Negative Sound Institute – Official Launch

Verian Thomas, a fellow mixter, and I, launch today the Negative Sound Institute creative commons netlabel.

Here’s our release blurb:

November the 1st: the day Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel opened and also, today, the day Negative Sound Institute opens its doors for downloading. It’s true that there’s no correlation between the two but it seemed worth mentioning.

Our aim is to release music by a variety of different artists to help bring their work to a wide and appreciative audience. We are not bound by genre or even ability but more by our own ideas of what constitutes an aural journey worth experiencing.

All tracks can be streamed, downloaded individually or as a whole and these, together with covers are released under Creative Commons license.

We initially release five EPs, which are as follows:

Artist: Closet Ballerinas
Title: Something Hopeful
Format: Downloadable E.P.
URL: http://www.negativesoundins...

The Closet Ballerinas is an experiment in music from non-musician Chris Short. The result is sometimes pretty and sometimes abrasive, but it leaves a mark. Closet Ballerinas is inspired by other DIY recorders as well as more well known artists such as Flying Saucer Attack and Syd Barrett. Sometimes it is very clear that the action happens with little knowledge of the instruments being played, and at times all flows the way it should.

This is music for people who like their experiments to include small but dotted “i”s.

Track Listing:
Sunrise, Thinking
Olya
Family
Roaring Silence
Louisiana Riverboat Blues
—

Artist: Dava Sobel
Title: Dava Sobel
Format: Downloadable E.P.
URL: http://www.negativesoundins...

Dava Sobel is a one man musical unit working with guitars, percussion, vocals and everyday household objects. ‘It all began on a cold winters day on an old computer. The software and equipment was basic but the ideas were there and so it all began. Different pieces attempt to capture a specific mood or atmosphere. The real aim here is to show that you don’t need a full home studio to enjoy recording music. Just look around your house or your garden to see that anything is possible.’

This is simply a gorgeous album, and deserves a place on any discriminating mp3 player.

Track Listing:
Berzelli Park
Ramsay Sand
Street Five34
Red Horizon Jumping Blue Lights
—
Artist: The Thomas Nunnally Ensemble
Title: Music to read books by
Format: Downloadable E.P.
Release: NSI000002
URL: http://www.negativesoundins...

The Thomas Nunnally Ensemble ploughs the lightly-furrowed midlands of experimental Anglo-American electronica. TNE sets out to prove only intuitive theorems, using intrinsic mystery as its slide rule. The work of TNE is assembled trans-oceanically, rather like a sonar ping deceiving a U-boat three hundred nautical miles west of the Canary Islands. This is musical claymation for the soul, assembled frame by frame, for your listening delight.
Track Listing:
Glimmering
Dead Girl
Ends Of The Earth
Six Feet Up

—
Artist: Gurdonark
Title: A Texas Christmas Holiday with Zikweb Travel
Format: Downloadable E.P.

URL: http://www.negativesoundins...

This album remixes, remolds, and reconstructs four pieces by French artist and mixter member Zikweb, www.zikweb.org.

Variously described as found music, ambient music, weirdbient music or noise, the work of Gurdonark is different things to different people but (his co-founder says) “his skill lies in his ability to create a mood or a feeling that transports the listener to an entirely new place”. In this case the place is Galveston Island which lies off the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico. Herons and mottled duck swim in the shallows among the reeds. Sea trout, flounder and croaker swim in the surrounding waters of Galveston Bay. The pirates LaFitte once established a headquarters on the island, hoping to create a Manhattan on the Gulf of Mexico. Storms, however, consistently battered the island, including in particular the devastating storm of 1900. Today 57,000 people live on this island, and show warm hospitality to holiday travelers.

Track Listing:
Galveston Island in December
—

Artist: Verian Thomas
Title: Down
Format: Downloadable E.P.
URL: http://www.negativesoundins...
With the proliferation of home recording set ups made possible by the ‘computer in every home’ age there is a tendency to use every tool at ones disposal to create music. This E.P eschews any complication and heads straight for mood in a technically simplistic way. Each track is based around piano, which has been treated with only a touch of reverb. In addition to this main instrument there are some low level synthesisers and the occasional odd noise to add to the sound pallet but mixed to not overpower the pianos leading role.

Track List:
Weight of Expectation
What Was Lost
Forgotten
The Price Of Living
in the beginning there was nothing, then there wasn’t
Forgotten (Messed Up Mix)
—

Artist: Verian Thomas
Title: White Eye Light
Format: Downloadable Single.
URL: http://www.negativesoundins...
White Eye Light is the result of experimentation with a newly obtained VST Mellotron instrument, in this instance set to Flute Mode. The two tracks available are a departure from the norm for Verian but the experimentation with the instrument colour subsequent pieces and have led him to explore new ways of constructing music free from the constraints of the conventional.
Track List:
Unconventional Angel Lifeform
Aluminium Lips

We hope you’ll come download our work, enjoy it, share it, and remix it.

best, Robert, who records as gurdonark

Congrats!

*meow*