Drone experimental

Far from static clouds and close to the moving beam in pursuit as an overflowing blue wave and a star beneath, appearing along with the moon.

Text by FH HF.

Anasisana - Infinite Horizon

Based in Texas, USA, Field Designer of Language Instinct features the liminal space between composure and harshness, like the clash of force. Capturing the contrast of brittle elements shifting with the raw, unpredictable nature of distortion - both expansive and constrained at once.

Amulet of Tears 055: Field Designer

Music: Field Designer

Artwork: @anasisana

Amulet 055: Field Designer

Biomes are little worlds of organic relationships, full of struggles, symbiosis, and sheer obsolete noise. In "De Silenti Natura," Henrique Vaz is meticulously crafting synthetic auditory biomes, sprouting from their own fuzzy logic. Unfolding across two distinct acts, the Brazilian artist interprets and replicates the complex, often ambiguous sounds of (un)natural environments, creating imaginary systems to inhabit over two sides of tape. The soundscape of the first side and title track is entirely algorithmically synthesized, with no samples used, leveraging Supercollider for real-time sound generation. The environment thus built is a flourishing one, seemingly unable to escape its own grandeur as insect-like buzzing and crackles expands into mountain ranges and forests of erupting sonorous drama. The second side introduces 'hydrophone' water synthesizers, submerged in a goldfish bowl to interface with the unfurling waves of electronic chords, creating a unique blend of damp and unwieldy sloshing movements, prismatically scattered into a luscious soundscape, and resembling everything from the bridge of a starship to the echoed drip-drip of stalactites.

Both sides of the album slowly unwrap and uncrinkle, revealing layers of hisses, distant digital choirs, warm enveloping chords, and juddering bleeps. Despite their unwieldy and strange nature, myriad elements convey a familiar sense of environment, flitting between the blossoming of new (manmade) life and the doom and destruction of the (real) world.

As the ringing of bells (fully synthetic; no samples were used) hove into view during the closing movement of side one, a simulacrum cacophony of voices is ushered in. It’s a reminder of the holy nature of sound itself, beamed into our heads intangibly. The flipside’s water ritual, frantically dunking ‘water synthesizers’ to birth swooping melodies and yawning tones, is jabbing at sleeping giants. It’s pushing and pulling the stars in the night sky into place. It’s both a simple act of beautiful creation, and a storm in a teacup. 


De Silenti Natura (2021)
An essay on the "silence of the models", the "modes of silence", the "silence as a module" and the idealistic/liturgical conceptions of the "sonorus".
An artificial environment (modeling aural stratum of biomes with fuzzy logic). All sounds are algorithmically synthesised, no samples used (Lua2SC/C++).
Algorithm computed at the studio of the Institute of Arts and Design of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in partnership with the research group Gambioluteria: From the Workaround-Oriented Programming to the Notch of Post-Digital Lutherie.

Hidrofonias (2023)
An essay on the "nature of models," the "modes of nature," "nature as a module," and idealistic conceptions of the naturalities of natures.
For a handmade hydrophonic synthesizer.
Recorded at the studio of the Institute of Arts and Design of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in partnership with the Laboratory of Image and Creation in Dance of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the research group Gambioluteria: From the Workaround-Oriented Programming to the Notch of Post-Digital Lutherie.


Composed, recorded and mixed by Henrique Vaz
www.instagram.com/henrique_vazzz/

Mastered by Adam Badí Donoval
abdonoval.com

Cover art, drawings and notes by Henrique Vaz

Layout and text by Michaela Cagáňová
www.instagram.com/michelle_cagan/

Words by Tristan Bath
Photography by Michaela Cagáňová

Released by mappa as MAP050 in 2024

Hidrofonias

The learning process is just as much an act of healing as betterment. The enabling of solutions through sheer willpower and openness to discovery, or a noble mission, never completed. In that spirit, the latest album by Berlin-based Slovak duo Päfgens – comprising Jana Drábeková Kočišová and Filip Drábek – represents a pensive development for the project.

