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Black Vinyl Edition

The Log and the Leeway follows a 6 year journey of personal exploration and drastic change for Bram Bosteels and his singular Kaboom Karavan universe. What entails is a sound-curiosity of rare format, following a metamorphosis that goes beyond the musical.

Early in the process, Bram was struck by the word/concept of a Leeway : the gradual departure from an intented course due to external influences. Following a boyish fascination for explorers travel journals, logbooks and the far fetched corners of the world, he could not have forseen how fitting of a title he had chosen. Drastically all of a sudden one day, completely unexpectedly, Bram experienced his own father dying in front of him from a rare disease. Shocked and confused by this intense encounter, his perspectives and musical course departed from its original path. But at the same time it was an enlightenment and a necessary influence for him to realise the initial idea and finish this album, started over half a decade before.

The ones familiar with Kaboom Karavan already know that nothing really sounds quite like it. Bram’s musical (and non-musical) universe is of the rare breed that seems to be entirely his own. Self-contained, but never opaque. Quite the opposite actually. Bram never pushes us away, instead, by listening to his music we are given view to a synesthetic wunderkammer of images, places, objects and possibilities. Distant but magnetic, alien but intimately familiar, Kaboom is folk music from another dimension. Listening to The Log and the Leeway is like waking up next to a bonfire in the middle of a swamp wearing somebody else’s clothes: You may not know how you got here, but whatever is happening seems to very directly involve YOU. What will happen?

Note from Erik K Skodvin (Miasmah): All the sounds, fabrics, instrumentation and stories that binds The Log and the Leeway together go far beyond what can be touched up in this simple writeup. As someone who have followed this journey since the beginning, and seen it shift from lighthearted fun to the most crepuscular personal experience, heard the stories behind (almost) every field recording and gone through boundless amounts of clips, visual details, notes, and inspirations – I can only say that it is with great pleasure and certain nostalgia I can present this record in full through Miasmah and close this quite extraordinary chapter. Bram is without doubt the most fascinating person I know. Like I told him in April 2020 during a trying time: “If everything fails, we´ll open a Kaboom Karavan museum” - an idea that might not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

Featuring: Cover painting by John Lurie. 16 page booklet of Musical illustration / collagés by Walter Dhoogh & Erik K Skodvin that more or less connects (or confuses) the dots between the music and stories behind. Mastered by Lupo at Loop-O

Prairie is the project of multi-instrumentalist and producer Marc Jacobs, hailing from Brussels with roots in The Netherlands. On stage, Prairie plays with two or three musicians and together they re-create a free association of musical ideas and atmospheres. Prairie has played in selected venues and festivals across Europe and for instance toured with Apparat.

“And the Bird Said: Cut Me Open and Sing Me” is the second full length album on Denovali Records.

This album was inspired by the silence of the birds, by the tone between a mother and her daughter, by the Sandsnipe twins, by constant wailing sirens, by the memory of a Vangelis track. Composed in the city, in his studio Les Lacs and in the mountains of the French Cévennes, Jacobs integrates his various recording locations into his magnificent sound design. By using various recording techniques, analog gear, guitar pedals, synths, amps and human voices, “And the Bird Said: Cut Me Open and Sing Me” creates a fountain of sound layers which coalesce to synthetic and noise infused manipulations, dramatic crescendos and subtle field recordings.

Jacobs focuses on melodies, sometimes hidden melodies, or straight out melodies that took him back to various musical influences, current ones but also from his past, lurking into pop and loving imperfection. The lyrics of "Cut me Open" are the spine of the record, the scenario where various species of birds lead the way, and where each track is a short chapter of the flight.

Jacobs once again showcases a deep sensitivity to narrative and rich cinematic textures by creating a technicolor soundtrack.

"... Like Ben Frost, (Prairie) exudes a certain harshness while tempering his work with moments of sublime beauty. This isn’t club material; it’s music for the hammer in one’s hand, the confrontation of the demon, the soul-shattering revelation." (A Closer Listen)

Subheim adds a new chapter to his catalog of shadowy raves with ΠΟΛΙΣ – the fourth long player. Pronounced "Polis," the Greek word for "city," ΠΟΛΙΣ doesn't so much evoke the rapid cadences of life in a modern metropolis as it does the unspoken tension between longing to escape and being trapped in some kind of concrete stasis – living together with millions of souls in an expansive emptiness.

Subheim uses ΠΟΛΙΣ as a vehicle to depart from traditional songwriting structures, crafting each track as a piece of a larger sonic collage. Songs come out of nowhere, abruptly come to end before they even get a chance to start or introduce new motifs and surprise reprises long after we expect the next track to cue up. These stutter-start forms reflect the four years it took for the record to take shape: a series of failed musical experiments, indecision, balancing an unstoppable creative drive with the unavoidable emotional ebb and flow of life.

Though this is clearly Subheim working at a new level, listeners will recognize the sound of ΠΟΛΙΣ instantly as his, with both hints of the IDM/electronica of Approach era and the unmistaken human element that is present in all his work. The natural, off-grid time feel of the record is effortlessly augmented with field recordings and found sounds, this time around with the addition of more grit and power, and with heavier use of analog synthesizers.

Despite the album being born out of a feeling of alienation from one’s surroundings, it's impossible to ignore the sense of hope that runs through this LP. In ΠΟΛΙΣ, we hear an arrival at a deeper understanding of oneself, an inner peace amidst the decay and a cautious optimism that comes from someone who just happens to feel most at home in darkness.

