Music news and information

Kitaro and Jon Anderson to perform at Harmony Festival
By Lorraine Kay
The 27th annual Harmony Festival being held June 11 and June 12 at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, CA, USA is featuring two electronic music favorites, Kitaro and Jon Anderson of Yes as two of its headliners for the weekend. Kitaro and Jon Anderson will be on hand both Saturday and Sunday.

The two will be performing separately but some still remember that they teamed up in 1992, for the Kitaro’s Dream album. Anderson contributed to Kitaro's Dream album, providing lyrics and vocals for a number of tracks. They then teamed up for a short tour of the U.S., Japan and Thailand, where they performed for the Thai queen. Kitaro is recognized as one of the most acclaimed recording artists in the Orient and America. Anderson is probably best known to the public at large as front man for the progressive-rock entity Yes and longtime Vangelis collaborator. Check the website, harmonyfestival.com for the complete schedule of events and ticket information.

Blue Water Records news
By Glenn Folkvord / press release
Darrell  Burgan of Blue Water Records has announced a batch of new albums recently on his label; Broadcasts, a collection of live performances by Palancar, recorded during radio broadcasts during 2004 and early 2005. Various forms of ambient music with electronic beats, available in 50 copies only. In the electronic ambient vein is also Not Your Average Hippy with their recent Stones, aimed for ambient fans who like "a little aggressiveness" in their soundscapes. Millions is the label debut of Colin Mansfield, who provides a blend of world fusion, chillout groove, lounge chic, and ambient soundscapes. Then there's CJ Wray's (pictured) recent release entitled Dreamers Two with a blend of Jarresque melodic electronica and all-synthetic sound design. Blue Water Records currently houses seven electronic-ambient artists and 10 albums.
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Electro-Music festival
Press release
A three-day festival and conference on electronic music will be held on June 3 - 5 in Philadelphia, USA. The program will include lectures, demos, jam sessions, and concerts. The scope of this festival is broad, covering all aspects of electro-music; experimental electronic music, including circuit bending, computer music, electro-jazz, modular synthesis, musique concrete, improvisation, noodles (generative music, automatic and algorithmic composition), multi-media, visual art and more.

Electro-Music is an international community of composers and musicians who seek to enable its members to develop music on their own terms. Electro-Music is not defined by a particular style or sound, but by its primary motivation being "the joy of creation, and the love of electronic sounds".
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Artemiy Artemiev news
By Bruce Atchison
Artemiy Artemiev reports that he has several electro-acoustic CDs in the works which he hopes to release in May or June. He's also recording and producing his father Edward's opera Raskolnikov, based on F. Dostoyevsky's novel. Recording began on the 24th of October 2004 and will last till the end of April or May of this year. Then the Artemievs will have two months rest, after which they'll be going to London for August and September to mix Raskolnikov at Abbey Road studio. This double CD release is scheduled for November. Andron Konchalovsky is planning to start rehearsals in September for the opera. It will be staged somewhere between March and May 2006.
 
A book featuring Edward Artemiev (pictured), in English and Russian, is also in the works and will be released at the same time as Raskolnikov. It will contain photos, interviews, and music scores.

Along with composing, writing film scores, being elected as the Russian Government's cultural advisor, and working on two collaboration projects, Artemiy is working on a solo CD for 2006. New Age Reporter nominated Artemiy's Time, Desert & a Sound CD as best electronic album and best ambient album for 2004.
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Call for 60x60 music
By Glenn Folkvord / press release
Continuing to promote contemporary composer and their works, Vox Novus is inviting composers to submit works 60 seconds or less in length to included in its third annual 60x60 project. 60 compositions will be selected to be performed continuously in a one-hour concert, in conjunction with multimedia elements and an analog clock marking the passage of time. During the concert each of the 60 pieces will begin precisely at the beginning of the minute, this will mark the end of one piece and the beginning of another. The compositions can include but is not limited to acoustic instruments, voice, environmental sources, and computer (sampling, MIDI, C-Sound, ProTools, etc.)

