adventurous music from secret pockets of the globe
Spectropol is back after hiatus with another installment in the Possible Worlds xenharmonic series as a name-your-price download.
As usual, stylistic variety and different approaches to xen practice are showcased in a collection of engaging tracks from nine international artists.
The multi-talented king-of-collaborators Bret Harold Hart brings his latest experimental collection to life through Spectropol. As with other Hart projects, this is a hybrid, with prog, jazz, rock, ambient, and noise elements worked in with a kind of electroacoustic improv perspective. There’s a playfulness in many of the tracks here, an invitation for things to happen, an attitude of exploration that provides no shortage of great moments!
Get DubbleThud at Bandcamp ($7 download; $12+shipping CD-R + download)
Eidolons: A Survey of Contemporary Electronic Music
Steve Mueske set out to produce a compilation that reveals some of the complexity, scope, and variety of current electronic music. Spectropol is happy collaborate with him on the release of Eidolons, an album that celebrates non-mainstream music and brings together artists from a variety of places and scenes. The album also includes some longer works, which are often overlooked on compilations.
In organizing the playlist Mueske also wanted pieces that might “converse with each other in a fortuitous way – an excerpt of a larger conversation that extends beyond the boundaries of a “mere” collection. Along those lines Pierre-Luc Senécal’s breathless acousmatic “Urban Gardens” rubs elbows with Busevin’s sound art piece “Three Chants for Computer” and Shane Byrnes’s meticulous deconstruction of a cello performance in “Machinato for Strings.” There are several microtonal pieces by Christopher Bailey, Paul Cousin, and Carlo Serafini, detailed dark ambient work by Fastus, Antonio D’Amato and Bálint Baráth, beautiful and disturbing sound collages, several sonic experiments, and a sublime classical piece by Paul Marquardt.”
FREE download at Bandcamp.
We’re thrilled to release a collection of 25 mostly-solo guitar tracks (in three parts) from Spectropol veteran George Christian (Brazil).
Aos Pássaros Outonais (To the Autumn Birds) is an intimate exploration of imaginative ideas on Christian’s main instrument, a highly personal and very enjoyable journey through various tunings, techniques, and emotions.
Stream or purchase a $7 download on Bandcamp.
The long awaited Earth Stepper debut is finally available on Spectropol.
Dan Stearns has been posting chunks from this collaborative project with Andrew Heathwaite for a few years, but finally the first full-length album is ready for presentation as a whole, with more collections of tracks coming later in the year.
Stream it and download it (for $5) at Bandcamp:
Earth Stepper is a collaborative project by Dan Stearns (instruments) and Andrew Heathwaite (vocals and text), with a handful of contributions from friends, mixed by Stearns into a microtonal and often noisy multidimensional stew. This album, Passport to Magonia, defies easy description. It beguiles, it challenges, and it gets into the back of your brain and under your skin. As with other music by Stearns (see Golden Town, SpecT 03), there is a conviction behind it that betrays an underlying logic, a subliminal flow, despite the chaotic layered surfaces; a sound-art tethered beautifully to Heathwaite’s words and melodies. Step into this trip.
Spectropol is happy to present an intriguing graphic score project from Lanier Sammons with collaborators Giacomo Fiore and Lucie Vítková.
The recordings presented here emerged from an Arts Works Residency at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. During the residency, I asked visitors to draw an image they’d like to have a musician turn into sound. I presented the visitors with grids and asked them to fill in a single cell. Initially, my plan was to combine individual contributions into curated scores, but I was delighted to discover that visitor enthusiasm exceeded my expectations. Folks almost always filled up all or most of the sheet with images, and each sheet felt like an independent, complete graphic score without any intervention from me needed. The contributors ranged from professional artists, like Carmina Eliason whose image is our cover art, to an infant doing his very first drawing on one of my sheets. Collected here are realizations of selected scores by Lucie Vítková and Giacomo Fiore, who were kind enough to come record in the museum gallery.
-Lanier
Spectropol is happy to once again bring the work of Iranian composer Ehsan Saboohi to our listeners…and in this case viewers, as the large work here, a dramatic concerto for solo actress, is ideally experienced as an audio/visual event. Saboohi brings Iranian poet Nima Yushij’s classic “The Legend” to life in this probing, challenging, and ultimately moving theatrical piece.
