commerical announcement

[Frans de Waard <frans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for the commercial content of this message. Microwave Recordings is a
CD-R only label. This e-mail is about the latest release, and since it is
the first post to the mailing list, we included some general outline and
past releases.

1. NEW RELEASE:

M 011 Massimo (untitled CDR)

Massimiliano Sapienza a.k.a. massimo (1975), lives in Catania where he
studies Political and Social Sciences, is currently working on - to use an
original technical term - <new forms of entertainment and games>:
generative and 'randomised' processes;
ambients for interactive manipulation and creativity;
interpretations and captive actions in real time;
according to the author these particular recent disciplines, to which he is
attracted to their mythical and creative potential,will gradually but ever
more frequently, come to replace the classic social games.

His first release on Microwave Recordings was done using two desktop
computers a mobile one, all connected via LAN, and tons of cracked
softwares + some media storage discs ! (no external musical instruments
were used).

2. GENERAL INFORMATION

Microwave is a new term for electronic music, recentely coined by Frans de
Waard, entrepeneur and jorunalist. In a review of a CD by German artist
Komet he wrote:

"maybe I should write again minimal techno. But it's not minimal techno -
goddammit. Everytime I write about music that borrows elements of
house/techno, but also from minimal music, ambient and industrial music (in
general: when we write about Oval, Pan Sonic, Noto, Ikeda, Goem,
Stillupsteypa, Richard Chartier, Mego, many releases on Touch), we notice
that our vocabulary runs short. It's a lot of things, but it has no name. I
have thought about this for some time now, and I think 'microwave' apply
describes what it's about. Micro in the sense that all the changes appear
on a microscopic level, small but evidently present, and wave, because
there is a current wave of serious musicians that take influences from all
these waves of music that have experienced (note that many of them are
around for a long time) and take whatever they fit well. "Technology will
be so small that it will disappear", John Cage once said. That might not be
entirely true, however it has shrunk over the years. To produce a good
quality music that can easily compete with the work made in 'real' studios.
Technology is micro too now." (Vital Weekly 162)

Taking this a step further, Frans de Waard now starts with releasing a
series of CDRs under the name Microwave Recordings.
Why CDRs you may ask? Just like cassettes 10 years ago, CDRs are easily
accesible to fulfill a demand per copy, but with a better quality.
Paradoxically enough they won't last as long as any conventional medium
until now, so it is a snapshot of a movement. Microwave is one such
movement, it's now here and probably won't last very long in the music
industry were hypes last shorter and shorter. Well fine, it's that we don't
care anyway.

It's the intention of Microwave Recordings to present a number of albums by
people that will loosely fit to the ideas of Microwave (we're too old
anyway to trap into any sort of dogma or believe in eternity). Maybe it
will last for a few months only. Instead of 15 minutes of fame, we have 15
minutes of fun (maybe even more).

3. RELEASES SO FAR ON MICROWAVE

M001 *SLO-FI

Unholy the task is of he who writes one-sheets, especially when the release
comes from *slo-fi. That word, including the *, is everything you will find
on the cover of his/her/their release, because of course it's one of those
'no we will not reveal who he/she/they might be, because we don't want you
to know, because it's not important'. Well or whatever was told. You'll
have to do with what you get. And if you thought you had any doubt: *slo-fi
is exactely what is says to be: extremely slow kind of techno music, with
bpm's at 60 or so, this bears resemblance to dance music (bass drums 4 to
4, hi-hats, 303 synth), but by keeping the speed slow, it's serve's well on
home speakers too.

M002 GOEM - LOKATIE

Goem deliver their usual free of everything music, reduced to the bare
bones of... music itself. Together as a trio since 1997 (before that Goem
was a duo since september 1996), they have recording sessions every now and
then. These happen either in studio's or on stage. So far they played some
15 concerts throughout Europe, at rockclubs, galleries (museum of modern
art in Stockholm) and technoparties. Oddly enough least understand at the
last sort of venues, being disconnected in Rennes (France) or a woman
screaming "Change! Change! Fuck you" (Berlin)

This release documents two of these concerts, one in Privat Klub in Berlin
and a small part of a concert at the Artooz festival in Limoges, France.
Even though every concert is recorded and reviewed afterwards, most
recordings are not as strong as they are in the venue itself. These two
concerts didn't sound too good at the location, but altogether make a lot
of sense of home listening.

M003 SURGE - LANDSLIDE

Surge sums almost everything up what Microwave is all about. Two boys in
their self choosen anonimty, toying around in their own analogue world.
Rather then buyig the latest G3 Powerbook (yes, they couldn't afford it),
they have some old Korg Ms20 synth, 4 track and footpedals. Nice and
affordable. Their first release, apptly named 'First' (a CDR on Bake
Records), was that joyfull mixture of everything good, new and daring
electronic music of today is: a dash of Oval, a bit of Pan Sonic, Goem,
Ikeda and packed with everything they could sample.

While watching the landslides in Europe this winter, on TV, they had their
title of their second release and went out to record it. Rather then
packing it again with samples, they still make them, but remove them in the
mix. The skeleton disappears and the skin remains. The result is an odd
mixture of hisses, beats, and out of sync tunes. Noisy at times, quiet at
times. Harsh but with that deep bass - again at times. And not a single
correct beat in sight (well apart maybe from the Aphex Twin inspired
opening track).

