Category: Uncategorized

Researching the first Artefacts of Australian Experimental Music compilation revealed many startling hidden gems, none more so than the music of Jack Ellitt. Born in Manchester in 1902, his family settled in Sydney 6 years later. He met New Zealand artist Len Lye in 1920, and would become a key collaborator over coming years, composing music and designing sound for Lye’s nascent film experiments. Incredibly, we know now that Ellitt was developing a form of proto-musique concrete using film stock as early as 1930, long before the acknowledged work of Schaefer, etc. A range of circumstances, including what Ellitt perceived as a rejection by listeners of his music and a reclusive personality, led to Ellitt’s astounding work being forgotten or lost.

Much of Ellitt’s music was tragically thrown out after his death in 2001, but four precious works have been collected into the “Sound Constructions” CDR/digital release, including his mind-blowing early-1930s collage work “Journey #1), and his later-life tribute to Len Lye “Homage To Rachel Carson #2” (1987). As with a number of Shame File Music’s archival projects, extensive liner notes are available here.

Use the code ELLITT for 10% off “Sound Constructions” (expires 13 July 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Astasie-abasie is a project of Ian Andrews which evolved out of a long running performance collaboration with Garry Bradbury. The project focuses on the amplification of sounds captured from small objects. Andrews’ contribution to Australian experimental music reaches back to the early 1980s, including projects like The Horse He’s Sick, Kurt Volentine, Cut with the Kitchen Knife and countless others.

On the surface, Astasie-Abasie’s 2021 “Molecular Gamelan” CD resembles something like solemn a Balinese trance-like processions, or intimate temple rituals with minimalist gamelan ensembles. The material is instead derived from a set of chance-based operations designed by Andrews involving the agitation of washers and other small metal objects with a variety of devices, including hand drills, film winders, and motorised screwdrivers. The result is what Vital Weekly described as, “beautiful, Zen-like music”.

A follow-up album “Elliptical Gamelan” is currently in-production for release by Shame File Music in the coming months, on limited edition vinyl and digital (discounted pre-orders now available).

Use the code ASTASIE for 10% off all Astasie-abasie releases (expires 14 July 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

One of the original aims of Shame File Music was to help make my own (then-nascent) music available. Over three decades (!) later, the label and online store has grown to be much more than this, but I still try to make most of my music available through this avenue.

Recommending one’s own music can be a fraught business. Over the years, I’ve moved on pretty quickly from a particular release, not wanting to spend much time with it, even though I was usually satisfied with the end product. My 2021 LP “Relativity/Only” is one exception to this, and remains an album I listen to quite regularly. I think the difference here is that I feel quite removed from the music; I didn’t “play” it, I just set up the situation and allowed it come to life. The music is played by percussion-based sound sculptures driven kinetically by turntables. A lot of care and attention did go into the preparations for each piece; I feel like a guardian and protector of these subtle compositions, rather than a creator.

Use the code GREEN for 10% off all Green-related releases (expires 11 July 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Pauline Oliveros was an American composer and performer whose impact on contemporary music. and listening practice in particular, is immeasurable. From the mid-1960s until her death in 2016, Oliveros was involved in early electronic and tape music experiments, just intonation, and the development of Deep Listening as an approach to both the playing and experience of music.

Shame File Music stocks range of her back catalogue, including solo releases and collaborative works with the likes of Joe McPhee, her Deep Listening Band and The Carrier Band amongst others. It is hard to go past “No Mo”, her astonishing mid-1960s electronic/noise/tape works. The two pieces featured here were recorded in 1966 (at the University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio, and the San Francisco Tape Music Center respectively) using a range of noise and tone generators, tape techniques and a Buchla Series 100 Box. As well as these timeless noise ecologies, her “Tara’s Room: two meditations on transition and change”, with just-intonated accordion and electronics, has been a particular comfort over recent turbulent years. Both are highly recommended.

Use the code OLIVEROS for 10% off all Oliveros-related releases (expires 8 July 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Todd Anderson-Kunert is a sound artist in a very literal sense, in that his work has the sense that he deals directly with sound. His music is constructed by great slabs of tone and timbre, alternately piled methodically on top of each other, or arranged in vast sonic fields like standing stones or Nazca Lines; the components seem relatively simple and unadorned on their own, but the overall combination of the parts creates a momentous impact.

The “When There Is Nothing Left To Say” LP stands out for me amongst Anderson-Kunert’s work, in that it goes beyond his already-impressive aesthetic achievements with his music by packing an emotional punch somehow through the subtle use of deep bass tones. This is minimal industrial music constructed with a great care that belies its monumental form.

Most of Anderson-Kunert’s in-print music is available through Shame File Music on a variety of formats, including vinyl, cassette, CD and digital. Also available is my “In Situ” CDR, a remix/repurposing of an earlier vinyl release of Todd’s

Use the code TODD for 10% off all Anderson-Kunert releases (expires 5 July 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Splinter Orchestra is a radical large-scale improvising collective that has been active in and around Sydney for two decades. The group’s focus and activities have developed over the years to a current practice that includes interaction with natural environments, and playing in remote locations.

The “Mungo” 3CD set documents three days the collective spent in Mungo National Park in outback NSW in 2016. This sprawling album “presents an argument for a creative collective, sensitive to time/space — one that treats all the participants, be they performers, other species, or the wind, as equal players”.

