exp2022

Artist: Jaeho hwang
Album: Inner-self 
Format: Digital / Tape
Cat.No: CHI038
Master: Justin Randel
Artwork: Jaeho Hwang
Release Date: 1st June 2022

Jaeho Hwang is releasing his second EP, Inner-self, on Chinabot. Combining elements of gabber, industrial rhythms components and experimental music gleaned from ten years in London's electronic music scene, Hwang also uses traditional Korean instrumentation as part of his compelling, original voice.

The literal and spiritual follow-up to his 2019 EP Non-self, Inner-self examines contemporary life through a Buddhist lens. But where Non-self took delight in the glitchy, dissolution of the self in a digital landscape or on the dance floor of a club, Inner-self looks back towards Korea's past, exploring the echoes of past people and cultures in Seoul's modern landscape.

Hwang's desire to reach into the past is personal. In 2020 he moved from London, his home of a decade, back to Seoul to spend time with his mother before her death in 2021, which he calls “the most shocking, sorrowful, and bizarre event in my life.”

In the self-directed video for the lead track Betweenness/사이, archive footage of early 20th century Seoul life is interspersed with Hwang's own daily life, a hundred years later. Many actions remain the same across the centuries – dancing, working, walking down the street. The two time frames are interlinked further with hovering squares of facial recognition technology over the faces from the past, an attempt to use technology to “recognise” people who are ultimately unreachable, but whose culture deeply influences those in Seoul today.

“During this period [of his mothers passing], I was lost in thought of how the deceased affects or changes us who continue to live in this world, what kind of meaning has been left after they have gone,” says Hwang. With its joyful melody piped out on a classical Piri flute, undercut with a dirty, bouncing bass line,  Betweenness/사이warmly embraces living traces of the past.

Traditional Korean instrumentation continues to meet sounds from contemporary clubland throughout the record. On the closing track On the Way to the End, created in the final months of Hwang's mothers life, a tense shiver of  Kkwaenggwari cymbals are punctuated by a clash of the Jing gong, while a post-industrial dirge whirls beneath. The track is the first time Hwang has used his own vocals – his distorted voice becomes a primordial wail of grief and rage.

On Yellow Eardrum, gabber beats and a punching kick drum create a driving rhythm under an otherworldly voice, a sample from master shaman Dae-rye Kim. Born in 1935 on the island of Jindo, Kim believed she could cleanse the souls of the recently deceased, as well as their living relatives, through her shamanistic singing and ritual practice she had learned from her mother. Similarly, Inner-self creates a space of communion between the past and present, making for a cathartic, timeless record.

About Jaeho Hwang
Jaeho Hwang is a London/Seoul-based DJ, producer, and visual artist who recontextualises traditional Korean instrumentation and brings it into the contemporary club music scene. After releasing his first EP on Chinabot in 2019, he has been featured in DJ Mag, BBC Radio 6 Music, 4:3 Boiler Room, XLR8R, DUMMY Magazine and Mixmag Korea. Now based primarily in Seoul, he is involved with Seoul community radio and Nek-O Future Club.

Inner-self

Betweenness/사이

Jaeho Hwang - Betweenness/사이

@galtier

Galtier makes his second return to his own label with a 5-track offering of off-kilter, obscure electronic madness aptly titled 'Imitation Plantae'. Inspired by the idea of man-made imitations attempting to capture the essence of natural beauty. Galtier's take on this very concept manifests itself through the ever-present sense of unease that is evident across all five tracks. The melodies drift in and out of tune, ever so slightly, ultimately sounding pleasing but always fleeting in their general aura of pleasantness. A showcase of Galtier's breadth of confidence across a huge span of BPMs and rhythmic influences that is showcased on his sophomore NHS release, reflecting the sense of uncertainty conveyed through the Intentionally awry mood throughout.

The EP itself is a distinct shift, once again, in gears off the back of his debut LP on Infinite Machine, which encapsulated the journey into one's own existence and presence in a vast world that is, to this viewer, connected on an atomic and deeply spiritual level. This decidedly stark difference in output originated as an attempt to play contrarian to his own 'style' of productions - Setting out to prove that he is capable of branching out once again into a new, confused realm that steers away from theatrics and hones in on sharp, digitized and overtly computer-programmed aesthetics.

Imitation Plantae EP

Buy EP

Galtier - Exhalation Of Blood

Vinyl & digital album: kmruahossan.bandcamp.com/album/limen

Released on April 29th, 2022

Last year, Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru (aka KMRU) and French digital alchemist Niamké Désiré (aka Aho Ssan) were invited by Berlin Atonal to collaborate on a project for the festival's Metabolic Rift edition.

