Notice Recordings is pleased to present the release of Portland, Oregon-based percussionist Matt Hannafin’s “John Cage: Four Realizations for Solo Percussion”, which offers attentive, probing interpretations of pieces that bookend the final thirty years of the composer’s work. Simultaneously restless and nuanced, Hannafin’s performance demonstrates Cage’s continued relevance and enduring ability to push performers beyond their performative biases and toward the unexpected.Written with no instrumentation, “Variations II” (1961) and “Variations III” (1963) both provide toolkit-like sets of marked-up transparencies which are allowed to fall into random overlapping patterns. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation for One-Sided Drums with or without Jangles” and “One4” (both 1990) are two of only five pieces Cage wrote specifically for solo percussion, and explore Cage’s late-career interest in directed improvisation. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation” was written for percussionist Glen Velez, with whom Matt Hannafin studied just three years after the piece was created.Commissioned by Notice Recordings, these four performances are in dialogue not only with each other but with Notice itself, which has its roots in the underground/DIY realm while also exploring contemporary/academic composition. The accessibility, inventiveness, and challenge of compositions like these make Cage a unique pivot point between these two worlds.

"Lend Storring your ear and your soul for the ultimate spirit-cleanse. Quasi-new-age healing is his specialty." - Tiny Mix Tapes On the long-awaited Exaptations, Toronto-based composer Nick Storring presents two highly textural, side-long pieces. On “Field Lines”, originally composed for Yvonne NG Peck Wan‘s dance piece, Magnetic Fields, a certain fragmented, uncertain openness is conveyed: a series of brief, dreamlike clearings are vignetted by pregnant silences or various levels of waking or sleeping states. Storring plays with a variety of tonal instruments that swell and tumble along while being nipped at by expressive percussion. Organic clusters develop within event-based sequences, stretching attention across multiple timbres and rhythms. On “Yield Criteria”, shifting drones move about like independent layers of ice on a lake in the dead of winter, slowing crumbling, sliding, and cracking in perfect harmony. Storring has written for dance and other interdisciplinary settings, and here he brings the delicate resourcefulness of a skilled accompanist, as well as a narrative sense that belatedly, profoundly blossoms. --- Field Lines: Composed and recorded October 2013 - May 2014 for Yvonne Ng's dance piece, Magnetic Fields, which premiered in May 2014.Nick Storring / various percussion and found objects, vibraphone, glockenspiel, balafon, chimes, hand bells, toy pianos, thumb pianos, voice/whistling, electric (NS Designs NXT4) and acoustic cellos, electric bass, electric mandola, violin, hammered dulcimer, Hohner Pianet T, Yamaha CP60M, Hohner Clavinet D6, flutes, harpsicle, strumstick, guitalele, steel pan, harmonica, melodica, pitch pipes, hulosiSpecial thanks to Yvonne, Marie-Josée Chartier, Mairead Filgate, Luke Garwood, Christopher Willes. Thank you to Germaine Liu for the use of her vibraphone, and John Farah for the use of his Pianet.Yield Criteria:Composed and recorded February - June 2014.Nick Storring / NS Designs NXT4 electric cello, electric bass, electric mandola, thunder tubes, Yamaha CP60M, toy piano, harmonica, duck call, voice, hand bells, glockenspielElements were used in Eva Kolcze's film, All That Is Solid. Thank you to Eva, Spencer Barclay, Jason Doell, Brandon Valdivia, and Bryan Bray.Processing and manipulation performed on the above sound sources (and the sound of a blank, chemically-treated 16mm film sound-strip) using combinations of the following: transducer speakers on various resonant chambers, instruments and surfaces; talkbox; spring reverb; recordable cassette walkman; various speakers; (contact) microphones.Special thanks to Nicole Cultraro for her violin and kalimba, her support and inspiration, and patience with my process. Thanks also to Andrew Zukerman.Gratitude also to all who listened and offered feedback.Artwork and layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by John Fitzgerald at Fitzgerald Letterpress, New Orleans

