Olan Monk - Auto Life
Format: Digital (EP)
Cat. No: CANVAS011
Release Date: 1st October 2021

Watch the video for 'Fameless': https://youtu.be/-xndTe8uWrc

Pre-order Auto Life (EP): canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/auto-life

‘A farewell to idolatry, where culture is absorbed into nature, like a body back into the fertile soil. Written as a 27 club survivor, lamenting the young dead, no longer young and celebrating the spectral presence of iconised peers. Reflexive and self-aware of the problem of over-identifying with the fictional performance of the solo act in various guises or archetypes: the rockstar or trapstar. Auto Life is a practical attempt at a weird re-hybridisation of otherwise seemingly divergent strands of popular music, conflating stylisations usually segregated by genre.

Auto Life was written as a collection of songs for eventual live performance. Recording music is absurd—an act in which you initially perform to no-one. The inclusion of a sample of crowd noise in ‘Fameless’ is the music studio equivalent of a laugh track being added to the soundtrack of a sitcom—unable to give up on disappearing horizons completely and imagining another context for performance in which an actual audience beyond the performer is present.

Autotune Punk—as a music of antagonism that resists from within, bending the lanes of a machine that flattens out the vocal performance to a given scale. I can still express feeling—even angst—but the machine doesn’t care. Refusing its own funeral, emulating the dead—it’s a Rock simulacrum. A renewably performed myth. I broke the spell. I just heard it as it was. The sacred framing of presence makes the pop idol always-already-dead by turning them into a symbol and an image—undead, un-ageing and endlessly reproducible within a commercialist visual culture.

The music which I would grow up listening to would later become a tool towards first facing, maybe later dismantling—or at least bending—the structures in which music was still being written, performed and recorded into existence. My emulation of and interest in pop—and popular—music is not in irony. I love this music—yet I question the context and conditions through which it has come to exist and continues to change shape. Opening up the horizon of pop to a new kind of strangeness, where the familiarity of the pop song disappears into blissful distortions and mixed signifiers towards a world in-between, otherwise unknown’.

— @olanmonk

Written, performed and recorded by Olan Monk

‘Bruised Fruit’ features an instrumental recording by Jam City, additional production and vocals written and performed by Elvin Brandhi
‘Burnout’ features an instrumental recording by Jam City

Tracks 01–07 mastered by Ali Najafi
Tracks 08 and 09 mastered by Jam City

Artwork by Ewa Awe

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Auto Life

Olan Monk - Fameless

* Announcing CANVAS009 *

Lugh - Erangal OST

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS009
Release Date:  16th July 2021

Pre-order available at canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/erangal-ost


Erangal is an experimental horror film directed by Kevin Brennan and scored by Lugh O’Neill. Constructed in a part documentary, part scripted format the film is fractured and episodic, unfolding in frantic fever dreams; creating distorted renderings of time, place and character.

The multiple scenes and vignettes in the film are connected through the traversal of a red hooded avatar, who progresses across various landscapes, observing the environmental and moral decay of the world of Erangal.

Through the transposition of actions seen in video games to physical bodies, Erangal grapples with the idea of virtual violence as a form of expression and identity whilst scrutinising the predominantly male ‘gamer-bro’ archetype synonymous with these online cultures. 

Lugh’s ever-present score invests and heightens the film’s emotional tone, moving between a sense of foreboding and suspense in ‘Taut’ and ‘Forest Lure’ eventually reaching a frenetic crescendo in ‘Lost Boys' and ‘Moan Jiro’.

The collaboration between Kevin and Lugh took place as a continuous feedback loop. While Kevin envisioned and created new scenes Lugh produced new pieces, each informing the other — the soundtrack and the film were crafted as two separate entities in constant cross pollination.

As part of the conception of the Erangal OST, Lugh reworked ‘Moan Jiro’ from his previous release Helico, which featured Olan Monk — C.A.N.V.A.S. co-founder alongside Lugh — whose instrumental intervention provides the brawny, bruising anthem for the brutal and grimey antics of the hyper masculine, lakeside dwelling lost boys of Erangal. Marie Requa Gailey, who also features on Lugh’s previous release Re Munus, contributes eerie multi-layered vocals for ‘Forest Lure’, characteristic of the omni present tension and unease felt throughout much of the film. 

The Erangal OST, released by C.A.N.V.A.S., builds stylistically upon Lugh’s previous release on the label, the queasy, frantic and exhilarating Re Munus LP released in 2020, while introducing air for the creation of a deeply contemplative environment and to make space for an aesthetic alliance with Kevin Brennan’s approach.

Lugh’s composition process amounted to the creation of an album — separate tracks, the combination of which became the sonic embodiment of Erangal. Those compositions now live within the film, interwoven into its various scenes and worlds, and simultaneously as an original soundtrack album in vinyl LP format — as a limited vinyl edition, with graphic and product design by Zuzana Pabisova — and digital format, offering an auditory depiction of Erangal and of Kevin and Lugh’s joint effort and collaborative process.



Erangal original motion picture soundtrack by Lugh O'Neill, for the film by Kevin Brennan

Mastered by Ali Najafi

Graphic and product design by Zuzana Pabisova

Vocals on 'Forest Lure’ performed by Marie Requa Gailey

Instrumental collaboration with Olan Monk on 'Moan Jiro'

Features original audio recordings and sound effects from the film

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Buy DL/LP

Lugh - Crystalline Dawn

Lugh - Erangal OST

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS009
Release Date:  16th July 2021

Pre-order available at canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/erangal-ost


Erangal is an experimental horror film directed by Kevin Brennan and scored by Lugh O’Neill. Constructed in a part documentary, part scripted format the film is fractured and episodic, unfolding in frantic fever dreams; creating distorted renderings of time, place and character.

The multiple scenes and vignettes in the film are connected through the traversal of a red hooded avatar, who progresses across various landscapes, observing the environmental and moral decay of the world of Erangal.

Through the transposition of actions seen in video games to physical bodies, Erangal grapples with the idea of virtual violence as a form of expression and identity whilst scrutinising the predominantly male ‘gamer-bro’ archetype synonymous with these online cultures. 

