MONTY ADKINS: Four Shibusa (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Apr 25th 2012 01:05 am

Monty Adkins: Four Shibusa

MONTY ADKINS
Four Shibusa
AB40
Audiobulb Records 2012
04 Tracks. 43mins22secs

Over the course of his career, which spans over nigh on twenty years, British composer and sound artist Monty Adkins has progressively stripped down his sonic spaces to now work with an extremely restricted palette from which he draws deeply atmospheric minimal compositions. His work has led him to create music for art installations and answer commissions from choreographer Wayne McGregor, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival or the prestigious INA-GRM in Paris. He has also collaborated with a vast number of artists, including AGF, Mira Calix, Vladislav Delay, Tim Hecker, Robin Rimbaud or Christian Fennesz, and has released five solo albums.

Four Shibusa is the result of a year-long collaboration with long-term friend and visual artist Pip Dickens, based on the Japanese principles of ‘shibusa’, which focuses on simple, beautiful aesthetic in everyday objects. Continue Reading »

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TATSURO KOJIMA: 16g (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Jan 27th 2012 01:21 am

Tatsuro Kojima: 16g

TATSURO KOJIMA
16g
AB039
Audiobulb Records 2012
11 Tracks. 60mins45secs

Boomkat: DLD

As digital music is steadily gaining ground, CD sales have been increasingly declining in the past few years in the same way as sales of vinyls and cassettes slumped when CDs were first introduced, but some record labels are still willing to commit to the format and dare investing into special projects. One such project is the new album from Japanese sound artist, graphic and web designer and mobile app developer Tatsuro Kojima, whose album 16g is being released by the excellent Audiobulb in an extremely limited run (50 copies), each CD housed in a unique, hand-made packaging, which counts an individual cover photo, a duplicate of which can be found inside, with at its back, a personal handwritten message, in Japanese, from Kojima. The picture is also numbered and signed.

The music is equally as delicate and artisanal. Continue Reading »

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SWIMMING: Ellipses (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Nov 25th 2011 01:28 am

Swimming: Ellipses

SWIMMING
Ellipses
AB037
Audiobulb Records 2011
13 Tracks. 44mins50secs

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

Swimming is a musical endeavour centred around California-based musician Devon Ferrucci. Whilst he records mostly alone, friends are welcome to drop by and contribute on occasion, and two appear here, one, Anthony Taibi, adds steel guitar on Pretending To Have A Heart Attack, the other, Rebekah Dickens, adorns Hourglass With Snow with delicate harp touches. Ferrucci works from a variety of acoustic instruments (guitar, drums and an array of plastic and metal objects) which he then processes and assembles into coherent sonic vignettes.

The music on Ellipses, which was recorded during Ferrucci’s last two years at university, was for the most part improvised. Using a few notes on a guitar or a particular sound or texture as a starting point, these embryos of ideas were then fed into his computer, worked and reworked until more defined structures started to emerge. Continue Reading »

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INTERVIEW: MONTY ADKINS Composing Layers

themilkman on Apr 17th 2011 11:48 pm

INTERVIEW: MONTY ADKINS Composing Layers

With his latest album, British sound artist Monty Adkins has been finding inspiration in the painting of Pip Dickens and art collective Brass Art, an approach that already partly infused his previous record. Over the years, he has work on various installations, scored dance projects and curated projects for the legendary GRM in Paris. Here, we talk with him about working on a project celebrating the work of Pierre Schaeffer, looking for electronic music in the orchestral works of Ligeti and Saariaho and understanding the process used by Rothko and adapting it to his own work. Continue Reading »

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MONTY ADKINS: Fragile.Flicker.Fragment (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Apr 10th 2011 11:38 pm

Monty Adkins: Fragile.Flicker.Fragment

MONTY ADKINS
Fragile.Flicker.Fragment
AB035
Audiobulb Records 2011
09 Tracks. 53mins49secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

After reading music at Cambridge University, specializing in French medieval and Italian Renaissance music, Monty Adkins became interested in electronic and electro-acoustic music and went on to become a member of the Birmingham Electro-acoustic Sound Theatre, a formation attached to the music department at the University of Birmingham. This led him to work on very diverse projects, from sound installations and scoring for a contemporary dance piece to curating a project for INA-GRM to celebrate the work of Pierre Schaefer, the man widely regarded as the father of musique concrète.

