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viewing 1 To 10 of 10 items
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CD
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M14 CD
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"After a two-decade interlude, Jim O'Rourke's Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. Since 2017, Toral's work has been entering a new phase, often still centered around the arsenal of self-built instruments developed in the Space Program, but with a renewed interest in the long tones and almost static textures of his earlier work; he has also, after more than a decade, returned to the electric guitar. Spectral Evolution is undoubtedly Toral's most sophisticated work to date, bringing together seemingly incompatible threads from his entire career into a powerful new synthesis, both wildly experimental and emotionally affecting. Toral manages the almost miraculous feat of having his self-built electronic instruments (which in the past he had seen as 'inadequate to play any music based on the Western system') play in tune. In an unexpected sidestep away from any of his previous work, the chord changes that underpin many of the episodes on Spectral Evolution are derived from classic jazz harmony, including takes on the archetypal Gershwin 'Rhythm changes' and Ellington?Strayhorn's 'Take the ʻA' Train,' albeit slowed to such an extent that each chord becomes a kind of environment in its own right. Threading together twelve distinct episodes into a flowing whole, Spectral Evolution alternates moments of airy instrumental interplay with dense sonic mass, breaking up the pieces based on chord changes with ambient 'Spaces.' At points reduced to almost a whisper, at other moments Toral's electronics wail, squelch, and squeak like David Tudor's live-electronic rainforest. Similarly, his use of the guitar encompasses an enormous dynamic and textural range, from chiming chords to expansive drones, from crystal clarity to fuzzy grit: on the beautiful 'Your Goodbye,' his filtered, distorted soloing recalls Loren Connors in its emotive depth and wandering melodic sensibility. The product of three years of experimentation and recording, and synthesizing the insights of more than thirty years of musical research, Spectral Evolution is the quintessential album of guitar music from Rafael Toral."
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LP
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M14 LP
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2024 repress; LP version. "After a two-decade interlude, Jim O'Rourke's Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. Since 2017, Toral's work has been entering a new phase, often still centered around the arsenal of self-built instruments developed in the Space Program, but with a renewed interest in the long tones and almost static textures of his earlier work; he has also, after more than a decade, returned to the electric guitar. Spectral Evolution is undoubtedly Toral's most sophisticated work to date, bringing together seemingly incompatible threads from his entire career into a powerful new synthesis, both wildly experimental and emotionally affecting. Toral manages the almost miraculous feat of having his self-built electronic instruments (which in the past he had seen as 'inadequate to play any music based on the Western system') play in tune. In an unexpected sidestep away from any of his previous work, the chord changes that underpin many of the episodes on Spectral Evolution are derived from classic jazz harmony, including takes on the archetypal Gershwin 'Rhythm changes' and Ellington-Strayhorn's 'Take the ʻA' Train,' albeit slowed to such an extent that each chord becomes a kind of environment in its own right. Threading together twelve distinct episodes into a flowing whole, Spectral Evolution alternates moments of airy instrumental interplay with dense sonic mass, breaking up the pieces based on chord changes with ambient 'Spaces.' At points reduced to almost a whisper, at other moments Toral's electronics wail, squelch, and squeak like David Tudor's live-electronic rainforest. Similarly, his use of the guitar encompasses an enormous dynamic and textural range, from chiming chords to expansive drones, from crystal clarity to fuzzy grit: on the beautiful 'Your Goodbye,' his filtered, distorted soloing recalls Loren Connors in its emotive depth and wandering melodic sensibility. The product of three years of experimentation and recording, and synthesizing the insights of more than thirty years of musical research, Spectral Evolution is the quintessential album of guitar music from Rafael Toral."
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CD
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M11 CD
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"Orton Socket is mainly comprised of main-man and mouthpiece Rob Mazurek, known for blowing horns (as well as eardrums and minds etcetera) on a variety of efforts by Stereolab, Isotope 217, his own Chicago Underground Duo, and some other folks you probably have heard of. Plus Rob's done a series of records under his own name. See, he's been a spotlight kid for years now. But for 99 Explosions, Rob has reemerged incognito, armed with synthesizer and powerbook, wearing the shimmering cloak of Orton Socket. The results, shall we interject, are outstanding. More in line with Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba and Aki Tsuyuko's Ongakushitsu than Bill Dixon and Albert Ayler, 99 Explosions reveals a poet in the making a tone poet, that is. Truly, the man is not limited by an embouchure. Fans of Mazurek and the soon to be named 'melancholy electronics' genre will equally be fulfilled by Rob's latest excursion into outer now-ness."
