LP

2. GENRE/S: Electronic / Trip Hop / Breaks


3. TRACKLISTS:

1 - Time To Hold Better
2 - This Time Last Year
3 - We Keep Us Safe
4 - Melancholy Sabotage
5 - Measures
6 - We Don't Owe
7 - Breaking Points
8 - Eviction

The new album from Lebanese-American musician Solpara, Melancholy Sabotage, marks his full length debut and return to Nicolas Jaar's Other People label. While it was recorded over Covid lockdowns, Jaar had been talking about wanting to back a Solpara full-length since he put out Swing. The album came to life while Solpara was living alone in a Brooklyn loft, collecting unemployment checks and viewing ample free time as the artist residency he'd dreamed of; he'd previously been forced to make music in odd windows between numerous jobs and the unmerciful pace of city life. Free from obligations, he would wake up early to take Arabic lessons online, read Tracey Thorn's autobiography, and skateboard the deserted streets, then come home and design sounds until he had a track that felt like it needed to be released. While this easy going lifestyle was peaceful in many ways, Solpara found more complex inspiration in the emotion that stemmed from participation in Black Lives Matter protests and the 2020 Beirut Port explosion, which rocked all of his extended family members in Lebanon.

Melancholy Sabotage explores the theme of sabotaging melancholy. Echoing sounds from the post-punk, trip-hop, and ambient genres, it is about sabotaging the cycle of melancholy and looking at this process without ignoring the sources that put it into motion. It may be compared to a rattling breaking free from retention, reaching states of dreamy euphoria while simultaneously acknowledging the sources of retention, viewed from above. The sources can be personal, political, or socio-economic. They are to be apprehended post-melancholy, after the sabotaging of the initial cycle of melancholy. In other words, it is about transcending melancholy and understanding where it came from with some distance. It may be beautiful and healthy to feel for a while, but how may one sabotage this cycle when it becomes paralyzing? Ultimately, this album is about feeling melancholy but also resisting it and naming the sources that initiated it.

"Time To Hold Better" points to neglect on both personal and group levels. "This Time Last Year" is a personal time capsule. "We Keep Us Safe" is about solidarity, autonomy, and care witnessed within protest groups. "Melancholy Sabotage" is a sonic exploration of the album concept illustrating anger and sadness, but finally, resistance and liberation from these feelings. "Measures" is a more fluid exploration of the latter after the initial storm has passed. "We Don't Owe" points to bigger bodies inflicting harm on populations that we owe nothing to. "Breaking Points" harkens the times that we may lose focus while pushing to transcend melancholy. "Eviction" is about being pushed out of a space unwillingly while simultaneously being forced to move forward.

Melancholy Sabotage pulls from a range of genres, uniting electronic sounds under the same post-punky glow. It pulls from complex, heavy themes including damage and injustice, presenting Solpara's most moving body of work to date. It highlights the poignance that has always been at the heart of his fluid sound, which caters to dancefloors and avant-garde spaces in equal measure. Working with a mix of dissonant guitars, distorted drum machines, and distant, reverb-washed vocals, Melancholy Sabotage is Solpara's uneasiest outing to date. The record pinpoints the duality at the heart of Solpara's sound, which is as plaintive as it is searing.



5. VITAL SALES POINTS:

Solpara launched the label and event series Booma Collective with Oren Ratowsky and Valentin Stip - a lowkey institution in the international techno circuit.

His 2015 EP, Swing, marked both a sonic and professional turning point. It split the difference between noisy techno and spacey ambience, capturing the essence of a young artist settling into a singular lane. Issued by Nicolas Jaar's esteemed Other People label, it solidified Solpara's place as an inimitable up-and-comer. "Nicolas and I met in high school, played in a band together, and have been exchanging music ever since," he says. In part thanks to Jaar's powerful co-sign, subsequent Solpara releases landed on imprints such as Quiet Time Tapes and Bruta?.

Solpara fuses elements of post-punk, ambient, house, and dub techno. While plenty of his cuts would fit within the context of an energizing DJ set, many are arrhythmic and avant-garde. When asked about his influences, Solpara cites artists ranging from Laurel Halo to Laurie Spiegel to Massive Attack to Denis Mpunga to Lily Tchiumba. His eclectic tastes were nurtured while studying film and philosophy in college, with German expressionism, Tarkovsky, and Chris Marker's La Jetee allowing him to realize the atmosphere he had been searching for. This curiosity was further encouraged by Booma Collective members and his roommate Jurg Haller, who went on to found the label Forbidden Planet Records. Later, after Solpara returned to his New York City hometown, he worked as a buyer for the now-shuttered record store Halcyon. In that job, he listened to copious amounts of music every day. His deep knowledge of culture has had a strong impact on a sound that is simultaneously fluid and commanding.


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Cassette

GENRE/S: Alternative / Electronic / Soundscapes

TRACKLISTS:

1. Antena magne?tica captando campos electromagneticos I
2. Antena magne?tica captando campos electromagne?ticos II
3. Micro?fono de contacto captando vibracio?n del puente Llacole?n
4. Micro?fono de contacto captando la interaccio?n entre el viento y un a?rbol
5. Micro?fono de contacto en elementos vibrantes
6. Micro?fonos de contacto captando granizos
7. Micro?fonos de contacto en autobu?s
8. Hidro?fono bajo el fondo del mar
9. Vibraciones de materiales Geofon II
10. Vibraciones de materiales Geofon I
11. Vibraciones de materiales Geofon III
12. En la direccio?n del viento
13. Ronroneo de selai
14. Rai?l
15. Efectos sonoros en la naturaleza


SHORT INFO:

Valentina Villarroel is a sound artist and phonographer who explores the intricate dynamics within various Southern ecosystems. Her work revolves around the profound potential of acoustic ecology, particularly in the face of encroaching real estate development on natural spaces. She also delves into the consequences of sound pollution on numerous species, contributing to their decline or disappearance. In recent years, her focus has extended to urban soundscapes and significant sonic events, such as the October 18th protest in Chile. With a solid background in bioacoustics applied to both human and animal well-being, Valentina assumes the role of co-director at AOIR Sound Laboratory. There, she spearheads an interdisciplinary initiative that centers sound as its core element. This includes the creation of the sonic cartography portal aoir.cl, as well as the development of handmade electronic devices like the Bowerbankii and the creation of various experimental microphones.

VITAL SALES POINTS:

Available only on limited cassette
More

2LP with Printed PVC Sleeve

GENRE/S: Alternative / Electronic

TRACKLISTS:

LP1:
A1 / 1. Ale Hop - Head Transplant
A2 / 2. Daniela Huerta - Tza Tun Tzat
A3 / 3. Debashis Sinha - For the waters ever taste the heavens up parts I-V

B1 / 4. Hexorcismos - ¿Acaso de veras se vive con raíz en la Tierra?
B2 / 5. Hexorcismos & El Irreal Veintiuno - Interferencias
B3 / 6. Jessika Khazrik - Gebera

LP2:
C1/ 7. Khyam Allami - Mix v6
C2 / 8. Kloxii Li - Anhaga
C3 / 9. KMRU - hidden options
C4 / 10. MAF - What's heard once entered (Nommo)

D1 / 11. Portrait XO - MUTUALISM_151122
D2 / 12. Simina Oprescu - Granularities
D3 / 13. Visions of Lizard - Barranca del muerto



SHORT INFO:

For the last seven years, sound artist, technologist, and electronic musician Moisés Horta Valenzuela (aka Hexorcismos) has been studying artificial intelligence and generative art, wondering how these new technologies might be augmented into his musical process. Born in Tijuana and currently based in Berlin, Hexorcismos has long attempted to break down the permeable borders between musical styles and expressions, using the spaces in between to reinforce his politics and worldview. And on 'MUTALISMX - becoming sonic network', he expands his vision, inviting artists from across the globe to collaborate on work that questions the biases inherent in AI models, offering a collective alternative that could serve as a blueprint for further research.

The majority of AI art at this stage works with "big data", taking ideas from the cultural canon and muddying them with our contemporary reality. But if we accept that mass culture is always politically biased, always swaying towards historical prejudices, then there must be a counter-narrative. Hexorcismos began to develop a bottom-up approach, using "small data" to interrogate his idiosyncratic approach to art; he built a tool called SEMILLA.AI based on neural audio synthesis that could not only mimic his sonic fingerprint but transform it into another. So when he offered the synth to his network of collaborators, he gave them the option of either using only their data or sharing the signatures of each other artist involved in the project, blurring their identities into a mutual voice.

