Silvercoat the throng

Reciprocal capture (ft. Speaker Music)

re-smp

Taken from the album 'Piano Muisc 1-7' released as LP, CD and digital.


Editions Mego is proud to welcome Powell to its roster with a bizarre and strangely emotive new LP of synthetic computer works entitled Piano Music 1-7.

Via his own Diagonal Records imprint, his work on XL Recordings and, most recently, the opening of audio/film platform A Folder [afolder.studio], Powell has firm footing in the contemporary electronic landscape. During a wry and obstinate musical life he has twisted myriad synthetic forms into shapes that explore and expand upon the districts of post-punk, techno, noise + computer music, and in the the last year alone he has released four albums of hi-def abstractions, each inspired by a formalisation of music proposed by Iannis Xenakis. 

As an extension of this intense period of work/research/play with stochastic functions [using probabilities to compose music], various processes emerged that Powell then began to apply to more traditional musical events. Where ordinarily in his work the probabilities and relationships are used to define parameters such as wave-shape, folding, FM, filter modes etc., he now began to use them to create musical formations and visual scores that could be played back using any software/MIDI instrument [one of these can be seen on the rear cover of the LP release]. While mapping out this cartography of relations, he used a basic Grand Steinway sampler as a placeholder instrument; the longer the process went on, though, the more he began to embrace the acoustic properties of the synthetic piano and make it the bedrock for this new constellation of work. 

Piano Music 1-7, subtitled ‘Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics’, consists of seven different synthetic islands strung together into a single composition. All were composed using the aforementioned processes that allowed Powell to play a piano, even if he never learned to do so with his hands. After all, ’In writing electronic music,’ Robin Mackay once wrote, ‘you also have to direct the invention of new tools.’

At times the piano skips gleefully over shadowing synthesis, whilst at others the synthetic sheets swarm and envelope the keys. The interplay between the two create a fantastical alternate reality, a cosmic machine in which time is eroded, shrunk and expanded, like a wax upon which operations and relations are inscribed or engraved. Many of the pieces express a playfulness or optimism verging on vitalism, as bundles of piano notes dance and interpolate with a never-repeating range of electronic gestures. The feel is of a brightly coloured flower-bed in various stage of bloom. This interplay of the [artifical] acoustic and the electronic builds on the pioneering processes developed by David Behrman in works such as Leapday Night, and Piano Music 1-7 could also be posited as a modern take on Conlon Nancarrow’s investigations for player piano. Similarly, the razor-sharp sonic properties and unfolding of non-human events recall the computer works of Xenakis and the surgical precision of Mego mainstay Florian Hecker.

Recorded in late 2020, these new Powell works propose not just a bold and bright vision of electronic music but serve also as a map with which, for 35 minutes at least, we can navigate our way out of the current milieu. As the artist himself remarks in the sleeve-notes, ‘. . . What emerged from this fog or soup [for me] were ideas and processes that felt affirmative and life giving — sensations I had always hoped to convey in my music. Perhaps the optimism or positivity I felt at these musical events unfolding, these clusters and knots tumbling in different directions across time, can also be felt by you.’

Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics

Composed and recorded by Powell, 2020
Mixed by Powell and Tobin Jones at The Park Studios, London
Mastered by Russell Haswell

Art direction by Guy Featherstone
Photography by John Cronin

Powell 'Piano Music #1' (EMEGO 301)

There’s a body of water in the woods near Carrboro. Dappled light on the trail leads you to it. Crunch of leaves underfoot. A river feeds the swimming hole where people plunge, naked and alive. On a chair you sit reminiscing about the future. After a dip, you lay on a big smooth rock - let the sun bake you dry. Then you walk further into the woods.

Like coming upon some keyboardists situated at the mouth of a cave, the entreaties on this record are calming but enigmatic, tinged with melancholy and reflection. Recurring motifs are given room to grow—there’s much space, and the progressions percolate, an auditory mapping of emotional crevices. Sentimentalism given a rougher edge. It lures you in; an orb appears, bright and buzzing. It motions for you to continue. As you do, a fragrance floats through the cave and fills your psyche, like a thousand roses hidden in the dark.

On "Keyboard Suite Vol. 1", MARV imbues analog subtractive and FM synthesis with a distinct physicality. Dub studio techniques and rigorously hand-played performances create an 'environmental' keyboard masterpiece strongly connected to the lineage of 1970s-80s private press ambient and electronic recordings-- but elegantly modern sound design and production methods center the album in the present day. A timeless quality pervades "Keyboard Suite Vol. 1", allowing for easy repeats, marinating the subconscious ache of loss with a dreamily resolute hope.

keyboards and effects ~ Geoff Schilling and Nathan Taylor
french horn (A2) ~ Aaron Smithers
mixdown assistance ~ Glyn Maier
audio finalization ~ Nathan Taylor
design and layout ~ Joe Bastardo (www.josephbastardo.com)

all proceeds to Carolina Abortion Fund (Durham, NC) ~ www.carolinaabortionfund.org

