[xs-72] Agnes Heginger and Karlheinz Essl - Out of the Blue

THIS IS OFFICIALLY THE LAST XS RECORDS release

artist: agnes heginger and karlheinz essl

album: out of the blue

download

release date: 31/03/2010

more details and stream

contact: webpage

cover: front

On December 9th, 2010 I made my way to the Essl Museum in search of the lost spirit of Advent. It was there that Agnes Heginger and Karlheinz Essl performed for the first time as a duo, developing an improvised musical dialogue 'out of the blue'. Somehow 'out of the blue' fit perfectly for me because I was looking for a way out of my melancholy December mood. Instead of chairs there were cushions spread out on the floor that seemed to invite the audience to a direct, unconventional and comfortable listening experience.
The Essl/Heginger performance: responsive, unpretentious and focused. There was a positive feeling of closeness and a friendly attentiveness towards the audience.

From the very first moment I was stunned and amazed, and at the same time touched and fascinated with what then happened. As I sank deeper into my floor cushion, I felt almost embarrassed by a let's say 'complete sense of happiness'. Two highly sensitive personalities engaged each other in a dialogue that should go down in history as a prime example of musical interaction.

There were many innovative moments, alternating quite willingly the musicians pulled each other into reflection, with clear sighted independence, fusing things into perspective. With a dramatic climax at the perfect moment, they communicated affectionately with virtuoso clarity to a spellbound audience. Whether it was 'out of the blue' or carefully planned, the opportunity to listen to Agnes Heginger's and Karlheinz Essl's musical dialogue was indeed my good fortune.

You were certainly left hoping that this musical conversation will be continued.

Press review by Jörg Duit

[xs-71] cage cabarrett - covil radiophonic workshop

artist: cage cabarrett

album: covil radiophonic workshop

download

release date: 31/03/2010
more details and stream

contacts: myspace

cover art: front

Cage Cabarrett explores notions of indeterminacy in art. We encourage a DIY aesthetic and we value simplicity over complexity. Like Dada before, Cage Cabarrett stands for a strong anti-commercialism attitude and an anti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice.
We believe in the creation of art by chance, exploiting the principle of randomness. The word derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling of dice. We give you the sound of that rolling dice. It sounds like Cage Cabarrett!

[xs-70] hui-chun lin - selected improvisation works

artist: hui-chun lin

album: selected improvisations work

download

release date: 31/03/2010

more details and stream

contacts: myspace

cover art: front

Hui-Chun Lin, is a Solo cellist. She works with improvisation, theatrical music, world music, and contemporary music interpretation. Born in 1979 in Taiwan, she plays violoncello, on which she received a classical education. Since 2006, she finished her study in Leipzig, Germany, she lives also in the same city as a cello player and an artist.
Her artistic versatility appears in the co-operation in numerous projects with theatre, dance performance, contemporary and classical music and also world music. She also had appearances with different music festivals, like: the Leipzig Jazz Festival 2007 with Beat Freisens Spelunkenorchester.
After her postgraduate study in improvisation, she received a teaching assignment for improvisation in the university for music and theatre in Leipzig.

[xs-69] heitor alves - gimme some more sounds

artist: heitor alves

album: gimme some more sounds

download

release date: 15/11/2009

more details and stream

contacts: facebook

cover art: back & front

Today we present you the amazing gimme some more sounds, a work done by Heitor Alves, during a workshop with Vitor Rua (GNR, Telectu, Organização), and Dwart, that took place in the summer of 2009. This work is a simple and amazing multi-track recording, featuring a very naif, and well-acomplished work, which features improvisation, with found instruments, namely a whole-range of instruments, that are basically found objects, and which reflect the best spirit and stuff made by Heitor Alves, when trying to seek for transposing with transcendentalism his personal life experiences of the summer, to the music he made. Aesthetically it basically results, in a simple, but well archieved recording which comes from the ideias of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, to Pauline Oliveros, going throught stuff like John Cage, and Beatriz Ferreira. All made with a very personal aproach, throught improvisation, and studio recording techniques

For those who don't actually don't know, Heitor Alves builds electronic instruments, having already build to people such as Vitor Rua, Rafael Toral among others. You can find them in http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/.

