mimaroglu music sales ☞ artists ☞ brendan murray

.home.

.artists.

.labels.

.new.

.restocks.

.best.

.faq.

.blog.

previous artist: john murphy		there are 8 titles featuring brendan murray in stock. they are listed below.		next artist: heather leigh murray

$10.01

back in stock as of
june 17th, 2009

first in stock on
march 3rd, 2009

threads:
digital-musics
electro-acoustic-composition
minimalism-drones

23five incorporated (usa) #23five ltd 03 cd

brendan murray “live free or die” compact disc recordable

live free or die (37:08)

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "live free or die"

february 2009 release ; micro-edition disc covering a new piece by brendan murray (the new hampshire twin to “commonwealth’s” massachusetts) released to coincide with his appearance at this year’s activating the medium festival, where he’ll appear alongside tony conrad debuting a new collaboration with film-maker paul clipson ...

brendan’s in fine form ; over the 37-odd minutes of rising & subsiding sound, a frozen cloud of hostile electricity takes root, mutating into a pretty harsh mist before dropping out suddenly, allowing the piece to begin again from scratch in a more “friendly” form ... as a slightly dissonant master-chord rises to the fore, it’s augmented by a 1/4 tone variant of itself, causing a rupture in harmonic activity (my ears started buzzing in a very odd way right at this moment - listen to the sound-sample) before the tides subside and filter away ...

life-affirming work ; highly recommended !!!

23five incorporated press release...

brendan murray
live free or die
23five incorporated cd-r

the title of this piece by boston's minimalist composer brendan murray harkens to the motto of new hampshire and follows up the commonwealth album for 23five as a variation on the same theme. in fact, murray has resampled his slowly modulated commonwealth through various effects pedals to reconstitute a wholly different composition, albeit with a similar chromatic timbre. live free or die ascends to several crescendos through the harmonic drone, the first of which crashes to near silence whilst the second gently glides toward the conclusion. murray's precise use of tone and color situate his work again near that of phill niblock and eliane radigue, but the compositional strategies align him with his contemporaries in francisco lopez and the hafler trio.

note. this is a micro-edition of 50 copies, in support of brendan's 2009 performance for 23five at the activating the medium festival.

$13.44

back in stock as of
june 17th, 2009

first in stock on
april 23rd, 2008

threads:
electro-acoustic-composition
minimalism-drones
digital-musics

23five incorporated (usa) #23five 013 cd

brendan murray “commonwealth” compact disc

commonwealth (49:06)

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "commonwealth"

april 2008 release ; new music from mms perennial brendan murray (recently fêted in the wire - way to go brendan !!!) - a single monolothic piece of pure drone-ascension, constructed out of guitar & analogue synthesizer materials into an impeccable wall of rising sound ...

with this album it’s clear that brendan has hit his stride ; the psycho-acoustic interference resultant from his mathematically proportioned tone combinations (i’m sending a definite phill niblock influence ...) absolutely bubbles over ; listening to this @ a fair clip on the recently refurbished mms in-house sound system revealed layer after layer of interlocking beat-frequency-lineage motion, onion-skin style, entirely dependent on where i stood in the room (ala lamonte young’s “dream house” installation, only with two channels !!!) ...

in my mind, no one else is currently working anywhere near the level of care/control as brendan in long-form sound - this is simply a joy to behold & something that warrants repeat listening(s) ... highly recommended !!!

23five incorporated press release...

brendan murray
commonwealth

in recent years, brendan murray has become a central figure in boston’s sound art vanguard through a reputation of exceptional live performances and a growing catalogue of slow-shifting compositions for rarified drones. he sets himself apart from the conventional wisdom that drone-based music is an open-ended exercise into the “realm of the infinite.” murray specifically shapes his repetitions and sinewy tonalities within the rigors of compositional frameworks and temporal restraints. this process does not lend itself to speed, as previous albums required up to four years to complete and commonwealth endured over fifteen drafts before murray perfected the album.

a single crescendo terminating at the end of 49 minutes, commonwealth is an epic investigation into subtle harmonics and overtones expressed through layered slippages of pure sound. conceived through guitar, analog synthesis, and plenty of digital manipulation, commonwealth expresses a rare confidence in murray’s finely tuned detailing of sinewy tonalities and sculpted megalithic surfaces. murray himself has qualified this album as a “sincere bow to ‘classic’ minimalism,” and commonwealth is a worthy parallel to the work of phill niblock, eliane radigue, and iannis xenakis.

founded in 1993, 23five incorporated is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound works in the public arena, and to the support and education of artists working with and discussing the medium of sound. for the past 14 years, 23five incorporated has remained at the forefront in bringing the most adventurous elements of sound art to the san francisco bay area. 23five has served as an important benefactor to artists such as john duncan, christina kubisch, francisco lopez, achim wollscheid, matt heckert, zbigniew karkowski, atau tanaka, and many more.

