Osaka based mastering engineer Kentaro Hayashi debuts on Opal Tapes with this 2 x 12” recorded alongside Yasuyuki Nakamura, with additional remix duties from Merzbow and Jim O’Rourke. After opening with a nine-minute concrete style piece, Hayashi channels the addition/subtraction strategies of Vainqueur’s Chain Reaction outings on ‘Vakuum’, inciting laments for bass-heavy soundsystems and grotty live music venues. It works wonders in covid-era isolation too however, setting up nicely for the shuffling techno paranoia of ‘Peculiar’ and the brooding, understated cut ‘Odyssey’. Building on the original CD release, Kentaro and Stephen Bishop draw for two extra cuts, notably ‘Arrowhead’, a ridiculously compelling mutant DnB/jungle spin-off that blends walls of noise, crow squawks, sub-aquatic FX and sharp breaks.

From this writer’s perspective, the general atmosphere is one that seems to incorporate varying strands of UK club culture across the past three decades, taking elements from the hardcore continuum and the starker moments of early dubstep and fusing them with a brutalist approach to sound design that fits in line with the heyday of Japanese noise. Whilst raw and chaotic, the tracks fit together to convey an extremely acute sense of purpose, Hayashi seemingly aware of how each piece of the album holds together. O’Rourke deconstructs ‘Vakuum’, twisting stems of the original into glitch-laden vortex, whilst Merzbow brings us back to the opening cut, doubling up on the intensity and bringing proceedings to a close. Hayashi has been quietly working away behind the scenes at Slowdown (スローダウンRECORDS) over the past year, responsible for technical assistance on a slew of Merzbow CDs and a blink and you’ll miss it Vanity records demo compilation. In late 2020 he released Peculiar as a small-run CD for the Remodel label, a drop in the ocean of the ever-expansive Japanese noise scene. The album seemed grounded in the shadows of its home country with no proper distribution - globally impenetrable by less than a select few in the know fans. With its finger on the pulse, Opal Tapes now welcomes these microworlds of dark and beautiful sound structures to the fold with worldwide distribution on the vinyl edition. Some heavy, heavy frequencies on this one!

- Fergus Clark

2x12" / Digital

Kentaro Hayashi - Vakuum (Jim O'Rourke Remix)

Bishop / Rezaei - Voul

new track off the @warmwintersltd benefit compilation titled Črepy: https://warmwintersltd.bandcamp.com/album/repy

Oh to be a mast

From the Psychic Liberation vaults comes a pairing of sonic material from artists LXV and Glyn Maier. Having originally been planned for respective 7” releases, the pairing of these modernist technological psychedelia recordings revealed themselves to sit beautifully together. 

Lxv is the most prolific alias of David Sutton, a sound arranger from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He also records under the monikers Heaven Copy, Temporal Movement, as well as his full name, David Wesley Sutton. Glyn Maier is a sound artist and field recordist living in the Unorganized Territory of South Oxford, Maine. A longtime fixture of East Coast underground circuits, Maier has performed and recorded under various aliases, most recently as Lack. Maier currently runs nature friendly label Enmossed.

Sutton notes of the A side material “The two recordings which appear on this side were created using pure data and a Roland SP808EX. They come to you from the distant year 2015. At this time I was very interested in exploring irregular modes of rhythm and constructions of motion in a digital audio environment. I sought to emulate the wavering state between tech-infused dysphoria and transcendent euphoria -through creating a pathway to irregular groove excavation in the disjointed wriggles of adverse movements, tangled up, like a tornado blasting through a junkyard and assembling a pc, but not quite.”

On the flip side of the record, ‘Memoria' and 'Gŵyl' were recorded in late summer 2017 following the passing of Maier’s grandmother. “I built them using sounds coaxed from her collection of wooden shakers and metallic windchimes. Further processing and arrangement were done with an Arp 2600 synthesizer and a handful of analog effects units. A final touch was provided by Brood X cicadas that I recorded in her backyard. Predicted to emerge in 2021, a small cohort awakened early and sang through the sweltering evenings my family and I spent sifting through her belongings - a lifetime of materialized memories.

