FOR THE PROMOTION OF EXPERIMENTAL WORKS REALISED USING FREE SOFTWARE
                       

CDRS editions of 200 in nice oversize sylver-on-black printed sleeves,
50 copies go to the artist
you can listen and download them from archive.org by clicking on the title
you can buy them via Metamkine
CONTACT




FREE SS 16

Joaquin Lana

"Jacobin Of Noise"



Gamberro y Makarra por excelencia,
there is nobody in the whole Spanish noise scene
that laughs more about the whole world than Joaquin Lana.
This records sounds familiar but I don't know why.
Actually I do know why. "Jacobin Of Noise" documents
the  sound of the guillotine slicing the heads of

the royal computer music club.
Nihilist noise in the era of digital hope.
Anti-Copyright



FREE SS 15

Noish ((Oscar Martin))

"noise&capitalism.txt >> /dev/dsp"


Originally from Motril (Granada)
but now living in Barcelona, Oscar Martin
is partly responsible for the ursonate magazine
which collects texts and music from the growing Spanish experimental
music scene. For this release Oscar took a .txt file of Noise & Capitalism
opened a terminal and put it through
the dsp of his computer in order to literally make noise out of the book.
Then he began to process the sounds with analogue tape and edit
them, until he manage to get the shape he wanted.
Perfectly sculptured, "noise&capitalism.txt >> /dev/dsp"
records the process of a growing exploration into
the terrain of material conceptualism.
Public Domain



FREE SS 14

Christian Galarreta

"Computer Music Is Dead"

In the cemetery of computer hardware,
Christian uses  his software only  to document a derive
into the detritus of matter, into the desolation of our times,
into the nothingness of being.
Nothing alive here and no hopes,
just some sounds without pretending to grasp you.
We live between 0 and 1's in a collapsing world
so it is not strange that someone tries  to find ways of documenting
the death of our surroundings.
No digital glamour here, just materialist realism.
This record is the beginning of the end.
Anti-Copyright



FREE SS 13


Olaf Hochherz

"hé, vous, là-bas !"

Fractured and minimal, this release is
the passing of time interrogating your patience.
Little sounds with no specific origin
dissolves your aesthetics into a void.
I am still a listener but what I am listening to?
Nevertheless it brings pleasure to my ears and ideas to my brain.
What do you want to find out about this music?
Do you want to feel attracted to it?
Do you feel that it tells you something?
Improvisation, concrete music, reductionism...
Nothing of these yet something different, hard, precise, uncompromising,
crystal clear in its generic essence.
We can learn a lot from Olaf Hochherz about maximizing the potential
of  concision and geiz.
WTFPL





FREE SS 12


Phil Julian

"Low Activity Computer Solo"

Philip Julian or Cheapmachines gets inside his cheap machine
to get a collection of luxurious sounds which are then
beautifully arranged for your expensive and qualitative
pleasure. Working concretely with the sound material of his computer,
Julian throws you deep inside the object that you might
spend most time with. You touch it, you carry it, you write
to it, you might even talk to it, but do you love it?
In fact, it is very likely that you might be hearing this
piece from a computer that makes similar sounds.
You might be working while listening to this but if you pay close
attention to this piece, you seriously get the feeling that
you are navigating inside your computer, and strangely enough
it's not so hectic down here. It's actually nice and quiet
especially now that the fan of my computer has stopped
while I am typing and listening to “Low Activity Computer Solo”.
There is a different sense of time going on; why do
I have to try to make things with my computer in
the fastest way possible?
Why do I need to squeeze as much activity out of this
machine? Why do I need a faster processor?
Why can't I just enjoy the way it looks, the way it sounds,
the craftiness of the engineers, designers and workers who
assembled this computer in China?
Why do I have to use the computer to communicate with the rest
 of the world instead of having a dialogue with the machine itself?
“Low Activity Computer Solo” is a masterpiece for all computer
fetishists around the globe.
Anti-Copyright



FREE SS 11


Loty Negarti

"Requiem for The Revolution"


