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A new remastered and expanded edition of the most popular of Manual records - the 2005 shoegaze classic Azure Vista. Jonas Munk aka Manual remastered the original six album tracks and added seven live tracks performed in Chicago and Los Angeles on Manual's 2007 US tour. Long time friend and partner in music Jakob Skott redesigned the artwork for this 2xCD edition, which comes in a six panel Eco-wallet.

 10 years after its release, Azure Vista still feels like a bold, and highly original work that's near-impossible to categorize. There's a definite dream-pop influence, occasionally recalling Robin Guthrie's most panoramic guitar work in Cocteau Twins, as well as Slowdive's oceanic euphoria. But this is far from being another shoegaze-homage. What really sets this set apart is the earnest and completely un-ironic incorporation of 1980s fm-radio sounds and John Hughes soundtracks, which Jonas Munk absorbed throughout his childhood and early teens - ghosts of Tears for Fears, New Order, Simple Minds and The Cure can all be heard throughout these six abundant, adventurous compositions, enveloping the ambience and electronics in a strange, nostalgic haze.

 The album was partly written and conceptualized during a three month trip to California, when Munk was 22, and comes off as a crazed, innocent celebration of youth, freedom, sun and sea  gradually unfolding over the course of 47 blissful minutes. If one senses a conceptual similarity to M83's indie hit record Sartudays = Youth (as well as one or two similar synth-riffs) , it's worth noting that Azure Vista was released three years earlier (!).

 The second disc features 7 live cuts performed with Jakob Skott (aka Syntaks) on synths and samplers. There's a previously unreleased track included (Untitled) as well as radically different versions of Marbella – a track Munk originally wrote with Robin Guthrie – and Rise (a Syntaks track), as well as Sal Paradise (from the collaborative Manual & Syntaks effort Golden Sun).

Manual: Azure Vista 2015 remaster

Full Circle Reworks

Circle 19 (Midori Hirano Rework)

Close The Windows

Alexandra Spence – “Do jellyfish breathe?”

A reworked version of this piece has been released as the album 'a veil, the sea' as a cassette tape or download on the Mappa label. You can purchase a copy here:

https://mappa.bandcamp.com/album/a-veil-the-sea

During Sydney’s most recent lockdown I submerged* a 15 minute-long piece of cassette tape in seawater collected from a local beach. The cassette tape contained a field recording of waves, and a recording of my voice offering a (non-definitive, and non-hierarchical) list of things found in the Pacific Ocean.

I’ve been thinking about connection with bodies of water, as well as connections between bodies and water, and how we might reimagine our bodily limitations to examine the things that connect us to each other and to our surroundings. The sea has always felt like home, and having lived on both the east and west edges of the Pacific Ocean it has become a place of connection for me.

I’ve been thinking about the Pacific Ocean as a home – not only to marine creatures and sea currents – but to the obscure movements of global trade, offshore data barges, and sunken satellites deactivated and dumped from space. Vast bodies may seem infinite, but nothing is – the depths hold mysterious, beautiful, and troubling things.

…Bottlenose dolphins, ancient artefacts, Lego pieces, approximately 36 species of shark, underwater mines…

Imagining an infinite ocean has led to overfishing, floating plastic-particle gyres, lost whales (as a result of the underwater din of shipping and naval industries), and an international sense of unaccountability.

“… Do jellyfish breathe?” is a kind of sonic traversing of oceanic layers, exploring imaginary landscapes, entwining and encountering unequal forms, such as breath with wave, fish with fishing line, along the way.

*Submerging the tape in salt water is an expansion of an ongoing project in which I bury tape loops 7-second field recordings on tape loops before burying them in the earth at the location in which they were recorded. I imagine this as a collaboration of sorts — I make a recording and the physical variables of each place and location alter it. While the magnetic coating of the tape retains sonic remnants of the recorded sounds of the place, the physicality of the tape ribbon retains material remnants of the place: sand, salt, other, which, in turn, impart audibly on the recording in the form of crackles, scratches, tape-warp, and hiss.

Alexandra Spence - Do Jellyfish Breathe (excerpt)

KAP 016 - Tapeworks (Preview).

Hopes and Theory is a collection of songs inspired by wild plants and intentional gardens. At its core this music is rooted in synthesis, autonomy, and purely tuned harmony. At its heart there is chaos, color, and evolution. Hopes and Theory was recorded on the island of North Haven, Maine and reflects the anarchy of serenity in a seemingly peaceful place. 


