Antboy Mailorder/Distribution

[antboy]

hi all,
don't know if it is so appropriate here but just thought I'd spread the word for those in Europe, ( or anywhere for that matter ) that Australian experimental music label ANTBOY MUSIC is now running a kind of low-key, low-fi mailorder/distribution service for ANTBOY related artists and a few other Australian releases ( so far we have all the Impermanent recordings, Dr Jim )...
we have paypal and all that...

here is an updated taste of what we have now...
( and on the way are CDs from PseudoArcana, Synaesthesia, plus heaps more...)

=================================================================
** AREK GULBENKOGLU
* 'points alone' ( Impermanent recordings 06 ) *
Points Alone is the debut solo recording by Melbourne, Australia, based musician Arek Gulbenkoglu. The recording consists of five abstract compositions for acoustic and amplified wooden guitar which highlight the visceral sonic possibilities of wood and steel. The recording of Points Alone was carried out with the conception that the listener¹s speakers would be the ultimate instrument themselves and as such this work is focused beyond the guitar itself and beyond the live improvised moment. Points Alone uses space and duration to distort the listener¹s sense of time, the five untitled pieces unfold and recede in a subtle disequilibrium of sound shapes.

===================================================================
** ERNIE ALTHOFF
* 'Heliosonics', ( NMA CD9904 ) *
A solar powered sound project by Ernie Althoff.
Heliosonics is a collection of 26 (one electronic, and 25 kinetic) percussive sounding devices designed to play in various outdoor spaces. All are powered by solar energy. This CD features 16 tracks on which groupings of the machines are recorded in specific environments.
The sound machines of Heliosonics can be divided into two groups in a number of ways. For instance, their sounding components are either of wood (bamboo or 'manufactured' plywood and dowel) or metal (aluminium or tinplate). A more important division is the grouping of those that sound continuously, and those that sound sporadically (thirteen in each group).
This continuous / sporadic division provides a simple yet effective way to categorise the sounds of the sea, cicada song and traffic hum against a sudden birdcall, the squeaky hinges of an opened gate and a bottle smashed in a back alley. The model for Heliosonics is the sound world of the environment - it is designed to emulate but not imitate. Heliosonics partners the real world - and the real world plays Heliosonics .

70 minute CD, 12 page booklet insert with descriptive texts and colour photographs of the sound machines.

====================================================================
** PETER BLAMEY
* 'salted felt' ( Impermanent recordings 002 ) *
Peter Blamey believes in minimal means: his kit is two little mixers and a single oscillator, wired together into an unstable multiplexed feedback web. What emerges, though, is nothing like the tick-tock trance of much recent "minimalism." It's pulsing, spinning clouds of chirps and cracks, broken up with chunks of blurry oscillator drone and spluttering, twittering noise; and all those elements drawn from a single unstable, tangled mass of signal. Here Blamey delivers nine dense, intricate, just-in-control slices of analog chaos synthesis. Laptops: who needs 'em?

====================================================================**
BUCKETRIDER
* 'l'événements' (Dr Jim 35) *
Dischord, microtonality, free noise, artifice, high-fat riffs, and horns like jet engines make l'événements bucketrider's richest and most delightful work yet.

** BUCKETRIDER
* 'Le Baphomet (Dr Jim 29) *
A sonic melting-pot where noise meets sonority, chaos meets order, and detournement meets the muse, this is bucketrider's third album.

** BUCKETRIDER
* 'Guignol's Band' (Dr Jim 25) *
The five-piece bucketrider arrives.

** BUCKETRIDER
*The Adoration of the Lamb (Dr Jim 24) *
bucketrider's origins as a trio... guaranteed to delight cryptographers, full of ciphers to confound.

