http://cookshop.ro/


(yes, move along folks, nothing to see here anymore...)

JUST ONE MORE DAY UNTIL COOKSHOP V2 GETS ITS OFFICIAL LAUNCH!

PLEASE BE KIND, DON'T USE CAPS LOCK. THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

Luigi Turra
Texture.Aero
Adozen 2007

01. Texture.Aero [25:55]

A very delicate and soft one-tracker on the adozen.org netlabel, with two distinctive parts, merging field recordings with Luigi Turra's processed sound - first for a lull of quietude, then for an equally moderate tempo that builds almost unnoticed into a heavenly crescendo. Way to go, I say. And a good warm-up, I say also, for Luigi's Enso full-length issued by Small Voices, co-produced by Gianluca Becuzzi. Save as.

Agape
Guardaropa Open/Closed
Kning Disk 2007

01. Guardaropa 1
02. Guardaropa 2
03. Guardaropa 3

Two relatively unheralded Swedish improvisers, saxophonist Martin Küchen (here also credited with zither, pepperoni-box and preparations) and guitarist David Stackenäs (handling additional "low-budget electronics") explore very intense yet understated territory with Agape. Does the name refer to an opening or to the Latin term for selfless love? Perhaps both. Though the duo works in careful and restrained territory, they achieve a fullness and rich presence; a series of irregular blocks of almost repressed energy - generally avoiding any rhythmic impetus in favor of sonic sheen and the crackle of breath mixed with electricity. There is a slight repetitiveness that creeps in every now and then, but things freely rise and fall, accumulate and disperse with the subtlety of ever-changing details coming from professional live sessions.

File under: "dynamically static kinetic methodology".

>> rapid / fsend (86mb)
>> love it, buy it (Kning Disk)

Misophone
Where has it gone, all the
beautiful music of our grandparents?
It died with them, that's where it went…
Kning Disk 2007

01. White Waves
02. Nothing Down There but Trees
03. Deluded and Obscene
04. You Can't Break a Broken Heart
05. It's Good to Be Alive
06. Song Thrush
07. Turning Hay in the Fields
08. Seaweed on the Rocks
09. The Sea Has Spoken
10. Petroleum Lampa
11. Don't Be Afraid
12. Tired of Silly Dreams

They've recorded hundreds of songs, but this is their first publicly released collection, issued in November by the Swedish label Kning Disk. The Sea Has Spoken a capital E "Epic" of Eastern-European styled folk. A real tale, more than observations of bad poets lost, blind, feeling their way around in urban jungles. It quivers, and forces you to turn the pages quickly. But nothing is given away until the story tells it, the moment that you start to hear and feel the twists and turns... Happy new year.

>> rapid / up.to (94mb)
>> love it, buy it (Kning Disk)

Giancarlo Vulcano
Vetro
Innova 2007

01. Portrait of Arthur Rimbaud
02. Tierra del Fuego
03. 3 x 3, No. 2
04. Portrait of Richard Manuel
05. 3 x 3, No. 1
06. Piano Death Theme
07. Music for Fish Tanks
08. Self Portrait

«Vetro is a record of New York composer Giancarlo Vulcano's involvement with performers he met through Forecast Music, a Brooklyn new music series, 2003-05. There is a wide-eyed optimism and charm to this post Minimal collection of instrumental vignettes. It was made with an equal directness. Vulcano taught the music to the players by rote, and you can hear the delicate listening and interplay going on; there never was a paper score for the music to get stuck on.

Vulcano describes the period when Vetro was created: "It was a process of giving the musicians little phrases to play as I was discovering them... I was finding ideas, and my friends would play them for as long as they interested us, and then on to the next". The compositional process having been organic, the composer considers Vetro's recordings definitive versions of the works; collaborative projects that clearly define a unique compositional voice during the composer's first creative surge of work. More aural sandbox than Hollywood, more Alexander Calder than Philip Glass.»

>> rapid / fsend (58mb)
>> love it, buy it (Baskweb)

Ever made picks of what to play for NYE? A while back, I used to stick to Röyksopp's Melody A.M., as there weren't many other records both me and my close ones would enjoy. Then, last year, was Fursaxa's Myriad of Satyrids for a sort of 'religious' solitariness... This time, unless you'll offer other sensible suggestions, I think I'll let Vetro do the hard work. Although I don't recommend it solely 'pon that basis. Magic...

