Vibrant post- new jazz, stunning realised in all its manipulative glory. Sparkles, time-shifts and exhilarates...

Taken from the album 'Irreal' released as CD and Digital

Irreal

BJ Nilsen 'Short circuit of the conscious thought' (EMEGO 305)

Air, in both its stillness and its movements, is what compels INVASIVA, the latest release by multidisciplinary artist Dorian Wood.

In early 2022, Dorian set out to investigate the root of her anxiety—and how her breathing is both affected by, and complicit to, her mental state—during an artist's residency at Loghaven in Knoxville, Tennessee. Upon touring the campus, she learned of the Whittle House, an abandoned cabin on the grounds that had not been inhabited for many years, set apart by the other nearby, fully-restored cabins. In encountering this site, Dorian connected with the idea of isolation as a catalyst for disrepair. She came to understand how separation could trigger a fear of losing self-awareness and the inability to escape. 
 
INVASIVA is a document of the artist meandering physically and mentally between two forms of confinement: "mandated" and "self-imposed". Like an abandoned house, the composition is filled with a stillness that seems both uninhabited and anticipatory. Gradual shifts in tone build an atmosphere of meditation, and droning notes are sustained like a deeply held breath. And yet, despite the fear of quiet isolation which permeates the piece, INVASIVA swells with slow respiration, revels in the wind, and echoes with gentle reminders of outside life. 
 
The work is one that emulates a contemplative state which is constant threat—and perseveres.  Comprised of the recorded stillness within the Whittle House, and sounds captured in the office lobby of Dorian's breathing specialist in Los Angeles, INVASIVA is a quiet, ethereal triumph over suffocating loneliness. It is a piece that is filled with inhalation, anticipation, reflection,  exhalation, release—it is filled with air.

Invasiva

Dorian Wood - Invasiva (excerpt)

Marina Herlop - Nekkuja
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 141
Release Date: 27 October 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Nekkuja

While she was waiting for her last album 'Pripyat' to be released, Catalan composer and producer Marina Herlop was restless. She was concerned about her (by then) uncertain music career, and felt emotionally unmoored. "Some days I used to sit on the balcony of my flat to catch some sun,” she explains, "I would close my eyes and start visualizing myself as a gardener, pulling out purple weeds from the soil, every bad memory or emotion I wanted to expulse being one of the plants." As the days dragged on, the fantasy deepened, and Herlop discovered that parts of the garden was withering; the energy she had been putting into the non-musical side of her life had seeped into her creative pasture and poisoned it. She knew what she needed to do to overcome the blight: plant some seeds and tend to her art to help it blossom and bloom once again.

'Nekkuja' is a place for Herlop's warmest, sweetest sentiments to rise to the surface and crack through the topsoil. She describes the record as a way for her to seek and affirm inner light, and it's undoubtedly her brightest, poppiest statement to date. The forward-thinking, experimental touches that nourished 'Pripyat' are still present, but blessed with a level of positivity that's rare to find in a scene so entranced by darkness and melancholy. Skittering fragments of ornate acoustic instrumentation provide a serene welcome to 'Busa', punctuated by precise electronic processes that shuttle the sound towards abstraction and fantasy. Herlop's voice grows over the tangle of sounds from a childish giggle into a layered, matted mantra, sounding passionate, hopeful and full of energy. The vitality spills over into 'Cosset', where she wraps powerful motifs around ricocheting beats and dramatic piano rolls.

Herlop's garden opens up dramatically on 'Karada' when bucolic field recordings crack like sunlight over harp plucks and willowy vocals. Her voice seems to bend around the whooshing streams and chittering of birds as if she's singing to the manicured land itself - a utopian paradise that Herlop employs as a metaphor for the creative process. In contrast to the view that an artist is an isolated genius or an idol to be worshipped, Herlop believes that the garden helps us see the process as closer to devotion or perseverance. A gardener brings order to the wild chaos of the outdoors, collaborating with nature to arrange something vibrant and enduring. Blending familiar sounds with fanciful concepts, Herlop traces an imaginary garden, imploring us to wander and wonder. And by the album's billowing final track 'Babel', it's flowered into a flush of pruned vocal phrases and delicately groomed orchestral rushes, painted in orange, green, blue and red.

Composed, produced and recorded by Marina Herlop
Vocals by Marina Herlop
Mixed and mastered by Joker
Artwork by Mati Klarewin

Marina Herlop - Interlude (PAN 141)

NPVR is the avant garde duo made up of the late Peter Rehberg and Nik Void. Editions Mego is proud to present their second and final release. No this is not some kind of Beatles synthetic AI that raises the dead reconstructed recordings but rather a new album made by the humans and their machines. 

