2026 reissue.
A Thousand Breathing Forms, the second boxset of Steve Roden archive works released by Sonoris, is a selection of unreleased or hard-to-locate works from 2003 to 2008, a very prolific and creative period for the Californian artist. The boxset is centered on his hard-to-describe loop based sound works that are uniquely his own, such as Stars Of Ice (2008), A Christmas Play For Joseph Cornell (2007), but also includes the conceptual "One Hour As The Bumps Of Surfaces" and some more musical or instrumental works. So Delicate And Strangely Made, the title of one of his very first records (2003), could still be the right description of his sound work, rooted in visual arts and architecture, mixing conceptual rigor, and experimentation, without neglecting musicality.
Steve Roden (1964-2023) was a visual and sound artist born in Los Angeles. Roden’s work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, and performance.
Most of Roden’s sound works tend towards using a singular source - such as objects, architectural spaces, field recordings, or texts. These things, become abstracted through humble electronic processes to create new audio spaces, or “possible landscapes”.
Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.
"Over the last thirty years, Steve Roden has risen as a singular voice, attacking and advancing the highest challenges of the avant-garde - blurring the lines between nearly every creative field, moving outwardly toward the boundary with every day life. A visual and sound artist, his work spans the fields of painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, and performance.
A pioneer of Lowercase music, a movement which uses amplification as a means to address the quiet and unheard sounds of objects and environments, Steve Roden is one of the great contemporary successors of John Cage. Looking beyond the shadow cast by chance and indeterminacy, he casts the ear toward a world indicated by the composer’s most original, radical, and often neglected idea - the value and beauty of the sounds of non-instrumental sources and of the every day. Through subtle intervention, he has illuminated the path for a rising generation of artist working in sound - refusing categorization, working as comfortably in a museum or gallery, as the contexts of music. Guided by rigorous conceptual perimeters and concerns, across A Thousand Breathing Forms the axis of Roden’s work snaps into view - the monumental presence of the smallest moment and sound.
This boxset, which collects Roden’s unreleased and hard to find works from the incredibly prolific period between 2003 and 2008, is drenched in musicality. Centered around loop based works, it pulls relentlessly and democratically from a seemingly endless world of source - samples of records from an array of cultures, field recordings, instruments, object, and environments. It is a body of work, which, for being birthed electronic process, appears stunningly organic - steeped in humanity and touch. A world of intimacy. The discrete at a towing scale. A realm to be inhabited, which burrows deep - taking residence in the ear. As it sounds, resonances, and structures intertwine, Roden appears as a vision of the future, and a bridge to the past - a breaking of dogma, and a reconciliation for the schism between Minimalism and the conceptualism of Cage. A world guided by ideas, presenting the profound beauty, meaning, and importance of sound, across its six CDs, A Thousand Breathing Forms is a revelation - a lens into the practice and work of an artist of incredible significance, as much as an opening to the larger field. Capturing and advancing some of the most important and difficult ideas of the last hundred years with elegance, accessibility, and grace, this is a collection which promises to grow over time and at every turn."
Bradford Bailey
2026 reissue.
"Every Color Moving” consists of 6 discs, covering 7 hours of the 15 first years of Steve Roden musical activities. The first 4 discs contain unreleased works and impossible to find small editions. The last 2 discs offer a selection of tracks made for compilations during the same period. From the surprising early experiments to the development of his often imitated but never equalled 'lowercase’ aesthetic, these are some of Roden’s earliest works, documenting numerous rare and unreleased recordings.
The discs are accompanied with a 32 page booklet with an essay and extended track notes, written by the artist.
Steve Roden (1964-2023) was a visual and sound artist born in Los Angeles. Roden’s work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, and performance. Roden’s earliest musical experience was as the singer of the Los Angeles punk band “Seditionaries” from 1978 - 1982, performing locally with some famous bands from this scene. Roden’s early works moved from loud to quiet in the midst of an emotional crisis at age 18, fueling a shift in his work, with the discovery of Eno’s Obscure label. In the early -1990’s Roden discovered the Broken Music catalog (an encyclopedic survey of records related to visual artists), offering a context for an artistic practice rooted in both visual and sound art.
In 1990 Roden released his first recording on a self-released cassette titled “the secret of happiness” under the artist name “in be tween noise”. Since then, Roden has released 45 solo recordings on various labels, alongside numerous collaborations and compilations. By the late 1990’s Roden began to use his own name as the artist of his solo recordings. Most of Roden’s sound works tend towards using a singular source - such as objects, architectural spaces, field recordings, or texts. These things, become abstracted through humble electronic processes to create new audio spaces, or “possible landscapes”. In 2000, he used the term “lowercase” to describe a music that “bears a certain sense of quiet and humility”. Over the years, he has created a rich and diverse body of work that is uniquely his own, mixing conceptual rigor, experimentation and musicality.
"Jeu du monde" is a collection of around twenty musique concrète pieces which spreads over more than six hours of music.
Each CD has been designed as an audio film which tells a full story. The box set includes previously released works which have long been unavailable, reworked versions of digital releases, as well as unreleased pieces especially composed for this occasion.
With the use of a complex sound palette ( synthesizers, analog and digital manipulation, percussion, low fidelity samplers, radios, Revox, vocals, prepared piano, field recordings... ), Lionel Marchetti takes us through an audio landscape in which the acoustic imagination feeds on nature and its diversity: the desert, the upper atmosphere -mankind - night and day, fire, death, until we disappear into the ocean space...
Lionel Marchetti is a French composer of musique concrète and an improviser (various analog and digital electronic instruments and modified speakers ). He also writes poetry and essays on the art of Musique Concrète, as an artist working within the genre.
His musique concrète works follow in the steps of composers such as Pierre Henry, Bernard Parmegiani and Michel Chion.
Since his emergence in the experimental music scene, about 20 years ago now, Kevin Drumm has perpetually shaken up conventions of various sub-genres with his major albums, for example, shifting from the tabletop/prepared guitar with his first self-titled album, to noise with Sheer Hell Miasma, to ambient/drone with Imperial Distortion. He has been notably prolific recently, with numerous self-released cdr and digital releases.
Elapsed Time is a collection of some of these recent works, dating from 2012 to 2016: desolate ambient drone (Middle Of Nothing, February), "cassette tape music" or raw musique concrete (Earrach, The Whole House), computer assisted live electronics and rough spectral music (Crooked Abode, Bolero Muter), with additional tracks from Tannenbaum and Shut-In.
This boxset documents one of the key figures of today american avant-garde at his peak of creativity.
Nicely remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi for an optimal listening experience (hifi system recommended).
"Elapsed Time" is undoubtedly destined to be a classic, and one of the finest experimental tomes to emerge over the last years. Despite his noisy reputation, Kevin Drumm music can be overwhelmingly sensual even at its loudest, providing a form of minimalism replete with a delicate, melancholic motion. How wildly divergent emotions rise, hover, and fall using so little is a mystery that only Kevin Drumm can provide.
While you may not find an answer, you can certainly get lost in the question.
SoundOhm
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