From Woven Songs, out Feb 2022 on LP and digital

Rosales - Loom

memories

The sonic epilogue to Fionnlagh's debut album, 'What Came Before'. Featuring original material and remixes from ambient heavyweights: Warmth, Powlos, Hilyard, Anwalter, Logic Moon and Seabuckthorn.

Download here: https://bit.ly/3hdecqL
'What Came Before' vinyl here: https://bit.ly/2SZvdsi

What Came After

Download

Fionnlagh - Bj2x8i8l2e0f7s1 (Warmth Remix)

Glacis is London-based Scottish composer Euan Millar-McMeeken, who some may recall from his previous collaboration work on Whitelabrecs including ‘Nothing Hurts Forever’ with Gavin Miller and as one half of Dead Bell, alongside The Green Kingdom. Euan also records as Civic Hall with Craig Tattersall and as Gallowglas alongside Johan G Winther. His most recent work 'Distances' with Adrian Lane was released on vinyl via Oscarson.

As a frequent collaborator, it is fitting that Euan’s debut for Whitelabrecs is in fact further partnered music in the form of ‘Interpretations’. He invited 11 artists to adapt, distort and deconstruct a collection of his original compositions, realising these into an album in its own right. Interpretations are not simply remixes. Euan explains that he’s never really liked the term ‘remix’ as it simplifies the process of working with original material. He never intended for this record to be a remix record and now it is complete, this feeling remains.

Euan aimed high in curating his artists, enlisting the likes of Tape Loop Orchestra, the Humble Bee, C.Diab and Satomimage and placing them alongside friends and regular collaborators including The Green Kingdom, Simon McCorry and Adrian Lane.

The tracks contained on Interpretations are all careful sonic studies of the original work that respond and react in different ways. Some of the pieces contain moments of the original pieces, some are unrecognisable, all are fascinating examinations. A rebirth, of a kind, from the original idea. Through these interpretations, the tracks are given new meaning and new life. Remarkably, this hour of music stands together as an album experience, despite the variety of the line-up and each artist’s approach to composition.

interpretations

wlr142 glacis - interpretations

https://christineott.bandcamp.com/album/eclats-piano-works

Two years after Time to Die, French composer Christine Ott returns to Gizeh Records with her fifth album, Éclats (Piano Works), a collection of twelve pieces for solo piano, twelve impressionistic miniatures, instrumental and cinematic fractals celebrating the beauty of life.

Éclats (Piano Works) is a kind of mirror image to Chimères (for Ondes Martenot) (2020, Nahal Recordings), which showcased her other favourite instrument, and for which Christine Ott is particularly renowned - as she is through her past collaborations with Yann Tiersen, Tindersticks, and this year with Chilly Gonzales. But here, there's no vintage electronics: the musician unfurls acoustic landscapes in black and white, alone at the piano, behind a Steinway, a Fazioli or her father's old Prestel. The album opens with Pluie d'arbres, a powerful yet delicate allegory of deforestation. This duality runs through the album, whose energy is sometimes melancholy, sometimes hopeful, but always generous and full of empathy.

Sometimes nourished by revealing improvised gestures and crystallised during live performances, these new pieces by Christine Ott also make the link with various projects by the artist, both on stage and in film. Die Jagd nach dem Glück (The Pursuit of Happiness) is an extract from her original composition for Lotte, mon amour, a film-concert created in 2014 based on 4 short films by Lotte Reiniger, a German director from the first half of the 20th century. Lotte Reiniger was a true pioneer of animated film, and her films are still incredibly modern and human. Originally composed for piano, Martenot ondes and viola, this highly romantic piece is presented here in its simplest orchestration. Éruption Volcanique also foreshadows another film-concert work by Christine Ott, to come in 2024, for Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran. Set on a storm-swept island off the coast of Ireland, the film depicts the daily life of a fishing family in the 1930s. In a film-concert with an ambitious, physical and immersive score, the musician pays tribute to the courage of these inhabitants, united by a strong sense of solidarity, in constant battle with the elements.

Éclats (Piano Works) presents works recorded over a long period of time; a clear homage to Hitchcock, the writing of Vertigo undoubtedly has its origins in the composer's youth. Some pieces, such as Étreintes and Amours étoilés, were recorded during the sessions for Only Silence Remains (2016), and Christine Ott has regularly performed Golden Valley on stage since its creation in 2018 - whether as solo piano or rearranged in groups as part of her parallel projects (Snowdrops, Theodore Wild Ride...). Other compositions, such as Clouds of Dreams, are much more recent. So it's a real gift to finally discover on record the variety and richness of these twelve original compositions, which have long remained in the shadows.

