To Space!

Topdown Dialectic • 06

Papiro (@marcopapiro)
Automare
12" LP (Muscut 7)
Release date: TBA 2017
muscut.org/Papiro-Automare

A 
Rhenus Rebus

B
Automare 
Polmonella* 
Incom 
Latana Supurea

Performed by Marco Papiro with* 
Anthony Glass: Casio vibes 
Markus Stähli: Q-Chord 
Mastered by Alex Buess

From the city that brought you LSD comes a new album by Marco Papiro, a Swiss-Italian musician and graphic designer who has gained some notoriety with his album covers for the likes of Panda Bear and Sun Araw. "Automare" is Papiro's seventh solo album, recorded on 4-track cassette, on hard-disk, in public and in private, entirely self-produced and now released on Nikolaienko's Muscut label.

The five hauntingly evocative tracks offer a variety of atmospheres from surreal to arcane, from celestial to subaqueous. Synthetic sounds (some mature EMS, Moog and Roland) are combined with other assorted instruments (organ, shehnai, electric guitar and bass,) and emulsified through various time-and-space-bending devices. There are no percussions, with one surprisingly groovy exception, in which a drum machine is being generously treated with phaser and envelope filters – think of early Cabaret Voltaire with a North Saharan touch.

Papiro's handcrafted artificial vocals are anything but human, but all the more compelling: out of the fluorescent Plankton of the side-long opening track "Rhenus Rebus" rises a siren's voice, reminiscent of Alide Maria Salvetta in Battiato's "Campane", joined in a final mantra by an oboe borrowed from an inebriated Third Ear Band. Entering a chimeric karaoke bar, the title track "Automare" makes the album even more bizarre by introducing a distinctive pop feel. Back to the abstract world, the following "Polmonella" – a live recording with additional musicians Anthony Glass (aka Antenna Tony Monorail) and Markus Stähli (of Roy & the Devil's Motorcycle) – is a fevery exploration of cosmic territories in the manner of Harmonia, while the alien articulation of "Incom" sounds unlike anything else ever recorded.

Papiro - Automare (12", 2017) Excerpts

Track from the forthcoming 12" 
Conga Square - Secada Mondatta
due out 11.24.17

paltoflats.com

Conga Square-Secada Mondatta PFF01 (preview)

Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear (excerpt)

We release Phil Strucks album NNO on February 23.

Phil is a experimental recording artist, who also works as a photographer, documenting the contemporary, experimental electronic music scene and life around it. His music is based on sampling from odd sound sources, random data streams and the usage of microphones and various synthesizer. Phil ennobles the trivial, honors the silence and creates an experimental collection of raw textural ambiance. It could’ve been a matter of trompe-l’oeil, a mere juxtaposition of audio signs to mimic functionality, but there’s a much more vibrant and fluid quality to his mind-expanding pieces. He is living in Hamburg, Germany.

Text: Baptiste Girou (Inverted Audio)

Phil Struck - Brook

Beautiful dreamlike ambient piece by Birch.

'The Danish imprint Infinite Waves takes a step back with its triple
cassette anthology ‘Still Water’, showcasing the current tides and
sounds at the label. The compilation will be released on October
13.

The rules on Still Water are the same as on the 2017-precursor,
Underwater Gestures. Each of the six artists has been given a tape
side – or a maximum of 20 minutes ¬– to incorporate their own
sound and atmospheric textures, resulting in a triple cassette
release with six different notions of the ‘ambient’ terminology.
By compiling different works of art, Still Water is both a statement
that is larger than the individual works and a manifestation of the
concept and artistic profile at the Copenhagen based imprint. In a
world of easy to digest singles, Still Water is a far-reaching and
weighty body of the work.'

