from the album "Cover Versions" - Senufo Editions / Fantôme Verlag 2013

Silhouette Couple

Taken from 'Fringe' LP/Download (E064, Ecstatic 03/09/2021)

A gorgeous swell of intimate soundscaping from Felisha Ledesma on this simmering stunner for Ecstatic, despatching two extended, richly absorbing pieces weft from everyday detritius; synths, strings, voicemail, found sounds - hitting a similar spot for us as Ulla’s diaristic 'inside means inside me’ but with a more defined play of sound-as-light that gently and memorably tugs at the earlobes and heartstrings. 

Exploring a music of presence and ultra subtle inference, ‘Fringe’ is the 2nd release by Ledesma, student of Berlin's estimable Universität der Künste, following from a debut for Enmossed x Psychic Liberation earlier this year. Using AMQR - a software synthesiser built by Ledesma together with Ess Mattisson - both pieces here shimmer with elusive timbres that occupy a realm that feels lost between worlds - neither electronic nor acoustic, but more a sort of observational sound that radiates togetherness and warmth. 

Operating at insightful levels of synaesthesia, Ledesma poetically turns ostensibly humdrum sources into clouds of smoke - emails, voicenotes, walking along the water, a poem attached to an email, walking alone in New York during lockdown, going for a swim at sunset in the desert - all turn into a smudge of memory. When ‘Beamsplitters’ opens with a tangible human presence - a voicemail from a friend - it startles with its earthly pull, eventually getting lost in a tangled spool of found sound leaving just a trace of iridescent, intimate reverie. 

On ‘Golden Mirror’ Felisha gently diffracts a lonesome guitar phrase into a humming thizz with a steeply uncanny ability to jog the memory in a similar way to how olfactory stimulus can conjure feelings of nostalgia. It’s a trick familiar from an emergent new realm of lower case composers creating something like submerged, small scale symphonies that work counter to notions of classical excess or anodyne ambient, instead focusing on microcosmic, highly peronalised sort of worldbuilding that’s impenetrable, yet somehow entirely open.

Felisha Ledesma - Golden Mirror [E064]

Gudrun Gut and Mabe Fratti have worked together on a powerful hybrid album, where taut rhythms fuse with haunted vocal melodies and spoken word, and field recordings meld with extended ambient pieces. Limited edition of 500 copies on Yellow Transparent vinyl LP, digital downloads and streamings.

As part of Umor Rex’s 15th anniversary, we here present an album that builds a dialogue between two lands and two unique artists. Mexico is the origin and conceptual residence of our label, while Germany is where we produce and manufacture our records (Berlin functions as the center of distribution and logistics, thanks to our friends at Morr Music). The intertwining imaginations belong to German producer Gudrun Gut (Malaria!) —a notable figure of the subculture and the German music scene since the early 80s, and also a founder of Monika Enterprise and recipient of the ‘Listen to Berlin’ Award in 2019— and singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Mabe Fratti (originally from Guatemala, now based in Mexico City). We knew about “Let’s Talk About The Weather” from the beginning, and since the moment Gudrun and Mabe made us part of their project, our excitement could not be greater.

The process started with Gudrun and Mabe having long distance conversations, asking about their whereabouts and discussing the weather. This might seem rather commonplace, but it works as a key thematic component for the entire album. The weather as the new great unknown, perceived through the optics of everyday life. Sound files were methodically exchanged, with Mabe exploring words and vocals, and Gudrun working with field recordings taken from each city. In the end, this joint musical venture would provide a healing effect for both artists during life in quarantine.

“Aufregend”, the opening track of the album, reflects upon a general lack of excitement in modern life. It wonders what the future might hold. Is it cold? Is it warm? Will it be the same? “Air Condition” is an eerie, dazzling collision of climates: the hazy warmth of Mexico City, the deep cold of Uckermark. The last track, which gives the album its name, is a long ambient piece composed of four parts: sound sculptures, field recordings of city life, news and weather forecasts, and private conversations about the climate. It’s kind of a collaborative diary, obsessed with a single, all-encompassing subject.

Produced and recorded by Gudrun Gut and Mabe Fratti between Berlin, Uckermark, Veracruz and Mexico City. Mixed by GGut at Stern Studio Mastered by John Tejada in Sherman Oaks, USA. Artwork & photos by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City.

