'Up All Night' is one piece from a folder of unheard electro-acoustic recordings dating from 2019-2022. The ten pieces have been assembled on afolder.studio so that YOU — intrepid supporter of new music and film that you are ☻ — can listen to them outside of the lifeless, zero-quality environments where most music is now consumed [or skipped]. These recordings were lovingly mastered by Russell Haswell and mixed by Powell and Tobin Jones at Park Studios, London. Should you wish to listen to them in higher resolutions [recommended], or just own some music that you buy directly from the artist, you can email the artist direct. He'll send you a unique personalised folder of the music; and you can pay, or not pay, however much you like. Details ➜ https://afolder.studio/af21

Powell ➪ Up All Night [aƒ21]

Vinyl & digital album: kmruahossan.bandcamp.com/album/limen

Released on April 29th, 2022

Last year, Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru (aka KMRU) and French digital alchemist Niamké Désiré (aka Aho Ssan) were invited by Berlin Atonal to collaborate on a project for the festival's Metabolic Rift edition.

The duo had already been working together, but the offer provided the momentum to shift the conversation into another gear. Initially, they looked for thematic connections within their individual practices that might match Kamaru's meditative soundscapes with Désiré's crumbling cyberpunk expressionism, and surprisingly for two artists renowned for their grasp of minimalism, it was the opposite that drew their attention. Watching the world shift as it reacted to the spiraling pandemic, Kamaru and Désiré were moved to experiment with volume, physicality, and intense emotionality.

“I never made something so extreme," Désiré says of the duo's first recording, 2021's 'Ruined Abstractions', an extended composition that matches dense, powerful low-end drones with fractal digital fuzz and smokestack bruit. It set the mood for a back-and-forth that resulted in their seismic debut full-length, "Limen", described by the two acclaimed artists as an attempt to scrutinize the yin and yang of destruction and creation.

Cacophonous, concrete crunches fanfare the album's opening piece 'Resurgence' - the result of their Berlin Atonal commission - but the track refuses to languish in wrecking ball devastation. Instead, powerful synthesized harmonies ring from beneath the rubble, before stifling everything in a humid fuzz of dense, emotionally-charged cinematic electronics.

Influenced by the prescient post-apocalyptic mood of Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" and the mythological phoenix, an immortal bird said to be reborn from the ashes of its dying predecessor, "Limen" is an album that sonically snapshots the anxious, floral beauty of an explosion or the colorful intensity of a raging fire. It's rooted in concepts of duality - the idea something unsettling can be viewed from a different angle and re-interpreted.

On the album's epic, 21-minute centerpiece 'Ruined Abstraction I + II', swirling electromagnetic interference paints a haunted parallel vista that dissolves slowly into subtle, orchestral tones and booming, widescreen thuds.

Almost angelic closing track 'Rebirth' meanwhile is the most unashamedly beautiful composition Kamaru and Désiré have written together, but its choral bliss is doused in petroleum noise and saturated distortion.

"Limen" is an album that seeks to lift a veil of silence from the world, replacing it with maximalist bombast and vivid passion. It's a dynamic piece of work that finds its creators pushing themselves to the limits, deconstructing history as it detonates around us.

All tracks written and produced by Joseph Kamaru
and Niamké Désiré; mastered by Joker

Published by Multiverse Media Publishing
© & ℗ Subtext / Multiverse LTD 2022

subtextrecordings.net/

Limen

Vinyl & digital album

KMRU & Aho Ssan - Ruined Abstractions

Archaic Vaults is pleased to present the first vinyl album for the label, cataloguing ten tracks from ten artists spanning the globe. This curation brings together a multiplicity of genres within the label’s ongoing thematic output - durational ambience, field recordings, oversaturated improvisations and spatialised synthetic loops among them. A diverse cohort of familiar and new collaborators alike.

Edition of 300. Design by Severin Black.

‘Continuing A Worn Out Tradition III’ will be available for pre-order from Friday 5th May 2023 and then shipping from Monday 15th May 2023. Mastered by Owen Pratt at Shepard Tone.

https://archaicvaults.bandcamp.com/album/continuing-a-worn-out-tradition-iii

https://soundcloud.com/archaicvaults
https://soundcloud.com/floraytw

Pre-order

Premiere: Ciaran Jacob & Flora Yin Wong - Dome C [Archaic Vaults]

