vital016
2021 élan vital recordings 
elanvital.bandcamp.com

Synthesizer made in Japan 30 years ago, virtual synthesizer on a PC, toy instruments, grandmother's house upright piano, rain sounds from outside my room, children's voice recorded in Taiwan a few years ago. . . It was a year when the sense of distance to capture sounds and memories became vague in a confined room. The perspective of the memory in me that captures the world, the net and the reality, the past and the future, the near and the far, is gradually changing. The production of these tracks may have been a process of re-examining the sense of capturing time and space. This album is a record of how to face the world around me, made during the year from March 2020 to March 2021.

Soloi Sound is a music project by the graphic designer Yosuke Goto, based in Tokyo. He combines field recordings, old Roland synthesizers, Taishogoto (Japanese stringed instrument invented in the early 20th century), toy instruments and more to create ambient music. In making ambient music, he tries to set himself free from the world of graphic design where logic and grids dominate and to pursue asynchronous rhythms, melodies and moods that are not bound to playing techniques or theories. He has previously released albums on Post Global Recordings, Umé Records and Organic Industries.

Finished and mastered in April 2021 by Yosuke Goto
Cover design: Toni Dimitrov

Release date 15th July 2021
Order at https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/another-perspective

Soloi Sounds - Fairy Tale

vital017
2021 élan vital recordings 
elanvital.bandcamp.com

'Lost Rarities' composed by our newcomer Dionis Afonichev AKA Dionisaf is a dense and introspective ambient album that arose from the Russian woods. Majestic nature, tranquil in its power. The endless expanses from the tundra to the Arctic, the Russian prairies that keep the memory of centuries, the ocean depths and the bottomless starry sky above the endless Siberian territories. All these landscapes are filled with depth that cannot be expressed in words but can be heard.

All tracks in this album are created using analogue media, tape loops and non-musical noises. Tape and vinyl defects become elements of the composition here. In the modern digital era, people are losing touch with tangible reality and living nature, plunging into an artificial synthetic and virtual environment. The naturalness and uniqueness of simple things is becoming a rarity.

Mixing and mastering: Dionis Afonichev
Cover photo: Yulia Rychkova
Design: Toni Dimitrov

Release date 1st September 2021
Order at https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/lost-rarities

Dionisaf - Cowboy Terry

vital018
2021 élan vital recordings
elanvital.bandcamp.com

Release date 7 October  2021
Order at https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/nuance

Nuance is a ritual in 5 acts. In conversation with absence, negative bodies, haunted places, spectres and traces, the sound-artist Demetrio Cecchitelli investigates the autobiographical space. The project originates from the clash between the materiality of a private, intimate space - the house in which the composer spent his early years, a physical vessel of affection, desire and imagination - and an out-of-tune piano. Through the mantric practice of obsessive repetition he explores new temporalities, rewrite and exorcise the past, while creating a meditative, suspended, minimalistic habitat. A haunted project, cruel and incredibly tender at the same time. Layering reverb, delay and single-cycle feedback in order to create delicate and elegant patterns, he steers the legacy of Grouper, Tim Hecker and Basinski into a rough, raw and uncertain new territory.

Demetrio Cecchitelli (1997) is a composer and musician mainly active in the field of electronic and electroacoustic music. Released on Healing Sound Propagandist, Whitelabrecs, Sounds Against Humanity, among others. 

Music and mastering: Demetrio Cecchitelli
Cover artwork: Chiara Benzi
Design: Toni Dimitrov

Demetrio Cecchitelli - Nuance 03

vital019
2021 élan vital recordings

"UTOPIA has long been another name for the unreal and the impossible. We have set utopia over against the world. As a matter of fact, it is our utopias that make the world tolerable to us: the cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live. The more that men react upon their environment and make it over after a human pattern, the more continuously do they live in utopia; but when there is a breach between the world of affairs and the overworld of utopia, we become conscious of the part that the will-to-utopia has played in our lives, and we see our utopia as a separate reality" - The Story of Utopias by Lewis Mumford.

