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News archives:
Issue 19
Interactive
installation interface
Press release
Canada Council for the Arts has founded the development of the
Art Interface Device (AID)
which will be publicly launched in Toronto, Canada on May 26th.
The AID is a two-way interface for creating electronic
interactive installation and performance works, a link between
the physical and digital worlds of computer art. The launch will
present the AID hardware and software components and demonstrate
their use in interactive applications incorporating sound,
vision and touch. DJ Lewis Kaye, audio hacker Rob Cruikshank and
coder Mel Wilson will collaborate to create interactive
soundscapes on the fly using the AID audio switcher. PD meister
Ben Bogart will be installing Step and Repeat, an interactive
video projection piece controlled by the AID ultrasonic sensor
and you. AID is a project of InterAccess, the electronic media
arts centre. [ Top
]
Yello remix
contest
By
Glenn Folkvord
Yello has launched a
remix contest in collaboration with start-ab, a project of
German music schools, supervised by the music schools of Bochum,
Essen and Oberhausen. The concept is to join forces with
professionals from the music industry to organize events and
competitions to advance the musical education of young musicians
and producers. In 2003, the third annual remix competition
attracted 2000 artists. In 2004, the project collaborates with
Yello, the Swiss electronica band. The remix contest launches on
June 11th and lasts only for three days, with winners announced
on July 17th. [ Top
]
New
experimental label
By Glenn
Folkvord
Ristretto is the name
of a new CDR record label dedicated to experimental music. It's
a sister label to Grain of Sound Records, and will focus on such
music as "cell cycle music, expanding-contracting minimalism,
helical crash music and extreme repetition with crackling pops".
The first release will be Japanese the artist/project Asamo's
Niju, to be issued in June, followed by Draftank's Oranje
Boek in August. [ Top
]
New [sic]
album
By Glenn
Folkvord
The latest album in
Piehead Record's 2004 limited edition series was released in
May. Montreal-based sound artist Jen Morris, recording under the
name [sic], released her new CD Gorilla Masking Tape,
which is composed of "fleeting sonic contrasts, dissonances, and
impositions" using the Japanese koto drum and field recordings
processed through various electronic devices. The [sic] roadshow
has travelled extensively in Europe, where she performed at the
2004 Transmediale. [ Top
]
Tangerine
Dream news
By Glenn
Folkvord
Tangerine Dream announced on
May 21st that the release of their second "vault recording" is
imminent. Simply called East, the CD includes a
remastered recording of the band's concert on February 20th
1990, in East Berlin at the Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle. This
concert marked the first stage appearance of Jerome Froese,
founding member Edgar Froese's son. It was also the first
concert of a West German band in East Berlin after the fall of
the Berlin wall in 1989. The music will mostly be from Lily
on the Beach, Optical Race and Le Parc, plus a
previously unreleased encore. Like the first CD of the vault
series, this album will not be sold in retail shops but only at
the TDI
website and selected mailorder services. The band also
announced that several more archived concerts will be released
in the future, at least two or three recordings each year if
time permits. [ Top
]
Kraftwerk news
By Glenn
Folkvord
Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk has
released information to the Italian press about future plans for
the band. He confirmed the release of their remastered
catalogue, and mentioned that their eight main albums will be
released on CD and vinyl in September, both separately and in a
box, and later in the Super Audio CD format (SACD). There will
be both German and English versions, but no unreleased tracks.
He also mentioned that there are early plans for a live album,
which possibly will have a a limited edition collector's version
with a picture book. A concert DVD was not mentioned, but many
shows during their 2004 tour has been filmed by a professional
crew. The first three Kraftwerk albums will also be re-released
later. Kraftwerk's 2004 tour will end in early June but they
will re-appear at selected
festivals across Europe later in the summer. [
Top
]
Clarke & Ware
at the opera
By Glenn
Folkvord
Vince Clarke, knobtwiddler of
Erasure, has joined forces with Martyn Ware under the name The
Illustrious Company to compose an 18 minute piece for the UK
Royal Ballet which incorporates a large section from
Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2. The piece is based
on the Diaghilev ballet Petrushka and is about the secret
life of puppets. It features 20 dancers from the Royal Ballet.
Erasure's Andy Bell will be singing a 2 minute acapella piece at
the end, accompanying the death of Petrushka. The Illustrious
Company is going to install a very high quality 3D immersive
surround sound system in the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera
House especially for the piece. Clarke and Ware's Illustrious
Company provides music for art installations and multimedia
projects and has released two albums.
