ANLA COURTIS / RICHARD FRANCIS
Aucklantida
(Robert & Leopold - R&L042) Cassette $5.75 (Out-of-stock)
Studied and paced drone, textured without caution using cut-ups, modular electronics and bent instrumentation. This trans-Pacific mind-meld collaboration connects the Argentinean composer’s uncomfortable nest of strange and abstract music with the New Zealand sage’s ambient drone waveforms. C40. Edition of 50
Combinations #1
(Entr'acte - E191) Cassette $5.25
Patterns, rhythms and structures, like memories from Francis’s surroundings. Recorded 2013–14 at the Künstlerhäuser in Worpswede, at Worm in Rotterdam, and at home in Auckland. Edition of 80. C60 with same thing on both sides.
Listen to an excerpt of “Two Airs” here: http://entracte.co.uk/projects/richard-francis-e191/
RICHARD FRANCIS / JASON KAHN / BRUCE RUSSELL
Dunedin
(CMR - CMR27) CD $14.25 (Out-of-stock)
Thirty-eight minutes of immersive sound and fractured electronics by Richard Francis (modular synthesizer, computer), Jason Kahn (analog synthesizer, radio, mixing board) and Bruce Russell (analog electronics), recorded live at Dunedin Public Art Gallery in New Zealand. Russell’s analog system cleaves a path through Francis’s thick cloud of dusty field recordings and swirling standing waves; Kahn’s chaotic feedback system of synthesizer and radio spikes and sputters, like a dying bird in the midst of some caustic low pressure front moving slowly across the horizon.
RICHARD FRANCIS / BRUCE RUSSELL
Garage Music
(Alone At Last - AAL2) CD $11.25 (Out-of-stock)
Three parts mail music exchange, one part juxtaposition of two solo sets from 2009, and one part live recording from The Physics Room, Christchurch, where Francis plays modular synthesizer and computer, and Russell uses guitar, tapes and Clavioline synthesizer. Hand assembled in textured paper. Edition of 500.
RICHARD FRANCIS / FRANCISCO LOPEZ
In De Blaauwe Hand
(Korm Plastics - KP3033) CD $11.25
(Korm Plastics - KP3033) Used CD $8.00
Working with very small seed source sound samples during a residency at Extrapool, the two intermingling compositional paths of Lopez and Francis unfold in parallel; the single sixty-six-minute track merges a dreamy geography of subtleties and complex organics. With a barely perceptible crawl in from silence, softly mechanical drones begin to appear, rippling with a radiant, ever-building hum. As the piece progresses the hum gets thicker and the drone texture strengthens. Clicking pulses are overtaken by thick drones of buzzing, hypnotic, and comfortable noises.
Lisa Says
(Aufabwegen - AATP38) LP $15.00
Transcontinental collaboration with sounds recorded in Stockholm, Berlin and Auckland. The mixdown portrays the current state of affairs in improvised noise: filtered gritty sound blocks flow and float with no apparent direction when sudden breaks puncture the structure and create something almost like a melody. Text insert documents a skype conversation between the two artists discussing the methods and aesthetics connected to this release and their ways of working in general.
Middles
(Banned Productions - BP228) Cassette $5.75
Live recordings made with oscillators, signal generator, spring reverb, EQ filters, delay, noise, loop maker, computer. Approach as feedback. c30
RICHARD FRANCIS / ANTHONY GUERRA / MATTIN / JOEL STERN
Richard Francis / Anthony Guerra / Mattin / Joel Stern
(CMR - CMR13) 7-inch $10.00
Two five-minute cuts excerpted from about three hours of material recorded in 2004. Computer, electronics, field recordings, electric guitar, computer feedback. Edition of 250
Talking Machines
(Banned Productions - BP189) Cassette $5.75 (Out-of-stock)
Live recordings made with oscillators, signal generator, spring reverb, EQ filters, delay, noise, microphone, dried seed pods, hands, paper, loop maker, computer. C30
Warmth
(CMR - CMR26) CD $14.25
Vignettes composed using modular synth, computer, field recordings, looper, and Edirol recorder, riffing on memories and impressions of brief sound moments, melting into a fine, delicate mass of sound. In Francis’s minimal and tense music, ticks and crackles, maybe one or two drones, meander about, falling somewhere between the cracks of improvisation and composition.
Waste Away / Nun’s Murmur
(CMR - 29) 7-inch (lathe cut) $12.00
"Using field recordings, modular synth, computer, looper and edirol recorder," explains our friend at Volcanic Tongue, the man they used to call Eso Steel "conjures huge, phantom, barely populated soundworlds that are compulsive in the kind of entropic gravity that they generate, situating low drones and what sounds like distant airplane noise in fields of static, shortwave tone and that classic dying amplifier / overheating electricity appeal of the best of the post Xpressway/Corpus Hermeticum drone artists."