All µ-ziq

Remix  for Pixl on his "Outer Reaches" ep

Vinyl + Digital

Pixl - Outer Reaches (Scrase Remix)

1977

Belt & Carpet

Asda

Allegro

Marmite

When we established Balmat in 2021, neither of us could have imagined that within two years, we’d be putting out an album by one of our musical heroes: Mike Paradinas (@mikep), aka µ-Ziq. The British producer has been an inspiration to label co-founders Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne since the 1990s. In fact, his album-length remix project The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq was one of the very first pieces of electronic music that Philip bought, way back in 1994. To have the opportunity to release his music now feels like a real full-circle moment. 

Paradinas, of course, needs no introduction. Under a slew of aliases, chief among them µ-Ziq, the British artist revolutionized leftfield electronic music in the 1990s—coincidentally, this year marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, Tango N’ Vectif, for his friend and sometime collaborator Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label—and his label Planet Mu (@planetmurecords) has built up a formidable catalog of visionary, forward-looking records, mapping virtually every corner of the electronic spectrum. With 1977, he turns the clock backward in a sense, and not just with the album’s title: Rooted in classic ambient and electronic sounds, these 15 tracks evoke the anything-goes spirit of the early ’90s, before the tools and tropes had calcified into cut-and-dried styles.

There’s no shortage of familiar sounds on 1977. There are echoes of raves and chillout rooms and transmissions from the fringes of techno; there are detuned synths and glistening reverb tails and, above all, gauzy vox pads, the eerie glue that holds it all together. The title, he says, is meant to invoke a general sense of nostalgia, bookmarking a year in his boyhood when he became more self-aware. More than anything, 1977 sounds like µ-Ziq distilled: Stripped of his signature breakbeats and customary chaos, Paradinas’ first-ever strictly (well, mostly) ambient album presents the essence of his music in a whole new light.

Along the way Paradinas touches on dark-ambient drones (“Marmite”), horror-film themes (“Belt & Carpet”), jungle breaks (“Mesolithic Jungle”), and even house music (“Houzz 13”), which marks the first bona fide dance-floor moment on Balmat to date). Yet the album never—to our ears, anyway—feels expressly retro. Rather, Paradinas plucks timeless sounds out of the ether and gives them a gentle tap, spinning them into unexpected new orbits. At times, 1977 feels like an experience of extended déjà vu: When we first listened to it, we had the sense that we already knew this music. It was as though we had heard it years ago, perhaps on a battered cassette tape lent to us by a friend, and been searching for it ever since. We hope you feel the same.

µ-Ziq - 1977 [BALMAT05]

Out now on Adepta.
Buy: https://adepta.bandcamp.com/album/the-amen-experience

Artist: @pearl-river
Label: @adepta

[Premiere] Pearl River Sound - The Horny (out on Adepta)

Erwan Sene  - JUnQ
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 131
Release Date: 14 April 2023
Purchase: PAN.lnk.to/JUnQ

JUnQ, or the Journal of Unsolved Questions, is modeled on a parallel exercise: to sketch music and to score sculptures. Part exhibition, part book and part album release, JUnQ seeks to propose a collaborative language that binds the algorithmic needs of an artificial pop star to the performance of the artist himself. Boundaries between reality and artifice are blurred in a continuous chain of confrontation and sublimation, wherein a romance between analog evolution and digital experimentation is born.

The immersive project released by PAN represents Erwan Sene’s debut album and the multifaceted nature of his approach. Composed like a chorus of fantastical beasts, the album wanders atmospherically through a fogged wood. Sounds are never used for their default function–– they are sculpted, distorted and amplified, becoming hybrids of themselves. A haunting banshee, the monstrous growl of an Orc, Siren songs wafting through the trees–– these and more are recreated with sinuous violins, muffled harpsichord and digital instruments, culminating in a a vibrant “jungle” of sound.

