@0 EP3

Aqua (from Playing Piano for the Isolated)

S&S Presents: Dreams

Portugal (A Lift)

from 'Odham's Standard' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den191
available on all formats at [http://denovali.com/origamibiro]

Origamibiro is a collaborative project consisting of three core members: musician, soundtrack composer and producer Tom Hill, visual artist and filmmaker The Joy Of Box, and multi-instrumentalist Andy Tytherleigh. Originally started as a solo project for Tom, Origamibiro has since evolved into an audio-visual collective, producing studio music, art objects, interactive installations and hauntingly original live audio-visual performances. Origamibiro like to create work with an array of unorthodox processes and contraptions, found objects, video feeds and multi instrumentalism. Their unique live performances involve treated books, typewriters, found celluloid, paper, eerie wildlife recordings, home movies, sellotape and bespoke visual contraptions. All of these things had been added, adapted, even destroyed as a way to generate images and audio that could evoke a feeling, a response, an understanding or perhaps a question from audiences.

2014 sees the re-release of Origamibiro's entire back catalogue - the albums ‘Cracked Mirrors and Stopped Clocks’, ‘Shakkei’ and ‘Shakkei Remixed’ - through Denovali and also the release of their fourth studio album 'Odham's Standard'. Discussions concerning tone and theme took place much earlier in the writing process this time around and unbeknown to each other, both Tom and Jim were taking an interest in more supernatural aspects of audio and video material generation. Jim had begun to research into spirit photography, where images of deceased spirits are apparently imprinted onto photographic plates through the presence of a medium. Looking for an audio equivalent, Tom began looking into EVP or electronic voice phenomenon whereby hidden voices from deceased spirits appear to present themselves in audio recordings. What is fascinating about this process is not how legitimate the phenomenon actually is but how dependant it is on the decision or need of the viewer or listener to believe it is significant or even personal.

Interestingly, there have been many attempts over the years to debunk or disprove the validity of spirit photography and yet for every court case there are also a number of witnesses willing to passionately testify that not only is the phenomenon real but that it applied directly to them. Arthur Conan Doyle was the creator of the most famous detective in the world and, conversely, a staunch defendant of the validity of spirit photography. In his infamous treatise 'The Case For Spirit Photography' he is both naive and strangely prescient: “Victorian science would have left the world hard and clean and bare, like a landscape in the moon. (however) There is nothing scientifically impossible, so far as I can see, in some people seeing things that are invisible to others. One or two consequences are obvious, the experiences of children will be taken more seriously. Cameras will be forthcoming. These folk who appear to be our neighbours, with only some small difference of vibration to separate us, will become familiar.”


Odham's Standard

Origamibiro - Butterfly Jar

Vivre le moment

Sleepwalk into Dust

Daydream Vol 1

Breath of Stillness

The Gloomy Forest

Natural Blue is taken from Julie's sophomore album Not Even Happiness, releasing in January 2017 

To pre-order Not Even Happiness  in Europe (or indeed anywhere outside of North America): http://basinrock.co.uk/

For North America: http://grapefruitrecordclub.com/products?keywords=julie+byrne

Download via Bandcamp: https://juliembyrne.bandcamp.com/album/not-even-happiness

Natural Blue

Erased Tapes present 'Handfuls of Night' — the highly anticipated follow-up to Penguin Cafe’s much applauded 2017 album 'The Imperfect Sea' — inspired by the Antarctic, Arthur Jeffes’ journey following in Scott’s footsteps and our penguin friends that reside there.

Using gut-stringed violins, viola, cello, bass, percussion, upright and grand pianos, synthesiser, harmonium and more, Arthur Jeffes and his cohorts have crafted a vivid series of panoramic sonic landscapes, that are as rich in cerebral poignancy as they are in emotional depth.

Handfuls of Night began life after Greenpeace commissioned Jeffes to write four pieces of music corresponding to four breeds of penguins, to help raise awareness for the endangered Antarctic seas . A fundraising evening at EartH in Hackney followed, where Penguin Cafe premiered the four songs named after their feathered counterparts to a sold out audience; the rousing contemporary folk inflected ‘Chinstrap’, the mournful and minimalistic ‘Adelie’, stoic and rhythmic ‘The Life of an Emperor’ and the wistful, string-laden ‘Gentoo Origin’.

“This record started with a core of pieces I wrote specifically about penguins in the Antarctic for a project with Greenpeace in autumn 2018. There are four native Antarctic penguin species – each with their own individual characteristics and natures. I carried on from there to envisage a whole anthropomorphised world, where these penguins had narratives and adventures that we soundtracked”, says Jeffes. But both the album and Penguin Cafe as a project have origins that reach further back:

“In 2005 I was asked to join an expedition re-creating Scott’s last Antarctic trip in 1911 for the BBC, using the same Edwardian equipment. I’m no explorer but I was keen, especially as there’s a family link – Scott was married to my great grandmother before she married my great grandfather. 

Antarctica by this stage being a protected environment, we swapped to the Arctic circle where we spent 3 months on the Greenland ice sheet, first dog-sledding and then man-hauling just short of 1000 km at 10,000 feet, across ice fields and glaciers. 

I had lots of time to ponder my life back home. It was then that I decided to get my Master of Music degree and focus on composing music, and also then that I realised that even in the most remote silent places, music can still be a huge part of one’s internal world and imagination.  Whilst on the expedition. I spent days playing things back in my head and also writing new things, which I would then try and write down at the end of the day.”

Handfuls of Night’s tones, textures and melodies evoke otherworldly expanses, which at different junctures are either foreboding, awe inspiring or peaceful. There’s subtly morphing rhythmic repetition throughout, somewhere between minimalism, krautrock and the piano-cascades of label peer Lubomyr Melnyk. Jeffes creates a kinetic, circling motion, which drives the album forward in the form of a musical trip that mirrors the physical journey it was inspired by.

Penguin Cafe was founded by Arthur Jeffes in 2009, after bringing together a talented and disparate group of musicians including members of Suede and Gorillaz, to perform his father Simon Jeffes’ legacy of world-renowned Penguin Cafe Orchestra music, ten years after his untimely death in 1997. A full biography is available here.
Handfuls of Night is out this autumn amid a string of UK live dates, before taking the album on a worldwide tour in 2020 with more dates to be announced.

· pre-order 'Handfuls of Sound' on LP/CD/DL: https://idol.lnk.to/HandfulsofNight

Handfuls of Night

At the Top of the Hill, They Stood...

Buy LP/CD/DL

Penguin Cafe - At the Top of the Hill, They Stood...


Two countries, two cities, one river. The Oder River not only separates the German city of Frankfurt from Slubice in Poland, it separates two different worlds from each other. Whether rich or poor, people try to seek their fortune there – but often only find their limits.

Hans-Christian-Schmid („Nach fünf im Urwald“, „23“, Crazy“), one of the most successful and exciting young German directors, made a moving film with an impressive ensemble, telling emotional, deeply human stories, subtle and moving, tough and yet full of poetry.

Notwist composed the music for this film, based on a pianoloop and minimal electronics, and recorded it with participation of Sebastian Hess (cello) and Saam Schlamminger (zarb). For the twelve-inch release the piece was remixed by Martin Gretschmann aka Console.





Alien Transistor shop

The Notwist - Lichter 1

Sleepwalk into Dust

Alexander Lemberger

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