2012 was a good year for me. I was very productive creatively.
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It was also a good year for netlabel music, I found a ton of good stuff to listen to. For the last several years, I’ve done a write-up of some of my favorite netlabel things released during the previous twelve months. I’m doing it again this year with this blog post, but before moving on to my end of year recommendations, I would like to call attention to the work I was personally involved in during 2012.
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Two of my albums came out this year:
“Buddha Reduction” on Vuzh Music
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and…
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“One of the Drone Boys” on Linear Obsessional.
Both are free downloads with CC licenses allowing for non-commercial derivative work.
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Inarguably the biggest thing I did this year was curate and open an exhibition of sound art, which was visited by hundreds of people in Fort Collins, Colorado, made possible through the financial support of Front Range Community College and guided by my Museum and Gallery Studies instructor Jennie Kiessling. It was titled Sound Through Barriers, and included performances by Jeph Jerman and Cheryl Leonard. The exhibition & performances are extensively documented at the website with TONS of photos and TONS of sound recordings and a big curatorial statement that distills some of my thoughts about listening. Hope you’ll read it if you haven’t.
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I also started performing live, after having been an exclusively a composer of recorded music prior. Here’s a video of one performance:
http://youtu.be/iOnXNknsrgQ,
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and here’s another one of the performances (audio only this time) on SoundCloud:
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– Vuzh Music released eight albums this year by the following artists:
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I also was happy to release seven generations of new work on Dystimbria, my netlabel where each new release uses appropriated material from the previous release(s). The artists this year were: AODL, Mutant Beatniks, Post-Avantist, Cinchel, Miquel Parera Jaques, David Nemeth and Phillip Wilkerson. All of their tracks can be downloaded freely from the Dystimbria.cc.
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OKAY, so that ends the part where I talk about my own projects from the year, and start recommending netlabel music!
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Just like last year’s best-of, I’m only going to recommend free downloads, because that’s primarily what I listen to.
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I’m again calling special attention to those releases with licensing allowing for derivative work. I am currently working on a new set of music based entirely on samples of netlabel music with this kind of open licensing. I’m drawing samples from a diverse set of artists and transforming them into new works. This process has been very exciting, not only for me creatively, but also because it deepens my appreciation for the original works. I appreciate artists who allow for derivatives, extra hoorays for them! Derivative-friendly licenses get a happy Bush badge, unfriendly licenses get an EVIL CHENEY badge.
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Again I’d like to encourage more promotion of this type of underground music. How is anyone supposed to find out about underappreciated music if you don’t tell someone about it? Don’t assume that any of this music, or any other netlabel music you find has no problem attracting listeners, often very few people ever listen to this music. Unknown artists really made an effort to do good work, and they want listeners, so do your part and tell someone if you like a netlabel release. Please.
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This list is not qualitatively ordered, it’s alphabetical, so please don’t glean any kind of meaning from placement.
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– PLEASE share any of your favorite netlabel releases from 2012 in the comments to this post. I and the readers of this post may have missed something really good.
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– Andreas Brandal – Apparition
Control Valve license unknown
Andreas’ intriguing sound pairs a subtle musicality with abstractions and drones. Minimal repeating phrases and saturated squalls of howling sound, all with a keen sense of flow and composition. Very nice, I like a lot of this fellow’s work.
I always check the Control Valve netlabel for new things, they’re one of my favorites in terms of content, but the website design is frustrating. I can’t deep link direct to the album, because of the way the netlabel presents its releases. Here’s the label’s website: http://www.controlvalve.net/ To get this release, you’ll either have to go to ‘releases’ on the main site, and search for the album or you could go to this archive page and download the .zip (it’s not a normal netaudio release page).
Control Valve also doesn’t provide release date or licensing information for its releases, I wish they did.
Just three of the many releases by this prolific artist during 2012. I’ve listened to as many as I can. Alex’s stuff is always interesting, a common strategy of his is to select a collection of materials non-standard to sound making and improvise with them while running these sounds into a looper. Audio for Noisy Rooms uses insistent electronic synthesis, Trevenec focuses on bell sounds, and Words I Regularly Misspell… is the most melodic of the things I’ve heard from him, even going into a long, repeating sung refrain at the finale.
Begins with a splendid 22 minute track of mind-clearing, slow-burning, intense, harsh noise. The final two tracks are not as harsh, but equally deserving of attention.
