Quecksilber was founded in 2003 by Markus Detmer (Staubgold). This CD-only label is dedicated to minimal and experimental music of all different kinds, presented in a corporate design created by Tina Frank of the MEGO label. The international roster dives deep into the sea of state-of-the-art avant garde music, from the delicate feedback drones of Oren Ambarchi and Martin Ng via the voice-sound collages of Boris D. Hegenbart and The Loop Orchestra's stunning loop adventures to AGF's vocal clicks and cuts and the contemplative ambience of Rafael Toral and the trio of Hildur Gudnadóttir, BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa.
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viewing 1 To 11 of 11 items
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QUECK 011CD
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This is Rafael Toral's 11th release, the first for the Quecksilber label, and another continuation of his "Space Program." After 15+ years of accomplished work on guitar and electronics, the Portuguese musician, producer and sound engineer announced that he was to embark on a long-term project, which was to be a multi-faceted work-in-progress representing his new approach to music. With the release of the first album of the program, the eponymous Space, he managed to disrupt the notions of avant-garde music, choosing to focus on "single sound events." The sounds are generated by self-devised electronic equipment set into action by the performance of gestures, by bodily action (take a look at the video samples of the "Space Study 1" on his web site, where he "plays" glove-controlled computer sinewaves). Thus, the music is created by individual decisions in real time -- just like in jazz, as Toral emphasizes. So basically, this is electronic music played with a jazz sensibility. Toral brings a performative aspect to electronic music that it often sorely lacks. The initial album Space is like a roadmap, accompanied by three distinct serieses: the performance series "Space Studies" (which started in 2004), and the record series "Space Elements" and "Solo Series." The latter are unaccompanied real-time solo recordings on one instrument only (as opposed to "Space Elements," where Toral collaborates with other musicians). The present CD is the first in that series and the second materialization of the program. Whereas Space featured an orchestral approach to composition (and thus a diversity of elements), Space Solo 1 presents the listener with music that is narrowed down almost to a point: everything is concentrated on a single element. The key feature of this music is that it was performed with a degree of skill, a commitment and a depth of exploration that could not be found on an orchestral record. On this album, Toral appears as a musician who simply plays an instrument on an individual, human and physical level. One cannot help but notice that Toral is opening up a new dimension in music -- and maybe also in language. Welcome to a new mode of expression.
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QUECK 010CD
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Lappetites is Eliane Radigue (France), Kaffe Matthews (U.K.), Antye Greie/AGF (Germany) and Ryoko Kuwajima (Japan). Before the Libretto is The Lappetites' first release. The Lappetites is a forum, a meeting place, a concept within which to make and exchange new music via digital and sonic linking games in remote and local places within a multispeaker playground. The Lappetites was spawned from an evening Kaffe Matthews curated at Tonic, New York, April 2001 where o-blaat, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Marina Rosenfeld and herself played a 45-minute set. Matthews saw such a performance as an opportunity to gather together women from different backgrounds and different generations to check out ways of live sharing and poaching sound and data from each other as a means of composition. With other commitments, distance, travel costs and schedules, it was soon realized, that The Lappetites would be a forum within which to explore these ways of playing, and that different members would come and go in rotation over time.
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QUECK 009CD
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"For everybody who is sick of everything else, Beta ERKO is a quartet comprising DSP wizard Robin Fox (Synaesthesia), turntable maestro Martin Ng (gcttcatt, Mego), MC Vulk Makedonski (Curse Ov Dialekt, Mush) & electronics/prepared piano enfant terrible Anthony Pateras (Synaesthesia, Tzadik). I'm OK, You're OK slices open the hip hop myth and guts it of any stylistic restraints, presenting a kaleidoscopic reconfiguration of familiar elements (beats, rhymes, samples, scratching) that are molded into fifteen tracks of insane vocal textures, head-splitting sonics, and multi-temporal rhythms. Fearless of delving anywhere within the electro-acoustic spectrum, Beta Erko use gargled scat singing, frenetic scratch-fests, impenetrable digital mashups, prepared piano, tri-lingual rhyming and walls of beat boxing to create an unbelievable stylistic anomaly which is somehow still compellingly fun to listen to. I'm OK, You're OK is a rare case where four profoundly perverse minds came together to do something different and it actually worked."
