Lake From The Louvers is a new solo work for concrete sounds, electronics and instruments from Australian composer-performer James Rushford, who has spent the last fifteen years honing his singular approach to composition and performance through solo works and collaborations with artists such as Oren Ambarchi, Crys Cole, Will Guthrie, Graham Lambkin and Klaus Lang.

Created primarily during a stay at the La Becque, an artist residency on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lake From The Louvers draws inspiration from the play of shadow and light on both the surface of the lake and the window through which Rushford viewed this lacustrine landscape. While the lake is itself at times directly audible in the form of field recordings, the image suggested by the record’s title is less directly represented than translated into sonic structures inspired, as Rushford explains, by ‘the passing of shadow through a fixed space’. The movement of light across these two flat surfaces, lake and window, finds its sonic equivalent in these eleven pieces, in which fragments and particles of sound – highly amplified crunches, synthesized squawks and pings, harp notes – ripple across the length of each track. Fixed sets of elements define each piece, often moulded into ephemeral ensembles in which individual voices consistently fade away and reappear.

Rushford’s performances on various keyboards provide the unstable, wavering foundations of many of these pieces, with microtonal tunings adding a woozy, seasick edge to his stately, often stunningly beautiful playing. Each side of the LP ends with an extended keyboard work: the first for groaning, sighing church organ, the second for a psychedelic cloud of detuned synthesizer tones in which harmonic fragments sink into their own melancholic recollection. Elsewhere the record makes use of elements as varied as microtonal harp, skittering drum machines and synthetic marimba, establishing a sound palette remarkable for its breadth, as well as its sparkling, glittering quality. Where many of Rushford’s solo projects have taken the form of long works with a sombre cast, Lake From The Louvers is strikingly bright and accessible, a series of sonic glimpses in which, like a late Monet, the shimmer of light undoes the distinction between image and reflection, foreground and background, surface and depth.

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, cut at D+M. Printed artwork on inner and outer sleeves by Valle Medina and Benjamin Reynolds (Pa.LaC.E).
Design by Bartolomé Sanson. Released in collababoration with La Becque Editions.

JAMES RUSHFORD 'U+25CF' (SP131)

For Promotional Purposes Only

@god69
@vasesound @fraymysterio
@blacksnakewhip
@dj-sweat

Mastered by Ike Zwanikken
Artwork by Amos Turner

Promo Disc 1

digis & caps

INDEX: Promodisc01

Nik Colk Void is well established with her work - using modular systems, voice and guitar - as one half of Factory Floor, one third of Carter Tutti Void (alongside Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti) and with the late Peter Rehberg as NPVR, but perhaps surprisingly, 'Bucked Up Space' is her first solo album release. 

Void explains, “When Peter Rehberg initially asked me to produce a record for Editions Mego, I didn't feel quite ready and asked if we could make a record together instead. Collaboration is so ingrained into what I do, I only felt ready to make this album after working through ideas live, using the audience in place of the collaborator.”

Bucked Up Space combines Void’s love of improvisation with the driving force of beat-driven music absorbed from performing in galleries, residencies and clubs across the UK and Europe. She goes on to say, “You find out more about yourself when you explain your ideas to others, and that’s how I felt the live performance worked for me.”

The process steadily teased out a language and Void employed a variety of tactics in the recording process including a methodical approach of collecting data at her home studio in a manner not dissimilar to keeping a diary. Her microscopic focus on raw instrumental noise, layered and reformulated, resulted in a sound catalogue that Void divided into groups for their tone, density and texture. 

These initial pieces were taken to a studio in Margate to put them into a more cohesive compositional context. Something that pragmatically started as cold and detached was given warmth, unity and emotion in the studio. Via improvised repetition co-existing alongside organised production, Void conjures new sonic muscle with tracks such as ‘Interruption Is Good’ and ‘FlatTime’. Initial recordings are rendered into sequences initiating the organic rhythms, triggering awkward jerks of high hats and percussion, or used to activate the margins of post effects detectable in the tracks like ‘Demna’, ‘Big Breather’ and ‘Oversized’.

Void explains: “It was important to me that the simplicity in the work disguised a lot of complexity, I want this work to be absorbed instinctively.” 