The call is open to composers of any nationality, age, or career stage. All submissions must be postmarked by May 16, 2005. Selected works will be announced on September 15, 2005. Submission forms can be downloaded at VoxNovus.com
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New Databloem releases
By Glenn Folkvord
The label Databloem has announced two new albums. Collection 3: Blending is their new compilation of contemporary ambient and minimal-glitchy beats and soundscapes from Jason Corder, Krill.Minima, Danny Kreutzfeldt, Lingua Lustra, Mendigo, Lufth, Liquid Bridge, Waki, Dreaming the Seed, Svartling, and MOC. And coming up next is a debut album with "deep northern ambience" from Nunc Stans, and a new solo album from Jason Corder. Both the latter will be released in March 2005.
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Cinque Cento debut album
Press release
Cinque Cento (pronounced cheen-kweh chehn-toh) is a tiny Italian car, aswell as the number 500 in Italian. It also happens to be the musikal project of T.D. Nicholson from Trondheim, Norway. He had already been dabbling with electronica for some years when he in 2001 decided to start working more seriously on his solo project Cinque Cento. Inspired by retro soul, funk and jazz, Cinque Cento is centered around bass lines, combined with beats, sample treatment, as well as melodies. His debut track Endless Summer (with vocalist Anita Nansy Valderhaug) was featured on the Friendly Selection compilation in 2002, and was followed by the Blue Nights in Oslo EP issued late in 2003. Working like a true Cinque Cento - that is - slow and inconsistent, Nicholson eventually pulled his act together and has now produced enough material for an album. While the Blue Nights In Oslo EP was mainly instrumental and groove focused, the Lake Shore Drive album has a more melodic approach, and features guest musicians on vocals, sax and guitar.
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Alpha Wave Movement new CD
By Glenn Folkvord
Alpha Wave Movement has a new CD out now, called Ephemeral Highways. Like the title hints at, the music has been designed to accompany long distance travel by foot or automobile. The music draws melodic inspiration from early ECM and Windham Hill recordings. Electronic and mellow music that is not space music nor new age, according to the artist. The music for the album had been finished for a while, but recently the artist acquired the Novation Nova and Kurzweil K series synths and composed some new tracks. AWM also releases music under the name Thought Guild.
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Kraftwerk concert material
By Glenn Folkvord
Kraftwerk has announced their next releases, which will document their 2004 world tour from several angles in the form of a double concert DVD, a double live CD, a double multichannel SACD and a 4LP box set. No mention of a book, nor the long planned remastered versions of their catalogue releases. The live material will be released under the headline Minimum Maximum. Kraftwerk is rumoured to continue to tour festivals in 2005.
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Beatservice compilation pack 2
By Glenn Folkvord / press release
Beatservice has now made a special compilation pack of the three Arctic Circles albums; Arctic Circles 1 (1997), Arctic Circles 2 (1999) and Arctic Circles 3 (2001). The series presents the Norwegian electronica and ambient scene, with exclusive tracks from Illumination, Biosphere, Mental Overdrive, Röyksopp, Teebee & K, Xploding Plastix, Flunk, Slowpho, Athome Project and others. 
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More Brian Eno remasters
By Glenn Folkvord / press release
The next round of Brian Eno Original Masters are to be released. The new batch includes Music for Films, Apollo, Thursday Afternoon and More Music for Films. The latter is the first ever CD version of the hard-to-find Music for Films Volume 2, which  previously was only released on vinyl LP as a part of the long out-of-print 1983 Working Backwards LP box set. The new name on this album is caused by the inclusion of 11 additional, never before commercially available tracks taken from the rare promo-only sampler (limited to just 500 copies) that was originally sent only to a select group of film directors. Includes contributions from Daniel Lanois, Michael Brook and Roger Eno.
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John Greaves' ambient album
By Glenn Folkvord
In addition to his work with Blegvad and his solo albums, John Greaves has also collaborated on a number of albums with musicians as diverse as David Cunningham, Pip Pyle, Robert Wyatt and Michael Mantler. Greaves' new album Tambien started life in 1995 when Voiceprint MD Rob Ayling suggested to John that he record an ambient album. Almost ten years later the album is finished. It is around an hour long and consists of seven pieces of improvised music. Why seven? Well according to John Greaves, "it is a friendly number".
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Kit Watkins new releases
By Glenn Folkvord
Ambient / space music artist Kit Watkins has a couple of new releases forthcoming; The Gathering is a live DVDR from his March 2001 concert in Philadelphia, USA where Watkins played a special wind instrument to support his electronic soundscapes. The video footage has been enhanced with visual effects. Then there is World Fiction, a new worldbeat CD that consists of a number of improvised vignettes, conceived and produced by Watkins in 2003 and 2004. On this album Watkins plays synthesizers, electronic wind controller, electronic drum pads, percussion, plus electronic editing.
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Jens Gad opens studio
By Glenn Folkvord
For several years Jen Gad has been the co-producer, co-writer, remixer and right-hand collaborator for Enigma, the German mysterious ambient techno pop phenomenon. He has now launched his own website where he presents himself and his work for artists and corporations (as potential clients). Beside Enigma, he has also worked on music for Frank Farian, Andru Donalds, Cafe del Mar, ATB and others for 16 years. Apart from an extensive high-end recording and production studio, Gad is also a passionate guitarist (nearly all Enigma`s guitars) and drummer. You can hire Gad and his studio for around 1700 dollars per day. Gad Studios is located on the Spanish island Ibiza.
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Klaus Schulze live DVD
By Glenn Folkvord
An upcoming re-release of the Klaus Schulze album Dig It will include a bonus DVD from a concert helt at the Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria in 1980. The CD itself will have a 28 minute bonus track called Esoteric Goody but will be accompanied by the live DVD Stahlsinfonie ("Symphony of Steel") with a duration over 62 minutes. It will be an NTSC region free DVD. In the concert we can see Klaus Schulze in a factory worker uniform and helmet. There was also a video screen with visuals from a steel factory. The concert consists of two tracks: Steel Symphony and Friedrich Nietzsche. The first track was earlier featured in the Ultimate Edition box set.
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Stargarden new album
By Glenn Folkvord / press release
Stargarden, the ambient music project by LVX Nova founder Bobby DeVito, has just released album number four. The new material is shorter and more melodic, but still in Stargarden's ambient tradition, according to the artist. Featuring a mixture of analog and digital devices, the sound palette on Music For Modern Listening is the most expansive yet for Stargarden, due to the addition of a few new instruments, most notably an original revision three Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. P5 Mon Amour on the album is a track that was composed and recorded entirely with this classic analog synth.

