12″ LP and download available now.
12″ LP and download available now.
This week Bandcamp’s front page feature was on 12k and focused on a bit of history as well as a primer for new listeners.
Check it out here.
Corey Fuller, calligraphist Mariko Kinoshita and visual artist Synichi Yamamoto have an immersive exhibit at Tokyo’s Haneda airport
Drawing inspiration from Hojoki, Fragments invites viewers to meditate on the ephemerality of the universe through sounds and images that are in perpetual motion.
“Ceaselessly the rivers waters flow, and yet the waters never remain the same. The foam that floats upon stagnant pools, now vanishing, now forming, never remains the same for long. So too it is with people and all that dwell in this world.”Rendering an excerpt from Chomei Kamono’s Hojoki in calligraphic form, Fragments is a contemporary visual and aural recomposition of this historic text. Combining Mariko Kinoshita’s calligraphy and her auspicious use of space, the poetry and stillness inherit in Corey Fuller’s sonic tapestries and Synichi Yamamoto’s visuals, like shifting landscapes observed from a meta-perspective, Fragments is a convergence of each artist’s unique approach and vision. 
Fragments is part of a larger exhibition titled Eternal which is not only about “inheritance of methods” and “modernity” but also “concept of time” A digital installation & projection work exhibition that expresses “the space and time of 1000 seconds of silence” through four themes. It is Curated by MUTEK.JP.
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Slow Machines brings together veteran Stephen Vitiello and 12k newcomer Michael Grigoni, whose debut Mount Carmel (12k1090, 2018) made an impression for its merging of the pedal and lap steel guitars with a hushed, ambient sound. On Slow Machines Grigoni provides the guitars and Vitiello the electronics and processing with a goal of combining each of their artistic languages into a new form.
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Following the completion of Break (12k2040), Fuller set out exploring ways in which he could faithfully translate the music to a live setting. Not content to simply play on top of layers of backing tracks through use of a laptop, Fuller began the arduous but ultimately rewarding task of deconstructing, reassembling and scoring the album in its entirety. With guidance from Kyo Ichinose, the Break Ensemble was formed with Ichinose himself behind the piano and glockenspiel, Anzu Suhara on violin, Atsuko Hatano on Viola and Hiroki Chiba on Contrabass. These recordings and films document the very first concert of Corey Fuller + Break Ensemble performing “Break” in its entirety at WWW in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan on May 27th, 2019 to a captive and sold-out audience.
Marcus Fischer’s On Falling was originally self-released as a tour cassette in the fall of 2018. 12k is proud to offer this new version that contains the original release on side A combined with a 30-minute live recording on side B.
Marcus is known for his releases of carefully constructed studio works and tape manipulation, yet his process also embraces randomness, incidental, and found sounds. On Falling is an exploration of the latter techniques that allow for improvisation and capture the results in a single stereo take. This reproduces the experience of his live performances.
The improvised work on On Falling is as captivating as Fischer’s studio work—the presence of physical contact between body and instrument with musical notes that undulate in the stereo field, never resolving the same way. Despite the irregular nature of his compositions, the music is patient and gentle, while staying alert and engaging. Fischer’s acoustic instrumentation and understanding of the digital and tape manipulation process makes the nature of the sounds something new entirely, something that falls outside of standard definitions.
The live performance “On April 29th” (presented on side B of the cassette) contains many of the elements found on the first four tracks (guitar, tape loops, modular synthesizer and field recordings) as well as the voices from one of Fischer’s installations. For this performance, Marcus focused on textures centered around extended guitar techniques. Using objects placed under and on top of strings, he creates sympathetic overtones, transforms his guitar sound into a chorus of bells beneath pipe organ drones. Amid dusty musical passages and the swells of his prepared guitar, the performance draws to a close in a wash of analog tape delay from a repurposed reel to reel recorder.
12k presents On Falling as a limited edition of 100 cassettes which will live on in digital and streaming formats.
Interludes is a companion album to Ohio’s debut LP Upward, Broken, Always (12k2042). The seeds for these durational pieces were planted during one of the final editing sessions of Upward… – the accidental muting of a majority of the musical tracks of the first song “Apeiros” left only a ghostly minimum of ambience playing. Immediately seeing the strength of this Ohio’s Taylor Deupree and Corey Fuller set out to create two more of these “interludes” from full tracks on the album. These three songs provide the closure for each side of the (three-sided) LP release.
The interludes remained quite short on the album but the languid, abstracted nature of their compositions true calling was to be extended out into longform pieces, and, thus, Interludes was born.
Spanning upwards of 20 minutes each, these pieces are an exhale from the often intense and cathartic anima of the original album. They offer a deeper journey into the nostalgic exploration of those distant Ohio memories, looping and trailing into vapor.
The new collaboration, long in the making, from Taylor Deupree and Corey Fuller culminates in this 3-sided vinyl release.
Only 100 available.
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“… A bonus episode this week! The Fretboard Journal’s Ryan Richter talks to dobro, lap steel and pedal steel composer and instrumentalist Mike Grigoni. Ryan says, “In 2001, I had the good fortune of meeting Mike Grigoni on a Bainbridge Island beach. ‘You gotta know this guy…’ was the party line that day, and it was right on the money. Before departing Seattle, Mike and I collaborated on music, and though it never bore much tangible fruit, it was wildly informative for me. Mike’s ample skill as a leader, accompanist, and composer was an invigorating force that’s as much of an inspiration now as it was then. (When working on my own music, I often employ the ‘what would Mike do here” postulate.’) Mike’s musical journey has taken him from traditional Bluegrass to Ambient music, a swing that could be a mirror reaction to his shift in academic focus from Ethnomusicology to Ethnography, a subject on which he’s currently writing his dissertation in Durham, North Carolina. “
Dobro and lap-steel guitar wrapped in a quiet shell of colors and barren hills.
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MOUNT CARMEL
The emotional new full-length from Illuha’s Corey Fuller is now available on 12″ LP & CD
BREAK