Lugh’s ever-present score invests and heightens the film’s emotional tone, moving between a sense of foreboding and suspense in ‘Taut’ and ‘Forest Lure’ eventually reaching a frenetic crescendo in ‘Lost Boys' and ‘Moan Jiro’.

The collaboration between Kevin and Lugh took place as a continuous feedback loop. While Kevin envisioned and created new scenes Lugh produced new pieces, each informing the other — the soundtrack and the film were crafted as two separate entities in constant cross pollination.

As part of the conception of the Erangal OST, Lugh reworked ‘Moan Jiro’ from his previous release Helico, which featured Olan Monk — C.A.N.V.A.S. co-founder alongside Lugh — whose instrumental intervention provides the brawny, bruising anthem for the brutal and grimey antics of the hyper masculine, lakeside dwelling lost boys of Erangal. Marie Requa Gailey, who also features on Lugh’s previous release Re Munus, contributes eerie multi-layered vocals for ‘Forest Lure’, characteristic of the omni present tension and unease felt throughout much of the film. 

The Erangal OST, released by C.A.N.V.A.S., builds stylistically upon Lugh’s previous release on the label, the queasy, frantic and exhilarating Re Munus LP released in 2020, while introducing air for the creation of a deeply contemplative environment and to make space for an aesthetic alliance with Kevin Brennan’s approach.

Lugh’s composition process amounted to the creation of an album — separate tracks, the combination of which became the sonic embodiment of Erangal. Those compositions now live within the film, interwoven into its various scenes and worlds, and simultaneously as an original soundtrack album in vinyl LP format — as a limited vinyl edition, with graphic and product design by Zuzana Pabisova — and digital format, offering an auditory depiction of Erangal and of Kevin and Lugh’s joint effort and collaborative process.



Erangal original motion picture soundtrack by Lugh O'Neill, for the film by Kevin Brennan

Mastered by Ali Najafi

Graphic and product design by Zuzana Pabisova

Vocals on 'Forest Lure’ performed by Marie Requa Gailey

Instrumental collaboration with Olan Monk on 'Moan Jiro'

Features original audio recordings and sound effects from the film

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Lugh - Lost Boys

33 - 33-69

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS012
Release Date: 21st October 2022

Pre-order available at https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/33-69

C.A.N.V.A.S. is proud to announce the release of 33-69, the debut album of 33. 33-69 laments and commemorates the interruption of the simplicities, beauties and charm of mortal life in full Baroque splendour, whilst also partaking in the final opportunities for carnal pleasure and orgiastic excesses in the earthly realm.

Through their collaborative project 33, Billy Bultheel and Alexander Iezzi further consolidate a partnership which has taken many forms within a visual, artistic spectrum. Their practice envelops performance art, music and installation, whilst pinpointing, developing and elaborating the most meaningful and poignant marriages of the disciplines. Their differing backgrounds have informed the way that their long collaboration works – Bultheel with his conservatory training, and Iezzi coming from DIY punk and experimental music scenes.

Their debut album 33-69 paints a tumultuous world within which the 33 collaboration is extended to a number of other presences that pierce the stormy skies to torment, delight and enchant. Amongst them are Ivan Cheng, Steve Katona and Dylan Kerr who appear in grace as the broody clouds part to let in some light. As the light recedes, NAKED haunts amongst the shadows on 'The Knife', with an avalanche of metallic noise.

'Thomas The Obscure', with Patrick Belaga's Cello performance, introduces an element of serene, meditative calm before 'Heaven's Blade' cuts through with the ultimate rapturous frenzy. The album ends with 'Speed and Beer’, a dizzying brass-led anthem which conveys a sense of nausea and confusion, surfacing from the shadows.

Bultheel and Iezzi carry with them a wealth of composition and performance experience and skill, boasting impressive trajectories which cross each other frequently. Now based in Berlin but hailing from Belgium and Arizona respectively, have worked together for the past three years, producing musical performances that explore relationships between movement, sculpture and electronic and classical music. This complex and intricate working relationship culminates in the creation of 33-69 as a defiant debut — a dense and finely crafted work which finds unlikely pathways through which to navigate Baroque, Lieder and exuberant club through humour, dread and exaltation.

33-69 was conceived during the first Covid-19 lockdowns and documents the duo’s experiences of pandemic life in Berlin. Recreating that dopamine shot and collaborating towards a sense of community that the pandemic had suddenly folded away. The record is a short but powerful rush of emotional states and bodily desires, translated into cerebral and carnal electronic compositions of EDM, noise and techno. 


Written, produced, recorded and mixed by 33 (Alexander Iezzi & Billy Bultheel)

Additional vocals on sirens by Dylan Kerr

Mastered by Ali Najafi

Design by Leïth Benkhedda & Stelios Ilchuk

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

33 - Thomas the obscure (Patrick Belaga)

33 - Fireworks

Xao - Wirehead

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS013
Release Date: 2nd December 2022

Pre-order available at canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/wirehead

‘An overwhelming diet of stimulation. Maximalist sonics reflect/mimic the barrage of media, attention hijack. A cathartic balm with which to come down from the onslaught. To break out of the compulsion loop. Erosion of Attention and Critical Thought. The inability to write or hear a melody.

As more potent stimulus is experienced with greater frequency, the elicited response grows duller. Satisfactory engagement requires stronger, stranger and crueller stimulus. Entropy cascades, form becomes occluded. Dragon chasing. The Earth will implode under the weight of our data. The internet currently boasts the mass of a strawberry.

Wire-heading as a Possible Contributor to Civilisational Decline.
Wire-heading as a Possible Contributor to the Death of Art?
Wire-heading as a form of music making…
DAW addiction, resampling syndrome.

Micro-genres and reissues. A glut of influences, fleeting obsessions; option paralysis fomented. Procedural and algorithmic composition to break the stalemate. The imposition of order becomes freeing. Seeding pareidolia? Freedom through procedure. The altar wine of counterpoint and the modafinil of machine learning. Or a new digital spirituality achieved through enhanced aleatory. Silicon zealotry and the pursuit of the divine online.’