Finally and just in time for Christmas 2020 Hastings of Malawi release their third LP - the antithesis of Christmas albums.

In this bleak vinyl mid winter the sleigh bells have been replaced with twelve handsaws, two motors and a dustbin, a duet between a walrus and an autistic child on an aeroplane, a chorus of pigs and Tasmanian devils, sounds from Japan, China, Africa, Italy, India and Hawaii, digital voice synthesis, sound sculptures, randomly generated music, geiger counters, free improvisation and a rocket engine.

As with their first two albums this record continues to explore themes of communication and communication breakdown.

Is communication possible? What is the message? What is sound? What is on the surface of a record? What is beneath the surface of a record? Hastings of Malawi provide the answer to these questions in the form of a 38 minute poem called Axial Incidents.

OK SPIRIT is the new label by N.I.B., Kilian Paterson and DJ Neewt. The Frankfurt trio kicks off with a wild range of contemporary dancefloor adventures. The titel track 'Voces De Humo' is an epochal 17min journey by Bear Bones, Lay Low accompanied by two stunning remixes from DJ Plead and TNC6.

Living legend Phew follows up her brilliant Light Sleep album with another masterwork - Voice Hardcore - comprised entirely of her iconic, instantly recognizable voice, twisted, folded and layered over six mesmerizing tracks.

Repress

Peter Michael Hamel emerged from the 70s Krautrock scene dreaming of 'the blue flower growing between the milestones on the road to a future world-music'. A truly visionary artist who worked and studied with John Cage, Morton Feldman and Terry Riley, his 1980 Colours of Time LP - an epic, sprawling, 22-minute saga - was hailed by The Guardian's Rob Fitzpatrick as 'an absolute masterpiece of skull-bursting, synth-led ambient minimalism'. Thirty six years on, Astral Industries reinterpret Hamel's original vision with remixes from two contemporary heavyweights - Wolfgang Voigt and Rod Modell (aka Deepchord). Each expansive interpretation invites you to step outside of reality and into an alternative imagination of Hamel's future world, spiralling into the colours and slowly out of time itself. Original artwork by Theo Ellsworth and a massive thanks to Peter Michael Hamel & Eckart Rahn.

Following 2019’s New Atlantis LP under his experimental techno alias Efdemin, Phillip Sollmann’s Monophonie is a project dedicated to uniting different strands of utopian music. His approach: combining and recontextualizing rare historical instruments of sonic research of Hermann von Helmholtz (19th century) with the self-designed, microtonal instruments of Harry Partch and metal sound sculptures of Harry Bertoia.
The result is a psychedelic investigation into just intonation – alternative tuning systems that create unique sets of harmonics not found in conventional scales. Monophonie recasts these sounds into new rhythmic environments where epic kosmische, polyrhythms, acoustic techno and microtonal glow are interwoven into a rare music.
Over nine tracks, the album explores multiple forms of minimalism, from unwavering repetition to paired-down chords and sparse sonic environments. But it also seeks to expand the sound spectrum of Partch’s custom built organs and melodic percussion instruments as well as Bertoia’s sonambient singing metal rods into a atmospheric otherworldliness.
Monophonie was first composed in 2016 and premiered at Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre in 2017, before it went on to the renowned Ruhrtriennale and Kampnagel in Hamburg. It was performed by one of Germany’s premier neue musik collectives Ensemble Musikfabrik together with Sollmann himself on von Helmholtz’s original double siren, with set design by Michael Kleine and wardrobe by Peter Kisur of Honeysuckle Company.

WRWTFWW Records is profoundly enchanted to announce the full official reissue of Somei Satoh’s magnificent Avatamsaka Sutra inspired Mandala Trilogy with one additional never-released piece, sourced from original masters and available on double vinyl in heavy 350gsm sleeve with liner notes by passionate Japanese music connoisseur/collector/critic/dj Masaaki Hara.

Deep deep deep into the abyss…

The Mandala Trilogy blends Somei Satoh’s own slowed down Buddhist chant vocalization and early electronics to create a radiant and meditative atmosphere conveying serenity and timelessness. It includes three pieces recorded separately. "Mandala" was recorded at the NHK Studio of Electronic Music in 1982 and was included on the album Mandala/ Sumeru, released on Kojima Recordings’ ALM. "Mantra" was a NHK commissioned work, recorded at the same studio in 1986. "Tantra" was recorded at Victoria University of Wellington’s Lilburn Studios for electronic music and recording in 1990.

Included as a bonus is the 20-minute "Mai", a composition commissioned by harpist Ayako Shinoza-ki and recorded at the Kioi Hall in Tokyo on November 11th 2004. The piece was conducted by Tetsuji Honna and performed by the Kioi Sinfonietta Tokyo. Satoh says: "The harp is one of my favorite instruments. Also, by combining my affectionate percussion instrument, the chromatic gong and steel drum, with the harp’s most beautiful tone, I attempted to bring out a mystical sound." Alt-hough it is not an electronic music piece, the stunning composition elegantly complements the deep mystical world that Satoh expresses in his Mandala Trilogy.

Mandala Trilogy + 1 is reissued in conjunction with Somei Satoh’s Emerald Tablet / Echoes LP, also available on WRWTFWW Records.

