The Mars Transmission . . .

Coming next month . . . planetary eruptions in the form of post-rock & experimental din . . .

Introduction to Nonviolence I: Fall Term, by Tobias Reber

Released January 7, 2019 

Composed and recorded by Tobias Reber in January 2012 

Mixed and mastered by Markus Reuter 

Artwork by Bernhard Wöstheinrich

zero dark thirty

zero dark thirty | Minimal/Techno/Post-Rock/Noise | 87:00

Up before dawn (@ dark) to hit the gym, the trail and/or Nordic Track . . . with coffee & . . . some beats!

Made for working out (with a little stretch-time @ the beginning) – a gift from me to, uhm . . . me as a reminder that, a la Jocko Willink: Discipline = Freedom! It also has the added advantage of blending in some nostalgia, especially Plastikman, Tibbetts, Add N To (X), Speedy J, Photek & noisy Brian Eno.

Strap on your seat belt & swab out yer ears . . . this one rocks!

Listen via Mixcloud or Hear.This

01 Alessandro Adriani – Casting the Runes
02 Venitian Snares – Felbomlasztott Mentökocsi
03 Nine Inch Nails – The Waltz (surgical edit)
04 J.Peter Schwalm & Stephan Thelen;
……w/ Eivind Aarset, Tim Harries & Manuel Pasquinelli – Pluto
04 Plastikman – Consumed
05 Shifted – Seel
06 Lucy – Laws and Habits
07 Sendai – Inverse Array
08 Steve Tibbetts – Dzogchen Punks
09 Add N To (X) – FYUZ
10 Speedy J – Drill
11 Lucy – tof (Tommy Four Seven remix)
12 Photek – The Fifth Column
13 Tony Levin, David Torn & Alan White – Crunch Time
14 Brian Eno – Horse

Miracles of Modern Science

Miracles of Modern Science acoustic cover of Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’

n o i s_e

n o i s_e | a PostRock/Experimental/Ambient Mashup | 80:24

Gradiently noisy (because not all noise is loud & boisterous!), with gradually increasing intensity (plus, whenever I can get Schwalm, Fripp, Torn, Summers, Cline, Rypdal & Beck on a mix..!)

Track 3 was a late edition. The mix was technically “complete”, when I came across the ‘Remixing the World‘ project & decided to stack 4 of their found-sound tracks to add another dimension to the atmosphere.

This was a fun project to construct — as I wanted a softer feel to the “noise” (as opposed to, say, elements_gear) with a slow ramp-up to what could be described as “din”.

Happy listening!

Listen via Mixcloud or Hear.This

01 Fuantei – Track 3
02 Terje Rypdal – Dawn (custom extended edit)
03 Remixing the World (mashup)
……a. Walthamstow Glass Factory | b. Birmingham City University
……c. Distant Bells_Tomba Brion….| d. Berlin Ubahn U5
04 Christophe Charles – D-E-G-D (excerpt)
05 Harold Budd – Feral (Odd Nosdam remix)
06 Conrad Praetzel – Blue Poppies
07 J.Peter Schwalm & Stephan Thelen
……(w/ Eivind Aarset, Tim Harries & Manuel Pasquinelli) – Eris (edited)
08 Motorpig – Cryptic Passage
09 Robert Fripp – Seascape (Lichtenvoorde 13 Jun 2004)
10 Ümlaut – Insight
11 David Torn – Where’d I Bury that Stupid Clock (excerpt)
12 Das German Quintet (see track #7) – Haumea
13 ProjeKct Two – Is There Life on Zarg?
14 Andy Summers – Bitter Honey
15 Nels Cline Trio – Cropped
16 Jeff Beck – Head for Backstage Pass

Dust & Ether

Raise your glass high!

Half the year gone . . . half t’go!

The Process . . .

#ambient/#experimental/#classical/#techno

Robert Fripp, Washington Square Church

A new set of Frippertronics from 1981 will be released in CD/DVD and 2LP format in April 2022. These live Frippertronics performances have been taken from recordings in New York City between July and August 1981 and have been mixed and produced by David Singleton from audio painstakingly restored by Alex R Mundy. 

The set is regarded as the finest example of Frippertronics in performance.  The DVD features the material in 24/48 hi-res stereo and DTS-HD Surround Sound (Quad 4.1). The 2LP edition is on 200gram vinyl and has been cut by Jason Mitchel at LOUD Mastering. 