Music by Xao

Vocals on 'I Wed My Shadow' performed by Marie Requa Gailey

Artwork and design by Somnath Bhatt

Mastered by Alex Gordon at Abbey Road Studios

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Xao - Ophanim Plushie

Xao - Bone Theory

@olanmonk edit ft. @lu_gh + @michaelspeers

brothers_

Anam (Meditation Tape)

https://olanmonk.bandcamp.com/

@olanmonk

Olan Monk - Achilles

@olanmonk x @xao-3
https://olanmonk.bandcamp.com/track/grey-sky

Olan Monk - Grey Sky (Xao Edit)

'INIS' OUT NOW
DIGITAL + INIS/ANAM DOUBLE EP C40 CASSETTE
CANVAS001
https://olanmonk.bandcamp.com
@olanmonk @somervillesounds

INIS

Buy DL/CASSETTE

Olan Monk - Failure Dance (w/Maria Somerville)

from INIS (EP) 27.4.18
DIGITAL + INIS/ANAM DOUBLE EP C40 CASSETTE
CANVAS001
https://olanmonk.bandcamp.com
@olanmonk

Olan Monk - Sisyphus

from @lu_gh - Hélico(EP)
Format: Digital
Cat.No: CANVAS002
Release Date: 21 June 2018

**

LUGH announces debut EP ‘Hélico’ to be released via label and platform @c-a-n-v-a-s on summer solstice, 21st June 2018.

The Berlin-based artist makes use of digitally disembodied vocal sounds and textures as a compositional tool for creating new environments on Hélico, in attempt to draw his listener into an affected and emotive state. However, LUGH strives to leave the listener short of creating a true connection to the source of the sound. The outcome is a very real and tangible experience that is somehow lost in an uncanny virtual space.

The opening track, ‘Million Dollar Cowboy’ revs up this specific depiction to its utmost resulting in an eerie and evocative space formed by the overlap of what is recognizably human, tangible and familiar with the aseptic sterility of the digital. This is followed by the rupturing of ‘Teeth in My Hands’ clearing the air for a new environment to be created, by the third track, ‘Skototrope’.

‘Skototrope’ is about the self-realisation and acknowledgement of a certain attraction to somehow somber and negative realities. The track portrays the delicate tension between feelings of disappointment and defeat and the tender affection for those negative aspects, which one continues to cherish and explore.

Introducing LUGH’s disembodied and distorted voice on ‘Moan Jiro’, the track disrupts his reflective state with a raw burst of energy and the only conventional rhythmic moment on ‘Hélico’. The same distorted voice navigates a somehow cosmic space on ‘No Tassels’. Closing track, ‘Tropics’, creates a narrative “like a micro-opera for the themes and characters encountered along the release”.

After having previously existed as a showcase where LUGH had performed and collaborated with other London based artists, C.A.N.V.A.S has morphed into a platform for the coexistence of a geographically increasingly dispersed group of artists, manifested through events held in London, Berlin and Ireland.

Mastering by Ali Najafi, Artwork photography by Shek Po Kwan

@lu_gh
www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Hélico

Buy DL

Lugh - Teeth In My Hands

from @lu_gh - Hélico(EP)
Format: Digital
Cat.No: CANVAS002
Release Date: 21 June 2018

**

LUGH announces debut EP ‘Hélico’ to be released via label and platform @c-a-n-v-a-s on summer solstice, 21st June 2018.

The Berlin-based artist makes use of digitally disembodied vocal sounds and textures as a compositional tool for creating new environments on Hélico, in attempt to draw his listener into an affected and emotive state. However, LUGH strives to leave the listener short of creating a true connection to the source of the sound. The outcome is a very real and tangible experience that is somehow lost in an uncanny virtual space.

The opening track, ‘Million Dollar Cowboy’ revs up this specific depiction to its utmost resulting in an eerie and evocative space formed by the overlap of what is recognizably human, tangible and familiar with the aseptic sterility of the digital. This is followed by the rupturing of ‘Teeth in My Hands’ clearing the air for a new environment to be created, by the third track, ‘Skototrope’.

‘Skototrope’ is about the self-realisation and acknowledgement of a certain attraction to somehow somber and negative realities. The track portrays the delicate tension between feelings of disappointment and defeat and the tender affection for those negative aspects, which one continues to cherish and explore.

Introducing LUGH’s disembodied and distorted voice on ‘Moan Jiro’, the track disrupts his reflective state with a raw burst of energy and the only conventional rhythmic moment on ‘Hélico’. The same distorted voice navigates a somehow cosmic space on ‘No Tassels’. Closing track, ‘Tropics’, creates a narrative “like a micro-opera for the themes and characters encountered along the release”.

After having previously existed as a showcase where LUGH had performed and collaborated with other London based artists, C.A.N.V.A.S has morphed into a platform for the coexistence of a geographically increasingly disparate group of artists, manifested through events held in London, Berlin and Ireland.

Mastering by Ali Najafi, Artwork photography by Shek Po Kwan

@lu_gh
www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Lugh - Million Dollar Cowboy

Guest Show 
LONDON
11.05.18

www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/olan-monk-11th-may-2018

@nts_live x @c-a-n-v-a-s
w/ @olanmonk & @elvin-brandhi-1
artwork : Mariana Rocha

OLAN MONK - NARCISSUS
LUGH - TEETH IN MY HANDS
MICHAEL SPEERS - SUL LOCUS
XAO - CORVID
AUSSCHUSS - SILK LAW
CIENFUEGOS - OPEN CELL
POLIDO - BREAKING OUT THE PAST
VOLSK - GLIDING BLADE
ASHLEY PAUL - FRAYED DREAMS
JACOB SAMUEL - BALLAD OF GHOST
BEN VINCE & MICACHU - WHAT I CAN SEE
OLAN MONK - DRONE ISLAND

ELVIN BRANDHI
(UNKNOWN TRACKS)
(LIVE)

ELVIN BRANDHI & OLAN MONK - CHAINS
ELVIN BRANDHI & OLAN MONK - HELL (IS WHERE THE HEART IS)
OLAN MONK - DYSPHORIA
LUCY RAILTON - FORTIFIED UP
MY BLOODY VALENTINE - SOMETIMES

C.A.N.V.A.S. on NTS : Olan Monk & Elvin Brandhi

Elvin Brandhi - Shelf Life (EP)*OUT NOW*

Format: Digital, Cassette
Cat.No: CANVAS003

*

“
Sickness unto death in an age of commodified well-being: approaching death from the point of view of an actualised virtual eternity. The commodification of daily life and the self, preclude the possibility of reincarnation, we do not identify ourselves as a cycle, a movement, an expression of life itself but as a single product that exists in and for itself.
 
