Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Friday, November 15, 2019

Aaron Turner "Repression's Blossom" out today! (November 15)

Out today via SIGE + Ektro Records
Aaron Turner "Repression's Blossom" LP/DL.
Physical edition sold out in US - still available in Europe via Ektro Records and Boomkat.com and Norman Records


Aaron Turner’s solo debut Repression’s Blossom explores the realm of avant-garde and reductionist metal. Avoiding the pitfalls of unintentional monotone, the album’s abstract narrative tightropes through viscous noise mayhem and clinical serenity towards the mythical echelons of minimalism with gravity analogous to Kevin Drumm, Caspar Brötzmann and Pauline Oliveros. The drone-supported fragments of exquisitely manipulated audio create a magnificent multi-layered backdrop for Turner’s feral guitar mangling, which extends across lyrical abstraction and concrete art.
Besides his solo works, Aaron Turner is renowned for his participation in the bands SUMAC and ISIS. His other projects include Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer and House of Low Culture, as well as collaborations with other artists such as Tashi Dorji, Daniel Menche, Keiji Haino, and Circle. He is the founder of Hydra Head Records and co-founder of SIGE Records.
Track Listing:
1. Fear of Discovery
2. The Vanity of Need
3. Attar Datura
4. Underlying Nature of Habitual Dishonesty

Edition of 300 copies, with LP/jacket art by A. Turner.








Mamiffer "The Brilliant Tabernacle" out November 1st



Photo by Ethan DeLorenzo


Physical copies available HERE
Digital HERE
CD available through DAYMARE Japan HERE
CS available through Ektro Records Finland HERE

Track Listing: 

1. All That is Beautiful 
2. River of Light 
3. So That The Heart May Be Known 
4. Two Hands Together 
5. To Receive  
6. Hymn of Eros 
7. To Be Seen

Vinyl version, 300 copies black/100 colored vinyl copies (re-press 100 Clear), housed in heavyweight "tipon" style jacket, with gold foil embellishment, and oversized LP booklet with art/design by Faith Coloccia. 
Description:


The long-arc vision of Faith Coloccia / Mamiffer has deftly traversed a sonic terrain with an emotional depth and compositional restraint rarely found in contemporary music. Across multiple albums, EPs, and splits, she and her collaborators have tapped into the passionate elements of life—the sublime joys and the harrowing losses - while also providing a score to the less definable moments; the pensive times of solace, the dissonant chapters of uncertainty, and the meditative sojourns. Mamiffer’s latest album, The Brilliant Tabernacle, transmutes darkness and rejoices in the force of life by illuminating the beauty of creation. Beginning with a foundation of piano, organ, and voice, Coloccia enlisted her partner and long-time collaborator Aaron Turner along with a congregation of auxiliary musicians to help her construct “a guiding light” in the form of seven songs.

With The Brilliant Tabernacle, Coloccia has focused her work on encompassing the totality of the human experience. Herein she acknowledges both the joyful abundance and inherent suffering of life, while fostering a deep reverence for “pristine awareness” as accessed by the natural mind. This fecund drive was further bolstered by the birth of her first child after her last album The World Unseen. The attendant experiences with maternity—hope, love, strength, support, surrender, and more than anything, the cognition of the self at its most powerful: the embodiment of vulnerability—prompted the construction of The Brilliant Tabernacle.

The album opens with “All That is Beautiful,” a poetic salve buttressed by Coloccia’s piano, Jon Mueller’s communal drum patterns, Veronica Dye’s constellating flute, and Turner’s dichotomous combination of bucolic acoustic guitar and distorted squall. Amidst this backdrop of lilting major and minor key melodies, Coloccia weaves a private psalm of global stewardship and personal strength—a prime example of her music serving as a talisman in a labyrinthine world. From there the album segues into the aural blessings of “River of Light,” a psychedelic calling of drones, pulses, and melodic fragments, with supplementary vocals by Monika Khot. “So That the Heart May Be Known” is a blissed-out harmonic incantation, an amalgam of old world folk elements and modern minimalist composition colored by Eyvind Kang’s string arrangements. Coloccia’s lyrics once again serve the overall vision of reveling in the beauty of creation by repeating the cyclical mantra “How does it feel? / What do you know? / All love!” Coloccia asserts that her aim with Mamiffer is to create psychedelia without drugs and spirituality without the dogma of religion, and that principle is deftly achieved on “Two Hands Together” where graceful piano foundations channel lyrical parallel’s between the process of birth and the metaphoric rebirth of baptism, invoking a secular sense of wonder and magic towards both human biology and consciousness. 