Drifting from their lo-fi shoegaze beginnings, Päfgens drone-infused soundscapes have become increasingly immersive and expressive “framed improvisations,” where spontaneous passages are captured, then revisited with fresh layers upon layers over the course of months, breathing and evolving naturally, mirroring the unpredictability of nature. Songforms have all but melted away, with ethereal guitars and bass nestling up against field-recorded sounds, synth beds, percussion, and singing bowl tones.

The framed improvisation on ‘Aspect of What’ explores love and loss, relishing both the joy and melancholy of paying tribute to Filip’s late ethnologist grandmother, Božena Filová (1926-2020). Her voice opens track 2, ‘Particles’, speaking of the humble desire to “help the people in the rural environment”, and the goal of “uplifting people to better living through education”. The album’s emotionally charged approach to improvisation is suitably uplifting and seemingly made without ego, the couple melting away into the flitting wall of rustling drones and heavenly fuzz. Even at their most serrated (the groaning guitar amp squall underpinning ‘Journey’) or when surrounded by chiming bells, clocks and bowls (‘Around the Clock’), Päfgens is ready to listen, rest, learn, and improve, extracting and nurturing hidden abstract emotion in every piece, plundering something universal and teachable from very personal depths. 


Päfgens are Jana Drábeková Kočišová and Filip Drábek
pafgens.bandcamp.com
www.instagram.com/pafgens/?hl=en

Recorded in Berlin - Moabit between February and August 2023
Jana: guitar, tongue drum, synths, vocals, singing bowl, field recordings
Filip: bass, kastle drum, guitar, field recordings

My father was affected by the mission, that we should help the people in the rural environment. For him, the goal was uplifting people to better living through education. He was saying, they are the salt of the earth.
Božena Filová in “Particles”

Thanks to Jakub Juhás for pushing us into the right direction, Martin Krajčír, Ján Solčáni, Figuško, our families and Pad Thai

Mixed and Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering, Bonn DE
www.schwebung-mastering.com

Artwork by Rastislav Podoba – Water catchment V., 2020
www.instagram.com/rastislav_podoba/
Design by Tereza Maco
www.instagram.com/zlatyretriever/

Words by Tristan Bath
Photography by Zoltán Czakó

Released by mappa as MAP049 in 2024

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council
license


Rule the Waves

Water ripples all around, and echoing sounds stretch out into a shady sub aquatic habitat. Its dark corners slowly burst into view as cresting noises reveal fresh caverns teeming with liquid life. This is Sueños Acuáticos, the latest sonic exploration from Lamina, a musical project by French artist, Clarice Calvo-Pinsolle. Built from years of carefully gathered field recordings, the album constructs immersive, detailed soundscapes where watery environments, caves, and forests intertwine with digital manipulations.

Rooted in the myth of the ‘Lamina’, a creature from Basque folklore, the project blends this oral tradition with technology to build a geological myth. The Lamina’s world—a nocturnal ecosystem of water and stone—serves as the foundation for the album’s sound design. Lamina reshapes these natural recordings into something new: stretching, pitching, and layering them to build intricate sound environments that feel simultaneously organic and synthetic. “I transform these sounds much like I would sculpt in ceramics,” explains Calvo-Pinsolle, “by adding, removing material, and imagining landscapes.

Drawing from hydrofeminist and posthuman ideas, particularly those in Astrida Neimanis’ Bodies of Water, the album treats sound like water—shifting, flowing, connecting, and buoying life. Tracks flow into one another without clear boundaries, much like the natural currents they represent. The result is a continuous listening experience, inviting deep focus on texture above melody.

Lamina is exploring the potential of the field recording as a compositional tool. Natural sounds, like trickling water or wind through trees, are processed out of recognition—or cliché. A sense of weightless immersion takes hold as Lamins’a music unfolds, and listeners float freely and choose their own adventure in the Lamina’s home. Less a set of songs than its own evolving environment, Sueños Acuáticos (‘Aquatic Dreams’ in English) is a meticulously constructed work in which we can freely float. 


