Now On Numero: 90s Essentials

from 'HYMNEN UND HELDEN' [CD|LP|DIGITAL]
Denovali Records · den387
available on all formats at http://denovali.com/sanktotten  


Alongside with the release of the new album “Tote Winkel”, Sankt Otten will be delighting us with another limited vinyl bonus release. “Hymnen und Helden” (hymns and heroes) is a collection of cover versions created over the last few years. As the album title suggests, it pays homage to self-proclaimed musical hymns and heroes from the seventies and eighties.


HYMNEN UND HELDEN – track by track:

A well-known Moog sequence leads us on the way into the cover album. Giorgio Moroders 1977 disco classic “I feel love” has been tackled here. Sankt Ottens instrumental interpretation starts out familiar, but ends in a slightly disturbing disharmony of mellotron and ebow guitar.

The instrumental version of the melancholy Wipers anthem from 1983 starts with a rather unusually fast 808 beat for Sankt Otten. The 80s electronic echoes suit the punk rock earworm “Doom Towen” surprisingly well.

Without Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, more unusual electronic music would hardly have been conceivable in Germany in the early 1980s. “Alles ist gut” tribute to this band and singer Gabi Delgado-Lopez, who passed away in 2020 and with whom they shared the festival stage in 2015. Gabi‘s lyrics are rendered by text- to-speech software with the voice of an unknown Claudia.

“Wishing (If I had a photograph of you)” was made famous in 1982 by A Flock of Seagulls. This record was regularly played on Stephan Ottens turntable back then. Reason enough to remember this with “Sehnen (Hät- te Ich von dir eine Fotografie)”. The recordings for this album were made in 2007 and have been updated and completed in the last year. Carsten Sandkämper, who was also featured on Sankt Ottens debut album “Eine kleine Traurigkeit”, contributed the vocals and lyrics.

The Swiss band Grauzone became famous with the NDW hit “Eisbär”. Instead of this title, they took on the B-side of this single with “Ich liebe sie”. A synthpop love song full of innocence, stylishly sung by Carsten San- kämper and refined with Kraftwerk-like choral sounds and an herbaceous motorik beat.

The band has enjoyed a personal friendship with Harald Grosskopf since their collaboration in 2013 on the album “Messias Maschine”. With “So weit, so gut”, they take on his little hit from the album “Synthesist”, which is one of the gems of the synthesizer albums of the eighties.

“Kriegsmaschinen, fahrt zur Hölle” is an anti-war song from 1974 by Günter Schickert, the Berlin master of the echo guitar. Unfortunately, the lyrics are still relevant. Oliver Klemm contributes the delay guitars and Stephan Otten puts the lyrics through a vocoder. Sankt Otten compress the 17-minute original to just under 5 minutes and move it musically from the 70s to the 80s.

Sankt Otten’s adaptation of David Bowies “Heroes” is equipped with warm Juno 106 sounds, ebow guitar and synthesizer pads. The German “Helden” version, known from the movie Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, is sung in a touching way by Carsten Sandkämper.


New York-based Rafael Anton Irisarri was responsible for mastering of the record. As part of the series with graphic covers, this die-cut artwork was also created by Mexican designer Daniel Castrejon. The one time only vinyl pressing, limited to 350 copies, comes in a beautifully designed die-cut cover and colored vinyl. The Osnabrück duo Sankt Otten, founded in 1999, have been releasing on Denovali since 2009. The band has dedicated itself to the holy trinity of Krautrock, Ambient and contemporary Electronics.

Sankt Otten - Doom Town

Moos

Ried-Brig

Labastida

Stream/buy the new album, 'we're having a barn dance': https://lavender.lnk.to/barndance/
Stream the single: https://lavender.lnk.to/harlequinlosdias/

lavender are Oskar Rice and Adam Jackson; friends since school, one a DJ/producer, one in an indie band, their burgeoning friendship saw them bonding over Elliot Smith as much as J Dilla. Their debut EP garnered praise and appreciation, with lead single peppermint currently on 22 million Spotify streams. The recently released lowlight:slowlight won a plethora of support from Clash, Wonderland, The Line Of Best Fit, DMY, BBC 6Music and more. 

