Pictures, by MOTION

Pictures was the debut album from the UK’s Motion. It was originally released in 2000 on his own imprint as a hand-numbered edition of 500 CDs in a clear sleeve with vellum insert.

A copy of the CD was discovered by 12k’s Taylor Deupree and Line’s Richard Chartier at a bookstore in Sheffield, England in 2001. After purchasing the disc Deupree spent a couple of years trying to track down its maker which eventually lead to Chris Coode, the man behind Motion.

Motion went on to record two albums for 12k: Dust, in 2002 and Every Action in 2004 and continues to be a favorite for his signature fractured, yet oddly human sound. This was “glitch” made without the modern day ease of DSP and plug in trickery instead utilizing an analog synth, hardware samplers, and a lot of talent.

12k is happy to be able to re-release this album in a downloadable format and make this little-known and beautiful work available once again. Pictures would have happily existed on 12k back in 2000 and, together with Dust and Every Action remind us of an important time in 12k’s history.

Released January 8, 2013

evaporation

evaporation | Experimental/Ambient/Noise/Glitch | 78:21

Happy 2021! Here’s hoping this brand new year brings you to the threshold of your dreams & goals . . . & beyond!

This is a culling of various, vaporous, ambient artifacts, relics & cherished sacrificial aural ceremonies from years gone by and 3 more recent tracks (1, 3 & 11); meshing/mashing experimental derivatives with the vast ambient landscape.

Constructed over this past Thanksgiving break.

Download

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• 01 Nicola Di Croce – Deus Sive Natura (excerpt)
• 02 Juta Takahashi – Silence
• 03 Harold Budd – Yellow
• 04 Jeff Greinke – City Light
• 05 Tomas Weiss & Anthony Kerby – Vision 4
• 06 Brian Eno – Written, Forgotten
• 07 Max Corbacho – One True Light (edit)
• 08 Steve Roach – Cloud Cover
• 09 Jacob Newman & Devin Underwood – Tracing Memory
• 10 Mystified – Earthwaves.3
• 11 .foundation – Vesper Hymn
• 12 The Circular Ruins – Perpetuum Mobile

Post-COVID constructular emanations . . .

r O t O

r O t O [rotogravure / roh-tuh-gruh-vyoor]
a photo-mechanical process by which pictures, typeset matter, etc., are printed from an intaglio copper cylinder.

Cover art for a rework (& new opening treatment) of a previous mix.

The new cover speaks to the content, which has a lot of glitch & found-sound tapestries woven in, much better than did the original. Having artwork embedded into the mp3 as it plays on my phone or iPad is something I find enjoyable (I use mp3 Tag). I think that art & music go hand-in-hand in the final deliverable (mixes being, in a manner of speaking, the new albums).

At first I was going to use this image for a new mix . . . but with no new material on the drawing board, and our show schedule nearly complete for 2021, I decided to do a reissue . . . only slightly altered
(heh . . . just like Brian Eno does ;- D )

r O t O (track-listing contained in d/l zip file)

click image for larger view

the vicinity of bLue

the vicinity of b L u e | ambient/glitch/noise/experimental | 80:44
(releases December 1st . . . but don’t tell anyone you got early access!)

An experimental outing of slicing, dicing, arranging & rearranging compositional segments of sound, until the audiological effect was . . .
“just right”!

It represents not so much the emotional/psychological state of “being” blue . . . but the empty sparseness the color can invoke (e.g. “Blue, blue, ‘lectric blue; that’s the color of my room — where I will live”*).

Glitch. Space. Drift. Some Ether-Jazz . . . and nuanced Ambient Drone
(with a new film composition from Brian Eno).

All shades . . . all hues . . . all bLue.

