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http://subtextrecordings.bandcamp.com/

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https://www.youtube.com/user/SubtextRecordings

More info
http://subtextrecordings.net/


@subtext-recordings

Vinyl, CD, digital

Subtext Recordings

evdet Erek "Davul" (SUB023)
Digital: cevdeterek.bandcamp.com/album/davul

Ahead of his representing Turkey at this year’s Venice Biennale, Subtext present’s Istanbul based Cevdet Erek’s first full length LP: ‘Davul’. The title refers to the instrument performed by Erek, a large drum with many names, common from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, known variably as a daouli (Greek), tapan (Macedonian), dahol (Kurdish), or tabl (Arabic) to cite a few.

Erek plays the drum with his own unusual method, utilising a large soft mallet alongside various smaller implements to beat and distort the skin of the drum, tuned lower than normal, taking advantage of being able to walk around studio or installation spaces with the instrument. Erek acquired the drum from a Roma musician, proceeding to play it in private for years where he developed this new textural approach, integrating the instrument into his A Room of Rhythms installation piece at Istanbul Biennial, 2015.

Comprising extracts culled from hours of solo drum improvisations recorded over two days in Berlin, ‘Davul’ features no editing or overdubbing. At times Erek describes “playing to get the negative and aggressive away from inside of me, hoping that I could do the same for the other people surrounding me.” He refers to a shamanic history of healing rituals - although the davul is most commonly used for weddings, dances, and celebrations. “Of course the aesthetics of dark electronics and noise that I've been exposed to for decades informs the overall feel as well,” adds Erek.
Over seven improvised pieces Erek conjures a massive variety of
uncharacteristic sounds and colours from the drum, from deep
scrapes and grinds to heavy rubs and drones, creating complex
rhythms. Experimentation with rhythm, meter, and silence has
always been at the core of what Erek does - from his work as a conceptual artist, presenting work at the likes of dOCUMENTA, to decades as the drummer in Turkish experimental rock band Nekropsi - but ‘Davul’ is his purest statement-of-intent to date; a raw and hypnotic exploration of flow and dynamics.

Bio: Cevdet Erek was born in Istanbul in 1974, where he would initially study Architecture. Originally formed in 1989, Erek has also been the longtime drummer with Turkish experimental music stalwarts, Nekropsi. After completing his Masters in Sound Engineering & Design at İTÜ MIAM Center for Advanced Studies in Music, Erek’s installations and performances have been presented far and wide, including dOCUMENTA, Sydney Biennial, and Istanbul Modern. He’s also worked on sound and music for film, most recently contributing original music and sound design to Emin Alper’s “Frenzy” (Venice International Film Festival – Special Jury Prize, 2015).

subtextrecordings.net

Davul

Prepare

Cevdet Erek - Prepare

This excerpt is taken from 'Veil' a piece taken from Compound - Yair Elazar Glotman - 6.10.17

Under his guises Blessed Initiative and Ketev, as well as his
own name, composer and sound artist Yair Elazar Glotman
has explored extended techniques and processes to forge new Tracklist: sonic textures and musical forms. Compound picks up where
the previous solo work under Glotman’s own name - 2015’s
Études - left off. The acoustic sound palette has now expanded
from solo contrabass into a trio including pianist Rieko Okuda
and percussionist Marcello Silvio Busato.

Glotman guides the trio into utilising sounds from the edges of their instruments’ abilities - arguably mere byproducts of harmony - and through improvisation, repetition, and post- production, conjures new sonic bodies over two sidelong pieces. His guidelines for each improvisation gave the players autonomy to emphasise the microscopic details of certain sounds: the shudder of a piano key, the hum of a cymbal, the incidental click of a plucked contrabass string. The recordings were then layered and reformulated by Glotman into two separate structures to complete the composition process. Both ‘Veil’ and ‘Revelate’ utilize the full spectral potential of each instrument, revealing new rhythmic patterns and harmonic content in the process.

Taking Glotman’s microscopic focus on instrument noises he put began on Études as a starting point, the trio on Compound ultimately bring into question both density and contrast, rhythm itself losing its stricter structures and becoming a purely pattern-based driving force in the music. The resultant unit contradicts and opposes itself, all sorts of clashing rhythms and melodies coexisting within the body of the two compositions of evolving sonic architecture.

