Serein.co.uk / Forecasts

Listening Rituals

admin — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:23:58 +0000

Extended:

Extended

Tracklist

Track:

Robert Henke / Signal to Noise II (Signal to Noise)

Emil Klotzsch / sctl14 (Tiefe Berge)

C-Schulz & Hajsch / Untitled (C-Schulz & Hajsch)

Terre Thaemlitz / A Quiet Of Intimacy Mirrors Distance (Digital Space)

The Inventors of Aircraft / Koeln (*Exclusive)

Microstoria / Me-Too_Modula (Model 3, Step 2)

Visor / Night Interludes (Visor)

Denzel & Huhn / Kinogat (Time Is A Good Thing)

Vladislav Delay / Ele (Suite) {Entain}

The Idea for this Forecast came about after one of my periodic listens to Robert Henke's album, 'Signal to Noise'. This album is one of those I find myself always coming back to, where listening to it has become almost a ritual - in the same way that some people have a particular novel they read once a year. This got me thinking about what other albums I had this similar relationship with; music that I periodically set aside time and space to listen to. After a few days of delving through my collection I found myself drawn to several albums from the late 1990s and early 2000s; music that, like the Henke album, I didn't necessarily listen to frequently, but which had left a lasting impression on me from the day I first heard them.

Most of the tracks are from Germany (some from Cologne, a couple from Berlin), were recorded between 1999 and 2003 (some a little later) and would probably fit into a category that later become known as 'micro sound'. What strikes me about the mix I've assembled is how engaging and forward thinking the music still sounds, despite many of the tracks being around ten years old. In fact, it seems like a precursor to much of the more interesting music being recorded now. I lived in Cologne during this period and nearly all of this music I discovered whilst there. Once my German friends found out what I liked listening to they took me to the A-Musik shop where I was introduced first hand to labels such as A-Musik, Kompakt and Sonig.

Before Cologne i lived in Sheffield, the home of Warp Records and a city with a great musical heritage - electronic music in particular. Warp releases dominated my listening throughout the nineties, and looking back now I can see how the golden age of the label (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Black Dog, Boards of Canada) had come to and end, and just as it did, I moved to a city where, for me, the next phase of forward thinking music was being made.

This mix is a personal reflection on my time spent in Germany and the music I discovered there. As for my contribution to the mix, which is part of the Forecast criteria, I have included a new, exclusive piece of my own, something I wrote in response to the music itself along with reflections on my time in Cologne.

— Words by Phil Tomsett (The Inventors Of Aircraft)

"The Idea for this Forecast came about after one of my periodic listens to Robert Henke's album, 'Signal to Noise'. This album is one of those I find myself always coming back to, where listening to it has become almost a ritual" — The Inventors Of Aircraft

Fungi

admin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:28:35 +0000

Extended:

Not Extended

Tracklist

Track:

Murcof / Louis XIV's demons

Talk Talk / Eden

The Fabric / Containers

Satin Wall / Dans Les Profondeurs

Silo / Prime Movers

Charles Ives / The Unanswered Question

Slowdive / Cello

Menace Ruine / Sky As A Reversed Abyss

This Heat / Paper Hats

Arve Henriksen, Terje Isungset & Karl Seglem / To Er Sedan

Radian / Okazaki Fragment

Loren Mazzacane Connors / Long Nights

Karen Dalton / Katie Cruel

The Chameleons / View From A Hill

Julianna Barwick / White Flag

Nuno Canavarro / Untitled

Mark Hollis / A Life (1885/1905)

Mike Ramsey / Pris/Illbird

Polder / Valleys

Hans Otte / Wassermanmusik 1

Fungi is an edgy and otherworldly selection of music by Mike Ramsey (1000 Hours Of Staring) including a very special contribution of his own. Expect to discover brilliant new music along the way.

Fungi is an edgy and otherworldly selection of music by Mike Ramsey (1000 Hours Of Staring) including a very special contribution of his own. Expect to discover brilliant new music along the way.