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– Gurdonark – Open Spaces
We Are All Ghosts cc by
Each Gurdonark release is similar in content, simple, plucky little melodies played with soft synth pads, this time with prominent glissandi used in the compositions. I enjoy listening to each Gurdonark release to get a feel for Robert Nunnally’s progression as an artist, but I also simply enjoy the music for itself.
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– He Can Jog – Pocket Suite
Pocket Fields (conflicting reports of license, on archive it’s listed as cc by nc nd, on other places it’s cc by nc sa – the artist assures me he’s derivatives friendly.)
A nice abstract journey in static-y tone clusters and glitches. Feels somehow melodic and rhythmic, but it’s neither. I’m not sure how he pulled off that effect!
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– The Implicit Order – Gaps in the Land
Wholeness Recordings cc by nd
Talk about your ‘hauntology’… the Implicit Order wrote the book on spooky nostalgic collage music. This road-trip themed release is as good as it gets, very nice work. Although it does nag me that his work is built on appropriated samples from copyrighted sources, and yet his own work is licensed disallowing others to remix it.
Miquel Parera Jaques is one of those artists whose releases I always listen to, and usually I end up really liking a lot. The first two releases listed here feature Jaques’ mind-massaging complex electronic wave forms slowly transforming… utterly and completely mesmerizing stuff. It’s hard to concentrate on anything but the sound when this music is on. The last release here is something a bit different, as it uses algorithmic computer functions to generate midi signals to control a pipe organ. It reminds me of some of the stochastic synth work I’ve heard from academic sources, but of course the organ sounds lend a contextual weight, which Miquel outlines in his artist statement. I would like to have seen more variation in terms of rhythm / tempi and timbre in this work, but it is fascinating that this very different work elicits some of the same mesmerizing effect as the electronic stuff.
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– Hannah Marshall – Tulse Hill
Linear Obsessional cc by nc sa
These are improvisations for cello with de-tuned strings. Many of the pieces are structured with simple repeating tone phrases, but rhythmically they sway in an organically determined imprecise meter… this is something that interests me very much, something I’ve explored and continue to explore in my own music. I keep listening to this and my appreciation keeps growing. Splendid work.
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– Meteer – Decameteer
Withering Trees netlabel cc by nc sa Meteer – Novometeer
Withering Trees netlabel cc by nc sa Meteer – Octometeer
Withering Trees netlabel cc by nc sa Meteer – Three Word Seminary
BFW Recordings cc by nc nd
We were lucky to have a bunch of Meteer releases this year! Three Word Seminary is ambient electronica with an edge… expertly made. The three -meteer releases – named after the last three months of the year – are the same, but with a more experimental / exploratory edge. I think I’ve listened to Novometeer the most, but they’re all good. If you don’t know his work, you are cheating yourself.
Thomas Park does country music. He’ll put a boot up yer ass, it’s the American way. There’s little identifiably “country” about this music, the genre’s conventions are strained really thin, curt steel twangs twitch in repetitive spasms and the slide guitars shimmer confusedly.
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– The Noisemaker – Space Drones
Inside Outside cc unspecified
A pair of completely lovely drones, can’t say it’s especially “spacey” though. The first sounds like its source might be a high tempo drum machine looping a single tom hit run through liberal amounts of chorus & delay. Somehow this builds into an enveloping atmosphere of shimmering overtones. The second track is a low frequency hum, a higher frequency whine and a repeating ping. The simple things make me happy sometimes.
A reissue of one of my favorite abstract noise-ambient albums from my tape collecting / trading days. This is a drop-dead classic of abstract ambient-noise. Unmissable.
Begins with an eight second blast of loud harsh noise, just enough to scare the shit out of you. The remainder is a very compelling exploration of strange textures coaxed out of piezo mics and failing equipment, with some recordings of live performances thrown in for good measure. The bare minimum of acid-etched sound, no ornamentation.
Sparse electronic atmospheres. Yummy oscillations, drifty quasi-melodic tones, slowly creeping crunches & clicks. Says here it was made with Soundcollider.
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– Chris Whitehead – South Gare
Linear Obsessional cc by nc sa
A composition that organizes selected phonographic elements and multi-tracks them together with a smattering of humble percussive interactions with actual spaces. Terrific.
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– Xesús Valle – Gently Annoying
Audiotalaia cc by nc sa
How do you even describe this album? It’s peculiar and diverse and offputting and catchy and… and… gently annoying. An intriguing collection of off-kilter music that grooves by its own secret inner logic.
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My Last.FM stats for the last year (I’m last.FM user vuzh)… you were thinking I don’t actually listen to this stuff, were you?
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Netlabel links:
Mini reviews. Emphasis on the mini.
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I like all of this stuff.
Except for the no-derivatives licenses I don’t like that stuff.
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I didn’t feel like alphabetizing them, so please infer absolutely nothing from the way they’re ordered, it’s completely random.
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Schemawound – They Want To Make Your Body Move. I Want To Hold You Perfectly Still.
Waxen Wings / CC-BY-NC / Name Your Price
An uncluttered collection of sparse electronic atmospheres. Yummy oscillations, drifty quasi-melodic tones, slowly creeping crunches & clicks. Says here it was made with Soundcollider. http://music.schemawound.com/album/they-want-to-make-your-body-move-i-want-to-hold-you-perfectly-still
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Mystified – The Noise Years
Buddhist on Fire / CC-BY-NC-ND / Free
Burbling, squawking, grungey sounds, but somehow with that sleek Mystified structural sense. http://archive.org/details/bof040
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Travis Johnson – Pnaïx
Ilse / CC BY NC SA / Name Your Price
Grooving to the rhythm of strange attractors. Seriously denuded percussion like something rattling in the bottom of a pot of boiling water. Short blips & glissandi. Some of the sounds might come from acoustic improv run through electronic filtrations, others sound like sequenced drum machine sounds. http://ilse.bandcamp.com/album/pna-x
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Yolanda Uriz / Angel Faraldo – Ademen
Audition Records / CC-BY-NC-ND / Free
Abstracted electronic soundscapes journeying through various possible imagined spaces. http://archive.org/details/ar057Ademen”
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Daniel Barbiero – Not One Nor Zero
Zero Moon / CC BY NC SA / Free
Solo improvs on double bass, extended techniques with long pauses between one sound and another. http://archive.org/details/zero137
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Graham Dunning – Graham Dunning – Recompiled 2010 – 2011
Open Sound Group / CC BY NC ND / Free
A retrospective compilation of some of this dude’s stuff. Claustrophic hiss loops, synth drones, feedback studies, site recordings and explorations of sounds on found tapes. http://archive.org/details/GrahamDunning-Recompiled2010-2011
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Leo Bettinelli and Pol Nieva – Pale
Tecno Nucleo / CC BY NC SA / Free
Experimental electro-improv. I hear synths, strings (viola, guitar?) and lotsa delay. http://archive.org/details/tn035
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Mystified – Where Angels Fear To Tread
Treetrunk / CC BY NC / Free
Thomas Park does country music. He’ll put a boot up yer ass, it’s the American way. There’s little identifiably “country” about this music, the genre’s conventions are strained really thin, curt steel twangs twitch in repetitive spasms and the slide guitars shimmer confusedly. http://archive.org/details/Where_Angels_Fear_To_Tread
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PBK – Thrill Pictures
Nostalgie de la Boue / License not listed / Free
What can I say? A drop dead classic of noise ambient. I played this music a lot in its previous release on cassette. This is billed as a remaster… maybe it’s been a long time since I’ve heard the music, but it sounds to me now like it may have been remixed too? http://nostalgie-de-la-boue.blogspot.com/2012/02/pbk-thrill-pictures-condensed.html
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Minireviews of netlabel stuff.
All of this stuff is free.
Look at all of those no-deriv licenses (grumble grumble). What’re you afraid of?
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Barascud – Summit
Nowaki / CC BY NC SA
http://www.nowaki-music.org/album.php?id=149#album149
Well made guitar-ambient music alternating between neutral drone atmospheres and prettier stylings. I am partial to the former and not so interested in the latter, but for this kind of thing, it hits its marks fairly well.
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Alex Charles – Trevenec
Linear Obsessional / CC BY NC SA http://linearobsessional.bandcamp.com/album/trevenec
Drones based on bell sounds. Peals & jingles add up from a simple beginning to a thicker soundscape. Later, what sounds like thumb piano from a jack-in-the-box lends a gone-mad feel to it.
