New Ernie Althoff and Astasie-abasie releases out on Shame File Music

 New on Shame File Music




Ernie Althoff “Two Long Works” digital  the new album from Melbourne sound artist and instrument-maker, Ernie Althoff.

Following the musical rest period triggered by the crazy Covid cataclysm of 2020, I emerged from it with these two overly lengthy tracks. “HRWT” uses two recordings of kinetic music machines, digitally altered in both tempo and pitch. The other two instruments are manually played. One is a cardboard resonator box strung around with three thick and five thin elastic bands. Calling this simple device an instrument is almost flattery. The other is another ‘string’ instrument using the metal wires and frame of an egg-slicer attached to a wooden resonator box.

“Half as” mimics the sonic palette of its longer partner. Again, recordings of two kinetic machines have been digitally altered. The elastic band instrument now has an extra bass string, and the metal wire sounds now come from a three-slicer setup on a single long resonator box. Previously plucked, in this track it’s mainly beaten with sticks.

Available now for free streaming and free/pay-as-you-feel download.

Ernie Althoff is a Melbourne sound artist and instrument maker active in Australian experimental music since the late 1970s. He is unique not only for the original textures and sonic elements he creates, often tempered with wry humour, but also for his practically continuous contribution to and participation in the Melbourne experimental music community for over four decades.



Astasie-abasie “Molecular Gamelan” CD/digital   Shame File Music is delighted to present these fascinating experiments in micro-percussion and temporal displacement from Astasie-abasie AKA Ian Andrews, he of early-80s Sydney tape fuckery projects like The Horse He’s Sick, Kurt Volentine, Cut with the Kitchen Knife and countless others. “Molecular Gamelan” records the agitation of small metal washers by hand drills/screwdrivers/film winders, and shrinks the listener down to a micro-sonic world.

Download/stream now, CD available in July, pre-order now for this special discounted price.

Ian Andrews works across a number of disciplines including film and video, sculpture, installation and collage, poetry and writing, in order to explore questions relating to utopia and modernism, technologies and the post-human. The work attempts—via a strategy of deconstruction and collage, and the critical juxtaposition of appropriated materials—to locate the point of fracture in discourses of power and discursive regimes, and put into question the organising structures, and break the syntax of the accepted sedimented frameworks that keep thought rigid and ultimately hold us to ransom. His contribution to Australian experimental music reaches back to the early 1980s, including projects like The Horse He’s Sick, Kurt Volentine, Cut with the Kitchen Knife and countless others.



Undecisive God “Offering” CDR/digital Here’s Undecisive God’s 2003 monolithic ambient/drone guitar album, on Bandcamp for the first time. CDR version also available. Maybe a misstep including a cover of Sonic Youth’s “Mote”, but credit to their influence at the time should be paid, I guess. The rest of the album I still like a lot, and can listen to it now like it came from someone/somewhere else 


Shame File Music MixCloud Here is a mix including Shame File Music releases from the past year or so, some of our favourite recent distribution items in the shop, along with a reissued blast from the back catalogue.


New in the Shame File Music online shop

Jon Rose “State of Play” 2CD - double CD set of latest violin extremities.
Tarab “Holes” CD - latest release of pointilist noisescapes
Joe Musgrove “Patterns of Abundance” CD - Surprisingly soothing yet fascinating work from long-time Brisbane sound mangler
DJ Gandalf Lundgren “Deep Deep Forest” CDR - expertly and anonymously-mixed sounds and beats.


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