Gentrified Underground is back after its seminal compilation and exhibition on Drexciya last year. For its 3rd outing the label showcases blackmetal-, dungeon-synth- and acid influenced compositions by young polish producer Lumpex (Forbidden Planet). Cover by illustrations by
Elin Gonzales and Walid El Barbir.

Caught somewhere between environmental sound studies and surrealist sonic architecture, SUGAI KEN helps mark the 30th release of Field Records with an ambitious new album. Commissioned by the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo, Tone River is the product of a year’s intensive work between artist and label, created in part to examine the relationship between Japan and the Netherlands with regard to water management.

While its doors to the Western world were closed during the 17th and 18th centuries, Japan kept abreast of Western science via a Dutch trade post in the bay of Nagasaki. When the country changed from a feudal society to a modern democracy through the turn of the 19th century, Dutch engineers lent their expertise to large-scale water management projects. One of the most prestigious projects of the time was the Tone River, which stretches 322 kilometers across Honshu, Japan’s largest island.

For this project, SUGAI KEN travelled to three points across the Tone River and used regular, binaural and underwater microphones to record environmental sounds, seeking to express the change in landscape of the river in its flow into the Pacific Ocean. On Tone River, these varied recordings are interspersed and juxtaposed with Ken’s distinctive take on synthesis, where raw and precisely sculpted textures and tones interact in stark, neutral space.

On this conceptually rigorous, yet beguiling and free-flowing record, SUGAI KEN glides between the elemental and hyper-synthetic in a flexible exploration of sound and story

"For their first release, fledgling label Euphonic Rhythms launches with a 2LP fundraising compilation featuring the cream of the underground electronic music community. Artists featured include; Import, Christoph De Babalon, FARWARMTH, Gillie Mc Pherson, Ondness, Kepla, Jiinx + Sunun, Ausschuss, Withdrawn + Birthmark, Bobby Jewell, Best Available Technology, Proc Fiskal and Mya Gomez.

At least 50% of the profits will go to the Trussell Trust, Migrants Organise and Resourcing Racial Justice...the rest for artists."
180g, recycled vinyl 2LP. Comes in a recycled kraft gatefold sleeve. Mastered and cut by Helmut Erler at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Includes download code

40 mins of brexit gush from the Hair & Treasure crew. Recorded live at Archers Tower in 2019 at the frenzied soapy
heights of the media whoopee shit pie.

‘’Just the right amount of glue.’’

Rating 2.9.’’

"Use the Air" is a selection of works for the stage that have been created over the course of 15 years. Their origin in relation to choreography is difficult to put into a methodical formula. The productions were never about "dance music" in the classical sense, to which the dancers hang like puppet threads. The starting points were dj-ing, live improvisations in Jenny Beyer's OPEN STUDIOS (rehearsals with and in front of an audience), field recordings of work noises, the theater environment. The music was sometimes created independently of the choreographical development, sometimes closely based on the conceptual specifications and sources of inspiration (pictures, theories, philosophies) of the choreographer. It could change in the course of working together, sometimes as beautiful, but useless, disappear into the archive or find its space, sometimes in an unexpected place. What happened on stage remains hidden on this record. Therefore the selection was determined by the question of what could work without the visible action of dancers. Much of what has arisen cannot naturally be reproduced on a sound carrier: e.g. the sound of 40 mini speakers carried by the audience on a course through the theater in Jenny Beyer's "Fluss", installations with prepared records and record players in "Liebe" or the Stravinsky arrangements in "No 'Rait Of Spring" by Josep Caballero Garcia. Techno or Gabba tracks would have gone beyond the musical scope of this selection (the latter for Gloria Höckner's piece “Hard Cores in Soft Shells”). - Jetzmann About Jetzmann Jetzmann (Horst Petersen) was musically socialized by bands (e.g. Die Erde,visible in the film "Die Liebe frisst das Leben" by Oliver Schwabe), but the band idea was exhausted, so he started working solo especially on music for the stage, for contemporary dance and on radio work. At the same time there were publications, e.g. the setting of a Hölderlin text "Unter die Deutschen" (anti-info, 2007) or "Ein Fest" (harsh noise movement, 2017), contributions for compilations and collaborations (e.g. with the Aromaclub).

For fans of Four Tet / Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith / Floating Points /Orlando Weeks.

A beautifully composed and masterfully produced album spanning deep alternative electronica, modern classical and concrète ambiance. An essential debut release from the collaborative duo featuring  contemporary instrumentation and a guest vocal performance from Orlando Weeks. Packaged in unique artwork by Diana Gradinaru.