Their new album, we're having a barn dance, is the story of one tumultuous year of living, loving (and the falling out thereof). The songwriting is a diary of an eventful 12 months. “We had a big chat about what this all means to us,” explains Oskar, “And we boiled it down to this: it’s about love, but not necessarily romantic love. It’s about all of those competing emotions and how, if you love one thing, it might detract from loving something else.”
 
we’re having a barn dance is both literally and metaphorically their one year safari of discovery, starting in a farmhouse in France through to a studio behind Lidl in Limehouse. “I think the album for me feels like a journey,” explains Adam. “I was definitely fixated on this multifaceted concept of ‘home’ throughout the writing process. It seems to start with a departure and sets in motion an attempt to try and locate, then return to, an ever-evolving sense of home. Which is interesting as I was couch-surfing for the bulk of the time we were writing the album, living across so many different homes. Oskar and I gave each other permission to use the shared project as a personal outlet. And making it was entwined with a process of self-reckoning and was helpful in a way that I hadn’t experienced from music before.”

“We were pretty perfectionist,” says Oskar. “Took a while tweaking everything and making it right. And it really documents, I think, that year in a really nice way.”

"'harlequin/los días azules' is the conclusion of the album. It is a reflection and triumphant end of a chapter, simultaneously looking back with fondness and forward with optimism. It was the last track we made for the album, and benefits from hindsight providing some final musings and a level of resolve on the themes of the album".

lavender - harlequin/los días azules

That's Why She Hates Me

Release Date: June 5, 2025
Artist: Rhian Sheehan, Arli Liberman
Title: Sentio
Catalogue Number: LPD257
Label: Loop Electronic
Format: Digital Single
Genre: Electronic, Ambient, Post-Rock

Sentio

Gemini b/w Everybody's Bored

Gemini

Greyscale

Love 15

Boyfriend

No. 1 Fan

One Day I'll Be On Time

The Sailor

Order 'Union Cafe' on LP/CD/DL: phonofile.link/union-cafe

Erased Tapes has the huge privilege of reissuing the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s last ever studio album Union Cafe including a first time vinyl edition — out now to coincide with the 20th Anniversary of founder Simon Jeffes’ passing in 1997.

It was 1972 in the South of France when Simon had an unfortunate experience with food poisoning which lead to a much more fortunate circumstance when a vivid dream, induced from his illness and depicting a dystopian future, conceived the Penguin Cafe; a charming place where solace, harmony, and the orchestra’s unique music could be found amidst brutal concrete structures and darkness. For the following 25 years, Simon carried out this vision bringing brightness into a world full of noise. Sadly, after his passing, the original orchestra disbanded, but the doors to this happy place reopened when his son Arthur decided to continue his father’s legacy under the name Penguin Cafe.

The continuation of the PCO began at London’s Union Chapel in 2007 when Arthur and the original musicians commemorated Simon 10 years after his death. Another 10 years forward, 2017 will see Penguin Cafe pay tribute to him once again at the Union Chapel on December 11th where they will perform Union Cafe in full – a union from all corners of this magical world.

Union Cafe was the fifth, and the last studio album by Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It was initially released in 1993 merely on cassette and CD, and will now be given a new breath of life, for the first time available on vinyl, and another chance to reach old and new fans alike.

“Union Cafe was the last studio album recorded by the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra and marked a move towards a definitive English pastoral sound combined with larger string arrangements set against longer solo piano pieces. With this last album they got even closer to the PCO idea of squaring the circle of intellectually challenging modern music that is still actually beautiful. For me this has always been a contender as my favourite PCO album, and the fact that it never ended up on vinyl was more to do with the way things were in the early 90s, and chance rather than it being deliberate. So in that sense this release is righting an old wrong. The slow development of the pieces means that you can really get lost in them and vinyl is of course the perfect way to do that.” — Arthur Jeffes

Arthur very kindly gave access to the original Union Cafe painting that currently lives in his North London home studio, created by Arthur’s mother Emily Young and now photographed by Alex Kozobolis for this special reissue edition.

