The Squid's Ear
Recently @ Squidco:

Eric Shorter:
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Ernesto Rodrigues / Ana Albino / Hernani Faustino / Carlos Santos:
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Paula Sanchez:
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Camila Nebbia / Kit Downes / Andrew Lisle:
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Recorded live in Berlin, the debut from Camila Nebbia's working trio with Kit Downes and Andrew Lisle captures six dynamic, unrestrained pieces that navigate shifting textures and rhythms, fractured lyricism, and tightly woven interplay, avoiding individual soloing as the group explores contrast and transformation through raw energy, deep listening, and collective momentum. ... Click to View


Le Vice Anglais (Pires / Parrinha):
vas-y (4DaRecord)

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Marc Baron / Eric La Casa:
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Exploring the fragility of recorded memory and the processes of cinematic restoration, Marc Baron and Eric La Casa capture, manipulate, and recontextualize sounds from the Hiventy film laboratories, transforming them through analogue treatments and dynamic re-recording into a compelling meditation on representation, decay, and the shifting nature of perception. ... Click to View


Francisco Lopez :
Untitled (2021-2022) [2 CDs] (Bu Lang Tribute Cake)

A double CD of composed environmental sound works from Francisco López, assembling raw field recordings from locations including Tenerife, Eswatini, Israel, Georgia, Chile, and the southwestern USA, along with a film soundtrack and a collaboration with Felipe Otondo, creating immersive, abstract electroacoustic pieces with intentional silences and textural extremes. ... Click to View


Eventless Plot | Haarvol:
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Eternities:
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Elka Bong (Margolis / Wright / Bouchard):
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Karl Evangelista Quintet feat. Bobby Bradford and William Roper:
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Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters, The (Rasmussen / Mitelli / Rezaei / Koenig):
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Akmee:
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Recorded in Oslo's Toyen Kirke, this spiritually resonant second album from the Norwegian quartet Akmee explores acoustic possibilities with lyrical counterpoint, trance-like repetition, and intuitive improvisation, as trumpeter Erik Kimestad Pedersen, pianist Kjetil Jerve, bassist Erlend Olderskog Albertsen, and drummer Andreas Wildhagen stretch melody and rhythm into expressive, otherworldly forms. ... Click to View


Ernesto Rodrigues / Guilherme Rodrigues / Maximilian Glass:
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An intimate, texturally rich trio session recorded in Berlin between Ernesto Rodrigues on viola & crackle box, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello, and Maximilian Glass on percussion, navigating misty lowercase atmospheres, glitch-box coloration, and finely balanced interactions that unveil subtle surprise and collective improvisation within a tight, exploratory sound world. ... Click to View


Sveio:
Latent Imprints (577 Records)

A fascinating exploration of human-machine collaboration from UK trio Sveio — James Mainwaring on saxophone, Federico Reuben on laptop improvisation and live coding, and Emil Karlsen on drums — using AI in real-time to generate uncanny textures and forms, resulting in a spontaneously composed and constantly evolving electroacoustic sound world. ... Click to View


Kommun:
Kalpa (thanatosis produktion)

Expanding to a sextet, Swedish guitarist Finn Loxbo's Kommun deepens its exploration of cyclical time and collective improvisation, weaving acoustic steel-string guitar, piano, strings, and percussion into evolving, harmonically rich phrases that merge individual lines into fluid, slow-burning forms — meditative, intricate, and poised between structure and dissolution. ... Click to View


Various Artists:
Archipelago (Bathysphere Records)

A benefit compilation in support of marine restoration through ORAI, this diverse collection features 13 experimental and ambient works — including evocative soundscapes by Scott Solter, Cristina Cano, and others — each track a donation from artists celebrating the sea’s mystery, fragility, and power through deeply personal sonic reflections. ... Click to View


Mat Watson:
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Extracted from archival sessions at Imaginary Sound Fields in Melbourne, Australian synthesist Mat Watson assembles a limited-edition set of vivid modular compositions — ranging from library-inspired cues to exploratory electronic abstractions — capturing the tactile nuance of a Eurorack modular as he sculpts asymmetrical, colorful soundscapes that blur nostalgia, experimentation, and inner space. ... Click to View


Unredeemable (Tracy Lisk / Andrea Pensado):
Preverbal (Love Earth Music)

A dynamic, spontaneous duo collaboration by percussionist Tracy-Lisk and multi-disciplinary performer Andrea-Pensado, this LEM-347 release unfolds through drumming, cymbal washes, voice and live electronics into a fluid, improvisatory dialogue that balances rhythmic sensitivity and textural exploration within an intimate, acutely reactive sound world. ... Click to View


