Name: Orbital Elements by Family Underground
Duration: 3 min 16 s
Description: Album was originally released on Italian label Laboratorio Palestro as an limited LP in 150 copies. Cover art by italian photographer Francesco Bartoli Avveduti.

Album was originally released on Italian label Laboratorio Palestro as an limited LP in 150 copies. Cover art by italian photographer Francesco Bartoli Avveduti.

Orbital Elements

“Free the organ from its dependence on the church and remove it from its sacred immobility.”
“…a phenomenological approach that involves experiencing the limits of sound objects.”  - Pancrace Manifesto

“The talented Pancrace ensemble reminds me of David Munrow and the Early Music Consort.” - Charles Curtis

Music for spatialized midi controlled pipe organ “Organous”, Silbermann pipe organ (1778), Voices, Bird Calls, Baroque Violin, Rattles, Ventilators, Whistles, Uilleann Pipes, Gaïda, Sheng, Rhombus, Pouet-Pouet, Pi Synth, Kastle Synth and AM radio. 
Pancrace is an ensemble comprising French, British and Austrian performers. 

The members being Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel and Jan Vysocky. 

Pancrace has “a unique, fully formed vision that combines improvisation, composition, eclectic instrumentation and a church’s massive pipe organ” (Sarah Hennies).

Pancrace’s latest double LP “Papotier” is the third panel of a tryptic after “Pancrace” (2017) and “Fluid Hammer” (2019). The ensemble knew at some point from their previous LP they would have to go back to church and repent confronting a Silbermann 18th century baroque organ with their custom made modular midi pipe organ : the “Organous”. 

After nearly 18 months of lockdown the quintet finally met in Bouxwiller Alsace a few miles away from Dangolsheim where Pancrace first formed in 2015. During a residency Pancrace had full access to the Protestant church with its humongous Silbermann pipe organ famous for its “human voice” stop. Ironically the album title “Papotier” came up before the covid era. Ironic because a “papotier” is a mask or to be very specific a grotesque face carved in wood, initially rigged to the lower part of the organ casing. There are only very few of these fancy oddities left in France and around the world. 

After months of feeling gagged during lockdown having a “papotier” as an amulet was somewhat liberating and greatly contributed to opening up the Pancrace sessions to the exploration of human voice. Relearning how to breathe, listening to the human membrane, questioning the nature of air all within the confined space of a 14th century church were the essential acts that compose the pieces. One can consider this album as a phenomenological investigation into voice articulation trying to emulate the birth of a vocable like von Kempelen's speaking machine who also used rudimentary organ modules to mimic human babbling. Essentially understanding what a mouth is to us to the point where, when all the pipes are blowing, they make a hell of a noise.

Cybermann

Le Papotier

Melville

Farben

Taken from the album 1/2 on Penultimate Press

Léo Hoffsaes is a Paris-based composer working mainly with electric guitar, string instruments, and field recordings.

On this record for Penultimate Press, Hoffsaes is focused exclusively on electric guitar and ways to record it; blending back and forth the physical sound of a supercardioid mic placed just above the strings with a more distant, colder, raw resonance of the plugged guitar. The sound shifts between these two perspectives and is also à l’image du core motif, a slow, deliberate two-note progression (sometimes three), oscillating and moving through the pieces like weary feet struggling with mud, like the push and pull of 1 and 2 in ½. Hoffsaes also made a trombone piece that follows that similar system of composition. The pieces are composed with a custom guitar tuning. The tuning includes intervals that approximate simple harmonic ratios and others that follow non-rational frequency relationships.

Temps Lilbre

Purchase at Bandcamp

Léo Hoffsaes - Temps Libre

CIA Debutante & Zhu Wenbo - In Beijing - Fever Bed

22525

Mark Harwood follows up his 2022 offering with the new album, or, Urim.

or, Urim showcases a no holds barred approach to plunderphonics, resulting in a human head to hard drive battle of natural and synthetic emotion. or, Urim combines elements of psychedelia, progressive rock, progressive electronics, abstract electronics, avant classical and extreme electronics.

Harwood was born in 1972 and therefore resides in the rare pocket of humans that experienced both human and synthetic dominance within the span of their lives. There was and only will be a some of us.

or, Urim is a dusty digital futuristic head trip for generation then, now and next.

or, Urim is a record delighting in wholesale theft whilst occupying a meditation on the shifting tides of human and non-human dominance.

Utilising pre-existing musical forms for new forms is as old as DJ Kool Hercs. We live in an age where an 8 year old kid can be fined for recontextualising an 8 second long snippet of a soul song from 68, whilst certain ketamine fueled companies can scrape the entire history of culture for capital gain.

Harwood teases a hearing aid to the new ear of hope, fear, doubt, dread and dreams de jour.

or, Urim

Treuer Atem

Modify The Ventriloquist

Family Underground(FU) is a group consisting of Sara Czerny on bass, synths, vocal and drums and Nicolas Kauffmann on guitar, vocal and electronics. FU started out in 2000 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Orbital Elements

Family Underground

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