Archive for April, 2008

Akira Rabelais is a Los Angeles based composer and software developer. AllMusic Guide describes him as “an intellectual pioneer as much as anything else”. His bespoke software creation ‘Argeïphontes Lyre’, free to the public from his website, is a collection of audio filters and generators predominantly based on time domain morphologies and recombination. Fans of his software such as Aphex Twin, Stephan Mathieu, Scanner and Terre Thaemlitz describe it as “uniquely inspirational” and “transcendently poetic”. Akira’s critics describe it as “irritatingly confusing” and “completely undocumented”. Akira has used this software as his main composition tool since 1997 and has issued several albums on a variety of labels bearing its stamp. Akira’s music, works and words can be further explored through his website, www.AkiraRabelais.com, where he has collected a broad spectrum of obliquely related materials and texts.

Eliane Radigue was born in Paris, France. She studied electroacoustic music techniques at the Studio d’essai at the RTF, under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (1957-58). She was married to the artist, Arman, and devoted ten years to the education of three children, deepening classical music studies and instrumental practice on the harp and piano at the same time. In 1967-68 she worked again with Pierre Henry, as his assistant at the Studio Apsome.

Radigue worked for a year at the New York University School of the Arts in 1970-71. Her music, its source an Arp synthesizer and medium recording tape, attracted considerable attention for its sensitive, dappled purity. She was in residence at the electronic music studios of the University of Iowa and California Institute of the Arts in 1973.

Becoming a Tibetan Buddhist in 1975, Radigue went into retreat, and stopped composing for a time. When she took up her career again in 1979, she continued to work with the Arp synthesizer which has become her signature. She composed Triptych for the Ballet Théâtre de Nancy (choreography by Douglas Dunn), Adnos II & Adnos III, and began the large-scale cycle of works based on the life of the Tibetan master, Milarepa.

In 1984 Radigue received a “bourse à la creation” from the French Government to compose Songs of Milarepa, and a “commande de l’état” in 1986 for the continuation of the Milarepa cycle with Jetsun Mila.

Notoriously slow and painstaking in her work, Radigue has produced in the last decade or so on average one major work every three years. Very recently, in response to the demands of musicians worldwide, she has begun creating works for specific performers and instruments together with electronics. The first of these was for bass player Kaspar Toeplitz, and more recently the American cellist Charles Curtis.

Performances of her music have taken place at galleries and museums such as the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs (Paris), Foundation Maeght (St. Paul de Vence), Albany Museum of the Arts (New York), Galerie Rive Droite (Paris), Gallery Sonnabend (New York), Galerie Yvon Lambert (Paris), and Galerie Shandar (Paris); at festivals including the Festival de Como (Italy), the Festival d’Automne a Paris, Festival Estival (Paris), International Festival of Music (Bourges, France); and at the New York Cultural Center, Experimental Intermedia Foundation (New York), The Kitchen (New York), Columbia University (New York), Vanguard Theatre (Los Angeles), LACE (Los Angeles), Mills College (Oakland), University of Iowa, Bennington School of Music, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the NEMO Festival (Chicago 1996). She has appeared on many broadcast programs including France Culture, France Musique, distribution via satellite covering over 50 stations in the U.S. including special programs on KPFK (Los Angeles) and KPFA (San Francisco).

Radigue currently lives in France, where she continues to compose electronic music and study the teachings of the Tibetan lamas. She returns to the United States periodically to present programs of her electronic works.

