WNYC.org: "A session bassist who hit it big with the ’60s teen-idol act The Walker Brothers, Scott Walker recorded dark and brooding solo albums that rival those of Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave. His most recent album is the disturbing, but critically lauded The Drift. The reclusive artist is the subject of the documentary “Scott Walker: 30 Century Man,” which opens Dec. 17 in New York. The film’s director, Stephen Kijak, and music writer Graeme Thomson talk about the one of the most unusual and compelling songwriters of the past 40 years." Listen here
wikipedia: "Burial is the self-titled debut album by the anonymous dubstep producer, Burial. It was released in 2006 on Kode9's Hyperdub records to critical acclaim, including being named "Album of the Year" by The Wire magazine. Read on
BBC: "In Mary Anne Hobbs' new Tuesday night slot she's got an exclusive mix from Burial which has been put together by Kode9. Pus there's tracks from Cadence Weapons, False, Calibre, Zinc, and Breakage." Download here
hyperdub.net: "This first album on Kode9’s Hyperdub label comes from the mysterious Burial. On this self-titled CD debut, Burial carves out a sound which sends the dormant slinky syncopations of uk garage, via radio interference, into a padded cell of cushioned, muffled bass, passing through the best of Pole’s Berlin crackle dub. Burial explores a tangential, parallel dimension of the growing sound of dubstep." More
THE WIRE: "There's and almost heroic consistency to Phill Niblock's work. Since the late 60s - Niblock has recently turned 70 - he's worked with live instrumentalists, multitracking simple tones and drones tuned either aurally or visually to sinewaves and the playing back the results at very high volumes which greatly enhance the field of overtones. This latest set is the product of nearly two years' work, all but one of the pieces involving a single instrument, recorded, repeated, pitch shifted and then played back in a variety of recording environments, ranging from saxophonist Ulrich Krieger's flat in Berlin to the main auditorium of Deutschland Radio in Cologne. Close miking also picks up extra levels of harmonic and timbral detail." More
"The Highly pleasing debut album by Dutch musician Rutger Zuydervelt is eminiscent of Willian Basinski and Harold Budd among others, but has plenty of twists and turns of it's own. 'Kreukeltape' is particulalrly Basinski-esque, but it's as if the music has been amplified and subjected to a still more extreme aging process. Drifting like an electronic Marie Celeste, it manages to convey a substantial sense of absence. Even the minimal piano interventions seem excessive and garrulous, such is the mood Zuydervelt creates here." Read on
matadorrecords.com: "The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast is the new record by San Francisco duo Matmos. It is a series of "sound portraits" of a pantheon of people that they admire. A musical attempt at biography, it’s loose in some places and very literal in others; taken as a suite of stylistically disparate songs, you get a kind of fractured family album, a historical pageant. It's at once Matmos’s most melodic and most conceptual record." Read on
wnyc.org: "Every 11 years since 1984 Scott Walker, the James Joyce of Pop, has released an album that digs deeper into his unique, dark, musical world. A pop star back in the 60's with The Walker Brothers, Scott Walker began his journey into musical terra incognita with a series of solo albums that featured an improbable blend of crooning, surrealism, and experimentation. Walker's brand new album, "The Drift," is powerful, mysterious, astonishing, and compelling. While it seems to continue from where his previous album left off, it's otherwise utterly unlike anything else...The album is over a hour long, but host David Garland presents most of it on this show." Listen to this feature at Radio WNYC
forcedexposure.com: "This is the long-awaited fifth full-length solo album from Berlin's queen of fragile and poetic electro-pop -- now introducing the piano. It's three years since Barbara Morgenstern's acclaimed album Nichts Muss, and as The Grass Is Always Greener goes to show, she has come a long way. Her Goethe Institut-sponsored world tour and many recent collaborations with, among others, Robert Lippok and Bill Wells have clearly been an inspiration for this album." More
allmusic.com: "One of the prime figures in the growth of Kraut-rock, Conrad Schnitzler made important contributions to the early history of Kraftwerk and Kluster. Like many in the Kraut-rock community, Schnitzler was greatly inspired by influences in the visual artistic world as well as the musical; he studied sculpture with Joseph Beuys, and composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen, also looking to John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer for inspiration. By 1969, he was working with Tangerine Dream, with whom he recorded Electronic Meditation. The album became one of the most distinctive in TD's discography, and Schnitzler takes much of the credit for its chance-taking approach." More
The WIRE May 2006: "[...] Nevertheless, Mattin's music has an undeniable roughness, a lack of politeness that sets him apart from other more hi-tech, high-concept laptoppers. He's a contrarian, intent on going against the grain at all times, never doing what's expected of him. His albums can dwell on hellish noise (such as his 2004 Pink Noise collaboration with ex-Hijokaidan vocalist Junko) or centre on the flimsiest wisps of sound - he has recorded with both Taku Sugimoto and Radu Malfatti, probably the most restrained musicians working today. “Most of my work has to do with the preconceptions that people might have and trying to contradict them, trying to put a different perspective on what can be done in a performance situation,” he says. “I try not to make a hierarchy of sounds, I try to deal with the instrument against the way it was conceived. Often with computer musicians it's a macho kind of attitude, one guy with a laptop, very enclosed. So I try to break this by playing with the lid closed, or with the computer off, or with just the speakers.”" Read on
allmusic.com: "One of the most enigmatic figures in rock history, Scott Walker was known as Scotty Engel when he cut obscure flop records in the late '50s and early '60s in the teen idol vein. He then hooked up with John Maus and Gary Leeds to form the Walker Brothers. They weren't named Walker, they weren't brothers, and they weren't English, but they nevertheless became a part of the British Invasion after moving to the U.K. in 1965. They enjoyed a couple of years of massive success there (and a couple of hits in the U.S.) in a Righteous Brothers vein. As their full-throated lead singer and principal songwriter, Walker was the dominant artistic force in the group, who split in 1967." More
ON THE COVER: AGF: Word processing in Berlin with polystylistic laptopper and digital 'poemproducer', Antye Greie. By Keith Moliné FEATURES: Scott Walker, Conrad Schnitzler, Ryoji Ikeda, Invisible Jukebox: William Parker, Scatter, Mattin, David Rothenberg
Download tracks from Basque Improv-punk Mattin.
View a video clip of excerpts of live performances from the Fonal Records tour featuring Kiila, Islaja and Es.
Download exclusive tracks from clarinettist and twitcher David Rothenberg.
Download an exclusive mixed excerpt from 8 of the 20 transmitters along Graeme Miller's Linked soundwork.
Listen to a track from Michael Gordon's new album Light Is Calling preview ing his upcoming tour.