Download from Bandcamp

01 Slow City, 2nd Stack: 3 tracks, simultaneously
……a. Fabio Perletta + Luigi Turra – Ma pt 3
……b. Fripp, Buck, Chalenor, Chamberlain, Rieflin & Zazou –
………..The Slow Music Project
……c. Richard Chartier – Second End
02 Serries, Verhoeven & Webster – Fissure
03 Lowered – Distance Flooded Us
04 Brian Eno – Decline and Fall [extended remix]
05 Christopher Bissonnette – Consequence
06 Focus on the Breath – Waves
07 Ethereal Ephemera – A Place Where Strangers Gather to Watch the Sunrise (excerpt)
08 Hollie Kenniff – Aubade
09 Scott Lawlor – Morning Calm (excerpt)
10 Gimmick – La peau de la femme (excerpt)
11 Keys for Eclipse – Social Amnesia
12 Cryptic Scenery – Hospitals 1 (edit)
13 Robert Fripp & Brian Eno – Terebellum
14 Motorpig – Tesla Coil
15 Jonas Meyer – Strömung

white noise room

white noise room | Experimental Ambient/Ambient/Minimal/Noise | 80:48

“You know I hear a lot of talk
So I’m headed for the stereo store
To get a white noise maker and turn it up to ten!”
…………………………………………………………..~Frank Black

Pale fog juxtaposed against a faded backdrop with nondescript, texturized sound emanations . . . like an isolation tank for your ears.

You could nap to this . . . literally.
It’s glitchy, droney, drifty (a little ambient for you purists out there!) with a smidge of caustic undertone (original play-list was penned on the back of a cancelled postage stamp with a #2, bonded Ticonderoga pencil).

#Yum!

Download via Bandcamp

01 Motorpig – Glue Doesn’t Stick To Everything (edit)
02 Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand – Xenon Wind (edit)
03 Richard Chartier + Yann Novak – Undefined (edit)
04 Susan Drone/Kris Force – Sinusoidal Dance/Auric Blade #3
(dual tracks, stacked & blended)
05 Jared Sugar – Ininda
06 The Star Pillow – Molize Forest
07 Neuro… No Neuro – They’re Always There
08 Jonas Meyer – Sekundenschlaf
09 arbee – moutons sur le lac
10 Keys for Eclipse – Two Part
11 Ümlaut – To Leave it As it Is (edit)
12 Cryptic Scenery – Hospitals III (edit)
13 Rafael Anton Irisarri – Lutecia
14 AUME – Hypnopompia (edit)
15 Jeff Greinke – Urban Pasture
16 Tsone – BeetsOVseq
17 Strië – Test For Ability

Transit (15th Anniversary Edition), by Lawrence English

Transit was my first full length solo recording. When I say solo, I’m in no way reducing the contributions of friends like Mike Cooper, Tam Patton, Cat Hope, DJ Olive, Ben Frost, Gail Priest, Scanner, Philip Samartzis, John Chantler and Heinz Riegler who all helped to realise this work. Frankly, without them the record would have been a whole lot less interesting.

As the title suggests, this is categorically a record about motion, about transitions and about the ways of recognising the lived-in world that is so acutely felt in the earliest years of travelling. During this time, my world view expanded considerably and I was struck by the complexities of the world, the interpersonal relationships people experienced each day, the political intensities that haunted cities (perhaps most clearly captured in the transformed recordings of ultra nationalist speakers on the streets of Tokyo), the dynamic shifts of season (something rather foreign to us antipodeans) and the experiential list goes on.

At the time of making this record, I was quite focused on the idea of creating sound works that were detached from emotion. This wasn’t to say I wanted to create a cold music, but rather one that was utterly focused on the sensory qualities of the experiences that informed it. Phenomenology instead of affect theory I guess you could say. Returning to this record a decade and a half on, it’s funny how powerfully nostalgic and intensely emotional the memories carried in these pieces have become. My intensions, at least from my own listenership, have completely failed and I can say I do (deeply) feel this music (and thankfully sense its places and spaces too).

Each of the pieces on Transit were born out of field recording. During these years, I was recording literally all the time. I found it a powerful device for memory and also for imagination. Revisiting the recordings months or years after making them, I found different qualities of those times were revealed and those shifts often shaped the way the pieces were composed. It’s with pleasure I share this work again, freshly remastered and with a few little bits and pieces cleaned up. 

Releases November 27, 2020

Serus, by Siavash Amini

“Every night is two nights”, according to Maurice Blanchot. “The night the body spends in sleep is not the same as the night the dreamer spends in dreams. The sleeping body may lie under the stars, and the dreamer may dream of the stars—even of a journey to the stars—but the night of the dream is a night without stars.”

From Siavash
The Idea of this album, when I first started drafting it, was to continue what struck me as very interesting yet simple idea; night. I became interested in different definitions of what night is, our perception of it and what night means physically to us as well as symbolically.