This new album was composed and recorded in Miami, and was intended for modern listeners who want to "create an aural environment that is stimulating and enhancing, while never being overbearing", inspired by Satie's ideals for "furniture music".
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Christof Migone book
By Glenn Folkvord
Errant Bodies Press announces the publication of its book Christof Migone - Sound Voice Perform. Released in collaboration with the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Roskilde, Denmark. An 88 page book with a full-length CD. The book documents the performance, sound, and video works of the Canadian multimedia artist Christof Migone. Working since the mid-80s, Migone intermixes a multitude of media, from radio to telephones to digital objects. Including documentation of physical works and a CD of audio works compiled from the last 15 years, with essays by Allen S. Weiss and Brandon LaBelle, an interview with the artist by Martin Spinelli, Christof Migone - Sound Voice Perform is the first monograph on this artist.
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Kitaro remix album
By Glenn Folkvord
Last September came Reinterpretations, a compilation of remixes of Kitaro tracks by high-profile and underground producers, all of whom were given the directive of putting their spin on Kitaro's music. The remixes were directed to follow Kitaro’s vision; "to create music that unites, heals, and soothes the human spirit". Reinterpretations features twelve remixed Kitaro tracks, including remixes by Peas, Appogee, Turbotito (Junior Senior) and Timmy the Terror (Ima Robot). Each track featured on the album shares a common thread, that of "ancient sounds and futuristic beats merging".
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New Thomas Park album
By Glenn Folkvord
Thomas Park has released a new album of ambient industrial music on Latex Records. The 11-track Transient is mainly inspired by remix work that Park did for Robin Storey (of Rapoon fame) and is recommended for fans of Rapoon, Nocturnal Emissions, Lustmord and of drone music, ambient, minimal, lo-fi, dub, and musique concrete in general. Park now records under the artist name Mystified, and his previous actual solo release was as AutoCad with Log Rhythm in 2001, on the now-defunct Pivotal Records. Since then, Park has developed his new interest in ambient industrial music.
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Obmana and Wilson debuts together
By Glenn Fo
Vidna Obmana and Stevel Wilson (known from Porcupine Tree, Bass Communion, Blackfield) has collaborated on a new album called Continuum, to be released by the US record label  Soleilmoon in March 2005. This part one of their collaboration and will be presented in a Lasse Hoile designed oversized card sleeve and pressed in 1000 copies only. This debut CD features three 20 minute long pieces of "richly melancholic textural music" designed for Bass Communion and Vidna Obmana fans.
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Rheingold reissues
By Glenn Folkvord
The first two Rheingold albums (featuring lyrics by former Kraftwerk contributor Emil Schult) has been reissued on CD as remastered editions with a couple of bonus tracks. The self-titled album Rheingold has 8 bonus tracks: River, Triad Dimensions, Rheingold, Staiger Walzer, Dreiklangsdimensionen (Single Version), and the bonus tracks on the album called R are: FanFanFanatic, Looks Good On You, A Moment's Glance, Stahlherz (Single Version), Das steht Dir gut (Alternative Version), Fluss (1982 Version), Dreiklangsdimensionen (1982 Version). Both reissues are on EMI.
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French prog and electronic rock
By Bruce Atchison
Gary Davis at artistshop.com offers prog rock and electronic music. One of them is Christian Richet's album Waves. According to the ArtistShop newsletter, this artis is "one of the greatest French specialists in Seventies-like electronic music." This is his fifth album. Another electronic album is Pascal Comelade's Back to Schizo. This album appears to be a collection of his minimalist compositions between 1975 and 1983. Gary also notes that the Camel Productions catalog will be moving from California to England.
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Rick Wakeman helps Tsunami victims
By Bruce Atchison
According to a January news bulletin from the www.assistnews.net website, Rick Wakeman added keybords to the recently released charity single Grief Never Grows Old. Proceeds will go to the victims of the devastating Indian Ocean Tsunami through the official Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) Fund. The single was released on January 24, 2005 on a newly created label, One World Records and is hoped to raise more than USD 1.91 million for the relief fund. John Anderson, his colleague from Yes, has also helped with this tune. The single also features Sir Cliff Richard plus the surviving members of The Bee Gees, Robin and Barry Gibb who have recorded for the first time since the death of their brother Maurice. More information can be found at Rick Wakeman's website.
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Electronic music news in short
Compiled by Glenn Folkvord, contributions by Bruce Atchison and Lorraine Kay

