new releases on Another Timbre, Feb/March 2013

[simon reynell]

Another batch of CDs on Another Timbre due in a few days:

at57 John Cage - Cartridge Music (Stephen Cornford, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Rob Curgenven, Ferran Fages, Patrick Farmer, Daniel Jones & Lee Patterson)

at58 Lee Patterson & Vanessa Rossetto - Temperament as Waveform

at59 Atolon + Chip Shop Music - Public Private (Ruth Barberan, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ferran Fages, Erik Carlsson, Martin Kuchen, David Lacey & Paul Vogel)

at60 Berlin Series #1 Michael Thieke & Olivier Toulemonde - Inframince + Lucio Capece & Jamie Drouin - Immensity

at61 Osvaldo Coluccino - Oltreorme

I hope to get extracts up on Youtube over the weekend. http://www.anothertimbre.com/index.html

By the way, I'm down to my last 7 copies of the Wandelweiser und so weiter box set. I'm trying to get some back from Metamkine, so may have a few more soon, but numbers are running low whatever.

[simon reynell]

These have arrived now & can be ordered from the Another Timbre website, where there are also audio samples via Youtube.

Cartridge Music (Cornford, Curgenven, Farmer, Fages, Jones, Monteiro & Patterson)


Lee Patterson & Vanessa Rossetto - Temperament as Waveform


Atolon + Chip Shop Music - Public Private


Inframince - Thieke / Toulemonde and Immensity - Capece / Drouin


Osvaldo Coluccino - Oltreorme

[Daniel Jones]

Reviews of these discs are now over at Brian's blog: http://olewnick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/ ... setto.html

[simon reynell]

thanks for doing my job, Dan.

There are also two other good reviews of Osvaldo Coluccino's 'Oltreorme', one by John Eyles in All About Jazz here: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=44355, and one by Julien Heraud on Improv-Sphere here: http://improv-sphere.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... s-non.html

[Daniel Jones]

thanks for doing my job, Dan.

There are also two other good reviews of Osvaldo Coluccino's 'Oltreorme', one by John Eyles in All About Jazz here: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=44355, and one by Julien Heraud on Improv-Sphere here: http://improv-sphere.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... s-non.html

You're welcome!

I must admit to being a bit disappiinted in Brian's review of Cartridge Music... but, whatever, the rest of the reviews are fabulous and I hope the batch goes great guns!

Got my eyes on those Coluccin's before the special offer is up at the end of the month...!

[Daniel Jones]

There's a French language review from the inimitable Mr Julien Héraud here: http://improv-sphere.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... music.html

And for those, like me, whose French isn't proficient enough to understand exactly what is said I provide an English language translation:

"It’s easy to understand why it was necessary to compose a work such as Cartridge Music in 1960, because this composition by John Cage introduced gesture and the musician into electronic music at a time when the latter was confined to broadcasts of works recorded on tape. A score like Cartridge Music really introduced the concept of performance into electronic music, and marked the beginning of live electronics. But why continue playing this work at a time when electronic performances are ubiquitous? It might seem unnecessary in some way, but I really don’t think so. To the extent that it’s a graphic score, it leaves space for the performers, and this space is precisely exploited here as an area of ​​freedom both for the musicians and for technological advances in the tools that are used (the cartridge of a record player in this case).

And the musicians, who are they anyway? Truly some of the most original in the field of improvised electronic and electroacoustic music, some of them close to the Wandelweiser collective. Brought together by Stephen Cornford, musicians as talented as Ferran Fages, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Patrick Farmer, Lee Patterson, Daniel Jones and Robert Curgenven offer their collective interpretation of Cage’s work - players who usually play rather different music, but are here capable of offering a coherent performance over 37 minutes.

The seven musicians have a common interest in exploring sound in itself, and in experimenting with timbre and colour. They take turns for short blocks of time, producing sound fragments that frequently sound different, but are united by their temporal and material aspects. On the one hand the score of Cartridge Music sends them back to an interpretation in which the successive sonic fragments, while different, are similar in their approach to time - a non-linear time in which any narrative is impossible, and where each fragment is forced into an exploded temporality. On the other, the sound source itself, the cartridge, unifies all the fragments. Often abrasive, a full-frontal and physical approach to sound is constantly present; each sound is recorded very close and engaged with in a very physical, hands-on way.

