HTRK

Pre-order the Psychic 9-5 Club LP in The Ghostly Store:
http://www.theghostlystore.com/products/htrk-psychic-9-5-club

HTRK - Give It Up

“Secret Thirteen Mix 080” is like an enigmatic and dramatic John William Waterhouse‘s romanticistic painting “Sleep and his Half-brother Death” where two figures lethargically reclined side by side in an artistic interior are touched with moonlight and its whole mystery. Foggy shadows and sleepy aura expressively shroud the intimate surroundings in a painting and the strange likeness and unlikeness of the recumbent figures are taking control of the unconscious. Waterhouse’s masterpiece is oddly mirroring HTRK’s ethereal selection in two perspectives: it holds a perplexing composure and a penetrating parallel worlds existence sense, also interprets a lucid dreaming that is Nigel’s nowadays exploratory object. Moreover same as the painting HTRK’s mix goes from diverse emotional substances starting with divinity, calmness, proximity and finishing with confusion, inner chaos and hidden depression. It should be highlighted that this mix starts with a midnight raga (one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music which traditionally is only meant to be performed (and heard) at midnight) and follows its mood almost during the whole mix, so we suggest to play it at midnight to have a maximum effect of its magic. Nigel captured psychological dimensions in pieces as moderate and unforgettable as the sequences of enlightening dream. HTRK’s timeless selection is dedicated to all devoted guardians of metaphysics and spirituality.

Tracklist:
1. Pandit Pran Nath – 21 VIII 76 NYC Raga Malkauns [Just Dreams, 2002]
2. Omit – ReTainer (live) [Pseudo Arcana, 2012]
3. Jon Hassell – Blues Nile [Lovely Music, 1977]
4. Brian Eno – Lizard Point [Editions EG, 1982]
5. Werkbund – Rungholts Verklärung [Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, 2010]
6. Rinus Van Alebeek / Luc Ferrari – Tape 1, Side A [Mathka, 2011]
7. Steve Roden – Airria (Hanging Garden) Second Version [Sirr, 2003]
8. Takami – Dark Woods [LLE, 1985]

HTRK - Secret Thirteen Mix 080

Earshot #15 with Jonnine from HTRK

HTRK "Psychic 9-5 Club" out April 1, 2014.

Pre-order "Psychic 9-5 Club" in The Ghostly Store: http://www.theghostlystore.com/products/htrk-psychic-9-5-club

HTRK - The Body You Deserve

HTRK - Love Is Distraction

HTRK - Wet Dream

HTRK - Ice Eyes Eis

HTRK - Bendin'

Purchase: http://theghostlystore.com/collections/music/products/htrk-work-work-work 
Release Info: http://ghostly.com/releases/work-work-work

HTRK’s Ghostly International debut Work (work, work) is a flat-lined study of desire and submission, sentimentality and dysphoria. The London by way of Berlin and Melbourne art-rock duo (pronounced “Hate Rock”) finished the album’s production while grieving the sudden loss of founding member and bassist Sean Stewart to suicide in March ‘10. And while that tragedy has certainly found its way into the music’s bottomless sonic void, Work (work, work), written from 2006-10 in Berlin and London, is about much more than abject darkness. Much, much more.

On Work (work, work), HTRK craft a stark soundscape: achingly slow 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, vaporous guitar noise, and Jonnine Standish’s androgynous, detached vocals, dripping with reverb. And yet it’s the careful way the pair combine those elements—organizing and juxtaposing them with a minimalist’s attention to detail—that makes their music so emotionally devastating. “Ice Eyes Eis” starts things off by enveloping you in a slippery erotic zone, in which a German sex TV babe splays herself over a molasses-slow beat and clouds of dry-ice atmosphere. The creeping “Eat Yr Heart” embodies HTRK’s touch with sonic unease, showcasing a high-pitched horror-movie synth obligato that flits like a swarm of bats around Standish’s declarations of longing (“glucose, cellulose, saccharine”/ “you fill me up then make me starve, eat yr heart”). Late-album highlight “Love Triangle” takes a more sensuous tone, describing a perfect three-person encounter (“he on she on me / she on me on he / bermuda bermuda bermuda”) over textured guitar swirls and a languorous drum-machine march.