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M11 LP
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CD
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M13 CD
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"Triangles offers you more of the powerbook electronics sounds we're all digging on so much, and from speaking comparatively from the field as it stands today, Triangles sounds quite good, really amazing, in fact. Despite falling into the, dammit, start saying it -- 'melancholy electronics,' hole that you clearly need filled, Triangles stands on it's own. Need more? Try this -- Triangles occupies the space between powerbook extrapolations (quite reminiscent of the sole person in America who can do anything well at all on them silicon bastards, wink wink!), and middle 70's Italian melancholy electronics (yes, they did it first again, damn them!), like Alvin Curran or Franco Battiato. It hints at Robert Ashley's automatic writing and David Behrman?s On the Other Ocean. A little bit anyways. But no matter what you think Triangles sounds like, it's definitely a 'trip,' as the kids on acid say. Yeah, Triangles will definitely keep those types busy for awhile. Meanwhile, critics will find it shocking easy to find angles and write reviews for Triangles, so expect much punning geometry in our near pulp future. But what of you, the listener? You can throw this disc on (after examining the cover graphics by Triangles and Swedish artist/soundmonger extraordinaire Leif Elgrenn) and find some points of your own. Who knows? Maybe you'll say, Triangles -- A hodgepodge of bleeps, scrapes, white noise, motor-like sounds, schmaltzy organ drones, sluggish acoustic guitar strumming, a morose piano note or two, an apoplectic fit of crunching and crackling and a clipped voice occasionally muttering something. Triangles use guitars (both electric and acoustic), piano, organ, PZM scrape and scratch as well as analog synthesizer and other modern electronic music producing equipment. Cold at times, serene at others, spacey, maybe gloomy for a few moments -- you can throw harsh in there too. All that in just 38 minutes."
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M13 LP
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CD
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M09 CD
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"Space Ponch is strange even by Japanese standards. The World Shopping With Space Ponch is the sound of an odd electronic orchestra, a digital dance band, somehow not out of place if you imagine a 1970s ballroom and a stage full of keyboard players, all pecking away at their silicon instruments. Vocoded vocals are overused all over the world, but here, they go far beyond what you may have previously heard. Giorgio Moroder's got nothing on Space Ponch. This world have been perfect for Ken Russell. And cinematic comparison isn't that far off. There's a medley of music from Jacques Tati, as well as other good-times standards, a cartoon-cutup style of Perry and Kingsley, the pre-video game sound of Yello Magic Orchestra, the electronic equivalent to Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band. Yet somehow Space Ponch goes somewhere very strange that they haven't been before. It's a case of mistaken identity, because you can't quite identify them."
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M08 CD
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"Comedy is his third album, recorded over two years ago. It floated around in a provisional version, entitled Organ, for quite a while and caused a genuine bidding war between labels, at least five of them, which caused our Kevin to retreat in his special endearing way, and ultimately decide not to do anything at all with it. During this hibernation, Organ underwent some changes, being dissected and bisected and now including three electronically generated magnifications, bookended by the original monolithic organ recording. The album opens and closes with this would be title track, and it's awesome. 'Organ' is firmly in line with monster-minimalists Tony Conrad and Phil Niblock. The recording of this could honestly be heard over a block away from his apartment. The middle pieces are, like his album Second, extrapolations of microscopic detail and will be familiar terrain to fans of Bernhard Gunter and the Mego scene. But Drumm is so all-American, his sense of intuition over form is totally there, that classic intuition that got us all the patents."
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CD
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M07 CD
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"Rafael Toral's music is guitar based, but doesn't seem to involve any of the usual guitar histrionics. Instead he focuses in on the little details, the expansion of the sustained note. Sound Mind Sound Body is indeed a sustained note; the music is not dissimilar to Fripp and Eno's classic extrapolations, to Toral's mentor (and former NYC landlord) Phil Niblock, or to other like-minded drone masters. What is special is its (for lack of a better word) tenderness and hands-off gentleness. For this reissue, Toral has restored some pieces that were edited from the original and remastered the whole bloody thing for maximum drone effect."
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2CD
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M04 CD
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2023 restock. "The English free jazz improvisation scene of the late 60s and early 70s was an incestuous breeding ground. Robert Fripp was producing albums by Keith Tippet, Brian Eno was using Derek Bailey and Evan Parker on albums of odd Russian electronic music on Island, and labels like EMI and RCA were actually taking a stab at selling this music to a large market. Amidst all this was Ray Russell, a popular session guitarist, also playing in John Barry's group, also reputed to be the first guitarist in England to have a pedal setup, and also the man responsible for the guitar freak-out on the Dr. No soundtrack album. CBS and RCA started releasing records of his free jazz groups. They started innocently enough, but eventually Russell started to break free. At a time when hollow body guitars and a clean sound were the norm, he had his Fender guitar in one hand and a fuzz box in the other. For a period in the early 70s he made records of unknown hybridibastardization of the rock sound and free jazz energy. He was Caspar Brotzmann when Caspar's dad was still writing blueprints for the continental Europe free jazz sound. Then he moved on, as people do, and the records became impossible to get. His efforts dropped off the face of the free map. The sound is recognizably jazz -- rhythm section, horn, playing heads; group improvisation. But even after all these years it's still a shock when Russell comes up to bat. His lines are not so much melodic variation, or even Coltrane-like walls of sound. Instead it is what, 20 years later, was termed 'skree'; sharp, angular bursts, like a Pollock painting mounted with guitar pickups, the sound of explosions. Like contemporaries Sonny Sharrock and Terje Rypdal, Russell makes it sound as if the guitar is not enough, as if he's reaching for something wilder, something that can't be contained within the 6 string cage."
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