Sami El-Enany & Dampé - Opix 
Sami and Joe (Dampé (Rinse FM) have been friends since college and collaborated on music and sound projects growing up. For the past few years they have drifted in and out of touch in London, catching glimpses of the other's work from afar. It took worldwide lockdown for the idea of the Opix LP to form. 
The sharing of a nostalgic photograph led to the idea of a new multiplayer online RPG campaign to pass the time and distract from cycles of bleak headlines, Instagram and jobs boards. That quickly transformed into remote music making and collaboration, bouncing material and reactions back and forth across the internet.  Early lockdown for them will be defined by these songs. Celebratory and escapist, a way of protecting themselves from the panic of the moment.
Sami’s focus has always been composition, working closely with directors, writers and artists to create bespoke scores and sound for film, TV, games radio, theatre and installations. Joe works in dance music, running venues, presenting a monthly show on Rinse FM and has released a series of club-focused Dampé records on Berlin’s Dirt Crew and London’s WotNot Recordings. You can hear the two contexts collide across the record to make a dreamy electronica with influences from the concert hall to the club via gaming and film. 
The music was made in two home studios with skyped-in recording sessions with incredible instrumentalists including jazz drummer Luca Caruso, Double Bassist Nina Harries, trumpeter Wilfred Petherbridge and songwriter and vocalist Orlando Weeks.
—
Sami El-Enany is a British Egyptian composer and producer whose work negotiates the fringes of modern classical, electronica and field recording. Alongside his own productions, he works closely with directors, writers and artists to create bespoke scores and sound for film, TV, games, radio, theatre and installations. Recent works include Tongue Tied, produced for BBC Radio 4, Deadly Structures, a sound-only first-person exploration game produced by the ICA and the BBC and to be released on Mac and PC this year, and the film score for Walking With Shadows, the first LGBTQ+ Nollywood feature film ever made, also to have a worldwide release this year.
Dampé is a studio project from South East London. On moving to the city he has been intimately involved in its club culture from running warehouse spaces and booking venues to hosting a monthly show on Rinse FM plus DJing and performing in groups across the city and Europe. Currently based out the Rhythm Section Studio and a home (boat) studio he’s working on a series of records following 2019’s debuts drops on Berlin’s Dirt Crew and London’s WotNot recordings.

Ginno Russo follows up summery sizzler She Is On Fire with his full debut vinyl 12' for MOM. The Valencia based DJ and producer presents a stylish four track EP. It is entitled Travelling Around Zambia and features rhythms and beats inspired by Africa. Russo has been an active DJ since he was 17, with DJ residencies in Valencia and the surrounding region, as well as frequent trips to the Balearic Islands. Due to this experience, Russo knows what works on the dancefloor. Therefore it is no surprise that all four tracks on this EP are built for club play. However, the fun rhythms and ear catching grooves also make them suited to other occasions. Lio is a powerful and uplifting opener. It features steady textured beats, a stylish keyed groove and rising strings. Dubby is a relentless follow-up. Exploding chords and a live bass take centre stage over not stopping beats. Rosas is a funky number for the dancefloor. Textured percussion and powerful synths work the groove here alongside looped vocal fragments. Poble finishes off the EP with a vocal winner. Call and response sung vocals are laid over a powerful bassline and strong beats. This is a fine debut EP from Russo.

One of the most influential bands in the last five decades, Kraftwerk virtually established the blueprint, the source code even for electronic music. Founded by classically trained musicians Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleban in Dusseldorf in 1970, the band has informed and inspired a diverse range of genres and artists including David Bowie, Björk, Afrika Bambaataa, and Joy Division. This early live performance, in Soest, Germany in Winter 1970, broadcast on WDR-TV displays the band in superb form. Arguably, the future of electronic music, trance, techno, ambient - started right here.

First release on the freshly launched label Anomalies comes from one of its co-founders Ramon Babot aka La Màquina Corrupta. Lead track “Dilluns Blau” – which stands for Blue Monday in Catalan – is a techno track not specifically built for the dancefloor but that can also work on it. A rather moody pad appearing at mid-length of the track reminds us that our serotonin will not last forever and that Monday might come soon. Second track “Gent de Poble”, which means “Village People”, features a relentless bassline that can be as intense as some of those people who live in a small town. On the B side, “Concepte Innecessari” provides the perfect soundtrack for self-introspection in the form of a not so conventional groove. The last track on this EP is “Consells de Mare”, a beautiful electronic lullaby that your mother would sing for you if she were a synthesizer.

After years of working as a graphic artist, designer, and creative director, Pilar Zeta will release her debut album Moments of Reality on Ultramajic Records on October 5th, 2018.

Inspired by Japanese post-modern art from the 1980s and produced using synthesizers from the 1990s, the new age album of nine electronic pieces is ambient and cinematic with an off-world feeling.

Her sound draws on the style of bands like Art of Noise and Steve Roach that she was exposed to early in her life and evokes the work of Yasuaki Shimizu, Yello, and Laurie Anderson. Each of the nine tracks will feature a cover with different objects in absurdist settings. Much the same way Zetas visuals seem to be artifacts from a parallel universe, Zetas ethereal and melodic compositions sound like a coded language transmitting from a neighboring galaxy.

I feel privileged to be able to translate my visual world into sound, the unknown was the most fun and fascinating aspect of it

Fueled by a lifelong love of the paranormal, Zetas metaphysical iconography and music exist in futuristic, surreal, and elegant spaces. Her visual and sonic works function as a form of practical magic in a machine-centric world, connecting different mediums through a singular, transcendent vision.

A Colourful Storm presents a piece of the contemporary Australian underground. Suburban Cracked Collective is the project of Shaun Leacy, a figure with ties to Hour House, Castings and Altered States Tapes but otherwise shrouded in mystery. His private-pressed album, Private Failings was a cult hit of 2019, nabbing the attention of The Trilogy Tapes, Free Form Freakout and the WFMU freaks. Swimming Amongst The Dregs is the follow up and is an unbelievable mesh of concrète, electronics and un-pop overtones. Future classic for those into Dean Blunt, Kallista Kult and the subdued projects of James Ferraro. Edition of 250 with full-colour artwork.