“Hymn of Eros” is the centerpiece of side 2, a kaleidoscopic inversion of side 1’s homespun musical traditions interwoven with the electro-acoustic emissions of synthesist Alex Barnett and waves of textured bass from Brian Cook. It’s the track that most closely recalls the ominous lurch and protracted abstractions of Mamiffer albums like Hirror Enniffer and Mare Decendrii, although the lyrical intent is perhaps the most pointed of any song on The Brilliant Tabernacle. “So many problems in the world stem from people who do not love themselves, and have lost a fundamental gift that should be everyone’s birth right: to be loved unconditionally and completely. Much of our conditioning has strived to detach humans from one another, to see difference as threatening instead of as a strength, to separate the bond with the mother and the earth, and this is passed down through the generations,” Coloccia says. “I felt this record was a complete psychic and magical observation of the healing power of true love, of respecting vulnerability, of not wanting to forget where we all come from- how we were all once helpless and all deserving of love.” The album closes with “To Be Seen,” a transcendental plainsong that brings the uninitiated into the fold while conjuring the inviting warmth and hallucinatory spirituality of Letzte Tage Letzte Nächte-era Popol Vuh or the hypnotic repetition of Asa Osborne projects like Zomes and Lungfish.

“The album as a whole represents a mythical narrative: the hero's descent into the darkness of the soul and the generational sickness of our current culture and its history, followed by the triumphant reunification with the primal deep of total love. This process generates the power to break the spell of linear time, thought and action, and produces instead a sense of cyclic and physio-psychic existence. It provides the opportunity to overcome indoctrinated amnesia, to uplift collective strength and allows for the restoration of in-born self-love” Coloccia says of The Brilliant Tabernacle. And indeed, the album is a journey through the dark and into luminous revelation, across a myriad of textures and timbres, at turns tranquil, turbulent, and surreal. 


“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”- James Baldwin. 


Bio by Brian Cook


Credits:

Written by Faith Coloccia and Mamiffer

Produced by Randall Dunn and Mamiffer

Recorded by Randall Dunn at Studio Litho, Seattle, WA. (2013) and AVAST! Studio, Seattle, WA. (2014, 2015, 2018). 
Additional recording by Mamiffer at The House of Low Culture, Vashon, WA. (2013-2018). Jon Mueller's percussion and Faith Coloccia's piano on "All That is Beautiful" recorded by Matt Bayles at Robert Lange Studios, Lakeshore, WA. (2017). Piano, synthesizer and electronics on "Hymn of Eros" recorded by Nicholas Wilbur at The Unknown Studio, Anacortes, WA. (2016)

Mixed by Randall Dunn at AVAST! Studios Seattle WA 2018 
Strings arranged and performed by Eyvind Kang

Faith Coloccia: vocals, piano, organ, cassette field recordings, auxiliary percussion 
Aaron Turner: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, additional vocals 
Jon Mueller: percussion 
Brian Cook: bass 
Eyvind Kang: viola, violin 
Veronica Dye: flute 
Alex Barnett: electronics and synthesizer on " Hymn of Eros" 
Monika Khot: additional vocals on "River of Light" 
Janne Westerlund: Kantele on "To Be Seen"

INTERVIEWS:

The 405
Self Titled

PRESS/Reviews:

Portico Magazine
The Wire
The Stranger
Prog Magazine
A Closer Listen
the 405
NPR
Aural Aggravation
Circuit Sweet
Meat Mead Metal
Music and Riots
Kultur News
Scene Point Blank
MMH radio



Thursday, October 17, 2019

Marshall Trammell: Music Research Strategies


Music Research Strategies Performing Political Education (Towards a Solidarity Economics Conduction System for Improvisers)

