Ambivalence

Tracklist & more: http://www.movement.radio/show/Optimo-02092021

Optimo Espacio - 2 September 2021

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Beginning with 2012’s Leland New York artist Francis Harris has been doing a deep dive into the sonic swells and contrapuntal granularities that articulate our most abstract, and sometimes slowest moving, virtualities. Through found sound, analog synthesis, and concise instrumentation Harris has delivered works that transcend the diagrammatic exposition often found in electronic music in an attempt to redraw the landscape of how such music is received and understood. Rather than valorize the fragment, the ambient, even in some cases the song, Harris’s albums offer networks of complex interiorities that endeavor to act as whole worlds unto themselves replete with memory, possibility, loss, and a radiant albeit tenuous hopefulness for the future. 

While previous albums, most notably Leland and Minutes of Sleep (2014) as well as two albums released as one half of the duo Aris Kindt (most notably the stellar Swann and Odette from 2017) have relied on singular thematic and narrative drives that were often of a personal, collaborative, or hermetic in nature, Thresholds is an album that aspires to sonic universality and the presentation of a fully formed psychoacoustical world. That being said it is not an “album of ideas”. Inspired by the ecological and political upheavals of the present and the role of speculative thought as an avenue of global transformation Thresholds is the work of a mature artist fully in control of his powers. Both expansive and nuanced the album widens the aperture of the affective possibilities of the electronic assemblage; themes skip from one track to the next, elevating and informing each other in tangible fields of abstract figuration. The titles, while often heady, concisely allude to strategies implicit in the construction and arrangement of the works: Cut Up, within the context of the album, is exactly that. Luck Takes a Step juxtaposes stately synths with just the right touch of playful fluctuation and latent atonality. The title track itself is a knotted mass of uncertainty and propulsive beats the breakdown of which is a nervous series of fits and starts that resonate not just within the track but as the fulcrum of the entire album: the threshold of our Threshold: 

“…we are caught up in our own original transversals of time to the point of dissolution, and that which remains a part of the contrivance of ourselves is ultimately that which crosses the threshold and is somehow, miraculously, reconstituted on the other side of it. Because it is via the threshold that we can best observe the conditions of experience as lived even as we cross to the other side of understanding, rejoining the ancient equilibriums of which we, in our depths, are comprised.” (From the liner notes) 

No track overstays its welcome and with the help of standout vocalist Eliana Glass, and instrumentation by Dave Harrington, Mark Nelson (Pan American), Will Shore, Greg Paulus and Gareth Redmond, and mixed by Phil Weinrobe, the result is a dizzyingly pure inward gaze that is first and foremost an album about connection.

Thresholds

Cut Up

Francis Harris - Cut Up

Speculative Nature Of Purposive Form

Francis Harris - Speculative Nature Of Purposive Form

I Can Still See Us

Francis Harris - I Can Still See Us

Rebstock Fold

Francis Harris - Rebstock Fold

This is my birthday gift to my best friend who was my partner in crime in crate digging :)

Kuniyuki Takahashi - My Dear Friend
Andrew Wasylyk - Last Sunbeams of Childhood
Billy Cobham feat. Eumir Deodato, Novecento - The Vibe Inside
DJ Cam Quartet feat. Inlove - Everybody Loves the Sunshine
Uptown Funk Empire - I Am a Manchild
InLove - The Sweetest Pain
Blood, Sweat And Tears - Wheel Spin (the reflex revision)
Gazzara - It's Because (Alex Di Cio Jazid Mix)
S-tone Inc feat. Toco - Superbacana (Dub Version)
St Germain - Rose Rouge (Ron Trent Jazzfunksuite Remix)
Kyoto Jazz Massive - Astral Ascension
Joey Negro & Dave Lee - Stomp Your Feet
Vito Lalinga (Vi Mode Inc Project) - Tribal Night
Max Sedgley - Something Special (Crazy P Remix)
Quincy Jones,Big Daddy Kane & Kool Moe Dee - Jazz Corner Of The World (history of jazz) - Birdland
Aural Distortion - Bossa nostra (Brazil Sensitive)

A Tribute to My Dear Friend

Kiosk Radio is an online community radio streaming 24/7 from a wooden shack in the heart of Brussels’ historic “Parc Royal”.
More info and music: https://kioskradio.com

WE SLOWLY ROT w/ DJ Athome @ Kiosk Radio 18.03.2022

@peerrine en direct de HEAT pour notre événement Hors du Nid du 4 juin !

