Snippets - yeyeh

Jerry&ThePelicanSystem - SARIANI LP

Tracklist

A1. Raga or Raga
A2. Temple of Jetsu
A3. SARIANI
B1. Everest INN
B2. Kathakali Masks
B3. POOLS GAMES

Pre order @ http://bit.ly/yeyeh004preorder
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Since launching in 2018, Pieter Jansen’s yeyeh label has excelled at delivering unusual and inspired collaborations between artists who have never worked together before. Jansen’s desire to bring together musicians, composers and producers from different disciplines – for example classical Theremin player Carolina Eyck and previously club-focused electronic musician Eversines, or legendary Dutch jazz singer Greetje Bijma and off-kilter ambient artist Oceanic – has resulted in some genuinely magical, transformative and unusual music that defies categorization. To continue the series, the Amsterdam-based curator and label owner has looked East to the Polish jazz underground. 

‘Sariani’, yeyeh’s latest collaborative release, brings together two stalwarts of Poland’s vibrant experimental jazz scene: saxophonist and composer Jerzy Mączyński, who impressed with his 2019 debut album ‘Jerry&ThePelicanSystem’ and Waclaw Zimpel, a much-travelled clarinet player whose most recent releases cleverly combine the slowly shifting electronic textures of ambient with his deep-rooted love of experimental and free-jazz.

‘Sariani’ has its origins in the friendship between Mączyński and Zimpel that developed during the early stages of the global Coronavirus pandemic. After many happy hours spent discussing life, music and Indian culture – the latter a shared interest that would shape future recording sessions – Mączyński offered Zimpel the chance to join forces on what he initially intended to be his second solo album. Over the eight months that followed, recording sessions in two separate Warsaw studios saw the set – a far-sighted meditation on Mączyński’s travels to India – develop into a genuinely collaborative production and a unified artistic vision.

The pair lay down a marker on opener ‘Raga or Raga’, a musical translation of the Book of Rag where increasingly expressive saxophone – a mixture of undulating, stretched-out solos and droning motifs – metamorphose as the track progresses, cleverly matching the increasing intensity of the trance-inducing modular electronics that bubble beneath before surging forwards towards a breathless conclusion. You’ll find a similar musical narrative – albeit with bolder free-jazz notes and more intense electronics – on the album’s closing track, ‘Pools Games’.

‘Temple of Jetsu’, an especially spiritual composition, fuses the melodic cycles of classic minimalism with similarly slowly unfurling electronic motifs and luscious ambient textures, while the title track – a meditation on the plight of women in India – delivers a beautiful but sometimes uneasy mix of densely layered minor-key sax sounds, exotic and intoxicating solos, off-kilter electronic rhythms and enveloping synthesizer textures.

Guest musician Szymon Wójcik, who had previously travelled to Nepal with Mączyński, provides glistening guitar textures on ‘Everest Inn’, a kind of musical translation of a Himalayan sunrise. Like the track that follows, the tactile, soft-touch joy of ‘Katakhali Masks’, ‘Everest Inn’ offers a new blueprint for ambient jazz. It’s this distinctive musical fusion – the acoustic and the electronic combined with the mystical and far-sighted – that marks out Mączyński and Zimpel’s first collaborative work. It’s a genuinely revelatory and intoxicating album.

Artwork & Design:
Nol.one & Wimswim

Jerry&ThePelicanSystem - SARIANI LP [yeyeh004 snippets]

UHF - Tune IN 2LP

Tracklist

A1. Tune IN
A2. Can U Hear The Hum
B1. Breaking Open The Head
B2. Multidimensional Transformation
B3. Sam-Sa-Ra
B4. The Book Of Forbidden Knowledge
C1. Call Of The Wild
C2. The Fifth Science
D1. The End Of Ur World
D2. Gravity’s Rainbow
D3. Searching 4 Spirituality Without Religion
D4. The Emerald Tablet

Pre order @ bit.ly/yeyeh005preorder
Releases December 1 
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Since 2019, Amsterdam-based curator Pieter Jansen has used his yeyeh label as a vehicle for carefully considered (and sometimes unlikely) ‘first time’ collaborations between different experimental and avant-garde artists including Eversines, Carolina Eyck, Greetje Bijma and Oceanic. 