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QUECK 008CD
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"The new album by composer, performer and installation artist Michael J. Schumacher from New York City after the critically acclaimed Room Pieces, on the XI label, which was rated best of 2003 for 'modern composition' by The Wire magazine. Feat. guest musicians Tim Barnes, Charles Curtis, Donald Miller, Peter Zummo, George Bishop and many more. Stories refers to the idea of layering, the process of building a structure by stacking things on top of each other. This procedure is particularly evident in 'Room Pieces New York', in which as many as 23 parts play simultaneously. In general, Schumacher's interest is to develop a contemporary form of counterpoint, where each voice maintains its integrity while contributing to a total sound. Listeners are invited to create their own melodies by letting their ears follow the sounds moment by moment, allowing spontaneous pathways linking the various voices to emerge effortlessly."
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QUECK 007CD
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"Re-release of this long-deleted Kammerflimmer Kollektief classic feat. 15min+ of new studio recordings. An assemblage of intriguing electro/acoustic elements, Hysteria is the newest offering from Karlsruhe's Kammerflimmer Kollektief. Incorporating samples, analog synths, and a plethora of stringed instruments (including an acoustic jazz ensemble), Hysteria taunts the fine line of control between abstraction and realism, with a beauty that's stunning at times. Kammerflimmer Kollektief began as the one-man experimental excursions of Thomas Weber. Trapping ambient noise, live and synthetic drums, guitars, strings, upright bass and keyboards into interlocking rhythmic explosions, Weber expanded the group to a live six piece in 1999 and has been brilliant and busy ever since. From their Karlsruhe, Germany home base, this ensemble effortlessly blends experimental electronic elements and moody free-form jazz to stunning effect. File under: cosmic country."
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QUECK 006CD
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"How code made its way into my music. As a singer and producer, I rely primarily on content, and that can get to be a real encumbrance. After many years of creating music, I feel that I'm being confronted over and over again with the fact that listeners -- and especially when it comes to Germans dealing with the German language -- have problems getting to the music. Content always comes first -- the message, the brain. In cutting the tracks for my album Head Slash Bauch (head slash gut), I wanted to free myself from this coercive pressure to have to say something understandable. On my way to becoming an independent producer, I geeked my way through the process of self-education in matters of hardware, software, user's manuals and all the other stuff that goes with it. And that's how the computer/laptop came to exert an extremely positive -- except for the chronic back pain -- influence on my working and lifestyle options, my communication and production possibilities, and makes possible more and more flexibility, speed and personal control. So that's how I discovered the poetry and beauty of this technically practical programming language. Since then I've been experimenting with this tension between technical coolness and rhythm and melody in connection with reality, feeling, vision. For the opening of the Ars Electronica Klangpark 2003, I presented a live performance featuring some of this work and my recent album Westernization Completed and integrated into it a composition especially based on the dictionary entry for 'code'." -- AGF
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QUECK 005CD
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"The third album by the legendary Australian Loop Orchestra in their more than 20 years of existence. All compositions are rendered with tape loops on reel-to-reel tape machines only. The genesis of The Loop Orchestra occurred in the ashes of a simple two-tape-machine-no-man-band, The Nobodies, which died in a fire in 1980. From those ashes, and with a pastiche taken from the likes of Terse Tapes, home of seminal Australian Industrial outfit Severed Heads, an ashen poultice was formed to take up further and more involved household heretical experimentation, this time with reel-to-reel tape machines. This idea was subsequently expanded upon in the studio of Sydney radio station 2MBS-fm amid a group of experimental radio programmers. Two, John Blades and Richard Fielding, were using the studio equipment as an instrument, experimenting with tape machines through processes involving cutting, dissecting, rearranging and rejoining prerecorded tape, creating tape loops and playing them back. They felt a need to formalize their studio experimentation and so conceived the idea of creating a full blown machine orchestra. The intention of the Orchestra was for groups of instruments of an orthodox orchestra to be represented by reel-to-reel tape machines playing loops of the instruments' sounds. In 1983 an ensemble comprising 4 reel-to-reel machines playing slowly evolving tape-loop constructions, made its live debut playing a live-to-air performance in the studio of Sydney radio station 2MBS-fm in 1983, as The Loop Orchestra. In 1990 The Loop Orchestra released its first LP. Given the extraordinary length of time between the formation of the group and the debut release it was appropriately entitled Suspense. It was followed by a compact disc, The Analogue Years, in 1999. The current lineup consists of John Blades, Richard Fielding, Emmanuel Gasparinatos, Patrick Gibson and Hamish MacKenzie."