 @ 7:00pm
Events take place October 17, 24,  and 29 at 7pm
Music Research Strategies (percussionist Marshall Trammell) instigates social practice collaborations at sites of political opposition. Music Research Strategies began as a critical ethnographic framework bridging Trammell’s ongoing interests with improvising strategies, organizational improvisation and psychology, and street-level, social justice action. Music Research Strategies navigates the global economy as a touring musician performing research and political education nationally and internationally through a battery of modular, social science-based systems.
For his residency and series of events at Western Front, Trammell will undertake a collaboration and exchange with Vancouver artists who use percussion—including Eileen Kage and John Brennan—and present his research around music as a tool for collective organizing. Over the course of a two week residency with three events, Music Research Strategies will continue the Insurgent Learning Workshop (ILW) series focusing on “Solidarity Economics,” a participatory, improvised music workshop. The workshop serves as a public & collective process towards developing a new language through improvisation based on a general framework of ideas developed by the US Solidarity Economy Network.
This series of events will unfold over three evenings:
October 17, 7pm
Insurgent Learning Workshop: Solidarity (Cooperative) Economics Conduction System
Night one consists of an open rehearsal and workshop with Trammell and collaborators.
October 24, 7pm
Indexical Moment/um: Solidarity (Cooperative) Economics Conduction System
Night two consists of three “conductions” with a collaborative group and a solo performance.
October 29, 7pm
Social Impact Assessment: Music Research Strategies with John Brennan
Night three concludes the series with a talk by Trammell and a final performance with John Brennan.

Monday, October 14, 2019

Mamiffer "All That Is Beautiful"





Heres a video for 'All That Is Beautiful" from the new Mamiffer LP "The Brilliant Tabernacle". Video by Lauren Rodriguez. Thank you Randall Dunn, Matt Bayles, Jon Mueller, Veronica Dye, Monika Khot and Lauren.


From Faith: "I worked with Lauren Rodriguez on this video, and gave her my notes and themes which she interpreted into film. She was involved in the process on a heartfelt and emotional level as well as a creative one. She helped me create a visual narrative representing the psychedelia and different mind-states of new parenthood and the feeling of being "earth-bound". 
"Focusing on the matrilineal connection to my mother, grandmothers and great grandmothers. In the video I dress up in their clothes and jewellery,  I wash their blankets and make their beds. I was attempting to follow in the strength of their footsteps- that when seen as domestic- were silenced and made invisible/mundane- and instead elevate them to the full colour of the present. I wanted to find the power of their souls, and carry that through visuals of where I live, and the land that surrounds our home. Two artists that inspired me in the making of this video and song were Audre Lorde's The Erotic As Power and the documentation of the "earth-body" artist: Ana Mendieta."

More info HERE

Pre order HERE

Monday, September 30, 2019

William Fowler Collins on tour:






















30/09 DE Mannheim Hafenkirche
1/10 FR Metz La Chouée
2/10 BE Kortrijk The Pit’s
3/10 LUX Luxembourg city Rocas
4/10 DE Wuppertal Gallery Grölle
5/10 DE Halle Pierre Grasse with Aaron Turner
6/10 DE Chemnitz Odradek
7/10 CZ Prague Potrva with Aaron Turner
8/10 DE Munich Committee
9/10 IT Verona Malacarne
10/10 IT Cornuda Tipoteca Italiana
11/10 IT Udine invitation show
12/10 SLO Velenje Klub eMCe Plac
13/10 IT Venezia Padiglione9 Forte Marghera

Friday, September 13, 2019

Happy Release Day! Daniel Menche and Mára

Happy release day to Daniel Menche! "Melting Gravity" is available now! available at:
BANDCAMP
MERCHTABLE
BOOMKAT



Happy release day to Mára (Faith Coloccia)! "Here Behold Your Own" is available now! available at:
BANDCAMP
MERCHTABLE
BOOMKAT







Thursday, September 5, 2019

Mamiffer "River of Light"

We are happy to announce the upcoming release of Mamiffer’s new full length “The Brilliant Tabernacle” - coming Nov 1st from SIGE Records. Here is “River of Light”, the first preview track from the album - we hope you enjoy. Thank you!



