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7"
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KOO 009-05EP
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$32.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/19/2025
Strictly limited to 50 copies. Convergent Evolution is a conceptual sound art project that brings Lightwaves' electromagnetic musical research (KOO008) to a radical theoretical point. Following a research path conceived by Giovanni De Donà, the interpreter Nicola Penna (Nasty Boy) transforms selected samples taken from Niclas Lindgren's Io (KOO009), based on an electromagnetic session mixed at EMS studios in Stockholm, into a refined landscape of abstract rare groove and broken beats. Extending Koo Editions' earlier exploration of "music made without synthesizers," this work gravitates toward an electronic sound reminiscent of synthesizer-based music. It reflects the natural principle of convergent evolution -- distinct origins leading to similar forms through functional necessity.
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KOO 009LP
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Io is the result of a process that started in 2022 during the composition of the music for Bertolt Brecht's play Life of Galileo, directed by Carolina Frände, at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. In Galileo's search for the unseen, he points his telescope to the sky, expanding human perception and our understanding of the world. Here, the electromagnetic fields of the theatre stage are recorded using a sort of anti-radio, an artisanal pocket electromagnetic detector, in line with the significance of the Neosurrationalist bridge between art and science inaugurated by Koo Editions. Sculpting and arranging these frequencies became a compositional practice that began with the track entitled "Io", named after the moon Io, which was one of Galileo's first discoveries. The album was made at the legendary Elektronmusikstudion in the spring of 2023 and finalized during a summer residency at Palazzo Stabile, Piemonte, Italy.
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KOO 008LP
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Together with Photons (KOO 002LP, 2005), Lightwaves completes the investigation of the electro archetype, documenting the Neosurrationalist bridge between art and science, that began with a dialogue in a Kreuzberg bar involving Giovanni De Donà, Paololuca Barbieri of Alterazioni Video, and physics researcher Markus Gühr, now professor and lead of the Experimental Quantum Physics group at Potsdam University in Berlin. The dissemination given by the current interpretations made by various artists, reveal the possibility of radical vibrant electro made without synthesizers, in spite of Kraftwerk's tradition. To play directly with neon lights instead of singing them, and to amplify even the invisible infrared of a remote control without fearing a T.V.O.D -- television overdose --, it's meant entering definitively into the new normality of the bruit, the rauschen, the shum, the záyīn, the new "Arte dei rumori" of the electromagnetic noise of the new millennium, revealing both the inaudible of light frequencies and also the invisible through its raw sound and potential for irreverent, chromatically-limited pulsations. The first pocket-sized Chinese solar panels are turned into photomicrophones, and with an inexpensive set-up made of different light bulbs, neon, remote controls, LEDs, and a dimmer, we experienced the zeitgeist by closing a cycle that involved popular culture and contemporary art. Lightwaves was on tour for some years from No Art Gallery and Mediateca Santa Teresa in Milan to MoMa PS1 and Location One in New York, MoCa and Duolun Museum in Shanghai, Ikra club in Moscow, then in other locations as Kunstlerhaus in Stuttgart, Link in Bologna, Flowers in Catania, Acusmatiq 2.0 in Ancona, Mayr 3 in Milano again, and Breakout music festival featuring Steve Piccolo in Genova in 2009.
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KOO 007LP
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An imaginary train journey between Bologna and Moscow. The original recording of the entire experimental electronic session performed at the audiovisual festival "Geometry of Now," Moscow (2017) curated by Mark Fell, reworked in Bologna (Italy) with custom analog equipment in 2022. Alexei Borisov, the Moscow underground legend who has spanned new wave, electronic noise, and constructivist experimentation, measures up with artist and curator Sergey Kasich, a sound and media artist originally from Sevastopol, Crimea, founder and main curator of the SA)) community for experimental sound artists from the post-Soviet regions, as well as the SA))_gallery and SA))_studio in Moscow. The deconstruction of that live performance is meant to underscore the evidence of the lie of the end of history and the inadequacy of theories produced by the relativist burden of postmodernity with its illusory recombinations, revivals, and remixes, lead to the search for a misaligned and alt-modern subjectivity that concretely emerges from an imaginary journey into the era of the materialization of the unexpected, like the sudden concreteness of a window that no longer squeaks, but slams... The "Petroni apartment session" was recorded in Bologna, by also mixing concrete elements of environmental recording to emphasize the sudden impending immediacy of the real dimension.
