fantastic write up about 'Aurat (Tool)' on the Tiny Mix Tapes website > http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/sha-devi-conscious-cunt-ep

Seven artists reckon with isolation and subsistence in Dragon’s Eye Recordings’ latest release, titled 'Touch'. Organized by Tomoko Hojo, the album collects six sound pieces by various artists who grapple with the restriction of physical contact through sound. Our ability to touch is a means of survival, an essential and intimate way of living and communing with others. So when it is taken away for the same reason we possess it—for the sake of staying safe—how can it be replaced? What can stand in? 

The pandemic claimed so much; and for a time, touch fell victim. In the album 'Touch', Alexandra Spense, KMRU, Viv Corringham, Myriam Van Imschoot and Federico Protto, Tomoko Hojo, and Melissa Pons prod at means of non-tactile touching. They explore spaces where touch is only a memory, a recording, something missing to find replacements. In assembling this six-piece collection, artist Tomoko Hojo recalls Yoko Ono’s 1964 event which invited attendees to “watch the sky and touch”. Over the course of 'Touch,' the listener is an attendee, witnessing sonic reconstructions of haptic happenings. In each of the album’s pieces, sound grazes unseen surfaces and traces invisible shapes with an absent finger.  

In “Communion”, Alexandra Spense recalls a space where tactility transformed into something more, an instance that dissolved the borders of the physical body to blend spirit with its surroundings. KMRU’s “its not a tangency” relies on repetition to feel the boundaries of its container. Almost like echolocation, the listener relies on distant children’s voices and the monotony of soft drones to situate oneself in an imagined space.  

“Imagine myself walking with you” engages with the physical intimacy created not through touch, but rather physical presence—the nearness of two bodies, the potentiality of tactility, the imprint conversations can leave long after they end. Viv Corringham digitally recreates her process of walking and talking with strangers, instead connecting with a friend online. In “Human Measures”, Myriam Van Imschoot and Federico Protto create an instrument which mimics what touch might sound like by simultaneously breathing into a circulatory system of tubes, wrapped into something like the symbol for infinity.   

In “fall asleep”, Tomoko Hojo conjures whispers, chants, and rings bells to touch the air.  From these sound waves of voice and instrument and element, intentional and drawn out, their dispersal can be felt. It’s when the waves enter the ear that we can hear them. But Hojo asks what happens to other waves that run into other parts of the body, unalive or unhearing.  

The absence of other bodies, the ultimate vehicles of touch, brought Melissa Pons inward with her piece “Three”. Through airy field recordings, scattered static, and gently howling drones, it’s as if Pons watches her emotions float off of her body like the minuscule flakes of skin that comprise dust.  

Each of these six pieces ask to expand outside of sound, to take physical shape, make gestures and wander. In their own unique ways, the artists of 'Touch' attempt to transmute sound into tactility, and they come as close as they can. Collectively, the sound pieces exist within the container of the compilation—an abstract notion that places collections of noise alongside one another. And so what is a compilation if not individual tracks rubbing up against one another, meshing, touching?

Touch

KMRU - Its not a tangency

Mondkopf - "Spring Stories" arrives June 2nd on Miasmah. CD + Digital (for now).

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Deprived of sanity, Paul Régimbeau aka Mondkopf found new territories of expression with "Spring Stories", a collection of post-rapture moods full of glorious chaos, ready to absorb and re-ignite all that is worn. 

As a phoenix raising from the ashes, Spring Stories captures the earth in full bloom. Darkness & Insanity looses it´s grips as the roots and fresh leaves creates a slow dance towards the sun. Similarily, sine-wave drones move around exploding electric guitar improvisations as new light beams on shadow cast corners. The album feels like a 60ies jam set in the post-world psychedelic underground. Heavy, absurd, beautiful and ready to sooth burnt out, depleted minds. Paul has citied that he´s affected as much by folk improvisors such as Master Wilburn Burchette & Robbie Basho as well as the doom drone of giants Earth & Sunn O))). Spring Stories invokes on these, while feeling like a personal blow-out, coming right from the core. Touching and grand, like spring itself.

The album also features Frederic D. Oberland on two tracks playing variously Duduk & Alto Saxophone. Lastly, The Necks drummer Tony Buck shakes & rattles all over the final - and seriously epic - piece “Continuation”, as the world aligns while the sun rises over its near-dead shape.

