V/A - Kikommando
Label: PAN / Hakuna Kulala
Cat.No. PAN 124 / HK029
Format: DL / Book
Release Date: 6 August 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Kikommando
Video: bit.ly/3i2EgSg

A collective effort from a vital scene in Kampala, KIKOMMANDO takes its name from Ugandan street food of flat bread and beans. As a ‘food of soldiers’ offering maximum energy for minimum funds, the eponymous mixtape, video series and book project is an equally nourishing and ambitious proposition. It all began in the East African summer of 2018, during a two-month residency at the Nyege Nyege label and collective’s villa, in collaboration with their sublabel Hakuna Kulala. Producer and PAN artist Simone Trabucchi (aka STILL) opened the door to his temporary studio in the city and a crucial cross-cultural collaboration was born.

“The intention was to record as much as possible,” Trabucchi says about KIKOMMANDO’s musical showcase of eight Kampala-based artists, coming from the spectrum of musical influences, crossing trap, drill, cut ups, kuduro, electro, smooth jams—the list goes on. In creating a sonic space to support the expression of its featured singers, poets and emcees, the mixtape ties countless styles and flows into a single snapshot of a particular part of the Kampala music scene, at a particular point in time. The invective of rapper and street legend Blaq Bandana’s “Nkwaata” is laid over a spare and brooding ambient. Kampala Unit trumpet player and first-time singer, Florence, rolls a thick melodic texture through the organic clicks, knocks and atmospherics of “Bae Tasanze”. Jahcity’s unique lyricism combines a personal take on traditional music and soulful-reggae with a jerky, wobbly collection of drops and donks.

Meanwhile, Ecko Bazz applies his grimey vocals and rhythmic, introspective words to lead single ‘Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) at a particularly pertinent moment of self-reflection. “I was trying to listen to the voice inside myself and wanted to achieve a higher level of understanding of things, life,” he says about the themes that he felt inspired to explore with Trabucchi at the recording desk. The accompanying video, shot on a rooftop in the Kampala neighborhood of Ggaba, is one of a series of slick and high-definition films complementing each one of the KIKOMMANDO tracks. These also include contributions from Ugandan emcee and key Hakuna Kulala member Biga Yut, don dada of the GabaGaza gang Swordman Kitala (with Omutaba on percussion) and South Sudanese poet and singer Winnie Lado.

Also accompanying a ‘visual mixtape’ of moving images for each song on KIKOMMANDO is a recording diary of sorts, where Trabucchi compiles a vibrant collection of pictures, colours and textures reflecting the its heterogeneous sonic palette into a book. Together this multifaceted, interdisciplinary project showcases, what Lamin Fofana’s liner notes describe as, “amazing originality, complexity”, while “embracing dissonance”.

Trabucchi’s personal take on a kind of ‘digital dancehall’ defined the sound of his ground-breaking rumination on Italy’s colonial history on debut STILL album, I, in 2017. KIKOMMANDO is a different proposition entirely, where he finds new ways to complement the personality and skills of its contributors sprung from a constant stream of visitors arriving at the Nyege Nyege Villa’s makeshift studio. “It was a dialogue,” stresses Trabucchi, who has always preferred collaboration as a means to escape branded and stereotypical identities, while creating something new. “I created the musical platform to make the singers confident, and challenged them at the same time. Working together accelerates ideas and reveals that nothing is your invention alone. That’s why KIKOMMANDO is a mixtape to me, and not an album.”

The mixtape is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by NMR. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11 & 12 mixed by Ville Haimala. Tracks 5, 6 & 8 mixed by Lorenzo Dal Ri.

@hakunakulala

KIKOMMANDO

STILL, Swordman Kitala - Rollacosta feat. Omutaba (PAN 124 / HK029)

Myxomy - Myxomy (SUB042)

Stream & download: https://myxomy.bandcamp.com/album/myxomy

Artistic collaborations don't have to be exhaustive, competitive or combative. And for Berlin-based producers James Ginzburg and Ziúr, their work together as myxomy has been almost effortless. Both artists bring with them a deep history of recording in vastly different circumstances: Ginzburg has worked on bass music, folk, experimental techno (as half of Emptyset) and experimental drone, while Ziúr played in a number of bands before settling into her current explorative electronic mode. So when they started working together in 2020, it was their respective backgrounds that provided the touch-paper for an explosive artistic head-to-head.

Ginzburg instigated the process by sending Ziúr beats he'd made in Bristol in a former life, and Ziúr, fresh from finishing her PAN-released third solo album "Antifate", set about sculpting them into completely new forms. In response, Ziúr dispatched vignettes to Ginzburg and he did the same. As they exchanged ideas back and forth and lapsed into absurdity, the songs followed suit, evolving from raw concepts and loops into proper songs as both Ziúr and Ginzburg traded melodies, lyrics and production tricks. The duo's fragmented sketches and scribbles took on new life, channeled, refined and re-invigorated as they developed into anxious, hybridized pop jewels.

Their surprising stylistic choice is revealed immediately on opening track 'Sloppy Attempt', a fractured mood stabilizer that dissociates from Bristolian trip-hop into glossy android pop. Ziúr's singing voice carries the track into a sonic black hole, mutated into an alien gurgle as she gently coos the prophetic words, "a sloppy attempt won't cut it, no no." And as Ginzburg takes the reins on 'A little opaque', singing over Ziúr's twisted neon electronics, it's clear that both artists have pushed each other outside of their comfort zones, providing the reassurance and comfort necessary to evolve.