The sleeve image, a still from We Are City by Brazilian artist Maria de Lima, was chosen to illustrate Bucked Up Space, which Void describes as “a distorted reality,  the space that lives at start of an idea, then floats in public view, before returning to inform my understanding of the idea. Once the idea is out in the world, it moves and morphs into something else entirely.”

Written, performed and produced by Nik Void, the album was engineered by James Greenwood, mastered by Rashad Becker and tracks 1, 4, 5, 7 and 9 were mixed by Marta Salogni.

Bucked up Space is the result of the ideas and resulting sounds of free exploration morphing into a personal structured album that fearlessly moulds patience, listening and restraint. It’s a sharp focussed work embracing collective action through the lens of the self. All this, and also one of the best abstract dance records you will hear in some time!

Bucked Up Space

Interruption Is Good

Nik Colk Void 'Interruption Is Good' (EMEGO 295)

On her third album, Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, asks what guiding forces might be driving, enticing, and affecting us. “All Above” is rooted in her deeply personal philosophy as an artist, blurring the boundaries between electronic music and acoustic music and sculpting familiar ambient forms into personal themes painted with rich emotional colours. Written painstakingly over the last two years, the album is the most ambitious and divergent set of music Portioli has assembled so far, with a wide variety of instrumentation (including voices, strings, organs, guitars, and synthesisers) focused around the piano. She‘s keen to assure listeners that while that instrument isn‘t always heard, it‘s constantly at the forefront of the album, shepherding its emotions and anchoring its mood. It makes sense then that on the opening track ‘Quasicristallo’, the acoustic piano is the first element we hear, recorded closely, so its characteristic rattle and creak can speak as loudly as the familiar tones themselves. When the music blooms into abstraction and processed electronics, it‘s almost imperceptible: reverb mutates into ghostly vapour trails, and distortion forms the keys into another instrument entirely.

“All Above“ follows 2020‘s acclaimed “Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes“ and 2018‘s “Pineapple” released on Donato Dozzy and Neel‘s Spazio Disponibile imprint. Having garnered praise from outlets like Resident Advisor, XLR8R, The Quietus, Inverted Audio, and The Verge, Portioli operates in a unique space within the electronic music scene, straddling the art world and the wider electronic music scene. She‘s developed sound art installations for Rome‘s La Galleria Nazionale and the Terraforma Festival-related Il Pianeta, and has appeared at Barbican, MUTEK, Le Guess Who?, Kraftwerk, and other internationally renowned venues and festivals, often collaborating with Marco Ciceri on A/V presentations. Ciceri also maintains the visual identity of Portioli‘s label One Instrument, a concept imprint that asks artists to create music only using a single device. All this experience is poured into “All Above”, a richly visual album that‘s far more than just an imaginary film score. While on ‘Human’, her piano punctuates a rhythmic synthesised bassline and smudged choirs that can‘t help but trace out the silver screen. The composer is keen to clarify that she doesn‘t think of her music (or sound in general) in visual terms.

Portioli studied as a linguist and used her art to develop an emotional language that‘s not bound by expected cultural constraints. When she adds a different instrument or process, it‘s not to reference a visual cue but to mark a journey through different states of being. Each element embodies a different emotion or mood: the electric guitar represents strength or violence, synthesisers shuttle us into the dream world, and the acoustic instruments highlight intimacy and warmth – even heart. Read like this, the tracks are like meditative poems rather than cinematic vignettes.

Dedicated to Editions Mego founder Peter Rehberg, who died suddenly last year, “All Above” demands engagement and refuses to evaporate into the background. The album asks listeners not just to absorb the album as a whole but notice the cracks in the structure and discern the tension they cause. That‘s never more evident than on the closing track ‘Cost What It May’, a piece of music almost jarring when Portioli chops into noisy waves of electric guitar. In the wrong hands, this might sound like a power move – some rock posturing to act as a finale. But Portioli‘s expression is different. She‘s forcing a level of engagement that perceives the negative space as just as necessary as the saturated positive, and what could be more haunting and emotionally resonant than that?

