from 'Symmetrie und Wahnsinn' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den370
available on all formats at https://denovali.com/sanktotten/

After the 2020 album "Lieder Für Geometrische Stunden", Sankt Otten finally make us happy again with a new release at the beginning of 2022. "Symmetrie Und Wahnsinn" (Symmetry and madness) fits here skillfully, both creatively and musically, in an album series with geometric context.

The album starts unusually buoyant with "Hymne Der Melancholischen Programmierer" (Hymn for sentimental programmers). A Kraut-Pop pearl, which could go on forever with its Motorik swing and with its catchy melody the track doesn't come across as melancholic as the song title predicts. You have to listen twice to not succumb to the illusion that it was composed in Düsseldorf at the end of the seventies. Here (and on the track "Sei Symmetrisch Zu Mir"), Sankt Otten were supported in the studio by drummer friend DIRK PELLMANN.

The drum machine in rumbling funky mode. "Die Glücklichen Unglücklichen", the secret hit of the album? They bend the beat into geometric shapes, let the bass play in circles and cover the song with ghostly choirs. The echo of a spinett-like sound overlays the sound, spitting out a deceptively cuddly dream world.

The 10 minute long "Die Ordnung Des Lärms" could be called an Ambient-Kraut symphony without hesitation. An enormous swelling to ecstasy, a guitar sings distantly in the background. Silence. Synthetic strings pave the way and are supported by choirs. A crackle that suggests a rhythm until it is taken over by a drum computer in the main part of the track. Bombastic mountains of synthesizers pile up and yet a catchy melody finds its way through this mishmash of hypnotic electronics. Fourth movement - Kosmische-choirs in suspension over a bass synth and an Ebow guitar. Is this already Prog-Rock? The question doesn't arise, in the end everything merges into reverb.

"Luftspiegelung Der Sentimentalitäten" begins cautiously with a gentle sequence and a discreet kick drum. The mini-Moog sounds like a guitar. Anyway. A surface floats by and returns, layers and shapes build up. At last, everything melts into perfect harmony with a plaintive-sounding synth. This track was composed as a stripped back reprise of the first track from the last album "Sentimentale Sequenzen".

A hypnotic Motorik-beat of an 808 that encourages head nodding and could almost be danceable. True to style with warm analog 80s electronic sounds and a loose echo guitar. This is "Angekommen In Der letzten Reihe". Man and machine hand in hand as a homogeneous musical unit and the connection of tradition and vision.

Sankt Otten like images of infinity. In the religious sense of meditative mantras, or also in the mathematical sense of an elongated curve that eventually returns to its starting point. "Bis Das Helle Licht Uns Holt" goes exactly in this direction with its classical use of sequencers and a sound carpet of choirs. Sound worlds that, through a clever repetitiveness, barely noticeably guard the constant changes in the compositional mesh like a secret and only reveal what is to be discovered by listening closely and letting it be seen. Such a thing is probably called Berlin School?

The Osnabrück duo Sankt Otten, founded in 1999, has been releasing on Denovali since 2009. With their now 12th album they give us again a gem of timeless instrumental music. The holy trinity of Krautrock, Ambient and contemporary Electronics, but always stylistically confident and unmistakable Sankt Otten.

For the mastering New York based RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI could be won. Also with the cover layout again good taste is proven. As part two of a cover series, this extraordinary die-cut cover artwork was again created by designer DANIEL CASTREJÓN. The vinyl version comes in a die-cut cover (in a limited transparent edition), the CD in an elegant cardboard slipcase.

Symmetrie und Wahnsinn

Luftspiegelung der Sentimentalitäten

Sankt Otten - Luftspiegelung der Sentimentalitäten

With modular synth, accordeon, violin, and voice.
credits
released February 7, 2022

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
for the film "An initiation to Game B"

Composed, performed, recorded, mixed & mastered
by Hélène Vogelsinger
Original Artwork by Jake Ruiz
Layout by Chalisk Pito

A Place To Rediscover Each Other

The first track on our upcoming album, titled “The Quiet Companion”, is called “Together But Apart” (featuring Julia Gjertsen). It will be released on October 13th, 2023.