Mixed by James Ginzburg
Mastered by Rashad Becker

Erwan Sene - Siren (PAN 131)

hyperreality

𝐴𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖 𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡-𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑠
_A new podcast, mix and sound collage 
by 𝐈𝐮𝐝𝐢 𝐊𝐡𝐚𝐞̈𝐥  (@judica-l-hamon)
40'

Related to spring, wet vegetation zone, birds and kings who never understood when swamp mist try to reach out

image collage by 𝐓. 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐬 (@t-eaux)


Tracklist : 

- Aldo Leopold, Almanach d’un comté des sables,  1949, pp.130-134
[lecture par Iudi Khael]
- Peldrút - Talin talon
[enregistré et mixé dans le Lot 26/11/2021]
- Kin Leon - Leaving home for the fields
[kitchen. label]
- Imaginary Softwoods - Yellow Calcite II
[field records]
- Valentina Magaletti - Tutti al circo
[a queer anthology of drums]
- Theodore Cale Schafer - It’s A Mistake To Wait
[students of decay]

(interlude [?] Rita surgit des fougères, mamm ha mamm gozh o komz, boest an diaoul sur chant lituanien à plusieurs voix en lecture à l’envers)

- Carla Boregas - A Cidade dos outros
[iDEAL recordings]
- Ka Baird - Metamorphoses
[Drag City]
- Mélanie Loisel - Tsanteu Traou
[Borguefül]
- ladr ache - Trafic de grues
[Fougère Musique]
- claire rousay - Your first armadillo
[sight in my ear]
- (suite) Aldo Leopold, Almanach d’un comté des sables,  1949, pp.130-134
[lecture par Iudi Khael]
- (encore) Theodore Cale Schafer - It’s A Mistake To Wait
[students of decay]
- (suite) Aldo Leopold, Almanach d’un comté des sables,  1949, pp.130-134
[lecture par Iudi Khael]
- Iudi Khael - [?:]
[unreleased]

imagelist :

- Canaanite goddess Anat, -2500 bc, found by a farmer in Khan Younis, Gaza strip
- sinkhole created by the overuse of groundwater for irrigation, Konya, Turkey
- Dr Marcel Baudoin, Le Maraichinage - Pays de Monts, cinquième éditon, 1932 p. 120
- Screenshot from the movie Ran, Akira Kurosawa, 1985
- Bad computer padmade drawing of Mélèze, Pinaceae family

𝐈𝐮𝐝𝐢 𝐊𝐡𝐚𝐞̈𝐥 - 𝐴𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖 𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡-𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑠

evo-lation four is evo-natura's forth fundraising compilation, featuring gorse panshawe, usof, bod [包家巷], Arigto, Blood of Aza, angel's corpse & SONE URBIA.

Focusing on natural sounds, the project skillfully blends field recordings, drones, and electronics, with each artist sonically reflecting towards the subject.

All the earnings will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects. (https://www.edenprojects.org/)

Artwork & Cassette Design by Ronja-Elina Kappl
Mastered by Heliopolis Echo Lodge
Curated by Ioannis Nafpliotis

evo-lation four

Cassette / Digital

usof - tussah

Suh+Moon - Monsoon [endonesia]

glint music w/ excel dj - 18/01/2024

This track has already gathered over 5,000 plays, hundreds of replays and shares – and I’m truly grateful for all of it, thank you so much. 💙
I’ve re-mixed and remastered it, and it’s now available on both Spotify and YouTube as well. Your support there would mean the world to me, so if you enjoy the music, please follow me – lots of new releases are on the way!

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GregoryBlank
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/11aJaGrMtHdHyxyKkIpiyV

Morgan's Forest

Spotify

Morgan's Forest (spotify edit)

See here for more info: http://bit.ly/30cY5Nq

Nick Malkin, 'Into The Light '93' (2020). Courtesy Soda Gong, Columbus.

BOOKING: warren.morris@theplayground.co.uk

Allegro

µ-Ziq

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