pan y rosas release entrance to hades by alexei borisov and jelena glazova

Alexei Borisov was born in Moscow on December 7, 1960 and graduated from the Moscow State University where he studied History and Arts. His controversial performing career as a guitarist began in 1980 in the new-wave group, Center. The following year he formed the mod-band, Prospekt, which transformed into the shifting Notchnoi Prospekt in 1985. After the dissolution of Notchnoi Prospekt in the mid 1990s, he surfaced again in the “noise reconstruction and techno acoustics” duo F.R.U.I.T.S. with Pavel Zhagun as well as in various art/noise/industrial/impro acts like Sever, Joint Committee, Atomic Bisquit Orchestra, New Russian Alternative, Gosplan trio and more. He is a co-founder of the N&B Research Digest label and curates the international festival of experimental music, Noise and Fury. He also works as a DJ in clubs and on various radio stations in Russia and abroad.

Jelena Glazova is a sound/visual artist and poet from Riga, Latvia. She works in interdisciplinary areas of contemporary art – combining image, poetic text, experimental sound and installation in her pieces and performances. Her sphere of activity in experimental music is drone/noise, usually constructed from processed vocals. As a conceptual artist she relies on her voice as a generator, heavily altering and manipulating it through digital processing. She considers this destruction of the vocal element as a way of expressing unpronounced speech – connecting it with her practice as a poet. As a visual artist, Jelena works with physicality which extends her sound art paradigm.

Their first album as a duo for pan y rosas was recorded in Moscow and Riga in 2023 with tapes, electronics, processed vocals, laptops, and controllers. The sound contains long form drone electronics with squelches, bends and swells.

Get the album here!

pan y rosas release DJ Protestant by Violeta Garcia and Brice Catherin

Violeta García is a cellist, composer and curator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She performs in many art forms including free improvisation, contemporary and trans-media experimental repertoire in violoncello and electronic music. In 2015 she founded a digital label and music series called TVL-REC, which is devoted to publishing new music, experimental groups and collectives from Latin America and organizing shows and festivals of noise and extreme music in Latin America and Europe.

Brice Catherin willingly stepped away from the contemporary music institutions in order to very freely develop a few activities: multi-instrumental cellist, improviser, composer and art performer. These activities feed into each another, so that beyond his multidisciplinary shows and improvised concerts, Brice has never stopped composing and premiering written pieces. Most of his recent projects explore the idea of democracy in art: the artists’ individual responsibilities and their place in the social group, as well as those of the members of the audience, are challenged and questioned.

Violeta and Brice brought their cello visions together for a freely improvised joint effort. Their first album as a duo is a unique trip of noise and extended string techniques in an immersive, dark winter. Fog, wood, and love surround these two Libra October-born, beautiful, humans.

Get the album here!

pan y rosas release este instante by Omar Grandoso!

Omar Grandoso was born in Buenos Aires. He plays piano and trombone among other instruments. He has participated in many projects with different ensembles and plays regularly with many musicians in improvisation contexts. In addition to playing with free music groups, he also works within experimental films and contemporary dance; making compositions for theater, visual arts and multimedia. He is an activist in the musicians’ organization, MO – Músicos Organizados, that tries to both improve the work conditions of musicians and to strengthen their ties with the community.

To avoid the fear brought on by the Covid pandemic and Omar concentrated on playing the electric piano in his room. After restrictions were lifted in Buenos Aires he scheduled two record sessions at a studio and tried to recreate what he had been doing in his room. He improvised and let other musics (and musics of others) simply appear in the improvisation. After letting the work sit for a time, he began working to condense the recording experience into an instant of the present. Este instante is an effort to converge memories from the past with visions of the future in a small particle of time called music.

Get the album here!

Jefferson Park EXP with tay_ploops and Jenna Junk – December 12, 2pm

In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday December 12 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

Jessica Gabriel is a multidisciplinary artist, puppeteer, life model, permaculturalist, poet, clown, currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Her project tay_ploops is based on tape loops and other textures.

https://jessicagabriel.ca/

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Jenna Boyles aka Jenna Junk is an interdisciplinary artist and magnet for things no one else wants. Joyfully defying landfills, she gleans sound from objects labeled “trash” and “obsolete.” Rewiring old electronics and embedding conductive textiles into trash instruments, she articulates the ubiquity and resonance of unwanted things. Touching upon the resilience and power of memory held within material, her performances play between the sensitivity and unpredictability of squishy-bodies and hard-wired machines. She received her MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018 and BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. Her costumes and illuminated objects have appeared in parades and forests, on rivers and beaches. Jenna has performed at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago IL and was a recent New Media Artist in residence at Mana Contemporary Chicago.

https://jennaboyles.com/

IG: @jennajunk

pan y rosas release ribcage/davidsongs by cut a lonely figure!

