LAWRENCE ENGLISH, Observation of Breath, LP

Release date - Sept 10th 2021
Catalogue nr. - HG2103
Format - Vinyl / digital
Hallow Ground

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1) A Torso (10:01)
2) A Binding (06:05)
3) And A Twist (02:42)
4) Observation Of Breath (20:44)

Credits:
All organ recorded at The Old Museum, Brisbane July-November 2020,
except A Torso’s centre section which was recorded in 2016 on the same organ.
Performed and Produced by Lawrence English
Picture by Juan Valverde de Amusco, 1560
Design by Ruth Stofer and Greenpointless

///
Do you remember the last time you were breathing consciously? Either way, you are likely doing it now. On his new album »Observation of Breath« for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label, Lawrence English worked exclusively with an organ for four compositions that are exercises in »maximal minimalism,« as their creator himself notes in a nod to Charlemagne Palestine, who coined this term. While it seems somewhat fitting that those four pieces based on a steady flow of air were conceived and recorded in a situation of accelerated standstill caused by a respiratory disease, the Room40 founder is not so much concerned with capturing the zeitgeist than rather incorporating the spirit of time itself. »It is a record about presence and patience,« he explains. Exploring the unique sonic affordances of a singular instrument, »Observation of Breath« is not only devoted to the durability of sound but also to its density. That it marks his debut on Hallow Ground after having shaped its sound by mastering most of the label’s releases in recent years is just as fitting then as its release following albums by Kali Malone and FUJI|||||||||||TA, whose innovative work with organ instruments have facilitated a rediscovery of their possibilities. 

English’s compositions however are neither directly indebted nor responding to these musicians. His exploration of the organ’s many facets started a decade ago when the composer was given access to an instrument built in 1889 that is presently housed at The Old Museum in Brisbane. After it had already played a crucial role on his seminal albums »Wilderness Of Mirrors« and »Cruel Optimism,« last year’s self-released »Lassitude« was the first record that English entirely composed and recorded with that instrument. »During the soft lockdowns, I spent many days playing to an empty concert hall, recording the pieces that became ›Lassitude‹ and then, this album,« says English in regards to an unfortunate situation that fortunately provided him with time and space—two major themes but also key qualities of the four new compositions. In this sense, he goes on, »Observation of Breath« resolves a number of the questions originally raised by »Lassitude.«

»The organ is an exercise in the observation of breath,« English explains the album’s title. »It is a physical breath, one that manifests both audible and inaudible waves of vibrations. The sheer scale of the instrument, its weight and the physical length of the pipes involved in producing the sounds we experience is nothing short of mind-boggling.« More importantly, the sound artist is fascinated by the organ’s ability to produce frequencies that exist at the sensory limits of human awareness—it’s at the edges of these limits that fascination can be found, he argues. »The particular organ that I work with comprises four manuals and 45 speaking stops and it has a tubular-pneumatic action,« he explains. »It’s the stops that are the focus of my interest. They are very specific and when manipulated in certain ways and in certain combinations, create a unique set of unsteady timbres that make it a remarkably intoxicating instrument to collaborate with.«

LAWRENCE ENGLISH - A Binding (HG2103)

STEVE FORS, it's nothing, but still, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2201
Getefold cover, obi strip, limited clear vinyl

// Single release "ground glass" 21. June 2022
// Album release "it's nothing, but still" 19. Aug. 2022

Steve Fors offers deeply physical music on his Hallow Ground debut »it's nothing, but still.« Having already established himself as a composer of visceral drone and noise pieces in various Chicago- and New York-based underground projects, Fors’s first release under his given name is even more dense and evocative than his earlier work. A concept album on the subject of breath, the Siavash Amini-produced record sees the now Swiss-based composer blend field recordings with electronic and acoustic sounds—most notably towering cello drones—to almost overwhelming effect. 

Initially taking inspiration from living with a chronic lung condition, Fors meticulously crafts pieces that transcend his personal experience and reach for something universal. »The album is a study in melancholy and transience,« he explains. »And my intention is that the sounds trigger a memory, an image, a feeling in each of us. While our specific circumstances are momentary and discrete; joy, rage, and despair remain existential to our common experience.«

At first listen, Fors describes moments in time by building on a foundation of simple field recordings—an afternoon in a cathedral, the idling of COVID-19 morgue trucks outside Brooklyn Hospital, or the fleeting sound of wind in the trees—and then progressively overlays electronic and acoustic textures. On repeated plays however, the songs unfold, revealing a complexity, depth, and presence uncommon in current ambient music.

What makes »it's nothing, but still« such a memorable album is that it doesn’t impose anything on the listener, but rather offers them something to get lost in. From the first lush drones on the opener »(good enough) for now,« to the solemn piano chords on the title track, to the glistening cello feedback on »the way to heaven,« Fors’s sentiment about the record rings true. »If we surrender ourselves, these sounds can move us out of our present condition into a distinctly different existence, if only for a moment. If we choose to listen closely, we can experience the superpositioning of both memory and imagination in real time.«
Tracklist:
1.) (good enough) for now (07:28)
2.) ground glass (05:32)
3.) it's nothing, but still (05:02)
4.) unsound structures  (06:26)
5.) lead into aether (05:58)
6.) the way to heaven (05:48)		 
		
Credits:
All songs composed, recorded, performed and mixed by Steve Fors in Zurich 
Produced by Siavash Amini in Tehran, Iran
Mastered by Rafael Anton Irissari at Black Knoll Studio, New York
Cover photography by Jens Knigge
Cover design by Steve Fors
Released by Hallow Ground in 2022

