| November 2006 news
November 27, 2006
THE COMMONS NEED YOU!
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November 24, 2006
LOW FREQUENCY SIGNALS
• tube'|057 - Mezzo - Ostracismo
«Miguel Onofri lives in this Argentinian town called Mendoza, population 876 000, not very far from Chile's border and about 1000m above the sea level, up in the mountain plateau. Pretty far away from everything we know, it seems. Nonetheless, Miguel is an active part of an artistic community of visual artists and musicians - Miguel is also a video artist -, they put up shows and invite guest artists, touring around some towns like Córdoba, and they even started their own Netlabel, SincroWeb.
As a sound artist, Miguel is known as Mezzo, putting his laptop to work on low frequency signals and white noise and drone-based minimal electronica. Harsh stuff, and amazingly well done.
'Ostracismo', although being a very small release, inflicts variable levels of damage to our ears. And it's good.
'Track #01' is a small intro of low frequency clicks and cuts, Ryoji Ikeda style, and is somewhat violent. It takes 59 seconds to go away, 'though. 'Track #02', the longest track in this EP, starts with machine errors, like an electrical generator going berserk, sending SOS signals. Slowly, an underlying drone appears and takes control of the track. The rest is up to you to discover.
'Track #03', another short piece, an interlude-type of thing, is of a dissonant type of sound frequencies, a different kind of error, easier on the ears but also very interesting to explore. 'Track #04' is a personal favorite. It's an emotional drone, unfortunately too small to enjoy to its fullness. 'Track #05' is made of another type of interferences. You could almost visualize the wavefields of data being put out. Again, too damn short to put us in a transe. Awesome release. Now, can I have another 40 minutes of this, please?» - Pedro Leitão
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November 17, 2006
THANOS CHRYSAKIS AT PARIS/BERLIN
Hi there,
We're very proud to inform that Errant Waves, a music work by Thanos Chrysakis - originally released here on test tube, as release 029 - has been selected to be part of the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin's Sonotheque, among various other works of this contemporary audio-visual festival. Check it out here, under the Videolibrary link on the left.
Thank you Thanos, for letting us know of this great news.
Peas,
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November 15, 2006
CLASSIFIEDS
Music people, listen up, a good friend asked me to pass on this info:
«Lisbon-based guitar player seeks interesting projects either to integrate as a band member or to collaborate with, either recording guitar lines for previous recordings or supporting live. I would be happy to collaborate with
independent projects sounding like mogwai, epic45, lee ranaldo, a silver mt. zion or slowdive, or with electronic/abstract projects like belong, fennesz or alike.
My gear includes two fender jazzmasters, a fender jaguar, a 68 fender telecaster, a fender telecaster with bigsby, amongst some other guitars, a vox ac30, a peavey classic 30, an orange studio, a marshall vs100, a marshall jcm800, an ada mp-1 preamp, a yamaha spx-900, a ibanez ts reissue, a dunlop rotovibe, a digitech pds-8000, etc.
My name is Miguel Azevedo and I can be contacted via miguel.azevedo[AT]idssecurity.org or miguel.azevedo[AT]pt.ibm.com. My personal phone number is +351963511366.»
That's it. Miguel is eager to do something creative, so, if you're interested, write or call him up. The result might be interesting. Long distance collaborations could be cool, you know...
Peas,
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November 14, 2006
22ND CENTURY MEDICAL TREATMENT
• tube'|056 - Siegmar Fricke - Pharmaceutik 06
«Siegmar Fricke started his first musical experiments back in 1981, using tape-recorders and shortwave-radio signals to create collages of musique concrète that has been recorded on various cassettes. After intense activities in the european tape scene from 85 to 93, Siegmar founded the project 'Efficient Refineries' together with Miguel A. Ruiz from Madrid, who was already active in the spanish electronic music scene since the 80's.
Fricke's new solo work 'Pharmaceutik 06' was recorded at his studio in september 2006 and is his clearest musical statement so far, defining his view concerning "Pharmakustik", a new electronica genre in its own right.
