Music and Updates (1/8 - 1/12) — Phill Niblock, Ben Richter, TUTUPATU, Gouge Away, Pissed Jeans, Astrid Sonne
Composer Phill Niblock passed away on January 8th at 90 years of age.
Admittedly, I’ve really only scratched the surface when it comes to Phill Niblock. I acquired the Superior Viaduct reissue of Niblock’s Nothin To Look At Just A Record LP a few years ago, which is 40-plus minutes of layered drone emitted via trombone. It’s not the type of album you throw on too often as it is meditative and lengthy. If you swapped out the trombones for super-juiced guitars, you’d have a Sunn O))) album. I revisited the LP and heard patient, slow, and enveloping intensity.
Niblock was a celebrated figure in avant circles and the testimonials online from peers and devotees of his work have been numerous. Composer Lawrence English wrote a wonderful tribute at The Quietus.
10/2/33 - 1/8/24.
Official site — https://phillniblock.com
And since we’re talking about Phill Niblock, composer/accordionist Ben Richter, who is cut from similar avant cloth, is releasing a new album called Aurogeny, which is out now via Infrequent Seams. Two videos for tracks from the album surfaced. Both videos were developed by artist Lei Han.
Links:
Infrequent Seams — Bandcamp
Ben Richter — Bandcamp / Website
Videos and info provided courtesy of Clandestine Label Services:
The two and a half hours of accordion, string quartet, and ensemble music on Ben Richter’s Aurogeny, the 2-CD follow-up to 2017’s acclaimed Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean, are united by a focus on the potential for acoustic phenomena to create immersive sound-worlds of constant gradual transformation.
A student of Pauline Oliveros, Richter's work has been described by Brian Olewnick as "cloudy, mysterious, and dark ... Beckettian in its slow spread," while Stephen Smoliar has insisted that Richter's Panthalassa is "likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening."
Clearly, Richter has taken up the mantle of Oliveros's explorations and ethos.
Aurogeny's first disc focuses entirely on Richter’s unique approach to the accordion, with solo and multitrack works exploring just intonation, detuning preparations, and sliding register shifts, seeking liminal zones between pitch and rhythm to stretch time perception beyond the human. Fans of Oliveros will take note, but so will those who love the patience and timbral explorations of Laura Cannell, Ellen Arkbro, and others working in these realms.
Aurogeny's second disc begins with the Koan Quartet’s masterfully concentrated performance of "Aurogeny," a geologically paced, timbrally morphing string quartet — until the striking instrumental menagerie of "Orogenesis" erupts in raucous, sprawling post-rock joy, followed by the eerie, distorted doom-drone of "Tethyscape," a dive back into the deep dark sea. Sarah Davachi, Anna von Hausswolff, and even, eventually Sunn O))) may come to mind.
As director of Ghost Ensemble, Richter creates innovative new work with a diverse host of experimental performer-composers. The ensemble’s debut LP We Who Walk Again features music by Oliveros and Sky Macklay alongside Ben’s Wind People, described by Meg Wilhoite as “a multifaceted texture that evokes the primeval.”
Richter holds a BA from Bard College, MM from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and DMA from CalArts.
TUTUPATU’s IV will be out via Broken Clover Records on Valentine’s Day, 2/14/24. Fans of The Necks, Earth, and Master Musicians of Bukkake will appreciate the group’s acoustic-led variation on Kosmiche Musik, the track “Tangerine” a layered travelogue set to mid-gallop.
More information can be found at It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine.
IV is available for pre-order at Broken Cover Records.
Music and info provided courtesy of Us-Them Group:
TUTUPATU, founded by Tomas Garrido, Matías Tangerina, and Olivares, fuses their diverse musical backgrounds in classical, jazz, rock, electronic, experimental noise, drones, and ethnic music. After more than a year of dedicated rehearsals, they've meticulously crafted a unique sound that invites exploration.
Their collective aim is to shape an auditory landscape that defies convention, drawing inspiration from trance-inducing repetition—a musical odyssey transcending genres, resonating with the eclectic blend of their individual influences. Through their explorations, they guide listeners on an introspective journey into uncharted realms. Join TUTUPATU in the immersive experience unfolding through their debut album.
Gouge Away’s upcoming third album, Deep Sage, was announced with the band’s new fury-soaked track, “Stuck In A Dream”. Deep Sage is scheduled to release 3/15/25 via Deathwish Inc.
Links:
Facebook
Bandcamp
Instagram
Music and info provided courtesy of another/side:
Deep Sage, Gouge Away’s third studio album, started coming together in 2019 during sound checks and in small pockets of downtime between tours. In early 2020, they demoed songs with Brok Mende in an unassuming storage unit in Orlando, FL. Gouge Away pulled influence not only from the nostalgia of the bands they grew up listening to, but also developed a sense of urgency, noise, and introspective lyrics they felt most represented them. Those demos helped shape the songs into the finished record that Deep Sage would become.
