Sourced Sustain

Hngwy - Sourced Sustain

From Relaxer's forthcoming album 'Concealer'
https://planet.mu/releases/concealer/
Art by Bjorn Copeland

Daniel Martin-McCormick, formerly known as Ital, now known as Relaxer returns to Planet Mu. His new album ’Concealer’ “was made in a very private way.” McCormick describes the process as being akin to “peering into materials - the materials defined the record. Rather than making a record that's about an emotion, or a political scenario, or the dance floor, or the empty dance floor, or any narrative, this record was about communing with the materials and letting them speak to me. When I say the materials, I mean synth sounds, the space of aggressive digital processing inside the computer, and the formal structures of dance music.”
 
Daniel is well aware of how he’s been viewed as “both inside and outside of dance music” but notes that people are missing the full picture – “there's this third dimension, which is not necessarily tethered to dance music at all. That's maybe my way of hearing. Or the co-resonance with raw materials.” Informed by formal composition studies with electronic pioneer Morton Subotnick and Ben Vida, Concealer began to take shape. “I had this strong feeling that the tracks were these floating sound objects, and I was peering into an empty center point which they orbited around. The center point of empty/radiating emotional resonance... the materials took on a resonance that I responded to while I was working. It's only after the fact that the emotional contour of the album became apparent.” 
 
The cover featuring a work by visual artist and Black Dice member Bjorn Copeland is a big clue to the sound of the record. Relaxer notes that it reflects “this open, airy material squeezed and wrestled into a contorted shape, suspended in air with an empty center. That's exactly how the album felt. In this sense I wanted to take myself out of it, to let the materials bloom into their own shape, guided by my hand but not defined by my intellect or any market concerns.”
 
Martin-McCormick thinks of the sounds on the album as “primarily just… resonant. I mostly hear resonant transience. Sounds disappearing into a field, or being obscured, or crumbling, or being subsumed. Loss.” Daniel continues “emotional resonance... that feeling that art echoes your emotional reality without narrowing it to a single mood. The mood is more like... the reality of one's personhood, reflected in the abstraction of sound.”
 
The album drifts towards some hyper digital sounds and marks Daniel’s return to using a computer in collaboration with hardware. Combining the ultra-artifice of the digital and its glossy, pure surface qualities, Daniel comments that it “gives the sounds this sickly, shiny dimensionality which is a little (a lot?) un-human. This decoupling from the human-ness of sound means the sounds can speak in their own special way. Of course, all sounds can speak in their way, but a vivid, digital, melty synth speaks in a way that feels more autonomous, or less tied to historical/encultured musical gestures. It hovers in the air and melts and glides. It's a little gross.” 
 
His return to Planet Mu has been long overdue. It's been almost ten years since his album ‘Hive Mind’ (under the alias Ital) dropped on Mu, and this new record should be seen as an expansion and deep development of some of the ultra-artificial, hybrid digital contortions of dance music that McCormick started with on ‘Hive Mind.’ Welcome back.

Concealer

Relaxer - Mello

Three Evocations (2021)- M3g

Additional mix by
Engelr Hashim - Evocation III (Engelr Hashim mix)
Grischa Lichtenberger - 3(Grischa Lichtenberger 3 ēvōˈkāSH(ə)ns mix)

https://dingndents.bandcamp.com/album/three-evocations

Three Evocations - Evocation I / II / III / Engelr Hashim mix / 3 ēvōˈkāSH(ə)ns

Laconic Impression - Epidemy

"Belorussia's Laconic Impression appears on Acre for the first time with long-player 'Epidemy'. Laconic Impression - aka Andrew Clam - has been producing since the 90s, moving from noise towards hip hop and beats. Citing influences such as Scorn, Techno Animal, Somatic Responses and Warp luminaries, Clam works under a number of aliases with releases on numerous labels, including Canada's Monkey Dub and Russia's Deep-X. With Epidemy Clam presents us with eleven hefty slabs of lo-fi, industrial beat mangling. Warmly distorting breaks abound, encompassed by quirk and glitch. Track by track Clam sets up head-nodding grooves yet inventively pulls the carpet out, constantly wrong-footing us. With refreshing brevity Epidemy marries grit, dirt and intermittent darkness, offset by beguiling appeal, snatches of hook-like melody and a gentle sense of humour."

Links:

www.discogs.com/artist/4891475-Laconic-Impression
open.spotify.com/artist/7cJSYItVn3ktdKSm2uIthy
soundcloud.com/laconicimpression
credits
releases February 16, 2022

Artwork by Andrew Clam
Mastered by C Mantle

Epidemy

Laconic Impression - Epidemy  [Out Now]

Thank you so much to one Ssyla ( @ssylaxo ) for letting us air his premier mix. It’s an hour of expertly picked tunes and a really great overall concept, thrilled to have this as the second instalment on our Radio Raheem Milano series.