According to Fricke, «Pharmakustik might be a new path of sound-innovation in today's technological music that often lacks the approach of intense electromodulation by focusing just on preset sounds, melodies and familiar song structures. Instead, Pharmakustik consists of reduced and syncopated rhythmic patterns clinically filtered ambiences generated by sampling-technology, electro-modulated voices and linear structure. In detail, all single audio elements are heavily modulated by various electronic devices and therefore very futuristic and abstract. So far, the analogue and digital sound processing is the most important condition to create a medical pharma-sound that is clinical, artificial and of highest modulation standard. Automatic rhythm sequences are digitally dissected by bit-crushing and organic ambiences are constantly morphing by trembling waveforms and pitch-curves of complex effect periphery. Metallic minimalism of the rhythmic elements are combined with wide space-ambience. 'Pharmaceutik 06' is robotronic neuroblast in clear digital resolution and constant cellular morphing.»
Technical explanations apart, what we have here is digital and minimal electronic music that could be one day made by computer algorithms without human intervention. Kind of a 'muzak' concept adapted to medical and laboratory futuristic conditions... when I listen to this, images of George Lucas' THX 1138 feature film come to mind. Sit back and enjoy the treatment.»
- Pedro Leitão
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November 06, 2006
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
• tube'|055 - Lezrod - Exploraciones sonoras de paisajes surreales y espacios
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • infinitos
«Biosphere based his last work on the novel "De la Terre à la Lune", written by Jules Verne. He gave us the sounds of travelling into space, and the breathtaking silence of contemplating earth from the moon. Had David Velez, in his Lezrod disguise, inspired himself in the works of Jules Verne for this release, and I would say that he was showing us around the mighty submarine Nautilus, and then taking us in a guided journey through the deep sea.
Is the name "Submar" an abbreviation for Submarine? Only David will know for sure. But in this first piece, everything is dark. Sounds that could almost be labeled industrial group together and are splintered with samples of water moving. Almost no rhythm, apart from the waves of static and the flow and ebb of distant echoes of dark sounds. A gloomy landscape, with the comforting melancholy that only Lezrod can achieve.
The song "Asiv" really gives the listener the impression of being underwater. The bleeps seem sampled off a sonar, the static and electricity that run through all its 18 minutes duration could very well be the soft humming of the Nautilus' engine room, whose motors ran on an electric power source, as imagined by the brilliant Jules Verne.
Lezrod continues in the line of his previous releases for Test Tube and Zymogen. Except that his sound is getting thicker and more intense. A listener that knows his previous work will certainly guess who's behind the wheel here, but on this release, he no longer lets clicks'n'cuts have so much focus, preferring to bring into the light some field recordings, carefully controlled noise drones, static, slow broken rhythms that only start to make sense after a few listens, ambients (aquatic, I stress once again) that seem to flow like waves, and so many more layers of sound. Lezrod's sound is getting more difficult, but more rewarding in equal proportion.
The title says it all: sonic explorations of surreal landscapes and infinite spaces. This is the best description one could give.» - Luís Marta
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November 06, 2006
WARP FACTOR 8, Mr. SULU!
Our release schedule is so busy, with so many good stuff to release that we're gonna crank up the speed until further notice. This is what to expect until the end of the year:
November
This week we will have the return of Lezrod - our man David Velez from Bogotá (now struggling for a design career in NYC); Siegmar Fricke with his clinical pharmakustic style from Wilhelmshaven, Germany; Mezzo and his minimal noise from Mendoza, Argentina and finally on_14 (formerly AO), from Japan with more drone-style guitar walls.
December
Just in time for xmas, test tube will be releasing Florian Fernbacher's weird jazz-tinted electronica - another german friend; My Fun a.k.a. Justin Hardison, the man with the cinematic field recordings from the U.S.A.; Progressive guitar hero Glenn Brown from Australia, one of the two continents that was still missing here at test tube, and wrapping up 2006 in glorious festive fashion, the minimal beats and grooves from Hungarian Project Swirl.
8 great new releases before entering 2007. Just click by!
Peas,
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