Dusted Features Our Finland correspondent offers up four records and one label worth talking about, not to mention hearing. Tweet

2011: Matthew Wuethrich

James Hoff
How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away
(Pan)

Cairo. London. Athens. Wall Street. This was the year the streets filled with dissatisfaction, anger and protest. This one-sided picture disc (a mix-down of a multi-channel installation) wasn’t a prophecy, nor was it a tribute or a criticism. It’s visceral audio reportage, a chaotic collage of recordings from inside the fog of various historic riots and in-the-streets confrontations.

Mark Fell
Manitutshu
(Editions Mego)

The 12”, long the preferred medium in club music, has found a new currency in this age where nothing is product and everything is process. Mark Fell further twists material he already visited on 2010’s UL8, this time with discarded plug-ins made for a commercial software synthesizer. Not for the dance floor, not for your house party, it demands a space of its own creation.

Rrose x Bob Ostertag
Motormouth Variations
(Sandwell District)

“I don’t think the future we are facing is one almost any of us would wish for,” admits writer, musician and activist Bob Ostertag. “But it is coming faster than we can take in.” He does his part on this double 12” to both usher in this future and get out of its way. With a vague hope of open-source creativity in mind, Ostertag made Motormouth, an album of Buchla synthesizer improvisations, freely available on his own website. Taking Ostertag’s music into the future is Sandwell producer Rrose, who transforms the original pieces into these impulsive, high-energy techno tracks.

Bill Dixon
Intents and Purposes
(International Phonograph)

This is how you reissue a masterpiece: detailed extraction from the original tapes, high-class exact reproduction of the original cover and no extras. This is what Bill Dixon wanted you to experience — no more, no less.

Senufo Editions

Apparently no one told Giuseppe Ielasi that record labels are irrelevant. Run with artist Jennifer Veillerobe, Senufo is his third label in the past decade — and it shows that we still very much need the kind of wide-ranging, well-thought-out perspective a label provides. Embracing many formats (LPs, 12”s, 7”s, CDs, cassettes, downloads), the label catalogs a cross-section of sonic phenomena: field recordings, analog synthesis, cracked electronics, ethnographic intrusions, classic electro-acoustic works, digital constructions and more. Don’t think of Senufo releases as albums; hear as them as audio essays from the margins.

Five for good luck in the new year:

Thomas Ankersmit / Valerio Tricoli - Forma II (Pan)
Rale - Some Kissed Charms That Would Not Protect Them (isounderscore)
Helm - Cryptography (Kye)
Morton Feldman - Orchestra (Mode)
Taku Unami / Takahiro Kawaguchi - Teatro Assente (Erstwhile)

By Matthew Wuethrich

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