Pre-order from: sigerecords.merchtable.com sigerecords.bandcamp.com





Saturday, August 31, 2019

SIGE artist upcoming shows:

DANIEL MENCHE:

9/25 Vancouver BC Canada, New Forms Festival
11/09 Portland OR, Modular 8 with Jim Haynes and Mamiffer

MARSHALL TRAMMELL:

Music Research Strategies' Status Quo Is My Enemy Tour continues
September 11-14, 2019 - Underground Railroad Training, Niagara Falls, NY.
September 25, 2019 - “Towards a Solidarity Economics Conduction System for Improvisers,” Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS, Oakland CA.
September 26, 2019 - Music Research Strategies Solo Performance, Matatu Festival of Stories, Parkway Theatre, Oakland, CA.
October 4, 2019 - Music Research Strategies, Solo Performance - Toronto Biennial.
October 5, 2019 - Music Research Strategies, Solo Performance - Toronto Biennial.
October 6, 2019 - In Defense of Memory, Red Room, Baltimore, MD.
October 7, 2019 - Santistevan/Trammell Duo, Silver Springs, MD.
October 9, 2019 - Santistevan/Trammell Duo, Sunview Luncheonette, Brooklyn, NYC
October 10, 2019 - Santistevan/Trammell Duo, basement in Brooklyn, NYC
October 12, 2019 - In Defense of Memory, The Stone, NYC.
October 15, 2019 - Music Research Strategies, Western Front, Vancouver, BC.
Date TBD - Alternative, Library Bellingham, WA
October 23, 2019 - Music Research Strategies, Western Front, Vancouver, BC.
Duo Vernacular, featuring (Eileen) Kage - Sunshine Coast, 
October 30, 2019 - Music Research Strategies, Western Front, Vancouver, BC.
October 31st, 2019 Duo Vernacular, featuring (Eileen) Kage, SFU Woodward, Heart of the City Festival

JON MUELLER:

9/5 at Skeleton Dust in Dayton Ohio
9/6 Hopscotch Fest Location: The Wicked Witch) Raleigh NC
9/7 Institute 193 in Lexington KY
9/14 May Chapel in Chicago IL
9/29 *Creative Clarity Workshop with Jon Mueller Sturgeon Bay WI
10/12 *Creative Clarity Workshop with Jon Mueller Milwaukee WI
10/12 10pm Company Brewing Company Milwaukee WI

More information: https://rhythmplex.com

*As part of FTAM: Noise Knowledge Consortium
The aim of this workshop is to help people understand and define their creative voice and vision. Through stories, meditation and discussion, points of individuality will be identified, creating a clearer path to make your work, whatever the discipline, more aligned with your identity and unique character.

Beginning with a talk, examples of finding one’s own voice within the chaos (and uniformity) of our lives will be shared. These ideas will then be allowed to distill within each person individually – an important process to help identify the path to move forward – during a quiet gong meditation using a variety of mid to large sized gongs. These deep tones provide a relaxing and conducive background for undistracted thought, concentration and focus within. After the mediation, the discussion will be opened to the room, sharing thoughts, experiences and questions, further inspiring and solidifying each person’s clarity on their own creative voice and how to put it to use within their work.)

AARON TURNER:

- 04/10/2019 - Krakow, PL // 
Sacrum Profanum Festival
- 05/10/2019 - Prague, CZ //
w/ William Fowler Collins + Nebulosa
- 06/10/2019 - Warsaw, PL //
Avart Art fest w/ Bill Orcutt and Mick Barr
- 07/10/2019 - Halle, DE //
w/ William Fowler Collins + Nebulosa

WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS:

26/09 IT Varese Twiggy
27/09 IT Bologna Ikigai Room
28/09 CH Lugano invitation show
29/09 CH Zürich UMBO
30/09 DE Mannheim Hafenkirche
1/10 FR Metz La Chouée
2/10 BE Kortrijk The Pit’s
3/10 LUX Luxembourg city Rocas
4/10 DE Wuppertal Gallery Grölle
5/10 DE Halle Pierre Grasse with Aaron Turner
6/10 DE Chemnitz Odradek
7/10 CZ Prague Potrva with Aaron Turner
8/10 DE Munich Committee
9/10 IT Verona Malacarne
10/10 IT Cornuda Tipoteca Italiana
11/10 IT Udine invitation show
12/10 SLO Velenje Klub eMCe Plac
13/10 IT Venezia Padiglione9 Forte Marghera

MAMIFFER:

Nov 4 / The Crocodile / Seattle, WA with Mono (Japan)
Nov 5 / The Imperial / Vancouver, BC with Mono (Japan) and Bellwitch
Nov 9/ Modular 8/ Portland OR, with Daniel Menche and Jim Haynes






Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Mára (Faith Coloccia) "Here Behold Your Own" Pre-Order

Mára "Here Behold Your Own"

Side A: A New Young Birth 
Side B: Sangre de Cristo 

Available for pre-order HERE.

