Sound arts

Recording of the evaporation of 785 grammes of water, namely the average quantity of water that a body loses during an office working day, according to Carrier thermal balance statistics.

Live performance of the artists Jacopo Benassi (voice, guitar, dildo and japanese axe), Michele Lombardelli and Luca Scarabelli (guitar and analog devices) at the RetroStudio, Fiorenzuola d'Arda, 11 July 2022. Including a 16-page booklet of photos by Jacopo Benassi.

An exploration of the shifting acoustic ecology of the Western Isles.

An anthology that traces the long legacy of interdisciplinary experimentations at the intersection of walking, listening, and soundmaking (new edition).

Available for the first time since its original 1980 release on ALM-Uranoia, New Sense of Hearing documents a collaboration between Takehisa Kosugi and Akio Suzuki, two luminaries of Japanese experimental music in the lineage of Fluxus.

Available for the first time since its original 1980 release on ALM-Uranoia, New Sense of Hearing documents a collaboration between Takehisa Kosugi and Akio Suzuki, two luminaries of Japanese experimental music in the lineage of Fluxus.

An exploration of the soundscape of coastal cities by the French-Lebanese artist.

A double-creation with four hands, surprising, intelligent and sensitive, between minimal experimentations, avant-garde pop and dissonance.

A wonderful sophomore collaborative work pieced together over two years of changing seasons, ideas, moods, and feelings.

An original meeting, powerful and explosive, between Charlemagne Palestine, Eric Thielemans and Oren Ambarchi.

Discographisme maison / Homemade record sleeves is a project collecting and assembling a series of record sleeves. They were all reworked and customized by unknown artists who used the original cover as a support or a source of inspiration... This collection echoes an intimate, marginal and overlooked experience, which can be replaced in the history of iconography and pop music.

The sophomore album by the Istanbul born and raised, Berlin based electronic music composer and sound artist Hüma Utku: a series of sonic essays based around themes of psychological phenomena, which can be read as a musical enquiry into the human condition.

The sophomore album by the Istanbul born and raised, Berlin based electronic music composer and sound artist Hüma Utku: a series of sonic essays based around themes of psychological phenomena, which can be read as a musical enquiry into the human condition.

A series of ghostly ink drawings and scanographs by eRikm, accompanied by a mixed sound piece, with sound texts freely inspired by fragments of stories about the universe of the Yokai, these ghosts and supernatural creatures that inhabit Japanese mythology, between hypnotizing soundscapes and bewitching instrumental devices.

A collection of 77 texts by Jason Kahn, each text written in response to a field recording made by the sound artist in Zurich in February-March 2020 (CD with the 77 sound recordings included): a poetic and sonic cartography that reflects the constitution of the place by the way it "sounds".

Vanda Spengler; contemporary Arabic poetry: Rana Al Tonsi; interview with percussionist Lê Quan Ninh by Jérôme Noetinger; interview with David Chiesa and Nina Garcia, two of the 26 figures of the UN ensemble; interview with Lebanese musician, oudist and vocalist Youmna Saba; interview with Marion Camy-Palou by Michel Henritzi; Thierry Monnier (1972-2022) by Pali Meursault; RG Rough; 66 album reviews...

Listening as the basis for social, bodily and passionate movement and transformation.

A collective improvisation as part of a creative research academy focusing on listening as a philosophical, artistic, social and somatic issue.

The third release on Corvo Records by sound researcher and conceptualist Stefan Römer, a soundtrack for one of his experimental films as well as a new addition to his meta project "Deconceptualize".

A major addition to the body of carefully hewn solo work Crys Cole has released over the last decade, offering up two side-long suites of her radically intimate approach to sound.

The art of the tuning fork: the manifesto of the sound artist, performer and composer Nicolas Bernier.

A dialogue between the saxophone and the viola.

Collecting previously unissued works recorded between 2018-2021 and a side-long epic dating back to the early 80s, as the title suggests, "Drumming Up Trouble" focuses on a hitherto almost unknown aspect of Alvin Curran:'s encyclopaedic and omnivorous musical world: his experiments with sampled and synthesised percussion.