And to bring these melodic bursts to life, Christine Ott called on the services of visual artist Léa Barbazanges, who creates sculptures and installations using assemblages of plant, mineral and animal materials. The works that adorn the album cover come from her Optiques series; 12 photographs of crystals seen through a lens, like a poetic prism that brings us closer to living things, their textures and ramifications, as obvious as they are complex, and that give a formidable visual echo to the 12 compositions on the album.

Étreintes

Drift

Nebel Lang - Why Should I Stay?  

1. (situate)
2. like riddles
3. filled with sound

--

Something must have happened in my life.
Pondering questions like riddles, calm and collected.
Wondering where all the hours went,
I once had spent here,
looking at myself a bit puzzled.

Something must have caught my attention,
immersed into a different assignment, perhaps.
This precious time in between,
that is now filled with sound and ripe reality.

--

https://nebellang.bandcamp.com/album/why-should-i-stay

Recorded in August 2023

Photography by Patrick Smith
instagram.com/paddyjw

Field recording in "(situate)" by giddster
freesound.org/people/giddster

Text collage

--

Available now on Bandcamp

(̶s̶i̶t̶u̶a̶t̶e̶)̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶ ̶p̶i̶e̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶p̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶e̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶s̶t̶a̶b̶l̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶v̶o̶l̶u̶m̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶t̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶.̶

Why Should I Stay?

filled with sound

Nebel Lang - Why Should I Stay?  - Filled With Sound

Slow Heart Music is the acoustic side project of ambient and drone musician Ben Rath. Based in Manchester, UK, Ben has released music under his own name with labels including Sound in Silence, Unknown Tone Records, Eilean Rec., Cathedral Transmissions, Moonswing Netlabel, Triple Moon Records and Whitelabrecs. As Slow Heart Music, Ben focuses more closely on solo acoustic guitar instrumentals and has released albums exclusively through Whitelabrecs.
The majority of Ben's musical output finds its home in the rich and diverse territory of experimental ambient and drone music. Ben creates compositions using original recordings of guitar, keyboard, and piano, as well as samples, field recordings, and digital synthesizers. These sounds from various sources are then moulded, transformed, and edited together to form instrumental arrangements which span a wide variety of styles, tones, and emotional registers, with inspiration drawn from pioneers in the genre such as Tim Hecker and Lawrence English, the early ambient works of artists such as Sean McCann and Colleen, and the emotional weight and resonance of Constellation Records greats such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Esmerine (among many others).

Under the Slow Heart Music moniker, Ben strips things back to explore the simple joy of the acoustic guitar. His playing, influenced by the likes of Eric Chenaux and Richard Dawson, as well as the gentle beauty of solo piano works from artists such as Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds, combines a sense of playful and spontaneous improvisation with arrangements and compositions that often express a gentle and tender emotion.

For his new album ‘Hope’, Ben returns to the artful acoustic arrangements and soulful guitar playing that marked his debut as Slow Heart Music, ‘This Body Is Not Me’ (2017). Armed with the same £5 half-size classical guitar which was used to record the first time around, Ben adds a second classical acoustic borrowed from his girlfriend in the spirit of using whatever was to hand to create with. He had a vision for the sound he wanted to achieve, which builds on influences from artists that embrace the mournful and melancholic, but also find beauty and uplift amidst the sadness. As Ben explains, “I’ve struggled with my mental health ever since adolescence, and music was the thing that often provided me with the most solace and comfort. The artists that inspired me were those who were expressing something that felt real to my experience, that taught me that I was not as alone in my feelings of deep sadness and anxiety as I often felt, and that meaning and beauty could still be found and expressed in the midst of it all.’’

Those who know him would describe Ben as a quiet, calm, and reserved person, but his music is the space where he is able to express himself more fully. ‘Hope’ is a collection of soft and minimal pieces, steeped in emotion and feeling, at times mournful, at others uplifting, but never seeking to prematurely soothe or distract from the suffering of the world, instead sitting in the mud of it all, and seeing what can be created from there. It is Ben’s sincere hope that his music may help some other lonely soul feel that little bit more connected and understood.

Hope

wlr161 Slow Heart Music - Hope

Slide (instrumental)

further experiments with the error instruments sonic lullaby and make noise morphagene, this time with a 4ms Dual Looping Delay providing the backwards bits... and, overall, a longer loop in the morphagene for a more sparse sound. i like this one!

july 20, 2017 (music box 20)

Mount Carmel

Call

Whitelabrecs was set up by Harry Towell in late 2015 as another outlet to put out experimental electronic/acoustic music. It followed Harry’s previous labels Audio Gourmet, Tessellate and Warehouse Decay and focuses on a collectable series of highly limited edition vinyl-effect CDr packaging, with the first 50 releases influenced by white label vinyl records. The label also runs a digital only series called eRecords, with each of these releases including a special PDF booklet.

https://www.whitelabrecs.com
https://whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com/

wlr161 Slow Heart Music - Hope

Whitelabrecs

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