I came across the idea of ‘other night’ described by Maurice Blanchot, during my research. It started me recognising night as something we experience as ‘the night of sleep’; it is night that we resist in sleep, by way of dreaming.

Things became more interesting for me during many nights of not sleeping and intoxication, and an eventual nervous breakdown. This experience, culminating in me spending three days in ICU, gave me pause to think about Blanchot’s words.

Slipping in and out of consciousness my mind, which had already experienced a blurring of what one might call the ‘other night’ and the night itself, by being in half sleep most of the time. I felt myself far way from all my surroundings and at the same time being very attentive to some details in the objects around me. It was as if my body and mind where in an in-between state. I can only describe this as being distant or more precisely being in the dark. Objects and people showed themselves out of proportion and mostly dim.

A feeling to describe this sensation, the word for which I only came across later, is ‘Serus’. There was a sense of repetition and familiarity in some feelings and emotions that I had towards some objects like sensing I knew them but not exactly from where or when. It was as if my body was resisting sleep and my sleepy mind was resisting being awake, only to dream of another type of the world that I could be awake in. 

Released August 2, 2019

u r b a n

u r b a n | Minimal Techno/Noise/Techno | 77:24

Extraneous aural lamentations from an isolated, undisclosed, non-rural municipality.

. . . and (more to the point) gritty turbulence & granular causticity, constantly grating across the listener’s ear so as to create a state of sonacular trance.
(earbuds will prove most helpful on this auditory excursion!)

Download via Bandcamp

01 Aes Dana – Beneath
02 Simon Šerc – Greybody Fit (excerpt)
03 Tonaliens – Vesta part 1 (excerpt)
04 Miktek – Serene
05 Rag Dun – The Echo that Swings
06 Ebauche – Umbilical Transfer
07 Nine Inch Nails – Temp Fix
08 J Peter Schwalm – Gangesthal
……(w/ Eivind Aarset & Tim Harries)
09 Lingua Lustra – Return
10 Ümlaut – If the Eye Never Sleeps
11 David Torn – Outsider (excerpt)
12 Neuro…No Neuro – Showers
13 Martin Nonstatic – Distance C
……(extended edit)
14 Eskostatic – Shadow
15 Vcam – Coreceptor_Env

elements_graphic

elements_graphic | Ether-Jazz & Jazz-ish Noise | 67:48

Aurally graphic examples of ether-jazz, noise & dangerously cacophonous din (listener discretion advised!).
: ) (inside joke!)

This is predominantly TONUS (who are releasing the albums represented here on Tuesday, October 20th) in construction . . . with some alternative guitar sonance (Rypdal & Torn) included as . . . sonic bookends.

These are my favorite TONUS releases thus far – – the group is progressively moving through this “New Wave of Jazz” at breakneck speed & compositional improvisation . . .

. . . Well done!

Download via Bandcamp

01 Terje Rypdal – Dawn
02 Colin Webster & Andrew Lisle – Kuggar
03 Rubicon Quartet – Airs Out
04 Ward, Verhoeven, Serries & Roberts – Imaginary Junction, pt 2 (edit)
05 Russell, Keune & Vanderstraeten – On Sunday, pt 2 (edit)
06 Benedict Taylor & Dirk Serries – Puncture Cycle IV
07 Rubicon Quartet – Made Dream
08 Colin Webster & Andrew Lisle – Zennor
09 David Torn – Swayed

February 29th, by Marcus Fischer + Ted Laderas

February 29th

On February 29th, we recorded a live performance that marks a new direction for our ongoing collaboration. We challenged ourselves with new approaches to instrumentation and performance. Ted stripped away his effects, going with just cello played with extended technique. Marcus set aside the guitar and instead used vibraphone as both a percussive and bowed instrument, layering and processing the sounds. The result is a dynamic, spacious, sometimes chaotic performance that is departure from the past but also feels like home.

All proceeds of February 29th will go to benefit Rose Haven shelter, a shelter and community center in Portland serving women, children and gender non-conforming folks experiencing trauma, poverty, and physical and mental health challenges.

released May 1, 2020

from February 29th, released May 1, 2020
Recorded live at Beacon Sound in Portland, Oregon
February 29th, 2020

Ted Laderas: Cello + reverb
Marcus Fischer: Vibraphone + electronics

Thanks to everyone for their support.