Adkins’s last record, Five Panels, recorded with bass guitarist Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, was inspired by the paintings of Mark Rothko. Equally, his latest opus finds its source in the work of London-based painter Pip Dickens and that of Brass Art, a collective of artists based in Manchester (Chara Lewis), Huddersfield (Kristin Mojsiewicz) and Glasgow (Anneke Pettican). Continue Reading »

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CALIKA: Blood Embrace (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Aug 12th 2010 01:37 am

Calika: Blood Embrace

CALIKA
Blood Embrace
AB031
Audiobulb Records 2010
11 Tracks. 48mins48secs

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

Brighton-based Simon Kealoha is back on Audiobulb with his fourth full length slice of refined electro-acoustic in five year, his first album since Seedling Mother (Audiobulb, 2007), following the two EPs released last year, Crooked, once again on Audiobulb, and Slack Jaw on Highpoint Lowlife. Ever since he first appeared, in 2005, with his debut album, Small Talk Kills Me, Kealoha has been refining his sound, bringing together acoustic and electronic elements into complex and fragile formations. Beside working on his own project, Kealoha has also collaborated with Seefeel mastermind Mark Clifford on the excellent Running Taper, an album published on Clifford’s Polyfusia Records in 2005, and on a second opus which came close to be released two years later but appears to have been victim of the demise of the label.

Announced as a more stripped down and bare record, Blood Embrace remains a pretty intricate and organic collection, at times surprisingly light and airy, at others radical and dense. Continue Reading »

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AUTISTICI: Slow Temperature – Early Works Vol.2 / Autistici Reworked – Resonating Wires (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Jul 25th 2010 11:32 pm

Autistici: Slow Temperature - Early Works (Vol. 2) Autistici: Autistici Reworked - Resonating Wires

AUTISTICI
Slow Temperature – Early Works Vol. 2
AB030
Audiobulb Records 2010
11 Tracks. 51mins44secs

AUTISTICI
Autistici Reworked – Resonating Wires
AB032
Audiobulb Records 2010
10 Tracks. 55mins23secs

Slow Temperature – Early Works Vol. 2
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

The last year has proved a rather busy period for Autistici, with no less than four releases between October last year and now, two of which collecting material recorded between 2001 and 2005 and previously unreleased, the other two part of a same project, the original, Complex Tone Test, being Autistici’s second album, the follow up to his 2008 12K debut Volume Object, and Resonating Wires, focussing on reworkings of one particular track from that album.

While Detached Metal Voice was a somewhat diverse collection, ranging from the relatively straightforward to the more overtly experimental, Slow Temperature, the second instalment of early material is an altogether much more coherent release and is in essence much closer to Newman’s two albums proper in the approach to textures and how they fit in together.
Continue Reading »

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:PAPERCUTZ: Do Outro Lado Do Espelho (Lylac Ambient Reworks) (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on May 12th 2010 01:00 am

:Papercutz: Do Outro Lado Do Espelho (Lylac Ambient Reworks)

:PAPERCUTZ
Do Outro Lado Do Espelho (Lylac Ambient Reworks)
AB029
Audiobulb Records 2010
12 Tracks. 57mins53secs

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

Originally the project of Porto-based musician Bruno Miguel Pereira Pinto, :Papercutz soon expanded to incorporate vocalist Melissa Veras, with other musicians joining the pair for live performances. Released two years ago on Canadian imprint Apegenine, Lylac, the band’s first album, bridged the gap between stark atmospheric electronica and elegant contemporary pop music to create a superb hybrid, served by Pinto’s delicate blend of acoustic instrumentation, electronic textures and beats on one side, and by Veras’s softly ethereal vocal tones, occasionally reminiscent of Anneli Drecker, on the other. The album was followed by a single, Ultravioleta, which featured remixes by The Sight Below, Neotropic, Spandex and Signer. This is partly what encouraged Pinto to let other musicians give their own vision of his work. The resulting collection of remixes, published on Audiobulb, features reworks by Helios, Simon Scott, Taylor Deupree, He Can Jog, Autistici, Astroboy, Chris Bissonnette, Jasper TX,  Rameses III, Emanuele Errante and Feu Follet. Continue Reading »