The result is a compilation that unspools with the coherence and fluidity of a single-artist album or adventurous DJ mix, genreless and boundless but unified by a singular message. Hunanese-American artist Kloxii Li for example takes rugged percussion and tense, industrial ambience, smudging her soundscape into a swirling gust of ghostly dissonance. Hexorcismos himself contributes two compositions: the lengthy, hypnotic 'Acaso de veras se vive con raíz en la Tierra', an AI-powered scramble of his pointed tribal guarachero experiments; and 'Interferencias', a collaboration with Mexican club veteran Bryan Dálvez, aka El Irreal Veintiuno that drives intense dancefloor rhythms into a dense haze of frozen drones and radio static. Elsewhere, Berlin-based Lebanese artist and writer Jessika Khazrik dissolves her voice into a mesh of obscured rhythms and dissociated whirrs, blending the organic with the artificial but retaining an overpowering sense of humanity.

Some artists were drawn to the nebulous aspects of the technology, searching for truth in a soup of different sounds, while others, such as KMRU, used Hexorcismos's synthesizer the examine their output. On 'hidden options', the Kenyan sound artist fed his immense catalog into the neural net, bringing out his mannerisms and tendencies in the process. Each track is singular but myriad, prompting both mutual respect and a sonic becoming, a feedback process between the artist and the tool, the individual and the collective. Data sets are made by people, and by engaging directly with musicians, Hexorcismos suggests a new way of utilizing a technology demonized and glorified without careful examination. Each artist owns their AI model, and alongside the album Hexorcismos will release SEMILLA.AI to the public (with custom-made models to start the process), allowing anyone to access this revolutionary technology.

Even the album's artwork reflects the political message, conceptualized by Chilean duo hypereikon, who used AI processes to develop a visual reflection of the technology and its possibilities. Operating outside of academia and capitalist enterprises, MUTUALISMX proposes an alternative future - one without borders that's not beholden to the Western canon, where independent labor can be prioritized and celebrated, and where creativity can truly flourish.
More

LP, Artwork with Obi Tag, Vinyl made of BioVinyl

2. GENRE/S: Alternative / Electronic

3. TRACKLISTS:

A
1. Intiha - 3:50
2. Nazar Se - 4:14
3. Muddat - 6:30
4. Raat Bhar - 2:58

B
5. Dard - 7:30
6. Chiragh - 5:46
7. Lagta Nahi - 2:10
8. Dono Jahan - 3:32


4. SHORT INFO:

Singer, songwriter and author Ali Sethi had been entranced by Jaar's music long before they began collaborating. He'd absorbed the sounds over a number of years, listening casually and taking in their subtleties in bars and rooftop parties across Lahore and London. "It felt familiar to me, that sense of adventure you have when you hear his music, like a tale that teases you and plays with your expectations as it unfolds," says Sethi. "In that sense it resembled the leisurely improvised ghazals and qawwalis I grew up hearing in Pakistan." So when the two were finally introduced by Indian visual artist Somnath Bhatt, a regular Jaar collaborator who also handled the album's artwork, Sethi was well prepared. He began to sketch out voice notes using loops snipped from Jaar's acclaimed 2020 album 'Telas', improvising vocalizations and seductive Urdu poems over Jaar's weightless, time-bending productions. Jaar was astonished by the result; "It was what 'Telas' had been missing," he explains.

Improvisation has been important to the Chilean artist for many years. Before he had even started making electronic music, Jaar jammed on accordion with friends on the street in New York City. It's at the core of his practice, "a moment in time," in his own words. 'Intiha', the opening track on the album, is the first they finished together, and positions Sethi's evocative phrases over Jaar's faded, metallic percussion. It's a perfect proof of concept, re- imagining the world of 'Telas' and augmenting it with a sense of ancestral melancholy and giddy euphoria that's truly transformational.
Sethi is best known globally for his attempts to revive the ghazal, an ancient poetic form that was taken by Sufi mystics from the Arab world to Persia and throughout the Indian subcontinent, where it captivated the royal court. It's been unfashionable in the last few decades, a mannered style associated with decadence, and Sethi offers it a new lease of life through his playfully revisionist covers and renditions. (His most popular single 'Pasoori' is a global phenomenon, one of the most Googled songs of 2022, with hundreds of millions of listeners tuning into its timeless message of forbidden love.) Sethi updates the ghazal form by using his years of training in raga music, lifting metaphors that reflect his journey as an out-of- place queer kid in Pakistan who became a US citizen and now lives in New York City.


5. VITAL SALES POINTS:

Critically acclaimed musician Nicolas Jaar collaborates with Pakistani artist Ali Sethi for a reworking of his original album Telas

Ali Sethi song "Pasoori" was the most googled song in 2022. It has over a billion streams across his profiles


More

160 Pages Book (Boodk/Auduio Combination sold as "Merch Item"), containing 13 QR codes to download 13 songs.

Aho Ssan debuts on Other People with second solo album and book 'Rhizomes' featuring Nicolás Jaar, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, clipping., Blackhaine and more

2. GENRE/S: Electronic / Alternative



3. TRACKLIST:

1. Ouverture feat Nyokabi Kariuki
2. Rhizome I Feat Josefa Ntjam
3. Cold Summer Part I Feat Blackhaine
4. Le Tremblement Feat Nicolás Jaar & Resina
5. Memoria Feat R?n C?p ?uôi & Richie Culver
6. Till The Sun Down Feat clipping. & Resina
7. Rhizome II Feat Lafawndah
8. Hero Once Been Feat 9 Antiope
9. Tetsuo I feat James Ginzburg
10. Tetsuo II
11. Away feat Exzald S & Valentina Magaletti
12. Rhizome IV Feat Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid & Mondkopf
13. Fermeture Nyokabi Kariuki




4. SHORT INFO:

Aho Ssan debuts on Other People with second solo album and book 'Rhizomes' featuring Nicolás Jaar, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, clipping., Blackhaine and more

Paris based composer Aho Ssan, the artist moniker of Niamké Désiré, presents his new full-length 'Rhizomes' on the Other People label following his debut LP 'Simulacrum' (2020) and collaborative record 'Limen' (2022) with fellow musician KMRU.

'Rhizomes' draws inspiration from a concept coined and developed between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri. The idea of an ever evolving structural model, constantly in motion and spreading out in all directions at once. It has no beginning and no end, but always remains in a middle, through which it grows and overflows.

"The root thought is the one that kills everything around itself while the rhizome is the root that stretches out to meet other roots," Désiré explains considering the works of French writer Édouard Glissant who addresses questions of identity, crossbreeding of cultures and its evolution.

Much like the name it borrows, Aho Ssan's 'Rhizomes' is a multimedia project that embarks on a myriad of disparate, unique musical and artistic partnerships. This piece adapts this concept to explore the influence of sound materials on creation, the appropriation of a sound object, and the collaborative nature of a composition that responds to modernity.

"Rhizome represents an underground stem system that fosters connections between various organisms and allows them to flourish collectively. It's an album that celebrates collaboration and brings together a diverse group of talented artists," Désiré continues.

Aho Ssan collaborated with a comprehensive cast of artists to create a musical rhizome including Nyokabi Kariuki, Josefa Ntjam, Blackhaine, Nicolás Jaar, Resina, R?n C?p ?uôi, Richie Culver, clipping., Lafawndah, 9T Antiope, James Ginzburg, Exzald S, Valentina Magaletti, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid and Mondkopf. Cooperation and community are at the root of this project and the lens through which all the compositions can be understood through.

Aho Ssan will present 'Rhizomes' AV show together with visual artist Sevi Iko Dømochevsky at Berlin Atonal 2023. 'Rhizomes' received a Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2023 Digital Music


5. VITAL SALES POINTS:

In conjunction with the album, 'Rhizomes' comes complete with a set of illustrations by Kim Grano in a book release. The drawings become a hybrid language, each an emotional response to the musical half. The book contains an extended version of the album with 3 additional songs and 2 longer versions of the album songs. It also includes a sample pack by Aho Ssan and a collection of solo tracks by Elliot Blaise, KMRU, Lamin Fofana, Brodinski & Se?bastien Forrester, Valence Drake, 9T Antiope, Exzald S and Valentina Magaletti. The extended version package is only accessible through the QR codes in the book.

