● CD01_SPLIT : Humbros / R​.​I​.​P. ●

❊ Composé et mixé par Humbros
❊ Masterisé par Ernest Bergez (Sourdure)
❊ Artwork par Josué Confort ©
❊ Sortie le 9 juillet 2021
❊ Cassette, 80 exemplaires, papier recyclé

→ champdoner.bandcamp.com/album/cd01-split-humbros-r-i-p

Sumac

A1 - Humbros - Sumac

LAURIN HUBER, Dog Mountain, LP

Release date - July 30th 2021
Catalogue nr. - HG2199
Format - Vinyl / digital
Hallow Ground

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1) Raja (04.59)
2) Nickel (05:50)
3) A Town Is Not A Town (04:54)
4) Storskog-Borisoglebsk (07:32)

Credits:
Composed and recorded by Laurin Huber
Mixed by Rolf Laureijs
Mastering by Lawrence English
Artwork by Michael Bodenmann

///
»Dog Mountain« is the second release by the Zurich-based producer and composer Laurin Huber on Hallow Ground. After last year’s »Juncture« saw the Edipo Re co-founder work mostly with synthesizers and programmed rhythms, the four tracks are much more restrained, drawing on tape loops and feedback, recordings of acoustic guitar and synthesizers such as the Korg MS-10 as well as field recordings that relate to the overarching topic that informed the making of the record. While »Juncture« had previously aimed at deconstructing the binaries and dualities that shape our lives and thinking, »Dog Mountain« is dedicated to geographical divisions that result from political processes and social constructions. »›Here‹ means one nation, ›there‹ another,« writes Huber in a literary piece that accompanies the record. »Being in sound, such a separation seems odd.« 

While treating the metaphor of the border as a »membrane, registering and translating the vibrations of its surroundings« and thus as something that is constantly (re-)defined, maintained and defended however, the artist also takes into consideration that »one cannot escape one’s standpoint,« as he puts it. The music on »Dog Mountain« may transcend and overcome certain borders, but it does not deny the realities that they impose on each and every one of us – whether in our political lives or in the realm of sound. This is mirrored in Huber’s engaging in the structural and sonic interplay of repetition and difference. Working with slowly evolving and modulating elements that are exposed to slight shifts, »Dog Mountain« puts a focus on the interaction between small elements that together form a bigger whole which is marked by constant evolution and change. 

Opener »Raja« (»border« in Northern Sami and Finnish) starts off with a two-note melody played on an out-of-tune guitar. Different field recordings and synthesizer sounds drop in and out of the mix until the dynamic shifts and Huber starts playing more notes on his instrument, thus increasing the tension. It’s a meditation on minimalism, but also a piece that mediates between notions of what constitutes the difference between noise and music or referentiality and abstraction in sound. After »Nickel« (named after a Russian monotown near the border to Norway) dedicates itself to explore the friction between hissing white noise and melancholic tape loops, »A Town Is Not a Town« (a phrase taken from the documentary »Kiruna – Rymdvägen«) structurally mirrors the experiment of »Raja« with very different sonic means. 

Closing the record, »Storskog-Borisoglebsk« (the title refers to the northernmost land border between Schengen-Europe and Russia) is the longest and most challenging piece, working with both long-form drones and musique concrète elements. It proposes a synthesis of the opposites that are explored patiently and with much attention to detail throughout this record.

LAURIN HUBER - A Town Is Not A Town (HG2199)

From forthcoming LP "Murmurations" available on Cibachrome Editions April 1st 2022 https://leabertucci.bandcamp.com/album/murmurations

A Vast Interiority - Lea B + Ben Vida

https://delphinedora.bandcamp.com/album/hymnes-apophatiques

hymnes apophatiques

ritournelle scolastique #1

Though recorded before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Oleksandr Demianenko’s 𝐼𝑛 𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑂𝑓... cassette very much serves as a meditation on the importance of preserving art, culture and roots at a time when war threatens to erase all of them. Dedicated to the memory of the late Olga Fedoseevna Sergeeva (1922-2002), a folk artist whose voice is featured in legendary director Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 film 𝑁𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑔ℎ𝑖𝑎, Demianenko immerses tape-looped snippets of Sergeeva’s singing - culled from field recordings made in her village - in layers of synthesizers and pedals. The result is an invocational auditory experience that, bridging the worlds of traditional folk music and modern ambient, coaxes Sergeeva’s spirit out of the past and into our tumultuous present. The fact that Demianenko used first-takes exclusively only intensifies the living presence already embedded in this striking music.

At the same time, 𝐼𝑛 𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑂𝑓... contains deeply personal dimensions for Demianenko. “As a child, I spent a lot of time in my homeland. I often heard the folk singing of my grandmother and her friends,” he says. “To me, [this music] is also a fond memory of my childhood and adolescence in my native village in the forests of Ukraine.” So while the pieces certainly exude the aforementioned somberness, they’re also gently pastoral and heartening reminders of a homeland and Demianenko’s love for Ukraine.

eleases July 26, 2022

Recorded by Oleksandr Demianenko in one take
Audio finalized by Glyn Maier
Source 120mm photograph for design by Oleksandr Demianenko
Design by RJM Vanderheyden
Text by Justin Farrar

IN MEMORY OF...

ENXPL BANDCAMP $

ENXPL14 - OLEKSANDR DEMIANENKO - A2. SEGMENT 2

First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow up to her brilliant 'Creative Contradiction’ (Takuroku 2020).

While she might be best known as an improviser, most notably in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of 'Les Diaboliques', Maggie Nicols’ talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. Whilst Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown we invited Maggie Nicols to follow up her brilliant Creative Contradiction’ (Takuroku 2020) with some time spent singing alone at the piano. The release comprises an LP of songs and a 2CD edition including a companion disk of free improvised meditations entitled, ‘Whatever Arises.’ The LP and 2CD contain different material.

ROKU032 - Maggie Nicols "Are You Ready / Sans Papiers"

Three recordings of Terry Day’s Solos. The first one is a rare extended solo performance on mandolin by Terry.
Luton Piano is part of a series of recordings at 33 Art’s Centre, Luton. The LMC was home for the London Musicians Collective, and is where Terry recorded with various musicians & groups. This recording reflects the great acoustics and lively ambience of the LMC space.

TDA021 - "Albert Alto" from 'Solos '79'

Mother Ivy's Cave - Sampler

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

from the 1st album "small souds" 1999.
recording of black mong of north vietnam singing, 
recorded and composed by miki yui.



Mong

_ph011 Jordan Christoff - Плаващ

As you can imagine we are under huge pressure at the moment and are working flat out to ensure Cafe OTO survives this. The impact of this situation is extremely acute for small venues like ours and we need all the support we can get to pull through. Please donate what you can, if you can. Thank you. 

Cafe OTO opened in April 2008 with the aim of providing a home for creative new music that exists outside of the mainstream. It comprises one large cafe/performance space open during the day serving food and drink with an evening programme of live music almost seven nights a week. 

OTOROKU is part of OTOProjects - a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that has been set up to manage the programme at Café Oto. Any profits from OTOROKU are put back into supporting what we do and will help us to continue programming the best musicians and performers from all over the world.

www.cafeoto.co.uk

ROKU032 - Maggie Nicols "Are You Ready / Sans Papiers"

cafeOTO

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