The supermarket social network obliterates the surface of material hybridising, detaining all movement to self enclosed unit reductions, excommunicating mutation. Encapsulated in a fixed identity, packaged and promoted, immune to the infection of outsiders. The social contract of a pre-sealed self, branded with calculated sell by date, sentenced to a shelf life of inter-passive exchange.  
 
Shelf Life compiles this synthetic axis, upon which we bide out time smiling.  
Interrupt user: authorise disk-root conflict[ 
”

Elvin Brandhi is welcomed to the index of C.A.N.V.A.S. releases as the first solo release of 2019 and the third commission since the conversion from events series to label in 2018. As a performance nomad whose very practice is simultaneously about engagement with place and a lack of geographic singularity - there could not be a more fitting accomplice to C.A.N.V.A.S.’ effort as a self-publishing artist group to build a collaborative community despite increasing dispersion. This is the solo project of Welsh artist Freya Edmondes - otherwise known for her role as vocalist in father/daughter duo Yeah You - in which performances mesh a collage of electronic sounds with a disruptive stream of improvised vocals. These tracks are as close to studio versions as this fundamentally live practice gets - roaming recordings, sample blasts, club contortions and the ever present voice alchemically infused. In 25’46” of sound, Elvin’s bio-technological monster appears like a Cronenberg body horror - mouths appearing where they shouldn’t - or a living, breathing post-digital Beckett character narrating their own club induced self-destruction. Yet the future shock is fresh - Shelf Life is as fun to listen to as it is completely disarming.

soundcloud.com/elvin-brandhi-1

Mastered by Ali Najafi
Digital Artwork by Firas Shehadeh
Tape Design by AALTAR
In Collaboration with Olan Monk

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Shelf Life

Elvin Brandhi - IMBRED WAILE / OCDC

* Announcing CANVAS003 *

Elvin Brandhi - Shelf Life (EP)
Format: Digital, Cassette
Cat.No: CANVAS003
Release Date: 21 March 2019
__

Elvin Brandhi - Empty Weeping (VIDEO)
youtube.com/watch?v=Vk7WCEt4rIA

Cassette and Digital pre-order :
canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/shelf-life

*

“
Sickness unto death in an age of commodified well-being: approaching death from the point of view of an actualised virtual eternity. The commodification of daily life and the self, preclude the possibility of reincarnation, we do not identify ourselves as a cycle, a movement, an expression of life itself but as a single product that exists in and for itself.
 
The supermarket social network obliterates the surface of material hybridising, detaining all movement to self enclosed unit reductions, excommunicating mutation. Encapsulated in a fixed identity, packaged and promoted, immune to the infection of outsiders. The social contract of a pre-sealed self, branded with calculated sell by date, sentenced to a shelf life of inter-passive exchange.  
 
Shelf Life compiles this synthetic axis, upon which we bide out time smiling.  
Interrupt user: authorise disk-root conflict[ 
”

Elvin Brandhi is welcomed to the index of C.A.N.V.A.S. releases as the first solo release of 2019 and the third commission since the conversion from events series to label in 2018. As a performance nomad whose very practice is simultaneously about engagement with place and a lack of geographic singularity - there could not be a more fitting accomplice to C.A.N.V.A.S.’ effort as a self-publishing artist group to build a collaborative community despite increasing dispersion. This is the solo project of Welsh artist Freya Edmondes - otherwise known for her role as vocalist in father/daughter duo Yeah You - in which performances mesh a collage of electronic sounds with a disruptive stream of improvised vocals. These tracks are as close to studio versions as this fundamentally live practice gets - roaming recordings, sample blasts, club contortions and the ever present voice alchemically infused. In 25’46” of sound, Elvin’s bio-technological monster appears like a Cronenberg body horror - mouths appearing where they shouldn’t - or a living, breathing post-digital Beckett character narrating their own club induced self-destruction. Yet the future shock is fresh - Shelf Life is as fun to listen to as it is completely disarming.

soundcloud.com/elvin-brandhi-1

Mastered by Ali Najafi
Digital Artwork by @firasshehadeh
Tape Design by AALTAR 
In Collaboration with @OlanMonk

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Elvin Brandhi - Empty Weeping

from @c-a-n-v-a-s - Cipher(Compilation LP)
Format: Digital, Vinyl 
Cat.No: CANVAS004
Release Date: 22 February 2019

**

C.A.N.V.A.S. announces ‘Cipher’ compilation featuring Michael Speers, Xao, object blue, Ashley Paul, Ben Vince, Ausschuss, Olan Monk, Flora Yin-Wong and Lugh.

Out 22nd February 2019

**

Label and artist platform C.A.N.V.A.S. are pleased to announce compilation album ‘Cipher’, out on the 22nd February 2019.

The fourth release since their cross over from subterranean performance series to label, this LP features Michael Speers, Xao, object blue, Ashley Paul, Ben Vince, Ausschuss, Olan Monk, Flora Yin-Wong and Lugh.

Each artist has responded to specific thematic instructions to create a contextually coherent, although artistically varied collective work.

In the context of increasing digitisation and codification as a means to recreate, record, communicate and propagate events from the real world, Cipher plays with different processes by which musical material is abstracted and codified.

This project reconsiders the graphic score and other means by which music has been codified. Cipher considers the hegemony of authorship in the context of codification of music, and speculates on possible means for musical propagation, whether they uphold human authorship or neglect it.

