Radian

zhao

there are no accidents
I've had both records by these guys since they came out and they remain the finest example of... what do you call it? Noise-beat fusion? such brilliant textures and psychoactive tones... a totally fresh and never heard before (atleast I haven't) convergence of imprivisation and composition, live and studio methods, abstract sound work and groove.

rhythmically it can be more diverse and interesting, but on the whole Radian works amazingly well.


anyone heard any of the other projects those 2 are involved with? I was looking at them on Forced Exposure and they all sound ace (but F.E. has a way of over hyping).
 

carlos

manos de piedra
i have one Radian CD and i love it. this thread reminded me i lent it to a friend and never got it back

have not heard the other projects
 

zhao

there are no accidents
carlos said:
i have one Radian CD and i love it. this thread reminded me i lent it to a friend and never got it back

have not heard the other projects

glad to be of service :)

anyone can think of anything else along the lines of quality genre defying material like Radian?
 

mms

sometimes
confucius said:
glad to be of service :)

anyone can think of anything else along the lines of quality genre defying material like Radian?



alot of the stuff on load records is of this ilk imo
 

redcrescent

Well-known member
Have you checked out the earlier Radian stuff that is not on Thrill Jockey? They have an EP and an LP on Austrian labels (Charizma/Rhiz and Mego IIRC), so total 3 LPs + 1 EP.

Nemeth and Brandlmayer also appear on a release with Dafeldecker/Siewert called Die Instabilität der Symmetrie (The Instability of Symmetry) which you might find worth looking into.

The In Memoriam Max Brand 2 CD comp only has 1 or 2 Radian tracks but is definitely worth it.

It might be somewhat of a stretch and Radian are hometown heroes and all, but I have always found Supersilent a better proposition.
 

anhhh

Well-known member
i suposse you are talking about kapitalband1 and autistic daughters. the music from kapitalband1 is easy to get. their first cd its called "2 cd" and there are 2 cds. one with the music and the other is a cd-r. check www.kapitalband1.com to find mp3s to full that cd or to get a proper idea of how they sound. i also enjoyed radian but i have to listen them more. also as redcrescent had said check the non thrill jockey records.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
thanks for the suggestions. I think I'm a pick up the Kapital Band disc. I bet earlier Radian sounds more abrasive and less meditative. because of the change of dynamic from their first thrill jockey to the second.

I will look into some of the Load stuff but somehow I'm sceptical that a lot of improvising electro-acustic post-dub noise sculptors are on that label...
 

zhao

there are no accidents
redcrescent said:
The In Memoriam Max Brand 2 CD comp only has 1 or 2 Radian tracks but is definitely worth it.

what is Max Brand's music like? 70s academic electronic music? concrete? tape works?
 

mms

sometimes
confucius said:
I've had both records by these guys since they came out and they remain the finest example of... what do you call it? Noise-beat fusion? such brilliant textures and psychoactive tones... a totally fresh and never heard before (atleast I haven't) convergence of imprivisation and composition, live and studio methods, abstract sound work and groove.

rhythmically it can be more diverse and interesting, but on the whole Radian works amazingly well.


anyone heard any of the other projects those 2 are involved with? I was looking at them on Forced Exposure and they all sound ace (but F.E. has a way of over hyping).

odd i was l listening to them for the first time in ages today
well storm and stress on touch and go might be your thing, mice parade, load records too .
also battles .
yes radian are ace
 

redcrescent

Well-known member
confucius said:
what is Max Brand's music like? 70s academic electronic music? concrete? tape works?
Some background on the man and the tribute CD here.

The In Memoriam disc contains some of his work from the 60s, some of which he plays on instruments that Bob Moog designed for him, prototypes for models Moog would later mass produce. It's extremely varied stuff. "Notturno Brasilero" is his take on the Amazon rain forest at night, while other pieces are renditions of French folk songs on which he himself sings. There are also electronic waltzes and some commercials he did for things like pain killers and the Opel Kadett car. Weird.
On the other disc a bunch of Austrian electroneers do some reworking of Brand's sounds, which is quite a challenge given the nature of the original material. Some works very well, some not so well, but it goes beyond just looping some interesting bits, adding fx and putting a beat to it. I'm usually very skeptical of such "reinterpretation" projects, but I think this one works as well as, say, Biosphere/Deathprod's takes on Arne Nordheim pieces on Nordheim Revisited (Rune Grammofon).

Because Brand was a victim of Nazi persecution, a lot of his early work was lost, which is a real pity (a crime would be a better word, perhaps). I'd love to hear his 1920s opera Hopkins the Machinist, which apparently integrates both jazz and found sound, similar to what fellow Austrian Ernst Krenek was doing with his operas Sprung über den Schatten and, especially, Johnny spielt auf. Dieter Kaufmann does what he calls a "condensation" of Hopkins on the opening track of disc 1.

Personally I think it's a very nice set to have.
 

mms

sometimes
redcrescent said:
Some background on the man and the tribute CD here.

The In Memoriam disc contains some of his work from the 60s, some of which he plays on instruments that Bob Moog designed for him, prototypes for models Moog would later mass produce. It's extremely varied stuff. "Notturno Brasilero" is his take on the Amazon rain forest at night, while other pieces are renditions of French folk songs on which he himself sings. There are also electronic waltzes and some commercials he did for things like pain killers and the Opel Kadett car. Weird.
On the other disc a bunch of Austrian electroneers do some reworking of Brand's sounds, which is quite a challenge given the nature of the original material. Some works very well, some not so well, but it goes beyond just looping some interesting bits, adding fx and putting a beat to it. I'm usually very skeptical of such "reinterpretation" projects, but I think this one works as well as, say, Biosphere/Deathprod's takes on Arne Nordheim pieces on Nordheim Revisited (Rune Grammofon).

