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 Humming Conch is a label, founded by Christian Roth.
It is a partner project of the netlabel Resting Bell and has its focus on physical releases in various formats (CD, CDr, Cassette, Vinyl). Humming Conch features music in the fields of modern classical, drone, folk, ambient and many more.
All releases on Humming Conch are made with lots of love and in limited editions.
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| Tomas Phillips - Quartet for Instruments |
CD
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Relying predominantly on acoustic instrumentation, Quartet for Instruments compounds exploratory inspiration, precision, and elegance to create a work that is both evocative and absolute.
As a well-versed artist with many distinct styles, Tomas Phillips has released works on such notable labels as Trente Oiseaux, Line, NVO, and Koyuki, as well as having an extensive background in contemporary literature and fine arts.
Created with piano, clarinet, minimal electronics, and cello during a two-month residency program at Headlands Center for the Arts, outside of San Francisco, California, Quartet for Instruments stands as a delicate, yet flourishing example of directional music, set in a gentle, free-flowing pathway.
The piece is very much an extension of Intermission/Six Feuilles (Line, 2006), which attempted to harness various influences into a focused, composition-driven work. Where Quartet for Instruments
differs is in the depth of its arrangement and in the fact that it utilizes recordings (mostly piano and clarinet) of improv. Thus, it operates at the midpoint between composition and improvisation.
Like Intermission/Six Feuilles, it is also a fairly demanding piece in the sense that it relies on an aesthetic of duration with minimal repetition. It does contain movements, though these are not necessarily independent of one another; the piece is intended to function as a singularity with decisive variations.
Release description written by Will Thomas Long and Tomas Phillips
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| 30 - 7 - 2010|
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| Tomas Phillips - Quartet for Instruments |
CD
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Relying predominantly on acoustic instrumentation, Quartet for Instruments compounds exploratory inspiration, precision, and elegance to create a work that is both evocative and absolute.
As a well-versed artist with many distinct styles, Tomas Phillips has released works on such notable labels as Trente Oiseaux, Line, NVO, and Koyuki, as well as having an extensive background in contemporary literature and fine arts.
Created with piano, clarinet, minimal electronics, and cello during a two-month residency program at Headlands Center for the Arts, outside of San Francisco, California, Quartet for Instruments stands as a delicate, yet flourishing example of directional music, set in a gentle, free-flowing pathway.
The piece is very much an extension of Intermission/Six Feuilles (Line, 2006), which attempted to harness various influences into a focused, composition-driven work. Where Quartet for Instruments
differs is in the depth of its arrangement and in the fact that it utilizes recordings (mostly piano and clarinet) of improv. Thus, it operates at the midpoint between composition and improvisation.
Like Intermission/Six Feuilles, it is also a fairly demanding piece in the sense that it relies on an aesthetic of duration with minimal repetition. It does contain movements, though these are not necessarily independent of one another; the piece is intended to function as a singularity with decisive variations.
Release description written by Will Thomas Long and Tomas Phillips
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| released: 7/30/2010 |
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| Ian D Hawgood - Tents and Hills |
CD
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Ian Hawgood needs no introduction. He has released an enormous number of releases under different monikers on countless labels, free mp3’s as well as physical releases. And besides that musical output he also runs three labels.
"Tents and Hills" was released by luvsound back in March 2008 as a 4-track EP. Shortly after the release Ian recorded 4 additional tracks. I first heard the tracks back in 2007 when Ian contacted me to release some of his music on Resting Bell. I fell in love with the first 4 tracks within seconds. The main theme through the whole record is a kind of organic, natural feeling. Especially on the bonus tracks Ian uses field-recordings from hiking and camping, woven together with droning soundscapes.
Enjoy "Tents and Hills" in its wholeness, with about 50 minutes complete duration.
Illustrator Kati Meden also reworked the graphic-design for this CD-edition.
