| December 2006 news
December 31, 2006
FROZEN FLOWERS
• tube'|062 - A Sankip Hummad - Lamiales
«Son of a multi-instrumentalist whom played in New Orleans Jazz/Blues bands, Desmond Hollins started making music in 2001. This Minnesota citizen’s music is being put out under a couple of different monikers. Katrah Quey is more hip hop oriented, Ceptual and Palet more ambient and now test tube releases a record from his new alias, A Sankip Hummad, which reveals some of Desmond’s electronic influences (Arovane, Jan Jelinek, Boards of Canada) and a subtle reference to what people like Prefuse 73, RJD2 or even El-P did to hip hop.
‘Lamiales’ is a sum of his influences, with lots of drowned beats hanging around in a mutant ambience that it’s mostly warm but sometimes everything floats in a mixed scenario surprisingly shadowy and colder, in songs like ‘Inague’ and ‘Sapping Dust for Tyme’. ‘Ysopp’ and ‘Hazel Intentions’ share the world with Boards of Canada in a subtle and gentle way. In the other hand ‘Caltrop’ reveals some of Desmond’s hip hop influences with a handful of cool slowed motion beats.
This first release by A Sankip Hummad is one that will make a good company this winter. It’ll detach you from the cold outside and, most likely, from the rest of the world too.» - André Santos
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December 28, 2006
HO! HO! HO!
• tube'|mix001 - v/a - Xmas Mix '06
Welcome to the first installment of test tube's new series: The tubemixes!
For the first one,
aeriolabehaviour has made a Christmas mix with a selection of his personal favourites from our catalogue. We know that Xmas 2006 has already passed, but... well, every day is Xmas to us!
Hope you dig it!
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December 27, 2006
WELCOME TO VOLUME IV
• tube'|cdr004 - v/a - tube'|044 ~ tube'|056
The fourth volume of this series. From Maina to Mezzo there's literally a world of sounds to discover.
The deal: special price for a round plastic disc with nearly 7 hours of test tube releases for your pleasure.
Here, here.
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December 26, 2006
MINIMAL HUNGARY
• tube'|061 - Project Swirl - Alpha Centauri EP
«One day, not long ago, Hungarian Daniel P. decided to create some loops for his radio show at Torespont Radio. Some of those loops grew into tracks and that's pretty much the story behind Project Swirl, Daniel's minimal dub-infused electro outfit. Since then, he has released a couple of EPs - on Eastern Recordings and Inoquo netlabels - and a compilation track in some Russian underground netlabel. Meanwhile, a couple more are underway, and this one 'Alpha Centauri EP' fell in test tube's lap some months ago. And we're glad it did.
Project Swirl's sound comes as a true descendant of oldschool Basic Channel material, with a bit of monolake's minimal techno and ~scape's future dub into the mix. While 'Alpha Centauri' travels mostly into electro-techno territory, 'Logical' and 'Illogical' (two faces of the same coin, so to speak...) are truly dubish pieces, reminders of Deadbeat's more down to earth 'dance' tracks, but with a slight touch of german cerebral techno for good measure. 'Tn' comes from Daniel's more 'experimental' side, if you wish. It's downbeat and not for the dance floor, but nice anyway. Sweet!» - Pedro Leitão
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December 17, 2006
AMBIENTE PROGRESSIVO
• tube'|060 - Glenn Brown - Sodium Light City
«A comparação é porventura, o veículo mais vezes utilizado para descrever um objecto musical. A evocação de referências e proximidades estéticas permite, muitas das vezes, um quase ajustamento semântico entre a intenção de quem se pronuncia em relação ao objecto em causa e a percepção daqueles a quem o discurso é dirigido. Existe no entanto, um problema neste ajustamento. Falamos da relatividade inerente a qualquer obra de arte. À falta de contornos imediatamente reconhecíveis, a apreciação não passa de uma experiência pessoal e talvez intransmissível.
É por isso mesmo que não vamos comparar este “Sodium Light City”, do australiano Glenn Brown, às texturas resultantes dos soundscapes de um Robert Fripp. Não, não o vamos fazer. Têm a mesma rainha e trabalham os mesmos ambientes sombrios – drones arrancados das suas respectivas guitarras, não como quem atira uma pedra à água e conta os ressaltos, mas como quem fica a observar as pequenas ondas que daí resultam. Há contudo uma diferença que poderá escapar ao mais incauto. É uma diferença que se divide em verbos como “cheirar”, “beber” ou “saborear” (sim, a música também tem disso, mas ao que se sabe ainda não abriu restaurante). Se calhar é por sabermos que Glenn Brown é australiano. Pode até ser devido a passarmos tanto tempo a olhar, com os olhos plenos de devaneio, para a imagem que ilustra a capa – a celeridade do tempo traduzida nos ramos secos de uma árvore resiliente, ao final de mais um dia. Se fossemos sempre ao fundo desta relação entre o usufruto de uma obra artística e a predisposição de quem dela usufrui, então, grande parte da arte representativa veria o seu valor conceptual gravemente atingido.