Tom Recchion has been a sound and visual artist/composer/art director & graphic designer in California since the 1970’s. He is the co-creator of the legendary Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). At the time he discarded object making (though he employs it now) and concentrated on the ephemeral nature of sound. His early practice in low-tech sonic exploration presaged many of the genres exciting developments of the last quarter century: record manipulation, live tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments, installation, and more. In the LAFMS his group The Doo-Dooettes became one of the 3 anchor points for the collectives endeavors as well as playing in AIRWAY, and many other groupings of the collective. He’s collaborated with Half Japanese, Jad Fair, David Toop, Christian Marclay, Mark Trayle, Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, Max Eastley, to name a few, as well as plays in the improvisational group Extended Organ (Paul McCarthy, Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen and Mike Kelley). Currently and most proudly he is a secret member of Smegma, under the name Victor Sparks and has formed a ’spin-off’ group The Rodney Forest with fellow Smegma members Ju Suk Reet Meat and Oblivia/Rock and Roll Jackie who have just had a record released on Qubico this year. He’s remixed for Oren Ambarchi, The Electric Company, Sun & Jim Thirwell. He also occasionally writes for WIRE magazine and has many recordings released. The solo releases “Freak Show” (cassette only), “Chaotica”, “I Love My Organ” and “Soundtracks To A Color: Gold & Black” (which accompanied a large scale installation), were released in 2004. In 2006 a new solo CD came out in Italy on Schoolmap label as their innagural release and a Christmas 7” single was recently released by Meeuw Muszak in Belguim. His work has led him to many fruitful collaborations with film makers such as Janie Gieser. The result of which ended up being selected in the New York Film Festival of 1999 & Kirby Dick, as well as video artists Bruce & Norman Yonemoto and Branda Miller and has done work for the theatre, dance and performance artists. He has recordings on Birdman, Touch, PSF, RRR, Pinokoteka, Barooni, Sub Rosa, Idea, Staubgold, Tigerbeat6, sound. and the Cortical Foundation. He was awarded a 2004 COLA Fellowship in the visual arts. In the summer of 2004 he was awarded Best New Genre/Uncatagorizable Artists by the LA Weekly Music Critics Poll. MOCA commissioned him to design and produce a listening room in support of their current exhibition “A Mininmalist Future?” which lead to the production of a 6 hour DVD survey overview of minimalist musicians and curated 3 concerts which helped give birth to MOCA’s Immersion Concert series curated along with Robert Crouch. He is developing a collaboration with monologist David Greenberger, another with sound artist John Weise. His most recent work was part of MOCA’s Visual Music exhibitions concert series, ‘See Hear Now!’ is an improvisation of sound and image with artist, filmmaker Jonathon Rosen. He also just completed work with film maker/puppeteer Janie Geiser on a theatre piece called “Invisible Glass” for Cal Arts that made it’s premier in April at the Redcat. Afterwards he participated in SASSAS’ summer sound. series in an evening of film makers and composers where he premiered 3 older video and film works from the 1970’s that had never been show. Following that he has performed with the ROVA Saxophone Quartet along with Fred Frith, Nels Cline and Mark Trayle performing a version of John Coltrane’s Ascension also at the Redcat. He is also a recipient of a Pasadena Cultural Arts grant for visual artists for which he will release a project called ‘78’, which is a 78rpm vinly 10” lp that will be ciculated in pubic spaces. Most recently he performed at the Getty Museum. As an art director/graphic designer Recchion has created CD packages for Robert Wyatt, Terry Riley, Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, David Lynch & Julee Cruise, Ringo Starr, Los Lobos, Prince, The Carl Stalling Projects, Lou Reed/John Cale, The Band, Merle Haggard, Alanis Morrisette, The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks, Hermann Nitsch, TamTam Books and many others and a quartet of Grammy® Nominations for Packaging Design.

The birth of Akira Rabelais’ “Hollywood” has its roots in the composer’s lifelong interest in field recordings and in the desire to create a piece of work dedicated to Los Angeles: Texas born Rabelais has used a Tascam recorder to capture almost four hours worth of sounds on Hollywood Boulevard, between Betty Grable’s and of Rod Serling’s stars. These original recordings have been lightly edited, cut and mastered into a composition that encapsulates the sounds of casual chats, drunken tourists, peddlers, passing cars, music coming from surrounding shops. An extremely dynamic and always changing soundscape dedicated to “the pleasure of being present”.

Akira Rabelais, composer and software devoleper based in Los Angeles, has released records on Ritornell, Orthlorng Musork and Samadhisound. He has collaborated, among others, with Björk, David Sylvian, Harold Budd and Stephan Mathieu.

Akira’s website: www.akirarabelais.com

Buy:

Cd in jewel case, edition of 500 copies.

