I swear my cat is meditating to this right now

@significant0ther

YOUTH host Significant Other’s glum but resilient meditation on love and loss, a broodingly therapeutic debut album that straddles IDM and industrial Ambient signatures, reminding us of work from Bola to Jay Glass Dubs, Spectre to classic late night Rob Hall mixes.

Sharing a different side of his sound to that heard on club-cut 12”s for Spe:c, Oscilla Sound and anno over the past few years, Significant Other here dwells on feelings that “emerged from moments of extreme passion and pain", patching new and archival material to work thru a mental fug of ambient noise laments and crankily dubbed out illbient lines of thought.

The pacing is stygian and the atmosphere near still, betraying a depth of suppressed emotion that he processes over the album’s eight tracks. ‘Demonology’ evokes a hash haze contemplation with its patina of Burial-esque vapours and incidental crackle, and ‘The Future Doesn’t Exist’ taps into a classic vein of screwed NYC downbeats a la Spectre, showing off a killer instinct for crushed hip hop drums also explored on the weighty swang of his ‘Love Beat.’ 

‘Residuum’ doesn't fall into outright doom, preferring to skirt the event horizon of a black hole and keep the chin bobbing up with the vulnerable yet hopeful tones of ‘Pendant’,  also in the Loren Connors-esque midnight peal of ‘Drifting In The Third Person’ and the elegiac closing sequence ‘Perpetual Care’, with its piano and string led coda.

https://theyouthlabel.bandcamp.com/album/significant-other-residuum-yocd11

Significant Other - Residuum - YOCD11 - YOUTH

A07 - Zero - Asio Otus

A1

https://xenoplex.bandcamp.com/album/xenoplex01

SPECTRAL LOOSE

3XL02 
Remastered tunes from bandcamp fridays and some comps.. 
Sleeve design by Nahyun Park. 
www.nahpark.xyz

"Clearing their cache of stray bullets, Exael returns with a gyring plunge into percussive wormholes and low-lit mood enhancers .The tracks are broadly cleft along schisms of dark/light and demonic/angelic, switching from restive propellers to more sublime sensations in a fine testament to their practice - making for prob our favourite Exael release thus far.

On the “darker” side, they commit the convulsive, fractious footwork pulses and warped tones of ‘Circle (Squishy Mix)’ in a sort of parallel to 33EMYBW’s insectoid rhythms and combustion systems, while ‘Ice That melts The Tips’ trades in rapid, ice-skating thizz and ‘Ghoul Search (Demonic Attachment Mix)’ fires up the junglist particle accelerator for a proper gauntlet of hyper techstep dynamics.

The contrast is epitomised by ’Composure’, arranging flinty breaks on a luscious waterbed of floating pads, before ‘Eidolon’ renders a sort of airborne dembow pressure in the vicinity of Ben Bondy & special guest dj’s xphresh works.  ‘L-theanine’ closes the session on a fine tread inside emo ambient styles and flurries on the same spectrum between DJ Lostboi and Teresa Winter, complete with a reverberating, half-buried vocal. 

All smoke & strobe doozies."

Eidolon

NOT MANY PEOPLE HERE YET

Holding the tension of opposites is a theme running throughout the work of Angelo Harmsworth, and the six pieces comprising Vent are no exception. Inspired by the different and oftentimes clashing forces comprising our weather systems, the New Mexico-born but now Berlin-based musician and producer envisioned his “compositions as micro-ecologies,” wherein “powerful waves push off one another.” The patterns emerging from this captivating music represent some of Harmsworth’s most complex to date. Swells of foreboding frequencies and jarring maximalist textures may bear down on listeners, yet an undercurrent of bliss–so deeply submerged it borders on the subliminal–manages to infuse even the most tumultuous moments of Vent with a calming groundedness.

And also like the climate, especially in the age of the Anthropocene, this cassette unfolds in ways that are profoundly unpredictable. An artist known for his ability to span the divides separating underground noise, sound design, ambient and industrial, Harmsworth ensures that each successive piece makes a radical break from what preceded it. This quality becomes particularly apparent when contrasting sides. The nearly harsh-noise, distortion-charged moments punctuating Side A are nowhere to be found on Side B, which reveals moments of vast, spectral beauty that reflect his roots in the desert landscapes of the American Southwest.

Of course, this kind of sonic breadth only comes with experience, of which Harmsworth has plenty. Steadily recording and releasing experimental music since the early 2010s, he has worked with some of the sub-underground’s stand-out imprints, including Angoisse, Bathetic Records, Total Black, and Opal Tapes. Placed in the context of his impressive catalog, Vent can be seen as both a continuation of what came before and a bold new development.

---

Angelo Harmsworth is a musician & sound artist whose works tends to fluctuate between austerity and decadence. Currently based in Germany, he has been published by a network of experimental labels in addition to his own imprint, Lime Lodge. 

releases July 26, 2022

Recorded by Angelo Harmsworth
Audio finalized by Glyn Maier
Artwork by Angelo Harmsworth
Design by RJM Vanderheyden

Vent

Angelo Harmsworth - Drag Net Capture (ENXPL15)

Having spent time exploring pastures new, longtime co-conspirators @louventurini and @angelhunt are back tending to their @greenbelt999 imprint with a sophomore release. 

'HomeBase Extracts' occupies a space between dreamingly pastoral bliss-out and ritualistic downtempo. It's a record to soundtrack divination, fortune telling or the practice of horticulture, and, as if it were heralding the vernal equinox, the duo’s hope springs eternal on our premiere. 

‘UtiliTotality’ proves the fertile ground from which radiant pads emanate, much like sunbeams penetrating a forest canopy, or a meadow in full bloom.

Pre-order: bit.ly/3Czlmhz

moody show

xtclvr

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