maybe you remember how a couple of months ago the noise-below crew participated as “nn+” in the tot festival that took place at knot gallery in athens (related posts here, here and here). well, nicolas already wrote about the whole thing, and today i wrote about it on my own blog (because you can never have enough of those…) here:

http://syndromesrandomcontent.blogspot.com/2010/08/nn-soundcheck.html

i also put up a recording of myself fumbling with the available equipment during the soundcheck. i ended up with a charming piece of noise + room ambience

enjoy,
kostis

NN+ soundcheck by syndromesuploadcloud

Tags: knot gallery, kostis kilymis, sites/blogs

Costis Drygianakis sent us his thoughts on the brand new Cranc album, copper fields. And in turn we thought we’d make a big deal out of it, seeing that Costis was the man who chose, back in the year 2000, to release the trio’s first album (All Angels) on his own ΕΔΩ (EDO) label.

From the time that the first Cranc album was released (All angels, ΕΔΩ 2000) a whole decade has passed. Today it is becoming obvious that that particular record marked the end of a phase. From 2001 and on, the three of them (Rhodri and Angharad Davies from Wales and Nikos Veliotis from Greece) left behind all twelvetone scribblings and instrumental musique concrète and devoted themselves with remarkable self-discipline in the search for extended and long-drawn sounds, those referred to as drones. After a decade of independent personal trajectories and occasional chance encounters, they rejoin their forces here, more mature and relevant than even. And they succeed in something that is missing in the majority of similar attempts. They maintain undiminished interest from the first up to the last minutes of the record, they avoid unnecessary excess, they do not forget themselves in some minimalist stupor. Because, as in the end it turns out, it is of great importance the fact that these slow and endless sounds do not originate from some automatic generators, but from strings vibrating under human fingers. And ultimately, great human fingers.

~ costis drygianakis

copper fields is available from organized music from thessaloniki, as well as absurd

Tags: costis drygianakis, cranc

tasos stamou’s kukuruku recordings label, home to quite a few improv and outsider cdr editions, is now available through the excellent metamkine distribution in france. time you checked out some of those obscure sides that always seemed hard to get, ok?

-

http://www.kukurukurecordings.com/
http://www.metamkine.com/?partiste=1&monlabel=1495

Tags: kukuruku

thanks to the knot crew

Tags: a strange attractor, absurd, athens, ilan manouach, knot gallery, kostis kilymis, ku

nothing but a short post to mention a small fragment of the nn+ set that took place during the tot festival held in knot gallery on the 26th & 27th of june.
nn+ turned to be the ‘line-up’ of nektarios (a strange attractor record store), nicolas (πτώματα κάτω από το κρεββάτι records), kostis kilymis (organized music from thessaloniki). with nektarios we feel grateful somehow to mihalis kyratsous & dimitra lazaridou-hatzigoga as they dropped the idea for this set and turned to be great chacnce to do finally a duo we longed nearly 18 years to do since the last days of the greek grind/noisecore scene’s heyday back in early 90’s. back then he as a member of the grind group ‘industry of crashed conceptions’ i as ’sickness’. then wishing a kinda whitehouse tone generator noise thing that never materialized now something we liked much more to be honest as we had a host of participants like otomo hava, ilan manouach, e.a.

also just for the history and the arhives of absurd completists…during the set were smashed some 150 looper cds. for the record the cd was to be an edition of 500, i ordered back then some 600 sleeves and anastasis (of the small music theatre fame) helped w/ the cd order/ manufacturing. well i only left athens for a 4 days visit to budapest upon landin’ back the 500 cd ordered had turned to a 1000 cd one and luckily instead of 600 sleeves approx for the first time in absurd’s history had some close to 700 printed. not sure how the final edition was however some 20-30 were smashed during the old fashioned donkeys electrograph performance 4 years ago. some 100-150 were thrown into a recycle bin outside my house and some 100-120 more or less left were smashed during the nn+ thing. since then was too bored to print again sleeves for the remaining copies you see.

same holds for the tasos stamou ‘infant’ cd. by the time it was out some 60 – 70 copies were left without sleeve. if am not mistaken when the sleeves we initially bought were some 400-450 for an edition of 500-520 cds. so for 4 years too they were collecting dust in my bedroom and as i need room now for more records of my collection i simply recycled them. guess there’s more tasos stamou to be recycled sooner or later….

enjoy

Tags: a strange attractor, absurd, athens, knot gallery, kostis kilymis

hi

long since the last update or at least i think so.
so just out is cranc’s ‘copper fields’ cd co-produced with organized music from thessaloniki. in brief a noise-below release.
marks the 2nd cranc release exactly after a decade since their first ‘all angels’ cd on edo records and is far more different in style. listening both of them you may see the difference and progress (depnends on your opinion if is progress or whatever) the trio did in their sound search the last decade.
it also marks the end of absurd and an almost 14 year journey comes to its end.

there are various plans in mind for future projects not as intense as absurd at least at the moment (well absurd started like that in 96 you might say and then…). in early / mid july a new project starts and will be the main vehicle for this decade. also important as a vehicle is the ‘outside my window’ blog. my greatest interest wth it is field recordings but never sayno for proper mp3/flac releases. already a dead gum mp3 is uploaded also a binaural field recording of a specific site of the city of kalamata as recorded by nikos kyriazopoulos last april while cycling in the city.
check http://thenoisehitthemastheyopenedthedoor.blogspot.com

slowly will keep upldating the ’story so far’ blog http://allnoisesswelltogetherinlandscapes.blogspot.com as still there are shitloads waiting to be uploaded.

also a kind of posthumous release is a 10″ by tasos stamou. a recording of a party held for the birthday of a friend’s daughter last july in the village of nea triglia in halkidiki, north greece. guess sometime in july will be out too.

