Search:concret

With or without a drink in hand, moderate temperature, no need to jump into the wet. One night AT the pool, not inside. Palm trees or succulents - not far from here, the vegetation has adapted to the situation. A soft rustling: Possibly crickets, probably also the wind. No traffic and certainly no civilization, which right now would probably only disturb with its long agenda of responsibilities. HYPNOSIS AND MUD - Healing hypnosis, healing mud. The half-frustrating, half-liberating feeling of saturated soil between the toes. A state of inner peace. Instead of a voice, you hear primitivist percussive explorations. A groping and grasping of the bare feet, with delicate toes. Abstraction is followed by the concrete: a walk through the ORCHIDEENGARTEN RUSE, an orchid garden close to the Bulgarian town and not far from the Romanian border. Digitally, but not unreal. Perhaps even better than reality - anyone can do that. The (unofficial) soundtrack to this would not only make the Canadian composer Mort Garson happy. A lady‘s shoe kindly looks at us. If you turn around, you arrive on the other side: A LINE HAS TWO SIDES. Conundrum-like images, dissolved one-dimensionality. Candid narrative ambiance. A clarinet calls to duty. Civilization and traffic after all? SUNBEAMS ON YOUR CAR. Urgency, a clamor of voices - both in their best form. Yet again – the clarinet, the blunt reality: ONE NIGHT AT THE POOL. We are still standing here, we probably never left. A three-part journey – with delicate transitions. Three destinations: Now forever united. Dissonant and yet pensive. In the far distance the advertisement for the collected works of Meredith Monk. Hair erect, the little skin nerves contract, goosebumps - at last!

2023 Repress

Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Alvin Curran’s classic Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri, originally issued in 1978 on Ananda, the cooperative label run by Curran, Roberto Laneri, and Giacinto Scelsi. Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri (Light Flowers Dark Flowers) – its title inspired by an intersection in Milan – is the second in the series of four solo recordings Alvin Curran issued in the 1970s and early 1980s, preceded by Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden (1975), followed by The Works (1980) and Canti Illuminati (1982).

Each of these solo works combines field recordings with performances on synthesiser, various acoustic instruments, and voice, arranged in languorously paced, dreamy sequences. Far from the bracing pointillism of much musique concrete, the elements encountered on the meandering course followed by Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri – whether a frenetic piano improvisation, dense layers of Serge synthesiser and ocarina, or a monologue from Frederic Rzewski’s five-year old son, Alexis – often occupy the foreground of our attention for minutes at a time. As Curran explains, his approach is like that of a filmmaker in the editing process, working with “whole blocks of recorded time”. The purring of a cat, toy piano, a child counting, plaintive synthesiser tones, the cacophony of exotic birds at the London Zoo – each disappears into the next, until, on the LP’s second side, a solo piano performance takes centre stage, moving unexpectedly from percussive minimalist permutations to a halting rendition of Georgia on My Mind. A subtle yet stunning work that more than forty years on still seems charged with possibility, Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri arrives in a loving reproduction of the original sleeve, featuring Edith Schloss’ beautiful cover painting, remastered audio and with new liner notes by Alvin Curran and Francis Plagne.

»Dog Mountain« is the second release by the Zurich-based producer and composer Laurin Huber on Hallow Ground. After last year’s »Juncture« saw the Edipo Re co-founder work mostly with synthesizers and programmed rhythms, the four tracks are much more restrained, drawing on tape loops and feedback, recordings of acoustic guitar and synthesizers such as the Korg MS-10 as well as field recordings that relate to the overarching topic that informed the making of the record. While »Juncture« had previously aimed at deconstructing the binaries and dualities that shape our lives and thinking, »Dog Mountain« is dedicated to geographical divisions that result from political processes and social constructions. »›Here‹ means one nation, ›there‹ another,« writes Huber in a literary piece that accompanies the record. »Being in sound, such a separation seems odd.«

While treating the metaphor of the border as a »membrane, registering and translating the vibrations of its surroundings« and thus as something that is constantly (re-)defined, maintained and defended however, the artist also takes into consideration that »one cannot escape one’s standpoint,« as he puts it. The music on »Dog Mountain« may transcend and overcome certain borders, but it does not deny the realities that they impose on each and every one of us – whether in our political lives or in the realm of sound. This is mirrored in Huber’s engaging in the structural and sonic interplay of repetition and difference. Working with slowly evolving and modulating elements that are exposed to slight shifts, »Dog Mountain« puts a focus on the interaction between small elements that together form a bigger whole which is marked by constant evolution and change.

Opener »Raja« (»border« in Northern Sami and Finnish) starts off with a two-note melody played on an out-of-tune guitar. Different field recordings and synthesizer sounds drop in and out of the mix until the dynamic shifts and Huber starts playing more notes on his instrument, thus increasing the tension. It’s a meditation on minimalism, but also a piece that mediates between notions of what constitutes the difference between noise and music or referentiality and abstraction in sound. After »Nickel« (named after a Russian monotown near the border to Norway) dedicates itself to explore the friction between hissing white noise and melancholic tape loops, »A Town Is Not a Town« (a phrase taken from the documentary »Kiruna – Rymdvägen«) structurally mirrors the experiment of »Raja« with very different sonic means.

Closing the record, »Storskog-Borisoglebsk« (the title refers to the northernmost land border between Schengen-Europe and Russia) is the longest and most challenging piece, working with both long-form drones and musique concrète elements. It proposes a synthesis of the opposites that are explored patiently and with much attention to detail throughout this record.

Marc Moulin’s debut LP Sam Suffy (1975) is a compelling and unique mosaic of jazz, soul, and electronic elements that employs sampled sounds and sequencers to startling effect, vividly anticipating the music of the not-so-distant future.

While rooted in collective improvisation, cuts like the opening “Le Saule” and “Le Beau Galop” foreshadow the emergence of house music via their underlying electronic motifs; even more impressive is the five-part, 17-minute epic “Tohubohu,” a remarkable update of Musique Concrète sensibilities that creates drumbeats from water drops and pits trumpeter Richard Rousselet against a herd of hippos.

But for all its complexities and innovations, Sam Suffy is above all a sublime listening experience, closer in spirit and scope to trip-hop than the more abstract fusion classics it follows

Sam Suffy is released as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on translucent vinyl.

Iggy Pop ‘Rain’s Break’ tonight 25th June with shout out
BBC6 Music

“Magical miniature sonic worlds that modestly await discovery.”
Music OMH – interview + review now live

"Assured and promising"
The Vinyl District – 5* review
Birthday Cake For Breakfast – review

Concrete Islands – review

The Line Of Best Fit - “An incredibly exciting artist”

Rolling through with a fresh release for Concrete Castle Dubs comes Dutch producer Kid Sundance. An esteemed beat maker and producer who’s been known for his Hip Hop & Breaks over many years behind the mixing desk, always applying that original analogue style of production to his material. After leaving the Drum & Bass scene in 1999 he always kept a weak spot for the tracks that changed his life, he never sold his collection and last year he took them from the top shelf to the ground, rediscovered the love, linked with Disorda @ Concrete Castle Dubs and decided to get back on and release a record for the label...

