Our good friend Paintings For Animals has released their much anticipated EP Cistern Air on Aphonia Recordings. They have been featured at several Gallery 1412 shows with our artists and others. Go to the website and check it out!
New Release!!! Paintings for Animals – Cistern Air
In the November issue 297 of the UK’s The Wire magazine David Stubbs reviews Dokuro’s recent release, The Black Room. Look for the interview in print or read the full text below:
Based in Oakland, California, Dokuro are visual artist/composer Agnes Szelag and the magnificently nomenclatured The Norman Conquest. They include the word “pop” in their self-definition, which is a little like Sunn 0))) locating a Country & Western element somewhere in their music. This is extremist fare that blasts awat the earwax without leaving you feeling pointlessly bludgeoned. On “The Ghost Goes West”, clouds of generated electricity belch blackly, then are discreetly sculpted. “Shadow of the Cat” is sheer catastrophe, all earthquake and Grindcore, its rotorblade still whirring long after the helicopter has crashed and burned. Finally, with “October Moon” a calm descends and dawn breaks over a charred landscape quiet but for the sporadic noises of afterburn.
Amy Denio: Subrosa release show/party (w/ Nucular Aminals + Problems)@ Gallery 1412
NEW RELEASE BY AMY DENIO:
Amy Denio – subrosa: AR017
click here to preview tracks / purchase this release
This article appeared in Cyclic Defrost Magazine. You can read the original posting here.
Agnes Szelag, one half of Oakland’s Myrmyr with Marielle Jakobsons, presents a short release of just four songs on No Summer or Winter. Her work as a solo artist focuses on the relationship between sound and visual media, and the whirling yet crunching undercurrent to the first track “Lato” sets the tone for the piece. At just under twenty five minutes the compositions on No Summer or Winter are allowed enough space to grow and fortunately don’t outstay their welcome.
One of the difficulties of appraising Szelag’s work is deciding where (or even if) there are boundaries between the performance space and the home listening experience. “Man Made Weather” in particular seems built for the former environment “ a movement that lapses into languid cello after being prefaced by swathes of noise and processing. Though No Summer or Winter wasn’t written specifically for such a purpose, it somehow seems intrinsically linked to a place outside of where her audience listens from. “Inside and Out” does tries to bring the sensation back though, all hazy synths and soft textures. There is some delicate cello work throughout the EP, but nowhere near as fluid and organic as it appears on her work with Myrmyr.
As No Summer or Winter unfolds over repeated listens, the progression is made clearer. It becomes almost a dialogue between the summer and winter seasons Szelag composed it in, uncovering fragments of processed vocals that act as clues to the shifting world outside. There are some exquisite moments here even if it does feel sometimes as if the confines of the art installation are closing in.
© Alexandra Savvides 2008
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Show starts at 8:00 PM sharp
For 14 years, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival has been an amazing asset to the NW experimental music community. This year, Aphonia Recordings will be hosting a benefit show to raise money for this year’s festival (…travel expenses for artists, promotion, venue rental etc.. This stuff isn’t free!). In addition to performances, we will also be holding a raffle & silent auction for awesome prizes donated by NW artists & musicians, including: CD’s, LP’s, reel-to-reels, random audio gear, & one squirrel costume (donated by Red Squirrels).
Please show up the benefit, donate generously, buy raffle tickets, bid on a rad prize or two, & support the festival……It will make you a better person!
A number of Aphonia Recordings folks will be performing at the actual festival in Olympia (ie. Paintings for Animals, Darwinsbitch, & a collaboration between Ben L. Robertson + Gabe Will (violist – Problems)).
www.myspace.com/olystrangemusic
Aphonia Recordings 2008 Performance Series #6:
Friday, June 6th
Gallery 1412 (1412 18th ave – Seattle)
8:00pm
$5-15 suggested donation
-Paintings for Animals
-Penny & Her Lowercase Kindred (Olympia/Reno)
-The Precambrian
PAINTINGS FOR ANIMALS
Heavy drones, overtone melodies, and the sound of the land – Paintings for Animals performs with field recordings, bowed metals, mixer feedback, throat singing, vocal blips, clicks and the buzz of electronics. Started 2001, in Seattle by Pearson Wallace-Hoyt, the project is maintained to provide a platform for the proliferation of spiritually charged noise and a revival of ritualized sound. With members dispersing to Bali, Kolozberg, New York and San Francisco, Paintings continues to craft a truly Cascadian music of chants, esoterica and the sounds of urban & natural environments.