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INTERVIEW: AUTISTICI Sound Therapy

themilkman on May 9th 2010 09:28 pm

INTERVIEW: AUTISTICI Palliative Therapy

In the early 2000s, David Newman founded Audiobulb, a label which has since been a catalyst for contemporary electro-acoustic works and sound-based projects involving a wide range of artists. Two years ago, Newman released his debut album as Autistici, a project which he had started working on in 2000. We took the opportunity of the release of Detached Metal Voice – Early Works (Vol. 1), a collection of early material released on Audiobulb, to catch up with him and talk about both his music project and his label. Continue Reading »

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AUTISTICI: Detached Metal Voice – Early Works Vol. 1 (Audiobuld Records)

themilkman on Apr 15th 2010 06:43 am

Autistici: Detached Metal Voice - Early Works Vol. 1

AUTISTICI
Detached Metal Voice – Early Works Vol. 1
AB028
Audiobulb 2010
11 Tracks. 47mins58secs

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

It’s barely been a few months since Autistici’s second album, Complex Tone Test, was released, yet here comes another collection of fine electronic music from David Newman, published on his excellent Audiobulb imprint. This time though, the album collates early recordings and brings a variety of experiments under one umbrella. No indication is given to when these tracks were recorded, but they are linked by a taste for retro-futuristic technologies, especially early voice synthesis experiments developed in the sixties and seventies in the US by the Bell Laboratories, an AT&T research site based in New Jersey, and old style electronic instrumentation.   Continue Reading »

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CALIKA: Crooked (Audiobulb Records) / Slack Jaw (Highpoint Lowlife)

themilkman on Dec 9th 2009 12:25 am

Calika: Crooked Calika: Slack Jaw

CALIKA
Crooked
AB024
Audiobulb Records 2009
05 Tracks. 22mins04secs
Format: Digital

CALIKA
Slack Jaw
HPLL043
Highpoint Lowlife 2009
05 Tracks 20mins32secs
Format: Digital

Crooked
Icon: arrow Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

Slack Jaw
Icon: arrow
Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD. Boomkat: DLD

Clearly willing to spread his music to the cream of British electronic imprints, Brighton-based Calika has, in recent weeks, returned to both Sheffield’s Audiobulb and London’s Highpoint Lowlife, offering each label five tracks of fine electronic music compiled on two EPs. Simon Kealoha, the brain behind Calika, has, in the past, released two albums on Audiobulb, worked with Benbecula and contributed one track to Highpoint Lowlife’s excellent Analog For Architecture compilation, published in 2006. Beside his solo activities, he has also worked with Seefeel’s Mark Clifford, with whom he has recorded two albums worth of material, the first, Running Tapper, released through Clifford’s Polyfusia imprint, the second yet to materialise. Continue Reading »

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VARIOUS ARTISTS: 2 | Favourite Places (Audiobulb Records)

themilkman on Oct 28th 2009 02:07 am

Various Artists: 2 | Favourite Places

VARIOUS ARTISTS
2 | Favourite Places
AB026
Audiobulb Records 2009
10 Tracks. 56mins30secs

Icon: arrow Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

The concept is pretty simple: take a number of contemporary musicians with a taste for moods and atmospheres, task them with recording sounds from their favourite places in the world and use them in a composition. This is exactly what David Newman, head of Audiobulb, did two years ago, and the result was compiled in the first instalment of Favourite Places, with contributions from Biosphere, Taylor Deupree, Claudio, Leafcutter John and John Kannenberg amongst others. The second volume in the collection brings together musicians from the UK (Michael Santos, Icarus, Autistici, Calika), Australia (Lawrence English), Belgium (Yannick Franck), Japan (Sawako), USA (Jeremy Bible, He Can Jog) and Canada (Michael Trommer), giving them each a chance to introduce their very own favourite place. The booklet accompanying this CD contains photographs and a description of these spots, providing concrete complements to the recordings. Continue Reading »

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