taken from Jana Rush - "Painful Enlightenment" (ZIQ428 out August 13th 2021 on Planet Mu)

https://planetmu.bleepstores.com/release/224365-jana-rush-painful-enlightenment

Chicago's Jana Rush returns with "Painful Enlightenment", an intense emotional rollercoaster of disfigured samples, quivering electronics and vagrant percussion. As implied by the title, the album is a document of her own personal growth through struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, a glimpse into a dark period of her life amid learning the art of letting go. Her debut for Planet Mu is the follow-up to her twisted "Pariah" LP on Objects Limited. It's euphonic and uplifting, even blissful, yet equally chilling, and at times a difficult listening experience. Jana says "This album is not a footwork album. It's more like dark experimental listening music, an opportunity to be myself without judgement!"

The album opens up with the pessimistic "Moanin’", its gorgeous, blazing sax solo pulled back and forth like it was being played through a possessed tape recorder. Baneful bass pulsates over dozens of maniacal vocal samples on "Suicidal Ideation", an absolutely mesmerizing collage of beauty and terror with a runtime of nine minutes. Moody guitar plucks cry over an intricate bed of micropercussion and erratic low-end blasts on the title track, one of the more sombre moments of the album. At the halfway mark, the record takes a dark, twisted turn, as "Disorientation" well, disorients, with its thick layers of untraceable alien sounds unfolding and contracting back into themselves. Thick layers of time-stretched textures and bewildering rhythms meet masterfully placed snares on "Intergalactic Battle", featuring Teklife’s DJ Paypal. On "Drivin’ Me Insane", Jana and collaborator Nancy Fortune stretch three words back and forth and inside-out over the course of three minutes, using every last gasp and sibilance possible. The album closes with Paypal making his second appearance. "Just a Taste" is an encore featuring many of the fundamental sonics that make up the LP, haunting horns and paranoid voices struggle to speak over fluctuating low-end harmonics. 

An established veteran from the world of ghetto house and juke who cut her teeth on Dance Mania records in the late nineties, Jana has the stripes, so to call her an outsider would be fictitious, yet she is a true unicorn within the history of that realm and becomes more and more alienated from formulas and trends on each new record she creates. "Painful Enlightenment" is full of dense, intricate abstractions, paired with rapidly moving structures and is unlikely to sound the same twice, as every listen exposes new layers of its vibrant, transcendental details.

Painful Enlightenment (mp3s)

Jana Rush - Mynd Fuc

Submarine Walk

Marco MAL Loprieno: piano, electronics, percussion, sampling, voice, bass, ableton live, push, instant composition
Pat Lugo: photo

NEVERLAND

MONEY MONEY

One musician. 2 saxophones, bass clarinet, trumpet, kalimba. Effects and Looper. It's all.

Hikikomori

Violent Freedom

Baron Samedi, the vodoo loa of death and change
Marco MAL LOPRIENO: electronics, field recordings, instant composition
Pat LUGO: photo

BARON SAMEDI

always follow the WHITE LINES !
Marco MAL LOPRIENO: electronics, percussion, instant composition
Pat LUGO: photo

WHITE LINES

Nick Mateo  - piano                                   @NickMateomusic
Ni! - kalimba, bass-clarinet, trumpet       @Ni-Ni-Shrubbery

Nick Mateo - Reach (feat Ni!)

Marco MAL Loprieno: Instant Composition; Electronics; Voice; Percussion
Pat LUGO: Photo
Shamanism can remedy the evils of the world

SHAMAN

the universal ZEBRA, mistery of the night, love/fear of the dark... Fire in the Lake

Marco MAL LOPRIENO: instant composition, sopranino sax, kalimba, field recordings, sampling, percussion, electronics, ableton LIVE, PUSH
Pat LUGO: photo
Andrew WEATHERS: mastering

FIRE IN THE LAKE

ZEBRA

EXIT_LAB is a laboratory, a place to meet and an informal platform dedicated to explore and promote art, performance and social action.

it is located in Anderlecht, Belgium (EXIT_LOFT) it was created 20 years ago by Pat Lugo and Marco MAL Loprieno.

Marco MAL Loprieno - instant composition, wind instruments,  toys, field recordings, sampling  and electronics; PAT LUGO - voice, photo, text and visual.  
"IN HISTORY AS IN NATURE WHAT IS ROTTEN IS THE LABORATORY OF LIFE " [Karl Marx, The Capital, book I, chap. XV ]

MONEY MONEY

EXIT_LAB

Related tracks