Stage Costumes for Girls

Purchase: bit.ly/daniailyas
Catalog #: GN77
October 22, 2024
LP+DIGI

DANIAILYAS is the collaborative, cross-continental project from Barcelona-based composer Dania Shihab (Paralaxe Editions), and Portland-based avant-gardist, Ilyas Ahmed (Grails member and collaborator with Liz Harris, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and Golden Retriever). Having both previously issued solo works through Geographic North, a remote one-off collaboration soon manifested into an on-going aural dialogue, yielding the duo’s debut ‘Enough for Me to Remain.’ The album stands as a hallucinatory masterclass, charting into the theater of the uncanny—Dania's transcendent vocal melodies and cathartic synths exquisitely woven between Ilyas' mercurial guitar in some vaporous dance of beauty. A love letter scribed in blood. A bloodletting drenched in hope.


Opener “The World Spins” immediately establishes Dania and Ahmed pairing as a truly exalted engagement—a nascent collaboration with boundless potential and cosmic chemistry. It’s the best of both worlds, with Ahmed’s spidery, open-ended acoustic gestures providing the perfect backdrop to Dania’s double-tracked and echoed lyrics spoken into the darkness. The morbid mise en scène of “Be Where” creaks with diegetic gloom and deeply sullen composure, straddling the physical, astral, and ethereal plane at once. 

Commencing in a blur of solemn acoustic genuflection, “Walking Through Another Door” ambles along with wordless, funereal focus. Vocally, Dania meticulously layers various vocal parts into a unified, mellifluous missive delivered with disembodied elegance and weightlessness. It’s equal parts angelic and grievous, striking a chord of heart and mind. “Breathe and Start Again” continues the emotion into more kaleidoscopic patterns, with a heaving manipulated clarinet motif turning over and over again through its habitual dance and Dania’s spectral coos floating by like storm clouds at dusk.

“The Pilgrim” ushers in an unassuming epic of dust-swept vistas haunted with spirits of yore. Beyond capturing a “cinematic” feeling, the song is essentially “pure cinema,” conjuring aural images that are both historic and timeless. In the song’s final moments, Dania’s refrain “Feeling dark again” enters the weighted darkness, bringing a flash of light and hope amidst the oblique obscurity. Closer “Coming Home” offers the most vulnerable and delicate moments on ‘Enough for Me to Remain,’ creating ample safe space to console and comfort in these weary times.

DANIAILYAS - "The World Spins"

ser384|a1.1.0.1

*limited vinyl and cassette editions via leavingrecords.com -
https://leavingrecords.com/plant-music-vol-3-the-golden-teachers
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Experience the high strangeness of plant music—plants that “sing.” For years musician Nico Georis has used biofeedback instruments to connect a variety of flora to analog synthesizers, letting their biodata create music that is strange and existentially gorgeous.

Nico’s work in plant music happened during a six year span, and was set in motion by a simple desire to find a fresh supply of long-form ambient music for relaxing to at home. After a chance encounter with an obscure technology dating back to the 70’s allowing plant electricity to be converted to MIDI data, Nico began experimenting with using his house plants to generate endlessly evolving ambient music. “I was looking for music that I couldn’t find, and I realized the plants & I could make it.”

Here was an opportunity for another type of ambient music, one not born of the human brain, to emerge. A music that moves beyond human thought forms all together, and leans deeply into the green. Culled from hundreds of plant songs recorded between 2016 - 2022 both at home and in the wild Plant Music Vol. 1 and 2 represent the “greatest hits” of Nico’s plant music years.

Plant music Vol. 3 marks the newest installation, showcasing music generated from psilocybin mushrooms, known by many as “Golden Teachers”.

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"This music is created via an artistic translation of electrical biodata into musical data. Two mushrooms and the mycelium connecting them are hooked-up to sensors, and their fluctuating electrical conductivity is translated into an equivalent flow of music notes (MIDI). These notes are then filtered into musical scales and routed into synthesizers that generate tones.

These recordings have been arranged into a variety of solos, duets and trios. They reflect what we feel are the most fascinating and beautiful examples of psilocybin mushroom music, straight from the tub."