The initial meeting of Rehberg and Void was in London in 2016 and despite or due to their mutual awkwardness found solace and compatibility in the fact that they both had a similar electronic modular set up, along with matching cases to transport all. The idea to collaborate was an obvious and organic process as a means to connect their individual gear together and observe the outcome. The fruits of these initial experiments, recorded in London, resulted in the playful experimentation of their acclaimed 2017 release 33 33 (eMego 251).

Now in 2024 Editions Mego presents the logically titled follow up, 33 34. These sessions were recorded six months after the initial recordings at Peter’s home in Vienna. This was planned out as a mirror city release to the original London recordings. With Peter having access to his full studio set up this time around we encounter a rich audio landscape which organically folds together a variety of musical genres blurring any distinction between these forms so the resulting music hovers as a new cloud of sound. Any musical form, be it industrial, electro-acoustic, ambient, drone and techno all coexist and melt into the other as the ensuing result unveils a hypnotic swarm of divergent sounds (music). When active there were no lines or contexts with NPVR, either between sound or genre within these recordings or live where NPVR were at home playing at a techno club one night and an avant garde venue the next.

The initial session of these recordings was edited by Rehberg and sent to Void to further develop.
Over time the final versions were agreed on and then shelved as other outside projects took over. The awkwardness had been surmounted and the two had become close friends. NPVR performed at a range of venues such as Tresor, Sutton House, Corsica, Blitz, Paris GRM #Focus2, LEV Festival and Rigas Skanumezs Festival. Following Rehberg’s untimely passing Void had difficulty listening back to the sessions but eventually thought it fit to complete and release this album, of which even the artwork (like 33 33, an image from Zurich photographer, Georg Gatsas) had been decided upon prior to Rehberg parting ways. 

There is an unmistakable joy to these recordings. One encounters an enthralling exploration of their chosen machines which conveys the excitement of what can be randomly conjured when people speak through such devices. There is no grand statement or argument here, just the sheer thrill of creation and the recorded results of random encounters. The art of collaboration was always a mainstay of Rehberg’s practice from the advent of the MEGO adventure. Rehberg & Bauer was an initial collaboration with former business partner Ramon Bauer. Even at this stage one can hear a relaxed sense of delight in the sheer discovery of sound.

A mix made for the Wire magazine following the release of 33 33 hints at the freedom that comes with endless urge for exploration and discovery. Abstract tracks from Z'EV. Jérôme Noetinger and Jung An Tagen are included alongside British stalwarts The Fall and New Order. There were no lines between pop / academic / underground or mainstream in Rehberg’s world. All of it sat at the same table. It is just matter in the atmosphere, like the diverse exploration found in these recordings that comprise 33 34.

33 34

Raw to the Core

NPVR 'Raw to the Core' (EMEGO312)

Thorough Ring

Idiosyncratic and infectious – listen to 'Pink Something' by Tom Richards, taken from his upcoming release on nonclassical, 'PINK NOTHING'.

Catch Tom live at the Victoria in Dalston on 31 July. There'll also be dreamlike theremin and musical machinery from Sarah Angliss, and improvised vocal-driven drone poetry from Steph Horak.

THIS EVENT WAS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR 11 JULY, BUT WAS POSTPONED. ALL PURCHASED TICKETS REMAIN VALID.

More info: http://bit.ly/2K6s7cz
Facebook: http://bit.ly/2LLE485
Tickets: http://bit.ly/2JR7LYc

Tom Richards – Pink Something

Mythologized moments, set fire to the relics of hurt. 

To burn / Serenity

Letting go / Surrendering

'Where I End You Begin' EP out now.

1.'ABLAZE / Fröjd'
2.'Swear on my Silver / Angelplay'
3.'The old Gods are Falling / Chanting & Cussing’
4.'BEGINNING'

EP artwork by Jonna Mayer & Suutoo
https://suutoo.bandcamp.com/album/where-i-end-you-begin

Where I End You Begin

feat. Batu, Morgan Buckley, Kuljit Bhamra 

Beatrice Dillon - Workaround
Format: LP / DL
Cat.No: PAN 106
Release Date: 07 February 2020
Purchase: bit.ly/33ISoYr

‘Workaround’ is the lucidly playful and ambitious solo debut album by rhythmobsessive musician and DJ, Beatrice Dillon for PAN. It combines her love of UK club music’s syncopated suss and Afro- Caribbean influences with a gamely experimental approach to modern composition and stylistic fusion, using inventive sampling and luminous mixing techniques adapted from modern pop to express fresh ideas about groove-driven music and perpetuate its form with timeless, future-proofed clarity.

