“Each of us is a mere symbolon of a man, the result of bisection, like the flat fish, two out of one, and each of us is constantly searching for his corresponding symbolon. —Plato, The Symposium”

Symbolon

🛒: amphibianrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tran…-palestine

Instagram: 
https://www.instagram.com/elsadekomar/
www.instagram.com/amphibian_rec/

Soundcloud: 
QOW:https://on.soundcloud.com/NpPcy

For months we have been witnessing genocide and violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Our community is based on values of solidarity and empathy and we cannot and won’t stay silent. Thus we are releasing under the ‘Transmission for Palestine’ project, native to our home club - Ankali. Our effort is to raise awareness of the struggle and suffering of the Palestinian people. We believe in anti-colonialism and freedom of the Global South from Western imperialism.
Free Palestine 🇵🇸

All proceedings from this album will be donated to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and Middle East Children's Alliance.

www.pcrf.net
www.mecaforpeace.org

IMPORTANT!
If you donate - not 100% of your donation will proceed to the PCRF because PayPal and Bandcamp take a decent amount of the earnings.
credits
released January 13, 2024

Artwork by Omar El-Sadek

Mastered by Ladislav Sterba

Amphibian Records 2024

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QOW - -2026

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

Pollution Opera - Crisp Heart

The neon-lit allure of Miami at night is an aesthetic hard-coded into frazzled eye sockets, whether you grew up enthralled by Tony Montana’s rise to power or fell into the ultra-violent fantasy of GTA. Something about the clamouring Florida heat drives people to excess, whether they’re players in a fiction or real-lifers living like movie stars. It’s a visceral aesthetic which enchants the world over — just one lurid notch in the bedpost of American cultural colonialism — and it shows up the sullied reality of ‘the dream’ even in the dimmest of lighting.

Brodinski didn’t have to soak up this pervasive inspiration vicariously through mixed media — bedded into Miami for a summer, he wrote The Sinkhole while contemplating the knotty character of this art deco wonderland once the sun goes down. The French producer has lived many lives in many places throughout his career, touching on chart-baiting electro and late 00s techno as a breakout superstar in the superclub era. Evil World saw him working with a heavyweight cast of rappers and more recently he’s linked up with the likes of Louisahhh and Low Jack to indulge a more gutter-dwelling flip on his upfront, flamboyant strain of haute-club-couture.

The Sinkhole evokes broad, palm-lined boulevards cast in the moon’s milky glow in every haunting pad — a seductive siren song calling out over Biscayne Bay. But threat is never far away, spelt out in every bludgeoning, bloated slap of bass, in every quivering string line cast in a minor chord, in the needlepoint detail slithering and shivering around the rhythm section. Without resorting to the lowest common denominator of speed, Brodinski finds his own way to spell out tension, directing a bewitching set piece that beguiles as it ensnares, promising you the depraved but oh-so elegant thrill ride your heart so deeply, ashamedly desires.

—Oli Warwick

Produced and mixed by @Brodinski
Mastered by Rashad Becker
Artwork by Ian Bruner and Babybrush

DBL26DL

The Sinkhole

Brodinski - Bedrock

Brodinski - Crawling

Brodinski - Catastrophe

Brodinski - Thick Skin

Shella Radio is an independent community-driven online radio streaming live from Ankali & Planeta Za in Prague, Czech Republic.
Dive in: www.shella.radio

Hadath w/ Jana | Shella Radio 18.06.2024

Samurai Music returns to the evocative sound world of Ancestral Voices for an album that splits the difference between cinematic sound design and deadly restraint at 170 BPM. Nemeton continues Liam Blackburn's exploration of ancient Celtic mysticism through snaking rhythms and snarling sound design, conjuring a high-definition sonic image of sacred groves and the druids practicing amongst them.  

Blackburn's Ancestral Voices project tracks back to 2015, when he debuted on Samurai Horo with the Night Of Visions album. In stark contrast to his celebrated 140 work as Indigo, this project leaned on the inspiration of pagan spirituality to charge his vivid, advanced production style with a rich and mysterious atmosphere. While he's channelled this approach into a variety of tempos and styles, on his 2016 EP Old Earth Voodoo on Samurai Music he applied the concept to a drum & bass framework, which he returns to on Nemeton with rigorous focus.

Far from a straightforward collection of breakbeat tracks, Blackburn uses negative space and pointillist production to carve out an immersive, tense sound world around the 170 grid. He takes a widescreen approach to percussion, running from pin-prick synthesised one-shots to tumbling, organic drums you'd more readily associate with a Hans Zimmer score. Scene-building is the foremost mission across Nemeton, casting otherworldly forces in sweeps of low-end friction and dramatic melodic blooms amidst tangible real-world field recordings of flora and fauna.  

Casting the mind back some 2000 years is an exercise in imagination as much as research, and Blackburn ably summons dark fantasy as he delves ever deeper into Welsh mythology with a studious zeal and avid fascination. It's that drive that makes Nemeton burst forth and take shape so powerfully, bristling with kinetic energy and a barely-concealed, strangely seductive menace that leaves a lasting impression long after the last snatch of bass has bared its teeth.


Nemeton - out on 2x12" & Digital


1. Ancestral Voices - Nemeton
2. Ancestral Voices - A Heart Of Oak
3. Ancestral Voices - Annwn
4. Ancestral Voices - Mist Of Avalon
5. Ancestral Voices - Arawn
6. Ancestral Voices - Stanzas Of The Graves
7. Ancestral Voices - Keltia

Nemeton

Ancestral Voices - A Heart Of Oak [SMDELP14]

Remix von den  Kruder & Dorfmeister Edits: 
Alex Reeze – Jazz Master 

Percussion: Pipe Synthesizer.
Synthesizer: Elektron Digitone.
Kickdrums und Samples: Elektron Digitakt.
Struktur: Breakbeat-orientiert, experimentell, angelehnt an die K&D Sessions.

Alex Reese - Jazz Master (K&D Sessions - Daniel Steinfels Edit)

الصَوْت الخام غَيْر المُعالج للبَرَابِرَة قُطّاع الطُرُق والمُهَمَّشين والمُتَشَرِّدين والهَمَج، إلّا أن قُلُوبُهُم رَقِيقَة

𝙑𝙤𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙯𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙨, 𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙛𝙞𝙩𝙨, 𝙨𝙖𝙫𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙨, 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙖𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩

Brodinski - Crawling

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