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Kaffe Matthews / Andrea Neumann / Sachiko M – In Case Of Fire Take The Stairs (2002) - essential eai
as I am wont to do in the spring - a time of great change, tension, and atmosphere - and to accompany my ever-evolving practice of laptop noise and found-object/code-breaking music-making, discovering high quality EAI records from time past has become something of a ritual. This key record - by three women powerhouses, and released by IMJ in 2002 - features a frighteningly alien, totally synthetic, and blistering take on quiet sound-object dismantling. The notable piece is the bisected opening "I.", where the former part's twenty-minute excursion into extremes of volume and extreme space, littered with unknowable sine blirps and kaffe's sample-tronics giving way to the latter's vicious post-post-jazz, with a particular extreme stretch of Sachiko's sine wave generator finding a truly head-splitting tone while andrea and kaffe building the scaffolding
May 5, 2025
Related Recs
Went to a neighborhood record shop recently and heard this over the speakers while flipping through the stacks. I couldn’t quit nodding along to its hypnotic composition and took a gamble on a copy — 100% the right choice. Big rec if you’re into Philip Glass. And the album concept is so good:
Originally released in 1979, Sei Note In Logica (Six Notes In Logic) presents a singular, sinuous piece. The composition is based on a finite set of musical notes, yet this limitation is the point of departure for a grand tour of possible combinations and enthralling timbres (marimbas, strings, reeds and human voice).
The joyous experiment of Sei Note is grounded in constant variation. Often doubled by multiple instruments, non-repeating patterns are exquisitely layered, while electro-acoustic signals transform and further refract through visceral effects. Within this conceptual framework, Cacciapaglia does not so much juxtapose rigid dichotomies — acoustic vs. electronic, melodic vs. dissonant, simple vs. complex — as fuse them into an expansive whole.
Jan 8, 2025
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This is a great intro to modern/neo-classical with an electronic twist. Try to find live recordings of his songs "Says" and "Said and Done" - the first one is basically a study in build-build-build-build and the second unfolds around the repetition of one single note. They both give me goosebumps every single time.
Recommend headphones (or big speakers) and giving it your full attention.
Feb 3, 2025
Man, these wildly varying sample-based tracks are a journey through sonic possibilities.
Bop out to the blues trance of Robert Johnson 2.
Get lost in the nature of Hubert Fichte 1.
Transcend to the strings of John Cassavetes 2.
There is so much to talk about with this project. Ekkhard Ehlers revolutionized what it meant to sample someone in music. Try it out (ambient requires patience) but I promise you will hear something you have never heard before.
Feb 14, 2024
Top Recs from @woolwormontario
Fog and Ocean - Lullaby
Diving through ancient indietronic and the far distant waves of esoteric and ancient indie pop can only dreg up so much - however the findings from basically unknown 555 records has sourced some healthy gorgeous offerings. This one buzzes with 80s synth groove life but the buoyant aughts twee vocals and implacable synth melancholy keeps it wholly out of time
May 4, 2025
May 4, 2025