• Richard D. James, aka. Aphex Twin, releases a series of vinyl-only EPs under the name Analord. The music is based on analogue sounds and styles, utilising Richard’s extensive collection of vintage analogue gear.
• Artists Support Asia is calling for help to provide aid to the tsunami victims. Donate a new or old track! Electronic Music World will be compiling these tracks into compilation CDRs and selling them. All proceeds will be donated to the International Red Cross.
• The new album from Autechre Untilted will be released on April 18th, 2005 (April 9th in Japan). Autechre will be on tour throughout April, May and June.
• Headshock is the new project by Paul Nagle, now together with Tim Rafferty. Their debut album is called Music From Peak Experience.
• A new CD from Hemisphere, Rambling Voyage, is out now.
• Create will release a new CD this spring.
• Can Atilla plans to release a new CD this spring also.
• Alex Paterson has confirmed that The Orb plans to release a new album in September. A new EP will be released before the summer as well.
• Binar has released a new CD, called Project Poltergeist. Binar is Paul Nagle and Andy Pickford.
• Experimedia has recently released new albums by Plantre, Milieu, Silo Romano, and Helen Keller, plus a mix set by Dan Mcleod.
• Ozone Player, a.k.a. Otso Pakarinen, has a new album out called Frozen Paint On Boiling Canvas. Samples and information are on his ozoneplayer.com website.
• Official sources has confirmed the release of the 2-disc version of Jean Michel Jarre's Live in Beijing DVD, which was released in France as a single-disc title in December 2004. It's now scheduled for a late May release and may feature a live CD.
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