Buscar:manus

Waves 1 is the rst release of Curd Duca since the legendary Elevator series (1998-2000). Waves is an album trilogy. Waves 2 and 3 will be released on Magazine in 2021.

If we think of Curd Duca’s Waves in terms of sound, rather than in terms of form, each track on Waves is actually like the large, illuminated, richly decorated initial letter that introduces the narrative of so many medieval manuscripts. It is as if Duca was collecting extraordinary letters, opening up an alphabet of sounds, and developing a musical phonetics between adjacent terms. From gong to gone; bell to bells minus drone; dome to father.

The real beauty of Curd Duca’s cycle lies in the fact that it opens up differently from so many perspectives. That we can understand it as a collection of treasures, as a commentary on our acoustic environment, as an attempt to dissect the world and stylize its parts. Much like a printer's typesetting box, Duca proposes an inventory of everything that sounds. Some of the pieces are exaggerations. Some allusions. Others abstractions, parodies, and trans gurations. It is often not even clear whether the music is based on a recording or a synthetic sound. Is the nightjar real or is it a synthetic imitation? Did Duca really use brass and zither sounds or simulate them on the computer? The hermaphroditic nature between reality and arti ciality is a central aspect of Duca’s sound world.

There is only one thing you must not do with this music: trivialize it or underestimate it. With Waves, Duca is exploring the very essence of sound, and its possible meanings and contradictions.

The rarest of all exotic LPs, like Eden Ahbez but with extra added death. This bizarre, rarely heard masterpiece brings together jazz, ancient manuscripts and a convicted murderer…

Issued originally in 1959 it originates from Pheonix, Arizona. The concept behind the recording was unusual - to brings together two unconnected worlds: the jazz genius of Buddy Collette with the academic oriental studies and translations of A.I Groeg.

Little can be found of A.I. Groeg, But before the LP was recorded A.I Groeg had translated several Polynesian and Japanese manuscripts. These form the basis of the dark narrations and lyrics across the album.

Sublime vocalist Marni Nixon (the voice of Maria in West Side Story) was brought in for two songs and fledgling actor Robert Sorrels (now a convicted murderer) supplied the strangely unsettling and almost otherworldly narration.

The original LP states that “Buddy was given carte blanche with the material. After six months of composing and studying with the voice soloists, the results were two instrumentals and two songs on side one, and tone poems on side two. The latter represents a new musical genre. They are musical descriptions, preceded by spoken lines, and they become tone poems or musical illustrations inspired by the islanders, their words and marvelous simplicity. The mood is complete, yet hovers strangely in the air like a vague tantalizing dream.”

I’d first heard the album in about 2010 on a bizarre bootlegged CD (edited strangely with exotic library music), and spent the next few years desperately trying to find an original pressing. About one copy turns up a year, it seems to be far rarer than the legendary Eden’s Island album and occupies a similar musical space. But this album has a little more death.

Heaven knows what new listeners will think of Polynesia, but it sure is a dark and weird musical trip. One I feel everyone should take.
Jonny Trunk 2019

On 28th June 2019, drummer / producer / composer Myele Manzanza will release his eagerly anticipated third album 'A Love Requited' on First Word Records (winner of Worldwide Awards 'Label of the Year' 2019).

Produced with award winning Australian bassist & long time musical collaborator Ross McHenry and featuring a plethora of New Zealand and Australia's finest young instrumentalists, 'A Love Requited' is as much a musical journey as it is an attempt to process, work through and come to terms with the life around him.

"The music on this record was written often as a place of psychological refuge from the tensions of an ultimately failed relationship at home, as well as an attempt to come to grips with thought patterns and personal history that caused an often problematic relationship to music itself. Meditating on themes of love, fear, family, anger, death, ego and acceptance has helped create a narrative arc that grounds the album as well as a mode of therapy to begin working through these issues for myself.

'A Love Requited' is easily my most personal work to date and my hope is that beyond the music itself it may be of help to others, if only to say that your not alone in your struggle to make sense of the world".

This album also features the stellar talents of APRA award winning NYC based pianist Matthew Sheens (John Pattitucci, Cecil McBee, Ross McHenry Trio), alto saxophonist Jake Baxendale (Antipodes, The Jac), trumpeter Ben Harrison (Dave Douglas, Horns Of Leroy), trombonist James Macaulay (The Lagerphones, Epic Brass), multi-reedist Jason McMahon (The Shaolin Afronauts), flautist Adam Page (NZSO, John Psathas, Noel Gallagher), guitarist Django Rowe (Wizard Tone Records) as well as additional keyboard contributions by longtime collaborator Mark de Clive-Lowe (Ropeadope Records, Mashibeats), Brenton Foster and Jack Strempel.