Aitor Izagirre aka Loty Negarti originally from Getxo but
now living in Donostia, is one of the most active agents in
the Basque underground scene. His activities include
running the zines Soliloquio and Pidgin (experimental and
concrete poetry) and Hamaika, one of the best labels I have
encountered in years. After Negarti's very impressive
“antylogy ’0’, electronic chemical sound poem” published by
the Basque/Galician net-label Larraskito, “Requiem for The
Revolution” shows a cold but Psychotic, distant but
aggressive side of Aitor. The first track starts the war at
your membrane: if they are taking our senses, let's wake
them up, let's shake ourselves out of this boredom. So many
things are just for our superficial pleasure, but this
is not the case of "Requiem for the Revolution". No remorse, no
way back, listening to Requiem for the Revolution either you
press stop or you get addicted to it's malice. While being
short, "Requiem for the Revolution" is definitely nasty enough
to first damage your brain and then to comfort and
massage it with the cozy second part: never has whitenoise
felt so soft and nice! Now you are ready for the next
revolution.
Copyleft




FREE SS 10

Taku Unami

"malignitat 2"


When improvisation becomes psychological!
In this new recording by Taku Unami expectations are constantly twisted leaving the listener in a perplex and uncomfortable position. We never know what is next:  a pig, the wind, a river, a beat, a nasty noise, silence, clapping, impatience, pleasure, sadism, humor, good taste, a horror movie... or the very nice and polite Unami that we all know. Taku Unami is a master of the on-off. The careful structure that holds malignitat-2 comes from years
of investigating silence and tension in the very active Japanese improvised scene that he is part of together with others including Masafumi Ezaki, Kazushige Kinoshita or Taku Sugimoto (Taku has documented these musicians on his amazing hibari music label). Once, when we were about to play a concert, Taku went to the record shop and rented a CD of sound effects, which he then ripped off and played in the concert. This was later to become the famous helicopter sounds from his 1st malignitat record. Of course the CD contained other sounds which are further explored here. So many records of improvisation are about producing "good quality experimental music". The problem with this type of experimentation that tries to achieve certain aesthetic forms, is that it becomes too self-enclosed and too precious about refined and well worked out sounds. Instead Taku poses questions of what elements can be brought into improvisation and how we perceive and judge them in different ways. Taku Unami is opening up possibilities in improvisation through exploring new ways of appropriation.
Anti-Copyright




FREE SS 09

xxxxx

"is-land"


xxxxx includes Martin Howse, among other things an Emacs master living in Berlin where he has been running all kinds of workshops (mostly on free software and hardware) at his studio on Linienstr. 54. Martin has written extensively about Free Software and has engaged in many types of  experiments: I heard about one of his projects in which he invited different people to a discussion, then started to process their voices and interrupt the easy and smooth development of the conversation. The session got into chaos. Not all of the people appreciated it, but when you take risks it is likely that some people are not going to like what you do. Something similar happens with is-land, a tough record which
demands time and concentration but can be extremely rewarding. One of the hardest and most exiting releases that I heard for a long time.
GNU GPL license





FREE SS 08


PATO

"clip_clap_crisis"


Rubén Patiño aka Pato originally comes from Barcelona,
a city he describes as being something in between
Orwell's 1984 and Disneyland. Nevertheless he sometimes does the
most brutal DJ sessions that I have heard. Pato is now living in Denmark
doing some stupid sound course in which he already got into trouble by playing
too loud. Pato is a total character, which you can already
get a sense of in clip _clap_crisis.  After living 3 years in Berlin,
he is  well known in the city's underground scene for his volume abuse.
In clip_clap_crisis Pato breaks sounds following the
Viennese laptop tradition of making fucked up digital
collages. While other laptopers tend to be more clinical, Pato
uses ultra fast crappy dsp tricks to produce the kind of
kinky and dirty computer music that only a latino could do.
The fact that his computer screen was broken
might have helped to produce such a nasty but sexy and
coherent work.
Anti-Tutti





FREE SS 07


THE NOISER (aka Julien Ottavi)

