Composed during a whirlwind period of touring and sound engineering in 2019, 𝑂𝑛𝑙𝑦 functions as both a tranquil refuge and as a heartfelt appreciation for the source instruments' timbres. Berlin-based Bridget Ferrill crystallizes her professional recording experience and artist residencies into a singular focus on Buchla modular, harp, zither, and viola da gamba. Rather than an exercise in technical mastery, Ferrill's careful arrangements invite us to linger with each instrument; in her words, fulfilling the longing to "listen a little longer, a little slower". Every contour of the instruments is lovingly traced, a warm invite for us to join her in the exuberance of exploring their inner life.

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Bridget Ferrill (USA/DE) is a producer and composer of electronic music whose work plays between pattern and noise, exploring augmented instruments, handmade electronics, and experimental computer music. She has participated in residencies at EMS in Stockholm, LungA in Iceland, and the Dirt Palace in Providence, Rhode Island. Recent projects include composing for Staatstheater Cottbus, engineering and performing electronics for Bendik Giske’s live show, designing the Anglerfish drone synthesizer for Common Ground, and creating multimedia installations with composer Áslaug Magnúsdóttir.

Ferrill is also a live and studio engineer with experience working in studios and venues such as Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, Machines with Magnets in Providence RI, and at Real Surreal, her own mixing and mastering studio in Berlin.

Only

Bridget Ferrill - Viola da Gamba (ENXPL10)

https://blackseedacts.bandcamp.com/album/tagism
Artwork by Tadi - @tadi-ss

Tagism

Confidences


Je dis que l'avenir se souviendra de nous.

Je désire et je brûle.

À nouveau, l'Amour, le briseur de membres,
Me tourmente, doux et amer.
Il est insaisissable, il rampe.
À nouveau l'amour a mon cœur battu,
Pareil au vent qui, des hauteurs,
Sur les chênes s'est abattu.

Tu es venue, tu as bien fait:
J'avais envie de toi.
Dans mon cœur tu as allumé
Un feu qui flamboie.

Je ne sais ce que je dois faire,
Et je sens deux âmes en moi.

Je ne sais quel désir me garde possédée
De mourir, et de voir les rives
Des lotus, dessous la rosée.

Et moi, tu m'as oubliée. 

— Sappho

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image: “‘a hymn to the love that dares not speak its name.’ not for all eyes but just for those women who have walked soft in the dark dark light. i give you my praise - a song of many textures and moods.”

from the cover of pointblank times: a lesbian/feminist publication, vol. 2 no. 5, june 1976

Emma Thalia - Dessous la Rosée

Stream or download: https://lnk.to/WiltedWomanPH119

It’s a pleasure to welcome Wilted Woman back into the fold for her second release on Phantasy. Whereas 2019’s ‘Lon Lon Night Vision’ signalled dystopian rave deconstruction, remixed by Laurel Halo (a “haphazard techno wrecker for unleashing your inner crazy clown”, as Resident Advisor put it), ‘Glossy Center’ reveals two tracks that maintains that same bass weight, while blossoming into the sort of arrangements that would render cyborgs dewy-eyed with unprogrammed emotion. Meanwhile, a club interpretation from Kim Ann Foxman, a linchpin of club culture in both the US and Europe, is singularly weaponised to melt their synthetic brains.

Glossy Center

Stream or Download

One year after the release of Gryphon Rue and Merche Blasco’s North of The Future, Tigersushi presents Resounding: North of The Future, transmutations of the album by a dynamic group of sound artists summoned by Gryphon and Merche, queering the notion of the “remix” and replacing it with a far more radical entity. 

In 2020’s New York summer, Gryphon Rue and Merche Blasco gathered for sonic purges. Seeded in a deep yearning to disrupt the idle thick air of quarantine, these purges became an emotional conduit. The music charts non-idiomatic improvisations bound to deformations of time and place. Drawn and refined from these sessions, North Of The Future is an accurate and sublime summation of a profoundly mournful year – it is a blissful, yet frightening album. Merche Blasco’s scarcely governable EMS Synthi AKS (“Cintia”) tangles signals with Gryphon Rue’s custom synth (“Fritz”), threaded with siren-calls of the duo’s bowed saws and harmonium. 

Resounding: North of The Future was sparked by a remark by the writer and curator Bob Nickas, who claimed he could hear "space station disco" in the afterglow of the music. From this departure point, Gryphon and Merche invited electronic and media artists to channel the tracks with their distinct voices. The result is a wild assemblage, drifting in languorous ambiences that haunt and soothe, nourish and dissolve into, out of, and beyond crescendo.

Featuring Bergsonist, Joakim, Will Epstein (AKA High Water), Jenn Grossman, León & Sayed, Lee Gilboa, Ruth Garbus and Bryce Hackford.

Bergsonist’s mesmerizing darbuka grooves over shivering chords and ominous textures, bookending the collection with her second remix of Super Tender (punningly titled Tenderize).

https://tigersushirecords.bandcamp.com/album/resounding-north-of-the-future

Gryphon Rue & Merche Blasco - Super Tender (Bergsonist Tenderize Remix)

A. Campbell Payne dives deeply into the crystalline chimes and resonant bells of FM synthesis for the six tracks of 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒔 + 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔. Swirling polyrhythms and ambiguous modal harmonies convey their feelings during a fitful period of recording during 2020-1. Payne says, “Living between two places[…], going through the motions of travel while not going anywhere new created a restless atmosphere for performing this music,” which is reflected by cyclic structures both within and between tracks.