We're extremely proud to present HAPPENSTANCE, a sprawling jazz-concrète project produced by Johannesburg composer and double bass player Shane Cooper. Approached in 2020 by interdisciplinary arts space The Centre For The Less Good Idea to create audio work, Cooper drew on his network in the thriving South African jazz scene, bringing in Bokani Dyer (piano), Cara Stacey (bows), Daliwonga Tshangela (cello), Gontse Makhene (percussion), Jonno Sweetman (percussion) and Micca Manganye (percussion).

Two days of free-flowing composition, improvisation and investigative recording followed, with the results captured on a vintage reel-to-reel tape machine. This tape was fractured and reassembled by Cooper, bringing into surreal focus tiny ecosystems of sound, like curls of static clasped from the air and brought under the magnifying glass. The results - two long, standalone pieces - are dizzying, weightless; musique concrète melding with jazz-schooled virtuosity in a dubbed out bricolage of interludes and u-turns.

Recommended for fans of Abdullah Ibrahim, Tony Allen, Floating Points and Daphne Oram.

Before there was Rimarimba, Suffolk-born, Felixstowe-based musician and home recording enthusiast Robert Cox assembled a cast of friends, some musicians and some not so much, for an experiment in group exploration and ecstatic expression under the name The Same. Sonically and gravitationally defined by Cox’s collaboration with guitarist Andy Thomas (a partnership which formed in 1976 to record as General Motors), Sync or Swim, The Same’s one and only album, also featured keyboards by Florence Atkinson and Paul Ridout, and vocals by Robert’s sister Rebecca.

Originally released in small cassette and vinyl quantities on Unlikely Records, Cox’s imprint and a meeting point for many other musicians found at the fringe, the back cover of the original album jacket is as much a map of the personnel, place, and process

fundamental to Sync or Swim as it is a table of contents for DIY music-making at the beginning of the 80s: “Recorded in peaceful Wiltshire between September 18th and October 6th 1981 (using a miscellany of home made devices) onto a Teac A-3300SX via a Teac A-3440. No noise reduction systems were used.”

The additional equipment listed – a combination of consumer technology and DIY innovation – speaks to an unpretentious, improvisational ethos that pilots Sync or Swim, and Cox’s career as a whole. Rimarimba, whose near complete discography Freedom To Spend made available again in 2019, showcased Cox’s simultaneously hermetic and prolific creative process, while The Same celebrates making sound for sound’s sake and the serendipity surrounding those moments.

Wiltshire, home to the Stonehenge stone circles and a county of empty plains in the southwest of England, is worlds away from the commerce and industry of Glenn Branca’s New York City or Neu’s Düsseldorf. While The Same may feel in some ways like a British blend of these minimalist and motorik machinations, Cox and Thomas were curiously fascinated with The Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa’s brand of psychedelic music.

Cox’s own definition of British psychedelia is “folk music meeting technology and going bonkers.” It’s by this definition that Sync or Swim takes unexpected forms, from tape-speed tomfoolery, concrète sound collage and analog delayed marimbas, to the colorful spectrum of interwoven guitar play between Cox and Thomas reminiscent of Ghanaian Highlife but more accurately indebted to Jerry Garcia.

Before there was Rimarimba, Suffolk-born, Felixstowe-based musician and home recording enthusiast Robert Cox assembled a cast of friends, some musicians and some not so much, for an experiment in group exploration and ecstatic expression under the name The Same. Sonically and gravitationally defined by Cox's collaboration with guitarist Andy Thomas (a partnership which formed in 1976 to record as General Motors), Sync or Swim, The Same's one and only album, also featured keyboards by Florence Atkinson and Paul Ridout, and vocals by Robert's sister Rebecca. Originally released in small cassette and vinyl quantities on Unlikely Records, Cox's imprint and a meeting point for many other musicians found at the fringe, the back cover of the original album jacket is as much a map of the personnel, place, and process fundamental to Sync or Swim as it is a table of contents for DIY music-making at the beginning of the 80s: "Recorded in peaceful Wiltshire between September 18th and October 6th 1981 (using a miscellany of home made devices) onto a Teac A-3300SX via a Teac A-3440. No noise reduction systems were used." Cox's own definition of British psychedelia is "folk music meeting technology and going bonkers." It's by this definition that Sync or Swim takes unexpected forms, from tape-speed tomfoolery, concrète sound collage and analog delayed marimbas, to the colorful spectrum of interwoven guitar play between Cox and Thomas reminiscent of Ghanaian Highlife but more accurately indebted to Jerry Garcia. On the album's culminating final track, "E Scapes," all of these elements are brought together in twenty-minute journey through layers of chiming guitar loops and spritely solos, keyed percussion, and tape experiments, all played as though the sun were rising over the standing stones of Salisbury Plain. Cox would later go to similarly greath lengths with certain solo sound endeavors, but the confluence of musicians on "E Scapes" pushes the piece to exceptional, unforgettable heights. Transferred and remastered from the original tapes, The Same's Sync or Swim arrives on LP July 16th, 2021 on Freedom To Spend, just in time for the album's 40th anniversary.

MCC returns with x3 roll cage rattlers from the elusive DJ SKIFT, rumoured to be operating remotely outta the True North-North East territories. Recommended if ur into anything good.

