Inspired by Otomo Yoshihide’s Lecture, Fukushima! will be the 4th release on Presqu’île Records.

This double compilation will feature contributions from Magda Mayas, John Tilbury, Choi Joonyong, Joe Foster, Hong Chulki, Jin Sangtae, Burkhard Beins, Mark Wastell, Jonathan McHugh, Annette Krebs, Chris Abrahams, Mural, Michael Pisaro, Greg Stuart, and Greg Kelley.

The album will also be accompanied by an online project gathering essays, paintings, pictures, and videos from AVVA (Billy Roisz / Toshimaru Nakamura), Billy Gomberg and Richard Kamerman.

Almost a year ago after the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, the situation is still very precarious. People of Japan need our help. This is a modest contribution, but 100% of the funds raised through the sales of this record will go to japanese non-profit organizations.

Tracklist:
1.01 John Tilbury – Al Contrario (D.Smith) 34:02
1.02 Magda Mayas – Foreign Grey 09:10
1.03 Choi Joonyong / Joe Foster / Hong Chulki / Jin Sangtae – From Dotolim 14:29

2.01 Burkhard Beins – Counter 06:25
2.02 Mark Wastell / Jonathan McHugh – Eventide 06:27
2.03 Annette Krebs / Chris Abrahams – Duo 02:43
2.04 Annette Krebs – Field recording of the anti-Wall Street-demonstration in front of the Reichstag in Berlin 03:58
2.05 Mural – Fukushima for the Time Being 09:35
2.06 Michael Pisaro / Greg Stuart – The Bell-Maker, from Four Pieces for Recorded Percussion (Il faut attendre) 21:34
2.07 Greg Kelley – Cylindrical Mirror 07:05

Album Mastering and Post Production: Christoph Amann, Amann Studios Vienna.

100% of the funds raised through the sales of this record will go to japanese non-profit organizations.

Presqu’île Shop
ONLINE EDITION

Just creeping out into the weird winter of 2012 is this new collection of tracks published by Avant Archive. Waiting In Poor Lighting introduces some less heavily computerized improvisations, focusing on analog textures given over to amplifiers and amplifier modeling, occasional location recordings hovering like a mirage.

the official line:

Billy Gomberg presents a magnetically warped version of warmth with this recent collection of four pieces. Over two sides, we get exposed to this kind of creeping mixture of hiss and drone that collaborate to create feelings of fondness and anxiety. Probing it reveals almost nothing, but experiencing it yields something wonderful. This music will creep up on you. You will find yourself loving it and wishing you could listen to it all the time. It is discordant and noisy at times, but the warmth makes it feel like a friend. Billy Gomberg is your new best friend.

Anti-Gravity Bunny chimes in:

Absolutely incredible new tape from Gomberg on Avant Archive. Two tracks each side, the first one: drone, then some wonky dynamics. The opening on the A side is a subtle slab of calm, the stillness just before dawn, with an increasing sense of paranoia that the sun might not actually rise, that turns into a meditation on darkness and the possibilites of a world without sun. The B side opener is much more blissful, though just as dark, melancholic organ-type drones bringing down the house with deep rumbles and bittersweet progressions. Both closing tracks are full of echoey weirdness, drifting dreams, sustained tones plunked out and smothered in hiss, the last track depressing as hell, the epitome of loneliness. So so good. And this is one of AA’s limited releases, so you know what to do.

Limited run on cassette available from Avant Archive. Digital available from the Bandcamp link above.

Thanks to Michael Jantz at Avant Archive.

This is my second concert in Chicago since the 90s and my first solo performance in my hometown. So yes I’m very excited and hope many of you can make it.

Here is the official promo.