◄░░░░░░►

Nico Georis is a keyboard player, producer & songwriter from California. He produces music from his studio at Granny's Dancehall in a ghost town amidst the wilderness. His music, a unique amalgamation of global influences, presents an imposing total aesthetic that is all his own.

Made with the help of Bob Otis and Lovelle Femme.
Special thanks to Matt Baldwin who helped conceive and organize this recording while also co-editing a few songs.
Cover photo by Matt Baldwin and Gabe Georis.
Artwork and layout by Victoria Stöcker.
Mastered by Will Smith.

Breathing Hills

Hearts

Saturn

coldveil

Taken from the album 'taking into account only a portion of your emotions' released as CD and Download

taking into account only a portion of your emotions

pinkcourtesyphone 'Reference Point Intermission 1' (EMEGO 236)

TRACKLISTING / INTERVIEW:
self-titledmag.com/2018/09/21/geographic-north-label-of-the-month-feature/

FURTHER READING:
getcentered.io/2018/09/21/alva-noto-ryuichi-sakamoto-vrioon-review/

Label of the Month: Geographic North

A1. By The Light Of The Pyramids
B1. Postcards From Gortupal

In an era of boundless self promotion, anonymity is a rare and precious thing. Listening to Trevor Jackson's NTS show one night we heard a glorious piece of music by something called Elite Beat. A quick search found 10 years worth of recorded material but not a single photo or youtube clip. They had made a record with Niger born guitarist Mdou Moctar but were based in Portland, Oregon. More questions than answers but we knew we had just heard one helluva cosmic link up! 

We still don't know what they look like but we can tell you Elite Beat is a 6 piece ensemble now in their 12th year as a musical collective. Their sound is non prescribed rhythm music with an emphasis on live playing, free form expression and dubbing techniques. Players who have absorbed the plethora of global grooves from dub, Ethiopoques and Tuareg guitar music (probably the odd Dead bootleg too). They aren't retromaniacs or here to revive a genre. Just some cats from Oregon talking that universal language, fueled by laugher and a vision of the eternal. 

*To preserve audio quality, the vinyl versions have been carefully shortened*

Elite Beat - By The Light Of The Pyramids (RREP03)

Artist: Nikolaienko
Album: Rings
Label#: faitiche23
Format: LP/DL
Release: April 16th 2021

Fortunately for us, Dmytro Nikolaienko agreed to open up the jewellery boxes of his tape-loop archive for his debut album on Faitiche. What came to light was a collection of dreamy glittering gems, masterfully presented using the compositional possibilities of analogue tape machines. Some may consider a tape machine to be limited as a musical instrument, but Rings makes a convincing case with its sure-handed use of the available parameters – moving tape over the tape head mechanically and manually, cutting loops, manipulating timbre and creating noise by means of saturation. The results are eleven blurred, repetitive, rhythmic patterns that can be understood as an intervention against digital precision, as mechanical irregularities and background noise become musical events.

For those familiar with Nikolaienko’s work, his nostalgic approach here will come as no surprise: born in Ukraine and now based in Estonia, he has chosen a historical medium (that has been enjoying a renaissance for some years now) to record historical-sounding sequences. The way he manages his own back catalogue is similarly archival, documenting the chronology of his tape loops in such a way as to leave no doubt as to their advanced age. And then there are his two wonderful labels Muscut and Shukai, the latter being an archival project releasing electroacoustic obscurities from the Soviet past. Which brings us back full circle …

Nikolaienko: Ambianta I

self-titled is a music magazine that has nothing to do with music. At least not in the traditional sense of self-important ‘criticism’ and profiles that read like regurgitated press releases. Yes, we print reviews and thought-provoking features, but we also pride ourselves on answering the questions others don’t ask. Find out what some of those questions are by reading our daily site or one of the back issues below.

For more information, or to request our one sheet for prospective advertisers and creative/event partners, please feel free to contact one of our editors:

Editor/Publisher, Andrew Parks, aparks@self-titledmag.com
Managing Editor, Arye Dworken, adworken@self-titledmag.com

As for getting covered in our digital magazine or daily edition, please send any material for review or feature consideration to our central office at:

self-titled
4204 Oakland Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55407

Label of the Month: Geographic North

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