If you’ve missed the self-titled debut, released by Island People in 2017 on raster, you’re in for a treat! Known for its surgical- precision explorations into post-digital manipulations, the celebrated label and a platform for many groundbreaking sounds has signed a mastering engineer Conor Dalton, Grammy Award-winning producer David Donaldson, musician and DJ Graeme Reedie, and a guitarist Ian “Chippy” Maclennan for a fascinating journey that brought much of their organic and warm sounds to the slightly cold, a little sterile, and desolate space. For their sophomore release, simply titled II, the group push their sounds into a further territory, resembling their home country of Scotland, “made of contrasting lights and harsh elements where time seems to stand still, circling the moment.” Beyond elements brought on from individual contributions, the group has relied on influences experienced together during their tour. Such slight melancholy can be grasped through pieces titled “Far From Shore,” “Stillness,” and “All My Plants Are Dead,” but today I am happy to offer you this exclusive premiere of a track named “Loneliness Has a Purpose,” which you can first experience it here on its own, and then, along the rest of the tracks on the full album.

"Out of the whole album, this track best represents the sound of paths not taken. Of one destination for some still feeling like a journey yet to be taken for others. The narratives we create reveal us all to be unreliable storytellers, it is only in looking back honestly that we can direct the ending. With the feeling of isolation during intense quarantine bringing up a lot of time for introspection, songs like “loneliness has a purpose” reflect on the many directions a life could take, potential futures not chosen and the many decisions that shape a future."
— Island People


I was going to write a bit more about this exciting release, but I feel that I’d be simply paraphrasing the following words, already appearing on the group’s Bandcamp: “The arrangements unfold like the long tracking shots of an early Antonioni film […] gloomy, darker, richer textures have conquered their space…” Yeah, well said. An absolute gem for lovers of surrealist and organic noir-fi as well as pristine, process-oriented production – a culmination of the above four minds gathered in the same unique space! Once again, the physical album is scheduled to start shipping on June 25th.

Loneliness Has A Purpose

TRACK PREMIERE : Island People - Loneliness Has a Purpose

Taken from Saffronkeira & Siavash Amini's LP The Faded Orbit on Denovai Records, out September 24.

More: www.orbmag.com/music/

@denovali
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The Faded Orbit

Premiere: Saffronkeira & Siavash Amini - Kernel

I've got a powerful and slightly conceptual track premiere for you today. Powerful, because, well, it's Siavash Amini, the Tehran-based Iranian ambient and sound artist whom I've been following for about a decade now via his releases on Umor Rex, Flaming Pines, Opal Tapes, Room40, and the Swiss Hallow Ground imprint, the latter of which is putting out this record, titled Songs For Sad Poets on September 23rd. Conceptual, because the collection of eight tracks is inspired by the "legacy of the so-called cursed poets (»poètes maudits«) as well as the German-language tradition of song cycles and expands the structure of the classic art song through a process of lyrical abstraction." On this album, Amini is collaborating with the New York-based author Eugene Thacker, who supplies the poems which intricately weave themselves into the dark, brooding and desolate drones. But the words here are not spoken. They are expressed by virtue of this sound. Spending over nine minutes with this piece while reading the printed poetry really sets the mood, accompanied by music [I'll embed the image of the piece below]. Words like "wilted", "dead", ablaze", "withered", "black", and "silent" indeed set the mood for rumbling bass, dissonant cries, and shuffling noise, reflected in music, reflected in words. Together, the two creators deliver a project focused on the idea of the "fragility of the human being set against the vast horizon of climate, planet, and the cosmos that produces a ‘sadness without cause.’" "Powerful" is not a word that I throw around lightly - and if you listen to this track, I think you will agree with me.

"The structure and inspiration for textures of this track (and the whole first volume) come directly from Eugene’s text, but not in the exact order they appear in the poem. Imagine a choir singing some parts of the text simultaneously– in this case 1|5, 2|3  correspond to the first three minutes, 3|4|6 to the more quiet middle part and 7|8 to the ending. There are two tunings used simultaneously in some parts to express this superimposition in a more audible manner."

Songs for Sad Poets

A Quiet Glow (For Chūya Nakahara)

TRACK PREMIERE : Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker - A Quiet Glow (For Chūya Nakahara)

Stream / Buy

Vincenzo Ramaglia - La parole 1 (Alva Noto Remix)

French pianist Vanessa Wagner collects solo piano studies of graceful minimalism and rare finesse for new album Mirrored.

Quickly following March 2022’s Study of the Invisible album, Vanessa Wagner returns with a new collection of work that paints in many colours. The application of shadow in Mirrored evokes haunting poignancy; the care and delicateness of its negative space leaves room for undulating
melodic motifs to ebb and flow; its bold splashes of luminescence are striking and rich.