Leaving Solaris (Manufacturing Nostalgia)

admin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:34:21 +0000

Extended:

Extended

FLAC (link):

http://www.serein.co.uk/files/forecast/flac/cast006_leaving-solaris-by-robert-curgenven_(serein.co.uk).flac

Tracklist

Track:

*Stars Of The Lid – Broken Harbours Part 3, 2 & 1 (Tired Sounds of...) Kranky 050, triple LP, 2001

Glenn Miller / Moonlight Serenade (The Golden Greatest Hits II) Double LP, Historia 2-772

Robert Curgenven / Parkowanie/Elements (Wind) Fieldrecordings, Unpublished

G_S / Outside (Document 03 - Diffuse) V/A, Dorobo, 2001

Donald Williams & Ronald Whatley / The Old Woman (Sounds like West Cornwall) Sentinel, LP

Toshiya Tsunoda / At Stern, Tokyo Bay 11 Dec 97 (Ridge of Undulation) Häpna, H24, 2005

Toshiya Tsunoda / Sine Waves Mixed With The Sound Of A Vibrating Surface 2 Ridge of Undulation) Häpna, H24, 2005

*Alexander Scriabin / Symphony in C Minor, Op 43, Divine Poem, BBC Symphony Orchestra, 1984

Rosy Parlane / Iris Part 2, Touch, TO 58, 2004

Tim Hecker – 21:35:9:11:02 (Volt-AA) V/A, Oral, 2005

[Andrei Tarkowsky / Solaris, tape from Gilbarian to Kris Kelvin]

Robert Curgenven / Looking for Narratives on Small Islands (part 2), Winds Measure, WM25 2011

Thomas Köner – 2A, 3A (Permafrost) Type, TYPE071V, 2010

Ennio Morricone / Without Pity (Senza Pietà), For A Fistful of Dollars (Per Un Pugno Di Dollari)

Ennio Morricone / For a Few Dollars More, Theme, (Per Qualche Dollaro in Più) Soundtrack

Ennio Morricone / L'attesa (The Wait), from "A Gun for Ringo (Una Pistole per Ringo)", Soundtrack

Tarkowsky / Solaris, Hari addressing Kris, "I've forgotten something, but I don’t know what it is"]

Naked City / Fleurs du Mal (Absinthe) Avant, AVAN004, 1993

*Nina & Frederik / Carousel, S/T, Columbia SEG 8049, 45rpm EP

[Tarkowsky / Solaris, Snaut to Kris about Hari & plans to radiate the planet with his brainwaves]

*David Bowie / The Jean Genie (Best of Bowie) K-Tel, BLP81001, 1981

Emptyset / Completely Gone (Emptyset) Caravan, CVAN010, Double LP, 2009

*Stevie Wonder / I Just Called to Say I Love You, 45rpm single, Motown, TMG1349, 1984

*Belong / Same Places (Slow Version), Table of the Elements, Cu96, 2008

Stephan Mathieu / Remain, Line, LINE_047, 2011

Werner Müller & his Orchestra / La Cumparsita (Spectacular Tangos) Decca, LP

Robert Curgenven / s4 (Untitled), remix of unreleased track, 2011

Mark Fell / Part Two > Vortex Studies A&B, ”UL8”, Editions Mego, 2010

*Robert Curgenven / Looking for Narratives on Small Islands (part 1), Winds Measure, WM25, 2011

David Bowie / Space Oddity (Best of Bowie) K-Tel, BLP81001, 1981

Foreword

I approached Robert to see if he'd be interested in contributing a mix to Serein after hearing his album, 'Oltre' - a deeply satisfying piece of work that I've returned to many times since. Given the role that turntables play in his own compositions and their illustrious history in providing music as a seamless narrative, I thought he might be open to and interested in the idea of delivering a Forecast for Serein.

I had no idea what to expect from him - we didn't talk about it and when he prompted me for an angle I gave deliberately vague guidance. The result was as much a surprise to me as it will be for everyone else who listens to it for the first time - perhaps even more so for me as I wasn't given the opportunity to see the track-list beforehand (bear that in mind, readers).