For all of Work (work, work)’s more abrasive elements, its sense of bleakness and mourning, one finds a surprisingly romantic core. A sense of doomed melancholy, a heavy heart, lives below the layers of a murky and heavy space. HTRK’s remaining members, Jonnine Standish and guitarist Nigel Yang, sweeten their heavier sonic reference points (Pan Sonic, Suicide, et al) into songs of love and lust, creating an imaginary party record for the end of time. And what of all that “work”? In the end, HTRK’s album title seems both to refer to the tireless craft that went into its creation, as well as Standish and Yang’s endless quest to extract beauty from melancholy.

HTRK - Synthetik

HTRK - Work That Body

HTRK - Love Triangle

HTRK - Body Double

HTRK - Eva

HTRK – Body Lotion

Body Lotion is a collaboration between Belgium's Sleeperhold Publications, Australian duo HTRK and London-based artist David Ferrando Giraut. The three tracks on the record—"Sugar," "Punch" and the title track, "Body Lotion"—date back to the sessions that led to the band's 2011 album, Work (Work Work). For any HTRK fan, the opportunity to hear three unheard Work (Work Work)-era tracks is reason for both celebration and reflection. Two of the songs feature the unmistakable basslines of Sean Stewart, who died in 2010, before Work (Work Work) was released. 

Both "Sugar" and "Punch" were recorded live in HTRK's London rehearsal room, the then trio of Jonnine Standish, Nigel Lee-Yang and Sean Stewart. On "Sugar," Jonnine's voice smolders through smeared drums and Sean's bassline. "Punch" is spare and confessionary; "Body Lotion" is suggestive, winking and bruised, a trademark HTRK hook submerged beneath the murk. All three tracks mutated from the recording sessions that ultimately led to Work (Work Work) track "Slo Glo." While they all stand as striking individual songs, they share subtle elements in common—a lyrical idea here, some guitar parts there. 

David Ferrando Giraut's distinctive artwork adorns Body Lotion's sleeve and one side of the wax. (All three tracks feature on the record's A-side.) The Spanish artist has a deep and intimate connection to HTRK—he was living with Nigel in London at a time when Sean would visit to sketch out songs in Nigel's tiny room. They've collaborated before, too: Jonnine has narrated and appeared in some of his films, while Nigel has provided the music. Giraut's previous installations have often carried a musical lean—he's used LP covers and turntables in the past—and he's found a rich stream of creative inspiration in music's ability to create meaning and change in memory and behaviour.

This year has seen HTRK return with Psychic 9-5 Club, a bold and triumphant album, one that marked the beginning of a new era for Nigel and Jonnine. Body Lotion presents a beautiful, bittersweet glimpse into the recent past. 

About Sleeperhold Publications:

Sleeperhold is a Belgian-based publication platform. It's aim: to produce ten outputs, spanning different realms of the arts, and then cease to exist. Its current project is a run of ten vinyl records—HTRK's 12-inch follow previous efforts from Tropic Of Cancer, Moon Duo and Disappears. Before the vinyl series, Sleeperhold put out a photobook, a poster set, a deck of cards and short stories. They say: "There is no recurring theme, there is no recurring format, there is no recurring audience."

