New Style

Women’s voices deserve to be heard,
Mutual support amongst women is crucial,
Emotional labour from women is valuable.

Outside of the steady flow of daily tasks and the maintenance of everyday order, music provides us an opportunity to once again fall into a state of deep contemplation, breaking through the passive mundanity of quotidian life. After a four-month hiatus, Scandal has gathered together eight local female producers to launch its debut compilation “Scandal: Alexithymia 述情障碍” in January of 2022. This release will also officially mark the establishment of the Scandal label. We will also continue to achieve our goal: to help more women express their creative desires and pursue their creative passions, and increase the representation of female musicians.

The term Alexithymia is a classical compound combining the ancient Greek words “a-” “léxis” “thymós”, respectively translated as "no" "speech" "emotion". Taken literally, the term means “silent and ruthless”. In the field of psychiatry, alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by the inability to perceive and express emotions in daily life.

“Scandal: Alexithymia 述情障碍” intends to reflect on the current atmosphere of atomization and fragmentation in our society, inviting eight local female producers to demonstrate how they express this emotional blockage through their music. At present, alexithymia is ubiquitous, exacerbated by coronavirus social distancing, an increasingly polarized political landscape when it comes to social and identity-based issues, or other reasons we’re unable to discuss. In a world where we can’t speak to our emotions, we need the interpretive power of music more than ever.

Love Is A Fragile Dream - Temple Rat

Full mix only available on cassette via Bandcamp, Discogs and recordshops (Filter Musikk Oslo)

HMD Records are proud to present our 17th split-release cassette by Oslo’s one and only PURPURRPURPLE (No) and Paris best kept secret ZULU (Fr). Staying true to the original format of releasing split mixtapes, HMD asked Annette Kvithyll (Purple) to curate a mix and select a match for the flipside of this contemporary club friendly analogue item. A 2 x 47 minutes wide range journey through both new and classic downbeat, electro, house, techno and tastemaker trance, leading into everything from North African rap, step varieties with drips of pop infused sample based signatures from Parisian producer Zulu.  
 
PURPURRPURPLE
With trance-aesthetics, sharp and grinding beats free from boundaries PURPURRPURPLE has been creating tracks and DJ-sets within a raw format since the golden age of mid 00. As one of the most experienced DJ’s from the Norwegian circuit, blessing countless clubs and festivals such as Roskilde, Sonar Stockholm, Øya, ByLarm, Way Out West, Norberg, CTM Berlin, PURPLE is known for her taste in blending not only RnB (witch she absolutely kills), but also various sub genres. Bass heavy rhythms, channeling rude New York Club and sub loaded sounds of London, as well as small independent labels across the globe. PURPLE features in a variety of projects within the creative underground of the Scandinavian contemporary art and club music scene and experiments with making music for fashion lines. Growing up in Hell, Norway, she has given the Oslo club scene memorable moments providing hard drum club nights such as ‘Ball Em Up’ which explores the very forefront of nightlife soundscape together with Slick Shoot, Drippin, Dj Skwar and Fakethias.

ZULU
Zulu presents music that is in motion and moving. With focus on future club, dub, beatmaking and ambient, references can also leave club music behind, evolving to interstellar dreamlike paths. With his collective “Bruits de la passion” and DJ residence for LYL Radio, his mixes and productions tend to have a personal approach on pop music which offers singular, poetical and rhythmical encounters. With his album “Smart & Loyal” from the new Parisian label Deardogs, Zulu offers a strong and sensitive inner dance experiment.

HMD 17 - ZULU

ISMISTIK - Live @ Borgen 1994 (HMD18)
Cassette only release. 100 copies.
Dropping 16.06.23

Bandcamp: https://hmdrecords.bandcamp.com/

This cassette contains a recording of Ismistik (aka Bjørn Torske) live in concert at Borgen in Oslo on the night of October 30th, 1994. The concert was held as a release party for "TOS.CD", a compilation CD which was Tromsø label Beatservice’s first release. The live set was recorded on DAT, and the recording then lay untouched in Bjørn's archive for over two decades. All of the material from this set is previously unreleased, with the exception of the track “Miditrip", a version of which was released on the first Ismistik 12-inch. The only people who have heard this material until now - besides Bjørn himself, HMD and mastering engineer DJ Sotofett - are those who were at Borgen that evening.
The live set was made especially for this concert. “I had many sketches lying around which I stitched together into a live set. I was making music all the time, and a good part of it never came out," recalls Bjørn. "It was a lot of work to prepare the concert. This was long before you could play live with just a laptop, and there was a lot of equipment that had to be transported on the train to Oslo. The aisle was full, so I had to put the Juno synth in the luggage rack above the seat. There was no time for a sound check at Borgen and the acoustics in the room were difficult because there was concrete and pillars on all sides. I had to play everything live on the spot and it shows: some of the sounds are quite high in the mix. At the end of the live set, the DAT player fell to the floor, so that's why the sound suddenly cuts out in the second-to-last track."
The seed that would grow into this release was sown in 2017 at the event Graff & Grill, which is held every summer in Moss under the auspices of Sex Tags and Kambo Super Sound System. Bjørn DJed there that year, while HMD collaborator DJ Kompressorkanonen attended as a guest. At one point, Bjørn asked him if it was possible that he was present at Borgen that time in 1994. And he was right! Bjørn then mentioned that he had the recording of that concert somewhere, and that he could send it over. The recording arrived in Kompressorkanonen’s inbox a few weeks later. When made aware of the existence of the live set, HMD CEO Jan Mayen had the idea to have it released on cassette. Bjørn gave the project a thumbs up, and the rest is history.
“Play it loud, close your eyes and imagine that you are standing in a run-down concrete hall with a smoke machine on full blast. Because that's exactly how it was.” – DJ Kompressorkanonen

ISMISTIK - Live Borgen 1994 (snippet)

Temple Rat - 東風

The Four Saisons Series by Chez.Kito.Kat Records
Vol1 - INVERNO
CKK094 - 2024
Master by Christophe Biache
Artwork by Samuel Ricciuti
Distributed by Underscope

01. Antilophobia - Dub15
02. Dissembler - Vex Detection
03. S.Talbot - Verification Code
04. MPHS - Symptom Of Detox
05. Sass& - Swarm
06. Eleina Vierce - Chaos Cookies

The Canadian label Chez.Kito.Kat Records commissioned all the artists of the label as well as the artists they invited to play in the Montreal monthly live electronic events TEMPIO NERO and ANALOVE MY LOG. They asked to them a track for the compilation series "Kito Sounds". 
Having received many pieces, the label decided to publish this selection in 4 small EPs classified by genre and theme. They will be released each season in 2024 : 

Winter >Techno :::: 
Spring > Electro & Bass :::: 
Summer > Groovy :::: 
Autumn > Noise & Ambient & IDM::::

These 4 EPs will be available in digital version distributed by Underscope before a physical publication which will be available at the end of the year.
The 4 EPs were mastered by Christophe Biache, and the artworks by Samuel Ricciuti.
We would like to thank all the artists who accepted this proposal, without their contribution this project could not have taken place.

Elaina Vierce - Chaos Cookies

HMD Records Oslo
https://hmdrecords.bandcamp.com/
www.hmdrecords.com