Repress!

Hania Rani is a pianist, composer and musician who splits her life between Warsaw, where she makes her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works. She has written for strings, piano, voice and electronics and has collaborated with the likes of Christian Löffler, Dobrawa Czocher and Hior Chronik, and released an album with her Polish group teskno last year. She has performed at some of the most prestigious venues in Europe - from the National Philharmony in Warsaw, to Funkhaus in Berlin, to The Roundhouse in London (where she made her debut at the Gondwana 10thanniversary festival last October) and at festivals such as Open'er, Scope Festival and Eurosonic. Her compositions for solo piano were born out of a fascination with the piano as an instrument, and her desire to interpret its sound and harmonic possibilities in their entirety and in her own way. Esja is her debut solo album and for Rani it is her first, real, personal statement as an artist. "No hiding behind the "collaborations" or "projects" anymore. For the very first time, finally - just me, as I am". Recorded at Rani's apartment in Warsaw (the piano room has a beautiful reverb and the space has become part art studio and part sound laboratory for Rani) and at her friend Bergur Þórisson'sstudio in Reykjavik, Esja is a series of beautiful melodic vignettes. Sensual, sensitive, rhythmic, atmospheric, free but harmonious, beguiling and hypnotic, collectively they project a sense of unlimited space and time.

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“Sonically, the Swedish duo SHXCXCHCXSH distort the club context they work from by rendering functionality with an exceptionally refined and idiosyncratic palette. As logophiles, they contort the little descriptive context they afford audiences by imploding language into splintered and barely comprehensible character sequences. The impression is that each is the result of mutual process-driven experiments.
This is all true of '......t', their new album and debut recording for Northern Electronics. However, working at this scale, SHXCXCHCXSH play with wider parameters and explore broader functions to produce their most comprehensive and focused work to date.
Across fifteen tracks, their bespoke dark matter is stacked with drone pyrotechnics, shredded vocals, and oblique, snatched sounds that eddy into frantic melodic storms. Sublime intensity is spiked with effervescent yet brooding intermissions throughout, staking '......t' as the most crucial volume of their catalogue as it gestures toward new references.”

Written and produced by SHXCXCHCXSH
Artwork by Klara Granstrand.
Stochastics by Jonas Bard. Mastered by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnissLab, Rome
northernelectronics.se

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After excursions into Hip Hop, Rap and film music Austrian producer and musician Urbs has returned to the downtempo and Triphop styles that were the cornerstones of his most successful work, discovering his very own niche along the way. Using obscure samples as well as traditional instrumentation for his impressionistic instrumental pieces he takes us to „Geheimland“, the secret land of our imagination where things are not as they seem.

Born as Paul Nawrata in Lower Austria, Urbs is a veteran electronic producer and musician living in Vienna. A music fanatic from a very young age, he started writing and photographing for various fanzines in his teenage years, interviewing numerous artists as diverse as Kurt Cobain, Nick Cave and the Wu Tang Clan.

He soon felt attracted to the blossoming HipHop scene of Vienna, contributing to the radio program of legendary impressario Werner Geier aka Demon Flowers. Best described as the Austrian version of Tony Wilson, he took him under his wing and soon released his first steps in music production on his Uptight label.

In 1998 two EPs were released as Urbs & Chaoz, spawning a first success with „Closer To God“, which was not only a radio favourite, but was also used by famed director Ulrich Seidl in his early work „Models“ and remixed by none other than legendary Washington duo Thievery Corporation.

Heavily influenced by Kenny Dope, Todd Terry and Armand Van Helden’s HipHop releases,
the musical style of Urbs & Chaoz was dubbed Dope Beat in central Europe and can be seen as one of the precursors of Triphop.

His next musical partner was Cutex with whom he released „Breaks Of Dawn“ and „Peace Talks!“, two LPs of timeless instrumental HipHop, both of which are seen as classics of the genre. „The Thing“, a veritable hit on Austrian radio, was used for various commercials and even selected as one of the „Best 100 Austrian Songs“ by FM4, the leading alternative radio station in the country. Until today that song has been streamed more than two million times.

