1: Corpus Replica – A self declared or self confessed “Hermetic duo from London”, they say they deal in “Ethereal dark soundscapes, electronic music, traditional folklore and distortion”, so far, with only this first taste to go on, that sounds about right. Red Magic is dense, dark, brooding, deliciously minimal, painterly, it does sound rather red, the dark red ochres of Rothko, an inviting rewarding first taste (haven’t I seen these people performing in a gallery?). Fine start, now where are they going to go with it?    Bandcamp / Instagram

 Vaux Flores – Dawn Chorales  (Audiobulb) – “As an artist working with sounds that tend to be science adjacent, one phenomenon that I’m continually intrigued by is the concept of the dawn chorus – both with regard to the ornithological sense of the term, as well as the electromagnetic – not to mention the various confluences that the two may engender” – an almost 43 minute long album, four pieces, the tone is set with the slow movement of the twelve minute opening piece, The Black Blood Of The Ordovician – actually, the tone is set with the title of the opening piece and it would be easy to start talking of wind blowing through the metal of an old abandoned industrial building as the sun comes up or the filmoid sense of things, of the brooding drama and if there is a dawn chorus here then it is a kind of dark one and the birds are kind of keeping a sharp eye out. The third of the four pieces is titled Automated Pleasure Constructions Designed To Simulate Authenticity Entirely Outside Of Indigenous Norms, once again that is a more than healthy clue. Four pieces of complex music, dense layers of sound, pulses, left-field bits of colour…  

“The avian dawn chorus is an interesting measurement of the ecological health of a region – simply put, barring some exceptions, more birds equals a healthier ecosystem – and on several occasions, one can track a noticeable difference in activity as human development encroaches farther and farther into the few remaining wild spots left on this planet. With that in mind, I find myself continually compelled to document these moments of birdsong whenever I can, which, in this case, typically manifests as an early morning activity (possibly triggered by my own personal response to the electromagnetic dawn chorus) that I typically start my day with while on holiday in the tropics”.

Mechanical dawn chorus maybe? Machine driven industrial organicness? he’s hearing the dawn in a different way. Do like the way these peices grow around you, kind of take over without you really noticing they have (the silence afterwards is almost deafning)

“Vaux Flores is Travis Johns, a sound artist residing in Ithaca, NY, whose work includes performance, interactivity, installation, and printmaking, often incorporating eco/bio-based themes and electronic instruments of his own design. As an improviser he performs primarily on electric bass and electronics; with studies in the field conducted under the tutelage of Fred Frith, Joelle Leandre, and Butch Morris, among others. Active in the San Francisco Bay Area for several years, Johns moved to Costa Rica in 2011 where he collaborated extensively with visual artist Paulina Velazquez-Solis on Raro, an immersive installation that represented Costa Rica in the 2013 Biennial of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC). Since returning to the states, he’s continued to apply his trade as a composer, educator and instrument builder under the nom de plume of Vaux Flores, with clientele and collaborators ranging from museums, theatre groups and dance troupes to Academy award-winning film composers and Grammy award-winning musicians”.

It is something I say rather a lot, I’ve probably already said it on this page, his work is very painterly (but then I am a painter, I tend to think in paint, not sure about the cover artwork, but then, maybe?). These four musical pieces do feel like warm inviting paintings and there is a lot to explore, to get lost in. Dense, gentle pulses, many of them, the buzz of birds, insects, flies, mechanical ones, each piece slowly evolving, revealing, opening up, I’m not going to tell you what colour the paint is this time, I might have already done that with the next piece down, and it is all rather subjective and well this is feeling rather uplifting now, it does feel like you do if you do manage to get up in time. before the machines get up…    Bandcamp

3: Sarah Davachi – A piece of music called Possente Spirto from the LA based composer-performer, a piece from the album The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir, out 13 September 2024 (more here)

More about the release (via the press release)

“Silent friend of those far from us, feeling how your breath is still enlarging space, fill the sombre belfry with your pealing.”

“The seven compositions on this album, written between 2022 and 2024, form a conceptual suite and an observance of the mental dances that we construct to understand acts of passage; the ways that we commune and memorialize and carry symbols back into the world beyond representation. To this end, The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir engages two references to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus: Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, a collection of poems from 1922, and Monteverdi’s l’Orfeo, an early baroque opera from 1607.

The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir is a supplement of sorts to Two Sisters (2022) and Antiphonals (2021), which were attempts to begin bridging the gap between the fixed electroacoustic pieces that emerge in Davachi’s home studio and her slow-paced, somewhat open-form chamber writing, in which each performance presents a new structure and in which each iteration offers the path to a new composition and deeper meaning.

