A Year Ago

Carmen Villain (Actress Remix)

recorded in early 2016 with the latvian radio choir  🕊🐚

Andy Stott - Song For Chance

From album 'TRACED', Pattern 04, Sonic Pieces, 2017

Traced

Post Human

Experimental cinema sonics, electroacoustic research practice and shadowy wind instruments come together to form this unique interpretation of the mythical city of gold. Utilising rare, half forgotten Soviet era synthesisers Vladimir Karpov creates immersive soundscapes under the name XYR. The Formanta mini keytar and the Alisa 1377 lend Karpov’s music strange, seldom heard atmospheres which the St. Petersburg native then combines with field recordings, toy percussion and wood flute to further build upon his utopian narratives.

Part concept album, part nod to Popol Vuh, his attempt to channel the thematics of the ancient tale of the Muisca people through his modest home studio left a lasting impression on us here at 12th Isle and we’re proud to present a selection of the tracks on vinyl for the very first time. Originally confined to just 25 cassette tapes, for this edition we have assembled some of the most inspiring tracks from the sessions as well as the bonus closing piece ‘Aguirre Song’. Immediately engaging, sincerely heartfelt and strikingly original, these are recordings we have returned to time and time again.

Limited edition LP comes housed in screenprinted sleeve. ‘El Dorado’ recorded April – August 2014, originally released via Illuminated Paths (March 2015).

https://12thisle.bandcamp.com/album/x-y-r-el-dorado

ISLE003

XYR - El Dorado LP (ISLE003)

MIKA VAINIO + RYOJI IKEDA + ALVA NOTO - LIVE 2002 [N-043]

In September 2002 Mika Vainio, Ryoji Ikeda and Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) were invited by the Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art for a residency. As a result of this project three live performances followed this research period.

All the tracks on this record were recorded live on September 23, 2002 at the Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art in Newcastle, UK.

All sounds by Mika Vainio, Ryoji Ikeda, Carsten Nicolai.

LIVE 20O2

MOVEMENT 4

MIKA VAINIO + RYOJI IKEDA + ALVA NOTO - MOVEMENT 4

Premiered by @resident-advisor 
https://www.residentadvisor.net/tracks/893826

"I made this track from samples of a piano board I recorded in EMS Stockholm with LAIR while we were working on our project. And some microphone hiss for the beats. I have been making purely percussive tracks recently for my upcoming album, so for this track I wanted to have an emotive melodic element as well. The title refers to the difficulty it seems as a human to live as you truly want, as opposed to how you think you should." - @eomac

Eomac - Don't Fear Your Own Heart

Artist: ASUNA & Jan Jelinek
Album: Signals Bulletin
Label#: Faitiche18
 
Faitiche is delighted to announce the release of a new collaboration between the Japanese sound artist ASUNA and Jan Jelinek: the album Signals Bulletin brings together joint improvisations and compositions made over a period of three years in Berlin, Kyoto and Kanazawa. ASUNA’s meandering organ drones merge with Jelinek’s pulsating synthesizer and field recording loops to create dense superclusters that span broad harmonic arcs.

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Watching the Japanese sound artist ASUNA playing the organ, some people might be surprised. ASUNA is no virtuoso flying over the keyboard in a rage. Instead, with the calm gestures of an office worker, he cuts strips of adhesive tape to the correct length before sticking them onto the keys of his instrument. In this way, large clusters of keys are held down, creating a dense and sustained range of frequencies, while the sound artist continually prepares further sets of keys or removes tape again. I have rarely seen a more convincing performance concept, with such a power to fascinate.

I first met ASUNA when we both gave a concert at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, his home city. He performed the organ drones as described above and I immediately knew I wanted to collaborate with him. Six years and five meetings later, we completed Signals Bulletin. The album includes both joint improvisations and compositions, recorded in Berlin, Kanazawa and Kyoto.

Whether using prepared organ, Casio keyboards or mechanical plastic toys, ASUNA creates rich textures of sound that barely change over long stretches of time. It is a music without breaks. For a while, I was unsure how my loops made using modular synthesizers and live sampling fitted here – until I realized the role I had to take in this duet: I would provide the rhythmically pulsating foundation over which his dense continuums could unfold.

The result is harmonically drifting superclusters that put us into a meditation-like state. It can perhaps be compared to Automatic Writing – a mode of creative expression floating somewhere between concentration and distraction. Both the structure of our pieces and our approach to our instruments allow a similar “absence”: we let the machines play and repeat themselves – while we, in a mild form of trance, adopt the role of observers, intervening only occasionally.

It is no coincidence that ASUNA owns a collection of Doodle Art – drawings jotted down during conversations or while talking on the phone. It is said that works made like this point to the unconscious and reveal pet motifs – because a doodler always inadvertently returns to his or her favourite themes. The artwork for Signals Bulletin features pictures from the collection, in this case sheets of paper from the pads provided in stationery shops to test out pens. The special quality of such doodles is that the jumble of drawings is the work of a collective whose individual members do not know each other. Layer by layer is added, by someone different each time – until it becomes a dense cluster of lines and symbols ...
Jan Jelinek, Berlin 2018

ASUNA & Jan Jelinek: Relief, Pt.1

feat. Laurel Halo, Kuljit Bhamra, Jonny Lam, Verity Susman, Untold

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 - Workaround Two (PAN 106)

After a stormy year, let us bask your moonlit dreams with synthetic serenades and sweet susurrations, that coax us all into digital lust.

INDEX0X0 is a prescription of sonic pheromones designed to soothe, arouse and awaken all sentient beings. A kiss from the gentlest carbon-composite lips, rewrites our code into a swirling sequence of bliss.

The tracks are available as 'pay as you feel' and we have love inspiring merchandise to accompany the compilation.

Tracks by: @agespowerflip @connaharaway @vasesound @specialguest-dj @cofaxx @l-v-j @amamelia @djfuckoff @ysystem @hystericalloveproject @blacksnakewhip

INDEX0X0

Love Line

Special Guest DJ - Makeout Dub

from the album "Holiday for Sampler" – (Planam, 2013)

Giuseppe Ielasi / Andrew Pekler - Oga

Andrew Pekler