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Four years after his last release as Hauschka, composer Volker Bertelmann returns to City Slang for his new effort “PHILANTHROPY”. While touching on the work of musical innovators, such as Erik Satie and John Cage, Hauschka reimagines the potential of the prepared piano for the 21st century, a technique that involves inserting objects between the instrument’s strings or onto its hammers to expand its sonic and operative possibilities.

Founded by sonic architect and explorer Robert Raths aka ghostworker in 2007, Erased Tapes is a truly independent record label that has disrupted the industry and rejuvenated the musical landscape. The London-based label has consistently nurtured genre-defying artists from all around the world without losing its avant-garde ethos.

2015 saw BBC 6 Music radio presenter Mary Anne Hobbs stage an Erased Tapes evening featuring Nils Frahm and A Winged Victory For The Sullen at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the prestigious BBC Prom. It was the fastest selling ticket of the entire season. Shortly after Erased Tapes was awarded Best Small Label 2015 at the AIM Awards.

On February 5th 2017 Erased Tapes opened the doors to its new East London home, marking the 10th anniversary by introducing fans and the public to the new Erased Tapes Sound Gallery.

“Ten years of one of the most important record labels of the last few years“ — Gilles Peterson

"Over the last decade, Robert Raths’ label Erased Tapes has developed a sonic profile perfectly in step with the growing taste for quiet, meditative works on the cusp of ambient and chamber music" — The Independent

“The heart-string-tugging London label that floats gently between 20th century composition and ambient music” — Rolling Stone

‘Where were you guys when I was thirty?’

Lubomyr Melnyk is a Ukrainian composer and pianist who has pioneered ‘Continuous Piano Music’.
 
Classically trained and greatly affected by the minimalist movement in the early 1970s, he has developed his own unique language for the piano, named after the principle of maintaining a continuous, unbroken stream of sound.
 
Lubomyr Melnyk is a true innovator, exploring new directions for contemporary music. Not only is he regarded as one of the world’s fastest concert pianists, his compositions also truly carry the listener to new realms. To witness one of his rare live performances is nothing short of a mind-opening experience.
 
Melnyk has shown a remarkable devotion to the instrument, always striving to discover new ways of composing music in the continuous mode. His focus is on the actual sound of the piano as much as the harmonies and melodies of the music.
 
Using rapid and complex note patterns, Lubomyr's virtuoso piano technique forms overtones that blend, collide or even create new melodies in rare moments, and thereby shape the composition beyond its original form. To accomplish this requires a special technique, one that has taken him many years to master.

April 2013 will see Lubomyr Melnyk's his first release on UK label Erased Tapes. Entitled 'Corollaries', the album was recorded and produced by Peter Broderick with the additional help of Nils Frahm and Martyn Heyne. Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths knew it was time to share the great musical legacy of Melnyk, to which he simply responded: ‘Where were you guys when I was thirty?’

PRESS:

'Captivating as ever' – The Wire

'Modern classical raptures' ★★★★ – Uncut

'Stately, lush and quietly virtuosic' ★★★★ – MusicOMH 

'A pianist of remarkable talent and insight' 9/10 – Line Of Best Fit 

'A delight from start to finish' ★★★★★ – The Skinny

‘Hypnotic’ ★★★★ – Rolling Stone, Germany

‘Cascade-ish discharging beauty’ – Spex, Germany

'Epic, meditative stillness' Album of the Week – WQXR Q2 Music

'A lustrous, shimmering soundworld' Album of the Month – Textura

Channelled madness – the sound Dawn of Midi spent years shaping, culminating into their most mesmerising work yet

With Dysnomia, the Brooklyn-based group Dawn of Midi abandons improvisation in favour of composition, utilising sophisticated rhythmic structures from North and West African folk traditions to weave a sonic tapestry of trance-inducing grooves. From close up one may see only dots, but when stepping back an undulating image reveals itself. “We didn’t want to create anything cerebral,” says Belyamani, “we wanted something visceral, something that would awaken our instinctive dance impulses.”
Having met at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 2006, bassist Aakaash Israni, pianist Amino Belyamani and drummer Qasim Naqvi found their original rapport through late night tennis matches on the campus court. The chemistry they founded there eventually led them back indoors to improvise together; something they did in total darkness to deprive themselves of all their senses except the crucial one – their hearing.
The manner, by which a trio of solely acoustic instruments ends up sounding like electronic music, has to do with the unconventional ways the group play their instruments on Dysnomia. The record comes to life in the trio’s critically acclaimed live shows, a test of endurance and trust that involves performing their hand-looped acoustic minimalism note for note, just as the compositions were recorded. Dawn of Midi’s sets are as energetic and rhythmic as a seamlessly mixed DJ-set, mesmerising fans in the same way the group’s favourite experimental and electronic acts have for decades.
The album was recorded to 2-inch tape at Waterfront Studios in Hudson, New York - a former church that was purchased and transformed into an analogue recording playground by the great engineer Henry Hirsch. Once the band visited the studio and met Henry, an expert in analogue recording equipped with a vintage Helios console, 16 and 24-track tape machines and a superb collection of microphones, it was obvious they had to record there; it was miles ahead of anywhere else they had visited. Rusty Santos then mixed the album to make sure it would hit as hard as the group’s favourite electronic albums do in spite of it being entirely acoustic.
“We wanted to make a record that sounded both musically futuristic and sonically vintage,” explains Israni, “and since the album never saw a proper international release, it is very exciting to see what might happen when more people are exposed to it. And to be aligned with Erased Tapes, whose enthusiasm for the music they release has done a lot for exposing unique instrumental and electronic music, makes it that much more interesting.”

Dysnomia will be released worldwide on June 1st, 2015 through Erased Tapes – available on 2x LP, CD and Download.

Max Richter trained in composition and piano at Edinburgh University, at the Royal Academy of Music, and with Luciano Berio in Florence.

On completing his studies, Max co-founded the iconoclastic classical ensemble Piano Circus, where he stayed for ten years, commissioning and performing works by Arvo Pärt, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe and Steve Reich.

In the late 90s he worked with a number of electronic artists, notably Future Sound of London on their album 'Dead Cities". He subsequently collaborated with FSOL over a period of two years, also contributing to the albums "The Isness" and "The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness". Max also collaborated with Mercury Prize winner Roni Size, on "In the Mode".

In June 2002, Max released his debut solo album, "memoryhouse", recorded with The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. This was followed in March 2004 by FatCat's release of "The Blue Notebooks", with featured readings by Tilda Swinton.

In 2005 Max produced Vashti Bunyan's outstanding comeback album "Lookaftering".

2006 saw the release of "Songs From Before" based on Haruki Murakami texts read by Robert Wyatt. That same year, Max began performing "from The Art of Mirrors", an evolving score to previously unseen Super 8mm films of Derek Jarman.

Max's more recent work continues to stretch the notions of what Classical music is.  ‘24 Postcards In Full Colour’, released in August 2008, is an experimental work made up of 24 composed ringtones.

Max works widely in film music, installation and the theatre, most recently on INFRA, made with Wayne MacGregor and Julian Opie for The Royal Ballet, London. The Ballet was the subject of a BBC 'making of' documentary.

Max was named 2008 European Composer Of The Year for his score to Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir, for which he was also nominated for the Prix France Musique.

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