Portland, Ore. musician and naturalist Loren Chasse has a long and varied history within the more organic and textural branches of drone and sound art. Comprising pregnant field recordings, tense drone whispers, and wispy layers of texture, The Sodden Floor’s dark superimpositions drift between momentary dread and almost childlike abstraction. They seem composed with an eye on cinema: sounds drift into focus and then cut or pan away; the resulting shifts constitute a dreamlike presence only sustainable within an ephemeral world, one documented with a half-awake awareness — leaving or coming — but always accepting the flittering yet immovable mise-en-scène aesthetic of non-existence. --- "Currently based in Portland, Oregon, Loren Chasse has long created and curated music with lots of delicacy and otherness. His new solo cassette mixes improvisations on his grandfather’s melodeon with a heavily weighted atmosphere of darkness. Feels like it was recorded in a haunted, bell-strung, moss-crusted cabin. For all we know, it was." - Byron Coley, The Wire

"This may very well be the perfect entry point for one new to the Space Program. I actually saw Toral give a solo performance in October at The Projection Museum, an art studio and living space right at the edge of Northeast Portland on Burnside, at the invitation of a friend, and while one does get a very visceral sense of what Toral means when he says he wants to make a more humanized, meaningfully expressive version of electronic music by emphasizing a sense of precise control over his tools in his solo performances, something about this 2012 collective effort stylistically falls into a place, if for the fullness of its sound. As Side A gets underway, Simões gives Toral room to breathe, offsetting Toral’s exploratory stabs into the silence with distant thunder. With an electronic shriek, the gates of sane madness open and that silence explodes into a whirlwind of violence, with Simões’s frantic strokes keeping time with Toral’s Braxton-like sonic attack. It’s a startling synthesis to behold (the actual sight of Toral yanking piercing cries out of these unassuming-looking handheld boxes is mesmerizing, I might add), but at the same time it’s one that makes one wonder why it was not stumbled upon before Toral took the leap. This is experimental electronic music operating at a higher level of deliberation and thoughtfulness than nearly everything else in sound synthesis and free improvisation– an essential document and a real pleasure to see getting a proper release." - Foreign Accents Space Collective 2 Live commemorates Portuguese musician Rafael Toral’s first U.S. tour in several years. Since the 1990s, Toral has been primarily known for his guitar work, but has since been working on the Space Program project, within which he has probed visceral and personal components of electronic music performance, and how they relate to the performer's experience, not to the resultant product.These recordings, taken from a live set at All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2012, find Toral performing with drummer Afonso Simões, developing sparse, deep textures with triggers and modular oddities. Smartly paced and absolutely blistering at times, this set touches on a variety of surprising tones: flute-like expressions, spacey warbles, and intricately patterned arpeggios that dissolve into drone sections with confrontational sonic palettes. --- Rafael Toral / electronicsAlfonso Simões / drums ---Artwork and layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Fitzgerald Letterpress --- Tracklisting: 1. Part I - 17:232. Part II - 13:38

"The A-side 'L'Immobilité (n'existe pas)' is an all-electronic drone-like excursion while on 'Même Place' there is some sort of acoustic sound, which comes in like tidal waves and sometimes it seems as if we hear a clock ticking amidst of these sine wave like sounds. Both pieces however have that same 'live'-like quality. I prefer the first to the second, but both were actually very good, making this into a damn fine release." - Vital Weekly Although living in separate European countries, Akama (electronics) and Duplant (organ, electronics) have forged a strong musical bond on a handful of collaborative releases, often with titles related to nothingness, which, in turn, mirrors the minimal, contemplative drone pieces contained therein. As its own titling suggests, immobilité (“immobility”) extends their musical concerns, and distills them in an extraordinarily rich way. More textural than event-based, these pieces are exquisitely paced to complement their roomy, crackling palette. Starting from two points—Duplant’s minimal score and his own parts—Akama reaches for more synthetic sounds than she has in the past. Duplant has resisted being labeled as a Wandelweiser composer. There is an element here that’s more personal to this duo, even down to the ticking of a clock. immobilité is a purposeful new statement from two artists who enthusiastically acknowledge their musical kinship. --- Ryoko Akama / electronicsBruno Duplant / organ, electronics ---Fue Akama - DrawingLayout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Fitzgerald Letterpress

