Archive for November, 2009

Born in 1974, lives near Milan since 1990. Started playing guitar in 1988, and worked for many years in the area of ‘improvised music’ (long term collaborations with Renato Rinaldi in the duo Oreledigneur, Thomas Ankersmit, Michel Doneda, Ingar Zach, Dean Roberts). Between 1997 and 2006 he has performed live with Taku Sugimoto, Jerome Noetinger, Mark Wastell, Martin Siewert, Nmperign, Brandon Labelle, Nikos Veliotis, Alessandro Bosetti, Gert-Jan Prins, Phill Niblock, Oren Ambarchi, and many others. From 2007 on, his main interest has been in site-specific solo performances, sometimes still using guitars as a primary sound source but integrating microphones and multi-channel speaker systems in order to create complex networks for sound diffusion in relationship to space.
He recently started a collaboration with Austrian video artist Michaela Grill (US tour in 2007, participations at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Evolution Festival in Leed, FilmSoundFilm in Marfa,TX) and is more involved in performances and installations with Renato Rinaldi and Armin Linke (ZKM Karlsruhe, Villa Romana Florence, Goethe Institut New York and Rome, various festivals). In 1998 he founded the “Fringes recordings” label, closed in 2005, and co-founded “Schoolmap Records”
in 2006.

Giuseppe Ielasi appeared in many festival across the globe and toured extensively in Europe, US and Japan. His album August’ was featured among the best releases of 2007 for The Wire magazine and was nominated for the 2008 Qwartz Electronic Music Award.

We’re very happy to announce that two new Schoolmap releases are ready to ship. Two wonderful Lp’s by Andrew Pekler and Konrad Sprenger.
More details in the ‘releases’ page, and some audio samples on our myspace.

Both editions are limited to 300 copies.

Vinyl Lp, edition of 300 copies.

“Three years after releasing his first solo record, “Miniaturen” on his own label “choose”, Berlin-based Konrad Sprenger (aka Jörg Hiller) now releases “Versprochen” on the Italian “Schoolmap” label. As if coyly playing off the various connotations of the title, which could mean “pledge”, “promise” or a “slip of the tongue” in German, Sprenger delivers a more mature product. Rather than going for the short, abbrieviated, cut-off statements found on his first release, he’s now opting for a deeper and longer spatial and temporal scale. These thirteen pieces with evocative titles allow time for dramatic development, along the way passing through dark emotional timbres which are then reflected in Dirk Bell’s neo-gothic cover portrait art as well as in the choice of font.
Sprenger spends years in studio production on his work, and the compositions show his attention to detail in their luminosity and almost tactile presence. The range of musical styles is as diverse as on his first record, yet the pieces seem less like ironic quotations and short forays and more like personal statements and explorations into various genres. As always with Sprenger/Hiller, the instrumentation is infinitely surprising, including classical, folk instruments and electronics performed by professional musicians as well as the friends from other disciplines with whom he’s worked together for many years. Sprenger has produced recordings by such diverse artists as Ellen Fullman, Arnold Dreyblatt, Robert Ashley and Terry Fox – and has performed for years as Konrad Sprenger with such luminary bands as Ethnostress and Ei and the art group Honey-Suckle Company.“

Arnold Dreyblatt, 2009

With contributions from Thomas Ankersmit, Gavin Russom, Ernst Karel and many others.
Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
Cover painting by Dirk Bell.

Vinyl Lp, edition of 300 copies.

The work of the Berlin-based composer Andrew Pekler has been been documented in various releases for labels such as ~scape, Staubgold and Kranky. When asked by Giuseppe Ielasi for some material to be released on Schoolmap Records, Pekler immediately considered the possibility of taking the many unused music fragments that had been collecting cyber-dust on various hard drives and bringing them into some kind of order. Raw sketches, orphaned sounds, finished pieces for abandoned projects, music for theater and dance, even a few completed tracks that did not fit onto earlier releases - these are the component parts of “Entanglements In An Orthopedic Sensorium”. In the process of arranging the album, Pekler aimed to impart each of the four “Entanglements” (fittingly reflected in Matthew Shlian’s cover art)with a distinctive structure and dramatic arc without concealing the fragmentary nature of the utilized material. The results are playful, rhythmical and peculiarly asymmetrical. Frequently, the music is immersed in otherworldly atmospheres that evoke both vintage science fiction and the most experimental fringes of ambient music.

The album’s title was prompted by Steven Connor’s review of Michel Serre’s “Les Cinq sens”. The relevant passage reads: “Our house of experience, which includes not just each individual body but also what Serres calls the ‘orthopedic sensorium’ of our social structures must remain sufficiently open, the social ear sufficiently labyrinthine to allow capture of the unintegrated, or the disintegrative, and the rapture of the ear by what forms and deforms it.”

Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
Cover drawing by Matthew Shlian.