He’s done it again on the imprint’s next release, which is the result of a week-long collaboration between Berlin-based Polish saxophonist/composer/producer Jerzy Maczyński (whose previous collaborative release with Waclaw Zimpel as Jerry&ThePelicanSystem appeared on yeyeh in 2021), celebrated Chicagoan DJ/producer Hieroglyphic Being, and Amsterdam-based electronic artist Rein De Sauvage Nolting (RDS, who originally functioned as recording and mix engineer) – as well as countless hours of intricate post-production. 

Those who attended Dekmantel Festival 2023, where Hieroglyphic Being and Maczyński performed live together as Universal Harmonies & Frequencies for the first time will know what to expect – namely far-sighted and futurist explorations that blur the boundaries between electronic-acoustic improvisation, avant-garde electronica, rhythmic ambient, free jazz and Hieroglyphic Being’s distinctively distorted, next-level Chicagoan rhythms. This act was accompanied by live visuals by Katarzyna Debska/VLF, who later created the artwork and visual language for the record release. 
That performance, which took place at Muziekgebouw/BIMhuis, occurred a little over 12 months after the week-long residency in a rented studio below Volkshotel that laid the foundations for the project. Over five days, Hieroglyphic Being (synthesisers, vocals) and Maczyński (saxophones, vocals) laid down 26 extended improvisations, with Rein de Sauvage Nolting not only acting as recording and mixing engineer, but also contributing artistic input. 

Following the session, Jansen and Rein Sauvage Nolting selected 13 tracks to provide the basis of an expansive double-vinyl album. While some of those spontaneous improvisations remain in-tact on Tune IN, many more were reconfigured, reworked and re-produced by Maczyński and Sauvage Nolting over over many months.Maczyński added more layers of instrumentation, creating a “whole band of reed instruments” using electronic tools – a method he previously utilized on 2021’s Jerry&ThePelicanSystem album, Sariani. 

As a result, Tune IN is an adventurous and experimental album rooted in real-time improvisation that not only reflects its’ creators’ unique musical personalities, but also delivers a genuinely unique and far-sighted collaborative sound. It begins with the stretched-out, slowly building brilliance of the title track – think waves of synth sounds, complimentary reed instrument motifs and spaced-out, effects laden beats – and ends with the hallucinatory exoticism of ‘Emerald Tablet’. 
In between, you’ll find forays into densely layered free-jazz (‘Can U Hear The Hum’), percussion-powered rhythmic cubism (‘Breaking Open The Head’), shuffling dancefloor tone poems (‘Multidimensional Transformation’, where Hieroglyphic Being delivers a typically spiritual spoken word monologue), becalmed ambient jazz (‘The Book of Forbidden Knowledge’), expansive synth-scapes (the Tangerine Dream-do-Sun Ra style ‘The Fifth Style’), dystopian drum machine-powered workouts (‘Searching 4 Spirituality Without Religion’) and countless, impossible-to-pigeonhole cuts that sit somewhere in between. It’s a magical and mystical meeting of musical minds that counts as one of the most expressive and inventive artistic collaborations of recent times.

Tune IN

UHF - Tune IN 2LP [yeyeh005 snippets]

Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Sykheljende Lûden LP

Tracklist

A1. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Away From Home  [04:26]
A2. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Sykhelje [01:07]
A3. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Golden Skinne [04:09]
A4. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Waegen Vallen [04:28]
A5. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Dripket [01:08]
A6. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Syzygy [05:30]
B1. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Protterduns (Part 1) [01:15]
B2. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Protterduns (Part 2) [06:04]
B3. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Veuhel [01:30]
B4. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Hynders [04:29]
B5. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - V&A [03:20]
B6. Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Peace In Mind [03:50]

Pre-order: bit.ly/yeyeh006preorder
Video Away From Home: https://youtu.be/MD5lBe313hQ

Releases October 25
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Since yeyeh brought them together in 2019 to record their first collaborative album, Swallow a Party, Oceanic and Greetje Bijma have become firm friends. The connection they first felt in the studio has led not only to the regular exchange of musical ideas and song sketches, but also lengthy conversations about life and art.

