Myxomy - Myxomy (SUB042)

Stream & download: https://myxomy.bandcamp.com/album/myxomy

Artistic collaborations don't have to be exhaustive, competitive or combative. And for Berlin-based producers James Ginzburg and Ziúr, their work together as myxomy has been almost effortless. Both artists bring with them a deep history of recording in vastly different circumstances: Ginzburg has worked on bass music, folk, experimental techno (as half of Emptyset) and experimental drone, while Ziúr played in a number of bands before settling into her current explorative electronic mode. So when they started working together in 2020, it was their respective backgrounds that provided the touch-paper for an explosive artistic head-to-head.

Ginzburg instigated the process by sending Ziúr beats he'd made in Bristol in a former life, and Ziúr, fresh from finishing her PAN-released third solo album "Antifate", set about sculpting them into completely new forms. In response, Ziúr dispatched vignettes to Ginzburg and he did the same. As they exchanged ideas back and forth and lapsed into absurdity, the songs followed suit, evolving from raw concepts and loops into proper songs as both Ziúr and Ginzburg traded melodies, lyrics and production tricks. The duo's fragmented sketches and scribbles took on new life, channeled, refined and re-invigorated as they developed into anxious, hybridized pop jewels.

Their surprising stylistic choice is revealed immediately on opening track 'Sloppy Attempt', a fractured mood stabilizer that dissociates from Bristolian trip-hop into glossy android pop. Ziúr's singing voice carries the track into a sonic black hole, mutated into an alien gurgle as she gently coos the prophetic words, "a sloppy attempt won't cut it, no no." And as Ginzburg takes the reins on 'A little opaque', singing over Ziúr's twisted neon electronics, it's clear that both artists have pushed each other outside of their comfort zones, providing the reassurance and comfort necessary to evolve.

On 'In and Until', they find an exact median between their two most recent albums. Twanging hurdy-gurdy sounds remind of Ginzburg's 'crystallise, a frozen eye', compelled forward by brittle foley percussion we last heard on "Antifate". A scalding industrial boil of deranged synthesizer squeals and rolling drums parts like the Red Sea on 'Toxin Out', cooling to a crust for Ziúr's half-sung words to echo overhead. "Burn the bridges it's a choice, eat the rich, and throw up on the fuckbois."

"Myxomy" isn't an overtly political album, but driven by a desire to create and a shared philosophical space, Ziúr and Ginzburg are naturally outspoken. Their vision of pop is twisted through history and floated on frustration, growth and constant reinvention. It's a unique mix of polar elements - light and dark, noise and silence, joy and melancholy - that centers itself on one important theme: together, we're far more powerful than we ever could be alone. 
credits

releases November 12, 2021

All tracks written and produced by Ziúr and James Ginzburg
Album art by Stefan Fähler
Design by Philip Marshall
Artist photo by Kasia Zacharko
Mastered by Joker
Published by Multiverse Media Publishing © & ℗ Subtext / Multiverse LTD 2021
license

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Myxomy

Vinyl & digital

Myxomy - A Little Opaque

From KMRU & Aho Ssan's Limen LP

Vinyl & digital album: https://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

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Limen

KMRU & Aho Ssan - Rebirth

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/

Vinyl & digital album

KMRU & Aho Ssan - Resurgence

KMRU & Aho Ssan - Ruined Abstractions

James Ginzburg & Yair Elazar Glotman - Nimbes (clip)

Track taken from Emptyset, debut self-titled on double LP, reissue. Available now to buy from: www.subtextrecordings.net/ SUB014

Emptyset - Completely Gone (SUB015)

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

Paul Jebanasam – Search Another 3Hφ˙ = Lose You I), Place I=0 Doubt..... (SUB016)

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

Paul Jebanasam – Depart As Air Dx Stop ∂ρ ∂  Dt Somewhere = +∇⋅(ρ Sigma (y Waiting.... (SUB016)

Blessed Initiative is a project by Yair Elazar Glotman, which suggests a dissonant, coexistent state of extreme highs and lows. The album attempts to articulate a mental state of simultaneity, in which equilibrium is fleeting, fragile, and its scarcity is embraced. Opposite states coincide, contrast and reflect, creating moments of uncertainty and insecurity. Absurdity and at times even bliss are possible results, in the attempt to channel anxiety into creative forces rather than debilitating ones. In an environment where personas are the sums of the images they project, sounds are also no longer evidence of invention but of ever-changing combination, curation, and editing. The final persona is a sum of the chosen and the deleted, as well as what may be projected from outside, creating a confusing and conflicted self. The sounds collected here are attempts to compose on these uncertain grounds, and to reflect the anxiety released in all these sources’ meeting and interaction. As a singular project, Blessed Initiative stops to comment on the conditions that inform Glotman’s composition before and after it, and to acknowledge it as a non-linear, ongoing process.