Order via: http://infinitewaves.net/product/various-artists-still-water

https://soundcloud.com/infinitewaves
https://soundcloud.com/sofiebirch

Still Water

Premiere: Birch - Stoke ft Jorn [Infinite Waves]

Taken from Keys to the Fields 27: Various Artists "The White Madonna"

Sofia Ozdravovna _ How a City Sings from November to November

https://vaagner.bandcamp.com/album/life-in-a-shell

Time exposed (VAK17 - Life In A Shell)

Taken from The Henning Christiansen Archive release HC3 Opus 201 L´ESSERE UMANO ERRABANDO LA VOCA ERRABANDO LP

The third release on The Henning Christiansen archive label features a previousely unreleased work from 1991. The Wandering Human Being - The Wandering Voice, as the title suggest is a piece for voice and featurues Carlo Quartucci, Carla Tatò, Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Henning Christiansen. 

Ursula and Henning met the couple Carlo Quartucci and Carla Tatò through the curator Johannes Gachnang on a visit to Genazzano in Italy 1983 and became close friends, collaborating on a variety of projects, most notably on Carlo and Carla’s epic adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's play Penthesilea (forthcoming on The Henning Christiansen archive). 

The Wandering Human Being - The Wandering Voice came about from a conversation between the four of them whilst on a beach on the island of Møn in the eastern sea in Denmark, looking south. Here they all laughed at the realisation that on the other ide of Europe in this direction was Sicily where Carlo and Carla lived. The island Sicily, The island Møn. As Henning says “The human-being was wandering from sea to sea”. Henning saw no difference in their way over life ‘over there’ and mused on the means of which we cross over oceans and move around facilitating awareness of the same family of human being. People from islands meet people from islands and they can all look across vast waters and laugh together. 

Human-basic-technology

This conversation and collective realisation of the simplicity of it all lead to this work which is one of the finest in Henning’s vast catalogue. L´essere Umano Errabando La Voce Errabando is a mantra for four voices, the sound of the ocean, a pvc tube, effects and wind instument. The piece moves in an organic hypnotic fashion lulling and rolling, ebbing and flowing over the two sides of the record. Rudimentary phrases in various languages interlope and weave a mystical music, as primitive as it is ‘contemporary’. 

The Wind, The Stars, etc are repeated over in random untrained fashion. The two couples from different countries weave voices, words and language into a common sonic fabric which eradicates identity, the idea of ‘national’, the idea of country, the idea of difference.  

Unlike anything else in Henning’s output L´essere Umano Errabando La Voce Errabando is a calm and meditative work which rolls along two sides wrapping the listener in a random melancholic meditative mantra. Only Henning Christiansen could summon such haunting, beautiful, gothic music carved from political hope.

Henning Christiansen -  L´ESSERE UMANO ERRABANDO LA VOCA ERRABANDO excerpt

buy cassette/digital nicemusiclabel.bandcamp.com

taken from Simon J Karis 'Piovve' NM039

Simon J Karis returns to Nice Music with Piovve, his first release for the label since 2017’s Madrugada. Following from recent releases for Altered States and Vienna Press, Piovve offers up six tracks demonstrating the development and deepening of Karis’ obliquely emotive approach to electronic murk. Floating on clouds of tape hiss in smeared VHS fidelity, Karis explores a range of formal approaches, from the burbling monophonic synth lines and spoken text of opener ‘Infinite July’ to the four-on-the-floor kickdrum and wistful music-box melodies of half-remembered rave closer ‘Shale Pardon’. In between we’re treated to the drumless motorik propulsion of ‘To Think of You’, which calls to mind Moebius and Beerbohm’s Double Cut in its woozy rhythmic insistence before the mood is hijacked by a distorted devotional vocal sample that abruptly reroutes proceedings from the morose to the ecstatic. The opposite path is travelled in ‘On Ardour’ where jittering synth pads toy with euphoria before descending into pensive gloom. Across these six miniatures – each of which concludes with an abrupt cut to silence – Karis mines a vein where sonic experimentation and emotional reflection meet, crafting something uneasy but ultimately celebratory. -Francis Plagne

For fans of Cluster, Actress

Topdown Dialectic • 06

/\\ • Aught