William Trevaskis is a composer and sound artist living and working in the Fox Islands of Maine who uses xenharmony to explore themes of chaos and nature. William's r&d marries modular synthesis with microtonality and live performance. Currently, he works using a combination of generative and live-performance systems to create a sonic landscape that calms and transfixes.

William Trevaskis - Hopes & Theory - Tape

it no alright

Jon Neher is a musician and artist from Saskatchewan in Canada. He is also renowned for performing as part of Peace Flag Ensemble and indie band Beach Body, as well as work for his own label Fenwood Rail. Jon followed a Classical music education through piano lessons at an early age, progressing into playing Jazz as he got older before he began to explore his own compositions after he had discovered Hardcore music.
Michael Scott Dawson is an artist based in Vancouver, Canada, who was also originally from Saskatchewan. His music has been released on labels including We Are Busy Bodies, Sonder House, and also Jon’s Fenwood Rail imprint. Michael is part of the Peace Flag Ensemble, providing guitar, field recordings and subtle electronics to the sound. His Ambient albums ‘Music For Listening’ and ‘Find Yourself Lost’ have received critical acclaim, not least from Whitelabrecs and this was the starting point for the release of this album, after we got in touch with Michael to show our appreciation; announcing Music For Listening as our favourite record of 2022.
‘I Yield My Time’ is the third collaboration solely between Jon and Michael, who know each other through the music community in Saskatchewan. Their Ambient-leaning debut ‘On Remembering’ was released digitally through Fenwood Rail back in 2019. Their love of music and diverse range of influences inform their work and enable them to experiment with a wide range of ideas and genres. As can be gleaned from earlier in this text, they both perform as part of the Peace Flag Ensemble, a group whose album Astral Plains is due out in July 2023.

This album places Jon’s piano sketches at the fore, with his approach to music composition beginning with improvised sessions on his keyboard before being adapted through chance-based post production techniques. Michael took these piano sounds and processed them through an array of tape machines and pedals. Most of the additional resonances beyond the original piano recordings are actually just new versions of these. Minimal details subtly adorn the pieces, with Michael’s field recordings and modest additional instrumentation inserting frail little soft sounds into the weight and voice of the piano. There is something beautiful in this juxtaposition, as Michael found himself building little movements around the improvisations, like a tiny orchestra of broken sounds.
The album is more about the process and combination of the artists’ respective techniques, than being centred around a specific concept. However, Jon notes that he realised after completing the album that he was thinking a lot about death, with close family members being diagnosed with cancer, the failing health of his grandparents, music industry peers passing at an early age and a choir director who had lent him a Rhodes passed away. There was this weird reckoning with the idea that death can be so much and so little depending on your context, and there are drastic implications on how you might find meaning in your life as a result.
For the listener, time becomes a theme in which to concentrate ones thoughts; whether consciously or subconsciously, as the subduing echoes of delay pedals and fading keys disappear. This record will become a reflective companion, which may direct thoughts and feelings in several directions; whether this be to reflect upon the past, to be present in the moment, or wander into the future, full of hope.

Written and produced by Jon Neher & Michael Scott Dawson
Mastered by Taylor Deupree
Photography by Michael Scott Dawson
Art and design by Andrew Heath

I Yield My Time

wlr139 Jon Neher & Michael Scott Dawson - I Yield My Time

Fragments from the forthcoming double CD (5" & 3") release on Wist Rec, "The Country Hospital" by Depatterning & Delphine Dora.

Wist Rec 30 examines the experimental therapies of the Weyburn Mental Hospital, a mid-century Canadian institution that pioneered humane and novel methods for treating psychological duress. 

Released in a jackdaw edition this winter.

www.wistrec.com

Depatterning & Delphine Dora - Country Hospital (fragments)

This is a snippet from the electro-acoustic "soundtrack" to the glitch novel by cult Japanese writer, Kenji Siratori. The music is by Canadian duo, Wormwood. Each copy of the AI infused novel comes with an accompanying CD.

Official Report On The Intransitionalist Chronotopologies Of Kenji Siratori  - Clip 2

Manual: "Clear Skies Above The Coastline Cathedral"

Manual: "Summer Of Freedom"

Manual: "Twilight"

Manual: "Tourmaline"

Manual: "Neon Reverie"

Azure Vista Records is an independently owned and operated label based in Odense, Denmark with a strong focus on blissed-out electronic sounds!

Manual: "Summer Of Freedom"

Azure Vista Records

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