Everything came to a halt in 2020 when a full year of plans were canceled in an instant. With the rug pulled out from under them, their backs against the wall, and no way to change the situation they were in, the members of Gouge Away had no choice but to go on a hiatus. They moved to different parts of the country and focused on their personal lives, accepting that those songs were never going to see the light of day. However, the songs lived as files waiting to be rediscovered and every once in a while, they’d get the urge to listen to them again.
On New Year's Eve just before 2022, Gouge Away decided to reconnect and finish writing Deep Sage with Portland, OR becoming their new writing location. While everyone was in town for a writing session, Militarie Gun had a show down the street at Mano Oculta and invited Gouge Away to play a couple of songs during their set as a surprise. It was the first show Gouge Away had played in three years. Energized by the reaction, the band continued writing. They had an overabundance of material, slashing songs from the final tracklist left and right. They not only elaborated on the urgent and abrasive qualities they were known for but broadened their melodic traits, too.
Gouge Away entered Atomic Garden East in March 2023 with Jack Shirley at the helm, and recorded Deep Sage completely analog and almost entirely live. The band performed together in a live room while vocalist Christina Michelle was in an isolation booth, her vocals projected from a monitor so the band could hear her. The goal of recording live was to sound like five friends playing in a room together, just like where they started in Florida. Unpolished and far from being over-produced, this is what the heart of Gouge Away has always been.
Popped Jeans?
“Moving On” is the new single from Pissed Jeans, which introduces the follow-up to 2017’s excellent Why Love Now, Half-Divorced. Release is scheduled for 3/1/24 via Sub Pop. “Moving On” is bouncy and accessible, not too easy on the ears but the hook is nonetheless infectious.
Music and info provided courtesy of Sub Pop:
On March 1st, 2024, Pissed Jeans will release Half Divorced, their incredible 6th album, on CD/LP/DSPs worldwide from Sub Pop. The band is sharing the official video for indelible lead single “Moving On” from director and frequent collaborator Joe Stakun (“The Bar Is Low,” “Bathroom Laughter,” “Romanticize Me”).
Pissed Jeans’ Half Divorced is the follow-up to 2017's Why Love Now, an album that took aim at the mundane discomforts of modern life. The album and its singles received praise from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Uncut, Stereogum, and more.
The twelve songs of Half Divorced skewer the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood. Pissed Jeans’ – Matt Korvette (vocals), Bradley Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass), and Sean McGuinness (drums) – notorious acerbic sense of humor remains sharper than ever as they dismember some of the joys that contemporary adult life has to offer.
Half Divorced includes the previously mentioned “Moving On,” the omnidirectional piss-take “Everywhere Is Bad” (Spoiler alert: “Seattle is soaking wet”), shrinking debt-to-credit ratios in the bracing “Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt,” and the harsh truth-telling in the bruising “Cling to a Poisoned Dream.”
Half Divorced was produced and mixed by Pissed Jeans and Don Godwin and engineered by Mike Petillo at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (co-producer and mixer for Why Love Now).
Check out “Boost” by Astrid Sonne and then check out the available tracks on her Bandcamp. Her album Great Doubt is releasing 1/22/24 from Escho label.
Music and info provided courtesy of Terrorbird:
Astrid Sonne is a Danish, London-based composer and viola player. Throughout her acclaimed discography, Astrid Sonne has been carefully crafting different moods through electronic and acoustic instrumental endeavours. On her forthcoming album Great Doubt, to be released January 26, 2024 via Copenhagen's Escho, this skill is refined, now with the distinct addition of the composer's own vocal in front. The tone of each track is unmistakably Sonne’s, structured around contrasts through an impeccable sense of timing. Lyrics on the album are sparse, merely highlighting different scenes or emotional states of being, leaving the music to fill in the blanks. Yet they also form a pattern of ambiguity, consolidated through the album title, searching for answers through looking at how and what you are asking, questions for the world, questions of love.
The viola, a trusted companion since Astrid Sonne’s youth, appears effortlessly throughout the album, fully integrated into the sonic universe; through a pizzicato driven arrangement in the poignant track “Almost” or along with booms and claps in mutated cinematic stabs during “Give my all”, paraphrasing Mariah Carey's 1997 ballad. Yet the string section also gives way to explorations of woodwinds, counterbalancing the bowed movements with digital brass and airy flutes. Finally, beats and detuned piano are fresh additions to the soundscape, cementing how Sonne’s practice is always evolving into new territories.
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