as has happened with any project unearthed from the genital grinder zine saga and on a ‘link’ between absurd and the new project that is in the works will be a special release somehow the ‘official’ final a 7″ by howard stelzer & frans de waard which is nothing else than another brick on the ‘torn tongue’ wall they slowly built. i assume that it’ll be out sometime in september or october.

speaking of posthumous releases as well the ‘adieu absurd’ party thing will take place on saturday the 4th in the city of xanthi. further details to be announced sometime later during the year.

also ‘a question of re_entry’ has almost fulfilled its idea. a final co-production cdr is due for release sometime in 2010 and will mark its end as well.

hhmm guess that’s all for now. sometime in july will email infos on the new project, its first release, etc.

love & noise
nicolas

Tags: a question of re_entry, absurd, sites/blogs

a link to nicolas’ blog, ‘outside my window‘, where you can find available for downloading a recording of ilan manouach’s solo set at the xanthi folk museum last autumn.

ilan is a graphic artist as well as a formidable saxophone player whose work often flirts with noise. In the case of this concert (original post about it here) things got a bit out-of-hand, so much that ilan himself thought the recording was somehow defective when we played it back some days later. a very strong gig, get it here:

http://thenoisehitthemastheyopenedthedoor.blogspot.com/2010/05/ilan-manouach-live-at-xanthi-folk.html

Tags: ilan manouach, sites/blogs, xanthi

introducing orila… I should have introduced orila a long time ago. orila is the ‘online phonographic workshop’ (rough translation) set up by yiannis iasonidis and specialising on guerilla concepts of record-releasing. Blank cdrs with to burn your downloadable music on; check. Special, unmarketable 3″ covers for the special edition, while you market the clear plastic sleeve edition; check. “Regular” cdr edition where each 10 copies or so have a different bit added to the cover because the label boss got new ideas in between; check. Amazing record sleeves that get constructed before the actual music gets recorded; check. Needless to say, we love orila, and it’s silly that we haven’t professed our love to orila all this time. I’m sorry orila, sometimes i get distracted.

Now comes the Ku edition. In two handmade versions, one a cool tape edition and the other a really out-there tape+decorated walkman edition, ready to listen to. Insane levels of cool of course. Did i mention that you can also just choose to download the thing?

the music contained is (as hinted) by Ku, aka Dimitris Papadatos. It was played live on an e-radio show, and comes “filled with obsessions, burst outs and romance. Kraut inflictions, dark vocals, drones and high frequencies transforming to birds.”

more info here:
http://www.orila.net/
http://kulttofthesilent.blogspot.com/

Tags: ku, orila

our mailing lists are down

having less time to dedicate on the site these past few months, i only recently realised that the database behind our mailing lists has ceased to function. This means that both the ‘absurd’ and the ‘organized music from thessaloniki’ labels’ mailing lists are not in operation. I have tried in vain to fix this problem, but at the moment i cannot even salvage the subscribers’ email addresses. Which means that those people who will not read this entry, might have to wait a long time befor they receive anything new from those lists. My apologies for this.

For the time being, you are encouraged to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed as an alternative. It will contain any info that would have apeared in those lists, as well as other news from related labels and artists. Or just keep an eye on our pages, the old-fashioned way.

Even though i myself still favor mailing lists and their succinct notifications, maybe this will prove to be a way forward since more and more people today seem to depend on automatic notifications. I’m afraid we don’t have another choice for now

Tags: absurd, organized music from thessaloniki

by yiorgis sakellariou

Last summer I visited the island of Kithira and stayed there for a few days. Besides the expected “beautiful sunny beaches”, which, I have to admit, I don’t really like that much, the island also offered some quite more interesting landscapes (and soundscapes of course), like the one near the village of Mylopotamos. The little river and the summer insects provided an ideal soundtrack for a summer’s day. Indeed relaxing, but also relatively loud, the “sounds of nature”, rich and full of micro-details, always attract my attention and motivate me to record them. That’s a far better way to spend my holidays than getting sunburnt on a –disturbingly- windy beach.

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Tags: field recording mini-series, mecha/orga

the buzz has been on for quite some time now around Veroia’s finest beat-maker Larry Gus (Panagiotis Melidis). While he’s no stranger to these underground waters (see older posts here), he’s been steadily making a name for himself as a (non-exclusively) hip-hop artist. Just released on the Greek ‘cast-a-blast’ label is his smashing sampladelic summer trip called ‘Stitches’. Great as the album is (close to fucking fantastic), panagiotis is -in some circles- loved even more for his inimitable, border-like neurotic, train-of-thought talk. On the occasion of his new album, you have a taste of those ramblings in an interview he gave to the greek music zine mic.gr here

if you want more, there’s always his blog

of course, a taste of his music is even better. More info on his label’s site here

Tags: larry gus

by yiorgis sakellariou

Here’s another location from Syria, this time from the south of the country. I left Damascus to visit the ancient city of Palmyra. On the highway, the “Iraq =>” signs made me feel quite weird as I was naively thinking that a small mistake by the driver could lead us to really unknown territories. After a few hours, we had to make a necessary stop. In the middle of nowhere was this little resting place/café called “Café Baghdad”. Although I was actually in a desert, I did not experience the completely silent soundscape, like I did the previous time I was in a similar environment (that was in Wadi Rum, in Jordan). The reason was the constant motor sound of the water pump that was probably used to provide electricity to “Baghdad Café”. I could not resist getting very close and record it. This sample was the only sound that I used for the opening track of my “61:50” release on the Triple Bath label.

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Tags: field recording mini-series, mecha/orga