Mathieu Ruhlmann
The Earth Grows in Each of Us
Afe 2007

01. Sunrings in the Ritual House
02. Eschenau, 1976
03. Elegy for Ivan Generalić
04. All Will Grow Young Again
05. Holding Light (Parts I-III)

The main concept behind this album has got less to do with the four Greek classical elements (see Zavoloka's Viter), and more to do with "the regeneration of life cycle". It's something that struck Ruhlmann quite heavily, as he recently experienced both the arrival of his first son and the fear of losing his beloved sister, who barely survived a near-death accident. The shorter compositions refer to Mathieu's year of birth in terms of duration (one, nine, seven and six minutes respectively) while the three-part suite 'Holding Light' lasts 30 minutes (in 2006 Ruhlmann was in fact 30) and it's divided into three aural snapshots of 10 minutes each.

Numerology aside, I'll have to say I really sympathize with both the concept and the title at work, and even more with how they're musically approached. Good music itself means, more than often to me, a process of regeneration, without removal of the part being regenerated, but capable of transcending it - same as in same old human nature. So then, isn't it only natural that music actually dealing with so-called "regeneration" will have the reality around you slip in a hermetic (parallel?) dimension, enforcing self-abandonment while in fact serving communion, continuity? Immersion, insulation or the smothering of the bond between the "you" and the "world" can be amazing tools for raising positive awareness. That said, the fact that these 5 pieces have grown out of a distinctive theme - the one of "growing" - gives them a layer of depth not often encountered, and the touch with which Ruhlmann treats these sound assemblages always calls upon each one's sensitive imagination.

>> rapid / mfire (97mb) (d-_-b)
>> love it, buy it (Afe Records)

Zavoloka
Viter
Kvintu 2007

01. Inhale
02. Exhale
03. Inhale
04. Exhale
05. Inhale
06. Exhale
07. Inhale

From the several prominent composers of the Ukraine - Kiritchenko, Kotra and Zavoloka - the latter is quite active and her music rapidly progresses. This new album is one of four, dedicated to the four elements. "Viter" means "wind" and it must be the air vibrations of violin and cello that evoke it. She has those played by fellow performers Olga Potramanska and Anton Zhukov, while Zavoloka herself edits everything on her computer, adding rhythms and electronic sounds. Seven short tracks, in total just under twenty minutes. It's strange, exquisite music. It's light of nature, swirling and moving. The rhythms are borrowed from the world of clicks & cuts, but the whole string part could be classical Ukrainian folklore. If you read this, it may seem an uneasy marriage, these two totally alienated approaches, but rest assured: they make a nice combination. When warm, authentic singing stands out over the calm and chilly electro background, it's just a beautiful thing to listen.

>> rapid / up.to (46mb)
>> love it, buy it (Kvintu)

Bark!
Contraption
Psi 2007

01. Polaris
02. It's a Life
03. Gyre
04. Snout
05. The Diver
06. Below Zero
07. Spanners
08. Mr Pointy
09. Decompression

«Against the laziness of the cerebral circuits, and virtually dedicated to the brigade awaiting for the moment in which music will be brought back to the ones who should officially own it, comes this exercise in uncontrollable instigation to disobedience by Rex Casswell (electric guitar), Phillip Marks (percussion) and Paul Obermayer (samples). Nine tracks that fight the e-commerce of presets, laptops and pro-tooled bedclothes through the one and only available weapon: instant fancifulness. "Interplay" may be a word too often used without really considering its real meaning; this time, though, it makes all the sense in the world, as these three musicians not only listen - with the utmost attention - to what they reciprocally do, but also let us intuit what's going to fill the blank spaces, leaving a little margin for the sounds to self-determine in order to extract immediate reactions and indeterminate enthusiasm from our systems, cranial twitches and spastic foot-beats augmenting their intensity in parallel with the puddles of scintillating liquids and ruptured percussive patterns characterizing tracks like 'Snout' or 'Mr Pointy'. Contrarily to many well known improvising motor-mouths whose redundancy leads them to repeated three-and-outs, Bark! is that kind of ensemble that deteriorates the patience of saints through insistent pricks to common sense that nevertheless cause an irrepressible smile of approval. A true fusion of radical gestures and wide-eyed electronic sapience that calls for an immediate check by the inquisitive minds.»