'Madrid Fue Una Ciudad Mundial' compiles four of the most important Spanish electronic projects from the 80's. A compilation released in cooperation with a show organised in Madrid last May, 18th where Aviador Dro, Flash Cero, Azul y Negro and Esplendor Geométrico played together for the very first time.Aviador Dro offers two unpublished early recordings from 1981. Flash Cero includes an unreleased song recorded back in 1987. Azul y Negro collaborates with a demo version of their cult classic 'La Torre de Madrid' from 1981. And Esplendor Geométrico give us a couple of live tracks recorded in 1989 for the first time available on vinyl

''Ruyzdael presents Writers on Wax Volume 1: The Sound of Graffiti, a compilation album with 8 exclusive, primarily electronic tracks by producers from four different countries who are more (in)famous as graffiti writers than as musicians.''Letters on a wall, letters on a train. When you take it back to that essence, it?s really not so strange that graffiti writers call themselves and each other writers. With just a few letters ? a word, a name ? they write their mythology for a general audience. No huge vocabulary needed, just imagination and a need for expression. It can come as no surprise that those qualities extend to other disciplines as well. Graffiti has long been associated with musical styles (hip-hop, punk) that contain an abundance of imagination and expression. Less well known is the fact that graffiti writers have embraced the DIY approach of electronic music. Writers on Wax Volume 1 is a group exposition of beats and basslines, imagination and expression. Sometimes using a lot of words, usually none or very few. The dance floor has its own myths.

Frans Zwartjes is famous for his art-house films (look him up on YouTube). A Dutch underground auteur, his prolific output dates from 1968. A unique talent, Zwartjes produced, directed and edited his own films (his last work was in 1991), but more importantly he created and improvised the soundtracks too. Zwartjes and his large body of work is only now being recognised by a wider, more international crowd, with screenings at the NFT and other important art-house cinemas across the world. The recordings on Tapes 2 were mixed directly from the Zwartjes soundtrack tape archive. They were assembled directly and in real time by Zwartjes archivist Stanley Schtinter and have never been issued before.

The music and sound have been put together as two long, seamless sequences; they are dreamlike, unsettling, peculiar, plugged-in, prescient and unlike any other soundtrack we have heard.

resh imprint Caldeira open their account with the first vinyl retrospective of Swiss composer Louis Crelier, whose FM sorcery and LinnDrum drama takes the listener away to an imaginary Africa.

Standing proud amid the sound waves, Caldeira emerges with a singular mission; to bring us music with hidden depth. Whether it’s a reissue or retrospective, archival or original, each release reflects the Michelin-grade tastebuds of label founder Camille Bertin AKA Plastic Bamboo.

Operating out of the shadow of Les Puces, the Saint-Ouen digger, DJ and producer has turned those in the know onto a wealth of zouk, boogie, proto-house and Balearic bombs over the past couple of years, but it seems he’s saved something truly special for this first release.

Rich with FM synthesis, infectious rhythms and evocative motifs, Rester Partir transports us to a fantasised Africa, found onstage at a Lausanne Theatre in 1985. Scoring a story about a 19th Century French missionary’s trip to Timbuktu, Swiss composer Louis Crelier created his own sonic landscape, capturing the exoticism and otherness of an imaginary Mali. Though the hypnotic rhythms and cascading mallets conjure images of the continent, the queasy keys, dubby idents and synthetic sonatas suggest something more interplanetary - picture James T. Kirk and Spock beaming down into the ochre dust of a ruined city.

Aided and abetted by a selection of ambient interludes, jazzy diversions and polyrhythmic excerpts from Crelier’s film work, as well as the exceptionally Balearic Deep In The Dale from TV series Alpine Academy, the largely unreleased compositions on Rester Partir finally break the fourth wall to find the wider audience they deserve.


Words by Patrick Ryder

Jing returns to Steve Bicknell's 6dimensions with an esoteric five-track release titled 'Diffraction', the second in her mystery project trilogy. Adopting a concept based on a philosophy of the human mind, Steve Bicknell's 6dimensions is an outlet for creatives and a visionary starting point for an artist's work, which Jing unfolded in her critically acclaimed debut mini album 'Adularescence' earlier this year. The Berlin-based Taiwanese electronic live performer, DJ and storywriter now returns to the platform - also home to Metro Skim and Heartless - to compose soundscapes telling her short stories in audio form: the result is an alluringly arcane piece of musical art entitled 'Diffraction'. Whilst the inaugural release is based around moonstones, the effect of light and the optical phenomenon of 'Adularescence', 'Diffraction' tells the story from the perspective of the moon and how it views the world we live in. Jing interprets this, composing the feelings into sound. The twisted opener, 'brighter the light, darker the shade' features an otherworldly synth-sound that warps in and out of control. Next, 'ß a d' has a tense, cinematic feel; dragged out white noise and bewitching, mysterious bells become the main focus of this murky creeper, before 'videodrome' follows with warm, stringy elements mixed with chilling vocals and a sharp top line. On the flip, 'Malentonion' builds in tension with evolving bass shrills and winding experimental sounds - layered with offbeat kicks and head-shaking 909 claps. Finally, 'Constant Human Game' is a sturdy 4x4 techno track complete with ominous, undulating melodies whilst synthetic drums and laser-like bleeps generate a compelling energy. The front cover is written in a system only used in Taiwan, whilst the reverse holds hidden messages.

