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viewing 1 To 12 of 12 items
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3CD
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SOFA 547CD
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Tempo is a three-CD set recorded live during a four-hour performance by Mural at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, in 2013. Following the group's 2011 album Live at the Rothko Chapel, this release shows the group expanding into a much longer form. Mural consists of Australian windplayer Jim Denley and Norwegians Kim Myhr (guitar) and Ingar Zach (percussion). They first performed in 2007 in Madrid, and have performed live around the world since. The trio has released two critically acclaimed albums. After two successful concerts at the Rothko Chapel and a CD on the Chapel's own Rothko Chapel Productions, the trio visited the Chapel for the third time in April 2013. Wishing to challenge traditional concert formats, they decided to play a four-hour long performance in the Chapel. The result was so satisfying to them that they decided to release the music as a three-CD set. This is an expansive and patient form of music, far beyond any traditional entertainment formats. In an abyss of time, Mural's music is not only elevated to another level; one could say that in these long durations, it finally comes into its own. Rothko's paintings in the Rothko Chapel can be seen on the front cover of the release. Jim Denley: wind instruments; Kim Myhr: 12-string guitar, zither; Ingar Zach: gran cassa, percussion.
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4CD
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SOFA 548CD
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Enough Still Not to Know is a four-CD set with music by John Tilbury and Keith Rowe, produced by visual artist Kjell Bjørgeengen for a video installation. The music is improvised, but it is quite evident that the two artists have developed a strong understanding throughout their five-decade-long collaboration. Keith Rowe and John Tilbury are especially known from their work in the Scratch Orchestra and AMM with Cornelius Cardew. Tilbury is also known as one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's piano music. In recent years, both musicians have been working with texts by Samuel Beckett; Tilbury has made music and text-based performances of a number of Beckett's latest works (including Worstward Ho (1983), Stirrings Still (1989), and What Is the Word (1989)), while Rowe's work draws inspiration from Beckett, where his music is totally stripped down so that only the core remains. This influence, as well as Bjørgeengen's instruction to make a kind of music that musically and conceptually works with dissolution and unification, combined with long sections of silence, has produced surprising results. This unique musical manifesto from these two legendary figures in experimental music includes a booklet with liner notes written by Tilbury, Rowe, and Bjørgeengen. Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics; John Tilbury: piano.
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LP
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SOFA 546LP
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The Pitch is a Berlin-based quartet that explores the area between abstract melody and acoustic drone. Since 2009 they have been developing a musical language and a body of work ranging from quartet music to extended, large-scale ensemble pieces involving guest musicians and further conceptual elements. Improvisation is an important element in their music and it is used as a generative device within specific shapes, structures, and ideas for different pieces of music. Their piece Frozen Orchestra focuses on slowly changing textures, pitch-set constellations, and the subtle blending of instruments. Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam) was recorded live at the Sonic Acts Festival and features six additional musicians in addition to the four core members. Boris Baltschun: electric pump organ; Koen Nutters: bass; Morten J. Olsen: vibraphone; Michael Thieke: clarinet. Featuring Lucio Capece: bass clarinet; Johnny Chang: violin; Robin Hayward: tuba; Chris Heenan: contrabass clarinet; Okkyung Lee: cello; Valerio Tricoli: Revox.
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CD
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SOFA 545CD
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Ingar Zach and Miguel Angel Tolosa's debut album Loner is a result a mutual admiration developed over many years of working together. The duo has been collecting material since 2005, and with a common fascination with electronics, field recordings, and acoustic percussion, they decided to start working toward an album with the material they had at hand. The result is an original electroacoustic album in which the symbiosis of many sound sources is heard as one complex organism. Ingar Zach (b. 1971) is one of the leading percussionists and improvisers in Norway. He is known for dynamic and energetic playing and the wide range of his sounds. Now living in Madrid, he concentrates on his solo work and his regular ensembles. He has been dedicated to experimental music and folk music since 2010 and is now touring and recording with his regular ensembles in Europe, Canada, the US, South America, and Asia. He founded Sofa with guitarist Ivar Grydeland in May 2000 and Sofa sub-label Sillón in 2005. Miguel Angel Tolosa (b. 1969) is a composer based in Madrid and Bonn. He studied musical composition with Antoine Beuger in Haan, Germany, and electroacoustic music with Jean-Claude Risset and Eduardo Polonio in Madrid. He has also studied sound engineering and worked as an engineer and producer for many artists and labels. His electroacoustic works have been released on labels around the world, including Winds Measure Recordings (US), Non Visual Objects (Austria), Twenty Hertz (UK), Drone Records (Germany), and Mystery Sea (Belgium). His scores have been premiered by internationally acclaimed performers like Alessandra Rombolá (flute), John McAlpine (piano), Markus Kaiser (cello), Burkhard Schlothauer (violin), Leo Svirsky (piano), and Trio Arbós. He has also shared events with the Germany-based international collective of composers Wandelweiser. Ingar Zach: percussion, electronics, field recordings; Miguel Angel Tolosa: electronics, field recordings, electric guitar.
