A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #38
ACL BTS, Presque Tout, and more from Ukraine
Dear Listeners, I just got back to Montreal last night after a week in my hometown of New York. I was mostly home to visit family, but visited a lot of art galleries as well as attending MoMA PS1’s opening WARM UP of the 2023 season. PS1’s summer concert series has been going on for more than two decades, although the last few editions were of course affected by the pandemic, making this something of a return to form. While the WARM UPs have always featured big name DJs skewed towards dancing (Robert Hood, DJ Premiere, Four Tet, Richie Hawtin, Derrick May), they’ve also always tended to include more experimental artists, such as Tony Conrad, Ikue Mori, Elliott Sharp, Aki Onda, Animal Collective, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Laurel Halo. (Alumni also include acts like Blood Orange, Solange, and even Cardi B, before they broke through to wider fame).
Last Friday’s headliner was Frankie Bones, a legendary New York DJ with deep roots regarded as the "Godfather of American Rave.” He was spinning lots of new music with an eye towards London (or at least so it seemed to me) with plenty of remixes gesturing towards pop to keep things accessible (Fleetwood Mac, Kylie Minogue, 50 Cent). But the reason I was sure to be there was that DREAMCRUSHER was selected as the opener, setting off the new season with a bomb, a significant reminder that WARM UPs have always been about more than pop, more than dancing. Their sets are always accompanied by a strobe warning, and tend to be engaging and confrontational in a way that few artists ever come close to. DREAMCRUSHER was joined by frequent collaborator GENG PTP, and together the two make up the duo Centennial Gardens.
Their set began at 5pm sharp, so we could already hear feedback and screaming as we were entering the museum. Seeing DREAMCRUSHER perform in broad daylight on the steps of MoMA PS1 isn’t an image I’ll soon forget, and I appreciate that the curators made this decision very intentionally.
Alright, so now I’m back in Montreal and making plans for the coming month, with lots of ACL content in the queue that I’m especially looking forward to sharing. In fact, last week also saw the publication of episode 29 of the SOUND PROPOSITIONS podcast, an extra-length, long in the works tribute to A CLOSER LISTEN, featuring interviews with ten of our contributors. In this newsletter, we’ve also got an interview with French field recording label PRESQUE TOUT, the latest installment of Gianmarco Del Re’s Ukrainian Field Notes, and our usual selection of Recent Reviews and Upcoming Releases.
CRITICAL POSITIVITY – with ACL
Happy (very belated) birthday to us! Back in January of 2022 we celebrated the tenth anniversary of our blog. To celebrate, in this episode, we pull the curtain back a bit to talk with ten of the writers who have contributed to A CLOSER LISTEN since we began over a decade ago. Utilizing my idiosyncratic editing skills, I’ve conjured a virtual roundtable discussing the past, present, and future of ACL. We discuss the founding of the site, abandoning scoring, and all our sub-sites, mixes, and other projects that define us. Our discussion of video game music gives way to a reflection on film scores, and the relationship between sound and the visual more broadly, including artwork, packaging, and physical media. We recount what has made ACL distinct over the years, our openness to new sounds, the joys of ongoing discovery, our formative influences, and our signature blend of critical positivity.
The music for this episode was selected collectively, drawn from tracks that came up throughout our conversations. Scattered throughout the episode are also many 10 second clips I solicited from friends of the site back in 2014. I used them to make some “community sound collages” that I never properly shared, so it seemed fitting to include them here.
“a mic at a window…” ~ an interview with PRESQUE TOUT
Presque Tout launched in 2019 as a Bandcamp page, a humble ongoing digital archive of field recordings from around the world. Anyone can participate, and the parameters for inclusion are very straightforward: Make a recording from an open window, with no editing and minimal signal processing, and then email it to them. Submissions took off during the pandemic, while so many of us found ourselves stuck at home, listening to the quotidien with a newfound attention, and the archive now includes over 100 recordings.
I learned of the project through Joe McKay, founder of Dinzu Artefacts, who contributed Los Angeles (CA), 03/21/2021, 7 pm. My own submission, Montreal (QC) – 04/07/2021, 3:54 pm, was posted just a few weeks later, and I’ve been an avid listener ever since.
Presque Tout released their first physical editions, a batch of three cassettes, in the fall of 2021. A second batch followed in May 2023, consisting of side-length recordings from Pablo Diserens, Marc Namblard, Jana Winderen, Hubert Michel, Mélia Roger, and Grégoire Chauvot. While the tapes quickly sold out, everything is still available for download or streaming, and all proceeds from digital sales go to “les Soulèvements de la Terre,” a French organization that fights for ecological causes.
