Raise your glass high!

Half the year gone . . . half t’go!

Break, by COREY FULLER

Corey Fuller is one half of the duo Illuha on 12k and Break is his first solo recording for 12k. A crashing wave, the breaking dawn, an impact, the crushing of emotional spirit… the breaking of a storm. These are all relevant ideas behind his choice of a title for this highly emotional abum. Fuller has addressed the universality of human struggle without going into specifics of his own personal waves. The ideas that we as humans all share many of the same difficulties is both a launching point and a message he wishes to share with Break — the catharsis. 

While Illuha’s music is known for its attention to small sounds and light textures, Break, while equally as fragile, sees Fuller working with much heavier elements. Still highly melodic, the work pulls and churns between harmony and tension, weight and air, the crash of a wave, the pull of the undertoe. The album is focused intensely on melody and harmony, progressions more carefully composed than the serendipitous found sound of his work with Illuha. 

The piano is often at the center of these songs, an instrument (his own) that has become much an extension of his own body. His own voice plays an important role as well, sometimes lyrically ethereal and sometimes just a breath signifying the ever-fragile thread of life. Beautifully recorded in his Tokyo studio, the sounds are captured with all of their inherent physical flaws. As Fuller himself states about the piano being “Recorded in a way that you can hear the bones, like an open ribcage, moving contorting…” Everything on Break is there for a reason, not just the sound and soul of the piano but the electronic elements as well, rattling bass tones and dramatic, emotional waves of synthesizer rising and dissolving. 

If a single word can be used to describe Break it is physical. From the instruments and techniques used to produce the album to the concepts of vulnerability of the human body. Break is an emotional riptide where violence and rest struggle to be the last voice.  

Released February 1, 2019

All music composed, performed and engineered by Corey Fuller in Tokyo, Japan.
Taylor Deupree plays glockenspiel and other percussion on “A Handful of Dust.”
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k. 

B O W I E [2023]

B O W I E [2023] | Rock/Rock ‘n Roll/Pop/Glam | 83:59

“What’s that, . . . you don’t, uhm, care for Mr. Jones . . . ?? “
;- D

This one was tossed in just for fun
(I haven’t made a Bowie mix in nearly 10 years!).

Albums represented: Hunky Dory, Low, Diamond Dogs, The Man Who Sold the World, Reality, The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, The Next Day, Scary Monsters, Aladdin Sane, Young Americans, Station to Station, Black Tie White Noise, Pinups + several 1-offs (tracks 1, 2 & 6).

Listen via Mixcloud or Sync

01 David Bowie – The Drowned Girl
02 Momus – Where Are We Now (Bowie cover)
03 David Bowie – Life On Mars
04 Always Crashing in the Same Car
05 Big Brother
06 David Bowie & Gail Ann Dorsey – Planet of Dreams
07 David Bowie – The Man Who Sold The World
08 New Killer Star
09 Bleed Like A Craze, Dad
10 A Small Plot Of Land
11 How Does the Grass Grow
12 Fashion
13 Boss of Me
14 Fame
15 Right
16 Stay
17 Sound and Vision
18 Jump They Say
19 The Jean Genie
20 Queen Bitch
21 Don’t Bring Me Down (Pretty Things cover)

Fridman Variations by Stephen Vitiello & Taylor Deupree

Interesting sounds, atmospheres & collaborations on this . . .
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Both Stephen Vitiello and Taylor Deupree are seasoned collaborators. Each new collaboration is a new context, a new conversation and a unique opportunity to learn. Vitiello has worked with musicians such as Scanner, Steve Roden, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Machinefabriek. As an artist often represented in galleries and large scale sound installations he has also had the frequent opportunity to work with visual artists from the likes of Tony Oursler to Julie Mehretu and Joan Jonas. Deupree has a long history of collaboration including early works with Christopher Willits and Richard Chartier as well as Marcus Fischer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Bon Iver’s S. Carey. Fridman Variations is Vitiello and Deupree’s third release together and continues their tradition of exploring their unique form of experimental improvisation. 

