Background Character - Vignette I

FUJI||||||||||TA, MMM, LP
Hallow Ground
Vinyl / digital, catalogue nr. HG2403
Ltd. purple vinyl / digital
Release date 18. April 2024

FUJI||||||||||TA returns to Hallow Ground with his second full-length for the Swiss label after it had released his international breakthrough album »iki« in early 2020. Active since 2006, the Japanese composer and sound artist has become prolific since the release of »iki,« releasing a slew of records while also touring the world. His new album »MMM« is Yosuke Fujita’s most complex so far. Changing the set-up of his pipe organ by switching to an electric air pump allowed him to activate new sonic and compositional potentials of the instrument, while he also expanded upon his experiments with his own voice. »MMM« is a masterpiece of conceptual and formal rigour—a testament to how multi-layered and versatile the music of FUJI||||||||||TA can be. 

Previous releases had already showcased Fujita's interest in working with the rhythmic potentials of the organ he built himself in 2009. Replacing its hand-operated air pump with an electric one allowed him to work with it more freely and simultaneously record its sounds. This marked the starting point for the opener »M-1,« for which he recorded the pipes by waving a gun microphone close to it, thus creating shifting rhythmic patterns. The piece engages in a perpetual play of repetition and difference, balancing sonic intensity with compositional dramaturgy. For »M-2,« the artist uses his voice and works with a singing technique he has developed over more than a decade: constantly exhaling and inhaling, he puts a strain on his internal organs in order to create what he calls a »third voice.« The resulting piece is built on a throbbing rhythmic foundation topped by wordless melodies.

»M-3« closes the album as a synthesis of these two pieces, but is far more than the mere sum of its parts. The subtle tonal shifts of the organ take on a more subdued role this time, and Fujita’s scat growling and singing reappears in processed form. »M-3« combines the rhythms and melodies of the previous pieces to let something entirely new emerge out of them, much like the album is based on perpetual changes and recombinatory strategies. In fact, Fujita explains, the acronymic title can be read in many ways: this album is minimalistic, but freely mixes and mingles different materials in magical and even metaphorical ways while also paying its dues to his wife and daughter—M. and M. Just like its title can mean a lot of different things, »MMM« itself is ever-evolving, traversing different moods and opening itself up to a plethora of interpretations at each of its many turns.

FUJI||||||||||TA  -  M-3

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet - HOAX (PAN 148)
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 148
Release Date: 04 October 2024
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/HOAX

Mutating out of the collaborative practice established on STROBE.RIP, Amnesia Scanner and Freeka Tet are so back with a new dual record project that explores and explodes norms of music production, songwriting and sonic aesthetics. HOAX is *not* an album and remix released together, but rather, a singular experience unfolding as two mirroring, mutually-reinforcing (or perhaps deconstructing) records.

The Amnesia Scanner “AS HOAX” record administers the liquid drip of devastating ballads, wandering mosh-ups and industrial flood lights that we fiend for. But, as with every AS record it is impossible to mistake the grunged-out doom for nihilism: there is simply too much raw emotion, vulnerable narrative and playful experimentation. With drums and chaos from Freeka on four “ASFT” tracks, AS has delivered perhaps their most prescient, hopeful and soon-to-be-seminal record of their genre-defining career.

Against this belligerent crispness emerges the sublime obelisk of noise in Freeka Tet’s “FT HOAX”. This is the debut full-length record released under the Freeka Tet moniker. It is a conceptual art piece that is unapologetically immediate. Using custom bashed scripts the AS record is negated, inverted and buffed down to reveal underlying rhythms and textures.

Freeka has taken the ubiquitous technology of noise-canceling headphones as a point of departure for this experiment in music-denial. The desire for eliminating environmental sounds is turned inwards to undermine the music itself. A variety of original techniques are used for ambient AS cancellation including creating a virtual space simulation and adding noise to spectrogram images.

While Freeka’s gesture is extreme, the result brings you to a serene contemplative plateau. The dual mirrored records are meant to be unlocked together: listening to the drone-ification opens up patterns and movements previously hidden, your newly trained ear will go deeper into the layers of subliminal encoding on HOAX leaving you reprogrammed.

The lyrics are a sticker suspended above reflective abyss: labeled ingredients are anchors that pull a connection out of the crashing shores of Oracle’s baritone sax croning and operatic countertenor samples from latent space. The resulting They Live glasses that are ripped from your eyes makes this dual record project a scathing polemic on state of music and creativity, thus raising the stakes of what it means to be an artist in the post-post-post-digital-crypto-AI-utopia-anthropocene.

Written and produced by Amnesia Scanner
ASFT RUFF, ASFT TAZZIE, ASFT ISSOK, ASFT ICAROS, written and produced by Freeka Tet & Amnesia Scanner
Drums on ASTF TAZZIE & ASFT ISSOK by Freeka Tet
Mixed by Amnesia Scanner
Additional mixing on AS OVER by Enyang Urbiks
Mastered by Enyang Urbiks

FT HOAX

Freeka Tet - FT Ruff (Active noise cancelling script)

slyn invites Diego V Navarro (@diegovnavarro) to join for this month's installment of in Passing tides ~ with Diego on the first half of the mix and slyn on the second ~

 "a mix that invites you to let yourself float in an ocean of sound formed by a selection of water-inspired Kankyō Ongaku shimmering gems." - Diego V Navarro


cover image by Diego V Navarro

in Passing tides 07 ~  Diego V Navarro & slyn ~ (16.10.24) (Retreat Radio)

🌐 Refuge Worldwide is a radio station and community space based in Berlin-Neukölln.

