James Mcdougall - An Opening in the Canopy

James McDougall (Entia Non). All recordings taken at dawn in Mount Glorious National Park, South East Queensland, Australia. Slightly abstracted impressions of moving through a rain forest. Features of landscape, quietude and retreat. Minimal processing.

An Opening in the Canopy (20:47)

Hitoshi Kojo - Kumoma / Shigemi / Mogari

These pieces were originally made for a compilation album "Yasujiro Ozu - Hitokomakura" of "and/OAR" label, which was released in 2007.

The participants were ordered to make the piece based on the stills of Ozu's movies.
Probably many of you know his movies. His movies were based on so-called ordinary daily life of old days in Japan.
At least it was my impression of his movies, even though the reality of my daily life in Japan was totally different...
So, it was an interesting challenge for me to see how I can work in the gap of the reality.
However it was much more difficult to adapt his movie's image to my work than I had expected.
Then, I needed to make up seven pieces until an acceptable one was made.
Now I can say, all the other pieces were funnily different from the image of Ozu's movie.
Dale Lloyd(and/OAR) told me that some of them might have been suitable for the previous compilation for the movies of Andrew Tarkovsky.
Three of them sounded listenable as they are. So, I decided to share them with you.

They were all composed between the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006 in Epesses and Cully in Switzerland.
All the sound sources were only taken from field recordings in various places.

Another mix of "Mogari" was used for a short video piece in same title, which I offered to a media art festival in Italy "Squardi Sonori 2008" later.

These photos are not related with Ozu's movie. Third photo is a still from the video piece "Mogari".

Kumoma (04:00) | Shigemi (04:00) | Mogari (04:00)


http://www.octpia.com/kojo/

Goh Lee Kwang - sickl2007

All sources are 4'33", for no particular reason other than it is a
magic number. The mix was made recently with noise reduction and EQ
applied.

sickl2007 (14:02)

Dominic Lash - Noon Draw

Dominic sent us this track as we were in the midst of assembling work for our split series, the inevitable happened, he changed his mind, we changed our minds, and we are now left with this wonderful improvisation. Rather than let him have it back, we thought we'd upload it here for you all.

Noon Draw (05:28)

Photo by Etnobofin

Mike Hansen - She is Asleep

Taken from my ongoing project “The Music For John Cage”, which began about four years ago as both homage and an experiment that relates Cage’s musical formality to the instant compositions created though improvisation. As I started to move away from what I saw as improvised jazz in my own approach to music creation, I found myself delving, head first, into electro acoustic performing. I have found Cage’s use of the I-chi to control the play of his music a parallel to that of electro acoustic improvisation, EAI.

I wanted to escape the role that the turntable or, in my case, a vintage record player has begun to take in contemporary music making. I found by re-interpreting 20th century new music, through both graphic scores and my own affectual feeling derived from recorded performances of the compositions, has allowed the record player to be used in a way that subverts its intention. I found Cage to be the perfect fodder for this notion.

In my re-interpretations of She is Asleep parts 1 &2, I use found aspects of the recordings of Cage’s rendition. I have taken these appropriated samples and processed them as acoustically created sounds that make up the rest of the piece. This work evolves around layers of simple Lo-Fi processing. Sometimes the original source material is evident, opening flaunted, like some of the vocalizing heard in Cage’s version of She is Asleep, others are transported into realms that have no mirrored reflection of it’s source. The record player is equipped with contact microphones that allow for me to generate sounds from the player itself. The platter can be scene as a sounding board, where objects can be dropped, placed, dragged, plucked and then processed. The same can be said for the motors, which are amplified and then processed.

Cage, for me, has a great relevance in the construction of 21st century new music, especially in the EAI movement where tonality has been dismissed. Invented sound and chance has become a paramount reality in my music. I see my work occupying a sturdy relationship to Cagean theory.

She is Asleep (09:18 | 03:21)