artist: anla courtis
title: tribute to calcium
format: 7"
cat #: tons019
price: Euro 6.00
"these are the first pieces I've ever recorded with
the toba violin. i was delighted by the raw sound
of this native instrument and my aim was to explore its possiblities beyond the traditional
approach,
that's why I decided to combine it with layers of electric guitar. the recording documents
this
exploration process and maybe keeps fresh the spirit of this first encounter."
(anla courtis)
"Sprung from the bowels of Reynols, guitarist Anla Courtis has produced an incredible
melange of
guitar,toba violin and tape music called Tribute to Calcium.
The sounds roll on like ducks down a
cement mountain.Squeedles of upper register amp noise curl along the edge of clouds on one
side,
the other is more low-down - like elephants on the killing floor. It's a really great record,
and probably the manifestation of a new sort of guitar sound.
artist: raphael smarzoch
title: spitrobot
format: 7"
cat #: tons018
price: Euro 6.00
… And who'd have thunk that would come along at this stage of the game? Well, I guess Cologne
native Raphael Smarzoch did, 'cause his new single, Spitrobot is another wall of electric guitar wail
obviously emanating from Dimension X. His feedback roars and sputters like a penguin choking on
a huge herring. And I guess the inference of the title is that the penguins are NOT NATURAL.
Like that matters! ..."
(the wire 06/2005 / byron coley)
artist: greg davis
title: gather/scatter
format: 7"
cat #: tons017
price: Euro 6.00
"… this is quite a jolting departure from Davis's customary leftfield but rustic fare as exhibited
on the likes of Curling Pond Woods.This is what you might call garden
shed musique concrète,
homebuilt but highly effective. The opening track, "Scatter" is tentative, mostly couched in
nocturnal silence, with sporadic electricity flashing like badger's eyes caught
in the headlights.
"Gather", however, which takes up side two, is far more eventul, like intense wartime activity
viewed throught nightvision goggles, strafing, crackling, piping, flaring up,
plunging
catastrophically, recrudescing – just the thing to frighten small children and animals."
(the wire 06/2005 / david stubbs)
"this record was created entirely
from a casio sk1 drum machine sample. this sample was then
processed in real-time using a custom-built max/msp sound environment.
'scatter'
was created by subtracting (or scattering) these sounds, processing them further
and adding
silences until i achieved a desired lesser density. 'gather' was created by adding
(or gathering) these
sounds, processing them further and overlaying them until i achieved a desired
greater density.
all of these sounds were then carefully arranged with soundedit16 to create the
finished pieces.
'two skylines' was created by taking the processed source sample and processing it further with
sonicworx powerbundle. then the waveforms of the left and the right channels
were rectified in
such a way as to resemble two city skylines.
these pieces were created between
the late winter of 2001 and the early fall of 2002.
this record is dedicated to john cage."
(greg davis)
artist: janek schaefer
title: early electronic compositions
format: 7"
cat #: tons016
price: Euro 6.00
"both of these compositions were
produced while i was working freelance for de rijke marsh
morgan architects
in london. one afternoon i had a message to call a guy named 'jet mistry'
who worked for the lift company thyssen. he was a chatty guy so we
talked about names etc,
and i decided to dedicate a track to his as
i liked it so much. this was produced using an
'rs integrator' analogue patch bay synthesizer that i'd bought around then
with the profits
of working a 96 hours week on a new london park competition.
another project we produced
at the practice was a quirky, live, stop frame
short video showcasing various projects for a
touring architecture exhibition.
i was asked to edit and produce the sound.
side b is a 7" mix with the spoken sections removed."
(janek schaefer)
artist: donna summer
title: fluxus, inc.
format: 7"
cat #: tons015
price: Euro 6.00
"this two-track 7”, brought to
us by tonschacht is like a small dish of calamata olives.
it isn’t going to fill you up,
but it tastes very good and will have you licking your
fingers after
a few minutes. let the hipsters keep their trucker caps and electroclash,
"fluxus,
inc." is a flexing of the donna summer school of discocrash. bass
jabs and
horn stabs syncopate against the blisters of boiling breaks
as a dancefloor doubledare
for the moshers, idm headnodders, and innocent
bystanders alike.
to newcomers this track might take a few listens
to fully digest, while those who have
seen mr. summer perform live
know this song would easily fit anywhere in his
energizing and entertaining
sets. it isn’t quite the same without witnessing the full
production
of polyester suits and victory laps taken through the audience, but
it is
appetizing enough to have you dropping the needle back a few
times before auditioning
the flip side.
“awkward song about love” caresses the palette nicely by
balancing the salt of side A
with a little sugar on side B. jason continues
with his brand of unapologetic sample
exploitation, though this time around he gets some acoustic assistance
from guitarist
david grubbs. Seemingly modeled after an epic 70’s rock ballad,
it reminds me of a
summer beach party thrown by macho men with mullets
and the women
who love
them. the tunes are pouring out of an iroc-z parked nearby and
there is plenty
of coors light on hand … ok – maybe not
all of you grew up in iowa, but I did."