“CHRY-PTUS” (1971) :
Originally two tapes which are to be played simultaneously, with or withour synchronisation, which does not affect the structure of the work, but creates changes in the game of sub-harmonics and overtones. Three variations on this piece were performed at the New York Cultural Center in 1971, with variations of amplitude and location modulation as well as synchronisation.
Realised on the Buchla Synthesizer at the New York University.
The booklet contains a text by painter Paul Jenkins, who also realised the watercolor on the front cover, written on occasion of Radigue’s first concert in New York, April 6th, 1971.

Cd 1:
CHRY-PTUS I (1971)
CHRY-PTUS (Version 2001) : Realised by Eliane Radigue with the assistance of Stefano Bassanese at CCMIX, Paris.

Cd 1:
CHRY-PTUS I I (1971)
CHRY-PTUS (Version 2006) : Realised by Giuseppe Ielasi, Milano.

Buy:

Double Cd in jewel case, edition of 1000 copies

With a 30 year practice in sonic explorations – including, record manipulation, live tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments - Tom Recchion is one of the world’s most established and finest experimental artist and musician. Based in Los Angeles, Tom Recchion has co-founded the legendary music entity LAFMS (Los Angeles Free Music Society), collaborated with David Toop, Christian Marclay, Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, Max Eastley, ROVA, John Duncan, Smegma (just to name a few). Tom Recchion plays in Extended Organ with Paul McCarthy, Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen and Mike Kelley and occasionally writes for the British music magazine THE WIRE.

“Sweetly Doing Nothing” is Tom’s first solo release after the critically acclaimed “I Love My Organ” (Birdman, 2004) and will further serve to enhance the artist’s cult status with an unmistakably unique mixture of underwater exotica-tinged minimalism, futuristic jazz, subtlety constructed dronescapes and a vivid orchestral pop sensibility. All the tracks were composed and realized in the 2005. For the first time in his career, Tom Recchion has used a computer – an Apple G4 Powerbook with Ableton LIVE sequencing software – as the main compositional instrument: “I previously avoided composing music on the laptop for reasons of lo-fi purity and the belief that the ‘mistake’ and the unknown produce the best art. Much to my surprise LIVE was the perfect environment to compose in. Not only did it work as a great improvisational tool for non-idiomatic composition but it also served my interest in loopy tonal mood music”.

Most of the pieces on “Sweetly Doing Nothing” were featured in a performance with visual artist Jonathon Rosen as part of MOCA’s Visual Music exhibition. The performance was held at the REDCAT, a small theatre part of the Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles dedicated to avant-garde activities. Jonathon Rosen’s visuals used for the artwork of the package and label. The CD features instrument inventor Max Eastley on several tracks.

Tracklist and notes from Tom Recchion:

Track 1: The Elephant God
“Heavy with the smell of incense burning and the weight and lethargy of a parade of elephants or the ornate adornment of Ganesha with the head of an elephant and the body of a man, the Lord of Success - son of Shiva and Parvati - sitting on his throne amongst ancient walls”. Features Max Eastley.

Track 2: Jazz 10,000 A.D.
“An ongoing attempt to imagine ‘jazz’ music from the future. I hope that the ensemble sounds like it’s melting”

Track 3: Oozings
“Part of the collaboration with Jonathon Rosen. These scenes were composed with the idea of being a series of chapters that we could use with flexibility as soundtracks to an array of visual Jonathon created. Different combinations of sounds, moods, textures and layers. Features Max Eastley”

Track 4: The Crazy Beat
“A dark space; crime ridden, bloody, dangerous cityscape. Drunkards, prostitutes and junkies in cheesy dives filled with the stench of booze and cigarettes hang-out doing nothing, while short circuiting jukeboxes play as the dice is rolled over and over. In strolls a blonde bombshell”

Track 5: Ho Ho 66
“Twisted kids hit the road, making their way out of the city on the open highway.
A road trip. With teen-age lust in their eyes, they have no idea they’re heading into the transformative powers of the deep blue sea. Their escapist angst disappears into the fog and they are gone forever at the toll of the bell”

Track 6: Underwater Girls
“Out there somewhere in the vastness of the ocean lives a society of creatures who are half-fish/half-woman. They swim all day and rest at night”

Buy:

Cd in digipack, edition of 1000 copies