phantasmagorically phantastic. Really creepy atmospheric sound. Great horror movie music.

Composed for the new Netflix hit series Katla, Icelandic multi-instrumentalist and composer Högni Egilsson has created ‘Sensus Terrae (Voice of Katla)’; a sonic exploration bringing the heart of the volcano to life. 

Using seismic data, the renowned artist, formerly of GusGus, has teamed up with scientist Kristín Jónsdóttir, lead actor-singer GDRN and the Cantoque Ensemble, creating something otherworldly. 

"Inside Katla, there are eight active areas that have their own earthquake frequency. We took these frequencies and transform them into musical expressions. The volcanic activity is actually a conversation between these eight areas – eight voices inside Katla.”

Stop what you’re doing, put on your headphones, and let the volcano Katla sing you the song of her people.

Sensus Terrae (Voice of Katla)

Stream & download

Högni - Sensus Terrae (Voice of Katla) ft. GDRN

German sound pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius and American composer Tim Story ring in the New Year with a sizzling prepared piano piece, fittingly named Crisscrossing.

Weaving together forty years of friendship, the eleven pieces on their forthcoming Erased Tapes debut 4 Hands, out February 25, convey restraint and empathy, and a way of communicating beyond words.

"Together we shaped the basic compositions, sometimes carefully preparing the piano with various materials (including my own hands), and Achim’s performances were committed to tape. I continued to compose and refine my parts in the following months. Because it was all recorded on the same piano, the result has a very appealing consistency of sound, and hopefully blurs our individual contributions into a single integrated voice” — Tim Story

“For me, these pieces express a different kind of beauty, they evoke more than the sum of their parts, they are a wordless dialogue, a bridge across the great water that separates our cultures from one another. ‘Allons enfants des deux patrie, haha!’” — Hans-Joachim Roedelius

4 Hands

Crisscrossing

Roedelius & Story - Crisscrossing

from 'Symmetrie und Wahnsinn' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den370
available on all formats at https://denovali.com/sanktotten/

After the 2020 album "Lieder Für Geometrische Stunden", Sankt Otten finally make us happy again with a new release at the beginning of 2022. "Symmetrie Und Wahnsinn" (Symmetry and madness) fits here skillfully, both creatively and musically, in an album series with geometric context.

The album starts unusually buoyant with "Hymne Der Melancholischen Programmierer" (Hymn for sentimental programmers). A Kraut-Pop pearl, which could go on forever with its Motorik swing and with its catchy melody the track doesn't come across as melancholic as the song title predicts. You have to listen twice to not succumb to the illusion that it was composed in Düsseldorf at the end of the seventies. Here (and on the track "Sei Symmetrisch Zu Mir"), Sankt Otten were supported in the studio by drummer friend DIRK PELLMANN.

The drum machine in rumbling funky mode. "Die Glücklichen Unglücklichen", the secret hit of the album? They bend the beat into geometric shapes, let the bass play in circles and cover the song with ghostly choirs. The echo of a spinett-like sound overlays the sound, spitting out a deceptively cuddly dream world.

The 10 minute long "Die Ordnung Des Lärms" could be called an Ambient-Kraut symphony without hesitation. An enormous swelling to ecstasy, a guitar sings distantly in the background. Silence. Synthetic strings pave the way and are supported by choirs. A crackle that suggests a rhythm until it is taken over by a drum computer in the main part of the track. Bombastic mountains of synthesizers pile up and yet a catchy melody finds its way through this mishmash of hypnotic electronics. Fourth movement - Kosmische-choirs in suspension over a bass synth and an Ebow guitar. Is this already Prog-Rock? The question doesn't arise, in the end everything merges into reverb.

"Luftspiegelung Der Sentimentalitäten" begins cautiously with a gentle sequence and a discreet kick drum. The mini-Moog sounds like a guitar. Anyway. A surface floats by and returns, layers and shapes build up. At last, everything melts into perfect harmony with a plaintive-sounding synth. This track was composed as a stripped back reprise of the first track from the last album "Sentimentale Sequenzen".

A hypnotic Motorik-beat of an 808 that encourages head nodding and could almost be danceable. True to style with warm analog 80s electronic sounds and a loose echo guitar. This is "Angekommen In Der letzten Reihe". Man and machine hand in hand as a homogeneous musical unit and the connection of tradition and vision.