					                     ***

🌿 We are heading to our 19th release. A various artist compilation dedicated to the notion of UTOPIA. It is 19 track/artists compilation gathered in consistent and dense flow building a coherent release of nearly 2 hours. Some of them already familiar to our audience, but some are on the label for the first time. The second labels various artists compilation sound ranges from the deepest ambient, through experimental gems and noise, and to the lowest drone. 

🍃 Another new thing is that this will be our first digital only compilation. Ok, there may be strictly limited CD option for the hard-core fans, but the focus is on the digital. Why? Because during the existence of the label in this last two years we faced with the most twisted consequences of the crisis. So, we compiled this album in order to support the labels work continuation and further CD production. 

🚩 Yes, we are going further.  UTOPIA is here!
Compiled by Toni Dimitrov 
Mastering: Yosuke Goto
Design: Toni Dimitrov 
Compiled by Toni Dimitrov 

Release date 11th November 2021 
Pre-oder at https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/utopia-compilation

9VoltDisaster & Buja - Narcosis

vital020
2021 élan vital recordings 

Green is the color most commonly associated with springtime, freshness, and hope. Green is often used to symbolize rebirth, renewal and immortality. Green is a color able to evoke powerful emotions. It is a dominant color in nature that makes you think of growth. Think of nature and see the incredible variety of shades of green expressing renewal and life. Green evokes a feeling of abundance and reflects refreshment and peace, rest and security. The color green has healing power and is the most relaxing color for the human eye to view. Green is the color of the Fourth – Heart – Chakra, symbolizing universal love, forgiveness, compassion, understanding, transformation, warmth, sharing, sincerity and devotion. It is located in the center of the chest, in the region of the heart. Green is the color of wealth, fertility, regeneration, hope and harmony. Green can help enhance vision, stability and endurance. Green is the color of Ginkgo Biloba.

Biloba Green is a musical project by Toni Dimitrov and Michele Andreotti. Their love for nature and ambient music as a manifestation and reflection of that cosmic harmony so evident in the biodiversity of our planet lead them to collaborate searching for new sonic combinations capable of restoring an evocation of the union of electronic sound and nature, expressed in the continuous flow of acoustic sources and electronic transformations. The name of the project derives from the scientific denomination of the Ginkgo leaf, an ancient and beneficial tree, inextricably linked to the ancestral significance of natural symbols.

Composed and arranged by Toni Dimitrov and Michele Andreotti
Guitar by Michele Andreotti
Field recordings by Toni Dimitrov
Mastered by Ivano Pecorini
Cover design by Toni Dimitrov

Release date 28 December 2021
Pre-order at elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/biloba-green

Biloba Green - #228B22

vital021
2022 élan vital recordings 

Humans have an innate ability to adapt to change. L’adaptation or Adaptation is the result of pure curiosity. It is through this album that artist tried to explore this capacity for change. The tracks were recorded with an electric guitar, numerous effects and field recordings, resulting in this subtle, admirable and impressive album. 

Creating his pieces primarily from field recordings and guitar loops, the Montreal native Grandbruit utilizes the banalities of everyday life and his city’s landscape as inspiration for his music. His previous albums were released on the labels Past Inside the Present, Aural Canyon, Giraffes tape, Healing Sound Propagandist and he is the co-founder of the label Florina cassette.

Composed and arranged by Francis Tremblay
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong 
Cover photos by Pier-Luc Tremblay 
Design by Toni Dimitrov

Release date 7th March 2022
Pre-order at https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/adaptation

Grandbruit - Adaptation 1

vital022
2022 élan vital recordings 

Manja Ristic / Toni Dimitrov - Dystopian 001

1. Manja Ristic - Nothing Has To Happen, Fortress Europe
2. Toni Dimitrov - Against Civilization

🏴 'Dystopian 001' is split release between the sound artists Manja Ristić and Toni Dimitrov, and it is part of the new 'Dystopian series', showcasing a more abstract, darker, obscure and politically infused side of the sound of élan vital artist roster. Inspired by everyday life in the last several years living in realized dystopian visions and darkest predictions, the sound on this series will be the soundtrack for our daily dystopian reality. We are all aware that the future of our civilization is not bright, but that doesn't mean we are not living in an exciting epoch.

🏳️ Part one brings two longer pieces, presenting the dark side of the mystical long form experimentations by the Serbian violin and field recordings diva Manja Ristić and the latest field recordings experiments of the sound art naturalist Toni Dimitrov. Through this joint release the artists are trying to explore the potential for change of the society, resulting in a mature, expressive and complex album. 

Composed and arranged by Manja Ristić & Toni Dimitrov 
Mastering LaPlant Studio Belgrade
Cover drawings by Dorian Dimitrov
Design by Toni Dimitrov

Release date 27th March 2022
 https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/dystopian-001

Manja Ristic - Nothing Has To Happen, Fortress Europe (excerpt)

vital023
©2022 élan vital recordings 

In the summer of 2021, during a week-long stay in New York, Dionisaf collected an impressive collection of the sounds of this city and, after returning from the trip, recorded this album in just a week. The sound density of the tracks is explained by the rich urban soundscape, after all, New York is a very large city with a high level of noise. Some tracks consist almost entirely of field recordings, while they cannot be called non-musical. In some tracks, you can hear quite melodic harmony. And sometimes it is a very dense and deep drone that literally plunges you into a trance.

Dionisaf (Dionis Afonichev) is a sound artist who has come a long way from a rock-band guitar player and an academic avant-garde composer to an ambient music producer and a multifaceted musician. He adopted a sonoristic approach to musical composition that relies on repetitive, meditative, nuanced musical structures often taken from the environment. Dionis Afonichev received professional music training at Kyzyl College of Arts, the Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory, and the Krasnoyarsk State Academy of Music and Theater. Apart from his music career, Afonichev studied Vedic philosophy and astrology for over a decade and received a brahminical initiation from his guru in India. His interests in different countries and cultures often find their reflection in his music. He now runs Chitra Records.

Composed, recorded and mastered by Dionis Afonichev
Cover photo: Dionis Afonichev
Cover design: Toni Dimitrov

Release date 23rd Jun 2022
https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/new-york-environments

Dionisaf - The High Line

vital024
©2022 élan vital recordings

The album 'Ray of Light' is a meditative piece, a background sound, ambient in the true sense of the term. It focuses on creating a mood, an atmosphere, through guitar loop and timbral qualities. Although the piece tells a specific story, it is mainly based on guitar improvisation and subtle ambient. Its volume meanders slowly, providing gradual movements. It shows a strange stillness, a tranquility that to the listener, is almost tangible. It's also about listening to yourself, an introspection, where time, place, sound and self, fuse into one. 

Saito Koji, born in 1978, is a musician currently living in Fukushima city, Fukushima prefecture. He played in several bands, then went solo in 2003 after being influenced by Otomo Yoshihide’s live performances, Derek Bailey’s CDs, and Kaoru Abe’s videos. Saito is engaged in the pursuit of an original kind of minimalism/improvisation using guitars, keyboards, effects and field recordings. Since 2004 Koji has released works on the labels Magic Book Records, Kesh Recordings and Gears of Sand Recordings, SEM Label, Resting Bell, Somehow Recordings, etc.