This is the Frippertronics album that should have come out in 1982. The forty years that have passed have done nothing to diminish the power of the music. The material appears on both discs with the DVD offering the audio in hi-res stereo and DTS Surround Sound, the nature of the loops lending themselves ideally to this method of production


The series of Frippertronic concerts were held in aid of a Soho-based theatre group and they find the guitarist using his technique of slowly building the music from the ground up, step by step. It’s an approach which demonstrates how the addition or subtraction of a single note can change the entire mood of a piece as we move in the space of a few bars from an atmosphere of pensive anticipation to one of yearning hope.

In an interview with the Melody Maker published just weeks before these concerts, Fripp was asked why he continuing to perform Frippertronic concerts. “It gives me a way of working with intimate contact with members of an audience…It’s almost an excuse to put me in a situation where one has the audience, performer and music, and in a certain kind of way something remarkable can happen. And that has happened to me, and it’s not possible in a group…Frippertronics is the most enjoyable means of playing I’ve ever found.”

The Washington Square Church performances represent some of the finest recorded examples of the Frippertronics series. Unlike other such recordings where the loops are on tape in the DGM archive but the solos require painstaking matching of existing audience recordings and bootlegs to those loops to complete the picture, the solos for these shows were actually recorded but not labelled as to which solos matched which loops. The matched pairs only became possible when DGM audio engineer Alex R. Mundy realised that the loops had been picked up, at microscopic audio levels, by the guitar pick-ups playing the solos, allowing for identification. David Singleton was then able to mix and produce the resulting audio. 

The music played more than rewards such efforts as, culled from the shows, (more complete versions appear on the “Exposures” boxed set), Fripp appears to explore every sonic avenue available to him as a guitar player – mesmerising loops, overlaid with beautiful solos, fast running ‘Frame by Frame’ style lines against a looped background, powerful ‘Scary Monsters’ type guitar noises and more besides.

TRACKLISTING

1. WASHINGTON SQUARE I
2. WASHINGTON SQUARE II
3. WASHINGTON SQUARE III
4. WASHINGTON SQUARE IV
5. WASHINGTON SQUARE V
6. WASHINGTON SQUARE VI
7. WASHINGTON SQUARE VII
8. WASHINGTON SQUARE VIII
9. WASHINGTON SQUARE IX
10. WASHINGTON SQUARE X
11. WASHINGTON SQUARE XI  

After completing the first round of concerts with a revived King Crimson starting in May 1981, Fripp headed over to the USA where he began a week-long residency at Washington Square United Methodist Church on 135 W Fourth Street in New York. Built in 1860, the church had historically been home to many congregations but in more recent years had become the venue for numerous cultural & arts organisations. 

Released on April 29th 2022 you can pre-order CD/DVD from 
Inner Knot (USA),
Amazon and
Burning Shed (UK / EU) 

Overload Lady, by Mick Harris & Eraldo Bernocchi

From 1997 to 1998, in two years only, Mick Harris has released 3 albums and 2 EPs for Sub Rosa, two in collaboration with Eraldo Bernocchi, one with Neil Harvey (PCM). Overload Lady was created and mixed in The Box, late december 1996, Birmingham, and published in early 1997.

Michael John Harris started out in the 1980s as a drummer working with various punk rock and grindcore bands (most notably pioneering grindcore band Napalm Death); as a drummer he is generally credited with popularizing the blast beat, which has since become a key component of much of extreme metal and grindcore. Since the mid-1990s, Harris has worked primarily in electronic and ambient music, his main projects being Scorn and Lull. According to Allmusic, Harris’s “genre-spanning activities have done much to jar the minds, expectations, and record collections of audiences previously kept aggressively opposed.” While in Napalm Death, Harris also played drums for Doom and Extreme Noise Terror, and participated in a side project with Mitch Harris called Defecation, which produced two records, Purity Dilution and Intention Surpassed, through Nuclear Blast, but this last one just with Mitch Harris.

Eraldo Bernocchi is an Italian musician, producer and sound designer. He created in 1985 the project Sigillum S. Later, he expanded the cadre of musicians he would work with to include people such as Mick Harris, Jim Plotkin and Bill Laswell. These collaborations have up to this day provided an array of releases and shows. Along with the aforementioned artists, the last 15 years have seen collaborations with musicians and artists including Harold Budd, Russell Mills, Toshinori Kondo, Raiz, Almamegretta, Thomas Fehlmann, Zu, DJ Olive, and a host of others. 

Released December 9, 2016