ALL MUSIC GUIDE (US): Best of 2019, 9/10 stars. Wordless vocalizations reverberate airily atop glassine tones and crispy clicks and pops. Beautiful and beguiling, it's an excellent album, and a very strong start for Branciforte's Greyfade label.
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THE NEW YORKER (US): Theo Bleckmann, an improvising vocalist of exceptional range and breathtaking sensitivity, collaborates with the musician and producer Joseph Branciforte [on a] beguiling new recording, LP1.

BANDCAMP (US): Best New Jazz, June 2019. Jaw-dropping beauty. This is the sound of falling snow.
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BANDCAMP (US): Best New Ambient, July 2019. It’s a rich listening experience that walks the line between complexity and performance excellently.
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DOWNBEAT (US): It[‘s] easy to be induced into a trance-like state by the beatific drones dreamily unfolding and the idiosyncratic, effects-laden vocalizations.
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QUADERNI D’ALTRI TEMPI (IT): Austere and extremely controlled sonorities, where impalpable textures dominate from which rarefied and well-kept details emerge.
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MARLBANK (UK): A fascinating blend, by turn moody and dark, experimental and ambient, a mighty unearthly universe which the two have created.
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ALL ABOUT JAZZ (US): The four improvisations constituting this album prove hauntingly beautiful while affirming this pair's gifts for micro-expression. These glacially open expressions belie their sophistication while delighting in the convergence between the audible and the subliminal.
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LOOP (CH): Delicately crafted timbres, tones, clicks and noises. This is a record to listen carefully to in all its nuances and intimate confines.
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SQUID’S EAR (US): Like a blanket of twilight sound and insidiously fragile detail: gorgeous, lulling and edgy. (read more)

A CLOSER LISTEN (UK): While [Branciforte’s] hand as producer ensures that the end result is well-formed and without superfluous material, the spontaneous energy of the unplanned meeting between these two talented improvisers is palpable.
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TONESHIFT (US): Delivers experimental electronica in unexpected ways. It’s difficult to imagine any listener not becoming engaged and one with the warm atmospheric sound. The vocal treatments are engaging, suspended and translucent.
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5:4 (UK): Improvisational freedom and compositional planning are evidently both being brought to bear on the music at the same time. As such, it’s not remotely background or atmospheric music, but an altogether more active form of immersion.
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TOUCHING EXTREMES (IT): A superb exemplification of ‘sensitive quiet music’, possibly to be experienced in an ever-stretching continuum.
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THE BROOKLYN RAIL (US): An ethereal program that combines electronic and ambient soundscapes with a classical composition bent.
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AMBIENTBLOG (NL): A fascinating mix of voice and electro-acoustics, perfectly balanced on more than one level. The combination of voice and electronics on one hand, neither taking the lead but both complementing the other, and the combination of darker and brighter atmospheres.
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PERCORSI MUSICALI (IT): Bleckmann’s vocals are much more ethereal than usual, voice loops transformed here into something that suggests a liquid fluctuation.
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EAR INFLUXION (US): A compelling dive into the intersection of minimal electronics and vocalization, its hushed beauty fueled by the strong chemistry of its complementary makers. Highly recommended.
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theo bleckmann

A vocalist and new music composer of eclectic tastes and prodigious gifts, Grammy-nominated Theo Bleckmann makes music that is accessibly sophisticated, unsentimentally emotional, and seriously playful, leading his work to be described as “from another planet” (The New York Times), “magical, futuristic” (All About Jazz), “limitless” (Philadelphia City Paper), “transcendent” (The Village Voice), and “brilliant” (New York Magazine).

Bleckmann has collaborated with musicians, artists, actors, and composers including Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Ann Hamilton, John Hollenbeck, Sheila Jordan, Phil Kline, David Lang, Kirk Nurock, Frances MacDormand, Ben Monder, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kenny Wheeler, John Zorn, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and, most prominently, Meredith Monk, with whom Bleckmann worked as a core ensemble member for over fifteen years.

Bleckmann’s accolades include NPR’s 2012 Top 10 Jazz Albums of the Year for his album Hello Earth! The Songs of Kate Bush, top-five spots in the 2013, 2014 and 2015 DownBeat Critics’ Polls for Best Male Vocalist, and the prestigious JAZZ ECHO award from the Deutsche Phono-Akademie in his native Germany in 2010.

joseph branciforte

Joseph Branciforte (b. 1985) is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, and Grammy award-winning recording engineer based out of New York. He is the founder of the record label greyfade.

Branciforte's wide-ranging musical activity spans acoustic, electronic, and algorithmic composition, performance and improvisation on a variety of acoustic and electronic instruments, and an expansive discography as recording, mixing, and mastering engineeer. At the bottom of each of these seemingly discrete threads lies a relentless fascination with sound as a profound emotional medium — organized through musical form, articulated by a careful selection of sound sources, and framed through the act of recording.

As musician & producer, Branciforte has collaborated with artists including Theo Bleckmann, Ben Monder, Taylor Deupree, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kenneth Kirschner, Greg Davis, Jozef Dumoulin, and JACK Quartet. As recording engineer, he has lent his talents to over 300 albums, working with some of the most respected names in jazz and creative music along the way.