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Subtext Recordings

The Light That Flickers in the Mirror

The Light That Flickers In The Mirror

Nerve Net

Juju Space Jazz

Function Advance

upsammy - Germs in a Population of Buildings
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 132
Release Date: 05 May 2023
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/GerminaPopulationofBuildings

On her sophomore album "Germ in a Population of Buildings”, upsammy moves through her surroundings with the curiosity of a place-bending landscape architect. The album is rooted in her interest for ambiguous environments in constant shift, and the feeling of discovering strange patterns in different ecosystems. Often, the Amsterdam-based artist finds herself zooming in and out beyond a place's most recognizable surface features to inhabit the microscopic and gigantic. Gathering field recordings and evocative environmental sounds, she shapes this source material into vibrating electro-acoustic rhythms and unstable, psychedelic textures.

upsammy's debut album, 2020's critically-acclaimed "Zoom", was praised for its careful reimagining of IDM, evolving vignettes that nodded towards the dancefloor without being shackled to its rigid set of rules. On "Germ in a Population of Buildings" her process has evolved considerably; the skeletal trace of IDM is still present but it's been trapped in amber, allowing her unique sonic landscape to develop organically. 'Being is a Stone' is a proof of concept in many ways, layering upsammy's contorted voice in rickety patterns beneath a lattice of fragile rhythms and faintly melancholy synths. It's never immediately obvious where the sounds are coming from - a hiccuping beat might be glass cracking underfoot, and larger pulses could be wet concrete, rusted iron or bent plastic. As the sounds develop they morph into each other, demolishing what came before and building on top of the ornamental wreckage.

On the dynamic 'Constructing', upsammy's sound design fluxes through hyperactive bass music structures, abstracting expectations at every turn. Often her sounds are whisper quiet, rattling and vibrating until heavier masonry drops and disrupts the structure. And when discernible rhythms subside into the background, like on the album's eerie title track, they become almost illusory, morphing between the real world and the electronic. upsammy's processed voice works like a bridge between these realms, snaking between stark, whimsical melodies on 'Patterning', arching from AutoTuned detachment into cooing, dreamy intimacy. By considering the harmonies between each location she's visited, upsammy has been able to build a unique topology that's an uncanny digital amalgam of her lived experience. It's a thoughtful alternative in an era more concerned with flatting the landscape than crumpling it and examining its peaks and troughs.

Mastered by Rashad Becker
Mixed by James Ginzburg
Artwork by Jonathan Castro Alejos and Tharim Cornelisse

Germ in a Population of Buildings

upsammy - Metro Snake Whispers (PAN 132)

The second release of POSITIVLAND by Mancunian artist:

Faff
@ffaf

PSTVLND 002 - 04/01/2024
positivland.bandcamp.com/

Limited ≈200 copies in Black vinyl, 180g.
Very Limited 26 hand-numbered copies, Splatter vinyl 180g
* Release Limited Edition 25/01/2024

****************************************
Note from the artist:


Faff’s Scrapbook.ep

This record is a collection of tracks I made from the start of 2019 to the end of 2021. They all exist completely independent of each other. My intention while working on music during this time was to create a time capsule/memory album for me to remind myself of my moments with. I had a lot of different experiences and substantially changed during this time. The early tracks were made by a completely different person than the person typing this. Of the 6 tracks on this EP, only one of them was made with the knowledge that it would be put together with the others and released as one cohesive article.

I wanted to make music again after abandoning it for 3 years. One of these tracks marks the turning point where a projected pipe dream of determined mastery was cracked through by what the speaker cone did when piano roll blocks were placed intuitively for the first time. 

In this .ep, I present:

THE CONCEPT

In its disjointedness, this music has presented itself to me as a scrapbook. It is rough around the edges, vague in its sentiment, and has more of an emotional than abstract association. While brainstorming for visual ideas to package these tracks in, I spat a bunch of words into a GAN and the words might be useful for you to get a sense of the general themes:  “synthesizer drum machine back catalogue emotional syneasthesia-inducing dance music” “vibrant energy synthesiser music record” “faffing about analogue synth music maker colour-changing light experiment” “bedroom studio acid bass sentimental rave artisan” “braindance analogue synthesiser data catalogue metaphysical music” “psychedelic synthesiser contemplation heartfelt breakbeat lullabies” “reaction diffusion rephlex records melancholic analogue music journal” “cerebral rave chromatic anthem dirge synth memories” “tr-808 analogue rave cerebral music energy ritual”

There is a dualistic nature to this EP, as it is a highly organised arrangement of totally disparate tracks. They are all (except one) built inside a DAW, but largely featuring live performance recordings of analogue hardware. The recordings are then processed after the fact. Layers on layers of humanity and machine, analogue and digital, specificity and ambiguity. All of the tracks are also subjectively experienceable pieces of music, but they sit in an objective folder structure on my laptop. Each one also was ignited by a unique occasion, but absorbs new meanings and connotations as time flows through and around them. These polarised paradoxes are key to the idea of this EP. Even to have a concept EP assembled from standalone tracks without any uniting concept is an example of the intertwining of opposites. Visuals associated are DAW architecture, poorly managed cables in thrown-together bedroom studio, piles of photographs printed out, computer folder structure, MIDI information in piano roll/automation envelopes, synthesiser encoders and pots.

