61 Mirrors

I’ve been staring at the screen for too long, thinking about what should I write about. It has been more than two years since I write something on the blog. Over these years, I haven’t stopped writing about music and art, I just fell into the trap of losing interest in reviewing my drafts and publishing them. But today I’m pondering and trying to escape. what better way to escape than writing briefly about music? 🙂

This year started rough and not as I expected it to be, and if I have to think of a moment where I was at my best clarity, had to say is when I attended SKALAR’s installation. A large-scale created by the artist Christopher Bauder and musician Kangding Ray.

SKALAR is an audio-visual installation that explores the impact of light and sound on the complex perception of humans. With an outstanding multi-channel and sound system, SKALAR gives you a profound and unique experience.

SKALAR is discussing and demonstrating Robert Plutchik’s theory, which is known as the Plutchik wheel. The emotion wheel describes eight basic emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. When you enter the space, at first, you will be fully immersed in darkness. The moving mirror will then move and change the color palette to stimulate and affect the sensory of your primary emotions, beginning with anger and ending with joy. The light is a major element in Bauder’s work but in this specific artwork, he is representing the endless cycle of time and its effect on the human’s emotions.

The sound was a crucial addition to the artwork. The sound piece merges between dark ambient to industrial techno just to set you in the right mood and give the most alluring experience. The combination between the rhythmic movements of the light and multi-dimensional sound creates a shifting space between a intense state of meditative and unsettling for the viewer.

God bless the people of the internet. I found the full performance on Youtube. For sure isn’t as outstanding as attend it live but worth to watch it.

I judge book by its cover and I can’t lie. II

I once write about how I rarely read albums reviews and I just pick my next album based on the cover (which I think it’s a bad habit, because I feel like I’m missing out a lot of good albums!) so one of my friends told me to turn it into a series when I talked about how I started listening to Steve Hauschildt. And I thought why not since I always do it.

My post is about John Foxx and his outstanding artworks. I sorta talked about him before in My Best Discoveries This Year but I didn’t give him enough appreciation for his work. John Foxx isn’t only a musician, but he is also a photographer and graphic designer, collaborated with some artists and released three *cut-up & collage* films. And the best way to describe his work; where he mixed between digital collage and multiple exposure- is dark, super vague and abstract. And I absolutely dig his style. *can you see it? there is a lot to get inspired by!*

The Quiet Man series are my favorite work by him, because the things that influenced him are the things that personally love and get inspired by.

 

The Pleasures Of Electricity

“Then he had a phase of wanting to absorb as much current as he could stand. This had a remarkable effect. The impression of shifting images accelerated until he became a softly glowing blur – like cigarette smoke uncoiling in a strobe light. He claimed that electricity stimulated him, made him exhilarated, but afterwards I could see that he looked fainter and more distant than ever.
I was also beginning to catch glimpses of something ruined behind the boyish appearance. It all seems to have been maintained through an act of will, the maintenance becoming inattentive as he grew increasingly detached and distracted.”

This is used as an album cover for his collaboration with Louis Gordon. * the follow-up to 1997’s comeback album Shifting City* Since I’m more a fan to John Foxx solo work, I mistakenly slept on this record *unfortunately* too long. & it was a very pleasant experience. In this work Magritte not only influenced the artwork but also the title, The Pleasure Principle resembles to John is The Pleasures of Electricity.

On this record I felt it was John’s most obvious minimalist sound than any of his previous albums (solo or in a group) but John said the whole album is made by a very strong influence from Kraftwerk. but the lyrics have some similar themes to Metamatic like psychogeography, walking through cities and skyline buildings. The similarity not only the theme but also kind of musically, the track “Invisible Women” recycles the riff from “Underpass”. My favorite track off the record is “A Funny Thing. The track is dark retro-electro with synth riffs that made it a very unique track. And it is something I like from electronic music.

 

This faceless man in a grey suit took a huge role in his work, features many of his songs, for example “A New Kind of Man” & Ultravox Single “Quiet Men”. The artwork of the album was originally photographed by Foxx himself and he designed it to look like René Magritte’s painting The Pleasure Principle. As we saw in the artwork of The Pleasures Of Electricity.

In “Neuro Video” artwork, we have an update version of one of the original album cover concepts for The Pleasures of Electricity. which is the faceless man in a grey suit. and continues throughout the booklet. No live shots, no text, just pure Foxx imagery.

This album leads me to listen to From Trash, their most personal album, and it’s their best. It supposes to be an album of electronic film noir, but with these metallic&analog synths I found it more retro-futuristic/dramatic 80’s, especially in “Never Let Me Go,Your Kisses burns, The One That Walks Through You”

The Pleasures Of Electricity 2 

This artwork was used twice,one was inside the foldout sleeve of  The Pleasures Of Electricity. And Used for a compilation album; 20th Century: The Noise. And it’s absolutely gorgeous.

The booklet of this album is done by the amazing Barnbrook

 

 

 

 

Tower Bridge Angel

Another artwork that I admire, it is used for “Quiet Man” album, without even googling it, you can see it was inspired by the masterpiece Wings of Desire mixed with 30s surrealism. It really gives me the same feeling when I see Wings of Desire cinematography, it’s so beautiful. & of course the significant element of his work “the faceless man in a grey suit” appeared here too. The Quiet Man is a spoken-word album, divide into five sections written by Foxx and read by Justin Barton merging with ambient music going through the background. & not my favorite but worth to check.