Mit "I May Never See You Again" veröffentlicht der iranische Komponist, Musiker und Virtuose der Kamanche-Geige, Saba Alizadeh am 08. Juli 2021 sein erstes Album auf dem neu gegründeten Hamburger Label 30M. Wie schon auf seinem Debütalbum "Scattered Memories" aus dem Jahr 2019 vermischt der 37-jährige Saba Alizadeh seine instrumentale Virtuosität mit sphärischer Elektronik, Samples persischer Musikinstrumente und Feldaufnahmen aus seiner Heimatstadt Teheran. Geboren 1983 in Teheran als Sohn des weltberühmten Tar- und Setar-Virtuosen Hossein Alizadeh, studierte Saba die iranische Kamanche-Geige mit Saeed Farajpoury und Keyhan Kalhor sowie Fotografie und später experimentelle Klangkunst mit Mark Trayle am California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles. Geprägt von den konzeptuellen Herangehensweisen, wie sie dort gelehrt wurden, basiert Saba Alizadeh seine Musik auf iranischen Traditionen und Skalen, um sie im nächsten Schritt zu dekonstruieren und zu abstrahieren. Im Ergebnis begeistern die neun meist instrumentalen Tracks auf "I May Never See You Again" als klanglich ausdifferenzierte Meditationen über das Thema Erinnerung - einerseits wird die Glaubwürdigkeit und Belastbarkeit der eigenen Erinnerung musikalisch seziert, andererseits geht Saba Alizadeh z.B. in dem Track "Silences Inbetween" durchaus auch konzeptuell vor, wenn er die Atempausen der Stille in Reden von Diktatoren aus vergangenen Zeiten in akustischen Hallräumen so sehr verstärkt, dass diese Stille als Distortion hörbar wird. "Wie", fragt Saba Alizadeh, "hätte sich die Weltgeschichte verändert, wenn das Publikum in diesen Atempausen nicht andächtig geschwiegen, sondern aufbegehrt hätte?" Das Schweigen der Massen, davon berichtet "Silences Inbetween", ist also keineswegs bloß neutraler Klang oder Geräusch, sondern es besteht aus hochgradig aufgeladenen Schwingungen, die, an historischen Orten bis zur Unkenntlichkeit amplifiziert, von einer (nicht eingetretenen) Utopie berichten, einem anderen Verlauf der Weltgeschichte. Es ist in diesem Sinne vermutlich eine Fügung des Schicksals, dass sich Saba Alizadeh 2016 in Berlin mit Andreas Spechtl, dem Sänger der Band Ja, Panik anfreundete, kurz bevor Spechtl im Rahmen einer Artist Residency für ein einige Monate nach Teheran zog. Andreas Spechtl wurde im deutschsprachigen Raum vor allem dank seiner Songtexte berühmt, in denen er die Wörter ähnlich abstrakt dekonstruiert wie Saba Alizadeh die Musik. Auf "I May Never See You Again" kollaborieren Spechtl und Alizadeh auf den beiden Tracks "Phasing Shadows" und "Touch". Saba Alizadeh kollaborierte zudem noch mit der elektroakustischen Soundkünstlerin Rojin Sharafi, einer gebürtigen Iranerin, die mittlerweile in Wien lebt. Mit ihr komponierte Saba den Track "Hybrid". Nicht zuletzt wegen der anhaltenden Pandemie arbeiteten die beiden virtuell zusammen, indem sie sich Tonspuren über das Internet austauschten - auch daher der Titel "Hybrid". Mit seinen handverlesenen Kollaborationen und vor allem dank seines ausdifferenzierten Klangraums ist "If I Ever See You Again" bereits jetzt eines der herausragenden elektroakustischen Alben des Jahres. Beeinflusst von iranischer Harmonik, Musique concrète und ausgefeilter, zukunftsweisender Beat Science stehen die insgesamt neun Songs von Saba Alizadeh für einen unfassbar spannenden Akt gegenseitiger Inspiration - wenn sich iranische Skalen und westliches elektroakustisches Verständnis kraftvoll vereinigen.

3xtape pack

* Three Cassette pack shrinkwrapped together therefore no returns for opened items *

Three part journey into an imaginary Indian Sub-Continent from three artists working on the fringes of Field recordings. Stories of the Dotted Indian Whale features italian artist Giovanni Lami, Hannibal Chew III aka Gonçalo F Cardoso and Argentinean noise prankster Bardo Todol.

First part from Italian sound artist Giovanni Lami, entitled Soap Wolf Giovanni presents a collection of ghost recordings from several places in India.

Second part from Hannibal Chew III is a collection of re-assembled recordings and in situ jams made in Arambol, Jaipur, Pushkar, Varanasi, Thar Desert, Pondicherry & Auroville between 2009 - 2019. Re-assembled in 2020.

The third and final part from Bardo Todol contains abrasive tape and digital field recordings manipulation made by Pablo Pico in Nepal, Kolkata, Varanasi and NewDelhi in 2012.

A new weird collection of re-interpreted field recordings from artists connecting the dots between musique concrete, naive improvisation and field recordings processing.

Artwork by Pablo Picco

Blue Vinyl
Lynch protégé and Twin Peaks sound designer Dean Hurley coaxes an incredible puzzlebox of atmospheres and mood pieces on this killer contribution to our Documenting Sound series, now remastered and pressed on vinyl for what is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most cinematic and neon-lit instalment in the series. Like a
smudged and overdubbed copy of the BoC Maxima tape, with added iridescence.
Across almost 40 minutes we transition from aerosolised synths to romantic chromatics, thru to Nurse WIth Wound-style severed rhythms and fading glimmers of hope, ‘Concrete Feather’ epitomises Dean Hurley’s prized knack for nuanced instrumental story-telling in the finest and most engrossing style we could imagine. Against the backdrop of the Hollywood film industry that has primed us for as long as we can all remember, the music spans a panorama of lush, mirage-like choral pads and starry flickers thru to gloaming
nightmare sequences and screwed drums, while touching on some of the dankest synth tones this side of his ‘Anthology Resource’ volumes or indeed his soundtrack work for Twin Peaks: The Return. It’s full of dread and a slowly unfolding sense of tragedy.
“Having a regular practice of recording is probably the single most important element to my craft. It’s a way of dropping indiscriminate mile markers while constantly moving forward in time without ability to pause.
Over the years, working for David Lynch taught me a great deal about this and the concept and importance of experimentation. I’ve found myself clinging to those lessons during this time and using them as tools for both productivity and balance. His notion of experimentation is a simple one, yet incredibly profound. It was one of the very first words I heard him say during our initial meeting, and I never stopped hearing the term daily over the subsequent 13 years working together. An ‘experiment’ can provide a legitimate mental back-entrance into the act of creation. It can position an approach toward discovery as opposed to effort, and eliminate the thought that one needs to ‘will’ something into existence. It also aids in calming the judgmental
side of a brain from stepping on/interfering with expression…after all, experiments are not about success or failure, they’re simply about learning. In the Lynch school of thought, multiple experiments then become firewood…and with firewood, one can not only build but actually sustain a fire…even turn it into a multipleacre blaze or more.
Dean Hurley

Limited edition gold vinyl edition.
Hamburg's funk adventurers at the top of their game with special guests Ice-T, Charlie Funk, Peter Thomas, Gizelle Smith, Lee Fields, JSwiss & the Mocambo Kidz.