The first release to document the variety and playfulness of the concerts that Arnold Dreyblatt and Paul Panhuysen's Duo Geloso performed throughout Europe in 1987-88.

Culled from field recordings, sampled orchestral noises, and voice recorders, the new production by New York artist and composer Nickolas Mohanna explores the spatial impressions of sound within a delicate acousmatic language; producing expressionistic collages that translate into wide-screen cinematic terrain.

An anthology of silence pieces from the records history.

An anthology of text and graphic scores to be used while walking, from Fluxus to the critical works of current artists, through the tradition of experimental music and performance, gathered and presented by Elena Biserna.

Frédéric Acquaviva, as Mozart of the assize court, questions, in this only known example of judicial sound art, justice and its functioning, but especially insists on the fragile barrier which separates criminals from honest composers.

A retrospective of immersive performances and installations with which the Israeli sound and visual artist, composer and musician explores the physicality of sound.

Persistence of Sound presents a new album from one of British sound art's most original voices.

Music, sound, memory and perception in Latifa Echakhch's practice and work.

A radio creation around the materiality of sound and air.

Previously unpublished performance of the internationally renowned dance band Selten Gehörte Musik (on this occasion: Christian Attersee, Gerhard Rühm, Oswald Wiener) at the closing event of the "Literanover" Festival at the Kunstmuseum Hannover, on November 16th, 1980. Close to two hours of very rarely heard dance music, indeed.

A poetic and "environmental" record, weaving delicate instrumentals with spoken word.

A poetic and "environmental" record, weaving delicate instrumentals with spoken word.

Premodern acoustic traces as the basis for new communities of thought in the present (a project responding to the work of the self-taught acoustic archaeologist Umashankar Manthravadi).

A proposition opened up by Umashankar Manthravadi in his practice as an acoustic archaeologist, bringing together writers, choreographers, composers, actors, dancers, musicians, field recordists and sound, light, and graphic designers who engage and transform each other's work.

Loopworks 2 expands Istanbul based audio/visual artist Kantarcioğlu's sampling pool to Turkish records as well as snippets from 70's TV and 80's new age and jazz tapes. This disparate material is mangled and glued together with Koray's very personal sampling techniques.

Francisco López offers a brand new field recording composition based on the recordings he did in the island of Tenerife whilst visiting for a performance at the Keroxen Festival, 2020.

Contemporary poetry in Arabic: Sara Elkamel; Marc Ribot; Bill Nace interviewed by Michel Henritzi; David Grubbs by Laurent Nerzic; Werner Durand interviewed by Deborah Walker; Paulina Owczarek interviewed by Gérard Rouy ; focus Insub.Records; 80 album reviews...

Richly illustrated, this book provides for the first time a visual overview of Lawrence Abu Hamdan's works of more than a decade, and elaborates on a formal vocabulary characterized by the aesthetics of sound and language.

An experimental noise project that synchronises sound with image and takes the form of a durational solo performance as installation (the publication accompanying Marco Fusinato's immersive project for the Australia Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, with texts by Branden W. Joseph, Elizabeth Povinelli, Chus Martínez, Thurston Moore, Stephen O'Malley, Bruce Russell, etc.).

A "story-poem", forming one of the parts of a project by Jean-Guy Coulange that also includes two radio plays and an exhibition.

A sound collage composed from 400 hours of recordings the artists made during the 2-year renovation of their house in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin. The work has been previously presented as an installation of which photos are included on 3 inserts.

Bundle (special offer for the purchase of seven issues of OpticalSound).

Interviews with Michael Gira (Swans), Ghislain Mollet-Viéville, Jérôme Lefdup, Éric Mangion, Pierre Leguillon, Norscq & Guillaume Ollendorff; Roxane Bovet, Mathieu Copeland and Laurent Schmid on John Armleder; Stéphane Margolis; Marie Losier's ten favorite records; Abbas Kiarostami by Alain Bergala...