Buy it:)!!

Special thanks and love go to Weefween, Robert and Chloe 

********************************************************************

credits
release January 4, 2024

Written, composed and produced in Manchester, UK, by Faff.
Mastered in Groningen, the Netherlands, by Johanz Westerman at Balyhoo Studio Mastering.
Designed in Manchester, UK, by Faff + Weefween + Positivland.
Distributed from Sardinia, Italy, by Desslab.

www.desslab.net
www.positiv.land

Faff - Voicenote (Snippet)

Excerpt of the first five minutes from the forthcoming vinyl re-issue of 'Topography of The Lungs' - one of the key recordings in the development of free improvisation and originally the first release on Incus, the label founded by Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley to document the music. 

This vinyl issue caps off a year celebrating Evan Parker's 70th Birthday. Evan plays a week of concerts at Cafe OTO and The Vortex from the 20-26 October. 

Release Date: 15 December 2014

Liner notes by Evan Parker (for the 2014 re-issue):

‘The Topography of the Lungs’ was the first recording I made as a "leader" - in the somewhat antiquated terminology of the times. What this means in simple terms is that I set up the date and invited Han and Derek to participate - after that it was a matter of open interaction.

The original notes make clear my enthusiasm for the work that Derek Bailey and Han Bennink had done as a duo and it was good of them to share their discoveries with me. It was the first release on Incus, a label that I set up with Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley with financial assistance from music journalist Michael Walters.  No accurate history of Incus Records has yet been written. After parting company  and when the conditions of my agreement with Derek Bailey had been met, it was issued as a CD, thanks to Martin Davidson, on my label psi.

Musicians of my generation were very happy when the CD superseded the LP. I remember clearly the initial argument that CD was an elitist format... Times and attitudes have changed and the LP has made a serious return, especially in the documentation of marginal musics. OTOroku is run by and, perhaps, largely for, a new generation of listeners who have an affection for the LP format that reminds me of my youth.

I am very happy that a label associated with one of the most important music venues in London is overseeing this release.

I often travel along Dawes Road in Fulham and pass the building where the recording was made.  It is on the first floor by a bus stop and was a small space with a dead acoustic, probably ideal for making low-budget rock demos, which encouraged very analytical listening.

The engineer, Bob Woolford, was not shocked by what we were doing. On the contrary he was then, and remains, one of the great engineers, along with Adam Skeaping and Michael Gerzon who enjoyed the challenges of recording alternative musics.

In the intervening forty-odd years since its first release, the idealism of the original notes has been battered almost sense-less by the Neo-Liberal (Neo-Fascist would be a more accurate term) moves to global hegemony. I take heart from the environ-mental, Occupy and anti-war movements and would encourage all younger listeners to find a way to live their lives as far as possible without interference and control by decisions made in corporate boardrooms. May the music here give you energy and fuel your imaginations.

					          EP  (August, 2014)



PRE-ORDER NOW

Evan Parker / Derek Bailey / Han Bennink 'Topography of the Lungs' [Excerpt] (ROKU(RE)001)

CD available directly from Important Records - imprec.com 

Strange Times is a virtuosic realization of contemporary
electroacoustic soundscapes composed and performed by Stephen
Ruppenthal and Gary R. Weisberg. With masterful employment of electroacoustic techniques and tools, including the original 70's Buchla Music Easel Ruppenthal used in the Electric Weasel Ensemble, these two artist create an essential, psychedelic, electro-acoustic experience.

Strange Times is a hallucinatory journey into our epidemic-ridden
times through a collection of startling sonic landscapes. From epic
acoustic journeys into re-imagining myth to the phantasmal soundscape world of the Bardo, Strange Times is not for the innocent or delicate listener. Time turns elastic, and folds in on itself; you are approaching the event horizon of a black hole. The only way to make sense of any of it is to mentally rewind; speed up or slow down the voices in your head in random attempts to find your way through this electroacoustic aether. Strange Times explores the ability of sound to alter consciousness, creating sonic environments, mental and physical states where one can allow the experience of listening to become transformative.