 

Different collages made by him for his singles that I really love.

 

 

And finally, his amazzing collaboration with Karborn! At some point in my life I *shamelessly* wasn’t interested to listen to John Foxx, until I saw “B-Movie (Ballardian Video Neuronica)” artwork that is designed by Karborn* since I liked it so much & I had to listen to the music & watch the video.  The pair presented film and sound seance manifesting J G Ballard neurons. On this album Foxx collaborated with musicians like Steve D’Agostino and Benge from John Foxx And The Maths. All the music is exclusive to this soundtrack except ‘The Other Side’, an extract from the forthcoming Electricity & Ghosts album (due for release in 2015), which just happened to fit with the visuals.

After a long time of discovering B-Movie, Karborn suggested me to listen to his other project with Foxx “Evidence of Time Travel” and this album has become very special to me and literally top every record I ever heard from Foxx. As I said before about this album, it gives you the sensation of the streets of a dark future city, apocalyptic cityscape. Karborn did a very massive job of making the graphic art and AV. The record, live AV show and online visuals trace the poignant tale of a man who falls in love with the aforementioned abstract entity. John Karborn explains: “[He] cannot bear to be apart from her, so he records himself into the material as is if he had always been present.”

Short extract from Evidence Of Time Travel | The Invention from Evidence of Time Travel *a fascinating experience I had from this!*

Glitch, the Sign of Longing. – An Excerpt

 

The compression and glitch caused by poor Internet connections give the rise to aesthetic and political reflections in Tariq Hashim’s film www.Gilgamesh.21 (2007), which documents a long-distance collaboration between Hisham, in Copenhagen, and his collaborator, Basim, in Baghdad, as they rehearse a play of the eighteenth-century-BC epic Gilgamesh via webcam, Youtube, and text messaging. In Baghdad the connection is poor and electricity cuts out often, interrupting their communication and introducing metallic echoes into their speech, Each bemoans his conditions: tariq@Copenhagen writes, “I live in the chilly hell of exile, up in the north of this planet.” basim@Baghdad replies “Me, I am in a burning hell, in the city of death” The deprivation of postwar Iraq and the pain of exile are compounded when together (by uploading movies of themselves watching the screen)  the actors watch Youtube videos uploaded by American soldiers in Iraq. These movies reveal sickening bigotry and ignorance, and they usually boast much higher resolution than the actors are able to achieve in their own communications. In silence, the actors watch these puerile, racist movies that reach much larger audiences than their erudite Babylonian adaptation likely will. But Basim and hashim’s low quality, long-distance montage, achieved by great effort, yields images of much greater intensity.

 

Coming together over poor Internet connections is also a theme of Mahmoud Khaled Camaraderie (2009), a meditation on the culture of male body builders composed of videos posted to Youtube: men posting, competing, oiling and massaging each other’s bodies, cheering. As the athletes’ gleaming bodies break into pastel pixels, we occupy the position of a viewer accessing this material at home online, a position of unofficial or unauthorized spectatorship. The voyeuristic feeling is even more pronounced in a shot of a young man recording himself in the mirror as he raises his shirt to reveal his buff torso. At one point, a group shot of athletes and their shouting supporters breaks up into a spectacular single moving mass of flesh – and fuchsia-colored pixels. Over it the following text, in Arabic and English, is placed:

comments off, no explanations needed.

no discussion or questions will be answered on this piece either.

it’s going to take me time to even process the fact that I posted this, hard as it was. I have taken courage to challenge myself and you have taken the time to allow this to affect you.

the pay off is well worth it.

In this address, the glitchy, low-resolution images indicate the longing of lonely Internet viewers, in countries where homosociality is the norm but homosexuality is illegal- and also their ways of building connections. The energy of effort, display, mutual support , and the desire unites these men as a collective. both those who perform onscreen and those present as online spectators. The Egyptian national anthem accompanies one of these exhibitions, suggesting that this unofficial culture may have more staying power —more “legs”— than the moribund Egyptian national culture circa 2009. Khaled challenges viewers to recognize that what we desire most may be the inverse of what is clearly visible and accessible.

 

Hanan Al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image, Laura U. Marks

My Year in Music | 2017 Edition

I haven’t listen to new albums that much but here is my take on it, enjoy.

 

Ben Frost- The Centre Cannot Hold / Threshold of Faith

first of all, Ben Frost. I had to say it, he did massive job this year, at march he released an OST for a TV series called “fortitude” and it wasn’t my favorite but somehow I listened it a lot while working,  it was a pretty long album and it made me lose track of time which is great for working on such an important project. My favorites off this record was Hildur & Erik & Vladek. then he dropped a surprise EP “Threshold of Faith”, as it was expected from him, intense, shimmering and industrial sounds. then he released a fellow-up “The Centre Cannot Hold ” and I honestly don’t know why my friends keep saying it sounds like Hecker, when it doesn’t sound like Hecker at all. when it’s sound more intense and dramatic than Hecker. Personally, I found Hecker’s music the opposite of Ben Frost’s music. Hecker is warm, emotional and ethereal, unlikely of Ben frost. it’s more cold, mechanical and sometimes terrifying. I loved “All That You Love Will Be Eviscerated” since the first time I heard it from the EP but after the album I loved it even more, especially when it ends “ Entropy In Blue ” starts, and these two tracks sound soo good together. if you hear it as one *15 minutes*length track. Also one of my favorite “Ionia“, it’s so catchy and addictive. The album definitely worth the check, it’s slowly grown on me. The only problem is the boring artwork, I wished it was a solid blue with his name. instead of white and blue thing. And ofc extra points for using a verse from Yeats’ The Second Coming poem for the title.

