lust

This Is Song Number 5 On My Upcoming Jazz Album. Dropping In October 2025

PARK iT.

please don’t forget me

From Sonja Tofik and Mar-llena's collaborative LP release 'Vilar i dina spår', released on LP in May 2018
@moonilena

Vilar i dina spår

Buy LP

Mar-llena - Monrepos

Purchase: geographicnorth.bandcamp.com/album/catch-a-blessing
Catalog #: GN52
April 5, 2019
LP+DIGI

Matthew Sage is a composer, producer, label owner, and publisher based in Chicago, IL. Since his earliest recordings, Sage has carefully considered and crafted each of his various approaches to experimental music. His debut LP A Singular Continent was an endless epic that charted imaginative aural cartography and seemed to soundtrack actual worldbuilding. Now, after five years personal changes and growth, Sage returns with his tried and true sonic trademarks, but with a noticeably liberated approach to his brand of experimental studio music.

Catch a Blessing shows Sage in a much more impulsive light. Where past work existed in space that was cerebral, meditated, and composed, the music here is more natural, playful, and effort-less.

Opting for chance and the unknown rather than rules and conceptual rigor, Sage "practiced" an amorphous technique that led to profound moments of accidental, unplanned beauty. And the perks were plenty. As Sage explains: "Learning to know less and to just feel more about what I am making has become important to me. I like, or am learning to like, the possibility of that openness, that uncertainty. Not knowing. It is uncomfortable, but it is nourishing."

Recorded over a summer in a tiny room on the second floor of a 120-year-old apartment in Chicago, 'Catch a Blessing' is the result of and the meditation on the exquisite exhaust and lavish lushness of his crumbling (and rebuilt) locales. 

Presented as a collection of ornately expressionistic portraits of Chicago, Sage approached the album more as paintings or sculptures than musical compositions. Album opener "Avondale primer Gray" unfurls a calm but vibrant quasi-melody that dissolves into a blur of found sonic objects both familiar unknown. "Lions to Baffle" is a semi-synthetic symphony of muted, sax-laden alien jazz, while "Elevator Straffing" maintains a whirling, glittering hum of echoed dissonance. "Claiming Air Rights" could be the literal sound of a piano floating through space, levitating despite an impossible weight. "Michigan Turquoise" brings an exquisitely eerie hymn with the same ghastly grace of Sparklehorse. Album centerpiece "Window Unit +Three Flat" is an open-ended epic of texture and ambiguity, immediately followed by the warped and trickling elegance of "Polish Triangle". "Wolfe Point Fog" closes 'Catch a Blessing' with peculiar focus, departing with an open-ended and wholly optimistic focus.

The moods and modes are constantly, entirely at odds with themselves: private vs. public, abject vs. profound, rural vs. urban(e), and so on. Where other players of experimental studio music take a more high-minded, often stuffy approach, Catch a Blessing floats in airier, more refreshing modes. It’s endlessly lush but sincerely marked by decay. This is naturalism in the truest sense.

M. Sage - "Polish Triangle"

HRNS "Naomi"
Warm Winters Ltd. 001

‘Naomi’ - the debut album by Portuguese duo HRNS - flickers gently between vulnerability and security, between being here and being there. This is music for contemplative, tired moments, when the immensity of space seems most striking. And as planes continue to fly over our heads, we all slowly drift further and further apart. But not everything is lost; perhaps our paths will cross again one day.

----- 

"There’s an impressionistic worldview behind this music, as if the listener is drifting through the world helplessly, surrounded on all sides by a hurricane of emotions every day. HRNS extract a mountain of suggested meaning and feeling from some relatively simple elements, presented calmly and patiently for you to soak up. Set aside some time to stick this one in the ghetto blaster after dark, and have a long, slow think." - Tristan Bath, The Quietus 

"A darkly glowing ambient delight...(which) offers sparkling meditations that shimmer like newly cracked geodes, dense and beautiful all at once." - Tiny Mix Tapes

Tracklist:

1. White Heron 	
2. You Will Never See The Same Water Twice 
3. Swan Palace	
4. Canadian Rifles
5. Prunes De Namur	
6. Eurostar 	
7. Angeles

WW_001

22 03 2019

Naomi

Angeles

Lifted - 2
Format: LP / Digital
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 85
Release Date: 07 June 2019
Buy: bit.ly/2W0yIL6 / bit.ly/30OhkwC

PAN welcomes back the Lifted ensemble for a second cross-continental adventure off the grid, simply titled Lifted 2.

Lifted’s latest release expands on the expression of improvised fusion that brought about the spectrum of styles explored on their 2015 debut album for PAN. Expansion is a key theme to Lifted 2, primarily in the musicians involved; Lifted is now a core group of Future Times boss Max D, Matt Papich aka Co La, Jeremy Hyman and Motion Graphics. Expansion also relates to musical ideas Lifted explore and the studio techniques executed.

Whereas the way they approached the idea of improvisation on Lifted 1 was framed in jazz terms, the seven-tracks on this second LP step even further into the vivid unknown. Zero boundaries for the exploratory impulse. “On this record we went a lot deeper into our kind of studio technique,” Lifted say. “We tried to cultivate the sound using the studio as a primary tool, almost a member of the group in a way.”

As with the debut Lifted LP, listening to Lifted 2 is an open invitation to experience the worldwide creative framework surrounding these artists. The collaborators for each track, whether present in the studio or online, show what a fluid and freeform exercise Lifted can be.