Responding to one of three sub-themes relating to the context, the 9 artists contribute works which will be released on vinyl and digitally in 22nd February 2019.

In line with their core idea of bringing together dispersed artists, C.A.N.V.A.S. are also holding two events, in London and Berlin to showcase the release.

credits
directed by Lugh O’Neill
graphic design by Louise Borinski 
mastering by Ali Najafi

CANVAS logo design by AALTAR

press contact, Isis O’Regan > isis@worldwidefriendlysociety.com

@lu_gh @floraytw @michaelspeers @ausschuss @xao-3 @ashleypaul @objectblue @vince21music @olanmonk

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Flora Yin-Wong - Murmures

from @c-a-n-v-a-s - Cipher( compilation LP)
Format: Digital, Vinyl 
Cat.No: CANVAS004
Release Date: 22 February 2019

**

C.A.N.V.A.S. announces ‘Cipher’ compilation featuring Michael Speers, Xao, object blue, Ashley Paul, Ben Vince, Ausschuss, Olan Monk, Flora Yin-Wong and Lugh.

Out 22nd February 2019

**

Label and artist platform C.A.N.V.A.S. are pleased to announce compilation album ‘Cipher’, out on the 22nd February 2019.

The fourth release since their cross over from subterranean performance series to label, this LP features Michael Speers, Xao, object blue, Ashley Paul, Ben Vince, Ausschuss, Olan Monk, Flora Yin-Wong and Lugh.

Each artist has responded to specific thematic instructions to create a contextually coherent, although artistically varied collective work.

In the context of increasing digitisation and codification as a means to recreate, record, communicate and propagate events from the real world, Cipher plays with different processes by which musical material is abstracted and codified.

This project reconsiders the graphic score and other means by which music has been codified. Cipher considers the hegemony of authorship in the context of codification of music, and speculates on possible means for musical propagation, whether they uphold human authorship or neglect it.

Responding to one of three sub-themes relating to the context, the 9 artists contribute works which will be released on vinyl and digitally in 22nd February 2019.

In line with their core idea of bringing together dispersed artists, C.A.N.V.A.S. are also holding two events, in London and Berlin to showcase the release.

credits
directed by Lugh O’Neill
graphic design by Louise Borinski 
mastering by Ali Najafi

CANVAS logo design by AALTAR

press contact, Isis O’Regan > isis@worldwidefriendlysociety.com

@lu_gh @floraytw @michaelspeers @ausschuss @xao-3 @ashleypaul @objectblue @vince21music @olanmonk

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Xao - Quintal

Michael Speers - xtr'ctn (LP)*OUT NOW*

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS005
Release Date: 13th of September 2019

;
synthetic listening environments :: created with material extracted from field recordings and processed/arranged using software, alongside electronic signals from no-input feedback + test equipment.

most of the source material was generated at my place of work[as a technician]—whilst testing large amounts of audio equipment—capturing electronics’ internal behaviours + using very high levels of amplification on various small capsule microphones, connected to wireless transmitters placed in resonant vessels/spaces and materials of interest
;

Northern Irish, London based musician Michael Speers composes and performs music as a temporal and worldly extension of himself and the tools at his disposition. As a percussionist by training, Michael extends his contact and interplay with resonant objects through instrumentalised amplification and feedback, employing signal processing to articulate the almost tangible constitution of sonic material as structural, nearly cellular, microscopic entities. Following his integral presence in C.A.N.V.A.S. performance events since their inception and his recent participation in the Cipher compilation, xtr’ctn is released in September 2019 as a debut solo LP for both the artist and the label.

Dehumanised black metal screams, attributed to seagulls - specifically “recorded in Ramsgate, 06.2017”. It’s the inhuman that concerns us here, or our complex relationship with non-human entities and abstractions. Extracting is a process. By integrating recorded and found sound phenomena, treated as profane and material entities, Michael meticulously arranges sound objects into composition, upholding a fidelity to their emergent properties. Most of these objects become seemingly un-referential, although occasionally you arrive at a near-recognisable sound source or environment, disrupting the invitation towards a total loss of a sense of self.

This is fictional music - it is of and for a world that doesn’t exist. Although presenting sound with sincerity and integrity, without allusion to linear narrative, Michael's materialistic approach is transcended by the sensitivity of his composition. In a sense, it comes after both feeling and expression, as the subdued emotion of a person attempting to reach beyond their own affective limitations. It reaches out without ever really touching anything. Yet for all it’s clinical reduction, there are moments of unhindered emotion which strike harder for their arrival from such a seemingly nonhuman place.

“xtr’ctn” fails in reaching a point of immanent abstraction - a flatline horizon. It arrives instead at the outer brim of a sensory dam, where organic glitches from the extremities of our perception have spread - like sonic cataracts - intercepting the flow of our auditory awareness. In its state of fiction, “xtr’ctn” acts as a flag for the C.A.N.V.A.S. community, pitched as a marker of our enacted existence, weathered though unliving. To follow this signal to its depth is to accept the unknown - you only follow, knowing no alternative.

Mastering by Ali Najafi
Artwork and product design by AALTAR

@michaelspeers

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Michael Speers - tombeau

* Announcing CANVAS005 *

Michael Speers - xtr'ctn (LP)

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS005
Release Date: 13th of September 2019

;
synthetic listening environments :: created with material extracted from field recordings and processed/arranged using software, alongside electronic signals from no-input feedback + test equipment.

most of the source material was generated at my place of work[as a technician]—whilst testing large amounts of audio equipment—capturing electronics’ internal behaviours + using very high levels of amplification on various small capsule microphones, connected to wireless transmitters placed in resonant vessels/spaces and materials of interest
;

Northern Irish, London based musician Michael Speers composes and performs music as a temporal and worldly extension of himself and the tools at his disposition. As a percussionist by training, Michael extends his contact and interplay with resonant objects through instrumentalised amplification and feedback, employing signal processing to articulate the almost tangible constitution of sonic material as structural, nearly cellular, microscopic entities. Following his integral presence in C.A.N.V.A.S. performance events since their inception and his recent participation in the Cipher compilation, xtr’ctn is released in September 2019 as a debut solo LP for both the artist and the label.