The Melbourne performance collective THIS Ensemble is something of a distant cousin to Splinter Orchestra. Led by Ren Walters, THIS Ensemble was a large-form, multi-disciplinary improvising mass, well-documented in their “Brown Paper Business” 2CD box set. THIS Ensemble also often ventured into rural and remote locations for creative interactions. A subset of the Ensemble in Ren Walters, Clinton Green & Michael McNab camped and played at the Pink Lakes, Murray Sunset National Park in 2015, part of which is documented on their “At The Salt Museum” CD.

These selections paint a picture of collective and contemporary approaches to sounding landscapes.

Use the code SPLINTERTHIS for 10% off all Splinter Orchestra and THIS Ensemble-related releases, as well as “At The Salt Museum” (expires 4 July 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Peter Farrar is a Sydney-based multi-instrumentalist/instrument builder who participates in a number of free-form collectives, including Splinter Orchestra and Prophets. Of his solo cassette “Fabio Pastell 2: More Fabulous Stories”, he writes:

I have many musical interests that seemed to be unrelated, at times almost contradictory. There were no pre-existing musical worlds to accommodate these interests in the one place…

Here at Shame File Music, I hear a lot of strange music, but Farrar’s solo releases have even me exclaiming, “what the hell is that?!” (in a very positive, excited way, of course). “Fabio Pastell 2: More Fabulous Stories” certainly ticks that box. It appears to be a series of pieces incorporating both acoustic and electronic instruments, many automated, into self-generative bands. These “bands” resemble anything from demented brass bands to electro-acoustic ensembles, and everything in between. His solo debut “Avocado” LP/CD produces similarly-astonishing music for extended/modified saxophones (I think, but you never really know).

Use the code FARRAR for 10% off all Farrar-related releases (expires 1 July 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Erkki Veltheim is a composer, sound artist and string player whose music goes to deep places between notes, drawing out whole sonic worlds out of minimal musical materials. His recorded work features across a number of releases stocked by Shame File music, largely as a collaborator and contributor to the work of others, yet a couple of releases feature more-than-substantial contributions.

Veltheim has released three CDs in duo with Anthony Pateras, the standout for me being the most recent “Duos For Other Instruments”. The album features two duos (for viola and celeste, and harpsichord and mandolin respectively) that involve the subtle accumulation of acoustic materials sparking something approaching psycho-acoustic phenomena; is that chiming I’m hearing really there, or is my brain to trying to make sense of the relationship between sounds? It’s a highly recommended, stunning listen from two of Australia’s leading exploratory musician/composers (Veltheim and Pateras’ trio with trumpeter Scott Tinkler – North Of North – also have released two albums of interest).

“Works for Travelled Pianos” features performances by pianist Gabriella Smart of works by Cat Hope and Veltheim. The latter’s “Two New Proposals for an Overland Telegraph Line …” is inspired by the 1st piano to arrive in Alice Springs, Australia, in the 19^th century.

Use the code ERKKI for 10% off all Veltheim-related releases (expires 29 June 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Moe Chee 默契 is a phrase in Mandarin that has no direct English translation, but can variously be interpreted as ‘silent bonding’, ‘unspoken agreement’, ‘mutual understanding’, ‘tacit’, ‘in sync’. Moe Chee was formed in 2014 by Taiwanese performing artist Chun-liang Liu and myself (Clinton Green) around a series of unauthorised performative actions around the grounds of the State Library of Victoria (including a run of 7 performances over 7 days, featuring a mythical 3am performance). In 2015, we toured Taiwan and recorded our debut album around public spaces and other social situations in Taiwan (plus one recording made in Melbourne). “Be It Hot, Humid, Or Ghostly Cold” is an amalgam of field recording, public space performance, conversation, and explorations of the potential for creativity and musicality in everyday life.

Moe Chee have also released the cassette “Testament of the Trinity”, documenting one of their State Library performances (this one on midnight on a Friday night) in collaboration with Jen Callaway. Chun-liang Liu has also released a solo album on Shame File Music “Friction”. Her second solo album will be released on Shame File Music (on digital and cassette) later this year.

Use the code MOECHEE for 10% off all Moe Chee-related releases (expires 28 June 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.

Carolyn Connors is a singer, sound artist, performer and composer whose work has excited and challenged Melbourne audiences for a number of years. She continues to collaborate with a range of artists and improvisers, and explore the limits of vocal performance.

“Surface Noise Vol.9” captures a tour de force solo performance at Make It Up Club in 2012; a thrilling and joyous extended vocal performance with occasional slide whistle, staggering in its range and material covered. A rare solo release from Connors, it is shared with a live performance recording by instrument builder Ernie Althoff from 2015.

The Shame File Music shop also features a recent collaborative project with Terry McDermott using software interfaces and the Federation Bells, on the “Music Under Lockdown: Melbourne 2020” compilation, and 1995’s “Chris Mann & the Impediments” CD, where Connors is joined by other luminaries including Mann, Rik Rue and Jeannie Marsh.

Use the code CONNORS for 10% off all Carolyn Connors-related releases (expires 27 June 2022).

As always, free postage for orders within Australia over $100.