“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.

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.

(another) Stunt is the second part of a trilogy started in 2008 with the ‘Stunt’ EP on Schoolmap: the series is based on the use of one turntable and a large selection of vinyl records as sources for raw material, and pulses/rhythm as main organisational principle. The focus on the physical gesture of playing the records – fully recognisable after the editing and the assemblage – is probably more related to the kind of “turntablism” familiar to hip-hop musicians, than to other plunderphonic-related sampling technique.
Aesthetically, the Stunt project has been welcomed as a departure from the style of music Giuseppe Ielasi has been previously identified with: the strong emphasis of rhythmic pulses, the balance between repetition and variation, and the overall organization of the raw material could bring to mind a personal interpretation of skeletal deep house as well as asymmetrical cold funk.

(another) Stunt was mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Full color cover photo by Italian artist Amedeo Martegani.

Vinyl EP (6 tracks, 22 minutes), pressed on 200g vinyl, edition of 500 copies (100 of them, only available from the label’s websites, are pressed on orange vinyl).

Co-released by Schoolmap Records (Europe) and Taiga Records (US).

“Cholagogues” is a re-issue of the LP released by the musicians’ collective label Bead in 1977 and, since then, out of stock. The re-mastered album is composed of a single long track based on a performance at Action Space in London, 1st of April 1977. The performance, reported to be the first and possibly the last of this trio, was recorded by David Toop on a Sony TC164A cassette tape machine and was created with a variety of music instruments and sound producing devices including different kind of flutes, trumpets, whistles, panpipes, drums, cymbals, fiddles, respiratory and vocal sounds, body percussion. Described by Musics’ critic Peter Riley as a prime example of “slow music” (music that shows slowness in its reception, conception and execution) “Cholagogues”, musically speaking, is a very unique affair: alternating ritualistic sparseness with denser moments, mixing hints from various non-European music styles with a minimalist economy of means and a overall sense of playfulness, the record is a lost gem of European improvisation and anticipates not only different styles of experimental music but also some weird rock to come. The CD version of “Cholagogues” has been digitally re-comes with a reproduction of the original Lp artwork.

‘Stunt’ is the first in a series of three vinyl EP’s which represent an interesting stylistic departure from Ielasi’s previous work. The series is focused on the use of one turntable and a large selection of vinyl records as sources for raw material, and pulses/rhythm as main organisational principle. The basic sound material, in the form of short segments and loops or longer and more complex improvisations, was collected over the course of three months, using techniques influenced more by “turntablism”, than traditional sampling or plunderphonics. The raw sequences have then been edited and assembled in 6 tracks (more to follow…), whose structures are probably closer to house music productions than to Ielasi’s more atmospheric and layered compositons from his earlier releases.

Stunt was mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. Full color cover photo by Italian artist Amedeo Martegani.

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”.

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.

“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.