All Above

Human

Grand River 'Human' (EMEGO308)

Decomposition is a mix series by Dead Channel. Fig. 21 comes from HA KYOON. Born in South Korea, and raised in the French countryside, the Paris based multidisciplinary artist, producer, and dj embodies many forms: master of balance manipulation, engulfed human torch, dancer, archer, circus performer, singer, and creator of intense experimental percussion. With this mix, the keen selector traverses through metallic broken rhythms, icy clipped breaks, and a myriad of macabre electronics, culminating in a dark, hypnotic exploration of renegade music. Tracklist below:

PAN DAIJING - Metal 八月 
PERMANENT - Jack OF Diamonds
CHRIS MITCHELL - I Don’t
NICK KLEIN - Do You Want To Crash
CONTAINER - Eject
NET GALA - Internet Celibacy Part 2
SARA PERSICO - Fugace
PAN DAIJING - Ran 乱
DANSE MUSIQUE RHÔNES ALPES - et c’est parti pour rebelote
GROUP A - Ketabali
CONTAINER - Peppered
COLDGEIST - Ambivalent
THE UNDERTAKER’S TAPES - Out of Reach
GIANT SWAN - Pan Head
MOOR MOTHER - Matter of Time
De-Bons-en-Pierre - Puddle Points
DECEMBER - Meltinf Permafrost ReleasingAncient Secrets
THE BUG - Hammer (feat.Flowdan)
ANIMISTIC BELIEFS - Thức Tỉnh [Rebirth]
HÜMA UTKU - Dissolution of I

@hakyoon

www.deadchannelrecords.com

Decomposition - Fig. 21:  HA KYOON

JULES REIDY new Shelter press album 'Trances' (SP147) will be out on Limited and Black LP edition, CD, Digital Download.

Preorder here: https://juliareidy.bandcamp.com/album/trances

JULES REIDY 'I (SP147)

Whisky soaked, nocturnal, brooding. Aging’s album ‘Troubles? I Got A Bartender’ was a noteworthy, film-noir infused suite that quietly slipped out on cassette in 2015 by a then budding Manchester avant-jazz ensemble, led by David McLean.

In 2020, amidst the pandemic’s tempest and winter's gloom, the idea manifested of showcasing McLean’s slow burning, wistful soirée in a new light via a curated effort

by Berlin’s Vaagner label, which invited a series of hand-picked artist to rework selected compositions from the album, rendering its mournful, smoke-tinged resonances into new shapes.

Showcased here, is one of these efforts, by Manchester based Craig Tattersall aka A Humble Bee.

VAA07 | Aging - Vampire Body Blues (The Humble Bee Rework)

C.Lavender
"Rupture in the Eternal Realm"
CD ltd 200

On her third full-length album, C. Lavender delves into her
experience with a profoundly impactful Buddhist meditation
centered in the sacrifice of the self as a source of liberation.

“Rupture in The Eternal Realm” is a musical reinterpretation and
compendium to C. Lavender’s experience studying the Tibetan
Buddhist meditation practice known as chöd. The practice
traditionally involves musical instruments including drums
(ḍamaru), trumpets (kangling), bells and chanting. Rather than try
to recreate the practice's musical ritual, C. Lavender used it as a
point of departure for reflecting on her inner connection with the
meditation, one which she continued to dive into throughout the
pandemic. The song titles are taken from lines within the
traditional chöd chant, which is akin to a musical composition and
serves as a visualization guide throughout the meditative process.
“Rupture in The Eternal Realm” creates a new paradigm in the
grand tradition of women electronic music composers such as
Laurie Anderson, Éliane Radigue, and Pauline Oliveros connecting
forward-thinking music with Buddhist principals.

The album features recordings made on Buchla 200 synthesizer,
Haken Continuum, gongs, voice, brainwave modulating tones, EVI
and field recordings from the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra
Buddhist temple in Woodstock, NY.

released June 12, 2024

Cover design: Robert Beatty
Mastering: Taylor Deupree

C. Lavender - Melt Into Light

- Thank you Gotlandmusiken for playing my piece at Ljudvågor festival 2024 at Visby.

Kontrast

"Kontrast" for jazztrio, flute & oboe

Myriad (Live set May 2025)

Taken from the album 'Last Live' released as 2LP, CD and Digital.

Cave12 / Editions Mego co-release

Myriad (Live set May 2025)

Sophie Vitelli

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