BUCKETRIDER have distinguished themselves as one of the most innovative and challenging contemporary music ensembles in Australia.
Founded nearly a decade ago by David Brown, Sean Baxter and Tim O'Dwyer, the group has been at the forefront of experimental music in Melbourne since its inception.
As adept in the rarefied realms of improvisation and new music as they are with the raw energy of free jazz and punk rock, bucketrider fuse these disparate styles into a coherent and exciting whole. Intent on breaching the artificial boundaries that exist between so-called serious and popular music, they have successfully introduced rock audiences to the energy of free jazz, jazz audiences to the vibrancy of punk, and classical audiences to the delights of contemporary improvisation.

===================================================================
** CANDLESNUFFER
* 'Candlesnuffer' (Dr Jim 28)*

Candlesnuffer is David Brown. He has a history in Melbourne that yawns back to the mid-70's and has seen a progression from rock kid with a bass guitar to academically qualified guitar experimenter. His musical gifts have been a virtual secret here due to his lack of a travel bug. However it's time the word got out and at the grand old age of 45 this is his first solo release. He is known best as a member of bucketrider and Lazy, as well as for recorded work with KK Null, and performances with Null, Phill Niblock, Jon Rose, along with an army of local avant-gardists.

====================================================================
** TIM CATLIN
* 'Slow Twitch' (Dr Jim 34) *
"Tim Catlin has taken the shimmering ephemeral nature of the guitar's indefinite identity and exploded it into a fine mist. The guitar is not a solid entity, its location in the mix not longer governed by a common understanding of how the elements of rock fit together. Free of such constraints, the sound is allowed to evolve and mutate, pulsate, rattle, hum, buzz, crackle, breathe, and resonate of its own accord...."

===================================================================
** MATTHEW EARLE, WILL GUTHRIE, ADAM SUSSMANN
* 'document 04' *
"On the second release by the Guthrie / Süssmann / Earle trio, the players let their improvisations simmer. The first piece has Earle’s piercing volleys of electronic click and chatter continually pulling the rug from under Guthrie’s rolling, mechanized percussion. Süssmann places dull thuds and the odd fragmented chord perfectly, as though resting each sound atop a haphazardly balanced structure. The second piece was recorded on 2SER FM as part of the Radio Alice program. Word has it that Earle and Süssmann use their radio show as a space to improvise in a semi-public fashion, sending the week’s findings out over the airwaves. You can hear them sifting through options on this track, eliciting from their instruments a torrent of sound events demarcated by decisive cut-offs and pregnant pauses. Earle’s solo disc catches a few pure tones and lets them spill from empty equipment. It’s an austere listen that requires an exacting patience: when Earle introduces a second tone during the second piece, it’s momentarily startling. But the final 40-minute track is the biggest puzzle, so distant and quiet you wonder whether it’s actually present. Turning the stereo up to burn-out level, I heard a faint trill peeking in and out of the speaker hiss, but that could just be a ghost tone, determined by the self. Earle’s vigilance is admirable."
Jon Dale

====================================================================
** MATTHEW EARLE
* Document 03 *

===================================================================
** BRETT LARNER / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA
* 'after school activity' ( Impermanent recordings 005 ) *
After School Activity was recorded in Oakland in 2003. The first two recordings come from Mills College, one recorded in a studio the other performed live, but it is the final track that provides the most vivid picture of what was occurring between the two musicians during this time. The third track entitled After School Activity was recorded on Artship where the two access to record anywhere on the vessel they desired, it was the top deck that drew Toshimaru in.

===================================================================
**LAZY
* 'Microsonics' (Dr Jim 31) *
Sean Baxter and David Brown explore the sounds and textures of microscopic acoustic gestures, produced with prepared electric guitar, drum kit and percussive junk. This is rarefied free improvisation which, though focused on miniscule sounds, is best appreciated at frighteningly loud volumes--a kind of inverse noise-grind/shitcore experience.

====================================================================
**RASMUS B LUNDING and PHILIP SAMARTZIS
* 'Fluorescent' (Dr Jim 30) *

Fluorescent is the first recorded collaboration between Danish electroacoustic improviser Rasmus B Lunding and Australian sound artist Philip Samartzis. It is a culmination of studio-based improvisation and live performance in which environmental recordings, abstracted textures and prepared instrumental gesture converge to create restlessly modulating densities bordered by abrupt transitions. The title reflects the luminosity of the sonic grain resonating over time, radiantly occupying space to highlight the familiar while rendering it strange.

