I made this piece during the winter months when I spent most of my days alone, digging into archives, collecting some forgotten scraps from old tape loops together and melting them with what felt present at the time, those soundscapes that vibrate most beautifully in deep silence.

It consists of two parts - one corresponding to the setting process, the other to resetting, it tells story of leaving traces and covering them up.

Trace had its very first premiere on May 6 at Rewire festival.

Trace

katharsis is a label founded by the copenhagen-based artist jjjacob in the spring of 2020 focusing on emotionally charged music. The vision of the label is to show the world how music is our best tool to process moods, thoughts and emotions by self-therapeutic involvement with the arts. katharsis showcases various different branches of electronic, ambient and experimental music on their releases featuring artists from all across the world. On this monthly radio show on Ma3azef.live, jjjacob and invited guests who are involved with katharsis exhibit their current musical inspirations for 2 hours. 
After a break in the Ma3azef.live program for the cause of Palestine, katharsis returns with 2 hours of experimental music. jjjacob starts off the show with the usual mixture of melodic synth-driven floaters and a few more hard-hitting tracks, before he lets @zerocrossingpoint and @nexcyia showcase their ambient selections of the moment.

Tracklist:
jjjacob [00:00:00-00:53:43] jjjacob - Oxygen Demand
°w°s - 22 (oklou x taylor swift medley)
Lost Salt Blood Purges and Boring Bathtimes - 'The Violent Light,
Maxwell Sterling - Speaking In The Tongues Of Angels
Concrete Fantasies - An Effigy of Tears
Whitearmor – 13
Parish - Cascade I
HERBARIUM - See You Soon
Clark – Small
ABADIR – III
Chance - Babamın Korunması
Barmer Boys + Himmelrum - Nagma > Ranaji
Oliver Coates - 10 Honey
jjjacob - The Tower
Samuel Organ – A
mo chuisle – corrosion
Mang - All The Glittering Blades
Cor2Pel - hyper careful sweet
danish nxc - waiting here 4 u
jjjacob - ??? 

Zero Crossing Point [00:53:43-01:30:01]
Gabriel Yared - Betty et Zorg
Treha Sektori - Solvah
Ancestral Voices - Eiyani
TCF - 54 c6 05 1c 13 cc 72 e9 cc dc 84 f2 a3 ff cc 38 1e 94 0d c0 50 5c 3e e8 (IDOUL)
Atrium Carceri - Warden
Ital Tek - Deletion Quarter
Liturgy - Glass Earth
Last Life - VAR 3
Clark, Yair Elazar Glotman, Yamila - Shut You Down
FITNESSS - F20 - FAITH
Kashyyyk - The Chestnut Tree
Zero Crossing Point - Karplus-Stuck

Nexcyia [01:30:01-02:00:00]
Oneothriz Point Never - Nothing's Special
Racine - Sous La Poudre
Corporation - Scene
TIBSLC - Beach Life
TIBSLC - Nightmode
picnic - 12 folds and rips (Huerco S. version)

katharsis w/ jjjacob, Zero Crossing Point & Nexciya

RONCE - AQUATICS
(DAWN013)
100 limited copies
12inch
@itsronce
Produced by Zoë Villerd
Mastered at Studio Martyrs
Photo by Ronce
Design by Hajj
Dawn 2021

Ronce - The Devil Sleeps In My Stomach

A07 - Zero - Asio Otus

aircode - Disgust

Friday September 1st 2023 Rhizome releases and celebrates the compilation album 'Hypersea'. (Pre-)order via: https://rhz000.bandcamp.com/album/hypersea

The compilation album takes its point of departure with the text ‘Hydrofeminism - Or, On Becoming a Body of Water’ by Astrida Neimanis and contains 18 tracks from the Copenhagen underground scene apart from a track from New York namely Laenz who earlier this year released a double single on the label. In each way the artists have interpreted the text by Neimanis and worked with its topics such as water, fluid borders and feminism. 

Alto Aria about the album: “With the current threat of a watering ban in Denmark, increasing pollution and lack of water all over the world, we zoom in on water with this album. We wish to follow Neimanis’ thread about water and feminism – she teaches us that we and our identity, like the fluid borders of the oceans, always are negotiable and never fixed. With the compilation we celebrate water and its essential role in our lives. Whether it is through the lens of clean drinking water, an identity in flux, dying fish, the western pollution level or something completely different, we wish this album to be a reflection over and a get together around what we all depend on.” 

The album has become a sonic collage of a watery quest, fast footsteps, shifting and fragmented choir pieces, broken beats and hearts, soothing synthesisers, harsh wind, caring bodies, uplifting beats, polyphonic saxophones and long reverbs. Hypersea is curated by Alto Aria and presents works by Hôy la, ilinx, Saltmother, Julia Becker, ill, Angel Wei, Lyra Valenza, Faber, Jason Lee, Bysund, Holger Seidelin, Astrid Nørgaard, KRY, Laenz, Varnrable, Messell, Skarv and Alto Aria. 