M004 RICHARD CHARTIER - POST FABRICATED

Chartier is a painter and electronic musician with the love of a deep
microscopic view of textures - either on canvas or with sound. Previously
he released a more 'serious academic' CD with Intransitive, but his music
has been more vivid - will small beats and deep sounds.

Current releases include a CD for release on Japanse Meme label, and a
collaboration with 0* for 12K (Taylor Deupree's label)

M005: TOOL (forthcoming release)

This will be a 7" based on the first 4 releases. With lots of lockgrooves
and short pieces. A tool of the open minded, DJ's and musicians a like.
With one track by *Slo-Fi, eight by Goem, three by Surge and seven by
Richard Chartier. The master that the cutter will be using, will also be
released as a CDR. Each track is a static entity for some minutes and
should not be seen as a music release, but as a tool.

M006: NACHT PLANK - 1-12

Behind the new monikker Nacht Plank we find Lee Anthony Norris. So far he
produced more regular forms on dance music under various names, but is
mostly known under the name Metamatics and has releases on Clear Records,
Skam, and Hydrogen Dukebox.
Lee remixed Friend & Dr. Kosmos, Roupe, A1 People, CSM and Anthony Manning
Together with Ichiro Taniguchi and Kenji Taniguchi he produces music under
the name Tone Language, whose first release will be on Staalplaat.

M007 DISCMEN - PART HUMAN PART SIMPSON

That Which Is Not Cyber

Man created machines. Their codes are our codes: insert, pause, end, home,
control, auto-reverse, search, balance, contrast, brightness, play, and so
forth. Our spontaneous compositions, as much improvised as a cd-player is
able to improvise, are sketches of our personal lives. We call them songs.

These are broken songs.

These songs transport our codes.

Some Pocketable Philosophy

This is a world of perfecting technology. Better machines, better sound
production, risks are fewer and fewer. As others did before us, we embarked
on a crusade against clean methods of production, by subverting the
technological perfection of sound as reproduced by cd-players. A
compact-disc is supposed to be durable, to provide endless hours of
comfortable listening. It is a passive object par excellence. It is there
to serve us. But as a result of our experiments we have concluded that the
same passive object can be changed into a dynamic one, much in the same way
that a Lego set can be used to create a multitude of different
constructions. A CD-player is also a passive vehicle built to be stable and
protect the territory of high-fidelity. Now you feed it a strategically
scratched CD and it then becomes an active instrument with a voice of its
own instead of a mere vehicle for the reproduction of music.

The Music of Chance

The CD-player assumes the main role, that of a random organizer or
chief-engineer. It is the CD-player who (and we feel this "who" is
pertinent) selects and maintains a given sound pattern. We just make it
stop or else try to force the CD-player into reading another sound pattern
by touching its body in order to provoke a loss of stability - we are
touch-sensitive.

Discmen are not musicians nor technicians. We are listeners. The machine
speaks for itself. We merely interpret the sound of machine error and
record it. One take, no treatments. Only editing is allowed.

Some CV

live reproduction:

November 1996 at ZDB (Lisbon, Portugal) with Croniamantal;
November 1998 at ZDB (Lisbon, Portugal) with Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzp!;
December 1998 at Paradise Garage (Lisbon, Portugal) with Mouse On Mars,
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzp! and Supernova;
December 1998 at Labirintho (Porto, Portugal) with Joao Paulo Feliciano.

digital past:
mini-cd «Stucker» (Ananana 1999)


M008 ANDREAS BERTHLING - 1000-1001 KHZ

"Andreas Berthling is my name I´m from Sweden but at the moment I live in
Trondheim/Norway studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in the second year of
study! The Academy gives me (almost) unlimited amount of time and space for
trying out ideas I got concerning the relationship between sound and
vision,  taking it´s form in music/sounds and film/video´s. Together with a
colleague  of mine R. Sundin a.k.a. Bad Kharma a eight day long performance
took place in a cargo container in Trondheim/1999. (read about it at
berthling.cjb.net  go to live_conflicts and read about it there!...
short description of how 1000/1001Hz was made:
the most recording is made with a MD (contact miked and all that) but then
"processed" through a VCR. The process is mainly just rewind and forwinding
the tape multiple times (up to 100 times) back and forth until  the sound
disintegrates and blends into a blurry "picture" on the magnetic  VHS-tape.
Then it´s digitized into a computer, using a basic  ANALOG<->DIGITAL
video-editor-software. At that point I have the raw  material for putting
together a complete tune (which may consist of only one  up to sixteen
different samples). The title comes from the  idea of the  doppler-effect
occurring when one sound is pitched in two different  frequencies from two
different sources (L & R in this case). That creates a  feeling of space
while hearing the tune while moving about in a room where  it´s played
(well hopefully)."

M009 IMMEDIA - REPEAT PLAY

A duo from England with an unusual soft mix of electronics. They are hard
to compare with anything we've heard before. It's a bit like Francisco
Lopez - but different. High pitches scratches and beeps are intelligentely
mixed in a brand of relatively short pieces. They have done their own CD-R
releases before, but were asked to do this for us. They limited themselves
to analogue synths only, but with a fine treat of electronics.

M010 MICROWAVE - A MANUAL

A compilation of sorts, in the works of sorts. Is this an open invitation?
Well, yes, maybe. Only for open minded... write for more info.

for more info: <microwave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Microwave releases are unfortunally not available from any good store.
In Europe contact: <mailorder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
In the USA contact: <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>