Based in Berlin, Yair Elazar Glotman is a classically-trained musician and sound artist. Besides previous works on Subtext including Études, a collaborative score with James Ginzburg experimental film Nimbes, and the eponymous debut of his Blessed Initiative project, Glotman has released music via Opal Tapes and others under the nom de plume Ketev.

Yair Elazar Glotman - Veil - Excerpt

xin "To Shock The Sky And Shake The Earth (SUB025)
Vinyl & digital: https://xxxiiinnn.bandcamp.com/album/to-shock-the-sky-and-shake-the-earth

To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth is a process of searching. It sees the Berlin-based artist navigating spaces between conventions, cultures, pressures and sounds. This informs their decision to release the EP through Resonate and a handful of independent platforms.

On this decision, xin says:

“I don’t believe that there should be one way to do anything, or in convention for convention’s sake. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ethics of making and releasing music, and trying to find less harmful ways of being in the world.”

This statement points towards growing dissatisfaction around independent music’s reliance on corporate monoliths, from Facebook to Spotify. xin's decision is made as one gesture in a much broader, quickly-evolving discourse.

xin’s particular approach is also evident in their production, which lacks consistent genre signifiers for listeners to grab ahold of. Tracks such as ‘Black Light Blind Fire’ and ‘Sucker’ lean on dance music’s lexicon, while ‘Aedes Splatter’ is comprised of shudders, sputters and hums. 'To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth' is an unusual synthesis of varied sounds.

http://subtextrecordings.net/

To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth

Garr

Vinyl & digital

xin - Garr

https://xxxiiinnn.bandcamp.com/album/to-shock-the-sky-and-shake-the-earth

Aedes Splatter

xin - Aedes Splatter

Black Light, Blind Fire

xin - Black Light, Blind Fire

six correlations

James Ginzburg - light, timed - a river

"a pattern, returned" is off James Ginzburg's new solo album, out now on Subtext Recordings. More info here: http://tmxt.es/3jju

@jamesginzburg
@emptyset-1111111
@subtext-recordings

James Ginzburg - "a pattern, returned"

Gonçalo Penas - Ego De Espinhos [SUB027]  
Release date: January 18, 2019 
Vinyl & digital: goncalopenas.bandcamp.com/album/ego-de-espinhos

Continuing Subtext’s exploratory electronics and devastating sonics is the expansive Ego De Espinhos, the debut full-length from twenty-two year old Porto, Portugal-based artist Gonçalo Penas.

Described by Penas as a series of “self-exorcisms,” Ego De Espinhos is the cathartic outcome of a highly introspective process. Shaped by opposing forces and instincts, the LP touches on themes that are at once intimate, yet omnipresent. Splendor confronts destruction; id confronts super-ego.

Created solely with digital instruments designed and built by the artist, Ego De Espinhos is the result of Penas’ improvisations.

@goncalopenas
@subtext-recordings

Ego De Espinhos

Vinyl & Download

Gonçalo Penas - A Besta / Quanto Mais Me Bates

Gonçalo Penas - Ego De Espinhos [SUB027]  
Release date: January 18, 2019 
Vinyl & digital pre-order: https://goncalopenas.bandcamp.com/album/ego-de-espinhos

Continuing Subtext’s exploratory electronics and devastating sonics is the expansive Ego De Espinhos, the debut full-length from twenty-two year old Porto, Portugal-based artist Gonçalo Penas.

Described by Penas as a series of “self-exorcisms,” Ego De Espinhos is the cathartic outcome of a highly introspective process. Shaped by opposing forces and instincts, the LP touches on themes that are at once intimate, yet omnipresent. Splendor confronts destruction; id confronts super-ego.

Created solely with digital instruments designed and built by the artist, Ego De Espinhos is the result of Penas’ improvisations. 

@goncalopenas
@subtext-recordings

Gonçalo Penas - Ego De Espinhos

UCC Harlo “United” LP - SUB028
Vinyl & digital: http://bit.ly/UCCHarlo-United

Release date (vinyl & digital):
March 22, 2019 

In United, her debut LP as UCC Harlo, classically-trained musician Annie Gårlid distills hauntological pop, sound art, medieval and baroque music, and left-field club production into a series of ecclesiastical-wave ventures.

Written over six years in Germany, United began on train commutes during Gårlid’s stint as a violist in an opera orchestra near Cologne and developed further during her time in Berlin. Through gestures such as reframing music by Bach and Magister Zacharias through DAW experimentation and field recordings, United proposes sonic reconciliations between the old and the new. 