(Igloo Magazine)
artist: fibo-trespo / anders gjerde
title: a hoax. a scam. a phony
format: 7"
cat #: tons014
price: Euro 6.00
"Side one: Someone peels a two note
riff out of an organ. Someone else plonks away on a
xylophone, a disconnected stream of notes. There’s some slightly itchy
synth-violin. And then
these hilarious blats of BBC Radiophonic Workshop electronics. It’s all
over in about six minutes.
Nice. Sets the mood.
Side two: This is your more expected Fibo-trespo improv-splatter. These guys are part of that
wave of Norwegian noisic goodness that Bruce Russell and co. were bigging up a couple
of years
back. One half of Fibo-trespo is the ‘infamous’ Kjetil D Brandsdal.
You might know him from
that heavy Noxagt trio who put out a record on Load (they must be hip, Lightning Bolt are
on
that label too.) Kjetil put out some delightful solo discs about seven years ago.
His second self-released vinyl thing was something else entirely. I haven’t
really kept up since.
Kjetil, you out there?
Sindre Bjerga is the other half of Fibo-Trespo. He’s a sweet guy, runs
the Gold Soundz label.
I got a tasty little package from the guy a while back with tonnes of Fibo-Trespo discs in
it.
I like their approach: it’s totally unassuming and organic, heavy when
it needs to be, light
when
it can, they smear their instruments over the walls and floor and then mess with
the guts
when no-one’s looking. Like much of the Norway noise stuff it has
a distinctive spirit and mood
that’s peculiar to their corner of the world.
Unlike someof the Norway stuff, however, it’s
actually damn good. One of
the Fibo-Trespo CDRs comes in a detourned Iron Maiden CD
cover and if that ain’t good I don’t know what is.
Anders Gjerde runs the Humbug label who has also documented some great sounds on CDR.
Including the most recent Continental Fruit title. What he’s doing here,
who knows?"
(worlds of possibility / jonathon dale)
artist: jazzkammer
title: knitter
format: 7"
cat #: tons013
price: Euro 6.00
knitter is the first 7" from this norwegian duo - guitarist,
improviser and composer john hegre
(also in der brief) and lasse marhaug,
one of the most productive musicians in the international
noise/experimental underground of the last 10 years (also in del and owner of the jazzassin records
label) – this time with alexander rishaug who already participated on the last jazzkammer–
longplayer "pancakes" (smalltown supersound).
this swedish label also released rolex, a remix-album of their first two cds with contributions by
merzbow, thurston moore, pimmon and mayn others. jazzkammer combines timbre sound textures,
drones, chrashing noise, digitalia, field recordings, turntables, static electric atmospheres, samplers
sine waves and location recordings, all used in free improvisation to create fragmented, eclectic and
relentless yet focused and massive collages. a-sia might remind you of mixture between the
hi-speed electronics of belgian irregularities scratch pet land and the microsound-turntablism like
otomo yoshihide or martin ttreault, b-sia begins like pop defined by the tochnit aleph crew, but
slowly between layers of distortions there rise sweet, fenneszian melody as if they were
re-arranged by rudolf e.ber.
artist: keith fullerton whitman
title: live (at the tremont theater)
format: 7"
cat #: tons012
price: Euro 6.00
"Whitman's new single runs live guitar through some effects and
a Mac with beautiful results.
There are tactile similarities to some of Jim
O'Rourke's recent work, but the way that Whitman
allows the quiet waver
of strings to congeal into something far more menacing and far less
obviously human, is definitely neat."
(the wire 11/2002 / byron coley)
artist: oren ambarchi
title: der kleine koenig
format: 7"
cat #: tons011
price: Euro 6.00
"the record is a set of two instrumental
pieces that sound as though they were created
via electric guitar, then allowed to expand
and slither through the air more like his
electronic stuff (albeit
a beatless version). abstract, amped frequencies, a bit like
marco
fusinato's work in places, this is a fine addition to the tonschacht
catalogue."
(the wire 01/2003 / byron coley)
artist: vibracathedral orchestra
title: the one you call the ghost train
format: 7"
cat #: tons010
price: Euro 6.00 (out of print)
side a: the one you call the ghost train (4:02)
side b: oblong two (5:08)
artist: rosy parlane
title: the peetoon files
format: 7"
cat #: tons009
price: Euro 6.00
"rosy parlane's the peetoom files is yet another good record from this new zealand expatriate,
a former drumming member of thela, pit viper and so many more. like
all his solo work,
this record is electronic rather than percussive, but the a side
has a certain clatter to its construction.
closer to recent work,
the flip is akin to a drift study of clown structure - bumping into
a big,
spongy nose, squeaking, then backing into the current witha surge
of electricity."
(the wire 04/2000)
artist: vote robot
title: h.waiian blue
format: 7"
cat #: tons008
price: Euro 6.00
"there are echoes of other, lousier artists to be heard in the
way that Vote Robot allows the
gentle crotch of their electronic pressure
to collapse against the event horizon, but the results
here sound more
unplanned, improvised and genuinely fudged than most of Vote Robot
contemporaries. maybe their claim not to use computers just makes me
biased towards them.
whatever the reason, the pieces here walk like
cake around the edges of my consciousness,
crumbling into the sweetest
crumbs imaginable. and that makes for fine snacking."