Alongside Davachi, featured musicians on this album are Andrew McIntosh (viola, Los Angeles), Mattie Barbier (trombone, Los Angeles), Lisa McGee (mezzo-soprano, Los Angeles), Pierre-Yves Martel (viola da gamba, Montréal), Eyvind Kang (viola d’amore, Los Angeles), and Rebecca Lane (bass flute, Berlin), Sam Dunscombe (bass clarinet, Berlin), Michiko Ogawa (bass clarinet, Berlin), M.O. Abbott (trombone, Berlin), and Weston Olencki (trombone, Berlin) of the Harmonic Space Orchestra (Winds).

For Davachi’s part, she again returns to her favourite keyboard instruments: Mellotron (in particular, the brass and woodwind samples), electric organ (the Korg CX-3), synthesizer (the Prophet 5 and Korg PS-3100, which are both extremely useful in their tuning capabilities), and, of course, pipe organ. There are four pipe organs featured on this album: a mechanical-action instrument built by Tamburini in 1968, located in the Basilica di Santa Maria dei Servi of Bologna, Italy; an electric-action instrument built by Veikko Virtanen in 1969, located in the Temppeliaukio Church of Helsinki, Finland; a meantone mechanical-action instrument built by John Brombaugh in 1981, located at Oberlin College’s Fairchild Chapel in Oberlin, OH, USA; and, a mechanical-action instrument built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1864, located in the Église du Gesù of Toulouse, France.

The organ pieces on The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir focus more heavily on the instruments’ pedals as well as the textural variations made possible by the mechanical tracker actions that most possess. ‘Possente Spirto’ is a loose conceptual reference to the aria ‘Possente spirto, e formidabil nume’ in l’Orfeo. As in Monteverdi’s version, ‘Possente Spirto’ also emphasizes the use of strings and brass and observes a particular order in which they enter and exit, and also incorporates a sort of continuo framework. It departs from there to focus on a slow-moving chord progression and its variations in voicing, inspired by renaissance concepts of harmony as a vertical structure, set within a standard quarter-comma meantone temperament. The piece employs the same structure that Davachi uses in most of her chamber writing, where each iteration of a performance is slightly different, calling on players to respond in real time and engage in a more direct form of listening. ‘Trio for a Ground’ continues this feeling of partitioned instrumentation, with the organ providing the continuo throughout and the choir handing off to a duo of strings. In this recording, Davachi works with baroque strings – the viola da gamba and the viola d’amore, the latter of which incorporates a set of sympathetic strings that exist entirely for resonance. ‘Res Sub Rosa’ was composed specifically for a wind quintet formation of Berlin’s Harmonic Space Orchestra, and employs a system of septimal just intonation as well as a similarly variable structure that allows the players some discretion in how the piece is shaped at any given moment and which encourages different harmonic and acoustic encounters in each performance. ‘Constants’ functions as an electronic counterpoint to ‘Res Sub Rosa’, substituting human decisions with the natural interruption and decay cycles of sound-on-sound tape delay to achieve a similar sense of pacing and unpredictability”. Bandcamp / www.sarahdavachi.com

4: E-09 Project…

“This is a recording of the E-09 audio/visual live improvisation at the Pandora art gallery, Berlin, in August 2013. In their E-09 Project Seamus O’Donnell and Alexandra Macia utilize a collage of influences such as the frequencies of the radio bands (jammed using DIY FM transmitters) and electromagnetic signals (given off by various power sources and motors) along with digital circuit bend synthesizer, circuit bend enhancer, field recordings, amplified objects, oscillators, granulators and voice. The power supplies powering the devices used provide a colour palette of EM spectrum tones to discover and manipulate. Other sources of EM sounds are the motors of the instruments used, such as the Dictaphone and CD player picked up by a DIY wideband receiver for EM radiation. With this method even the TV and plasma ball used in the live creation of the video feedback are used as EM sound sources, thus closing the loop in the relationship between the live improvised audio and visual side of the performance. Once captured, all these elements are filtered, dissected and superimposed on themselves by repeating patterns that, in turn, are destroyed, generating an organic, dynamic and progressive sound universe”.

And here there are at a picnic…

And over on Bandcamp… E-09’s 2023 album….

“E-09’s new album, “Psychophonic Hotline” demonstrates their customized approach to the exploration of the power of sound. The album is a compilation of improvisational performances that include sound sources such as radio frequencies and electromagnetic fields alongside voice and various electronic instruments. These sounds are captured, filtered, dissected, and superimposed upon themselves through repetition of patterns to generate an organic, dynamic, and progressive audible universe.

The term Psychophony is found in the therapeutic treatment of migraines, for auditory hallucinations in schizophrenics and by spiritualists describing how spirits talk through a medium. E-09 invites listeners to experience a new form of Psychophony and a musical expression that is both distinctive and experimental, by exploring the therapeutic potential of sound. Like a physiotherapist who by night works as a dominatrix”.

Here’s a Lust in Peace cushion, it feels like a fitting end to this page… ORGAN THING: Two rather artistic designers, the bold style of Eden Sherry, the dark soul of Lust in Peace…