News
May 13, 2008
A CEUX QUI VIVENT EN MARGE
• tube'|123 - d'incise - Les Restes du Festin
«Rhythms that bleed. Rhythms that rust and fall apart. Rhythms that fracture your perception of time. D'incise's decompositional approach is charged with an electricity that turns actual objects into distorted images. At times, you will find your neck's vertebrae moving back and forth to keep a time only existant in your mind. In the collaborative nature of "Les Restes du Festin", we can hear micro-cuts from various improvised music recordings of Johann Bourquenez (piano), Christian Graf (guitare), Christophe Berthet (saxophones), Gaël Riondel (saxophones), Cyril Bondi (drums) and d'incise (piano and percusions). In addition, we can hear the talented intervention of Lena, Bluermutt, Hopen, Ibakusha, and Monsieur Connard.
Here, electronic thoughts are translated into numerous acoustic dances to the point of loosing distinction. Dancing thoughts of electronic motion. A grand piano that stands up as anthropomorphic figure to interact and dialogue with the player. Frequencies that tickle the tympanic membrane in order to descend through the eustachian tube reverberating eternally. Binary codes that materialize into percussive instruments; number ones as drumsticks, and zeros as bass drums.
Dusty pieces of metal falling through a waterfall of sound waves until they reach the depths of an ocean of noise. Water ripples become multicolored threads that float around a beam of light. Mercury plugs that melt when plugged into amplifiers. Unidentified Flying Objects that become cymbals and give a message about phenomenal spaces. Static hairs follicles that abandon the skin to encounter the vibrations coming from the speakers. These are some of the visions I receive when listening to this sonic constructions. Micro-cuts from a macro-musician.» - Sebastian Alvarez
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May 09, 2008
DVD VOL. II
• tube'|dvd002 - v/a - test tube collected works 076 ~ 124
A little more than a year after the first volume, here is the second one: test tube collected, from release 076 to 124. With a slightly redssigned cover and with a completely new set of 10 different artworks to choose from.
The first volume's artwork was dedicated to the flora of central europe, and this one is dedicated to the some underwater species of the world, beautifully illustrated by the hands of late Professor Ernst Haeckel. Check out all the covers at the release page.
Available for delivery only by the end of the month, but you can and should pre-order it now because as before, this will be handmade and packaged in limited quantities. And if you don't already own a copy of the first volume and want to have both delivered to your door, we will set up a proper PayPal item for the bundle at a special price. Soon.
EXTRA: The first 25 people to order our new DVD release will receive as a thank you present a deluxe edition of the next release - d'incise's 'Les Restes du Festin' with their package. Be quick if you want one. This offer was only possible thanks to generosity of d'incise himself. Thanks Laurent!
Peace,
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May 06, 2008
LILTING IN AUSSIELAND
• tube'|122 - Entia Non - Lilt
«As promised, we're back with another excellent work from Entia Non - aka James McDougall from Australia - called 'Lilt'. Like the previous one, expect to listen to lots of juicy field recordings from australian whereabouts artfully mixed with soothing ambient tones and drones of rare beauty, and also organic backgrounds to complete. For this release, James went to capture new sounds to some well known 'sand islands' located on the eastern coast of his enormous country, namely 'Stradbroke Island'.
'Oxide Pearl' and 'Littoral Glades' are my favorites and the ones that best capture Entia Non's essence of 'australian ambient/field recordings' work. Warm and dense backgrounds, moist and organic f.r. full with birds singing and water flowing and daily familiar voices and sounds. There's not many more to be said to fairly describe what you'll hear (or are listening to right now through our flash player), so if you please, head straight to the download link.
This is another keeper, folks. We hope you enjoy it to the fullest!» - Pedro Leitão
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April 27, 2008
ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
• tube'|121 - Mother - Self Deprivation
Once again, Chris Komashko releases a compelling set of sonic options to cerebrate upon. According to most dictionaries, deprivation is the loss or absence of parts, powers, or things that are needed. Is the self a part? Is the self a power? Is the self needed? In any case, listening to "Self Deprivation", you will encounter the pleasant absence of melody, familiar chords and structures. This absence can make you reflect about things that are not longer present. Hence the expression "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Is heart the self?
Along these concise tracks you can be lifted momentarily by soothing ambiances, or be taken by the sudden arrival of extraneous sounds that keep you in a very attentive mode. The atmosphere created in this album has the power to raise different types of questions. Some of this questions might be about the strange nature of what you are hearing pan around your head. Like the nature that surrounds us, this creation is still unknown and that probably will remain like that for ages to come. In this album, "Mother" communicates in languages that can be understood only in thoughtless awareness. Even-though the titles of the tracks appear to be very humane, they carry a profound celestial meaning. Mother is full of human moments that suddenly take a divine turn. Within this divinity, a wide range of dark and light moments show you different aspects of the living and the non-living, the organic and the non-organic. Let Mother grab your hand and take you into territories without distress.» - Sebastian Alvarez
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April 23, 2008
STFU ALREADY!
