Marco Shuttle's third album, Cobalt Desert Oasis, features a varied collection of music recorded across a two year period. Often traveling to remote destinations, Marco would come back to Berlin with field recordings, images, and other inspirations to process in his studio and turn into sound.

The theme of the journey turns into a something more abstract than a travel diary, where environmental sounds blend in with modular synthesis, drum machines, effects and analog oscillators resulting in a cinematic listening experience where psychedelia, ritualism, and mysticism weave together in a sort of alien soundscape - that as the title of the album suggests, is reminiscent of a parallel utopian world.

The album is rich in complex rhythmics, and more than in any of his previous work, has strong acoustic elements. Amongst other percussion instruments, Marco used the Tombak, a traditional Persian hand drum capable of reaching a very wide range of frequencies - from deep round subby toms, to high pitched sharp rimshots, throughout the record.

Marco Shuttle is certainly not new to these sort of elements, but in Cobalt Desert Oasis he brings the environmental element of his sound into the forefront in a way that takes the listener into a hazy expanse where it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the machine elements from the natural - and where the music almost becomes a visual experience, which relates to Marco's own photography used throughout the cover and insert images.

Written and Produced by Marco Sartorelli
Mastered by Neel @ Enisslab
Design by Josh Abramovici
Photography by Marco Sartorelli 

'Acrobat' is taken from Marco Shuttle's 'Cobalt Desert Oasis' LP
PREORDER: Vinyl 2x12"/Digital: https://marcoshuttle.bandcamp.com/album/cobalt-desert-oasis
Out October 15th, 2021

Marco Shuttle
@marcoshuttle
https://marcoshuttle.bandcamp.com/album/cobalt-desert-oasis

Incienso
inciensorecs.bandcamp.com
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Incienso.nyc

Marco Shuttle - Acrobat [INC-012]

Oderbruch

Menschen und Mauern

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/agartha_lp_dl

‘Where is Agartha? What is the specific region in which it lies? Along what road, through what civilizations, must one walk in order to reach it?.’ Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in 1886

Agartha, the debut full-length album by Japanese producer Wata Igarashi, is a mysterious, divine thing. Named for the mythical secret kingdom, understood as a complex maze of underground tunnels, perhaps designed by Martians who colonised the Earth tens of thousands of years ago, it’s a similarly mystical, perhaps even cosmic trip – but this time, exploring an inner, deeply personal cosmos. Beautifully detailed and bustling with rich incident, it takes Igarashi’s music to new places, which still retaining his unique sonic imprimatur; in this respect, it’s perfectly at home with Kompakt, a label that’s always encouraged artists to make the visionary music they need to create, to take risks and make sideways steps into uncharted territory.

An eloquent producer and DJ, Igarashi has been releasing techno for eleven years now, appearing on such imprints as The Bunker NY, Delsin, Midgar, and Time To Express; he has also self-released his productions via his WIP net label. Throughout, Igarashi has consistently explored his unique approach to techno and electronic music, one that’s eloquent and poised, even when it shifts into more psychedelic terrain; he’s a master at balancing the sensual and the functional, and he has an unerring ear for the right texture, the right tone, at the right time. He brings all of this into Agartha, his most thorough-going expression of self to date.

For Agartha, Igarashi had a strong concept he wanted to explore. Visualising specific scenes from an imaginary film based on the titular secret kingdom, he created soundtracks for those scenes, spending time during the pandemic in his studio, working away carefully at the ten tracks here. Given his background in creating music for television and advertisements, Igarashi is well-placed to explore the marriage of the sonic and the visual in such intimate ways, but freed from commercial concerns, he let his imagination run riot. He also drew on a rich palette of musical influences – techno is in there, of course, but you can also hear the smoky, improvised jazz of the likes of Miles Davis (to whom the album’s title is an indirect nod), and the minimalism and systems music of Steve Reich.

The latter is particularly pronounced on the gorgeous, beatless drift of “Floating Against Time”, where an arpeggiated sequence lingers, lovingly, around your ears for nine blissful minutes, coasting across swooning drones and waves of ambient noise. “Ceremony Of The Dead”, originally composed as part of a Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial sound concert, is a deep pass into systems composition, with various patterns overlaid and interlocking, before a wordless vocal rises from the depths, a gorgeous counterpoint to the swarming textures that gather across the track. On the other hand, tracks like “Burning” and “Subterranean Life” nudge toward Fourth World territory, painting deluxe dreamscapes of uncertain provenance; the title cut is an abstract drift-world, Igarashi painting an alien tableau dotted by shape-shifting creatures.

Agartha’s conceptual framework means that everything on the album sits perfectly together; listening to it in one sitting is a dizzying, lush experience. Its imaginings of inner landscapes recall, in some respects, the nautical, aqueous mythologies of the Drexciyan universe, though from different perspectives. But the result is Igarashi’s own creation, a deluxe, enchanting trip through the visionary Agartha of this unique producer’s cinematic mind’s-eye.

Agartha

Wata Igarashi - Searching

From 'HomeSoon', the forthcoming EP by Cousin.

Out on Mood Hut Records Nov 17th 2023.
Vinyl distribution by Rubadub.
Smartlink: https://moodhut.ffm.to/homesoon

Cousin - 3 X A Charm

In this volume, we continue the journey...

The Realizing Heaven tapes have always been about exploration—pushing sound to new emotional edges and letting each project evolve on its own terms. With Vol. 4, the tones sharpen, the atmosphere expands, and the mixing becomes more experimental than ever.

Working between Logic Pro and Ableton 12, I shape ambient, cinematic spaces designed to pull you somewhere else for a moment. Each track is its own little universe—built from instinct, feeling, and the drive to keep leveling up my craft.

The story keeps growing. The sound keeps shifting.
Welcome to the next chapter.

Sublime (instrumental)

Hyperbasis 83

Boom Bap Soul Jazz Type Beat
TODOS LOS DERECHOS RESERVADOS

Boom Bap Series Once Once Doscinco

Objekt #4

Buy on Bandcamp

Needle And Thread

Track taken from 'Apparitions', the Forest Drive West 2x12" release on Livity Sound released 12th October 2018.

Apparitions

Forest Drive West - Phaze-Shift

Polygon_Cities

Invisible

https://buttechno.bandcamp.com/album/sport

New York based label founded in 2017 by Anthony Naples and Jenny Slattery (@jennyslattery).

info@incienso.nyc