condemnation of those who threaten it. Art and activism are one and the same. 

Helping to interweave Goldin’s past and present, multi-disciplinary duo Soundwalk Collective soundtrack her personal and political struggles to sublime effect. The contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, the pair work with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, developing site-and-context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary, or artistic themes. And for all the beauty and the bloodshed on show here, the duo strike the balance just right; their compositions in collaboration with Zacharias Falkenberg and Johannes Malfatti producing a trance that oscillates between grace and madness. 

Within the score, Crasneanscki draws connections with the life and work of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who was removed from society through confinement in institutions. In his last poems, written as fragments while he was plagued by mental illness, Hölderlin renders nature, in all its fragility and ephemerality. Similar themes merge in Laura’s portrait of Goldin and serve as an inspiration for the composition of the choral songs and cantus within the soundtrack. Through the repetition of words and the layering of voices, the lyric scansion operates like a language possessed, echoing various styles from sacred music to modern minimalist techniques. The music is characterised by quivering strings and swells, de-tuning and lingering, shifting around the surreal, and creating a spectrum of musical experience. Exerts of Nan’s narration are featured in two of the tracks, her powerful narration offering a more direct approach to the storytelling. 

In »All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,« Poitras shows protest is really Goldin’s great artwork: Her entire life had been leading to this moment of passionate expression, an inspired situationist gesture which fused the personal and the political. Art can change the world, which Poitras and Goldin tell us with powerful results. While there are multiple threads in this remarkable portrait which could have carried entire films, the soundtrack provides a sonic identity that helps keep track of proceedings. Utterly unique in their approach, Soundwalk Collective have delivered a gripping and thoughtful score, helping turn Goldin’s personal pain into culture-rattling impact.

A1 Half Of Life
A2 Schimmer Sanft Den Klang Des Tages
A3 The Land And The Sea
A4 Sisters I – Feat. Nan Goldin
A5 Des Geistes Werden
B1 Before The Light
B2 Witnesses
B3 Zeitgeist
B4 To Zimmer
B5 Sisters Ii – Feat. Nan Goldin

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Doyenne 002: Singing To Spirits. Flora Yin Wong (Ed.). Doyenne Books

Posted in music, poetry, writing on August 28th, 2023
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ritin

Doyenne 002: Singing To Spirits is an anthology curated by artist and writer Flora Yin Wong looking to historical, indigenous rituals worldwide. Bringing together female-identifying musicians, artists and writers on the platform to explore lesser known forms of their artistic practice – the contributions for the first book are from friends & collaborators across the world including: 

Christina Vantzou (Kranky), Lisa Lerkenfeldt (Shelter Press), Lucy Liyou, YL Hooi, Lucinda Chua, Dali De Saint Paul (EP/64), Sarah Shin (Ignota Books), Cucina Povera (Editions Mego), Martyna Basta, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Ekaterina Bazhenova-Yamasaki, Ruth Saxelby (ex-Fader), Susu Laroche, Mira Mattar (Granta / Ma Bibliotheque), Heather McCalden (Fitzcarraldo Editions), Hibiki Mizuno, Hana Noorali, Rose Higham-Stainton, Sonia de Jager, Tara Fatehi, and Marianthi Hatzikidi. 

Thematically rooted around the tradition of ‘Singing to Spirits’, the notions of music being used as an ancient medium to commune with the afterlife are linked with songlines in Aboriginal animist belief as a connection to the land – featuring texts including intimate personal essays, identity exploration, photographic work and lyrics. The project will be further explored through various events of performances and excursions. 

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Klangteppich V Magazin. Franziska Buhre. Norient Books

Posted in magazines, music, writing on August 24th, 2023
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Franziska Buhre (ed.)
Klangteppich V Magazin
Festival für Musik der iranischen Diaspora

Editorial Support: Hannes Liechti
Design: MüllerValentini – Agentur für Markendesign
Copy Editing: Angus Finlayson, Tash Siddiqui, Meredith Slifkin, Tucker Wiedenkeller

Since 2021, Norient has been publishing an Online Special together with Klangteppich, the Berlin-based festival for music from the Iranian diaspora. In the meantime, this publication has developed into an archive of lively perspectives on contemporary music-making in Iran and the Iranian diaspora. 

The texts have been created as an invitation to festival artists and other authors to deepen their own narratives and meaningful historiographies of exchange between Iran and the world. 

With this Special, we want to raise awareness of the complex realities in which diasporic artists work. The fifth festival edition is now an opportunity to collect a selection of previous and new texts in a printed magazine.