====================================================================
** STASIS DUO ( Adam Sussmann and Matthew Earle )
* 'hammer & tongs', ( Impermanent recordings 001 ) *
In their live improvisations Adam Sussmann and Matthew Earle take metaphorical tongs to the emptied-out insides of samplers, twisting sinewaves into thin, piercing sheets and disintegrating clusters. This set skirts around the periphery of hearing, tense atmospheres stretched between high whines and low power hums. This isn't blank tinnitus sinecore, though, it's a subtler construction of delicate broken gestures, twitches, flecks, gently stretched noisebursts and the occasional placid, glassy bleep which has somehow slipped through intact.

===================================================================
** STASIS DUO
* 'beetrooits' ( DOCUMENT ) *

===================================================================
** JOEL STERN / ANTHONY GUERRA
* 'stitch' ( Impermanent recordings 004 ) *
Stitch is a recording of bold fully detailed layers of sound produced from field recordings and guitar, though there are few times where the source of the audio can be clearly heard or understood. These improvisations are both dense and heavy while maintaining a fragile sense of weightlessness or even swinging equilibrium.

==================================================================
** ADAM SUSSMANN
* 'acoustic guitar solo' ( DOCUMENT 2 ) *
"Süssmann’s solo disc, Acoustic Guitar Solo, is the real revelation. Comprising two tracks, and clocking less than 25 minutes, Acoustic Guitar Solo is all about the extremities of the instrument. The opening track is densely packed and shrill, with Süssmann cracking the acoustic guitar open to reveal its gnarled and tough innards, a muted bass drone that’s sheared by a set of impossibly sharp and resonant razors. It is fierce stuff, but much like the best Japanese noise, there’s a calm you can source in the midst of it all, as Süssmann takes a leisurely approach to development. The second piece is pure tone hypnotism, with Süssmann’s previous scouring resolved to the singing of sine waves. Acoustic Guitar Solo is a completely heavy document, quite unlike anything you’d expect, and it feels like the next quantum leap for acoustic guitar improvisation after Annette Krebs’ Guitar Solo. It’s that revelatory."
Jon Dale

==================================================================
** ADAM SUSSMANN
* 'guitar solo 2' ( DOCUMENT 5b ) *

====================================================================
** WESTERN GREY
* 'Glacial Erratic' (Dr Jim 33) *
Western Grey is a trio of severity and icy minimalism. The members include Melbourne sound artist Philip Samartzis and the revolutionary artists from Lazy, Sean Baxter and David Brown. The recording has been made via a process utilising found drumbeats, fresh-recorded electronic sound and guitar improvisations, and mixed using a subtractive process to create an electroacoustic album of extreme minimalist tension.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
enjoy...

[Jesse]

Will,
I'll offer that I own 4 Antboy releases, and they are all of strong interest to the intrepid & curious: Building Blocks & Spear, both solo percussion works from Will, very different in form & their degree of improvisation v composition. I have not heard another percussionist who organizes solo work along these lines. Will's materials are intriguing, the results at times staggering, quite musical once you jettison a clutch of expectations concerning what percusson might include/exclude.

Also, the trio with Matthew Earle and Adam Sussman, electronics and guitars respectively, Bridges. There is a strong synergy in the trio, as well as three distinctive voices, bright, sharp and sometimes harsh sonorities prevail.

Lastly, the installation artist Ernie Althoff; his Dark By 6 has been discussed here, reviewed by Brian O. on Bags.

In sum, a whole nutty scene in Australian improvised music has been glimpsed by these releases, revelatory for me. I intend on catching more by all 4 of these principals.

[Richard Pinnell]

To add my two pence worth, I can second Jesse's reccomendation of the above releases. I have all but the Blamey and can honestly say that the Melbourne/Sydney scene is about as vibrant and productive as anywhere in this music right now.

