Oysters - Snippets

Releases

The Album is out on January 27

Pre-order: ffm.to/choralfeeling

Credits
Written and produced by Job Oberman Including the voices of 30+ friends 
Artwork by Bob Verhoeven
Text by Gregory Markus
Mastered by Sjoerd Oberman

Choral Feeling

Buy/Stream

Oceanic - Choral Feeling (previews) - Nous'klaer LP 007

Out 04/10/24

Preorder Vinyl & Digital via Bandcamp:
https://tinyurl.com/bd3b2x74

One Eye Witness:
https://link.common-ground.io/JJnxT5eDX

With a remix and a compilation cameo already under his belt, Canadian figurehead Priori makes his Kalahari return for the debut proper. 3 squelchy incursions complete with a hefty remix from fellow Oyster Cult acolyte Sansibar.

Known for traversing breezy, horizontal zones, the NAFF co-founder sets downbeat and ambient concerns aside for the direct and propulsive. Expect insistent, urgent forays down the wormhole as nocturnal jaunts made of ritual and darkroom throb coalesce with meditative, essential rhythm.

This is fractal gear born from the the traditions of European, Japanese and American Mid-West techno; tunnelling and immersive, conjuring moments of ascension for the gathered masses.

Finishing on Sansibar’s meaty refit, the one-two punch of seismic kick and dry-as-bone snare propels Priori’s original in a whole new direction.

Priori - Lexica | Kalahari Oyster Cult (OYSTER63)

Preorder Vinyl & Digital via Bandcamp:
https://kalaharioystercult.bandcamp.com/album/pinky-promise

Almost exactly a year since since ‘Felt Cute’ debuted on Kalahari and Blu:sh is back in the building. But this time around, it’s with a record evoking the muggy closeness of a dancefloor suspended somewhere between peak-time elation and wide-eyed vision quest.

Tweaking the blueprint to rapturous ends, the latest offering from this Blu:sh project propels itself forward with a muscle-bound groove. Six robust, deadly club trax replicate the breathy seduction of its predecessor, but this time, with added velocity.

Pinky Promise is full frontal and deadly while channelled through the same explorative prism characterising Benoit’s best work. Probably the toughest material the prolific shapeshifter has put out to date.

Nods to Eurocentric styles shine through with particular emphasis on the sexy and trance-inducing. It goes straight out the traps with a big dose of fractal fuel and stays murkily psychedelic to the very end.

Blu:sh - Pinky Promise | Kalahari Oyster Cult (OYSTER64)

Preorder Vinyl & Digital via Bandcamp:
https://linktr.ee/kalaharioystercult

Denizens of the Oyster Cult, rejoice. Elusive dancefloor operator S.O.N.S has followed last year’s compilation cameo up with the deadliest of full debuts.

Booting off with some rough 'n ready gear, "Drive" is the latest chapter as S.O.N.S undergoes his metamorphosis into a more brooding entity. The esteemed Junction Records and Junction Forest proprietor oscillates between tunnelling acid techno and a darkwave-indebted workout somewhat reminiscent of Dutch pioneer Das Ding. Three night-stalking club trax rooted in ominous portent.

Trading the gentler touch and sound sensitivity of releases past for something tougher, and meaner, but there aren’t any diminishing returns. Quite a departure from the introspection of that aforementioned compilation appearance while retaining the transcendent qualities that always typified his work.

S.O.N.S - Drive | Kalahari Oyster Cult (OYSTER66)

Preorder Vinyl & Digital via Bandcamp:
https://kalaharioystercult.bandcamp.com/

One Eye Witness:
https://link.common-ground.io/7tqU6NFqU

Berlin scene figurehead Gilles Aiken, AKA Edward, coming through with a massive Kalahari debut (and it’s safe to say he understood the assignment).

Booting off on a massive remix tip as the veteran producer reinterprets Mike Parker & Aric Rist’s Trybet project, but trust him to allow for a moment of dancefloor introspection. It’s prime early morning gear in a rousing juxtaposition of beatific string harmony and tough-as-nails deepness. Triumphant ‘window shutters open in the club at 5 AM’-type shit.

The other two are quintessential Edward: impressionistic, widescreen odysseys across lysergic terrain, but groove-forward where it counts. A pair of head-spinning explorations intended for the dancefloor, flush with shadowy flex, insectoid detail and tripped-out flourishes while keeping it funked-out in the tradition of Detroit.

The ‘Deep Sea Villain EP’ plumbs the depths of smudged abstraction, and as we’ve come to expect from Edward, it’s big on hallucinatory detail. It all oozes the multi-layered surrealism that typifies his best work. Proper transcendent biz.