Having passed the milestone of 100 recordings, I took this opportunity to speak with the founders of Presque Tout about their project and what they’ve learned so far, as well as talking a bit about what to expect in the future. I also encourage everyone to consider submitting recordings of your own! Whether you have fancy microphones or just the voice memo app on your phone, all it takes is “a mic at a window” and the openness to listen.
Initially PRESQUE TOUT was an ongoing series of digital releases, very simple field recordings (no editing, minimal mixing) outside our windows, and while it started in 2019, most of the submissions came during the pandemic. Would you agree the experience of sheltering in place during the pandemic changed the context of these recordings somehow?
When the pandemic hit, we had started the label for about a year and not much was happening with it at the time. Now the whole world was experiencing this weird moment and we had a lot of time on our hands all of a sudden. Since most of us were in lockdown, sharing soundscapes sounded like a nice way to escape a bit from this bleak situation, so we reached to people asking them to participate, and it worked quite well since everybody now had the time to sit back and record/listen. The recordings we gathered at this period feel quite special now, as they’re documenting this very odd moment of human history where everything pretty much stood still for a while
Ukrainian Field Notes XXV
Episode 25 of Ukrainian Field Notes sees us travelling to Germany to speak to Lobanov K., Ponura and Travis from Strela about displacement, separation and the logistics and challenges of promoting Ukrainian artists abroad. Furthermore, we explore the experimental and electronic music scene in Odesa with Galeta Jaira, Phite Noise and Olexandr Hodosevych from Rudnic Ore, while Tarik Stomp talks classical in Kyiv and Alex Pervukhin gives us the lowdown on the outset of the full-scale invasion in Kharkiv.
In terms of new releases, we feature the latest compilation from Gasoline Radio‘s expedition deep into the roots of Ukrainian culture, Спадок, together with new works from Adaa Zagorodnya, Ana Foutel & Olexiy Mikryukov, 58918012, Arctica, Palitra, memories, Revolt, Brume & Edward Sol, and Obskura.
Also, do check out our selection of mixes and podcasts featuring Travis, our Regular Disco residents, NFNR, Elija, Smezkh, Bryozone b2b Mlin Patz, Kopfmann, and Another Perspective on the Ukrainian Cultural Scene.
But to begin with, here’s our UFN podcast for Resonance FM where we had the pleasure of discussing Regular Disco with Katia Stieber and Kadiristy with a cracking selection of music including an unreleased demo. This is followed by our customary Spotify playlist.
Happy listening. We’ll be back in September with a new episode of Ukrainian Field Notes.
RECENT REVIEWS
Reviews are at the heart of ACL. Here are (excerpts from) a few of my favorite reviews we posted on the blog in the last few weeks. And we have a lot of old friends in this round up.
Ensemble Dedalus / Ryoko Akama ~ ELIANE RADIGUE
A separation has many stages. It starts with an ellipse, a kind of alienation, and slowly unfolds into an opposition or even better a difference before it moves on to a departure. We can understand a separation as a way of seeking clarity, of pulling things apart materially, temporally, or creatively. … This is beautifully demonstrated on the recent collaborative release between Radigue with the French-ensemble Dedalus and UK-based Japanese-Korean artist Ryoko Akama (Montagne Noire, MN7). The album features two compositions from her OCCAM series that were written at the same period but for different means. The first titled OCCAM – HEPTA 1 (2018) is performed by Ensemble Dedalus using solely acoustic instruments whilst the second one titled OCCAM – XX (2014) is performed by Ryoko Akama using an analogue synthesiser.
Jana Winderen ~ The Blue Beyond
If humans beings are incensed by the cacophony of construction, lawn work and traffic, why would we suspect sea creatures to be any different? The deep agitation caused by noise pollution affects feeding patterns, breeding and migration. And while humans can at least complain, sea creatures can do nothing but endure. A plane flying overhead may be a minor annoyance to us (and especially to most field recordists), but a constant parade of motorboats over a mating ground leads to fewer children and in some cases, extinction. In The Blue Beyond, the intrusions are always near, but seldom dominant, like annoying neighbors who at least stay on their side of the fence. Unfortunately, their noise becomes our noise, and in this case, we are the annoying neighbors. Engines can be quieter (think of stealth submarines), if only the manufacturers might find the motivation. On Side B, the biophany decreases every few minutes as the anthropophony increases, in the same way as all conversation ceases when a fire engine races by. But whenever there is no human intrusion, the richness of the sonic tapestry is revealed.
