Taken from the album 'Piano Muisc 1-7' released as LP, CD and digital.


Editions Mego is proud to welcome Powell to its roster with a bizarre and strangely emotive new LP of synthetic computer works entitled Piano Music 1-7.

Via his own Diagonal Records imprint, his work on XL Recordings and, most recently, the opening of audio/film platform A Folder [afolder.studio], Powell has firm footing in the contemporary electronic landscape. During a wry and obstinate musical life he has twisted myriad synthetic forms into shapes that explore and expand upon the districts of post-punk, techno, noise + computer music, and in the the last year alone he has released four albums of hi-def abstractions, each inspired by a formalisation of music proposed by Iannis Xenakis. 

As an extension of this intense period of work/research/play with stochastic functions [using probabilities to compose music], various processes emerged that Powell then began to apply to more traditional musical events. Where ordinarily in his work the probabilities and relationships are used to define parameters such as wave-shape, folding, FM, filter modes etc., he now began to use them to create musical formations and visual scores that could be played back using any software/MIDI instrument [one of these can be seen on the rear cover of the LP release]. While mapping out this cartography of relations, he used a basic Grand Steinway sampler as a placeholder instrument; the longer the process went on, though, the more he began to embrace the acoustic properties of the synthetic piano and make it the bedrock for this new constellation of work. 

Piano Music 1-7, subtitled ‘Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics’, consists of seven different synthetic islands strung together into a single composition. All were composed using the aforementioned processes that allowed Powell to play a piano, even if he never learned to do so with his hands. After all, ’In writing electronic music,’ Robin Mackay once wrote, ‘you also have to direct the invention of new tools.’

At times the piano skips gleefully over shadowing synthesis, whilst at others the synthetic sheets swarm and envelope the keys. The interplay between the two create a fantastical alternate reality, a cosmic machine in which time is eroded, shrunk and expanded, like a wax upon which operations and relations are inscribed or engraved. Many of the pieces express a playfulness or optimism verging on vitalism, as bundles of piano notes dance and interpolate with a never-repeating range of electronic gestures. The feel is of a brightly coloured flower-bed in various stage of bloom. This interplay of the [artifical] acoustic and the electronic builds on the pioneering processes developed by David Behrman in works such as Leapday Night, and Piano Music 1-7 could also be posited as a modern take on Conlon Nancarrow’s investigations for player piano. Similarly, the razor-sharp sonic properties and unfolding of non-human events recall the computer works of Xenakis and the surgical precision of Mego mainstay Florian Hecker.

Recorded in late 2020, these new Powell works propose not just a bold and bright vision of electronic music but serve also as a map with which, for 35 minutes at least, we can navigate our way out of the current milieu. As the artist himself remarks in the sleeve-notes, ‘. . . What emerged from this fog or soup [for me] were ideas and processes that felt affirmative and life giving — sensations I had always hoped to convey in my music. Perhaps the optimism or positivity I felt at these musical events unfolding, these clusters and knots tumbling in different directions across time, can also be felt by you.’

Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics

Composed and recorded by Powell, 2020
Mixed by Powell and Tobin Jones at The Park Studios, London
Mastered by Russell Haswell

Art direction by Guy Featherstone
Photography by John Cronin

Powell 'Piano Music #1' (EMEGO 301)

https://archaicvaults.bandcamp.com/album/continuing-a-worn-out-tradition-ii

All proceeds from this compilation will go towards Sistah Space, a non-profit community-based organisation bridging the gap in domestic abuse services for African heritage women and girls.

V/A 'Continuing A Worn Out Tradition II' (Excerpts) [AV006]

There’s a body of water in the woods near Carrboro. Dappled light on the trail leads you to it. Crunch of leaves underfoot. A river feeds the swimming hole where people plunge, naked and alive. On a chair you sit reminiscing about the future. After a dip, you lay on a big smooth rock - let the sun bake you dry. Then you walk further into the woods.

Like coming upon some keyboardists situated at the mouth of a cave, the entreaties on this record are calming but enigmatic, tinged with melancholy and reflection. Recurring motifs are given room to grow—there’s much space, and the progressions percolate, an auditory mapping of emotional crevices. Sentimentalism given a rougher edge. It lures you in; an orb appears, bright and buzzing. It motions for you to continue. As you do, a fragrance floats through the cave and fills your psyche, like a thousand roses hidden in the dark.

On "Keyboard Suite Vol. 1", MARV imbues analog subtractive and FM synthesis with a distinct physicality. Dub studio techniques and rigorously hand-played performances create an 'environmental' keyboard masterpiece strongly connected to the lineage of 1970s-80s private press ambient and electronic recordings-- but elegantly modern sound design and production methods center the album in the present day. A timeless quality pervades "Keyboard Suite Vol. 1", allowing for easy repeats, marinating the subconscious ache of loss with a dreamily resolute hope.

keyboards and effects ~ Geoff Schilling and Nathan Taylor
french horn (A2) ~ Aaron Smithers
mixdown assistance ~ Glyn Maier
audio finalization ~ Nathan Taylor
design and layout ~ Joe Bastardo (www.josephbastardo.com)

all proceeds to Carolina Abortion Fund (Durham, NC) ~ www.carolinaabortionfund.org

ALSO WILL BE STOCKED BY:

Tobira Records (JP)
All Day Records (US)
Commend (US)
Boomkat (UK)
Industrial Coast (UK)

LP details ~
black vinyl, printed center labels
lacquer cut ~ Amy Dragon
recycled black paper jackets ~ Middle Press
silkscreened with water/soy-based ink ~ Goatmother Industrial
recycled plantable seed paper insert ~ Greenfield Paper, debossed with Braille text* ~ Middle Press
custom scent ~ Meadow Maker Apothecary (www.instagram.com/_meadowmakers_/)

*may not be readable due to paper thickness and texture

*ALL LPS WILL BE SHIPPED OUTSIDE OF JACKET FOR SAFETY*

Keyboard Suite I

MARV - Stable Mate (ENM10)

Artist: Trip Shrubb
Album: Trewwer, Leud und Danz
Label#: faitiche 25
Format: LP/DL
Release: Oct 22nd 2021

Faitiche is excited to present, for the first time on vinyl, a selection from the 84-track (!!) remix project originally released in 2013 as a three-tape set by Trip Shrubb aka kptmichigan aka Michael Beckett. Known to many from bands like Tuesday Weld or The Schneider TM Experience, Beckett remixed his way through Harry Smith’s famous Anthology of American Folk Music – a compilation of American folk, blues and country recordings released in 1952, soon to become key point of reference for the emerging folk revival movement. Having translated the title into the local dialect of the part of Germany where he lives, Beckett began reinterpreting all of its 84 tracks using sampler, effect pedals and loops – sometimes making several tracks in a single day. A colossal undertaking whose results are beyond accomplished and that is summed up in the selection of thirteen tracks on Trewwer, Leud un Danz.
  

Murray Royston-Ward writes about Trewwer, Leud un Danz:

“Total sacrilege... 
A collection of remixes of tracks from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music which was originally released in its entirety. The album is titled Trewwer, Leud un Danz (sorrow, song and dance) which is drawn from an endangered ‘Low German’ dialect (lippisch Platt) and is poetically approximating Smith’s volumes Ballads, Social Music and Songs.   The hardware employed encompasses analogue, virtual analogue and digital. A primordial soup of electrical fields, striated granulation, micro-circuitry, molecular oscillations and mathematical manipulation; communicating directly with the guitars, zithers, mountain dulcimers, fiddles, jaw harps, banjos, harmonicas and human voices of 1930’s America: itself a reterritorialization of African and European folk traditions that reach back farther and farther into our collective pasts. (…)” 

faitiche 25, 2021
Music by Michael Beckett
Mastering by Rashad Becker
Design by Tim Tetzner
Published by La Chunga
Label image by Giant Fox

Trip Shrubb: Wach Up, Jakob

end of the year thoughts and intentions
in a self-release "survivors kit" by @perila
https://perilazone.bandcamp.com/album/survivors-kit

we can’t control what’s happening outside but we can take care of the inside so the outside feels better.

perila – barefeeter

The next thing I knew, I was "exiting"
But it felt like my presence there had been a return
Without ever any away

Outside we had all already been 
Thrush eggs

Exits Exist

𐕣 INFERNO 𐕣 ASTAROTH ENN CHANT 𐕣

A collage of sounds from http://www.andrewpekler.com/phantom-islands/ – an interactive website that charts the sounds and histories of islands that were once found on nautical maps but have since disappeared.

Phantom Islands are artifacts of the age of maritime discovery and colonial expansion. During centuries of ocean exploration these islands were sighted, charted, and described – but their existence was never ultimately verified. Poised between cartographic fact and maritime fiction, they haunted seafarers’ maps for hundreds of years, inspiring legends, fantasies, and counterfactual histories. Phantom Islands – A Sonic Atlas interprets these imaginations in the form of a map of speculative sounds from 27 phantom islands around the world.

Phantom Islands (Collage)

random alien love to all my friends during a fucked up time.

insides 3 (alien love mix)

ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ, 'High School Blues
Format: Cassette / Digital
Release Date: May 1, 2020
Artwork: Jesse Sappell

Buy: https://motionward.bandcamp.com/album/high-school-blues

High School Blues is the debut tape by 17 year old Russian producer Nikolay Kozlov aka ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ. Throughout the songs on the release there is a thread of generative and freeform characteristics, but the emphasis on abstraction is balanced by grounding and at times uneasy swells of emotion that shift and sink in slowly throughout the tracks. Suitable listening for a variety of headspaces and atmospheric conditions.

https://soundcloud.com/nikolaykozlov

MWT003: ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ, 'High School Blues'

Album ‘the spectre always leave the same way it entered’ by ϙue (@optovolokonniy) is a tribute to other-dimensional aspects of our existence. An attempt to look behind the flickering veil, a break-up music for blackmetal couples, a journey of the soul. The spiritualist seance will begin on May 14: 10 original avant-garde stories plus 3 remixes from @ArthurKriulyn, @Monotronique and @Lostlojic are waiting for you. Also will be available on limited edition of cassettes. mystictrax.bandcamp.com @mystictrax
___________

"...It may feel empty and confusing, but there is a rhythm within you. If you are mindful enough, you will find it. I know you can. And there will also be real peace and beauty in destruction..."

Phantom Islands (Collage)

Andrew Pekler