Original press release note (2019):
Carrying blistering funk lines in their fingers and worldly influences in their hearts, the unique and distinctive Mocambo sound is not one to be confused with retro bands trying to recapture an era. Eschewing traditional recording methods, this DIY crew are committed to driving forwards, and 2066 sees them at the height of their powers, broadcasting a call for unity.
After reaching new audiences worldwide and earning critical praise for their two long players on Brooklyn's Big Crown Records in their tropical guise as Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, the band have reassembled and refocused in their original form, the workhorses behind dozens of 45s on the Mocambo label and beyond. Crossing generations, this album introduces some of the world's youngest funk talent to step up and rub shoulders with soul and rap legends, soul sisters, an elder statesman composer/arranger and a brand new emerging artist out of New York.
As with all Mocambo releases, the two sides of the record have been meticulously sequenced by the
band. Side A welcomes us aboard with joyous instrumental stomper Preaching To The Choir, and a call to build bridges from Mocambo chanteuse and percussionist Nichola Richards, duetting with emerging rap talent, New York MC JSwiss. B-girls and b-boys are called to the dancefloor as Superstrada and Concrete Stardust commence, all buzzing synth lines and relentless drums. New Jersey legend and Big Crown associate Mr Lee Fields is guest of honour for Where Do We Go From Here before a horn workout brings us to a close with Macumba. It's time for a breather.
The B side kicks off with the grand return of the Golden Girl of Funk, Gizelle Smith, a sister who's been busy taking on the world. Composer and presenter Peter Thomas narrates a Return To Space to mark the centenary of the debut of his score to sci-fi show Space Patrol, which first broadcast in 1966. We're back down to Earth and the mean streets for the furious drums and car chase workout of Golden Shadow. Today slows down the pace for a reflective ballad with Nichola front and centre - and here's the next generation: the Mocambo Kidz sing along to their parents' instrumentation for Here We Go, a new kids' block party anthem... with no sleep 'til bedtime. The album closer makes it clear that the Mocambos are nowhere near powering down as Ice T and Charlie F unk bring their A-game for an old school attack which, since you're up bouncing anyway, gives you no excuse not to flip the LP and drop the needle right back on to Side A. Onwards!
A summation of their journey so far and a celebration in anticipation of what's to come, the album is set
to take its place in a legacy of open minded, organically recorded music, showering listeners with the crew's maze of tantalising sounds pulled from funk, afro, hip hop with cinematic composition and storytelling.

Originally released digitally in August 2020 and supported by DJ Stingray, Martin Gore (Depeche Mode), Manni Dee, Rommek and Tapefeed, OBSCUUR is thrilled to present the vinyl issue of Catartsis & Ōtone's split EP "Mechanical Gesture". Catartsis and Ōtone explore, both in their collaborative and respective work, a wide spectrum of electronic and electroacoustic music with the practices of field recording and attentive listening at the core of their creative process. Inspired by musique concrete and electroacoustic sonic manipulations, they combine and alter sounds from the real, from their surroundings and from found (mainly metallic) objects. Stemming from this approach, they engage in rhythmical and textural research to elaborate a - peculiar, acousmatic and almost tangible - percussive and club-oriented music. With "Mechanical Gesture" Catartsis & Ōtone bring us an EP that is the very definition of the word "groove" while investigating rhythms and timbres from various mechanical apparatuses. Press, slice and carve your way through this assortment, it's guaranteed to get you moving.

Tape

Tekanan is the full-length debut of Melbourne-based Indonesian-Australian drummer and sound artist, Rama Parwata. A thorough exploration of rhythmic capabilities and percussive improvisation under ever-shifting timbral and stylistic environments, Tekanan is Parwata’s examination and documentation of his vast musical influences in electro-acoustic improvisation, Indonesian gamelan music, free jazz, electronic music, R&B, and noise music, whilst still maintaining an entirely unique non-idiomatic musical voice. Tekanan sees Parwata experimenting with not only the drum kit, but additionally implementing no-input mixing boards, musique-concréte sampling techniques, junk percussion, electric guitar, and computer music production to create a relentlessly metamorphosing soundscape that abruptly, yet seamlessly oscillates between ethereal ambiances to turbulent barrages of rhythm and noise through five unique movements.



Aptly named after the Indonesian word for pressure and stress, Tekanan was composed by Parwata with the intent of it being a listening experience which would pressure the listener to have no clear indication of the direction of the music and where it will ultimately settle, leading the listener on a sinuous, yet intriguing aural journey. This title additionally applies to the pressure of the challenging nature of the music, in a performative sense, which pushed Parwata to his physical and mental limits to perform and compose.



“As cliche or banal this might sound, I tried to make a record that was purposely made to be hard to put into a box. I didn’t want to make a “drumming” record or a noise record or anything of the type, but a record that just contained "good” music (or what I constitute as being good). Many aspects of my musical life were injected into this release: gamelan music (the first music I was exposed to), noise, hip-hop, free-improvisation, Xenakis, jazz, electronic music. Ultimately this record is a homage to those musical influences.” - Rama Parwata

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An active figure in Australia’s experimental music and art scenes, Parwata has worked with the likes of Marco Fusinato, Robin Fox, and Robbie Avenaim, and choreographers Stephanie Lake, Juliet Burnett, and Melanie Lane. He is also a member of seminal long-running Melbourne Doom Metal band, Whitehorse.


As of 2019, Parwata has been a co-curator and committee member of Melbourne’s legendary concert series, Make It Up Club, which has been presenting weekly avant-garde improvised performances since 1998.

Drug Store Romeos formed at college in nearby Farnborough when childhood friends Jonny (Gilbert) and Charlie (Henderson) pinned an ad about finding a bassist for their new band to the school’s notice board – Sarah (Downie) replied and quickly proved herself a better vocalist than either of them. The trio spent the subsequent 24 hours discussing their love of Stereolab over messenger and watching Portishead and Mild High Club videos in the college’s computer lab. The band soon cut their teeth playing live at college, at Guildford Boiler Room and Aldershot West End Centre, rather than the familiarly trodden paths in London although they did frequent Brixton Windmill as often as three times a week at one point; carrying all of their equipment back to Fleet by train as none of the band were old enough to drive. The 3am walk home from Fleet station, with amps and flight cases slung over their shoulder, would become a rite of passage; the quiet countryside influencing their hushed atmospheric sound and nocturnal aesthetics as much as their shared affection for Suburban Lawns, Broadcast, and Tom Tom Club. Lyrical abstractness / concrete meaning. Danceability / lyingdownability. Minimalism / fullness. Introspective melancholy / playfulness. Lo fi / hi fi. Drug Store Romeos play with the senses and flip the expectations, finding the sweet spot every time.

