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CD
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MORR 152CD
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"With his latest record, Notwist singer and guitar player, film soundtracker and Alien Transistor label boss Markus Acher, aka Rayon, offers up a sparse, intoxicating album of instrumentals. As the name suggests, the spaces between notes here are treated with as much gravity as the notes themselves - arpeggios spiraling upwards, conflicting yet interlocking in a dizzying overlap of time signatures. An obvious reference point is Javanese gamelan, with its ensemble of hand-beaten metallophones and bamboo flutes, pulling in all directions at once and yet, like a starling murmur, maintaining shape as one, rippling whole. Eschewing electronic equipment, the title track sees marimbaphone, piano and vibraphone appearing to mimic a delay pedal, giving the effect of rain falling with odd regiment into a singing bowl. Melancholic but weirdly uplifting arrangements surface throughout the record, punctuated by mossy synth hums and subterranean rustling. Like much of Rayon's work, A Beat Of Silence beams across like a soundtrack for some forgotten documentary: dusty archive footage of cities being built and eroded in time-lapse seeming to flicker across the screen. Closing tracks "To the Quiet", a tentative, almost impossibly fragile ballad, and "Kona", a stretched and mangled wash of orchestral drone akin to Plinth or Edmund Finnis, leave the listener fully enveloped, as this incredibly sensitive work draws to a close." --Richard Greenan (Kit Records, Devon Loch) Personnel: Sachiko Hara - piano, harmonium; Cico Beck - marimbaphone, bass-drum, percussion, electronics; Karl Ivar Refseth - vibraphone, glockenspiel, bassdrum, percussion; Anton Kaun - objects, electronics; Markus Acher - harmonium, percussion, gongs, electronics; Tadklimp - electronics, algorithmic processing. Produced by Tadklimp and Markus Acher.
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LP
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MORR 152LP
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LP version. Includes an inner sleeve and a download code. Edition of 500. "With his latest record, Notwist singer and guitar player, film soundtracker and Alien Transistor label boss Markus Acher, aka Rayon, offers up a sparse, intoxicating album of instrumentals. As the name suggests, the spaces between notes here are treated with as much gravity as the notes themselves - arpeggios spiraling upwards, conflicting yet interlocking in a dizzying overlap of time signatures. An obvious reference point is Javanese gamelan, with its ensemble of hand-beaten metallophones and bamboo flutes, pulling in all directions at once and yet, like a starling murmur, maintaining shape as one, rippling whole. Eschewing electronic equipment, the title track sees marimbaphone, piano and vibraphone appearing to mimic a delay pedal, giving the effect of rain falling with odd regiment into a singing bowl. Melancholic but weirdly uplifting arrangements surface throughout the record, punctuated by mossy synth hums and subterranean rustling. Like much of Rayon's work, A Beat Of Silence beams across like a soundtrack for some forgotten documentary: dusty archive footage of cities being built and eroded in time-lapse seeming to flicker across the screen. Closing tracks "To the Quiet", a tentative, almost impossibly fragile ballad, and "Kona", a stretched and mangled wash of orchestral drone akin to Plinth or Edmund Finnis, leave the listener fully enveloped, as this incredibly sensitive work draws to a close." --Richard Greenan (Kit Records, Devon Loch) Personnel: Sachiko Hara - piano, harmonium; Cico Beck - marimbaphone, bass-drum, percussion, electronics; Karl Ivar Refseth - vibraphone, glockenspiel, bassdrum, percussion; Anton Kaun - objects, electronics; Markus Acher - harmonium, percussion, gongs, electronics; Tadklimp - electronics, algorithmic processing. Produced by Tadklimp and Markus Acher.