On 'In and Until', they find an exact median between their two most recent albums. Twanging hurdy-gurdy sounds remind of Ginzburg's 'crystallise, a frozen eye', compelled forward by brittle foley percussion we last heard on "Antifate". A scalding industrial boil of deranged synthesizer squeals and rolling drums parts like the Red Sea on 'Toxin Out', cooling to a crust for Ziúr's half-sung words to echo overhead. "Burn the bridges it's a choice, eat the rich, and throw up on the fuckbois."

"Myxomy" isn't an overtly political album, but driven by a desire to create and a shared philosophical space, Ziúr and Ginzburg are naturally outspoken. Their vision of pop is twisted through history and floated on frustration, growth and constant reinvention. It's a unique mix of polar elements - light and dark, noise and silence, joy and melancholy - that centers itself on one important theme: together, we're far more powerful than we ever could be alone. 
credits

releases November 12, 2021

All tracks written and produced by Ziúr and James Ginzburg
Album art by Stefan Fähler
Design by Philip Marshall
Artist photo by Kasia Zacharko
Mastered by Joker
Published by Multiverse Media Publishing © & ℗ Subtext / Multiverse LTD 2021
license

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Myxomy

Vinyl & digital

Myxomy - A Little Opaque

GOOOOOSE - wechat

https://soundcloud.com/aghnie is an experimental Georgian producer based in Tbilisi.

"Thru The Ruins" is from his 'House of Spleen' split with Seqta.
https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/house-of-spleen

Aghnie - "Thru The Ruins"

Steven Warwick - MOI
Format: LP / Digital
Cat.No: PAN 103
Release Date: 08 November 2019
Purchase: https://bit.ly/2OOBRO1 / https://bit.ly/2IW4LI9

“MOI” is the fearless new full length album by artist and musician Steven Warwick. The record signals a more upbeat reprise following the previous, reflective release “Nadir”. “MOI”, the first physical release under his own name ( having previously recorded under the Heatsick monicker), is a journey considering interior worlds and personal architecture, as found in early spiritual narratives. Recorded in Berlin, the FUGA residency space in Zaragoza and and on location in New York, Warwick’s sonic vocabulary is further expanded with intense frenetic rhythms, prismatic melodies and resonant vocals.

Like the dopamine rush of contemporary life, “MOI” is a sonic roller coaster with a scream -if-you-wanna-go-faster urgency ; “Open Fire Hydrant” bursts out like a pressure valve spiralling onto the dancefloor, while Kaleidoscope offers cheeky anecdotes as told on a ride home soundtracked by a garage beat.
MOI is a spectrum both emotionally and musically, embedded with an underlying spirituality wrestling with existential dread, as witnessed in “Over There”, “Salvation”, “Kind of Blue” or the icy digital pulse of “Cold Light of Day”. “Danke” featuring guest vocals from visual artist Josephine Pryde offers a slightly gothic feel, albeit of the architectural variety, while the purgatorial transmissions of “Consolatio”, bring a moment of respite. “Rush” is a sensuous percussive workout before concluding on the rampaging seductive house track “Silhouette”.

“Do you know who I am? Because I don’t!”

The album is mastered by Jeremy Cox, featuring cover photography by Ilya Lipkin, and layout by Bill Kouligas and Johannes Schnatmann

@stevenwarwick
http://p-a-n-org

Steven Warwick - Open Fire Hydrant (PAN 103)

CNDSD - Flux

https://bit.ly/2xQyzmN

Taken from @forces-music's new album Epoch, out March 22, 2020 via @ginandplatonic.

Following Forces’ breakthrough string of acclaimed albums coming out on the key label triad of Bio Future Lab., Conditional & Genot Centre in 2018, Gin&Platonic is extending the output of the Finnish musician and multidisciplinary artist Joonas Siren with his next full-length Epoch:

"The album maps out all these topical ideas (the general political, ecological and social problems) sonically. Collapsing sound material, unsteady temporal structures, noise and distortion build up intensities without catharsis. The tracks are made with different live programming techniques, peculiar time-stretching and layering techniques and other VST and FX’s dysfunctions. Within the mournful aural chaos, there is a potentiality for change."

- Forces aka Joonas Siren

Produced by Forces
@forces-music

Mastered by Wim Dehaen
@wimdehaen

Artwork by Jiri Macku
jirimacku.tumblr.com

Released by:
Gin&Platonic

Bandcamp

Premiere: Forces - Markov Vertigo [Gin&Platonic]

To watch the A/V work: https://vimeo.com/452723516

QT.bot is an artificial intelligence, trained on the textual and visual data of Queering The Map, that generates speculative queer futures and the environments in which they occur. Their digital mind is constructed from an implementation of the Open AI GPT-2 text generation model trained on over 82 000 text entries from the platform, and a StyleGAN trained on scraped Google Street View imagery of the tagged coordinates on Queering The Map.

QT.bot’s first video output, Sitting here with you in the future, is a deep dream into the collective (cyber)spaces of possible queer futurities.The narratives and landscapes of speculative LGBTQ2IA+ life generated by QT.bot straddle the line between the plausible and the fantastic, revelling in the potential of failure, chaos and incommensurability in the queer use of machine learning technologies. In collaboration with the voices of their human community, QT.bot fabulates on the absences of the archive, orienting us away from what is, or has been, and towards what could be.

Project By: Lucas LaRochelle

Sound Design: Rouzbeh Shadpey

StyleGAN Engineer: Mattie Tesfaldet

Mastering: Philippe Vandal

Supported By: Studio XX, Social Service Club, and MUTEK

Sitting here with you in the future (feat. QT.bot)

GOOOOOSE (Han han)
contact: miniless@gmail.com

GOOOOOSE - wechat

GOOOOOSE

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