The Light That Flickers in the Mirror

The Light That Flickers In The Mirror

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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)

Here in Wales, the wells hold the stories from our ancestors, these tunes are still being played, faint notes can still be heard, if you listen very carefully. 
Centres for ceremony, storytelling and healing, where the Naiads and fairies are home.
This sound journey takes you on the adventure into the watery depths of the soul, a playful promise from the past, that this water goes through you, into the streams, rivers, back to the sea, just like it's always done, and always 

TRACKLIST:

Peter Seiler - Reef mode
Alan Stivell - Cochevelou
Sam Mcloughlin - Crazywell pool
JH1-FS3 - Virtues of despiration
Piper Spray + Lena Tsibizova - Lost cars
Habitat ensemble - Rounded edges
Vadin - Astrologica
KMRU - Uneven
Laurence Pike - Holy spring
Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton Barker -The Heavenly realms
Memotone - Measure for measure
Peter Seiler - Sensitive touch
Folklore tapes - The Queen of the Well pt 1
Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton Barker - The Heavenly realms
Folklore tapes - The Queen of the well pt 2
Sylva Sylvarum - Ophir
Luca Yupanqui - V3-2
Sylva Sylvarum - Umbrella spinner
Scott Gailey - Ginger Soy Milk Pudding
Kmru - Matching teal surfaces
Felicia Atkinson - The sun perhaps three of them
Motte - Crystal Waters
Vadin - Plateau

@elliement22

Invitée Spéciale — e l e m e n t

you might wonder why i deleted the file for this one

bacon

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)

Joshua Sabin "Terminus Drift" (SUB020)
Vinyl & digital: subtextrecordings.net/SUB020-Joshua-…Terminus-Drift

Subtext's latest signing is Joshua Sabin, a Scottish musician and artist based in Leith, Edinburgh.

Joshua's debut album Terminus Drift explores humans' relationship with environment and space, and how this experience is augmenting us as we further embrace a digital age. Our structures of communication, exploration, and discovery are mediated by technological shifts and we exist in simultaneity between our physical environment and emerging cyberspaces with a blended perception of embodiment and orientation within both.

Sirens reverberating through station tunnels, fluctuating harmonics of subway engines, echoing tannoy systems, piercing screams of electromagnetic fields.

The sonic material of this album is composed exclusively of field-recordings captured in transit through Kyoto, Tokyo, and Berlin, in addition to electromagnetic field recordings captured in Glasgow and Edinburgh. By interrogating the sonic properties of our physical environment, Terminal imagines the sonic landscapes of these dualistically navigable 'cyberspaces' we transiently create and move through interacting with our world.

http://subtextrecordings.net

Joshua Sabin – Array

Subtext Recordings is a Bristol founded / Berlin based label curated by James Ginzburg.

Joshua Sabin – Array

Subtext Recordings

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