Perila (Aleksandra Zakharenko) left her native Russia six years ago, landing in Berlin. Finding her place almost immediately - first at Berlin Community Radio and through that amongst a group of like-minded creative individuals (including her current flatmates Special Guest DJ and exael) - she started a regular practice of working on an expressionistic "sonic diary" of field recordings and electronic sound research for her own pleasure. When the opportunity arose to create her own podcast series, WET (or Weird Erotic Tension) was born. Upon hearing her evocative and atmospheric music layered with friends Nat Marcus and Inger Wold Lund's erotic spoken word poetry, Sferic Records asked to release it, and Perila - a project name originally used for her BCR show - truly came to be. Aleksandra, who was raised in St. Petersburg, has been involved in music since childhood thanks to her melomaniac father. She's been both drummer and singer in local bands in Russia, and is also the co-founder of radio.syg.ma - one of the first online stations in Russian focusing on experimental sounds - but Perila is something else entirely. You could loosely describe it as ambient, but her soundworld is so specific and transportative, filled with detail and movement, it's more akin to hauntological musique concrète, touched by song. Her fascination with voice and language - she studied English literature at university - is still evident, although that's now her voice, her texts, her crooning you can hear on the Everything Is Already There cassette (Boomkat Editions, 2020), her processed breaths on the Meta Door L cassette (Paralaxe Editions, 2020). The Wire Magazine got it right when they said about Irer Dent that, "Sensuality is presented as a secret pass to a higher consciousness." For her debut album, How Much Time it is Between You and Me?, released via Smalltown Supersound on June 11th, Aleksandra takes inspiration from the concept of time, which she felt keenly during the pandemic. Recorded primarily in September 2020 in a rural village in France - her only travel during the first year of the pandemic period - surrounded by mountains but otherwise alone with no internet, her perception of time there differed immensely. She describes the trip as, "an immersive experience into self," viewed through a "silence prism" where everyday sounds usually ignored felt amplified. While her work has always dealt in intimacy - be it the private thrills of WET or the audible closeness of our surroundings - the organic response and consistent feedback she gets for Perila made Aleksandra recognize a longing, a need for it in today's world. Intent on creating work based in honesty and tenderness, Perila's practice also explores how we feel music and emotion throughout the body and how sound can help to release it. How does the sound enter a body and travel through it? Where does movement start? How do you reach and unblock emotional clusters with the help of sound and deep listening of the body responses? Aleksandra likes to describe her music and performances as trips - thick narratives drifting along sound to get closer to self. Let Perila guide you through this journey.

Repress

Next round for Another Picture. After exploring the highs in electricity and the lows of the deep grounds we go further into things. Sensing vibration of the fire below and turning it into a never-ending evolution of sound and groove. This is what you might know about Losoul tracks - and here you can't go wrong either. There are scattered artefacts of the city bringing vibe and inspiration - the streets, the people, the concrete, the action - it's all in between. Then there's the ever-changing beauty of nature out there on a day to just leave things as they are. Soul, movement and emotion. Again Losoul gives a strong example of experience from his longterm career in house and techno production and performing. Two pieces of music timeless in many ways. See you on the dancefloor. And everywhere else.

Lisa Milberg and Jon Bergström started their band Miljon over a pitcher of margarita in Mexico City and have since kept busy writing gorgeous little pop-songs in makeshift studios in and around their hometown of Stockholm, Sweden – mostly in their bedrooms and various cabins in various woods surrounding the city, never staying too far from the pine trees.
Having assembled a collection of 13 pieces of proper flaskpost-disko, these demos were passed on to Studio Barnhus’ in-house mixmaster Matt Karmil, who worked his studio magic on the recordings, turning them into a seductively warm and spacious debut album. “Until then, our only expenditures for the album were wine bottles and taxis”, says the band.
This isn’t the first time Miljon has teamed up with Studio Barnhus, the ever-explorative Stockholm dance label. The band collaborated with Barnhus co-founder Axel Boman on the wistful piano-house ballad “Forgot About You” in 2018 (“a summer anthem … a marvel of simplicity” - Pitchfork) and the label’s core personnel are all regulars at Arranging Things, the design store (“Stockholm’s coolest” - Vogue) that Lisa runs with another friend.
Going further back, Miljon isn’t the first musical project of neither Lisa’s nor Jon’s – the former enjoyed her fair share of 00's indie rock success as drummer and eventually lead singer of The Concretes, while Jon has earned a reputation as the hardest working man in several Swedish music scenes, bringing energy and expertise to punk stages around the country as well as Stockholm’s electronic underground.
With Miljon, the two friends make sure to keep it short and sweet, happily celebrating imperfections. “We believe in ‘first thought, best thought’ and try to work on the songs as little as possible, instead trusting a good melody and a nice vibe, not overthinking it. We dare you to find a bridge on this album!”
With “Don’t They Know”, the duo presents not only 13 beautiful songs (perfect for shower-humming, living roomshuffling and warm summer night boombox-blasting alike) but also an album that turns into something grander than the sum of its parts.
“We made it because it’s the kind of album we’ve been wanting to hear ourselves. It’s all quite song-centric these days and it feels rare to find a whole album to step into and stay inside, you know? We hear great songs all the time, but we wanted an album that was its own little universe, with its own mayor, own happy hour, its own yard sales and extramarital affairs.”
“Don’t They Know” is released through Studio Barnhus as a vinyl LP June 18.

Adopted Berliner hailing originally from the US, Kyle Geiger is not just an experienced DJ and producer, having already released on staple techno imprints Soma, Perc Trax and Droid, but also a budding production teacher via his Twitch livestream started during the first lockdown of 2020. When he’s not sharing knowledge about DAWs and shedding light on diverse voices in the music scenes, he also runs his labels Cubero and Front Left.

Across three techno excursions, collectively dubbed 'Bellhouse' and numbered 1 to 3, Kyle uses recurrent themes and motifs to craft intricate techno rollers in different forms. 'Bellhouse 1' stands out as a peak time dancefloor track, complete with heavy-hitting percussion, a dramatic lead and scintillating hi hats. 'Bellhouse 2' on the other hand comes off as a more subtle, restrained groove, whose nervousness can keep the energy high, while the third track can be found more on the dubby side, with metallic synths and mechanical whirs atop a steadily evolving marching bass. Hosts Rebar take on 'Bellhouse 2' giving it their own spin - distilling its fidgety atmosphere into a more anchored, mind-bending slow burner.

Cut A Lonely Figure is the (mostly) solo project of Blue Tapes founder David McNamee. Previous releases include Sugimoto Seascapes (Fractal Meat Cuts), Rothko Horizons (Bloxham Tapes), and In Sea, In Circles, In Concrete (Pan y Rosas Discos).

For this release, recorded at home during Lockdown 1, 2020, Cut A Lonely Figure was: Sarah Angliss (theremin), Maria Marzaioli (violin), Rosie Reynolds (clarinet), Andrew Smith (saxophone), and David McNamee (everything else).

In the space of five short years (and as many albums) at the end of the 20th century, Add N To X caused havoc with their unique retro-futurist electronic music. Add N To X’s musical intensity proved too much for the group who split up in 2002. Their album On The Wires of Our Nerves, complete with its classic cover image, recorded on Soul Jazz
Records’ then new offshoot label Satellite Records, launched them into the spotlight and included two NME Singles of the Week ‘Black Regent’ and ‘King Wasp’. Over twenty years since it was first released and long out of print the album 'On The Wires of Our Nerves’ stands up one of the most forward-looking electronic albums of then
and now. This classic album is released in a very limited one-off pressing silver coloured vinyl edition as a Record Store Day exclusive title.