Sankt Otten like images of infinity. In the religious sense of meditative mantras, or also in the mathematical sense of an elongated curve that eventually returns to its starting point. "Bis Das Helle Licht Uns Holt" goes exactly in this direction with its classical use of sequencers and a sound carpet of choirs. Sound worlds that, through a clever repetitiveness, barely noticeably guard the constant changes in the compositional mesh like a secret and only reveal what is to be discovered by listening closely and letting it be seen. Such a thing is probably called Berlin School?

The Osnabrück duo Sankt Otten, founded in 1999, has been releasing on Denovali since 2009. With their now 12th album they give us again a gem of timeless instrumental music. The holy trinity of Krautrock, Ambient and contemporary Electronics, but always stylistically confident and unmistakable Sankt Otten.

For the mastering New York based RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI could be won. Also with the cover layout again good taste is proven. As part two of a cover series, this extraordinary die-cut cover artwork was again created by designer DANIEL CASTREJÓN. The vinyl version comes in a die-cut cover (in a limited transparent edition), the CD in an elegant cardboard slipcase.

Symmetrie und Wahnsinn

Luftspiegelung der Sentimentalitäten

Sankt Otten - Luftspiegelung der Sentimentalitäten

Noctalgia

Title track from Leafcutter John's new album, Resurrection(Pathway009)

A panoramic sound world of drifting vocals over a densely-processed terrain of mud-caked percussion and guitar, Leafcutter John’s new solo album, Resurrection, is a characteristically unique blend of the electronic and the acoustic, the hi-tech, the human and the homemade.
Resurrection is the sixth Leafcutter John album and his first solo release since 2006’s The Forest and The Sea CD/LP(Staubgold). In the intervening nine years, John has toured from Vietnam to Venice, appeared live with Beck Hansen and Imogen Heap, and provided the score for Crow, a major theatre project by Handspring (creators of War Horse). 

During this time, John has also maintained his permanent role as the unpredictable, electronic antagonist in Polar Bear, the twice Mercury Music Prize-nominated, genre-defying jazz band.
This new record marks fifteen years of releases by Leafcutter John. Born John Burton in Wakefield (Yorkshire, England), his highly original musical voice was first spotted by Mike Paradinas, label boss of Planet Mu Records. Over the course of his first three albums (2000-2003), John established and developed his idiosyncratic London-based studio, and his skills as an inventor of unusual instruments and extraordinary music software.
Resurrection begins with the sound of a single bell, in homage to one of John’s major influences, Bernard Parmigiani’s De Natura Sonorum (1976). From there, the album unfolds over five cinematically varied tracks, “like floating above a world in constant flux,” in John’s own words. In fact, aerial photographs of the Japanese tsunami of 2011 were a direct inspiration for the record.
“I would create complete, fully-formed compositions,” says John, “then later, I’d come back to them, playing the part of
the destroyer, scraping and smearing away elements, weathering, piling up and re-ordering them, as if they’d been hit by a natural disaster.”
Not content with the usual tools available to the electronic musician, John has created innovative new systems and techniques for both live performance and production. This includes a light-controlled instrument that allows him manipulate his live sound through gesture, flickering candles, flashing torches and pyrotechnics. For the track “Gulps,” John coded special software to layer huge swathes of sound. Using a recursive system, he created 7.1 billion layers of a recording of the North Sea, one for each human alive on the planet at the time of writing.
Featuring a guest appearance by Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet), “Gulps” is a poignant demonstration of John’s
approach: Hutchings’ intimate clarinet is gradually engulfed by a (literal) ocean of sound. This is sculptural sound design
where technological innovation is always at the service of the emotional impact of the music: deeply human at its root, and
mind-expanding in its ambition.

Desire Path Recordings
www.desirepathrecordings.com | leafcutterjohn.com

Credits
Written and produced by Leafcutter John, with Varpu
Kronholm playing additional percussion on “I Know You
Can” and Shabaka Hutchings playing Clarinet on “Gulps.”
“Endless Wave” contains elements of “Forest Of Spades” by
Strings Of Consciousness, used with permission.
Mastered by James Plotkin
Photography by Max Baillie
Design by Chris Koelle, Leafcutter John, and Varpu Kronholm

Distributed by Revolver

Leafcutter John - Resurrection

Between Sphere

DOWNLOAD & TRACKLIST: http://blrrm.tv/InStereoBingRuth


Bing & Ruth - Boiler Room In Stereo

from 'Electric Stutter' [CD|2xLP|Digital]
Denovali Records · den281
available on all formats at [http://denovali.com/orsonhentschel]

