A playlist featuring selections from our 2020 & 2021 releases, including Godspeed You! Black Emperor, T. Griffin, Fly Pan Am, Jason Sharp, Sofa, Jerusalem In My Heart, Light Conductor and Jessica Moss.

Constellation - Sampler 2020/2021

Jerusalem In My Heart • "Abyad Barraq" (with Greg Fox)

Jerusalem In My Heart • "Ana Lisan Wahad (with Farida Amadou & Pierre-Buy Blanchard)"

Sofa • "Arclight"

Sofa • "Ch2Chi"

Lucrecia Dalt - "Inframince"

The Thursday sessions - Queen st

from 'Blossoms In Red' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den243
available in October on all formats at [http://denovali.com/ensembleeconomique]

Based in Californian Humboldt County, Brian Pyle wanders the world on his countless travels. Far from being restless, he has his very own Pylesque way of travelling. Much like a Lynchian version of Hemingway, he has an eye for the thin layer between restlessness and relaxation, gloom and serenity. Wherever he goes, he ardently absorbes these nuances, rarefies them and moulds them into a seamless array of glimmering styles, from drone and ambient to shoegaze and post-wave, giving birth to yet another creation of his prolific Ensemble Economique project.
On his by now eleventh album and fourth Denovali release "Blossoms In Red", Pyle combines and perfects elements of his previous output into a cohesive narrative. The opener "From The Train Window, Red Flowers On The Mountain" is a surprisingly scarce ambient piece, which feels like an almost infinitely stretched precious moment of time. Despite being austere, it is warm, sublime and incredibly captivating and after listening to its full 8 minutes, one cannot help but to rewind and replay. Having barely escaped this seductively infinite loop, one encounters the title track "Blossoms In Red" featuring Portland electronic duo Soft Metals. Starting off with a characteristic sluggish programmed beat, one is immediately overpowered by the onset of the towering combination of a warm bassline and a shimmering synth ambience. As the track flows, these elements writhe around each other in a delicately beautiful fashion, absorbing the materialising wailing guitar which almost sounds like an ethereal voice, as well as the occasional melodic and rhythmic accents. The next track sees this guitar return in a rather pure form. "On The Sand", featuring jack-of-all-trades Peter Broderick, is essentially just reduced analogue drums, electric guitar, a simple vibrating bassline and hoarse almost spoken vocals. Slowly and methodically, these constituents form a captivating erotic ritual, much like a beguiling and hypnotic mandala procession of imperturbable blissful individuals on the beach. As proven on numerous occasions, Pyle can easily lead all his trumps in the presence of female lead vocals, and "Blossoms In Red" makes no exception. Indeed, "You, By Candlelight" is easily the best Ensemble Economique track with female vox to date. Pyle manages to embed the vocals just in the right minimal amount of instrumental layers, making the track radiate an elusive tranquility. The fifth and closing track "Nothing Is Perfect" is a classically tinged piano piece with only very little processing and sparse field recording samples. With all pieces of the album, Pyle manages to create tracks which feel like being composed only of two or three layers of sound, that are nevertheless allowed to develop a life cycle which seems incredibly long - track lengths vary from 6:30 to 8:10 - but still feels just right. Thus "Blossoms In Red" is probably Ensemble Economique's most minimalistic album, but at the same time - or maybe just for this reason - his most skilled work.

Blossoms In Red

Preorder / Buy

Ensemble Economique - You, By Candlelight (feat. J Moon)

múm (Gunnar Örn Tynes, Örvar Smárason & Samuli Kosminen) live at Radialsystem on 14 February, 2016.

Together with the percussionist Samuli Kosminen, the founding members of múm, Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Smárason, performed an improvised live score to “Menschen am Sonntag”, a masterpiece of silent film. 

Special thanks to the artists for a great performance, to Jan Gieseke for the amazing sound and to Carlo Grippa for mastering this tune.
Recorded at Radialsystem, Berlin.
Published with permission of the artist.
Photo: Markus Werner

múm plays Menschen am Sonntag @ UM:LAUT -  Live Snippet 1

Bear is out

Track taken from the upcoming album on Fluid Audio...

Music: Matteo Uggeri
Label: Fluid Audio
Mastering: James Plotkin

www.fluidaudio.bigcartel.com/mailing-list

Grandpa

Matteo Uggeri - Grandpa (Sample)

Fallen

The Ephemerality of Chalk

from the album 'semblance' available on kranky 07/20

Semblance

forma 'three-two'

READ > inverted-audio.com/premiere-heinali-iridescent

Ukrainian artist and sound designer Oleg Shpudeiko @heinali follows up 2017's epic "Anthem" with a set of equally as beautiful pieces culled from studio improvisations on a modular set up.

Heinali - Iridescence [Injazero Records]

Rebecca Foon • "Dreams To Be Born"

From the album Waxing Moon by Rebecca Foon
cstrecords.com/cst149

CST149
180gLP / CD / DL
Constellation

Waxing Moon

Rebecca Foon • "Another Realm"

Artist: Tangents
Title: Old Organs
Album: Timeslips
Release Date: Sep 4, 2020 

Pre-order: https://tangents.bandcamp.com/album/timeslips

Enigmatic Australian ensemble Tangents return with a new studio album two years after the release of New Bodies. The Australian Music Prize-nominated New Bodies thrust Tangents’ peculiar blend of furious improvisation and precision production into the international spotlight. More tension and intention pervade Tangents’ fourth album, Timeslips, demonstrating a thoughtful maturation of spontaneous ideas and more deliberately abstract assembly. With breathtaking, rhythmic drumming and adept production driving the various moods, Timeslips emerges from greater live performance and carefully constructed compositions. The brittle skittering mallets of “Exaptation,” raucous guitar of “Debris,” and processed trumpet of “Vessel” add new timbres to their existing palette of jazz drums, melancholy piano, throbbing cello and swirling glitched ambience. Mostly recorded in a single day, just before guitarist Sia Ahmad left the band, only the bravest, most intense moments from the original session remain intact on Timeslips. The tonal rumble of a 100-carriage coal train winding through New South Wales’ Bylong Valley signals the album’s slow close, recalling Tangents’ earlier references to the Australian environment on New Bodies and Stateless.

Tangents - Old Organs

We are an independent record label based in Montréal, releasing experimental music we care about in the most careful ways we can.

Rebecca Foon • "Dreams To Be Born"

Constellation Records

Related tracks