$13.44

back in stock as of
may 21st, 2009

first in stock on
december 15th, 2006

threads:
minimalism-drones
electro-acoustic-composition
digital-musics
harsh-noise

intransitive (usa) #int 027 cd

brendan murray “wonders never cease” compact disc

hymn one (10:15)
seize (11:42)
hymn two (2:59)
seas (19:42)
hymn one (reprise) (4:34)

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "hymn one"

what a great way to kick off 2007 (or whatever year this currently happens to be) - with this, brendan murray’s epic “wonders never cease” on intransitive, finally available after several print/press mishaps and my own delays in getting the master to the label after the great hd crash of 2006...

i put brendan up there amidst the grand pantheon of gradient-shift composers due to his meticulous nature and sharp, procedural sense. to call any one of these 5 pieces “static” would be missing a large part what makes this music so extraordinary; the small, almost imperceivable details lurking under the formal overlay - the bubbling upper-harmonic buildup at each piece’s crescendo - the cumulative nature of the individual sounds as they gain momentum throughout.

anyone with even a passing interest in the more horizontal planes of contemporary electronic composition will be bowled over by the sheer force of sound by record’s end. i give this one, to you, my highest recommendation.

intransitive press release...

int027 brendan murray wonders never cease cd

four years in the making, the music of brendan murray’s latest/greatest album of cinematic drone anthems, wonders never cease, was honed during live concerts around new york and new england. recorded in situ, each track was painstakingly (re)assembled and embellished back at murray’s studio. while it cannot accurately be called a ‘live album’, the adrenaline thrill of live performance is palpable as soon as the opening howl charges out from the speakers. from the laminal scorch of the opening track, through an electric fizz storm and a breathy hymn for what sounds like harmonica and folding chairs (?), the eyes-wide-open bliss of wonders is exhilarating. soulful, melodic and intimate, this is electro-acoustic music as gloriously life-affirming and natural as a sunrise.

• brendan murray’s third album, following last year’s critically acclaimed resting places cd (sedimental, 2005).
• murray will headline a concert in boston on new year’s eve presented by the city of boston, and also featuring birchville cat motel, kapotte muziek, and keith fullerton whitman.
• european tour with tomas korber and mike shiflet in early 2007 with stops in the uk, france, switzerland, belgium, germany, the netherlands.
• for fans of william basiniski, greg davis, birchville cat motel, nobukazu takemura and andrew chalk.

intransitive recordings.

electronic music for people who like that sort of thing, est.1996

$12.61

back in stock as of
february 26th, 2009

first in stock on
september 12th, 2007

threads:
electro-acoustic-composition
minimalism-drones
musique-concrète

sedimental (usa) #sed 049 cd

brendan murray / seth nehil “sillage” compact disc

ebb/cess (3:07)
runs toward needles (3:29)
clothes tear (6:23)
underneath a portrait (4:38)
wake of scent (1) (2:48)
wake of scent (2) (3:17)
feet wrap around chair (9:59)
waving (9:11)

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "underneath a portrait"

superlative collaboration between brendan murray and seth nehil; combining their respective strengths as audio-conjurers into something that’s neither seth’s plaintive field-studies and concept-pieces nor brendan’s jet-plane roar/blissed-out drone...

...actually much of this feels closer to a radiophonic construct or “traditional” musique concrète; seth’s source material(s) (atmospheric events, percussion) isn’t so much blurred-out by brendan’s elongation techniques as magnified... hidden events & detail become motifs, the slight dynamic shifts become the form.

i’ll be spending much, much more time with this recording over the coming weeks; i suggest you do the same.

sedimental press release...

sillage - s/t (sedcd049)

sillage is brendan murray and seth nehil in collaboration

certainly amongst our most challenging releases, sillage is the mind-blowing collaboration of brendan murray and seth nehil and is the result of a first meeting in a live setting from 2004, a performance that was loud, powerful, and very successful. this event combined with knowing these electronic sound artists previous work as generally maximalist and full makes sillage both curious and nearly shocking in this light, as here the material is continually turning inward, trying to push out but always being submerged. this document takes many, many listens and can remain baffling and impenetrable. yet with patience one does get underneath it, and once this happens the sonic rewards are otherworldly and deep. followers of either or both artists work should recognize his particular contributions but this venture has provoked new and uncharted territory from both.

