Of Thread & Mist is the solo project of Richard Knox (A-Sun Amissa / Gizeh Records). Brought to life in 2020, it focuses on music composed by Knox then deconstructed and manipulated via hand-made tape loops, beaten-up 4-Tracks and modified cassette players.

Info >> www.gizehrecords.com / www.slowsecret.com

Static Hymns to No One is the debut album from Of Thread & Mist.
The music found here unfurls slowly and patiently, imbuing a saturated, solemn and nostalgic tone that allows ample time to absorb and ponder.

Layers of orchestration and drones, recorded onto tape loops, decompose and collapse throughout the duration of these pieces. The elegiac sweeps and choral sighs are buried inside a dense and sometimes suffocating atmosphere but it's one where shafts of light are eternally present as these compositions gradually evolve.

Static Hymns to No One is an intimate affair, the rawness of the writing and recording techniques add to the melancholic aura, infusing it with lamented memories and quiet, dusky evenings. This is a record of humble defiance, of determination to push forward. A place of solace and contemplation amongst the clamour and the folly.

This release is accompanied by extensive original artwork and photography created by Knox alongside the music in the early weeks of Autumn 2020.

PRESSING NOTES
100 - Limited edition CD + 16 page booklet. Gatefold silkscreened packaging with artwork throughout the sleeve and booklet by Richard Knox. Hand-numbered. Instant download available (one track with pre-orders and full album on release day) + Bandcamp code inserted inside the sleeve.

Digital orders receive the booklet in pdf form.

Silkscreened sleeves by Death Rattle Press

Static Hymns to No One

Of Thread & Mist - Grace and Truth Perish

French composer and multi-instrumentalist Christine Ott returns to Gizeh Records for her fourth album ‘Time to Die’, the sequel to the highly regarded ‘Only Silence Remains’ (2016). 

Info / Listen >> www.gizehrecords.com

‘Time To Die’ is a musical fresco in eight chapters, a sensory journey between the world of the living and the dead, for which the musician weaves a unique dramaturgy between contemporary classical and electro-acoustic music.

The title track picks up the story where ‘Only Silence Remains’ left off ... Like it’s centrepiece; ‘Disaster’, the beloved cinematic text here is read by Casey Brown. Ott seeks to offer strong sensations, without artifice, whether by the power of her compositions on the piano (‘Brumes’, ‘Horizons Fauves’), or by intuitive arrangements mixing her unique practice of Ondes Martenot with a maelstrom of Jupiter8, Monotrons, Timpani and Tubular Bells as on the first track. In addition, Ott captivates us with her harp playing on ‘Chasing Harp’, by her aerial singing on ‘Landscape’, or even on the airwaves on ‘Comma Opening’, which ends a triptych of songs after the versions published on ‘Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot)’ (NAHAL 2020) and on ‘Volutes’ from her side-project Snowdrops (Injazero 2020). These two previous records have been praised by critics, especially in the best records of the year according to The Guardian.

This expressive and spontaneous impetus, leitmotif in her musical production, takes a new form within ‘Time to Die’. Through the notes disseminated in an endlessly reinvented minimalist heritage, the interpretation is the ultimate musical glue allowing the pieces to come to life, thereby making this repertoire and its composer-performer unique. A universe where music - despite the album's title - never dies.

We finally share these few words from the talented American musician and videographer Fredo Viola, with whom Christine has forged long-distance correspondence since the first lockdown. Listening to the record, he wrote her these few words, which he allows us to share here:

"Stunning, terrifying, magnetic, delicate, painful and uncanny... It’s like discovering a bizarre object hanging very low in the sky, something beautiful but unfathomable, just out of reach. The way I see the album is as a series of quite cinematic meditations on the theme of death and dying, changing prismatically, up to that incredibly delicate and beautiful conclusion.” Fredo Viola

PRESSING NOTES
50 — Blue Vinyl + CD - Deluxe edition. Gizeh Store Exclusive. Includes the sheet music for the track 'Miroirs' housed inside a hand-numbered, silkscreened card folder with additional texts from Christine Ott. Heavyweight card sleeve with poly-lined paper inner.

200 — Blue Vinyl - Heavyweight card sleeve with poly-lined paper inner. 

CD — Housed in a six-panel digipak with additional artwork featured on the inner sleeve.