ALSO WILL BE STOCKED BY:

Tobira Records (JP)
All Day Records (US)
Commend (US)
Boomkat (UK)
Industrial Coast (UK)

LP details ~
black vinyl, printed center labels
lacquer cut ~ Amy Dragon
recycled black paper jackets ~ Middle Press
silkscreened with water/soy-based ink ~ Goatmother Industrial
recycled plantable seed paper insert ~ Greenfield Paper, debossed with Braille text* ~ Middle Press
custom scent ~ Meadow Maker Apothecary (www.instagram.com/_meadowmakers_/)

*may not be readable due to paper thickness and texture

*ALL LPS WILL BE SHIPPED OUTSIDE OF JACKET FOR SAFETY*

Keyboard Suite I

MARV - Stable Mate (ENM10)

@user-133935668
"Hey Hey! I am back on track with a second edition for WET... Swirling your minds on deep waves towards more truthful and upfront futures. With interpretations of texts written by notorious female authors; Virginie Despentes with her brillant King Kong Theory and Legacy Russell with the avant guarde mind blowing manifesto Glitch Feminism; Let me take you for a deep dive into the transcending powers of DIGITAL SKINS. We will make a few stops on degenerative results from gender binaries, investigate Internet Avatars, falling in love with the dead and rape...
Fasten that belt and hang on tight to the passenger seat!
Works by myself trancing old school R&B tracks, Urin, D.Dan, CATARAT, Ausschuss, Carnalina, Klein, Cryptobitch and Circular Ruins...

+++ Find me blasting hard drums and tender emotions this Friday at Panke Culture amongst a killer line up for INCIDENT C. Find details by following us on insta @iinncciiddeenntt "

TOMMIE O – DIGITAL SKINS

When the dub turns red the general will be dead

Dub for the general .mp3

Hanky Panky

[LLM004]

A1 ... Exo | official video: http://bit.ly/llm004_yt
A2 .. Plus
A3 .. Errors
A4 .. Klint
A5 .. Torn
B1 ... Neoneon
B2 .. Airless / Portals
B3 .. Snake
B4 .. Sensor

Produced by Phil Struck. Mastered by Manes at SALZ. Artwork by Phil Struck. Design by Alex Ketzer. Video by Irwin Barbé and Louise Ernandez. Distributed by Noorden.

© 2017 LL.M. | noorden.org/llm

Klint

[LLM004] Phil Struck - Klint

We are all experiencing very weird times very new combinations of feelings and tension.
WET presents first WET compilation of tension release with sensual deepness from innocent heretic, daniela huerta, polido feat. NM, ulla and perila and zaumne.

Intimate and seductive sonic wet research series with a therapeutic effect.
WET wants to support you. Succumb.

Glove Which Touched The Moss

A1 from a new VA titled Cold Readings, out the 22nd of February. https://brokntoys.bandcamp.com/album/va-cold-readings

@pera-sta-ori

ΠΕΡΑ ΣΤΑ ΟΡΗ - Passive Concealment

Vladislav Delay - Rakka II
Format: LP/DGTL
Cat.No. CR14
Pre-order: http://bit.ly/3dLkry3

In 2020 Cosmo Rhythmatic released ‘Rakka,’ which presented Sasu Ripatti’s glorious return to his most famous alias: Vladislav Delay. Nonetheless, the album contents made it evident that this eventual comeback was not intended as a revival. Ripatti was reactivating the project and a steadfast evolution in its sound, a new approach to both the emotional and environmental characteristics of electronic composition.

The inspiration for this new course was given to Ripatti by a series of ventures into the wilderness of his native Finland, confronting “The raw, undefined, uncontrolled and uncorrupted power that exists within it.” The result is a hyperbolic, extreme ecosystem of sound populated by fast-moving drones, dense clouds on noise, and tectonic bass rumbles with hints of harmony birthed by harsh tonal contrasts. The sheer intensity of the music was only matched by the rigor of its craft.

2021 sees the coming of the second chapter in that very same journey. ‘Rakka II,’ once more on Cosmo Rhythmatic and made of that very same impassioned matter. Tho while on the first one, Ripatti seemed intent to portray the elemental forces as free, unabashed, and unconstrained by musical structures, here he appears to compile some of it in beats and progressions that have something in common with the wildest sides of dance music. It’s like consciousness tuning in with the non-human after struggling with its apparent distance and hostility, accepting its uncoded structures, and finally finding a common language for reconciliation.

As Ripatti puts it, Rakka II is a romantic summer vision full of hope and optimism;  after the brutalist vibes on the first one, the storm has passed and skies are clearing. 
Rakka II is ultimately another masterful achievement in an already stellar career and an unquiet blast of energy for chaotic times.

Vladislav Delay - Rakkn (CR14)

§ focused on contemporary sound and growth
✔ hand-constructed out of recycled materials as possible
♥ all proceeds to positive endeavors

MARV - Stable Mate (ENM10)

enmossed

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