The Art of Electronics

Mercury Prize-nominated Portico Quartet has always been an impossible band to pin down. Sending out echoes of jazz, electronica, ambient music and minimalism, the group created their own singular, cinematic sound over the course of three studio albums, from their 2007 breakthrough ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’, and 2010 John Leckie produced ‘Isla’, to the self titled record ‘Portico Quartet’ in 2012. Now rebooted as Portico Quartet after a brief spell as the three-piece Portico, the group are set to release their fourth studio album Art In The Age Of Automation this August on Manchester’s forward thinking indy jazz and electronica label Gondwana Records. It’s an eagerly anticipated return, with the band teasing both a return to their mesmeric signature sound and fresh new sonic departures in their new music.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago - We Are On The Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (2019) {Pi Recordings}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44.1kHz - Official Digital Download (bandcamp.com) -> 1.05 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 339 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2019 Pi Recordings
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Composition

The Art Ensemble of Chicago has been at the forefront of creative improvised music since 1969, and has long served as the flagship ensemble of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the august Chicago-based organization that also fostered the careers of members such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Wadada Leo Smith, among many others. The greatness of the Art Ensemble has always been the shared commitment of its original members – Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors, and Famoudou Don Moye – to the total realm of African diasporic music: what they have long-termed “Great Black Music—Ancient to the Future.”

The visual and aural arts have likely been interconnected since the beginning of human artistic expression. Artists in both mediums utilize similar terminology to describe techniques, processes and aesthetics in their work. Keyboardist/composer Dov Manski and visual artist Erin Parsch began a partnership to explore the ways in which musical performance and painting can communicate. The Hue of Silence is their astounding multimedia project that shows some of their discoveries, centered around their response to color.

Franz Koglmann - Ich (1986) {Hat Hut Records hat ART CD6033 rel 1989}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 281 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 182 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 34 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1986, 1989 Hat Hut Records | hat ART CD 6033
Jazz / Modern Creative / Avant-Garde Jazz / Flugelhorn

Here in the early days of Austrian composer and flügelhorn player Franz Koglmann's Pipetet – it was only five years old in 1989 – listeners hear the first efforts of the mature composer begin to come to fruition. His trademark meld of styles did not so much involve combinations but juxtapositions – the clear lines of division still existed on Ich. Unlike the later offerings of Cantos I-IV or The Art of Memory, Koglmann's earlier work had to stress its European-ness for the sake of identity more than anything else. (One wonders why, when in the first measures can be heard the restraint of a Vienna conductor holding this band of ten together, and the measured ear of the rhythm section looking for cues.)