All tracks composed, recorded and mixed by Clarice Calvo-Pinsolle in Brussels in 2024
With the voice of Mars on Aqualines
www.claricecalvopinsolle.com
lalamina.bandcamp.com
www.instagram.com/laminalalamina/

Mastered by Adam Badí Donoval
abdonoval.com

Artwork and design by Fen ToucheMoulin
www.instagram.com/touche_moulin/

Words by Tristan Bath
Photography by Michaela Cagáňová

Released by mappa as MAP054 in 2024

Dissolution

Explicit isolation is the third album by the international collective E/I, led by composer and percussionist Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek. The group’s seven core members came together while studying at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory and the Royal Danish Academy of Music. For this latest release, they are joined by Slovenian musicians Samo Kutin (hurdy-gurdy) and Kaja Draksler (organ), alongside Danish tuba player Rasmus Svale.

The three compositions distill sound down to its essential elements, drifting freely through space. The material is minimal, moving in the geological rhythm of endless cycles of tension and release, formation and dissolution, density and lightness. Pimpon acts here more as a guide than a creator with a master plan. He is a navigator, leading us to the most crucial moments where sonic emissions merge into vibrating drones, building to an inevitable leap—an explosion after which the particles rearrange themselves once again. It feels like futuristic temple music infused with intergalactic spiritual jazz, the extensions of drone music, and acoustic ambient textures, all highlighted by the jolly grin of the navigator.

“I wrote the scores and asked each of the musicians to record their parts individually. What’s interesting for me about doing it this way is that it removes the element of immediate interaction and introduces a factor of randomness. I then edited and mixed it myself, also adding my own parts. Previously, it was strictly acoustic music, and the recordings were ‘live,’ meaning they were captured in one room at the same time, with no subsequent edits.” Pimpon has also incorporated electronics, which make the album even more airy and organically complement the sounds of the hurdy-gurdy and organ, recorded in Trboje, the small Slovenian village. 


Pauline Hogstrand - viola
Nicole Hogstrand - cello
Asger Thomsen - double bass
Gianluca Elia - tenor saxophone
Michał Biel - baritone saxophone
Jędrzej Łagodziński - tenor saxophone
Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek - percussion, shruti box, synth
Kaja Draksler - organ
Samo Kutin - hurdy gurdy
Rasmus Svale - tuba

Music written by Szymon Gąsiorek
www.pimpon.info
pimpon.bandcamp.com


Recorded in Copenhagen and Trboje in 2023
Mixed by Szymon Gąsiorek and Michał Biel (A1)

Mastered by Adam Badí Donoval
abdonoval.com

Artwork by Rita Koszorús – Just the two of us, 2023
www.instagram.com/rita.koszorus/
Design by Tereza Maco
www.instagram.com/zlatyretriever/

Words by mappa


Released by mappa as MAP052 in 2024

With support from Koda's Cultural Funds
license


Two musicians, two different folk music traditions, two soundscapes hundreds of miles apart and one nightingale song. Nightingale melodies inspired this intoxicating folk album by Slovakian flautist Michaela Antalová and Norwegian double bassist Adrian Myhr. The Oslo-based duo’s album follows their meditative 2021 debut Zvony (Bells), which featured harmonium, field recordings of crickets and a Slovak male choir.

Sing Nightingale is a translation of ‘Zaspievaj Slavicku’, a traditional Slovakian song. The duo experiments with this theme of the songbird; exploring instrumentation from around the world and its rich tonal textures. On ‘Night Singing’, Michaela plays a Slovakian fujara, a tall, upright wooden bass flute originally played by shepherds. The fujara’s smooth, deep tones are laid over a recording of a nightingale by musicologist Tomáš Šenkyřík, with Michaela’s flute mimicking the bird’s nocturnal chirps and warbles to attract a mate. Michaela is carefully imitating the bird, who is in turn improvising his melody. In ‘Worm Moon’, named after the springtime full moon in March, when nightingales return from Africa where they have spent the cold winter, Adrian’s slow and resonant double bass is brightened by the sweet trills of a real nightingale and Michaela’s fujara.