SHP #5.4: HTRK - Body Lotion

ha, htrk

LATE NIGHT SOUNDS: CONFESSIONS OF A MASK
1. Sean Stewart - late night sounds, Berlin 
2. Terre Thaemlitz - Frames 002 
3. James Brown - King Heroin (excerpt) 
4. Sean Stewart - late night sounds, Berlin 
5. Chris Carter - TVX (excerpt) 
6. Badouin Oosterlynck - Suite for a Bondage Room (excerpt)
7. Sol Ixent - from La Vie Nouvelle 
8. Vangelis / Emmanuelle Seigner and Hugh Grant in Bitter Moon 
9. Martin Rev - Nyx (excerpt) 
10. Sean Stewart - late night sounds, Berlin 
11. Reiko Ike / Rita Moss - Daydream (from Plochingen mix for Entr'acte) 
12. James Brown - King Heroin 
13. Gatekeeper - from www.radicalfriend.com / scene from Phenomena / late night sounds 
14. Robert Görl - Mit Dir (extended) 
15. Slow Head - Night Glitters 
16. Rolf Julius - Wet Speakers (excerpt) 
17. Adeptus - Bury You in Kerman



NE069: HTRK's "Late Night Sounds - Confessions of a Mask" Mix

An insidiously hypnotic mix, optimised for chill-out rooms, intense study sessions, clinical drug trials and office ambience. Synapses gently massaged by ambient pieces from Robert Babicz and Ryoji Ikeda, outsider house classics from DJ Sprinkles and Hieroglyphic Being, free-form group-think from NYC's Excepter, tough beats from Finland's Ø (empty space) and a 20 minute immersion from the far reaches of New Zealand's Omit. HTRK play tonight at Unsound in Manggha at 19:30.

1. Edward Artemyev / Part IV / Solaris OST / Toei Music
2. Robert Babicz / Eternie / Desert / Mille Plateaux
3. Ryoji Ikeda / Zone 4 / Document 02 / Dorobo
4. Omit / Sequester / Tracer / Helen Scarsdale Agency
5. DJ Sprinkles / Grand Central - Part 1 (Deep into the Bowel of House) / Midtown 120 Blues / Mule Musiq
6. Hieroglyphic Being / Spheres of Madness / A Romance of 2 Planets / Alter
7. Excepter / Og / Presidence / Paw Tracks
8. Ø / Teehetki / Tulkinta / Sähkö
9. Francis Monkman / Spiral Motion / Forcefield / Bruton Music



Unsound Podcast 13: HTRK

Taken from 'Drama' Single by HTRK, out July 6, 2018.

Order 'Drama' at: https://ghostly.com/products/drama
Or at the retailer of your choice: https://Ghostly.lnk.to/htrk-drama

Drama

HTRK - Mentions

Download "Dying of Jealousy" at: ghostly.com/products/dying-of-jealousy
Or at the retailer of your choice: Ghostly.lnk.to/htrk-dying-of-jealousy

Dying of Jealousy

HTRK - Summer Rain

HTRK [HATE-ROCK-TRIO]

HTRK became in 2003. Early music spawned from basement sessions: omnipresent electronic drum sequences, ostinati basslines and twisted guitar loops based on repeated rhythms that make you move. Nigel Yang and Siam Scream found a beautiful muse in Jonnine D, who joined the band shortly after its inception. New alias the Hate Rock Trio: drone moored by Jonnine's listlessly simple vocal melodies.

Songs played at shows in Melbourne and Sydney were finally recorded in December 2004. A single live take captured on borrowed equipment in HTRK's cave, NOSTALGIA in its original form is the closest document of the band's uncompromising live shows (and a reverb-drenched middle-finger to 'production values'). Its abrasive sound manages to produce submission, carried by a hypnotic stability that always threatens collapse.

Scream's bass riffs are pure, slow rock and roll, Yang's guitar is insidious, the 808 is perpetual and often piercing. HTRK could provide the soundtrack to a Reifenstahl movie, a modern day marching band for immaterial cyber armies. Jonnine leads, striking floor tom with commands:
"Ha!"
"Dance!"
"Everybody let's go!"


At other times, NOSTALGIA's control effects irresistible groove, dance hits and dream-pop laments. When the songs end, un-foreshadowed, feeble silence marred by feedback leftovers and the dead static of the drum machine leaves the spectator in a rude state of torpor. HTRK's music feels like an indian gift of torture for a masochist, given then carelessly withdrawn. And it's an airy type of mercilessness, the worst kind.

HTRK - Ksext

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HTRK

ilOVEiTllllOUD