Table of Contents:

Franziska Buhre und Hannes Liechti: «Prolog»
Impressionen Klangteppich I 2018 (Photo Series)
Shayan Navab: «And Somewhere I’ve Heard the Screams Before» (Short Essay)
Sophie Grobler: «Our Homeland» (Short Essay)
Amin Hashemi: «On the History of Iranian Popular Music» (Short Essay)

Impressionen Klangteppich II 2019 (Fotoserie)
Shaahin Peymani: «One Way Passage to Tehran» (Short Essay)
Franziska Buhre, Hadi Bastani: «Listening Is at the Heart of What I Do» (Interview)
Erum Naqvi: «Diaspora Comes Home» (Round Up)
Arshia Samsaminia: «Making Persian Music More Accessible to Outsiders» (Music Theory)

Impressionen Klangteppich III 2021 (Photo Series)
Franziska Buhre: «Bass Drums, Cowbells, Tambourines» (Essay)
Ali Kamrani: «Lass mich mit Hass nicht allein» (Gedicht)
Tanasgol Sabbagh: «Dard I Door» (Poetic Text)
Pardis Zarghampour: «Wann gehen wir zurück?» (Essay)

Impressionen Klangteppich IV 2022 (Fotoserie)
Nikan Khosravi: «Being on the Right Side of History» (Essay)
Shabnam Parvaresh: «Blinde Passagiere» (Essay)
Matthias Küntzel: «Der Rundfunk als Waffe. Die Persisch-sprachige Nazipropaganda und ihre Folgen» (Essay)

With contributions by Hadi Bastani, 
Franziska Buhre, 
Sophia Grobler, 
Amin Hashemi,
Ali Kamrani, 
Nikan Khosravi, 
Matthias Küntzel, 
Erum Naqvi, 
Shayan Navab, 
Shabnam Parvaresh, 
Shaahin Peymani, 
Tanasgol Sabbagh, 
Arshia Samsaminia
and Pardis Zarghampour

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Politics of Curatorship book launch / Norient Books @ Motto Berlin. Friday June 29, 2023.

Posted in Motto Berlin event, music, Theory on June 28th, 2023
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Dear Friends,

We are happy you invite you to an open-air summer evening with lectures, readings, and a music performance to launch our newest Norient Book Politics of Curatorship on June 29 at Motto Books Berlin from 19:00 onwards.

In essays, academic texts, photo essays, poems, and short comments by 32 writers, artists, journalists, and scholars from all over the world, this volume attempts to encourage different approaches to increase diversity and equality in curatorship within the cultural industry.  

For our Berlin release party, we have invited the Berlin-based curator and book contributor Andrea Goetzke & the activist and DJ Ari Robey-Lawrence for a panel discussion, the musician Tatiana Heuman aka Qeei to play an exclusive music performance, and the sound artist Lendl Barcelos and Norient founder Thomas Burkhalter (both contributors) for remote readings in the lovely courtyard of Motto Books Berlin. Moderated by Carla J. Maier and Philipp Rhensius.

Expect an engaging evening with critical questions, challenging sounds and refreshing drinks. Co-moderated by Norient Books editor and Sound Studies researcher Carla J. Maier and Norient editor and writer/musician Philipp Rhensius.

Hunting-Gathering finissage / Eldar Tagi, Lena Pozdnyakova, and Stas Shärifullin (HMOT) @ Motto Berlin. June 27, 2023.

Posted in Exhibitions, Motto Berlin event, Motto Berlin store, music on June 26th, 2023
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Dear Friends,

We are excited to invite you to the finissage event of Lena Pozdnyakova’s “Hunting-Gathering” exhibition, featuring live performances by Eldar Tagi, Lena Pozdnyakova, and Stas Shärifullin (HMOT). The evening also marks the release of New r Age, ME003 (Motto Editions) by Eldar Tagi, Lena Pozdnyakova, and Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist & composer Patrick Shiroishi, based in Los Angeles.

Organised by Liza Kin.

Join us on Tuesday, June 27th, at 7:30 PM at Motto Books Berlin.

Eldar Tagi, a multi-instrumentalist and composer originally from Kazakhstan, is now based in Berlin, Germany. His live improvised performances use a range of instruments, including computers, field recordings, analog modular synthesizers, daxophone, guitars, other stringed instruments, found objects, and self-made sound-makers.

Lena Pozdnyakova, an artist, curator, and researcher from Almaty, Kazakhstan, explores the culture-nature dichotomy, the Anthropocene, and the boundary between life and art in her collaborative projects and research. She is also 50% of thezwo duo with Eldar Tagi.

Stas Shärifullin, aka HMOT, is a Basel-based musician, researcher and artist working with sound and decoloniality. Born in Central Siberia, with Bashqort roots, Stas is studying the political potential of various musical and listening practices through live performances, lectures, interventions and sound installations focused on the issues of extractivism, identity-based oppression, collective memory and militant (sonic) ethnography: action-as-research, research-as-action.

We hope to see you at Motto Books on Tuesday, June 27th at 7:30 PM for an exciting evening of live performances and art.