Le béguin pour P errine (live @heat 04.06.22)

Want to be happy?
Allow the Creative to 
Flow through all you do

::

Original music & haiku poetry by Bob Weathers

Through All

A sonic portrait of a city suspended in twilight, it traces the quiet pulse of urban dusk — moody and gently immersive. As the day exhales and the skyline softens, textures emerge — quiet synths, distant echoes, and the hush of passing lives.

Le Code is a French ambient artist known for creating soft atmospheric soundscapes with subtle synthesizer or piano sounds inspired by nature (especially water and the ocean). He also co-founded Mare Nostrum Label, largely continuing the ocean theme.

Produced, mixed and mastered by Alexandre De Charrin (Le Code)
Cover picture by Alexandre De Charrin
Cover design by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)

Something in the Air

Last Day on Earth

Definitive

Exploded View

One Too Many

'Crush', out now on Ninja Tune: https://floatingpoints.lnk.to/crushSo

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Crush

Falaise

Angel Tears in Sunlight

The Pulsation

In the 2000’s Chee Shimizu helmed an untouchable Tokyo DJ collective called Discossession alongside Dr Nishimura (House music buyer for Cisco Records at the time). Balancing out this unit were a young Scotsman-abroad named Jonny Nash (who’d later form Sombrero Galaxy [ESP001] and Gaussian Curve as well as the Melody As Truth imprint), and the late guitar virtuoso and tattoo artist Zecky. Formidable DJs and multi-talents on the Tokyo scene, Discossession released two EPs on Kenji Takimi’s Crue-L imprint and various mixes individually on www.lovefingers.org, all holding well-deserved eternal cult status. Chee’s 'Denshi Meisou' [2006] and 'Follow My Dream' [2007] for Lovefingers as well as his legendary “listening sessions” at HiFi lounge SHeLTeR in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, laid foundation for what would become known to his followers as “Organic Music” or “Obscure Sound”, the former extending as the name of his record shop and the latter as the title of his 2013 book. 'Obscure Sound' chronicled his tastes in detail and has since become a sort of diggers bible for peers and younger generations.

At the ESP Institute’s inception in 2009, Shimizu contributed two tracks to Lovefingers’ 'Concentration Vol 1' compilation as apéritifs to a later release. “Later” eventually became “forever” and the mythical piano track (appearing only as a demo on 'Golden Age' and 'Dekmantel 061') is still, to this day, not ready for formal release. Skip a dozen years, musical interests and major life changes, and Chee has now unveiled something quite special in accordance with his Obscure Sound — rather than making new out of old rope, he presents a collaboration with Tokyo guitarist miku-mari a.k.a. Takahiro Matsumura. The artists frequently collaborate at the experimental audio/visual event, 'Sacrifice', held irregularly at Tokyo’s ForestLimit, and in 2018 when Chee was invited to DJ at Japan’s only Ambient festival 'Camp Off-Tone', he and miku-mari endeavored to expand these works into a 2-hour improvised performance. Chee collaged various percussion samples and personal field recordings utilizing four CDJs, supplementing with live windchimes and Andean chajchas, while miku-mari coupled a guitar-controlled synthesizer, 'Sound Tube' software (developed by Japanese Ambient composer Hiroshi Yoshimura) and more live elements such as Tibetan bells and pyramid crystals. Rehearsals for this performance were held prior to the festival at ForestLimit, recorded as multi-tracks and edited into these two cerebral Reconstructions.

[ESP030] Reconstructions

Buy from ESP

[ESP030] CHEE SHIMIZU + MIKU-MARI - B - Reconstruction 2 - SNIPPET

𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨

𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢
𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘣𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘢 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢

Kali

Scissor & Thread is cut from a different cloth than your average dance imprint.

Francis Harris - I Can Still See Us

Scissor and Thread

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