Vamos portanto olhar para o carácter de imensidão que a obra nos sugere, para a vastidão dos elementos que nos envolvem, que nos afectam e pelos quais nos regemos. É fácil relacionarmos tudo isso com a paisagem agreste australiana. Poderíamos fazê-lo com outras, mas sabemos de antemão que acabaríamos lá, no enorme “centro vermelho”. É aí que a escala humana de Fripp é superada pela vastidão do território, pela austeridade do clima ou ainda pelas concepções de um tempo ausente e de um deus displicente, tão bem representadas neste brilhante trabalho de Brown.
Poderíamos fazer tudo isso, mas não o vamos fazer.»
- Samuel Jerónimo
«Message to our non-portuguese speaking readers: We don't have proper english liner notes for this release. We have comissioned them to our good friend and fan Samuel Jerónimo (also an artist/composer) and he expressed himself in his mother-tongue. Even a very good translation would lose most of the semantic value of his excellent text, so... we did nothing to it. Nevertheless, I'll try to put Glenn Brown's release into perspective. Mr. Brown is a guitar player from the Jazz/Prog old school, and he does dark ambient with this classic rock instrument. Now don't try to imagine what this aussie has done. Just download it and have a good listen. Play it loud but softly. And up that 'bass' dial on your amplifier.»
- Pedro Leitão
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December 11, 2006
TEST TUBE AT RESONANCE FM
Via Marvin Suicide, a really great radio show 100% based on royalty-free/netlabel sounds and releases.
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December 08, 2006
MUSIC FOR SOFAS
• tube'|059 - My Fun - Idyll EP
«Lazy Saturdays, lounging about on the comfy couch while looking out the window into the impossibly blue sky, the slight Autumn breeze kept out by the thick glass while the resonant sound of wind chimes, swinging lazily somewhere out in the neighbourhood as the breeze wafts by, floats ethereally into the house. Pigeons fly. Kids laugh and play. The trees sway. For a moment, everything seems perfect: even in here, with the TV turned on to the lowest audible hush above silence, an imperceptible white noise that fades in and out of the sound picture, along the breeze, the chimes, the kids, the sound of the lift going up and down the building, the doors that slam or the keys that fit the lock, the cellphones ringing in the distance, the soup pot boiling on the stove, the washing machine humming. You find yourself attuned to every single one of these sounds as, like a huge flock of birds crossing the sky, they fly in and out of your sight line — or should that be the hearing line? — in an ever-changing, ever-moving formless shape that changes contours, patterns, length at the batting of an eyelid. But everything seems slowed down, unhurried, deaccelerated to the point of stasis, so you can take the time to absorb and appreciate each constituent of the sprawling aural painting hung up around you; the sound of a lazy Saturday separate from the outside world, just looking inside yourself, aware, at peace, yet amplifying everything that is around you, alchemically transmuted into these four pieces by American sound artiste Justin Hardison. An idyll that makes sense of the here and now.»
- Jorge Mourinha
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December 01, 2006
WAVEFIELD
• tube'|058 - on_14 - Forest
«on_14 is the new encarnation of japanese Aogu Yoshida, the man who brought us (as AO) 'Endlessly, Sweetly and Slightly', a beautiful two-piece work for guitar drones. Aogu is also the man behind the excellent ON-LI Netlabel (worthy of a visit), where he has more than a couple of releases. So, what has changed between AO and on_14, musically? Very little, actually. The trademark guitar drones are present, the sad and meditative imagery is also present. Even half of the tracks are close to the 10 minute mark. But there's also something new.
'Forest' compiles three new studio recordings and a live one, called 'Taste'. I don't know were or why Aogu recorded this live track and chose to include it here. But, interesting enough, it fits perfectly. 'Taste (live)' and 'After Summer' - the opening and closing pieces of this new EP - are very similar in form and much in the same line structurally as the previous test tube release: long and wavy drones ondulating in the cosmos, freely, in solitude. But there's also a slight difference, because this time Aogu didn't let them loose enough to reach distortion levels.
With the 'Forest' pieces, we also find resemblances to 'Endlessly, Sweetly and Slightly', not structurally but musically: The rough edges of the drones and the 'on the red' distortion pedal effects are pretty much the same. But the similarities end here. Aogu added another layer to the drone mass, a discrete drum beat and chimes. This percussion layer is present in part one and two of 'Forest' at all times, 'though it gets muffled up here and then by the sharp drones. But it's an interesting addition, as it draws the listener away from the noise pool... and back again, repeatedly. And then it comes 'After Summer', which is the perfect ending for this awesome work.» - Pedro Leitão
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