Kamixlo has experienced a lot of loss in the last two-and-a-half years. His long-awaited debut LP, Cicatriz, is named after the Spanish word for “scar”, taking its intense and energetic tone from the tough times in the Brixton-based producer’s life. An extremely personal album that follows 11 songs with titles like “Sick”, “Poison” and “Destruction”, it pitches soft and hard sonics against each other to create an urgent and exciting ten-sion as the track listing hurtles through its own emotional rollercoaster. It runs from the lurching drone and monstrously distorted vocal samples of opener “The Coldest Hello (Live From The Russian Spiral)” to the bright and melodic kosmiche-reggaeton closer of “Azucar” (‘sugar’), produced with Swedish cloud rap producer Woesum.

Only just past his mid-20s, Kamixlo has been making a name for himself with his dembow and bass-influenced dance deconstructions, releasing three EPs since 2015, as well as running the recently defunct Bala Club party and label, named after Japanese pro wrestling group Bullet Club. The night was an inclusive operation that established its own unique style of cross-genre post club music for the margins, while allowing Ka-mixlo the space to develop his sound—one that was imbued with its own pop immediacy, as well as smatterings of emo, electro and hardcore. British-Chilean Kamixlo’s Cicatriz is rife with surprising references. These include the thumping industrial of “The Burning Hammer Bop”—taking its title from one of the most dangerous professional wrestling moves ever invented—and the growling sub bass of “DKD Lethal”—named after DJ Lethal of famous nu metal band Limp Bizkit. Meanwhile, long-time collaborator, producer and Endless party founder Felix Lee appears on the scrambled rhythm and cut-up sampling of “Demonic Y”. As the saying goes, there’s no pleasure without pain, no resurrection without destruction, and Cicatriz is all these things at once.

The album is mastered by Beau Thomas, featuring artwork by Daniel Swan.

This EP features 3 unreleased early takes from Martin Rev's Les Nymphes -album from 2008. Tracks are early 2006 stripped down versions.

Unbegrenzt is the third in an ongoing series of archival records of the unheard music of Swedish composer Catherine Christer Hennix, co-released by Blank Forms Editions and Empty Editions. It follows Selected Early Keyboard Works and Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku (named the #1 archival release of 2019 by The Wire), in addition to a two-volume collection of Hennix’s writing titled Poësy Matters and Other Matters.

Recorded in February of 1974 and featuring Catherine Christer Hennix (recitation, percussion, and electronics) and Hans Isgren (bowed gong), Hennix’s realization of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Unbegrenzt” (German for “unlimited”) from Aus den Sieben Tagen is an elaboration both rigorous and radically different from the canonical 1969 recording issued by Shandar. The collection of 15 text pieces written in Paris during May of 1968, Aus den Sieben Tagen, denies its performers notated direction and instead provides poetic cues that hinge upon Stockhausen’s conception of “intuitive music,” a Eurocentric perspective on improvisation antithetical to the vernacular forms Hennix had engaged with as a young drummer performing in Stockholm jazz clubs with musicians like Bill Barron, Cam Brown, Hans Isgren, Lalle Svenson, Allan Vajda, Bo Wärmell, and many others. While both Hennix and Isgren saw the formal prospect of Aus den Sieben Tagen as a productive development of and beyond La Monte Young’s event scores, she here steadfastly counters his rationalization of intuition with the Principle of Sufficient Reason. (Cf. Brouwer’s Lattice.) Eschewing the busy, conservatory-addled lapses into idiomatic citation of Stockhausen’s 1969 recording, Hennix’s alternative realization of the “Unbegrenzt” score’s instructions to “play a sound with the certainty that you have an infinite amount of time and space” is based on her concept of Infinitary Compositions, the trademark of her ensemble The Deontic Miracle which, at one time, considered adding Stockhausen, La Monte Young and Terry Jennings scores to its repertoire. Taking a mature, minimal iteration of Stockhausen’s compositional method of “moment-forming” to heart, her version’s dark, controlled feedback and amplified bowed gong subtly shift through an immanent sequence of formative moments, step by step. Its bubbling computer noise, percussion, and repeated ominous transient sounds of temple blocks over the bowed gong terminate with the integrated recitation of exotic text fragments from Hevajra Tantra which faithfully take Stockhausen’s score into deeper vistas of the unconscious and a more devastating opening to the unlimited time and space of a dreaming mind.

Audio restoration and mastering by Stephan Mathieu, with an essay by Bill Dietz.

Catherine Christer Hennix (b. 1948) started her creative life playing drums with her older brother Peter, growing up in Sweden where she heard jazz luminaries, such as John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor perform from 1960 to 1967. Directly after high school, Hennix went to work at Stockholm’s pioneering Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), where she developed early tape music, incorporating computer generated speech done at the Royal Technological University (KTH), where she was an undergraduate student. After traveling to New York In 1968, she met artists Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles who invited her to stay at the Something Else Press Town House where she had the opportunity to meet, among others, composers John Cage, James Tenney, and Phil Corner. During the following years she developed fruitful collaborative relationships with many composers in the burgeoning American avant-garde, including, most significantly, Henry Flynt and La Monte Young. Young introduced Hennix to Hindustani raga master Pandit Pran Nath and she would later study intensively under him as his first European disciple. While Hennix continued to make music performing alongside Arthur Russell, Marc Johnson, Henry Flynt, and Arthur Rhames, she also served as a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at SUNY New Paltz and as a visiting Professor of Logic (at Marvin Minsky’s invitation) at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In recent years Hennix has led the just-intonation ensemble the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, which has featured musicians Amelia Cuni, Amirtha Kidambi, Chiyoku Szlavnics, Hilary Jeffrey, Amir El-Saffar, Benjamin Duboc and Rozemarie Heggen. She currently resides in Istanbul, Turkey pursuing studies in classical Arabic and Turkish makam.