More

LP [Limited Edition Vinyl]
GENRE/S: Alternative / Electronic / Noise

TRACKLISTS:

1. At The Opposite Pole of Architectural Virtue
2. In One Corner The Male Relatives
3. Serene Company
4. Tiles of The Façade
5. Chafing Dish
6. Such Gardens There Are
7. Capping Verse
8. Overdose Ferocious
9. Patience Of A Traitor
10. Bareekullah Picnic
11. In Thrall

SHORT INFO:

Tehran-born, NY based brothers Mohammad and Mehdi collaborate with Ian McDonnell, a.k.a. Eomac on a new record entitled "Patience of a Traitor". Inspired by the traditional bath houses in their native Tehran, the brothers say: "This record speaks to preserving the things that are timeless, through revisiting the past. The traditional Persian bath house - its architecture, the role it played in keeping, building community, the bathing rituals - served as our ultimate symbol. Now we drink from one cup, and fill the jar with the other."

More

LP [Limited Edition Vinyl]

GENRE/S: Alternative / Electronic / Ambient

TRACKLIST:

1. Addio
2. Felicitazioni
3. Piccolo e Cattivo
4. Mio Signore
5. Tranquillo
6. Oboe Vento e Rumore
7. Ti Saluto Parte 2
8. Contacto
9. Casa di Emma
10. Ti Saluto Parte 1

SHORT INFO:

Dienne's 'Addio' is a 32 minute study on loss and mourning. Following the death of her grandmother due to covid, and unable to say a proper goodbye due to travel restrictions, Dienne set out to give her "Addio" through musical form. She lets objects fall, leaves windows open, and lets the wind dust off the shelves. This is the sound of everyday mourning, a taste instead of an event. A lingering, broken and patient work of undeniable beauty.

Credits:
Artwork by Africanus Okokon and Maziyar Pahlevan.
Mastering by Gert Van Hoof.

Bio:
Dienne is a Belgian composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. She builds songs and soundscapes portraying images & stories that play behind her eyes. Starting with the oboe as a child, before adding the piano and flute to her repertoire, she later produced soundtracks for theater and dance performances. Her debut 'Addio' will be released on 'Other People'.

More

LTD 2LP [Includes Art Prints by Zofia Kulik]

Compiled on vinyl for the first time

GENRE/S: Library / Ambient

TRACKLISTS:

1. Krzysztof Knittel: Lapis (1985)
2. Bohdan Mazurek: Canti (1973)
3. Magdalena Dàugosz: Yes and No (1990)
4. Barbara Zawadzka - Greya - III (1991)
5. Barbara Zawadzka Greya - IV (1990)
6. Barbara Zawadzka Greya - II (1987)
7. Rudnik - Epitaph of Stones (1984)
8. Boguslaw Shaeffer - Symphony. Elec…e (perf. by Wolfram) (1964-66) - I
9. Boguslaw Shaeffer - Symphony. Elec… (perf. by Wolfram) (1964-66) - II
10. Boguslaw Shaeffer - Symphony. Elec…(perf. by Wolfram) (1964-66) - III
11. Boguslaw Shaeffer - Symphony. Elec… (perf. by Wolfram) (1964-66) - IV


SHORT INFO:

Would It Sound Just As Bad If You Played It Backwards?"

A Collection of Sounds from the Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia (1959-2001)
Art by Zofia Kulik



"Would it sound just as bad if you played it backwards?" assembles a collection of audio experi-ments created at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES) from 1959 to the beginning of the century. These exceptional works are presented alongside images from the Polish artist Zofia Kulik, whose career reached its apogee between the late 1960s and early 70s. While PRES and Kulik remain touchstones in the recent history of the Polish avant-garde, presenting them togeth-er in one release may not have seemed like an obvious choice. There are, of course, some histori-cal intersections-the most notable being a shared interest in Polish artist and architect Oskar Hansen's Open Form theory. Open Form promoted a modular theory of architecture that became a tool adapted by its users and inhabitants. Hansen's ideas influenced Kulik's early works and also manifested in the PRES's iconic "black room," a music studio designed by Hansen, himself, which was equipped with moveable sound panels that absorbed or reflected sounds to promote a greater, creative freedom from its users. And yet, as it usually goes, the most obvious connections are usually the most deceitful. Whereas Kulik initially followed Open Form, she later turned away from it. And as for the black room-it mostly worked in theory but not in practice. What is it then that makes the two work together?

Within the realm of art history, Kulik's work is often divided into two periods: her early, artistic endeavours connected to Open Form, and the KwieKulik collaboration (with Przemys?av Kwiek), followed by her later turn towards a closed form, characterised by a departure from pro-cessual art in favour of material works of art. Yet these terms don't necessarily bring out the es-sence of Kulik's works. The artist explained that Hansen's Open Form was important for how it opened his students to perceive their environments in a different way. Reminiscing about those times, she states, "I wanted to catch the moment when the object I was looking at was real. I de-cided that as a static item it can never be real-it's possible only in the process of looking at it. That translates to the object being recorded and presented in certain sequences [...] there's the astonishment at the materiality of objects, colours, transformations."

Kulik's works chosen for this release are taken from two projects, Lady Halina and Cones (1968-71) and Excursion with White Screen. Route: Cemetery, The Palace of Culture, which were in-cluded in Kulik's diploma at the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The projects consisted of slide projections presented on three screens, with specific temporal se-quencing. Lady Halina and Cones presents a woman's body, its forms, geometrical figures, and shapes undergoing a process of transformation. About Excursion with White Screen, Kulik says "this white sheet was supposed to signify an empty screen in different spatial situations in the city. I thought that I would later project a slide onto that screen, imposing another image after-wards, like a collage, but suddenly that screen became a material object instead of an abstract, pure idea of a potential image within an image. It became an object in itself and I began to notice that the screen sometimes wrinkles in the cemetery, and sometimes moves with the wind." A myriad of new meanings and references arise in the twenty-first century from Kulik's sequenced films. From the perspective of a young woman, Lady Halina and Scones poses questions about the objectification of women, the boundaries of their agency, and the recognition of their subjec-tivity within the patriarchal world in which their bodies often functioned as objects of control. In Excursion with White Screen the symbolism of a white sheet placed against a background image of a cemetery or the Palace of Culture questions the role of these religio-political monuments, the white screen acting as an empty, and potentially alternative, space between them.

The music chosen for "Would it sound just as bad if you played it backwards?" spans most of the history of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, including tracks as early as W?odzimi-erz Koto?ski's "Concrete etude, Study for One Cymbal Stroke," and ending chronologically with Wolfram's rendition of Bogus?aw Schaeffer's "Symphony. Electronic Music." Just as with Kulik's works, the contemporaneity of the music presented is astonishing. The album opens and closes with Krzysztof Knittel's 1980s compositions, "Lapis" and "Poko," and perfectly encapsu-late his descriptions of his experiences in the studio: "We acted without any initial plans or elec-tronic scores, there were no goals to be achieved, no creative method defined in advance. We used our aesthetic and technological knowledge freely, the shapes of tracks emerged during our shared work in the studio."

The album also includes "Mictlan I" (1987) and "Yes and No," (1990) two stunning works by Magdalena D?ugosz, who studied composition with Krystyna Moszuma?ska-Nazar and music theory with Józef Patkowski. Since 1979 she has been teaching in the Electroacoustic Music Stu-dio at the Academy of Music in Kraków.

Also featured is the avant-garde composer El?bieta Sikora, Knittel's fellow member from the KEW Composers' Group, with her stark pieces "Letters to M" and "View from the Window," (1971), and Barbara Zawadzka, whose "Greya" (1988) is meant to evoke different sequencings of the colour grey. In this piece, particularly, it's hard not to appreciate the similarity to Kulik's notion of sequencing and transformation of objects.

Bernadetta Matuszczak's "Libera me" (1991) is an example of a somewhat different creative ex-perience. In a radio interview conducted by Marek Zwyrzykowski in 1992, the composer stated that she wasn't intending to discover any "extraordinary electronic effects"; instead, she focused on the piece's "expressive layer." With the help of Tadeusz Sudnik from PRES, she incorporated into "Libera Me" the characteristic melody from the Polish version of the Orthodox hymn "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal" and then combined it with sounds of explosions and instru-mental recordings, a veiled response to the US's interventions during the Gulf War.