“There aren’t many poems as fitting for our current political climate as W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” Written in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I, it describes the radicalization of politics at that time and the overwhelming disillusionment surely felt by anyone hoping for at least a lesson learned from a conflict that mercilessly devastated numerous countries and societies. Spoiler: there wasn’t, and it feels like we haven’t learned anything in the following 98 years either. A grim, if increasingly realistic, assessment. ”

 

Rafael Anton Irisarri – The Shameless Years / Leandro Fresco and Rafael Anton Irisarri – La equidistancia / Seventeen Words – Gailes

Since Irisarri released A Fragile Geography , I got my eyes on his music. if we look at his discography we will notice that he slowly went from ambient, minimal modern classic to a rich drone and I think we glad that he BOTH did it. The Shameless Years is another solid, consistent, splendid record, it delivers so many emotions under so many thick and heavy layer of noise, & like his other records, he tries to expose the difficult socio-political state of America. Irisarri’s The Shameless Years is bitter, saudade, angry and resigned; heartbreaking. Its hard to forget once experienced. For me, this one is undoubtedly the album of the year. It starts off with “Indefinite Fields” ambient textured with a heavy white noise to cleanse your soul. “RH Negative” the noise on this track is gentle and soothing, it made slightly melancholic and warm, I had to use it for a video experiment of mine. Another thing I liked about this record is the collaboration between him & the Iranian musician Siavash Amini, where they both worked remotely on two tracks. & This collaboration came together at the peak of all the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric happening in the USA, not to mention the banning of Iranians from entering the country, explains Irisarri. The diptych with Amini, ‘Karma Krama’ and ‘The Faithless’, seems bathed in additional waves of sorrow and dread. The wash of symphonic stormclouds of synth drones and processed notes on the latter gradually appears and disappears over the course of thirteen mournful minutes.

In La equidistancia Fresco and Irisarri collaborated over a distance, to serve you a dreamy journey into a hazy world in slow drone. Discovering this was pure pleasure, after each interrogation, you want to go back to it, to once again immerse yourself in ethereal music, in which everything sounds like it was from another world. A wonderful album for winter evenings *I think this is why they made & release it in winter!*

This is not a first time Rafael Anton Irisarri and Benoit Pioulard collaborated together, but this time they sound better than Orcas. It’s combination of warm textures, fragility and soft melodies. It’s very soothing. & short running time makes it for a perfect album to listen at night before sleeping.

 

Leftina Osha – Naive Forever / Restive Plaggona – The Burned Letter & Leaving the body

discovering Dimitris Doukas’ music probably was one of my best moments this year, I remember  I was looking for similar music for Black Merlin then I found that he released a new album called “The Burned Letter” and maaan, the album was a very pleasant surprise! he did everything I like in techno, it’s raw drums with very dark synths so I had an urgent feeling to listen to his entire discography, then I noticed that he is only one year active with a ridiculous amount of releases AND he is a part of a new dark ambient act that I liked called “Leftina Osha”. all the releases are killer, we gotta respect him! He released ten albums under the name “Restive Plaggona” and four of them was this years, Non Serviam topped them all but since this post about my yearly music favorites, Leaving The Body is amazing then The Burned Letter, after that Orders Rejected. unfortunately Committed to the truth didn’t click with me that much, but overall it’s an excellent record but not so memorable. Every record is ranging from ambient melancholy to pulsating Industrial soundscapes, so it’s really worth to check.

*UPDATE: I just knew he released a new album! And it’s heavier than the other.

 

COH- COHGS / Felicia Atkinson – Hand in Hand

it’s really surprising COH’s record flew under the radar, especially he re-released tracks from his collaboration with Coil Love uncut. I honestly found it weird they write about it on Editions Mego like it’s new materials when Love’s Septic Domain & Fffetish released in 2000 but anyway, my favorite off the record is the tracks with Little Annie, her voice is so good. 46 Things I Did Today is three minutes long insert is a long commentary on what she did that day in a serious *kinda* metallic voice or this how the music made me feel. the track is not a creepy in Radiohead’s Fitter Happier way, but it felt creepier if you hear it over and over. The other track with Little Annie is Curious Yellow, it’s almost a minimal ambient drone electronic but it gets more and more rhythmically complex. there are moments that remind me of Hecker’s Haunt me a lot *or Ricardo Donoso’s overture” , probably because of the loops and glitches of long and fading sines, piano sounds in a soothing, melancholy *cause the lyrics* and sentimental way. overall, the album is a pretty experimental, spoken-words and arpeggios with “Glitch” elements build the main texture of this record.*probably the only industrial moments were in Love’s Septic Domain.* It’s an underrated album, that should’ve been recognized. *definitely deserves more recognition.*

Félicia Atkinson is a multidisciplinary artist from France who is has been releasing avant-garde music merging ASMR voices for nearly ten years. The first time I came across her name was last year when she did a collaboration with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and to be honest that record didn’t click with me at all,  it made me not wanting to check her out. But her new album Hand in Hand came on shuffle on Spotify. And it is quite different from what I experienced with Ledesma. This album is so futuristic and cyberpunk-ish. It is textually rich yet it’s so minimal, it has layers of her reading poetry in an eerie way, looping glitches, minimal soundscapes and echoing. The infrasonic sound merging with mysterious lyrics makes some moments of the album enigmatic and somehow very sentimental. The focus that Atkinson laid here is to uses dissected vocal to create abstract rhythms, textures fused with movement, poetry, and sound. If you’re in the mood for silky experimental electronics, this perfect record.