In contrast to the sparkling timbres of 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒔 + 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔, subtle compositional instabilities imply an underlying unease. But as a complete suite, it is intended as “an aide in processing feelings of dread, anxiety, and hopelessness”, and Payne continues: “I encourage you to listen to this while on a hike or in other contemplative, open settings.”

releases October 17, 2022

recorded and mastered by A. Campbell Payne
insert photo by A. Campbell Payne
all proceeds to Fund Texas Choice (Austin, TX) - fundtexaschoice.org 

buy: https://enmossed.bandcamp.com/album/trails-stations

Trails + Stations

A. Campbell Payne - Field (ENMB-09)

Jungle!

Geins't Naït - Archives 1/3 (GRVTS015)

A1 Fix
A2 Cameo
A3 A3 Quivala
A4 Computer Bit
A5 La Plus Belle De Tout Le Quartier
B1 Caramel
B2 Rossi Aldo
B3 ABS Trac 1
B4 Roman
B5 Boutons d'Or et Coquelicots
B6 Dimanche

Archives 1/3

Buy at Bandcamp

Geins't Naït - Rossi Aldo

xpq?002 

a long time in the making..

Corroded digital shrapnel amorphous metallic groove pool with an acidic core 

Degraded and corrupted club tools for the adventurous DJ

All tracks recorded in Chicago, 2014-2016


NOW AVAILABLE
https://www.rubadub.co.uk/records/catalog/product/view/id/10533/s/dioxippe/
https://boomkat.com/products/dioxippe

DIGITAL
https://xpqsound.bandcamp.com/album/dioxippe

exael 'dioxippe' xpq?002 clips

Saint Abdullah // “In God’s Image” // 2xCD on Psychic Liberation // 
Release date: August 21, 2020

Saint Abdullah, composed of Tehran-born brothers Mohammad and Mehdi, have fine-tuned their vision of conceptual, blown-out dub and free jazz with “In God’s Image,” an ambitious twenty-song double CD on Psychic Liberation. The opus by the two Iranians living in New York, is full of mourning and rage, but these affects only scratch the surface of the work’s emotional and formal heterogeneity. 

Like the image gracing its cover—a tiny, dusty peykan, its roof fitted with an image of Ruhollah Khomeini and cone speakers—Saint Abdullah uses DIY minimalism to deliver maximal messaging. On “Problem,” distorted percussion, Shia oration, and a sample of the late Nipsy Hussle meld into a cathartic club burner, while the rhythms and lifted string arpeggiations on “Potion for sorrow” induce hazy cinematics, the duo’s attempt at Persian stoner boom bap. 

Elsewhere are instances of improvised jamming, melancholic twinkling, and pensive restraint. The powerfully eclectic statement by Saint Abdullah includes appearances by saxophonist Travis Laplante, who blows a spiralling noir line over feedbacking cacophony. On another track, Moor Mother delivers a poetic lashing on Western imperialists who rain missiles on hospitals, grieves the bodies piling up as capital gets sucked from the Earth. 

The sample work on “In God’s Image” draws heavily from Iranian documentaries, and includes the brothers’ field recordings from Tehran and New York. Heretical combinations collide senses of antiquity and contemporaneity, resisting the many orientalist reads on Iranian culture and politics. In this struggle, Saint Abdullah conveys many emotional registers, from exhausted depression to righteous indignation. 

Among many things, the image of Khomeini on the cover, which often scandalizes American audiences, represents the overthrow of a 2,500-year-long monarchy. All forms of dehumanization receive the sonic snakebite of Saint Abdullah, and “In God’s Image” resuscitates the revolutionary potential of music that pulls from the traditions of oppressed peoples in both the East and West. 

Psychic Liberation, in operation since 2018, is an experimental music label started in Brooklyn, New York, currently based in The Hague, Netherlands. The label is distributed in North America by Fantastique, and in EU/UK by Boomkat.
Mastered by Glyn Maier
Layout by Sara Abruña 
credits
releases August 21, 2020

psychicliberation.net

Audio by Saint Abdullah
Mastered by Glyn Maier
Layout by Sara Abruña

PLIB007 - SAINT ABDULLAH - A5. Of Us (CIENFUEGOS EDIT)

London-based Swedish producer aircode’s debut EP on Alien Jams is ‘basically a very tired EP’.

Written throughout a year of sleep deprivation, “Effortless” reflects a period of disorientation, social claustrophobia, and the unbridled feeling of a loss of focus. A navel-gazing introspective struggle of feeling apathetic and drowsy, yet simultaneously restless and constantly moving. Fractured machine fragments and riddled sleep-deprived speech alongside manipulated drum samples, distorted guitar, are symptomatic of her captivating work in electronic experimental music so far. Using self-generated ‘logical’ melodies, unexpected rhythms, and phone and vocal recordings, the EP offers a challenging, melancholic and ever-changing aesthetic.

Piecing together spontaneous text, and moments of glitch, like an anxious machine, or someone on auto-pilot; “the tracks represent this mixture of apathy and a scattered mind,” she explains, "On the verge of hyperventilation with constantly changing rhythms as you feel your heartbeat and breath loud and out of sync. The melodies are also somewhat dipping in energy," never reaching the whole way up, but giving up and falling down.

Dry my face up
It’s easy, why
Heavy air
Pacing around the third floor
Your voices intrude
On my skin
Must be fed
Accelerating ahead
It’s easy at a high pace

I don’t believe in effort
The third time
Don’t shake
If it’s not enough

Releases September 25, 2020
Pre-order- https://alienjams.bandcamp.com/album/effortless

Artwork by Ewa Awe
Mastering by Rupert Clervaux
Words by Flora Yin-Wong

Glossy Center

Wilted Woman

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