Eugeniusz Rudnik, the composer and sound engineer whose name is among those most strongly associated with PRES, contributes with his "Epitaph for Stones," (1984) a dedication to Jerzy Popie?uszko, the Polish Roman Catholic priest associated with the Solidarity trade union and an-ti-communist movement who was murdered by the Security Service. Bohdan Mazurek, who took over the reins of the studio from Rudnik in 1962 is also included with his piece "Canti" (1973).

As mentioned above, the album also includes W?odzimierz Koto?ski's seminal "Concrete etude, Study for One Cymbal Stroke," a piece sourced from the single stroke of a mid-sized Turkish cymbal; it is often considered to be an important starting point for the development of experi-mental music in Poland. And, finally, the album features two performances of Bogus?aw Schaeffer's "Symphony. Electronic Music," the first by Bohdan Mazurek which remains very close to the composer's score, and a contemporary version by Wolfram, which takes much more creative liberties.

In a text about his seminal work, Schaeffer stated that he "decided to include the factor of inter-pretation in a work that was greatly precise by nature" underlining the importance of shifting el-ements: "the development of music lies in individual elements shifting in the hierarchy of their functions." Indeed, an interest in shifting hierarchies seems present in Kulik's powerful images and most of the sound pieces contained in this release. When the Polish Radio appointed Eu-geniusz Rudnik to present PRES's technical capabilities to a conservative delegation of Soviet composers, he was met with a bitter reply: "Would it sound just as bad, if you played it back-wards?" asked the rigid composers. Rudnick's answer was to create "Skalary," (1966) a multi-version piece which could be played from start to finish and from finish to start, at different speeds, as well as with altered left and right channel distribution. This modular openness calls to mind the empty sheet in Kulik's images. Whatever the context, its static emptiness creates space for a different reality than that which those in power had in mind. This brings us back to Kulik's thoughts on her experiences as a student in the late 60s, a pivotal time in which she determined the process of looking and listening was central to reality itself, thereby shattering the rigidity of traditional forms and religio-political power: "I decided that as a static item, an object can never be real-it's possible only in the process of looking at it."




More

LTD 2LP [Includes Art Prints by Zofia Kulik]

Compiled on vinyl for the first time

GENRE/S: Library / Ambient

TRACKLISTS:

1. Wlodzimierz Kotonski - Study for One Cymbal Stroke (1951)
2. Symphony. Electronic music, part I (performed by Bohdan Mazurek) (1966)
3. Elzbieta Sikora - Letters to M. (1980)
4. Bernadetta Matuszczak - Libera me (1991)
5. Elzbieta Sikora - View from the Window (1978)
6. Magdalena Dlugosz - Mictlan I (1987)
7. Barbara Zawadzka - Greya part V (1991)
8. Krzysztof Knittel - Poko (1986)



SHORT INFO:

Would It Sound Just As Bad If You Played It Backwards?"

A Collection of Sounds from the Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia (1959-2001)
Art by Zofia Kulik



"Would it sound just as bad if you played it backwards?" assembles a collection of audio experi-ments created at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES) from 1959 to the beginning of the century. These exceptional works are presented alongside images from the Polish artist Zofia Kulik, whose career reached its apogee between the late 1960s and early 70s. While PRES and Kulik remain touchstones in the recent history of the Polish avant-garde, presenting them togeth-er in one release may not have seemed like an obvious choice. There are, of course, some histori-cal intersections-the most notable being a shared interest in Polish artist and architect Oskar Hansen's Open Form theory. Open Form promoted a modular theory of architecture that became a tool adapted by its users and inhabitants. Hansen's ideas influenced Kulik's early works and also manifested in the PRES's iconic "black room," a music studio designed by Hansen, himself, which was equipped with moveable sound panels that absorbed or reflected sounds to promote a greater, creative freedom from its users. And yet, as it usually goes, the most obvious connections are usually the most deceitful. Whereas Kulik initially followed Open Form, she later turned away from it. And as for the black room-it mostly worked in theory but not in practice. What is it then that makes the two work together?

Within the realm of art history, Kulik's work is often divided into two periods: her early, artistic endeavours connected to Open Form, and the KwieKulik collaboration (with Przemys?av Kwiek), followed by her later turn towards a closed form, characterised by a departure from pro-cessual art in favour of material works of art. Yet these terms don't necessarily bring out the es-sence of Kulik's works. The artist explained that Hansen's Open Form was important for how it opened his students to perceive their environments in a different way. Reminiscing about those times, she states, "I wanted to catch the moment when the object I was looking at was real. I de-cided that as a static item it can never be real-it's possible only in the process of looking at it. That translates to the object being recorded and presented in certain sequences [...] there's the astonishment at the materiality of objects, colours, transformations."

Kulik's works chosen for this release are taken from two projects, Lady Halina and Cones (1968-71) and Excursion with White Screen. Route: Cemetery, The Palace of Culture, which were in-cluded in Kulik's diploma at the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The projects consisted of slide projections presented on three screens, with specific temporal se-quencing. Lady Halina and Cones presents a woman's body, its forms, geometrical figures, and shapes undergoing a process of transformation. About Excursion with White Screen, Kulik says "this white sheet was supposed to signify an empty screen in different spatial situations in the city. I thought that I would later project a slide onto that screen, imposing another image after-wards, like a collage, but suddenly that screen became a material object instead of an abstract, pure idea of a potential image within an image. It became an object in itself and I began to notice that the screen sometimes wrinkles in the cemetery, and sometimes moves with the wind." A myriad of new meanings and references arise in the twenty-first century from Kulik's sequenced films. From the perspective of a young woman, Lady Halina and Scones poses questions about the objectification of women, the boundaries of their agency, and the recognition of their subjec-tivity within the patriarchal world in which their bodies often functioned as objects of control. In Excursion with White Screen the symbolism of a white sheet placed against a background image of a cemetery or the Palace of Culture questions the role of these religio-political monuments, the white screen acting as an empty, and potentially alternative, space between them.

The music chosen for "Would it sound just as bad if you played it backwards?" spans most of the history of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, including tracks as early as W?odzimi-erz Koto?ski's "Concrete etude, Study for One Cymbal Stroke," and ending chronologically with Wolfram's rendition of Bogus?aw Schaeffer's "Symphony. Electronic Music." Just as with Kulik's works, the contemporaneity of the music presented is astonishing. The album opens and closes with Krzysztof Knittel's 1980s compositions, "Lapis" and "Poko," and perfectly encapsu-late his descriptions of his experiences in the studio: "We acted without any initial plans or elec-tronic scores, there were no goals to be achieved, no creative method defined in advance. We used our aesthetic and technological knowledge freely, the shapes of tracks emerged during our shared work in the studio."

The album also includes "Mictlan I" (1987) and "Yes and No," (1990) two stunning works by Magdalena D?ugosz, who studied composition with Krystyna Moszuma?ska-Nazar and music theory with Józef Patkowski. Since 1979 she has been teaching in the Electroacoustic Music Stu-dio at the Academy of Music in Kraków.

Also featured is the avant-garde composer El?bieta Sikora, Knittel's fellow member from the KEW Composers' Group, with her stark pieces "Letters to M" and "View from the Window," (1971), and Barbara Zawadzka, whose "Greya" (1988) is meant to evoke different sequencings of the colour grey. In this piece, particularly, it's hard not to appreciate the similarity to Kulik's notion of sequencing and transformation of objects.

Bernadetta Matuszczak's "Libera me" (1991) is an example of a somewhat different creative ex-perience. In a radio interview conducted by Marek Zwyrzykowski in 1992, the composer stated that she wasn't intending to discover any "extraordinary electronic effects"; instead, she focused on the piece's "expressive layer." With the help of Tadeusz Sudnik from PRES, she incorporated into "Libera Me" the characteristic melody from the Polish version of the Orthodox hymn "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal" and then combined it with sounds of explosions and instru-mental recordings, a veiled response to the US's interventions during the Gulf War.

Eugeniusz Rudnik, the composer and sound engineer whose name is among those most strongly associated with PRES, contributes with his "Epitaph for Stones," (1984) a dedication to Jerzy Popie?uszko, the Polish Roman Catholic priest associated with the Solidarity trade union and an-ti-communist movement who was murdered by the Security Service. Bohdan Mazurek, who took over the reins of the studio from Rudnik in 1962 is also included with his piece "Canti" (1973).