United also reflects the idea that sound and music always exist in broader, complex contexts loaded with historical and environmental information and mediated by internal emotional landscapes. For Gårlid, this acknowledgement is a metaphor for our urgent need to be attentive to non-human agencies and voices. United acts as a means of claiming a right to obscurity and of “sounding” ambivalence, doubt, and messiness in an age that demands transparency and clarity. 

Annie Gårlid is a New York-based writer, musician and musicology researcher concerned with our ever-shifting, tenuous relationships with ecology, technology and care. 

Creating and discovering links between the old and the new, Gårlid operates equally in the realms of experimental, club and early music. She is a member of the Holly Herndon Ensemble and the band Songs, has collaborated with Caterina Barbieri, Bill Kouligas and Emptyset, and has performed with ASMR-artist Claire Tolan. She works regularly with an array of composers and artists, and performs as a viola player and singer in both Europe and the USA.

@uccharlo

United

Ave Giove

UCC Harlo - Áve Giove

INTERVIEW / FEATURE:
self-titledmag.com/2019/02/21/ucc-harlo-united-album/

UCC Harlo - Ceres

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS(SUB029)
VINYL pre-order: https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/chords

Pre-order

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS For Organ

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS(SUB029)
VINYL pre-order: https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/chords

With ‘CHORDS’, the Stockholm-based musician and composer Ellen Arkbro returns to Subtext, following her acclaimed debut album ‘For Organ and Brass’.

This new longplayer sees Arkbro adopt a more minimalist approach, focusing on the immediate qualities of sound and elegantly expanding the tonal capacities of acoustic instruments using precise, subtle synthesis.

Composed of a carefully selected combination of tones, ‘CHORDS’ stretches, extends and obscures the timbral character of the instruments it is performed on.

Across both tracks, Arkbro examines the sonic materiality and harmonic quality of chords. She considers how the compositions occupy space rather than time – transposing theoretical possibilities into the phenomenal realm.

As a part of Arkbro’s systematic investigation of harmonic sound, ‘CHORDS’ proffers a divergence from conventional ways of listening. This work allows for a form of listening which goes beyond the mere reception of outer stimuli in letting the listener experience their role as active, and as embodying the sound itself. Space rather than time becomes the primary locus of listening as subtle movement of head and body reveals the inner complexities of ‘CHORDS’.

@ellenarkbro

CHORDS

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS For Guitar

Joshua Sabin "Sutarti" LP (SUB030)
Pre-order: https://joshuasabin.bandcamp.com/album/sutarti

Release date: July 5th, 2019
@joshuasabin

Sutarti

Joshua Sabin - Sutarti: VI

xin "MELTS INTO LOVE" (SUB031)

Download: http://bit.ly/xin-melts-into-love

xin returns to Subtext to share their debut LP, MELTS INTO LOVE.

Mining fragments of neurofunk, hardcore and dubstep, xin searches for something else. They borrow from dance and rave lexicons to warp, mangle and strangle tropes into something anew. Embracing failures, blemishes, inexperience and misuse, xin imagines new affinities, anxieties and ecstasies in an age of noise, spectacle and inundation. Alien, shapeshifting reeses dance and twirl in “Myopia,” while AI choirs and pseudo-breaks are distilled into “Spent, Wasted and Saved” (featuring AYA, fka LOFT). The fiendish, ecstatic imagery that accompanies is created in conjunction with painter Gabrielle Bejani and machine learning engineers Ash D'Cruz, and Chris Tegho.

Like xin’s 2018 EP, MELTS INTO LOVE will be released solely via independent platforms Bandcamp, Boomkat and Resonate. The record also borrows from fellow Subtext signee Fis and his Saplings project and is released as a “biodigital” LP—meaning the music is released digitally, but with a living consequence woven in. All proceeds from sales will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, with each purchase of the LP funding the planting of at least 40 trees.

xin has recently performed live at Berlin’s Volksbühne, in support of Holly Herndon’s PROTO launch, and Kraftwerk, for MaerzMusik’s The Long Now, among others. They are soundtracking Zach Blas’ upcoming installation The Doors, and are a summer 2019 research resident at Trust, Berlin’s space for utopian conspiracy and the (re)design of infrastructure.

with thanks and love to:
Aya, Billy, Izzy, James, Laurel, Oscar, Sam

Artwork:
Ash D'Cruz, Chris Tegho, Gabrielle Bejani and xin

@xxxiiinnn
http://subtextrecordings.net/

MELTS INTO LOVE 

Download

xin - Ffantom Contendt

xin "MELTS INTO LOVE" (SUB031)

Download: http://bit.ly/xin-melts-into-love

xin returns to Subtext to share their debut LP, MELTS INTO LOVE.

