| 2012 NEWS
December 06, 2012
• tube'|262 - Off Land - Circadian
«Off Land was formed in 2004 by Tim Dwyer, an artist and musician from New England whose sound was originally shaped by "net" label culture's collaborative atmosphere of experimentation and peer feedback. His sound has been influenced by meditative music such as Javanese gamelan and minimal drone. Dwyer's music is sparse yet texturally intricate, lying in some sort of electro-acoustic limbo between Namlook's more dusty ambient collaborations, literal Phonography and contemporary classical experimentalism (from the artist's website.)
Off Land has works released at the ever excellent labels Resting Bell and Kikapu among other respectful labels of the internets.
Off Land's new EP
is the first release from in a new series of works dealing with the theme of cycles. The result is an expression in repetition, time, rhythm, and flow...
01 Circadian - A twenty-four hour rhythmic cycle of the human body;
02 Records - Repetitive historical tracking of measurements;
03 Greywater - Recyclable water generated by domestic activities;
04 Cicadas - Insects, whose broods emerge in thirteen or seventeen year cycles.»
- test tube
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November 18, 2012
• tube'|261 - Spectrical - Silktremor
«This time we bring a new and very young but already very talented sound artist from Melbourne, Australia.
Timothy Allen a.k.a. Spectrical creates ambient and minimal soundscapes based on field recordings he sources from everyday objects found around his surroundings.
In his first release ever - since he started producing music back in 2009 -, which we are really proud to present here, 'Silktremor', Tim produced very personal yet very broad and universal ambient pieces.»
- test tube
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October 26, 2012
• tube'|260 - Bettinelli / Egea / Ortiz - 21.01.2012
«Leo Bettinelli, Marc Egea and Carola Ortiz are music performers and got together earlier this year, in January, for an improvisation session outside the catalán city of Barcelona, in a museum called Museu de Pintura de Sant Pol de Mar.
Entitled '21.01.2012', this the piece that was recorded directly from the concert. This is pure improv music sounds, hope you like it!»
- test tube
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September 30, 2012
• tube'|259 - Experience in Goa - Slow Steps
«Alessio Giorgianni is a composer and sound designer, coming from Italy and active in the music scene since 2003. Experience in Goa is his nom de guerre when he works as a musician.
We present 'Slow Steps', his latest musical work. It is a mix of field recordings, acoustic sampling and electronic manipulation, inspired by the shamanic rituals. And it's a really really good release! Enjoy.»
- test tube
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September 18, 2012
• tube'|258 - Paolo Veneziani - 204
«test tube proudly presents Paolo Veneziani, an italian sound composer and experimentalist and a well known name in the netaudio scene. He has been releasing royalty free music since 1996 (so far 16 years and going...).
'204' - Paolo's first release since 2008 - is a new collection of tracks where harsh and rhythmic sounds are predominant, but where ambient experimentalism and sinewave modulation also have some room to sprout and thrive.
This is not something for every ear
out there, but if you let it grow properly, you will end up loving every second of it. 'Erratic steps' is a true gem. One of our favorites releases for 2012.»
- test tube
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August 31, 2012
• tube'|257 - Thrystero - Chamber music
«Thrystero is actually Bo Vibe, born in the Year of the Boar in Northern Norway. After learning how to handle 6 strings in Los Angeles, wrestling post-structuralists in London and climbing cultural walls in Berlin, he now calls Barcelona home. Guitar, piano,voice and field recordings form the basis of Thrystero's "organic electronica". "Organic" alluding to both tools and methods as the project's goal is to explore the timbres of the surrounding environment (wood, metal, water, doors, railway, river, etc.) and the character of the instruments reacting within to it. Each piece grows from a dynamic relation between composition and improvisation and may follow set harmonic principles or stray completely from the "set", bound only by a certain flow emanating from a reaction between "the field" (city, river, room) and the tool. The "field" in the case of the tracks here is Berlin - from the intimacy of the creaking floorboards of Thrystero's loft to the majesty of the city streets.»
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July 31, 2012
• tube'|256 - Radosław Kurzeja - Lake or Sad War
«Radosław Kurzeja is a musician based in Kraków, Poland, and we are very excited to welcome him to the test tube family along with his magnetic looping textures and absolutely intoxicating soundscapes.
With such narratively inspired titles such as 'Elizabeth Peyton painted David Hockney's portrait when I was eleven' (our favorite), Kurzeja patiently stacks several loops
on top of each other, connected with some very soothing ambient synths until he reaches that point when everything makes sense and an entirely new world is brought forward so our minds can dive into and travel far away from our bodies.
