Some new-ish sounds

I just found two record reviews that I forgot to publish. They're a few months old, but maybe you'll enjoy it anyway.

Maryanne Amacher - Sound Characters 2 (2008)

Maryanne Amacher (1943) studied under the late Mr. Stockhausen, and rose to fame in 1967, when she created City Links: Buffalo, which was a 28 hour long piece using 5 microphones placed in different parts of the city, broadcast live by a radio station. Most of her pieces are site specific, though in 1999 she released Sound Characters (Making the Third Ear) on the Tzadik label. This is her follow-up to that album. Her droning minimalism is rather quiet in Teo! Part 1 - 2, though at times collapsing into the anguished shrieks of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi monster in Teo! Part 3. The albums real tour de force, however, is the 25-minute Teo! Part 4 (A) & (B), an intergalatic symphony of pulsating drones, bringing to mind Klaus Schulze's masterpiece Irrlicht. I certainly look forward to listening to some more of Maryanne Amacher's music.

Francisco Lopéz - Untitled (2006 - 2007) (2008)

If nothing else, Spanish sound artist Francisco Lopéz can at least boast a ridiculously large discography. His latest release, Untitled (2006 - 2007), is an over-indulgent double-CD, collecting pieces of noise and, well, silence from the last couple of years. While it does contain a few interesting sounds, the huge amount of filler material makes for a rather boring experience. What, one might ask, is the point of tracks such as the barely audible Untitled #194? All in all, his latest release adds little or nothing to a discography that is already too verbose. The art of Mr. Lopéz stands as a monument to the ever-cheapening cost of making CD's.

/Aron