«When the particles of dust along a curve start floating, they carry miniscule pieces of metal, plastic, and glass. As these particles float, they reflect natural light to become visible to the human eye. In a similar way, A Sankip Hummad lifts tiny glitches, clicks, and bleeps out of their technological environment to infuse them with a special type of light and compelling traces of human memory; memories of a utopia that never existed or perhaps nostalgia for something we do not know yet. In any way, the clever compositions of Desmond Hollins continue to captivate the attentive ear with slick grooves capable of taking different dimensions within time and space.
If "Le Sac" = The Bag, and "De Sonido" = of Sound, then imagine a bag that transforms the objects it is carrying into sound. Everything you put inside loses its material form to become sonic messages that inspire you to move slowly forward. As you walk balancing this bag, a metric level of pulses is heard and consequently your steps become rhythmic. Soon, "Le Sac De Sonido" takes you into a journey through landscapes where everyone greets you with meditative gestures. In this trip you are allowed to use the bag to collect your "objects" and transform them into vibrations, or simply just go with the flow.
A Sankip Hummad understands how to guide us into our psycho-geography with groovy aural maps that take cartography into a whole different level. Enjoy the trip.» - Sebastian Alvarez
«'Wanderweg' is german for 'Hiking Trail' or 'Hiking Path'. Brad Mitchell recently lived and worked in Switzerland - before moving back to his Springfield, Missouri home, so it's no surprise that the lower Alps, the Black Forest and other typical surroundings inspired him with their nature magic. 'Wanderweg' is also the title of Brad's latest drone album, before putting his Kikapu netlabel to rest. This marvellous collection of guitar-based ambient drones sends us into deep nostalgia-mode right from the opening piece 'Burg' - german for Castle, while guiding us through the autumnal-afternoon, lower light-brimful landscapes of some far away medieval germany. If we close our eyes, we can be and feel there for a fraction of a second.
The whole album feels like a hiking day trip, and the song titles emulate familiar themes: 'Felsen' (Rock), 'Bäume' (Trees), 'Weg' (Trail or Path) and 'Fluss' (River). All of them built up from guitar dones, some heavier/darker than others, but generally pointing to an 'upping' or 'rising' feel, like 'Bäume' which starts at the ground with a short paced loop only to flatten itself after a while, and rising to the skies until the end. 'Fluss' is probably my favorite piece - and the longest one with more than 20 minutes, and it really sounds like the flow of a river. The highest frequency sounds actually resemble water, liquid movement, while a massive drone throbs over them. There are pitch variations in the drone throughout the piece, the best part of it being somewhere along the middle, where the riverflow seems to gain strenght - perhaps because a waterfall is approaching.
'Wanderweg' is a dense, emotive, and beautiful drone collection, ripped from the guts of mother earth somewhere near the Black Forest.
Thank you very much for this, Brad.»
- Pedro Leitão
«Adrián Juárez is a sound experimentalist from Buenos Aires, Argentina and he has been working with different sound languages since 2005. Not long but he has already spawned an impressive number of solo and collaborative works since then. Adrián works with various genres and sytles, ranging from IDM, vocal music, ambient, post rock and experimental to orchestral music, afro, percusion, latin american folk and others.
'Planicie Corrediza' is one of his most recent works to be filed under improv./experimental, and one that test tube has the immense pleasure to release. With mysterious titles like 'Batanonabitidolac' or 'Cadoltibina', this EP is roughly 25 minutes of pure, unadultered ordinary and out of the ordinary sounds. Adrián uses water and dirt, bubbles and sand, cardboard boxes, wood planks and pieces, acoustic guitars in pure agony, tin cans, plates and glasses, bassdrums, chimes and whistles, voices and throat sounds, PVC tubing and a whole lot more that cannot be effectively described - we can only imagine. This sound architecture results in completely organic non-music, non-compositions, incidentally without any narrative but telling us some kind of story at the same time. Music from the earth, from within a house, from someone else's day or night, music built like a tree-house where we keep adding pieces of wood and metal and found parts and it gets bigger and different and special every time we add something new. Every object has its own life and produces its own distinctive familiar or unfamiliar sound. This is improvisation music made out of unorthodox instruments at its best, and the experience of listening to it is more than special, it's an experience»
- Pedro Leitão
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March 10, 2008
TRIANGULIZONA VIDEOS
Following our recent 'Flossy' release, by Croatian Future-Jazz ensemble TrianguliZona, there are a couple of videos that you can find on - where else - YouTube. The first is from one of the album pieces - 'Rippling' - and the second is from the piece 'Making New Directions' - not included in test tube's release.
Enjoy:
«The collaborative nature of spanish composer Juan Antonio Nieto has taken him into different journeys. What happens when the continental drift process suffers inversion? The union of intangible terrains is becoming more clear each second. At this point, we know that language is truly unstable and absolutely turbulent. We would like to be in control and arrest this flux of events that surround us. Pangea's "Tradition" is an album humble enough to keep its language free and resonating without any familiar order. Its unexpected interventions always enter from different directions (South, North, East, and West) and keep you at the verge of a forgotten continent. A massive continent of sound once united when structures were inexistent.
Pangea reminds you of those times before each of the component continents were separated into their current configuration. With astonishing sessions that go galaxies beyond free jazz improvisation, "Tradition" creates epic musical forms out of deeply explosive and gentle moments. If you allow it, these forms are capable to join disperse theories and hypothesis in the depths of your mind.»
- Sebastian Alvarez
