LAURIN HUBER, Dog Mountain, LP

Release date - July 30th 2021
Catalogue nr. - HG2199
Format - Vinyl / digital
Hallow Ground

hallowground.bandcamp.com

Tracklist:
1) Raja (04.59)
2) Nickel (05:50)
3) A Town Is Not A Town (04:54)
4) Storskog-Borisoglebsk (07:32)

Credits:
Composed and recorded by Laurin Huber
Mixed by Rolf Laureijs
Mastering by Lawrence English
Artwork by Michael Bodenmann

///
»Dog Mountain« is the second release by the Zurich-based producer and composer Laurin Huber on Hallow Ground. After last year’s »Juncture« saw the Edipo Re co-founder work mostly with synthesizers and programmed rhythms, the four tracks are much more restrained, drawing on tape loops and feedback, recordings of acoustic guitar and synthesizers such as the Korg MS-10 as well as field recordings that relate to the overarching topic that informed the making of the record. While »Juncture« had previously aimed at deconstructing the binaries and dualities that shape our lives and thinking, »Dog Mountain« is dedicated to geographical divisions that result from political processes and social constructions. »›Here‹ means one nation, ›there‹ another,« writes Huber in a literary piece that accompanies the record. »Being in sound, such a separation seems odd.« 

While treating the metaphor of the border as a »membrane, registering and translating the vibrations of its surroundings« and thus as something that is constantly (re-)defined, maintained and defended however, the artist also takes into consideration that »one cannot escape one’s standpoint,« as he puts it. The music on »Dog Mountain« may transcend and overcome certain borders, but it does not deny the realities that they impose on each and every one of us – whether in our political lives or in the realm of sound. This is mirrored in Huber’s engaging in the structural and sonic interplay of repetition and difference. Working with slowly evolving and modulating elements that are exposed to slight shifts, »Dog Mountain« puts a focus on the interaction between small elements that together form a bigger whole which is marked by constant evolution and change. 

Opener »Raja« (»border« in Northern Sami and Finnish) starts off with a two-note melody played on an out-of-tune guitar. Different field recordings and synthesizer sounds drop in and out of the mix until the dynamic shifts and Huber starts playing more notes on his instrument, thus increasing the tension. It’s a meditation on minimalism, but also a piece that mediates between notions of what constitutes the difference between noise and music or referentiality and abstraction in sound. After »Nickel« (named after a Russian monotown near the border to Norway) dedicates itself to explore the friction between hissing white noise and melancholic tape loops, »A Town Is Not a Town« (a phrase taken from the documentary »Kiruna – Rymdvägen«) structurally mirrors the experiment of »Raja« with very different sonic means. 

Closing the record, »Storskog-Borisoglebsk« (the title refers to the northernmost land border between Schengen-Europe and Russia) is the longest and most challenging piece, working with both long-form drones and musique concrète elements. It proposes a synthesis of the opposites that are explored patiently and with much attention to detail throughout this record.

LAURIN HUBER - A Town Is Not A Town (HG2199)

Stormslagne Sjæle

"The Days Long" from Duane Pitre's new solo album "Omniscient Voices" - Out Nov 19th, 2021 on IMPREC.

Pre-order available via Imprec.com

Duane Pitre returns to Imprec with Omniscient Voices, an articulate, intense and emotionally resonant set of five pieces for justly tuned piano and electronics.

Omniscient Voices is a uniquely distinct work that follows Pitre's trilogy of releases which culminated with 2015’s Bayou Electric and included the critically acclaimed Feel Free (2012) and Bridges (2013) albums. Where those albums were rooted in long form pieces, Omniscient Voices is a collection of shorter pieces, offering more harmonic variety than previous works, with a unique sound and feel that is still unmistakably the work of Duane Pitre.

In 2019, after a five year period where Pitre did not focus on outward facing music, but instead on his own personal practice, a small idea in the form of a question came to him: would the combination of his latest computer- and electronic-based experiments, used in conjunction with justly tuned piano, produce interesting results; simply put, would it “work”? Concurrently, Pitre was studying a handful of Morton Feldman scores for their focus on tonal clusters, reading a book on Arvo Pärt’s life and work, and contemplating the pulse-based rhythms of Steve Reich and Phillip Glass.

In 2020, with no intention of making a new album, the composer tried to answer this question. The results would spawn five pieces that would become Omniscient Voices. On this new work, Pitre finds himself giving equal priority to both piano and electronics, utilizing his Max/MSP-based generative network to real-time convert precomposed piano motifs, into data, which is then used to communicate with two polyphonic, microtonal hardware synthesizers whose patches Pitre authored; this process generates the electronic component of the album. Pitre also utilizes controlled improvisation to interact with the piano-reactive electronics in a spontaneous and inspired manner, going back and forth between these two pianistic approaches. In all, this approach creates a “musical feedback loop” of sorts.

Despite Omniscient Voices being the culmination of 15 years of hard work and inspiration, this beautiful album somehow materialized in a natural, intuitive and effortless way (like any artist's best work.)

Mastered and cut by Golden and pressed at RTI for maximum fidelity.

Artist's statement:
“When making the pieces that would become Omniscient Voices, I often viewed the piano as human action, a single note becoming a single gesture that has the potential to change the electronic environment, the electronics becoming the environment surrounding that human in the natural world, who then has the power to change their actions based on their surroundings. All actions have consequences. The interconnectedness of everything. Single actions making waves of change.”

RIYL: Arvo Pärt, Morton Feldman, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass

Duane Pitre - The Days Long - from Omniscient Voices - Pre-Order Available

Tracklist

01. Moss Covered Technology - Brick & Air IV
02. Alex Bober - I Don’t Always Do Right Things
03. Ishmael Cormack - Pinecone
04. Minamo & Moskitoo - Superstitious Typology
05. Jeannine Schulz - The Wind Blows Over The Earth
06. Ian Hawgood - Fields
07. David Cordero - Unreal
08. Fields We Found - Rains
09. Michael Scott Dawson - The Sentimentalist
10. Lorenz Weber -  Wärmst Du Mich

300. Sleepy Sunday Podcast (Elm Records)

11/10/2025

Gypsy  Life

Passage (instrumental)

All Our Tears (AM 8034) 4:00 17-11-2025

A track from the album Thought Texture out now on Constellation Tatsu.

Opaline - Inside Sky

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)

Taken from the album 'Feeling The Spirit' released as LP, CD and Digital

The Transcendence Orchestra 'The Golden Jaws Of The Celestial Vice' (EMEGO 282)

Anthéne, the music of Bradley Sean Alexander Deschamps. He is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and also curates the Polar Seas Recordings label. His compositions are primarily created using electric guitar and synthesizers, with field recordings and occasional acoustic instruments. Over the past few years his music has been released on Home Normal, Constellation Tatsu, Past Inside the Present, among other labels.

Anthéne - the slow wave [GRFTPS006]
available for pre-order on giraffe tapes bandcamp exclusively limited edition cassette / digital -
https://giraffetapes.bandcamp.com/album/the-slow-wave

Duane Pitre - The Days Long - from Omniscient Voices - Pre-Order Available

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