Edward - Deep Sea Villain EP | Kalahari Oyster Cult (OYSTER65)

Preorder vinyl and digital

https://bit.ly/4hGrJRZ

With Roza Terenzi and Sleep D on the remix, Alfred Czital & Ayu summon divine frequencies across a debut recalling the finest turn-of-the-millennium trance.

Spirits are high as we strive for utopia. Like relics of times passed – a bygone era where the free party reigned supreme – this is a union forged out of a mutual affinity for trippy dancefloor dynamics and live performance.

Rapturous and ecstatic, both originals evoke pure club hedonism. Sensual, sultry gear made of euphoric melodrama, close sweat and lysergic throb. Wide-eyed optimism coursing throughout, but like any good proggy majick, it’s not without a decent dose of shadow and ritual.

Coming in hottt with the remixes and both are befitting a release bent on traversing the wormhole interior. Oyster Cult acolyte Roza Terenzi keeps it taught and tightly-coiled on her rugged, propulsive re-fit, and not to be outdone, Butter Sessions founders Sleep D let atmosphere pull focus with a sprawling, dubby workout.

Alfred Czital & Ayu - Talk To Me | Kalahari Oyster Cult (OYSTER68)

Plafond 4 — Ulla Straus / Oceanic [LP]

Vinyl: https://clone.nl/item57897.html
Digital: bakk.bandcamp.com/album/plafond-4

A1 Ulla Straus — I Forgot to Take a Picture (12:03)
A2 Ulla Straus — Becoming Warm (6:24)
B Oceanic — Three Sides Of A Shell (19:21)
 ↳ 1. Aperture 
 ↳ 2. Columella
 ↳ 3. Sea If You Can Hear

The fourth Plafond sees fine-crafted contrasting pieces complement each other in courtesy of Ulla Straus and Oceanic. Along the wide arbitrary landscape of listening or 'ambient' music, it is a delight to have two artists, separated by the vast Atlantic, contributing quite opposite interpretations of such to the series. Perceptual time feels as a recurrent theme which binds them, albeit in a whole different modus operandi.

In her iconic tactile productions, Straus excavates levels of advanced musical complexity in the seemingly most simple. Throughout two tracks her crude and beautiful technique riffles, compositions that remain prone to the transient, combining field recordings with morphing saxophone and guitar. This is deeply evocative music that turns its recipient into a mode of contemplation. ‘I Forgot to Take a Picture’ breathes melancholic romanticism, ‘Becoming Warm’ feels lorn yet hopeful. Pastoral haze over a rouge-tainted barren, the crackling insides of a wooden forest house. Picturesque and minimalist, Pennsylvania’s Straus manages to temporarily stop the sand from gravitating downwards.

Oceanic antagonises Straus with the triptych ‘Three Sides of a Shell’, recalling different emotions adhering to the fourth dimension. As a performing artist, Oceanic masters the element of suspense. Here, over the course of nineteen minutes, a three-note sequence is explored within the producers imaginatory, chapterised, providing moments to navigate through his fictitious galaxy. Stuttering melodies across azure waters, synthesised bleeps as flickering stars over a moonlit mountain pass. Oceanic’s music feels advanced through actively incorporating contemporary futurism, whilst never losing the glacial glance that is so familiar to its early nineties foregoers. It is as if listening to ‘Three Sides...’ heightens the senses, towards possibility, innovation even, triggering illusions of time dilation, shattering the hourglass.

Comes in hand printed dreamy, pink sleeve, including Obi-strip, by the BAKK Innerspace Ink Station.

Music: @ullastraus / @oceanicocean
Design: Mike Kokken and Heer Badoux
Words: Luke Cohlen (@lukecohlen)

Plafond 5

BAKKPlafond4 | Ulla Straus / Oceanic (LP)

After releasing Oceanic’s 2017 live recording at the end of 2018, De School’s home imprint De Nieuw returns with four club-ready interpretations of Oceanic’s concert on modular synths and strings. First up is Oceanic’s take on his live recording, turned into the perfect fit for his halftime DJ-sets and a much-asked track ID. This track found its way to De School regulars upsammy and Pariah who have each created their own version.

Both are basement ready: a dub-inspired trip from Pariah’s side while upsammy performed her melodic magic on the string hook of the original. Closing off is Oceanic’s Beat Tool: a stripped-down drum workout that focusses on the percussion, the strings still echoing in the background. Together these tracks represent different visions of the original, both suitable for clubs in the future and home play today.
credits
released May 15, 2020

Mastering: Ten Eight Seven
Design: Edwin van Gelder (Mainstudio), Jeremy Jansen

Oceanic - Live At De School Club Versions (De Nieuw 02)

Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Swallow A Party LP

Tracklist

A1. Swallow A Party
A2. Step Snakes
A3. Never Done
B1. Technicolour Memories
B2. Mist In Tide
B3. A Window Drifting
________________

yeyeh founder Pieter Jansen has now conjured up another unlikely but inspired joint album, this time featuring award-winning free-jazz vocalist https://soundcloud.com/greetjebijmakwintet and leftfield house, techno and ambient producer https://soundcloud.com/oceanicocean.

