various artists - self​-​identified non​-​male artists making experimental electronic music (tape +zine/digital, hylé tapes)

an unreal undertaking and lovingly put together, a massive three tape compilation and zine, this lengthy electronic tome contains many beautiful and out-there personal works from a whole collection of talented producers and musicians. 'self-identified non-male artists' to be exact with what we're hearing and who by, and this is perfectly real and a lovely thing to have exist.

there is a plethora of standout tracks, but i recommend diving in from the top and following the alphabetical sequence all the way down this experimental/audio rabbit hole, there's gold everywhere throughout.

hoping that everyone involved gets a full new record deal/commission out of this (be it tape or cdr or vinyl or digital), it's up to us as fans and label people to be more inclusive and selective with how we shape our things, so the names we're already well familiar with and that existing echo chamber that comes with it has a parallel reality running alongside it.

equal competition and curatorial specialization for new ears.

there is always an unbelievable array of music-making happening, but we can't or shouldn't fall on easy connections without truly digging, without digging out this great work, or without digging into what we say we're about or what we want to be about in the first place.

new music means just that: new. let's dig it all out, as this compilation makes too clear, it's right in front of us. and has always been right in front of us.

huge thanks to richard at hylé tapes for putting this monster together and i know it will be the natural trajectory of what is already happening, and the new projection of hours and infinite hours of more new music to continuously come into being. 

rotational zine full pdf

FULL ZINE PDF D/L

rotational zine

zine now exists
digital version will come here soon
tape + zine pairing available here

soon come

i've been working on the first print zine and that should be ready to go in a few weeks. the zine will be paired with a cassette by the new york ensemble causings, who have a strong one-sided c-75 of a live performance/recording they did on wkcr last year. it's a beauty.

 

available + in motion

my apologies for letting this fall behind a bit...

my own tape + free digital label, power moves library, has had five releases come-and-go since the last post about layne garrett's terrific reportage. 

two of those albums are real-time collage/field recording/sound art documents from my own solo project called downer canada. breather attitudes came first, then hieronsong. 

live den is the second album by the duo project of cheryl fraser and myself called row. this album moves through textural live-playing in a dub/electronic/drone dream: hypnotic and searching.

there was a wild + heavy blistering droner tape by baltimore's mold omen duo as well. no edits in heaven was the title and they somehow teased out a cacaphony of minimalist squelching gunk from four mitts, emulating full band clutter and raga-like intensity in small-amp-in-a-small-room blowback.

then there was the first split tape for the library too, a c-50 of two singular albums combined on one, which had side one's patrick cahill/ocathail and side two's phil neff/hastío both exploring and lost in stretched-out fingerstyle acoustic guitar wonder. each invokes technique and time-place differently. patrick goes for mostly shorter vignetted back-forth brit-folk finger-picking, shouldering celtic-like flurries and bursts of directed intensity and precision. phil lays back into the hiss/lower-fidelity of chorded and strummed long-form meditational impulse, letting things cool and collect and come down again to the flow of the day, where the windows are open and alive.

and last saturday was the release of delphine dora's parallel world, a beautiful album of piano-and-voice soli equally psychedelic and folk-song inspired, bathed/inhabited by lullaby and folkloric imagination, and filled with lilting far-away melody and subtly-shifting repetitions.
 
all of these are free to download in whatever file-format that suits, and as i type, there are two copies of delphine's wonderful tape remaining. feel free to go back inside the earlier works from the beginning as well, there is plenty to grab onto. and as ever, there will be more to come.

will be back soon with the print zine, rotational #1. 

thanks for reading. 

rotational intermission - layne garrett

"i think my vision is cultivated on the fly."

new album called reportage by layne garrett released end of may on my power moves library imprint, but here's a really interesting q-and-a with layne that gets into his process and work, found here.

news from rotational

going to try putting a print zine together a couple of times a year, filled with interviews and reviews, so the online home will no longer house the individual reviews/etc as i've been doing, i will scan and archive the print editions after they have been mailed off/purchased and spoken for, so things will still land here, just in a different form.

will make them available here first, cheaply, before they get archived.

i would love if you keep sending stuff my way, i've heard so much amazing work from all over the place, and i'd hate to lose out on that gift. and i will do my damnedest to write about as much as i can, only now that writing will be in a physical shape that will be digitized later, so if yr okay with waiting a little bit to see the new branches spout from this here rooted tree, i'd be forever grateful.

yrs in action writing/exploring,
kev