Repress

Punctual like a Swiss watch, Driftmachine presents a new album that once again astounds and delights. We know their trademark: solid mechanical percussions, forceful bass and melodies systematically built around circular patterns. "Spume & Recollection" is the sixth Umor Rex album by the Berlin duo, and what better way to celebrate the label's 15th anniversary than with a new record from the masters of labyrinthine cables and patches. Regarding "Nocturnes" (UR 2014), their debut album, we described their sound as precise and symmetrical, identical concrete blocks mounted and articulated in a random order. Their already obsessive style continued to evolve with their third record, "Colliding Contours" (UR 2016), now pushing further into abstract dub, ultra-tense grooves, and even more kinetic loops, moving further away from conventional musical structures. Between these two albums they released the remarkable "Eis Heauton" (UR 2015), a kind of hypnotic experiment informed by shadowy atmospheres, chance, and an intuitive dialogue with their musical machines, a unique situation in which they acted as bemused observers in hunt for epiphanies, resulting in an exquisite amalgamation of lucid dream-logic and mechanical precision. A one-of-a-kind soundtrack for minute and wordless scenes unfolding in pitch-black back alleys and hidden, alchemical basements. A similar map was explored with "Shunter" (UR 2018), a superb secret meeting between avant-garde phantasmagoria and concrete experimentation. "Radiations" (UR 2017) offered B-sides and bonus tracks, in addition to collaborations with Shackleton and The Sight Below, a kind of preamble that united Driftmachine’s different expressions and leanings.

When Andreas Gerth and Florian Zimmer come up with new material, one listens with high expectation. Looking back on their discography, one could safely anticipate a high quality album densely layered with their familiar leitmotifs. And yet, "Spume & Recollection" takes us by surprise and finds a new way to transfix. Fresh methods and ideas are introduced to their dynamics and formula. Yes, of course, you can still expect a healthy dose of kosmische, which is one of the dominant features in Driftmachine’s DNA; but this is now entwined with novel materials, semi-material patterns of alien code stretching over exhilaratingly tense and detailed grooves, clouds of gas shifting on top of deep dub architecture and blocking out the sun for prismatic effect. Even more of a surprise is the immediate, streamlined nature of these tracks, making "Spume & Recollection" their most accessible record and, perhaps, the most addictive (and this without sacrificing the essential mystery and strangeness at the core of Driftmachine’s sound).

We have previously described their work as post-industrial-dub; right now, we might just call it hypno-music for man and machine to dance and dream together. "Spume & Recollection" takes this concept as far as it can go without breaking, and finds some strange new feelings, and weirdly danceable grooves, to shed some light on this dark and dazzling ride.

All songs written & produced by Andreas Gerth & Florian Zimmer in Berlin Mastered by John Tejada Artwork & Photos by Daniel Castrejón

Electroacoustic music composed in 1991 by Michèle Bokanowski for Patrick Bokanowski short film "La Plage" (4parts)

Limited edition of 300 copies. Unconventional 4 different cover artwork (75 copies each) on embossed cardboard (2 colours version : Lavanda and Tabacco), one credit sheet inside. All on high quality recycled paper.

Invisibilia - the new Canti Magnetici serie curated by Andrea Penso - is proud to introduce for the first time on vinyl a composition of Michèle Bokanowski, one of the most poetic composers in the avantgarde european music scene.

Remained unpublished until today, this composition is made as soundtrack for the short film "La Plage" (1992) created by the experimental filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski (husband of Michèle Bokanowski).

"La Plage" is probably the less "concrete" composition made by Michèle Bokanowski. It is pure liquid abstraction in sounds. It is one of those rare compositions really out of time and space. As expressed by Pip Chodorov, editor of 4 DVDs that contain all the films directed by Patrick Bokanowski, we can feel the works created by Michèle Bokanowski and Patrick Bokanowski are a sort of "spiritual search for the overrunning of perception, and thereby oneself. Searches into abstraction in the real, mysterious blanks that recover the daily".

The venerable composer and keyboardist Stale Storlokken follows up his previous Hubro release (and solo debut recording), The Haze of
Sleeplessness, with a second solo album performed entirely on pipe organ and recorded at Steinkjer Church by Stian Westerhus.
He describes the album as “a cavernous cathedral of sound”. While the Norwegian Grammy-nominated ‘The Haze of Sleeplessness’ used a whole keyboardmuseum’s worth of antique synths and contemporary digital software to create
its vast array of sounds, everything on ‘Ghost Caravan’ is the product of one organ’s pedals, pipes and sonic plumbing.
“There’s not so much of a relationship to ‘Haze’, says Stale Storlokken of the new album. “That album was more based on improvised ideas that were tweaked and arranged , while this one is all improvised with almost no editing at all. Everything you hear is from the church organ, with no additional instruments.
The basic concept of the record, and the arrangement of the titles and pieces, is done in such a way that they alternate between a fluent, “on the move”, abstract mood and a more recognisable, concrete and grounded mood. At the same time it should be so open that listeners will hopefully have their own unique experience. The organ at Steinkjer is not a big organ but it has some really nice sounds, with a number of quirks and mechanical eccentricities that suit my music.”
The organ is partly a reconstruction based on a Wagner organ in Nidarosdomen built originally in 1741, the organ is housed in the strikingly modernistic Steinkjer kirke, designed by Olav S. Platou in 1965, and featuring glass panels by the artist Annar Millidahl. What Ghost Caravan does share with its predecessor is a seemingly limitless acoustic space for the listener’s imagination to roam in, with Storlokken creating a cavernous cathedral of sound.
The audio dynamics span an enormous range, capable of stretching from the quietest breathy whisper to a basso profundo squawk or scream, sometimes within seconds of each other. Similarly, the incredible variety of sounds that Storlokken coaxes from the organ can defy rational analysis, with the resolutely analogue instrument appearing to echo the industrial, found-sounds of clanking machinery or buzzing electronics that one might expect to encounter through digital sampling or the tape-based experiments of musique concrete.
Over ten separate improvised pieces which connect into an informal suite through the repetition of key elements and sequential titles (with four ‘Spheres’ and four ‘Cloudlands’, plus ‘Ghost Caravan’ and ‘Drifting on Wasteland Ocean’), Storlokken has made a strikingly unified, self-referential aesthetic world that can stand as a true work of art.

Repress

- 2021 repress / comes in red sleeve -

Following the release of critically acclaimed Steppin' Forward LP in 2014, we're happy to announce Steppin' Forward Remixed. For this release we've asked producers featured on the original album to rework each other's tracks and in the end we received an outstanding result of a 14 track compilation filled with deadly bass heavy riddims.

