LAVURN - COMBAT LANGUAGE

LAVURN is the debut self-titled album from Lavurn Lee, a singer, songwriter, producer, performer and DJ from the inner suburbs of Toronto. He has also lived and worked in Sydney, Hong Kong and Berlin. His music is an emotionally complex assemblage of processed vocals, filtered pads, surgically programmed drums, haunting melodic fragments and hazy textures. This 13 track album of sparse, emotive and experimental R&B is his second for SUMAC and his first under his own name, following a previous record under the name Fake in 2018. Lavurn was made over three years between Toronto, Berlin and Hong Kong in close dialogue with SUMAC founders DJ Plead and T.Morimoto.

Previously, as Cassius Select, he has established himself as a unique voice in dance music, releasing on cult labels such as Unknown to the Unknown, Accidental Jnr, Hypercolour, Banoffee Pies, Raw Basics and Bruk Records. His side projects include collaborations with vocalists such as VV Pete and Daemon, his previous experimental R&B aliases Guerre and Fake, and BV (alongside Marcus Whale and DJ Plead).


THOUGHTS & REFLECTIONS ON THE MAKING OF LAVURN

“I’m trying to make pop music. Not in the industry sense, but in the way that everyone is making their own type of pop music. It wants to be listenable, so it can create emotions. I come from bedroom song writing in the age of the internet. The lyrical content and sounds reflect my demeanor. Big ego with low sense of self-worth. Constantly posturing. At once both strong and weak. I don’t always trust my abilities. I don’t have the voice to produce contemporary radio R&B. I don’t do traditional harmonies, mine are all over the place.

It's the first time I'm writing about my own life in a literal sense. I spent years writing love songs having never been in a relationship. Whereas this feels very raw as a reflection of my experiences. To me the album sounds insular because it was made that way, in isolation. The vocals are used in a sampled way. A chorus for one track might be chopped and turned into another hook. A verse for one song is half timed and used for the chorus of another. Auto-Tune is used heavily. Some tracks are ‘written’ by pulling different beats, textures and vocals from different tracks and seeing what fits together. I tried to take self-sampling further and further. I was thinking of ways to world-build.

Most of the lyrical content on the album is about dealing with a breakup. But the album doesn’t reflect a break-up because it’s completely one sided. It doesn’t reflect the reality that I was an awful person during the relationship. Really it's an inward study of a reaction to rejection. It’s ambivalent. The attitude is “hey imma do me and improve myself”, while also desperately wanting someone back (for all the wrong reasons). There’s a veneer of self-improvement and healing. But it’s all performance. I used to think all the songs had a kind of toxic intent because of this. Trying to impress someone in a way that would make them want to return to you. In retrospect I understand the songs differently. They’re not perfect. A bit confused in their vulnerability. Maybe quite sweet in a way. I think it’s healthy for me to see the lyrics on the album as directed at myself. It’s an album about self-love. I learnt that making music can be a kind of self-care.” 
credits
released February 16, 2024

Written, recorded, produced and mixed by Lavurn Lee
Mastered by T.Morimoto
Photography by DJ Plead

LAVURN - COMPACT DISC

songwriting, production and mixing by Lo Bise
mastering by Taylor Deupree at 12k Mastering
album art by Lo Bise
Jevels 2024

Lover's Prelude

Scorpio Red is pleased to announce the release of Zeynep Ağcabay’s second EP, out on the 7th June 2024.

The Turkish born, London based artist’s 4-track release ‘Memories from the Future’ re-frames memory as a non-linear plane of time: visions and sounds collected from “memories” that are yet to occur but feel already lived. An effort to merge her self-titled spiritual folk project with her former ambient pop moniker mea0u, ‘Memories From The Future’ evokes a cyclical, nostalgic and trippy dream sequence. Distorted vocals, a nod to heavy exposure to Western pop influences, meet with samples of Turkish Ney flute and percussion reminiscent of "home".