+DOG+:
Our Beloved..... (Love Earth Music)

A fierce and immersive set of three extended noise pieces from the six-member experimental collective of Steve Davis, Bobby Almon, Chuck Foster, Edward Giles, LOB, and Mackenzie Kourie, recorded in multiple locations, blending dense textures, static-laced improvisation, and electroacoustic intensity into a raw and unapologetically visceral listening experience. ... Click to View


Das B (Mazen Kerbaj / Mike Majkowski / Magda Mayas / Tony Buck):
Love (thanatosis produktion / Corbett Vs Dempsey)

Inspired by John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, the second album from the Berlin-based quartet Das B — Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Mike Majkowski (bass), Magda Mayas (piano), and Tony Buck (percussion) — subverts the tribute format with a radical re-imagining built on free improvisation, textural exploration, and structural homage, resulting in a deeply immersive and conceptually rich work. ... Click to View


Das B (Mazen Kerbaj / Mike Majkowski / Magda Mayas / Tony Buck):
Love [VINYL] (thanatosis produktion / Corbett Vs Dempsey)

Inspired by John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, the second album from the Berlin-based quartet Das B — Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Mike Majkowski (bass), Magda Mayas (piano), and Tony Buck (percussion) — subverts the tribute format with a radical re-imagining built on free improvisation, textural exploration, and structural homage, resulting in a deeply immersive and conceptually rich work. ... Click to View


Matt Mitchell:
Sacrosanctity (Obliquity)

Fully improvised and recorded in the same session as his previous solo album, Illimitable, pianist Matt Mitchell's solo performance explores shifting structures and emotional densities with a remarkable clarity of form and spontaneity, blending jazz intuition, classical modernism, and abstract rhythm into a deeply focused and personal sonic journey. ... Click to View


Dave Burrell / Sam Woodyard:
The Lost Session, 1979 Paris (NoBusiness)

Unearthed from Dave Burrell's personal archive, this long-rumored 1979 Paris session with legendary Ellington drummer Sam Woodyard finally emerges, presenting a rare and intimate duo performance sourced from a cassette dub of the original tape — an essential historical document capturing two master musicians in a spontaneous and deeply expressive exchange. ... Click to View


Ernesto Rodrigues / Miguel Mira / Flak / Tiago Varela / Manuel Guimaraes:
Genius Loci (Creative Sources)

Continuing Rodrigues' post-Cage series of single-track acoustic improvisations, this 2025 quintet with Miguel Mira, Flak, Tiago Varela, and Manuel Guimaraes blends viola, cello, electric guitar, fan organ, melodica, and piano in an evolving tapestry of mysterious breath, subtle continuity, and fragile sonic space recorded live in Lisbon with profound delicacy and restraint. ... Click to View


Carlos Zingaro / Bruno Parrinha / Fred Lonberg-Holm / Joao Madeira:
Enleio (4DaRecord)

Reuniting violinist Carlos Zingaro and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm with bassist João Madeira and bass clarinetist Bruno Parrinha, Enleio captures a dynamic Lisbon session of free improvisation rich in textural interplay, pointillist gestures, and evolving sonic dialogues, blending expressive restraint with bursts of manic energy across four nuanced and immersive pieces. ... Click to View


Ferdinand Schwarz :
Listening Time (Another Timbre)

A contemplative composition by Ferdinand Schwarz for the Oslo-based ensemble AREPO, Listening Time unfolds as a patient, microtonal exploration of harmonic stasis and collective structure, blending just intonation, fragile textures, and co-composed material in a deep listening experience that merges composed form with improvisational sensibility and communal artistry. ... Click to View


Timothy McCormack :
Mine But For Its Sublimation (Another Timbre)

Composed for and performed by pianist Jack Yarbrough, Timothy McCormack's mine but for its sublimation is a resonant and formally immersive solo piano work that explores gesture, vulnerability, and transformation through precise touch, spatial decay, and evolving harmonic tension, revealing a deeply personal and physical engagement with the piano's sonic possibilities. ... Click to View


Eventless Plot | Francesco Covarino:
Methexis [CASSETTE + DOWNLOAD] (Innovo Editions)

A textural and quietly immersive collaboration between Italian percussionist Francesco Covarino and Greek trio Eventless Plot, combining modular synth, field recordings, percussion, and tapes in an intricate 2024 live studio session that continues the exploratory cassette ethos of Covarino's TSSS label through Innovo Editions' equally intimate and tactile aesthetic. ... Click to View


Dan Brown / Dan Reynolds:
Live At The Grange Hall [unauthorized][CASSETTE] (Sacred Realism)

A unique document of Don Brown and Dan Reynolds' unconventional compositional practice, recorded live to tape in 2008 with an 8-piece ensemble performing four decades-spanning works at Multnomah Grange #71, this unauthorized cassette release captures a pivotal moment in Portland's experimental scene, offering singular music with deep references and no clear precedent. ... Click to View



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  The Manhattan Listening Tour  

A guide to galleries that aren't for the eyes.


