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CD
CONSERVATORY --AQ 09
NINE SUGGESTIONS --AQ 08
PRESENCE --AQ 07
TONGUE --AQ 06
STUN SHELTER --NIFO 01
THE KEENING TOWERS --AQLE 01 SOLD OUT
INFRASOUND-TIDAL --AQ 05 SOLD OUT
PHANTOM BROADCAST --AQ 04
FRESH --AQ 03
NAV --AQ 02
PALACE of MIND --AQ 01

VIDEO
All videos currently sold out

DISTRIBUTION
JOHN DUNCAN: work 1975-2005
OUR TELLURIC CONVERSATION
DA SICH DIE MACHTGIER...
DUNCAN/ ELGGREN/ von HAUSSWOLFF
Z'EV/ DUNCAN/ BAKER/ FEAR FALLS BURNING
ECO E NARCISO: PRESENZE SONORE

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Photo © John Duncan

CONSERVATORY
John Duncan & Paolo Parisi
2005
ISBN 88-8867-45-1
AQ 09
€ 30

Reviews

NINE SUGGESTIONS
John Duncan, Mika Vainio & Ilpo Väisänen
2005
AQ 08
€ 15.50

Reviews

Photo © Giuliana Stefani

Scratch Ring
Volume
The Metallic Conversation
Eliminated: the Stress
Eliminated: the Jolly
Center: Pause
Found...!
The Deepening
The Bristling Haze

John Duncan: shortwave, processing
Mika Vainio: oscillators, processing
Ilpo Väisänen: oscillators, processing
CD in digipak cover
Released by Allquestions

PRESENCE
John Duncan & Edvard Graham Lewis
2004
AQ 07
€ 15.50

Reviews

Photo © John Duncan

PURPOSE STIMULATED
FALL
CYCLE
STEP

John Duncan: processing, shortwave, field recording
Edvard Graham Lewis: voice, words, field recording
CD in special doublefold paper cover
Released by Allquestions

The alternatives still held considerable potential The essential sway or ppphhhhooot!
He felt completely vulnerable
The protection of the narcotic curse was gone
and the inclusive was only empty, black and total
Measuring boundaries is human but...
Faking dreams was God-like...
All purpose stimulated
All presence amplified
It was like this
That was understandable
-- Edvard Graham Lewis

Photo © Giuliana Stefani

TONGUE
John Duncan & Elliott Sharp
2004
AQ 06
€ 15.50

Reviews

As Joan LaBarbara titled her ancient LP, "Voice is the original instrument" - so what happens when you open that instrument bringing out its components? This question is answered by Duncan and Sharp in "Tongue": using voices as source plus shortwave and processing as coagulant, John and Elliott hallmark your listening space with plumbeous halos of slowed harmonics and intense confluences of spectral deflagrations. The tracks where the vocals are evidently recognizable are absolutely spectacular in their power - imagine enormous Tuva singers bursting out in a hell of rotors; on the other hand, shortwave and treatments often bring a complete timbal deforestation, rearranging the ear's domain according to unpredictable leaderships and patterns. Again, gurgling guttural beast utterances get modified, losing their identity through artificial leakages while the strength of tampered low frequencies makes way to the total reassertion of a stationary, fearful status quo. Mind-bogglingly innovative, this music is going to resist the hard test of passing time: it must be considered an important stepping stone in both artists' history.
-- Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

Photo © Ela Bialkowska

STUN SHELTER
John Duncan & Carl Michael von Hausswolff
2003
NIFO-01
€ 27.

Reviews

John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff have been operating in an ever-changing creative sphere for more than twenty years, expressing themselves through diverted codes, overdone to the point of absurdity, yet subtly tacit and keenly mingled. The rhythm of their art stems from a strong vision, from an aesthetic journey resulting from extreme and accurate personal experiences; the variability of the rhythm represents the unbalance caused by doubt as the element that unceasingly questions certainty. Their activities spread out in countless directions, taking in conventional style in order to immediately subvert it. The subversion mostly involves the conventional perception and contextual location of expressive forms, complying with the need for a boundless creative fluency.

For the exhibition in Prato, the artists have agreed to arrange their works in the same exhibition space: a strong impact and a finely expressed sensitivity are features of these two installations. John Duncan's See is a video installation made up of four separate and simultaneous projections of sequences taken from the John See Series, a series of adult movies he directed in 1986-87 during his stay in Japan. On entering the dark exhibition space, the viewer is assailed by immense flashes of images and sound cut-ups... In those moments in which the sound is softer, a voice emerges, whispering Japanese phrases until it is drowned once again by the wave of louder sounds. Carl Michael von Hausswolff's Thinner & Low Frequency Bar / Glue & High Frequency Lounge consists of two bars made of steel and glass on which lie bottles and cans containing volatile substances... glue and thinner. On the bar two oscillators produce frequencies varying in intensity, whose sound penetrates the ears altering normal perception levels. Both works fill the space perfectly, one by means of strong images (See), the other through the substances shown. The attention level is at its maximum in attempts to grasp the Japanese whispering (See) and the ghost-sounds of the oscillators (Thinner Bar...), defying the threshold of audibility as they act on the unconscious.
-- Daniela Cascella, extract from the catalogue