paintingsforanimals.com
PENNY & HER LOWER CASE KINDRED
Penny and Her Lower Case Kindred is a medley of shadow puppets, an adjustable stage, a variety of keyboards and organs, a synth, a loop station, a head mic, vacuums, strobe lights, fake blood, real blood, some drums,internal dialogue exposed… Unicorn: “We began hosting on-stage forums a couple of years ago once we realized that it was unfair to monopolize Penny’s brain.” Cher: “I wouldn’t really call it a forum…more like the sound of 15 minute recesses from the other side of the chain-link fence. Lots of piercing noises and academic purging.”
www.myspace.com/pennyandherlowercasekindred
THE PRECAMBRIAN
Aphonia Recordings’ founders, Ben L. Robertson & Andrew Senna, team up to explore the spectral transfiguration of minute sounds & vocalizations. In concept, The Precambrian is a sequence of interactive synthesis environments, engineered by Robertson using the graphical programming language; Max/MSP. Often drawing from his background in sound design for film & theatre, Senna utilizes a handful of homemade piezoelectric transducers, microphones, & field recordings to interact within each of these unique synthetic environments. The result of this interaction is a performance which resembles a series of absurd, one-act narratives.
www.aphoniarecordings.com
Jun 05 – 9:00P Desolation Wilderness @ Le Voyeur (Seattle, WA)
Jun 06 – 8:00P Aphonia Rec. Series 6 @ Gallery 1412 (Seattle, WA)
Jun 08 – 8:00P The Precambrian @ The Blue Moon (Seattle, WA)
Jun 14 – 8:00P Agnes Szelag @ 21 grand (Oakland, CA)
Jun 18 – 8:00P Old Number Sevens (Phonon) @ the Tractor (Seattle, WA)
Jun 20 – 8:00P Benefit Show for the Oly Exp Music Fest @ Gallery 1412 (Seattle, WA)
Jun 24 – 6:00P Paintings for Animals @ Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA)
Jun 27 – 7:00P Ben Robertson + Gabe Will @ Olympia Experimental Music Festival
Jun 28 – 2:00P Paintings for Animals @ Artopia film show (Seattle, WA)
Jun 28 – 6:00P Darwinsbitch @ Olympia Experimental Music Fest (Olympia, wa)
Jun 29 – 7:00P Paintings for Animals @ Olympia Experimental Music Fest (olympia, wa)
We are pleased to announce that Agnes Szelag’s debut Aphonia Recordings release, ‘No Summer or Winter’ was recently reviewed by online publication, ‘Textura’.
click here to preview tracks / purchase this release.
Agnes Szelag is a composer, performer, and video/audio installation artist. Her work explores the cognitive and aesthetic relationship of sound and visual media in chosen environments. In performance and composition she creates interactive schemes that ride the line between composition and improvisation. Agnes is a Course Director at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts, received her MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College, and her B.S. in Radio/TV/Film from Northwestern University. Agnes resides in the Bay Area, CA.
Agnes has performed and collaborated with Marielle Jakobsons (as myrmyr), Norman Teale (as dokuro), Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Curtis Bahn, James Tenney, Terry Riley, Maryclare Brzytwa, Chris Brown, Ben Bracken, Gregg Kowalsky, Aram Shelton, Steini Gunnarson, Ava Mendoza, Abe Dichi (as comfort food), Moe! Staino, Phillip Greenlief, Double Vision, Capacitor, and many others.
Her work has been featured in the Electronic Music Midwest Festival, the Illuminated Corridor Festival, 60 x 60, Voices on the Edge, at the Stone in NY, and has been broadcast nationally on KQED for the show Spark. She has also executive produced numerous video pods that have aired nationally on Current TV. This fall she will be playing in the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival as myrmyr.
KRGA’s latest Aphonia Rec. release, ‘June’ was recently reviewed by the online zine, ‘Foxy Digitalis’.
check out the review
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