As mentioned above, the album also includes W?odzimierz Koto?ski's seminal "Concrete etude, Study for One Cymbal Stroke," a piece sourced from the single stroke of a mid-sized Turkish cymbal; it is often considered to be an important starting point for the development of experi-mental music in Poland. And, finally, the album features two performances of Bogus?aw Schaeffer's "Symphony. Electronic Music," the first by Bohdan Mazurek which remains very close to the composer's score, and a contemporary version by Wolfram, which takes much more creative liberties.

In a text about his seminal work, Schaeffer stated that he "decided to include the factor of inter-pretation in a work that was greatly precise by nature" underlining the importance of shifting el-ements: "the development of music lies in individual elements shifting in the hierarchy of their functions." Indeed, an interest in shifting hierarchies seems present in Kulik's powerful images and most of the sound pieces contained in this release. When the Polish Radio appointed Eu-geniusz Rudnik to present PRES's technical capabilities to a conservative delegation of Soviet composers, he was met with a bitter reply: "Would it sound just as bad, if you played it back-wards?" asked the rigid composers. Rudnick's answer was to create "Skalary," (1966) a multi-version piece which could be played from start to finish and from finish to start, at different speeds, as well as with altered left and right channel distribution. This modular openness calls to mind the empty sheet in Kulik's images. Whatever the context, its static emptiness creates space for a different reality than that which those in power had in mind. This brings us back to Kulik's thoughts on her experiences as a student in the late 60s, a pivotal time in which she determined the process of looking and listening was central to reality itself, thereby shattering the rigidity of traditional forms and religio-political power: "I decided that as a static item, an object can never be real-it's possible only in the process of looking at it."
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LP

CENIZAS WAS WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY NICOLAS JAAR BETWEEN 2017-2019. MASTERING BY RASHAD BECKER ART BY MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN
MIXING BY NICOLAS JAAR AND PATRICK HIGGINS
* In 2019, Patrick Higgins and Nicolas Jaar mixed some of the record in Higgins' Future- Past studios in Hudson NY and Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan. Additional mixing was done in Figure8 Studios in Brooklyn by Nicola?s.


8/10 Resident Advisor - Cenizas is an LP of significant gravitas from an artist with among the largest and most engaged followings in electronic music

8.0 Pitchfork - Given all the technical ground Cenizas covers, Jarr is an impressively meticulous guide. Every pluck, ping, buzz, scratch, and whistle is intentional, a bump in the tunnel as you slide down the rabbit hole

9/10 Loud & Quiet - Jaar's music has always been deeply preoccupied with atmosphere, and Cenizas is a deeply atmospheric album. It sounds like a void. As you listen, you feel like you could fall into it and never find your way out. In that way, these 54 minutes feel like a sequel to Jaar's first hit, Space is Only Noise, set 5,000 years in the future. He told us then. He's showing us now.


NICOLAS JAAR BIOGRAPHY

NICOLAS JAAR is a Chilean sound maker born in 1990. He is known in the club world for his various dance 12?? EPs and remixes he put out from 2008 to 2011. Since his first full length (SPACE IS ONLY NOISE, 2011), he has embarked in multiple divergent path.
For the last 7 years, he has released a large volume of recordings through his label OTHER PEOPLE (including music by LYDIA LUNCH, WILLIAM BASINSKI, PATRICK HIGGINS, DJ SLUGO, LUCRETIA DALT, PIERRE BASTIEN & TOMAGA, VTGNIKE and others).
In 2015, Nicolas scored DHEEPAN by director JACQUES AUDIARD (winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2015).
In 2016, Jaar launched THE NETWORK, a web of 111 fictional radio stations done in collaboration with artists JENA MYUNG and MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN. A batch of these mixes was aired on NTS radio and is archived here: (https://bit.ly/35PwrHu). In 2017, THE NETWORK became a book, published by PRINTED MATTER In NY.
In the spring of 2019, Jaar was commissioned for a 9 hour improvisation in the OUDE KERK CHURCH in Amsterdam which he performed alongside two organists and a dozen surround speakers pointed at the ceiling of the church.
Nicola?s is currently curating a residency for sound artists in the West Bank that takes place in a 130 year-old converted food storage shack in Bethlehem (within the DAR YUSUF NASRI JACIR FOR ART AND RESEARCH)
Residents so far include composer SEBASTIAN JATZ RAWICZ and researcher and artist ROLANDO HERNANDEZ.
In the fall of 2019, he presented INCOMPREHENSIBLE SUN, a sound and light installation in a 200-meter-long ex-military shooting range in Zaandam (The Netherlands) and RETAINING THE ENERGY, BUT LOSING THE IMAGE alongside artist VINCENT DE BELLEVAL which consisted of 10 large rotating parabolic reflectors that capture and emit hyper-focalized surround sound.
For the first SHARJAH ARCHITECTURE TRIENNALE (curated by ADRIAN LAHOUD IN 2019) Nicola?s performed a piece for 16 buried speakers in the desert near the MLEIHA ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTRE.
Nicola?s has collaborated with artist LYDIA OURAHMANE (MUSIC FOR TWO SEAS, Stromboli), FKA TWIGS (MAGDALENE), and PATRICK HIGGINS under the name AEAEA. He is also a current member of improvisational ensemble ¡MIE?RCOLES! alongside dancer and choreographer STEPHANIE JANAINA, founding member of research collective SHOCK FOREST GROUP, and half of the band DARKSIDE

Tracklist:

1 Vanish
2 Menysid
3 Cenizas
4 Agosto
5 Gocce
6 Mud
7 Vacíar
8 Sunder
9 Hello, Chain
10 Rubble
11 Garden
12 Xerox
13 Faith Made of Silk

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- 2LP is mastered for Exceptional Sound

LTD Edition includes : 2LP + Book + OCard + Clear PVC Sleeve

CENIZAS WAS WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY NICOLAS JAAR BETWEEN 2017-2019. MASTERING BY RASHAD BECKER ART BY MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN
MIXING BY NICOLAS JAAR AND PATRICK HIGGINS
* In 2019, Patrick Higgins and Nicolas Jaar mixed some of the record in Higgins' Future- Past studios in Hudson NY and Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan. Additional mixing was done in Figure8 Studios in Brooklyn by Nicola?s.


8/10 Resident Advisor - Cenizas is an LP of significant gravitas from an artist with among the largest and most engaged followings in electronic music

8.0 Pitchfork - Given all the technical ground Cenizas covers, Jarr is an impressively meticulous guide. Every pluck, ping, buzz, scratch, and whistle is intentional, a bump in the tunnel as you slide down the rabbit hole

9/10 Loud & Quiet - Jaar's music has always been deeply preoccupied with atmosphere, and Cenizas is a deeply atmospheric album. It sounds like a void. As you listen, you feel like you could fall into it and never find your way out. In that way, these 54 minutes feel like a sequel to Jaar's first hit, Space is Only Noise, set 5,000 years in the future. He told us then. He's showing us now.