One of the strongest connections that helped shape their growing creative partnership is not musical, but personal. Both grew up in coastal communities at different ends of the Netherlands and the sensory impact of living close to the North Sea and Wadden Sea, respectively, made a long-lasting impression.

This connection gave them an idea: why not use the Wadden Sea, an intertidal zone of the North Sea situated between the Frisian Islands and the Dutch Coast, as a thematic inspiration for their next album. Oceanic and Bijma exchanged memories of wonderous wetlands, the salty smell of sea air, seemingly never-ending tidal mudflats, the distinctive calls of rare seabirds, and the look and feel of local flora and fauna. 

When they gathered in Studio Het Rode in Roderwolde for three days of improvised recordings based on existing ideas, Oceanic and Bijma set out to create music, through a mixture of voice and electronics, inspired by the mental sounds and images that appeared when they thought about the Wadden Sea’s celebrated landscapes. Extended improvisations were recorded, before Oceanic edited them down and they collaborated shaped the finished versions with added texture and structure.

The resultant album, Sykheljende Lûden (Frisian for “breathing sounds”), wears its central inspiration lightly, with many of Bijma’s startling and expressive vocalisations and Oceanic musical motifs subtly hinting at tidal flows, bird calls, and the comforting feeling of home that the environment stirs in both artists. It is not ‘landscape music’ in the strictest sense of the term, but rather music partially inspired by their personal psycho-geographies and nostalgic memories of their former coastal homes.

Sykheljende Lûden is frequently both majestic and mesmerising, with Bijma showcasing the full dynamism and expressiveness of her vocal range and Oceanic conjuring electronic sounds, rhythms and textures that combine his long-stated love of both club music and emotive experimentalism. From the bubbly bliss of opener ‘Away From Home’, to the ambient-operatic moodiness of closing cut ‘Peace In Mind’, via the soft-spun sweetness of ‘Golden Sun Skin’, spaced-out minimalism of ‘Dripket’ and the rhythmic creepiness of ‘Veugel’, Sykheljende Lûden is a unified artistic vision that owes as much to the duo’s coastal roots as it does to their evolving creative partnership.

Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Sykheljende Lûden [yeyeh006 snippets]

The first release on yeyeh is a compilation of tracks by Dutch poet Simon Vinkenoog, a former poet laureate, and renomated one-man band Spinvis. More than ten years after the birth of this album, it has been pressed on vinyl for the very first time.

A journey. A journey through sound. A journey of eighty-one years.
Simon Vinkenoog’s sound. Simon sings, speaks, yells, hiccups, and cries. As a poet. As a witness, passer-by, survivor, instigator, benefactor and chronicler of the remarkable twists of his own lifetime. A collage of music, sound and poetry, compiled with several hours of archived material. Carefully edited and soundtracked by Spinvis.

Spinvis & Vinkenoog - Ja! & Ritmebox Compilatie [yeyeh001 snippets]

Carolina Eyck & Eversines - Waves LP

Tracklist

A1. Reflections
A2. Echos
A3. Circles
B1. Waves
B2. Dots
B3. Fragments
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For the label’s second release, Amsterdam imprint yeyeh has brought together two musicians from vastly different backgrounds to celebrate the far-sighted musical potential of the Theremin on the 100-year anniversary of the instrument’s invention.

“Waves” is the product of two weeks of studio collaborations between award-winning composer and Theremin soloist https://soundcloud.com/carolinaeyck and https://soundcloud.com/eversines, an electronic music producer who has previously released music on yeyeh’s sister label ninih. It builds on Eyck’s work composing for “Theremin & Voice”, with both artists playing a part in processing, modulating, layering and arranging vocal and Theremin sounds to
create six breathtaking electronic compositions.

