Buy: http://darla.com/index.php?fuseaction=item_cat.ecom_superitem_detail&item_cat_id=43946


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

I first got turned on to the music of Jonas Munk thanks to the Pure Ambient playlist on Apple Music as it included a few tracks off of Jonas's Minimum Resistance album released on his fantastic Azure Vista label. After months of pestering him, I'm very excited to finally share this mixtape!

Enjoy,
Josh

Connect with Jonas Munk:
https://www.instagram.com/jonasmunksounds/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057377323014

Connect with Azure Vista:
@azurevistarecords
https://www.facebook.com/azurevistarecords
https://azurevistarecords.bandcamp.com/

Tracklist:
1. Gabor Szabo: ”Three King Fishers” [Skye Records]
2. Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions: ”Around My Smile” [Rhymes of an Hour Records]  4:38
3. The Sandals: ”Endless Summer” [Capitol Records]  8:31
4. The Durutti Column: ”Requiem Again” [London Music Stream Ltd.]  11:11
5. Piero Umiliani: ”Nostalgia (synth version)” [Right Tempo SNC]  15:04
6. Slowdive: ”All of  Us” [Sony BMG]  18:25
7. David Sylvian: ”Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples” [Virgin Records]  22:06
8. Landing: ”Feel, and the Seas Fill” [K Records]  24:12
9. Michael Rother: ”Fontana di Luna” [Groenland Records]  27:34
10. Iasos: ”Lueena Coast” [Inter-Dimensional Music]  34:00
11. Hiroshi Yoshimura: ”Creek” [Light In The Attic Records]  37:41
12. Devendra Banhart & Noah Georgeson: ”Rise From Your Wave” [Friends Of / Dead Oceans]  42:12
13. JB Dunckel & Jonathan Fitoussi: ”Mirages” [Prototyp Recording]  47:40
14. Ryuichi Sakamoto: ”Solari” [KAB America]  53:48

Connect with We Are Machine:
@wearemachinemusic
https://www.youtube.com/WeAreMachine
https://www.instagram.com/wearemachinemusic/
https://www.facebook.com/wearemachinemusic

We Are Machine - Afterhours 017 - Jonas Munk

Calque

Kiyosumi

I think the collaborative project by Zach Frizzell (zakè) and Damien Duque (City Of Dawn) first saw the light of day back in 2020 when these two ambient artists got together to release Wander on Frizzell's own Zakè Drone Recordings. The duo have also released music as Frizzell & Duque, appearing on these pages numerous times in the last few years, including the addition of Ossa, for the album I picked as one of the best of the year. Last year, Jonas Munk, aka Manual, picked up Agape for his Azure Vista Records, and I have subsequently highlighted the album in my Music For Bending Light And Stopping Time for Best of 2022. All of these opening words, with a brief journey through history, are only here to demonstrate how excited I am about their follow-up release on Azure (co-distributed by Frizzell's Past Inside The Present imprint for the US friends and followers). The title track, "Ash", which I am premiering for you today, is a perfect example of the unhurried, unfurling, and unpretentious ambience that blankets the senses when you need these sounds most. "Their focus offers up the steady ebb and flow of sound, cultivating a profound sense of meditative stasis and explorations of high-fidelity sound." This is the type of slow-evolving minimal music that you want to turn all the way up in volume so that each frequency permeates, saturates, and eradicates all the wrinkles and spikes in your jittery mind. Lovely textures on this one, folks, carefully curated by the mastering touch of James Bernard.

"The music the two create together reflects the expansive landscapes of their native Texas and Indiana. Slowly unfolding melodies that seem to rise like the sun from a Texas horizon and drones that resonate like leaves in an endless Indiana woodland. It's a sound that's both beautiful and slightly haunting – a sound that encompasses the listener and demands attention. This is music to get lost in."

TRACK PREMIERE : zakè & City of Dawn - Ash

Soliton

In Transit

Manual: "Clear Skies Above The Coastline Cathedral"

Manual: "Summer Of Freedom"

Manual: "Twilight"

Manual: "Tourmaline"

Manual: "Neon Reverie"

First track from the new album, entitled "II: Plains/Patterns", out on Azure Vista Records March 31!

CD/DL/LP (vinyl limited to 300 copies!). Preorder here: https://billowobservatory.bandcamp.com/

Billow Observatory – the trans-atlantic duo consisting of Detroit's Jason Kolb (Auburn Lull) and Danish producer Jonas Munk (Manual) – are back with a follow-up to the their debut album from 2012. 

”II: Plains/Patterns” departs from the first LP’s amorphous ambient haze with a more rigid, albeit subtle, underpinning of rhythm and pulse. The duo’s obsession with “place and space” comes clearly into focus with an album that draws deeply from Munk and Kolb’s individual proximity to the geographically distant, but oddly similar, sounds of Germany and Michigan, past and present. 

 Traces of shoegaze, modern minimal electronica, and kosmische appear on every track, but are mutated into something mysterious and new. ”Pulsus”, for example, opens the album with a driving teutonic stutter and washes of serene guitar loops that are punctuated by bursts of filtered synth patterns; a combination that seamlessly bridges the gaps between disparate genres and periods of time. 

 Centerpiece, ”Plains”, expands the ambient formula into an inspired epic in three parts, where swells of processed guitars, distant voices and faint echoes of Detroit techno are weaved together to form a kaleidoscopic whole. And tracks such as ”Vex” and ”Plum” seem to pay as much homage to Slowdive and Eno's Harold Budd collaborations as to the modern minimalism from Cologne or Berlin.

Plains

New record, "II: Plains/Patterns", out March 31! CD, download and vinyl (limited to 300 copies). Order here:

https://azurevistarecords.bandcamp.com/

Billow Observatory – the trans-atlantic duo consisting of Detroit's Jason Kolb (Auburn Lull) and Danish producer Jonas Munk (Manual) – are back with a follow-up to the their debut album from 2012.

”II: Plains/Patterns” departs from the first LP’s amorphous ambient haze with a more rigid, albeit subtle, underpinning of rhythm and pulse. The duo’s obsession with “place and space” comes clearly into focus with an album that draws deeply from Munk and Kolb’s individual proximity to the geographically distant, but oddly similar, sounds of Germany and Michigan, past and present.

Traces of shoegaze, modern minimal electronica, and kosmische appear on every track, but are mutated into something mysterious and new. ”Pulsus”, for example, opens the album with a driving teutonic stutter and washes of serene guitar loops that are punctuated by bursts of filtered synth patterns; a combination that seamlessly bridges the gaps between disparate genres and periods of time.

Centerpiece, ”Plains”, expands the ambient formula into an inspired epic in three parts, where swells of processed guitars, distant voices and faint echoes of Detroit techno are weaved together to form a kaleidoscopic whole. And tracks such as ”Vex” and ”Plum” seem to pay as much homage to Slowdive and Eno's Harold Budd collaborations as to the modern minimalism from Cologne or Berlin.

II: Plains/Patterns 

Pulsus

From Causa Sui: "Live in Copenhagen" 3LP boxset/3CD out now on El Paraiso Records!

www.elparaisorecords.com

Causa Sui: "Mondo Buzzo" (Live in Copenhagen)

Taken from Billow Observatory's album III: Chroma/Contour on Azure Vista Records, out February 8.

Pre-order: https://billowobservatory.bandcamp.com/album/iii-chroma-contour-2

@azurevistarecords
@billow-observatory

III: Chroma/Contour

More exclusive music

Premiere: Billow Observatory - Soft Logic

Asteroid 2467

Asteroid 2467 (single version)

Afterglow

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

Manual: "Twilight"

Azure Vista Records

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