NICOLAS JAAR BIOGRAPHY

NICOLAS JAAR is a Chilean sound maker born in 1990. He is known in the club world for his various dance 12?? EPs and remixes he put out from 2008 to 2011. Since his first full length (SPACE IS ONLY NOISE, 2011), he has embarked in multiple divergent path.
For the last 7 years, he has released a large volume of recordings through his label OTHER PEOPLE (including music by LYDIA LUNCH, WILLIAM BASINSKI, PATRICK HIGGINS, DJ SLUGO, LUCRETIA DALT, PIERRE BASTIEN & TOMAGA, VTGNIKE and others).
In 2015, Nicolas scored DHEEPAN by director JACQUES AUDIARD (winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2015).
In 2016, Jaar launched THE NETWORK, a web of 111 fictional radio stations done in collaboration with artists JENA MYUNG and MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN. A batch of these mixes was aired on NTS radio and is archived here: (https://bit.ly/35PwrHu). In 2017, THE NETWORK became a book, published by PRINTED MATTER In NY.
In the spring of 2019, Jaar was commissioned for a 9 hour improvisation in the OUDE KERK CHURCH in Amsterdam which he performed alongside two organists and a dozen surround speakers pointed at the ceiling of the church.
Nicola?s is currently curating a residency for sound artists in the West Bank that takes place in a 130 year-old converted food storage shack in Bethlehem (within the DAR YUSUF NASRI JACIR FOR ART AND RESEARCH)
Residents so far include composer SEBASTIAN JATZ RAWICZ and researcher and artist ROLANDO HERNANDEZ.
In the fall of 2019, he presented INCOMPREHENSIBLE SUN, a sound and light installation in a 200-meter-long ex-military shooting range in Zaandam (The Netherlands) and RETAINING THE ENERGY, BUT LOSING THE IMAGE alongside artist VINCENT DE BELLEVAL which consisted of 10 large rotating parabolic reflectors that capture and emit hyper-focalized surround sound.
For the first SHARJAH ARCHITECTURE TRIENNALE (curated by ADRIAN LAHOUD IN 2019) Nicola?s performed a piece for 16 buried speakers in the desert near the MLEIHA ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTRE.
Nicola?s has collaborated with artist LYDIA OURAHMANE (MUSIC FOR TWO SEAS, Stromboli), FKA TWIGS (MAGDALENE), and PATRICK HIGGINS under the name AEAEA. He is also a current member of improvisational ensemble ¡MIE?RCOLES! alongside dancer and choreographer STEPHANIE JANAINA, founding member of research collective SHOCK FOREST GROUP, and half of the band DARKSIDE

Tracklist:

1 Vanish
2 Menysid
3 Cenizas
4 Agosto
5 Gocce
6 Mud
7 Vacíar
8 Sunder
9 Hello, Chain
10 Rubble
11 Garden
12 Xerox
13 Faith Made of Silk

More

LTD CD : CD + Book + Clear PVC Sleeve

CENIZAS WAS WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY NICOLAS JAAR BETWEEN 2017-2019. MASTERING BY RASHAD BECKER ART BY MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN
MIXING BY NICOLAS JAAR AND PATRICK HIGGINS
* In 2019, Patrick Higgins and Nicolas Jaar mixed some of the record in Higgins' Future- Past studios in Hudson NY and Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan. Additional mixing was done in Figure8 Studios in Brooklyn by Nicola?s.


8/10 Resident Advisor - Cenizas is an LP of significant gravitas from an artist with among the largest and most engaged followings in electronic music

8.0 Pitchfork - Given all the technical ground Cenizas covers, Jarr is an impressively meticulous guide. Every pluck, ping, buzz, scratch, and whistle is intentional, a bump in the tunnel as you slide down the rabbit hole

9/10 Loud & Quiet - Jaar's music has always been deeply preoccupied with atmosphere, and Cenizas is a deeply atmospheric album. It sounds like a void. As you listen, you feel like you could fall into it and never find your way out. In that way, these 54 minutes feel like a sequel to Jaar's first hit, Space is Only Noise, set 5,000 years in the future. He told us then. He's showing us now.


NICOLAS JAAR BIOGRAPHY

NICOLAS JAAR is a Chilean sound maker born in 1990. He is known in the club world for his various dance 12?? EPs and remixes he put out from 2008 to 2011. Since his first full length (SPACE IS ONLY NOISE, 2011), he has embarked in multiple divergent path.
For the last 7 years, he has released a large volume of recordings through his label OTHER PEOPLE (including music by LYDIA LUNCH, WILLIAM BASINSKI, PATRICK HIGGINS, DJ SLUGO, LUCRETIA DALT, PIERRE BASTIEN & TOMAGA, VTGNIKE and others).
In 2015, Nicolas scored DHEEPAN by director JACQUES AUDIARD (winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2015).
In 2016, Jaar launched THE NETWORK, a web of 111 fictional radio stations done in collaboration with artists JENA MYUNG and MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN. A batch of these mixes was aired on NTS radio and is archived here: (https://bit.ly/35PwrHu). In 2017, THE NETWORK became a book, published by PRINTED MATTER In NY.
In the spring of 2019, Jaar was commissioned for a 9 hour improvisation in the OUDE KERK CHURCH in Amsterdam which he performed alongside two organists and a dozen surround speakers pointed at the ceiling of the church.
Nicola?s is currently curating a residency for sound artists in the West Bank that takes place in a 130 year-old converted food storage shack in Bethlehem (within the DAR YUSUF NASRI JACIR FOR ART AND RESEARCH)
Residents so far include composer SEBASTIAN JATZ RAWICZ and researcher and artist ROLANDO HERNANDEZ.
In the fall of 2019, he presented INCOMPREHENSIBLE SUN, a sound and light installation in a 200-meter-long ex-military shooting range in Zaandam (The Netherlands) and RETAINING THE ENERGY, BUT LOSING THE IMAGE alongside artist VINCENT DE BELLEVAL which consisted of 10 large rotating parabolic reflectors that capture and emit hyper-focalized surround sound.
For the first SHARJAH ARCHITECTURE TRIENNALE (curated by ADRIAN LAHOUD IN 2019) Nicola?s performed a piece for 16 buried speakers in the desert near the MLEIHA ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTRE.
Nicola?s has collaborated with artist LYDIA OURAHMANE (MUSIC FOR TWO SEAS, Stromboli), FKA TWIGS (MAGDALENE), and PATRICK HIGGINS under the name AEAEA. He is also a current member of improvisational ensemble ¡MIE?RCOLES! alongside dancer and choreographer STEPHANIE JANAINA, founding member of research collective SHOCK FOREST GROUP, and half of the band DARKSIDE

Tracklist:

1 Vanish
2 Menysid
3 Cenizas
4 Agosto
5 Gocce
6 Mud
7 Vacíar
8 Sunder
9 Hello, Chain
10 Rubble
11 Garden
12 Xerox
13 Faith Made of Silk

More

CD Version

CENIZAS WAS WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY NICOLAS JAAR BETWEEN 2017-2019. MASTERING BY RASHAD BECKER ART BY MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN
MIXING BY NICOLAS JAAR AND PATRICK HIGGINS
* In 2019, Patrick Higgins and Nicolas Jaar mixed some of the record in Higgins' Future- Past studios in Hudson NY and Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan. Additional mixing was done in Figure8 Studios in Brooklyn by Nicola?s.


8/10 Resident Advisor - Cenizas is an LP of significant gravitas from an artist with among the largest and most engaged followings in electronic music

8.0 Pitchfork - Given all the technical ground Cenizas covers, Jarr is an impressively meticulous guide. Every pluck, ping, buzz, scratch, and whistle is intentional, a bump in the tunnel as you slide down the rabbit hole

9/10 Loud & Quiet - Jaar's music has always been deeply preoccupied with atmosphere, and Cenizas is a deeply atmospheric album. It sounds like a void. As you listen, you feel like you could fall into it and never find your way out. In that way, these 54 minutes feel like a sequel to Jaar's first hit, Space is Only Noise, set 5,000 years in the future. He told us then. He's showing us now.


NICOLAS JAAR BIOGRAPHY

NICOLAS JAAR is a Chilean sound maker born in 1990. He is known in the club world for his various dance 12?? EPs and remixes he put out from 2008 to 2011. Since his first full length (SPACE IS ONLY NOISE, 2011), he has embarked in multiple divergent path.
For the last 7 years, he has released a large volume of recordings through his label OTHER PEOPLE (including music by LYDIA LUNCH, WILLIAM BASINSKI, PATRICK HIGGINS, DJ SLUGO, LUCRETIA DALT, PIERRE BASTIEN & TOMAGA, VTGNIKE and others).
In 2015, Nicolas scored DHEEPAN by director JACQUES AUDIARD (winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2015).
In 2016, Jaar launched THE NETWORK, a web of 111 fictional radio stations done in collaboration with artists JENA MYUNG and MAZIYAR PAHLEVAN. A batch of these mixes was aired on NTS radio and is archived here: (https://bit.ly/35PwrHu). In 2017, THE NETWORK became a book, published by PRINTED MATTER In NY.
In the spring of 2019, Jaar was commissioned for a 9 hour improvisation in the OUDE KERK CHURCH in Amsterdam which he performed alongside two organists and a dozen surround speakers pointed at the ceiling of the church.
Nicola?s is currently curating a residency for sound artists in the West Bank that takes place in a 130 year-old converted food storage shack in Bethlehem (within the DAR YUSUF NASRI JACIR FOR ART AND RESEARCH)
Residents so far include composer SEBASTIAN JATZ RAWICZ and researcher and artist ROLANDO HERNANDEZ.
In the fall of 2019, he presented INCOMPREHENSIBLE SUN, a sound and light installation in a 200-meter-long ex-military shooting range in Zaandam (The Netherlands) and RETAINING THE ENERGY, BUT LOSING THE IMAGE alongside artist VINCENT DE BELLEVAL which consisted of 10 large rotating parabolic reflectors that capture and emit hyper-focalized surround sound.
For the first SHARJAH ARCHITECTURE TRIENNALE (curated by ADRIAN LAHOUD IN 2019) Nicola?s performed a piece for 16 buried speakers in the desert near the MLEIHA ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTRE.
Nicola?s has collaborated with artist LYDIA OURAHMANE (MUSIC FOR TWO SEAS, Stromboli), FKA TWIGS (MAGDALENE), and PATRICK HIGGINS under the name AEAEA. He is also a current member of improvisational ensemble ¡MIE?RCOLES! alongside dancer and choreographer STEPHANIE JANAINA, founding member of research collective SHOCK FOREST GROUP, and half of the band DARKSIDE