Stephen Ruppenthal (Berkeley, 1949) San Francisco Bay Area new music trumpeter, electroacoustic and text-sound composer, Stephen studied electronic music and composition with composer Allen Strange, and ethnomusicology with Lou Harrison, and holds a Masters of Arts Degree in Contemporary Musicology, writing the first comprehensive treatise in English of Sound Poetry, “History of the Development and Techniques of Sound Poetry in the Twentieth Century in Western Cultures.” Stephen was a founding member, along with Don Buchla and Allen & Pat Strange, of the Electric Weasel Ensemble, and more recently, with Brian Belet and Pat Strange, of SoundProof, and is known internationally for his live electroacoustic performances, and writings on text-sound
composition. Stephen has been composing and performing electroacoustic works for Buchla instruments since 1971. Flamethrower, a 2017 CD of electroacoustic works for trumpet and flugelhorn, by Allen Strange, Brian Belet, Bruno Liberda, and Elainie Lillios, and performed by Stephen is currently available from Ravello Records. 

Gary R. Weisberg, composer-sound designer-digital audio artist was
born 1951 in Brooklyn, NY. At age 2, Gary was exposed by his mother to the music of Brahms, Khatchaturian and Rimsky-Korsakov. He also had a fascination with dinosaurs. He first picked up a musical instrument in 1972, playing free- jazz improvisation on flute and alto sax. Gary moved to San Francisco in 1976 and was involved in a loosely knit collective of jazz and experimental musicians and artists, operating a small performance space called The Blue Dolphin. He studied music, computer programming and electronics at San Francisco State University, graduating with a degree in Electronic Music Composition. He spent two years building a modular analog synthesizer, and began composing electronic music and text-sound compositions for art/ photography gallery openings. From 1986-1994, Gary maintained a MIDI project studio for the production of his own music, as well as sound and music for TV/Film/Video productions. Since 1994, Gary has been composing PC-based experimental electronic music, as well as pieces
for electronic and acoustic instruments, occasionally performing with other composers and collaborating with visual artists. He currently resides in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley.

1. Post - Apocalyptic Biscuit (Ruppenthal)

OXY w/ OBLAKA - 19/02/2024

時の性質は、様々なことから影響を受け、液体のように変わっていくのである。~  The nature of time, under numerous influences, changes like a liquid.

Umé Records presents the album "Equal Parts" by Great Britain's Paul Oednom.

Listen: https://umerecords.bandcamp.com/album/equal-parts

ume028

Download

Paul Oednom ~ Equal Parts (snippets)

evdet Erek "Davul" (SUB023)
Digital: cevdeterek.bandcamp.com/album/davul

Ahead of his representing Turkey at this year’s Venice Biennale, Subtext present’s Istanbul based Cevdet Erek’s first full length LP: ‘Davul’. The title refers to the instrument performed by Erek, a large drum with many names, common from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, known variably as a daouli (Greek), tapan (Macedonian), dahol (Kurdish), or tabl (Arabic) to cite a few.

Erek plays the drum with his own unusual method, utilising a large soft mallet alongside various smaller implements to beat and distort the skin of the drum, tuned lower than normal, taking advantage of being able to walk around studio or installation spaces with the instrument. Erek acquired the drum from a Roma musician, proceeding to play it in private for years where he developed this new textural approach, integrating the instrument into his A Room of Rhythms installation piece at Istanbul Biennial, 2015.

Comprising extracts culled from hours of solo drum improvisations recorded over two days in Berlin, ‘Davul’ features no editing or overdubbing. At times Erek describes “playing to get the negative and aggressive away from inside of me, hoping that I could do the same for the other people surrounding me.” He refers to a shamanic history of healing rituals - although the davul is most commonly used for weddings, dances, and celebrations. “Of course the aesthetics of dark electronics and noise that I've been exposed to for decades informs the overall feel as well,” adds Erek.
Over seven improvised pieces Erek conjures a massive variety of
uncharacteristic sounds and colours from the drum, from deep
scrapes and grinds to heavy rubs and drones, creating complex
rhythms. Experimentation with rhythm, meter, and silence has
always been at the core of what Erek does - from his work as a conceptual artist, presenting work at the likes of dOCUMENTA, to decades as the drummer in Turkish experimental rock band Nekropsi - but ‘Davul’ is his purest statement-of-intent to date; a raw and hypnotic exploration of flow and dynamics.