STEVE FORS - ground glass

LAWRENCE ENGLISH / WERNER DAFELDECKER, Tropic of Capricorn, LP
Hallow Ground
Ltd. orange vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2301
Release date: November 24, 2023

Tracklist:
1. Tropic of Capricorn I (20:00)
2. Tropic of Capricorn II (19:26) 

Credits:
Composed by Werner Dafeldecker & Lawrence English
Field Recordings - Lawrence English 
Treatments - Werner Dafeldecker
Cover photo by Lawrence English

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/lawrence-english-werner-dafeldecker-tropic-of-capricorn

Tropic of Capricorn

Lawrence English / Werner Dafeldecker - Tropic of Capricorn II

MUSIQUE INFINIE, Earth, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2401, EAN: 0602343041797

Tracklist:
1. Creation (14:25)
2. Destruction (12:53)

Credits:
Composition and production by Musique Infinie
Mixing and mastering by Suoni Speziali
Photos by Jean-Marc Avila
Design by Laurin Huber
Essay by Laurin Huber

Supported by Popkredit Zürich and Kanton Zürich.

Earth

Musique Infinie - Creation (HG2401)

FUJI||||||||||TA, MMM, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2403
Ltd. purple vinyl / digital
Release date 18. April 2024

FUJI||||||||||TA returns to Hallow Ground with his second full-length for the Swiss label after it had released his international breakthrough album »iki« in early 2020. Active since 2006, the Japanese composer and sound artist has become prolific since the release of »iki,« releasing a slew of records while also touring the world. His new album »MMM« is Yosuke Fujita’s most complex so far. Changing the set-up of his pipe organ by switching to an electric air pump allowed him to activate new sonic and compositional potentials of the instrument, while he also expanded upon his experiments with his own voice. »MMM« is a masterpiece of conceptual and formal rigour—a testament to how multi-layered and versatile the music of FUJI||||||||||TA can be. 

Previous releases had already showcased Fujita's interest in working with the rhythmic potentials of the organ he built himself in 2009. Replacing its hand-operated air pump with an electric one allowed him to work with it more freely and simultaneously record its sounds. This marked the starting point for the opener »M-1,« for which he recorded the pipes by waving a gun microphone close to it, thus creating shifting rhythmic patterns. The piece engages in a perpetual play of repetition and difference, balancing sonic intensity with compositional dramaturgy. For »M-2,« the artist uses his voice and works with a singing technique he has developed over more than a decade: constantly exhaling and inhaling, he puts a strain on his internal organs in order to create what he calls a »third voice.« The resulting piece is built on a throbbing rhythmic foundation topped by wordless melodies.

»M-3« closes the album as a synthesis of these two pieces, but is far more than the mere sum of its parts. The subtle tonal shifts of the organ take on a more subdued role this time, and Fujita’s scat growling and singing reappears in processed form. »M-3« combines the rhythms and melodies of the previous pieces to let something entirely new emerge out of them, much like the album is based on perpetual changes and recombinatory strategies. In fact, Fujita explains, the acronymic title can be read in many ways: this album is minimalistic, but freely mixes and mingles different materials in magical and even metaphorical ways while also paying its dues to his wife and daughter—M. and M. Just like its title can mean a lot of different things, »MMM« itself is ever-evolving, traversing different moods and opening itself up to a plethora of interpretations at each of its many turns.

FUJI||||||||||TA  -  M-3

SIMINA OPRESCU, Sound of Matter, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2402, EAN: 0602343041803

Tracklist:
1. Sound of Matter I (16:16)
2. Sound of Matter II (19:19)

Credits:
Composed, mixed, and written in Berlin, December 2022 – February 2023 by Simina Oprescu
Mastering by Lawrence English
Master cut by Andreas Lupo Lubich
Artwork by Laurin Huber
Essay by Simina Oprescu

Sound of Matter

Simina Oprescu - Sound of Matter II (excerpt) (HG2402)

KATELYN CLARK & MITCH RENAUD, Ouroboros, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2406
Ltd. vinyl / digital
Release date: 04.04.2025

On Katelyn Clark and Mitch Renaud's »Ouroboros,« astronomical and astrological phenomena, concepts and symbols such as the Great Year or the Eternal Return serve as the starting points for sonic explorations and experimentations. Focusing on a uniquely tempered range of frequencies, from low-end drone rumbles to airy pipe swirls, the duo develops a minimalist and highly evocative sonic universe on their debut album for Hallow Ground.

Working as composers, improvisers and curators in Canada's vibrant experimental and early music scenes, Clark and Renaud began developing »Ouroboros« through extensive improvisation with a reduced setup. Clark, who has worked extensively with historical keyboards since her studies in Amsterdam and Siena, played a small pipe organ modeled after a 14th-century instrument while Renaud brought a modular synthesizer and his interest in feedback systems to the collaboration. Later, the duo further refined their artistic dialog and the sonic interactions of the two instruments through the shared space of a two day recording session in Vancouver. Subtle crackling, acoustic beating and other (psycho-)acoustic effects in five pieces document this encounter, giving the music a profound physicality while hinting at the bodily presence of the two collaborators.

Just as the cyclicality of natural phenomena or the repetition of planetary movements is both a scientific fact and of the cultural imaginary, the sound worlds of »Ouroboros« are fundamentally rooted in time and space while transgressing the idea of a »here and now« through their conceptual links to geological and planetary time. The interplay of portative organ and modular synthesizer, which merge fluidly and in ever-changing ways, leads to a kind of circularity, a timelessness, a no-time. At the same time, the movements and subtle changes undermine the idea of repetition in the negative sense. After all, the Eternal Return, as Gilles Deleuze writes in regard to Nietzsche, is not the return of the same but a repetition of repetition. The only constant is change, the production of new intensities, of new forms of life – and of new frequencies.