Composed by Saito Koji
Cover design by Toni Dimitrov

Release date 8th August 2022
https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/ray-of-light

Saito Koji - Ray Of Light (Excerpt)

vital003 
2020 élan vital recordings

The world is changing and is facing with a new global paradigm shift in the realm of geopolitics. History has taught us that power shifts are unsurprising, essential elements of global development. The result will be a world that we won’t be able to recognize. In this context, though the world may be changing, the importance of power has not. The world of the future will be far more complex and contradictory than we thought it would be. A grand strategy, that rested on the simple idea of a uni-polar world — the notion that the United States is the only power that counts in the world today is not applicable anymore. Opposite to this, the new world will have a place for a multitude of diverse participants in global politics interacting in various formats. Gone are the days when the ‘West’ could dictate policy and shape the world in its own image. The world of today is instead witnessing the rise of new and diverse global powers capable of wielding influence in both global markets and global governance. The wealth of the economic powerhouses of the latter half of the 20th century, including the United States, Europe and Japan, has begun to wane, while the global south is on the rise, not least in the form of the emerging economies, China, India and Brazil. This is an emerging multi-polar world. 

In these conditions, power is diffuse and “new generation, ambiguous, hybrid, nonlinear, unrestricted, irregular, unconventional and asymmetric” are all terms associated with 21st century warfare. Contemporary hybrid warfare, hybrid threat and hybrid aggression have all been used to describe potent and complex variations of warfare in the 21st century. Conventional Western concepts of war are incompatible and fundamentally misaligned with the new realities of war. As information is more powerful than weapons in today’s context, contemporary wars aren’t fought to win but rather to confuse. Non-linear warfare is a different model for projecting state power, one that wields disruption and information warfare more than conventional munitions. A nonlinear war is fought when a state employs conventional and irregular military forces in conjunction with psychological, economic, political and cyber assaults (cyber conflict, electronic warfare, information warfare). Confusion and disorder ensue when weaponized information exacerbates the perception of insecurity in the populace as political, social, and cultural identities are pitted against one another. This “blurring” divides influential interest groups and powerful political organizations by exploiting identity politics and allegiances. The emergence of a unipolar post-Cold War world order has resulted in a significant paradigm shift. 

'Dark political stratum', Private Mountain's second album refers to all these changes and turbulence. Produced in Macedonia, a center of the global geostrategic clashes of the superpowers, it is a sound statement to the global political shifts, observed through the local prism. Macedonia in the recent years and under the pressure of the neighboring countries and the superpowers, was (and still is) under heavy attack of all before-mentioned methods of the hybrid war, passing through very harsh historical times and major national changes, that unfortunately resulted with disintegration of the nation as we know it. 

Private Mountain is audio and visual project of Dimitar Dodovski and Toni Dimitrov releasing their debut album 'Blue Mountain' on UK label Neotantra. It is a project about their shared fascination with nature, art, philosophy and many discussions about the past and future of ambient music, that resulted with a beautiful introspective album, a complex blend of field recordings, drone and ambient sound that captivates fans of this genre.

cover design: Toni Dimitrov
mastering: Dimitar Dodovski
 
released February 20, 2020
buy the album https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/dark-political-stratum

Private Mountain - Nonlinear Warfare

vital005
2020 élan vital recordings 

After nearly two months of silence and passing through these hard times, we are going furthaer with our fifth release signed by Keys for Eclipse. Downpour is a calm and detailed ambient album with sweeping, emotional movements, rich with subtle field recordings, gentle textures, ethereal melodies and atmospheres that as a whole make it a truly emotionally challenging listening experience. Written during the latter half of 2019, the album takes direct inspiration from the ambience of rain and the comfort which it can bring to the listener. Downpour combines a constant flow of rain with field recordings, synthesizers and piano to create a calming yet mysterious backdrop for introspective late night thinking. 

Hailing from Aberdeen, Scotland, Keys for Eclipse is the musical project of Jacob Anthony. Combining elements of ambient and drone to create dream-like soundscapes for the listener. Taking influence from ambient cornerstones such as Brian Eno and Aphex Twin as well as Akira Yamaoka's work on the Silent Hill franchise (which gave inspiration to the KfE name) Downpour is the 4th solo effort from the artist, released in collaboration with Élan Vital. The release will be out on 1st Jun on limited edition CD and cassette. Pre-orders are already available.