Dehumanised black metal screams, attributed to seagulls - specifically “recorded in Ramsgate, 06.2017”. It’s the inhuman that concerns us here, or our complex relationship with non-human entities and abstractions. Extracting is a process. By integrating recorded and found sound phenomena, treated as profane and material entities, Michael meticulously arranges sound objects into composition, upholding a fidelity to their emergent properties. Most of these objects become seemingly un-referential, although occasionally you arrive at a near-recognisable sound source or environment, disrupting the invitation towards a total loss of a sense of self.

This is fictional music - it is of and for a world that doesn’t exist. Although presenting sound with sincerity and integrity, without allusion to linear narrative, Michael's materialistic approach is transcended by the sensitivity of his composition. In a sense, it comes after both feeling and expression, as the subdued emotion of a person attempting to reach beyond their own affective limitations. It reaches out without ever really touching anything. Yet for all it’s clinical reduction, there are moments of unhindered emotion which strike harder for their arrival from such a seemingly nonhuman place.

“xtr’ctn” fails in reaching a point of immanent abstraction - a flatline horizon. It arrives instead at the outer brim of a sensory dam, where organic glitches from the extremities of our perception have spread - like sonic cataracts - intercepting the flow of our auditory awareness. In its state of fiction, “xtr’ctn” acts as a flag for the C.A.N.V.A.S. community, pitched as a marker of our enacted existence, weathered though unliving. To follow this signal to its depth is to accept the unknown - you only follow, knowing no alternative.

Mastering by Ali Najafi
Artwork and product design by AALTAR

@michaelspeers

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Michael Speers - sul. locus

* Announcing CANVAS006 *

Olan Monk - Love/Dead (LP)

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS006
Release Date: 26th of June 2020

Olan Monk - New Life (LYRIC VIDEO):
https://youtu.be/b0O2Zi8zE38

Vinyl and Digital pre-order:
https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/love-dead

‘
For the record:

You are tuning into something that has been playing on an endless loop. These recordings come from a time when the dystopia called but life stood still, imagining other horizons. Love and new life in a place once used to house the dead. This was all we had: a shared dream. Dragging the harmonium from the top bedroom and down to the court, playing it until the fabric tore and it would no longer breathe or sound. Gold echoes reflecting on the roof. A memory, entombed. The familiar sound of the ferry engine roaring and the cold salt water blasting out beneath us as we went out to Inis Oírr, the smallest of the islands, like we did most summers.

Love as a refusal to die, yet. This album survives as a vanitas—a reflection on the transience of life and certainty of death. A love letter to a dead city. Dripping paint over lost texts. Enticing the shadow self and embracing the anima, attempting divination. Live from an archive of past performances. All recordings are both dead and undead in that every time they are played back, they are re-lived. A mortuary of crystallised feelings, doubtful (self-imposed) exile and the long-gone sentiment of any romance in isolation.

‘But there it is, either you love or you don’t.’
—Samuel Beckett, First Love
'

Recorded between Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland, and a coroner’s court and mortuary in south London.

Vocals on ‘Dead’ performed by Maria Somerville
Vocals on ‘Morticia’ written and performed by James K
Additional mixing on ‘Morticia’ by Xao
‘Tomb’ features the sound of an Aran Island Ferries engine

Mastered by Ali Najafi
Design by AALTAR with artwork by Olan Monk

@olanmonk

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Love/Dead

Olan Monk - New Life

* Announcing CANVAS007 *

Lugh - Re Munus (LP)

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS007
Release Date: 23rd of October 2020

Vinyl and Digital pre-order:
canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/re-munus

‘
There is grief, exultation and relief inherent in belonging to community. Re Munus reflects on the tone of deep gravity with which the re munisation of the de munised is unravelling. The generations which dismantled their social contract, achieved immunity, revoked solidarity.

Severe circumstances foment collectivity, suffering and empathy, interrupting the ethereal dream of social weightlessness. Re Munus sketches sensations and observations during a time of reorientation, rediscovery of lived sensibility on a relational scale. An encounter with sensations which we had said defined us—the tangibility of which we had forgotten, believed to be confined to the past. There is tension between the physical withdrawal and lived intensity which permeates these works.
’ Lugh

Personal drift. There is a multitude of presences guiding you through this record as a listener, not without their own doubts as to where they are leading you. A murky social space. Time-compressed club experiences within layered acoustic dimensions; consolidated, captured and played back into the same space. I am sitting in several rooms simultaneously. Death metal screams in an Animal Crossing world modelled on our own.

The choral rush of ‘Million Dollar Cowboy’ from Lugh’s Hélico EP (2018) re-appears again in ‘Braises’ and ‘Free Fall’, deeper and re-figured. Sometimes the record also haunts itself—each element heard having been through a process so long and many-staged, it’s as though it has already lived.

These compositions hold within them a flawed attempt to communicate on every level. The desire of language as expressed through music—towards shared meaning. Paradoxically voiced and voiceless, it denies textual, verbal description, instead crying out through the cracks in forming its own liquid tongue. Clone choirs simultaneously rehearse in an open space below. A slow walk through this spectacle. It’s an anguished record as much as it is at times tranquil. The movement between voices detached and embodied becomes playful—often warping them far beyond recognisability.

Beautiful artefacts. Stomach churns in the face of a burnt-out horizon. Cantering & sneezing. Air is driven into the corners and creases of a gold-plated, reverberant structure. The neural network claps to keep itself in time. Gutter Synthesis organ lament; tears of the duffing oscillators. There are moments on this release when tensely divergent fragments are barely held together. The prominent human voice mixing with the heavily re-sampled voice—it’s an incredible lift. Superimposed night and day. Sonic creatures living within the material, sharing time and space. Tenderness and together-ness.

Michael Speers and Olan Monk

Music by Lugh O'Neill

Vocals on ‘Vertiginous Leap’ and 'Free Fall' performed by Marie Requa Gailey

Artwork, graphic and product designed by Zuzana Pabisova

Mastered by Ali Najafi

Underwater recordings from Zuzana Pabisova's underwater sports camera feature on 'El Rocio'

The ‘Gutter Synth’ designed by Tom Mudd features on 'Americans', 'Irony, Chastity, Obedience' and 'Index Veri'

@lu_gh

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Re Munus

Lugh - Irony, Chastity, Obedience

* Announcing CANVAS007 *

Lugh - Re Munus (LP)

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS007
Release Date: 23rd of October 2020


Vinyl and Digital pre-order:
https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/re-munus


‘
There is grief, exultation and relief inherent in belonging to community. Re Munus reflects on the tone of deep gravity with which the re munisation of the de munised is unravelling. The generations which dismantled their social contract, achieved immunity, revoked solidarity.

Severe circumstances foment collectivity, suffering and empathy, interrupting the ethereal dream of social weightlessness. Re Munus sketches sensations and observations during a time of reorientation, rediscovery of lived sensibility on a relational scale. An encounter with sensations which we had said defined us—the tangibility of which we had forgotten, believed to be confined to the past. There is tension between the physical withdrawal and lived intensity which permeates these works.
’ Lugh


Personal drift. There is a multitude of presences guiding you through this record as a listener, not without their own doubts as to where they are leading you. A murky social space. Time-compressed club experiences within layered acoustic dimensions; consolidated, captured and played back into the same space. I am sitting in several rooms simultaneously. Death metal screams in an Animal Crossing world modelled on our own.

 The choral rush of ‘Million Dollar Cowboy’ from Lugh’s Hélico EP (2018) re-appears again in ‘Braises’ and ‘Free Fall’, deeper and re-figured. Sometimes the record also haunts itself—each element heard having been through a process so long and many-staged, it’s as though it has already lived.

 These compositions hold within them a flawed attempt to communicate on every level. The desire of language as expressed through music—towards shared meaning. Paradoxically voiced and voiceless, it denies textual, verbal description, instead crying out through the cracks in forming its own liquid tongue. Clone choirs simultaneously rehearse in an open space below. A slow walk through this spectacle. It’s an anguished record as much as it is at times tranquil. The movement between voices detached and embodied becomes playful—often warping them far beyond recognisability.

Beautiful artefacts. Stomach churns in the face of a burnt-out horizon. Cantering & sneezing. Air is driven into the corners and creases of a gold-plated, reverberant structure. The neural network claps to keep itself in time. Gutter Synthesis organ lament; tears of the duffing oscillators. There are moments on this release when tensely divergent fragments are barely held together. The prominent human voice mixing with the heavily re-sampled voice—it’s an incredible lift. Superimposed night and day. Sonic creatures living within the material, sharing time and space. Tenderness and together-ness.

Michael Speers and Olan Monk 




Music by Lugh O'Neill

Vocals on ‘Vertiginous Leap’ and 'Free Fall' performed by Marie Requa Gailey

Artwork, graphic and product designed by Zuzana Pabisova

Mastered by Ali Najafi

Underwater recordings from Zuzana Pabisova's underwater sports camera feature on 'El Rocio'

The ‘Gutter Synth’ designed by Tom Mudd features on 'Americans', 'Irony, Chastity, Obedience' and 'Index Veri'

@lu_gh

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Lugh - Braises

* Announcing CANVAS008 *

Various Artists - Apocope (LP)

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS008
Release Date: 12th of February 2021

Vinyl and Digital pre-order:
canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/apocope

Apocope is the second C.A.N.V.A.S. compilation, following Cipher (2019) and featuring another grouping of dispersed artists responding to a call-out under a unifying theme/sky. Where Cipher approached codification, Apocope approaches the cut-off point of a pop operative. An ‘apocope’ is a word truncated—a sound omitted—moulded into a shape that rolls off of the tongue yet carries within it further significance.

Together as C.A.N.V.A.S; Lugh, Olan Monk and Elvin Brandhi invited Alpha Maid, Bashar Suleiman, Billy Bultheel, Hulubalang and Nadah El Shazly to join them in excavating ‘POP’—a boundless yet always personal subject, specific to context and forms of co-existence.

The resulting record created by the group is a warped hypogeum of dissonant intimacies, the texture of the post-POPped bubble strewn into unpredictable hymns of prophetic onomatopoeia. Together this collection of tracks sustains tangible reciprocity between those involved, despite the dislocation of the time during which it was made and the physical distance which separated the artists who communicated remotely.

HYPE! As the commercialization of an essentially positive impulse to exert imbalance. We asked ourselves to what extent we are the subject of the conditions we fight against, which contagions inhabit our receptivity. What involuntarily haunts the creative inventory.

Apocope is a compilation of tracks that approach without reaching their referent. The possible drop-off point of the pop lineage. Idols falling. Apo-Cope, understood also as apocalyptic hope. This title recovers the dynamic meaning of Cope (Kolaphos). Cope is not a capacity to contain a situation, it is a strike, a hit—a resistant attack. A de-fence mechanism as a cutting through the protective infrastructure and allowing the skin to breathe. A collective calling up, throwing off our infatuations.

The joy of pop nothingness falls flat of an exuberant call-out. Instead, it’s a burnt out landscape of post-pop memories. Shells of cars with the windows blasted out and the radio playing a skipping CD on infinite loop or tuning into radio stations still echoing from last year, already forgotten. A pandemic induced surge-out, a farewell to arms. The greatest hits of an only half-remembered era of reducing attention spans and blown out pop hedonist nihilism, a NOW compilation for the elongated annulment of our prospects.

Apocope is a somewhat jaded, stranded, and disoriented but defiant and hopeful gesture, striving to redefine the realm of the possible. This is neither a tabula rasa, a clean-cut break from the past, nor is it nostalgic. Apocope remodels the vernacular to create breathing-space for an era gasping for air. It reveals and reflects the trauma of a generation plagued by cultural stasis and strife, letting out some bruised blood.

We sidle with the cut-off point, the Cope, the Hit that POP’s our bubble, revealing the face disguised by flawless elastic. To learn from the affectivity of ideological oppression we join the hit parade assertively walking in the opposite direction.