>> rapid / fsend (61mb)
>> love it, buy it (Squidco)

One of the unique attributes of this session pertains to band’s fusion of the acoustic-electric factor; at times it is difficult to distinguish between the organic element and Obermayer's sampling maneuvers. But overall, it's mostly about the extension and expansion of spontaneous composition, woven into the fabrics of this brave new world we inhabit: anything is free game. Gripping work, and so much fun.

Nad Spiro
Tinta Invisible
Geometrik 2007

01. Ex Limbo Stars
02. Interruptus
03. Meremont Hotel
04. Helix
05. Tinta Invisible
06. Time Track
07. Soundhouse
08. Obaliba
09. Miss Rotula
10. Eye T.V.

Five years after Fightclubbing, Basque artist Rosa Arruti (aka Nad Spiro) comes back armed of her "limbo guitar", software and treated voice to leave us, once again, positively perplexed. If you expect a singer-songwriter album, then you couldn't be more wrong. As a matter of fact, there's not too much in Tinta Invisible that you could associate to guitar. Faint traces perhaps, a residue, a string being hit, but throughout Rosa knows how to make things resonate like a mysterious electronic mass. A mass celebrating almost nothing to be memorized or catalogued; a continuous process of appearing and disappearing of scarcely visible colors. She defines this approach as "sound camouflage"; indeed we have little chance of attributing an even vague scheme to what she plays. It's all moody and attractive, but also highly taken by the software involved, so a bit glitch and click & cuts, and then also improvised, poetic and a bit abrasive. No light stuff around here then, but who would want to settle with less? Music can be arranged in countless combinations - it's nice sometimes to be reminded.

>> rapid / mfire (89mb) (d-_-b)
>> love it, buy it (Geometrik)

Onde
One
Ondemusic 2007

A. Four/One
B. Three/Two

Debut LP from the trio of Greg Jacobs, Timo van Luijk, and Marc Wroblewski... Frankly, I've no clue about their backgrounds, but as far as I can judge from these four pieces, they all are accomplished players/improvisers. The calmness which designates the drum, sax and bass section at the axis; the fantastic acoustic side which keeps modulating their improvisational performance; the rich timbre of the warped guitar, and last but not least, the noisy side, discharged without losing sight of aim and audience. The A part seems to have an endless stream of sound effects, whereas on part B there's more traditional electro-acoustic improvisation, with the inclusion of electronic tape manipulation. Instruments can be recognized as such and there is much else to be heard. Dedicated to Geert Feytons of Noise Makers Fifes, who took his own life last year. "Musical homage" may just be an understatement.

>> rapid / mfire (50mb)
>> love it, buy it (Mimaroglu)

darwinsbitch
Induction EP
Aphonia 2007

01. Melted Ore
02. Catalysis in Carbon Smoke
03. Induction Cuts
04. Flames in Blackened Sky
05. In Raven's Dissipation

Solo violin + laptop + electronics + rocks and bones... Alvin Lucier spinning devolved Eastern European folktunes or Tony Conrad gone melodic... More women should aspire to make sounds like this lassie. She even wrote a little poem as to represent them. Or maybe it was vice versa and the poem came first?... Yet it's all so perfect, as if the music's always been there, and was always meant to be. It could burst forth at any moment, but remains highly atmospheric and subdued throughout. For me, it's what goes on when everyone's asleep, when streets are deserted and the cold wind blows.

Quite a significant "induction"...

>> rapid / divsh (28mb) (d-_-b)
>> love it, buy it (darwinsbitch)

"the earth's ore shrinks from its shell
and condenses away from us,
now helpless to invade it

but my ancient blood flows from many wells
my roots vine recklessly
beneath the steel to where
the ore meets the ocean."

Loren Connors
As Roses Bow: Collected Airs 1992-2002
Family Vineyard 2007

01. An Air
02. Child
03. Sorrow in the House
04. St. Brigid's Air
05. Moonyean No. 3
06. Moonyean No. 7
07. O'Connor's Last Air
08. Moonyean No. 9
09. Onora's Kid
10. Moonyean No. 13
11. Frozen Star
12. O'Carolan's Air
13. Little Shoes
14. Brigid's Air
15. No Way Home
16. Air for Bobby Sands and the Hunger Strikers
17. Evangeline
18. Dance Acadia
19. A Boy's Day at the Fair
20. The Cart Ride
21. Airs No. 1
22. Airs No. 2
23. Moonyean