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KOO 005CD
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Recording of the entire session performed at "Geometry of Now", the audiovisual festival organized by the V-A-C Foundation and curated by Mark Fell that took place at the former power station GES-2 in the hearth of Moscow (2017). CoH, the alias of Ivan Pavlov, is a Russian word for both sleep and dream, spelled in Cyrillic and pronounced as "son". Having left Russia for Sweden in 1995, CoH produced an extensive catalog of releases, including several notable collaborations with leading figures in industrial music, such as Cosey Fanni Tutti and Peter Christopherson of Coil/Throbbing Gristle. His dreamlike progression resonates here within GES-2, an exceptional monument of industrial archeology from the early 20th century, which Renzo Piano transformed into a multifunctional exhibition space whose renovation was completed later in 2021.
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KOO 006LP
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The electronic audiovisual project, inspired by ritual and regional music from the Iranian plateau The term "elemaun" (loanword from French) is equivalent to the English word element, commonly used in mathematical terms of the surface integral in Persian. The components and smaller surfaces that are selected to study the whole surface are called "elemaun." Such elements can contract in size to a considerable degree to estimate the limit value of the intended surface. The set consists of six compositions of digital and analog synthesizers, field recorded samples, ambient soundscapes, and synthesized drum machines referencing different cultures, music, and narratives and the same approach has been taken for computer-generated motion pictures and real-time edited video footage. The tunes are sampled as abstract, minimal, and repetitive motifs from different cultures of Baluch, Azeri, Southern Iranian Arabs, Khorasan, etc. After the Linz Ars Electronica premiere in 2016 it was presented in Poland, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Germany and finally in Canada in 2019, where the artist is based.
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KOO 004CD
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An octophonic performance realized on September 7, 2011 for Dolomiti Contemporanee, an improvised concert for technological apparatuses and insects: through the use of Diachronic, an innovative software conceived and produced by the artist. A dialogue opens with the crickets selected and microphone-controlled in their boxes placed inside a deserted industrial area of the Dolomites, staging a vision of continuity between man and nature, mediated by technology. The crickets were observed and fed for days, separated into four different groups according to aptitude and species, corresponding to four separate channels, as if they were four teeming autonomous, living and responsive instruments. Diachronic is a patented instrument inspired by the plastic dynamism of the Futurist Umberto Boccioni, free jazz, and the elliptical regularity of Kepler's laws. It allows you to draw speed variations in real time while maintaining the same duration of the measure, to improvise as the sound paste unfolds over time. This digital instrument is used during the session to dialogue with the crickets, which reacted particularly to sharp peaks, while in the second part it becomes the exclusive and artificial protagonist, and is used to rework the recorded material.
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KOO 003CD
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Selected tracks and images from the exhibition "Working Photos" at Fridman Gallery, NYC (2019), specifically in reference to the black-and-white photo and video series "Light Patterns", here represented in a ten-page booklet by seven selected pictures and an exclusive retrospective story by the author related to memory and place. The tracks include aquatic elements, crickets, bells and other stories from the Greek islands, Belgium, the Danube and the Rhine Delta in a real-life experience that comes back to mind as a fluid sensation. This CD celebrates Phill Niblock's personal history, recounting episodes from his personal life, from the purchase of his first tape recorder in 1953, to his nocturnal activity as a DJ in the radio station during his military service, to the beginning of his musical career in 1968. A journey through magnetic tapes, through what today would be called "sound art", the transition to digital processing, up to this celebratory adventure developed at a distance together with Giovanni De Donà of Koo Editions during the pandemic isolation. This project is not only about the canonic digital edition in CD, digipak with booklet, of material selected by the artist from an art exhibition. Includes Leporello booklet that includes seven selected images from the exhibition "Working Photos"at Fridman Gallery NYC (2019) and a personal Phill Niblock story that celebrates his 60 years career; edition of 200 (numbered).