 

Ulwhednar – Modern silver / Vargdöd – Brutal Disciplin

Jonas Ronnbery could easily be considered one of the most productive and hardworking producers in the last decade and yet he is still so criminally underrated. This year he collaborates with two artist Abdulla Rashim and Andreas Karlsson.

Modern Silver is the 6th album with Abdulla Rashim under the name Ulwhednar, this album is purely techno except the two tracks “1000 pills” , “Modern silver”, these are quite industrial than the rest of the album. On these two tracks, Loke Rahbek collaborate and add his ethereal touch into it with his spooky voice. I strongly believe this is the best album they made.

Brutal Disciplin is the first album between Ronnbery & Karlsson, I’ve never heard of Celldöd until now, so the curiosity made me look for his previous album and let’s be honest his music is pretty okay; not that memorable too, just a dull techno sounds. so I guess it’s a great achievement that someone as genius as Ronnbery believe in you and actually release an album with you. from the opener “ Kennel Murder Case” you can tell, this album is an experience, it’s teetering between brutal terrorist noise and industrial techno, it’s impressive and dark. I found this project promising, I can’t wait to hear from them again!

 

 

Loke Rahbek – City Of Women / Loke Rahbek & Frederik Valentin – Buy Corals Online

Oh my Loke! after numerous projects with different musicians, he finally released an album under his own name. City Of Women was my album of the year until Irisarri released The Shameless Years. A lot of things happening at once in this album, it has a lot of textures, every track is divergent. Personally I get a lot of moment Love Streams/Hecker vibes. I know I look naive because I didn’t like Love Streams and I consider it the weakest album by Hecker but somehow I insanely love it from Loke. *I know it doesn’t make any sense but I feel if I listen to track individually, because of that textured synths mixing with eerie choral vocals, it could be easily mistaken as Hecker. City of Women is dense yet lightweight, and the pastel colors in the artwork give me silk soft synth vibes. I highly recommend it.

I think this is the first time I hear Loke Rahbek making Slow and ambient IDM, I guess this is what happened when two different artists collaborate, to create something different. This album is really soft, very good chillout music and it makes the atmosphere very relaxed. Very pleasant album, perfect for breezy, sunny day.

 

 

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – On The Echoing Green / Slowdive’s self-titled

After numerous of ambient drone releases, he *surprisingly* released a pure fine ethereal 90s sound. And I think he successfully achieves it. I know a lot of people didn’t enjoy it or wanted him to go back to his “old style” but for me, I felt some unique sounds that remind me of Cocteau Twins vibes at times. It’s so perfect.

A Part of me is happy because of Slowdive are back, and the other part is disappointed. I had to say it, it’s a just decent album. It wasn’t shoegaze, it is more to dreampop elements, there is nothing impressive about it. “Slomo” is probably the highlight of the album then “Go Get it” and that is it.  I really can’t consider it as the album of the year. it is so weak compared to their previous releases.

 

 

Liam Gallagher – As You Were/  Future Islands – The Far Field / The War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding

I think Liam Gallagher’s album is the highlight for every Oasis’ fan, since Liam announced it, we’ve been wondering for months how it is going to be. & it is not a surprise that the album sounded actually like Oasis, also recalls a lot of his other project Beady Eyes. And to be honest, I don’t know if it’s in a good or bad way since it’s his first solo album, I don’t know if this was his intention, to create a pure classic rock album, rather than experiment around like his brother. but personally I LIKED the Oasis vibes, I found this record is quite enjoyable. The best track “For What It’s Worth”, it is so “Stand by Me”-esque WHICH IS GOOD. There are few memorable tracks Like the opener “Wall of Glass” *it’s pretty catchy*,  “I Get By” and “All My People / All Mankind”. this album is a proven that Liam is a good songwriter not only a good vocalist, he puts a great effort into the lyrics and the music itself, it’s really worth to check. Also I had to say it, it’s impressive that his voice didn’t age, it’s still sound as good as 90’s.

One of the things that I love about future Islands, that no matter how many albums they put, *where it gets to the point it’s difficult to differentiate between the tracks in a good way* they still managed to keep their sound without sounding repetitive. Anyway The Far Field is the strongest band’s effort, they develop a common proposal, expanded more to make songs with emotional sense. I think they finally sure of their distinctive sound. The only weak track is North Star, this track sound so mediocre in a way I can’t stand it but the other is so good.

The War on Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding is one of the albums I have listened to for three days straight without paying attention to the tracks, so there isn’t a hit track for me it’s overall good.

 

Ryuichi Sakamoto – Async/ Mika Vainio – Reat

 

Do we really need to say anything about how genius Sakamoto is? Nah, I don’t think so, I’m just waiting for this record to be historic. Glitch in a classical venue, you have to check it.

I was shocked when I knew about Mika Vainio death,  it is a tremendous loss to Electronic music communities,  & to me personal, I always consider him one of my huge inspiration as a visual artist. Like I never thought it’d be his last album when he announced Reat in his official site. 😦  Reat was exactly how I like, minimal techno with hints of glitch, sound more like his other project Pan Sonic other then his solo works *which is what I prefer*  My favorite tracks are -And Around Coils Of Horns  – A Season In Harar 1881. 

