In the plastic bag

Cmdc - Shine A Light Through An Open Door

"Veering from fractured hyperpop into deconstructed club oddness and ambience, this album is a restless and rewarding experience that will delight fans of the Orange Milk catalogue and the stranger corners of Oneohtrix Point Never’s discography." (https://soundcloud.com/djmag) 

"Time and time again, we have found ourselves lost in this album. A potent stew of element we’d possible not normally enjoy tumbling in space with sections we wish continued into far longer expanses." (Obladada) 

On Organe Solaire (GEN051) by https://soundcloud.com/amselysen a coherent ensemble is presented consisting of digital, hyperprocessed textures, minuscule sound fragmentations and impassioned, pressing vocal broadcasts. Deceptively, the sound at intermittently even approaches something like a sugary sweet pop production: chord stabs, piano tones, heartfelt howling, energetic kicks, the whole works. The most powerful weapons in the electro-acoustic toolkit are used here: sound events occur on a microscopic scale, sliced, granulated, pitch-bent, resonant, bubbling, stretching - but at the same time have an impactful, cinematic, piercing quality. From the arrangement point of view there is a cryptic multi-centered, restless logic, with the trajectory of all tracks constantly getting out of balance, twisting, self-subverting. The human voice, or the remnants of it, form an important thread through this album; spanning a wide tonal, textural range, the voice material is sometimes vocoded, stuttering, crushed, resampled, fried, totally pushed beyond its limits; but at other times innately performative, assertive - a declaration of intent or active intervention, conveying meaning, communicating something important. Organe solaire follows 2020's murky transmission Hypnagogic Surge.

/ Hakeem Lapointe (https://soundcloud.com/amselysen) about GEN051
“My [Amselysen’s] second full length album’s focus, Organe Solaire, strays from conceptual music and goes on dissecting and splaying a dark but colourful sludge of emotions. A major point source in my compositional approach to the record has been imagining the trajectory of hyper-pop if it evolved with a more pessimistic tendency, with the same bells and whistles, but less shiny and squeaky clean — like the rainbow reflections of tar bubbles.
Organe Solaire, unable to afford being cryptic, doubles down on honest, raw lyricism and is quick to open up, building a comprehensive musical and gestural language that reflects the narratives behind each and every track. They range from slow suicidal ballads, to demented hyper-melancholic pop, to interludes containing heavy narratives, like Discrepancies (for Kellyanne): a heavily filtered piano composition dating from my late teens, also acting as a hope to reach out to a long lost then-best friend.
I did not shy away at referencing personal idols who’ve inspired me throughout the years: The Labour of Love samples Akira Fuse’s Shikuramen No Kahori, a song mentioned in Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko’s feature length film Kuro, and matches its theme: gazing at the afterimage of a romance long gone. Post-modern Tsunami, as outlined by “shoutout to Hito Steyerl”, is made to the image of Steyerl’s Liquidity Inc.: in its wave-like structure; in its senseless meme aesthetic; and nods at its conceptual approach, dissecting contemporary culture with economic undertones.
To aid me in my efforts, I have called upon two outstanding collaborators to lend their strengths on the album. I’ve recruited the excellent Ubu Boi, providing tactful compositions and solid vocal performances, and the mysterious 2x|n, a.k.a. Seraphim, for precise sound design and incisive aural interventions.
Delving into romantic torment, drug use, artistic frustrations, struggles with mental illness, Organe Solaire brings forth a fundamentally human experience in the form of raw edges thinly veiled under a layer of gloss.”

Buy & Stream

Amselysen - Cyclamen

TOVE LO - BAD HABITS EDIT

103110 - sunsh1ne

Listen to 'Total Power' by Zack Christ taken from 'Underbearing' out on 10th February via katharsis

Pre-order: https://katharsis-label.bandcamp.com/album/underbearing

The 49th release of katharsis is the album “Underbearing” by Danish artist Zack Christ, coming out in full on February 10th. The album follows his 2024 album “𐘲(𐘨)𐚎𐘲𐝥𐃀𐘡𐘴𐝂.” released with the international artist collective glitch.cool, but takes a few steps away from his usual more cryptic expression by incorporating elements of crystalline clarity and stark four chord anthemic melodies. This clean sound design is juxtaposed by slightly out-of-tune vocals, obscure speech and saxophone(!) samples, and the at times anarchic compositional switch-ups.

Across its 9 tracks, “Underbearing” offers an emotional snapshot of a tumultuous time in the artist’s life, marked by loss and new beginnings. While the album resists strict thematic boundaries, it’s suffused with feelings of grief, transformation, and resilience. Layered with undertones of global and personal crises, the music captures a striking duality—holding both gravity and playfulness in equal measure. In this poignant rollercoaster of sound, meaning remains open, inviting the listener to explore their own interpretation of its vivid contrasts and complexities.

Links:
Zack Christ
https://soundcloud.com/zack-christ
https://www.instagram.com/103_zacksyv
https://linktr.ee/zackchrist
katharsis
https://soundcloud.com/katharsislabel
https://katharsis-label.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/katharsislabel


Underbearing

Zack Christ - Total Power (katharsis)

Funtime - Arunika

STR70

Take Me With You

All Proceeds Will Be Donated To The Palestine Children's Relief Fund

www.pcrf.net

Forever United - Medusa (Forever United Remix)

A snapshot of a short-lived microgenre, created by a niche network of producers in New York, fusing two of the dominant sounds of the city in the mid 2000s – the ostentatious, trunk-knocking drum programming of Diplomats beats, and the euphoric big-room trance sounds spilling from the city's clubs. Dipset Trance.  
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/the-nts-guide-to/episodes/the-nts-guide-to-dipset-trance-8th-april-2025

NTS Guide to: Dipset Trance  080425

STRICHTARN

Excelsus - Makèlèlè (Excelsus Edit)

I'm scared
So afraid to show I care
Will he think me weak
If I tremble when I speak?

So Afraid to Show I Care sees Theo Alexander & Qow assume the role of gleaners and foragers, collecting fragments from over a year of collaboration to produce a palimpsest of sonic layers. Their 30-minute micro-epic is built on an ethic of bricolage, covering tape-recorded ambience, voice note instrumentals, warped acapellas and growling double basses, all of which play out in an uninterrupted narrative.

As unabashedly experimental as it is emotional, the album’s diverse landscape features Egyptian spoken word artist otteswed (formerly known as Aly Talibab) and improvising contrabassist Klára Pudláková. On the leading single, Addictive, Pudláková’s double bass, enters into a melodic dialogue with yearning vocal samples. Towards the end of the album, otteswed delivers an existential soliloquy above waves of organ chords performed by Theo Alexander who sampled church organs from Prague, London and Orford. This album brings together material from a string of high-profile premieres across Europe and the UK featuring a rotating cast of collaborators.

Along with the digital release of the album, comes a limited-edition double cassette tape that includes both the album and selected Live performances from CTM festival ‘25, and PAF festival ‘24 featuring George Cremaschi on Contrabass.

Theo Alexander (London, UK) and Qow (Cairo, Egypt) began working together in 2023, and have respectively been featured in NPR, The Quietus, The Wire, and supported by Shape+, Britten-Pears Arts, and others. 

releases June 6, 2025 

Music written and composed by Theo Alexander & Omar El Sadek
Double bass on Tracks 3, 5, and 9 by Klára Pudláková
Double bass on Live Recording tape by George Cremaschi
Vocals on Track 7 by otteswed
Mixed & Mastered by Oliver Torr
Live recording mixed by George Cremaschi
Artwork by Omar El Sadek, design by Niels Wehrspann

In the plastic bag

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