Balmat’s second release comes from @hoavi, aka Kirill Vasin, a Russian electronic musician whose work approaches what might be familiar reference points —deepest dub techno, atmospheric ambient, liquid drum’n’bass— with a singular and refreshing point of view.

We first became aware of Hoavi after coming across one of his tracks in a DJ mix by Leech, aka Peak Oil label founder Brian Foote; we began corresponding, which led to a massive zip file of unreleased tracks turning up in Balmat’s inbox. Music for Six Rooms has been culled down from that bounty, its disparate moods distilled into 10 profoundly immersive tracks that touch upon dream pop, dub techno, and new age, all swirled together into the headiest of ambient dreamscapes.

Active since the early 2010s, when he founded his Shells Rattle label, Hoavi has released on a number of labels including floe, Snare Tapes, Fauxpas, and Minor Notes. In October, Peak Oil will finally release his album Invariant, recorded in 2019 and intended for release in 2020, then tied up in pressing-plant backlogs for over a year. Balmat’s Music for Six Rooms follows roughly a month later; we think that the two albums offer a wonderfully complementary view of Hoavi’s talents—one rhythmic, the other largely beatless, yet both of them sensuous in the extreme.

Music for Six Rooms appears in two slightly different editions. The vinyl edition appears on a single piece of vinyl upon which some tracks have been subtly edited in length, to ensure maximum audio fidelity; the digital version features extended edits and runs some 18 minutes longer, in total, for a maximally immersive experience.

Music for Six Rooms

Hoavi - Music for Six Rooms [BALMAT02]

From Sara Berts' Braiding Fragments, available for pre-order on cassette tape and digital now.
https://muzaneditions.bandcamp.com/album/braiding-fragments

@sara_berts

Sara Berts - Mayflies

tape loops
pianos
and broken voices,
breathing
then falling
like dust on strings.

VAK60 | The Humble Bee - An Opposite (Fall Snippet)

From Endurance's Verb, out now on cassette tape and digital:https://muzaneditions.bandcamp.com/album/verb

Endurance - Feel

MATTHIAS PUECH, Mt. Hadamard National Park, LP

Release date: 31 January 2023
Catalogue nr. - HG2302
Format: Vinyl / digital
Hallow Ground

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1. Mt. Hadamard National Park     (22:48)
2. Suspension     (3:57)
3. Imperceptible Life     (14:57)

Credits:
Composed, recorded and mixed by Matthias Puech
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
Photo by Caroline Schöbi
Drawings by Matthias Puech
Artwork by Laurin Huber
Thanks to Gustave Evrard

///

“Mt. Hadamard National Park” is the Hallow Ground debut by composer, programmer, and instrument designer Matthias Puech. Informed by mathematical and artistic approaches that aim to both contemplate on and control complexity, the eponymous five-part composition explores natural and mystical forces through what he calls “audio-naturalist noise”. The composition is complemented by two further pieces: “Suspension” emulates the chemical phenomenon of the same name, while “Imperceptible Life” hinges on the musical possibilities of stridulation. Over the course of the entire album, Puech’s singular take on electro-acoustic and electronic music creates unique sonic spaces as much as it pays its dues to the unpredictability of the world that we inhabit.

Jacques Hadamard was a pioneer among physicists and mathematicians who, in the early 20th century, were puzzled by processes that are deterministic but hard to predict. While researching the history of Chaos theory, Puech also felt drawn to an artistic movement from the mid-19th century, the so-called Hudson River school of painting, whose rise coincided with the gradual taming of the sites of Northern American wilderness it chose as its source of inspiration and subject. Fascinated by both attempts to contemplate on and control complexity, Puech wondered what would happen if those were to meet. “Mt. Hadamard National Park” offers thus in Puech’s words “an audio-naturalist noise meandering through an invented space that is subject to the arbitrariness of natural and mystical forces.” The sounds, arranged in sweeping and tense dynamics, serve as multiple agents within a complex system. The synthetic flora and fauna feels uncannily familiar or even disturbingly hostile at times. “Mt. Hadamard National Park” is an artistic expression of natural phenomena, but also a meditation on the imprint those leave on the psyche of the people who encounter them.

The short piece “Suspension” picks up on a similar idea. “In chemistry, a suspension is a mixture of small solid particles inside a liquid,” Puech explains. This process is mirrored in aquatic yet tangible sounds as well as dynamics that slowly converge towards density before the composition ends on a quiet note. The 14-minute-long “Imperceptible Life” is based on a live performance first conceived as a full-scale test drive of some new electronic equipment Puech was designing at that time. It explores the musical potential of stridulation, the act of creating sounds by rubbing together certain body parts—in the insect world, a common means of communication. Again, Puech’s approach is neither purely naturalistic nor only mimetic. Rather, “Imperceptible Life” offers yet another artistic reflection on the theme of chaos and order, and how human perception and emotion relate to it.

As a whole, “Mt. Hadamard National Park” thus not merely mirrors natural phenomena but transforms them in ways that are emotionally evocative: the complexity and apparent arbitrariness of Puech’s compositions reveal an underlying beauty that is equal parts haunting and comforting.

MATTHIAS PUECH – Mt. Hadamard National Park (Part 1) (HG2302)

Get it here: 
https://repeatle.bandcamp.com/album/wf1-2023

Christian Hutchinson-Berg (Kite, Yvonne) and Andreas Tilliander (Mokira, TM404) have known each other forever but very rarely collaborated musically. Until now. Here is Wind & Fire with our debut tape WF1. 

Each cassette is a duplicate of the previous one where cassette number 001 is the master, 002 a copy of 001, 003 of 002, 004 of 003 et cetera. 
In this way, every cassette is unique and the sound is slowly degrading, getting more distorted and weird with each new copy. 
A nod to Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting In a Room or perhaps even more to the The Cure cassettes we taped from and to our friends as kids. The cover art is treated the same way. 

Limited edition of 100 copies. Act fast.

Wind & Fire - WF103 (taken from WF1 out Feb 3rd 2023)

CD available from: IMPREC.com

“an intoxicating sauce of stark and tripped out ritual music... which conspires to keep listeners in a semi-permanent trance state” Julian Cope / Head Heritage

“a heady brew of deep listening music that is almost medieval in mood and wholly reverential in technique” Edwin Pouncey / Wire Magazine

“Razen push the drone potential of medieval instruments like hurdy gurdy as well as shawm and recorders... into realms of total sensory overload” David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue



Razen's Postcards From Hereafter was recorded using a 17th century organ tuned at 398 Hz (meantone) in a Belgian cathedral erected in 1305. The ensemble explored, with rich results, the organ's strict and limiting tuning with an arrangement that included hurdy gurdy, recorders, chalumeau, violone and nyckelharpa.

Razen - Poscards From Hereafter - CD - Release: 3.24.23

A Tension of Opposites, Vol. 4

Returning

every single note on this song is a reason to cry

Heart

Composed and recorded by Lisa Stenberg on the EMS Synthi 100 in studio KSYME Contemporary Music Research Center, Athens, Greece in 2017.
Produced at EMS Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm 2017.

Monument

Buy cassette

Heart

Sleepwalker

In Flux

HALLOW GROUND 
is a platform for Music and Art that leads to Visions.

It was established in Lucerne/Switzerland by a group of individualists, idealists and first of all artists. We act as publishers, hosts and performers.

www.hallowground.com

MATTHIAS PUECH – Mt. Hadamard National Park (Part 1) (HG2302)

Hallow Ground

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