The Quiet Companion

Shimmering Moods

Sven Laux & Logic Moon - Together But Apart (with Julia Gjertsen)

About Last Time

Approach of Autumn

🔗 Listen & support:
Spotify · Bandcamp · YouTube · more → linktr.ee/amb1Matt3r

🎧 Music for:
sleep · deep focus · meditation · inner drift · slow time · space dreaming

📎 Tags:
#ambient #drone #granular #spacemusic #sleepmusic #darkambient #soundscape

Recurring Dreams

~ IIKKI 007 ~

music : Federico Durand
photography : Albarrán Cabrera (Angel Albarrán & Anna Cabrera)
album/book : Pequeñas Melodías
duration : 38.24 mn
date : November 2018

edition : 
vinyl : limited to 300 copies, DDM Cut, 180 gm, hand numbered 
cd : limited to 200 cd (glass mastered) hand numbered
book : limited to 500 copies hand numbered + hand stamped

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pre-order : October 11th, 2018 / official release : November 08th, 2018

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Mastered by Taylor Deupree
Artwork by Albarrán Cabrera
Design by Sprflxgrfzm

Recorded in La Cumbre, Argentina, on tape loops and cassettes with a Sony TCM200-DV, Fostex X-18 & Macbook, using acoustic guitar, music boxes, synthesizer, electric piano, Rhodes piano sampling, Roland Space Echo RE-201, CT5, EHX 2880 and a small modular sampler (Morphagene, Clouds, 2hp LFO, 2hp RND, Bastl Ciao).

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Links :
https://federicodurand.bandcamp.com/
http://albarrancabrera.com/
https://www.iikki-books.com/

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℗ & © 2 0 1 8 - I I K K I - I I K K I 0 0 7

Federico Durand – Pequeñas Melodías (album preview)

PURCHASE NOW - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sunsets-and-clocks-ep/id613789626

'Sunsets and Clocks' EP available 4/16 via Non Projects.

Premiere via XLR8R - http://www.xlr8r.com/mp3/2013/03/sunsets-and-clocks

Material originally penned for a recent tour of Japan with fellow LA artist Matthewdavid, Sunsets and Clocks is a brand new EP from Anenon.

Consider how personal an experience it is to wait. When caught in the space of time before a thing happens, we unconsciously reveal ourselves through our ticks - physical manifestations of where we let our thoughts drift in this non-space. While waiting, each foot tapped, itch scratched and phone checked reflects the places we allow ourselves to explore before we have to jump back into formal time and space to perform.
 
Anenon recorded Sunsets and Clocks in the weeks directly preceding a whirlwind tour of Japan, where expectations and preconceptions (both false and true), collided over and over again in anticipation of the trip to come. In this collection of songs, Brian Allen Simon shares that intimate space, where he was both highly conscious of the relentless march of time and simultaneously removing himself from it, delving into an inner space where the lack of time smeared memories, fantasies, and fears into one another.
 
From the title, we can start to understand his headspace during this period, where the abstract concerns and artistic preparations for an international tour to a new country constantly collided with the pragmatic, binary problems of itineraries, exchange rates, and language barriers. These conflicting drives mirror the sharp contrast of the way the smudged shades of a fading sun mark the end of the day at the same time that the precision crafted gears of a timepiece click into place. 

We hear this theme reflected in how these pieces are unified by their maximal approaches to contrasts in the perception of time and meter, voice and tone. Anenon plays with this contrast through the shadowy textures of rhythm in the live improvisation of "We Yearn" and the meticulously interlocking beats driving "Ghost Light" and the title track. Boldly eschewing the use of the Rhodes and piano of his previous releases, these songs instead rely on the tenor sax and synthesizer. This new pairing fully realizes the theme in the marriage of the ethereal vibrations of the lungs and haunting accuracy of the keys.
 