Just about anything on Antboy/Document/Impermanent is worth a listen, particular favourites though;

Will Guthrie - Spear (Antboy)
Guthrie/Sussmann/Earle - Bridges (Antboy)
Adam Sussmann - Acoustic Solo (Document)
Anthony Guerra/Joel Stern - Stictch (Impermanent)
Arek Gulbenkoblu - Points Alone (Impermanent)

A further recommendation is Matt Earle and Anthony Guerra's 'IN' released this week on l'innomable in Slovenia. Jarring, but finely constructed raw electronics and possibly some guitar...

[antboy]

Originally Posted by Richard Pinnell

To add my two pence worth, I can second Jesse's reccomendation of the above releases. I have all but the Blamey and can honestly say that the Melbourne/Sydney scene is about as vibrant and productive as anywhere in this music right now.


A further recommendation is Matt Earle and Anthony Guerra's 'IN' released this week on l'innomable in Slovenia. Jarring, but finely constructed raw electronics and possibly some guitar...

hi richard,
yeah l'm looking forward to the Earle/Guerra CD. and if you haven't heard the Peter Blamey CD I can thoroughly reccomend it! Peter is an amazing musician who is currently doing a phd on sinewaves (!?)...really really good CD...

[antboy]

hi all,
don't know if it is so appropriate here but just thought I'd spread the word for those in Europe, ( or anywhere for that matter ) that Australian experimental music label ANTBOY MUSIC is now running a kind of low-key, low-fi mailorder/distribution service for ANTBOY related artists and a few other Australian releases ( so far we have all the Impermanent recordings, Dr Jim )...
we have paypal and all that...

here is an updated taste of what we have now...
( and on the way are CDs from PseudoArcana, Synaesthesia, plus heaps more...)

=================================================================
** AREK GULBENKOGLU
* 'points alone' ( Impermanent recordings 06 ) *
Points Alone is the debut solo recording by Melbourne, Australia, based musician Arek Gulbenkoglu. The recording consists of five abstract compositions for acoustic and amplified wooden guitar which highlight the visceral sonic possibilities of wood and steel. The recording of Points Alone was carried out with the conception that the listener¹s speakers would be the ultimate instrument themselves and as such this work is focused beyond the guitar itself and beyond the live improvised moment. Points Alone uses space and duration to distort the listener¹s sense of time, the five untitled pieces unfold and recede in a subtle disequilibrium of sound shapes.

===================================================================
** ERNIE ALTHOFF
* 'Heliosonics', ( NMA CD9904 ) *
A solar powered sound project by Ernie Althoff.
Heliosonics is a collection of 26 (one electronic, and 25 kinetic) percussive sounding devices designed to play in various outdoor spaces. All are powered by solar energy. This CD features 16 tracks on which groupings of the machines are recorded in specific environments.
The sound machines of Heliosonics can be divided into two groups in a number of ways. For instance, their sounding components are either of wood (bamboo or 'manufactured' plywood and dowel) or metal (aluminium or tinplate). A more important division is the grouping of those that sound continuously, and those that sound sporadically (thirteen in each group).
This continuous / sporadic division provides a simple yet effective way to categorise the sounds of the sea, cicada song and traffic hum against a sudden birdcall, the squeaky hinges of an opened gate and a bottle smashed in a back alley. The model for Heliosonics is the sound world of the environment - it is designed to emulate but not imitate. Heliosonics partners the real world - and the real world plays Heliosonics .

70 minute CD, 12 page booklet insert with descriptive texts and colour photographs of the sound machines.

====================================================================
** PETER BLAMEY
* 'salted felt' ( Impermanent recordings 002 ) *
Peter Blamey believes in minimal means: his kit is two little mixers and a single oscillator, wired together into an unstable multiplexed feedback web. What emerges, though, is nothing like the tick-tock trance of much recent "minimalism." It's pulsing, spinning clouds of chirps and cracks, broken up with chunks of blurry oscillator drone and spluttering, twittering noise; and all those elements drawn from a single unstable, tangled mass of signal. Here Blamey delivers nine dense, intricate, just-in-control slices of analog chaos synthesis. Laptops: who needs 'em?