Almost one year after his debut LP Feed The Tape, Orson Hentschel enters new musical terrain wearing old shoes. His second LP Electric Stutter, which is almost 55 minutes long, is only loosely connected to his debut. Whereas Feed The Tape was strongly shaped by Classical Minimal Music, Hentschel now incorporates influences of Trip-Hop and Electronic Pop Music. Since his childhood, he considers artists like Massive Attack, Portishead and Björk as some of his most important sources of inspiration. The influence of this kind of popular music is clearly audible. Hentschel’s new tracks are shorter, more shaped and reduced in the density of their sound material. Pattern-oriented repetitions, which where in the focus of Feed The Tape, now fulfil the function of sophisticated sub-components of the overall composition and are subordinate to the melodic forms or merge with them. Also the amount of sample-based material has decreased in order to create space for synthetically produced sounds with melodic character. Electric Stutter is more complex and more detailed than Feed The Tape. At the same time the reduced density of sound material and the higher amount of melodies form a kind of music that is more easily accessible.

Whereas the Düsseldorf-based composer started off with classical piano, he by now concentrates on electronic and experimental music and film compositions. Even though Hentschel has experienced a classical education, his composition techniques are anything but traditional. His creative starting point is rarely rooted in musical ideas, but consists of finding appropriate sound material. His sources are diverse: sounds and samples like soundtracks, film sounds, music albums or internet findings encounter polyphonic vocal-music from the 14th century and composition techniques of Minimal Music such as Steve Reich. In his compositions Hentschel draws a cross-section through the history of music and its genres in order to form his own musical expression. Considering his studies of music science in Düsseldorf and previously in Vienna and Dresden, his musical time-jumps appear less surprising.    

Describing Orson Hentschel only as a composer of contemporary music does not do him justice. In his self-conception as an audio-visual artist he creates his own live show, combining lights, visuals and fog to a stunning atmosphere, which cannot be eluded. Supported by live-drummer Lukas Baumgart, Hentschel delivers a sound, whose energy is physically palpable and electrifies the audience. A live-show generating an intense experience, going to the limit and erasing any sense of time. Orson Hentschel moves perceptions not merely through sheer volume, but with driving repetitions and extensive tension.

Electric Stutter

Orson Hentschel - Fade In, Fade Out

Origin and Echo

Snow Palms - Rite

'The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past' is the latest album by Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and composer Yann Novak, and his second for Touch. It considers the relationships between memory, time, and context through four vibrantly constructed tracks that push Novak’s work in a new direction while simultaneously exploring his sonic past. 'The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past' is composed as a quadriptych – a single gesture broken into four parts – that meditates on the inevitable progression of time, our relationship to the past, and our distortion of the past through the imperfections of memory. The album will be released February 23, 2018 on the London-based label Touch. Available digitally and on CD, the physical version will be packaged in a gatefold sleeve as a limited edition of 500. For more information on the artist and release, please visit www.touch33.net.

The album’s conceptual roots stem from 'The Archaic Revival' by American ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna. In it, McKenna theorizes that when a culture becomes dysfunctional it attempts to revert back to a saner moment in its own history. He suggested that abstract expressionism, body piercing and tattooing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, and rave culture were proof of this default to a more primal time. The text’s idealism was influential to Novak in the ‘90s, but today the theory bears a darkly-veiled resemblance to the rise of nostalgia-driven nationalism. Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the signifiers of a ‘better time’ - McKenna’s idea highlights our propensity for selective memory, seeing history through the lens of memory instead of fact. On 'The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past' Novak looked back at his own older works through this lens as inspiration.

“For this album I was interested in expanding into a more emotive compositional style and palette. In doing so, I was reminded that this was territory I had covered early on in my career — the whole process became a way to reconnect with my own past and history.”