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QUECK 004CD
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"Paul Wirkus is a drummer from Poland who has been playing jazz and improvised music for quite some time. During the '80s he played in the well-known Polish punk band Karcer, by the end of the '90s he participated in a post-rock project by the name of Mapa (you might remember the article about them in the Wire magazine). All this information Paul Wirkus does not judge as important, and indeed, to approach the music on his new solo album, it really isn't. What is important is the fact that this CD -- the music on which could broadly be described as 'minimal electronica' -- is Paul's third release under his own name. This time, he didn't want to be too experimental and just rely on the powers of commination of the work itself. The music on this release was created live with several MiniDisc-players hooked up to effects instead of, as one might think, by editing processes done with computers. Thus the tracks have a warmer, more organic character than most other electro-acoustic music. Accidents, coincidences, minute shifts and 'aural snap shots' characterize this music. In contrast to earlier solo-outings, not only samples of strings and piano and white noise are to be heard, but also generated analogue sounds, fragmentary melodies and even vocals. One of the tracks on which he sings is called 'blask' which roughly translates to 'shimmer', a word that characterizes his music very well. Paul is primarily concerned with the sound of the voice itself, his lyrics are more or less 'open'. Searching and finding. Sometimes, he says, it takes some time to realize that you've already got what you want."
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QUECK 003CD
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"The second solo CD of [#/TAU], is a narration about encounters. Recorded in cafes, back rooms, in attics and in streets. 13 miniatures, music in little boxes. Places to keep minute objects in, crumpled up sketches, handsome things, space junk and the like. 13 Encounters, 12 dialogues. Everyday poetry, driven, harried and carried by electronic impulses and shimmering planes, anchored in grounding bass sounds, electrified by a whirring current. Nothing much is happening -- the air is tight. [#/TAU], founded in 1996 by Berlin-based computer-sound-artist Boris D Hegenbart, is a project, which from its very beginnings strove to combine electronics with human sounds. Initially hailing from dub music, Hegenbart is now better known for his filigree sound-poetry. The sound material used is comprised of cut-ups, field-recordings, purely synthetically generated waves, 9 kHz atmosphere..."
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QUECK 002CD
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"8 Guitars is a totally absorbing and trance-inducing work of psychedelic beauty. Here eight guitarists are patched to a computer; recorded and manipulated live with no overdubs. Each player observes strict, unchanging rhythmic patterns over the course of the recording. However, the dense, shifting rhythms in 8 Guitars are derived not from the physical attack of the performers, but through the complex interaction of the overtones and harmonic characteristics of the instruments themselves. This makes for one of the most unique and compelling works for electric guitars in recent memory.
8 Guitars is a finely balanced exploration of restraint and delicacy and is at the same time a full-blown raucous electro-catharsis. The sort of work that will satisfy not only the chin-stroking lovers of abstract electronica but also power-chord enthusiasts. 8 Guitars is the first release by 24-years old Scott Horscroft from Sydney/Australia."
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QUECK 001CD
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"Vigil is the second duo album by Australian composers Oren Ambarchi and Martin NG from Sydney after 2001's Reconnaissance on the Staubgold label. It's a dreamlike sonic excursion based upon the fluid architectural modulation of harmonics and resonances. Recalling the landmark experiments of the sonic arts union (Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma), Ambarchi and NG create an enigmatic tapestry of pulsing, shimmering and shifting sound which represents a subtle and compelling realignment of eastern and western minimalist traditions. Austrian designer Tina Frank of Mego has added two short films in mpeg format to this release which in its slow and subtle moves match perfectly with the fragile beauty of Ambarchi's and NG's music. Ambarchi has become a solo performer whose stirring sonic experiments with the guitar have seen him recently record for acclaimed exploratory music labels Touch, Staubgold and Tzadik, and perform and collaborate with artists such as Fennesz and Otomo Yoshihide, and revered minimalist composer Phill Niblock. Martin NG whose main instrument is the turntable is another outstanding character in Sydney's rich experimental music circuit. He released an album for the Mego label with Farmer's Manual's Hiaz Gmachl, recorded for Grob with Jim Denley and was part of 2002's 'Turntable Hell' tour with among others Otomo Yoshihide and Martin Tetrault."
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