 

 

Visionist – Value / Orson Hentschel – Electric Stutter

 

Safe to me, for whatever reason it didn’t really click with me then I read the concept of his new album, I thought it might worth checking. In this album there is an interesting collage of sounds and ideas, by deconstructing rhythmic lines, pitch shifted vocals sampled almost through the entire album, we can sense that he still influenced Oneohtrix Point Never & he brought it again in Value. And to be honest it annoyed me at times,  I mean like you don’t have to use pitch-shifted vocals in every track, right? anyway this is an amazing album that’s well produced.

Orson Hentschel was my best discovery last year, his track Slow-Moving was my most-played song in the last year. Hentschel never sees himself as a composer or a musician, but as a multimedia artist who was looking for the suitable sounds for his Audiovisual shows, his interests was lying in experimental sounds, and samples that had been used to recreate it in his own sound. In Electric Stutter he took Trip-Hop and Electronic Pop Music as a strong influence, unlikely his last album Feed The Tape, that was shaped by Classical Minimal Music. It’s energetic and rhythmic counterpoint to the last. Machine Boy is the kind of techno that make me shiver hard. it’s heavy as fuck. & it’s probably the highlight of the album. Electric Stutter isn’t an immediately impressive record, but the more I listen, the more texture I feel. Beautifully strong and fragile. The album cover is a shaving man wearing platinum, carbon fiber skin, which explains his current health condition nerve paralysis that has been pinned by Neurosurgeons to his right temporal lobe, and that made me think it’s his most personal work.

 

Gas – Narkopoop / Anjou – Epithymía

I was never interested in Gas’ music, even though they a big deal in electronic music industry, my friend recommend it to me, saying; they’re back after a 17-year, it’s a really good album..etc so I thought I would give it a shot, and I strongly agree with him. this album is really good. Gas here created an ethereal, foreboding atmosphere, this is *I think* all we asked from ambient.  I can say with certainty this one of the best comeback albums. The only problem I face, is I have to go through the entire album in one sit, otherwise I can’t seem enjoy hearing the track individually.

Anjou is another project by the duo Mark Nelson and Robert Donne from Labradford, and Steven Hess from Pan American, but for unknown reason it is still consider an incredibly underrated. After numerous listens, I can say this album is better than the first. it’s very meditative and very stellar, it’s a beautiful collection of tracks to enjoy on your long nights. That nostalgic jazzy-trumpet hint in An Empty bank, made it my favorite.*it kind of giving me Het Volk vibes*

 

 

Lakker – Eris Harmonia / Oake – Sentiment of Callousness / William Basinski – Shadow in a Time

if you’re familiar with Lakker, you will except some rhythmic techno but not this time. With Eris Harmonia the duo took a different road, it starts heavy with intense industrial techno and ends with more shimmering sound. Eris Pt 1 & 2 are very intense and aggressive. Eris Harmonia uses sound to explore the “different reactions and emotional responses to the current world climate of chaos and uncertainty.”

Sentiment of Callousness is my favorite EP of the year, it’s combination of dark ambient, industrial dub and female voices. They get better with each release. Abul is a huge track. I loved everything about this record, the concept, the music itself, and the cover.

Shadow in a Time has two tracks, each track is a two twenty minutes long – not a surprise! The first piece is a tribute to David Bowie. I’ve a soft spot for musicians who use saxophone in their ambient pieces, and Basinski did that in the most beautiful way, after you fully immersed in a repetitive sound, an abrasive saxophone sample pop up and change everything, for this moment, it will make you come back. The second track wasn’t my gem, but I liked that he took a sample from the track “Melancholia II” and just let it fade in. Overall, Shadow in a Time is sorrowful as fuck, extremely beautiful. I love Basinski so much but, sometime my mood can’t handle listening to one full hour of repetitive loops, and this EP serves my needs, it’s short and perfect.

 

 

 

 Lussuria – Standstill / Âmes Sanglantes – Crackdown

These are the longest albums of he year, if you want to immerse yourself into noise, listen to these. Lussuria is almost four hours, and Sanglantes 12 hours *WOW I KNOW!*             They both Dark Ambient with industrial elements. & they released for Hospital Productions’ 20th anniversary year.

 

Albums worth to mention:

Actress — AZD (Electronic)

Alessandro Cortini — Avanti (Progressive Electronic)

Angeles & Internazionale — Vigilance (Dark Ambient)

Basic House — I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed (Ambient Techno)

Blanck Mass — World Eater (Progressive Electronic)

Black Merlin — Proto World (Industrial Techno)

Belief Defect — Decadent Yet Depraved (Industrial Techno)

Carbon Based Lifeforms — Derelicts (Psybient)

Carla Dal Forno — The Garden (New Wave)

Dag Rosenqvist & Matthew Collings – Hello Darkness (Experimental)

Evan Caminiti — Toxic City Music (Dark Ambient)

High Plains — Cinderland (Ambient)

Gabriel Saloman — Movement building Vol.3 (Drone)

The Inward Circles — And Right Lines Limit (Dark Ambient)

Isorinne — Speechless Malison (Ambient)

Janek Schaefer — Glitter in My Tears (Drone, ambient)

JASS — Weightless (Electro-Industrial)