Tracklist:

1 Vanish
2 Menysid
3 Cenizas
4 Agosto
5 Gocce
6 Mud
7 Vacíar
8 Sunder
9 Hello, Chain
10 Rubble
11 Garden
12 Xerox
13 Faith Made of Silk

More

AAL 3LP '2017-2019' on Other People featuring Lydia Lunch.
F = vinyl-only edit

Tracklist 3LP

A1. Fantasy
A2. If Loving You Is Wrong
B. With An Addict
C1. If You Can't Do It Good, Do It Hard feat. Lydia Lunch
C2. Alarm
C3. Deeeeeeefers
D. Faith
E1. Penny
E2. You (Forever)
F. Vinyl-Only Edit More

AAL Single 12" on Other People featuring Lydia Lunch and FKA twigs.

Tracklist EP


A Illusions Of Shameless Abundance
Featuring – Lydia Lunch

B Alucinao
Feat. Estado Unido & FKA twigs
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Tracklist LP:

1. In Praise Of Shadows
2. Figure
3. Distance
4. Rest
5. Weight
6. South
7. Tides

Sary Moussa is an electronic musician who has been active in the Beirut underground scene since 2008. He released his first full-length album Issrar in October of 2014 under the moniker radiokvm. His latest record Imbalance, finds Moussa revisiting the soundscapes of his childhood; from the echoes of political unrest, to Greek-Catholic chants, and the quiet nights of a secluded Southern village. The album combines sound design with intricate melodic arrangements to create a choir of synthesizers and noise singing in and out of sync.
In addition to his solo work, Moussa has also composed music for theatre and dance performances, short films, and museum installations.


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Format Notes:
140g vinyl, remastered from the original analogue tapes, metallic silver sleeve

Territories:
Worldwide no restrictions

Track List:

A1 : The Now Generation (3:29)
A2 : Panama (2:24)
A3 : Inorganic Matter (3:27)
A4 : African Nightclub (3:18)
A5 : Grease Plant (3:20)
A6 : Southerly (2:15)

B1 : Mechanical Heart (7:22)
B2 : Chemical Threat (3:26)
B3 : Steady Going (3:16)
B4 : Nepal Trek (2:47)

Release Notes:


Release Notes:

They Say: “Documentary and industrial underlays for current themes of modern life”.

We say: Mind-blowing, percussion-heavy, Afro-tinged, cosmic-disco library bomb.

This is the one. An absolutely outstanding record from 1983 and definitely one of the hardest to find on the collectable German library label, Coloursound. The Now Generation (Percussive Underscores) is comfortably one of the very best library records full stop.

The record comes galloping out the gate with a pair of rapid synthy-eurodisco bombs - the title-track and “Panama” - before slowing down to a woozy pace on “Inorganic Matter”. “African Nightclub” sounds like it reads, and is a particular favourite of Prins Thomas. Indeed, it was used to great effect on his seminal Cosmo Galactic Prism mix for Eskimo back in 2007. It’s followed by the dark, druggy, slow motion industrial groove of “Grease Plant” before “Southerly” lifts the tempo to close out side A with its Latin funk strut of bells and melancholic keys.

For us, though, it’s all about the opener to side B: “Mechanical Heart”. Seven minutes of building, mid-tempo disco-funk joy, deceptively explosive, club-ready gear for body and soul. The back cover dryly describes the track as “Guitar and percussion, light industrial underlay”. Hmmm. How about, “after finally emerging from a particularly heavy week jamming in a sunless, lawless German warehouse, Chic warily press record on a wayward, illicit instrumental for basement gatherings”. Just wait for those drums at the 3 minute mark…

The beatless ambience and menacing stabs of the proto-electro “Chemical Threat” follows, before the open drums and incredible fills of the metronomic “Steady Going” and fantastically monotonous funk breaks of “Nepal Trek” round out this sensational set.

This is a library masterpiece in no uncertain terms, full of synth funk, afro beats, exotica, leftfield madness, dance floor dynamite and all-around greatness.

As with our KPM and Themes re-issues, the audio for The Now Generation comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. Richard Robinson has brought the original Coloursound sleeve back to life in all its metalic silver glory.
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As one half of the revered duo Zombi and with solo releases under is fake movie soundtrack composer alias Gianni Rossi ( permanent vacation ) or his real name ( Kompakt, L.I.E.S. ) STEVE MOORE has an extensive record of worshiping wholeheartly and toying around with his musical obsessions: glam and prog rock, early spacey synth pop and their manifestations in tv themes and b-movie soundtracks, mainly of the italian kind. Under his new guise LOVELOCK he plunges fearlessly and with verve into the pastel shining, glossy world of Italo Disco and Synth Pop and there couldnt be a niftier choice to remix the first 12" of his upcoming album on Internasjonal than MORGAN GEIST who has been championing disco of the more synth-driven italian variety long before it became the fashionable thing to do again. from the anthemic intro with big piano chords forcefully laying out the main theme in a almost broadway musical style errupting into supercharged, nightprowler-like synth chords to the joyous guitar melody, the sweeping complex synth melodies and the oblivious, longing vocals this record refuses every millisecond to end on the pile of drawn by numbers, safe club-tools. it succesfully aims much higher, cunningly balancing along and avoiding the slope into kitsch along the way into the pantheon of glittering timeless pop music. More

Metronomy release their third album, 'The English Riviera' on April 11th through Because Music. The follow up to 2008's critically acclaimed 'Nights Out', 'The English Riviera' is a sonic progression of epic proportions and affirms Metronomy front man and producer, Joseph Mount, as a rare British talent.
Since 'Nights Out', the band have swollen to a four piece with new members Anna Prior on drums, Gbenga Adelekan on bass, original member Oscar Cash on keys/sax, and Joe himself on vocals, keys and guitar. This expansion of personnel is reflective of a new record that is mapped by vast soundscapes, incredible depth and warmth, and big pop hooks
Part love letter to the area of Devon coast Mount grew up in and part concept album about his own semi-fictionalised vision of "The English Riviera", the tone for the album is set by the opening sounds of seagulls, distant waves and a Music Hall string quartet. However, any notion of whimsy is swiftly dispelled, as the seismic bass line of 'We Broke Free' shudders and ushers in waves of layered guitars and synths.
Having produced and remixed everyone from Roots Manuva to Kate Nash and the forthcoming album from Nicola Roberts, this is the first Metronomy album that Mount has taken out of his bedroom and recorded in a proper studio. The results are telling.
Characterised throughout with a sense of warmth and richness, 'The English Riviera' is in parts reminiscent of seminal 1970s West Coast studio albums from the likes of Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles, but due to Mount's studio wizardry, the record sounds vibrant and entirely of its time.
Few other albums released this year will so successfully transcend such a plethora of influences and ideas and form such a coherent body of work.

Tracklisting:
Side A:
The English Riviera
We Broke Free
Everything Goes my way
The Look
She Wants
Trouble
Side B:
The Bay
Loving Arm
Corinne
Some Written
Love Underlined
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Tracklist 12":
A1) Orlando Magic, A2) Cabrio Mango
B1) 1981, B2) She Keeps It Good

The Toy Tonics crew is known for being addicted to two things: vintage music machines and old vinyl. 100% music aficionados. On the Tonic Edit series the crew shares some of their favorite old tracks - in a reworked version.