Union Cafe

Buy 2LP/CD/DL

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Kora Kora

Berlin based cellist and composer Anne Müller shares a second piece, 'Drifting Circles', ahead of her long awaited debut solo album 'Heliopause'.

'Heliopause' follows several Erased Tapes releases featuring Anne, including her celebrated collaboration with Nils Frahm titled 7fingers, appearances on Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm’s Collaborative Works, Nils Frahm’s All Melody and his acclaimed soundtrack for the film Victoria, Lubomyr Melnyk’s Fallen Trees, as well as the two bespoke solo pieces Walzer für Robert and Bel Tono for the label’s 5th and 10th anniversary box sets. In fact, a glance at Müller’s Discogs boasts credits on over 60 releases since she began recording in 2007.

Classically trained at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts under the renowned cellist and conductor Michael Sanderling, Anne Müller performed as a cellist in many of Berlin’s symphonies for some time before choosing a different path with her music and focussing on novel approaches to classical instrumentation. A profound believer in the power of artistic collaboration, Anne’s skilled cello playing and instinctive composition became extremely sought after.

Following her work with Nils Frahm, an enduring partnership with singer-songwriter-composer Agnes Obel ensued, touring for five years together and featuring on two albums (Philharmonics and Aventine) and most recently, working with multi-instrumentalist Markus Sieber (aka Aukai) on his 2019 album Reminiscence. In between all this, Müller also co-founded the progressive live project Solo Collective along with violinist/singer Alex Stolze and pianist/conceptual artist Sebastian Reynolds, releasing Solo Collective Part One in 2017.

A solo record in every sense of the word, Müller wrote, recorded, arranged and produced Heliopause. The album is named after the boundary where the sun’s wind ceases to have influence. It is ultimately, the border of our solar system. The name struck a chord with Müller since the two voyagers sent on an exploratory mission 42 years ago, recently crossed the Heliopause, entering into interstellar space and losing power from our own sun. Müller recognised herself in this moment, not only approaching the same age, but also breaking new ground; having relied on collaborating with so many other stars and now venturing into the unknown with her first solo statement; “Heliopause marks the end of a long journey but also the start of voyages to explore strange new worlds”

Both as the closing title track and album as a whole, Heliopause crosses these physical and invisible borders throughout, sending the cello as a typically classical instrument to exciting new and uncharted territory.

· pre-order 'Heliopause' on LP/CD/DL:  idol.lnk.to/Heliopause

Heliopause

Drifting Circles

Buy LP/CD/DL

Anne Müller - Drifting Circles

@juliagjertsen curates our latest mix with a beautiful selection of tracks featuring Bersarin Quartett, Dmitry Evgrafov, Daigo Hanada, Jim Perkins, Daniel Pemberton and much more. 

Julia released her album 'Fragile' on @modernarecords in November which you can listen to and purchase here: https://modernarecords.bandcamp.com/album/fragile 

Tracklist:
Bersarin Quartett - Wenn wir nur wollen             00:00
Jonas Meyer - Strömung                                      04:40
Dmitry Evgrafov - Anthem                                   11:59
Daigo Hanada - En                                               14:39
Mette Henriette - Passé                                        18:11
Jim Perkins - Enfolding                                         22:58
Niklas Paschburg - If                                             27:04
The Seven Fields of Aphelion - Michigan Icarus   32:00
Chris Watson - El Divisadero                                 37:04 
Daniel Pemberton - OSR I - I                                 42:15
Nuojuva - Hämärään                                             45:57

Contemplative Classical Mix

Julia Gjertsen - Contemplative Classical Guest Mix

The Sailor

The Album Leaf

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