Azure

Darklite

@milliamusic
@kind_tree
@raw_silk
@benbondy
@specialguest-dj
@uwudustbath

Eagerly awaited yet patiently bubbling under the surface, UwU dust bath emerges with its primal offering, a deeply generous and authentic sonic array from lowkey prolifics Purelink. Despite the
Chicago trio’s humbly mysterious presence, the transcendental music speaks resoundingly.

The most unforeseen plot twist comes via xphresh (Special Guest DJ & Ben Bondy), causing Rihanna’s notoriously iconic vocals to drip like honey, seeping into the fuzzed post-dancehall daydream; a sunkissed celebration.

Words by Katie Campbell 

vinyl preorder : www.one-eye-witness.com/release/16539…link-Purelink
digital preorder : uwudustbath.bandcamp.com/album/purelink

releases July 1, 2022

Purelink

pi pi pi premiere: Purelink - Butterfly Jam (xphresh Bad Girl version)

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 - Patterning (PAN 132)

Asma Maroof, Patrick Belaga, Tapiwa Svosve - The Sport of Love 
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 134
Release Date: 26 May 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/TheSportofLove

In the late 18th century, reason and rational thought was idealized and viewed as the most progressive way to comprehend a rapidly industrializing society. The snap reaction was Romanticism, an artistic movement that prioritized emotion, imagination and intuition - things that can't be quantified but have sustained culture for millennia. Now in a digitally accelerated age where our lives are not only measured but distributed in binary, a similarly hot-blooded creative response is long overdue. On The Sport of Love, seasoned collaborators Asma Maroof, Patrick Belaga and Tapiwa Svosve consider the language, competition and contradiction of modern romance: its yearning, incomprehensible vastness and the inevitable darkness and fleeting fragility. For the trio, love is the emotion that propels all of us whether we acknowledge it or not, and its expression can be realized in many forms.

“I know my musical collaborators on an arguably more intimate level than many of the friendships that are exclusively born of word-based language,” says Belaga. The cellist and composer has been developing a relationship with Los Angeles-based DJ-producer Maroof (also known as Asmara) and Svosve, a Swiss saxophonist and electro-acoustic musician, for many years; the three are all part of Moved by the Motion, a "roving band" that also includes artist and filmmaker Wu Tsang, performer and dancer Tosh Basco and dancer Josh Johnson. As a three-piece ensemble, their interaction is fluid and physical, and with Svosve and Belaga on sax, flute, piano and cello, Maroof sculpts the sounds into textured, effervescent fantasies. “A lot of the songs were improvised and then I made sense of the madness," she explains.

The music emerged like smoke from the embers of soundtrack work they collaborated on in 2021. After finishing scores for Virgil Abloh's Louis Vuitton A/W 2021 collection film, Peculiar Contrast, Perfect Light and Bafic’s documentary short Sub Eleven Seconds, the trio were left with unanswered questions and excess energy. They considered the idea of creating an imaginary score to a romantic movie, using love to dictate its movement and narrative. So opening track 'G Major Kind of Love' is the intoxicating first blush, characterized by a drowned sax solo that sounds like a siren call from beneath the ocean. 'Delicate Distance Between Boulders' is quivering and hesitant, using gentle piano motifs against reverberating flute sounds and subtle, goosebump inducing electronic treatments.

Everything comes into sharp focus on the album's lengthy central piece 'The Stranger', that brings in additional instrumentation from harpist Ayha Simone and percussionist Mathieu Edward. The three friends saw this particular composition as a journey within itself, charting the anxiety, harmony and uncertainty of love. Shifting from gooey freeform jazz into gurgling noise and bleak ambient drone, it connects the dots between Dorothy Ashby, Arve Henriksen, Jon Hassell and Hildur Guðnadóttir while voyaging into parts unknown. It's a finale of sorts that wrestles with the complexity of the album's themes, returning to earlier refrains and prolonging their tension.

Fittingly, the record is tied together by artwork from the trio's friend Tosh Basco, and several tracks have already been used by Wu Tsang in a piece for SFMoMa. The Sport of Love is powered by physical connection in a digital world, and breathes a mysterious allure that's never been more urgent.

The Sport of Love 

Asma Maroof, Patrick Belaga, Tapiwa Svosve - G Major Kinda Love (PAN 134)

@violentquandonaime

helen island - last liasse
Vinyl/Streaming/Digital
- 21.02.24 -

Ghastly and hallucinatory – Last Liasse is a sign of the times, alternative pop record by Helen Island. Within this debut album, the artist captures the saccharine gaze of digital escapism through characteristic filtered high notes, cut-up genres, and processed vocals. Providing a comprehensive overview of Helen Island’s self-distributed initiatives, with the ethos of the Parisian Simple Music Experience collective, the twelve tracks set a solid musical score that resonates with the age to come.

helen island - alice dj

trickpony - Pillow Talk
STEP11

Vinyl Preorder: https://t.ly/_JdmN
Digi Preorder: https://t.ly/_ZybS

Step Ball Chain’s unconventional prototype band trickpony is the 11th release on the ever evolving imprint. An assortment of sensual cyber jams collaged together by the trio over timezones, birthed in Perth, Australia by Mike Midnight and Roza Terenzi; old friends joined by Helsinki’s visionary songstress Maria Korkeila. A trinity of alchemy blossomed into an audio rendition of exquisite corpse, layers of each entity glistening through amongst a united cosmos; trip hop atmospherics and downtempo drippings. 

The five track EP reveals a metamorphosis of nostalgia, a foot in the ever present and daydreams of future. A subconscious deep dive into lustful pop, guided by spine tingling vocal fantasies; textural hallucination, harmonic odes to the golden era underground and a flirtation with drum and bass, tribal percussive freakouts and dream tinged lyrics of desire. 

Pillow talk is a timeless exhibit of esoteric treasures, a portal to a private world of modern enchantment that reveals itself in new ways each listen, music for lovers created by a supergroup of innovators to be digested, shared and cherished.



Written & Produced by Michael Gunson, Katie Campbell and Maria Korkeila
Mastering by Marco Pellegrino 
Cut by Marco Pellegrino at Analog Cut
Distributed by One Eye Witness
Artwork by Nicola Tirabasso

trickpony - Pillow Talk (STEP11)

Treating songwriting as an instinctive process, Bedoret transforms her deeply personal experiences into pure emotion. Not following any set narrative, Eyes takes the listener on a journey via their own experiences, prompting introspection through Bedoret’s hypnotic melodies. Through the album, she awakens the audience's imagination, to open up their emotional response.

Vanessa began her classical training at age 6 and on completion at 18 she embraced the thrill of playing guitar in punk bands, and like many at the turn of adulthood, was quickly captured by the allure of the dancefloor. She also counts black metal to opera and from eurodance to IDM as inspiration. Her deep understanding of musical form elevates her experimentation to a truly unique sonic experience, one that never strays too far from her original love of classical music.

Through the lens of a life lived to it’s fullest and one that does not shy from experiencing the rawest of emotions, it’s clear that Bedoret has a nack for translating personal observations into cinematic crescendoes. The field recordings throughout only heighten this feeling adding both a grounding and other worldy sensibility. Lyrically, she allows you to peek into her private world and for a fleeting moment letting you lock eyes with hers, asking what do you see?