EMERGE + SINTARI MIMITHE – kagome

out now !

EMERGE + SINTARI MIMITHE – kagome
CD-R in cardboard sleeve (ltd.ed. 50 copies)
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live at ac headquarter, Augsburg, 03.05.14
recording by Gerald Fiebig
mastering, photography and design by EMERGE

Recorded live in early 2014, this is one of EMERGE’s many collaborations with female vocalists. Sintari Mimithe’s spoken/breathed voice, with lyrics in Japanese, adds an unsettling intimacy to EMERGE’s austere sonic textures.

As the deep electronic sounds move across the sound field like gigantic plates of rough slate, the voice of Sintari Mimithe adds a more human scale in the higher register, like a narrator from outer space, watching and commeting on prehistoric times when huge tectonic movements created mountains.

File under: dark ambient, drone

https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/kagome

 

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RE-DRUM + EMERGE – persecutory delusion

RE-DRUM + EMERGE – persecutory delusion
CD-R in cardboard sleeve (ltd.ed. 50 copies)
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live @ NoiseAngriff #47, Berlin, 02.04.14
recording by fgnugn/Frank F.
mastering, photography and design by EMERGE

Although recorded at a concert series titled “NoiseAngriff” (noise attack) in Berlin, this live collaboration is actually a lot less harsh than one might expect. The paranoia suggested by the title might be felt in the dark ambient dronescapes, though.

In this slowly evolving set, the two performers connect to their roots in drone ambient, combining harmonic, yet vaguely ominous electronic textures with small concrete sounds. Over the course of some 45 minutes, Russian artist Re-Drum and his German colleague EMERGE create a vast expanse of sound through which they navigate with tentative movements, like ships in dark uncharted waters in the night.

File under: dark ambient

https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/persecutory-delusion

 

EXEDO – vile

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EXEDO – vile
CD-R in cardboard sleeve (ltd.ed. 50 copies)
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live at our kitchen, Munich, 21.12.13 by EMERGE
recording by Gerald Fiebig
rework by EXEDO
mastering, photography and design by EMERGE
thanks to Franz
 
The title of this harsh noise album could be read as an anagram of “live,” as the whole audio on the release was created by shredding a live recording by EMERGE. It could also be read literally, though, as Exedo go out of their way to make it sound as crass as possible, with all the contempt for musicality that one can expect from a self-respecting harsh noise outfit.
 
Of all the noise releases on attenuation circuit, this must be one of the harshest – with the exception perhaps of the Rollator series that is specifically dedicated to noise. What makes this example of harsh noise wall interesting, though, is the use of sudden gaps in the noise. Contrasting extreme noise and total silence (with the listener’s ears still ringing) is a minimalistic but very effective strategy for keeping the listener on edge, waiting for the next dropout. Heavy listening indeed, but not boring.
 
File under: harsh noise
 

MARTWA NATURA – I

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MARTWA NATURA – I
CD-R (ltd.ed. 33 copies)
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Martyna Solecka: voice
EMERGE: voice samples, body sounds
 
recorded live for echokammer at Ganze Bäckerei, Augsburg, 02.01.16
echokammerkonzerte.wordpress.com
 
drawings by Martyna Solecka
recording, mastering and design by EMERGE
 
Martwa Natura (Polish for ‘still life’ in the artistic sense) is a collaborative project of visual artist/vocalist Martyna Solecka and composer/sound artist EMERGE. Restricting their sonic palette to the sounds of Martyna’s voice, both live and sampled by EMERGE, and body percussion sounds amplified with contact microphones, they manage to create an incredible richness of textures.
 
Thanks to the skilful use of effects, the live set recorded here evokes the sounds of a multitude of species: dolphins, bats, and vultures come to mind, and as Martyna’s melodic lines, oscillating between mourning and jubilation, clash against the rattling and hissing sounds created by EMERGE, all sorts of associative dramas unfold in the listener’s mind. This could be a sonic tale of travel through uncharted dangerous geographies near the heart of darkness, a story of war and destruction, or something else entirely. Anyway, the duo manage to balance repetition and change in a manner that is hard to find in electroacoustic improvisation, creating a measure of dramatic suspense and release that should be the envy of many composers.
 
File under: Electroacoustic music
 

GERALD FIEBIG / EMERGE vs. NYM – condensed endeavour

out now !

GERALD FIEBIG / EMERGE vs. NYM – condensed endeavour

CD-R in cardboard sleeve (ltd.ed. 50 copies)
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live at CAIRO, Würzburg, 22.11.13
recording by Gerald Fiebig and EMERGE
recycling by NYM
mastering, photography and design by EMERGE
thanks to Christian and Taubenschlag crew

A live recording of a concert by EMERGE and Gerald Fiebig at Cairo in Würzburg, Germany, fell into the hands of the mysterious artist (pseudo-) NYM, who used the audio of the whole concert as raw material for creating one of his glacial, monochrome dronescapes.

Clocking in at more than 36 minutes, the composition by NYM rather expanded than condensed the musical endeavour by EMERGE and Fiebig on the Cairo stage, which was hosted by Würzburg’s experimental music series Taubenschlag. Aesthetically, if not temporally, the title is quite fitting as the slowly moving drones created by EMERGE and Fiebig were condensed into a kind of uber-drone, nothing but the infinite background hum of a pre-human or post-apocalyptic universe, with all colour/timbre drained from the sound source. This would make perfect theatre music for any Beckett performance, preferably of “Endgame.”