After releasing "Retain a Breath" last year, @fmsao returns on Imum Coeli with a new full-length album titled "Tales of Severe Damage," which marks his fifth release in his discography. This monumental sonic canvas encompasses a wide spectrum of electronic genres : you can hear elements of ambient and IDM from the 90s and 2000s, passages reminiscent of krautrock from the 70s and 80s, deconstruction, glitch, noise, Soviet electronic music by Eduard Artemyev, video game soundtracks in the spirit of Jesper Kyd and Akira Yamaoka, and much more. FMSAO magically unifies this entire sonic spectrum into a cohesive dramaturgical narrative. We find ourselves in sunlit clearings one moment and in the dimly lit chambers of David Lynch's films the next, while also witnessing something grand and cosmic that defies description. This can be likened to a psychedelic journey with the purpose of healing the soul and addressing profound damages. The album is about the power of overcoming and the strength of the inner light that resides within each of us.

Bandcamp/streaming https://album.link/ic009

FMSAO is the project of Evgeny Shchukin, who also produces as WOLS and in the duo Narcissi. Evgeny is also one of the founders of Fuselab label.

Tales of Severe Damage

FMSAO - Severe Damage

Sorry, the saxophonist was drunk last nite

DJ Conséquences - Local Bands Suck

Drawing from notes and recordings made during the Sonic Acts residency programme 'Overexposed x Lives of Deltas', sound artist Minji Kim aka Unknown Kim tells us about her ongoing research into the sonic qualities of the Zandmotor 'sand engine' experiment in the Netherlands. 

In this episode of the Overexposed Podcast, Andrea Gonzalez speaks with Minji Kim, discussing the interplay between human life and the environment, the sonic qualities of wind and the use of auditory technologies in tracing diverse forms of decay.

Overexposed Podcast interviews participants of Sonic Acts’ annual OVEREXPOSED artistic research residency about artefacts that have moved their artistic practice in a lasting way. Presented and produced by Andrea Gonzalez and Arif Kornweitz of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee. With additional production by Monty Mouw.

Overexposed Podcast: Eavesdropping Environmental Crises with Minji Kim

Scène XXI - 09/11/2023

Aleksandra Słyż 

Aleksandra Slyz is a Polish composer, sound engineer and sound artist graduated from Poznań Academy of Music in Western Poland and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden.
Slyz is creating rich and diverse drone structures in her work highlighting microtonality’s resonances and tensions. She experiments with sonification techniques such as body movement sensors which can be seen in her work with Hypercycle in 2021. Her work lies in between new technology possibilities that enable waves to shape sound qualities and her fantastic classical background. 
Aleksandra Słyż was in 2022 part of the Shape European Union selection, a platform for emerging artists. 
2023 was   in the shadow of AI and AI is going to be part of our lives in a more present and definable way. In the interview Aleksandra explains on the importance of balance between technology and being in the context where truth and media are being challenged by the rise of AI tools.

Inertia Movement pres. Freedom Rucks of Interdependence w/ Ciprian Ocean & Aleksandra Słyż - 1.01.24

I was commissioned by Olympics Music Foundation to create a selection of sound works for Making Manchester, a multi-media performance  exploring real-life stories of migration to the UK. Using live music, poetry and physical theatre, the work explores how these unique family histories, and communities' shared experiences of migration, are woven into the socio-cultural fabric of the city and its people. I recorded 60 pupils from Dean Trust Ardwick (DTA) secondary school, telling their families migration stories. From these recordings I made 4 short pieces relating to the different sections of the performance - home, travelling, arriving & Manchester.

Making Manchester: Home (Excerpt)

"Pulsar Acid" is OUT NOW on SUPERPANG
https://superpang.bandcamp.com/album/pulsar-acid
Watch the video:
https://youtu.be/HrG6n9Wc3KE

*Playback on stereo speakers is recommended, otherwise single stems might not be audible*

Composed and produced by Jung An Tagen & Eric Frye
Software by Marcin Pietruszewski
Mixing and mastering by Jung An Tagen
credits
design: Joe Gilmore
released October 10, 2020

Jung/Frye - "Pulsar Acid"

passing through a narrow aperture, 
envisaging a becoming. 
it refracts,
behold it’s edging shoulders 
for we are one of the same two entities, 
fragmented, consuming the audible.
@nts_live with Breakwave first 30 minutes, @ahossan second 30 minutes.
n1 sin(θ1) = n2 sin(θ2)

Breakwave with Aho Ssan ~ it refracts

Sound Artist, Composer, Storytelling

Currently undertaking a PhD in Composition at The University of Manchesters Novars Research Centre

www.hayleysuviste.co.uk

Making Manchester: Home (Excerpt)

Hayley Suviste

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