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CD
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N 043CD
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Whenever Markus Acher finds time between his work with The Notwist and Lali Puna, he sets out to record film soundtracks under his solo moniker Rayon. This time it's Eleonora Danco's 2015 film N-Capace that inspired ten cinematic, instrumental sketches based on loops that loom, take shape, and change colors, only to vanish an instant later. Acher's understated tracks, created with both electronic and acoustic layers, can do without titles -- "Il Collo e la Collana 01" through "10" is perfectly sufficient -- because, ultimately, they're one entity anyway. After all, it's Danco's film, influenced by Fellini, Buñuel, and Beckett, that triggered these interpretations and set the tone for Il Collo e la Collana. At times clocking in at less than two minutes, the crackle of these tracks leads to a vast, shimmering expanse over barely audible layers of bass; it is here, in this clearing, that Acher, alone with his headphones, combines various acoustic instruments (mallets, harmonium, glockenspiel, guitar, piano) with samples, keys, beats, and drum computers; it is here that he meets some old acquaintances (Egisto Macchi, Bruno Nicolai, Ennio Morricone, Oronzo de Filippi) or reverses an idea so that it can slip where it belongs. The entire soundtrack is a purely instrumental, pastoral landscape of epic proportions. Whereas Eleonora Danco eventually released her latest movie as N-Capace, Acher sticks to its working title, Il Collo e la Collana (The Collar and Necklace), and his "collar" not only includes music that's not part of the original movie, but it also traces his path as a musician, with warm, soothing harmonies, melancholy moods, intentional cracks, the kind of freedom usually associated with jazz. Just like the movie, which Acher describes as "poetic and surreal at times," his soundtrack feels like an album of snaps; experimental, shot from unexpected angles, and often "beautifully strange" (which happens to be the common thread that links all Alien Transistor releases). This CD also includes Libanon, Acher's soundtrack for the late Michael Shamberg's 2006 film Maître, Lihseb Please, originally released as a 10" in 2006. Supported by cellist Sebastian Hess and singer Victoria Bergman, it's a stunningly melancholy trip to Beirut that features local samples over harmonium, with nods to Fouad Elkoury's photography and Etel Adnan's writings.
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LP
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N 043LP
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Whenever Markus Acher finds time between his work with The Notwist and Lali Puna, he sets out to record film soundtracks under his solo moniker Rayon. This time it's Eleonora Danco's 2015 film N-Capace that inspired ten cinematic, instrumental sketches based on loops that loom, take shape, and change colors, only to vanish an instant later. Acher's understated tracks, created with both electronic and acoustic layers, can do without titles -- "Il Collo e la Collana 01" through "10" is perfectly sufficient -- because, ultimately, they're one entity anyway. After all, it's Danco's film, influenced by Fellini, Buñuel, and Beckett, that triggered these interpretations and set the tone for Il Collo e la Collana. At times clocking in at less than two minutes, the crackle of these tracks leads to a vast, shimmering expanse over barely audible layers of bass; it is here, in this clearing, that Acher, alone with his headphones, combines various acoustic instruments (mallets, harmonium, glockenspiel, guitar, piano) with samples, keys, beats, and drum computers; it is here that he meets some old acquaintances (Egisto Macchi, Bruno Nicolai, Ennio Morricone, Oronzo de Filippi) or reverses an idea so that it can slip where it belongs. The entire soundtrack is a purely instrumental, pastoral landscape of epic proportions. Whereas Eleonora Danco eventually released her latest movie as N-Capace, Acher sticks to its working title, Il Collo e la Collana (The Collar and Necklace), and his "collar" not only includes music that's not part of the original movie, but it also traces his path as a musician, with warm, soothing harmonies, melancholy moods, intentional cracks, the kind of freedom usually associated with jazz. Just like the movie, which Acher describes as "poetic and surreal at times," his soundtrack feels like an album of snaps; experimental, shot from unexpected angles, and often "beautifully strange" (which happens to be the common thread that links all Alien Transistor releases). Includes download code.
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10"
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N 015EP
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Libanon is music composed for the film Maître, lihseb please by Michael Shamberg, composed and performed by Rayon aka Markus Acher, with the help of Sebastian Hess on cello, a computer, a harmonium and a few Libanese records .The music was also heavily inspired by the work of photographer Fouad Elkoury (one of his photographs of Beirut is on the cover) and writer Etel Adnan.
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