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KOO 002LP
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Unprecedented submolecular laser class 4 electro session, recorded in Physics Dept., Freie Univeristät Berlin, in 2005. The modern photon concept was originated by the work of Albert Einstein at the beginning of XX century, when he elaborated the relativity theory, in 1905. To celebrate the centenary (2005) of that singular event, the AEM -- "Casa dell'energia" of Milan -- organized the presentation of a dedicated installation and a live performance by the artistic collective Alterazioni Video. To develop this photonic work, they went to the physics laboratory of the Freie Universität in Berlin. Together with Giovanni De Donà, then researcher Markus Gühr (now director at Potsdam University after his experience at Stanford) carried out his research using a class 4 laser. The class 4 is able not only to pierce the retina, but also to break the bond that holds the oxygen molecules together, thus generating flashes of light and powerful micro-couplings with interesting rhythmic flaps. The session involved a certain risk, the atmosphere was naturally electrified, and under the supervision of Markus it was possible to trigger the laser through a drum machine in order to control these bursts and use them as rhythmic units. Improvising a unique session of electro to all effects properly sub molecular, minimal electronic sounds interacted with the rhythms of the matter stimulated by the laser while producing light phenomena. The "Waterlaser" track in particular was created by concentrating the laser focus on a water surface, and documents the background sound given by the splitting of the molecules of the liquid. This experimentation on the border of art and science goes beyond the reductionism given by the programmed structures of the explosions, and highlights the obscure aspect of indeterminacy revealed by uncontrollable explosions. This took place because of a physical principle that we could touch with our hands, which brought science closer to the aesthetics of magical realism, as we could experience with our eyes and ears. Recorded with room microphones, and the balance was all-in-all positive: no one injured, a professional digital camera burned for daring to linger too long in framing the focus of the explosion of molecules. A recording that is now presented in this record 15 years later. The B side features Chris Mitchell with bass-influenced kinematic interpretation using parts from the session. The recording of the next Milanese public session was lost in the black hole of the RAI archives.
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KOO 001LP
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Koo Editions comes on vinyl purposing a selected documentation from art exhibitions, interviews, intermedia collaborations. Koo Editions was born with the idea of using the vinyl medium as a moving exhibition space, referring to the relationship between certain experiences of visual art with the listening one. Why the record? Because the catalogs don't speak. The record is a place: "Where" in fact, deputy to the sound testimony of something that has already happened, can be preserved to be able to enjoy it from a distance (of time and/or space). The intent of Koo Editions is not to launch a precise style or a defined aesthetic, but to put the accent on the voice of peculiar and seminal attitudes linked to the world of visual art. The record introduces an inversion of focus, compared to what usually happens in artistic events where the eye and not the ear is the master. This is not a matter of sound art, vinyl art, net art or anything else: the medium is not the message, but conveys it. The first vinyl release on Koo Editions will feature Pavel Pepperstein's exhibition in the Russian pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2009, which is now presented again here, ten years later. Since 2009 was the year of the centenary of the Futurist Manifesto, the thematic reference looks to the historical avant-garde: it is in fact a work of Russian retrofuturism and bold beauty. The recording is titled The Future and introduces a radical criticism for the Russian being. Its roots go back to the past experience gained by the author in the Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, a pioneering artists' collective formed in 1987 in a squat in Moscow during the years of Glasnost and Perestrojka. On the cover there is an image chosen from the paintings displayed in the exhibition. Inside there is an extended track of Ilya Dmitriev, a mixable retro electronic flow deliberately influenced by '80s disco archetype. Pepperstein's speech blows over the beat from the ultra-world and goes in an unexpected direction, far from any hedonistic exaltation, embracing a severe criticism of a future towards which he absolutely does not want to tend. The artist, of unquestionable fame and international value, takes strong positions against the western cultural narrative and art market policies which deserve to be slammed in the face of today's public. MLP (B-side etched).
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