"The whole thing is pretty snarly, to be honest, both the loud and the quiet bits, the duo taking things up a notch for the final few minutes of dense, angular noise which evokes, simultaneously, a boulder-filled avalanche and a glitching Armageddon. Glorious." - We Need New Swords Kahn (American, living in Zurich) and Olive (Canadian, living in Japan) recorded these pieces while on tour in Japan in May 2014. This release features two unhurried explorations for radio, synthesizer, and mixing board (Kahn) and magnetic pickups (Olive). “Fukuoka,” presents a series of gradual unfurlings; pockets of pockmarked, dented and torn glass clusters, tumbling upon and over each other, perhaps briefly interlocking by way of some fragile barb, only to instantaneously break loose. “Osaka” is more comfortably structured, framed by a few small squalls abetting the range of synth and radio static; an instrumentation that resides between thin layers of shifting, jittery translucent timbres.Kahn and Olive both demonstrate exceptional attention to unrecognized sounds (see Kahn's ongoing Unheard Cities project), and one of the unique attributes of these pieces is their ability to make sounds whose sources, even with limited tools, aren't quite placeable. Their sound palette occasionally finds tension between understood words and speech as sound: hearing a sound that may or may not be speech, and speech that may or may not be understandable. They possess a unique resourcefulness on this release that makes it a surprising listen.   ---   Jason Kahn / analogue synthesizer, radio, mixing board, mixing, masteringTim Olive / magnetic pickups   ---Mixed and mastered by Jason KahnArtwork, layout - E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Fitzgerald Letterpress

"The 34 minutes that make up I hope you like the universe are the most homogeneous of anything that Joda's created yet. And through it, he shows us the beauty that lies in his corner of the universe. It ends with an invitation for us to realize how it also exists in ours." - Tone Glow Vancouver-based composer Joda Clément has been widely praised for qualities in his work that could be described as natural: unassuming complexity that elegantly reduces, and an indifference to overt emotional direction. I hope you like the universe brilliantly continues this path, as Clément blends field recordings, shifting synth textures, and instrumental performance. These pieces vividly suggest both exterior and interior environments and the boundaries between them, like peering through layers of windowpanes from inside a still room. Here, Clément’s work is both industrial and intriguingly human, hinting at people and actions that might create certain daytime and nighttime sound environments while resisting identification. --- Joda Clement / korg PS3200 and MS20, field recordings, harmonium, electromagnetic feedback ---Mastered by Joe PanznerArtwork and layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Fitzgerald Letterpress

On Hot Shaker Meet Lead Donut, Prants – the duo of Chris Cooper and Bhob Rainey – fan out beyond established positions as prankish, innovative improvisers. As ever, musical playfulness and seriousness coexist marvelously, but the fascinating atmosphere has mutated further beyond traditional instrumental performance. Squelchy synth madness, howling squeals, and minimal note-making are fastened onto recorded snippets and quietly drifting drones, built deceptively within the formality of collage. Embracing a structured impulsiveness, these pieces provide a jaggedly damaged new angle on the dynamic and textural extremes that have made the musicians’ work so engaging in the past.   --- "Who is Prants? Is it a typo? Are we talking about Pants? But no, it’s no typo; it’s a duo, a collection of two humans doing a thing together! Prants features two TMT favorites, Bhob Rainey (of nmperign, The BSC, and so on) and Chris Cooper (Angst Hase Pfeffer Naser, Caroliner, Fat Worm of Error), making sounds together. They’ve got a new cassette containing the sounds they’ve made together and recorded, and it’s called Shaker Meet Lead Donut. It’s available now on Bandcamp and from Notice Recordings. Marked by what the press materials call a “structured impulsiveness,” the two sides of the limited tape (only 100 copies out there!) zip and buzz in all sorts of jagged directions. The second piece, entitled “Igotu Otius,” features contributions from Mary Lattimore and Jesse Sparhawk on harps, June Bender on viola, Eric Coyne on cello, and Matt Stein on contrabass. It also credits “various” with “dry ice.” I don’t know exactly how that works, but I’m into it. If you’re familiar with Rainey’s free-improv maybe-kinda-sorta-possibly jazz work or with Cooper’s sound-stacking whack-attacks, then you can probably form at least a tentative notion of what you’re in for, but no slouching!" - Tiny Mix Tapes --- Performed and mixed by Bhob Rainey and Chris CooperOn Igotu Otius you shall hearCello - Eric CoyneContrabass - Matt SteinHarp - Jesse Sparhawk, Mary LattimoreViola - June BenderDry Ice - VariousMastered by Bhob RaineyArtwork and layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Fitzgerald Letterpress