Robert went above and beyond the call of duty in creating 'Leaving Solaris' - I shan't be as glib as to call it a work of art in its own right - that's for others to decide; what I will say is that it's a weird, wonderful and fun hour-long excursion. — Huw

Leaving Solaris (or Manufacturing Nostalgia) — Words by Robert Curgenven

Imagine an epic, cast in an old and these-days disused mould: a kind of cinema which recalls Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkowsky, Sergio Leone, David Lynch, Baz Luhrman, Godrey Reggio and Francis Ford Coppola. Within this epic, more than the scale of the production, the grandeur of the narrative and the story which is told, could it not be that the recalling of such iconoclasts and their work serves to create a kind of nostalgia - one draped in the sensory cloak of cinema such that the nostalgia itself produces nostalgia? This nostalgia for nostalgia - not for the new but a kind of harking back to great moments of sensory immersion and creation, moments which at the time were at the forefront of innovation but now lie in the halls of cultural fame far beyond the daily trappings of our lives and even the aspirations of today’s big budget Hollywood epics - a nostalgia for nostalgia where we retreat to this old world charm. Though could this be an ebb to a time in isolation, a segue of frozen moments when life was better and the colours were richer compared to the burden of living in this infernal Now? Within this near-Otherness lies a nostalgia for the grand, for places known and unseen, perilous journeys amid turgid seas, struggles across great landscapes, tragic tales of love lost and once again found, a propulsion into a post-terrestrial dimension populated by mysterious and surreal apparitions...

This epic presents the surreal, the absurd, seemingly contradictory narratives and bizarre segues to bind its characters much as in the Russian literary works which are not afraid to bend or morph the rules of time and space to manifest the imaginary. Shifting fluidly through the many “Golden Eras” of cinema, refusing conventional narratives or styles, a series of interconnected vignettes unfurl: the Stars of the Lid’s crackly beginnings belie the echoey layers submerged within a sea of tranquillity; Scriabin’s “Divine Poem” played in reverse becomes a heaving ocean, beset by alien transmissions and shortwave crackles; Ennio Morricone’s Western overtures of pleading fatalism transform the desolate Arctic tundra of Thomas Köner’s “Permafrost” into a bleak, Greek chorus singing out against the tragedy of the struggle toward triumph. Like a solitary figure within the lost narrative of this traversing of Otherness, buried within a nostalgia for nostalgia, the character of Hari from Tarkowsky’s 1972 production of Solaris pronounces, “I have forgotten something , but I do not know what it is”, as her presence encompasses a past long since gone and a man’s quest to recreate it. Elsewhere, Satroius’ macabre, imaginary midget sashays backward through the rumbling red room of mysterious voices in a Lynchian twist bringing to life further quotes from Solaris’ screenplay: Gilbarian doubts his sanity much as Kris’ mind doesn’t just manifest a call to say ‘I love you’ but also forms the brainwaves that Snaut recommends be used to blast this ocean world with radiation. Far above the planet’s surface in a post-Soviet disco-twinkled sky, Belong’s “Same Places” signals a departure which bends time, hurling us further into space on a “Space Oddesy/Oddity” –fueled mission into a new narrative universe where the ship can only break apart as it eventually returns us to the beginning, from the nostalgia-drenched past to the Present.

As suggested by the title, “Leaving Solaris” is not just the physical journey across the cinematic planet, away from its nostalgic mirages of the past and back into Space - which is at once from where we came and also the new way forward - it is also the psychological passage which marks the release which is both to leave and to create the departure. In this process, much as with the manufacturing of nostalgia, we have the beginnings of not just an escape from ourselves, but a modern era epic which trawls the cinematic histories of the 20th century; where through rose-tinged lenses, the crackle, the wash of decay and the textured fading of its print can present us with a new Present encased in the old and incapable of harming us for fear of dispelling its own apparition.

Track listing (*denotes vinyl played backwards)

"Leaving Solaris" by Robert Curgenven charts a cinematic trajectory away from the ocean planet of remanufactured nostalgia. Thirty-one tracks tempered and folded over a one hour mix in a subtly surprising series of layers and unlikely connections.

