Italian DJ and producer Manuel Fogliata hasn’t released a lot of records over the last ten years, but the few he has put out have always been worth tracking down. Perhaps best known for his work alongside Donato Dozzy in creating the much sought-after Aquaplano records at the tail end of the last decade, Nuel’s solo outings have been just as consistent and just as impressive. Whether taking on metallic electro or syrupy, bass-heavy ambience, Nuel’s attention to detail and his keen ear for a groove has made each release something to treasure.

Nuel’s only previous full-length, Trance Mutation (Further Records, 2011), was a masterpiece of minimal repetition. It was possessed of a gossamer-light surface, all trippy rhythms and wonderfully playful melodies, but it was deep too. Made with just one microphone and a handful of instruments in his studio in a small Italian town, it’s one of those records that can somehow present the whole of a track in the first few bars but stay fascinating for ten minutes or more. While initial impressions might suggest little in the way of continuity between the organic tribalism of Trance Mutation and the colder, more mechanic sounds of Hyperboreal, Nuel’s ability to go deep into a particular mood, a particular sound, links the two. An expert in the art of minuscule variations, Nuel’s compositions are always changing, always evolving somewhere within their ecosystem. 

Like its predecessor, Hyperboreal was made with the minimum of fuss. Recorded using just one semi-modular synth - the boutique and sadly discontinued Ekdahl Polygamist - and a handful of pedals, the album came together in just a few days while Fogliata was staying with Giuseppe Tillieci (aka Neel - famed mastering engineer and one-half of Voices From The Lake) at his apartment in Rome. The Polygamist’s combination of modular flexibility with the aesthetic cohesion of a complete instrument was the inspirational spark which set the album in motion. 

Hyperboreal begins ambiguously, the fluttering dissonance of ’Stepping Stone’ immediately setting the mood. It’s dark but not gloomy, not resigned. There’s something shadowy about its contained aggression, like it might lash out at any minute. It doesn’t. Through the winding paths of the following tracks - ‘Polaris’, ‘Hyperboreal’, ‘-Om’ - nothing becomes clearer, nothing moves towards any kind of resolution. The flutters of the opening track become a swirling mass on ‘Polaris’, and a venomous rattle on the title track. ‘-Om’ sees things calm just a little – the maddening, almost frantic pulsations of the previous tracks slowing, evening out into a bed of twitching feedback and resonant echoes. There’s even a hint of a regular beat, barely audible beneath the buzzing tones of synthesised electricity.

‘Be Well’, the penultimate track marks a change; from dissonance to a sort of consonance, a lifting of the shadows that have so far lingered around the record. It feels, in a peculiar way, almost uplifting, like watching ice melt in the sunlight. The record closes with ‘The Rest is Noise’, and though it seems to return again to a darker place, it does so with the memory of sunlight, warmth, and life. Suddenly the noise is not oppressive, but comforting. It is gentle, welcoming, as it closes around you.

As its title suggests, this is an album for colder climates, for stark and inhospitable landscapes. Its opening side is tough going at times, a truly unsettling void of vaporous tones, a blizzard of sound refusing to coalesce, refusing to make sense. Slowly though, Hyperboreal opens itself up to the listener, emerging patiently from an abyssal darkness into a beauty as still, as sharp and as breathtaking as an Arctic dawn.

Nuel - Hyperboreal

xprmntl

Experimental, IDM, Noise, Drone, Ambient, Power Noise, Industrial, Psychedelic, Abstract

An excerpt from Ben Frost's score for "Fortitude", A 12 part TV series created by Simon Donald. Fortitude stars Richard Dormer, Michael Gambon, Sofie Gråbøl and Stanley Tucci.

Pre-order Catastrophic Deliquescence (Music From Fortitude 2015-2018) on Ltd Edition White Vinyl: http://smarturl.it/BF-MFF

Music from Fortitude Seasons 1 & 2 on CD and to Download/Stream: https://smarturl.it/BFFortitude

More Information http://www.sky.com/tv/show/fortitude

Ben Frost - Fortitude (Score Excerpt)

Taken from the upcoming album 'Third Law'.
Released January 22nd via Tri Angle Records.
2xLP, CD & Digital.

'4101' is available to buy on iTunes now. Also available as an instant grat with any pre-order of the album; 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/third-law/id1057689581?ls=1

Roly Porter - 4101

Steppin' Stone

Hyperboreal

// Daniel Avery - New Energy [Collected Remixes]. A double album.

Out now: go.phantasysound.co.uk/PHLP05

Daniel Avery - Water Jump (Powell Remix)

Taken from the upcoming album 'DAZE'.
Released February 19th via Tri Angle Records.
LP & Digital.

Brood Ma - Nrg Jynx (Daze End Version)

Taken from the upcoming album 'Third Law'.
Released January 22nd via Tri Angle Records.
2xLP, CD & Digital.

First single, '4101' is available to buy on iTunes now. Also available as an instant grat with any pre-order of the album; 
itunes.apple.com/us/album/third-l…d1057689581?ls=1

Roly Porter -  Known Space

Polaris

Be Well

Autechre-Feed1

Betrayal (1-09/1-14)

A.M.

Dunaewsky69-War(No War)

Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas
Format: LP / Digital
Cat.No: PAN 83
Release Date: 5 April 2019
Buy: https://bit.ly/2OMcSsJ / https://bit.ly/2UivhmG

Lexachast is an ongoing collaborative work by Amnesia Scanner, Bill Kouligas & Harm van den Dorpel.

Initially birthed as a joint, improvised performance between Amnesia Scanner and Kouligas at the ICA, London in 2015, it was later recreated and extended with visual artist van den Dorpel into a 15-minute online-only audiovisual work – known simply as Lexachast.

Since then, it has expanded into a live show that has been performed at Transmediale, CTM Festival, Unsound Krakow & Adelaide, Next and LEV Festival and during Paris Fashion Week in collaboration with the brand Ottolinger. Now to be released on PAN, is a new document of Lexachast in its current, full-grown form.

Whilst broadly inspired by the experience derived from and exposure to algorithmic patterns as generated by visual artist Harm van den Dorpel’s specially-devised program, the work is a sonic reference to the fallouts of avant-EDM and cyberdrone. This in turn is simultaneously mirrored by the perturbing visuals, created by a unique algorithm that sources and blends various filtered imagery from DeviantArt and Flickr in real time – with a bias towards the NSFW, extreme banality, and ornamental melancholia. The results were a perfect fit for the deliberate intention of non-intent, an anti-video of sorts, which ended up as a defining element for the project.

The artwork is created with Harm van den Dorpel’s ever-evolving, image-sourcing algorithm and it is mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin