Written by BEA1991 and Sega Bodega, produced by Sega Bodega.

Tranquility (Part 2)

Marina Herlop - Pripyat
Label: PAN
Cat.No. PAN 128
Format: DL
Release Date: 20 May 2022
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Pripyat

Marina Herlop is often described as a pianist, a lingering remnant of her classical training. But what strikes the listener on Herlop’s breakout track miu is the intricate trickery of her voice, tracing rhythmical clusters around the subtlest of musical beds, in a technique inspired by Carnatic music of Southern India. 

miu, the opening track of Herlop’s new studio album Pripyat, was among the first songs that the young Catalan artist made on a computer, after two albums - 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babasha - that brought spectral elegance to the sound of piano and voice. This spirit of adventure continues into Pripyat, Herlop’s first full album produced on a computer, and her most intensely emotional work to date. 

Listening to Pripyat you can feel the emotional toil and creative endeavour that went into the record. Fans of Nanook and Babasha will recognise the combination of melancholic piano and elegant vocal lines that is found on Pripyat tracks like abans abans. But Pripyat has a far fuller, almost chaotic sound when compared to Herlop’s previous work, with the addition of electronic drums, electric bass lines and a wealth of sublime production effects. 

Added to this production expertise are songs of incredible grace and poise. Kadish is a spectral torch song rendered in emotional 3D by Herlop’s gorgeous voice; ubunto has a feeling of deep longing and lingering sorrow; and shaolin mantis is like a pop song refracted through disorienting production effects and percussive vocal cut ups. Pripyat is the perfect combination of computer production trickery and intimate emotional release. 

Songs composed, produced and performed by Marina Herlop. 
Mix: James Ginzburg 
Mastering: Joker 
Mix and mastering of 'miu (choir version)': Borja Ruiz 
Ukulele and ending synth in 'shaolin mantis': Adri González 
Electric guitar in ‘lyssof’:Òscar Garrobé 
Electric bass in ‘ubuntu’ and ‘miu’: Òscar Garrobé

Kaddisch

lyssof

abans abans

Stream/Download: https://chemicalx.ffm.to/airborneashesrmx

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Airborne Ashes

Airborne Ashes (Eartheater & Aleksandir Remix)

Artist: Eartheater
Album: Metalepsis
Release Date: 2/24/15
Hausu Mountain, HAUSMO 25
For more information, visit:
http://hausumountain.com/?page_id=1920

Eartheater - Homonyms

from the album "RIP Chrysalis" coming out on Hausu Mountain on 10/20/15

For more info:
hausumountain.com/?page_id=2282

Eartheater - Wetware

Eartheater — IRISIRI 
Format: LP/CD/Digital
Cat.No: PAN 86
Release Date: 08 June 2018
Purchase: http://p-a-n.org/product/eartheater-irisiri-pan-86/
BC: https://alexdrewchin.bandcamp.com/album/irisiri

Eartheater (aka Queens based artist Alexandra Drewchin) distills foley-filled digital production, a three-octave vocal range, and classical composition into works suspended between obsessively detailed sonic tapestries and almost recklessly romantic and gestural electronica. A body of viscerally emotive live performance stands alongside her recorded output, realized by her fearless physical investment and gut-wrenching vocal sincerity.

IRISIRI, Eartheater's third full-length record, lays out a shifting network of abstract song craft, laced with sudden structural upheavals and collisions of mutated tropes from numerous sonic vocabularies. Modular synth staccato plucks hammer out in arrhythmic spirals over a carefully muzzled grid of pumping kicks - unleashed in unpredictable disruptions.  Technoid stabs mingle with crushed black metal. An icy OS reads poetry against a bed of granular synth swells.  Drewchin's sirening whistle-tone vocals drape over relentless harp arpeggios. Eartheater confounds expectations of structure and resolution before deciding to thread in a sugary melody that snaps us back into some conception, however hazy, of pop songwriting. Guest spots on  IRISIRI charge Drewchin's ideas with concordant energies, from the stark imagist poetry of Odwalla1221 on Inhale Baby, to the sheer lacerating force of Moor Mother's unflinching verse on MMXXX.

Drewchin's lyrics, strewn with flourishes of wordplay and symbolism, explore themes of her autodidactic experience - playing with the tutelage of the ‘pupil’ within the ‘iris' mirrored in the palindrome  IRISIRI. One motif appears as a song name,  C.L.I.T., which Drewchin breaks down into "Curiosity Liberates Infinite Truth." The acronym stands as a microcosm of the Eartheater project in its holistic combination of idiosyncratic spirituality and cheekiness, presented with an earnest confidence that some could consider confrontational. In spite of this lexicon’s maximal effect, it comes from a very personal place as she states, “curiosity has had to be the currency of my education". On OS In Vitro, she reminds us that "These tits are just a side-effect," and "You can't compute her," as if to acknowledge the clouding effect of sexuality and technology in the face of a higher self-significance. In the record’s accompanying video piece, Claustra,  she slides between "the owning of my loneliness" and "the end of the loaning of my onliness”, encapsulating images of self-purifying 
isolation and the rejection of artistic exploitation with the flip of two syllables. The transmuting landscape of IRISIRI is riddled with evocative poetry and evidence of Drewchin’s development as an artist since her debut in 2015.

Drewchin performs and collaborates with art duo and close friends FLUCT. In February 2017, she starred in Raul de Nieves and Colin Self’s opera The Fool at the Kitchen. In April 2017, featured on two tracks from Show Me The Body’s  Corpus I mixtape alongside  Denzel Curry  and Moor Mother. She’s currently composing work for the contemporary chamber orchestra,  Alarm Will Sound, that will debut in May 2018. Her new live set sees her accompanied by the concert harpist Marilu Donivan.

The release is mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring photography by Elise Gallant.

@alex-drewchin
http://www.eartheater.solar/
http://www.p-a-n.org/