The 12” comes in an edition of 150 hand stamped copies, in yellow disco jacket and poly sleeve.
A side mastered by Jack Callahan
B side mastered by Glyn Maier
Distributed in the U.S.A. by Fantastique.

Buy 12"

PLIB009 - B1. Glyn Maier - Memoria

Space Afrika – Version 3 (SFERIC10")

All music by Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi 
Recorded at Standards, Milan, November 2015. Re-recorded and edited in Berlin, Kyoto and Monza, February 2018 - September 2020                                

Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
Artwork by Traianos Pakioufakis 
Design by Bartolomé Sanson		                                                  
 C+P 2021 l SP135 l SHELTER PRESS

ANDREW PEKLER & GUISEPPE IELASI 'Simferopol' (SP135)

Pé - As Honor Was On Its Last Leg (CSAM)

released July 29, 2021

All Music by MOS FET, Eustress, and Solid Squares

Mastering: Pheek

Geomag - copper squeeze

mydream cometrue

"Hlapov", the latest full-length release by Italian musician Grotta Veterano, is a work of patiently arranged, layered beauty. Presented as four movements of a single suite, "Hlapov" offers a sense of great cohesive narrative, supported by its slow buildups and gravitating drones, blending in elements of choral music and expanding, organic rhythms. Ultimately it is music of quasi-sacred contemplation, a meditative journey of profound scale - a precious ornament.

Your eyes are but two pools of infinite emerald green.

EN22

All music performed, recorded and arranged by Grotta Veterano, 2021

Hlapov

Grotta Veterano - MOV II

Where does fantasy end and reality begin? The dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian nature of man represents our greatest inner duel - the dance of chaos and order, the struggle of mind versus heart, the battle of immaculate harmony and intoxicated euphoria; a lifetime of chasing one's wildest dreams and divine muses, raised to the heavens by sheer imagination, only to be washed ashore by the unrelenting waters of Earth, crashing against the jagged rocks of existence, faced only by one's own truthful reflection staring back from the indifference of the sea. That is our ultimate, inevitable fate: the futility of our desires, the certain tragedy of living torn between two tides. 

The Birth of Tragedy is a compilation in two halves reflecting the mythological symbolism of Apollo and Dionysus, descendants of Zeus. The first half presents the Apollonian form - order, harmony, clarity. The second half is Dionysian - a state of chaotic liberation without boundaries, driven by instinct, blinded bliss and disarray. The collision between these worlds unveils the drama that we find ourselves in.

TEARS001 
Various Artists
The Birth of Tragedy
Limited edition vinyl/cassette 

https://amuletoftears.bandcamp.com/album/the-birth-of-tragedy

OUT NOW.

The Birth of Tragedy

yolabmi - Threnody

Independent Record Label

Új Bála - Hideg Sors
https://ujbala.bandcamp.com/album/hideg-sors

Geomag - below the river above the air
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/below-the-river-above-the-air

Women of the Pore & Arrington - Hot Town - Rip Up the Streets
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/hot-town-rip-up-the-streets

VA - Content Aware
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/content-aware

Kritzkom - Fuzziness
https://kritzkom.bandcamp.com/album/fuzziness

African Ghost Valley - Iberville
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/iberville

Abaunz - Ilunpean Arnas Hotsa Entzuten
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/ilunpean-arnas-hotsa-entzuten

African Ghost Valley - AAM
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/aam

MOS FET & Eustress - These Days
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/these-days

Andrew Haines - Hidden in the Night
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/hidden-in-the-night

Új Bála - Lobban
https://ujbala.bandcamp.com/album/lobban

Reinartz - Interactions 
https://reinartz.bandcamp.com/album/interactions

VA - Crash Klang Bang Thang
https://jollies.bandcamp.com/album/crash-klang-bang-thang

Geomag - copper squeeze

Jollies Records

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