Erasure
is also working on a new album, to be released in 2004. [ Top
]
Brian Eno
remastered albums
By Glenn
Folkvord
A number of Brian Eno albums
have been remastered and will be re-released this summer, with
even more to follow from Virgin Records. They will re-release
his albums in batches of four or five over the next two years.
In early June comes the first batch, with Here Come The Warm
Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Another
Green World and Before & After Science presented in
digipack format. Responsible for the remastering, or
"re-transferring from the original analogue masters" according
to Virgin, is Simon Heyworth, who previously worked on the
Eno 1 & 2 box sets. Promotional discs for the new releases
reveals that there have been added no extra tracks to the
remastered albums. [ Top
]
Tribute to
Michael Garrison
By Glenn
Folkvord
Following the passing of
Michael Garrison
in March,
Quantum Records in Holland is coordinating a tribute CD,
based on initiative by American fan Mike Valant. 20 artists have
agreed to donate original music to the album, including John
Serrie, Klaus Hoffmann Hoock, Akikaze, Rudy Adrian, Mario
Schönwalder, Erik Wollo, Gert Emmens, Dom F. Scab, Wave World,
David Wright, and Paul Nagle. Profits from the album will be
donated to charity. [ Top
]
Polish
festival music
By Glenn
Folkvord
The first edition of the
Alt+F4 festival titled Energy of Electronic Music took
place in the Center for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw, Poland in
2000. Its objective was to present the emerging Polish scene of
experimental electronic music. The event attracted hundreds of
people eager to discover new music. The second edition of the
festival took place in 2003 and has now been documented on a CD,
called Alt+F4, released in April. Among Polish artists
performing at the festival were Viön, Mem, Spear, Wolfram,
Robert Piotrowicz and Jacek Staniszewski, and also a few
Austrian artists; Laleloo, EFZEG and Fennesz & Pita. The CD
features eight tracks of music from these artists. For more
information, look at
salvia.pl
[ Top
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Charlie Adams
supports autism
By Glenn
Folkvord
Yanni's drummer for the
last 20 years, Charlie Adams, has joined forced with
Autism
Society of America (ASA) to increase autism awareness.
-By combining ASA's commitment to providing the best and most
comprehensive education, advocacy, research and community
resources with Charlie's passion for family, music and the
importance of supporting programs to improve the treatment of
autism, we have created a powerful relationship that leverages
our combined strengths to develop programs to help meet our
community's unique challenges, said ASA president Rob Beck
on April 15th. Charlie Adams is one of the world's most
sought-after drummers and have played on several multi-million
selling records, such as Yanni's Live at the Acropolis.
-My family's first hand experience with
autism enables my wife and me to provide the ASA community with
a parental perspective on the special needs of children with
autism. We are thrilled to work with ASA and look forward to
helping others as a result of this partnership,
said Charlie Adams, who recently played in Yanni's 2003 / 2004
Ethnicity tour. [ Top
]
Two new
Apoptygma Berzerk titles
By Glenn
Folkvord
Norway's perhaps leading synthpop band in
recent years, Apoptygma Berzerk, has announced two new releases;
the new single Unicorn from their latest album
Harmonizer, and the Making of Harmonizer DVD, both to
be released by WEA. A brand new album will also be released
later in 2004. The single and the DVD will be released as a
2-disc set, where the single will have 11 tracks, of which
several are remixes by Fairlight Children, TOY, Freezepop,
Hocico, Alon Cohen and No Comment, plus an Apoptygma Berzerk
version of The Cure's A Strange Day, a live track from
Tel Aviv, and a brand new song. The DVD includes almost two
hours of documentary footage, video clips and a "Ronan Harris
and The Cameras" feature. [ Top
]
New
experimental albums
By Glenn
Folkvord
A new batch of albums from
Infinite Sector has been announced. The experimental music label
is offering all the music as free MP3 downloads, but CDs can be
bought as well. Unfocus To Focus is one of the three new
titles, a compilation of ambient soundscapes and meditative
drones from 11 members of the Infinite Sector collective.
Another new title is Syrus Monet by Cory Thrall, offering
24 tracks that chronicles the artist's "troubled times". And
finally, Mike Verde's new 8 Bit Love album with actual
heart signals translated to audio by computers.
