expé/noise

Aperture

Lose

upsammy - Germs in a Population of Buildings
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 132
Release Date: 05 May 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/GerminaPopulationofBuildings

On her sophomore album "Germ in a Population of Buildings”, upsammy moves through her surroundings with the curiosity of a place-bending landscape architect. The album is rooted in her interest for ambiguous environments in constant shift, and the feeling of discovering strange patterns in different ecosystems. Often, the Amsterdam-based artist finds herself zooming in and out beyond a place's most recognizable surface features to inhabit the microscopic and gigantic. Gathering field recordings and evocative environmental sounds, she shapes this source material into vibrating electro-acoustic rhythms and unstable, psychedelic textures.

upsammy's debut album, 2020's critically-acclaimed "Zoom", was praised for its careful reimagining of IDM, evolving vignettes that nodded towards the dancefloor without being shackled to its rigid set of rules. On "Germ in a Population of Buildings" her process has evolved considerably; the skeletal trace of IDM is still present but it's been trapped in amber, allowing her unique sonic landscape to develop organically. 'Being is a Stone' is a proof of concept in many ways, layering upsammy's contorted voice in rickety patterns beneath a lattice of fragile rhythms and faintly melancholy synths. It's never immediately obvious where the sounds are coming from - a hiccuping beat might be glass cracking underfoot, and larger pulses could be wet concrete, rusted iron or bent plastic. As the sounds develop they morph into each other, demolishing what came before and building on top of the ornamental wreckage.

On the dynamic 'Constructing', upsammy's sound design fluxes through hyperactive bass music structures, abstracting expectations at every turn. Often her sounds are whisper quiet, rattling and vibrating until heavier masonry drops and disrupts the structure. And when discernible rhythms subside into the background, like on the album's eerie title track, they become almost illusory, morphing between the real world and the electronic. upsammy's processed voice works like a bridge between these realms, snaking between stark, whimsical melodies on 'Patterning', arching from AutoTuned detachment into cooing, dreamy intimacy. By considering the harmonies between each location she's visited, upsammy has been able to build a unique topology that's an uncanny digital amalgam of her lived experience. It's a thoughtful alternative in an era more concerned with flatting the landscape than crumpling it and examining its peaks and troughs.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Mixed by James Ginzburg
Artwork by Jonathan Castro Alejos and Tharim Cornelisse

Germ in a Population of Buildings

upsammy - Constructing (PAN 132)

'Humor' Release Date: June 30, 2023
Listen Now: https://hardlyart.xyz/tofusmell_basilnoodles

tofusmell: 
Bandcamp: https://tofusmell.bandcamp.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tofusmell
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1iOQiPT8N1MQbdUaTaefyZ?si=_6D2D2FcR0a0BW90Xh_Clg
On Tour: http://www.hardlyart.com/tours/tofusmell

Hardly Art: https://www.hardlyart.com
MiniMart: https://www.hardlyart.com/shop
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hardlyart
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hardlyart
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hardlyart
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/hardlyartrecords
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/hardlyartrecords

Humor

Basil Noodles

tofusmell - Basil Noodles

1993

Faith Healer - Try ;-) - Out September 8, 2017 on Mint Records

Faith Healer 
Facebook www.facebook.com/fayethealer/
Instagram www.instagram.com/FayeThealer
Bandcamp https://faithhealer.bandcamp.com/
Twitter twitter.com/FayeThealer
Spotify open.spotify.com/artist/2CQKYlMk1oC4h5zrC3k6RX

Mint Records www.mintrecs.com/
Twitter twitter.com/mintrecords
Facebook www.facebook.com/mintrecords
SoundCloud @mint-records
Bandcamp https://mintrecs.bandcamp.com/
Spotify open.spotify.com/user/mintrecords

Try ;-)

Faith Healer - Sufferin' Creature

Faith Healer - Best Saved 4 Last

Puce Mary — The Drought
Format: LP / CD / Digital
Cat.No. PAN 87
Release Date: 5 October 2018 
Pre-order album: bit.ly/2KGmn9f / bit.ly/2KGL7Ot

Building from a reputation of arresting live performances and critically acclaimed releases Puce Mary breaks new ground with The Drought, evolving from the tropes of industrial and power electronics to forge a complex story of adapting to new realities. Remnants of noise still exist, sustaining the penetrative viscerality offered on previous records, however The Drought demonstrates an intention to expand on the vocabulary of confrontational music and into a grander narrative defined by technical and emotional growth.

Bringing together introspective examination with literary frameworks by writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Jean Genet, Puce Mary’s compositions manifest an ongoing power struggle within the self towards preservation. The traumatised body serves as a dry landscape of which obscured memories and escape mechanisms fold reality into fiction, making sense of desire, loss and control. The Drought presents both danger and opportunity; through rebuilding a creative practice centred on first person narrative and a deliberate collage of field recordings and sound sources Puce Mary injects an acute urgency across the album seeking resilience.

“To Possess Is To Be In Control” makes use of lyrical repetition as an ambiguity of two selves, or a divided self, attempting to consume one another, while “Red Desert,” named after Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 film, portrays the individual subsumed by surrounding environmental forces. The seven-minute epic “The Size of Our Desires” acts as the emotional tipping point of the record; amongst the ominous drone and dense feedback flutters almost-beatific melodies, while the lyrics reveal a romantic call to be swept up in the midst of an increasingly uninhabitable world.

Rather than escape, The Drought dramatises a metamorphosis in which vulnerability is confronted through regeneration. Noise and aggression no longer act as an affront to react against but part of a ‘corporeal architecture’ where space, harmony and lyricism surface from the harsh tropes of industrial music. The Drought chronologises a transformation through a psychological famine, new ways of coping akin to plant survival in a desert – to live without drying out.

The release is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring art by Torbjørn Rødland

@pucemary
p-a-n.org