Bio: Cevdet Erek was born in Istanbul in 1974, where he would initially study Architecture. Originally formed in 1989, Erek has also been the longtime drummer with Turkish experimental music stalwarts, Nekropsi. After completing his Masters in Sound Engineering & Design at İTÜ MIAM Center for Advanced Studies in Music, Erek’s installations and performances have been presented far and wide, including dOCUMENTA, Sydney Biennial, and Istanbul Modern. He’s also worked on sound and music for film, most recently contributing original music and sound design to Emin Alper’s “Frenzy” (Venice International Film Festival – Special Jury Prize, 2015).

subtextrecordings.net

Davul

Prepare

Cevdet Erek - Prepare

Included in The Wire Tapper 44, the CD compilation included with the August 2017 edition of The Wire.

Badalisc (from The Wire Tapper 44)

xin "MELTS INTO LOVE" (SUB031)

Download: http://bit.ly/xin-melts-into-love

xin returns to Subtext to share their debut LP, MELTS INTO LOVE.

Mining fragments of neurofunk, hardcore and dubstep, xin searches for something else. They borrow from dance and rave lexicons to warp, mangle and strangle tropes into something anew. Embracing failures, blemishes, inexperience and misuse, xin imagines new affinities, anxieties and ecstasies in an age of noise, spectacle and inundation. Alien, shapeshifting reeses dance and twirl in “Myopia,” while AI choirs and pseudo-breaks are distilled into “Spent, Wasted and Saved” (featuring AYA, fka LOFT). The fiendish, ecstatic imagery that accompanies is created in conjunction with painter Gabrielle Bejani and machine learning engineers Ash D'Cruz, and Chris Tegho.

Like xin’s 2018 EP, MELTS INTO LOVE will be released solely via independent platforms Bandcamp, Boomkat and Resonate. The record also borrows from fellow Subtext signee Fis and his Saplings project and is released as a “biodigital” LP—meaning the music is released digitally, but with a living consequence woven in. All proceeds from sales will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, with each purchase of the LP funding the planting of at least 40 trees.

xin has recently performed live at Berlin’s Volksbühne, in support of Holly Herndon’s PROTO launch, and Kraftwerk, for MaerzMusik’s The Long Now, among others. They are soundtracking Zach Blas’ upcoming installation The Doors, and are a summer 2019 research resident at Trust, Berlin’s space for utopian conspiracy and the (re)design of infrastructure.

with thanks and love to:
Aya, Billy, Izzy, James, Laurel, Oscar, Sam

Artwork:
Ash D'Cruz, Chris Tegho, Gabrielle Bejani and xin

@xxxiiinnn
http://subtextrecordings.net/

MELTS INTO LOVE 

xin - Ffantom Contendt

xin "MELTS INTO LOVE" (SUB031)

Download: http://bit.ly/xin-melts-into-love

xin returns to Subtext to share their debut LP, MELTS INTO LOVE.

Mining fragments of neurofunk, hardcore and dubstep, xin searches for something else. They borrow from dance and rave lexicons to warp, mangle and strangle tropes into something anew. Embracing failures, blemishes, inexperience and misuse, xin imagines new affinities, anxieties and ecstasies in an age of noise, spectacle and inundation. Alien, shapeshifting reeses dance and twirl in “Myopia,” while AI choirs and pseudo-breaks are distilled into “Spent, Wasted and Saved” (featuring AYA, fka LOFT). The fiendish, ecstatic imagery that accompanies is created in conjunction with painter Gabrielle Bejani and machine learning engineers Ash D'Cruz, and Chris Tegho.

Like xin’s 2018 EP, MELTS INTO LOVE will be released solely via independent platforms Bandcamp, Boomkat and Resonate. The record also borrows from fellow Subtext signee Fis and his Saplings project and is released as a “biodigital” LP—meaning the music is released digitally, but with a living consequence woven in. All proceeds from sales will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, with each purchase of the LP funding the planting of at least 40 trees.

xin has recently performed live at Berlin’s Volksbühne, in support of Holly Herndon’s PROTO launch, and Kraftwerk, for MaerzMusik’s The Long Now, among others. They are soundtracking Zach Blas’ upcoming installation The Doors, and are a summer 2019 research resident at Trust, Berlin’s space for utopian conspiracy and the (re)design of infrastructure.

with thanks and love to:
Aya, Billy, Izzy, James, Laurel, Oscar, Sam

Artwork:
Ash D'Cruz, Chris Tegho, Gabrielle Bejani and xin

@xxxiiinnn
subtextrecordings.net/

MELTS INTO LOVE

xin - Spent, Wasted and Saved (ft. AYA)

Ecker & Meulyzer “Carbon” (SUB033)

Digital: https://eckermeulyzer.bandcamp.com/album/carbon

Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer make their Subtext debut with Carbon. 