Tomorrow begins this year's edition of STFU Porto, at the same place where it happened in 2007: Fábrica de Som. Here is an image wih the complete programme.
Unfortunately test tube will not be present physically, but we sent some DVD's of our catalogue (vol. 1) to be offered as present to the attendees. That's one more reason to be there!
Peas,
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April 19, 2008
SOMETHING ALMOST UNNOTICEABLY
• tube'|120 - Gordon Tebo - Patina Turner
«Remember Gordon Tebo back from tube031? Probably not since it was like two and a half years ago... still, Gordon offered us at the time, a nice little release called 'Adaptive Immune' and it was a conceptual EP about the human body system. Musically, it was minimal/experimental/noise at the very least.
Well be prepared now... because Gordon is back, and he's different. 'Patina Turner' - funny name for a release - is like a 360 degrees turn for Gordon, as he now enters minimal techno territory with it. But not down-to-earth minimal techno like that one coming from Germany and other european countries. No, Gordon did his own minimal techno blend, and, from Gordon's own words: «it's all got something very slightly fucked about it, almost unnoticeably.» Something unnoticeably, like the picture on the cover... And yes, it is fucked up, but in a gentle way. Gordon knows what's he's doing and what he wants, and he also threw in some ambient to boot, and the result couldn't be better: Four hypnotizing and extremely danceable tracks that have that special power to put us into 'nod mode' even if we are sat down in a comfy chair.
Opener 'People Mover' couldn't have been more appropriately titled and it's the real keeper here. 'Phone Home' is also a special little gem. Braindance, people!
Best with headphones or very loud speakers. Enjoy.» - Pedro Leitão
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April 14, 2008
THE FALL FELT THE FALL
• tube'|119 - Spirit Elevating Brains - Pulsos Temporales Memorias Estables
«'Pulsos Temporales Memorias Estables' is the second album from SEB here at test tube and this time he made it even bigger than the previous one. Twenty tracks of SEB's trademark 'digital nostalgia' style of clicks 'n' cuts and weird sampling. After a couple of listens, it's clear that Sebastian has been refining his sound. He's more precise and to-the-point when he tries to capture an emotional essence into a track or simply by telling us a story. Most of his new tracks are also smaller and more effective, like a new engine model that consumes less but takes you farther. Some of this tracks work a bit like interludes of sort, filling the gaps between heavier, denser and more mesmerizing ones.
A couple of my favorites are 'Microcranes from jpeg' and 'Transitorio en'. They're both round forms of loop samples put under a warm blanket of nostalgic ambient. Sounds a bit like Animal Collective's craziest tracks if they ever went all electronic, or maybe a bit closer to Panda Bear's latest solo incursion. But SEB is also a sucker for nice beat sequences, and this becomes obvious after listening to 'The fall felt the fall' (awesome title), 'Our meat politics' and 'People vanished too'. Speaking of great titles, SEB has a knack for picking colorful and funny yet interesting titles for his songs, titles that leave us wondering about their true meaning, if any. 'Perra con chompa' is one of the most intriguing ones. 'Perra' must be female from 'Perro' which is spanish for 'Dog', and 'Chompa' seems to be a sweater or similar type of clothing. Pretty weird, huh?
In the end, Sebastian Alvarez offers us 20 wonderful tracks for us to dream about metaphorical titles and the unknown dimensions that inhabit his mind. Have a nice trip.»
- Pedro Leitão
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April 03, 2008
OLD LIKE NEW
• tube'|118 - Platform - Templates
«Platform was the first electronic band Rui Gato formed little after he went solo as Outersites (later an audiovisual duo) - from Elastic Void, his first individual effort. For Platform he teamed up with Nuno Clímaco Pinto, a friend guitar player strongly influenced by european jazz and experimental rock. Gato on laptop and modular synth and Nuno on guitar synth and effects they started composing new material built on percussion bases with improv. phrases on top and went to play it live almost immediately. It was never meant to be a studio project but rather a pure live one. Their compositions often changed from gig to gig, although they kept the same percussion elements throughout the lifespan of the duo. In 2004 they put Platform to sleep as Nuno moved to a different city.
Well now, after this 3 years hiatus, Nuno got back last year and a month or so ago, an opportunity arose for Gato to perform in a culture fair in Pontevedra, Galiza (Northwestern corner of Spain) called proxecto-edicion. They decided to reactivate Platform and began rehearsing straight away. Then we had the idea to take some of the best live recordings back from the Platform concert days to do a 'special' release here at test tube. The boys re-mastered 8 tracks for 'Templates' and incidentally, they're playing today at the mentioned fair so it is with special pleasure that we release the record today.
Hope you enjoy this as much we do.» - Pedro Leitão
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tube'|123
d'incise
Les Restes du Festin
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68'30''
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tube'|124
OCP
Stepping Stone
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32'30''
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tube'|dvd002
v/a
test tube collected works
076 ~ 124
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34h51'38'' |
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