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great new CDs: front + rumors of war
hello all,
just a short note to mention two new CD releases which will doubtlessly
appeal to the discriminating microsound/electroacoustic afficionado.
_front_, the new CD by max haiven & jon vaughn (2 young composers from
canada) has just come out on no type label. a mature, ambitious work (73
minutes!) & highly recommended listening for anyone wondering just where
new abstract music composition is going...
http://www.electrocd.com/cat.e/imnt_0312.html
also just out from our fine label is metaXu, the italian duo of maurizio
martusciello & filippo paolini, with their second album (following their
eponymous debut on plate lunch) called _rumors of war_. a powerful
micro-orchestral/psycho-ambient dark gem of a CD that will leave you lying
helplessly on the thin line between hope & desperation.
http://www.electrocd.com/cat.e/imnt_089.html
i consider it a privilege to be releasing the above recordings & i hope you
will enjoy them.
also, please note that our notype.com website is temporarily down. it
should return very soon. we'll keep you posted. our electrocd.com site,
however, is working fine as usual.
have a nice day
~ david
===
Max Haiven, Jon Vaughn
Front
No Type (IMNT 0312)
A 73-minute work separated in 33 tracks of arbitrary length, Front is not
to be easily explained. At the frontier of conceptual art & listening
music, obnoxious candy pop & extreme experimentalism, Front introduces a
compositional approach which, according to the composers, may be dubbed
"domestic." The work unfolds as a string of events, whereby conceptual
relationships between sounds & ideas paradoxically gives birth to musical
content. The composers have integrated in thie work their own feelings &
experiences towards the ambient cultural narrative & pop music in particular.
Unlike many similarly ambitious works which assume a linear, almost
meditative attention from the listener, Front prefers to toy with the idea
that the listener's attention is a kind of data to be played with, much
like tone or rhythm. Finally, Front seeks to explore the dangers of musical
identity, & the concept of structure as a victim of interrogation. Without
attempting to criticise one particular aesthetic or another, the work is
nonetheless highly suspicious (almost antagonistic) towards the attitudes
leading to the choice of one aesthetic over another.
To shrug off Front as too "intellectual" will unfortunately miss the point
of the real listening pleasure to be found throughout. Thanks to its highly
peculiar form & its total integration of the CD medium, I wouldn't hesitate
to qualify Front as a completely unique gem in the world of electroacoustic
& electronic musics.
http://www.electrocd.com/cat.e/imnt_0312.html
===
MetaXu
Rumors of... War
No Type (IMNT 089)
When the thin line between war & peace gets as blurry as it is nowadays, a
good old unfashionable labour of memory might just be in order. For Rumors
of War, Italian duo MetaXu concerned itself with pivotal moments of recent
World History (particularly Occidental), times when History itself seemed
to end at once, giving way to an orgy of chaos, violence, blood, rape &
death (not to forget shock & awe...) But let's not be fooled: History is
going on still & watching silently, whether we are aware of it or not.
How to describe Rumors of War? I like to think of it as a romantic poem on
a particularly dangerous subject. For one, it might not make you feel good
about your own convictions. Surely it is bound with compassion for the true
victims of war. But listening to it, you could think MetaXu are flirting
with their subject, giving it some reverence, looking for the beauty in the
carnage. It's a matter of fact that the duo has not clearly specified their
own stance on the matter, though I would suspect them to be, ultimately,
pacifists. Well, who in their sane mind isn't?
Art as a battleground? Maybe we're getting to it. A place where blood is
drawn with ink, where violence is but a musical simulation of itself? After
all, Wagner is not the inventor of fascism. And neither is Goya responsible
for the horrors of war he so elegantly illustrated. Perhaps the problem is
in the listener...
Includes a bonus Quicktime video (8 min) by Mattia Casalegno.
http://www.electrocd.com/cat.e/imnt_089.html
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