Credits:
Music by Katelyn Clark and Mitch Renaud
Recorded and mixed by Aaron Klassen at Monarch Studios in Vancouver
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu (Schwebung Mastering)
Artwork by Laurin Huber

Ouroboros

Katelyn Clark & Mitch Renaud - Ouroboros (HG2406)

MIKI YUI, As If, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2404
Ltd. vinyl / digital
Release date 06. Sept. 2024

Miki Yui is a musician, artist, and composer, originally from Tokyo, who has been based in Düsseldorf since 1994. Her whose work has long explored multiple forms of media, while documenting liminal zones of perception. On her latest album, As If, Yui creates a subtly connected suite of electronic music, drawn from improvisations and randomised processes that she has engaged with modular synthesis. Deeply poetic in its expression, even at its most minimal, the six pieces on As If have a curious tenor – they are, each of them, intensely sensuous, almost haptic listening experiences, as though the laser focus that Yui displays towards her compositions allows her to engage them as almost physical presences in the world.

One of the keys that unlocks the intimate complexity-in-simplicity of As If was Yui’s encounters with the Amazonian rainforest in Manaus, Brazil in 2018. Finding that the sounds in the rainforest both shadowed and echoed the music she had been making for two decades, she embraced the possibilities of modular synthesis, the sounds of which she discovered “have astonishing similarities to the sounds I experienced in the rainforest.” There is, indeed, something natural about the way these sounds bloom in real time; in their dedicated focus to the subtle development and mutation of several discrete parameters of sound, they grow slowly, gradually, their rhizomic structures suggesting that we are always situated within the middle of sound.

Sometimes, the material here has a kind of febrile energy, as on the ticking, clacking electronics of “Generativ”, a track that seems to rotate in the air in front of the listener, the light reflecting off its multiple surfaces as we catch the intricacies of its micro-patterns. Elsewhere, we slide into a cooled but welcoming environment, like the late-night fire-fly horizon of “Song 4”; there’s also the humid, dripping tropical sunset that’s documented on “Summernight”. It’s a music that’s hard to locate external coordinates for, though there are, perhaps, some parallels with the work of Laurie Spiegel, Eliane Radigue’s Vice Versa, and Pauline Oliveros’s “Roots of the Moment”. But As If is an extraordinary collection of naturally developing, rich studies for slowly mutating, enveloping, elemental electronics.

Miki Yui - Ur

Following a run of chamber recordings, Samuel Reinhard returns with a suite of electroacoustic collages. 

"Movement", the New York–based composer’s latest offering, is built from notes softly held. In his ongoing investigation of musical duration, perception, and attention, Reinhard deemphasizes progress through an embrace of repetition and negative space, inviting listeners to linger in time. Instrumental recordings are arranged according to a predetermined system, iterating fragments of sound in overlapping intervals of various sizes. Delicately layered snippets of decaying piano are joined by cello (Leila Bordreuil), bass flute (John Also Bennett), double bass (Vincent Yuen Ruiz), baritone sax (Michael Biel), and harp (Shelley Burgon). This breadth of instrumentation, arriving as individual notes stretched and overlapped, is treated not as an opportunity for immersive coalescence, but rather a gentle augmentation of texture, free-floating counterpoint. Notes are accompanied by the traces of the bodies and actions that produce them: a hand pressing a key or an arm keeping a bow aloft; breath filling an instrument’s body or glancing off its surface; a string vibrating and then softening to stillness. In sum, we hear resonance in the process of being sustained, as well as in the release that follows.

Movement is a joint release from Hallow Ground and Präsens Editionen, and follows offerings by Kali Malone, Lawrence English, and FUJI||||||||||TA  on Hallow Ground, and Robert Turman, Magda Drozd, and Anna Homler on Präsens Editionen.

Samuel Reinhard - No. 1

COH - Fiat Sol (HG2477)

From the album Chronotopia out on June 6th 2025

One Day

»La Traversée« (»The Crossing«) is Matthias Puech’s second album for Hallow Ground and follows up on 2023’s »Mt. Hadamard National Park.« Profoundly inspired by re-reading »The Odyssey,« the French composer, instrument designer, and scholar used a Eurorack modular synthesizer to create four pieces that are by far the most intuitive and emotionally charged in his ever-expanding catalogue. Puech’s masterful command of sound comes to the forefront with even more urgency on this record. A wandering meditation on the human condition, »La Traversée« is an album that is constantly in motion—complex electronic music at its most gripping and evocative.

The foundation for »La Traversée« was laid when Puech prepared a live set for a tour organised in collaboration with Hallow Ground in support of »Mt. Hadamard National Park.« Before writing the first three pieces—»Ennosigaios,« »Polyphármakos,« »Nekuia«—the 18½-minute-long »Ithâké« was composed in near-total isolation in the South of France at the end of 2023. Puech performed the material live several times before taking a step black from it for a while. He revisited the pieces when preparing them for a release. »I was struck by how the technical process and the intention behind the music had completely vanished from my memory,« he says.

What remained intact, however, was Puech’s association of the material with one of the most influential texts of Western literature. Reading a graphic novel adaptation of »The Odyssey« with his two four-year-olds, he noticed the effect that it had on them and himself. »Its themes of longing, fear of and attraction to the unknown, unresolved quests, and the struggle for control felt topical,« he says. »I was completely taken. Every story ever told seemed contained in this ancient tale; every story I have ever tried to tell as a composer seemed inscribed in this framework.« This also extended to formal motifs such as the repetition of incidents, narrative developments, or dramatic effects that also mark »La Traversée.«

Puech says that he perceived Homer’s writing as musical, »like an old Delta blues or a Renaissance counterpoint,« which inspired his writing process. »With a couple of knobs on my Eurorack system, I could control the unfolding of a story,« he notes. »This made me pass through different emotional states and led to moments in which everything made sudden sense—when you as an artist get a glimpse at something essential, can touch upon something universal.« This shines through »La Traversée,« a wildly imaginative album that is deeply personal while also telling a story far more wide-reaching than that of its creator.