Mondkopf - Through The Storm, In Your Arms

Buy 12" from Houndstooth & receive free WAVs: http://store.houndstoothlabel.com/conscious-cunt.html
iTunes/Google Play: http://found.ee/ConsciousC-tDL
Bandcamp: http://found.ee/AD-CC-BC
Spotify: http://found.ee/AishaDeviSPO

Besides founding her label, Danse Noire, releasing leftfield electronic music from the likes of IVVVO and Vaghe Stelle, Swiss-born, Nepalese-Tibetan electronic producer @aisha-devi’s latest solo productions are further testament to her personal evolution. The ‘Conscious Cunt’ EP explores different perspectives on womanhood and the dichotomy between materialistic femininity under societal pressure and spirituality.

“It’s an EP about sluts, awareness, death, and women in a patriarchal society… enlightenment, violence, resistance, mothers, daughters, consciousness, Guy Debord, Vedas and eternity. It's also a high-five to my grandmother who raised me and passed away early this year.” - Aïsha Devi

Lead track ‘Kim & The Wheel of Life’ is a whirling melodic vortex of melancholic echoing synths underlaid by deep rumbling kicks that morphs into a vocal-centric piece. The beatless ‘Aurat’, Devi’s second ‘vox tool’ of a series, is an Urdu/Hindi poem written by Pakistani feminist, Kishwar Naheed. Finally, ‘The Saviour on Spilled Blood’, a reference to motherhood, is a slow-building epic, using Devi’s dark, chanting voice to accumulate energy and emotion. 

Conscious Cunt

Download

Aïsha Devi - Aurat (Tool)

KӢR - Dimiskija

Various Artists "I Could Go Anywhere But Again I Go With You" 
From Posh Isolation 207

Scandinavian Star - Alang

INTERVIEW > inverted-audio.com/feature/gag-flag-maoupa-mazzocchetti-talks-up-his-second-album-on-editions-gravats

We caught up with @maoupa-mazzocchetti to delve further into the ins and outs of his complex, pigeonhole-proof musical realm. With his trademark sense of humour and generous eloquence, the French producer takes us back to the sources of 'Gag Flag' but also speaks studio methods, wider artistic vision as well as his large stream of influences.

Gag Flag

Maoupa Mazzocchetti - How To Hate You Without H? [Editions Gravats]

The latest liminal low-end odyssey from French shape-shifter Maxime Primault’s BZMC entity swaps the screwed alien dancehall of past outings in favor of miasmic subterranean ritual, with compelling results. Born of “a few very intense sessions, in altered states of consciousness,” the three sprawling compositions comprising Voyage Sacrifice ooze in slow, smoke-choked darkness, awash with dungeon groans, insectoid noise, reverbed bells, molten bass, and distant demonic mumblings. Primault speaks of recent creative strategies attempting to “delete time, or escape time,” at which these pieces certainly succeed, entrancing the listener in their spiral sinkhole infinity: beatless, lightless, limitless. 

Occasionally a rusted, lurching metronome emerges, infusing a drugged sense of forward motion, but the essence of Voyage Sacrifice is textural and tantric – “almost like some kind of prayer.” Chants are chanted; the zone is black. The specter of dub still looms in the disorienting fog of FX and negative space but ultimately these sides exist outside (and deep beneath) any recognizable sonic lineage. This is cultic, questing music, deprivation chamber hallucinations “beyond good and evil, beyond sense and non-sense.” 

This Rorschach enigma dimension is foundational, as Primault admits: “It’s a mental journey. I handled the sacrifice; the voyage is yours.”

BZMC — Incineration of thoughts (SP109)

Founded in 2017, the Swedish imprint Moloton started out as an outlet for the growing experimental music scene in Stockholm. The label has to-date released six tape cassettes and two vinyl EPs by artists like Sonja Tofik, Mar-llena, Nev Lilit, Hegira Moya and Atonet.
For the label’s ninth outing, they're welcoming Orphan Ann with their debut LP ‘The Practice of Surrender’.

