23% Bicycle... captures the BSC shortly after an intense series of performances at the Phoneme Festival, a three-night event in Philadelphia featuring members of the band in a series of small groups followed by full BSC sets each evening. In one sense, the music is tight and controlled, maintaining a sustained tension as events peel from one to the next, not so much moving forward as revealing increasingly buried layers. But, from the very first sound, it is clear that everything teeters on chaos. The familiarity between the musicians is apparent, as is their willingness to undermine that familiarity, to send each other to unlit corners and map whatever sublime beauty or horror is found there. To say that the resulting music is dark is to miss its jubilance. It is complex and visceral, the work of an ensemble committed to both its refinement and unravelling.
This is the BSC's first release since 2003's Good on Grob Records.
The motive behind improvising with new players is frequently to find a new music in yourself. Sometimes, this new music is found in a struggle, where opposing approaches attempt to meet in a play between power and tolerance. More rarely, the new voice simply causes the music to appear - no struggle, all play. The music happens to you, and you just stay out of its way.
When Nmperign met with Jake Meginsky, the music happened to us. Participation was pure joy. Even with long silences and sudden changes, there was always the sense of being carried by a purposeful force. For me, this single, 14-minute piece conveys that force. I couldn't imagine it surrounded by other music. It warrants its own platter; a single object for a singular moment. I hope you enjoy it.
All LP purchases come with a download code for the lossless file, which can also be purchased separately for $4 (or more).
From the label:
REL012 is the recorded debut of the trio Nmperign with Jake Meginsky. Pressed on 160 gram copper plate mastered vinyl, REL012 features Nmperign in an energized, turn-on-a-dime form. Prodded by Meginsky into unnamable, angular textures, the trio is agile and unpredictable, occupying musical extremes with intelligence and grace. REL012 is a one-sided LP cut to
45 for Maximum Dynamic range. Featuring a striking cover, designed by Eli Keszler, printed by Ashley Paul. A light blue fold-over paper is integrated in to a heavy picture disc sleeve, labeled with a color sticker. Screened notes are featured on the inside. REL012 is a one-time, hand-numbered edition of 300 copies.
nmperign are one of the most celebrated and influential bands in contemporary improvised music. Yet surprisingly, more than a decade after their debut, Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) have never recorded a studio album as an unaccompanied duo… until now!
The music is spare and peerlessly inventive as always, but the mood rema
ins light and joyful, with a subtle undercurrent of absurd humor. While improvised music can sometimes seem airless and precious, Ommatidia opens the window on a sunny afternoon… the album’s gusts of breath, percussive splatter, and controlled explosions form six succinct pieces that feel alive and vital, while still speaking in nmperign’s utterly unique sonic language. A perfect way in for newcomers and a revelation for long-time fans, Ommatidia is the essential nmperign.
Previous nmperign albums have employed guest musicians – notably close collaborator and tape loop saboteur Jason Lescalleet, but also luminaries such as Gunter Mueller, Axel Doerner, Andrea Neumann, and Burkhard Beins – and subversive or dodgy recording techniques; their 2xLP on Siwa was recorded entirely to micro-cassette and cassette walkman, while an early CD on Selektion was edited from live mini-disc recordings. Intransitive is proud to present the nmperign album that fans have been waiting for: the core duo, beautifully recorded in an actual studio with excellent microphones.
When not making nmperign music, Greg Kelley performs with the aggressively psychedelic noise unit Heathen Shame (along with Wayne Rogers & Kate Village of Major Stars), minimalist chamber group The Undr Quartet, and raucous rock band Life Partners. Rainey regularly tours with folk/pop duo Damon & Naomi and leads The BSC, an eight-piece electro-acoustic improvising ensemble. They live in Boston and New Orleans, respectively.
Limited edition CD comes in full-color digipack designed by Mike Shiflet.
Two boisterous pieces of musique concrete, one from Rainey, "Ain't it Grand", and one from Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase (aka Chris Cooper of Fat Worm of Error, BSC, etc), "Journey to the Center of Something or Other"
After a month of touring the U.S. followed immediately by a month in Europe, this band hit Japan to finish up D&N's biggest tour in years, supporting their release "Within These Walls". After so many shows, the band had truly gelled, creating a constantly weaving, breathing music.
