Tag Archives: avant-garde

Antonio Gallucci – Hope for Nothingness as Something (Dinzu Artefacts)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

A two-chapter suite for modular & FM synth, wind & string instruments, electronics, sound objects and field recordings. The work is structured as a two-chapter descent from concrete score to analog & digital abstraction. It begins with the tangible written material and human presence of the performers, which are systematically subjected to a process of erosion. The initial components are reduced to “digital dust” — meaningless data fragments — then recombined algorithmically. This process entirely empties the material of its original structure and meaning. The work culminates in a final, unreal space, becoming a meditation on the transformation of human intention into pure, post-human data.

The notion of Hope for Nothingness as Something is a radical philosophical pivot, shifting the focus of human aspiration from tangible acquisition to ultimate negation. There’s a profound psychological shift: the very concept we often fear or dismiss as empty can be re-framed as an object of desire, value, or ultimate meaning. This concept draws its discursive power from its inherent paradox: desiring an absence and treating that absence as the most valuable presence.

“Is nothingness the same as nothing? Everything evolves around that. Absolute discardment, because there is hope only where nothing is retained. The fullness of nothingness. That is the reason for the insistence on the zero point.”

– T. Adorno

All tracks composed, played, mixed and mastered by Antonio Gallucci @ Mercurial Studio in Pistoia (Italy) between May and October 2025.

Antonio Gallucci is a musician, sound engineer, and digital technology expert born and raised in South Italy. He lives and works in Tuscany. His works reveal a poetic and conceptual dimension that leverages the use of new and old technologies, found objects and sounds, and the extreme
manipulation of sources, within a reflective and conscious aural experience. Over the past 25 years, he has collaborated with museums, theaters, artists, and international record labels.

Cover art by Aaron Owens

Anne Efternøler With Maria Laurette Friis And Johanna Borchert – We are. Profoundly. Predisposed. To drowning. (Relative Pitch Records)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

The music of this trio is an ongoing conversation between three women about life as it unfolds between artistic practice and daily routines. Compassioned conversations about being someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s partner, someone’s friend seamlessly float into the musical sphere, where words and emotions are transformed into pitches, harmonies, rhythms and artistic gestures.

Three strong artists from the creative music scene of northern Europe has formed a trio that feeds from the compassioned relationship between its members. Danish Anne Efternøler is a desired trumpet player on the Scandinavian scene, while German Johanna Borchert´s distinct approach to the prepared piano has given her a prominent place between the heaviest pianoplayers(sic) of her generation. For more than 25 years vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Maria Laurette Friis has been pushing the musical borders leaving a remarkable contribution to the field of abstract music.

Maria Laurette Friis – vocals
Johanna Borchert – prepared piano and vocals
Anne Efternøler – trumpet, flute and objects

Track 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 Recorded at Hobby Horse Studio, Copenhagen, January 10. 2022 By Simon Mariagaard.
Track 2, 4, 7, 8 Recorded live at KoncertKirken, Copenhagen, July 5 2023 By Mads Madsen.
All music By Anne Efternøler, Maria Laurette Friis, Johanna Borchert.

Future Children – A disorganized body (Self-Released)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

This is a soundtrack to the short film about the very strange case of a French woman in the 19th-century known only as Mme X…

“DR. JULES COTARD had to be surprised and confused by the female patient (known only as brought to his office at the Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital in Paris one afternoon in 1882. The 43-year-old described a peculiar set of symptoms: she claimed she had “no brain, no nerves, no chest, no stomach, no bowels — that there was nothing left of her but the skin and bones.
Also, she claimed she had no soul, that there was no God and no devil, and that overall she was nothing but ‘a disorganized body’ with no internal organs and because of that she claimed to not need to eat anymore. Further, she expressed her belief in her own immortality, noting that she could not die a natural death, but ‘will live forever unless she is burnt, fire being her only possible end.’ Sadly she starved herself to death…”

This soundtrack, beyond the story of Mme X is also influenced by other 19th-century eccentrics (and brilliant artists) of her time such as Marcel Proust and Erik Satie.
credits
released October 5, 2025

Future Children are C C Sheehan and Kevin Coral
Additional vocals by Darrian Dawnstar
Additional guitar by Malcolm X Abram
Additional Drums/Percussion by Ty Landrum

All tracks recorded and mixed at Strawberry MIDI, Kent, OH
Mastered by Adam Boose @Cauliflower Audio

Additional synthesizers recorded at Vintage Synthesizer Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Special Thanks to Josh, Jason, Ella, Bernard, Nicolas, Jessica, JED

Some of the synthesizers used on this album include: Moog Polymoog 203a
EMS Synthi AKS
Sequential Circuits Prophet 5
Oberheim 4-Voice
Roland Jupiter 8
Korg PS-3100
Korg Trident MkII
Gleeman Pentaphonic
Elka Synthex
Yamaha CS-70m
Yamaha CS-80
PPG Wave 2.2 Roland Juno 60 Korg MS-20
Jen Synthtone
SX-100…

Artwork by Nicolas Nade

Sir Richard Bishop – Hillbilly Ragas (Drag City)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: Our favorite six-string shaman is waving that axe around again! Sir Richard Bishop wrenches forth fresh damnable truth and beauty from a musical kamikaze run through histories both known and unknown. Turning a gimlet eye to the American Primitive guitar style, Sir Rick applies his own bloodthirsty interpretive methods on a self-described “excursion into the dark woods,” to locate – and play along with – the Primitive’s moonshine-fed inner savage.

Lalén Ríos Luna – Aura Seminalis (Porous Collective)

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Label Description:

It is made manifest only to those who travel through foul and fair, who pass beyond the summit of every holy ascent, who leave behind them every divine light, every voice, every word from heaven, and who plunge into the darkness where . . . there dwells what is beyond all things.


The instruments involved in the making of this one:
Trumpet
Clarinet
Telecaster
Morphagene
Microfreak
Landscape stereo field
Make Noise Wogglebug
Assorted percussion

Dylan Houser – Your Personal Swarm (Self-Released)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

Cold night on Valencia, the only spirit drifting throughout. A long-lost companion is feral yet lurks in the shadows still.

Recorded between December 2023 – January 2025

Instruments used: voice, keyboard, shortwave radio, rumble of ancient times, livestreams, running water, tiny plastic guitar, acoustic guitar, steel drum, wind chimes, synthesizer and sampler apps, outdoor field recordings, various assorted percussion, Chef Jakether speaking

Thank you to Bowman, Bevis, Bishop, and Billingsley

Is this phase two of a light that always goes out?

Expedient Self – Speaker EP (Submarine Broadcasting Company)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

SubCastCo is super buzzed to welcome Expedient Self to our aquatic vessel.

I first heard this work on a weekend where for some universally signposted reason I encountered three albums by solo artists working the fertile field of guitar loops. Pleasingly, they were all very different.

‘Speaker’ is a wonderful, idiosyncratic and original take on the loop strategy.

Expedient Self is Brighton, UK based artist Simon Chandler. Active since 2019 releasing 2 previous EP’s and a single.

The EP ‘Chairs’ was reviewed in The Wire.

“Chairs

Expedient Self MC

Expedient Self is a solo electric guitar project created by Brighton’s Simon Chandler. He uses looped figures to create an array of different sounds, which he piles up in ways that resemble Frippertronics NOT ONE WHIT. Even the quieter pieces tend toward dissonance in a way that most such music does not, and the more active passages can be almost (fr)antic (sic).
Chandler has a great sense of how to assemble discordant elements into a weirdly coherent whole, creating a very heavy ambience that is not ambient at all.”