Name: insides 3 (alien love mix) by ben bondy
Duration: 3 min 48 s
Description: random alien love to all my friends during a fucked up time.

From KMRU & Aho Ssan's Limen LP

Vinyl & digital album: https://kmruahossan.bandcamp.com/album/limen

Released on April 29th, 2022

Last year, Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru (aka KMRU) and French digital alchemist Niamké Désiré (aka Aho Ssan) were invited by Berlin Atonal to collaborate on a project for the festival's Metabolic Rift edition.

The duo had already been working together, but the offer provided the momentum to shift the conversation into another gear. Initially, they looked for thematic connections within their individual practices that might match Kamaru's meditative soundscapes with Désiré's crumbling cyberpunk expressionism, and surprisingly for two artists renowned for their grasp of minimalism, it was the opposite that drew their attention. Watching the world shift as it reacted to the spiraling pandemic, Kamaru and Désiré were moved to experiment with volume, physicality, and intense emotionality.

“I never made something so extreme," Désiré says of the duo's first recording, 2021's 'Ruined Abstractions', an extended composition that matches dense, powerful low-end drones with fractal digital fuzz and smokestack bruit. It set the mood for a back-and-forth that resulted in their seismic debut full-length, "Limen", described by the two acclaimed artists as an attempt to scrutinize the yin and yang of destruction and creation.

Cacophonous, concrete crunches fanfare the album's opening piece 'Resurgence' - the result of their Berlin Atonal commission - but the track refuses to languish in wrecking ball devastation. Instead, powerful synthesized harmonies ring from beneath the rubble, before stifling everything in a humid fuzz of dense, emotionally-charged cinematic electronics.

Influenced by the prescient post-apocalyptic mood of Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" and the mythological phoenix, an immortal bird said to be reborn from the ashes of its dying predecessor, "Limen" is an album that sonically snapshots the anxious, floral beauty of an explosion or the colorful intensity of a raging fire. It's rooted in concepts of duality - the idea something unsettling can be viewed from a different angle and re-interpreted.

On the album's epic, 21-minute centerpiece 'Ruined Abstraction I + II', swirling electromagnetic interference paints a haunted parallel vista that dissolves slowly into subtle, orchestral tones and booming, widescreen thuds.

Almost angelic closing track 'Rebirth' meanwhile is the most unashamedly beautiful composition Kamaru and Désiré have written together, but its choral bliss is doused in petroleum noise and saturated distortion.

"Limen" is an album that seeks to lift a veil of silence from the world, replacing it with maximalist bombast and vivid passion. It's a dynamic piece of work that finds its creators pushing themselves to the limits, deconstructing history as it detonates around us. 

All tracks written and produced by Joseph Kamaru
and Niamké Désiré; mastered by Joker

Published by Multiverse Media Publishing
© & ℗ Subtext / Multiverse LTD 2022

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Limen

KMRU & Aho Ssan - Rebirth

Monochrome LCD

AUDIO VISIT TAPE CARD 
Tokyo Sept 2017 C-12 
Praat5383

Xilo Obachia Que Tentenna

Extract from 'Empire' EP, out FEB 14, 2019 on Shelter Press
Order: https://shelterpress.bandcamp.com/album/empire

SHELTER PRESS / SP107

—
Following the release of his album Stadium, out on Shelter Press last October, Eli Keszler returns with a brand new EP, Empire. Recorded between September and December 2018, this three-track EP is about finding stillness, tranquility and beauty in a dystopian landscape. In some ways, it continues the concepts explored on Stadium since it's also an EP inspired by cityscapes, architecture and, as Eli himself notes, "the illusion of order during declines." 

Eli started touring for Stadium at the start of October 2019 with a performance at legendary New York venue, The Kitchen, the day before he orchestrated a five-camera shoot — check out this remarkable concert-length film: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNLdBYvpiJk). 

Eli will continue to tour starting this month with three solo performances as part of Kevin Beasley's exhibition “A View of the Landscape” commissioned by The Whitney Museum in New York on Saturday January 26th at 6pm, 7pm and 8pm. 

He'll also be performing live at Mutek, Phi Center, Montreal on February 23rd, Fort Worth Modern Art Museum on February 28th (in duo with Nate Boyce), Gnration, Braga, Portugal on March 29th and Rewire Festival, Den Hague on March 30th. You can also catch him performing in Oneohtrix Point Never's band at Pitchfork Midwinter 2019, Chicago on February 17th and Myriad, The Roundhouse, London on March 8th. And, he'll be teaching at CAMP in the Pyrenees in April. 

For those new to Eli, his sound lies at the intersection of jazz, improvisation, fusion, modern classical and electronics. Although the music press has often tried to identify his work in terms of specific genres, he remains boldly on his own musical and aesthetic path. 

Stadium received record of the year from Boomkat and placed in countless end of year lists. Since copies of Stadium are sold out, a repress of the album will be released the same day as Empire on February 14th.

insides 3 (alien love mix)

ben bondy

Recent comments

Geosmina

Related tracks