Radio Raheem: Bad Traffic w/Ssyla

IM099 - BOLT RUIN - EHKTA
Label: Infinite Machine
Release date: September 30th, 2022
Format: 12" / Digital

Infinite Machine is proving again it’s a label that refuses to sonically sit still. Having released everything from code-based compositions to bass-heavy techno in 2022, the imprint is readying the release of the black metal-tinged Ehkta by BOLT RUIN later this month. A musician whose work has been described as ‘apocalyptic’ more than once, on this new mini-album, the Belgian producer blends field recordings, twisted samples and rave signifiers with an eerie tonality born out of his nocturnal production sessions and time spent absorbing the silence of his studio garden.

Bridging the gap from his previous record to this one, ‘Sktone’ is a cinematic opener that unfolds like a bad dream in slow motion. Warped samples of Bulgarian choirs glide over synths wired in closed-circuit loops which feed back on themselves, degrading for infinity. Texture and space is added via field recordings of waves crashing over the ruins of ​​Brighton West Pier. This track exemplifies the unexpected influence BOLT RUIN took from the wildlife he witnessed in the garden of his urban studio when working on Ehkta. Adapting to the material at their disposal, weasels and blackbirds create nests from organic waste and human trash - an astute metaphor for the Belgian producer’s compositional approach.

Next up, BOLT RUIN drives up the tempo with the rave-ready ‘Nehng’, where a frenzy of trance arpeggios and frantic drum programming builds and intensifies over its 5-minute duration. Inspired by Yves Klein’s ‘Leap Into a Void’, ‘Nehng’ definitely evokes that bodily rush of freefalling into the unknown. ‘Nehng’’s driving rhythm is switched out for the brooding ‘Tzarhk’ - an ode to the soundtracks of B-movies composed on a vintage Roland SH-2 (a prominent character of the Stranger Things soundtrack). BOLT RUIN runs thick, syrupy synth slabs and punishing drum patterns through a rain-soaked limiter the producer found lying on the street by chance.

Another master-class in self-destructive arrangements comes in the form of ‘Rfohmdrá’ as delicate pianos and synth tones atrophy through daisy chained pedals which erode the signal. Valgeir Sigurðsson’s mastering skills shines through here, taking BOLT RUIN’s sci-fi-meets-metal sonics and amping them up to a scale on par with the Björk or Ben Frost records he’s previously worked on.

Conceived of as the mirror reflection of the LP’s opener, ‘Maevr’ pushes the approach of ‘Sktone’ to an even more nightmarish extreme. Embracing chance, the clattering layers of beats are sampled of a knocked mic on a window as BOLT RUIN attempted to capture a recording of rain from his studio. A happy and very effective accident for the foreboding mood of the track!

BOLT RUIN rounds off Ehkta with ‘Ekztamnh’; an ode to that specific sensation of entering through a corridor to a rave and hearing the rumble of a soundsystem from afar. Snarling melodies are run through a reverse granular delay effect which fragments the signal, reverses it and plays them back in irregular order; much like the shattered memories of a late night in a warehouse.

A musical magpie who finds inspiration in the most unlikely of sources, Ehkta is a restless exploration of salvage-punk aesthetics where doom-laden black metal melodies, amen breaks and an experimental approach to sound design sit in an irregular and uneven musical apocalypse. For fans of Blanck Mass or Caterina Barbieri - this is a must-listen material from a fresh producer establishing himself with a singular musical voice.

Maevr

Instrumental   Lofi  Trap  Beat Flowers

Taken from LTECH010: Physical Therapy 'Hit The Breaks'

Physical Therapy - Hit The Breaks (Bonus Beats)

Neige Neige Ft.Cha Cha

We have the exclusive listen of 'Speed', a track from Bloom's long awaited release on @wearecrazylegs, out November 23. 

Read more: weareinsert.com/audio/premiere-bloom-speed-crazylegs/

Sfumato

Read

Premiere: Bloom - Speed [Crazylegs]

A1 from "Falling Frontwards Into Pincers" EP out now on Great Curve (@greatcurverecords)

Mastered by Rupert Clervaux
Artwork by Max Jedwab
Distribution by Rubadub

Download code included with record.
Available from:

Rubadub: bit.ly/2WFRQlp
Bleep: bit.ly/2JdFnxy
Phonica: bit.ly/30Is3ZD
Juno: bit.ly/2G9cMb9
Redeye: bit.ly/2ReRzCO
deejay.de: bit.ly/2G9Am7p
HHV: bit.ly/2Ggbk6x
Chez Emile: bit.ly/3auglq1
Syncrophone: bit.ly/2trEVrb
Disco Piu: bit.ly/3dolim1
Newtone: bit.ly/39pzszU

Digitals on bandcamp: greatcurve.bandcamp.com/releases

Falling Frontwards Into Pincers

"Falling Frontwards Into Pincers" Out now on @greatcurverecords.
Available here: http://greatcurve.bandcamp.com/

Contact: willalfredsound (at) gmail.com
or message me on soundcloud/instagram

Falling Frontwards Into Pincers

Will Alfred

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