'Lake or Sad War' is an amazing work and an essential
download for everyone!»
- test tube
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July 20, 2012
• tube'|255 - Rico Püstel - Marquee Strat part two
«Hello fellow listeners and followers.
Our dear friend and contributor Rico Püstel is back with more awesome guitar synthesizing and drum looping galore!
This is the sequel to the original 'Marquee Strat' release, that test tube put out last year.
Perfect sounds and rhythms for this
hot summer! Just sit back and enjoy.
- test tube
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June 25, 2012
• tube'|254 - Bristophe - Dismissed Frankenstein
«Bristophe is an improvisation duo by Brice Catherin and Christophe Schweizer.
They produce a lot of work
constantly, and this particular album 'Dismissed Franskenstein' is a seven track re-release of the work they have done back in 2009 for a movie called 'Frankenstein'.
And here's
what they have to say about themselves:»
"We can’t always promise exactly who is going to play which instruments, but usually you can expect to hear cello, trombone, a bit of electronics, maybe some tuba, a touch of clarinet, plus e.g. recorder and other flutes, double bass, alpine horn, voice, bird calls, a few toys, and whatever else we come across that might produce some type of sound. We also know that while it is true that Bristophe enjoys being on stage, their definition of just where that is appears to be a somewhat different one, as they tend to wander all around the room, playing behind or in the midst of the audience; or furthermore to disappear behind curtains or onto the hallways.
What we do know for certain, though, is that we improvise.
Bristophe is half Swiss living in Hamburg (Germany) and half French living in Geneva (Switzerland). Occasionally both halves meet in one place, and that’s when sound happens: Sometimes extremely loud (even to them), sometimes so soft that you have to bend your head and dilate your eardrums to notice anything; Sometimes far away, and sometimes as close as a few inches from you.
But whatever happens, it sparkles like a shimmering fire."
- test tube (with excerpts from Bristophe.org)
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May 30, 2012
• tube'|253 - Out Level - sx guitar #2 EP
«And eighty releases later, Out Level (a.k.a. Luís Antero for field recording fans) returns with the second part of the sx guitar series (first part here).
Again, the only source of audio material here is his guitar, with plenty of effects, feedback and loops to make it almost unrecognizable as a musical instrument.
Enjoy
the trip.»
- test tube
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May 24, 2012
• tube'|252 - Lucida - ~ 33
«'~ 33' (or 'approximately thirty-three') is the work of Richard Harvey, Matthew Taylor, Darragh Murnane and Nick Carter, a group of three science and history academics and one website designer, who gathered together for a weekly music session to vent their creative energies. This mini album is an edited mix of improvised music culled from live recordings of those sessions, taken during the Summer of 2011 in Stoke Newington, London.
Lucida have had many guises, including a previous release on netlabel TLHOTRA called “the unexamined life isn’t worth thinking about”.
Be sure to check everything out. They make really really good experimental music.»
- test tube
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May 02, 2012
• tube'|251 - Ieva - Insones
«This amazing work by Ieva came out in 2009 in a CD-R limited release from japanese label Meditations but has since been unavailable. Three years passed and many experimental music lovers expressed the desire for a re-release.
Samuel then decided he was going to put this album available again, but as a free digital release, and since we have collaborated before in the excellent 'Constellation', today we have the pleasure of offering 'Insones' for everyone's aural pleasure. Enjoy.»
- test tube
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April 13, 2012
• tube'|250 - Fescal - Paralysis
«After numerous plaudits for his last album 'Alchemical Wanderings' we welcome something new from Fescal; for those who don't know, he is a
British musician currently living in South Korea and a producer of
attractively ageless music. Don' t forget to pick up a copy of his latest
album and watch out for a summer CD release on Twiceremoved Records
(Australia). While you're at it, be sure to grab his previous release here at test tube, 'Into the Atmosphere'.
Back to this release; 'Paralysis' is characterized by feelings of a
sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past; full of subtle
harmonic distortions and static hiss; throwing the listener to some place
back into his memories.
This short piece is the perfect example why one calls this kind of music
'nostalgic'.
It evokes nostalgia. We get to travel back without leaving the
present, to relive some moment, most times just a feeling of loss, of
detaching from something we miss. A missing from a past (or future)
feeling, perfectly translated into sound. Were it a longer piece, and I might
have got trapped back there.»