Max D’s international crew of Future Timers play deft roles throughout Lifted 2. Jordan GCZ and Dawit Eklund both return for ‘Lifting’ alongside 1432r’s Sami, NYC’s Will DiMaggio and Sao Paulo’s Repetentes 2008. Beatrice Dillon and Bass Clef, two highly-decorated artists from the UK underground, make telling contributions which mark the latest in a long line of celebrated creative collaborations for the pair. Further input comes via Aya, vocalist and bassist for crucial Japanese experimentalists OOIOO, and Martin Kasey, a friend of Papich with a background in Baltimore theatre, summoned for Lifted duty to provide some striking saxophone blasts.

How do all these collaborations manifest on Lifted 2? It’s a sort of inverse process full of blind takes with the results more bruised than polished. “The song stays fluid until the end. We pile the ideas really high and then decimate them,” Lifted say. “We delete until the songs are crystallizing; lay a grid of silences to organize the tracks. The breathing spaces become definitive.”

These seven tracks adroitly weave through mood and vibe, demanding heads lock in with an initial blast of whip sharp percussive hits and contemporary no-wave blowouts before letting off steam with soothing ambient synthesis. “Black Pepper” acts as the album centerpiece, an unhinged mangle of SH101 basslines, freeform flute & saxophone and multiple percussive sources brought to order by Papich’s studio dubs. “Rose 31” edges closest to the kind of jazz fusion that inspired the project from the off, Lifted utilising the various classic instruments deployed by the greats of the game. Closer “Near Future” smartly foregrounds Motion Graphics’ stunning piano talents, gradually stripping away all other elements until all that is left are his swirling notes.

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and artwork by Johannes Schnatmann & Bill Kouligas.

http://p-a-n.org

Lifted - Mirror In My Room (PAN 85)

From "A River Flowing Home To The Sea" LP / Digital
Bedouin Records may 2020
PRE-ORDER : https://bit.ly/riverflowing

Music by Otto Lindholm and P.Maze
www.mazeandlindholm.net
Vocals by Yiheng Yu (A1) and Stuart Argabright (B2)
Mix by Daniel Bleikolm at La Savonnerie
Master by Lawrence English at Negative Space
Artwork by Tatsuya Fujimoto
Design by Takashi Makabe / Zodiak
A&R : Salem Rashid Skourlis

A1. There’s a Room For You
A2. Racing, Chasing, Hunting 
B1. The Raw Silk 
B2. All Under Heaven Rests
B3. The Uncut Wood

There’s a Room For You

When they go under, how they navigate’ is the debut release of multidisciplinary artist Helena Pulkkinen.
On her EP Pulkkinen builds a captivating world through intricate compositions, juxtaposing her own voice with electro-acoustic ambiences. Across the EP’s five songs ‘When they go under, how they navigate’ emanates emotions which travel seamlessly from haunting to alluring and yearnful.

Written, produced and mixed by Helena Pulkkinen
Mastered by Joni Judén
Cover art by Gabriel Boicel

When they go under, how they navigate

Kara

Late July Noods Residency guesting Synalegg mix in 2nd half~~
https://soundcloud.com/synalegg

Tracklist:

Ennio Morricone - Fraseggio senza struttura		
Pontiac Streator - Angelus Spit (feat. Mister Water Wet)		
__-_ - Legato Crying - Legato Crying		
Mark_Leckey - In_This_Lingering_Twilight_Sparkle_Side_A		
Glass - Underperform (OOH-sounds re-work)		
Piezo - 01.OX		
Synalegg - Commuters		
adammmmmmmmmmmm -  i...		
Joanna Brouk - Majesty Suites Entrance of the Queen of Winter Dawn		
Speaker Music - Of Our Spiritual Strivings (ft. Syanide)		
Georgia - Walking Around Soho		
Pontiac Streator - Om Ne Ud		
Mark_Leckey - In_This_Lingering_Twilight_Sparkle_Side_B		
UVB76 - Bakara		
Richard-Craig - Dillon-James		
Shelley Parker - LET THE BODY B		
more eaze & claire rousay - Post-op		
Elysia Crampton - Morning Star-Red Glare-Sequoia Bridge (feat. Jeremy Rojas)		
Oiseau Danseur - Face A		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
SYNALEGG - guest mix (1:00:15)		
		


Emptyset - Ascent			
 Pavel Milyakov - Industry machine '87			
Voronoi - Gumbody Flash			
Ryoji Ikeda - Test pattern #0100			
Daniel M karlsson - Gaining traction with the local branches			
Ametsub - Over 6633			
Yvanko, Yab - Hydré			
Yves de Mey - Xylo			
Nebulo - Fata Morgana B			
Autechre - Known(1)			
William Fields - Prospection			
Moxus - Mush Space			
Jpegmafia - Dj Snitch Bitch interlude			
Grischa Lichtenberger - 003 0415 03 re 0112 re 0811 08 lv 1			
Bernard Parmegiani - Hors Phase			
Synalegg - Brèche

OOH-sounds W/ Synalegg - Noods Radio 26-7-20

Paradisia is the every other year compilation Gang of Ducks digitally releases.

This issue, named 20 after the possibly craziest year in recent human history, is also the first issue not curated by the label itself.
In fact, it is curated by Mana, Hyperdub affiliate and long-time G of D friend.

He took care of the compilation asking contributions to some of his favourite musicians and friends, not focusing on a single mood but rather letting them express their ideas and personalities in a free-flow.

The compilation so happened to be on the very same page with the label's philosophy.

Digital romance, analogue rawness, curated productions, instinctive approaches, dancefloor-ready and introspective compositions, beautifully co-exist through this 17-tracks collection, where each piece stands by its own and is still somehow linked with the others through a common shared attitude.


Curated by Mana
Mastered by Nick Foglia at Polo Torino
GODREC025
© Gang of Ducks 2020
released August 7, 2020

cD0174

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