Purchase: bit.ly/3OWXicn
Catalog #: GN64
June 10, 2022
LP+DIGI

Smoke Point is a duo composed of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Leech, Kranky) and Sage Caswell (Spring Theory). With their self-titled debut LP on Geographic North, the Los Angeles-based duo takes a captivating cruise through heady ambient drifts and ruthlessly rhythmic loop dreams.

Foote and Caswell first teamed up to create a series of improvisational atmospherics throughout a multi-room art gallery. The pair conceived of a sprawling, dynamic experience with tones, rhythms, and textures that varied from room to room, yet were inextricably tuned and melded together. Visitors could serve as a sort of human crossfader, moving through the gallery and dialing up or down aural aspects as they pleased. And although the collaboration came together to create music for a specific physical space, the concept was never fully realized until what is now the duo’s first record. 

Smoke Point brings five extended, cruise-controlled exercises that calmly violate the Venn diagram's overlap between boundless dance music and unfathomable ambiance. But beyond the boundaries of an album as a set of songs, Foote and Caswell cracked things wide open and recontextualized the album as an actual DJ tool onto itself; ambient leaning and melodically focused. To achieve this, 'Smoke Point' offers a bounty of loops in the form of endless locked grooves on the vinyl edition and brief but equally utilitarian snippets on the digital edition of the LP.

Smoke Point

Smoke Point - "Awakening"

Bajascillators

World B. Free

Tarotplane is PJ Dorsey of Baltimore, who produces a collection of Kosmische Musik with synths and spacey guitar effects. Based on many years of research and correspondence with Manuel Göttsching, “Aeonium” channels Göttsching’s style and sound. This psychedelic treasure captures moments from Krautrock favorites but moves into new realms and spaces unexplored in the genre.

The cover image is “DENKENDER EMBRYO72” (1972), a silkscreen by Gernot Bubenik photographed by the artist specifically for this release. http://www.bubenikgernot.com/index- e.html

Tarotplane has previously released records on 12th Isle, Patience / Impatience, Lullabies For Insomniacs, Noir Age and VG+.

Tarotplane - Aeonium

In his debut release with Constellation Tatsu, Andy Aquarius takes us on a journey from the forest to the sea. Aquarius was in the process of writing another album, the follow up to ‘Chapel’ (Hush Hush, 2021), when multiple voices emerged, each of them holding a distinct energetic signature. Those incantations became ‘La Force Aquarienne,’ a collection of intuitive prayers.  

The first track, ‘U Lisi’ (Ukrainian for ‘In The Forest’), represents the connective and grounding tissue of our shared dimension. From there the space continues to open up to different layers and degrees, slowly moving into the forest’s polar opposite, the sea (or Nirvana, meaning ‘No Forest’). 

The Celtic harp, supported by the forces of nature and a subtle orchestration, moves through quiet territories, gently distributing and releasing resonance along the way.

Andy Aquarius - La Force Aquarienne

A Love Letter to Water is the instrumental debut EP by Colombian-born, Los Angeles based therapist and musician Alicia Ramírez, aka Inkarose.

Four sonic poems are dedicated to the Spirit of Water – its circular, shape-shifting motion spans from River and Ocean to Clouds and Rain, and then returns to River. This record explores the curative properties of Water; a precious inhale and exhale, the mantra and pranayama of the Forest. Woven with love, these tracks feature special field recordings from various natural environments, including the Tayrona Jungle in Santa Marta, the rainforest in Kauai, and surrounding soundscapes of Los Angeles and Bogotá.

This voyage of sound is graced by the loving touch and musical contributions of dear friends and loved ones, including Carlos Niño (percussion), Rumi Inoue (Alto and Soprano Flutes), Matt Little (Keys), Yeuda Ben-Atar (Flute Synth), and Ian Roller (Alto Sax).

A Love Letter to Water is a love letter to the Self.

Inkarose - Cloud Waltz (with Yeuda Ben-Atar [Flute Synth] and Carlos Niño [Percussion])

Veta

Nueen - Veta

https://buttechno.bandcamp.com/album/yalta-ukraine
all proceeds go to Ukraine charities and defence needs

Synthopia

A commissioned cover of the Bee Gees classic, recorded for a walk down the aisle

Song arrangement starts about five minutes in

You can commission your own zone at:
https://benseretan.bandcamp.com/merch/personal-tone-zones

How Deep Is Your Love (zoned)

Suzanne Ciani
Buchla Concerts 1975
FKR082LP
Finders Keepers Records

Finders Keepers invite you to witness the incredible first ever Buchla synthesiser concerts/demonstrations providing a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presented in phonographic form. This is history in the remaking.

This spring Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we’ve come to understand it. To describe this records as a game-changer is an understatement. This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counter culture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it’s daunting to learn that this record was in fact not a record at all… It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, that somehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found on this 1975 live presentation/grant application/educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name Suzanne Ciani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record collections. Hopefully there is still chance.

In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company, San Francisco’s neck and neck contender to New York’s Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festival freaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and music replaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer the creative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiser the more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from the mainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hard revolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums The Bull and Silver Apples Of The Moon, Buchla’s versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but the high-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, in the pulsating shadow of Moog’s marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. Suzanne Ciani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not lose faith.

These “concerts” are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musician whose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesiser contemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short of sacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutely genuine vision of and ‘alternative’ musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in a bid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a bi-product of never before heard music that would render the pigeon holes “ambient” and “futuristic” utterly inadequate. Providing nothing short of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental “records” of Morton Subotnick and proving to a small, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musical instruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then.

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975 (Excerpts)

buy digital

Pavel Milyakov — mx live 4

adventurous with spiritual artistic sensibilities

Tarotplane - Aeonium

constellationtatsu

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