The project has its roots in a chance meeting between Jansen and Bijma, a legendary figure on the Dutch jazz scene who in 1990 became the first woman to win the country’s top jazz accolade, the VPRO/Boy Edgar award. Apart from having previously worked with the likes of Anna Homler (aka Breadwoman), Jasper van ’t Hof, Han Bennink, Louis Andriessen, Willem Breuker and her own solo projects, she’s in a league of her own.

Jansen is a big fan of Bijma’s 1996 heavily electronic collaboration with Jasper van’t Hof and Pierre Favre, Freezing Screens, and was with the friend who first introduced him to it when he bumped into Bijma. 
Excited to meet someone who had made one of his favourite records, Jansen took the opportunity to ask Bijma if she would be interested in working with young electronic music producers. To Jansen’s delight, Bijma quickly agreed.

Weeks later, Bijma stepped into the studio with Oceanic, a rising star of the Dutch electronic underground whose releases as Oceanic for Nous’klaer Audio and BAKK Plafond revolve around mechanical rhythms, opaque ambient textures, minimalist melodic movements and effervescent electronics. The pair quickly connected on an emotional and musical level, with Bijma taking her cues from Oceanic’s electronic sounds and rhythms, and Oceanic drawing inspiration from Bijma’s dexterous, mind-bending and otherworldly vocalizations.

After two hugely productive days, the cross-generational duo had completed a couple of mesmerizing songs – breathlessly haunting album opener “Swallow a Party” and chilly ambient closer “A Window Drifting” – and recorded several hours or improvisations that Oceanic later edited, layered-up and re-modelled.

The results are little less than spellbinding. The range and versatility of Bijma’s vocalizations is breathtaking, while Oceanic’s music – which cleverly incorporates the free-jazz singer’s vocal notes, tones and proclamations – swings between becalmed beauty and breathless intensity. 

Some of the set’s most striking moments are those where Oceanic re-contextualizes Bijma’s varied vocal sounds with the dancefloor in mind. On the pulsating “Technicolour Memories”, up-tempo “Step Snakes” and hypnotic “Never Done”, Bijma’s scat outbursts not only ride Oceanic’s rhythms, but also form part of the densely layered percussion tracks beneath. 

Like the release’s more downtempo and ethereal moments, these hybrid organic-synthetic compositions defy easy categorization, offering a unique brand of alien electronic/acoustic musical fusion that lingers long in the memory.

Artwork & Design:
Nol.one & Wimswim

Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Swallow A Party LP [yeyeh003 snippets]

Preorder digital & vinyl: https://kalaharioystercult.bandcamp.com/album/eversines-plooi-w-oceanic-remix

Discogs: 
https://www.discogs.com/Eversines-RDS-Plooi-12/release/15420267

2019 was the year of breakthrough for Amsterdam-based talent and De Lichting staple Eversines. Continuing on his ascension, we’re chuffed to welcome him to the fold with ‘Plooi’ – a stupendous mini sonic odyssey of sorts, taking us from vaporous skylines to brightly hued seascapes. Both captivatingly melodic and kinetic to the full, the four tracks composing the backbone to Eversines’ new jaunt into elegiac dance territories work their magic in the gap betwixt zen-like atmospherics, velveteen acid, sun-bleached electro and chiseled breaks that step up to the plate.

Whilst the OG version of ‘Plooi’ eases us into a shape-shifting environment, swinging the pendulum between nu-age infused / Sino-flavoured harmonics, lysergic bass phrasing and muscular breaks straight out the UK rave scene’s heyday, the remix from De School resident DJ Oceanic alters the original into a subaquatic dub weapon, navigating its way across frothing and bubbling synth lines to emerge in geysers of thermal bleeping and rhythmic outbursts. A more jacking affair, ‘Efbol’ carves out a lane of its own in between angular techno and playful, retro-laced electronica a la KLF meets James Holden in his ’Idiots Are Winning’ days. Completing the set on a more understated note, ‘Missing’ in collaboration with RDS promises to fill your headspace with thoughts of beauty and quiet. Merging FX-dipped piano chords, laid-back junglism and heavily verbed-out envelopes to form a well unique piece of ambient lushness, Eversines ushers us into a world of vibrant musical rapture, nestling away from standardized tropes and patterned behaviours.

Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Cut at The Exchange.

Eversines - Plooi w/ Oceanic Remix (OYSTER27 - Snippets)

Run by @reycolino
Brussels - Amsterdam
info@kalaharioystercult.com
Distributed by @oneyewitness
Bookings & label showcases: peter@klsbookings.com // +44 (0) 7742 600894