Have a nice day listening to this music, and share this experience with your family and friends.

[xs-68] karlheinz essl and matthew ostrowski - flechtwerk

artist: karlheinz essl and matthew ostrowski

album: flechtwerk

download

release date: 24/10/2009

more details and stream

contact: myspace

cover art: back & front

On May 5th 2009, Austrian composer Karlheinz Essl and New York-based sound artist Matthew Ostrowski met for a free improvisation concert at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, NY. Although it had been 8 years since their last performance as a duo, the show turned out to be very powerful, each performer complementing the other in ways neither had anticipated. They were so excited about the results of this almost chance encounter that they decided to make the recording available to the world.
This album is dedicated to the memory of Suzanne Fiol (1960-2009), founder of Issue Project Room.

Liner Notes by Tom Hamilton

I go to a lot of concerts. I actually try to go to fewer concerts, but it never lasts for very long. I have lots of friends playing electronic music, because I've also been doing it myself for 40 years. Seeing friends and hearing electronic music seem to go together, but that's just me. So that's what happened on May 5, 2009, when I schlepped out to Brooklyn to hear Karlheinz and Matt at Issue Project Room.
Sometimes the experience of listening to electronic music is masked to a degree by the "electronic-ness" of it all; the suspicion that we're now being asked to suspend our musical instincts to allow for the intricacies of the media. So we forget for just a little bit that we really do like a big dose of plain old musicianship. What a relief when we finally get it.
Like in all good concerts, what I did not count on was what I actually heard. And like in all good concerts, it felt like a wholly new experience in the art form itself. And now I listen to the CD and I'm reminded again how valuable and desirable we find contrast, drama and excitement - qualities that we wish for in any other music. I listen again as if it were jazz. Surprise!
OK, I can't help it. I will digress to one technical point: An obstacle that faces every performer of our electronic ilk is that electronic and acoustic instruments do not project their sound quality in the same way. Our ears hear the subtlest changes radiating from a clarinet in almost any space. Not so with the electronic sources in that same room. Loudspeakers are usually the culprits - they just don't deliver the punch the way the clarinet does, and microphones just seem to play dumb when they hear anything from a speaker. But in the present recording, I can hear tremendous contrast in dynamic range and a great deal of detail in the sound. This is not because the loudspeakers or microphones were something exotic (they weren't, sorry). Karlheinz and Matt have made their original computer-based instruments with a great deal of attention to those important sonic qualities and how that bears on the resulting music. High resolution plus large dynamic range plus expressive controls equal a terrific sound. And a little recording common sense never hurts. We're reminded of the room, reminded that it was a live event, but never limited by it.
The key to this isn't that it's electronic, computerized, sampled, or really tied to any particular technology, though ironically each of these artists are well-known for having innovated new techniques that help bring the resulting music across. The importance of their work lies in their abilities to improvise with endless shadings ranging between simplicity and complexity, and to channel the overriding musicality to fuel the performance.
And like a really good wine that we're experiencing for the first time, we just know that it's a good drink. Words don't fail us; we just don't need them any more.

Tom Hamilton
New York, October 2009

[xs-66] BpOlar - subversive vespers

artist: BpOlar

album: subversive vespers

download

release date: 05/09/2009

more details and stream

contact: myspace

cover art: back and front

videoclip: krow

BpOlar is son of a jazz musician and as such he was raised from a very young age listening to the jazz masters, and although is approach diverted from this it is part of his background and as such is part of his aproach to the berlin electronic music scene. BpOlar is also a multidisciplinary artist, creating digital drawings and paintings and 3D video clips to document his music and for live usage, or the opposite (makes music to illustrate video). One of these works is presented together with this release.