This confirms the performance’s fidelity to the score. What’s most interesting, though, is that the diversity of approaches and the singularity of the musicians still come to the surface in spite of the sense of unity. And it is this diversity that maintains suspense throughout the length of the CD, which is not an easy task for a disc that lasts 37 minutes and uses just one instrument - the record cartridge. Each player employs different gestures, gestures that either lead to blocks of loud sound or to microscopic, subtle details. Gestures which either attempt to create an impossible narrative, or which assert the ephemeral nature of the individual sounds. We never know what’s going to come next, how long it will last, if it will recur or just stop dead, if it’s accidental or intentional, if it will be in response to something else or deliberately set apart from everything that has preceded it.

In short an extraordinary disc. Extraordinary for its ability to combine a rigorous interpretation that is faithful to John Cage with an innovative and inventive spirit - innovative with regard to the score, and inventive with regard to current electronic practices. Highly recommended."

[simon reynell]

Thanks again, Dan; I should be paying you. And your French must be great to be able to offer such a good translation!

A few more reviews:
John Eyles in All About Jazz, very positive about the Thieke / Toulemonde, Capece / Drouin disc http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article ... ZH4sLWG2So
and for French speakers like Dan, Julien Heraud on the same: http://improv-sphere.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... lucio.html
Julien again on the Atolon / Chip Shop Music disc: http://improv-sphere.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... ivate.html
and Guillaume Belhomme's words on the Patterson/Rossetto from Le Son du Grisli:

Au nombre des duos – ici, les souvenirs de Bright Duplex et Hwaet – qui, dans l’ombre, fabriquent la discographie de Vanessa Rossetto, il faut aujourd’hui parler de celui qu’elle forme (à distance) avec Lee Patterson : Temperament as Waveform nous y engage.
Les dessins de Patterson disent à leur manière de quoi retourne la collaboration : des grisailles se lèvent entre deux silences, qui ne menacent pas, mais rapidement troublent et embellissent presque tout l’espace – le ciel qui sépare Austin et Manchester ? Pour ce faire, suffiront un souffle grave étouffant jusqu’aux parasites qui l’habitent, des percussions effleurées ou effervescentes, une sévère note de piano, un archet fébrile mais insistant, un crachin radiophonique, des mouvements minuscules, enfin, qui révèlent toujours d’autres manières de correspondre.
Et si du geste musical les compositions de Patterson et Rossetto n’ont gardé que les traces, l’empreinte de Temperament as Waveform n’en est que plus remarquable.

[Daniel Jones]

Thanks again, Dan; I should be paying you. And your French must be great to be able to offer such a good translation!

Was it your own translation, Simon? I didn't know that mastery of the French language was another string to your already ornate and wondrous bow!

And, yes, you should be paying me!

[Daniel Jones]

We should also link to the label spotlight episode of the marvellous Mathieu Ruhlmann's 'Soundscape' radio show eh!

Not only do you get to hear snippets of each of the latest AT releases but, also, you get to hear the erudite and dulcet toned muthafuckas (Simon and Mathieu) spout off about them... it's a pretty good way to while away an hour!

http://furiousgreencloud.com/cutandrun/ ... er-timbre/

[simon reynell]

And more nice reviews, this time from The Wire:

Abi Bliss on Osvaldo Coluccino's 'Oltreorme':
“Oltreorme is a demanding listen, but not for the usual reasons. The difficulty lies with obeying the sleeve’s command to “Hear this work only when there is an absolute silence around”. For want of an anechoic chamber, headphones are thus donned, although the suspicion remains that the Italian composer is making a Cage-inspired joke at his listener’s expense.
Silence is clearly a large part of Oltreorme – another instruction advises listening at low-medium volume, presumably to avoid squashing the mass of the silences – but it’s punctuated most elegantly by sounds from acoustic objects, with no conventional musical instruments or processing involved.
The title is an invented portmanteau of two Italian words which translates as ‘beyond footprints’ or ‘beyond traces’, reflecting Coluccino’s aim of capturing what he describes in an interview on Another Timbre’s website as “the breath of objects”: delicate, shortlived, mostly gestural sounds, arranged in clusters between the silences, with objects overlapping to highlight their sonic similarities and contrasts. Despite the low volume, it’s far from minimal, with a myriad of sources gently revealed, if not specified. Oltreorme 1 suggests clicking sticks, glass pebbles, a rustling that could be cellophane or grass, fingers tapping upon a surface. Oltreorme 4 conducts bead-like clicks, creaking hinges and footstep sounds towards the quietest of tumultuous climaxes.”