This DVD was filmed by Hiroo Ishihara and mixed from multi-track board recordings.
The two nights from Shiuya O-Nest were split between new material and D&N classics, so there's plenty of goodness for old and new fans to enjoy.
In the mid-1800s, Adolphe Sax set out to create what would essentially be a loud-ass clarinet. At least, "loud" was the dominant criterion. He apparently liked military bands and wanted some blaring (and portable) woodwind to enter the ranks. Of course, he also produced "classical" models of his invention, but, according to rumors, a rather vindictive German composer who had a beef with Sax conspired to keep the instrument away from the European canon. I'm inclined to think that the uncontrolled squawking sound contributed as much to this phenomenon as did the putative conspiracy. In any case, the classical models grew quite rare early in the instrument's history.
We all know by now that the saxophone found another home in popular music, which, for a time, was called Jazz. Its strident sound sat very well on top of all manner of percussion, and in the hands of some masterful players, that baby could really cry. And it cried and whispered and sang and screamed... and so much of that still sounds just fantastic and so un-marching band-like that who knows which way the old Belgian is twisting in his grave. But you have to admit that sometimes the crying sounds as if at least one teary eye is gazing towards an Oscar. And everyone knows to regard that coquettish whisper with some suspicion. The sax rarely takes off its performance face.
Still, you might sometime happen upon a stubbly one, alone, hunched over the bar. You're friendly, and it responds politely enough, if a bit distant. The conversation seems bound for nowhere, but a silent gulf, and this late hour, opens into a stammering confession. The sax is talking to no one in particular, using names and mentioning details you could never know about; not exactly making sense, but conveying a kind of hurt - the kind we're better off having trouble expressing. You get it. You know it's a proud hurt, one you wouldn't want to lose but rarely want to show. You want to be the nameless consolation the sax is seeking as much as you want the sax to be too drunk to remember you tomorrow. For now, you're helping each other, and it's going to be okay even if it never changes because it's been okay before, even great, and it hadn't changed then, either, did it? So you cut the guy a mile of slack and just listen. And one little world disappears, so that the other just hovers for a while.
Chris Forsyth at Evolving Ear originally asked me to do an 8" lathe cut for his label. I was hesitant for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I had already consigned a number of pieces to the format fetish void (a 3" CDr, a split LP, download only, etc). Still, I gave it some thought. I had been working on a number of complex, large-scale pieces, some with Ralf Wehowsky, some for dance and film, others to who knows what ends, and I began to feel that the time and conceptual constraints of a "single" might be refreshing. I convinced Chris to let me do a 7" instead of a lathe cut (I didn't need to go THAT lo-fi), and I set about making two formally related pieces with clear, simple trajectories; pop songs from a broken mind. And that's sort of how it went. The two sides of this release, "A Desert of Consolation" and "The Summering Unsound", both follow a singular form: an ambiguously intensifying exposition followed by an unfolding of previously hidden elements. The materials, however, could not be more different: "A Desert of Consolation" consists almost entirely of synthetic sounds lying in a narrow frequency band, while "The Summering Unsound" is made up of a good deal of untreated field recordings, beats, and broadband noise. And, though I followed my dictum of simplicity in the pieces' trajectories, I couldn't stop myself from piling a lot of layers into the mix. So, there's a simple, if perverse, horizontal unfolding, and a morass of detail vertically. Kinda like a nice pile of fall leaves with a rake and skeleton hidden inside. I should also mention that artist Elaine Kaufmann made the beautiful, hallucinatory covers for this release. No photo would do them justice, as they play with real light in a way that's difficult to describe or reproduce.
5 years and a mint's worth of postage bring us this dense, musique concrete epic. Each of the three extended pieces presented here have undergone serious transformations, mutilations, and rebirths, as discs were burnt, sealed and sent from Cambridge to Mainz and back again. Yet, despite all the fine-toothed combing commited by the obsessive perfectionists at the helm of this project, the music is wild, ruptured, assymetrical and WAY INTENSE. Tendrils of possible outcomes camoflage trap doors and the saturated memories of an unclean conscience. This is that kind of sublime that's a bit on the scary side despite the occasional reassurance of a slowly flowing rhythm or an almost major chord. This is the haunted closet you can't keep shut.