File under: drone, dark ambient

https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/condensed-endeavour

 

EMERGE – frail

out now !
 
EMERGE – frail
CD-R in cardboard sleeve (ltd.ed. 50 copies)
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live at INM-Phonophon, Frankfurt, 16.11.13
recording by Gerald Fiebig
mastering, photography and design by EMERGE
thanks to Roland, Tobias, Stefan, Fabian, Gerald, Martin, Wolfgang
 
In the last six years, the Phonophon concert series at INM (Institut für Neue Medien) in Frankfurt has established itself as one of the most important venues for experimental (electronic) music in Germany, if not Europe. EMERGE’s first ever live set by at Phonophon is documented on this album.
 
Recorded in November 2013 as part of an attenuation circuit label showcase, this 40-minute set is something like EMERGE’s kiss-off to the reverberated, abstract stretches of drones that used to be his trademark for years. Taking the use of reverb and chorus effects to hitherto unknown extremes, EMERGE creates the illusion of a bottomless abyss populated by giant machinery (or creatures?) of unholy intent. Unlike earlier EMERGE releases, on which the sound sources used were at least partly recognisable, in this case the artist makes every effort to make them sound like nothing else known to humankind. Very effective dramatic pauses with fade-outs and near silences punctuate the set, creating distinct “movements” within the concert instead of just pressing on. This masterful combination of density and silence makes this album stand out in EMERGE’s catalogue and possibly makes it one of the most mature works of his “drone ambient” phase, which preceded his current forays into musique concrète.
 
File under: drone, dark ambient
 

RE-DRUM / EMERGE – split

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RE-DRUM / EMERGE – split
white cassette in white jewel case (ltd.ed. 50copies)
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A. RE-DRUM
live at echokammer, Augsburg, 28.03.15
B. EMERGE
Live at Eufemia, Warszawa, 14.04.15
 
This split tape documents two performances of the respective artists on their European tour 2015, one by Re-Drum in Augsburg, the attenuation circuit label homebase, and one by EMERGE in Warszawa – a great example of attenuation circuit’s increasing live presence in the experimental music underground throughout Europe.
 
Both performances start from drones and take them into the area of noise. There is a certain roughness, if not harshness, to the sound that translates well into the tape medium. The “live” feeling is almost palpable in the recordings, as one can feel the performers being carried from the drone structures they’re known for into more extreme territories, riding the wave of intensity and feedback that only comes from concert situations.
 
File under: Drone, noise
 

EMERGE / GERALD FIEBIG – compound

out now !
 
EMERGE / GERALD FIEBIG – compound
CD-R in cardboard sleeve (ltd.ed. 50 copies)
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Recorded back in 2011, “compound” is a live collaboration between EMERGE and Gerald Fiebig, recorded at a concert supporting Nocturnal Emissions (the live set by Nocturnal Emissions has already been released on attenuation circuit as “compost”). The combination of synthesised quasi-melodies and metallic noises is rather unusual for the work of both artists at the time, making this an interesting addition to both of their catalogues.
 
In what is possibly quite a fitting tribute to their guest Nocturnal Emissions, one of the pioneers of so-called “industrial” music, EMERGE and Fiebig create a kind of factory-floor ambience by throwing (surprisingly rhythmic) loops of metallic clanks around the stereo field, then driving their whole system into a dense drone mayhem like a machine getting stuck in a dangerous overdrive mode, and then seguing into more quiet, but also more uncertain terrain by combining muffled voice footage with spacious, yet ominously undefinable sounds. With hindsight, this recording appears like a watershed between the dense dronescapes present in both EMERGE and Fiebig’s work for quite a while and the more “concrète” sounds they have been focusing on since then.
 
File under: drone, musique concrète
 

new review in vital weekly

new review !
 
EIGENIDYLL – KURMASSNAHMEN (CDR by Attenuation Circuit)
 
Eigenidyll, which is a new project by Tobias Schmitt, whom we know as Suspicion Breeds Confidence and Sasch Stadlmeier, also knows the other new release on Attenuation Circuit as Emerge (and who is the label boss here). They both play guitar (Stadlmeier also a bass), which they process with all sort of effects. This piece, which was recorded in concert in January of this year, shows very occasionally a bit of guitar sound, but most of the time is actually quite abstract. It is very ambient in approach but not necessarily it is a single mass of drone sounds. While with Emerge’s own work there is sometimes quite a bit of overuse of reverb, this is not the case here. All of the effects are used in just the right way. It goes from all the way to the threshold of hearing up until loud, spacey and bassey bits. I was reminded of the term ‚isolationist music‘, actually for the first time in a long time; remember that from the mid-90s? That covered a wide field of musical interests usually dealing with guitars in ambient contexts, and Eigenidyll very much work along those lines. Maybe a bit loosely organised, but then one has to keep in mind that this is a live recording, which wasn’t edited (I think) a lot afterwards. Most promising start of this new duo.
(FdW)