really like this - super atmo! who's at the controls??

Composer & date: Martin Read 2000
Dedicated to: Phil Nash & Hampshire Youth Jazz Orchestra

...go mad in a quiet way

Taken from the forthcoming album 'Flesh'. Release date 21st September 2015.


Composer and producer Robert Logan’s first album ‘Cognessence’ [2007] prompted   an array of rave reviews and favourable comparisons to some of the giants of electronic music. Still only 19 at the time he was described as “…something of a prodigy… a man that is already showing a maturity and a musical/textural understanding that many simply never find.” [BBC]. A second album ‘Inscape’ and a clutch of EP’s garnered yet more praise and cemented his reputation as an artist with immense talent.

His recent ‘Extasis EP’ marked his first solo release five years, a period in which he diverted his attentions to his blossoming career in soundtrack work and notable collaborations with the likes of Brigitte Fontaine, Grace Jones, Steve Roach and Skye [Morcheeba].  The EP received support and praise from the likes of BBC6, Igloo, Sound Colour Vibration, DJ Mag and Vinyl Factory to name a few.

The follow up ‘Flesh’ is Logan’s third full-length album and sees him further develop his idiosyncratic sound whilst continuing to open up new possibilities within the field of electronic music. As ever, Logan’s methodology is rooted in an obsessive desire to push the technology at his disposal to the limit – all his sounds are created from scratch or are created by deconstructing found sounds and acoustic instruments through extreme digital processes. Moreover, most of the album is composed using quarter tones, an experiment which is most in evidence on tracks that feature contributions from Andy Knight [Emporor’s New Clothes] on pocket trumpet. Other contributors include Sarah Sarhandi on viola and drummer Frank Byng [Snorkel, Prescott] who guests on the first three tracks and is a nod to his live band set up. This contrast between ‘live’ instrumentation and his own digital methods taps into some of the themes that Logan is exploring in the music and that give the album its title – ideas about flesh and spirit, technology and nature, mind and matter.

The music on offer ranges from the melodic and garage inspired bounce of ‘Phrack’, the sophisticated dark grooves of ‘Viker Raver’ and ‘Straighten’, the complex and breathless overtures and overtones of ‘Vespine Domain’ and ‘Spirit Wars’, to his more out of the box experiments with tracks such as ‘Glad Centipede’, ‘Cyborg Horn’ and ‘Playground’.


Robert Logan - Phrack

https://soundcloud.com/id3 https://soundcloud.com/soundmouse

ID3 Feat. Soundmouse - Hummingbird

Between The Houses

Rafael Anton Irisarri from "The Shameless Years"
Available in LP & Digital
www.umor-rex.org © 2017 Umor Rex Records

Post-minimalist American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri makes his Umor Rex debut with bold new album, The Shameless Years. Inspired by a troubled socio-political climate, buried melodies punch their way through a bleak cover of noisy drones, periodically veering into some of Irisarri’s most eerily pertinent music to date.

One of Rafael Anton Irisarri’s most thematically and sonically cohesive records to date The Shameless Years came together in a relatively short burst of creativity starting at the end of 2016. Rediscovering some relatively older tools - namely Native Instruments’ Reaktor, Absynth, and Kontakt software - Irisarri combined them with his collection of guitars, pedals, amps, and analogue processing gear, turning his Black Knoll Studio north of NYC into a powerful writing tool. Completed quickly by Irisarri’s standards, let alone during a period of social upheaval in American society, the record faces down several key personal themes. The title, suggests Irisarri, could in fact be seen as a reflection of the era of shamelessness we’re currently living in; a time of fake news and alternative facts.

Two tracks were completely remotely between Irisarri in New York and Umor Rex veteran Siavash Amini from his home in Tehran, Iran. This music came together at the peak of all the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric happening in the USA, not to mention the banning of Iranians from entering the country, explains Irisarri. The diptych with Amini, ‘Karma Krama’ and ‘The Faithless’, seems bathed in additional waves of sorrow and dread. The wash of symphonic stormclouds of synth drones and processed notes on the latter gradually appears and disappears over the course of thirteen mournful minutes.

‘Rh Negative’ marches gigantic guitars through towering valleys of scarred ambient noise dealing with Irisarri’s own heritage, many of his ancestors having come to America to escape poverty and oppression. The refusal of modern America to extend similar sanctuary to refugees escaping turmoil weighs heavily on the composer. Elsewhere an emotional onslaught of notes buried in mounds of greyscale noise on ‘Sky Burial’ aims to deal with Irisarri’s very own mortality – something he was recently confronted with following health scares, an accident, and a near-death experience in 2016. Pushing 40 as this album was being made, the composer is constantly aware that he’s already outlived his own father, who died at the age of 32. Facing down both intolerance and the void, the epic soundscapes of The Shameless Years are a vast cry of emotion from Irisarri. The clock is ticking - gotta make the most out of it while you still can.

All songs written and performed by Rafael Anton Irisarri, except #5 & #6 written and performed with Siavash Amini. Design by Daniel Castrejón, photos by Camilo Christen. Mastered by James Plotkin.

The Shameless Years

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Rafael Anton Irisarri — RH Negative

Tokiomi’s Secret Stash is a limited release cassette tape containing all new original material from Japanese beatmaker: https://soundcloud.com/tokiomi. The double-sided album features 2 x twenty minute “sets” of seamlessy mixed beats, atmospheres and sonic environments with Toki’s signature sound present throughout.

Buy : http://adsrmusic.ca/album/secret-stash
Released: Nov. 16. 2017

Between The Houses

The Non-Functional Saints

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