- test tube
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March 20, 2012
• tube'|249 - Ivan Kapec - The path of love
«Some of you that follow test tube releases might remember Ivan Kapec's groovy guitar sounds back from 2008's release tube113 (Triangulizona's amazing album 'Flossy').
Well, Ivan is back
with a solo release, 'The path of love', which he subtitled: 'Solo guitar pandiatonic free improvisation'. Most of the album tracks were captured as free improvisations, except for the title track 'The path of love' and 'Susret' which were originally composed for a 'dance performance movie' called 'Happily Ever After' (Vimeo link for the trailer), directed by Vladimir Koncar (also responsible for the Triangulizona live show visuals). However, the tracks that Ivan composed for the movie feature Hrvoje Galler playing the piano, while the new versions presented here were recorded with Ivan playing just his acoustic guitar, like everything else on this album.
Ivan explains the reasons behind this album:
"(...) 'Happily Ever After' had in the begining been titled 'The path of love', but Vladimir changed it later. But, for me the original title was very suitable for the material which I worked solo.
I recorded many tracks in two years, thinking about making a solo acoustic album. Some of them were recorded at home."
While recording the final versions, Ivan decided that the
music lacked - his words - "proper emotionally common sound and technical audio quality" - so he decided to re-record them in a single session at a professional studio in Zagreb, to maintain the true improvisation 'soul' but with a better sound quality overall, without overdubs, overedits and usual post-production changes.
'The path of love' is an intimate acoustic guitar session, and should be listened to in a peaceful setting, preferably with headphones, in dim light or complete darkness. Enjoy.»
- test tube
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March 10, 2012
• tube'|248 - Mental Health Consumer - WYO
«Brian Ruskin Ph.D is back after 'Backyard Mysteries' with a brand new adventure. He went to the wild west (Wyoming), recorded a lot of field recordings and went back home with inspiration to tell new stories. So the stories about the places and people that Brian experienced fueled this new collection of songs.
'WYO' takes us all on this musical journey across a US state that is full of cowboys and indians, coyotes and rattlesnakes, boulders and trees, creeks and canyons, blazing days and stormy nights, rodeos and campings, and deserted landscapes.»
- test tube
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February 19, 2012
• tube'|247 - Yara - Lucid Dream
«Yara is a relatively new artist coming from Russia but already has a few releases laying around the web. His music revolves around ambient dub-ish pieces with emphasis on the ambient side. There is also some clever while subtle use of voice samples. 'Lucid Dream' is the perfect foreground/background style constructed ambient release. You can listen to the background frame being played, a rhythmic layer of ambient drones and harmonic details while the foreground offers a lot of clear sounds, mainly found sounds and voice samples. This works quite good at giving you a realistic image of what you're hearing, kind of like in a 'real life sounds with soundtrack underneath' kind of way.
You rarely hear a beat, there's only a few syncopated bass 'hums' throughout the tracks - and very present on 'Freshness of being' - that set the pace in a way that your brain understands them as rhythm.
A very nice release that thrives on the repeat mode of your player. It just begs for a full LP in a near future (we can always hope).»
- test tube
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February 07, 2012
• tube'|246 - Aitänna77 - Night Loops
«Our long time friend and collaborator Mikel Martínez from Spain is back with another deliciously fragile collection of 'folktronica' songs, for your enjoyment.
Night Loops is a new EP - small in size but big at heart - from Aitänna77, written and performed using Lo-fi production standards, round and furry beats, timid keyboards and echoing strings. Only as an Aitänna77 release can be.
Enjoy.
Also, don't forget to check out all Aitänna77's previous releases. Use this for reference.»
- test tube
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January 16, 2012
• tube'|245 - mon0 - Colliding Textures
«'Colliding Textures' is the third release from mon0 here at test tube. After 'Beyond' (2008) and 'Multifidus' (2009), this german musician and deejay delivers another thriving collection of dense and ultra atmospheric drones, which has come to be his creative signature.
All four tracks are well over 10 minutes long and they all start gently with a long fade in
and then begin to develop textures throughout their end. Beware of the heavy use of bass frequencies, because these tracks might break your living room windows if you put your amp volume too loud.
As with previous mon0 releases, this new work is amazing in
density and in the use of textural sounds and landscape ambient backgrounds. It is a glorious experience for any listener, even if one isn't much into dark ambient. And this album will really overcome itself with the use of closed casket headphones.»
- test tube
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