Mining fragments of neurofunk, hardcore and dubstep, xin searches for something else. They borrow from dance and rave lexicons to warp, mangle and strangle tropes into something anew. Embracing failures, blemishes, inexperience and misuse, xin imagines new affinities, anxieties and ecstasies in an age of noise, spectacle and inundation. Alien, shapeshifting reeses dance and twirl in “Myopia,” while AI choirs and pseudo-breaks are distilled into “Spent, Wasted and Saved” (featuring AYA, fka LOFT). The fiendish, ecstatic imagery that accompanies is created in conjunction with painter Gabrielle Bejani and machine learning engineers Ash D'Cruz, and Chris Tegho.

Like xin’s 2018 EP, MELTS INTO LOVE will be released solely via independent platforms Bandcamp, Boomkat and Resonate. The record also borrows from fellow Subtext signee Fis and his Saplings project and is released as a “biodigital” LP—meaning the music is released digitally, but with a living consequence woven in. All proceeds from sales will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, with each purchase of the LP funding the planting of at least 40 trees.

xin has recently performed live at Berlin’s Volksbühne, in support of Holly Herndon’s PROTO launch, and Kraftwerk, for MaerzMusik’s The Long Now, among others. They are soundtracking Zach Blas’ upcoming installation The Doors, and are a summer 2019 research resident at Trust, Berlin’s space for utopian conspiracy and the (re)design of infrastructure.

with thanks and love to:
Aya, Billy, Izzy, James, Laurel, Oscar, Sam

Artwork:
Ash D'Cruz, Chris Tegho, Gabrielle Bejani and xin

@xxxiiinnn
subtextrecordings.net/

MELTS INTO LOVE

xin - Spent, Wasted and Saved (ft. AYA)

xin - MELTS INTO LOVE(SUB031)

Download: http://bit.ly/xin-melts-into-love

xin "MELTS INTO LOVE" (SUB031)

xin returns to Subtext to share their debut LP, MELTS INTO LOVE.

Mining fragments of neurofunk, hardcore and dubstep, xin searches for something else. They borrow from dance and rave lexicons to warp, mangle and strangle tropes into something anew. Embracing failures, blemishes, inexperience and misuse, xin imagines new affinities, anxieties and ecstasies in an age of noise, spectacle and inundation. Alien, shapeshifting reeses dance and twirl in “Myopia,” while AI choirs and pseudo-breaks are distilled into “Spent, Wasted and Saved” (featuring AYA, fka LOFT). The fiendish, ecstatic imagery that accompanies is created in conjunction with painter Gabrielle Bejani and machine learning engineers Ash D'Cruz, and Chris Tegho.

Like xin’s 2018 EP, MELTS INTO LOVE will be released solely via independent platforms Bandcamp, Boomkat and Resonate. The record also borrows from fellow Subtext signee Fis and his Saplings project and is released as a “biodigital” LP—meaning the music is released digitally, but with a living consequence woven in. All proceeds from sales will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, with each purchase of the LP funding the planting of at least 40 trees.

xin has recently performed live at Berlin’s Volksbühne, in support of Holly Herndon’s PROTO launch, and Kraftwerk, for MaerzMusik’s The Long Now, among others. They are soundtracking Zach Blas’ upcoming installation The Doors, and are a summer 2019 research resident at Trust, Berlin’s space for utopian conspiracy and the (re)design of infrastructure.

with thanks and love to:
Aya, Billy, Izzy, James, Laurel, Oscar, Sam

Artwork:
Ash D'Cruz, Chris Tegho, Gabrielle Bejani and xin

@xxxiiinnn
http://subtextrecordings.net/

xin - Myopia

Ecker & Meulyzer “Carbon” (SUB033)

Digital: https://eckermeulyzer.bandcamp.com/album/carbon

Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer make their Subtext debut with Carbon. 

