Signal to Noise

Via Discogs - …leaked to the internet on 2023-06-21 via Aphex Twin's new visualization app (for the concert on 2023-06-16 and the new single's cover).

https://aphextwin.warp.net/release/399837-aphex-twin-blackbox-life-recorder-21f-in-a-room7-f760

Aphex Twin - blackbox life recorder 20 ambient 760

KATELYN CLARK & MITCH RENAUD, Ouroboros, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2406
Ltd. vinyl / digital
Release date: 04.04.2025

On Katelyn Clark and Mitch Renaud's »Ouroboros,« astronomical and astrological phenomena, concepts and symbols such as the Great Year or the Eternal Return serve as the starting points for sonic explorations and experimentations. Focusing on a uniquely tempered range of frequencies, from low-end drone rumbles to airy pipe swirls, the duo develops a minimalist and highly evocative sonic universe on their debut album for Hallow Ground.

Working as composers, improvisers and curators in Canada's vibrant experimental and early music scenes, Clark and Renaud began developing »Ouroboros« through extensive improvisation with a reduced setup. Clark, who has worked extensively with historical keyboards since her studies in Amsterdam and Siena, played a small pipe organ modeled after a 14th-century instrument while Renaud brought a modular synthesizer and his interest in feedback systems to the collaboration. Later, the duo further refined their artistic dialog and the sonic interactions of the two instruments through the shared space of a two day recording session in Vancouver. Subtle crackling, acoustic beating and other (psycho-)acoustic effects in five pieces document this encounter, giving the music a profound physicality while hinting at the bodily presence of the two collaborators.

Just as the cyclicality of natural phenomena or the repetition of planetary movements is both a scientific fact and of the cultural imaginary, the sound worlds of »Ouroboros« are fundamentally rooted in time and space while transgressing the idea of a »here and now« through their conceptual links to geological and planetary time. The interplay of portative organ and modular synthesizer, which merge fluidly and in ever-changing ways, leads to a kind of circularity, a timelessness, a no-time. At the same time, the movements and subtle changes undermine the idea of repetition in the negative sense. After all, the Eternal Return, as Gilles Deleuze writes in regard to Nietzsche, is not the return of the same but a repetition of repetition. The only constant is change, the production of new intensities, of new forms of life – and of new frequencies.

Credits:
Music by Katelyn Clark and Mitch Renaud
Recorded and mixed by Aaron Klassen at Monarch Studios in Vancouver
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu (Schwebung Mastering)
Artwork by Laurin Huber

Ouroboros

Katelyn Clark & Mitch Renaud - Ouroboros (HG2406)

Intrinsic Rhythm

Ways

tender, exit

Peruvian (feat. LINTD & terrashotta)

first single from my next album 'hexed!' out on hyperdub march 28th

off to the ESSO

Frolic

The Scallywag

Angelus Novus

Angelus Novus (Alex Somers Rework)

SIMON GRAB & DAVID MEIER - PORŒS
Cat #: OUS053
Release date: February 7, 2027
Distributed by Kudos: https://kudosdistribution.co.uk
Label Bandcamp: https://ousooo.bandcamp.com

«Groovin’ on the risk of falling apart is our common playground, like surfing on an underwater tightrope through waves of frequencies, riding on broken rhythms.» — Simon Grab & David Meier

Porœs is the first album emerging from the new collaboration between electronic musician and no-input-mixing polymath Simon Grab and multifaceted drummer and composer David Meier, who is also part of the internationally sought-after avant minimal rock band Schnellertollermeier.

Grab and Meier’s cross-genre sound is raw and volatile, morphing between razor-sharp, rolling, crumbling, erratic and fierce states. It balances between Meier’s vibrant organic drumming and Grab’s pulsating bleeps and noises, growling bass lines and dubbed out feedbacks that he extracts from his custom-plugged no-input-mixing setup. Always on the edge of musical tipping points, Grab gradually pushes his circuits into overdrive, only to recalibrate right before everything breaks apart. In defiance, Meier offers an abundance of bold, incisive, stumbling and lighthearted, earthly rhythms and textures that intertwine seamlessly and offer a world of its own to explore.
	Throughout Porœs neither instrument is taking the lead. The two musicians step into a constant dialogue where it seems as if the sound waves are plunged into a perpetual maelstrom, welded into unbreakable bodies and melted into magma-like currents.
	Being fervently hazardous improvisers, Grab and Meier recorded this seven track album in several studio sessions, leading to a result that is confident and precise, but keeps the urgency of live improvisation. The constant sense of risk, of falling out of touch, combined with the intriguing thrill of witnessing an extended moment of equilibrium is what makes Simon Grab and David Meier’s Porœs so captivating.