JK — Suicide Estate Antibiotic Armageddon (Industrial Techno)

Joshua Sabin – Terminus Drift (Experimental)

Kassel Jaeger — Aster (Drone)

LCC — Bastet (Dark Ambient)

NTHNG — It never ends (Techno)

Onsy — Freq 255 (IDM)

Pact Infernal — infertility (Dark Ambient)

Patricia — Several Shades of The Same Color (Techno)

Perc — Bitter Music (Industrial Techno)

Prurient — Rainbow Mirror (Dark Ambient)

SNTS — Across Another Dimension (Techno)

Stephen Mathieu — Radiance X: Her Dark Gaze Drowned in Light (Dark Ambient)

Total Leatherette — For For The Climax Of The Night (Industrial)

Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson – Negative Chambers (Drone)

 

don’t cry

Joan Jonas, Vertical Roll.

Vertical Roll is a 1972 video art piece by American video and performance artist Joan Jonas, and I think it was one of the earliest glitch art work and somehow it is incredibly underrated which I understand why. Glitch video always has classified under abstract videos and it took more than thirty or forty years to appear as a genre in its own (when or how it became its own it will forever oddly unknown but first time glitch art was being discussed was around 2002)

 

 

“Vertical Roll is another case where time has been forces to enter the video situation, and where that time is understood as a propulsion toward and end. In this work access to a sense of time has come from fouling the stability of the projected image by desynchronizing the frequencies of the signals on a camera and monitor. The rhythmic roll of the image, as the bottom of its frame scans upward to hit the top of the screen, causes a sense of decomposition that seems to work against the grain of those 525 lines of which the video picture is made. Because one recognizes it as intended, the vertical roll appears as the agency of a will that runs counter to an electronically stabilized condition. Through the effect of its constant wiping away of the image, one has a sense of a reflexive relation to the video grid and the ground or support for what happens to the image.

Out of this is born the subjects of Vertical Roll, which visualizes time as the course of a continuous dissolve through space. In it a sequence of images and action are seen from different positions-both in terms of the camera’s distance and its orientation to a horizontal ground. With the ordinary grammar of both film and video these shifts would have to be registered either by camera movement (in which the zoom is included as one possibility) or by cutting. And while it is true that Jonas has had to use these techniques in making Vertical Roll, the constant sweep of the image renders these movements invisible. That is, grammar of the camera is eroded by the dislocating grip of the roll. As I have said, the illusion this creates is one of a continuous dissolve through time and space. The monitor, as an instrument, seems to be winding into itself a ribbon of experience, like a fishing line being taken up upon a reel, or like magnetic tape being wound upon a spool. The motion of a continuous dissolve becomes, then, a metaphor for the physical reality not only of the scan lines of the video raster, but of the physical reality of the tape deck, whose reels objectify a finite amount of time.

Earlier, I described the paradigm situation of video as a body centered between the parenthesis of camera and monitor. Due to Vertical Roll’s visual reference through he monitor’s action to the physical reality of the tape, one side of this parenthesis is made more active than the other. The monitor side of the double bracket becomes a reel through which one feels prefigured the imminence of a goal or terminus for the motion. That end is reached when Jonas, who has ben preforming the action recorded on the tape, from within the coils of the camera/monitor circuit, breaks through the parenthetical closure of the feedback situation to face the camera directly-without the agency of the monitor’s rolling image.”
-Rosalind Krauss The Aesthetics of Narcissism

 

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Side note: Joan Jonas is one of favorite artists that shifted my perspective, she once said something that I totally agree with and can’t forget.“Art is a dialogue with other art, dialogue with artists, dialogue with the past, dialogue with the future, it is important dialogue to have” *so please check her out*

When Television Meets Art

no intro, here is something I recently discovered

In the late sixties WGBH (a Boston radio station) was the first who presented and collaborated with six independent video producers and aired it on television.

The Medium Is the Medium was directed by Fred Barzyk and divided into six segments where every artist experiment with technology and pursuing their individual aesthetic.

 

Aldo Tambellini is an Italian American artist, he first began to work with “black” as a theme, which came to define his artistic expression. In his work here “Black” he catches the interaction between 30 black children and hundreds of black and white slides and films projected into space.

 

*it is impossible to find any thing about him online, really.*

The second work “Archetron” was made by Thomas Tadlock. a device which transforms a black and white broadcast into colourful ever changing kaleidoscopic patterns.

 

Alan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the “Environment” and “Happening” in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. Hello is a thirty minute interactive video, where groups of people dispatched to the various locations with instructions as to what they would say on camera. In this work he used five television cameras and twenty-seven monitors connected four remote locations over a closed-circuit television network.

 

Otto Piene was a German artist specializing in kinetic and technology-based art. Electronic Light Ballet in which a girl is lifted off the ground by helium filled polyethylene tubing to the accompaniment of abstract patterns of dancing colored light.

 

 

James Seawright  is an American modernist sculptor, by using mirrors and electronic components in his work he became a pioneer of interactive sculptures. In “Cappr…ao For TV” Seawright use two dancers in video tape delay positive and negative color

 

Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art, and he began participating in the Neo-Dada art movement, known as Fluxus, which was inspired by the composer John Cage and his use of everyday sounds and noises in his music. He made his big debut in 1963 at an exhibition known as Exposition of Music-Electronic Television.

