Order 'I Could Be Your Dog (Prequel)' at: ghostly.com/products/i-could-be-your-dog-prequel
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I Could Be Your Dog (Part I)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri - Moonweed

Music for Six Rooms

Only Love From Now On

Future Memory

. . . on reflection (one)

Holotropica

Observatory (feat. Nana Pi)

SH NL

Purchase: bit.ly/3OWXicn
Catalog #: GN64
June 10, 2022
LP+DIGI

Smoke Point is a duo composed of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Leech, Kranky) and Sage Caswell (Spring Theory). With their self-titled debut LP on Geographic North, the Los Angeles-based duo takes a captivating cruise through heady ambient drifts and ruthlessly rhythmic loop dreams.

Foote and Caswell first teamed up to create a series of improvisational atmospherics throughout a multi-room art gallery. The pair conceived of a sprawling, dynamic experience with tones, rhythms, and textures that varied from room to room, yet were inextricably tuned and melded together. Visitors could serve as a sort of human crossfader, moving through the gallery and dialing up or down aural aspects as they pleased. And although the collaboration came together to create music for a specific physical space, the concept was never fully realized until what is now the duo’s first record. 

Smoke Point brings five extended, cruise-controlled exercises that calmly violate the Venn diagram's overlap between boundless dance music and unfathomable ambiance. But beyond the boundaries of an album as a set of songs, Foote and Caswell cracked things wide open and recontextualized the album as an actual DJ tool onto itself; ambient leaning and melodically focused. To achieve this, 'Smoke Point' offers a bounty of loops in the form of endless locked grooves on the vinyl edition and brief but equally utilitarian snippets on the digital edition of the LP.

Smoke Point

Smoke Point - "Awakening"

With a strong interest in geology and biology, Takahashi started imagining the landscape and life of the Earth in prehistoric times based on fossils and illustrated books, later used as inspiration for his compositions. At first sight, these images make it easy to envision the ecosystems and environments of prehistoric Earth as so distinct from those of today that they could almost be seen as different planets. Living through the pandemic, when Takahashi first started composing the songs, made him rethink his initial thoughts. 

“The Palaeozoic era was a time of extinction, of prosperity and decline. When I think ab out these facts from geology, they are quite spectacular. But I felt that this cycle is still happening today, b ut on a different scale. If you think about the time before Covid-19, people were very active and free to move around. It was with this in mind that I set about writing the music, imagining what it would be like to overcome the social upheaval of Covid-19." 

It's the similarities between his initial analogy and the new pandemic reality that ultimately formed the main context for Paleozoic. This led Takahashi to make an album which sonically reflected the sequence of Paleozoic: starting from a time when life flourished in the sea ,before the arrival of life on land, to the gradual arrival of plants and insects on land and the end of an era due to change. 

In order to create a more vivid representation of the life force and grandeur of nature, Takahashi decided to forgo his signature lo-fi production style of using GarageBand on his Iphone. For this, he enlisted the help of sound engineer, producer and Atoris bandmate Kohei Oyamada with the mix and arrangements, resulting in a highly evocative, expansive sound palette. 

“With his techno sensibility and sound engineering skills, he was able to bring me closer to the sound I've been chasing, which is full of mystery, life and images of a wild and simple time. This record is the first step in my work with him and the foundation for further progress." 

The result is a fascinating journey through imaginary landscapes infused with great dramatic affect and an acute sense for details across sweeping drones and electronic glistens. 
credits
released April 29, 2022 

Composed by H. Takahashi 
Mix & arrangement by Kohei Oyamada 
Mastered by Taylor Deupree (vinyl) and Kohei Oyamada (digital) 
Artwork by Alicia Carrera

Emerald

Blue Sky Thinking

Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano - "Anata"

Taken from FRKWYS Vol. 15: serenitatem, available April 5, 2019 on RVNG Intl.

smarturl.it/frkwys15

©2019 RVNG Intl. // www.igetrvng.com

FRKWYS Vol. 15: serenitatem

Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano - Anata

Humidity

Humidity (feat. Nana Pi)