By Nirav Soni 2002-12-07

Poking around Manhattan for any period of time will soon yield a steady stream of tourists, eyes welded heavenwards, cameras in hand, relentlessly scanning left and right for the next spectacle. One should have caution when around such birds; an errant digit poses a significant threat to eyeballs. Rarely, however, do you find out-of-towners armed with a minidisc recorder, or a DAT machine. Surely our fair city is as much an auditory all-you-care-to-eat as it is it is an ocular one!

Apocryphally, John Cage said that when he moved into a loft on 18th St. and 6th Ave, he never bought records again. Whenever he wanted to hear music, he just opened his window. What can compare to the subtle symphony of pedestrian and road traffic? How many composers harmonies subtle as that of a screaming baby and a fire engine or rhythms as complex as squealing breaks and car alarms? The ears reel at the wealth of such sonic stimuli!

Of course, the nuances of street sounds can be somewhat unwelcome in an undercaffinated morning. But the shock always subsides and the hum of traffic blends with howling winds, underscoring the subtle interplay of rustling leaves and grumbling pedestrians.

Noise pollution?! How can you even think a phrase like that? I'll fight to the death to hear the Long Island Rail Road every morning; there are few sounds as life-affirming as the 7 train rattling over Roosevelt Avenue in Queens at the break of dawn. The sweet sounds of this fair city are in my book nowhere paralleled. Sure, New Delhi is louder and more brash and les rues of Paris perhaps more refined, but how can you compare it to the delicate clinking of change in indigent cups, the idle chatter of trust-funded youth, sizzling kebabs, clomping boots and clicking heels? Give me street performers like Kalaparusha Maurice McIntryre, Kenta Nagai and a free-jazz subway combo like Test over whatever else another city's got any day.

With su ch a rich ambiance to work in, NYC has a number of galleries and spaces devoted to the creation and presentation of sound art, in its installed and performed incarnations. These galleries present an excitingly diverse range of work, from the rigorously formal and conceptual to the more spontaneous and organic. With this in mind, I present to you "The Squid's Ear Sound Art Tour of Manhattan"

A few preliminary remarks:

  1. Get a Metrocard Funpass. $4 will have you cruising the subways and buses all day.
  2. Sound art galleries are not available in the way that visual art galleries in Chelsea and Soho are. As they are not dedicated to the marketing of commodities, galleries like Engine27 and Diapason are generally not as accessible as "traditional" art galleries are. You'd be well advised to check ahead of time to see which days and times they are open.
  3. Turn off your cell phone.
  4. Leave your headphones at home.

Engine27

Whatever you hear at the Engine 27 sound art gallery, it is likely to be perceptually overwhelming. Housed in an ex-firehouse in Tribeca, the gallery is home to the most sophisticated and awe-inspiring multichannel sound playback system I've ever witnessed.

Engine27 is generally open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays, exhibiting sound installations and, on occasion, live performances. The rest of the week, the gallery becomes a studio for artists to work. The overarching majority of what is exhibited is created on commission, specifically for the space. As part the commission, each artist is given 30-40 hours of time with an engineer to create a work to be exhibited in the environment.

I stopped into Engine27 early on a weekday, and had the pleasure of seeing the gallery without it's dress shoes on.Fragments of Leopanar Witlarge's composition-in-the-working hovered in the space as I took a slow walk through the gallery. It's d isconcerting enough to walk through an ex-firehouse filled with speakers that are at least half your size suspended from the ceiling; imagine the cognitive dissonance you feel when you see two people amiably chatting while shards of a disembodied voice moves from one side of the space to the other.

http://www.engine27.org/
Address: 173 Franklin St., between Hudson and Greenwich
Directions: 1, 9 train to Franklin St. Walk 1 and 1/2 blocks west on Franklin.