CREDITS
All music composed by Christine Ott
—
Christine Ott — Harp, Vocals, Piano, Ondes Martenot, Jupiter8, Percussions, Timpani, Tubular bells, Monotron, Vibraphone / Mathieu Gabry — Mellotron, Keyboards, Vibraphone, Effects, Processing and Arrangements on 1,4,5,8 / Casey Brown — Spoken Voice on 1
—
Recorded in Serpentine Studio Strasbourg, Conservatoire de Strasbourg & Musée Würth Erstein from 2012 to 2019 / Mixed by Benoit Burger in Spring 2020 / Mastered by Lawrence English / Artwork by Renaud Allirand / Layout by Richard Knox / Limited Numbered Vinyl Edition includes the piano score of "Miroirs", transcribed by Rémi Zeller

Time to Die

Christine Ott - Time to Die

French composer and multi-instrumentalist Christine Ott returns to Gizeh Records for her fourth album ‘Time to Die’, the sequel to the highly regarded ‘Only Silence Remains’ (2016).

‘Time To Die’ is a musical fresco in eight chapters, a sensory journey between the world of the living and the dead, for which the musician weaves a unique dramaturgy between contemporary classical and electro-acoustic music.

The title track picks up the story where ‘Only Silence Remains’ left off ... Like it’s centrepiece; ‘Disaster’, the beloved cinematic text here is read by Casey Brown. Ott seeks to offer strong sensations, without artifice, whether by the power of her compositions on the piano (‘Brumes’, ‘Horizons Fauves’), or by intuitive arrangements mixing her unique practice of Ondes Martenot with a maelstrom of Jupiter8, Monotrons, Timpani and Tubular Bells as on the first track. In addition, Ott captivates us with her harp playing on ‘Chasing Harp’, by her aerial singing on ‘Landscape’, or even on the airwaves on ‘Comma Opening’, which ends a triptych of songs after the versions published on ‘Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot)’ (NAHAL 2020) and on ‘Volutes’ from her side-project Snowdrops (Injazero 2020). These two previous records have been praised by critics, especially in the best records of the year according to The Guardian.

This expressive and spontaneous impetus, leitmotif in her musical production, takes a new form within ‘Time to Die’. Through the notes disseminated in an endlessly reinvented minimalist heritage, the interpretation is the ultimate musical glue allowing the pieces to come to life, thereby making this repertoire and its composer-performer unique. A universe where music - despite the album's title - never dies.

We finally share these few words from the talented American musician and videographer Fredo Viola, with whom Christine has forged long-distance correspondence since the first lockdown. Listening to the record, he wrote her these few words, which he allows us to share here:

"Stunning, terrifying, magnetic, delicate, painful and uncanny... It’s like discovering a bizarre object hanging very low in the sky, something beautiful but unfathomable, just out of reach. The way I see the album is as a series of quite cinematic meditations on the theme of death and dying, changing prismatically, up to that incredibly delicate and beautiful conclusion.” Fredo Viola

PRESSING NOTES
50 — Blue Vinyl + CD - Deluxe edition. Gizeh Store Exclusive. Includes the sheet music for the track 'Miroirs' housed inside a hand-numbered, silkscreened card folder with additional texts from Christine Ott. Heavyweight card sleeve with poly-lined paper inner.

200 — Blue Vinyl - Heavyweight card sleeve with poly-lined paper inner.

CD — Housed in a six-panel digipak with additional artwork featured on the inner sleeve.

CREDITS
All music composed by Christine Ott
—
Christine Ott — Harp, Vocals, Piano, Ondes Martenot, Jupiter8, Percussions, Timpani, Tubular bells, Monotron, Vibraphone / Mathieu Gabry — Mellotron, Keyboards, Vibraphone, Effects, Processing and Arrangements on 1,4,5,8 / Casey Brown — Spoken Voice on 1
—
Recorded in Serpentine Studio Strasbourg, Conservatoire de Strasbourg & Musée Würth Erstein from 2012 to 2019 / Mixed by Benoit Burger in Spring 2020 / Mastered by Lawrence English / Artwork by Renaud Allirand / Layout by Richard Knox / Limited Numbered Vinyl Edition includes the piano score of "Miroirs", transcribed by Rémi Zeller

#pianoday2021

Landscape

Christine Ott - Landscape

Gizeh Records is an independent label based in Manchester, UK. Founded by Richard Knox in Leeds, 2004 and focusing on a fiercely DIY ethic, Gizeh has grown with it's artists over the years to form a strong community of musicians and artists from around the world, most of them collaborating together over the years across various projects, helping the label and those involved progress and evolve in an organic, inspiring and galvanising way.

It is our aim to conduct ourselves with modesty and humility in an ever changing industry. We put love, care and passion into our records and our artists and continue to push our ideals and our collective as far as we can within the means that we have. We have no care for genres or pigeon-holes - simply the noise of harmony and the harmony of noise and the inspiration and spirit of the people who are making that noise.

Gizeh

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