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Conure – Surrounded by Pages
Treetrunk / CC BY NC ND http://archive.org/details/Surrounded_By_Pages/
NOISE! Often this kind of thing is better live and misses something in recording, but I liked this one quite a bit. Needless to say that if you demand that the sounds you consume be all rounded off & padded and pre-approved for safety, this ain’t for you. Starts off with a long piece that builds to a satisfying heaviness by adding elements slowly to the ever swirling miasma. Other tracks take a more modified approach, such as the second one wherein a quiet guitar loop is joined by a spacey hum, and it only builds into a high volume squall eventually and only briefly. Overall a measured, patient & varied approach to harsh noise. Very enjoyable.
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René Muñoz Córdova – The Fragility of Emotions
Akharene / CC BY NC ND http://akharene.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/fragility-of-emtions.html
Top shelf acousmatic drone work from this veteran netlabel composer. The drones here oscillate forebodingly enough, and are paired with various instruments (piano, percussion, brass) and other unidentified acoustic sound activity filling out the sound field. Not a huge amount of processing going on, much of it sounds like something that happened, not something conjured from a laptop.
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FJRicharts – Anders Als Alle
Camomile / CC BY NC ND http://camomille.bandcamp.com/album/anders-als-alle
Brightly tinted ambient music that often flirts with sweet melodic motifs and occasionally gives in.
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Hirobleep – Carved in Concrete
Hirobleep / CC BY NC ND http://hirobleep.bandcamp.com/album/carved-in-concrete
Insistent and simplistic primitive-techno jams based on a very limited palette of square & saw waves. Each high BPM track contains the same elements, a repeating bass line and a dissonant “melody” that also repeats, backed by a reedy drum loop clattering underneath. Once the pattern is set, that mixture repeats from the beginning to the end, with filter sweeps providing the only variety. On its own, it has a few moments, but I could really see this remixed into something good. It’s too bad then, that they issued this with a no-derivatives CC license, because we’ll never know.
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Noisemaker – Space Drones
Inside Outside / ?? (at this writing the netlabel page is down, I can’t determine license) http://ins-out.com/inside/releases/insd-010/
A pair of completely lovely drones. The first sounds like its source might be a high tempo drum machine looping a single tom hit run through liberal amounts of chorus & delay. Somehow this builds into an enveloping atmosphere of shimmering overtones. The second track is a low frequency hum, a higher frequency whine and a repeating ping. The simple things make me happy sometimes. The netlabel Ins Out seems to be down at the moment, I hope it comes back, because I can’t seem to find this release on Archive or Sonic Squirrel or other likely places.
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Sarah J Ritch – String Theory
Pan y Rosas / License not listed http://www.panyrosasdiscos.net/pyr048-sarah-j-ritch-string-theory/
Cello & violin pieces with some electronics. Call me crazy, but I hear hints of epic black metal in some sections and microsound electronic ambient stuff in others. The pieces with Ritch solo are more drawn out & patient, one has a subdued drone of frequencies beating, cresting & ebbing.
I’m finally getting some time to get caught up on my netlabel listening. The big project that was taking up so much of my time is now behind me (a sound art exhibition archived here: http://soundthroughbarriers.com) and I can concentrate on my other interests again!
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So in preparing this post, I noticed that a lot of the Creative Commons licenses that are used here don’t allow remixing… “no derivative work”. Obviously it’s up to each artist / label to decide what license to use, but I humbly argue for a more open license, such as CC BY or CC BY NC SA — a no-deriv license amounts to a monologue, allowing derivative work opens up the work to dialogue. I’ve been strongly considering the idea of basing a new work on appropriated sounds from the netlabel underground, (with proper attribution, of course) and it’s dismaying seeing all of these good releases that disallow it.
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And now I’m getting off my high horse and we can proceed to the reviews.
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Clay Gold – Clay Mining http://threelegsduck.bandcamp.com/album/clay-mining
Three Legs Duck / CC BY SA / Name your price
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A percussion improvisation with heaped-on effects, soft-pad washes & tinkles, and some samples too. I am ambivalent about it.
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He Can Jog – Pocket Suite http://pocketfields.com/post/24536164742/pf028-he-can-jog-pocket-suite
Pocket Fields / CC BY NC SA / Free
(Note: Archive.org lists the release as CC BY NC ND, but in conversation with the artist, that’s a mistake, and the above license is correct)
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It is a bitcrushed swampland of electronic crickets & frogs, with an Ariel Kalma-esque feeling of something hovering. Comes packaged with the source code.