and Bill Meyer on Vanessa Rossetto and Lee Patterson's 'Temperament as Waveform':
“Both Lee Patterson and Vanessa Rossetto have worked within improvised music, and each uses field recordings, but their methods and intentions are dissimilar. Rossetto’s early solo CD-R Imperial Brick comprises layered viola improvisations recorded in a single night, but she only occasionally plays live. Most of her albums are composed of sounds assembled collected during her daily peregrations around Austin, Texas, which she arranges over periods of months into sonic narratives. Patterson, on the other hand, plays amplified household objects – wine glasses, springs, dissolving seltzer tablets – at Improv gigs, and makes recordings of domestic events, such as an egg frying, and natural phenomena, like the sounds generated by underwater plants releasing gas bubbles. The sounds don’t tell a story – they are a story.
Temperament as Waveform is the product of a couple of years of file exchanges, so while some of its instrumental sounds might have been spontaneously generated, they were carefully placed and re-evaluated before the record was complete. Rossetto’s viola contributes Tony Conrad-like string drones and bristly high pitches that recall La Donna Smith’s playing, and I suspect that Patterson is responsible for the occasional small rustles and scrapes that push up from the music’s surface. These occasional events impart a sense of temporal immediacy that contrasts with both the process of the music’s creation and the yawning sonic expanse that fans out behind them. They never last for long, and they feel like not-quite-erased signatures, just as the signature qualities of each participant have been partially removed.
In a recent interview for the online journal Surround, Rossetto described the work as a process of removal, in which one player would contribute by telling another what to strip out of a piece. Apparently the field recordings were often the first to go. While you might hear the sounds of open air or a passing bus, they’re details in a continuous expanse of humming sound, like small framed pictures nestled in a much larger painted landscape.
The result expresses depth and distance rather than the manifestations of presence that Patterson and Rossetto accomplish in their own work. Listening to this record is like gazing into the distance from a high vantage point on a misty day. The proximity and exact shape of whatever you regard is hard to gauge, and the more you listen, the more you hear.”

[simon reynell]

Another very good review of 'Temperament as Waveform', this one by Julien Heraud, which you can read in French here: http://www.dmute.net/chronique-album-23 ... eform.html
Or here's a translation:

"In the area of improvised and experimental music Another Timbre is one of those rare labels, along with Potlatch and Ertswhile, that consistently promotes music that is very close to my taste. Just about every quarter, this English label releases a series of four or five discs that are mostly excellent. CDs of instrumental free improvisation, electroacoustic music, composed minimalist music, sonic abstractions, with a particular emphasis on new English musicians, such as Rhodri Davies, Patrick Farmer, Dominic Lash or John Butcher, and on the composers of the Wandelweiser collective (see the incredible 6-disc box set ‘Wandelweiser und so weiter’, dedicated to this collective). Most recently a surprising duo CD has appeared: the duo of Vanessa Rossetto and Lee Patterson, an American woman and an English man who have never met, but have composed this disc solely by exchanging files of recordings which were edited and assembled between 2010 and 2012.

Vanessa Rossetto is a young composer, violist and painter who usually works solo. She mainly composes with field recordings, electronics and for chamber instruments (note that she recently brought out an excellent LP on Kye, the label of Jason Lescalleet, who mastered this CD). Lee Patterson is a musician who lives near Manchester, whose discography is principally on Another Timbre, and has played on many realisations of works by the Wandelweiser composers, but equally in many formations playing improvised music. Patterson often explores the immediate sonic environment in his work, notably by amplifying acoustic objects.

There is no indication as to what instrumentation is used on the cover of Temperament as Waveform, but it is mainly a matter of electronics, amplified objects and Rossetto’s viola. Four compositions that are like different sonic landscapes, often close to drones, but drones which contain a multiplicity of micro-details. The first piece is fairly loud and powerful, a long continuous bass tone like a dense, massive sine wave to which which various metallic rubbings and sizzlings are added, a constant drone over which abrasive, irregular sound colours scurry like ants, details rising up from the sonic mass and attaching themselves before you’ve noticed. The two following pieces are calmer and less massive, with details and ornamentation alone taking the place of the continuous sounds. Two pieces which exist outside of conventional aesthetic categories: neither instrumental nor electronic, neither minimalist nor active, and which seem as much composed as improvised. Two pieces in which field recordings, sine tones, drones, instruments, silences and objects are all mixed together in such a way that you can’t tell who is doing what and how. The last piece rounds off the disc perfectly, looping back to some extent to the mood of the opening track. A massive, largely static piece with a continuous, hoarse sound from the viola, complemented by numerous granular electronic frequencies. Heavier, louder, rich and intense, the concluding track wonderfully balances the disc as a whole.

Four pieces with different sonic temperaments, each plunging into unique sonic territories which are created afresh for each piece. Yes, Temperament as Waveform provides a suite of sonic and psychological tableaus such as are rarely heard, tableaus which are personal, sensual and intelligently constructed. In conclusion, an immersion into sound and its psychological properties which is truly surprising and unique."