Artist: Various
Title: Activating the Medium Festival 2007 - 1/27
Price: $10.00
Catalog #: none
Released: 2007

 

2 CDR

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

Disc One:
01 Keith Evans
02 Matt Shoemaker

Disc Two
01 Olivia Block
02 Olivia Block
03 Steve Roden

the second compendium of recordings made from the tenth annual activating the medium festival at the exploratorium in january, 2007. this limited edition set features the performances of keith evans, matt shoemaker, keith evans, and steve roden

Artist: Various
Title: Activating the Medium Festival 2007 - 1/26
Price: $10.00
Catalog #: none
Released: 2007

 

2 CDR

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

Disc One:
01 Aaron Ximm
02 Camilla Hannan

Disc Two
01 Tarab
02 BJ Nilsen

the second compendium of recordings made from the tenth annual activating the medium festival at the exploratorium in january, 2007. this limited edition set features the performances of keith evans, matt shoemaker, keith evans, and steve roden

Artist: Tim Catlin
Title: Radio Ghosts
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: 23five011
Released: 2007

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 Hysterisis
02 Zumbido
03 Black Magnet
04 Radio Ghosts
05 Everything Must Go
06 Mirage

Melbourne based Tim Catlin's Radio Ghosts showcases his unassuming expertise with the finer aspects of the mechanically prepared guitar. For all of its dynamic frequencies and crosshatched vibrations, Radio Ghosts is devoid of Marshall stacks, Sunn amps, and stomp boxes, as Catlin captures the acoustic phenomenon of the guitar’s transient vibrations and steers clear of any tricked out sonic demolition. Instead, Radio Ghosts focuses upon the minutiae of the guitar: wood, strings, and amplifier. Through his refined, tabletop guitar techniques, Catlin prefers to set his guitar in motion, allowing the process dictate the course of action with minor edits and sleights of hand from the composer himself. Catlin’s drone guitar work is simultaneously capable of expressionistic illusions and a sonic transcendence of pure sonic introspection.

Artist: Tarab
Title: wind keeps even dust away
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: 23five010
Released: 2007

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 wind
02 keeps
03 even
04 dust
05 away

Field recordings are fundamental to the creative process of Tarab, the nom de plume for Melbourne based sound artist Eamon Sprod, who bolsters his field recordings with sympathetic sounds activated by his own hands rummaging through crumbling leaves, rusted bits of metal, broken concrete, and shattered glass, just to name some of the more obvious sources. Wind Keeps Even Dust Away is only the second documentation of Sprod's compositions; yet, it is an accomplished work on par with the best of contemporary sound ecologists (e.g. Chris Watson, Eric La Casa, Toshiya Tsunoda, etc.). On this album, Sprod presents an intertwining series of compacted collages that tease aquatic references from abandoned and overlooked sites of the arid Australian landscape. Every sound of a pipe gurgling with water is but a mirage of sand, rust, and dirt cleverly tricking the audience’s collective ear.

Artist: Jean-Francois Laporte
Title: soundmatters
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: 23five009
Released: 2007

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 Electro-Prana
02 Boule qui roule...
03 Dans le ventre du dragon
04 Mantra
05 Plentitude du Vide

Soundmatters is the first major compendium of the recordings from French-Canadian sound artist Jean-Francois Laporte, including his highly acclaimed composition Mantra. In balancing formal precision and intuitive expressionism, Soundmatters results in a series of visceral compositions that build upon the traditions of minimalism, graphical composition, and phonography. Laporte reveals his colossal talents for experiential composition through deftly processed recordings of tumultuous windstorms that would make Chris Watson proud, spiralling drones that he's polished to a Haflerian sheen, the majestic bellowing of sustained horns in the empty cargo hull of a decommissioned ship, and of course the metallic growl of his immaculate Mantra. Given the numerous parallels to Xenakis' smoldering electroacoustics and Tony Conrad's delirious harmonics, Laporte's work demands the attention as an under recognized genius in the realm of avant-garde composition.

Artist: John Duncan & Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Title: Our Telluric Conversation
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: 23five008
Released: 2006

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 ...Like a Lizard
02 Entry (Enhanced)
03 Yet another (very) abridged and linear interpretation of the history of our planet as we know it.

Our Telluric Conversation is the second collaborative album from John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff, which Duncan describes as having been galvanized by magnetism. In a semantic sleight of hand, Duncan and Hausswolff reveal magnetism through a duality of meanings. One on hand, they speak of the physical phenomenon of charged objects that exert an attraction or repulsion upon other objects; yet on the other, magnetism can be defined the psychological influence wielded by charismatic individuals. Our Telluric Conversation maps out the complexities that emerged through the collaborative pursuits of these venerated sound artists.

