randomorb 2025 Playback

Subtext Vinyl & Digital:
http://subtextrecordings.bandcamp.com/

Videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/SubtextRecordings

More info
http://subtextrecordings.net/


@subtext-recordings

Vinyl, CD, digital

Subtext Recordings

_ambiEND

Vinyl & digital album: kmruahossan.bandcamp.com/album/limen

Released on April 29th, 2022

Last year, Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru (aka KMRU) and French digital alchemist Niamké Désiré (aka Aho Ssan) were invited by Berlin Atonal to collaborate on a project for the festival's Metabolic Rift edition.

The duo had already been working together, but the offer provided the momentum to shift the conversation into another gear. Initially, they looked for thematic connections within their individual practices that might match Kamaru's meditative soundscapes with Désiré's crumbling cyberpunk expressionism, and surprisingly for two artists renowned for their grasp of minimalism, it was the opposite that drew their attention. Watching the world shift as it reacted to the spiraling pandemic, Kamaru and Désiré were moved to experiment with volume, physicality, and intense emotionality.

“I never made something so extreme," Désiré says of the duo's first recording, 2021's 'Ruined Abstractions', an extended composition that matches dense, powerful low-end drones with fractal digital fuzz and smokestack bruit. It set the mood for a back-and-forth that resulted in their seismic debut full-length, "Limen", described by the two acclaimed artists as an attempt to scrutinize the yin and yang of destruction and creation.

Cacophonous, concrete crunches fanfare the album's opening piece 'Resurgence' - the result of their Berlin Atonal commission - but the track refuses to languish in wrecking ball devastation. Instead, powerful synthesized harmonies ring from beneath the rubble, before stifling everything in a humid fuzz of dense, emotionally-charged cinematic electronics.

Influenced by the prescient post-apocalyptic mood of Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" and the mythological phoenix, an immortal bird said to be reborn from the ashes of its dying predecessor, "Limen" is an album that sonically snapshots the anxious, floral beauty of an explosion or the colorful intensity of a raging fire. It's rooted in concepts of duality - the idea something unsettling can be viewed from a different angle and re-interpreted.

On the album's epic, 21-minute centerpiece 'Ruined Abstraction I + II', swirling electromagnetic interference paints a haunted parallel vista that dissolves slowly into subtle, orchestral tones and booming, widescreen thuds.

Almost angelic closing track 'Rebirth' meanwhile is the most unashamedly beautiful composition Kamaru and Désiré have written together, but its choral bliss is doused in petroleum noise and saturated distortion.

"Limen" is an album that seeks to lift a veil of silence from the world, replacing it with maximalist bombast and vivid passion. It's a dynamic piece of work that finds its creators pushing themselves to the limits, deconstructing history as it detonates around us.

All tracks written and produced by Joseph Kamaru
and Niamké Désiré; mastered by Joker

Published by Multiverse Media Publishing
© & ℗ Subtext / Multiverse LTD 2022

subtextrecordings.net/

Limen

Vinyl & digital album

KMRU & Aho Ssan - Resurgence

https://colorsquadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/c-o-l-o-r-s-q-u-a-d-0-1-4

Melfins Phenyls

@kronombass
@maxdahlhaus
@unizonelabel

Max Dahlhaus and Kronom team up for Unizone on “Trauma Tendrils” with remixes from Domizako and Ice_Eyes.

“Trauma Tendrils” lands with all the diplomacy of blunt force trauma. Both veteran producers trawl the deepest and darkest recesses of their personal brands of dystopia, settling on a chaotic course of textured experimentalism and distorted broken rhythms. It’s industrial techno that has dissected and reorganized its molecular structure. Tracks that simulate the experience of emerging from the primordial cyber cocoon. Caked in dirt, drenched in acid, mouth full of gristle. All that’s left to do is tear the feeding tubes out of your stomach, punch a hole through the membrane of your prison, and rush the sentinels. What’s the worst that could happen?

On EP opener “Frantic Solar”, a corrosive melodic motif swirls around kicks precision-engineered to shake the very core of the earth. Ashen voices and screeching machine wails round out the scene. Driving and cavernous, “Dozhdot” bursts through the speakers with bags of lawless energy. With explosive buzzes, unrelenting kicks, and barely a second to breathe, both producers drive their rhythmic framework into despotic territory. The two faster numbers of the foursome, “Tendrils” and “Losing Grip”, ramp up the drama and the sense of cinematic anticipation. Something’s around the corner but you don’t want to know what because it might be the last thing you ever see.

Domizako and Ice_Eyes both take on “Losing Grip”. Prague producer Domizako leans into the track’s tense atmosphere with a remix that is the sonic equivalent of a rolling boil. It’s understated and it’s deadly. Greek experimentalist Ice_Eyes turns the party dial up with a remix primed for the club. Prepare for big stabs and big polyrhythmic energy.

Trauma Tendrils is coming on May 22 2024 via Prague-based label UNIZONE

PREMIERE: Kronom & Max Dahlhaus - Frantic Solar (Unizone)

wildsilences - someone like you [aqwan don't ask mix]

Coming out on Subtext Recordings 2nd February 2016. Image from a Fusion reactor.

Paul Jebanasam – Eidolons Beginning P = (m2A 2 Am To (rho - Z) - Y ∂t+(ρ See To Wait.... (SUB016)

please vote for us here

http://www.indabamusic.com/opportunities/ludovico-einaudi-night-remix-contest/submissions/2873b99a-f015-11e5-91bd-0e3dc18e16fd?utm_source=embed.indabamusic.com&utm_campaign=ludovico-einaudi-night-remix-contest&utm_content=playlist%20branding%20image&utm_medium=Widget

Vote! Thnx!!

ludovico-einaudi - night [aqwan and wildsilences nightrain rmx]]

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

track 1 of 3 - aqwan remixes wildsilence's nova and the skeletons EP

@wildsilences

wildsilences - i wish - aqwan mix

I walk in the dark
I hear my steps,
fixed, tough echoing,
in the water,
in the sound,
in the walls.

So lonely, so confused,
I sweep that ford of concrete,
following a feeble light.

I perceive other strides,
more heavy, impetuous,
that reverberate as well
in these thick walls,
of putrid water
and violent brake-up
an unusual calm
until that, of such shadow
I brush against the limbs,
I perceive the essence,
another breath indeed,
but not of human’s appearance.

-Utopian Soul-

MMV006 - Still Breathing EP

Weren't Us (Or Maybe Yes.. )

Mod21 -  Weren't Us (Or Maybe Yes.. )(Bandcamp Exclusive)

Download: https://www.xlr8r.com/mp3/cra%C3%BCn-uto

@hush-hush-records

Download

Download: Craün - Uto

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

Carbon

Sea Change

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

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