Since the mid-aughts, Chicago trio Haptic (Adam Sonderberg, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Steven Hess—this time around featuring Salvatore Dellaria and The Necks’ Tony Buck) has delivered riveting, meticulously controlled live sets, as well as a handful of releases mainly on the Entr’acte label, all of which reflect the group’s unique attitudes toward collaboration and structure. This release features material sourced from a variety of past recordings; they are without form and yet architectural, and just as uniquely engaging as the group’s previous work.From the perspective of Notice, Haptic’s mixture of the organic and the industrial has been profoundly influential, and could even be said to define a quintessential Chicago ethos channeled through dark ambience: roiling waves of density, structure, work, beauty, and oppression constantly overtaking each other. However, the final silence will always be present—and is expected—just like the spare, steady late-night call of a single circling black bird. --- "While Sonderberg has recently returned to Chicago and Haptic to the stage, neither was the case when they assembled Excess of Vision. They took leftover, previously unused recordings from throughout their existence, including some early improvisations with Necks drummer Tony Buck and  contributions from Salvatore Dellaria, and assembled them into a sonic comment upon their discontinuous state. On “So for the Remainder,” which takes up all of side one of this album length cassette, the long, slowly evolving tones that used to get Haptic rather reductively characterized as a drone outfit are once more presented. But they are layered, interleaved, and twisted together so that they interfere with each other and are in constant low-key flux.  Heard inattentively, it might seem that nothing is happening, but if you get close enough you’ll notice that the constancy is an illusion." - Bill Meyer, Dusted --- Performed by Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg with Tony Buck (I) and Salvatore Dellaria (II)Assembled by Mills/SonderbergMixed by SonderbegMastered by Tomas KorberArtwork and layout by E. Lindorff-Ellery

Two sets of music by Chik White, an alias of Darcy Spidle, whose Nova Scotia-based Divorce Records has been slinging LPs of sonic bemusement since 1999. Jaw Works is made up of solo jaw harp performances, wringing mesmerizing detail from variations in rhythm and tempo, while achieving a wide variety of barely believable, almost synthesized-sounding timbres. Behind A Dead Tree On The Shore also features the jaw harp, albeit in concert with the North Atlantic Ocean, which inspired the more minimal, rhythmic pieces performed on the shore. Organic and personal, this is folk music created by a single person in his environment, using the most basic of musical tools. "The immense, magical strangeness of the jaw harp – man, that twanging, cartoonish sproing – fuels this release. It’s essentially a series of brief exercises. On Side A, the Nova Scotia-based White cycles through variations on his daily practice; on Side B, he improvises along a shoreline. Since each track is no briefer than 50 seconds and no longer than four minutes, a game freshness reigns and there is never a sense that the artist is repeating himself: the coiled spritely bounce of “Hiding In A Dead Tree” is as distinct from the breathy, fading hesitancy of “Dreamer’s Words” or the steady, strident vibrations of “Dreamer’s Question.” White’s tones sidle from hypnagogic to inquisitive to – in the case of “Cliff Collapsing Slowly” – downright cybernetic, the echoed thrumming contrasting deliciously with the ceaseless crash and dispersion of waves. “Meditative” is a descriptor that’s thrown around a lot in experimental or drone music, but it’s rarely this earned, even as a crepuscular unease lurks at the edges of this cassette." - Cassettegods   ---   Artwork, layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Minuteman Press

Samuel Rodgers (co-curator of Consumer Waste) pairs up with sound artist Jack Harris on two explorations of minimal performance and sound creation. Working in a semi-urban ambience—open windows, barking dogs, distant sirens—the duo suggest both a specific location and a generic one. Their previous work has explored tensions between analogue and digital processes; here, sounds remain mainly non-instrumental in source: amplified object manipulation, cable hum, and different types of feedback intrude upon room tone at various intervals, like heavy clusters of dry floating leaves settling on transparent pillows. These pieces blur definitions of action and performance, and call into contemplation the intention of sound-making and what defines its “success,” while repeatedly upending expectations about pace and content. --- "For me these works seem characterised by a growing tension, hinting at some kind of terror lying just under the mundane surfaces of our everyday lives, unnamed and just out of the reach of our comprehension. Or perhaps these are instead extremely focused works of art, Harris and Rodgers investigating the peculiar sonic properties of the non-instruments they’re deploying – and the spaces in which they’re deploying –  with the tension coming from the friction between the restraint of their near-silent playing and the potential for cathartic release from letting rip with some serious high-voltage noise." - We Need New Swords --- Performed by Samuel Rodgers and Jack HarrisRecorded, mixed, and mastered by Samuel RodgersArtwork, layout by E. Lindorff-Ellery

