VERETER - Murli

»Free/Future/Music« is a project dedicated to creative alliances and concrete solidarity. Released through Altin Village & Mine label, it is presented as a mixtape series with artworks by Janett Andrejewski that exclusively features brand-new collaborative tracks by artists affiliated with the Leipzig-based label founded by Marcel Schulz in 2002. It will be accompanied by essays and visual art that engages with the subjects of freedom, the future, and music in various ways. As a nod to the mixtape culture of the 1990s that opened the doors to different musical worlds for Schulz and laid the foundation for the multi-genre approach of the label, the first instalment of »Free/Future/Music« will be released on cassette tape, with all individual tracks being made available digitally. Among those are exclusive collaborative pieces by Hani Mojtahedy + Andi Toma aka HJirok, Odd Okoddo + Angel Bat Dawid, Station 17 + Datashock, Cloud Management + The Space Lady, Vivien Goldman + PTTRNS, among others. Most of the artists have recently released records through Altin Village & Mine or will do so in the near future. 

Whether it’s the acoustic dub duo Quasi Dub Development’s collaboration with the late Lee Scratch Perry, Kalme and Map.ache’s dancefloor-ready dream pop, the unlikely combination of Phoebe Killdeer + The Shift + Andi Toma exploring the juxtaposition of digi dub sounds and traditional songwriting or Dumbo Tracks + The Field’s blend of minimal techno’s subtle elegance and krautrock’s driving cool: »Free/Future/Music« serves as a testament to how the free association of people working together can open up new perspectives for the future. Also including tracks by Teichmann + Soehne, Grand River + Memory Pearl and Li Yilei + Ava, »Free/Future/Music« is a rich, intergenerational musical mosaic that spans a variety of different genres or transcends them all together. Fritz Brückner of Modus Pitch mastered the majority of the pieces at his Haunted House studio, ensuring that the compilation’s stylistic diversity is presented in a sonically coherent way. 

In the spirit of unity and solidarity so deeply rooted in the making of these twelve different pieces of music, half of the proceeds from »Free/Future/Music« will be donated to Mission Lifeline, an association dedicated to migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean sea, with the aim of offering not only cultural value but also tangible social solidarity in times of exclusionary politics. However, »Free/Future/Music« does not brush over the fact that the label and the artists have offered their labour for free. This reflects a present reality of sheer endless self-exploitation with which the music world as a whole will have to grapple with even more in the future. Thus, the series also serves as a starting point for a discussion of these issues. They will be explored in a series of artistic interventions and accompanying essays. 
credits

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Catalog Number: AVM 081 
Releasedate: April 24th, 2025 
Format: Tape/Digital 

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Curated by Marcel Schulz. 
Mastered by Fritz Brückner. 
Cover art by Janett Andrejewski. 
Press release by Kristoffer Cornils. 
Theoretical exposé by Patrick Hohlweck. 

© & ℗ 2025 Altin Village & Mine — all rights reserved. 

Dumbo Tracks + The Field — Axel, Sebastian and Philipp

HJirok — Passaporte

Station 17 + Datashock — Salamander

Odd Okoddo + Angel Bat Dawid — Ninuwang (Version)

Vivien Goldman + PTTRNS — Narcissus

HJirok is a mythical figure, conceived as a fictional character by Iranian-born Kurdish singer and artist Hani Mojtahedy. Together with versatile music producer Andi Toma of Mouse on Mars, she combined a variety of sounds collected during their joint travels to Iraqi Kurdistan and elsewhere with heavily processed recordings of Sufi drum rhythms and setar melodies. The result is a driving, dubbed-out, and deeply intricate soundscape that perfectly sets the stage for Mojtahedy’s extended, unconventional vocal techniques and polyglot lyrics. Both informed by tradition and rigorously forward-looking, »Hjirok« (with a lowercase J) is at once a profoundly personal album and a universal utopian promise. As a ghost from the past, HJirok draws on Mojtahedy’s memories to mould a new future out of them. 

The foundation for »Hjirok« was laid in the city of Erbil in the Kurdish part of Iraq. During one of their stays in the region, Mojtahedy and Toma recorded the three percussionists Hadi Alizadeh, Jawad Salkhordeh and Serdar Saydan as well as setar player Ali Choolaei from Mojtahedy’s backing band while they were playing the rhythms and notes that she had grown up with in the house of her grandfather in the Iranian city of Sanandaj. Her memories of that place revolve around hypnotic Sufi music, dervishes in deep trance, and ecstatic singing. Much like this music seemed to open a portal to other dimensions, the inhabitants of the house lived in a sort of alternative reality: It provided them with a hideaway from political circumstances. Following the Iranian revolution in 1979, a Kurdish rebellion ensued but was met with the utmost brutality by the new regime, which resulted in the death of thousands.

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