cdemusic.org: "Natasha Barrett is a composer of electronic and instrumental music. She has composed electroacoustic music, and music for acoustical instruments and live electronics, sound installations, dance, theatre, and animations. She often works with recorded sounds of the world and abstractions of those sounds.
Natasha Barrett's electroacoustic music has been performed throughout the world. She has received awards from Noroit Foundation, Concours Scrime, International Electroacoustic Creation Competition of Ciberart, Ars Electronica, Bourges, Fondazione Luigi Russolo ... and commisssions from Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, Oslo Sinfonietta, NICEM (Norwegain section of the ICEM), International Computer Music Association"
wnyc.org: Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto collect sounds and phrases from movies, records, and the world around us. They combine those sounds with their cello, banjo and guitar playing and vocals to create an experience that's kind of like music and kind of like a radio play. Recording as The Books, their music is rich with the revealing, illuminating and mystifying magic of collage.
www.thewire.co.uk:"Bombay 1 are Düsseldorf's Kurt Dahlke (aka Pyrolator, ex-DAF/Der Plan), and Stoya, who has previously worked with Gang Of Four's Andy Gill. Strobl is Bombay 1's second LP, following 2003's Me Like You. That debut was full of glacial electronics and distorted Techno, which the Düsseldorf residents have rejected in favour of soul-bearing, restrained, bitter sweet songwriting. The album is named after the Austrian town, by a lake in the mountains, where the pair retreated to record."
thewire.co.uk."When people ask Kevin Barker to describe the sound of his 'group' Currituck Co, his reply is usually 'psychedelic folk', which makes sense, as he is a parttime member of Devendra Banhart's Vetiver, and earlier this year he toured with Drag City artist Joanna Newsom. Most of Sleepwalks, which shows off Barker's dark Country fingerpicking on steel guitars and banjos, as well as longer improvised pieces, was recorded in the bedroom of his home, Marlborough Farms, in Brooklyn."
THE WIRE June 2004: “Ostensibly a vehicle for singer-songwriter Liz Hysen, Toronto based Picastro weave her songs into an abstract framework of extended, moody soundtracks. Here the singer’s identity is absorbed into the overall impression left by the music. Reported comparisons with Cat Power are therefore wide of the mark. Hysen’s role is oddly selfless, her voice subdued to a general murmur amid the music’s burgeoning drama. The songs are instead a vehicle for the group to expand their vocabulary, creating a gloomy variant of folk blues with a wide reach. Once the context within which Hysen as singer and author is established, the lack of lyrical clarity or a firm songwriting identity no longer matters.”
guardian.co.uk: "As far as I'm aware, no major works by Clemens Gadenstätter have been heard so far in Britain, but this hour-long ensemble piece, Comic Sense, a zany hybrid between a piano concerto and an instrumental suite, suggests British new music groups would do well to investigate his output.
In 1966, the Austrian-born Gadenstätter began his professional life as a flautist, and was briefly a member of Klangforum Wien before going off, in 1992, for post-graduate studies with Helmut Lachenmann in Stuttgart. Lachenmann's approach appears to have left a deep impression on Gadenstätter's sound, but in a work like Comic Sense, completed last year, there is none of his teacher's deliberately alienating techniques."
strange-attractors.com: Beaming warmly from the underground enclaves of Los Angeles, CA like a lambent ray of soft sunlight, the music of Nick Castro is breathing fresh life and pristine wonderment into an old sound. Castro released a beguiling album called A Spy in the House of God in 2004 on his own imprint Records of Ghaud, and it caused quite a stir in the new acid folk circles. Imagine a melding of More-era Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett solo and a touch of Incredible String Band with modern fractured folk sound weavers like the Tower Recordings and maybe you are in the right sphere. For his follow up, Castro has assembled a cast of players calling themselves The Poison Tree, boasting amongst its ranks underground folk icons Josephine Foster and members of Espers. It is a heavenly match as evidenced on Further From Grace, a simply mystical sophomore effort illustrating with a feathery wallop that Castro is a major voice amongst the new insurgence of THC troubadours. Read more
allmusic.com:"The alternative pop-rock and lo-fi recordings of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti are full of intrigue--and full of contradictions. Pink, a male singer, composer, musician and producer who is based in Los Angeles, provides songs that are melodic, catchy and familiar--songs that, in their own unorthodox way, recall the most immediate, accessible, straight-forward FM pop-rock of the ‘70s and ‘80s. But Pink's work also comes across as bizarre, trippy, skewed and twisted--and a lot of that strangeness comes from his production style."Read more
evilbitch666.com: Alexander Hacke is best known for his work with experimental group Einstürzende Neubauten, which in 2005 celebrate their 25th year anniversary. Neubauten, something of a musical institution in their native Germany (actually sent to represent the Country at the 1986 World Expo), are widely regarded around the world as one of the founding fathers of “industrial” music, influencing later bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, among others.
However, Hacke has a strong musical resume in his own right, playing guitar for Crime and the City Solution (featuring members of The Birthday Party), Jever Mountain Boys, and Italy’s Gianna Nannini. He has produced albums for Klaus Kinski, anarchist songwriter Fred Alpi, Miranda Sex Garden, and Meret Becker. And of recent note, he has produced and composed for various films, including “Gegen die Wand" (Head On), directed by Fatih Akin and awarded with the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival (and which prominently features the track “Sugarpie” off “Sanctuary”), and is currently producing the music for Akin’s upcoming film “Crossing the Bridge/The Sound of Istanbul. Read More
paristransatlantic.com: "Unlike the other venerable pioneers of electronic music on both sides of the Atlantic, Tod Dockstader didn't arrive in the studio with his head stuffed of highfalutin' serial rhetoric or music conservatory dogma. His background as a cartoonist and sound engineer (which followed studies at university in Art, Literature and Abnormal Psychology) provided him with a refreshingly unpretentious hands-on attitude to sound and sound-producing equipment, a curious and playful ear and a knack for making do with whatever was at hand." More info
betterpropaganda.com: The anthemic Olympia, WA-based punk trio Sleater-Kinney formed from the ashes of Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17, a pair of groups which rode the first wave of the riot grrrl movement. Singers/guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein first met in 1992, when Tucker was one half of the duo Heavens to Betsy; Brownstein, a classically-trained pianist, was so inspired by Tucker and other grrrl musicians like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile (not coincidentally Tucker's own influences) that she formed her own band, Excuse 17, a year later. Read more
Two Insiders on the Dark...
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WNYC: "Former journalists Alan Huffman and Michael Rejebian talk...
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betterpropaganda.com: The anthemic Olympia, WA-based punk trio Sleater-Kinney formed from the ashes of Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17, a pair of groups which rode the first wave of the riot grrrl movement. Singers/guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein first met in 1992, when Tucker was one half of the duo Heavens to Betsy; Brownstein, a classically-trained pianist, was so inspired by Tucker and other grrrl musicians like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile (not coincidentally Tucker's own influences) that she formed her own band, Excuse 17, a year later.