Upon seeing Ryan Jewell’s patient, rigorous and riveting performance at Chicago’s very first Neon Marshmallow festival, we were fascinated by his meticulous sonic explorations falling somewhere in-between percussion, minimalism and electronic composition. Several years on, Jewell, still based in Columbus, OH, has continued to build an impressive resume as a co-conspirator with all sorts of people. Populated by acoustic textures, percussion-based sonic events, and unconventionally performed sounds, the assuredly paced solo pieces in Radio: Vol. 2 reveal Jewell as the yin to the noisier side of the Ohio scene. "On the first track, "O-O" (recorded in 2010), the world is one of acid sizzles and a rough, rubbed sound that occasionally grows into quasi-vocal moans that remind me very much of the nocturnal, unconscious murmurings of Robert Ashley in his "Automatic Writing" and is similarly disturbing. It's not that shifts of focus don't occur; they do, but feel absolutely appropriate, like moving smoothly to an adjacent, related space, here one where the rubbing becomes more vivid and stone-like, achieving a fine, near-chaotic state, ending with a couple minutes of soft, brushy sound and a punctuative clunk. The second side of the cassette, "OO" (2009), sounds more purely percussive to me and is even more concentrated, Jewell producing, through rubbing both smooth and rough, wonderful nests of sounds existing somewhere between tones and rapid rhythms, rising periodically to a frightening wail. He spends the entire cut right in almost the same spot, not generating anything new or spectacular but, better, letting the richness of what he's initially discovered sink in. That's something I greatly appreciate, wish it happened more often. Excellent work, highly recommended." - Brian Olewnick --- Performed by Ryan Jewell. Mastered by Joe Panzner. Cover drawing by Virginia Lawrence, additional artwork and layout by E. Lindorff-Ellery.

This is Nathan McLaughlin’s latest installment of his Echolocation series. Following releases on Digitalis and Gift Tapes, #5 also continues the organic and thoughtful work of his duo Loud & Sad. Focused on tape loops, layers of delay, and some chordal forms, each piece is meticulously and methodically built, with each sonic element given its due. This sense of pacing and care given to every moment is a crucial element of McLaughlin’s work, and it’s deeply attuned here. The pieces reflect the environment in which they were composed, tight-knit and rural; they mass like storm clouds, and then are barely there, leaving just the fluttering of a distant echo. Stretches of silence, and windblown expanses. Rich chords swell into deeply contemplative passages that are gradually stripped away. A gorgeous, hushed set of tape music. --- "Echolocation #5 extends McLaughlin's exploration of the elegiac and the dirge, adding some crunchy, roiling passages as well. Often McLaughlin's loops gather, in small enough increments to avoid overt, ham-fisted drama, a strong sense of the ominous. These tensions, as well as the fine structural drift McLaughlin is patient enough to permit, make the Echolocation series a fluid one, without a start or an end. Echolocation #5 should be heard as an installation in a big-hearted work, issuing from a musician with an immense gift for subtle music. They are sent from a recondite artist who may well disappear before you receive them, so there's no time to waste." - Jesse Goin / Crow With No Mouth --- Mastered by Eric SteigerArtwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery and N. McLaughlin

Focusing on the electronic element from his live performances, Mueller uses snare drum, gongs, and tape to craft long-form minimalist drones that are constantly shifting and morphing even in their sameness. A companion to his The Whole LP (Type Records) and live performances that documents this extraordinary phase of his work. "Continuing down the path taken in other recent recordings of his, one that more or less parallels that trodden in recent years by Jason Kahn, Mueller works with steady rhythms, building dense layers of cymbals (played with either soft mallets or fingers) and drums (generally heard in roll patterns). The obsessive nature can yield handsome dividends when the elements lose their individuality and fuse into a storm of near-chaotic but always forward-propelled sound as is the case on the second and fourth tracks of this cassette release. More with this kind of release than many, one really would like to experience this music in a live setting so as to be immersed in the shimmering waves and beats. Still and all, very enjoyable at home." - Brian Olewnick --- Jon Mueller / percussion, tapes --- Artwork by E. Lindorff-ElleryPackaging concept by Travis Bird