➡️ More info, more music: www.refugeworldwide.com

Support us by becoming a member on Patreon for just 3€ a month: www.patreon.com/refugeworldwide

Somewhere Else - esile & Glint - 23 Oct 2024

++ PRESENTATION ++

Inspired by the iconic tradition of the sample pack, the Source Folder series seeks to explore the diversity of interpretations, paths and offsprings that might emerge from a common resource. In each installment, a member of the Global URL Nation provides a sample pack from which other artists are invited to create a new track.

((o))
For this second edition, we welcome long-time collaborator Bademjan - a French artist blending heavily processed instruments with arcane atmospheres and raw emotions to unveil the sublime in their delicate intricacies.

For the project, he drew inspiration from early video game music, challenging 14 artists to collaboratively imagine the soundtrack of an ethereal, otherworldly video game. At the heart of the project is a collection of 25 custom-designed instruments – a unified palette of ambient washes, celestial leads, and weathered textures – that served as the exclusive sound source for the tracks, reminiscent of the creative limitations of the 16-bit era.

((o))
The result is a compilation of 14 tracks by aeria, B E N N, commun des mortels, False Self, Guenter Råler, Indigoblue, jjjacob, Léo Dubois, Levier, Lukann, Peow Beow, Sçlé, Sioban and Sopoorific.

Each track feels like a gateway to its own unique realm, a portal to its own liminal space, where wistful melodies and haunting textures intertwine. While some tracks evoke a tender nostalgia, wrapping the listener in bitcrushed warmth, others explore darker, more mysterious tones – all coming together beautifully as an immersive journey through uncharted dreamscapes.

((o))
The source folder containing the sampled instruments is available for anyone to use at this link : 
https://clublatemusic.com/resources


++ TRACKLIST ++

01. jjjacob - Dragol Steps
02. aeria - Raelynn
03. Sçlé - Snake Hangover
04. Guenter Råler - Abyss Glow
05. levier - Goofy Personnage
06. Léo Dubois - Journey to the Crystal Prism Sanctum
07. indigoblue - Spring Meadow (Morning to Nighttime) 
08. Sioban - Still running through my screen
09. commun des mortels - Lighthouse keeper
10. Sopoorific - Lament of the forgotten
11. PeowBeow - Frozen Momentum
12. B E N N - As sure as the dawn
13. Lukann - Limbo
14. False Self - Echo of One

++ CREDITS ++ 

Tracks produced by aeria, B E N N, commun des mortels, False Self, Guenter Råler, Indigoblue, jjjacob, Léo Dubois, Levier, Lukann, Peow Beow, Sçlé, Sioban, Sopoorific

https://soundcloud.com/mar-vila-495521800
https://soundcloud.com/bedoublensound
https://soundcloud.com/commundesmortels
https://soundcloud.com/falseself
https://soundcloud.com/guenterraler
https://soundcloud.com/indigoblue97
https://soundcloud.com/jjjacob
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/leo-dubois
https://soundcloud.com/levier93
https://soundcloud.com/lukann4
https://soundcloud.com/peow-beow
https://soundcloud.com/scleee
https://soundcloud.com/siobann
https://soundcloud.com/sopoorific

Cover and visual works by Yann Le Frit
https://www.instagram.com/ynhame_lefrit/

Mastering by Bademjan
https://www.instagram.com/_bademjan/

aeria - Raelynn

unmade - 23/01/2025

moonlight yuh spotlight yuh

[EP052] evo-natura presents: T2HDOF, an EP By Noah Rosa.

Aired via https://soundcloud.com/stegi-radio-athens.

Noah Rosa - Gentle rain, thunder, Ninh Binh
Music From Vietnam (Smithsonian Folkways) - Ho Ru Con (Lullaby)
Noah Rosa - Pure land 2022
Sequences - Hypnagogia 
Noah Rosa - Cicadas, distant motorcycles, Hanoi
Music From Vietnam (Smithsonian Folkways) - Doh Dam Mutai (Funeral Song)
Noah Rosa - Motorcycles, street sounds, Hanoi
Noah Rosa - An empty vessel
Richard Skelton - Threads across the river
Noah Rosa - Chickens, distant bikes, birds, Ninh Binh
Noah Rosa - Đàn đáy (Pham Dinh Hoang)
Tarawangsawelas - Selalu 
Leila Bordreuil - Sleep Cycle
Noah Rosa - Heavy rain, heavy wind, Hanoi
Noah Rosa - The lotus thorn
Noah Rosa - Rain, birds, AC, Hanoi
Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang - Ordered Pairs I
Noah Rosa - Loud street, garbage bell, sweeping, Hanoi
Noah Rosa - Metabolizing despair

Commissioned by Stegi Radio
Produced by Onassis Stegi

Background Character - Vignette I

Hamilton Tapes