Where Manzanza's debut album 'One' presented his ability as a producer / beatmaker, and his sophomore album 'OnePointOne' showcased his live performance and band leader prowess, 'A Love Requited' puts Manzanza's skills as a composer to the fore.

"Over the last few years I've really enjoyed the process of getting away from music software tools and just sitting at a piano with some manuscript paper and a cup of coffee and seeing what comes of it. I'm a very amateur pianist and my music theory knowledge is fairly limited, but in some ways that's an advantage as I'd be starting with a basic barometer of "does this sound good to me?", without too much consideration for formal rules and structure. From there, developing the arrangements to present to musicians forced me to get a better understanding of melody, harmony and orchestration and to really hone in on refining my ideas to a point where I now feel as much satisfaction and confidence putting myself out on the world stage as a composer as I do playing the drums."

'A Love Requited' will be available on vinyl & digital from the 28th June 2019.

Eagerly awaited debut album from oft-cited UK's most out-there band, features in the works with The Quietus and Wire already.

180GM PRESSING - 500 COPIES ONLY.

Difficult times required difficult music, my Yarns, that's why we had Guttersnipe; with its own sort of energy-kind there then.Reiner: A singular yield, a singular yield now.Barns: A whot
Reiner: A singular yield mate! Rich guitar strang, flow motive pounding underneath.Vox like Death come winding through the fields. Barns:  Hell of a way to describe a vocal style.
Me: Nah but for real my Donny, Have you read a presser 1 sheet lately It's the most

They say the PR era, circa late 80's killed the golden age of music journalism:
They say Guttersnipe have continuously melted all the forms that they come up against. They are right.  Because Guttersnipe is not part of a tradition we know well. You will identify the departure from it though, immediately, upon hearing My Mother The Vent. This LP, the promotional version of which, likely sits in your hands (disk, whatever). The innovation here is a FIRM commitment to the flowmotive polyrhythm underwriting the seared, nay fried, tonal rainbow and de-reasoned vox.

Not Nate Nelson, nor John the masseuse dude from Sightings but TIPULA CONFUSA.  Don't want to put the captain obvious pants on so tight I can't jump around the yard because why waste a good yard hang. I'll put on my blighty nighty instead. UROCERAS GIGAS has bridged so many gaps, finally unlocked the AxeWeld CODE and is really playing the thing. Not to mention bringing forth a world-view so utterly unique.  Good luck finding anything like it.

Finally some REAL disjunction in the music; clear and intended. In an age when most computer music composers use stochastic systems and still manage to drop some linear pathground shit, the brawler drums and slanky guitar constructions on My Mother The Vent are a genuine treat.  I've spent too much of my adult life so far hearing too much of this shit to not recognize REAL GAME. And here it crawls out of the grey shadows of ol' BLIGHTY.

Our post-music age: after the fine human endeavour known as music, the result of letting the cybernetic run ITS horrible game on us. I'm not waxing confusingly in a rarefied tone here. Nor running the boring sci-fi script. I really think that is were we is.  We left the human-music-on-a-human-scale behind and much to our detriment. Here we sit in our crumbling reality. But Guttersnipe come paleo, like the rhapsodes with long ass memories rattling off Homeric verse well into the age of manuscript culture, but here, with future tones.  Luckily. Otherwise, me and the record label here wouldn't be wasting our time and yours with a 1 sheet for My Mother The Vent.

So a proper first time on wax for these amazing creatures is a welcome addition to the world of things.  These drums and these guit-lines are so cranké, as they say here in my odd neighborhood.  These voices are so utterly expressive without even the damn language at hand ; like the great horns. We'll rinse this record out, I'll put on my old blighty nighty and go dance in the street.  Alex Moskos, Montreal, August 2018Guttersnipe is:UROCERAS GIGAS - Guitar, Analog Synth, VoxTIPULA CONFUSA - Drums, Drum Synth, Vox

Great music extends father than your ears can hear. Listening to resent recordings of Peder Mannerfelts music is listening to recordings of a complete creative flow. Superb tracks created inside of Peder Mannerfelts Villa Nellcôte.
Opener "Rhythm Inflection" is similar to a heartbeat but rebuilt using a parade of machines and biting ice-cold sounds that implies a climax that never comes.
Repetitive thuds are the wrecking ball of "Technology As Apathy" while saw waves continuously crunch until your ear are obliterated on "Failed Grammar". "Titled" is the centerpiece, however. Its sonic gears grind into hollowed-out spheres. A voice from the heavens echoes "Reset, reduce, turn up, repeat" until the words lose all meaning and are battered into the metal walls by distilled rhythms.
EP2 is the last ashes of a manuscript that's been waiting for ages to be turned into dust. It is the final nail in the coffin of his past that began with EP1 and Lines Describing Circles. Peder Mannerfelts music is gradual and always on the move, the process spans over the whole production.