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LP
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SOFA 544LP
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Consisting of three fully microtonal tubas, Microtub explores group tuba music from the perspective of microtonality. Color-coded sculptural scores are used to define areas of harmonic space in just intonation, presenting geometric structures to be explored by the players over time. The 3-dimensional graphic scores used on the album Star System are subsets of the Hayward Tuning Vine, which arose out of a desire to visualize the harmonic space implicit within the microtonal tuba. Each of the balls represent pitches, and the struts between them musical intervals. In "Star System" (side A), the musicians orbit once around the star-like structure, revealing the harmonic space implicit within it. In "Square Dance" (side B), the various squares and rectangles within the score are gradually explored by the musicians, analogous to a slow dance through harmonic space. Star System was recorded at Sjobygda Art House in Selbu, Norway in April 2013. Mixed by Espen Reinertsen and mastered by Helge Sten. Microtub: Robin Hayward (microtonal F-tuba); Kristoffer Lo (microtonal C-tuba); Martin Taxt (microtonal C-tuba).
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LP
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SOFA 543LP
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Tomba Emmanuelle is Michael F. Duch's second solo album for the double bass. It was recorded in May 2013 at the Emmanuel Vigeland Mausoleum in Oslo. The piece was commissioned by Ny Musikk Bergen in 2012. Whereas Duch's solo debut Edges (3DB 010CD) focuses on the music of Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff and others, Tomba Emmanuelle explores different registers, timbres and acoustic effects of the instrument in relation to the room it is being performed in. The Vigeland Mausoleum is probably one of Northern Europe's most unique concert venues, and highlights the acoustic phenomena that the piece is based on. Michael Francis Duch (b. 1978) is one of the foremost double bass-players on the Norwegian contemporary music scene. Since 2012 he has been associate professor at the Institute of Music, NTNU, Trondheim. He has established himself as a solid interpreter of Cornelius Cardew's music, documented through releases with the trio Tilbury/Davies/Duch. The album Cornelius Cardew: Works 1960-70 was included on The Wire's list of best releases in 2010.
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LP
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SOFA 541LP
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The sound of Bergljot is in constant flux. Bergljot began as an acoustic jazz trio in 2008, quickly moving through free-jazz to acoustic improvised music and is now in the middle of a heavy electric period with synthesizers, electronics and electric bass. What hasn't changed is a strict and minimalistic approach of slow development with special focus on richness of sound and energetic, clear execution. Bergljot has performed widely in Europe, at festivals such as Jazz Fest Brno, Natt Jazz Bergen, Koktebel Jazz Festival and Jazzinec Trutnov, as well as venues in France, Sweden, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Norway and Czech Republic. Vojtech Prochazka (piano, synths and electronics), Adrian Myhr (double bass), Tore Sandbakken (drums and percussion).
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LP+CD
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SOFA 542LP
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Sofa is very proud to release Kim Myhr's first solo record. It has taken two years and many performances around the world for Myhr to find and develop the material for All Your Limbs Singing, which can be described as an orchestral exploration of the 12-string guitar. The music can remind the listener of the early music of Ligeti or Morton Feldman, but it also contains an energy and simplicity similar to American folk music. The warmth and the intimacy of a stripped, naked acoustic guitar is audible in the symphonic largeness. At the same time ethereal and corporeal, the music dances its way through the immense spaces that it creates. Kim Myhr has been a strong force on the experimental music scene in Norway the last few years, both as a composer and as a guitarist. All Your Limbs Singing is his long-awaited first solo release. Includes a CD version of the album.