Electronic Opera is a work that accurately refer to as ” Television Art*” and like his other works, very twisted and controversial, that raises the question of sexual difference and female sexuality alongside the interruption to the transmission of televisual content, that is, the abstraction of the television broadcast. with his address to questions of abstraction alongside the imaging of female sexuality. if, as we will see the Paik example, seem to establish the relationship between sexual difference and video in terms of an opposition between femininity-as-representation and abstraction-as-form.

Electronic Opera #1 is a layering of transmission from three different cameras and the footage from two of the perspectives was subject to the paike abe video synthesizer, or ” the Wobbulator” that turned the black and white television image into deeply saturated color. A distorted visual of a topless female dancer that produced intense RBG colorist effects, as the first short sequence of Electronic Opera is done, we hear voiceover announcement states: “Please follow this instruction: turn off your television sets.” if, in the only remaining act of participation that television allows.

We also can hear Paik instructs the viewers to close and open their eyes at certain intervals. Just when it appears the work is about to start over again from the beginning, that blank screen would provide us with a certain exemplification of abstraction-as-negation.

The final effect is a simultaneous layering of images showing three perspectives on the same figure: the archetypal classical female tri-nude configuration, the three Graces, rendered in psychedelic moving colors. On the one hand, the nude figure, like the representation of “three hippies” and the ” national political figures” — the other visual motifs featured in Electronic hippes#1 – can be understood as distinctly non-abstract elements, and iconographic invocation of the three graces only further reinforces this view.

Here is a video that shows & explains The Medium Is the Medium

(unfortunately, this is the only link on the internet, you can see it)

*The term “Television Art” is used by Christine Mehring in her account of Paik’s earliest work with television.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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July 2017 Listening Log

I saw this idea online, and I was like why the fuck I don’t do it. A journal of the albums I listened through the month, I don’t know how long I will be doing it, but here we are. (The rating is tentative, I might change my rating after my 5th listen or 10000th)

Note: Most of the albums are Electronic/dark ambient/techno.

 

 

Mats Gustafsson / Joachim Nordwall – A Map Of Guilt

Date listened: 07/3/17
Rating: 3.5

I downloaded this album because of Mats Gustafsson, I love when saxophone mixed with noise machines. A Map Of Guilt was an unusual album, Marks Covered by the Wet Cloth was a very experiment and interesting track. There was tracks like Allready Cold.Unprepared. was too experimental or very improvisation. I didn’t enjoy it that much.

Favorite tracks: “A Map Of Guilt” “She Denied The Grass Getting Heavier”

 

AUN – Black Pyramid

Date listened: 07/5/17
Rating: 5.5

This album was in my list for too long for no reason. It gives me Sci-fi sense in a good way. It is a dark ambient, space disc: dark, noisy, pervasive from a mysterious afflated. it’s full of interesting textures, you can hear progressive electronic, drone and mysterious synthesizers. there is literally no one single weak track. it’s a solid album.

Favorite tracks: All of them? “ 2095” “Shining” ” Ursa Major”

 

SNTS – Across Another Dimension

Date listened: 07/6/17
Rating: 4.5

just another awesome dark release by him ❤

Favorite tracks: “Origin of Light” “Resurgence”

 

 

Helm – Silencer

Date listened: 07/6/17
Rating: 4.5

 

 

 

 

 

Phurpa – Trowo Phurnag Ceremony

Date listened: 07/7/17
Rating: 3.4

probably this is the most soothing album I listen in a while.

 

 

 

Prurient ‎– The History Of Aids

Date listened: 07/8/17
Rating: 4.0

A very emotional album.

Favorite tracks: “Hallucination” “Vertigo” “bittersweet”

 

 

 

Suspended Memories – Earth Island

Date listened: 07/8/17
Rating: 2.0

 

 

 

 

 

Raison D’être – The Empty Hollow Unfolds (expanded)

Date listened: 07/9/17
Rating: 4.0

Dark, calm and meditative atmosphere. Perfect for night.

Favorite tracks: “ِEnd of a Cycle” “The Hidden Hallows” “The Eternal Return and the Infinity Horizon”

 

 

Beyond Sensory Experience – The Dull Routine Of Existence

Date listened: 07/9/17
Rating: 5.5

This is might be my favorite project of the month, I love the title and I love tracks’ titles. This album is so calm yet terrifying. The Dull Routine of Existence is, as the title says, based on routine, repetitive rhythms. Drum machines have a central role here, mostly distorted, and that’s where the industrial fits in: they really do sound like machines. It seems just like inside those big factories where they manufacture car-related things.

It’s dark ambient album with industrial elements & some pulsating arpeggios. And what I personally love about this album is the way they add samples to it and repeated it to create an ethereal sound. The samples are spoken words but some of it aren’t unrecognizable as in ” The Dreaded Sun ”

 

 

Beyond Sensory Experience – Tortuna

Date listened: 07/9/17
Rating: 5.0

ofc, I didn’t get enough and I searched for more, Tortuna is their first album of a trilogy covering the three basic areas, is the result of an intense creative process performed in the nordic absence of sun and was released in early 2003. During that year, the trilogy was completed by the release of “Urmula” and “Ratan”, something about this album is really outstanding.

 

 

Drew McDowall – Unnatural Channel

Date listened: 07/10/17
Rating: 2.4

hmm I don’t know but I feel this is what Holy other sound if he ever made Dark ambient music?