Composed, recorded and mixed by Matthias Puech
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
Cover: excerpt from J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842)
Drawing by Matthias Puech

La Traversée

Ennosigaios

«UnKnown»

Lookout

RAPHAEL LOHER - Hug of Gravity, 2LP
Limited Art Edition Vinyl / Digital
Hallow Ground
HG2507
Release Date Oct. 17th 2025
https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/raphael-loher-hug-of-gravity

»Hug of Gravity« is the second solo album by Raphael Loher and his first for Hallow Ground. The Swiss pianist and composer uses piano preparations, tape machines, and digital means to forge an aesthetic of playful reduction and rhythmic abstraction. The source material for these four sprawling pieces was culled from recordings of the artist performing the album’s predecessor, 2022’s »Keemuun.« Loher used them in a painstaking two-part working process to create an album that is both a product of and an ode to transformation, exploring themes of alternative temporalities and spatialities. »Hug of Gravity« oscillates between experimental electronic music, ambient, and minimal music and calls to mind the work of artists like William Basinski, Linda Catlin Smith, or label mate Andrius Arutiunian.

Loher laid the foundation for »Hug of Gravity« in 2020 with ten solo performances at his studio, during which he presented the pieces from his debut album. For these intimate concerts, he prepared the piano with modelling clay in order to move beyond the well-tempered tuning that dominates most of Western music. He then used a consecutive three-month residency in the Blenio Valley to refine the recordings. »I cut up and rearranged the material, then transferred the results—around 30 pieces—to a varispeed tape machine and then back to the computer. After that was done, I cut them up and rearranged them again,« he laughs. By radically reworking the material, he created an album that eschews traditional notions of time and space.

Loher points out the influence that his surroundings had on him. »The process created the music—and the place was essential to the process.« he says. He wandered through the mountains for up to nine or ten hours a day, which gave him a sense of what he calls expanded temporality. »Time just felt longer, my experiences seemed more diverse and nuanced, and it was as if I perceived my environment more clearly,« he explains. This shift in Loher’s perception of time and space—the latter also expressed in the album’s title—influenced his work with the varispeed tape machine. It allowed him to change the pitch of different recordings while layering them to let interference patterns emerge and emphasise the emotional qualities of the unconventional tunings he had used.

In this way, Loher constructed numerous interlocking narrative arcs throughout »Hug of Gravity,« an album that is ever-changing; an exercise in calm ecstasy that provides its audience with the feeling of being removed from conventional time and space. This approach is also reflected in the artwork for »Hug of Gravity,« which is based on drawings Loher made during his residency at Blenio Valley. Their fine hand-drawn lines run in parallel and let incidental patterns emerge, an effect that is only multiplied when the six different drawings that accompany each vinyl copy of the album are overlapping, forming ever-new visual constellations.

Credits:
All music written, recorded and mixed by Raphael Loher
Recorded 2020 in Lucerne Mixed from 2023 to 2024 at Cima Citta Valle Blenio
Mastered 2024 by Manuel Egger at Suburban Sound, Winterthur 
Lacquer cut by LUPO
Design by Dorothee Dähler and Kaj Lehmann
Artwork by Raphael Loher

Hug of Gravity I (Excerpt)

SOII BLANC

(c)2017 by Dedekind Cut,
(p)2017 by Hallow Ground,
Buy the digital album here: http://bit.ly/2pUJVN2
Buy the Vinyl and Tape here: http://bit.ly/2pUJVN2
Distributed by A-Musik and Cargo Rec.

BUY VINYL / CS

DEDEKIND CUT - Lil Puffy Coat

HG1706 - Hallowground.com
Buy the vinyl or digital album here: http://bit.ly/2xwBugg
Distributed by A-Musik and Cargo Rec.

BUY VINYL / DIGITAL

MARTINA LUSSI - Citrin

HG1707 - Hallowground.com
Buy the vinyl or digital album here: bit.ly/2xwBugg
Distributed by A-Musik and Cargo Rec.

GONER - YS 2

HG1803 - Hallowground.com
Buy the vinyl or digital album here: http://bit.ly/2xwBugg
Distributed by A-Musik and Cargo Rec.

KALI MALONE - Cast Of Mind

MARIA W HORN, Epistasis, LP

Release date - Oct 25th 2019 
Catalogue nr. - HG1904
Format - Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
A1) Interlocked Cycles I 	(10:45)
A2) Epistasis 			(09:31)
B1) Konvektion 			(13:16)
B2) Interlocked Cycles II 	(09:46)

Credits:
All music composed, recorded and mixed by Maria W Horn
Linnea Hällqvist - violin
Knapp Brita Pettersson - violin
Maria Jonsson - viola
Natalia Goldmann - cello
Johanna Niederbacher - cello
Mats Erlandsson - electric guitar
David Granström - electric guitar
Johannes Landgren - organ 
Fredrik Lundqvist - organ

Mastering by Lawrence English
Design by Ruth Stofer

Promotion by Dense Promotion, ed@dense.de 
Distribution by Cargo Records and a-Musik
Released by Hallow Ground