Stemming from a live performance at NYC’s Fridman Gallery, Fridman Variations was co-produced by the gallery and will remain as part of the gallery’s publications. Fridman Gallery is a visual exhibition space that also boasts a unique dedication to experimental music through their annual New Ear Festival, at which Vitiello and Deupree performed and recorded the main piece for this album. 

Side A of Fridman Variations is the live recording, edited for vinyl while side B contains two pieces made with some of the same source material as the live performance and intended to be related, but entirely new, works. Guitar, modular synthesizer and a small tape synthesizer are at the heart of these songs. The improved layers draw on buried melodies and hint of field recordings and found textures. Not overly melodic, not overly noisy, Vitiello and Deupree like to find the edge between the pretty and the obscure, often suggesting more than laying their intentions bare. This type of sound is one that the duo often explores as an opportunity for Deupree to adventure beyond his melodic comfort zone and for Vitiello to work and experiment with new instruments and how they interact with his signature guitar. 

One of the biggest inspirations to the artists for this work was the hushed and dreamy state of the audience during the performance. The late-night ambience added to the immersive quality of the surround speakers and helped to channel creativity and a sense of sharing. 

Both artists feel that recording live performances is an opportunity to capture a unique moment that simply won’t happen again. Despite a performance’s flaws or imperfections the energy and interaction is a special moment in time for the performers and audience. The opportunity to not only document it for the listeners who were present but also to be able to share the moment with those who weren’t there is a positive one. To further be able to expand on the ideas in the controlled studio environment serves to enrich the experience and further the communication.  

Released February 1, 2019

Domes, by Heather Woods Broderick

Domes is a collection of meditative pieces based around the cello. While not being her primary instrument, the cello holds a very special place for the artist. Throughout the past 2 years, Heather often felt the need to find moments of respite in response to the chaotic and turbulent times we all faced in that period. Her days started or ended with the cello. A single melody initiated a process in which new elements were gradually added to the initial loop until the sounds filled her up. This process and the instrumental nature of these pieces opened the path for self-reflection and enabled her to express emotions outside the world of words or lyrics:

“The cyclical nature of the loop combined with the sound feeling like it’s surrounding me feels serene and safe. My hope is that listeners experience this as well.” – Heather Woods Broderick

Domes is a documentation of that period and offers 7 pieces which to the artist feels like dense masses – strong grounding sounds that can hold weight or be used to disperse weight – in an emotional sense. The album title, Domes, reflects this idea as domes are made out of triangles – the strongest shapes in the physical world. Coincidentally, there are 7 different triangles. As such, the pieces on Domes each reflect a different triangle, a different strongest shape which offers the listener a solid basis to find rest and calmness.

Heather Woods Broderick is a composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Growing up in a family of musicians, music took root in Heather’s life at a very young age. Evenings spent singing along to her parents folk music collection began to shape her sense of song as a child. After many years of classical piano training, she began to expand her musical toolkit by learning to play guitar, cello, and flute among others. Deeply influenced by rich tapestries of the natural world, she excels at crafting sonic landscapes that reflect both lushness and intimacy. Heather has released three solo albums to date, and over the years has recorded and toured extensively around the world with a multitude of artists including Sharon Van Etten, Efterklang, Alela Diane, Horse Feathers, Damien Jurado, Lisa Hannigan, Laura Gibson, and more.

DAUWLP020 

credits

Released May 13, 2022

Adventures Into Somethingness, by Conrad Praetzel

This is a wonderful & interesting album, full of ambience, drone & glitch, with just the right amount of subtle causticity; I had the privilege of listening to it last month & will feature a track on our August podcast . . .
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Conrad Praetzel is a multi-instrumentalist/ composer/ sound designer based in Northern California. He has self-published and promoted his recordings released on Paleo Music for over thirty years. His last five albums were released under the moniker Clothesline Revival, roots Americana with a modern electronica bent that Lucinda Williams acknowledged as an influence on her album “West” in No Depression Magazine.