The Album’s four tracks dynamically shift and surge, where time is rendered as material and momentum compels it into movement. Subtle distortion throughout the album ties the tracks together and echoes techniques explored in Novak’s 'Meadowsweet' (Dragon’s Eye, 2006). Tension gives way to a halcyon vision of place in “Radical Transparency,” immediately followed by the austere swells of “The Inertia of Time,” a piece that captures the twin impulse of generating optimistic beauty in harshly muted tones. Both tracks introduce subtle bass swells and stabs reminiscent of 'In Residence' (Dragon’s Eye, 2008). From there, the album grows darker with “Casting Ourselves Back into the Past,” and “Nothing Ever Transcends its Immediate Environment,” two icier tracks that preserve the album’s core: a layer of something long since passed that locks us into the very moment we inhabit. The latter introduces a processed vocal sample of Geneva Skeen, similar to Novak’s collaborative work with Marc Manning on 'Pairings' (Dragon’s Eye, 2007). The album is a study in perception and alteration, manipulation and awareness, effectively capturing Novak’s command of emotional texturing.

The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past'

The Inertia of Time

Premiering on the Ransom Note: https://bit.ly/2MyJojX

"An enchanting new album." - The Ransom Note 

Heinali is the alias of self-taught composer and sound-designer Oleg Shpudeiko from Ukraine. Now well established under the name he brings along his latest full length ‘Iridescent’ due for release on October 12th on Injazero Records. 

Having garnered rapturous responses to his earlier output and last year’s ‘Anthem’ Oleg continues to push the boundaries and experiment with altering mood and atmospheres of any space - with abstract yet deeply personal transmissions of ambient synthesiser work and subaqueous, minimal techno contortions. 

‘Iridescent’ consists of fragments of studio improvisation sessions recorded in 2016 and 2017, some of them recorded in one unedited take on a modular system and some layered and later morphed into compositions. As the title suggests Heinali crafts shimmering, incandescent portraits, rich in his unique characteristics and compositional liberty. 

Apart from the “musical sculptures,” that represent the bulk of this LP, Oleg was interested in the exploration of polyphonic capabilities of the modular system. ‘Rainbow Folding’, a loose homage to Terry Riley’s 'A Rainbow In Curved Air,' features an interplay of several independent, but distinct voices and their processed shadows — ‘ghost voices’. In 'Shadow Invention’ eerie atmospherics steal the spotlight and dominate the composition, ending in a cacophony of the ‘ghost voices’. 

Oleg says of the album, “it’s a kind of studio dairy. A reflection on the development of my relations with the hardware instruments and exploration of them as channelling vessels for my experiences and ideas.” 

“One can think of Iridescent’ as ‘musical sculpture’ analogy — when the body of music stays the same, but its surface is flickering with various colours over time — sometimes in a subtle manner, sometimes loud and clear. Or it can be understood in the context of various colours of polyphony, or as a liminal condition of the colour as if it’s being ‘stuck’ in the mist of twilight zone between neighbouring colour-states, so it can’t become a particular colour and is in a flickering kaleidoscopic state.” 

‘Iridescent’ bares Oleg’s style of sonic storytelling and austere, otherworldly textural embellishments that bring to mind Ben Frost, Akira Yamaoka, and Oneohtrix Point Never but also plants the seed for much more club ready electro. ‘Starling Reprise I’ is a scorching piece of ambient techno that conjures Four Tet, LTO and Susumu Yokota’s blissful, kaleidoscopic synth work whilst ‘Starling Reprise II’ retains the frosty, steely ambience that has become Heinali’s calling card. 

Cover artwork by Olga Gaidash.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k Mastering.

Pre-order

Heinali - Rainbow Folding

Founded by sonic architect and explorer Robert Raths aka ghostworker in 2007, Erased Tapes is a truly independent record label that has disrupted the industry and rejuvenated the musical landscape. The London-based label has consistently nurtured genre-defying artists from all around the world without losing its avant-garde ethos.

2015 saw BBC 6 Music radio presenter Mary Anne Hobbs stage an Erased Tapes evening featuring Nils Frahm and A Winged Victory For The Sullen at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the prestigious BBC Prom. It was the fastest selling ticket of the entire season. Shortly after Erased Tapes was awarded Best Small Label 2015 at the AIM Awards.

On February 5th 2017 Erased Tapes opened the doors to its new East London home, marking the 10th anniversary by introducing fans and the public to the new Erased Tapes Sound Gallery.

“Ten years of one of the most important record labels of the last few years“ — Gilles Peterson

"Over the last decade, Robert Raths’ label Erased Tapes has developed a sonic profile perfectly in step with the growing taste for quiet, meditative works on the cusp of ambient and chamber music" — The Independent

“The heart-string-tugging London label that floats gently between 20th century composition and ambient music” — Rolling Stone

Högni - Sensus Terrae (Voice of Katla) ft. GDRN

Erased Tapes

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