====================================================================**
BUCKETRIDER
* 'l'événements' (Dr Jim 35) *
Dischord, microtonality, free noise, artifice, high-fat riffs, and horns like jet engines make l'événements bucketrider's richest and most delightful work yet.

** BUCKETRIDER
* 'Le Baphomet (Dr Jim 29) *
A sonic melting-pot where noise meets sonority, chaos meets order, and detournement meets the muse, this is bucketrider's third album.

** BUCKETRIDER
* 'Guignol's Band' (Dr Jim 25) *
The five-piece bucketrider arrives.

** BUCKETRIDER
*The Adoration of the Lamb (Dr Jim 24) *
bucketrider's origins as a trio... guaranteed to delight cryptographers, full of ciphers to confound.

BUCKETRIDER have distinguished themselves as one of the most innovative and challenging contemporary music ensembles in Australia.
Founded nearly a decade ago by David Brown, Sean Baxter and Tim O'Dwyer, the group has been at the forefront of experimental music in Melbourne since its inception.
As adept in the rarefied realms of improvisation and new music as they are with the raw energy of free jazz and punk rock, bucketrider fuse these disparate styles into a coherent and exciting whole. Intent on breaching the artificial boundaries that exist between so-called serious and popular music, they have successfully introduced rock audiences to the energy of free jazz, jazz audiences to the vibrancy of punk, and classical audiences to the delights of contemporary improvisation.

===================================================================
** CANDLESNUFFER
* 'Candlesnuffer' (Dr Jim 28)*

Candlesnuffer is David Brown. He has a history in Melbourne that yawns back to the mid-70's and has seen a progression from rock kid with a bass guitar to academically qualified guitar experimenter. His musical gifts have been a virtual secret here due to his lack of a travel bug. However it's time the word got out and at the grand old age of 45 this is his first solo release. He is known best as a member of bucketrider and Lazy, as well as for recorded work with KK Null, and performances with Null, Phill Niblock, Jon Rose, along with an army of local avant-gardists.

====================================================================
** TIM CATLIN
* 'Slow Twitch' (Dr Jim 34) *
"Tim Catlin has taken the shimmering ephemeral nature of the guitar's indefinite identity and exploded it into a fine mist. The guitar is not a solid entity, its location in the mix not longer governed by a common understanding of how the elements of rock fit together. Free of such constraints, the sound is allowed to evolve and mutate, pulsate, rattle, hum, buzz, crackle, breathe, and resonate of its own accord...."

===================================================================
** MATTHEW EARLE, WILL GUTHRIE, ADAM SUSSMANN
* 'document 04' *
"On the second release by the Guthrie / Süssmann / Earle trio, the players let their improvisations simmer. The first piece has Earle’s piercing volleys of electronic click and chatter continually pulling the rug from under Guthrie’s rolling, mechanized percussion. Süssmann places dull thuds and the odd fragmented chord perfectly, as though resting each sound atop a haphazardly balanced structure. The second piece was recorded on 2SER FM as part of the Radio Alice program. Word has it that Earle and Süssmann use their radio show as a space to improvise in a semi-public fashion, sending the week’s findings out over the airwaves. You can hear them sifting through options on this track, eliciting from their instruments a torrent of sound events demarcated by decisive cut-offs and pregnant pauses. Earle’s solo disc catches a few pure tones and lets them spill from empty equipment. It’s an austere listen that requires an exacting patience: when Earle introduces a second tone during the second piece, it’s momentarily startling. But the final 40-minute track is the biggest puzzle, so distant and quiet you wonder whether it’s actually present. Turning the stereo up to burn-out level, I heard a faint trill peeking in and out of the speaker hiss, but that could just be a ghost tone, determined by the self. Earle’s vigilance is admirable."
Jon Dale

====================================================================
** MATTHEW EARLE
* Document 03 *

===================================================================
** BRETT LARNER / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA
* 'after school activity' ( Impermanent recordings 005 ) *
After School Activity was recorded in Oakland in 2003. The first two recordings come from Mills College, one recorded in a studio the other performed live, but it is the final track that provides the most vivid picture of what was occurring between the two musicians during this time. The third track entitled After School Activity was recorded on Artship where the two access to record anywhere on the vessel they desired, it was the top deck that drew Toshimaru in.