The duo, consisting of DIY veteran Anja Enerud (Masskultur collective) and Sofia Al Rammal Sturdza (SARS, Född Död) burst onto the scene with their pitch-black take on synth music, combining sharp, penetrating vocal chants with atonal drones and haunting drum machine patterns. Orphan Ann has previously released their music on the Danish label Posh Isolation, where they contributed with four tracks to the ‘You And Me Now’ cassette compilation.
They have been performing their live show at various stages around the world, including MUTEK in Mexico City and Norbergfestival in Sweden.

‘The Practice of Surrender’ consists of nine tracks, all recorded, produced and mixed by the duo themselves in their studio collective Tropiska Föreningen in Stockholm and is set to be released on January 25th 2019. It is indubitably a proof of a healthy Stockholm scene, where both Moloton and Orphan Ann are leading the way, pushing the Swedish experimental sound forward with a glare.

Tracklist:
A1 - Vi är överallt
A2 - The Practice of Surrender
A3 - Du kommer aldrig nära igen
A4 - Den stora knullfesten
A5 - Märkt
B1 - Marching Men
B2 - Fever
B3 - Я уезжаю
B4 - När vi såg genom glas

Release date: 25th January 2019

Order via: https://www.moloton.com/releases/
https://soundcloud.com/orphan_ann
https://soundcloud.com/moloton

Premiere: Orphan Ann - Den Stora Knullfesten [Moloton]

READ > inverted-audio.com/premiere-philipp-otterbach-the-weak-song

@philipp-otterbach 'The Weak Song' generates contradictory sensations of peace and disquiet, all at once tear-jerking and oddly soothing.

Philipp Otterbach - The Weak Song [Knekelhuis]

Taken from Kets to the Fields 31:
V / A "Japonsime"

Angelo Harmsworth _ Untitled

Taken from Maxwell Sterling - Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker of Truth
LP/Download [ELP050] 
Ecstatic Recordings, 24/04/2020

Weaving an intricately detailed tapestry of meditative, spiritual jazz and dream electronics, Maxwell Sterling’s astonishing second album ‘Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker Of Truth’ blooms in the gaps between Don Cherry, Talk Talk and Kara-Lis Coverdale, gently coaxing us into a trance- like reverie where the real and artificial morph into one pulsing organism.

Originating as a multi-channel installation commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary in 2018, the four extended pieces here were recorded at home in Morecambe Bay and then subsequently placed in a room alongside works by Moki Cherry (spouse of Don, mother of Neneh and Eagle-Eye Cherry), Penny Slinger, and a collection of static musical instruments the piece was intended to complement. As a follow-up to Sterling’s 2017 cult hit ‘Hollywood Medieval’ for The Death of Rave, ‘Laced With Rumour’ works with notably more fluid and gently psychoactive structuring that takes in seemingly disparate influences - from Roman mythology to Nottingham’s Lace industry - that results in a sprawling but intimate world of sound, characterised by aetheric arrangements that effectively elide the disciplines of spiritual jazz, chamber music, and art installation into something altogether new.

Much like Kara-Lis Coverdale’s converging interests in traditional vs hyper-modern, acoustic vs artificial and synthetic modes of sound, Sterling’s work here is fluid and unorthodox, but rooted in a deep understanding of convention which he proceeds to bend and re-shape at will. The album opens with a slowly contemplative and almost solemn drift between ‘Laced’, which features samples of Don Cherry weft into its tingling fray of electro-acoustic timbres, alongside the breezy chamber strokes of ‘With Rumour’, the hallucinogenic qualities of ‘Loud-Speaker’, and the darker revelation ‘Of Truth’, which concludes with a transition from mired murk to tones that channel Maxwell’s refined cinematic nous.

One of those albums that seems impossible to fully absorb in one sitting, listening to ‘Laced With Rumour...’ takes you from a swirl of brushed cymbals into harpsichord shimmers, passages of solo piano brushing up against the deepest subs - like a more bruised and flipped Sakamoto + Alva Noto collab, to Arthur Russell’s ‘World Of Echo’ slowly descending into synthesised madness. It’s a rich and stunning meditation for our time.

Maxwell Sterling - Laced [ELP050]

UK record label based at fabric, East London. Run in part by Rob Booth (Electronic Explorations)

Aïsha Devi - Aurat (Tool)

Houndstooth

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