Jüppala Kääpiö – ‘Animalia Corolla’ CD
Most of us are living in an urban world, dominated by constant noise and contagious stress. Our ears are conditioned by this aggressive environment and have often lost the ability to perceive another discreet world surrounding us. It might be hidden but also swarming, vivid and incredibly musical. We are all able to prick up our ears to some birds chattering together, the wind shaking leaves, toads singing serenades or old spirits telling us their immemorial adventures… Since its creation in 2006, Jüppala Kääpiö has tried to substantiate what they were hearing and feeling from animals, plants or even minerals that they met in their living places in different countries and during travels in different continents. “Animalia Corolla” is a record of feasts of spirits gathered from the whole world. Their songs, dances and conversations about the synchronicity of their dreams have been transcribed in this album. Jüppala Kääpiö is a Swiss and a Japanese duo. They settled in Brussels in Belgium in summer 2011 after staying in Switzerland , Canada, Mongolia and Japan. The life in multicultural/lingual situations naturally gave to their music a style which might be called cosmopolitan folklore music.
Hitoshi Kojo – ‘Omnimoment’ CD
Omnimoment is a collection of Hitoshi Kojo’s site-specific soundworks that were originally presented as installations or live-installation/performances between 2006 and 2009. All the works were created for a particular location by using objects that were found in and around that location, mixed with environmental sound. They were presented in long durations, from two hours to ten weeks, via multi-channel speaker systems, blending with the acoustic sound and resonance of the space. For this CD, the works have all been edited and re-composed in stereo using the partial documents of the respective projects. He intends this CD to stand alone as a work in its own right, without necessary reference to the original situations. However the basic structures and the original sounds that were created at (for) the actual situations have been retained as much as possible. The booklet contains bilingual texts (English and Japanese) about each original project.