VIDEO: https://skiks-bh.wistia.com/medias/sjacahtxg6 (stream only)
BANDCAMP (audio only, stream or free download – comes with PDF liner notes): https://spectropolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/concerto-for-solo-actress-the-legend-of-yushs-poet
INSTAGRAM (Farsi): https://www.instagram.com/p/BftV6wmHtu2/
DESKGRAM (Farsi): https://deskgram.org/thelegendofyushspoet
A translation is given below the video for non-Persian speakers (sorry, no subtitles), but the work…which is often declamatory and feels more like a play than music…can still draw one in with its own cadences and dramatic curve.
“The structure of this “concerto” is a combination of contemporary Naghali (recounting stories), spoken word, and contemporary performance art. The actress here creates musical events with voice, body, and movement; a bit like a piano concerto that does not have an orchestra. For me, the Mise-en-scène functions like the orchestration of a piece.
Naqqāli (or Naghali) is the oldest form of dramatic performance in Iran. Historically, it has adapted itself to socio-political circumstances. Before the Sassanid (651 AD), Naqqāls were poets and musicians simultaneously: they recited stories while playing instruments. Bārbad was the most renowned Naqqāl of the Sassanid. During Ghaznavids (10th-12th AD), the Court banned musical Naqqāli, but the tradition survived in remote areas.
The performer – the Naqqāl – recounts stories in verse or prose accompanied by gestures and movements, and sometimes instrumental music and painted scrolls. Naqqāls function both as entertainers and as bearers of Persian literature and culture, and need to be acquainted with local cultural expressions, languages and dialects, and traditional music.
The Concerto for Solo Actress is a faithful narration based on the poem “Afsaneh” (The Legend) by Nima Yushij. I left Tehran for two years in order to write “The Legend of Yush’s Poet”. For this purpose, what place could be better than the homeland of Nima, the father of modern Iranian poetry and whose poem “The Legend” poem charmed me?
I took up residence in the village of Khesht Sar, in the Central District of Mahmudabad County, Mazan- daran Province, Iran, and in close proximity to the birthplace of Nima – Yush. Whenever I was going to the city, I saw a large board at the entrance of the city that had been written on it: “Welcome to Nima Yushij’s Birthplace”. Indeed, Yush and Mazandaran are Nima, and Nima is the pristine nature of the North of Iran. My new home was near the Caspian Sea, which Nima describes it like this: “Your lips were smiling in that wave”. The only music that filled my mind in those two years were the sounds of nature and silence. In this silence, I had the opportunity to think about one thing every day and every hour! Who is the legend? What shape is she? How is her singing? How bitter is her bitterness? And how long is her way? The performance of this work certainly has the result of cooperating with a sympathetic and committed group that I should be very grateful to all of them. Those who were with me at eleven nights’ live perfor- mance of this work and then at all stages of recording, producing, and preparing the audio and video version.
As far as I know, The Legend of Yush’s Poet is the first concerto written for an actress. However, I am responsible for all the errors ahead. But at the same time, I present the premiere of this work to all members of the group and Ghazal Naeemi, who practiced hardly and tirelessly for almost seven months. I am grateful to my sophisticated and kind-hearted friend, Ramin Dargahi, who translated all the texts into English. I am grateful to my dear wife, Lena Koocheri, who has strongly supported me all this time. Also, I thank Mohammad Mousavi and Bruce Hamilton, who helped me to produce this work.
My greatest hope and desire during the making of this project and upon the release of its audio and video albums is that Nima Yushij, a well-known poet of Iran, is watching our work and smiling on what we have done – like a wave that smiles on the sea and caresses us slowly!” – Ehsan Saboohi Tehran 2017
Years in the making, Bruce Hamilton’s Lanes is finally available.
munk punq tezilo (2014) for clarinet, sax, accordion, piano and percussion [Ensemble Kompulz]
Attractors (2013) for vibraphone, piano, and recorded sounds
[Iktus Piano & Percussion Duo]
Still Life (1994) for solo clarinet
[Tasha Warren]
osbatt (2015) [processed keyboard improvisation; Bruce Hamilton]
Four Pieces (2015) for flute, bassoon, violin, double bass, and electric piano [Bellingham Chamber Music Society]
released December 14, 2017
It’s out. Thanks to everyone who waited so patiently! Pick up a copy (digital, CD-R + digital, or special expanded CD-Rx2 + digital) at our Bandcamp site.
More about this ambitious project here.
The Frets Of Yore compilation is finally ready for release on July 21 and the Bandcamp site is open for pre-orders!
Read more about the project here.
The expanded handmade versions will ship in early August.
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