Final 15 - A Ghostly 15 Playlist Curated by Michael Cina

"Anyone that knows me, knows that my main passion is music. I spend all day listening to music at work and my vinyl collection of 16k pieces greets me when I get home. I knew about Ghostly International before they contacted me in the early 2000’s and we would write off and on. They used to send me big packages of white labeled vinyl, it was decadent.

Late 2007 I got a call from Ghostly asking if I was up for designing a new single for Dabrye. It was a dream come true and I feel like I found a friend who really understood me. I have had the distinct privilege to design over 100 covers for Ghostly, and that is only the half of it.

When they asked me to do a compilation, I was all about it. I wanted to do three or more compilations because I wanted to segment it up into different sections (Ghostly, SMM and Spectral). It is impossible to reduce the entire label to 15 tracks. Ghostly is dynamic, they don’t fit one sound, genre or idea.

So I approached it as a mixtape of sorts. I tried to find a common thread that spoke to me and create a mood around that idea. Some of my favorite tracks are not on here. JDSY 'Horizon Line' makes my head spin. Choir of Young Believers 'Paralyse' takes me to another place. There are so many more.

What you are hearing some songs that have spoken to me over the years in a distinct way. I don’t feel like they are obvious choices but they all are nothing short of amazing. I hope this compilation helps you see a different side of one of the best labels to ever do it." - Michael Cina

The Sight Below - At First Touch

Bing & Ruth - Reflector

Video: https://youtu.be/2xgcnaqKxoI

Purchase from RVNG: http://smarturl.it/bing-twtga-rvng
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Purchase from iTunes: http://smarturl.it/bing-twtga-itunes
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From the album Tomorrow Was the Golden Age

© and Ⓟ 2015 RVNG Intl. / www.igetrvng.com

Buy from RVNG 

Bing & Ruth - Reflector

Remix by Norway's Biosphere of the last track produced at Black Knoll Studios in Seattle. This white label 12" titled "Unfurled" is part of a fundraising campaign launched by Ghostly International to replace all of The Sight Below's stolen studio equipment. More info here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-sight-below-s-music-gear-data-stolen

Unfurled (Biosphere remix)

aspetta,

But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.

shifty 1 take 2 july 30

Elements Chord Mode

Substrata + Man with a Movie Camera

The Things I Tell You

I. 2c 
II. Flutter
III. Moments in Love

out 04.28.17 https://boomkat.com/products/grafts

GRAFTS

From the album Anne.  Available November 16, 2018 from Western Vinyl.

Bandcamp https://josephshabason.bandcamp.com/album/anne
iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/anne/1427808233?ls=1&app=itunes
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/19FD6RN5K3xYFThAHM4fGy?si=0hUO0rFVQAigvSPTvJL_4w
WV http://westernvinyl.com/shop/wv182

Joseph Shabason
Twitter https://twitter.com/JosephShabason
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/josephshabason/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/josephshabason

Anne, the second album By Toronto saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason, is a tonal essay on degenerative illness. Delicately and compassionately woven with interviews of Shabason’s mother from whom the album takes its name, Anne finds its creator navigating a labyrinth of subtle and tragic emotions arising from his mother's struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Across the nine vivid postcards of jazz-laden ambience that comprise the album, Shabason unwraps these difficult themes with great care and focus revealing the unseen aspects of degenerative diseases that force us to re-examine common notions of self, identity, and mortality. 

Shabason’s uncanny ability to manoeuvre through such microscopic feelings is mirrored by his capacity to execute a similar tightrope-walk through musical genres. His music occupies a specific space that is as palpable as it is difficult to pin labels to. On Anne’s second track “Deep Dark Divide” rays of effected saxophone shine behind clouds of digital synthesizer that echoes the sound of jazz in the late 80s, but with a Jon Hassell-esque depth of sensibility that consciously subverts the stylistic inoffensiveness of that era. There is detail and idiosyncrasy beneath Shabason’s dawn-of-the-CD-era sheen that elevates the album far beyond a mere aesthetic exercise.