(the wire 08/2001 / byron coley)
artist: hrvatski
title: räume
format: 7"
cat #: tons007
price: Euro 6.00 (out of print)
side a: bad raum (4:20)
side b: eintrag raum (1:08) / kochen raum (3:20)
all source audio captured during march of 2000 in the reckankomplex through one oktava mk-319
microphone and a folio notepad mixer live to sound designer ii by keith fullerton whitman.
edited in soundedit 16 v.ii then sequenced in vision dsp with a casio cz-1 controlling an
akai s3000xl sampler mices to a sony dtc-a6 dat machine through an
allen & heath wzl16:2 mixer
and a digitech dsp16 reverb unit by hrvatski between august 12th and
21st of 2000.
no dsp was used asidefrom normalization and the stock akai filtering and playback algorithms.
dedicated to gordon mumma.
artist: gate
title: 3M
format: 7"
cat #: tons006
price: Euro 6.00
side a: 3M (I) (3:55)
side b: 3M (II) (4:15)
michael morley: programming and samples
robbie yeats: synthesizers and tone generator
recorded 9 july 2000 at the driving range, mixed 10 august 2000 at
my pit p.c
artist: joseph suchy
title: tau
format: 7"
cat #: tons005
price: Euro 6.00
"coming across like some three-headed
chimera offspring of cock E.S.P., loren mazzacane connors,
and yngwie malmsteen, suchy dives
and thunders in a sea of hiss and overloaded digital and
analogue processing,
then all of a sudden you'll hear a high speed metal run, and you'll
pump your
fist in the air, just in time for a cascade of tumultous
feedback to bop your noggin. a long and
lonesome blues melody will
carry you along for a while, and then the cycle starts again. and again."
(deadangel, issue 44, 01/2001)
artist: ashtray navigations
title: end-of-the-pier vault
format: 7"
cat #: tons004
price: Euro 6.00
"Ah, this guy. Fair at the top of the summit vis. English underground noise/collage aesthetix,
Ashtray Navigations is the solo outfit of young Phil Todd, our man
from Leeds. Having released
several of his records I can safely proclaim that this man is a genius
of the kind not found kicking
a dustbin around street corners these
days.
His work sounds like little sculptures of found sound and objet trouve, kept together by plaster
and tape, all frayedat the edges, warped and buckled under heat, and then re-shaped
into these
fantastically alien configurations. Five tracks on The “End-of-the-Pier” Vault,
the first four fly
by in about two minutes, the final track a seven-minute bleeder for overloaded
guitars, tape scraps,
altogether an unholy din the likes of which we here at
Worlds of Possibility wholeheartedly
approve of. In other words, a real keeper.
It might be up there with his Four Raga Moods and
Tristes Tropiques albums, and
the split 7” with Gang Wizard, as his best work.
Phil’s output is a whole other world unto itself, a crazed maze of outsider invention, and if
you’ve ever stumbled across records or tapes by Dogliveroil,
A Warm Palindrome,
The Hotel Left Accidentally Unpainted, Inca Eyeball, Dead Man’s Gravel, Jarvis/Joincey/Todd,
To Suckle the Pups, Target Shoppers, Anna Planeta, Blackthorne Stick,
or countless others
(really there’s too many), you’ve encountered
the Todd-ster. Plus there’s his on-again, off-again
record label
Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers. The guy’s also a totally lovely chap who is
almost single–handedly responsible for getting me into American underground
film,
so I owe him big-time. Check it out man, he named one of his albums
after the original title
for Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart."
(worlds of possibility / jonathon dale)
artist: a.f.r.i. studios
title: room service (part 1–3)
format: 7"
cat #: tons003
price: Euro 6.00
side a: part 1 (5:27)
side b: part 2 (3:23) / part 3 (2:41)
recorded summer-autumn 1999
by a.f. krause using the variable architecture
synthesis technology for a.f.r.i. studios.
artist: the new peculiars
title: dance music 2000
format: 7"
cat #: tons002
price: Euro 6.00
side a: dance music 2000
(2:30) / landing party (1:46)
side b: the crucial failure of authenticity (3:45)
david borecky - violin, voice
gloria borecky - keyboard, voice
karla borecky - drums, electronics
scott foust - guitar, electronics
recorded august 1998 at swill radio studios, johnstown pa.
a juan m. juan production for the anti-naturals.
artist: minit
title: bootleg
format: 7"
cat #: tons001
price: Euro 6.00 (out of print)
side a: bootleg (6:00)
recorded in sidney, late 1999
composed entirely from field recordings of natural phenomena on and around Alpsee, Bavaria.
originally inspired by and concieved for chicks on speed, munich.
side b: four (5:33)
recorded live to boombox one afternoon, sidney, late 1997
first released on limited edition polycarbonate, snawklor records 1998
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