$12.61

back in stock as of
february 26th, 2009

first in stock on
may 17th, 2005

file under:
electro-acoustic
sound-research
site-specific

sedimental (usa) #sed 039 cd

brendan murray “resting places” compact disc

shore (10:29)
garden (second mix) (12:03)
bed (15:45)
tomb (16:40)

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "bed"

brendan is currently “the man” on the boston experimental music scene... a status duly attained by his precise concert-statements & overall quality in meticulous sound-gathering & organization. it’s ultra-gratifying to listen to this, arguably his “mass-market” debut (he’s had a couple of other things out that so far i haven’t seen outside of twisted village or at his shows.)

all four pieces here inhabit a similar space... there is no attack and much decay (elements are slowly introduced, become evident, then subside in their own time on their own terms.) while almost every sound is at least one octave lower than it occurs in air, there’s little of the nyquist murk that usually results from this (brendan has a certain knack for making pitch-treated material sound wholly natural, this is most likely his raison d’être.) instead, the details of captured environments are revealed, yielding beautiful, glacial clusters of hidden harmonics and spectra. this is “sound research” in its purest sense, executed in only the most musically pleasing manner, devoid of any of the “process as craft” trappings of the recent/just-prior to bubble-burst mille plateaux generation.

those finding accord with the work of slow-motion long-form composers such as eliane radigue and phill niblock will certainly want to let this album unfold, again, slowly, again and again, in their own private space(s). one of my sure contenders for album of the year (thusfar), the pick of the spring 2005 sedimental litter. super-inspiring.

sedimental press release...

“i composed resting places on and off over three years. it was originally conceived as four separate releases that could be heard in succession. after the first piece, “garden,” was completed and released as a cd-r on kissy records using a markedly different mix, idecided to force the structure on the listener and present all four pieces at once.

the pieces are all inspired by thoughts about sloth, leisure and expiration and how all of those things might inform one another. that simple, severerealization that we have when we are really young: 'we are dying from the second we are borne.' it’s not meant to be as weighty as it sounds, but i tried to use that perplexing and morbid thought to inform these pieces. the result is not a serious meditation on mortality by any means. these are not requiems or “drones of death”. i wanted to use these very vague (and overused) concepts that everyone has to contemplate as starting points for the tone that informs all of these pieces: how do specific locations help us to feel alive and confortable or confused and dying or both? what happens to the places we live and die in when we leave them? do they feel anything?

this cd is very different from my first one, not now, which was much more about tentative and suspended moments. it’s much louder and warmer and more succinctly addresses the musical concerns (repetition, drones, deliberate editing) that have interested me since i started making music on my own some 10 years ago.

from a technical perspective, almost everything on this cd was played live in some form or another. “garden” and “bed” were composed entirely on the computer from samples of instruments and cassette tapes. i then pared down the compositions into minute loops for live performance. “shore” and “tomb” were created in the opposite fashion. i created loops with the phrase samplers i use live from various sources (acoustic and electric guitars, cassette tapes of field recordings and sounds from transistor keyboards and radios) and played the pieces as a whole. i then edited those live recordings on the computer. these are pretty simple methods; however, it took me three years to make up my mind as to what should go where.”-brendan murray

$8.82

new to stock as of
april 20th, 2009

threads:
electro-acoustic-composition
digital-musics
minimalism-drones

sentient recognition archive (usa) #sra 020 cd

brendan murray / mike shiflet “sentimental gentlemen” compact disc recordable

early retirement (15:49)
“how’s your late 90’s?” (18:21)

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "“how’s your late 90’s?”"

april 2009 release ; new version of this prior tour-only edition from brendan & mike, c/o nicholas szczepanik’s sentient recognition archive ... which is a great thing, as the original edition was something of a departure for both artists (rather than a straight bout of stark/grandiose minimalism, this works an almost mego-lineage vocabulary of computer-music noises, rife with dc-offset(s) and grinding wave-geometries, climaxing in the smooth metallic sheen heard in the sound-sample) , disappearing a bit too quickly from the mms catalogue for my tastes ; glad to have it available again !!!

sentient recognition archive press release...

brendan murray & mike shiftlet - sentimental gentlemen cdr
limited to 150 copies

originally released in a handmade quantity of 50 on cdr during murray & mike’s tour late last year, this has now gotten a proper reissue of 150 copies. two lengthy tracks with murray and shiftlet merging sounds to create something wholly unique. it’s also great to see some sense of humor in the drone field (check out the titles).