Varied in tone and execution, the album’s six tracks are arguably closer to instrumental pop than academic electronic music. Some tracks bear comparison to the cyclical melodic movements associated with the greats of American minimalism, while others recall the alien, otherworldly futurism of the Radiophonic Workshop, classic ambient music and the sun-bright bliss of early ‘90s IDM. Yet despite these
possible perceived parallels, “Waves” sits on its own as a stunning work crafted from the simplest of musical elements.

Carolina Eyck & Eversines - Waves LP [yeyeh002 snippets]

Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Swallow A Party LP

Tracklist

A1. Swallow A Party
A2. Step Snakes
A3. Never Done
B1. Technicolour Memories
B2. Mist In Tide
B3. A Window Drifting
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yeyeh founder Pieter Jansen has now conjured up another unlikely but inspired joint album, this time featuring award-winning free-jazz vocalist https://soundcloud.com/greetjebijmakwintet and leftfield house, techno and ambient producer https://soundcloud.com/oceanicocean.

The project has its roots in a chance meeting between Jansen and Bijma, a legendary figure on the Dutch jazz scene who in 1990 became the first woman to win the country’s top jazz accolade, the VPRO/Boy Edgar award. Apart from having previously worked with the likes of Anna Homler (aka Breadwoman), Jasper van ’t Hof, Han Bennink, Louis Andriessen, Willem Breuker and her own solo projects, she’s in a league of her own.

Jansen is a big fan of Bijma’s 1996 heavily electronic collaboration with Jasper van’t Hof and Pierre Favre, Freezing Screens, and was with the friend who first introduced him to it when he bumped into Bijma. 
Excited to meet someone who had made one of his favourite records, Jansen took the opportunity to ask Bijma if she would be interested in working with young electronic music producers. To Jansen’s delight, Bijma quickly agreed.

Weeks later, Bijma stepped into the studio with Oceanic, a rising star of the Dutch electronic underground whose releases as Oceanic for Nous’klaer Audio and BAKK Plafond revolve around mechanical rhythms, opaque ambient textures, minimalist melodic movements and effervescent electronics. The pair quickly connected on an emotional and musical level, with Bijma taking her cues from Oceanic’s electronic sounds and rhythms, and Oceanic drawing inspiration from Bijma’s dexterous, mind-bending and otherworldly vocalizations.

After two hugely productive days, the cross-generational duo had completed a couple of mesmerizing songs – breathlessly haunting album opener “Swallow a Party” and chilly ambient closer “A Window Drifting” – and recorded several hours or improvisations that Oceanic later edited, layered-up and re-modelled.

The results are little less than spellbinding. The range and versatility of Bijma’s vocalizations is breathtaking, while Oceanic’s music – which cleverly incorporates the free-jazz singer’s vocal notes, tones and proclamations – swings between becalmed beauty and breathless intensity. 

Some of the set’s most striking moments are those where Oceanic re-contextualizes Bijma’s varied vocal sounds with the dancefloor in mind. On the pulsating “Technicolour Memories”, up-tempo “Step Snakes” and hypnotic “Never Done”, Bijma’s scat outbursts not only ride Oceanic’s rhythms, but also form part of the densely layered percussion tracks beneath. 

Like the release’s more downtempo and ethereal moments, these hybrid organic-synthetic compositions defy easy categorization, offering a unique brand of alien electronic/acoustic musical fusion that lingers long in the memory.

Artwork & Design:
Nol.one & Wimswim

Greetje Bijma & Oceanic - Swallow A Party LP [yeyeh003 snippets]

record label run by soundcloud.com/pejiej
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pieterjansen_yeyehninih/
email: pieter@yeyeh.nl
distributed by One Eye Witness

Snippets - yeyeh

yeyeh • ninih