"Trilogie des fantomes"


Julien Ottavi who is part of the sound/activist
collective APO 33 in Nantes, has moved recently to London
where he has set up up a media lab in the artist space Area 10.
APO 33 produced the GNU/Linux audio-media distribution Apodio, which is
the one that Julien uses. 
Ottavi is likely the most intense laptop performer, always ready for new challenges and finding new ways of experimenting and this new work is a continuation of his extreme engagement in sound. With Trilogie des fantomes Julien comes back to his roots in concrete poetry, updating the genre by using free software to process his voice in order to express and redefine his Corcegan
identity. Think of an angry Henry Chopin after an indigestion
of Sunn O))) LPs and not being able to vomit.
GNUart licence





FREE SS 06


Hometown Feilding

"Simulations"


Hometown Feilding is the artist name from Mark Sadgrove,
a New Zealander living in Tokyo. We all know
about the whole kiwi noise scene but while most
of it is rock orientated, New Zealand has some of
the greatest musicians working with computers such
as Rosy Parlane, Dion Workman, Richard Francis
and Sandgrove. Mark is the probably the only programmer
of all of them. Simulations is a playful collection of
pieces with a warm and natural feeling to it.
The more you listen to Simulations, the more you can relate
to the New Zealand aesthetic but in a different and very
personal way. What at the beginning seems to sound like an early
electronic version of African music then leads to a second
half that, under a kind of dirt behind the digital sounds,
demonstrates an exquisite sense of time, pace and
development.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike






FREE SS 05


Miguel Prado


"Dios aborrece una singularidad desnuda"


Second solo release by the galician guitarist Miguel Prado
(Volanté, Taumaturgia label).
It requires confidence and a special sensibility to be able
to combine the kind of radical guitar playing influenced by
Derek Bayley & Bruce Russell with digital manipulation
without falling into some cheesy dsp processing. By pushing
lo-fi aesthetics and raw energy to their ultimate
consequences, Miguel Prado achieves a truly original voice
with such a historically loaded instrument. Always
remaining human and tactile, Miguel destroys clichés from
both improv or noise rock. “Dios aborrece una
singularidad desnuda “ shows the non-idiomatic, un-academic
most forceful side of improvisation. The dialectics between
specificity and abstraction makes this new work of Miguel
Prado an extremely focussed example of how to use perversity
with digital means.
Anti-Copyright




FREE SS 04

MATTIN

"BROKEN SUBJECT"


Try to find a centre to this cd and you will be lost.
Broken structures, desillusioned, desolate but delicate computer noise
that wants to physically twist your head around.
The rest is only happening in your imagination.
Minimal yet brutal, this is noise beyond the ethics of volume!
Anti-Copyright



FREE SS 03

Julien Skrobek

"Le Palais Transparent"

Elegance is the first word that comes to my mind to describe the "Le Palais Trasparent".
Julien Skrobek expands the paths of Radu Malfatti and Taku Sugimoto
exploring time and structure by placing sinewaves and guitar notes that
brake the very rich silences. Carefully constructed, "Le Palais Trasparent"
creates absorbing spaces that produce calm and intelligently suspended tensions.
Anti-Copyright



FREE SS 02

KAKOFUNK

"FRUTAMENTAL"

Straight from Barakaldo (a workers area in Bilbao), Kakofunk is an
eclectic artist that incarnates the most radical approach to music making.
The first time that I saw Kakofunk playing live, it made me think of the music Sachiko M would have made after spending 16 hours in a factory working hard. While listening to "Frutamental" you can feel a sense of freedom which scorns genre divisions and narrow understandings of what electronic music can be. "Frutamental" is a molotov cocktail to be thrown at all those "factories without walls".
Copyleft




FREE SS 01

Tim Blechmann

"re-reading"

Debut album from the PD master Tim Blechmann (now living in Vienna).
Many programers try to show off the possibilities of their programs,
instead Tim achieves the most focus and rigorous contemporary electronic music that I heard since Dion Workman.

Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0




Links:
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Distributions:
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