Based on field recordings made at Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank located on the island of Spitsbergen, Carbon grapples with the many contradictions that lie at the heart of our shift into the capitalocene. The project began in 2017, when Ecker and Meulyzer scored the performance “Frozen Songs,” a commission by Zero Visibility Dance Company led by Ina Christel Johannesen.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was conceived of as an effort to preserve copies of seeds from key crop varieties, ensuring their persistence in the event of large-scale crises. Yet the area is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, causing the permafrost to melt and putting the seed vault at risk. 

Across from the Seed Vault lie the decrepit remnants of Svalbard’s mining activities of the early 20th century; Carbon wrestles with the incongruities nestled in the town’s landscape. Reflecting on dissonances of stasis and change, closeness and distance, enclosure and expanse, as well as cynicism and hope, Ecker and Meulyzer consider the urgency of our situation while trying to sidestep all-too popular depictions of dystopia. In Ecker’s own words, “we don’t have the luxury to afford that kind of pessimism.” 

From close, supple sounds to cold, brutal sonics, Carbon meditates on the many challenging questions and contradictions raised by the Seed Vault and its surroundings—a landscape that embodies and makes visible the many intertwined phenomena that shape our current predicament.

Ecker and Meulyzer, formerly known as Stray Dogs, have released works such as Wasteland, recorded in deconsecrated church in Antwerp, and Kalkar, recorded in the cooling tower of a former power station in Germany. 

Koenraad Ecker works in the fields of electro-acoustic music, field recording, radio plays, stage performance and text. Together with Andrea Taeggi, he is part of the Opal Tapes-affiliated duo Lumisokea. His output encompasses studio albums, audiovisual installations, texts, performances, and sound design for film. 

Frederik Meulyzer is a percussionist active in projects including Belgian jazz band Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther, contemporary music and theatre company Post uit Hessdalen, and experimental psych-krautrock band Slumberland.

The ecological impact of the production of this record will be compensated through a carbon offsetting program .

Bandcamp

Ecker & Meulyzer - Metabolic Rift

Ecker & Meulyzer “Carbon” (SUB033)

Digital & CD: https://eckermeulyzer.bandcamp.com/album/carbon

Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer make their Subtext debut with Carbon. 

Based on field recordings made at Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank located on the island of Spitsbergen, Carbon grapples with the many contradictions that lie at the heart of our shift into the capitalocene. The project began in 2017, when Ecker and Meulyzer scored the performance “Frozen Songs,” a commission by Zero Visibility Dance Company led by Ina Christel Johannesen.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was conceived of as an effort to preserve copies of seeds from key crop varieties, ensuring their persistence in the event of large-scale crises. Yet the area is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, causing the permafrost to melt and putting the seed vault at risk. 

Across from the Seed Vault lie the decrepit remnants of Svalbard’s mining activities of the early 20th century; Carbon wrestles with the incongruities nestled in the town’s landscape. Reflecting on dissonances of stasis and change, closeness and distance, enclosure and expanse, as well as cynicism and hope, Ecker and Meulyzer consider the urgency of our situation while trying to sidestep all-too popular depictions of dystopia. In Ecker’s own words, “we don’t have the luxury to afford that kind of pessimism.” 

From close, supple sounds to cold, brutal sonics, Carbon meditates on the many challenging questions and contradictions raised by the Seed Vault and its surroundings—a landscape that embodies and makes visible the many intertwined phenomena that shape our current predicament.

Ecker and Meulyzer, formerly known as Stray Dogs, have released works such as Wasteland, recorded in deconsecrated church in Antwerp, and Kalkar, recorded in the cooling tower of a former power station in Germany. 

Koenraad Ecker works in the fields of electro-acoustic music, field recording, radio plays, stage performance and text. Together with Andrea Taeggi, he is part of the Opal Tapes-affiliated duo Lumisokea. His output encompasses studio albums, audiovisual installations, texts, performances, and sound design for film. 

Frederik Meulyzer is a percussionist active in projects including Belgian jazz band Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther, contemporary music and theatre company Post uit Hessdalen, and experimental psych-krautrock band Slumberland.

The ecological impact of the production of this record will be compensated through a carbon offsetting program .

Ecker & Meulyzer - Growth

Aho Ssan - Simulacrum LP (SUB034)

Release date: February 7
Digital album: http://bit.ly/AhoSsan-Simulacrum

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Simulacrum

Digital Album

Aho Ssan - Simulacrum II

A boutique music publisher and network of composers

Subtext Recordings

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