| April 2009 news
April 29, 2009
THE SENSORIAL FOREST
• tube'|166 - d'incise - Morsure Souffle
«Finally I had the honor of meeting Laurent Peter, the man behind the machines and objects that make up the name 'd'incise'. He came for the second time to Lisbon to play with Cyril Bondi (Diatribes) and some more local jazz musicians. They did a awesome show at Crew Hassan and, as I wrote above, I met Laurent in person, that same night.
We exchanged some audio gifts and among the ones I got, there was a handmade copy of 'Morsure Souffle', the latest d'incise album we are offering you now.
'Morsure
Souffle' is an amazing and fresh-sounding album. It's an album that, while retaining the already well-known 'd'incise trademark sound', it's also somewhat of a departure from his previous work. d'incise sounds much more detached from synthesis based and computer generated sounds, and almost completely embraces field recordings and found sounds as 'prime matter' for this work. The pieces are so much more complex and unpredictable, that you never know what you'll be getting next, until it hits you.»
-
Pedro Leitão
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April 28, 2009
VITAL RELEASE!
'Ontgalman' by Bas van Huizen just got reviewed by the infamous Frans de Ward, over at this week's Vital Weekly. Take a peek!
Thanks a bunch, Frans!
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April 21, 2009
THE NORTH POLE
• tube'|165 - Venus Vulture - Stick with me Giselle, things can only get better
«From the other side of the planet comes a New Zealander. His nom-de-guerre Venus Vulture aka Sean Monaghan, a plastic/visual artist turned musician. He has already two magnificent releases at one of my current favorite netlabel - Resting Bell - and now comes to test tube with a new work: 'Stick with me Giselle, things can only get better'.
Venus Vulture's music is perhaps very similar to his visual work: big, dramatic landscapes turned soundscapes of undoubtedly classical origin. It's ambient music at its most pure state; dense, enthereal, and eternal. 'Stick with me Giselle...' could be the story of a journey to the cold northern Europe (there's a track about Helsinki and another about Norway, at least...) by a group of people, we don't know how many. Well at least one can hint that from the track titles... and the visual artwork that accompanies points to that too: white snow, sprinkles of blue water and a hint of black rock, or black earth. It sounds as it feels and as it looks, and Venus Vulture managed to deliver a steady flow of narratively and deeply buried emotions of barren lands, lifeless and gelid landscapes, cold winters and bright sunny days near the north pole of our home planet. Just perfect.»
- Pedro Leitão
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April 15, 2009
MANOLGANT
• tube'|164 - Bas van Huizen - Ontgalman
«Bas van Huizen comes from The Netherlands and brings us a richly detailed and overall awesome album built entirely on loops of reworked live samples of guitar, metal objects and singing bowl. And nothing more.
All the pieces are complex structures and are dramatically enhanced by the compositional talent of Bas van Huizen and of course, all the live recordings would have to be of great quality to make such an album.
'Ontgalman' titles are all made up words, but they also carry something in their names that reminds us of real and fictional things. Take my personal favorite 'Metaalmoed' for instance; it sounds like some kind of metallic ensemble is playing drums on water pipes and pots and pans and then it builds up into a wall of noise full of really dense and special sound details.
'Ontgalman' is an amazing album waiting to be discovered.»
- Pedro Leitão
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April 15, 2009
UPLOADS GALORE!
Yeah! Problem solved. It seems my modem was dying a slow and painful death. New one installed and we're up to speed again.
I apologize to all the artists that were on schedule for this month. Now I need to speed things up a little to maintain our programmed schedule.
'Ontgalman' by Bas van Huizen will be released later tonight.
Thanks for keeping up.
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April 14, 2009
MORE EASTER EGGS BUT SOME GOOD NEWS TOO (AND SOME SAD ONES)
The connection problems still persist: Random network drops, no FTP uploads (the protocol I need the most to get the label running) and overall slowness.
The good news is that some tech guys from the provider are coming here tomorrow afternoon to sort this out. I run ADSL here, with a modem + wireless router setup. The router is new (~ 1 month) and is well configured, so the problem must be with either the modem which is kinda old (4 years) or the phone cable itself. Either case, not my fault or responsability and I hope they put this thing up to speed again, or else I'm definitely switching to cable.
On another
subject, the sad news: My friend Tiago Sousa, musician and curator of Merzbau Netlabel, is putting the nail in the coffin - so to speak. Unfortunately, Merzbau is a goner from this day forward. It seems that Tiago's career as a musician is no longer compatible with the curatorship of the label, which takes a lot of time and effort (and I know this from my own personal experience).
It's a loss for the Netaudio scene, but we all gained much from Merzbau's existence, and that legacy is here with us forever.
I wish Tiago a fruitful and happy career, and may all his dreams come true.
Thanks Tiago! - Pedro Leitão
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April 05, 2009
EASTER EGGS
A new release was supposed to come out this weekend, but I've been having problems with the internet connection - slow/stalled FTP speeds of big files - and since it's the protocol used to upload the releases, I cannot make available the next release at the moment.
I'm going up north to spend the easter week with relatives, and hopefully by the time I return - one week from now - the problem will be taken care of.
There's been something very wrong with my current ISP regarding downstream/upstream speeds and dropouts and I'm thinking seriously of ditching them and switch to cable or whatever... something different at least.
I'm starting to be very pissed with all this. It's getting on my nerves and making me postpone and re-schedule releases against my own test tube planning and organization schedules. I really need to sort this out.
Happy Easter to everyone. - Pedro Leitão
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