IDM Mailing Archive

The Microwave label has been a favorite of mine for awhile now and I've never seen much mention of it on this list. So when Frans De Waard posted this message to another list today I figured it would be a good introduction to the label for those who arent familiar with it. So far I have the Surge, Slo-Fi, Goem. Chartier, and Nacht Plank and recommend them all. Definitely looking fwd to the new ones! Fans of the experimental & microscopic sounds ala Meme, Rastermusic/Noton, 12k, Ritonell, Mille Plateaux, 1/Tau, BMB Lab, or Mego... -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Frans de Waard <frans@staalplaat.com> Re: Info about the Microwave label.... 1. NEW RELEASE: M 011 Massimo (untitled CDR) Massimiliano Sapienza a.k.a. massimo (1975), lives in Catania where he studies Political and Social Sciences, is currently working on - to use an original technical term - <new forms of entertainment and games>: generative and 'randomised' processes; ambients for interactive manipulation and creativity; interpretations and captive actions in real time; according to the author these particular recent disciplines, to which he is attracted to their mythical and creative potential,will gradually but ever more frequently, come to replace the classic social games. His first release on Microwave Recordings was done using two desktop computers a mobile one, all connected via LAN, and tons of cracked softwares + some media storage discs ! (no external musical instruments were used). 2. GENERAL INFORMATION Microwave is a new term for electronic music, recentely coined by Frans de Waard, entrepeneur and jorunalist. In a review of a CD by German artist Komet he wrote: "maybe I should write again minimal techno. But it's not minimal techno - goddammit. Everytime I write about music that borrows elements of house/techno, but also from minimal music, ambient and industrial music (in general: when we write about Oval, Pan Sonic, Noto, Ikeda, Goem, Stillupsteypa, Richard Chartier, Mego, many releases on Touch), we notice that our vocabulary runs short. It's a lot of things, but it has no name. I have thought about this for some time now, and I think 'microwave' apply describes what it's about. Micro in the sense that all the changes appear on a microscopic level, small but evidently present, and wave, because there is a current wave of serious musicians that take influences from all these waves of music that have experienced (note that many of them are around for a long time) and take whatever they fit well. "Technology will be so small that it will disappear", John Cage once said. That might not be entirely true, however it has shrunk over the years. To produce a good quality music that can easily compete with the work made in 'real' studios. Technology is micro too now." (Vital Weekly 162) Taking this a step further, Frans de Waard now starts with releasing a series of CDRs under the name Microwave Recordings. Why CDRs you may ask? Just like cassettes 10 years ago, CDRs are easily accesible to fulfill a demand per copy, but with a better quality. Paradoxically enough they won't last as long as any conventional medium until now, so it is a snapshot of a movement. Microwave is one such movement, it's now here and probably won't last very long in the music industry were hypes last shorter and shorter. Well fine, it's that we don't care anyway. It's the intention of Microwave Recordings to present a number of albums by people that will loosely fit to the ideas of Microwave (we're too old anyway to trap into any sort of dogma or believe in eternity). Maybe it will last for a few months only. Instead of 15 minutes of fame, we have 15 minutes of fun (maybe even more). 3. RELEASES SO FAR ON MICROWAVE M001 *SLO-FI Unholy the task is of he who writes one-sheets, especially when the release comes from *slo-fi. That word, including the *, is everything you will find on the cover of his/her/their release, because of course it's one of those 'no we will not reveal who he/she/they might be, because we don't want you to know, because it's not important'. Well or whatever was told. You'll have to do with what you get. And if you thought you had any doubt: *slo-fi is exactely what is says to be: extremely slow kind of techno music, with bpm's at 60 or so, this bears resemblance to dance music (bass drums 4 to 4, hi-hats, 303 synth), but by keeping the speed slow, it's serve's well on home speakers too. M002 GOEM - LOKATIE Goem deliver their usual free of everything music, reduced to the bare bones of... music itself. Together as a trio since 1997 (before that Goem was a duo since september 1996), they have recording sessions every now and then. These happen either in studio's or on stage. So far they played some 15 concerts throughout Europe, at rockclubs, galleries (museum of modern art in Stockholm) and technoparties. Oddly enough least understand at the last sort of venues, being disconnected in Rennes (France) or a woman screaming "Change! Change! Fuck you" (Berlin) This release documents two of these concerts, one in Privat Klub in Berlin and a small part of a concert at the Artooz festival in Limoges, France. Even though every concert is recorded and reviewed afterwards, most recordings are not as strong as they are in the venue itself. These two concerts didn't sound too good at the location, but altogether make a lot of sense of home listening. M003 SURGE - LANDSLIDE Surge sums almost everything up what Microwave is all about. Two boys in their self choosen anonimty, toying around in their own analogue world. Rather then buyig the latest G3 Powerbook (yes, they couldn't afford it), they have some old Korg Ms20 synth, 4 track and footpedals. Nice and affordable. Their first release, apptly named 'First' (a CDR on Bake Records), was that joyfull mixture of everything good, new and daring electronic music of today is: a dash of Oval, a bit of Pan Sonic, Goem, Ikeda and packed with everything they could sample. While watching the landslides in Europe this winter, on TV, they had their title of their second release and went out to record it. Rather then packing it