Simon Grab understands the error as integral part of his method. In a matrix of electronic feedback circuits, he tames the raw noises to find a musical balance within the randomness. Existing systems are always dynamic and never stable. In order to thrive, any system relies on feedback to balance itself out and adapt to the environment. His no-input-mixing album «Posthuman Species» and EP «Extinction» were released on -OUS, as well as his collaboration «[No] Surrender» with drone guitar player Francesco Guidici.

David Meier has been active between minimal music, modern composition, improvisation, jazz and rock music for nearly two decades. His band Schnellertollermeier tours internationally regularly and has played numerous festivals and tours all over the world. He initiated and collaborates with several duos, trios and ensembles, notably his septet Hunter-Gatherer that acts as a vehicle for his rhythmically complex and melodically idiosyncratic compositions. He appears on about 40 recordings to date.

Porœs

Basalt

Buy on Bandcamp

Simon Gab & David Meier - Basalt

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/pop_ambient_2025_lp_dl

Hello Everybody,

In recent years, the introductory texts for the Pop Ambient compilation series, which is released every year on Kompakt as the last release before the Christmas break, often began with the sentence "Every year again...".

“Every year again”, a quiet, almost unnoticed maxim of self-evidentness. Because this is already the 25th issue to be published this year.

25 years in increasingly fast-moving times in the even faster-moving music business is an eternity that doesn't just feel like it. It is all the more remarkable how I, as someone who is always restless and often driven by this fast pace himself, pleasantly almost haven’t realised how - in pop-ambient contexts - time does not pass (or passes differently) in the best sense.

When compiling the 25th edition I was asked, among other things, what it was like that I was still doing this and whether I had a favorite track. In the spirit of bringing all the tracks together I don't have a favorite track, or all of them. But I have a favorite part (moment) that I played. In this case it was a broad chord in a change of key at minute 2:55 in the piece Circles by Max Würden. A moment of majesty and familiarity that, at that moment, contains the entire Pop Ambient cosmos, that just works and doesn't explain anything - and I said: “...that's the reason why I'm still doing this.. .”

Pop Ambient is a statement without demands. Is promise without expectation. Is a path without a destination.         Every year again.

Wolfgang Voigt, October 2024

As always, the indispensable final mastering by Jörg Burger ensures that everything is brought together and the sound is fine-tuned.

And like every year, the 25th edition is of course wrapped in an abstract, floral magic creation by Veronika Unland. Over the years, the grace of her imagery has increasingly merged with the musical aura to form an unmistakable magical symbiosis.  In addition to the official vinyl and CD edition, there will be a limited edition of 100 pieces in transparent vinyl - including a hand-signed fine art print by Veronika Unland, available exclusively at Kompakt Mailorder.

Pop Ambient 2025

In Defense Of Symbolic Value 1

Jens-Uwe Beyer - In Defense Of Symbolic Value 1

Whatever the Weather II

9°C

What's Between Us

Stochastic Drift

Difference And Repetition

The Bell Tower

Fugue (feat. Roomful of Teeth)

The Trail

The Trail (Astrid Sonne Remix)

Three Foxes Chasing Each Other

Instant Psalm

Instant Psalm (Robert Stillman Remix)

Grey Interiors

James Marrs - Silo Sprinkles

Land and Sea

Heith - The Scrollkeeper (PAN 147S2)
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 147S2
Release Date: 15 April 2025
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/TheScrollkeeper

Heith shares 'The Scrollkeeper', the second single from the upcoming album 'Escape Lounge', out via PAN on April 25th, 2025 - accompanied by a new music video.

Written and produced by Heith and Leonardo Rubboli
Drums by Jacopo Battaglia
Harmonica and Synthesizer by Leonardo Rubboli
Mixed at TWS
Mastered by Amir Shoat
Artwork by Heith and Nicola Tirabasso

Heith - The Scrollkeeper (PAN 147S2)

Signal to Noise

diamond