Kirin McElwain ~ Viriditas
On Viriditas, the tracks begin as modern composition and end up as drone, an alchemical development that exposes the porous membrane between the two fields. This is the premiere release for Brooklyn cellist Kirin McElwain, who also adds voice and synth along with a guest spot on organ from Omar Zubair. The cover art matches the theme. “Future Sets (After Ruysch)”, a portion of Jessie McDowell’s larger work, also begins as one thing and ends up as another. The digital-on-aluminum image draws on still life and Dutch flower painting to become something outside time. And the album’s title, taken from Hildegard von Bingen, means greening or greenness and considers creativity as a renewing source for the soul. Yet in order for something to be transformed or renewed, first it must be broken down, which explains the character of the music.
Léa Boudreau ~ Limaçon
If limaçon (also known as Pascal’s snail) refers to a circle attached to a fixed point, rolling around another circle of the same radius to form a curve, one might ask, “what, then, is Boudreau’s fixed point?” Working backwards, if the curve is the stop-stutter-start of the pointillist music, the fixed point may be a series of invisible, mathematical tempos. Every dot and notch is carefully placed, even bursts of static and other protuberances. “Mini-bestiaire” earns its name with odd creature calls cutting through the drone, like a splicing of a monkey and a bird. The tempo reveals itself at the three-minute mark, with electronic patterns laid across forest crunches. After every stall, the tempo relaunches at a swifter pace, before disappearing in a rainstorm, followed by a swelter of synths, which eventually slow and stop like an unplugged appliance, landing with a splash in a river-fed pool. The playful beeps of the emergent beings suggest androids frolicking in the water as their “parents” honk from the overpass.
Philip Jeck & Chris Watson ~ Oxmardyke
Oxymardyke is both heartrending and inspiring, suffused with a melancholic character revealed only by the backstory. The ears receive it as a celebration of life. These are Philip Jeck‘s final sonic offerings (although we may yet heard unreleased work from the artist). Chris Watson relays the tale with heartfelt words. Watson had made a series of recordings at the Oxmardyke rail crossing and after some conversation had shared them with Jeck, who was fascinated by the area’s history. In January 2022, Jeck was admitted to the hospital. In precious, all-too-brief moments, he found relief from the pain, sitting up, working with these sounds on his laptop: remembering who he was, perhaps reflecting on his legacy, sharing his talents with the world for what would be the final time.
UPCOMING RELEASES
(complete list with Bandcamp links here)
The season we’ve waited for is finally here! (Sorry, Australia & New Zealand!). Even when we’re inside, we’re dreaming of the outside. Summer is a time for beaches, barbecues, driving around with the windows open, get-togethers with friends, action movies and of course, lots of music! This page is only the beginning; the summer music slate is already packed, and tours and festivals are on our calendars. New previews are added to this page daily; we hope you will find your next favorite album right here!
Andrew Smiley & Kate Gentile ~ Flagrances (Obliquity, 28 July)
Bear the Mammoth ~ Purple Haus (Art as Catharsis, 28 July)
Cate Brooks ~ Easel Studies (Clay Pipe Music, 28 July)
Chris Green-Armytage ~ Still (Bigo & Twigetti, 28 July)
Dana Jensen & Taylor Brook ~ Set (New Focus, 28 July)
Dario Calderone ~ Isolario (Moving Furniture, 28 July)
