Hamuli Plene - Midelaghe l
[CD, Release December 19th]
https://ny-agenda.bandcamp.com/album/midelaghe-i

Music and field recordings by Phil Struck & Emanuel Sundin 

Recorded at Oran, Börringe, Scania in May 2018
Mixed in Hamburg & Berlin 2018-2019. 

NAN1 © 2019 NY AGENDA

Hamuli Plene is a collaboration between the Swedish artist Prins Emanuel and the German artist Phil Struck. Acquainted through the fringe scene evolving around experimental electronics and post-club dance genres, they found a shared vocabulary of auditory aesthetics.

Sundin comes from a varied background as both a live drummer and producer of music with a leaning towards genres like dub and disco. Struck has, in contrast, mainly worked in the nische of cassette-released ambient & noise.

Midelaghe I could easily be mistaken for the sounds captured by an anthropologist happening upon a contemplative ceremony on a prairie farm in an isolated village far from civilization. All silent faces in the constant hum of life from insects and the surrounding nature. The slowed down pace of the summer season wrapped in the spell of heat.
    
The recordings for the album took place in spring on an old farmyard in the countryside of Börringe in Skåne, dating back a few centuries. The soil itself is rich with even older remnants of farm life, scattered with clay pottery and a once lucrative red brick industry. Location and ancestry has apparently seeped through the floorboards and coloured the sessions at the farm.

The album toys with the concept of field recording. While they might be built on various samples of field recordings, in the hands of Sundin and Struck they are manipulated and molded into a mythological landscape of their own. This is evident also in the cryptic language of the track titles and the duo’s name itself. The effect is an abstraction of the familiar which comprises a sense of both the uncanny and the nostalgic. Distortion and tape static mingle with rain and wind.

The distinction between the organic and the electronic is blurred beyond recognition. Perhaps this is a reflection on the technocentric times in which we are living; how all matter is subject to the same force of deterioration. Or how the natural world is gradually replaced with mechanical replicas. Midelaghe l hints at the start of a number of releases, yet falls upon you as a lamentation over a period long gone.

Words by Simon Eliasson, Malmö, June 2019

NAN01 – Hamuli Plene - Midelaghe l [Excerpts]

Sophia Zhuravkova - Unseen [Cassette, Release June 19th]
ny-agenda.bandcamp.com/album/unseen

Music by Sophia Zhuravkova

NAN02 © 2020 NY AGENDA & Sophia Zhuravkova

In what could be seen as an effort to redefine or decode the core idea of the field recording as simply the aural equivalent of a photograph; the works of Zhuravkova casts an effortlessly clear spotlight on a new vision of nature. A nature which is connected and wi-fi accessible, a nature of which every part is browsable via satellite view in Google Maps. A nature which might never know true solitude beyond that which we project unto it. 

And yet our idea of nature as a place outside of society is inherently a definition of solitude due to its lack of people. One might have thought that the advances of modern communication technology would make us immune to solitude; as we are always a phone call, video call or text message away from just about anyone else. Does anyone even enter a forest without the safety net of a smartphone these days? However, the biology of our minds cannot be fooled - we are hardwired for physical contact. In light of this, the voice samples on Unseen only serves to haunt the album with a hollow presence, enforcing the notion of solitude. 

But this is not solitude of the desolate kind. While equally tapping into the emotional potential of longing, there is tranquility and harmony in the soundscapes Zhuravkova envisions. The opaque haze of these compositions keeps one grounded in their eternal presence. This experience which Zhuravkova aims to capture reveals an intimacy with oneself in our relation to the “nature” of the outdoors. However transparent the world may seem through the lens of modern technology, there is still the possibility of the unseen. 

Vision itself is a key element to Zhuravkova’s music; as her daytime job is as a video editor, she often draws from this experience when composing. “It happens naturally” she says. “For instance, as a visual story unfolds it has a rhythm, a picture, a sound, and a meaning. They come together to produce an image in one’s mind. People only hear sounds, while I know all the intimate feelings, which were put into each track.”

Words by Simon Eliasson

Unseen

NAN02 - Sophia Zhuravkova - Unseen

Ny Agenda is a music publisher operating from Malmö city and it's sorroundings.
Organized by @prinsemanuel
NAN01–Hamuli Plene - Midelaghe l [CD, Out now]
NAN02 - Sophia Zhuravkova - Unseen [Cass, Out now]

–NY–AGENDA–

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