The focus on process and uncertainty is apparent in the album’s phrasing, re-articulation and cycles of repetition and deviation. The pieces were composed from sounds generated on the KYMA system, personal foley recordings as well as tape manipulations techniques. Minor sounds on major scales and micro-tonal tuning suggest an ambiguous harmonic sphere. These were then integrated within idiosyncratic rhythmic structures, at times integrating real spaces and resonating bodies as reverb and augmented echo chambers. Concrete, almost-recognizable organic sounds contrast with these abstract spaces and connect them to tactile experiences. These textures and structures are a palette that reforms and deforms as it cycles throughout the album. 

The photographic series “Relax (blue)”, 2004, by the artist Josephine Pryde was chosen for the album’s cover as a materialization of tension. The two images represent a closed cycle of energy and unfulfilled release. 

Yair Elazar Glotman is a classically trained musician and sound artist based in Berlin whose previous works on Subtext include the Lp Études and a collaboration with James Ginzburg titled Nimbes. 

Blessed Initiative – Borderline spamming (SUB019)

Blessed Initiative – Vile Value (SUB019)

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 – Eki

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

Terminus Drift

erminus Drift

Joshua Sabin – Terminus Drift

Clip from the latest Subtext Recordings release by Ellen Arkbro - For organ and brass. For organ and brass is comprised of two works by the Stockholm-based composer Ellen Arkbro. Both works focus on tuning, intonation and harmonic modulation. In previous projects, Arkbro composed for early music ensembles, wrote a series of durational pieces utilising synthetic tones and processed guitars, and, most recently, presented a work lasting 26 days at the Stockholm Concert Hall. for organ and brass looks back to Arkbro’s studies in Just Intonation with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and their disciple Jung Hee Choi in New York, as well as with kindred spirit Marc Sabat in Berlin.

The title composition was written for an organ with a specific kind of historical tuning known as meantone temperament. It was only after locating an appropriate instrument—-the Sherer-Orgel dating back to 1624 in St. Stephen’s Church in Tangermünde, Northeastern Germany—-that Arkbro set about recording both for organ and brass and its counterpart, three. “Hidden within the harmonic framework of the Renaissance organ are intervals and chords that bare a close resemblance to those found in the modalities of traditional blues music,” explains Arkbro. “The work can be thought of as a very slow and reduced blues music.” 

The work moves gradually through a series of long, sustained tones played by the organ and in parallel by a brass trio comprised of horn, tuba, and trombone. Arkbro’s treatment of pitch resembles the tuning strategies of La Monte Young. The brass parts were performed by microtonal brass trio Zinc & Copper, a group whose repertoire has included works by C.C. Hennix and Christian Wolff.  http://www.zincandcopper.org/

In Arkbro’s words, “the brass instruments and the organ fall into patterns of interaction in which a new breathing instrument emerges.” three, which follows the 20-minute title work, deploys the same principles of harmonic relativity. In removing the organ from the instrumentation and switching to a different meter, three acts as an intimate counterpoint to the ritual drone cycles of the title piece.  

Ellen Arkbro is currently studying for her Master’s degree in music composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Her work has been performed in Brooklyn, Stockholm, Norberg, Bologna, Gothenburg, Berlin, Birmingham, and Malmö, and on Swedish National Radio.
for organ and brass was recorded in Tangermünde, Germany in September 2016. 
The performers were Johan Graden (organ), Elena Kakaliagou (horn), Hilary Jeffery 
(trombone), and Robin Hayward (tuba).

Ellen Arkbro - For Organ & Brass Clip

xin "To Shock The Sky And Shake The Earth (SUB025)
Vinyl & digital: https://xxxiiinnn.bandcamp.com/album/to-shock-the-sky-and-shake-the-earth

To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth is a process of searching. It sees the Berlin-based artist navigating spaces between conventions, cultures, pressures and sounds. This informs their decision to release the EP through Resonate and a handful of independent platforms.

On this decision, xin says:

“I don’t believe that there should be one way to do anything, or in convention for convention’s sake. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ethics of making and releasing music, and trying to find less harmful ways of being in the world.”