Dusky guitar ‘n field recording compositions steeped in never-more-urgent contemporary environmental concern from master of the genre Mike Cooper. Touching and emotional, but never cloying.
From Mike Cooper: Playing With Water is a novel written by James Hamilton-Paterson. I was introduced to his writing by the Australian poet Peter Bakowski who gave me a copy of his book ‘Seven Tenths - The Sea And Its Thresholds’; a book that influenced my record Globe Notes and subsequent works immensely. Another of his books ‘Playing With Water: Passion And Solitude On A Philippine Island’ is about exactly what the title describes it as and provided me with the title.
The first edition on my Hipshot c.d.r label in 1999 was titled Kiribati and was dedicated to the people of that Pacific Island nation as I shared their concern, then as now, with the fact of rising sea levels due to global warming which threatens to destroy or make uninhabitable their low lying island homes. That album was the start of a long musical and artistic journey for me. In the years that followed I have visited many places around the North and South Pacific, South East Asia and The Caribbean that are also in danger of being inundated as water levels rise, both coastal and inland, due to melting ice or weather patterns that change drastically bringing untypical amounts of rainfall.
Cities such as Venice, Bangkok, Jakarta, London, Manhattan or any coastal, or near a major river, city will be subject to serious flooding and subsidence and may well become uninhabitable in the same way in the very near future. Bangkok was previously known as ‘The Venice Of South East Asia’ and its now roads were once canals. I have been in that city during the monsoon season and seen water coming up through the floor of shops and houses exiting to the street through the door. Jakarta is currently sinking at such an alarming rate
that the Indonesian Government is building a new capital city in Kalimantan (Borneo) Several of my albums subsequent to Kiribati - Globe Notes, Rayon Hula, Reluctant Swimmer/Virtual Surfer, Fratello Mare, Raft, Oceanic Feeling-Like (with Chris Abrahams) and now Playing With Water are all conceptually concerned with this same subject. Another conceptual thread connecting them is my concern
for the co-habitation of the human and non-human world expressed through my use of unprocessed avian or insect field recordings of song, signs and signals. Climate change, as well as the destruction by humans of the natural habitat of many species, is disturbing the balanced relationship we need to have with nature.
Indigenous and small, often nomadic, coastal communities are very aware of this balance and the incursion of the industrial world into their way of life is having disastrous effects which will ( if not already ) have similar effects and repercussions on ours.
There are field recordings on this edition from Pulau Ubin, Ko Phayan, Ko Lanta, Sri Lanka, Bangkok, St.Lucia and Martinique; all places that can look forward to or are already witnessing the Postdiluvian Future.
My guitar playing here, as always, draws on a number of styles and genres influenced by Hawaiian Slack Key and Lap Steel guitar.
Promo Contact: sonia@boomkat.co

*Repress*

In this limbo between the despair of 2020, and daring to hope for 2021, a herald comes into view.
The record you need, if you don't already have it, and if you do, get it for a valued friend.
"Finis Africæ (or Finis Africae)". Words redolent of mystery and myth, of Europe looking out to new lands, new worlds, new times. And so it is with "A Last Discovery", the work of Spaniard Juan Alberto Arteche Guel and his musical co-adventurers, recorded between 1984 and 2001. After fifteen years of musical success in Spain with his band Nuestro Pequeño Mundo, Arteche was ready to experiment with new ideas, and with the purchase of a four-track reel-to-reel recorder he did so, exploring imaginary global music-worlds with a core of like-minded explorers.

The group, dubbed "Finis Africæ" by JAA after reading Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose", where the term refers to forbidden books and hidden knowledge, released seven recordings over an eighteen-year period, the best of which are compiled here.

Finis Afriae was part of the "new wave" of Spanish music which gradually emerged after the end of the Francoist regime. Using modern electric instruments and traditional acoustic instruments from many cultures blended together via studio alchemy,
a magic which grew even stronger with the acquisition of a sixteen-track recorder after their second release, Finis Africæ created an outward-looking musical multiverse, an unclassifiable amalgam encompassing elements of folk traditions from all over the world, skillfully and lovingly shaped into an inclusive pan-global whole. Deeply influenced by African music, the group's reverberant, organic minimal funk will appeal to DJs as well as all who yearn for the loving warmth that comes with the embrace of global possibilities.

With liner notes in Spanish, English and Japanese by JAA, "A Last Discovery" is available on CD and double vinyl (with two bonus tracks). This is the first release by Finis Africae outside of their native Spain. Come take a retrospective journey of discovery. New worlds await.

The debut album from writer and artist Holly Childs and artist Gediminas Žygus formerly known as J.G. Biberkopf.

Initiated in 2017, Hydrangea grew out of a series of performances emphasising conspiracies and the designer realities that they generate. Navigating a tangle of digitally induced subjectivities and relationships, Hydrangea sees Childs & Žygus amidst a continuously evaporating world in which narratives dissolve, leak, fold in on themselves and loop.

