FARAVELLIRATTI
Lieu
BM022
Boring Machines/Coriolis Sounds 2010
06 Tracks. 38mins02secs

Issued conjointly by Boring Machines (Italy) and Coriolis Sounds (France), Lieu is the first album by Italian artists Nicola Ratti (electric guitar) and Attila Faravelli (computers). The pair have developed their collaborative work from live performances during which their music is filtered through prepared speakers and tape recorders. While Ratti has already released a number of records, either solo efforts or as part of electro-acoustic duo Bellows and experimental pop/rock outfit Ronin, Faravelli has worked extensively for theatre, radio and cinema before releasing his debut album, Underneath The Surface, on Die Schachtel last year.

As FaravelliRatti, they explore a world with takes shape beyond their respective work, blending elements of rock and electro-acoustic into a series of textured atmospheric soundscapes. Continue Reading »

SCORCH TRIO
Melaza
RCD2104/RLP3104
Rune Grammofon 2010
08 Tracks. 41mins52secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP iTunes DLD

Scorch Trio are frequently described as a power trio, a term originating with The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The description is accurate inasmuch as its members convey a feeling of concentrated energy, but the music’s also alive with a huge amount of filigree detail, each musician contributing an intense filigree to the group hive mind, interspersed with signature passages of blasted ambience. The group explore music that suggests Hendrix living alone on the frozen Russian steppes listening in to shortwave transmissions from the spirits of Derek Bailey and Sonny Sharrock. All the track titles are Puerto-Rican slang expressions – Melaza itself means “pure sugar cane juice, something sweet, fantastic.” Continue Reading »

BENOIT PIOULARD
Lasted
KRANK145
Kranky 2010
14 Tracks. 40mins02secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Despite a very French-sounding name, Benoît Pioulard is actually the long-running solo project of Michigan-born Thomas Meluch. After a few self-released albums, Pioulard’s first commercial release, a seven inch single entitled Enge, came out on Moodgadget in 2005, and was followed less than a year later by his debut album, Précis, on Kranky. Under its gentle folk exteriors, this album ventured into more experimental electronic territories, creating an overall complex and contrasted soundtrack. This album was followed by a second, Temper, two years later, on which Meluch continued to develop his particular blend of songs and instrumentals. Since, there have been a handful of limited seven inch releases for Type, Hall Of Owls and Blue Flea, countless compilations appearances, a collaborative album with Praveen and a cassette mini album, Valley, which was recently issued on FM Dust. Continue Reading »

BACHAR MAR KHALIFE
Oil Slick
IF1011
InFiné 2010
06 Tracks. 48mins24secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

The son of celebrated Lebanese singer and oud player Marcel Khalifé, Bachar Mar Khalifé was born in Beirut in the early eighties, but spent the majority of his formative years in France. He studied at the Boulogne Conservatoire alongside his brother, Rami, where he developed his singular approach to piano and percussions, and went on to graduate from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris while Rami headed off to the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. Later on, Bachar toured with his father for a while and also regularly performed with the Orchestre National De France and Pierre Boulez’s contemporary formation Ensemble Intercontemporain, and also contributed to the live collaborative project of Francesco Tristano, Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald. Continue Reading »

SIMON SCOTT
Silenne
SLAAPWELVIII
Slaapwel Records 2010
01 Track. 33mins00secs

This time last year, Belgian imprint Slaapwel Records teamed up with Peter Broderick for two very unusual gigs where the audience was invited to sleep over at the STUK in Leuven, Belgium, while Broderick and two other musicians played music throughout the night. Sleep, more precisely falling asleep has been the sole concern of Slaapwel, who have been releasing music designed specifically for that purpose for over three years now, with contributions from the likes of Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, Steinbrüchel, Greg Haines or Peter Broderick.

The latest to join this sleep brigade is Simon Scott, who follows his rather impressive solo debut, Navigare, released last year on Miasmah, and a couple of limited releases for Secret Furry Hole and Immune earlier in the year with Silenne, a record which, as described by Scott himself, was inspired by his propensity to fall asleep in the sunshine whilst listening to music. Continue Reading »

BILL WELLS & STEFAN SCHNEIDER
Pianotapes
KALKCD56/KALKLP60
Karaoka Kalk 2010
08 Tapes. 46mins43secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP US: CD | LP Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

It is not the first time that Scottish pianist, bassist and guitarist Bill Wells and German musician Stefan Schneider, best known as one third of To Rococo Rot, have collaborated. In 2003, the pair recorded an album, Pick Up Sticks (Leaf), with Annie Whitehead and Barbara Morgenstern, a collaboration which was followed by a second, Paper Of Pins, published last year on Karaoke Kalk. Pianotapes marks however the first time the two of them have worked on a record.

Pianotapes is the result of an intensely organic recording process. While Wells played delicate piano motifs, Schneider recorded them on old reel-to-reels tape machines and played them back at varied speeds, in turn impacting on Wells’s performance. Continue Reading »

The London Jazz Festival programme is known to regularly extend well beyond the realm of jazz, a genre itself subject to wide open interpretation. For its 2010 edition, the festival organisers have invited Mexican electronic artist Murcof to perform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on the South Bank, two years on from his LJF debut in the Purcell Room next door, where he performed with Spanish ensemble BCN216.