BpOlar music is strongly focused on creating textures, with a close relation with ambient music. This textures are nonetheless rough and arid, and lead us to alien environments where beats, noises and voices all create suspense moments, where you feel alert all the way through. This release is composed of four tracks and a bonus movie, that complements this particular vision.

If you pay attention to BpOlar work you'll find, in his drawings/paintings, movies and music, traces of this imaginary world, where the central element is the feeling of unsettlement.

[xs-64] ziur - granular world

artist: ziur

album: granular world

download

release date: 16/08/2009

more details and stream

contact: myspace

cover art: back and front

In the year that we celebrate 40 years upon the arrival of men at the moon, and so many scientific discoveries, and so many lab discoverers and adventurers I present you a composer – Ziur. His passion for the discovery and study of the unknown leads us to the essence of sound, of its granular essence, presenting us another meaning, invisible to the naked ear. And like a stone is a stone on earth or on the moon, sound will always be sound whether savage or trained by Ziur.

Leonardo Rosado (xs records curator)

André Ruiz is a composer and professor at the Braga’s Conservatório Calouste Gulbenkian and he is also known in the electronic music as Ziur. He released is work concrétement at xs records [pt netlabel] in which he explored the digital media and the paradigm of composition initiated by Pièrre Schaeffer or Pièrre Henry. Ziur as been working in a series of initiatives and collaborative projects using the icompositions platform. Granular World he presents us with a series of experiments that take us to the granular synthesis domain, using the ixiquarks software developed by Italian softwarehouse ixisoftware developed with supercollider (this software is freeware and opensource). This music is as a performance component based upon the mentioned software which was refined a posteriori.

Tiago Morgado (xs records curator)

“Granular World” is an album conceived from inumerous experiences made by André Ruiz aka Ziur (the composer) using granular synthesis processes. All compositions were made in real time, i.e., all transformation processes and progressive developments were done and recorded in real time, which excludes it’s exact remake. Starting from simple recorded sounds (crystal glasses, tam tam’s, piano chords, etc.) it was possible to create diversified and individual compositions, which can suggest the listener several environments.

André Ruiz (composer)

[xs-63] subterminal - filled with light

artist: subterminal

album: filled with light

download

release date: 03/08/2009

more details and stream

contact: blog & myspace

cover art: back & front

With eyes wide open.
Like in a reawakening. A strange awake that repeats itself every night; every passing day, or so it seems. Like a virtual experience; or maybe not. Maybe it is just a normal but scary awakening. ... "Filled With Light".

"Filled With Light" awakens us in two different ways. The first, because it is only an EP which is part of an album yet to be released; the second, because in that album, poetry, a core element always present in Subterminal's work, makes an eulogy to digital life. "Filled With Light" is like a trailer of a full movie that we anticipate; a summary with a beginning middle and end. For now, the awakening is what matters most and "Filled With Light" awakes; awakes us.

In that slow awake, "With You" introduces us to the theme, to the electronic principle that conducts the EP. However, "Filled With Light" is the track that captures our attention; because of the movement; the layers of sound; the excellent alto viola played by Tiago Morgado. There is a slight techno-industrial mood coloring Leonardo Rosado's words, the man behind Subterminal. At last, "For the First Time" definitely introduces us to what's coming. A confrontation with a different reality; or, an almost-reality. "For the First Time" introduces us to a confrontation between poetry and technology, created by dense sound ambiences, images, differing in rhythm and form. They are different lines of the same life; parallel or perpendicular. The exhaustion of conflict.

"Filled With Light" was composed and played almost entirely with an iPhone, with some extra sounds from other objects. After "Alumina" and "Insight", released in 2009, the reawakening of Subterminal is of happiness. "Filled With Light" is a great step forward when comparing with prior releases, which leads to the expectation of a very interesting conceptual album. Coupled with the refinement of his personal electronic universe, the author added a better voice treatment. The production of the EP was made by Tiago Morgado.