Conrad Clipper is the pseudonym of an anonymous composer and multi-instrumentalist, with a focus on prepared,
programmed & played piano. He lives and records in Berlin.

His debut album, Cycle of Liminal Rites, was released on Emily Elhaj’s Love Lion label (Angel Olsen). He is set to releasehis follow-up release, Heron’s Book of Dreams, on Luau Records (Theo Alexander, Sontag Shogun, Segal) on March 26th 2021. It was recorded in Arizona and Berlin, and was mixed and mastered by Deerhoof’s John Dieterich.


Conrad on the recording of Heron’s Book of Dreams:

Through the window at Arcosanti, I could see the desert, vast and transformative. Inside the room was an upright piano, a Fender

Rhodes, and several synths. For five days - every morning, afternoon and evening - I sat in this room with the circular window and wrote the music you can hear on this record. Outside, intimate crowds gathered to watch some of the world’s best musicians play unique and unrepeatable sets.

“Arcosanti, AZ is a prototype arcology designed by Paolo Soleri. Picture, if you can, moonbase architecture inspired by late-60s sustainable ideologies. Concrete atriums screened with poplar and olive trees. Shady, calm apses to keep the desert sun off. The low roar of the iron forge, casting the famous Arcosanti bells that are shipped around the world.”

Concrete presents old archives from Francesco Baudazzi (Violet Poison). Music he did between 2013 and 2014, influenced by his previous releases like "Non Sequitur" (Haunted Air) and "Awakening Messiah" (Bed Of Nails). Four experimental tracks with dark and strong rhythm, Raw and early proto-techno with a cyberpunk attitude. From the droney psichedelia of "Psychic Totem" to the cyberpunk proto-body-music of "Disarticolazione Cranica", from the obsessive monotonia of "LSD Take One" to the ultradark Techno of "Ultrakinesis". Enjoy this Industrial/Proto-Techno journey.

Throughout his vast career, the New York based Australian composer JG Thirlwell has adopted many masks as a means of infiltrating and subsequently subverting a wide range of pop cultural forms. His work under the Foetus moniker has taken on everything from big band to opera to noise-rock. Steroid Maximus embraced exotica and the world of soundtracks, while his Manorexia project continued his quest to the outer limits of contemporary composition and musique concrete. Thirlwell has also carved out a significant output in the field of the soundtrack via the large body of work created for the animated television shows Archer and The Venture Bros. In addition he has been commissioned to create compositions by such notables as Kronos Quartet, Bang On A Can, Alarm Will Sound, String Orchestra of Brooklyn and many others.

Now we have ‘Omniverse’, the second release under the moniker Xordox. Xordox is a synthesizer-based project, and on this evocative album we see the project branch into many new avenues. The science fiction element brushes up against crime noir, even veering into areas that could well fit in the video game soundtrack genre. With an audacious attitude and an arsenal of machines Thirlwell serves up a selection of thrilling retro-future mind capsules. This is music made from a life saturated in culture, both underground and mainstream, high and low. Tense sequencing and noir tinged keyboard lines invoke a powerful visual image of films and memory, of screens and speakers, of sound and space, all entering the cosmos and the subsequent galactic race. Thirlwell’s decades long exploration of sampling and sequencing, composing and ingesting a daunting amount of audio and visual artworks speaks volumes for the bold assimilations exposed here. ‘Between Dimensions’ lays out a tense theme which starts off like a score to a a crime thriller before morphing into a simulacra of Kraftwerk scoring a video game. The living ghosts of Giorgio Moroder and John Carpenter haunt ‘Oil Slick’ as it permeates wormholes, updating lifeforms with its stealth sequencing and tense momentum.

‘Omniverse' is a synthesised soundtrack journey, one which embraces past forms whilst reshaping them for the new unknown. ‘Omniverse' is a thrilling liquid ride through fear and hope, and like all the best of Thirlwell’s output, is simply one hell of an enjoyable journey to take.

For a good number of Spanish musicians, attracting attention from somewhere outside of Madrid was a mission impossible for several decades. While the Movida Madrileña, commonly referred to as the “Madrid scene” in English, stirred things up and made front page news on the basis of new wave music, musicians that were on the fringe or directly beyond it had few platforms from which to be heard.
Although Javier Segura has been recording music in his studio almost continuously since the 70's, his relevance and recognition as a musician has been limited to underground music circles. The fact
that he worked outside of the country's spotlight of power kept his name relatively unknown for years, something which even the arrival of the internet could not illuminate. Only the appreciation of a few collectors and disc jockeys kept the light on.
Passat Continu delivers here the first ever compilation by the spanish musician Javier Segura (born 1955), who worked as an isolated cell from his home studio in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, in the Canary Islands. Working for decades from the underground, Segura build up some brilliant ideas producing dozens of richly textured songs, stretching borders on ambient, experimental rock, dreamy folk or concrete music. Using guitars, rhythm boxes, trumpets synths or simply pedals, Segura managed his own career and produced while published a handful of albums by himself: El ser y el tiempo (1976), No mires atrás (1983), Nostalgia de lo humano (1986), Lamento bereber (1989), El ángel caído vol I, la lluvia azul (2004), Levántate (2005) and El orden y el caos (2006).
He also teamed up with Juan Belda on only impro project Arte Moderno (1981-1982), using the Roland TR-808 rhythm box as a main actor for the first time in the post-Franco’s Spain era.
'El sol desde oriente' uses three of that songs and add six more previously unreleased productions from 1980 to 1990, probably his most active period of time. Available on vinyl and digital through
Bandcamp. Digital version includes two extra tracks. Vinyl comes with insert with unseen photos and liner notes by Javier Segura and Passat Continu’s curator David G. Balasch.
All music written by Javier Segura except Jardín marroquí, written by Javier Segura and Juan Belda
under the name of Arte Moderno.