For this evening’s performance, Murcof rekindled his long-running partnership with Francesco Tristano, began a few years ago when Fernando Corona produced Tristano’s debut solo record, Not For Piano, released in 2007, and which consequently developed into a full live collaboration. Continue Reading »

MACHINEFABRIEK/KLEEFSTRA-BAKKER-KLEEFSTRA/LIONDIALER
That It Stays Winter Forever
WHITEBOX009JPN
White Box Recordings 2010
03 Tracks. 59mins32secs

MACHINEFABRIEK
Rural Route No. 6
SFRR006
Standard Form 2010
01 Track. 16mins57secs

Released to coincide with a series of common live dates in Tokyo, White Box Recordings have collected three exclusive tracks from Machinefabriek, Kleefstra/Bakker/Kleefstra and Liondialer, each around twenty minutes long, onto a very limited CD album (300 copies). That It Stays Winter Forever may be hinting at a cold and desolate time of the year, and each of the three compositions presented here could be interpreted as bleak and deeply introspective, yet there is a current of warmth circulating through the whole record, made more potent by the use of exquisite textures and sounds. Continue Reading »

FRANCESCO TRISTANO
Idiosynkrasia
IF1012
InFiné 2010
09 Tracks. 66mins49secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

A very talented young musician (he was born in 1981), Francesco Tristano Schlimé, to give his full name, moved to New York in 2000 to study at the prestigious Juilliard School, then went on to perform with the Russian National Orchestra. Tristano specialises in Baroque music and founded The New Bach Players ensemble in 2001, with whom he has recorded a number of classical works since. But, while in New York, Tristano also found a love for much more contemporary forms of music, even leading him to regularly deejay at various clubs in the city. Once back in Europe, he brought his love of classical music and techno together by developing a very personal style, which resulted in his non-classical debut album, Not For Piano, released in 2007 on the then fledging InFiné imprint, on which he revisited a number of electronic classics, including Rhythim Is Rhythim’s Strings Of Life, Jeff Mills’s The Bells or Autechre’s Overand, on the piano. With his follow up, Auricle Bio On, produced by Moritz Von Oswald, released a year later, Tristano created a very different piece of work, centered around two progressive and complex pieces set somewhere between musique concrète, minimal composition, abstract jazz and minimal techno. Beside his solo work, Tristano is also a member of Aufgang, a project formed with fellow Juilliard student and pianist Rami Khalifé and drummer Aymeric Westrich. The trio released their self-titled debut album last year.

Recorded in Carl Craig’s Planet E studios in Detroit, Idiosynkrasia is a more straightforward and accessible affair than its predecessor. Continue Reading »

BJARNI GUNNARSSON
SAFN 2006-2009
DOG006
Lamadameaveclechien 2010
07 Tracks. 49mins23secs

EINÓMA
Tvenna EP
DOG005
Lamadameaveclechien 2010
02 Tracks. 21mins20secs

Bjarni Gunnarsson is an Icelandic musician hailing from Reykjavik who has primarily been active as part of electronic duo Einóma, a project he founded almost ten years ago with long term friend Steindór Grétar Kristinsson, and under which banner they have released a handful of albums and EPs on Vertical Form, Uni:form and Trachanik. His debut solo album, enigmatically entitled SAFN 2006-2009, is released in an extremely limited handmade CD edition on Belgian imprint Lamadameaveclechien

While its title could lead to think that this album is actually a collection of unreleased material presumably recorded between 2006 and 2009, it remains unclear whether this is indeed the case. Regardless, this is a very impressive record, and a very consistent one at that. Continue Reading »

Located in the lively and cosmopolitan Shepherd’s Bush area, West London, a stone-throw from the cold and soulless Westfield shopping arcade, Bush Hall is like an oasis of calm and tranquility. The place has been many things over the years, from its original purpose as a ball room to a soup kitchen during the second World War, a snooker club in the seventies, before being returned to its former glory, complete with carved ceiling and chandeliers, in the nineties. It retains a level of intimacy which was perfectly suited to this evening’s performance from German musician and composer Volker Bertelmann, better known as Hauschka, who was kicking off his UK tour following the release of his recent album, Foreign Landscapes, on Fat Cat. For this performance, Bertelmann was accompanied by a twelve-piece ensemble, who, he informed us, due to the impossible logistic of taking a whole orchestra on tour, he only had met the day before for a rehearsal session, and was ‘feeling like speed dating’. Continue Reading »

ANDREA MARUTTI/FAUSTO BALBO
Detrimental Dialogue
AFE127CD/BM23/FRATTO012
AFE Records/Boring Machines/Fratto9 Under The Sky 2010
04 Tracks. 48mins11secs

It could be a decaying sound source which opens Detrimental Dialogue, and in a way, it is, except that instead of progressing, this is a regressive process which takes place during the first four minutes of this album’s opening track, as pieces of sonic dust progressively gather in increasingly more coherent electronic clusters. This is only the beginning of a recurring process during which compositions slowly break down into almost insubstantial fragments and regenerate into entirely new structures. All the way through Detrimental Dialogue, Andrea Marutti and Fausto Balbo take electronic synthesis from extremely granular to concrete universal level and back. Continue Reading »