great new CDs: front + rumors of war

[david turgeon <dt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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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