And while the album collates re-interpretations of works by composers as varied as Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, Moondog, Leo Ferré and Camille Pepin, the potency and effect of the collection as a whole reflects only Vanessa Wagner and the extraordinary breadth of her abilities.

BUY HERE: https://vanessa-wagner.bandcamp.com/album/mirrored

@vanessa-wagner-6

PREMIERE: Vanessa Wagner - Etude 4 (Philip Glass) [ inFine ]

Concert excerpts from the Bedroom Community Whale Watching Tour
1. Theory of Machines, AB Theater Bruxelles Belgium 08/11/09
2. Híbakúsja, AB Theater Bruxelles Belgium 08/11/09
3. Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes, Effenaar Theater, Eindhoven Holland 09/11/09

Performed by Bedroom Community

Ben Frost Live from The Ancienne Belgique, Bruxelles Belgium 08.11.2009

Taken from the album 'Modern Methods For Ancient Rituals' released as 2LP and download

Modern Methods For Ancient Rituals

The Transcendence Orchestra 'Upper Windrush' (EMEGO 246)

INFOS / ORDER 
http://shelter-press.org/cv-jab-zin-taylor-thoughts-dot-travels-surface/
—
Thoughts of a Dot as it Travels a Surface is the title of an album derived from a series of wall drawings begun in 2014 by multi-disciplinary Paris-based artist Zin Taylor. Drawn in simple black-and-white, the large-scale pieces depict linear landscapes populated with rough-hewn objects: potted cacti, sculptural boulders, steaming stone baths. Taylor describes the project as “a psychological backdrop,” utilizing the reductive yet narrative techniques of caricature and illustration to achieve an abbreviated, associative form of visual storytelling. Or in his words: “Think of it as haze collecting along the surface of the wall.”

Upon completion of a particularly ambitious 90-meter panoramic wall drawing, experimental composers Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett were invited to interpret the work as a musical graphic score. The result was a forty minute live performance in two parts, which was multi-track recorded and then mixed down into a 10-track album. Each piece and title corresponds to a specific section or object in the wall drawing. Vantzou, though based in Brussels, is best known for a string of enigmatic solo recordings for the American ambient imprint Kranky, while Bennett has explored electronic sound design in a variety of capacities, including as one third of Brooklyn synthesizer outfit Forma. Working under their initials – CV & JAB – they attempted to translate Taylor’s elusive gestural lexicon into sound. The results are appropriately minimal, malleable, and mysterious.

Opener “Cactus With Vent” sets the tone: insectoid murmurings and fractured crystalline tones seesaw in and out of focus, eventually disappearing within a wash of churning water. Each composition flows unbroken into the next, much like Taylor’s continuous line, emphasizing fluidity, curvature, and connectivity. “Hot Tub” introduces a mesmerizing synthetic flute-like raga, pirouetting above muted jungle noises and a babbling brook. Subsequent songs skew softer and stranger, alternately meditative (“Large Suess Plant”) and miasmic (“Tombstones”), remote vistas mapped with hieroglyphic frequencies.

The recordings, like Taylor’s nuanced mini-murals, exude a subtle but restless energy, rarely lingering too long in a fixed formation. The whooshing astral synthesizer of “Alfred Hitchcock Haze” dissolves invisibly into the smeared, somber séance of “Rock House With Door,” which in turn evaporates amongst the menagerie of chattering printers, running water, and shepherd tone whispers of “String of Objects With Planter.”

More so than in past projects, here Vantzou and Bennett mask their presence, allowing textures and tonalities to tangle or unspool with minimal intrusion. The effect is naturalistic, impersonal, and intriguing. Even the few passages of relatively emotive classical piano (“Brick With Modern Form,” “Fingers Of Thought”) are played with an air of otherworldly detachment, as though such beauty was materializing purely of its own accord.

Recorded Live at Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, Germany May 6th, 2017. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D+M. Clear purple vinyl housed in reverse board-printed inners and double-width spine jacket. Comes with a 180CM. leporello reproducing the original 9000CM. walldrawing. First edition of 700 copies worldwide.

CV & JAB — ZIN TAYLOR 'Fingers of Thought' (SP092)

Field recordings used on this track captured march 2001 at Venice Beach, Los Angeles, CA and at a hotel pool near Big Sur River. Computer voice: Viki MacInthosh. A slightly different 5.1 version of this track is hidden somewhere in the X-Box 360 version of the Spider Man III game. This is more a background loop than a piece of music...

Monolake Venice Beach

Released by Opal Tapes

Limited Edition Cassette now available for preorder at

opaltapes.bandcamp.com/album/selected-percussive-works-1998-2001-vol-ii

Millions Of Moon Strings Vibrate As The Animals Sing

Taken from Origamibiro's LP Miscellany on Denovali Records, out March 26.

More: www.orbmag.com/music/

@origamibiro
@denovali

Miscellany

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Premiere: Origamibiro - Attract/Repel

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