///
Following the success of her 2018 solo debut album »Kontrapoetik,« the Swedish composer Maria W Horn returns with »Epistasis,« her most ambitious record to date. The title track, »Konvektion« and the two parts of »Interlocked Cycles« see the XKatedral co-founder explore radical approaches to composition that combine avantgarde methods with electronic means. While »Kontrapoetik« highlighted Horn’s strength as a conceptual and political artist, »Epistasis« is to be understood as an advanced statement by a forward-thinking composer who throughout four pieces channels her influences, ranging from black metal to minimal music, through state-of-the-art technology. 
Originally composed as an audiovisual piece for synchronised multichannel sound and lights and premiered in 2018 at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, »Interlocked Cycles« is a series of pieces exploring a gradual increase in tempo and density using various instruments. It was written to be performed by a computer-controlled upright Disklavier piano while the electronic part was generated within the Supercollider framework using phase modulation synthesis. Navigating between acoustic and electronic sounds, the two parts of »Interlocked Cycles« create a frame for the album by respectively serving as an introduction and coda to Horn’s musical exploration of the notions of authenticity and artificiality.
The nine and a half minute long title track was composed for an eight-voice double string quartet and draws on evolving progressions in F minor that were inspired by the sound and harmonic structures of early nineties doom and black metal music. During the performance of »Epistasis,« which was commissioned by Konstmusiksystrar and premiered by Malvakvartetten at Konserthuset in Stockholm 2018, four parts are played by the string quartet and four parts are played back electronically. Using various amplification techniques, the spectral characteristics of the string instruments are enhanced and distorted and were later on complemented by feedbacking electric guitar overdubs while mixing the piece. The result are densely layered drones that are most unsettling when they are the quietest and reveal their anthemic qualities in their most forceful moments.
The structure of »Konvektion« however takes its cues from a very different field of the musical world. The composition progresses in a way that was inspired by Arvo Pärt’s »Tintinnabuli« technique, where step-by-step diatonic movement interplays with triads to form a complex harmonic function that is still rooted in tonality. Based around four-note chords articulated as dyads and performed by two organists on the same instrument, the duration of each dyad is measured by the individual breaths of the two performers while pitches are predetermined in the score of the piece. The alternating breathing cycles of the performers slowly move the piece forward at a glacial pace. Simultaneously, an electronic part composed of interference tones creating high and low frequency beating patterns gradually unfolds, making »Konvektion« an exercise in minimalism that combines the subtle gravity of Phill Niblock’s work with the visceral theatrality of Anna von Hausswolff’s organ pieces.

-

Epistasis

MARIA W HORN - Epistasis (HG1904)

FUJI||||||||||TA, iki, LP

Release date - April 3th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2003
Format - Ltd. Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Credits:
All music composed, played and Recorded by FUJI|||||||||||TA
Mixed by Makoto Oshiro
Mastering by Lawrence English at Negative Space

Tracklist:
1) keshiki (09:42)
2) nNami (09:20)
3) osoi (10:12)
4) sukima (07:03)

///
"FUJI|||||||||||TA has created a work that operates as a beautiful nexus between the material and immaterial qualities of music. 
It is a lived-in dreamscape of deep, rich tonality. A remarkable debut."
(Lawrence English)

///
FUJI||||||||||TA, real name FUJITA Yosuke, is a Japanese sound artist. After countless performances in different contexts either solo or along artists such as Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms and the legendary avant-gardist SUZUKI Akio as well as a slew of solo releases, his LP »iki« (»breath«) for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label is his first in nine years. On these four pieces, Fujita explores the idiosyncratic sound qualities of the pipe organ he has built all by himself in 2009. This - quite literally unique - instrument features only eleven pipes, an air pump called »fuigo« which was modelled after a traditional blacksmith’s one and has no keyboard. Inspired by traditional gagaku, it was designed to evoke rich landscapes rather function as just another musical instrument. While his previous records saw FUJI||||||||||TA explore various modes of abstraction, »iki« is a highly emotive yet meditative album, musically restrained but full of imagination.

»keshiki« immediately sets the mood for this record with a long sustained note that is punctuated by the soft clicking of Fujita’s air pump. Once Fujita carefully starts bringing melodies into play, the interplay of the drone and the discrete rhythmic element gives way to a fuller harmonic whole. »keshiki« is an intimate piece that perfectly displays the artist’s knack for painting a rich sonic picture with only a reduced palette. »nNami« juxtaposes the sounds of two pipes that are out of tune with each other, creating a hypnotic sensation of ebb and flow (»nami« translates to »wave«) that is full of subtle friction. It’s a staggering artistic interpretation of the instrument’s material characteristics. Clocking in at ten minutes, »osoi« (»slow«) is an overall melancholic piece that explores the relationship between different tone colours through minute changes in pace. Finally, »sukima« (»blank space«) is the shortest and the most rhythmic piece of the four. Composed of only staccati, it is a masterful exploration of the harmonic qualities Fujita’s stunning pipe organ has to offer.

Recorded between September and December of 2019, »iki« marks the culmination of FUJI||||||||||TA’s ten-year-long work with the instrument that he had built without any prior knowledge and started to teach himself to play without a manual in sight. It is, in other words, the unique result of a unique musical mind paying his dues to the uniqueness of his own creation; introspective and welcoming at once.

FUJI||||||||||TA - osoi (HG2003)

MARJA AHTI, The Current Inside, LP

Release date - May 8th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2004
Format - Ltd. Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1.The Altitudes (20:09)
2.The Currents (04:21)
3.Lost Lake (04:25)
4.Fluctuating Streams (06:12)
5.Sundial (04:43)

Credits:
Composition, production, mixing: Marja Ahti 
Voice: Johanna Kalliokulju 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi 
Cover artwork by Niko Karlsson and design by Juri Puhakka

The Altitudes was commissioned by Ina GRM as part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The work was supported in part by Arts Promotion Centre Finland. Synthesizers recorded at EMS, Stockholm and Ina GRM, Paris. Voice recorded at IAC, Malmö. Field recordings from various locations in Finland, Sweden and Croatia. 