Childs & Žygus ask: As individuals are siloed online, can rifts in reality ever be reconciled? Is history a form of science fiction? And are narrators ever reliable? The process of creating Hydrangea was defined by the search for a form to bind fiction, poetry, and musical experience. Its narrative is influenced by technical instructions, lectures and whispered conversations, in which slippage and floating focus can create new meanings in the listener that weren’t intended by the speaker.

Aspects of physical and informational security including passwords, codes, locks and obstacles speak to the ways in which meaning or material can be locked, unlocked or instrumentalised for a range of potential outcomes. Hydrangea reflects on the Machiavellian strategies of political ideologists such as Steve Bannon, Aleksandr Dugin and Vladislav Surkov who have made use of contemporary and postmodern artistic strategies to design narrative uncertainty—covertly braiding together questionable truths, slippery narratives and bespoke reinterpretations of history for undisclosed political ends.

"Hydrangea’s Just the Password Though, Right?"

Childs & Žygus employ a musical language that layers their cumulative practices and experiences. The compositions are cinematic and spatial, working with the illustrative qualities of Disneyesque string melodies and taking cues from Maurice Ravel’s impressionistic piano works.

The work is also influenced by both artists’ lifelong experiences of rave culture, beginning for Žygus during childhood in newly independent Lithuania, spending time juggling Disney and happy hardcore cassettes on the family stereo, and for Childs as a preteen in Australia, tagging along with her sisters to doofs and warehouse parties. Initiated while the artists were both working between Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 2017, the work also draws on Dutch gabber music.

Hydrangea’s development has been influenced by collaboration with artists and filmmakers Metahaven, who created the album art.

Holly Childs is a writer and artist. Her research involves filtering stories of computation through frames of ecology, earth, memory, poetry, and light. She is the author of two books: No Limit (Hologram) and Danklands (Arcadia Missa); and has presented her work at ICA (London), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Trust (Berlin), Elam School of Art (Auckland) and more.

Gediminas Žygus is an artist working within the fields of sound, documentary and performance. Their practice assembles a spectrum of influences deriving from architecture, ecology, ethnography, science studies, and media theory. As J.G. Biberkopf, their releases have found homes on Knives and Danse Noire. Žygus has performed at Barbican Centre (London), Berghain (Berlin), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), and Centre Pompidou (Paris), among others. credits

Linus Hillborg’s solo debut Magelungsverket lures listeners through despaired soundscapes of justly tuned electroacoustic orchestral arrangements seeped in rich harmonic synthesis.

Magelungsverket is a rendering of materials from Hillborg’s own computer game hacking project, Orphan Works, where an obsolete game engine was modified to create an interactive installation in which participants drive through the purple midnight streets of a decrepit and abandoned Stockholm. The game's generative soundtrack interacts with the player’s haphazard navigation of a ceaseless digital void of factories, housing projects, run down bars, ditches and lakes. Displaced, uncanny narratives and depictions of both real and semi-fictional locations in Stockholm that could have existed - but do not - procures distinct sequences of sound constructed with the Buchla 200 system, programmed synthesis, bowed cymbals, metal clarinet and tape machines.

The rendered pieces on Magelungsverket have been adapted from Orphan Works’ interactive and generative material into separate, fixed compositions, bound by duration, each one named after a location in this fictional, virtual Stockholm. For instance, Vårbergsobservatoriet (The Vårberg Observatory), draws its name from an artificial mountain that exists in the outskirts of Stockholm, amidst the sprawl of residential areas far beyond the sparkling city center. It was built from garbage scraps left behind after the underground metro system was constructed in the 1970s. In this fictional version, a public observatory was wishfully imagined to have been built on top of it. However fictitious Hillborg has imagined these locations, it is a bittersweet reflection and fragmented mental image of a Stockholm that never existed. Magelungsverket will be released on the 4th of December in a limited run of 200 black vinyls and across digital platforms.

Linus Hillborg (b. 1989, Stockholm) is a composer, musician and sound artist based in Stockholm, operating in numerous fields, ranging from experimental musics and audio-visual installations to post-punk and noise formations.

arbitrary presents the 2020 remaster & vinyl reissue of PM016 by Danish musician Mads Emil Nielsen, re-mastered and cut by Kassian Troyer, with cover artwork by visual artist Dane Patterson.

Originally released as limited edition C30 tape on Plant Migration Records in 2014, the four pieces on Nielsen’s first solo release are based on short orchestral and percussive samples manipulated by various synthesizer modules and effects processors. Variations are created by emphasizing different frequencies, harmonics, sections of short loops and the various surprises that result from the idiosyncrasies of each machine.

This vinyl reissue is part of the Black Box series of releases with music & audio originally made for theatre pieces, performances, installations, radio soundtracks, compilations and remix collaborations. The series showcases a more melodic side of Mads Emil Nielsen’s work, who, during recent years, has been focused on more abstract electronic/acoustic material – such as his collaboration with Andrea Neumann and Framework series (graphic scores & recordings).

Written & produced by Mads Emil Nielsen, Copenhagen, 2013. Originally released as limited edition C30 tape on Plant Migration Records (US), 2014.

For his first EP ever, Master Flashhh carved 5 beautiful tracks of analogue funkiness, drawing inspiration from drifting in Georgia, solitary walks alongside the ocean in Finist?re Brittany or recording his neighbors banging behind the wall.