... to keep the eyes wide open.

Press Review by Rui Dinis, A Trompa

[xs-62] hola one & elka brown - visitors

artist: hola one & elka brown

album: visitors

download

release date: 18/07/2009

more details and stream

contact: hola one @ myspace & elka brown @ myspace

cover art: back & front

In this new release by XS Records, Marek is back, this time together with elka brown, who has colaborated in this album with a remix of a song and some more colaborations. Personally, the main difference I see between this and the last album, is basically the production (in terms of mixing and mastering) which is signifcantly better in relation to last one.. also there has started to appear some drum machine components, which give a more rithmic character to visitors that hygh. Marek is a resident at Vombat Radio, where his tracks are featured in the electric city radio show, and which has allowed us to be partners of that radio. Hope you guys enjoy this release as much as we've done.

[xs-60] poros - labass

artist: poros

album: labass

download

release date: 20/06/2009

more details and stream

contact: myspace

cover art: back & front

Poros is a solo project of Paulo Vicente born in Lisbon (Portugal). Playing bass since 1987. He is also the author of the current xs records [pt netlabel] release, in which ((he presents himself as a one man band show) || (solo)) some sort of symbiosis occur between rock and electronic music, ambient, trip hop and downtempo.

Having such a passion for bass Poros bass leads the way to his admirable world of senses. Every note is played respectfully every chord has a smell, every beat a taste. You can sense different worlds in harmony. And all the other sounds increase this sense of perfume, of exotic nights, of longing for something. Carefully noises and sounds are placed in such a way that brings us closer and closer to desire.

This is we think what Paulo wants to show the world. If the word romantic wouldn't have such a bad implication nowadays we would say that Paulo is one of the ultimate romantics of this world. And this is also what we enjoy in the music we present you, passion and reverence for this language of feelings. Hope you guys enjoy this fine release as much as we enjoyed.

[xs-59] essl.burger - live!

artist: essl.burger

album: live!

download

release date: 07/06/09

more details and stream

contact: Karlheinz Essl myspace  homepage & youtube - Klaus Burger myspace & homepage

As a netlabel, we've always been worried about bringing music with an ascending quality to people, although some our releases seem a bit controversial, since we try to get as much diversity as possible.

This month, we can say that we are extremely proud to release Karlheinz Essl's and Klaus Burger's duo ESSL.BURGER. Not only because Karlheinz Essl is one of the most relevant figures of nowadays improvised music with live electronics in Europe, but also because we believe that together with our previous release and the following we might be heading to new pathways and manners of discovering ourselves in the music we are in contact with (in our music as an ascetic path belief), and in what we believe to be our role in this universe.

[xs-57] hola one - hygh

artist: hola one

album: hygh

download

release date: 5/4/2009

more details and stream 

contact: myspace and radio

Hola one is Marek Ogorzalek, the same person behind lost reality, khhh, and morten - pa gyngende grund. Marek has started his music activity in the hip hop underground scene in the late 90's and has been working in electronic music since 2000, although only in 2007 he sucedeed implementing something that he thought had interest for himself, in an aesthetic way. This was a basis for going throughout some existencial states, that condicioned his way of seeing life in limit situations. Lost Reality has been the result of it, and hola one works as an extension for this kind of sound. Here we have an interwine between experimental, ambient, minimal, micropoliphonic stuff, somewhere in the line of people such as brian eno, alva noto (in terms of textures), beatriz ferreyra, pauline oliveros and so on. Marek is a resident at Vombat Radio, where his tracks are featured in the electric city radio show.

[xs-49] rainbows - universal compassion

artist: rainbows

album: universal compassion

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace

Universal compassion is one more registry of the solo project of tiago morgado, this time with two small experiments in the style of christian fennesz (some sort of shoegazze noise, where piano drones, are processed over the time).