Photo © Giuliana Stefani

THE KEENING TOWERS
2003
AQ-LE 01

SOLD OUT

John Duncan

CD and 20 page booklet with photographs of the installation by Giuliana Stefani in a plastic DVD box Released by Allquestions in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies

Using exclusively children's voices as a source, John Duncan created a soundscape which you can rack your brain on, trying unsuccessfully to find something similar in avantgarde music recent history; maybe, just maybe, Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna" could be a sonic comparison. Children's voices mill around without a fixed place, like in a subterranean yet airy chorale; treated vocal components bring clucking, breathing and moaning upon a constantly changing wall of notes, at times sounding like a takeoff or a brainstorm, broken twice by several minutes of a screaming kid into a "repeat" delay, the result like a crazed flock of seagulls. When confronted with this almost primal scream, you desperately try to get a grip on your stricken nerves but it's just clutching at straws: you have to face the hard reality of being able to do nothing. Freezing emotions out of your being doesn't work, as you're submerged by them and come out as if baptized in your own silent sorrow. As far as the composition is concerned, nary a moment in this piece finds you stopping and thinking about the process: you're just overwhelmed and nailed to the seat by John's vision, using a single element to its maximum effect: the economy of means becomes a fundamentally rich sound environment.
-- Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

INFRASOUND-TIDAL
John Duncan
2003
AQ 05
€ 15.50
SOLD OUT
Reviews

CD in special gatefold paper cover
Released by Allquestions

Tidal
Barometric
Seismic

Photo © Giuliana Stefani

The sound sources of Duncan's new work is a series of infrasound recorded by Australian researcher Densil Cabrera, taken from tides, atmospheric pressure, seismic movements. The album is quite spacial, revealing its splendor only after assiduous listening (headphones recommended). Perplexing at first is the contrast between the beginning/end, fruit of a rich sonoric dynamism, and a central zone that seems static: a staticness amplified by the strong contrast with the sounds that frame it. The piece starts with ten minutes of variations around a central sound that expands into diverse harmonics; the sound is faceted, the bass creates unusual acoustic effects of echoic resonance. It finishes with a meandering drone that recalls Duncan's most recent work. It's really the central section however, so static, that costitutes the hinge of this composition: the person who listens and allows it to absorb, discovers tiny unexpected audio events. Duncan's intention is to suggest the atmosphere of scientific research: the isolation, the long flow of eventless moments before arriving at a relevant discovery. It's actually this sonic fabric at the limits of monotony, mirroring the accumulation of days without results, that add weight and importance to each successive listening. INFRASOUND-TIDAL is a voyage approaching timelessness.
-- Daniela Cascella, Blow Up

PHANTOM BROADCAST
John Duncan
2002
AQ 04
€ 15.50

Reviews

CD in special gatefold paper cover
Released by Allquestions

Shortwave

Photo © Giuliana Stefani

Following the records made in collaboration with Francisco L�pez and the instrumental ensemble Zeitkratzer, John Duncan returns to solo work and to exploring further the sound source he's always preferred, shortwave. We know nothing about the actual radio transmission that Duncan picked up on 18 April 2002 in the course of a single recording that gave life to this work. Only shadows remain, taking on the aspect of bells, resonating into infinity, together with reverberations and apparent choruses that stretch into emptiness. In some sections it seems as if you're listening to the ghost of a choral composition, a complex construction cut off from our senses with only a reflection given to savor, which alternately thins out and becomes dense, almost like breath. Duncan's ability to accumulate tension and energy is striking, even without dramatic passages or resolutions; PHANTOM BROADCAST could be read as a paradoxical, infinite extension of a single climactic moment, because the climax itself has force and incisiveness, unravelling in an infinite series of declinations and minimal tonal variations. The use of sounds trouv� (the reference to Surrealism is taken from Duncan himself, who compares this work to a process of automatic writing) seems to urge us to explore that which passes by us instead of ignoring it, and with extreme delicacy manages to discover folds of irridescent sound.
-- Daniela Cascella, Blow Up

FRESH
Performances by zeitkratzer
Composed and conducted by John Duncan
2002
AQ 03/x-t 2005
€ 15.50

Reviews

CD in special gatefold paper cover
Released by Allquestions and x-tract

NAV-FLEX
TRINITY

zeitkratzer
Ulrich Krieger (saxophones)
Franz Hautzinger (trumpet)
Melvyn Poore (tuba)
Alexander Frangenheim (double bass)
Michael Moser (cello)
Burkhard Schlothauer (violin)
Luca Venitucci (accordion)
Ray Kaczynski (percussion)
Reinhold Friedl (piano)
Marcus Waibel (sound, electronics)