The Norwegian Hardanger fiddle or hardingfele, features on two specially written songs; ‘Lament’ and ‘Rosenhave’ (rose garden) which bring together the nightingale’s symbolic associations with undying love, sacrifice, deep sorrow and loss. Celebrated Hardanger fiddle player Helga Myhr plays alongside Adrian’s double bass and Michaela’s seljefløyte or willow flute. Helga also plays on ‘Flagre’ (Flutter) and ‘Dance Nightingale’. The seljefløyte is very similar to the Slovak overtone flute koncovka. By using this Norwegian instrument, Adrian and Michaela’s new compositions are reminiscent of both countries’ folk traditions. Folk music often comes from unknown sources; the original writer may not be known and the melodies are typically passed down orally. Michaela and Adrian’s project merges the different folk musics from their respective countries, finding common ground in the sonic qualities of instruments and evolving a new hybrid folk style, authentic in its own right.

For the stunning adaptation of the traditional Slovakian fujara song ‘Dolu Ovce Dolinami’ (‘Sheep down the valleys’), Adrian’s friend Javid Afsari Rad plays the Iranian santur, similar to the traditional Slovak string instrument cimbalom. By coincidence, Iran’s national bird is the nightingale, making another unexpected connection to the symbolic bird. These 11 tracks are a beguiling fusion of traditional folk styles, approached by musicians from an avant-garde, improv and jazz background. The album pays tribute to a hugely expressive bird and finds a strange, soothing universality in the folk sounds of different countries. 


Adrian Myhr – double bass, harmonium
Michaela Antalová – fujara, seljefløyte, xylophone bar, shaker, voice
Helga Myhr – hardanger fiddle, voice
Javid Afsari Rad – santur

All compositions by Adrian Myhr and Michaela Antalová (except folk melodies on tracks 3, 9, 10 and 11)

Recorded at Maridalsveien 3 in Oslo, Norway by Adrian Myhr and Michaela Antalová, from February to April 2024
Mixed and mastered by Christian Obermayer at Strype Audio in Oslo, Norway

Vocals on track 10 was recorded in the former silo of the sugar factory in Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia
Singers: Anežka Matoušková and Lucie Páchová
Recording of the nightingale singing on tracks 4 and 6 by Tomáš Šenkyřík and Libor Měřínský, kindly borrowed from Skupina label

Design by Richard Hronský and Karola Ainsar
www.instagram.com/hronskyy/
www.instagram.com/paljusateadsid/

Words by Claire Sawers

Released by mappa as MAP053 in 2024


Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council

Worm Moon

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. 

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. 

Releases March 29, 2019 via Hallow Ground 

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

Coastal Inversion

Released on Longforms Editions March 2019
The title Stereo'frogi'ic is a play on the word stereophonic – to play with the illusion of multi-directional audible perspective – in this case presenting a quasi-bioacoustic sound piece, crafted from found recordings of frogs, insects, a recording of an animal scattering in the bushes and other 'vocal' animals wavering about in a stereo field. This piece was recorded and edited in the summer of 2019.

I have used slightly modified animals sounds to create aural illusions, morphing the perception of animal and machine generated sounds or raw recordings and digitally effected sounds. I wanted to create a tempo that would mimic something similar to the meditative sense you can experience from the flow or sound of the wind and other elements, when you are sitting in an open field while recording.

Stereo'frog'ic (Longforms Editions 2019)

The Harmonic Series II

Memory Phasings

musician and artist based in Los Angeles
www.byronwestbrook.com

Memory Phasings

Byron Westbrook

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