Begins at 8pm.
$10/8 students/ESS members

Experimental Sound Studio
5925 N. Ravenswood (near Peterson)
Chicago IL, USA

Here’s a lovely note from Peter Margasak at the Chicago Reader:

On his solo albums, including 2009′s Comme (Moar) and last year’s Quiet Barrier (Rest + Noise), Billy Gomberg creates warm, enveloping electronic soundscapes with a touch of abrasive glitchiness, a la late-90s Fennesz. But that’s not to say that this Chicago native, who moved to New York in 2005, makes music that’s nostalgic or imitative. His gently gliding organlike tones form melodies that are alternately sweet and haunting; the drifting ambience is sometimes punctured by percussive blips of static that create ephemeral rhythms, while at other times it undulates with its own pulse. Gomberg begins his recording process by improvising with these familiar elements, and when he’s got enough material he likes, he pares it down and arranges it—with a confident ear for compelling compositional development. A trio of Olivia Block, Carol Genetti, and Katherine Young opens.

Thanks to Liron Unreich + Catherine Chalmers for the diligent and excellent camerawork.

no particular order:

Sic Alps Napa Asylum
Anika Anika
Kurt Vile Smoke Ring For My Halo
Bhob Rainey / Bonnie Jones / Chris Cogburn Arena Ladridos
Beach Fossils Beach Fossils (ok 2010 but it didn’t reach me until this year)
Golden Retriever Emergent Layer and Light Cones (and in concert at Issue Project Room)
3/4 Had Been Eliminated Oblivion
Singer Mindreading
Tetuzi Akiyama & Takuji Kawai Transistion
The Drums Portamento
Gosia Winter & Barry Chabala Ananke
Kenneth Kirschner Twenty Ten
Steve Roden Proximities
Morton Feldman Orchestra
Eva Marie Houben von da nach da
Antoine Beuger (perf. Barry Chabala & Ben Owen) un lieu pour être deux

Special mention to three labels, two of which are repeat offenders on my lists:

SOFA (Norway) and affiliates. I was lucky to spend a chunk of my visit to Paris this spring w/ Kim Myhr and then later in NYC when Mural came by in August. Besides being a gang of gentlemen and great musicians, the label continued, by my ears, to issue essential recordings. In particular, Silencers Balances des Blancs and EMO ALBINO Lady Lord just make me happy, but that’s no slight to microtub (the tuba trio of Robin Hayward, Kristoffer Lo and Martin Taxt) or A Summer’s Night At The Crooked Forest by Sheriffs of Nothingness. Non-SOFA but related releases such as Mural’s Live At Rothko Chapel and Transition de Phase by the group of Jim Denley, Philippe Lauzier, Pierre-Yves Martel, Kim Myhr, and Eric Normand are also delightful. I was treated to concert performances by Streifenjunko, Vertex and Mural (two exceptional deliveries in NYC), as well as a handful of excellent meals in Paris and NYC.

Jon Abbey’s Erstwhile for yet another year brought serious authority to a heavy, ambitious release schedule and truly intense and memorable series of concerts in NYC. To single any particular recording or performance out would be to inevitably overlook another. I don’t even know where to begin. The bar is set very high. Φ, the 3CD master class by Keith Rowe and Radu Malfatti was coda’d by a lovely duo concert. Taku Unami and Takahiro Kawaguchi’s Teatro Assente continued pushing the envelope for recorded improvisation, and was also met by an intense series of highly inventive performances by Unami. These are just the obvious highlights for me, but Amplify:Stones was really just a three week summer camp of excellent and challenging concerts and fine company, followed up by just lovely albums by Greg Kelley/Olivia Block and Jérôme Noetinger/Will Guthrie, illustrating Jon’s impatience with whatever the perception of status quo is this year.

Students of Decay, besides releasing a cassette with my name on it, curated a truly exceptional run of vinyl by Danny Paul Grody, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Caboladies, Aquarelle and Bryter Layter.

Fellow musicians and artists who via their collaboration or presence made my year extra special: Charles Lindsay, Catherine Chalmers, Kim Myhr, Ingar Zach, Jim Denley, Petter Vågan, Tor Haugerud, Radu Malfatti, Takahiro Kawaguchi, David Rothenberg, Thenmorzhi Soundararajan, and Dan Snazelle.

Thanks to Ryan Potts, Alex Cobb, Brad Rose, Kate Carr, Travis Johnson and David Kirby for putting their commitment and resources behind my music this year.

Of course Richard Kamerman and of course of course as always Anne Guthrie.