"The CD is scratched.” A saying from the early millennium, it describes the phenomenon of skipping music on a damaged CD, the locked, repetitive groove. For nearly a decade, Fossilized Wilderness has been experimenting with a peculiar modification to CDJ equipment, birthed by long hours sorting through promotional CDs sent to a radio station. In embracing choppiness, a body of abrasive but bright ambient work has been constructed from the refuse of musical commodification.

The CD skip is both rhythm and tone on this LP, but if you expect the monotonous motions of a concept album, don’t: The moods here are just as granular. The six tracks shift from digital euphoria to shoegazing sentimentalism, a balanced mix of terror, plaintiveness, and joy, an impressive feat considering that the scratch of a CD produces potent nostalgia as well as Pavlovian irritation for many—a drive to eject the thing and fix the problem.

For those not growing up with it, the scratched CD is a relic phenomenon, something that happened with an artifact format. But just because it’s an artifact doesn’t mean it’s obsolete. On this LP, Fossilized Wilderness uses a sonic palette of subtly-shifting broken loops to create something new: delirious spectres rising from an ocean of plastic.

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Fossilized Wilderness is Ryan Martin, a pillar of the North Carolina underground music and arts scene. His most active artistic alias is Secret Boyfriend, with numerous cassette, vinyl, and CD releases on labels such as Blackest Ever Black and his own long-running DIY-informed imprint, Hot Releases. 

releases April 5, 2021

mastered :: Nathan Taylor

Fossilized Wilderness - 4 (ENMB07)

Cat. No.: HMDM005
Artists: Dave Saved / NPLGNN
Title: All You Can Hold In The Falling
Format: Coloured 12” / Digital
Release Date: February 2019


After a couple of impressive rounds on their own Forever Now imprint, Dave Saved and NPLGNN
accomplish another collaborative effort and land this time on Hypermedium with a new spectacular split 12”. All You Can Hold In The Falling finds both artists refining their research in temporal disturbances through an archaeology of comedown. Their sound, uncovering traces of dreams, memories and expectations, is crafted through the use of echoplexed samples, chopped’n’screwed lines and distorted particles, serving as a perfect chronicle for the inexorability of an endless bummer.

01 - Dave Saved - Empty Blooms Still Withering

From the upcoming Album "Vegetal Negatives"
Release Date 29 March 2019
Hallowground.com
HG1901
Vinyl / Digital

”Let us unfold the animal outward: the bronchia will become a thick foliage, keeping its respiratory function, but in reverse, naturally (CO2 absorption), reversed also concerning color, from the tint of calves’ lungs to its complementary cabbage green. The digestive system will become roots, maintaining its role of drawing in nourishment from the outside environment. […] for each animal form there exists a corresponding vegetal form. The man who would find his vegetal negative and unite with it would restore the integrity of the cosmos.”

Vegetal Negatives is a game of sonic mutations, mimicry, inversions, and association inspired by a text called "On pataphotograms", by the French writer René Daumal – a quasi-metaphysical essay that toys with breaking the conceived separateness of natural forms through poetic imagination.

Marja Ahti (b. 1981) is a Swedish-born artist living and working in Turku, Finland. She has been an active part of the Finnish experimental music scene for more than ten years. Now arriving at her debut LP under her own name, Ahti explores a new formal language and sonic palette that ventures far from the path of her earlier work.

The four electroacoustic compositions on the album combine and arrange field recordings, electronic feedback, Buchla and ARP synthesizers, bowl gong and harmonium, textures of detailed acoustic sound, and sustained tones with gentle microtonal beating into a precise musical narrative. She juxtaposes recordings of rooms and empty vessels, natural and artificial climates, spontaneous and staged events. Ahti draws upon Annea Lockwood's ideas about associative movements between sounds based on shared characteristics and sonic energy. Her approach to field recordings is neither diaristic, documentaristic, nor purely acousmatic, but rather it starts out from somewhere in between these notions: the sounds hover between abstraction and the deeply familiar, moving into a realm of poetic metaphor where they are set in relation to each other, fleetingly mirroring or shadow-dancing. Acoustic environments mutate into synthetically derived shadow forms.

The opening track, "Coastal Inversion”, moves from a seemingly familiar seascape into an ocean of wavelike synthetic staccato patterns, turning itself inside-out on the shore, before diving back into a sea of resonance. ”Rooftop gardens” arranges a series of largely unprocessed field recordings into a dream-logic sequence of upward movement towards the clouds. On the other side, ”Symbiogenesis” brews a slow evolution of wet, airy and earthy sounds and resonant friction. The closing track, ”Chora”, imagines a meditative space of breath: filter resonance posing as organ pipes against a backdrop of breezy industrial hoovers merges halfway with a harmonium improvisation that foregrounds the frictions of the wooden instrument itself, just before filtering out into resonant harmony.

Tracklist:
A1) Coastal Inversion (12:14)		B1) Symbiogenesis (07:22)
A2) Rooftop Gardens (05:44)		B2) Chora (10:47)

Credits:
Marja Ahti: composition, production, field recording, Buchla 200 and ARP 2600
Recorded at EMS, Stockholm, WORM, Rotterdam, and on locations in Greece, Alaska, Finland and Sweden.
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
Designed by Ruth Stofer

Vegetal Negatives

BUY VINYL/DL

MARJA AHTI - Symbiogenesis (HG1901)

Taken from keys to the Fields 34:
"Seven Movements"

Fountains for Assisi _ Movement IV: I Have Been Lifted

Ifs = Krzysztof Freeze Ostrowski & Fischerle

Source: https://fasrat.bandcamp.com/album/fasrat-compilation-3

Ifs - Candyflipper

Slippery (demo)

"Customer’s Copy" is the debut LP of contorted cosmic jazz and eccentric minimal electronics by Exotic Sin. The duo of Naima Karlsson and Kenichi Iwasa first came together for a performance celebrating the art and music of Karlsson’s grandparents, Moki and Don Cherry, before continuing as an independent unit that still incorporates some of the Cherrys’ instruments as well as their synergetic integration of music with artistic practice.