01-12. Airs 4-18
13. Death of Shelley
14. On Patrick Hill
15. O'Connaira's Air
16. Silent in the Soul
17. At the Playground
18. Stephen Foster's Air
19. The Kiss - A Moment at the Door
20. As Roses Bow

«How relaxing can avant-garde guitar be? It is short, very quiet and tiny. It is tiny without wilting into nothing but by being precious. And yet, it is not overly precious. It's a beautiful and well assembled collection by Family Vineyard. It gives attention to a fine musician who recorded these small compositions in the midst of living with Parkinson's disease. The one drawback to Collected Airs is that often it's impossible to reach the end of the collection awake. Probably a good listen for a first time Connors listener because it tends toward accessibility and concept. However don't expect it to fully represent the scope of his work. It's a nice work and one that should be in the collection of veteran Connors collectors as well as new buyers.»

>> gsize / mihd (147mb)
>> love it, buy it (Smallfish)

Traditionalist, experimentalist, outsider, bluesman, balladeer, or poet. Connors fits in everywhere precisely because he is outside of the categories we most easily think in, and because above all, he seems close to us and very human. In a sense, the most succinct way to describe this delicate and affecting record is to simply borrow a phrase from John Banville's 'The Sea', where he writes of "moments dripping away, unnoticed almost, drip by golden drip, toward the final, almost unnoticed, quietus".

Philip Davenport
Constellation of Luminous Details
Apple Pie 2007

01. Strays Use Numbers
02. Attempting to Read
03. The Wishing Machine
04. Driving 6
05. The Bridal Path
06. Replaying Numbers
07. Floating the Rose
08. Red Sheets
09. The House Was Strange Voices
10. A4 Copy of Itself
11. Process Innovation
12. EQ of Summer
13. Big Blue House/Attempting to Read Pt2
14. Pink Photography
15. Pictures of Nothing
16. Louis Famous Giant Hotdogs
17. Drinking Spirits That Burn Your Life
18. Whispered Whisper Removed
19. A Tower of Horses
20. Via White Arc
21. Strays Use Numbers Pt2

«Davenport is a writer and poet who explores the area between the literary and the visual, the tasteful and the transgressive. His poems are based on 'found' text, pushed so far that it becomes poetry. Constellation of Luminous Details is based on notes made from misheard conversations; the poems have both the lightness and the gravity of everyday speech. These texts were given to a broad selection of (amateur) readers in settings ranging from hospital wards to cafés to living rooms.»

>> mfire / divsh (55mb) (d-_-b)
>> love it, buy it (Lotta Continua)

In many cases, Davenport uses the first take of his recordings, thus leaving mistakes. At one point, one of the readers is interrupted by nurses talking next to her hospital bed. Great idea. In some cases the words are 'erased' and only breathing, sighing and traces of voices remain. Some of the material is further transformed by a variety of people, such as Gareth Bibby, Dave Clarkson, Ben Gwilliam, and others. I must admit the whole thing sounds much better than suggested on the cover or press text. Dreamy sequences... Voices mumble rather than recite. When you can understand them, they appear to be going in loops. A very fine mixture of sound and poetry, or perhaps poetry and sound. Or perhaps there is no hierarchy at all in this. The curiosity of sound and poetry recorded in various places makes it a wealth to hear.

Vapaa
Hum Hum Hum
Last Visible Dog 2007

01. Sarastaa
02. Varjoista
03. Naky Alas
04. Ajan Odotus
05. Tuhannet Vuodet

«Organic, drifting psych improv without much in the way of modern equivalents. Easily compared to a few Krautrock favorites (early Amon Düül 2 and a very quiet Ash Ra Tempel) - but in general a bit more relaxed (perhaps a little International Harvester?). For those well versed in the 'LVD sound', this is fairly definitive.»

>> rapid / divsh (50mb)
>> love it, buy it (LVD)

Never thought I'd use the word "lush" when describing Finnish psych, in the sense that it's so very light and airy, and submerged, and well, it kind of "floats", ahem... Just the sort of thing we need more as the cold draws in. Take any song except 'Ajan Odotus' - from the opener 'Sarastaa', with its meandering flutes, tinkling bells and tones evoking snowy Russian sadness (my favorite ever Keijo piece!), to the more rhythmic and acoustic closer, Vapaa makes it feel like it's not even being played by hands of men. Bit sprawling, bit spiritual, bit of the ol' mind fuck, great recording...