The two CDs in this compilation are edited by Bhob Rainey and Kenneth Goldsmith, respectively. The first disc is made up of pieces composed exclusively for this compilation: solo performances by artists whose use of acoustic sources provides a dialog between acoustically and electronically produced music. Artists include Greg Kelley, Sean Meehan, Charles Curtis, Bhob Rainey, Taku Unami, Chris Corsano, Liz Tonne, and Ellen Fullman.
The second CD focuses on the body as a vehicle and topic of sound. Artists include Gregory Whitehead, Language Removal Services, Henri Chopin, Matmos, John Duncan, Caroline Bergvall, Paul Dutton, Lauren Lesko, Christof Migone, Miya Masakoa, Jim Roche, People Like Us, Leif Elggren and Thomas Liljenberg.
The complete, extensive liner notes and full-length mp3s of all the music on this compilation are available at ubuweb.com.
The highly anticipated double-CD epic by Jason Lescalleet (tape loops) and nmperign (Bhob Rainey - soprano sax, and Greg Kelley - trumpet). The result of six years of live and studio collaboration, LM2X is by far the most ambitious and uncompromising statement yet by this formidable trio. The album begins simply enough with an ominous trio track, but don't get too comfortable... over the course of the next two hours, the ground steadily shifts, the bottom drops out, and any expectations a listener may have had going in are thoroughly trampled. Fans will find the usual ingredients here: crusty old reel-to-reel tape decks, cheap keyboards, amplified and acoustic horns...but rude tape splices, violent humor, and confusingly degraded fidelity push the music far from safe territory. The visceral drama of LM2X does not neatly spell out its intentions, nor does it signal exactly what it has up its sleeve. It exists in its own universe, demands repeat listens and to be taken on its own terms.
A GORGEOUS recording of a super-focused, razor-sharp nmperign performance in a bizillion-dollar concert hall in the UK. The label is 7hings, and they've prepared a full package for download with artist interviews and everything. Check it out at:
This long-awaited document of an historic tour marrying two of Berlin's finest improvisers with Boston's hometown sluggers has finally been released. At the end of August, 2001, Doerner and Neumann arrived at Boston's Logan airport for a tour that would cover the continental United States and take up the entire month of September. They started by recording with Boston's BSC (released on Grob Records as 'Good'), and then, faced with the challenge of how to fit all of their stuff into a luxury Hyundai (courtesy of a free upgrade coupon from Hertz), they embarked, with Rainey and Kelley, on what would normally be a significantly perception-altering tour of the U.S. It turned out to be more literally mind-melting, which brought out the bottomless magnaminity of each player and all of the characters encountered from New York to San Francisco to Bloomington to Birmingham. The music lets light in through dark slats, and is filled with the richness of sound these musicians bring to their best projects . It retains a 'live' feel while apparently derived from a tattered, ancient score, reserved for especially confounding times.
With five scorching singles plus an indigestible, side-long something or other, you might consider this nmperign Twisted Village LP to be their White Light/White Heat. No one will argue with you. Here's the breakdown:
Side One: nmperign + doerner/beins. Is it a waste of time to say that none of the instruments in this group sound the way they were meant to? Shall we make comparisons with electronic music? Perhaps we will simply mention that these five pieces come across a bit like self-assembling sound machines, and it's no doubt that if Marcel Duchamp had a radio show, he'd have spun this side pretty often. You'll likely find yourself smiling, and you probably won't know why.
Side Two: nmperign. Are you sad because you wore out your LP of Helmut Lachenmann's "Gran Torso"? Well, dry your eyes! nmperign is now providing you with a side-long scratch of silence that's sure to keep your ears cocked forward. Just like a couple 'a Cosmo Vitellis, nmperign gets involved in some sticky situations without ever forgetting what's important to them. Play this side until it's smooth and shiny to find out what that is.
Recorded on the road in various rooms in early 2000, 6 Standing Desert remains Rainey's most raw and exploratory solo work. A long middle section pushing every sonic nook and cranny the saxophone has to offer is surrounded by mic-bleeing microtonal melodies sounding both urgent and somehow natural. Remastered for girth and warmth with plenty of rawness left in.
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