Conrad Praetzel’s Adventures Into Somethingness is the first album of new music released under his name in twenty-four years. Gone are the traditional roots music instrumentations he has frequently employed in the past. This is explorative ambient music that continuously evolves in form utilizing deft sound design techniques along with tension and release to mesmerize and engage the listener. Sampled sound sources, often of electric guitar processed through effect pedals, are further reshaped, reprocessed and mangled into something entirely new to produce pulsating drones filled with sonic artifacts and ethereal landscapes.

He has never performed live but has received national acclaim including features on both NPRs All Things Considered and the Day to Day show. The entire Paleo Music catalog of Conrad Praetzel and Clothesline Revival albums will be made available on bandcamp concurrent with the release of Adventures Into Somethingness.

credits

releases June 24, 2022

Glitch, by Flavia Massimo

An expressive showcase of Flavia’s highly developed and deeply researched sound. “Glitch” renders her unique cello augmented with extended techniques, voice, synth, field recording, loops and live electronics. An organic world where perfection flutters and distorts with a microcosmic grace. The work “Glitch” is focused on the aesthetic of interferences, errors, and sound granules in a melt of acoustics and electronics. A glitch, a fault in an electronic system, becomes a malfunction of the classical way of playing the cello, far from the classical music canons to deconstruct the cello sound into small sound cells to experiment with different possibilities, so much that almost all the record sounds come from the processing of the instrument. Perfection offers no incentive for improvement and mistake is to go further. However unpredictable it may be, it has its own harmony. Integrating the error in a musical composition makes the concept itself harmonic.

“The error is there to remind the inexhaustible complexity of reality”

Released June 8, 2022

Flavia Massimo is a contemporary cellist, sound designer and event curator, both trained in classical and electronic music. She composes soundtracks for exhibitions, audio-guides, dance and theatre performances and creates interactive art installations. Her intense schedule of live performances brings her to work with several well renowned artists of classical, pop and contemporary music in Italy and worldwide. She conducts the workshop “Artigianato elettronico del suono”, a theoretical and practical laboratory, guiding the audience in the creation of a personal sound through sound-walks, acoustic exercises, digital manipulation and processing of music and ambient samples. She worked, as sound designer, with the “ CRM”, music research center in Rome. She is the artistic director of ” Paesaggi Sonori”, an unusual festival of cultural events in exceptional naturalistic locations.

Window to Mars, by Dario Russo

Intelligent techno . . . from Dario Russo.

This is a work of few months dedicated to ambient and drone sounds.
For this EP I’ve used the following instruments:

– Moog Sub25
– Novation Peak
– Handmade Micro D made by Massimo Olla
– Native instruments VST Piano

Released November 15, 2020

Yesteryear . . .

December 03 (Reworked), by Sergio Díaz De Rojas

Released December 3, 2018

To celebrate our label’s first anniversary, we are releasing Sergio Díaz De Rojas’ EP December 03 (Reworked), an outstanding collaborative project that will provide the listener with a varied collection of reworks, ranging from delicate piano and cello to soft electronic and ambient. This EP features CEEYS, Matt Emery, Elskavon, and Jakob Lindhagen. 

“December 03 was composed and recorded in one afternoon, and released in the middle of the night, without any sort of promotion. Two years later, with the intention of giving these simple but meaningful piano pieces some recognition – and to close that particular phase of my work as a composer – I invited some of my friends to reimagine the four tracks on the EP, and decided to release it through my dear label.” 

December 03 (Reworked) will be available digitally and on limited edition cassette, alongside a remastered version of the four original piano pieces composed by Sergio. 

Composed and mastered by Sergio Díaz De Rojas. 
Artwork by Seraphina Theresa.

Released December 3, 2018