Cut A Lonely Figure (formerly known as Thank You, Merciless Onlookers) is the musical alias of Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records founder David McNamee.

His new album for pan y rosas consists of two pices. ribcage is a longform brutalist piano composition figuratively depicting two pianos being slowly pulled apart and then pushed back together over the course of its pounding 23-minute runtime. The second piece, davidsongs, is a medley of semi-improvised pieces for chamber organ and piano that functions as a sort of comedown or balm from the intensity of the a-side.

Get the album here!

Jefferson Park EXP with Visda Goudarzi/Anna Xambó and Gerard Roma – November 21, 2pm

In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday November 21 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

‘immerse in the lake’ is a remote live coding performance for two laptop performers distributed on two different continents. The performance is based on processing sound generated by crowdsourced and personal site-specific field recordings from Chicago throughout the year. The piece is a real-time improvisation and a free interpretation of John Cage’s ‘A Dip in the Lake’.

Visda Goudarzi and Anna Xambó started this collaboration in summer 2021 for the performance “Livesourcing: Audience Participation in a Live Coding Performance” premiered at Ear Taxi Festival, Chicago, IL, USA. https://youtu.be/FQXAOBvSZBk

Visda Goudarzi is a computer musician working at the intersection of audio and human-computer interaction. Her research interests include sound and music computing, live coding, and data sonification, sound synthesis, and the application of new media in art. She designs and performs using interactive and participatory sonic interfaces. Her sonic works include live electronic performances, live coding and data driven sound. She is an Assistant Professor of Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College Chicago.

https://www.colum.edu/academics/faculty/detail/visda-goudarzi.html

Anna Xambó is an experimental electronic music producer and researcher. Her research and practice focus on sound and music computing systems looking at novel approaches to collaborative, participatory, and live coding experiences. To date, she has released three solo recordings: “init” (2010, Carpal Tunnel), “On the Go” (2013, Carpal Tunnel) and “H2RI” (2018, pan y rosas). Her solo and group performances have been presented internationally in Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in music and audio technology at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK) and a member of the Music, Technology and Innovation – Institute of Sonic Creativity (MTI^2).

http://annaxambo.me

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Gerard Roma investigates the inner life of sounds by poking at computers and other electronic circuits. His work often involves digital transformation of recorded sound textures coerced into algorithmic forms via live coding and self-made audio-visual instruments.

https://g-roma.github.io

Jefferson Park EXP with Becky Grajeda/Beth McDonald and Oblivious Newton Jon – November 13, 2pm

In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Saturday November 13 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

Becky Grajeda and Beth McDonald first started collaborating in the mid-2010’s, performing several pieces with a variety of musicians, speakers, and actors. After the social and artistic isolation of 2020, they were eager to collaborate on a new project, but didn’t feel safe to resume in-person performance in front of audiences. This facilitated a rare opportunity to explore sound worlds both new and old, without the deadline of a particular performance date or artistic goal. This recording is one waypoint on this exploration, and is the result of several months of improvisation, research, and drinking seltzer.

http://www.beckygrajeda.com/
https://bethtuba.com/

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Jon Strasheim’s project Oblivious Newton Jon began in 2018 as an outlet for Jon to explore the relationships between sound, noise, and music through a set of lenses different than he had previously used in his music career. Using electrical power noise as the source sound, Jon processes this noise through multiple series of effects pedals that operate as a sort of makeshift synthesizer. Accompany Jon as he attempts to navigate his way home from his explorations of noises interacting with each other in their overlapping circles of harmony and chaos.

https://obliviousnewtonjon.bandcamp.com/

Jefferson Park EXP with Reid Karris and Janna Lee – November 7, 2pm


In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday November 7 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