1. We Yearn
2. Ghost Light
3. Dreamer (for Mary Jane)
4. Sunsets and Clocks

Sunsets and Clocks

I first encountered Ben Chatwin's music as Talvihorros sometime in 2011 through his release on hibernate imprint. We become more acquainted when he contributed a beautiful track towards my ...and darkness came benefit compilation appearing in 2012. A few years later, Chatwin moved from London to Edinburgh and began recording under his real name. This new beginning also gave his music a refreshed and upgraded sound and with newly found confidence he moved on to the independent Village Green imprint - see Sleeper Awakes appearing on Headphone Commute's Best of 2015 lists. We've seen his follow-up, Heat & Entropy, grace the 'best of' lists a year later, but in 2018, I must admit, I was completely blown away with the Staccato Signals. Something changed entirely. Chatwin's music became cinematic, darker, edgier, blending synthetic and the acoustic, pushing the boundaries of intense sonics and textures, and totally gripping my mind. Needless to say, the album grabbed the top spot in the coveted Music For The Film Behind Closed Eyelids list of best cinematic music of 2018. This year, Ben Chatwin is back to unleash The Hum for Village Green, his sixth studio album under his own name, and today I've got an exclusive premiere from the release dropping tomorrow.

The title of the album, and indeed the title of this track, hint at something lurking behind the lights, the pipes, and concrete. That something is a sound, a drone, a purr, of lifeless objects generating life. When electricity is cut, the house fills with silence, and only then are you aware of all that constant whir you've been surrounded all time. This sonic ghost becomes the bloodstream of the dwelling, and with The Hum, Ben Chatwin amplifies its voice. This rumble is electric, growling, at times it's suffocating with the bass, its place expanded, frequencies increased, dynamics magnified. But at the center of this multi-dimensional chant lies a song, alone in space, alone in beauty. This is the song of Chatwin's music, and I've been mesmerized with all it has to say.

"When electronic artist Ben Chatwin plugged his Moog synthesiser into the mains at home one day, he was surprised to find the electrics of his home faintly singing. His house was built in the nineteenth century, and what he was listening to was the building’s natural hum. He boosted the volume, and in doing so, found the inspiration for his next release, The Hum, out on Village Green on November 6th"

The Hum

Ghost In The Machine

TRACK PREMIERE : Ben Chatwin - Ghost In The Machine

Two years after the release of his acclaimed Erased Tapes debut, ‘The Transition’, Californian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist David Allred returns with a solo piano perspective on the album, aptly titled Felt The Transition — out December 18.

"Felt The Transition is a new minimalist solo piano perspective on my experimental chamber folk album previously released in 2018, called The Transition. This music is reinterpreted on my 114 year old upright piano which was very kindly donated to me by my friend Adam Selzer who previously ran a recording studio in Portland called Type Foundry. This piano is very sentimental to me as it was used by a handful of my favorite musicians on their albums over the past 20 years, namely Peter Broderick’s ‘How They Are‘ and ‘Two Balloons’.” — David Allred

Felt The Transition

The Garden (Solo Piano)

Stream & order LP · DL

David Allred - The Garden (Solo Piano)

Hélène Vogelsinger is a composer, sound designer, videographer, and artistic director of the label Microsmose. Through a unique practice blending music, visuals, and sound architecture, she develops immersive, introspective works deeply connected to the living world.

With her modular synthesizer project, she explores abandoned or remote locations in nature, where she composes and performs live, engaging in a direct dialogue with the energy and memory of each space. Every place becomes a territory of resonance, a sensitive ecosystem that influences her music, movements, and perception of time.

Her creative process, which she has refined over several years, is based on deep listening, slowness, and connection to the present moment. Nourished by a sensitivity to silence, natural light, and the invisible, she crafts suspended experiences, somewhere between lucid dream, contemplation, and inner journey.

A multidisciplinary artist, Hélène also creates her own videos, works with visuals, and develops within Microsmose a creative space dedicated to sensitive, meditative, and organic forms. Her world unfolds like a poetic and sensorial language at the crossroads of ambient music, electronic experimentation, orchestral composition, and visual art.

A Place To Rediscover Each Other

Hélène Vogelsinger

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