Amish is pleased to officially announce a new release from composer Gregg Kowalsky, the fourth installment in the label’s Required Wreckers series. Movements in Marble and Stone (AMI-034R/W) includes two new pieces recorded live in 2011. While these performances occurred on opposite coasts, the source material is closely aligned in both concept and process. These works highlight his ongoing preoccupations with sound and setting, incorporating the focused blend of acoustic and electronic sources that Kowalsky is already well known for.

“Electronic Music for Square and Sine Waves” documents Kowalsky’s contribution to the 2011 Activating the Medium festival in San Francisco. This commissioned piece continues Kowalsky’s interest in how sound engages, manipulates and modifies one’s awareness of space. This piece generates—as both the name of the festival and Kowalsky’s composition suggest—sound that amplifies a hearing subject’s relation to his or her environment. For this composition, Kowalsky tuned an AM radio to random interference between channels, static abstractions that bookend the work. Within the core of the piece, Kowalsky used contact mics to process this, and other, sound source(s) as he moved around the performance space. The effect of this movement generates both melodic feedback and acoustic forms that provide a subtle complement to the static interference of the radio frequencies.

“For Baroque Lute, Tapes and Resonant Space” documents Kowalsky’s on going tape chants process, a project previously realized on both his Battery Townsley (2011) and Tape Chants (2009) LPs. For this iteration, Kowalsky tuned square and sine waves to Dutch lutanist Jozef van Wissem’s lute and then played these recordings through cassette players. Though they have collaborated previously, this performance at Issue Project Room in October 2011 is the first chronicling of Van Wissem and Kowalksy’s duo-work.

In both his performances and sound installations, Kowalsky has shared the stage and/or collaborated with a wide range of contemporary artists and musicians over the last ten years, including Stephan Mathieu, Fred Frith Kevin Drumm, JD Emmanuel, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Ben Vida, Yoshi and Tashi Wada, Aaron Dilloway, C. Spencer Yeh Paul Clipson, among others. Kowalsky has released a number of critically acclaimed solo records for labels like Kranky, Senufo Editions and Root Strata, as well as working with Marielle Jakobson in Date Palms (Mexican Summer).

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Gregg Kowalsky resides in Oakland, California where he completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. Kowalsky’s compositions range from drone and noise pieces to meditative psychedelia. Kowalsky has had the opportunity to perform throughout Europe and the United States; participating in festivals such as WDR’s SoundArt-Köln Festival, Sonar, ERTZ Festival and the Ideal Festival among others. His recordings have released on Kranky, Rootstrata, Arbor and Important Records. He has composed for dance, sound installations, film and acoustic ensembles.

Composer and lutenist Jozef van Wissem is devoted to what he terms “The Liberation of the Lute”. Taking an experimental approach to Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music, his compositions for the instrument have involved a dynamic mix of conceptual, minimalist, classical and improvisational strategies, seamlessly bridging the language of 17th century music with that of the 21st, without compromising the timbre and resonance of traditional lute playing techniques. Van Wissem’s live shows have taken him all over the world. He has records out on Important Records and his own Incunabulum label and has collaborated with James Blackshaw, Keiji Haino and Jim Jarmusch amongst others. He lectures on “The Liberation of the Lute” (at Harvard, Wesleyan University, Mills College amongst others) and was commissioned by The National Gallery of London to compose a sound piece to Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors. His work is featured more and more in documentaries and feature films and he recently composed pieces for lute and voice for the new Sims Medieval video game.

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R​/​W volume 7: Primordial Forms
by Nick Forté

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1.
Imperfect Birth 08:16
2.
Infusoria 09:16
3.
Rhodoferax 05:35
4.
Druse 07:39
5.
Sleeping Sickness 05:57
about
Primordial Forms is Forté’s most demanding and conceptual work to date. Forte has always been intrigued by the visual representation of sound on the computer screen. Editing software depicts sound as “waveforms” which can look like jagged landscapes or abstract geometric forms. For the five pieces that comprise the record, Forté created five one-second sounds on his computer based purely on the visual appeal of the waveform. He made these waveforms with the speakers off. These visually appealing forms became the seeds for the pieces on the record.

With the speakers turned back on, Forté then turned these discrete sound units into long form music through a slow and deliberate process of looping, editing, and manipulation. The entire record was made in a pirated version of Sound Forge from the late 90s. No sequencers or multi-track programs were used and no real time playing occurred on these tracks. Forte’s compositional process can be likened to cartoon animation, or Muybridge’s photographic innovations capturing movement and motion.

Though these pieces began in the eye, they end in the gut. Short sequences of tones and bursts of sound are embedded in rhythm and form. Throughout the album representational sound is confused with the non-representational and the end result, a combination of the computer-based and the organic, is a work of subtle power and dynamism.

Forté is one of the most innovative and overlooked figures in contemporary experimental and extreme music, though those aware of his discography recognize the arch and foundational significance of his work. From Rorschach to Raspberry Bulbs, and more importantly in his solo releases on Schematic, Soft Abuse, Sublight, Wodger and Catholic Tapes, Forté is one of the most versatile and rigorous musicians working today.

Cover art by Adam Helms.


Required Wreckers
With equal nods to Throbbing Gristle’s retrograde conceptualism and Recommended Records unwavering musicality, Amish is pleased to announce the Required Wreckers. Over ten catalogue releases, R/W will explore the work of artists operating at the intersections of sound art, improvisation, drone, outsider experimentation and modern composition. In the spirit of its name, R/W aims to disrupt the boundaries typically used to delimit genre and the sensibilities that help to inform taste. In so doing, R/W slips out from under the simple, reductive classifications so often used to discuss, and even critically engage, contemporary music. Situating R/W in the gap between Throbbing Gristle’s celebrated a-musicality and the unrelenting craftsmanship of Henry Cow, these releases acknowledge their debt to historical precedent. Each release is a one-time vinyl pressing (each will also be available in the vastly inferior digital format). These LPs will also include artwork and assorted ephemera that invoke our deepest respect for the medium and the handcrafted (and assembled) components we regret have disappeared with the rise of digital media. R/W will terminate in ten installments.