The Dream House

La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's Dream House has been a fixture of the New York creative community for 8 years. Since its creation, it has been employed in the realization of their collaborative project "The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry in Prime Time...." (Go to the website if you want to see the entire title), which ostensibly becomes an immersive sound and light environment.

What's most amazing about the Dream House is how the meticulously structured and calculated, para-scientific study sensory input is deployed in a space is so gentle and warm. Fans of drone based music will be taken by the complex webs of sum and difference tones that are synthesized in real-time, and the corollary light sculptures at once suggest 19th century retinal psychology, and 60's minimalism.

There are a few pillows alongside the walls, and the carpeting is plush, but aside from a small shrine to Pandit Pran Nath and the sound and light producers, the main space of the Dream House is bare. There's no one ideal location to experience the piece, and you're tacitly invited to create the composition for yourself by walking around and turning your head. Every time I go, I end up slumped up against the wall, gently nodding my head and thoroughly losing myself. There aren't really audible indicators of time, so if you don't have a watch, it becomes tough to tell whether you've been si tting down for 15 or 50 minutes.

The Dream House is a wonderful place to go in the wintertime, as it's much warmer than it's surroundings. There's a $4 donation requested at the door and shoe removal is mandatory (wear clean socks.)

http://melafoundation.org/main.htm
Address: 275 Church Street between Franklin & White Streets in Tribeca
Directions: 1,9 to Franklin St. Walk east to Church, cross the street, turn left, and walk 1/2 block.
From Canal St. Station (N, R, Q, W, J, M, Z, 6) Walk west to Church Street and head south.

Diapason

Diapason resides in the midst of office buildings and the financial mutterings. You'd hardly guess that this narrow entranceway in midtown would be home to some of NYC's most innovative sound art. Michael Schumacher and Liz Gerring continue Diapason in the tradition of their Studio Five Beekman, and present installations and performances in the galleries. Often you'll see video projected on the 3 screens in the galleries, adding an interesting visual component to the music.

You'll have to plan your trip around this visit. The gallery is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 6-12 pm, and since it's so far removed from the other stops on the tour, it's recommended that you leave plenty of time for it.

Diapason is comprised of two separate galleries: a large chamber that you enter when you walk through the door and a smaller room towards the far end of the room. The second room is easy to overlook, but is always worth spending time in.

Fred Szymanski presented his "Friction Sticky Rough" in the larger chamber in October, filling the space with dense clouds of sound particles, ebbing and flowing. On the wall were undulating, synthetic structures, a visual analogue to the tactile effervescence of the music. Bernard Gunter's installation in the smaller room wa smu ch more spare, a single red bulb illuminating the room, with speakers pushed against the wall almost sculpturally. The music was haunting, so quiet at times that the sound from the Szymanski piece became a very real presence.

http://www.diapasongallery.com/
Address: 1026 Sixth Avenue, between 38th and 39th
Subway: Subway: 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, B, D, F, Q, N, R, W to 42nd Street. Walk 3 and 1/2 blocks south on 6th Ave.

Sonic Garden at the World Financial Center

I applaud the curators of the Sonic Garden for their curatorial acumen and progressive tastes. It's not often that one can hear innovative sound art from the likes of Laurie Anderson, Marina Rosenfeld, David Byrne and Ben Rubin in as public an arena as the World Financial Center, where hundreds and hundreds of people pass every day.

However, these works are in an uncomfortable space. The Winter Garden, of which the Sonic Garden is a component, is located within the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan. For whatever reason, that didn't trigger enough bells for me, and I didn't mentally prepare myself for walking right next to the site of the World Trade Center last November in order to get to the Winter Garden.

Context is so important to the reception of artwork, and the Sonic Garden, while admirably presented, can't escape the larger shadow it stands beneath. It makes David Byrne's collection of jokes and one-liners seem a little trivial. Taken on their own merit, the works are nice enough. Ben Rubin incorporates market economics in his work, while Marina Rosenfeld's echoing sound particles evoke an image of a large, quiet imaginary dream garden. Laurie Anderson's work alone seemed appropriately elegiac, it's single processed violin, which feels delicate and reverent.

http://www.creativetime.org/sonicgarden/map.html

Subway: Take the 4/5/6 to Fulton Street, the N/R to Rector Street, or the 1/9 to Wall Street. Walk to Church and Liberty Streets and cross the South Bridge to 1 WFC. Follow signs within complex to the Winter Garden.



The Squid's Ear presents
reviews about releases
sold at Squidco.com
written by
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Squidco

Recent Selections @ Squidco:


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