Rhizome is a Copenhagen/Berlin based label started in 2020 by Aria Leth Schütze and Mads Krue Bugge. The primary focus of the label is experimental electronic music and alternative release formats. Rhizome has released music by artists such as Alto Aria, Skarv, Swell, Polly, Nemo, ioulus, Laenz, Ida Urd, and ill as well as the compilation album bag/belly/box. So far Rhizome has presented music and artists in Copenhagen at Øen, Alice, Mayhem, and Christianshavns Beboerhus.

https://soundcloud.com/rhz000
https://soundcloud.com/altoaria
https://soundcloud.com/skarv6

Hypersea

Pre-order

Premiere: Alto Aria, Skarv - Bold Coral [Rhizome]

Cold Reading

Beautiful Crisis

Pillow Fight At Sandwich Bay

Pillow Fight at Sandwich Bay

Pollution Opera - s/t
Cat. Nr: DN027
Format: DL / LP
Release Date: April 24, 2024
Buy / stream: dansenoire.ffm.to/PollutionOpera

Elvin Brandhi and Nadah El Shazly refuse to turn away from the horror. The intercontinental duo’s Pollution Opera album is an uncompromising futurist depiction of our disfigured, dystopian, and dying reality. Facing hell in full defiance, the experimental noise album catapults itself through a volatile compound of breathless shouts, screams, and screeches, in collision with vocal samples, environmental recordings, and acousmatic sounds. Ten tracks cover the spectrum of electroacoustic fragments and vocalizations, treacherously suspended between the roar of engines and synth distortion, of evocative intonations or guttural retching.

First conceived in 2020, Pollution Opera bubbled up organically from a first tandem motorbike ride through El Shazly’s hometown of Cairo. Singing and screaming through the second-loudest city in the world, Brandhi and Shazly found the extreme noise pollution served as catharsis from the suffocating smog that surrounded them. They then took these sonic specimens into studios across years and countries—from the initial recording and sessions in Egypt to Uganda, where their so-called “cacophony carbon orchestra” would carry into simultaneous but separate residencies at Nyege Nyege in Kampala. There, Brandhi and Shazly reprised the role of the motorbike as their “stage,” in a city where motorbikes are the main mode of public transport. They then developed a live A/V performance from video material captured by Arno Mery, collected from their travels, and reworked by Egyptian artist Omar El Sadek during Banlieues Bleues Festival 2023 in France.

The result is what the artists themselves describe as “an uncompromising world-spew, a shameless alloy of love and hate.” Haptic knocking, barking dogs, and human growls trample El Shazly’s famously evocative Egyptian singing style on “CRÎi Me A River.” Breathless vocal cut-ups and samples are bulldozed by arrhythmic acoustic percussion on “Danse Le Flou.” There are moments of respite within all the chaos, however, whether in the heavily pitched, Auto-Tuned opening of “Pollute Bold” or the wonderfully melodic closer of “Crisp Heart”—its derelict rhythmic thrust giving a listener something to dance about.

Both artists lend their unique positioning and idiosyncrasies to Pollution Opera, whether it’s in artist, vocalist, and musician Brandhi’s avant-garde noise music pedigree as both a solo artist and member of father-daughter duo Yeah You, or
singer, composer, and producer El Shazly’s hybrid catalogue combining electronic music with contemporary classical. Together, in asking the question of what a postmodern opera might sound like, the duo offer their existential answer in the true spirit of the often playful and ironic philosophical position by offering no answer at all.

Voice & electronics: Elvin Brandhi & Nadah El Shazly
Violin on ‘Crisp Heart’: Ocen James
Soprano on ‘Attention’: Marie Requa Gailey

Artwork by Omar El Sadek & Niels Wehrspann
Mastering by Rashad Becker

Pollution Opera

buy / stream

Pollution Opera - Tusker Light

German  newcomer  Ausschus  debuts  on  Haunter  Records  with  a  6-track  offering,  throwing  in  elements  from  the  whole  spectrum  of  contemporary  experimental  music.  The  subtle  yet  intense  melodic  work,  put  in  a  place  of  dangerous  acoustic  creatures  (bit-crushed  drones,  metallic  clangs,  slow  hard  beats),  allows  him  to  explore  both  negative  and  positive  affections.  The  main  goal  is  dominance—or  rather,  positive  acceptance—of  melancholia,  using  harsh  frequencies  as  a  crucible  for  one’s  psyche,  teaching  how  to  stand  amidst  the  noise,  breathing  it,  accepting  it  as  nutrition.  It’s  not  a  matter  of  riffing  against  listeners,  but  of  accompanying  them  through  different  rooms,  different  states,  and  molding  them  according  to  their  will  and  sensibility.  Ausschuss’  use  of  space,  reverb  and  harmony  gives  solidity  to  the  sound,  creating  a  proper  environment  in  which  insight  and  growth  can  happen  freely.


All tracks written and produced by L. Nicholson
Additional Vocals by Stella Chung
Mixed by James Kelly and L. Nicholson
Mastered by Tapewave Mastering
Cover by Richard Frater
Design by Jack Kimberley
Original painting by Richard Bryant

For Mattis

Haunter Records 2018

Pollution Opera - Tusker Light

Danse Noire

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