This time COEO get back in time. They destroyed a couple of 1970ies disco jams. Recut & repasted them. And gave them their special COEO touch. Of course it's irresistible!
This release comes on vinyl only first. Later maybe could be out on selected Digital sellers.. not sure yet.
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12” (+ download)

Tracklist
A1) Superior Things
A2) Heatwave
B1) Chappers Said So (Voiski Remix)
B2) Chappers Said So

Infotext

CYRK, the Belgian-German duo of Sammy Goossens and Pascal Hetzel, is giving its debut release on Vakant with three fast-paced no-holds-barred electro jams topped off with a remix by French producer Voiski.

'Superior Things', the eponymous title track, kicks off the EP with driving funk and and acid lead synths, followed by 'Heatwave', another futuristic high-tech-funker. On the flip we have 'Chappers Said So', a sublime homage to classic Detroit electro and last but definitely not least Voiski's remix of the latter, an immersive and trance-inducing techno re-work for you to get lost in.

Artwork by SEO – www.artseo.de
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Special Remarks : 180 gram Vinyl + Downloadcode, 30x30 chrome glossy printed inlay

The new talented Italian producers Sibling and the Russian Artist Heavenchord kicking it off
with Lonesome Landscape EP on FAUXPAS MUSIK. An emotional piece of late night
atmosphere dub techno music full of analogue warmth and heart-warming depth.
Vinyl tastes better...


Tracklist Vinyl:
A1 Lonesome Landscape
A2 Calmness
B1 Overcoming
B2 Slow Sensation More

Space-influenced tracks that bring the listener to the heart of the funk cosmos, Residual's latest serves up a brilliant and dexterous voyage to soundspheres that are well worth getting lost in.

Tracklist:
A1- Rukka- Stellar Radiation 7:08
A2- Teakup-Believe 3:56
B1- Sepehr-Exit Your Body 6:21
B2- Pressure Point- So Far, So Good 5:45

Release info / promo text:
If you've encountered Titonton Duvante's Residual over the years, then you'll be all too aware of their ability to conjure up genuinely thrilling and thought-provoking electronic works. Indeed, while he's best known as a DJ/producer in his own right, Duvante's own A&R skills are impressive, with Residual counting on everyone from Fym to Boo Williams to Garrett David over the years. As with their last V/A (the brilliant Refraction Vol. III), the label owner has done another expert job at rounding up some great troops here, with four emerging producers delivering the goods courtesy of Refraction Vol. IV.

We get underway courtesy of Rukka's 'Stellar Radiation'. Full of zippy, nimble synths and clever cowbell sounds, 'Stellar Radiation' is a brilliantly constructed slice of intergalactic funk that brings the rabbit role in some style. Teakup's 'Believe' is a more stuffy, techno-focused cut, the likes of which has been produced in a unique, urban-influenced vein. Miscellanea I on the Is / Was label, it's another reminder of the Ohio native's undoubted talents.

'Sepehr's 'Exit Your Body' plays out like a vintage cut from The Martian. Loaded with funk and soul motifs and characterised by its 808 sounds, this is techno of a real swagger and panache. Deep but brilliantly catchy, it's indicative of the label at its very best. It's then left to Italian producer Pressure Point to see us out, a task he fulfils in some fashion thanks to 'So Far So Good'. Another track with its roots in classic sounds, it too maintains a sort of contemporary edge. Really fascinating and sumptuous stuff that strays down different paths throughout the course of its almost 6 minutes, it closes the release in truly emphatic fashion.

Space-influenced tracks that bring the listener to the heart of the funk cosmos, Residual's latest serves up a brilliant and dexterous voyage to soundspheres that are well worth getting lost in.

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FORMAT 12” 180g, T30 Obi Strip, full printed sleeve, incl. Download Code

TRACKLIST

1./A1 Free Your Body 5:58
2./A2 Mr Kinney 6:05
3./B1 Bipolar 5:46
4./B2 Life 5:00
5./B3 7000 Miles 4:45

Release Note:

Ignore expectations and Free Your Body.
Travel a new path and Free Your Body.
Accept the limitations and Free Your Body.
Free your mind then Free Your Body.
Move to the beat and Free Your Body.
We encourage you to Free Your Body.
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LP,180, 2018 REISSUE - REMASTERED FROM ORIGINAL TAPES, CAREFULLY REPRODUCED ORIGINAL ART

Released in the same year as Synthesis over on KPM, 1974's Synthesizer and Percussion is its essential companion piece. "This record features the many distinctive sounds of the ARP Synthesizer plus percussion in various moods and tempos" is the even more underwhelming than usual library record sales pitch for Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett's second collection of what is basically minimal G-funk, with overtones of primitive acid house. This is ridiculously good.

This is one of Hawkshaw and Bennett's wilder joints and aeons ahead of its time. Bennett's tough drums provide the underpinnings for the prominent bass, keys and bubbling synths high up in the mix, alongside Hawkshaw's deranged clavinet-funk-rock. There are heavenly break loops galore.

Opener "Mon Amour" is ultra-smooth funk, all inter-weaving melodic lines whilst the seminal "Oddball" is an incredible hard electro strut with a knocking break. "Mile High Swinger" is a tranquil Spaghetti Western whistling theme over double tempo rhythmic movement and the pulsating "Auto Pilot" has a percussive groove elevated by electric piano and synthesizer. Check "Driving Force", "Home Run" and "Pacesetter" for electroid prog-funk dripped in acid squelch.

All five final tracks are beatless synth workouts, because they can.

As with all ten re-issues, the audio for Synthesizer and Percussion comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. We've taken the same care with the sleeves, handing the reproduction duties over to Richard Robinson, the current custodian of KPM's brand identity.

TRACKLISTING

Mon Amour
Oddball
Daytripper
Mile High Swinger (Vers. A)
Mile High Swinger (Vers. B)
Auto-Pilot
Pacesetter
Home Run
Driving Force
Action Man
Funky Chicken
Jolly Roger
Dumbo
Plain Song
Fanfair

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Special remarks : 12” with printed deluxe sleeve

Tracklist

A1 Nechîrvano
A2 Weso

B1 Tesîye De Bi Lûr Lûr
B2 Kurdistanê Baxcê Gulan
B3 Baran Barana


Shortinfo:

We gladly present the long awaited debut album by kurdish multi-instrumentalist Philippos Sîpano and Frankfurt am Main’s mighty duo Dan Bay & Le Rubrique aka The MPC Orchestra. “The Spirit of Dilovan” pays tribute to Philippos Sîpano and Dan Bayat’s youth band “Spirit Of Dilovan”, sketches the different musical paths the two took over the years and finds its final form in their new collaboration with Dilovan Le Rubrique, a master in the studio and a true patchbay wizzard.

With multilayered arrangements based on different kurdish music traditions and inspired by their indivudual experiences of Pop- and Clubculture, Philippos Sîpano & The MPC Orchestra’s new album can be both perceived as diasporic Popmusic or epic dancefloor monster for experienced music lovers.

All songs were produced at Offenbach’s Upper Citycenter Studio and dedicated to all DIlovans* out there, hoping they will one day constitute the majority of all people and we will all find peace, love and habibtiness on planet earth.

* good-hearted people <3
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UPC: 827170485464 Release : 18.02.2013
Special Remarks: Cover art by Gustaf Johnsson
Tracklist 12": A1. Reconnect - B1. Receive and Transmit
Establishing itself as a reliable source of music for the soul with "Minilogue - Endlessness", the Stockholm based label Make a Beautiful Corpse now welcomes its new family member. This second release made by the Swedish music artist and producer KAB is a brilliant sequel with a great soundscape and truly distinct beats. KAB, an abbreviation of his name Karl-Axel Bissler, has been active since the early 90's and, back then, released on the renowned NovaMute label along with artists such as Richie Hawtin (Plastikman), Speedy J, and Luke Slater. More lately his works has been released on Mule Electronic and WIR, to mention a few who too have recognized his subtle way of expressing feelings through music. Music that can be experienced either through the little white earbuds in a crowded bus as well as in the total freedom of the open nature. It doesn't matter. As long as you are ready to open yourself up a little bit, "Reconnect" and "Receive and Transmit" will bring you to a wonderful place inside you. We thank KAB for bringing these beats to this world, every beat denoting another heartbeat in the life of the MABC label.
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