Because Brand was a victim of Nazi persecution, a lot of his early work was lost, which is a real pity (a crime would be a better word, perhaps). I'd love to hear his 1920s opera Hopkins the Machinist, which apparently integrates both jazz and found sound, similar to what fellow Austrian Ernst Krenek was doing with his operas Sprung über den Schatten and, especially, Johnny spielt auf. Dieter Kaufmann does what he calls a "condensation" of Hopkins on the opening track of disc 1.

Personally I think it's a very nice set to have.


that sounds great - sorry to say i've never really heard of him
 

zhao

there are no accidents
childrentalking said:
the members are very active in the improv scene, which I don't know much about. having said that, I can't recommend this album enough. utterly beguiling.

yes the description of Too Beautiful to Burn sounds wicked. mos def made it on the list.

Max Brand sounds interesting... but the album sounds too varied and patchy for me to drop dollars on it right now.

on a different topic...

anyone here into Thuja? or Thuja's kind of improvised micro-psych?
 

mms

sometimes
confucius said:
yes the description of Too Beautiful to Burn sounds wicked. mos def made it on the list.

Max Brand sounds interesting... but the album sounds too varied and patchy for me to drop dollars on it right now.

on a different topic...

anyone here into Thuja? or Thuja's kind of improvised micro-psych?

go on.. sound interesting again ..
 

zhao

there are no accidents
mms said:
go on.. sound interesting again ..

i assume you mean Thuja?

I just made this purchase, and the following are 2 reviews hastily pasted together:


thuja _ "pine cone temples" double compact disc set


much has been said about the jewelled antler collective, the fertile womb from which thuja emits its primordial ooze, and of thuja itself. a loose-knit assembly of like minded sound ecologists who study the connections between their immediate environment and the music created by its players, jewelled antler claims a multitude of music makers in its orbit - blithe sons, skygreen leopards, franciscan hobbies being just a mere cross-section. thuja, however, remains one of the earliest and best-known incarnations. steven r. smith (solo, mirza, hala strana), glenn donaldson (skygreen leopards, mirza, franciscan hobbies etc), loren chase (id battery, etc), and rob reger (franciscan hobbies, etc) coalesce interests in field recordings, found sound, experimentalism, folk and psychedelic rock (among others) to weave seriously detailed and immense journeys into pure sound. thuja's albums on emperor jones, tumult, and a host of cdrs showcase their idiosyncratic improvisations in varying degrees, but none go deeper to the core of perception as does pine cone temples, thuja's darkest and most sensitive exploration of inner and outer space to date.

by incorporating real-time recordings of natural sounds from their particular surroundings, the four members of thuja play off each other and the space they inhabit with impeccable instinct, succeeding in creating eerie yet strikingly melodic compositions. the end result is a total immersion of the senses, for both the player and the listener. across the grand expanse of pine cone temple's two discs, implements such as piano, guitars, percussion, and well-placed contact mics are blended like pigments to conjure the subtlest of sonics, pulling every lost drop of their immediate universe into floating and buzzing cinematics. minimalist hues are brush-stroked into being and slowly unfurl into the atmosphere. improvised clouds of sound softly erupt to form compositions of such immense and precise detail, it would seem the music was written out rather than spontaneously developed. such is the magic of thuja and their uncanny ability to sculpt microscopic psychedelia from their immediate environment and collective consciousness.


Where earlier albums like Ghost Plants and Suns consisted predominantly of shorter pieces of widely varying tones and textures, here Thuja works almost exclusively on larger scale compositions, with most of these eight untitled tracks extending beyond the 10-minute mark as the group patiently allow their meticulous, spontaneous music to spread vine-like beneath the forest canopies, quietly chewing vast expanses of scenery with their soft mandibles.

As with their previous works, Thuja have recorded these pieces in a variety of natural settings, using strategically placed contact mics to help integrate the tiniest audible details of their ambient surroundings into the group's gentle commotion. Theirs is a uniquely intuitive, egoless species of improvisation, as the musicians seem to be competing not for the listener's attention, but to see who can most thoroughly camouflage himself in the underbrush. Though the quartet implements such conventional ingredients as guitar, piano, and hammered or bowed strings, the album contains few unaltered or immediately recognizable sounds, particularly since each musician seems determined to disguise his instrument as a conch shell or an acorn.

The first disc of Pine Cone Temples opens with the brief, jarring sound of a needle scratching across vinyl, before Thuja unhurriedly settle into their first extended creation, an effervescent mosaic of rustling percussion, deep earthy drones, and twinkling lights. From then on, the events spread over the course of these two discs seldom achieve anything beyond the volume of a fallen branch crashing to earth, as the group variously content themselves with gradually building swells of transistor rubble, amp feedback, and imprecisely Eastern-sounding acoustic strings. A notable exception occurs late in the second disc's epic 26-minute finale, a piece that climbs from its tranquil intro of what sounds like a campfire dispassionately consuming manzanita to an apex of electrified noise as starkly dissonant as anything the group have ever cut.

With its ambitious dimensions and the uncertain chronology of its compiled recordings, Pine Cone Temples seems an especially diffuse addition to Thuja's discography, one whose primary appeal will be to those already familiar with the group's organic methods and contours, while newcomers are wisely directed to start with the more easily-digested likes of Ghost Plants. And as with any cross-sectional collection like this, one can't help but wonder if Thuja isn't sitting on a virtually bottomless pile of such recordings, full of tapes that could equal or better anything included here.

-Matthew Murphy, August 25, 2005
 
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