Reid Karris is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound enthusiast and improviser hailing from Chicago, Illinois trying very hard to get all the music stuck in his head out for all the world to hear. After spending years as an odd guitarist trying to fit in with the world of rock music Reid shifted his focus towards improvisation, noise, drone and avant-garde. His primary instruments for doing so are prepared guitar and drum kit sent through electronics.

https://reidkarris.bandcamp.com/

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Janna Lee is a Chicago-based noise artist and dancer. Her current projects include Snek Trio with Reid Karris and Erik Sowa, and Obsequies with Corey Lyons. She also performs and records solo as Mother Wound.

https://jannaleemusic.bandcamp.com/

pan y rosas release Where The Wind Takes Us by Trio CZW

Trio CZW are improviser, composer and jazz musician Paul Cheneour (flutes) who invokes aspects of classical Indian and Persian music, composes for film and performs with—amongst others—the Zen Bicycle Band and ‘Whereness’; the British-Colombian composer Alistair Zaldua (e-violin) – whose recent work has focused on the interplay between notation and improvisation; and experimental musician Maureen Wolloshin (oboe and cor anglais) – who works between notation, improvisation, composition and performance. They describe their collaborative practice as ‘cartographism’: improvisations that are informed by graphic and text scores that can be imagined as maps and allows them to explore, traverse and uncover dynamic spaces.

Based in Canterbury, UK, Trio CZW have been active since 2019 and, as an offshoot of the Free Range Orchestra, emerged from the Free Range Experimental Music Concert Series in Canterbury, UK. Like FRO, the influences of Trio CZW comprise experimental jazz and free improvisation, live electronic music, and experimental sound poetry.

Where The Wind Takes Us is a suite of improvisations inspired by sonic paintings, graphic notation, or titles created during the covid-19 lockdown in the UK. The performances evoke the isolation and stasis the trio experienced during this period, together with the energy and enjoyment of playing together in the beautiful surroundings of St. Mary of Charity Church in Faversham, a traditional Kentish market town, close to Canterbury, where Maureen lives. The recordings were made in single takes using two ambient microphones positioned to capture the acoustic quality of the building and the natural sounds of the instruments within it.

Get the album here!

pan y rosas release dirty dialogues by dirty electronics ensemble, jon.ogara, and anna xambó!

Dirty Electronics focuses on shared experiences, ritual, gesture, touch and social interaction. In Dirty Electronics, process and performance are inseparably bound. The ‘performance’ begins on the workbench devising instruments and is extended onto the stage through playing and exploring these instruments. This time around the ensemble consists of John Richards, Amit D Patel aka Dushume, Audrey Riley, Sam Topley, Harry Smith, Zach Dawson, Robin Foster, Jacob Myer Braslawsce, Ben Middle, Samuel Warren, Matt Rogerson. Photo by Susanne Grunewald.

Jon.Ogara started his musical path by learning the flute at school and discovered the delights of classical music. He studied electronics at the University of Manchester with a focus on radio communications. At university, he learnt the guitar and started to create more independent rock music, influenced by bands such as The Fall or Cabaret Voltaire. He discovered the saxophone and Jazz and started to bring together ideas of Jazz improvisation into his composition. With the development of the internet and connected devices, he started to explore the world of experimental music and began to share ideas and compositions.

Anna Xambó is a researcher and musician with a background in computer science engineering, digital humanities and digital arts. She completed her phd in 2015 (the open university), specializing in music computing and HCI, and is currently a senior lecturer in music and audio technology (de Montfort University). Her musical practice includes live coding, multichannel spatialization, tangible music, collaborative interfaces, audience participation with mobile devices, and intelligent music systems for music performance. She has performed internationally and works actively in the music tech and experimental electronic music scenes as a co-founder of the online music record label Carpal Tunnel in Barcelona (Spain); as co-founder of Women in Music Tech at Georgia Tech (USA); as co-founder of Women Nordic Music Technology (Norway); and as a co-organizer of international concerts.

Dirty Dialogues documents a live encounter between Dirty Electronics Ensemble, Jon.Ogara and Anna Xambó in a free music improvisation session after a long pandemic lockdown. Thirteen musicians on stage combining analogue and digital instruments, acoustic and electronic materials, live coding and DIY sound-making techniques. An intense polymorphic journey of sonic exploration and chaos, which is especially recommended for noise music lovers. This album was recorded on May 17, 2021 at PACE (De Montfort University) with no audience due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Get the album here!