Zeynep Ağcabay - On My Mind

ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀʀᴛɪꜱᴛ

Tania Daniel, also known as Tati au Miel, is an artist born and raised in Montreal. They have been dedicated to their work as a freelance artist since 2017. Their artistic practice incorporates various mediums to produce evocative experimental sound pieces, sculptural and textile explorations, and ritualistic performances delving into contemplations on freedom, spirituality, storytelling, surrealism, and beyond.

https://soundcloud.com/tatiaumiel
https://www.instagram.com/tatiaumiel/
https://tatiaumiel.bandcamp.com

🌿 ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ꜱᴏɴɪᴄ ᴀɢᴇɴᴄʏ

…being together, in community

As we have always dealt with sound as a political category, our activism is based on listening and focuses on the revolutionary potential that is inherent in the sonic. Under the banner of Sonic Agency we want to enforce a sonic activism of opposition and resistance. The artists involved are advocating for social and political transformation. Their sounds lend themselves to global emancipatory struggles, and fights for freedom and equality. The featured sounds aren’t complicit in the silence that surrounds us. They are furious, desperate, crying, paralysed, compassionate and rebellious like us. There is a message in sound that cannot be negated.

Listening is not neutral.
Listening shapes the reality we live in.
Listening is shaped by ethics and politics and leads back to it.
Listening is directly linked to memory and identity.
Listening is as important as speaking.
Listing is an active act.

Read the full curatorial statement here
strumandiodine.com/article/sonic-agency/

SONIC AGENCY - TATI AU MIEL-  "Interpreting Wind, Strings and Noise"

Based in Prague, Xynnh is a mainliner of past joys and desolate elegance, part of a collective Glory Affairs - an ever morphing entity dedicated to bonding through audiovisual circus, as Mary would say. 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/ran-cap-duoi/episodes/ran-cap-duoi-25th-july-2024

RẮN CẠP ĐUÔI w/ Xynnh {Glory Affairs} 250724

HE4RTBROKEN is a Belgian collective bringing unapologetically emotional music into the club and organizing events in Brussels since 2015.

HE4RTBROKEN takeover w/ Liyo, Steff & Munix @ Kiosk Radio 18.08.2024

With „I DARE YOU II“, Xzavier Stone unlifted the veil: Removing the usual hard-hitting drums and pop structures he highlighted the meticulous sound design that has made up a big part of his signature sound. This culminated in a soothing and ever evolving 26 min soundscape. With I DARE YOU II (Interpolated Versions), the artist invites friends to re-interpret his sonics. Whether it's made up of one sequence or many; there weren’t any rules to the creation process. This open approach resulted in a variety of interpolations - featuring a vocal debut by American musician and DJ P. Morris, the Dutch duo KEY/GEN, Montreal’s producer and DJ Martyn “M.” Bootyspoon, Swiss producers and artists 2AAB, Kombé, Modulaw and Tobias Koch, french pianist Joseph Schiano di Lombo, genre-bending French producer Brodinski and Xzavier’s frequent collaborator Phillip Jondo from Cologne.

Original compositions by Xzavier Stone
Mastered by Modulaw
Artwork based on a still by Enayet Kabir's video work for "I DARE YOU II"
www.instagram.com/_enayet/

I DARE YOU II (Phillip Jondo Interpolation)

EndgamE’s Precious Metals lines up the latest in the sounds of the underbelly: drill, auto-tune serenades and dancehall. 808 snares rattle like uzis, deep synths sing out like a foghorn through the spray – both grime and hip-hop, tunes for the club and tunes for the car. Lock in. therealendgame@gmail.com 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/preciousmetals/episodes/preciousmetals-29th-january-2025

Precious Metals w/ EndgamE & DA 445.CEO 290125

slamp

feat. Kenichi Iwasa, 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 - Square Fifths (PAN 106)

Label based in Berlin, est. 2008. http://www.p-a-n.org

Beatrice Dillon - Square Fifths (PAN 106)

PAN

Recent comments

Persephone Otherkin

cotton beast

Nadia

sasha myrrh

Related tracks