Recorded over 2017-2019 between studios in London, Berlin and New York, ‘Workaround’ renders a hypnotic series of polymetric permutations at a fixed 150bpm tempo. Mixing meticulous FM synthesis and harmonics with crisply edited acoustic samples from a wide range of guests including UK Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bhamra (tabla); Pharoah Sanders Band’s Jonny Lam (pedal steel guitar); techno innovators Laurel Halo (synth/vocal) and Batu (samples); Senegalese Griot Kadialy Kouyaté (Kora), Hemlock’s Untold and new music specialist Lucy Railton (cello); amongst others, Dillon deftly absorbs their distinct instrumental colours and melody into 14 bright and spacious computerised frameworks that suggest immersive, nuanced options for dancers, DJs and domestic play.

‘Workaround’ evolves Dillon’s notions in a coolly unfolding manner that speaks directly to the album’s literary and visual inspirations, ranging from James P. Carse’s book ‘Finite And Infinite Games’ to the abstract drawings of Tomma Abts or Jorinde Voigt as well as painter Bridget Riley’s essays on grids and colour. Operating inside this rooted but mutable theoretical wireframe, Dillon’s ideas come to life as interrelated, efficient patterns in a self-sufficient system.

With a naturally fractal-not-fractional logic, Dillon’s rhythms unfold between unresolved 5/4 tresillo patterns, complex tabla strokes and spark-jumping tics in a fluid, tactile dance of dynamic contrasts between strong/light, sudden/restrained, and bound/free made in reference to the notational instructions of choreographer Rudolf Laban. Working in and around the beat and philosophy, the album’s freehand physics contract and expand between the lissom rolls of Bhamra’s tabla in the first, to a harmonious balance of hard drum angles and swooping FM synth cadence featuring additional synth and vocal from Laurel Halo in ‘Workaround Two’, while the extruded strings of Lucy Railton create a sublime tension at the album’s palatecleansing denouement, triggering a scintillating run of technoid pieces that riff on the kind of swung physics found in Artwork’s seminal ‘Basic G’, or Rian Treanor’s disruptive flux with a singularly tight yet loose motion and infectious joy.

Crucially, the album sees Dillon focus on dub music’s pliable emptiness, rather than the moody dematerialisation of reverb and echo. The substance of her music is rematerialised in supple, concise emotional curves and soberly freed to enact its ideas in balletic plies, rugged parries and sweeping, capoeira-like floor action. Applying deeply canny insight drawn from her years of practice as sound designer, musician and hugely knowledgable/intuitive DJ, ‘Workaround’ can be heard as Dillon’s ingenious solution or key to unlocking to perceptions of stiffness, darkness or grid-locked rigidity in electronic music. And as such it speaks to an ideal of rhythm-based and experimental music ranging from the hypnotic senegalese mbalax of Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force, through SND and, more currently, the hard drum torque of DJ Plead; to adroitly exert the sensation of weightlessness and freedom in the dance and personal headspace.

The album is mixed by James Rand and mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. Artwork by Thomas Ruff, layout by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

Workaround

Beatrice Dillon - Clouds Strum (PAN 106)

from the album 'allegiance and conviction' available 3/27

Allegiance and Conviction

windy and carl 'moth to the flame'

Oliver Coates - Butoh Baby
From skins n slime. 

Learn more https://smarturl.it/rvngnl68.

skins n slime

Butoh baby

Oliver Coates - Butoh baby

@drgibby
https://surf.bandcamp.com/album/i-have-been-grinding-but-still-im-stuck-here

Produced, mastered, and art by Gibby-Dj

🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️🏄🏾‍♀️
ⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶ

Gibby-Dj ~ I Have Been Grinding But Still I'm Stuck Here

booking contact: knarfnaideel@yahoo.co.jp

amazon;https://www.amazon.co.uk/music/player/artists/B00U29OTRE/leedian

YouTube;https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nVnn5zBF2y9vaQzGChgWinImvH5Mt6Vxw

'Stunting Noise'
https://stashedgoods.co.uk/product/leedian-stunting-noise/

'Light'
http://www.bluetapes.co.uk/product/blue-two-leedian-light

'Ape'
https://forgotimprint.bandcamp.com/album/ape

'One'
https://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/album/one

'En EP'
https://surf.bandcamp.com/album/en-ep

Thorough Ring

leedian

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