Planet Orange Records

Icelandic dub techno legend Yagya returns to his own Small Plastic Animals label with Vor, an album of dreamy dub techno indebted to seasonal differences. After exploring vocal-led composition on Faded Photographs, this new album finds Aalsteinn Gumundsson returning to the purely electronic sound he first forged in the early 2000s. It's an album split between the distinct moods of Spring ('Vor') and Autumn ('Haust'), four tracks apiece. Steeped in the pristine dub techno pulses and broad synthstrokes which made his early albums like Rigning and Sleepygirls instant classics, Gumundsson delivers a widescreen masterpiece true to his long-standing legacy in Iceland's lauded dub techno scene.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.net

It seems like an age since Icelandic producer Adalsteinn Gudmundsson's last album as Yagya, 2020's "Old Dreams and Memories." The first album to be released on his own label Small Plastic Animals it was followed by the four-track "Always Maybe Tomorrow" EP in 2021. "Faded Photographs" is his ninth studio album, the most involved and time-consuming project to date and collaborative on a scale not seen since 2012's "The Inescapable Decay of My Heart." It also marks an exceptionally confident return to the art of song-writing, but where that earlier album was a more upbeat dub techno-pop affair, "Faded Photographs" is nostalgic, wistful, reflective and steeped in poetic romanticism. Gudmundsson's love of the art of the album is also more pronounced here than ever before, almost every single track tied together by the particularly unifying use of triplet rhythms in combination with 4/4 beats, beguiling hushed vocals and enveloping, molten dub bass tones. Combined with a typical dedication to sound design and production, "Faded Photographs" is rendered an utterly seamless experience, demanding to be heard as a whole. Written and produced when we had become more distant and disconnected from one another than ever before, "Faded Photographs" brings together and showcases an ensemble of artists in a spirit of collaboration that flies in the face of adversity, a true product of its time.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.net

After the 2020 release of Old Dreams And Memories, Icelandic dub techno linchpin Yagya returns for a second release on his emergent label, Small Plastic Animals. This latest venture marks a new chapter in the artist's accomplished career, having released on Delsin, Subwax BCN and A Strangely Isolated Place as well as forming a core part of the Thule collective alongside his partner in Sanasol, Thor. As those associations ably point out, the music Yagya crafts is spacious and atmospheric, using the techno tradition as a vessel for meditative as well as emotional exploration and experimenting with sound design according to a specific, patiently cultivated style. Always Maybe Tomorrow finds Yagya ruminating on the behavioural energy of environments as viewed from afar - the man-made electricity of urban expanses and the interconnected flora and fauna of ecosystems. Looking to his chosen tools as a means to express these ideas, he employed a non-linear approach to each of the four tracks on this EP, choosing to create musical systems in constant flux rather than composing each piece in a conventional left-to-right narrative. Yagya's trademark voluminous chords and vast pads ebb and flow through filters controlled by LFOs and randomness, creating their own micro-incidents and macro evolution as though holding a mirror up to the environments the initial inspiration was drawn from.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.net

Icelandic producer Adalsteinn Gudmundsson aka Yagya now launches his own new Small Plastic Animals imprint with a brand new album, Old Dreams and Memories. After nearly two decades of releasing his Icy dub techno on labels like Sending Orbs, Delsin Records and A Strangly Isolated Place, his latest album marks a subtle move away from the sound he has dealt in before. Still slowly propulsive rhythms underpinning every track, but they are only a small part of the overall picture. Old Dreams and Memories is a rich symphony of luxurious sound, with transportive rhythms and hugely evocative layers of melody, the human voice and cinematic sampling all showing a further evolution in the art of this standalone producer. With vocals by Natsuko Yanagimoto, poems by Michizo Tachihara and saxophone by Oskar Gudjondsson.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: gpsr@wordandsound.net