Based on field recordings made at Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank located on the island of Spitsbergen, Carbon grapples with the many contradictions that lie at the heart of our shift into the capitalocene. The project began in 2017, when Ecker and Meulyzer scored the performance “Frozen Songs,” a commission by Zero Visibility Dance Company led by Ina Christel Johannesen.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was conceived of as an effort to preserve copies of seeds from key crop varieties, ensuring their persistence in the event of large-scale crises. Yet the area is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, causing the permafrost to melt and putting the seed vault at risk. 

Across from the Seed Vault lie the decrepit remnants of Svalbard’s mining activities of the early 20th century; Carbon wrestles with the incongruities nestled in the town’s landscape. Reflecting on dissonances of stasis and change, closeness and distance, enclosure and expanse, as well as cynicism and hope, Ecker and Meulyzer consider the urgency of our situation while trying to sidestep all-too popular depictions of dystopia. In Ecker’s own words, “we don’t have the luxury to afford that kind of pessimism.” 

From close, supple sounds to cold, brutal sonics, Carbon meditates on the many challenging questions and contradictions raised by the Seed Vault and its surroundings—a landscape that embodies and makes visible the many intertwined phenomena that shape our current predicament.

Ecker and Meulyzer, formerly known as Stray Dogs, have released works such as Wasteland, recorded in deconsecrated church in Antwerp, and Kalkar, recorded in the cooling tower of a former power station in Germany. 

Koenraad Ecker works in the fields of electro-acoustic music, field recording, radio plays, stage performance and text. Together with Andrea Taeggi, he is part of the Opal Tapes-affiliated duo Lumisokea. His output encompasses studio albums, audiovisual installations, texts, performances, and sound design for film. 

Frederik Meulyzer is a percussionist active in projects including Belgian jazz band Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther, contemporary music and theatre company Post uit Hessdalen, and experimental psych-krautrock band Slumberland.

The ecological impact of the production of this record will be compensated through a carbon offsetting program .

Bandcamp

Ecker & Meulyzer - Metabolic Rift

Ecker & Meulyzer “Carbon” (SUB033)

Digital & CD: https://eckermeulyzer.bandcamp.com/album/carbon

Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer make their Subtext debut with Carbon. 

Based on field recordings made at Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank located on the island of Spitsbergen, Carbon grapples with the many contradictions that lie at the heart of our shift into the capitalocene. The project began in 2017, when Ecker and Meulyzer scored the performance “Frozen Songs,” a commission by Zero Visibility Dance Company led by Ina Christel Johannesen.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was conceived of as an effort to preserve copies of seeds from key crop varieties, ensuring their persistence in the event of large-scale crises. Yet the area is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, causing the permafrost to melt and putting the seed vault at risk. 

Across from the Seed Vault lie the decrepit remnants of Svalbard’s mining activities of the early 20th century; Carbon wrestles with the incongruities nestled in the town’s landscape. Reflecting on dissonances of stasis and change, closeness and distance, enclosure and expanse, as well as cynicism and hope, Ecker and Meulyzer consider the urgency of our situation while trying to sidestep all-too popular depictions of dystopia. In Ecker’s own words, “we don’t have the luxury to afford that kind of pessimism.” 

From close, supple sounds to cold, brutal sonics, Carbon meditates on the many challenging questions and contradictions raised by the Seed Vault and its surroundings—a landscape that embodies and makes visible the many intertwined phenomena that shape our current predicament.

Ecker and Meulyzer, formerly known as Stray Dogs, have released works such as Wasteland, recorded in deconsecrated church in Antwerp, and Kalkar, recorded in the cooling tower of a former power station in Germany. 

Koenraad Ecker works in the fields of electro-acoustic music, field recording, radio plays, stage performance and text. Together with Andrea Taeggi, he is part of the Opal Tapes-affiliated duo Lumisokea. His output encompasses studio albums, audiovisual installations, texts, performances, and sound design for film. 

Frederik Meulyzer is a percussionist active in projects including Belgian jazz band Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther, contemporary music and theatre company Post uit Hessdalen, and experimental psych-krautrock band Slumberland.

The ecological impact of the production of this record will be compensated through a carbon offsetting program .

Ecker & Meulyzer - Growth

Aho Ssan - Simulacrum LP (SUB034)

Release date: February 7
Digital album: http://bit.ly/AhoSsan-Simulacrum

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Simulacrum

Digital Album

Aho Ssan - Simulacrum II

A boutique music publisher and network of composers

Subtext Recordings is a Bristol founded / Berlin based label curated by james ginzburg.

Cevdet Erek - Prepare

Subtext Recordings

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