again with samples, they still make them, but remove them in the mix. The skeleton disappears and the skin remains. The result is an odd mixture of hisses, beats, and out of sync tunes. Noisy at times, quiet at times. Harsh but with that deep bass - again at times. And not a single correct beat in sight (well apart maybe from the Aphex Twin inspired opening track). M004 RICHARD CHARTIER - POST FABRICATED Chartier is a painter and electronic musician with the love of a deep microscopic view of textures - either on canvas or with sound. Previously he released a more 'serious academic' CD with Intransitive, but his music has been more vivid - will small beats and deep sounds. Current releases include a CD for release on Japanse Meme label, and a collaboration with 0* for 12K (Taylor Deupree's label) M005: TOOL (forthcoming release) This will be a 7" based on the first 4 releases. With lots of lockgrooves and short pieces. A tool of the open minded, DJ's and musicians a like. With one track by *Slo-Fi, eight by Goem, three by Surge and seven by Richard Chartier. The master that the cutter will be using, will also be released as a CDR. Each track is a static entity for some minutes and should not be seen as a music release, but as a tool. M006: NACHT PLANK - 1-12 Behind the new monikker Nacht Plank we find Lee Anthony Norris. So far he produced more regular forms on dance music under various names, but is mostly known under the name Metamatics and has releases on Clear Records, Skam, and Hydrogen Dukebox. Lee remixed Friend & Dr. Kosmos, Roupe, A1 People, CSM and Anthony Manning Together with Ichiro Taniguchi and Kenji Taniguchi he produces music under the name Tone Language, whose first release will be on Staalplaat. M007 DISCMEN - PART HUMAN PART SIMPSON That Which Is Not Cyber Man created machines. Their codes are our codes: insert, pause, end, home, control, auto-reverse, search, balance, contrast, brightness, play, and so forth. Our spontaneous compositions, as much improvised as a cd-player is able to improvise, are sketches of our personal lives. We call them songs. These are broken songs. These songs transport our codes. Some Pocketable Philosophy This is a world of perfecting technology. Better machines, better sound production, risks are fewer and fewer. As others did before us, we embarked on a crusade against clean methods of production, by subverting the technological perfection of sound as reproduced by cd-players. A compact-disc is supposed to be durable, to provide endless hours of comfortable listening. It is a passive object par excellence. It is there to serve us. But as a result of our experiments we have concluded that the same passive object can be changed into a dynamic one, much in the same way that a Lego set can be used to create a multitude of different constructions. A CD-player is also a passive vehicle built to be stable and protect the territory of high-fidelity. Now you feed it a strategically scratched CD and it then becomes an active instrument with a voice of its own instead of a mere vehicle for the reproduction of music. The Music of Chance The CD-player assumes the main role, that of a random organizer or chief-engineer. It is the CD-player who (and we feel this "who" is pertinent) selects and maintains a given sound pattern. We just make it stop or else try to force the CD-player into reading another sound pattern by touching its body in order to provoke a loss of stability - we are touch-sensitive. Discmen are not musicians nor technicians. We are listeners. The machine speaks for itself. We merely interpret the sound of machine error and record it. One take, no treatments. Only editing is allowed. M008 ANDREAS BERTHLING - 1000-1001 KHZ "Andreas Berthling is my name I´m from Sweden but at the moment I live in Trondheim/Norway studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in the second year of study! The Academy gives me (almost) unlimited amount of time and space for trying out ideas I got concerning the relationship between sound and vision, taking it´s form in music/sounds and film/video´s. Together with a colleague of mine R. Sundin a.k.a. Bad Kharma a eight day long performance took place in a cargo container in Trondheim/1999. (read about it at berthling.cjb.net go to live_conflicts and read about it there!... short description of how 1000/1001Hz was made: the most recording is made with a MD (contact miked and all that) but then "processed" through a VCR. The process is mainly just rewind and forwinding the tape multiple times (up to 100 times) back and forth until the sound disintegrates and blends into a blurry "picture" on the magnetic VHS-tape. Then it´s digitized into a computer, using a basic ANALOG<->DIGITAL video-editor-software. At that point I have the raw material for putting together a complete tune (which may consist of only one up to sixteen different samples). The title comes from the idea of the doppler-effect occurring when one sound is pitched in two different frequencies from two different sources (L & R in this case). That creates a feeling of space while hearing the tune while moving about in a room where it´s played (well hopefully)." M009 IMMEDIA - REPEAT PLAY A duo from England with an unusual soft mix of electronics. They are hard to compare with anything we've heard before. It's a bit like Francisco Lopez - but different. High pitches scratches and beeps are intelligentely mixed in a brand of relatively short pieces. They have done their own CD-R releases before, but were asked to do this for us. They limited themselves to analogue synths only, but with a fine treat of electronics. M010 MICROWAVE - A MANUAL A compilation of sorts, in the works of sorts. Is this an open invitation? Well, yes, maybe. Only for open minded... write for more info. for more info: <microwave@staalplaat.com> Microwave releases are unfortunally not available from any good store. In Europe contact: <mailorder@staalplaat.com> In the USA contact: <info@soleilmoon.com> -->-Lance--- lance@inaudible.com p.o. box 450715 westlake, ohio 44145 united states --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org