Thanks to Olli Aarni, Niko-Matti Ahti, François Bonnet, Jason Dungan, Jonna Karanka, Laura Naukkarinen and Remo Seeland.

///
The Current Inside”, Marja Ahti's sophomore album for Hallow Ground, plays with the theme of currents - connecting and animating movements in the form of air, water and electricity. It approaches sound as a poetic medium, focusing both on the experience of sound as form and energy and on a loosely narrative arc, suggesting a riddle on the relations between the sounds. It implements alternative as well as intuitive tunings, analog and digital synthesis, recordings of sonorous spaces and vessels, electromagnetic fields transduced into audio, acoustic close-ups of elements in motion and other field recordings. Fluently connecting quite diverse sound sources, Ahti's music lingers in a zone between abstract sonorities and vaguely familiar acoustic environments.
The first half of the album consists of ”The Altitudes”, a piece commissioned by Ina GRM for Présences Électronique and Sonic Acts. It was inspired by descriptions of the layers of Earth's atmosphere. Imagining a movement through layers of air, the piece unfolds with a slow intensity, interweaving concrete sounds and closely tuned electronic sonorities. Traversing the altitudes, a landscape of entangled elements, masses and currents emerges. The air around us has weight and it presses against everything it touches. As gravity pulls it to Earth, it is sensed as pressure. The rotation of the planet, the angle of the sun at any new moment sets the elements in motion in a chain reaction. 
The other side consists of four shorter pieces. ”The Currents” opens with a dance of trembling charged movements. ”Lost Lake” extracts resonant tones from a trail of close-up recordings of winter environments, while ”Fluctuating Streams” channels streaming air in different forms. The closing track, ”Sundial”, could be construed as the steady turning of the planetary angle towards the sun, unfolding through fragments of everyday activity against the backdrop of piercing, slowly twisting, suspended tone.
Marja Ahti (b. 1981) is a musician and composer based in Turku, Finland. Originally from Sweden, Ahti has been a part of the Finnish experimental music scene for more than ten years in different constellations. She is currently active in the duo Ahti & Ahti with her partner and as a member of the Himera artist/organizer collective. Her critically acclaimed 2019 solo debut, Vegetal Negatives, explored a new formal language and sonic palette inspired by a short text by René Daumal.

MARJA AHTI - Fluctuating Streams (HG2004)

Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin - ARBA, DÂK ARBA - LP

Release date - June 5th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2005
Format - Ltd. Vinyl/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1. Grotta (14:29)
2. Amena (06:43)
3. Fumes (08:29)
4. Hieromancy (09:07)
5. Hereafter (04:54)

Credits:
Irena Z. Tomažin: voice
Frédéric D. Oberland: electric hurdy-gurdy (boîte à bourdons V) and processing
Recorded and mixed by Romain Poirier at Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts, in Tourcoing. Edited by Fanny Béguély, Frédéric D. Oberland & Romain Poirier at Mer Noir, in Paris. 
Mastered by Lawrence English.

///
Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« was conceived as the soundtrack for the eponymous installation piece by the French artist Fanny Béguély. First presented as part of the group exhibition »Panorama 21 - ›Les Revenants‹« at Tourcoing’s Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in December 2019, Béguély’s chemically painted photographs focused on humankind’s propensity for self-examination and its attempts to probe the mysteries of the past, present and future. Oberland’s heavily processed electric hurdy-gurdy, the »boîte à bourdons,« provides the foundation upon which the Borghesia member Tomažin unfolds her gripping vocal magic(k). Their dense mesh of soundscapes and singing mediate between the mystic and the modern, the natural and the all-too-unreal to further examine our persistent desire to decipher the signs we find in nature. As the first collaboration between these prolific experimental artists, »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« is as evocative and thought-provoking as the art that has inspired it.

It’s easy to see why a curious instrument like Oberland’s electric hurdy-gurdy would be well suited for the duo’s ends, and within its first few minutes the opening track »Grotta« makes it clear that the Oiseaux-Tempête co-founder is more than capable of weaving dark psychedelic sound tapestries with only limited means. The ritualistic energy that Béguély’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« draws on is channeled through abstract drones that mirror the aesthetics of the eight suspended paper rolls the artist’s audience were faced with. When the music becomes denser and Tomažin finally enters the picture with her signature glossolalic vocal performance, it seems as if the drones emanating from her musical partner’s curious instrument bleed right into her voice. Even as the sound of the boîte à bourdons becomes more visceral and Tomažin’s voice more discernible, »Grotta« remains as intangible as the mythological oracles that had informed the work of Béguély. Shorter pieces like »Amena« or the closing track »Hereafter,« though condensed, offer just as much to decipher - a whole musical world to get lost in, full of riddles and uncertainties.

»Fumes« and »Hieromancy« in the second half of the LP are the best examples of how much creative friction lies at the heart of the French experimentalist and the Slovenian singer’s collaboration. While in the former song, Tomažin first takes the lead singing uncanny, circular motives before stepping aside so Oberland can let the processed sounds of his hurdy-gurdy evolve into chilling crescendi, the latter sees both of them take turns in channeling the pervasive mysticism around them. Blurring the lines between the physical and psychic as well as the real and the hallucionary with their music, Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« is one of the most radical albums in recent years. An unsettling dialogue between two kindred, yet freely wandering spirits.

Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin - edits(HG2005)

SIAVASH AMINI, A Mimesis Of Nothingness, LP

Release date - Aug 28th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2006
Format - Vinyl with 8-page booklet/digital

https://hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1) Lustrous Residue (07:59)
2) Perpetually Inwards  (02:58)
3) Moonless Garden  (08:50)
4) Observance (Shadow)  (05:32)
5) A Collective Floundering  (06:48)
6) The Stillborn Baroque  (03:31)

Credits:
All Music Composed by Siavash Amini
Written and Recorded in Tehran 2018-2019
Based on Photographs of Tehran by Nooshin Shafiee
Booklet Photographs by Nooshin Shafiee
Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space
Cover Photo Nooshin Shafiee
Cover design Ruth Stofer and Greenpointless

///
Siavash Amini returns to Hallow Ground  with »A Mimesis of Nothingness,« his fourth album for the Swiss label. Following up on »Harmistice« together with fellow Iranian artists 9T Antiope, the six tracks were conceived in close collaboration with another artist and see the prolific composer intensify his interdisciplinary approach. The six tracks enter a dialogue with the photographs of Nooshin Shafiee, an acclaimed artist whose work capturing their hometown Tehran becomes the starting point for one of Amini’s most visceral and haunting records. »A Mimesis of Nothingness« translates the ephemeral situations and melancholic moods of Shafiee’s pictures into suspenseful soundscapes that masterfully navigate between the concrete and the abstract.

Amini met Shafiee while setting up the sound art space SEDA Projects at the Emkan gallery in Tehran where the photographer’s second solo exhibition was shown. Following the suggestion of curator Behzad Nejadghanbar, the two started a fruitful collaboration that would eventually lead to »A Mimesis of Nothingness,« which was written and recorded between the years 2018 and 2019 and which includes a booklet with a selection of Shafiee’s work. The two share an interest in exploring the sensual experience and the metaphysical dimensions of space. »I was fascinated by Nooshin’s approach,« explains Amini who, ever since releasing the album »TAR« through Hallow Ground in 2017, has focused on how our experience of places is shaped by the individual and collective subconscious. »It wasn’t the Tehran that everyone projected into their work, it was Tehran showing itself through tiny and giant overlooked places or objects.«

Amini’s music accordingly does not seek out a specific sonic picture of the city, but rather lets it come alive on its own terms. »A Mimesis of Nothingness« is a disquieting record precisely because it is a quiet one. Working with field recordings, Amini sculpts dynamic portraits that create an atmosphere of tangible suspense that is never fully released. Even when string-like sounds enter the picture as they do on the third track »Moonless Garden« or when the abstract and glacial noise on »Observance (Shadow)« demand the listener’s attention, the six pieces take hold of the subconscious rather than trying to be direct and confrontational. It is sound conceived not as a description, but a circumscription of spatial relations and the eeriness embedded in them. 

»We both saw something decadent or violent about all of these captured places and objects,« says the composer about Shafiee’s pictures. »There is no resolution, just excess. It seems they are eternal remnants of a violent scene, no matter how new or old they were. Never finished, never begotten, a stillborn.« Throughout »A Mimesis of Nothingness,« its ghost roams freely.

SIAVASH AMINI - Moonless Garden (HG2006)

MIKI YUI, Aperio!, LP
Release date - Sept 25th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2007
Format - Vinyl/digital

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1) Listening (oneness) 10:03 
2) Dancing (swamp) 04:00 
3) Chanting (afar) 03:57 
4) Dreaming (now) 05:25
5) Rhyming (colours) 02:58
6) Breathing (buds) 04:10
7) Babbling (mono) 04:45

Credits:
Music and Mix Miki Yui at MY Studio Düsseldorf
Mastering Giuseppe Ielasi
Drawing Excerpt Miki Yui 
Cover Design Ruth Stofer

///
The title of Miki Yui’s seventh solo album “Aperio!” is derived from the latin origin of April, "aperire" meaning “to open” or “to reveal”. Hinting at the way her music unveils another reality which is hidden beneath the surface. The title also reflects the aperiodic character of the music, its irregularity. Like a magic word to reveal the mysterious cosmos, each song opens up another intimate world of wonders.

„All my work emerges from my physical experience, the inspiration often comes much later though, after the experience is digested and almost forgotten, then it crystallises and becomes a source for my music.“

It is indeed no accident that the first track of „Aperio!“ is entitled
„Listening (oneness)“: it vibrates for ten full minutes with and within us. It reflects the art of Miki Yui coming into existence. The Düsseldorf based Japanese artist approaches the world around her from a sensual perspective rather than in an analytic-logical way, still both paradigms of art production manifest their influence on the process.
Miki Yui says: „In my music, I play the game of turning the abstract into concrete and vice versa.“

This is obvious in all of the compositions on „Aperio!“. Her music combines otherworldly and dream world experiences, creating environments of multiple atmospheres, both warm and inviting but at times irritatingly cold and airless. They stimulate all kinds of feelings in us: astonishment, sadness, yearning, wondering, and hope.
For her it does not matter where the elements of her cobweb originate: from field recordings to abstract and artificial creations to electroacoustic sounds. She remarks, “revealing the source would only limit the imagination of the listeners. My sounds exist to trigger their own imagination“

Miki Yui is born in Tokyo, based in Düsseldorf. Crossing the boundary of music and fine art, she is known for her unique minimalistic and organic approach towards music since 1999 exploring the grey zone of our perception and imagination.
Since 2008, parallel to her own work, she is in charge of the Klaus Dinger Archive, who was her partner.

