Ninth in the Ternesc series, Digital formats release June 18th, Vinyl format released later in the year.

Blawan - Fizz City

Blawan - Justa

X - Fade

Bjarki Runar Sigurðarson returns to the concept album format, with ‘A Guide To Hellthier Lifestyle’. It’s the first LP to be released on Differance, which he co-founded with the artist Thomas Harrington Rawle.

‘A Guide To Hellthier Lifestyle’ explores the psychological landscape of contemporary social issues, offering a sideways rumination on lifestyle dilemmas and wellness obsessions, presenting itself as a response to the modern condition. It combines storytelling with innovative sound textures – encouraging listeners to pause and contemplate the absurdities of contemporary life. Neither a critique nor an endorsement, it represents an honest exploration of our world through Bjarki’s sonic lens, gleaming a heart of darkness, but eventually finding light.

The album utilises hyper-stereo techniques, soothing melodies, complex audio structures, AI-generated voices and sampled vocals – influenced by Coil, Genesis P- Orridge, and Paul Lansky. Bjarki investigates how specific frequencies can impact consciousness, awareness, mood, and mental state, thereby influencing our perception of reality. His vaporous sound design provides a listening experience that bridges the physical and imaginative realms; sometimes placing the listener in contemplative sanctuary, and at others making them lost – somewhere strange, uneasy, disconnected.

Real Insight

Two years after releasing the acclaimed Crash Recoil, Anthony Child aka Surgeon returns to Tresor with new LP, Shell~Wave. Retaining the minimal equipment list and studio-version-of-live-show-sets approach of the previous album in order to focus on the work itself, Shell~Wave is a deeply personal document of both where Surgeon is and has been, converging three decades of experience with a continued curiosity in the untested.

"To make this project, I had to dig really deep in terms of what my relationship was to techno; I've been involved with it for a really long time and there's a lot about it I feel dislocated from, so I had to really think hard about what techno is to me. I often get asked "what is techno to you?" but I can't answer that with words; this album is the answer."

From the complex, twisting track Infinite Eye to the caustic Soul Fire, the eight tracks that make up the body of the album are single-take explorations of the vast, hard yet minimal techno Child is synonymous with. 

Neatly dividing the record in two, the emotional centre of the record comes in the form of Dying, a vibrating, beatless piece that with a mantra-like vocal loop steeped in reverberating effects.

Further echoes of dub production appear throughout the record as tracks like Divine Shadow, and Empty Cloud have an almost ever-present mist of reverberation, driven by the appearance of a new delay unit in the equipment list; while much of the philosophy of Crash Recoil's creation is present, the process and the instruments have changed as Child again switches up his approach to studio work.

This insistence on trying novel techniques doesn't preclude returning to old ones, as this use of modern digital machines with live, hands-on takes that are as inspired by 60s producer Joe Meek and 70s reggae as they are by this year's synthesiser expos.

"For me, it's an interesting experience returning to old techniques again after 30 years. [I'm] always exploring and finding myself back at the beginning. Connecting the present with the past."

This philosophy of 'time travel' is inherent to the music itself as the synchronised loops repeat while the delay and effects branch out, forming unique eddies; distinct quantum moments within the circular whole; the future leaking through the spaces between the sounds. All of the concepts on the album are perfectly communicated through the painting by Taiwanese artist Jazz Szu-Ying Chen which suggests the movement of water, sound waves, and the chitinous shells of sea creatures.

BANDCAMP

Surgeon - Soul Fire

Erwachen

LGN73-Flying Over you-Original mix

1994-2

1994-2 (2019 Version by Skeemask)

Sixth release in the Ternesc series from Blawan

Artwork by Sean Bell 
Mastered by Simon at The Exchange

B2. Blawan - Hapexil Rotator

BLAWAN