Colorlist Spotlight

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:02:09 +0000

Tracklist

Track:

Colorlist / Orchid (Lists)

Colorlist / Constant Change (A Square White Lie)

Colorlist / Carbon Monoxide (Lists)

Colorlist / The Swim Around (Lists)

Colorlist / Pteridophyta / Remixed by Reminder (Photographs)

Colorlist / The Lows (A Square White Lie)

Colorlist / Fern Room (Lists)

An introduction to the music of Colorlist. Their EP, "The Fastest Way To Become The Ocean", will be released through Serein on April 5th, 2011. All tracks on this mix are taken from previous recordings and are intended as a taste of what's to come. Thank you to the respective labels. Photograph by Frank Rosaly.

Westwind

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:04:20 +0000

Extended:

Not Extended

Tracklist

Track:

Mentz / Introduction II

Food / Becalmed

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble / Sharbat Gula

Colorlist / Living Mausoleum

Polar Bear / A New Morning Will Come

Kammerflimmer Kollektief / Equilibrium

Mentz / Crayons

Cinematic Orchestra / Exit Music (For A Film)

Westwind is a selection of tracks by Mentz, otherwise known as Stephan Raab. Stephan has roots with the legendary netlabel Tokyo Dawn Records and continues to write jazz blending found sound and live instrumentation.

Moderate Rock

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:36:51 +0000

Tracklist

Track:

Nirvana / Tourette's

Autechre / Netlon Sentinel

Fly Pan Am / Micro Sillons

Greg Davis / Nicholas

Mountains / Window

Tomoyoshi Date / Sunnyside Suns and Sands

Boards of Canada / Live interlude (98)

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Antennas to Heaven

Mogwai / Fear Satan (Kevin Shields Remix)

Pit Er Pat / The Good Morning Song

Opitope / A White Cloth Falls

Biosphere / Too Fragile To Walk On

Vikki Jackman / The Softest Blue

Jodi Cave / For Myria (Two)

Fieldhead / Almost Everything There is to Know (Pausal Remix)

Swod / Paintage

Aphex Twin / Avril 14th

Max Richter / The Haunted Ocean 1

Pip Proud / My Darling Son (Adam Wiltzie Remix)

Arvo Part / Da Pacem Domine

Moderate Rock was put together by Alex Smalley. Alex is one half of Olan Mill who released their debut album here on Serein in April, 2010.

December

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:31:45 +0000

Tracklist

Track:

Brian Eno / Slow Water

Susumu Yokota / Future Tiger

Ennio Morricone / Quilty

Eric Zann / Dôls

Bohren & Der Club Of Gore / Von Schnäbeln

Tangerine Dream / Sequent C

The Advisory Circle / The Old Schoolhouse

Son of Rose / Flocksandflocksandflocks

Broadcast / Drums On Fire

Ceptual / 1st Shadow Sweep

Donato Wharton / Deities Stalk The Land

Arve Henriksen / Ascent

Hauschka / Unknown

December is a loose collection of tracks from albums I've been listening to a lot lately, or in the case of the soundtrack compositions, from films I've recently seen where the score has made an impression.

Reintroduction

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:00:01 +0000

Tracklist

Track:

Marcel Türkowsky / Kuro Sawa

Herzog / Perhaps She'd Like To See Me Fall Apart

Nest / Kyoto

1000 Hours of Staring / Deliverance

The Inventors of Aircraft / All, Nothing

Stephane Leonard / Words in Progress

The Inventors of Aircraft / The Black Dog

Michael Trommer / Long Line Building

Nest / Wheatstone

Segue / Half Way

Marcel Türkowsky / De Dodu

Huw Roberts / Atlas Oryx

Pine / Flume

1000 Hours of Staring / Wintincubator

Reintroduction is the first in a series of mixes (forecasts) presented by Serein. 'Reintroduction' is intended as both a retrospective and a glance at what lies ahead for the label, put together by label owner Huw Roberts.