Preferring the stark contrast of analog/digital, acoustic/electric, and natural/unnatural sounds, Karlsson contributes synthesizers in addition to piano, celesta, and bells, while Iwasa collides anachronistic 90s Yamaha keyboard and guitaret with contrabass recorder, drums, kalimba, and three of Don Cherry’s instruments: one of his trumpets as well as two of his “zen saxophones,” handmade woodwinds appending reed mouthpieces to plastic plumbing parts, also called Don’s kettles after their high-pitched sound. With such timbral juxtapositions, the spirit of Exotic Sin is reminiscent of a number of leftfield jazz-meets-electronics ‘70s duos from Don Cherry’s maverick collaborations with Jon Appleton and Terry Riley to Anthony Braxton’s work with Richard Teitelbaum, İlhan Mimaroğlu and Freddie Hubbard’s "Sing Me a Song of Songmy," and Muhal Richard Abrams’ electronic works. On album opener “Dot 2 Dot,” Karlsson’s measured, monastic piano sets an elegiac stage for kettle bends and absurdist electro-percussive filtering courtesy of Iwasa before a flourish of cascading ebonies and ivories together with restorative circular trumpet motifs bring the sidelong piece to a majestic resolution. Named after the character from Ridley Scott’s 1989 film Black Rain, the schizosphere of “Charlie Vincent” interfaces ominous, dystopian synthesizer with permuted organ swells before album closer “Canis Minor” sets gentle sail for a distant bed of lonesome stars.

A visual artist as well as an archivist and coordinator for the Cherry estate, Karlsson continues to learn and study Don’s compositions and approach to piano with her uncles Eagle-Eye and David, who were taught by Don himself, and his use of short piano compositions as loose scaffoldings for improvisation is prevalent across the record’s three otherworldly unfurlings. Improvisor and multidisciplinary artist Kenichi Iwasa is also known for his legendary Krautrock Karaoke night, his contribution to Beatrice Dillon’s 2020 album Workaround, and collaborations with visual artists and musicians from Linder Sterling to members of Can, Neu!, Faust, Cluster, and Wire. Recorded and mixed, with additional alto flute, woodwinds, and contrabass recorder by Robbie Lee.

Exotic Sin - Canis Minor

Sable is the solo electronic project of vocalist/producer Isobel Hambleton. Born in Manchester, Isobel's songwriting draws on the philosophical heritage of the skeptical, romantic post-punk bands of 1980s Northern England. This songwriting sparked a short-lived career as a pub folk singer. However, increasingly inspired by the lush electronic arrangements of artists such as Bon Iver, James Blake and, more recently, Grimes, Isobel began to teach herself electronic music production and relocated to Berlin. Combining a wide range of influences, her music is a reflection of a young woman trying to understand a complicated world.

https://soundcloud.com/sable-isobel

Sable – Life Like This

axaxaxa #67 by Val Clipp - complete stress+relief

some aspects of the grotesque in southern fiction-flannery o'connor
when the kingdom calls-golden palominos
this town-opal 
peace demo b-mike oldfield 
pines at the end of the lane-alonzo ditto marsh 
puzzles-ed bruce 
you're my baby-tom dooley
life is just a moment part i-roy ayers ubiquity 
bombay calling-little john 
misty-willie mitchell 
faraway places-bing crosby 
bent city i and ii-phil yost 
sin eaters picnic-strange fruit abiku 
y'a pas de mystère dans l'air-michelle vernon 
just can't help myself-joya 
heaven on your mind-sam nix
un domingo de lluvia- pichi de benedictis & leo masliah 
yo quisiera saber-silvio rodriguez 
honey don't believe-virgil caine 
i love my label-nick lowe 
cool cool heart-terry pelton 
daisy-marie france 
something's wrong-james taylor 
you make me feel-pumpkin fairies 
trois gouttes de sang-vox populi
         
                                    xx K

Winter Song

TR115 - Maria Chavez & Jordi Wheeler - 'Five Thousand'

Amplify Berlin is a residency program that provides emerging Berlin-based musicians with guidance, a focused work environment and access to resources in the form of month-long artist residencies driven by a mentorship approach to creative development.

Artists are invited to apply via an online open call process (occurring twice yearly) wherein they select which mentors they want to work with. The mentors then select from those applicants. During each one-month residency period, two selected artists receive feedback and advice from their mentor, are given access to a music studio with a range of equipment and software and are able to develop their live set in the ACUD Club’s concert space (both with the support of a technician). They are required to complete at least one track to be
shared online, contribute to a monthly radio show on Reboot.FM and at the end of the residency, they perform at a showcase event at ACUD Club, on a lineup alongside their mentor.

Mentors include:
Caterina Barbieri, Laurel Halo, Lucrecia Dalt, Robert Lippok, Ziúr, Born In Flamez, Ville Haimala of Amnesia Scanner, Andi Toma of Mouse on Mars, Drew McDowall of Coil/Psychic TV, Max Boss of Easter, Pan Daijing, Farao, Black Cracker, Sasha Perera, Andrea Belfi, Rabih Beaini.

Presented by ACUD Macht Neu, this program has been co-financed by the Europäischer Fonds für regionale Entwicklung (EFRE) and Musicboard Berlin until 2021.

http://www.amplify-berlin.de
http://www.acudmachtneu.de

Sable – Life Like This

AmplifyBerlin