Gianluca Becuzzi/Fabio Orsi
Please Don't Count the Clouds
Foxglove 2007

01. Gianluca Becuzzi - Deep Green Dreamer
02. Gianluca Becuzzi & Fabio Orsi - Lost
03. Fabio Orsi - At Last as Naked Clouds

«On Please Don't Count the Clouds, we find our Italian duo creeping up the vines and into the droning heavens. This extremely limited collection features one solo minidisc from each, plus a brand new duo piece, all gorgeously packaged in hand-numbered bronze envelopes. As the sunlight is blocked out, the sounds of the spheres reverberate and send out mystic signals to the center of the universe. These are the remnants of the tones of the earth. Simple and beautiful...»

>> rapid / gsize (68mb) (d-_-b)
>> love it, buy it (Animal Psi)

Sold out from the label next day after publishing, but if you feel lucky, contact Animal Psi for the last copies. While you're at it, there are 3 other full-lengths by Fabio and Gianluca, still available from Digitalis, A Silent Place, and Last Visible Dog. Better yet, hit Fabio's MySpace to support his musicmaking more directly - way over most people's radar for some time now, albeit all decently done with hardly any filler.

Ignaz Schick
Dawid Szczesny
The View Underneath
Non Visual Objects 2007

01. One
02. Two
03. Three
04. Four
05. Five
06. Six
07. Seven
08. Eight

Berlin improviser and avant-turntablist meets Polish sound-artist in a processed, unrelentless wash of electricity. As you may remember, the Non Visual label previously featured Schurer & Steinbrüchel trading files across a multichannel installation; this time their two handsomes have planned a more interactive, simultaneous effort, recording most of the material in Dawid's house. Perhaps a house containing a laboratory, because obviously there's science at work here. Things buzz, crack, glitch about, though with great elegance and focus. Turntables, sinewaves, all manner of unnamed objects, guitars, and a laptop send constant surges of currents down the spine. Great remedy for kidney problems; at least so I've heard. Otherwise, a strong, dense, compact substance, in a constant state of subtle balance. There are probably thousands of records that need headphones, but the sparkling, almost omnipresent flashes of high voltage that peak through these 40 minutes really demand your canals to be isolated. Immersive shiznit, underneath or not.

>> rapid / mfire (54mb) (d-_-b)
>> love it, buy it (Non Visual Objects)

Brian Harnetty
American Winter
Atavistic 2007

01. The Night Is Quite Advancing
02. It May Be Wintry Outside Tonight, but Inside
03. I'll Cross the Briny Ocean, I'll Cross the Deep Blue Sea
04. I'll Have to Go Off and Be Gone Tonight
05. As I Lay on the Prairie, and Looked at the Stars
06. The Famous Goldfish Bowl (Which Is Really Just a Huge Jar)
07. That's Drunkard's Dream, Nearly Everybody Knows It
08. Instrumental with Fiddle and Harmonium
09. While Pacing a Garden, I Paused for to Hear
10. I Was Interested in the Story You Just Told Me About the Funeral
11. In London City I Used to Dwell
12. Speaking to the American Farmer
13. Thank You, Vern Henson
14. I Am on the Gospel Highway (My Heart Has Brought Me Home)
15. The Soldier Pulled Off His Uniform of Blue
16. Soon We'll Reach the Starry Sky
17. We'll Look for You If We Come Back

«The known, unknown, and forgotten, reworked into new cloth, exposing new layers of humanity. American Winter = holler musics woven with archival field/radio recordings, meeting the 21st century.»

Put simply, despite any suspicions one might have about the way these separate musical traditions fit together, it just works exceptionally well. Just as Madlib's access to the Blue Note catalog for his Shades of Blue album was a goldmine for a jazz fiend, Brian Harnetty was very pleased with the Appalachian collection that he rummaged through while at the Berea College in Kentucky, having full permission to use all original source material at hand. As justly remarked, Harnetty is "like a modern version of Alan Lomax", though he is not content to just catalog and present ancient American music; instead he's chosen to interact with it by creating collages and contemporary compositions. The way voices are mixed with sparse arrangements, the intimacy of it all, make a highly spiritual and highly recommended work.

>> rapid / mihd (73mb)
>> love it, buy it (Atavistic)