===================================================================
**LAZY
* 'Microsonics' (Dr Jim 31) *
Sean Baxter and David Brown explore the sounds and textures of microscopic acoustic gestures, produced with prepared electric guitar, drum kit and percussive junk. This is rarefied free improvisation which, though focused on miniscule sounds, is best appreciated at frighteningly loud volumes--a kind of inverse noise-grind/shitcore experience.

====================================================================
**RASMUS B LUNDING and PHILIP SAMARTZIS
* 'Fluorescent' (Dr Jim 30) *

Fluorescent is the first recorded collaboration between Danish electroacoustic improviser Rasmus B Lunding and Australian sound artist Philip Samartzis. It is a culmination of studio-based improvisation and live performance in which environmental recordings, abstracted textures and prepared instrumental gesture converge to create restlessly modulating densities bordered by abrupt transitions. The title reflects the luminosity of the sonic grain resonating over time, radiantly occupying space to highlight the familiar while rendering it strange.

====================================================================
** STASIS DUO ( Adam Sussmann and Matthew Earle )
* 'hammer & tongs', ( Impermanent recordings 001 ) *
In their live improvisations Adam Sussmann and Matthew Earle take metaphorical tongs to the emptied-out insides of samplers, twisting sinewaves into thin, piercing sheets and disintegrating clusters. This set skirts around the periphery of hearing, tense atmospheres stretched between high whines and low power hums. This isn't blank tinnitus sinecore, though, it's a subtler construction of delicate broken gestures, twitches, flecks, gently stretched noisebursts and the occasional placid, glassy bleep which has somehow slipped through intact.

===================================================================
** STASIS DUO
* 'beetrooits' ( DOCUMENT ) *

===================================================================
** JOEL STERN / ANTHONY GUERRA
* 'stitch' ( Impermanent recordings 004 ) *
Stitch is a recording of bold fully detailed layers of sound produced from field recordings and guitar, though there are few times where the source of the audio can be clearly heard or understood. These improvisations are both dense and heavy while maintaining a fragile sense of weightlessness or even swinging equilibrium.

==================================================================
** ADAM SUSSMANN
* 'acoustic guitar solo' ( DOCUMENT 2 ) *
"Süssmann’s solo disc, Acoustic Guitar Solo, is the real revelation. Comprising two tracks, and clocking less than 25 minutes, Acoustic Guitar Solo is all about the extremities of the instrument. The opening track is densely packed and shrill, with Süssmann cracking the acoustic guitar open to reveal its gnarled and tough innards, a muted bass drone that’s sheared by a set of impossibly sharp and resonant razors. It is fierce stuff, but much like the best Japanese noise, there’s a calm you can source in the midst of it all, as Süssmann takes a leisurely approach to development. The second piece is pure tone hypnotism, with Süssmann’s previous scouring resolved to the singing of sine waves. Acoustic Guitar Solo is a completely heavy document, quite unlike anything you’d expect, and it feels like the next quantum leap for acoustic guitar improvisation after Annette Krebs’ Guitar Solo. It’s that revelatory."
Jon Dale

==================================================================
** ADAM SUSSMANN
* 'guitar solo 2' ( DOCUMENT 5b ) *

====================================================================
** WESTERN GREY
* 'Glacial Erratic' (Dr Jim 33) *
Western Grey is a trio of severity and icy minimalism. The members include Melbourne sound artist Philip Samartzis and the revolutionary artists from Lazy, Sean Baxter and David Brown. The recording has been made via a process utilising found drumbeats, fresh-recorded electronic sound and guitar improvisations, and mixed using a subtractive process to create an electroacoustic album of extreme minimalist tension.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
enjoy...