Infinite
Sector is a non-profit musical collective and record label
dedicated to sharing and promoting experimental music, noise,
and electronica. [ Top
]
Vidna Obmana
ends CD trilogy
By Glenn
Folkvord
Scheduled for release on
September 14th, 2004 by Relapse Records is the closing chapter
in Vidna Obmana's trilogy of CDs, Legacy. The trilogy is
based on works by the poet Dante, covering the conflict of
opposites, between good and evil, black and white. The album
marks Vidna Obmana's decision to "upgrade his own experience as
a musician" by offering a fusion of industrial music, ambient,
"fourth world music" and even post-rock elements, performed on
electric guitars, overtone flutes and electronic devices. The
album also features several guest musicians; Belgian blues
musicians Paul Van Den Berg and Tex on electric guitar and bass,
the voices of Martina Verhoeven and Steve Von Till, and Steven
Wilson on electric guitar. [ Top
]
Tangerine
Dream fans' compilation
By Glenn
Folkvord
A group of Tangerine Dream
fans gather each year in a location that has been mentioned in
the band's song titles. Last year the fans gathered in the
Mojave desert, a gathering that included performance of music,
now resulting in the double CD Ricochet Gathering Mojave 2003
with music from Spyra, Free System Project, AirSculpture, Star
Sounds Orchestra, Paul "Arcane" Lawler, Dave Brewer, Bill Fox
and Volker Koenig; a lineup that bodes plenty of Berlin School
electronic music, similar to the Okefenokee Dreams
compilation from last year. Available from
synthmusicdirect.com and other retailers. [ Top
]
Two new albums
from Biosphere in 2004
Label press release
Biosphere will release two
new albums on Beatservice Records in 2004 (on Touch outside
Scandinavia). The first album,
Autour de la Lune, is scheduled for release in June,
and contains music commisioned for French radio last year. The
second album, Karma Repair Kit (working title) is
scheduled for release in the autumn. While Autour de la Lune
is a deep and minimalistic album, Karma Repair Kit is
more in the "classical" Biosphere ambient / electronica style,
picking up the thread from Cirque and the highly
acclaimed Substrata. Jenssen explains about
Autour de la Lune: -Radio France Culture contacted me
some time ago and proposed a commission that was to be premiered
at a radio festival. I was granted access to Radio France's
archives and settled on this early 1960s dramatisation of Jules
Verne's De la Terre à la Lune that totally captivated me.
The story is quite amazing. Verne wrote it in the nineteenth
century; still he managed to describe a manned space flight in
such detail one is stunned. Verne describes a space mission that
sees the astronauts launched from Florida and returning from
space to land in the Pacific Ocean, exactly the same procedure
that the US space program would follow many years later.
Jenssen sampled bits and pieces of the dramatisation's dialogue,
coupled it with sounds recorded at the MIR space station and
then incorporated it with his own compositions. [ Top
]
New Skytracker
album
By Glenn Folkvord
This website's resident
ambient composer Skytracker
has decided to release his next album Transreformation in
July. The 11-track album falls somewhere between his earlier
ambient soundworlds and random sound projects. Used extensively
on the album is the Absynth software synthesizer. A key track is
Multi random genetic mutation disorder which is inspired
by recent cloning technologies. This song triggered the next
Skytracker album, which will be a tribute to great scientific
discoveries and inventions. Transreformation will be
available in our webshop as both a
CD and as a download. [ Top
]
Jarre to play
in Bulgaria
By Glenn Folkvord
Although not officially
confirmed by Jarre at the time of writing, preparations are
still going strong for a big outdoor concert by
Jean Michel Jarre in
the centre of Sofia, Bulgaria. The project started as a joint
venture between the governments of Romania and Bulgaria, but is
now a Bulgarian project, aimed to celebrate that several new
countries have joined NATO this year. The current date for the
multimedia concert is July 2nd, and the location is Bulgaria
Square in front of the National Palace for Culture, with the
Vitosha mountain as backdrop. Bulgarian media has reported that
Jarre's crew has scouted the location and held auditions for
local singers to participate in the concert, so the outlook is
good for Jarre's first concert since 2002.
[ Top
]
Electronic
music news in short
Compiled by Glenn Folkvord
-
Margen Records in Spain has released the new album of Dom
F. Scab, his 6th solo album. Twelve Stories features 12
tracks of Berlin School music.
- Groove Unlimited will release a new CD by Frank van
Bogaert, scheduled for October 2004.
- In Holland a new
training centre for Steinberg music software has been
launched. You can subscribe to training programs for Cubase
SX / SL and Nuendo.
- Hypnos recently released
Sanctuary of Dreams by
Numina,
featuring guest vocals of Tara Vanflower.
- Karl Bartos has produced the
new album of Sapporo72,
a Swedish electropop band with members from The Mobile Homes.
[ Top
]
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