Cover concept: Jake Anthony. Album photographs taken in Sweden, 1925. Photographer unknown.
Design: Toni Dimitrov

releases Jun 1st, 2020 
buy the album https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/downpour

Keys for Eclipse - Downpour

vital006
2020 élan vital recordings

Private Mountain's third long-form release СТРАТУМИ (STRATUMI or STRATUMS in Cyrillic) uses the metaphor of geological strata to meditate on the different aspects of reality, their relationships and tectonic confrontations. Political, Economic, Cultural, Mental, Morphogenetic, Libidinal strata are the constituents of what the personal and social realities are. Now is the time to stop taking it for granted, to come out of the philosophical cave and learn personal and social responsibility, solidarity, communication and collaboration especially in these troubling times of capitalism pandemic accelerating beyond our ordinary powers of comprehension. 

After 'Dark political stratum', slightly noisier and experimental release (which development came out as an outtake of this material), on 'СТРАТУМИ' they return to more subtle plateaus, combining field recordings, drone and ambient sound, this time supported by the piano and synth of the drone superstars Carlo Giustini and Robert Farrugia! 
* * * 
Private Mountain is audio and visual project of Dimitar Dodovski and Toni Dimitrov releasing their debut album 'Blue Mountain' on UK label Neotantra (curated by Lee Anthony Norris). It is a project about their shared fascination with nature, art, philosophy and many discussions about the past and future of ambient music, that resulted with a beautiful introspective album, a complex blend of field recordings, drone and ambient sound that captivates fans of this genre with its emotional impact and subtle nostalgia (and that entered the bandcamp chart of ambient bestsellers and received many great reviews). The second album 'Dark Political Stratum' (published on Élan Vital Recordings) is a conceptual album that refers to the global geopolitical changes and turbulence at the beginning of the 21 century. Produced in Macedonia, a center of the global geostrategic clashes of the superpowers, it is a sound statement to these global political shifts, observed through the local prism. 

Produced by Dimitar Dodovski. Field recordings and arrangements by Toni Dimitrov. Additional synths and piano by Robert Farrugia, Carlo Giustini. Cover design: Dimitar Dodovski. Photo inlay: Toni Dimitrov.

releases July 20, 2020 
buy the album https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/stratumi

Private Mountain - Glow

vital012
2021 élan vital recordings 

Sebby Kowal is a  newcomer to élan vital recordings, but he is not unknown to the ambient scene as 'Bright Spaces' is his fourth album. Similarly like his previous albums, 'Bright Spaces' firmly sits into the atmospheric ambient/drone realm, driving you calmly and peacefully towards the vast horizons with glacial movements of the sound spectrum. The whole atmosphere and aesthetic aims towards reaching inner peace of the soul and it succeeds to actually tranquil and soothe the farthest corners and vast spaces of your soul. Hazy but still melodic, the album is mixing fragments of static, hums, decayed melodies and shady sounds into unique meditative amalgamation.  Or said with the artists own words: My goal with the album 'Bright Spaces' is to bring a sense of peaceful calmness to the listeners, the sense that is especially relevant during these stressful times. 

Sebby Kowal is a Polish ambient producer with previously three albums released on the labels Whitelabrecs, Shimmering Moods Records and Lagerstatte, and his track 'Lost In Tokyo' was placed on 'tʌntrə XIl' compilation released on Neotantra imprint. One of Sebby's proudest achievements was his Warm Night Fall EP released on Dewtone Recordings that came out in 2017 and it was sold with over 800 copies worldwide.

Written and produced by Sebastian Paul
Mastering: Michele Andreotti 
Photo credit: Yosuke Nojima
Cover design and inlay artwork: Toni Dimitrov

Release date 3rd March 2021
Pre-oder at https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/bright-spaces

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