Black Truffle is delighted to offer up a rare serving of unheard works by legendary Swiss artist Anton Bruhin. Active as a visual artist, poet, and musician since the 1960s, Bruhin has created important work in forms as varied as concrete poetry and landscape painting, imbuing everything he does with wit, humility, and absurdist humour. A recognised master of the jew’s harp (or Trümpi, as this ancient folk instrument is known in Swiss German), Bruhin’s sound work also encompasses tape collage, sound poetry, and manipulated bird song. On Speech Poems/Fruity Music we are treated to 26 short pieces made between 2006 and 2008 using the audio software Fruity Loops. These pieces carry on Bruhin’s long-running project of exploring the creative use and misuse of cheap, accessible technologies. In many of his analogue works, Bruhin explored the possibilities of simple cassette equipment. He invented DIY approaches to layering sounds by using multiple tape machines, experimented with distortion and tape speed, or, in his classic Inout (1981) created a maniacally single-minded audio monument to the pause button. Like the computer pixel drawings the artist produced around the same time as these recordings, Speech Poems/Fruity Music extends this approach to consumer software, presenting two parallel sequences of works that make use of Fruity Loops’ inbuilt synthetic instruments and its speech synthesis function. The instrumental works play like a twisted take on the aesthetics of 1980s video game soundtracks, using synthetic accordion and harpsichord sounds to realise jaunty little ditties that exploit their machine-realisation by making use of improbable pitch-bends and humanly impossible tempos and articulations. Between these samples of Fruity Music, we are treated to the Speech Poems, a series of recitations by a lone computer-generated voice. Many of them are in fact songs, as the synthetic voice crudely and hilariously changes pitch as it moves through its fragmented syllables and odes to cream in coffee. Carrying on Bruhin’s interest in the creative misuse of technology, many of the Speech Poems attempt to force Fruity Loops’ voice synthesis, designed only to speak English, to speak German. By entering phonetic text into the program, Bruhin gets it to produce a passable German alphabet and a series of approximations to a proper pronunciation of his name. Hilarious while strangely austere, entertaining but bizarre, Speech Poems/Fruity Music is classic Anton Bruhin, arriving in a beautiful mosaic cover by the artist, with the text of the ‘abc für anglophone’ on the back cover.

Electronic producer Intriguant with his 3rd album Spirits on vinyl as a limited release under record label from Singapore, TAV Records.
When it comes to the relationship between electronic music and its interaction with Singapore, we always find the theme of longing connectivity through its panorama even within the many concrete walls and high-rises we have grown accustomed to living in. With Spirits, Intriguant takes the role of an observer and explores the landscapes of many different cultures and sounds that have taken habitat past and present. Driven by hauntingly futuristic break-beats of the 90s, shaped 808s, imagined club sounds of dancing folks, bass-heavy textures reminiscent of Burial, Spirits is both for the late- night vanguards and personal home listening rooms. Intriguant's third album encompasses his experiences as an artist most vividly, highlighting his ability to use the flexibility of electronic music to link floating ideas to the physical world.

The Analog Vault is honoured to be working with Intriguant for our third release as TAV Records.

Basil Kirchin, a forgotten genius of post-war British music, was an influential jazz drummer, creative free-spirit and pioneer of Musique Concrète. Kirchin wrote a lot of albums, Mind on the run is one of the most representative Library record he wrote with fellow John Coleman. A milestone in british avantgarde.

Pudel Produkte boldly strides from strengh to strenth.

The enigmatic 47IN4 and RVDS (Pudel Produkte, Smallville, Bureau B) have coalesced as Cosmic Car, with one spontaneous gig under their belt with Börft’s Erik Jäähalli at the Golden Pudel and their debut release, Pudel Produkte 35.

Cradling tonality, detuned dischordant melodies which drift in and out of your subconcious, rhythms that collapse on themselves. The duo provide a record that floats between creeping acid and Mu-sique Concreté.

A delicate touch made with a unique use of tape machines, radio, and traditional techno hardware, it is pure sonic alchemy.

Artwork courtesy of the genius, Alex Solman

Brooklyn based Starrk debuts with this 4-track EP of experimental & industrial techno records. Through dissonant synths, harsh distortions, and powerful kicks, "The Club Is Now An Empty Room" is a reflection of a 2020 that deprived us of the catharsis of a dancefloor. The release is influenced by artists such as Tommy Four Seven, Swarm Intelligence, Ansome, and L A V E N, and the sounds will be familiar to fans of these artists.

Starrk himself is a NY based producer who is affiliated with the local techno venue Basement, and organizes various parties and music-related events under the SYITS organization.

Our new release features the debut of mysterious producer Bosquemar from Chile.

On his self-titled EP, he blends percussive grooves with gritty synths and field recordings.

In sophisticated soundscapes of concrete sounds, crunchy flutes, and conjuring vocals, Bosquemar creates a psychedelic South-American downbeat far from any stereotypes.

For 'Animales' we have Matanza's Rodrigo Gallardo on remix duty, who increases the tempo and adds a dubby flavour with bouncy beats and a calling flute theme.

La grande vallée (1993/95), 20'41

Musical composition, design and sound production carried out at the INA grm Studios (Paris) in 1993/95

Original audio recordings in the Drôme and the Mont Ventoux areas

Voice: Hélène Bettencourt

Vocal occurrences: Frédéric Malenfer, Bruno Roche, Lionel Marchetti

Bass clarinet (for processing): Jean Andréo

Micro-climat (1989/90), 21'33

Micro-climat is the first movement of the Sirrus cycle (Micro-climat, Passerelle, Sirrus) composed in 1989/90

Musical composition, sound design and production, audio recordings in 1989/90 at the CFMI studios in Lyon (Lumière University, Lyon 2)

"I wonder if my fascination for clouds (without being an obsession) may have risen at the end of the 80s as, whilst composing Micro-climat, I would regularly wander between the Vercors mountains and the high plateaus of the Monts du Forez discovering, through my eyes, body, breath, active observation and walk, that natural forms when constantly changing and yet swollen with a unity of matter (in this instance, water) open one up to a deep, fundamental breath and a clear field for the mind. The sky and its forces: our ally.

A model for a natural music which, although fixed, as in musique concrète (a rule of the genre), moreover on a recording tape, will remain charged with such a poetic quality that (isn't it its role or rather its reality?) it will ensure a perpetual renewal for our senses, so as to reach another idea of the world, far more open and richer than what we could have imagined."

Lionel Marchetti, 2011

Lionel Marchetti is a major figure of the "third generation" of concrète musicians, a term he values. Listening to these works, imbued with poetry and traversed by micro-narratives, one can indeed retrieve the original concrète spirit, the one that draws from the sonic world, with ears wide open, so as to extract a fertile, rich and multiple substance then shaped and conveyed towards a formal and musical abstraction. Lionel Marchetti has mastered this process, but his real distinctive feature is a truly unique talent for setting climates (as one sets traps) and keeping us on constant alert. The two pieces in this record perfectly illustrate the entrancing dimension of Lionel Marchetti's music, whose charm leads us, through each successive listening, to become voluntary captives so as to better liberate ourselves.

François Bonnet, Paris, 2020

The world of Italian Library music surprises us again with an extremely evocative record. Released with the name of Maria Teresa Luciani but really produced and composed by her brother Maestro Antonino Riccardo, Situazioni del Terzo Mondo ranks among the most important abstract soundscape records. Spontaneous tribalisms tainted with concrete sounds support the looming psychedelic vein, with different solutions from track to track. Recorded in 1972 it is reissued in a limited edition by Cinedelic Records.