El Contessa ~ Nos Habet Caramel (Bilna’es, 28 July)
Eivind Lønning, Espen Reinertsen, Romke Kleefstra & Jan Kleefstra ~ IT DEEL II (Moving Furniture Records, 28 July)
Experiments & Observations in Electricity ~ S/T (28 July)
Gareth Broke ~ Being (Bigo & Twigetti, 28 July)
Gunn Truscinski Nace ~ Glass Band (Three Lobed, 28 July)
hackedepiccioto ~ Keepsakes (Mute, 28 July)
Hazel Cline ~ Spell Song (Sweet Wreath, 28 July)
a Light Sleeper ~ Equaeverpose (Cuneiform, 28 July)
Lipphead ~ From the Back (Young Heavy Souls, 28 July)
Lisa Cameron & Ernesto Diaz-Infante ~ Ghosts of the JA (Loma, 28 July)
Maria W Horn & Vilhelm Bromander ~ Earthward Arcs (Warm Winters Ltd., 28 July)
Rascal Reporters ~ The Strainge Case of Steve (Cuneiform, 28 July)
Cheng Daoyuan ~ Consumed Leaders (Absurd TRAX, 29 July)
Ava Rasti ~ Ginestra (Flaming Pines, 30 July)
Nico Less ~ Still (1 August)
Nilotpal Das & Bio Contrast ~ Harmonium I (1 August)
Sana Nagano, Leonor Falcon ~ Peach and Tomato (577 Records, 1 August)
P.E.A.R.L. ~ The Light We Choose (KAOS, 2 August)
Erich Bargainer ~ Geisslerlieder (People Places Records, 3 August)
Rob Winstone ~ sifting through heaven (mappa, 3 August)
Andra Ljos ~ Megalithic Statues of Vishapakar (Not Not Fun, 4 August)
Byrne Kozar Duo ~ It Floats Away From You (New Focus, 4 August)
Dustin Wong ~ Perpetual Morphosis (Hausu Mountain, 4 August)
Flaer ~ Preludes (Odda, 4 August)
Lia Kohl ~ Too Small to Be a Plain (Reissue; Florabelle, 4 August)
Oiro Pena ~ Puna (We Are Busy Bodies, 4 August)
Pavor Nocturnus ~ Ecatombe (Cyclic Law, 4 August)
Raison D’Etre ~ Prospectus I – Sublime Edition (Cyclic Law, 4 August)
Tangled Thoughts of Leaving ~ Oscillating Forest (Bird’s Robe/Dunk!, 4 August)
V/A ~ МИФ (Not Not Fun, 4 August)
Martian Tin Can ~ MTC LP1 (6 August)
Memory Scale ~ And All Things Begin to Drift (Audiobulb, 5 August)
Requiem ~ POPulist Agendas (Mutineer, 7 August)
Joe Melnicove ~ You Is You (577 Records, 9 August)
Forces ~ Chimæras (mappa, 10 August)
Anthony Wilson ~ Collodion (Colorfield, 11 August)
bunsenburner ~ Rituals (11 August)
Din of Celestial Birds ~ The Night Is for Dreamers (A Thousand Arms/A Cheery Wave Records, 11 August)
Helios ~ Espera (Ghostly International, 11 August)
Jenny Beck ~ Up to the Surface (New Focus, 11 August)
Lawrence English & Lea Bertucci ~ Chthonic (American Dreams, 11 August)
Morten Georg Gismervik ~ Dunes at Night (Huber, 11 August)
Sævar Jóhannsson ~ Where the Light Enters (Whitelabrecs, 12 August)
Paul Dunmall ~ New Quartet: World Without (577 Records, 15 August)
Mute Frequencies ~ Svalbard Soundtracks (Flaming Pines, 17 August)
Alexandre Bazin ~ Innervision (Umor Rex, 18 August)
Cameron Graham ~ Becoming a Beach Angel (Phantom Limb, 18 August)
Guitarmy of One ~ The Wave Files (18 August)
Honest John ~ Sweet Travels (18 August)
Jeff Tobias ~ Music from Milky Way Underground (Gold Bolus, 18 August)
Josh Mason ~ An Anxious Host (Students of Decay, 18 August)
Kim Moore ~ A Song We Destroy to Spin Again (Blackford Hill, 18 August)
McKenzie Stubbert ~ Waiting Room (Curious Music, 18 August)
Reformat ~ Precursed (Fearbone, 18 August)
Starving Weirdos ~ Atheistsaregods (Discrepant, 18 August)
Awadagin Pratt ~ STILLPOINT (New Amsterdam, 25 August)
Cameron Graham ~ Becoming a Beach Angel (Phantom Limb, 25 August)
Euglossine ~ Bug Planet Is the Current Timeline (Hausu Mountain, 25 August)
FLOCKS ~ S/T (Zehra, 25 August)
Ki Oni ~ A Leisurely Swim to Everlasting Life (AKP Recordings, 25 August)
Mad Myth Science ~ S/T (Infrequent Seams, 25 August)
Scott Clark ~ Dawn & Dusk (Out of Your Head, 25 August)
Tarotplane ~ Murmuration (npm, 25 August)
Tent Music ~ S/T (Whited Sepulchre, 25 August)