Preview a track HERE.

Mára is the solo project of Faith Coloccia, the hermetic composer, songwriter, and vocalist who has a central figure in numerous projects including Mamiffer and her ongoing collaborations with Alex Barnett. Her arrangements for piano, organ, electronics, guitar, and voice often take the form of deconstructed plainsongs, as elegant variations of a melody that smolder and dissolve into heavy-lidded assemblages of shadow, fog, and echo. As Mára, she continues with her signature aesthetics, while laying bare the emotional core of her being. 

Here Behold Your Own follows the very limited Surfacing cassette from 2015. The album began to take shape shortly upon the conception of her son and evolved to encompass her becoming a mother in conjunction with the re-engineering of her creative processes. Coloccia reflects upon the album’s origins, stating “ A lot of the material that I used to make this record felt like the last glimpses of ‘me’ before I became another me. Almost as soon as I conceived I felt the old me slipping away, and so these recordings and photographs were like the last time spent with myself before I changed.” 

Mára’s melodies draw from the lullabies that Coloccia would sing to her son. Dating back many years, she has employed the...  more

credits

releases September 13, 2019

Side A: A New Young Birth
Side B: Sangre de Cristo

Recorded and mixed by Faith Coloccia 2018 on Vashon Island WA
Using cassette recordings from 2015-2018
Mastered by Randall Dunn










Daniel Menche "Melting Gravity LP" available for pre-order

Daniel Menche "Melting Gravity" LP 

SIDE A: Melting Gravity 1
SIDE B: Melting Gravity ll

Available for pre-order HERE.

Preview a track HERE.

Daniel Menche follows up his triple CD opus Sleeper with the razor drone constructs of Melting Gravity. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Menche is an iconic musician with three decades working with intense noise, immersive ambience, and turbulent field recordings. With Melting Gravity, Menche continues to carve his spot as a figurehead in the experimental community.

The title of Melting Gravity refers to an allegory on the human pursuit of transcendence with all of its connotations to weightlessness, ascension, flight, out-of-body experiences, and just getting high. Gravity, on the other hand, becomes that which negates and nullifies those transcendent pursuits. In the context of this particular allegory, gravity is the devil. Music, long a vehicle aimed towards transcendent ideals, becomes the weapon to defeat gravity, to defeat the devil. Daniel Menche wields the weapon of music in composing the mercurial grandeur that is Melting Gravity. 

Implementing an elegant arc of acceleration and dissolve, Menche presents a slow-motion tumble of drones from his signature manipulation of FM synthesis, oscillators, and sustained tones from various stringed instruments. The tangles and tendrils of these extended frequencies are bright and liquid, rich...  more

credits

releases September 13, 2019

Recored and mixed by Daniel Menche, 2018-2019.
Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk.
Photos by Daniel Menche.
Additional art and design by Faith Coloccia.







flood print




Monday, July 15, 2019

SIGE artists upcoming shows

Zachary James Watkins:

July 25th:
https://www.facebook.com/events/833444943699060/?ti=as

July 26th New duo with William Winant:

August 16th New duo Watkins / Peacock:

Marshall Trammell:

July 18 Mexico City
https://www.facebook.com/events/388883961756507/


SCONES & SOLOS - tbd - Mexico City

INSURGENT LEARNING WORKSHOPS
July 21, July 28 and August 4, 2019
4-6pm
4001 Troost Ave, Kansas City, MPO

William Fowler Collins:

26/09 IT Varese Twiggy
27/09 IT Bologna Ikigai Room
28/09 CH Lugano invitation show
29/09 CH Zürich UMBO
30/09 DE Mannheim Hafenkirche
1/10 FR Metz La Chouée
2/10 BE Kortrijk The Pit’s
3/10 LUX Luxembourg city Rocas
4/10 DE Wuppertal Gallery Grölle
5/10 DE Halle Pierre Grasse
6/10 DE Chemnitz Odradek
7/10 CZ Prague Potrva
8/10 DE Munich Committee
9/10 IT Verona Malacarne
10/10 IT Cornuda Tipoteca Italiana
11/10 IT Udine invitation show
12/10 SLO Velenje Klub eMCe Plac
13/10 IT Venezia Padiglione9 Forte Marghera