Directed by C.A.N.V.A.S. and Elvin Brandhi
Design by Gaspar Cohen with artwork by Elvin Brandhi
Mastered by Ali Najafi

We acknowledge the financial support of the Arts Council in making this project possible. [www.artscouncil.ie]

www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

@alpha-maid

Apocope

Harry wants to imagine a world without you

Alpha Maid - Harry wants to imagine a world without you

* Announcing CANVAS010 *

Alpha Maid - CHUCKLE 

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS010
Release Date: 19th of March 2021

Alpha Maid - SUM1  (VIDEO):
https://thewire.co.uk/video/watch-alpha-maid-sum1

Pre-order available at canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/chuckle

CHUCKLE is the first solo release by Leisha Thomas as Alpha Maid on the C.A.N.V.A.S. label, following a contribution to the recent Apocope compilation LP. The signature Alpha Maid genre prevails—the sincere, strong vocal style, aligned with a UK indignant and iconoclastic artistic lineage, set against dredging, grungy instrumentals reminiscent of North American open plains or urban sprawl. As if desert rock had occurred in mundane and claustrophobic South London rather than the Southern States. Alpha Maid observes and reflects on an urban, smoggy, UK surrounding, although appears to drive through it on an open interstate highway in a really wide car.

Alpha Maid's vocals vacillate between sometimes candid, close and unclouded, then drifting towards fragmentary, cutting and pasting in the manner of unstable media or limited bandwidth.

Opening with a quote—found footage from broadcasted media—‘i knew the figures’, pointing to a setting of British media harassment and scrutiny, WOWOWOW conveys amazement and disbelief, faced with the bare and flagrant injustices of the time and place. Vocals are swallowed by the cavernous reverberation, while slow paced stoner rock-like drifting instrumentals amble underneath.

CHUCKLE follows Alpha Maid's debut EP Spy, released via the ever-transforming collective and label CURL, of which Alpha Maid is a member, alongside the founders Coby Sey, Mica Levi and Brother May. Whilst Spy expressed revulsion in the face of creeping surveillance and the increasingly concealed and deceptive nature of power, CHUCKLE embodies the spirit of internal disorientation and realisations, exacerbated by a backdrop of social crises and injustices reaching levels beyond our grasp or comprehension.

Electronic interventions, eclectic instrumentation and found footage intersperse Alpha Maid's trademark sound. Brief interludes reminiscent of Scandinavian metal themes, undistorted but purveying doom—opening MILD WEATHER and closing NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED—contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of eerie dread. Within that, there is regular respite to be found—NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED feels light, rural, nearly folk, delivered with clarity of mind and of pace amongst the otherwise smoggy and moody overlying theme of the EP. The title of the track, however points to a familiar context of confusion amongst cosmopolitan and globalised socio-political contagion. NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED, in harmony with the nature of the whole release, is fresh, melodically simple, optimistic and yet suspended within a murky atmosphere of cataclysm and wonder.

Lugh O'Neill

Music by Leisha Thomas
Trumpet on 'MILD WEATHER' and 'NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED' performed by Jovis Lane
Flute on 'DOGGY' performed by Niazy Hazeldine
Drums for 'SUM1' recorded by Ben Vince at Roundhouse, February 2020

Mastered by Chris Pawlusek

Artwork by Fennella McCallum
Graphic Design by Zuzana Pabisova



www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

Alpha Maid - SUM1

Alpha Maid - CHUCKLE *OUT NOW*

Format: Digital/Vinyl
Cat.No: CANVAS010
Release Date: 19th of March 2021


CHUCKLE is the first solo release by Leisha Thomas as Alpha Maid on the C.A.N.V.A.S. label, following a contribution to the recent Apocope compilation LP. The signature Alpha Maid genre prevails—the sincere, strong vocal style, aligned with a UK indignant and iconoclastic artistic lineage, set against dredging, grungy instrumentals reminiscent of North American open plains or urban sprawl. As if desert rock had occurred in mundane and claustrophobic South London rather than the Southern States. Alpha Maid observes and reflects on an urban, smoggy, UK surrounding, although appears to drive through it on an open interstate highway in a really wide car.

Alpha Maid's vocals vacillate between sometimes candid, close and unclouded, then drifting towards fragmentary, cutting and pasting in the manner of unstable media or limited bandwidth.

Opening with a quote—found footage from broadcasted media—‘i knew the figures’, pointing to a setting of British media harassment and scrutiny, WOWOWOW conveys amazement and disbelief, faced with the bare and flagrant injustices of the time and place. Vocals are swallowed by the cavernous reverberation, while slow paced stoner rock-like drifting instrumentals amble underneath.

CHUCKLE Follows Alpha Maid's debut EP Spy, released via the ever-transforming collective and label CURL, of which Alpha Maid is a member, alongside the founders Coby Sey, Mica Levi and Brother May. Whilst Spy expressed revulsion in the face of creeping surveillance and the increasingly concealed and deceptive nature of power, CHUCKLE embodies the spirit of internal disorientation and realisations, exacerbated by a backdrop of social crises and injustices reaching levels beyond our grasp or comprehension.

Electronic interventions, eclectic instrumentation and found footage intersperse Alpha Maid's trademark sound. Brief interludes reminiscent of Scandinavian metal themes, undistorted but purveying doom—opening MILD WEATHER and closing NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED—contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of eerie dread. Within that, there is regular respite to be found—NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED feels light, rural, nearly folk, delivered with clarity of mind and of pace amongst the otherwise smoggy and moody overlying theme of the EP. The title of the track, however points to a familiar context of confusion amongst cosmopolitan and globalised socio-political contagion. NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED, in harmony with the nature of the whole release, is fresh, melodically simple, optimistic and yet suspended within a murky atmosphere of cataclysm and wonder.



Music by Leisha Thomas
Trumpet on 'MILD WEATHER' and 'NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED' performed by Jovis Lane
Flute on 'DOGGY' performed by Niazy Hazeldine

Mastered by Chris Pawlusek

Artwork by Fennella McCallum
Graphic Design by Zuzana Pabisova



www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com

C.A.N.V.A.S.

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