Artist: Francisco Lopez
Title: live in san francisco
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: 23five007
Released: 2005

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 live at the lab - hexaphonic, 08.05.00
02 live at 3feetofftheground, 07.14.01

Over the years, the sound-arts organization 23five Incorporated has sponsored numerous Lopez performances in and around San Francisco; and it is only fitting that 23five should publish this document of live recordings from San Francisco, with one track culled from the infamous Hexaphonic show at The Lab in August 2000, and the other from an intimate performance at 3feetofftheground in July 2001. Live in San Francisco comes with a blindfold to enhance the phenomonological experience of Lopez's dramatic compositions.

Artist: Gum
Title: vnyl anthology
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: 23five005
Released: 2004

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

Dic One:
01 Stormy Weather
02 Testicle Stretch
03 Injected by a Certain Amount of Charisma
04 Sporadic Acts of Violence
05 Smooth Torture in Exile
06 Involuntary Orgasms During the Cleaning of Automobiles
07 Outfits for Agony
08 Stomach Irritations
09 Fear
10 Arm Fuck
11 Snowtown
12 Cocktail Party Effect
13 Live at Hard Times, Melbourne, Australia, 1987

Disc Two:
01 1-800-GUM
02 Okefenokee
03 Cicada Material
04 Banning
05 Melted Limp Fallout
06 TV Eye
07 Blood on the Floor

Back in the late '80s, Melbourne's Andrew Curtis and Philip Samartzis collaborated in the aurally volatile project simply called Gum. With little expertise or training, the two gathered up what objects they were familiar with, in particular thrift store turntables and soiled records. Eschewing their original attraction to the giants of Industrial Culture, Gum quickly developed an aesthetic privileging the caustic rupture of skipping records and smoldering surface noise, predating the current avant-turntablist aficionados like Philip Jeck, Janek Schaefer, and Otomo Yoshihide. With the publication of Gum's Vinyl Anthology, 23five, Inc uncovers the bulk of Gum's work, including all of the material from their self-published albums Vinyl and 20 Years in Blue Movies and Yet to Fake an Orgasm as well as several infamous compilation tracks and plenty of unreleased material.

Artist: John Bischoff
Title: aperture
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: 23five006
Released: 2003

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 Piano 7hz
02 Interlude
03 Graviton
04 Immaterial States
05 Override
06 Sealed Cantus
07 Aperture

An aptly named set of compositions by John Bischoff who is a current instructor at the esteemed Center For Contemporary Music at Mills College, Aperture opens the possibility for multiple readings through a series of diverse techniques ranging from additive synthesis to FM synthesis to sampled-based processes. Each of the pieces within the album was recorded in real-time with no overdubs. Aperture introduces itself with clusters of samples that sprawl with the deliberate pacing of Morton Feldman's later periods, yet Bischoff renders what might be recognizable citations of a piano or percussion as pointillist condensations of digitized pixels and precise plastic details. During the ensuing pieces, Bischoff unleashes coarse streams of electrons which flange and pulse within the caustic firestorm of divergent timestretching, giving the impression that Bischoff is quite literally tearing the fabric of sound. Bischoff also presents a collaboration with Kenneth Atchley in complementing the oversaturated physical noise of Atchley's water fountain sculptures with short digital articulations that ride on the top of Atchley's dense texture.

Artist: Coelacanth
Title: the glass sponge
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: 23five004
Released: 2003

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 The Electic Hydrometer
02 The Hexactinellidae
03 The Leaden Sea
04 The Violet Shell and Its Raft

Authored by the Coelacanth duo of Loren Chasse and Jim Haynes, The Glass Sponge takes an abstracted yet empathetic view of its allegorical subject. Throughout The Glass Sponge, Coelacanth sets textural flutters, squeaks, and scrabblings in motion. These brittle events punctuate the boundless excursions of minimalism brought to life through elegaic bell tones, ghostly feedback, and tuning fork resonance, all spiralling together into translucent drones. Despite the obvious submariner references for this album, it may be a surprise that very little water spilled into the recording of The Glass Sponge.

Artist: Various
Title: 33 RPM: Ten Hours of Sound from France
Price: $12.00
Catalog #: 23F/SFM 903
Released: 2003

 

Tracklisting and preview MP3s:

01 PURR#2 by Kasper T. Toeplitz
02 Zocalo masque by Kristoff K. Roll
03 Resonant Sound Spaces/Bells, Brass, Metal by Jean-Claude Risset
04 Resonant Sound Spaces/Plectra by Jean-Claude Risset
05 Resonant Sound Spaces/Filters by Jean-Claude Risset
06 A rebours by Lionel Marchetti
07 excerpt/metamorphasis by Cristophe Havel
08 It Was Too Dark to Hear Anything by Laurent Dailleau
09 One sonne by Mathieu Chamagne
10 nim by pizMO
11 Gris epais by Jean-Philippe Gross
12 evolutoin by Mimetic

An exhibition companion compilation to SFMOMA's 2003 listening room program 33 RPM: 10 Hours of Sound From France, curated by Laurent Dailleau. 33 RPM's Compact Disc companion features compositions from Kasper Toeplitz, Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe Havel, Laurent Dailleau, Mathieu Chamagne, pizMO, Jean-Philippe Gross, and Mimetic. Comes with a 24 page booklet and original program details.