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LP
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UBK 002LP
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A cascading piano improvisation by Xiu Xiu's Hyunhye Seo, recorded live during a Nam June Paik exhibition in Turin. On Side B, Japanese avant-garde pioneer Phew reinterprets Seo's performance into a new electronic landscape. Music as surrender, dialogue between performer, space and the present moment. 200 copies. Comes with Obi. Hyunhye Seo, a core member of Xiu Xiu, in her solo work navigates the precarious edges where composition dissolves into pure gesture. Through ecstatic piano improvisations, restless percussive attacks and an expansive use of acoustic space, she constructs layered sonic environments that move across the boundaries of noise, avant-garde jazz, ambient and contemporary classical music. Her performances reveal an unfiltered process of listening and creation -- a practice in which thinking becomes the enemy, and surrender the only viable strategy. "Continuation" captures one such surrender. Recorded live at MAO -- Museo d'Arte Orientale in Turin during the exhibition Rabbit Inhabits the Moon -- The Art of Nam June Paik in the Mirror of Time, this cascading piano improvisation unfolds as a dialogue between performer, space and the particular acoustics of a museum built to house contemplative objects. Jamie Stewart processes the sound in real time; Giuseppe Ielasi shapes the final mix. What emerges is a work of charged immediacy -- restless gestures giving way to passages of unexpected tenderness, noise and silence trading places in continuous exchange. The title is precise: this is music that refuses conclusion, that exists in a state of perpetual becoming. On Side B, "Continuous Extension" offers an unprecedented response. Phew -- the pioneering figure of Japanese avant-garde music since the late 1970s -- was invited by curators Chiara Lee and Freddie Murphy to reinterpret Seo's performance. Working with synthesizer and subtle processing, Phew distills the resonances of "Continuation" into a new electronic landscape -- waves of abstraction that echo like reflections in sound, tracing the harmonic tensions of Seo's playing into territories she herself did not visit. The accompanying booklet includes an essay by Bruno Lo Turco exploring the deep connections between improvisation and Buddhist thought, and a written reflection by Seo on her own practice of surrender and listening.
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CD
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RM 4212CD
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"From eel to eel," Oskar thinks, standing by the coffin, "for eel thou art, to eel returnest." --The Tin Drum, Günter Grass
Eel is the second set of sound works from Berlin based Korean American composer, Hyunhye Seo. Known widely for her contributions to the now legendary unit Xiu Xiu, Seo's solo pre-occupations dwell in an altogether more timbral and gestural domain. Each of the two pieces that compromise Eel are visceral deep dives into a turbulence of sound flows. Uniting her interests in ecstatic piano performance, dynamic percussion, and cavernous acoustic treatments, Seo's pieces are dense, instinctive, and vertical. This is a music that skates at the edge of the abyss without fear of knowing what lies over the edge.
A note from Hyunhye Seo: "Every year, the eels arrive in Sargasso. The eels that sprang to life when the sun god Atum warmed the Nile, the eels generated within the entrails of the earth, from the rubbing of the rocks and dew drops on riverbanks, they travel thousands of kilometers to Sargasso to breed. Their larvae, eels of glass, move to freshwater homes, crawling across land or up waterfalls if necessary, breathing through their skins, to get to where they want to go, although no one knows exactly where or why. Sometimes, they eat snakes and birds. After decades, when they're ready to breed, they stop eating and develop sex organs, and they travel back to Sargasso. If they can't go back to Sargasso, they never fully mature. They just stop ageing. No human has seen eels breed. Freud dissected over 400 eels in search of eel testicles. Aristotle thought they grew from earthworms in dirt. No one knows why they go where they go, or how they find their way back. Creatures of mud and rain, fluid in time and age, unabashed in its metamorphosis, unknown yet always found."
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