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| released: 3/1/2010 |
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| Tiago Sousa & João Correia - Insónia |
LP
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As founder and main operator of the Merzbau label (pioneering netlabel in Portugal, home to some of the most solid and consequential new names in the portuguese scene, such as Lobster, B Fachada, Noiserv, Frango or Walter Benjamin) Tiago Sousa had always shown an attention to novelty and an healthy disregard for genres or for playing it safe. Merzbau came to an end, earlier this year, having fulfilled its mission and its destiny, with some of it’s front runners attaining considerable attention and even success in the portuguese scene.
Come 2009. Merzbau has reached its end with a feeling of mission accomplished. Tiago Sousa, in the meantime, had assumed a surprising solo career, with the release of Crepúsculo, Noite/Nuit and The Western Lands. Surprising because, and despite the broad aesthetics he revealed as an editor, nothing in that aspect of his life hinted at the direction its own music would take. Far from the indie pop precepts of Noiserv, B Fachada, Jesus The Misunderstood or Mariana Ricardo, and equally distant from Frango’s overt experimentalism or the muscled noise rock of Lobster or Lemur, Tiago’s music took as reference contemporary classical music, though assuming a creative method clearly owing to the ingenuity, simplicity and spontaneity of improvisation. The emotive and restrained melodies he sketched on those records, mainly coming out of his piano, evoke not as much his inside knowledge and living of the highly remarkable last 5 years in portuguese indie or experimental music, but more so his discovery of luminaries such as Erik Satie, Terry Riley, Robbie Basho or Olivier Messiaen, as well as his readings of most of the Beat Generation masters, the political testimonies of H.D. Thoreau and the Situationists or the distant Eastern Philosophy.
So here we are, on the verge of Insónia, Tiago’s fourth record, released by Humming Conch. An album which is almost exclusively fed by the piano, with drums and even some clarinet popping out every now and then, courtesy of guest musicians João Correia and Ricardo Ribeiro. Insónia, recorded in the beginning of the year by american sound-engineer and university teacher Geoffrey Mulder, and mastered by the renowned Taylor Deupree, who runs the 12rec label, is, simultaneously, the record that one anticipated from Tiago (or which awaited Tiago), but also a surprising effort. It is, on one side, a certain pinnacle of the work Tiago had been developing, but it’s surprise lies in the fact that, in a way, nothing had anticipated such an accomplished and emotionally-charged record. The steadiness of its markedly impressionistic meanderings, echoing Debussy or Chopin, and the savoir-faire with which it turns simple and small melodies into crafty hymns of spirituality and meditation, show that this is a nocturnal record, no doubt about that, but also reveal a morning splendor and vigor which materialize on the unstoppable and unresistant propelling of tracks like Passos, and hinted at on the several movements of the chosen single Folha Caduca or the opening track Movimento.
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| released: 11/16/2009 |
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| Summons of Shining Ruins - BIRD REQUIEM |
K7
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Analog Vibrations. That points into the right direction. Summons of Shining Ruins is a project of Shinobu Nemoto, who works with electric guitar, tape delay, old rhythm machines, stompboxes and 4-track-recorders. No computer or software is used to record this work. And you can hear that in every tone.
"BIRD REQUIEM" sounds at the first listen extremly raw. You can not define what you hear in the first moment. But everything sounds a bit haunting, hidden under a layer of dust. But the longer you listen, the more you can feel how warm everything sounds and how spirited this work is.
You can point out subtle melodies, coming to you through this thick curtain build by delay over delay and tone over tone. You can hear the rhythm machine, ticking and rumbling from the past. And at some points you can imaging voices or shapes, floating by.
To follow Shinobu's advice: Listen to it loud and feel the analog vibration.
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| released: 7/1/2009 |
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| Christian Vasseur - Alam |
CD
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| released: 5/28/2009 |
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| Christian Vasseur - Poèmes saturniens |
CD
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| released: 5/28/2009 |
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| Celer - Capri |
CD
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| released: 2/16/2009 |
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