Mark Sanders, Chris Mapp, Andrew Woodhead ~ CollapseUncollapse: TIME IN IMAGES (577 Records, 31 August)
Arrowounds ~ The Slow Boiling Amphibian Dreamstate (Lost Tribe Sound, 1 September)
autodealer & The Corrupting Sea ~ Sonic Ablutions (Somewherecold, 1 September)
The Color of Cyan ~ Egress (1 September)
Enclosed & Silent Order ~ Entrainment (Hypostatic Union, 1 September)
Joshua Marquez ~ Recycled Sounds (1 September)
Lisa Lerkenfeldt ~ Shell of a City (Room40, 1 September)
Natasha Barrett ~ Reconfiguring the Landscape (Persistence of Sound, 1 September)
S A R R A M ~ Pàthei Màthos (Subsound, 1 September)
Sult ~ Always I Gnaw (Thin Wrist, 1 September)
RRUCCULLA ~ Zeru/Freq (Lapsus, 7 September)
Annea Lockwood ~ Glass World (Room40, 8 September)
Channelers ~ Generation/Harvest (Inner Islands, 8 September)
Golden Brown ~ Wide Ranging Rider (Inner Islands, 8 September)
Lapsus ~ Absent Friends Vol. III (Balmat, 8 September)
Matthew Halsall ~ An Ever Changing View (Gondwana, 8 September)
Pauline Hogstrand ~ Áhkká (Warm Winters Ltd., 8 September)
Phase4our ~ Coordinates EP (Machine Records, 8 September)
Salò ~ S/T (Kuboraum Editions, 8 September)
Samuel Adams ~ Current (Other Minds, 8 September)
Sawyer G ~ It’ll Be Gone For a Little While (Inner Islands, 8 September)
Siema Ziemia ~ Second (Byrd Out, 8 September)
SPIME.IM ~ Grey Line (~OUS, 8 September)
Veil ~ A Circle in Stone (Other Facts, 8 September)
Swami Lateplate ~ Doom Jazz II (Subsound, 14 September)
Akira Kosemura ~ Rudy OST (Schole, 15 September)
Elephantine ~ Moonshine (Northern Spy, 15 September)
Haralabos [Harry] Stafylarkis ~ Calibrating Fiction (New Amsterdam, 15 September)
J Forester / N Kramer ~ Habitat II (Leaving, 15 September)
John Butcher, Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash, Steve Noble ~ Fathom (577 Records, 15 September)
Kaya North ~ Myths (Lost Tribe Sound, 15 September)
Keope ~ Flikka Flokka (Bigamo, 15 September)
Lusine ~ Long Light (Ghostly International, 15 September)
Pathos Trio ~ Polarity (Imaginary Animals, 15 September)
PCM ~ Dreamland (n5MD, 15 September)
Tenniscoats ~ Tasmania Bootleg (Room40, 15 September)
D’luna ~ Child of Time and Earth (22 September)
Drawing Virtual Gardens ~ 22:22 (Lost Tribe Sound, 22 September)
Droneroom ~ The Best of My Love (Somewherecold, 22 September)
Eduardo Ella ~ Una Pregunta, Tres Respuestas (577 Records, 22 September)
MrDougDoug ~ SOS Forks A REM II (Hausu Mountain, 22 September)
Mukqs ~ Stonewasher (Hausu Mountain, 22 September)
Spurv ~ Brefjære (Pelagic, 22 September)
Stereo Minus One ~ Everything Is So Beautiful, I Need to Lie Down (Machine Records, 22 September)
zeitkratzer – Reinhold Friedl ~ Scarlatti (Karlrecords, 22 September)
Jessica Ackerley, Yuma Uesaka, Colin Hinton ~ Petting Zoo (Waveform Alphabet, 23 September)
Anna Papij ~ Always Beautiful (29 September)
Christopher Tignor ~ The Art of Surrender (Western Vinyl, 29 September)
Equipment Pointed Ankh ~ Downtown! (Torn Light, 29 September)
Jlin ~ Perspective (Planet Mu, 29 September)
Kilometre Club ~ How to Unravel (We Are Busy Bodies, 29 September)
Nick Dunston ~ Skultura (Fun in the Church, 29 September)
Oman Breaker ~ Compromat (BITE, 29 September)
Richard Sears ~ Appear to Fade (figureight, 29 September)
David August ~ VĪS (99CHANTS, 6 October)
Hania Rani ~ Ghosts (Gondwana, 6 October)
Jessica Pavone ~ Clamor (Out of Your Head, 6 October)
John Ghost ~ Thin Air . Mirror Land (Sdban, 6 October)
Up High Collective ~ Koinonia (San-kofa Rhythms, 9 October)
Bex Burch ~ There Is Only Love and Fear (International Anthem, 20 October)
Thomas Vanz ~ Colors of Invisible (Mesh, 27 October)