- Text by Thomas Venker

MIKI YUI - Dreaming (now)(HG2007)

Mats Erlandsson – Minnesmärke - LP
Release date - Nov 6th 2020
Catalogue nr. - HG2008
Format - Vinyl / digital

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1. Vilja 	(19:08)
2. Slakt	(22.03)

Credits:
Hilary Jeffery - Trombone, Tuba
Gaianeh Pilossian - Violin
Yair Elazar Glotman - Double Bass
Mats Erlandsson - Everything Else
Mastering by Andreas Lupo Lubich
Artwork by Marijn Degenaar

///
Mats Erlandsson makes his debut on the Swiss label Hallow Ground with »Minnesmärke,« at once a nuanced sonic exploration of the industrial and political history of his native Sweden and a deeply personal album. One of the key figures of the Stockholm drone scene, the prolific composer worked with The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble’s Hillary Jeffery, violinist and long-time friend Gaianeh Pilossian as well as sound artist and frequent collaborator Yair Elazar Glotman for a two-part composition built around tuned sustained tones performed by electronic and acoustic instruments that were combined with field recordings in order to evoke a psychedelic state of reflection, a dream-like elegy for the acoustic properties of the former iron ore mine Ställbergs Gruva where the music has been conceived and recorded. Following up on releases on labels such as Hallow Ground label mates Kali Malone and Maria W Horn’s XKatedral imprint, »Minnesmärke« is Erlandsson's most accomplished work yet. 
Originally a commissioned work by the Non Existent Center for a month-long artist residency in Ställbergs Gruva last Summer, »Minnesmärke« conceptually picks up on the socio-political and economic history of the Bergslagen region where the mine is situated. After mining operations had been on-going for decades prior, in the Industrial Age iron became one of the country’s largest exports, making the mining industry an integral part of the country’s progression towards a socialdemocratic welfare state in the years after World War II. With the rise of neoliberalism and the simultaneous erosion of the welfare state however, the mines around the region started closing, which resulted in the surrounding community losing its relative prosperity. Erlandsson’s interest in this story though does not exclusively stem from the historical significance of the mine, that has been re-opened in 2012 as a centre for cultural activities and critical thought. In fact, his grandfather was born and raised in the vicinity of it and thus his life - and, by extension, his grandson’s - was inextricably linked to its fate and the ebbs and flows of the industrial development in the area. 
It’s no surprise then that the two parts of »Minnesmärke,« which translates to »memorial« or »monument,« is marked by a sense of dislocation and dissociation. »Working in Ställberg was a somewhat surreal experience from the point of view of a musician some one hundred years later,« says the artist. »Being in that environment makes you view time from the side - since the place remains the same it accentuates the deep chasm that separates my perspective from those of my relatives, while at the same time providing a form of intimacy with them.« This naturally shaped the recording process, which saw Erlandsson create an interaction between the acoustic and the electronic, the human and the machinic as well as the natural environment and the technology that has shaped it as much as it has been shaped by it. A combination of synthetic and recorded sound sources was processed by reamping it in various rooms of the vast mining complex. The resulting hybrid field recordings were transferred to tape and have then been treated extensively. An arrangement for Pilossian’s violin, Jeffery’s tuba and trombone playing as well as Glotman’s parts on double bass were recorded separately and similarly manipulated to create an expanded chamber ensemble with a wider range and an ability to transcend the usual temporal bounds of the instruments.

MATS ERLANDSSON - Vilja (edit)(HG2008)

NORMAN WESTBERG & JACEK MAZURKIEWICZ, First Man in the Moon - LP
Release date - March 12th 2021
Catalogue nr. - HG2101
Format - Vinyl / digital
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2101

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
What Is Good For The Goose (09:35)
That Was Then (08:29)
First Man In The Moon (06:45)
Falsely Accused (06:33)
Oxnard (05:47)

Credits:
Recorded at Studio Diamentowy Pies
Damian Pielka, engineering
Piotr Mazurek, engineering assistance
Jacek Mazurkiewicz, mix
Lawrence English, mastering
John Fell, photographs
Greenpointless, design

///
An unlikely meeting of two like-minded spirits, »First Man in the Moon« sees the former Swans guitarist and Hallow Ground regular Norman Westberg and the prolific double bass player Jacek Mazurkiewicz collaborate for five evocative tracks. The pair finds common ground beyond the boundaries of atmospheric drone, abstract jazz and experimental music and blurs the lines between the acoustic and the electronic. 

The two first met when the composer Mazurkiewicz supported Swans with his solo project 3FoNIA on their 2014 European tour. »I really enjoyed his approach,« says Westberg about the Polish musician’s blending of the acoustic qualities of his instrument with electronically generated sounds. A decision to collaborate was made and when the US-American musician returned to Eastern Europe to support Michael Gira on his solo tour in late 2019, Mazurkiewicz reached out to him with the idea of booking some studio time before Gira’s two concerts in Warsaw. »Recording was very fun and easy,« remembers Westberg. »It was just two people enjoying hearing and reacting to what the other is doing.«

»First Man in the Moon« is not however a plain document of these improvised sessions, but also shaped by Mazurkiewicz’s approach as a composer. Once the recordings were finished, he selected and edited the recorded material, refining the peculiar dialogue between the guitarist’s meditative drones and bright chords and his own rhythmic yet subtle approach to playing the double bass, sometimes plucking the strings and occasionally using his bow to underscore Westberg’s fleeting melodies, but also using the instrument in unconventional ways to generate sound. 

A feeling of weightlessness prevails throughout the aptly-titled »First Man in the Moon.« Even at their most abstract however, these five improvisations-turned-compositions remain tangible, lively, and joyfully explorative. It is a record that you wouldn’t expect from either of these musicians, but the logical result of two idiosyncratic minds sharing not only space and time, but also their respective visions with each other.

NORMAN WESTBERG & JACEK MAZURKIEWICZ - What Is Good For The Goose (HG2101)

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

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