Fans of KK Null and David Brown (who together are Terminal Hz) probably already have this CD. If you don’t, you should get it right away. (If you’re not a fan of KK Null or David Brown, you should get this right away, so that you can become one, too.)
Terminal Hz is five tracks of [...]

The train is king of sounds; long live the king!
But don’t expect a whole lot of train noises in this piece. This is a serious piece which happens to use train sounds as one of its sources, but only one. There are electronic sounds and people talking, on and off the radio, [...]

Unsettled line starts out with some night sounds—cricket-like—which are joined by increasingly sharp, mechanical sounds and some truly luscious electronic grit. There are some pretty harsh sounds here, and some laughter, and some Tibetan singing bowl, and although there are a few drones now and again, this piece takes place mostly over [...]

I first heard Lionel Marchetti in the Ground Fault recording of Portrait d’un Glacier (Alpes 2173m). Le Grande Vallée could almost be called Portrait des feuilles sèches, as the sound of crunching through the autumn leaves strolls through the whole piece. Over the top of that are voices calling, human, wolf, bird. [...]

In its own quiet way, Philippe Mion’s Confidence is one of the wilder of the Cinéma pour l’oreille offerings. And by wild, I mean wildly out of control anything can happen and does what is he what? going to say next it’s all so crazy and what bewildering oh fine well.
And all [...]

Any given electroacoustic piece can range from almost completely electronic to almost completely acoustic. Jim O’Rourke’s Rules of reduction is one of the latter. Very few (no?) electronic noises, and very little done to the sounds themselves, of crowds, of traffic, of cars honking, of guitars, of squeaky swings, of seagulls, of [...]

Along with Noetinger (and in collaboration with Noetinger), Marchetti does both concert pieces and live improv. I’ve heard both and can say quite confidently that if you see a notice of these two doing a live show, go see it. Truly. You will be less a person if you don’t.
But Mue. This is [...]

Lots of harsh, loud electronic noises—it’s easy to conclude that that’s presentational: presenting the harshness and brutality of war. And it’s true, this piece does include guns firing and people talking about Desert Storm (including Bush père). But the overall impression I’m left with is that the sounds themselves, with their own [...]

Five tracks, all labelled “Untitled.” Makes it easy to listen to this as one piece—in five movements. Certainly the overall sound of the thing changes very little from “movement” to “movement.” Nor does the basic aesthetic change much either. In other words, it’s a consistent piece from start to finish fifty-two minutes [...]

You may be forgiven for expecting a piece that places you so precisely to give you the sonic equivalent of being at 2173 meters in the Alps (French Alps, of course). Maybe. After all, the first musique concrète piece, Étude aux chemins de fer is full of train sounds. And while many [...]