Sound arts

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Previously unpublished performance of the internationally renowned dance band Selten Gehörte Musik (on this occasion: Christian Attersee, Gerhard Rühm, Oswald Wiener) at the closing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...

A composition in two continuous parts of 30' and 19' which melts two antagonistic and complementary dimensions: a data-text read by the French artist ORLAN and a virtual orchestra, composed of four singers (Loré Lixenberg, Joan La Barbara, Wills Morgan and Jacques Lizène) and 124 different instruments.

The new solo work of the French musician Pascal Battus: four pieces composed exclusively with cymbals, producing different types of resonances and as many sound expanses.

Iannis Xenakis by Kasper T. Toeplitz; interviews with Delphine Dora, Paul Lovens, J.A. Seazer, Frédéric Blondy; Fred Van Hove by Gérard Rouy; carte blanche to Julie Hascoët; reading notes and about sixty albums reviews; contemporary Arabic poetry: Mina Nagy...

A poetic, "necropolitical" view of sociality in Mexico.

A radio-commissioned album by the Canadian sound artist, based on sound fragments recorded around the world: a subtle and poetic assemblage of concrete sounds and atmospheres that evolve at the boundaries of perception (with Oren Ambarchi and Seiji Morimoto on drums and electronics).

An evocative musical tribute to Greek architect and painter Dimitris Pikionis, based on field recordings and small "poor" objects such as tin whistles, music boxes and toy harmonicas: a meditative, whirring, vibrating and suspended sound piece, both "environmental" and particularly musical.

Array expresses the experience of a remote Antarctic research station through the convergence of sound, site and performance. The result is an immersive and affective experience of the spaces, protocols and conditions comprising the bracing polar environment.

Dreamtime X is a diary kept between March 2020 and March 2021, capturing the conditions of lockdown as experienced by the author. Articulated in the form of 100 short poetic entries, the publication veers across a set of ambivalent perspectives.

A gallery of portraits of people listening to a work by Frédéric Acquaviva in progress, laid out like a flip book.

A hybrid edition (a vinyl record with a newspaper and an insert) extending the artist's research on the links between sound, architecture and the history of spiritism.

A series of in situ improvisations on Mount Tamborine in Australia.

The first vinyl LP release from Fluxus pioneer Alison Knowles (remastered edition transferred from original tapes, with an expansive 20-page booklet).

Contemporary poetry in Arabic: Lamis Saïdi; Pascale Criton; homage to Peter Rehberg by Jérôme Noetinger; Romain Perrot aka Vomir; Michel Doneda; Wuppertal festival / Peter Brötzmann; Yosuke Yamashita interviewed by Michel Henritzi; 45 album reviews...

Two pieces based on Milan Knízak's canonical text Aktual University, dating from 1967, containing ten short lectures outlining the university's character—On Conflict, On Dreams, On Revolutions, On Love, On Belief, On Art, etc. These lectures were to serve as inspirational schemes for lectures, seminars and discussions held at an ideal university.

A staircase drips, not with water but with sound: book / CD dedicated to Fritz Hauser's impressive "sound drawing" for the Vincent van Gogh Foundation in Arles.

Jean-Marie Massou's double album presenting, in a raw way, the recordings made at the end of the 1970s in a giant tank.

The renunciation of art / the art of renunciation.

The third collaboration between Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma—their first album produced together in the same studio: an electroacoustic, poetic, fluid and sensitive dialogue between the two experimentalists.

Built from deconstructed layers of texture, tone, and arrhythmic percussiveness, Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi's 'Palimpsests' distills 6 years of work into 9 splintered, airy reimaginings of minimalism—each surprising, creatively rigorous, and startlingly beautiful—that rest at the outer reaches of contemporary electroacoustic practice and musique concrète.

The new magistral piece from Phill Niblock, played by the Arditti String Quartet, David Watson and the Phoenix Ensemble Basel.

Artist's book.

The new magistral piece from Phill Niblock, played by the Arditti String Quartet & David Watson.

The new magistral piece from Phill Niblock, played by the Phoenix Ensemble Basel.

A 1975 unreleased Strumming performance in Antwerp.

An initiatory drift through the complex, multiple and singularly innovative sound art of Frédéric Acquaviva.