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CD
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SOFA 540CD
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Sheriffs Of Nothingness are Kari Rønnekleiv (violin) and Ole-Henrik Moe (viola). In 2011, Rønnekleiv/Moe released the album A Summer's Night At the Crooked Forest on SOFA. Wire magazine wrote that the album is a technical tour de force -- and a musical one, too, each track structured with composerly precision. On this sequel, we meet an extraordinary duo with an almost telepathic interplay. Recorded in the middle of the forest in a cabin with no electricity (the recording equipment was run on solar energy(!!). With titles such as "You Are Walking On a Sleeping Summer," "Peismusikk" (Norwegian for "fire place music") and "Blizzard," one can maybe imagine under what circumstances this session took place.
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2LP
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SOFA 539LP
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Streifenjunko's Sval Torv continues a thread that has run through the best music of the last 50 years -- but this time, as envisioned through the sensuality of the trumpet-sax environment. The breathtaking precision Espen and Eivind bring to their microscopic scan of shifting breath/harmonies creates an engaging surface. But underlying the oscillating, clouding tones, pulsing vibratos and calibrated poppings, there are appropriate systems and structures -- this is carefully-crafted music on many levels, and as the discs unfold, one perceives that a theme is examined from different perspectives. Streifenjunko reveal themselves in a most intimate and touching way -- we hear exceptional respect between two men and we hear rich time spent developing together. Their only notation is recording. They don't talk much about the structures and systems and insist that playing and listening back is their compositional tool. Created is a sax-trumpet traversing materiality -- a trumpet-sax never split, one part never isolated from the other -- no counter to their points -- a symbiotic relationship, more than the sum of the bodies. (And unlike much 21st century music, flesh is not denied -- there are no cyborgs here.) We experience the intertwining as a new body -- a new body, and consequently a new mind. Much of the morphology of the music is then generated by shared consciousness. Their sounds are not tacked onto a predetermined framework -- form emerges from process. Perhaps Sval Torv is a throwback -- an anachronistic luddite antidote to the rampant I-ism of our age. Or, more positively, it's a harbinger of future endeavors -- that Streifenjunko's utopia is the latest mutation in the remarkable evolution of collectively authored music, a model which is cogent for making the new dialects of today's and tomorrow's musics, (and not just musics). Mastered by Helge "Deathprod" Sten. Liner notes written by Jim Denley. Pressed on deluxe 140 gram vinyl in a gatefold sleeve.
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CD
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SOFA 537CD
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Sofa has, during its 11 years of existence, presented many artists who have pushed the boundaries of voice: Sidsel Endresen, Phil Minton, Maja Ratkje and Anita Kaasbøll, among others. With Nude On Sand, it is perhaps the lyrics that lead the music in unexpected directions. The project started off in a series of commissioned works, and slowly developed into this fascinating duo. Free-folk perhaps? Taku Sugimoto, Shirley Collins, Lou Reed and Diamanda Galas meet up to share blood, and the blood hits the ground to become a little weed called Nude On Sand. Musically, their debut album is stripped, but not minimalist. There are few formal restrictions, allowing the music to shift with a SNAP from naive blues, spoken word and completely fragmented pop songs. The lyrics follow these abrupt shifts with endearing absurdity, representing the blogosphere as much as poetry. The result is essentially vulnerable, exposing a youthful, Beckett-like nakedness. Members include Jenny Hval (guitar and voice) and Håvard Volden (guitar).
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CD
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SOFA 510CD
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Håkon Kornstad (reeds); David Stackenäs (guitar); Ingar Zach (drums/percussion); Barry Guy (bass); Jim O'Rourke (remix). "This CD presents three different tappings of TRI-DIM. TRI-DIM was one of the first young improv groups to rise to the surface on the vital, ever growing music scene in Oslo. This is TRI-DIM's second album and it should in more than one way document the work they have been doing over the last two years. The first track is a live recording from Blå from April 2002. Second, a remix by Jim O'Rourke, using some of TRI-DIMs unreleased material."
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