Continuing where .aiff (12k1004) left off, the latest release from 12k highlights those artists and sounds that will carry 12k into a new year of microscopic sound experimentation. From Richard Chartier’s lowercase sounds to the glitchy groove minimalism of Surge’s Casio VL Tone, this untitled collection represents the refining of 12k’s style and aesthetic with a roster of artists that spans the planet.

Note: all tracks are previously unreleased.

Below is a more detailed look into the synthetic microcosm of 12k1008:

01. Richard Chartier: “Untitled” Inaudible tones and ear-itching stereo tactics represent flawless Chartier. A pristine digital signal path provides the perfect backdrop for this lowercase sound painting. Listen carefully.

02. Goem: “Comp Zeven” Goem uses a broken, yet still sound-producing Dr. Rhythm drumcomputer, which is treated by unique processings. This track was recorded in Stockholm’s EMS Studios and edited in Roel Meelkop’s studio in late 1999. A decidedly jarring twist of churning rhythms and deep textures.

03. Kim Cascone: “BufferDrift”“BufferDrift” is a continuation of work with pulsar synthesis and convolution techniques that Cascone used in the “pulsar studies” release for Falsch (www.fals.ch). By generating pulse trains and convolving them with various material created for earlier projects, he was able to conjure new textures and micro-events that almost sculpted themselves into final form.

04. Miki Yui: “>B io” Born in Tokyo, educated in California and now living in Cologne, Miki Yui is an installation artist working with sound and multimedia sound/space projects. “>B io” is an electronic wash of sine tones and reverberated scratches, a brief glimpse into her fascinating small sounds and spatial creations.

05. Dan Abrams + Albert Tan Shuttle358’s Dan Abrams teams up with motion graphics designer Albert Tan in the formation of this untitled piece which blends Abrams’s software stylings with Tan’s rhythmic sound movements. Like Ahuttle358, their collaboration breathes some humanity back into the microscopic genre with a more grounded rhythmic foundation and digital, yet warm, dsp processing. Look for a release from this duo on 12k in the near future.

06. Surge: StrictlyA C Surge is a two piece group from the remote areas of the Netherlands with a fascination for nostalgia: they use the Casio VL Tone 1 (the early 80s revolution for the bedroom musician and currently rediscovered by electronic-musicians) in a bizarre slice of minimal techno with stuttering, skipping qualities.

07. Komet: Würm The digital, bubbling sounds of Frank Bretschneider (Raster Music, Mille Plateaux, 12k) are ever present in this effervescent bath of microscopic rhythms and the interplay of clean and static/noise tones. Look for a Komet full length on 12k this summer.

08. Taylor Aeupree: A100study00.01.31 This track is part of an ongoing series of experiments with a Doepfer A100 modular synthesizer. Square wave lfo’s provide clock pulses for various sine wave oscillators and geiger clicks and the gentle drift of time.

09. *0: 2.000 Japan’s Nosei Sakata is back after 2 excellent releases on 12k and Meme. Utilizing signature hypnotic repetition and pure tones, Sakata creates subtle interactions that play with acoustic space and the listener’s perception.

10. Tetsu Inoue + Taylor Deupree: Active/Freeze A collaboration a long time in planning, Tetsu Inoue (Tzadik, Fax, Daisyworld, Rather Interesting, etc..) And Taylor Deupree finally team up in an intercoastal exchange of audio data. Finely crafted cuts and splices create a frenetic digital soundwall that works itself to a surprisingly melodic outro of intentional errors.

11. Shuttle358: Sequence Rrounding out the compilation is a new track from the upcoming Shuttle358 full length Frame. Dan Abrams, who created a stir with his debut release Optimal.LP(12k1005), is back with a style he can call all his own. Sparse ambient melodies and digital generations perfectly juxtaposed into an original and evocative form.

Reviews

Artists

Shuttle358

Shuttle358, the moniker of native Californian Dan Abrams, clearly stands as one of 12k’s most revered, and mysterious, artists. Some say his work was responsible for humanizing the microsound movement of the early 2000’s, and rightfully so.  He took the computer-as-instrument and made it beautiful and personal, carving out a unique place for himself among throngs of artists. After 10 years, this fall we will see the release of the new album from Shuttle358. Fans…

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Taylor Deupree

Technology and imperfection. The raw and the processed. Curator and curated. Solo explorer and gregarious collaborator. The life and work of Taylor Deupree are less a study in contradictions than a portrait of the multidisciplinary artist in a still-young century. Deupree is an accomplished sound artist whose recordings, rich with abstract atmospherics, have appeared on numerous record labels, and well as in site-specific installations at such institutions as the ICC (Tokyo, Japan) and the Yamaguchi…

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Frank Bretschneider

Frank Bretschneider is a musician, composer and video artist in Berlin. His work is known for precise sound placement, complex, interwoven rhythm structures and its minimal, flowing approach. Bretschneider’s subtle and detailed music is echoed by his visuals: perfect translated realizations of the qualities found in music within visual phenomena. Bretschneider (1956) was raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz since 1990), where his aesthetic developed as he listened to pirate radio and smuggled Beastie Boys tapes in…

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Kim Cascone

Kim Cascone has been involved with electronic music for more than 20 years since his studies at Berklee College of Music and at the New School (with Dana McCurdy) during the 1970s. In the 1980s Cascone worked with David Lynch as Assistant Music Editor on both Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. He left the film industry in 1991 to concentrate on Silent Records, a label that he founded in 1986, transforming it into the…

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Richard Chartier

Richard Chartier (American, b.1971) is a Los Angeles based artist and is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist sound known as both “microsound” and Neo-Modernist. Chartier’s minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself. Chartier’s critically acclaimed sound works have been published since 1998 on a variety of labels internationally. He has collaborated with noted composer William…

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Goem

Goem started mid 1996 when Roel Meelkop gave Frans de Waard a smallelectronic device, which he found in a thriftshop in Rotterdam. Thedevice was called the Student Stimulator. Until today it is unknownwhat it was used for, but most likely it was part of a researchprogram exploring the mysteries of human sleep. The machine justgenerates pulses, of which speed and intensity can be changed. Fransdabbled around with the machine using Steve Reich’s Phase Shiftingtechniques and…

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