Favorite tracks: “Tell Me the Name”

 

 

Beyond Sensory Experience – Pursuit Of Pleasure

Date listened: 07/10/17
Rating: 5.5

Favorite tracks: “Pursuit of Pleasure” “Affection / Devotion ” ” Advanced Human Sexuality (AHS)”

 

 

Pan Sonic – Vakio

Date listened: 07/10/17
Rating: 4.5

I didn’t enjoy the first four tracks, but the rest was outstanding as usual.

 

 

 

Taiga Remains – Crushed Radiant Deities

Date listened: 07/10/17
Rating: 2.0

Favorite tracks: “Crushed Radiant Deities” “When The Eyes Alone Can Perceive It”

 

 

 

 

Birchville Cat Motel – Beautiful Speck Triumph

Date listened: 07/11/17
Rating: 2.5

 

 

 

 

Ramleh – Hole in The Heart

Date listened: 07/11/17
Rating: 5.5

You have to listen it on one sit. Outstanding experience.

 

 

 

Calorine K – Now Wait For Last Year

Date listened: 07/13/17
Rating: 5.5

This album is underrated timeless gem, I hardly believe it’s released in 80’s! I enjoyed every moment of it.

Favorite tracks: “The Happening World” “Chearth” ” Leaving”

 

 

Zero Kama – The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H

Date listened: 07/14/17
Rating: 4.0

I enjoyed this album probably because it’s made of human bone! It’s really good album and experience.

Favorite tracks: “Night Of Matter” “ Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome ”

 

 

Brain Eno – Music for White Cube

Date listened: 07/114/17
Rating: 5.5

Music for 5 am

 

 

 

Oil Thief – Obsolescence & Monality

Date listened: 07/14/17
Rating: 5.5

The whole album is just wow!

Favorite tracks: “Under the Sand” “”The Beginning” “The Colony”

 

 

 

nthng – It Never Ends

Date listened: 07/16/17
Rating: 4.5

 

Favorite tracks: “Touch” “In My Dreams”

 

 

 

 

 

Mind Over Mirrors – Undying Color

Date listened: 07/17/17
Rating: 2.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perc – Bitter Music

Date listened: 07/18/17
Rating: 4.0

 

Favorite tracks: “Exit” “I just can’t win” “Chatter”

 

 

 

Emptyset – Emptyset

Date listened: 07/18/17
Rating: 3.0

 

Favorite tracks: “ Gate 2” “Awake”

 

 

 

 

 

Patricia – Several Shades Of The Same Color

Date listened: 07/19/17
Rating: 4.5

ahhhhhh i loveeeeee Patricia. since his first album Body Issues, and he is one of my favorite techno artists. Personally I think this album is his best release, his album Bem Inventory was pretty mediocre. I didn’t enjoy that much and I wasn’t excited for his new album until I read that it has 15 tracks. I was like ” wohho, he probably worked hard for it, I should give it a try.” and I’m glad did. Several Shades of The Same Color is actually has different shades of techno which suit every mood you have. The Words Are Just Sounds is my favorite top in the whole album, it’s dark, has atmosphere of  beats that just gives off this creepy vibe with, I love it!

Favorite tracks: “The Words Are Just Sounds” “Thoughts of You” “ German Friendship“

 

Haus Arafna – Children Of God

 

Date listened: 07/19/17
Rating: 4.5

 

Favorite tracks: “Holocaust” “Mein Leben” ” Golgatha in Flames” “The Way You Go”

 

 

 

Pan Daijing – A Satin Sight

Date listened: 07/19/17
Rating: 3.0

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Frost – Threshold of Faith

Date listened: 07/27/17
Rating: 5.5

hell yess, he is back! there is nothing to say, all i needed this year was a new “real” album by him. the whole EP is so good but I think my favorite is Threshold Of Faith (Your Own Blood). what a stunning and haunting track.

 

Black Merlin – Phase One

Date listened: 07/29/17
Rating: 5.5

This is might be my favorite EP of the year. SO GOOD. I wish it has four tracks not two 😦

 

 

 

Onsy – Freq 255

Date listened: 07/31/17
Rating: 5.5

 

Favorite tracks:“Freq One” “Crack Cake” “Freq Nine”

 

 

 

 

Topic 4 : Ji Lee

Ji Lee is a Korean designer who currently lives in New York who (for me) mastered the idea of “Think like there is no box”.

He best known for the bubble project, but for me Abstractor is like my favorite project. And I always wished he could do it as series and make different form.

Also, his typography work was highly influential to graphic design industry, his most popular project “Words as image” started as an assignment 20 years ago in his typography class and turned into a lifelong hobby, where he plays with typography in order to convey the pictorial idea of the word he represents. Here to see the full project

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In his project Univers Revolved, Lee took the characters from the typeface Univer and he rotated them and turning each one into a kind of a typographic sculpture with different shapes, What I really find fascinating about this project is when you look at them, you don’t see any alphabet, it is so experimental and absolutely outstanding.

 

 

He took the left most point of each capital letter and revolved it 360 degrees around the axis and created the symmetrical letters. And you can read them from right to left

 

 

 

The full alphabet

 

he generated a font based on these representations and it’s so fun to try!

download it here from his site

 

Reading is fun

War within war

 

His purpose was to challenge whoever to read it and figure out what his word or alphabet meant.  Here is a link if you want to challenge your mind

 

Univers Revolved, a Three-Dimensional Alphabet was published as a visual puzzle book by Harry Abrams in May 2004. The book became the winner of AIGA’s 50 books / 50 covers and New York Book Award.