Special thanks to Goethe Institute, who contributed to the creation of this album with a Virtual Partner Residency support.

Let’s Talk About The Weather

Gudrun Gut + Mabe Fratti — Aufregend

from the album Charles Cohen - "Brother I Prove You Wrong" out on Morphine Records 2015 - doser026LP

Composer, improviser, and Buchla Music Easel master Charles Cohen returns to Morphine with a suite of new material. In keeping with the timbre spectrum of his semi-modular system, Brother I Prove You Wrong is built around pointillist analog tones—Cohen's cosmic "beeps and boops"—that swarm and scatter in mesmeric patterns across four sides. Moving through surrealistic textural overlays and industrial miasma, the album's nine tracks reveal a more introspective and personal side of the artist, following from a retrospective LP trilogy released via Morphine in 2013. Those assembled works, dating back to the late '70s, quickly became essential listening and brought Cohen—at the time largely unknown outside Philadelphia's experimental circuit—to critical renown. 

Brother I Prove You Wrong was recorded in Berlin in September 2014 using the Buchla Music Easel, with production help and support from Rabih Beaini. Mastered by Neel and curated and designed by TankBoys; cover art by Nathalie du Pasquier.

Charles Cohen - The Boy and the Snake Dance

Sitting on the Moon

Wicked Game

Glory Bitch

Music composed and produced by Caterina Barbieri between September 2015 and January 2016. Mixed at Elektronmusikstudion in
Stockholm (SE). Composed with an ER-101 Indexed Quad 
Sequencer and a Verbos Harmonic Oscillator. 
Images by Giovanni Brunetto 
Photography by Angelo Jaroszuk Bogasz 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi 
First edition pressing of 500 double LPs packaged in a gatefold jacket. An edition of 200 sets on transparent blue vinyl is available for Important mailorder customers: http://importantrecords.com/imprec/imprec449
Bandcamp: https://caterinabarbieri.bandcamp.com/album/patterns-of-consciousness
"...has an imperial, exacting beauty." (The Wire)
“…few albums have hit us as hard as Caterina Barbieri’s 70-minute opus, Patterns Of Consciousness. On her debut full-length, Barbieri commands tsunami-height waves of arpeggiated analog synths." (Fact Mag)
"Patterns Of Consciousness finds Caterina Barbieri at her best, elegantly moving between melodically pleasant yet twisted sequences and comforting, reassuring sonic spaces. Every piece, while given a singular identity, is part of the bigger picture: a work of art that will push you, pull you, and then eventually leave you with your back against the wall once you get to the last track. " Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails)

Gravity that Binds

From the 2011 album "Sentimental Favourites" – originally released on Dekorder. Available digitally on Bandcamp at the nice price of pay what you want.
https://andrewpekler.bandcamp.com/album/sentimental-favourites

Sentimental Favourites

Name your price

The Twilight Of Your Smile

The sound on this release has been examined and produced throughout March and April 2019 in Frankfurt am Main during a music-residency initiated and hosted by "Künstlerhaus Mousonturm" and MMODEMM.

Written and Produced by Asuna Arashi

Asuna - Cloud River Seen From The Window

Zaumne - Élévation

Charles Curtis: Performances & Recordings 1998-2018 (SLT-005)

Saltern presents its fifth release, Charles Curtis: Performances & Recordings 1998-2018, the first comprehensive collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist Charles Curtis. Selected by Curtis and Tashi Wada from recordings spanning the past two decades, the collection offers a broad, inclusive view of Curtis's activities across the diverse worlds of music he inhabits, containing rare, unreleased recordings, and never-before-released music by Terry Jennings, Richard Maxfield, Éliane Radigue, Alison Knowles, and Curtis. The wide-ranging scope of this release speaks not to a musical restlessness, but to a genuine spirit of inquiry, as these areas of activity for Curtis have existed concurrently in dialogue, not simply in succession, for decades. Over two hours of music by composers and artists with whom Curtis is closely associated including Éliane Radigue, Guillaume de Machaut, Tobias Hume, Silvestro di Ganassi, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Alison Knowles, Richard Maxfield, and Curtis himself. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with liner notes by La Monte Young, Spencer Gerhardt, and Tashi Wada. Custom packaging and screen printing by Alan Sherry.

Silhouette Couple

Andrew Pekler