$21.84

new to stock as of
april 22nd, 2009

threads:
modern-composition
minimalism-drones
digital-musics
electro-acoustic-composition

students of decay (usa) #sod 19 sp cd

brendan murray “untitled • cold piano” compact disc and compact disc recordable set

sleeprunning
from the melted past
(top floor of the parking garage 11:37 pm)
tangerine tree
i avoid the night
maybe okay
the cold piano

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "the cold piano"

april 2009 release ; special edition of the untitled brendan murray disc on students of decay ...

comes with a bonus cd-r entitled “cold piano,” covering brendan’s set at the swedenborg chapel in harvard square (i was there ; the slow arc of brendan’s music bouncing off of the “magic” architecture was one of the best sets of live music i heard last year - completely sublime) ...

students of decay press release...

sod-19

brendan murray

never content to rest on his laurels, we have here a new stellar release from boston based composer/sound artist brendan murray, the followup to the acclaimed 23five release "commonwealth." murray's compositions tend to hinge upon drones and this eponymous record is no exception. that being said, this is a work which differs considerably from "commonwealth" or "wonders never cease" (murray's intransitive release from 2007).

in brendan's own words:

this record was recorded after a 6 month break from making solo music. commonwealth was a pretty big undertaking over a few years, and i wanted to see if i could take some of the long range deliberation out of my process and trust decisions that i normally rethink over and over. i also worked under a deadline for the first time. the six tracks represent the first real overhaul of my approach since i started. i found myself breaking a lot of self-imposed rules and working very quickly. i decided to incorporate recognizable instrumentation, mainly piano and guitar. i made some shorter pieces and use lots of different recording techniques to give each track it's own character while making it sound like a record. it definitely sounds like my music, but it's a more delicate in some places than anything i've ever released. i regard the ideas as refined and realized, but each track inhabits its own space, almost like chapters in a book.

it's self-titled or untitled, depending on how you care to think of it. the images in the artwork could also work as symbolic titles. i have left that very open, because the titles of the pieces are purposely evocative. they are also rather personal and refer to specific moments in my life, whether real or imagined. i plan on making a couple of more records like this, as well as continuing to make large, complex pieces. i don't regard this as a detour. some people have told me that this music sounds dark, others have told me it sounds really paranoid. i think it's a weirdly optimistic record.

cd (ltd.500)

$15.12

back in stock as of
may 18th, 2009

first in stock on
march 10th, 2009

threads:
electro-acoustic-composition
analogue-synth
digital-musics
minimalism-drones
modern-composition
field-recordings
playback-music

unframed (usa) #uf 2 cd

richard garet / brendan murray “of distance” compact disc

in parallel (27:00)
the tyranny of the objects (19:39)

click the play button to hear an excerpt of "in parallel"

march 2009 release ; glad to finally see a release from the duo of mms perennial brendan murray & new york area composer richard garet ...

over the two long-form pieces herein, the pair incur a gaseous cloud of keening metallic timbres ... garet’s introduction of field-recorded events & telemetry-noise adds punctuation to the largely static, synthesized voids, giving the pieces more in the way of momentum .... but then again, much like brendan’s solo output, this is patient music ; you need to give it the attention & space to unfold in it’s own time ...

as with everything brendan’s involved with these days, this comes highly recommended !!!

unframed press release...

unframed ufcd2
richard garet and brendan murray
of distance

debut collaboration of richard garet (who has recent releases on winds measure recordings, non-visual objects, and/oar), and brendan murray (23five, intransitive, sedimental among others).

garet and murray are both known for their carefully measured compositions, in which wide droning expanses are organized into articulated, endlessly engaging structures. next to the timbral complexity and fine detail that comes through their layering of textures, of distance also shows well the painstaking attention devoted to the unfolding of temporal dynamics.

presented here is the result of three years of exchange between the artists, who initially got together for a series of improvised sessions and later used the resulting recorded material to compose the two long pieces on this cd. their generative process encompasses analog synthesis and digital manipulation, as well as the use of field recordings as malleable sonic matter.

the cd is packaged in a letterpress die-cut sleeve containing also an extra-long letterpress fold-out insert. composed and produced by richard garet and brendan murray in astoria, ny and medford, ma, between summer 2004 and summer 2007. designed by gill arnò and printed at middle press. hand-made edition of 400 numbered copies.

previous artist:
john murphy

...and that's everything in stock featuring brendan murray.
(why not take a look at the previous and next artists?)

next artist:
heather leigh murray