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Miquel Parera Jaques – Empty Space http://www.tecnonucleo.org/index.php?page=release&release=33
Techno Nucleo / CC BY NC SA / free
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Frequency oscillations beat and collide together until they burst. Aw… poor square waves!
Samples and source code also available.
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Travis Johnson – Menotact http://www.controlvalve.net
Control Valve / license not listed / free
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A quietly modulating electronic drone supplemented by the occasional electro-bloop, or sine-glissando is paired with an indoor site recording in which not much happens (a rustle of slight movement, something clicks or clatters). Later, there are a few claps in a reverberating space. None of it adds up to much, but that’s all-right with me, I happen to think it’s pretty nifty!
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Lezet – Hum http://www.etchedtraumas.net/discography/hum/
Etched Traumas / license not listed / free
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Assembled from incidental mouth / breath noises. Disinterested sounding “ah”s & “hm”s join amphibian snurks, clammy gurgles & bovine grunts as the primary source material for the two pieces that are the focus of this release. The compositional structure is as insistent as aimless, like a room full of morons bumping into one another: perhaps then the point is to dance to it? It’s funny at first, and then a little disturbing, and most definitely worth a listen. I’ll leave it to a literary scholar to tell me whether or not this is sound poetry.
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Meteer http://www.bfwrecordings.com/releases/Meteer/ThreeWordSeminary/
BFW Recordings / CC BY NC ND / free
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One day the “outside world” will discover how good Bjorn Asserhead’s Meteer project is, and what’ll happen then? Hopefully the rest of us netlabel folk will beam with pride and send him virtual handshakes and pats on the back, and he’ll make sure to remind people in that edenic “outside” that there’s other people like him making music and giving it away for free… “down there”. Seriously, though this chill rhythmic ambient music is better than much of the similar stuff I’ve heard on the 12k label, and he hits the occasional evocative groove that stands on its own. He’s an artist worth following.
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Naïve Mind – ___________ (Put a title in this line if you want) http://www.zenapolae.com/zen087
Zenapolae / CC BY NC SA / free
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If you asked a lot of people if they like competent pop-techno with simplistic, pretty melodies sometimes with a bit of guitar plucking alongside, many of those people would say “yes, I like those things”. I’m not one of them, so this gets chucked in the bin.
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David Nemeth – Home Drones http://archive.org/details/Home_Drones_Nemeth
Treetrunk / CC BY / free
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Miscellaneous domestic hums and whirrs treated as though they were worth documenting and listening to, which of course they are. I think it’s fab.
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Juan Antonio Nieto – The Voice Inside http://archive.org/details/TheVoiceInsideem177
Electronic Musik / CC BY NC ND / free
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Filmic spooky atmospheres with a distant hint of Robert Rich’s “Trances / Drones”
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Protofuse – Bits#10 http://protofuse.bandcamp.com/album/bits-10
self-released / copyrighted / it was free, but I guess now you have to pay?
Low-rent Basic Channel minimal techno stuff. It burbles along unremarkably enough. I’m often partial to this kind of thing, so I like it, but admittedly it’s not the most exciting music in the world.
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Radio Royal – RRDL01 http://clinicalarchives.blogspot.com/2012/04/ca495-radio-royal-rrdl01.html
Clinical Archives / CC BY NC ND / free
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A few seemingly competing interests here. Several extended freeform electronic jams with background loops and dirty lo-tech synths. Then the loops come to the fore to accompany a boring sampled vocal monologue, and things get more problematic. Then there’s another big change when nestled in the middle of it is a great psychedelic track with a wobbly repeating guitar / drum phrase and the vibrating inflections of a vocalist intoning in Japanese (?). Suddenly it all sounds more interesting.
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Restive – [m2012/30-09] http://archive.org/details/restive_m30
self released / CC BY NC SA / free
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That fondly familiar Restive construction: independent loops of rumbling noises, one track has a Cluster-ish little keyboard meditation, I’d love to see more like that!
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Slowpitch – Biosphere Stargaze http://bahdoom.com/bah002/
Bah Doom / copyrighted / free
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Hazy sound clumps looping for opiated head-nodding. Each track starts off promising, but never develops into anything but another reason to stare bleary-eyed at the wall.
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Chris Whitehead – South Gare http://linearobsessional.bandcamp.com/album/south-gare
Linear Obsessional / CC BY NC SA / free
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A composition that organizes selected phonographic elements and multi-tracks them together with a smattering of humble percussive interactions with actual spaces. Absolutely fantastic.
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