His first solo album was released on G-Stone Recordings in 2005 and was co-produced by Peter Kruder (Kruder & Dorfmeister). On „Toujours Le Meme Film“, Urbs channelled his love for film music and French Chanson. He toured Europe with a six piece band and a complex visual concept and the album became a remarkable success. Songs from „Toujours Le Meme Film“ were used for US TV shows „Grey´s Anatomy“ and „Nip:Tuck“ as well as numerous commercials; Gilles Peterson discovered the album and played „So Weit“ on his Worldwide radio shows.

Urbs began producing other musicians like Austrian MC Skero, released further EPs of instrumental HipHop and numerous remixes for the likes of Tosca, Marsmobil and Daniel Haaksmann along with countless other Austrian artists.

Together with award winning composer Karwan Marouf, he worked on film music for directors like Arash and Arman Riahi as well as Werner Boote, on commercials, documentaries and contract work for Red Bull Media.

Since the early days of social media Urbs has connected with MCs and singers from around the world and in 2017 finally released those collaborations on the (Rap-)album simply titled „Urbs“, which included contributions by MCs like Wordsworth and R.A. The Rugged Man. The song „10000 Years Behind Me“ with its spectacular video starring Austrian actress Birgit Minichmayr was another success on the alternative radio in central Europe.

While in 2020 the world was in the grip of the pandemic, Urbs, who had just become a father felt inspired by the fantasy and perception of his son. He reconnected with his roots and produced „Geheimland“ in one go, trying to find the essence of his work and musical passion and creating his very own musical language along the way.

Tracklisting

Side A
A1. Levitation (6:10)
A2. Im Geheimland (5:29)
A3. Mighty Amethyst (6:28)

Side B
B1. Mandarin Sparrow Song (6:28)
B2. Thasos (6:32)
B3. She Of Tranquility (5:22)

Side C
C1. The Lizbeth Phrase (5:27)
C2. Ever Golden (4:14)
C3. Woodwind (5:51)

Side D
D1. Cryosol (6:19)
D2. Light Comes On (6:09)

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*2022 repress*

Restored and re-mastered from the original tapes comes Gigi Masin's much sought after first album 'Wind' Never commercially released the LP was in fact only given away at a number of small concerts, with many of the remaining copies destroyed during floods in the Venice based musician's house.

Quickly becoming seen as something of a landmark ambient album in recent years, 'Wind' is now lovingly presented again in it's entirety. True to it's original private issue it is once again being made available through Gigi Masin's very own 'The Bear On The Moon Records'.

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limited LP + MP3 download code.

12k is very happy to welcome Uwe Zahn, aka Arovane, to the roster. Arovane, a well-respected artist in the field, hailing from within the German countryside, has been active since the early 2000s beginning with releases on City Centre Offices and DIN in the heyday of the IDM and microsound years. He has since gone on to release work with n5MD, Pure Magnetik, and Strangely Isolated Place, among others. With Reihen he takes his characteristic pointillist synthetic structures and impeccable sound design and lays them in a web of fagility, decay and etherealism that feels like new a new direction for Zahn.

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Born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Alexander Molero is no stranger to the exotic idealism that westerners have towards South America. A move to Barcelona a few years ago gave him new notions of how the Amazon was imagined by the west. The inspiration for this record came from the book by Anton Goering "Vom tropischen Tieflande bis zum ewigen Schnee" and was also influenced by the writings of Victor Segalen and the visions of Werner Herzog in “Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre”. The way that these artists explored and romanticised ideas of the unknown were the trigger for the creation of the sounds heard in “Ficciones Del Trópico".

Using a Yamaha CS-60 Synthesizer, Molero creates an enigmatic and utopian voyage inspired by the tropical and exotic desire of European’s first contact with these foreign and unexplored sites. For his first record, he wanted to create soundscapes for the wilderness reminiscent of the European explorers that faced the unknown and beyond of the Amazon forest in the 19th century. Eight pieces, 44 minutes, with titles referencing birds, animals and landscapes that simulate a continuous discovery.

The spirited patterns of the pieces invite you into Molero’s mind and to explore the way his imagination materialises into sound. Developed and recorded during 2017 and 2018, “Ficciones del Trópico” resonates references and soundscapes that Molero has conceptualised over the last decade.

The constant structure and rhythms created a unique – and continuous – sound-aesthetic. Molero’s tropical fiction is like diving into the sea with Jürgen Müller, exploring Alpha Centauri with Tangerine Dream or building new exotica through the lens of Mike Cooper. But this time everything happens in a jungle.

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