Photo © Giuliana Stefani

Duncan's usual base materials are treated 'electronic' sounds taken from non-musical sources -- shortwave signals, or the emissions of a linear particle accelerator, for example. Zeitkratzer is a ten piece featuring conventional strings, percussion and brass, plus one member credited with electronics. The music works its surprises by filtering acoustically produced drones and objectified sounds through an electronic aesthetic. The results have an oddly removed effect. Zeitkratzer and Duncan appear to share an interest in the sheer plasticity of acoustic sound, and the pursuit of this interest takes them into some remarkable spaces. "NAV-FLEX", originally for shortwave signals, is dominated by wavering strings and breathy saxophone coalescing into an unstable drone. Making a point of its circularity, its principal looping sound is set against the shifting textural material collecting at its periphery. Its forward movement, such as it is, derives from the mobility of its marginal elements. "TRINITY" is even better: full of suppressed menace, it mixes episodes of surging, pitchblending drone with harsh noise that then modulates into distressed accordion tones. Three minutes from the end the tension is diffused, as the piece dissolves into insubstantial gusts of breath. Under Duncan's conducting, the ever resourceful zeitkratzer have pulled off two more provocative feats of sonic transposition.
-- Will Montgomery, The Wire

NAV
John Duncan and Francisco López
2001
AQ 02
€ 30.

Reviews

Data files
Shortwave

Double CD in doublefold digipak cover released by .absolute. and Allquestions

Not content with the material that won them an Honorable Mention at the 2000 Prix Ars Electronica, Duncan and López have completely recomposed this work to two CD's, NAV-FLEX (Duncan) and NAV-gate (López), by adding each others' sources to their own.

With two names like these, it's guaranteed. The first of the two CD's, NAV-gate, presents Lopez and Duncan chiselling vibrations that are often suspended at the limit of the audible, and it's true that playback via headphones brings discoveries to the ear that speakers not in a setting of total silence don't catch. The color of the sound seems dark, galactic, in a limbo that contains spirits now ready to make the leap to the center of the earth, to know once and for all the origin of its continuous tremors. A few percussive touches seperate the parts, and in the end you'll find yourself disoriented, needing to understand yet aware of invisible forces new to us. The second disk, NAV-FLEX, starts off from a sort of electroacoustic 'lightning', a dry flash of frequencies that start together as a chord, but then are divided, chasing each other and almost disappearing, only to return and show themselves in the distance, meteorites not flying wild but driven by the same great centripetal force that sends the mind and body to absolute unity: the achievement of perfection.
-- Massimo Ricci

Photo © Giuliana Stefani

PALACE of MIND
John Duncan and Giuliana Stefani
2001
AQ 01
€ 15.50

Reviews

Data files
Shortwave
Voice

CD in textured doublefold heavy paper cover

PALACE of MIND follows a labyrinthine architectural schematic which parallels not only the minute circuitry of the computer but also the rhizomatic synaptic connections of the brain. With the movement from an irritable data-stream purity to the gossamer haze of shortwave distortion to gaping drones of treated vocal vibrato, Duncan and Stefani have set a trajectory deep into the heart of their sonic architecture. Each room is saturated with an anxiousness for what may be on the other side of the door. It is not Duncan firing a gun at your head, but an interlocking network of chambers that resonate and breathe with a profound beauty.
-- Jim Haynes, The Wire

JOHN DUNCAN
Work: 1975-2005
Published by Errant Bodies
2006
ISBN-10: 0-9772594-2-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-9772594-2-7
€ 20.00

Reviews

Contributions by Daniela Cascella, Leif Elggren, Cosey Fanni-Tutti,
Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Mike Kelley, Brandon LaBelle,
Paul McCarthy, Tom Recchion, Takuya Sakaguchi and Giuliana Stefani.

102 page book with b/w and full color images.
Designed by Marco Brollo (STUN SHELTER)
Audio CD mounted on back cover

CD tracks:
CREED
RIOT
TRINITY
CRUCIBLE
THE GOSSAMER DISPATCH

OUR TELLURIC CONVERSATION
Released by 23Five
2006
23Five 08
€ 16.00

40 page booklet with full color images.
Audio CD mounted in slimline jewelcase.
Slipcase in rubber coated paper with title embossed in braille.

...Like a Lizard
Entry (enhanced)
Yet Another (Very) Brief and Linear History of the Planet as We Know It

JOHN DUNCAN/ LEIF ELGGREN/ CARL MICHAEL von HAUSSWOLFF
Released by Die Stadt
2004
DS 64
€ 8.50

7 inch vinyl with full color printed cover in plastic slipcase.

The Gossamer Dispatch (Duncan)
The Cobblestone Is Still the Weapon of the Proletariat (Elggren)
The Way the Breeze Lays (von Hausswolff)

DA SICH DIE MACHTGIER...
Released by Die Stadt
2004
DS 65
€ 16.50

Audio CD in digipak cover with printed inserts.

Z'EV/ JOHN DUNCAN/ AIDAN BAKER/ FEAR FALLS BURNING
Released by Die Stadt
2005
DS 85
€ 18.50

2x 7 inch + 2CD with full color printed covers in plastic slipcases.

ECO E NARCISO: PRESENZE SONORE
Bruno Dorella/ Marco Milanese/ Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo
John Duncan/ Valerio Tricoli
Jacob Kirkegaard
Stephan Mathieu
Steve Roden

Released by Eco e Narciso
2006
€ 10

CD with full color 35 page booklet in 4-panel digipak cover.
Limited stock