[xs-48] rainbows - songs for someone

artist: rainbows

album: songs for someone

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace

Songs for someone é como que um tardio iniciar de uma nova etapa e como que um preparar de uma novo ciclo de releases (e quem sabe, até projectos) por parte de Tiago Morgado, mentor da netlabel XS Records [portuguese netlabel]. Songs for someone faz-se então adivinhar como que um abrir de novos caminhos no sentido de uma espiritualidade vivida essencialmente através da música, e que encerra tudo aquilo que faz com que o autor do mesmo sinta a existência de uma razão para continuar a fazer música. Uma espécie de mística onde a angústia, a paixão, o sofrimento, o amor, o equilibrio se encerram numa vivencia espirtual conduzida através da musica. Trata-se portanto de uma maneira de transmitir através do seu instrumento com recurso a processamento (pedais e racks direccionados essencialmente para o processamento de guitarra electrica), aquilo que sente em relação a alguém ou algo, em relação ao tudo ou nada, caminhando num sentido de abraçar uma linguagem que cruza em alguns momentos o minimalismo presente na musica de compositores como steve reich ou philippe glasse, a uma quase sugestão de tratamento micropolifónico, típico da música de brian eno.

[xs-47] nata - stormy weather

artist: nata

album: stormy weather

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace

Recorded on my balcony one summer afternoon while watching a particularly vicious storm lash the coastline, literally destroying everything in its wake, then slowly going out to sea. this is how it felt to be there, the air thick with electricity and a sinister atmosphere of profound unease...this record is playable at any speed

[xs-46] pangea - vital error [feat kenji siratori]

artist: pangea

album: vital error

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace & blog

Today we have a spoken word lp to present to all of you guys.. it's called vital error and it's the last aparition of pangea, a friend of ours callled juan nieto (he has previously released some stuff in test tube), and which features the colab of kenji siratori, a japanese cyber punk poet well known in the web and which has featured colaborations in my project uncle bart comes to have breakfast.

[xs-45] jorge nunes - comprimido

artist: jorge nunes

album: comprimido

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace & blog

Jorge Nunes abre o ano de 2009 com uma bomba em estilo "Comprimido"; qual complexo químico ou arma de arremesso a lembrar o Dr. Robert Moog - esteja ele onde estiver desejando que esteja em paz - que continua a valer a pena ter criado nos idos 60 aquele extraordinário aparelho de som sintetizado. O Moog. É ele que serve de primeiro veículo transmissor ao universo em turbilhone que aqui vem comprimido. Ele e mais alguns pedaços arrecadados ao espaço e ao tempo por um moderno iPod de toque. Mas adiante que a loucura não espera; Desespera.

[xs-44] moreu - gong music

artist: moreu

album: gong music

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace

Suyoshi kanda is a Japanese Composer / Eight Strings Instrument Player. in this 44th release in xs records [pt netlabel] - the very last one of 2008, he presents himself with a work for gong, a percursion instruments of huge dimension used early by percussionists and drummers, ranging from percursion ensembles, to classical sinphonyc orchestras, and which has been introduced in contemporary music by the visionary karlheinz stockhausen in his works Mikrophonie.

[xs-43] 10konekt - telekom

artist: 10konekt

album: telekom

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace

Today I present you with this fine industrial project from france, 10konekt, which works in the base of circuit bending stuff.. an ep to be listened with care and open mind.

[xs-42] ziur - concretement

artist: ziur

album: concretement

download

release date:

more details and stream

contact: myspace

Ziur is the artistic name of Andre Ruiz. Originally from Maia, Portugal, is a composer who has made creations for movie pictures, animation films, video games and musical orchestral arrangements and collaborated with several artist performers. He lives in Braga where he teachs composition at the local Music school. For many years is working in classical music as teacher and composer. Ziur's project (created in 2005) is an escape for his believes and is an atempt to expand his music ideas and share with all his musical visions.