Still, the sounds on Anne are not so experimentally opaque as to stand in the way of the album’s through-line of sincerity and emotionality. When dissonance is employed it is punctual and meaningful, like on album-middler “Fred and Lil” where a six-minute cascade of breathy textures builds suddenly to an agitated growl, only to abruptly give way to Anne Shabason speaking intimately about her relationship to her own parents. Snippets of such conversations see her taking on something like a narrator role across Anne while the sound of her voice itself is sometimes effected to become a musical texture entwined into the fabric of the songs without always being present or audible.  The subsequent piece “Toh Koh” then drifts into playful disorientation as a lone female voice echoes the two syllables of the title, recalling the vocal techniques of composer Joan La Barbara, or even the light-hearted mantras of Lucky Dragons. From here the album veers back onto its aesthetic thoroughfare with “November” where Shabason lays muted brass textures atop a wavepool of electric chords provided by none other than the ambient cult-hero Gigi Masin, one of Anne’s many integral collaborators.

The serene tragedy of the album distils itself gracefully into the ironically titled album closer “Treat it Like a Wine Bar” wherein flutters of piano and mournfully whispered woodwinds seem to evaporate particle by delicate particle, leaving the listener with a faint emotional afterglow like a dream upon waking. There is a corollary to be drawn here with what it must be like to feel one’s own mind and body drift away slowly until nothing remains, while the collection of memories and abilities that we use to denote the “self” softens into eternity. On Anne, it is precisely this fragile exchange of tranquillity and anguish that Joseph Shabason has proven his singular ability to articulate.

Anne

Joseph Shabason - "Forest Run"

Pre-order the album here: mute.ffm.to/ACVM


Batticuore is taken from the forthcoming studio album VOLUME MASSIMO. 
Released on Mute 27 September 2019.

Volume Massimo Live-AV tour includes:

30 August - Atonal, Berlin
8 September - Up to Date Festival, Białystok
14 September - Draaimolen, Tilburg
22 September - Rural Festival, Japan
28 September - Sonica, Ljubljana
19 October - Barbican, London
20 October - LEV Matadero, Madrid
21 October - St Paul`s Sessions, Athens
25 October - Semibreve, Braga
6 November - Slaktkyrkan, Stockholm
8 November - Mira Digital Arts Festival, Barcelona
13 November  - Good Room, New York
16 November - Midway, San Francisco
18 November - The Lodge Room, Los Angeles
Wednesday 20 November - Holocene, Portland
30 November - KoncertKirken, Copenhagen
6 December - Monk, Rome
7 December - Argo 16, Venice
11 December - Bozar Electronic Series, Brussels
11 April - Concertgebouw, Bruges

Facebook: www.facebook.com/alessandrocortiniofficial/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/alehan/ 
Twitter: twitter.com/blindoldfreak 
Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/blindoldfreak

BATTICUORE

by Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek 
"Bird, Lake, Objects" (2010 Faitiche)

I'll change your life / Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek

Alessandro Cortini is an Italian musician, producer, composer, and instrument builder. 

Cortini is one of the foremost figures of contemporary electronic music, best known for his haunting, atmospheric work. Alongside being a longstanding member of Nine Inch Nails, he is highly prolific and has released a steady stream of his own heady music on luminary labels including Mute, Hospital, and Important Records for the past decade. Throughout his shadowy rise to fame, he has collaborated with the likes of Lawrence English, Daniel Avery and Merzbow (to name a few). Balancing dark ambience with smokey, pulsing rhythms, his compositions are perfectly restrained, textured and mesmeric. 

Cortini was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 through his work with Nine Inch Nails, making history as the only Italian musician to have ever been honored with this recognition. 

In 2021, in collaboration with boutique synth builders Make Noise, Cortini released his own, custom-designed, semi-modular synth, “Strega” (Italian for ‘witch’). That same year, he used Strega to build his latest full length, Scuro Chiaro [Mute], which Pitchfork described as “pitched somewhere between purgatory and the planetarium ... consistently managing to thrill and surprise”. 

In addition to years of extensive worldwide touring, Cortini has also soundtracked fashion shows including Alexander McQueen, Dior, and several of Fendi’s presentations. In 2022, he exhibited a high-concept audio installation called “Nati Infiniti” for Sonar 2022 at Museu de Lisboa’s “Fábrica de Moagem.” A live version of “Nati Infiniti” is set to debut at Berlin Atonal in 2023.

Alessandro Cortini’s music has been licensed for use in television, film and documentaries, games, and commercials, including FX’s hit show The Bear, “Thank You Very Much” a documentary about Andy Kaufman, Samsung, BMW, Sony, and Netflix. Remixes have also been a part of Cortini’s identity – remixing the likes of Depeche Mode to Mogwai to Death Cab For Cutie, Yann Tiersen to Vatican Shadow, and more between and beyond.

BATTICUORE

Alessandro Cortini

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