The duo had already been working together, but the offer provided the momentum to shift the conversation into another gear. Initially, they looked for thematic connections within their individual practices that might match Kamaru's meditative soundscapes with Désiré's crumbling cyberpunk expressionism, and surprisingly for two artists renowned for their grasp of minimalism, it was the opposite that drew their attention. Watching the world shift as it reacted to the spiraling pandemic, Kamaru and Désiré were moved to experiment with volume, physicality, and intense emotionality.

“I never made something so extreme," Désiré says of the duo's first recording, 2021's 'Ruined Abstractions', an extended composition that matches dense, powerful low-end drones with fractal digital fuzz and smokestack bruit. It set the mood for a back-and-forth that resulted in their seismic debut full-length, "Limen", described by the two acclaimed artists as an attempt to scrutinize the yin and yang of destruction and creation.

Cacophonous, concrete crunches fanfare the album's opening piece 'Resurgence' - the result of their Berlin Atonal commission - but the track refuses to languish in wrecking ball devastation. Instead, powerful synthesized harmonies ring from beneath the rubble, before stifling everything in a humid fuzz of dense, emotionally-charged cinematic electronics.

Influenced by the prescient post-apocalyptic mood of Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" and the mythological phoenix, an immortal bird said to be reborn from the ashes of its dying predecessor, "Limen" is an album that sonically snapshots the anxious, floral beauty of an explosion or the colorful intensity of a raging fire. It's rooted in concepts of duality - the idea something unsettling can be viewed from a different angle and re-interpreted.

On the album's epic, 21-minute centerpiece 'Ruined Abstraction I + II', swirling electromagnetic interference paints a haunted parallel vista that dissolves slowly into subtle, orchestral tones and booming, widescreen thuds.

Almost angelic closing track 'Rebirth' meanwhile is the most unashamedly beautiful composition Kamaru and Désiré have written together, but its choral bliss is doused in petroleum noise and saturated distortion.

"Limen" is an album that seeks to lift a veil of silence from the world, replacing it with maximalist bombast and vivid passion. It's a dynamic piece of work that finds its creators pushing themselves to the limits, deconstructing history as it detonates around us.

All tracks written and produced by Joseph Kamaru
and Niamké Désiré; mastered by Joker

Published by Multiverse Media Publishing
© & ℗ Subtext / Multiverse LTD 2022

subtextrecordings.net/

Limen

Vinyl & digital album

KMRU & Aho Ssan - Resurgence

all tracks produced, mixed & mastered by @maxdahlhaus
remixes by @lilianechlela @najibmusic @TSUMUTSUMU @xliks
artwork by Luna Woelle

The core of 'A Cracked System' resonates from the urgent need of change and immediate self-care. “It's an EP with ups and downs, surprises and different states of feelings, all wrapped into soundscapes,” says Berlin producer and audio-visual artist Max Dahlhaus about his new EP, which takes a different sonic paths than previous releases 'Short Morrow' (Infinite Machine, 2021) 'Be A Glitch' (Hyperboloid Records, 2021) or 'Glacier' (self-released, 2022) and which was also heavily influenced by the series of lockdowns.

MAX DAHLHAUS - STYMIED CYCLE (T5UMUT5UMU REMIX)

MAX DAHLHAUS - STYMIED CYCLE

We bring you Supreems' Being EP for AM005, a  masterful and moving 5 tracker encompassing many different tones and moods. 

LISTEN/ BUY:
https://airmilesrec.bandcamp.com/album/being-ep-am005
https://ffm.to/being

Vinyl coming soon x

https://soundcloud.com/supreems <3

Buy Digital

AM005 // Supreems - Being EP

lovesong

World Why WEB

KABAAL - Weerman  [MDT008]

@marienonnis 

visual by Justine Ferrer  

Tracklist : 

saand - return 
rec - treckin’ 
xato - grief 
Angelo Harmsworth - Splinter ft. Felisha Ledesma 
Ytem - alta tears 
Mirror Organs - Fexofen 
Messell - envelope follower_ll 
Cotton Pills -  Oriental Script
qwqwqwqwa - Phantom 
Lensk - Negation Cycles
SKSSS - 712perc 
ssaliva - True Star 
Schacke - Mutual Secrecy (part 2) 
Antonia XM - Bronze Key 
Evitceles - Transfixed 
Marble Bust - N053X 
Pablo Altar - Infra

Invitée Spéciale — marie nonnis

'a downtempo centric self-inquiry quest by means of binge-shiftin'

https://ab-u.bandcamp.com/album/binge-shiftin

released March 7, 2025

artwork by Mery Khugashvili & Arsen Iy
composed & mixed by @ab_y
mastered by @yeyomf & @qwqwqwqwa

lovesong

qwqwqwqwa

Recent comments

синий цвет

sippin'Silk - djOnebeer

Anit Levan

keprah

Related tracks