This statement points towards growing dissatisfaction around independent music’s reliance on corporate monoliths, from Facebook to Spotify. xin's decision is made as one gesture in a much broader, quickly-evolving discourse.

xin’s particular approach is also evident in their production, which lacks consistent genre signifiers for listeners to grab ahold of. Tracks such as ‘Black Light Blind Fire’ and ‘Sucker’ lean on dance music’s lexicon, while ‘Aedes Splatter’ is comprised of shudders, sputters and hums. 'To Shock the Sky and Shake the Earth' is an unusual synthesis of varied sounds.

http://subtextrecordings.net/

https://xxxiiinnn.bandcamp.com/album/to-shock-the-sky-and-shake-the-earth

Aedes Splatter

xin - Aedes Splatter

Gonçalo Penas - Ego De Espinhos [SUB027]  
Release date: January 18, 2019 
Vinyl & digital: goncalopenas.bandcamp.com/album/ego-de-espinhos

Continuing Subtext’s exploratory electronics and devastating sonics is the expansive Ego De Espinhos, the debut full-length from twenty-two year old Porto, Portugal-based artist Gonçalo Penas.

Described by Penas as a series of “self-exorcisms,” Ego De Espinhos is the cathartic outcome of a highly introspective process. Shaped by opposing forces and instincts, the LP touches on themes that are at once intimate, yet omnipresent. Splendor confronts destruction; id confronts super-ego.

Created solely with digital instruments designed and built by the artist, Ego De Espinhos is the result of Penas’ improvisations.

@goncalopenas
@subtext-recordings

Ego De Espinhos

Vinyl & Download

Gonçalo Penas - A Besta / Quanto Mais Me Bates

Gonçalo Penas - Ego De Espinhos [SUB027]  
Release date: January 18, 2019 
Vinyl & digital pre-order: https://goncalopenas.bandcamp.com/album/ego-de-espinhos

Continuing Subtext’s exploratory electronics and devastating sonics is the expansive Ego De Espinhos, the debut full-length from twenty-two year old Porto, Portugal-based artist Gonçalo Penas.

Described by Penas as a series of “self-exorcisms,” Ego De Espinhos is the cathartic outcome of a highly introspective process. Shaped by opposing forces and instincts, the LP touches on themes that are at once intimate, yet omnipresent. Splendor confronts destruction; id confronts super-ego.

Created solely with digital instruments designed and built by the artist, Ego De Espinhos is the result of Penas’ improvisations. 

@goncalopenas
@subtext-recordings

Gonçalo Penas - Ego De Espinhos

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS(SUB029)
VINYL pre-order: https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/chords

Pre-order

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS For Organ

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS(SUB029)
VINYL pre-order: https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/chords

With ‘CHORDS’, the Stockholm-based musician and composer Ellen Arkbro returns to Subtext, following her acclaimed debut album ‘For Organ and Brass’.

This new longplayer sees Arkbro adopt a more minimalist approach, focusing on the immediate qualities of sound and elegantly expanding the tonal capacities of acoustic instruments using precise, subtle synthesis.

Composed of a carefully selected combination of tones, ‘CHORDS’ stretches, extends and obscures the timbral character of the instruments it is performed on.

Across both tracks, Arkbro examines the sonic materiality and harmonic quality of chords. She considers how the compositions occupy space rather than time – transposing theoretical possibilities into the phenomenal realm.

As a part of Arkbro’s systematic investigation of harmonic sound, ‘CHORDS’ proffers a divergence from conventional ways of listening. This work allows for a form of listening which goes beyond the mere reception of outer stimuli in letting the listener experience their role as active, and as embodying the sound itself. Space rather than time becomes the primary locus of listening as subtle movement of head and body reveals the inner complexities of ‘CHORDS’.

@ellenarkbro

CHORDS

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS For Guitar

PYUR - Oratorio for the Underworld LP [SUB032]
Release date: October 10th, 2019

@pyur

Oratorio For The Underworld 

PYUR - Flowers And Silvers

xin - MELTS INTO LOVE(SUB031)

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

xin "MELTS INTO LOVE" (SUB031)

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 

Download

xin - Myopia

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/

xin - Crrrash!

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

Roly Porter "Kistvaen" LP

Vinyl & digital pre-order: https://subtextrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/roly-porter-kistvaen

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Kistvaen

Roly Porter - An Open Door

'Material' will be released on vinyl housed in a gatefold four-panel sleeve
featuring images from the three sites. Vinyl will be released on march 18th
and digital on march 25th.

http://subtextrecordings.net/
http://subtext.bigcartel.com/

1: Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station - Snowdonia, Wales 17.12.12 - Clip

Eric Holm "Surface Variations" (SUB036)

Digital album pre-order: https://ericholm.bandcamp.com/album/surface-variations

http://subtextrecordings.net/

Surface Variations

Eric Holm - Alioth

Vinyl pre-order

Roly Porter - Kistvaen

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

Popular tracks by Subtext Recordings