Label Description:
This album is in memory of Norbert Kutz. A valued friend for many years. I’ll miss the guy.
Thanks to Thomas Mathie for the Cover work
Label Description:
In the artist’s words, TO THE ANCESTORS is “An exploration into synthetic nature”, drawing inspiration from, and conjuring the emotional resonance of, forest bathing, zen garden sitting, and the historical elegance of the Gagaku and Koto music of Edo period Japan. The album seamlessly merges these influences with moods of the environmental music movement Kankyō Ongaku of the 1980s and 1990s and then passed through a filter of modern electronics, digital processes and patch cables resulting in a collection of meditative pieces that evoke a sense of calm, introspection and peace.
Composed between 2018 and 2020, the album’s eight tracks, titled only by their duration, are rich in texture and shimmering with radiance. Utilising modular, analog and digital synthesis, Stefane and Targo conjure sounds that feel both distinctly processed, yet organic in nature, and in doing so, embody the Japanese traditions and practices of Wabi-Sabi. Digital flutes breathe through self-generative CV patched Gewa blocks while fountains of ethereal granular plucked koto like sounds cascade and glide over serene synthesised sparkles, drips, and tweets in a mimicry of the natural world bringing a harmonious meeting of human and machine, nature and virtual landscapes. Through40 minutes, these aural infusions hint at shades of Hiroshi Yoshimura, Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa and other greats of the Japanese ambient golden era.
Prepare your favourite(sic) Temea ceremonial tea, relax and enter a state of serenity. This is environmental meditation music for the digital now-age.
Joshua Stefane, known for his work as Endurance, is a prolific Ontario, Canada born producer and curator currently residing in Nara, Japan. One of the founders of cult ambient cassette tape label Muzan Editions, Stefane has been instrumental in organising(sic) and supporting various events, happenings, and festivals in his adopted home, (such as the annual Moment Festival held in the majestic Tenkawa village) and being a vital, nurturing connector to an international community of forward thinking electronic ambient artists and DJs.
Steve Targo, performing as Inner Travels, and more recently as Nimbudala, is an American, Wisconsin based artist and explorer of inner and outer worlds. He has been creating New Age and spiritual-adjacent visionary music for years, releasing meditative works for cassette tape on labels such as Aural Canyon, Sounds of The Dawn, Fluere Tapes, and Inner Islands. A true purveyor and practitioner of futurist healing sounds.
TO THE ANCESTORS will be available in both digital and physical realms. Physical copies will be released exclusively through bandcamp as a limited edition pro-dubbed C90 cassette, featuring translucent smokey shell, on-body print, 4-panel full-colour inlay and as always, a screen-printed Golden Ratio Spiral acetate, continuing Golden Ratio Frequencies’ tradition of offering quality, visually appealing sonic totems.
Pre- Order available 21 June 2024, with full release and shipping from 5th July 2024.
Composed 2018 – 2020
Inner Travels – Synthesisers
Endurance – Modular Synthesis
Photography – Joshua Stefane
Design & Layout – A P Macarte
Label Description:
Swedish musician Erik Jarl has been active since the Fall of 1999, principally as Jarl. He was also a member of post-industrial act IRM, of which Erik was one of the founding members. Jarl’s music has been released on several labels through the years, and he has collaborated with acts like Anemone Tube, Envenomist, and Skin Area. Erik Jarl composes his music through a total analogue approach with the use of synthesizers, analogue sequencers, waveform generators, and oscillators, as well as several echo/reverb and delay units.
Recorded in Spring-Winter 2023 at Norrköping, Östergötland, Sweden by Erik Jarl.
Published by Reverse Alignment in collaboration with Luce Sia.
Mastering by Raffaele Pezzella (a.k.a. Sonologyst).
Artwork by Karolina Urbaniak.
Cd layout by Matteo Mariano.
Cat. Num. RA65.
© 2024. All rights reserved.
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Tracks 1-9 taken from “Dream Circle”
Tracks 10-19 taken from “Recurring (Dream Circle)
Tracks 20-28 taken from “Mandala”
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My new album, “ruralia,” aligns with Florina’s vision and is inspired by Monet’s Falaise de Pourville, le matin, featured on the cover.
This creation came about during a time when I was deeply immersed in exploring the virtues of rural life as an alternative to the industrial impact on society.
This influence shaped “ruralia” into a very intimate album, embracing minimal elements to depict what would be a life away from the city.
By minimizing distractions, I aimed to achieve peace and clarity. The album embodies quietness, contemplation, and inner discovery amidst the natural world, encouraging deep thought and self-knowledge to live a simple life as a form of resistance.
*********
a call for calm
in a natural conversation
propels a sound capsule
ochre-colored
the storm rises
sings the limit of worlds
the universal ignorance
of a bird’s flight
the wind buys peace
at the price of the waves
adding to the land’s debt
the hope of a simulated city
the quiet of a gray sky
patience patience
return to calm
carnal monologue
of this geography
imaginary
—–
un appel au calme
dans une conversation naturelle
propulse une pastille de son
couleur ocre
l’orage se dresse
chante la limite des mondes
l’universelle ignorance
d’un vol d’oiseau
le vent achète la paix
au prix des vagues
s’ajoute la dette du terrain
l’espérance d’une ville simulée
quiétude d’un ciel gris
patience patience
retour au calme
monologue charnel
de cette géographie
imaginaire
Music by Iván Aguayo
Mastering by James Edward Armstrong
Design by Anne-Julie Dudemaine
Photos by Pier-Luc Tremblay
Original painting “Falaise de Pourville, le matin” by Claude Monet (Oil on canvas, 1897)
Words by Philippe Chagnon
Label Description:
INSPIRED BY A TRAGEDY is a collaborative album between anatoly grinberg (aka tokee) and andreas davids (mainly known from xotox). their obsession manifests as a cinematic odyssey through an enigmatic dystopian story, where silence can resound with intensity and noise can become inconsequential. the superficial weight of matter can dissolve into an intricate idm-ish loops, metamorphosing an entire composition into a meticulously crafted form. hypnotic repetition, crunchy beats and lush, expansive swells serve as the catalyst for their journey through ambient soundscapes, revealing new dimensions of auditory perception.
INSPIRED BY A TRAGEDY – the plot: a violent shudder sent the small plane plummeting towards the snow-capped mountains. the sole survivors pieced together the fractured memories of the inexplicable descent. days bled into a desperate struggle against the elements, panic a constant companion – a place where even the mountains whispered warnings. one terrifying night, an unseen force ripped through their camp. they fled in terror, leaving only a slashed tent and a chilling tableau. days later, rescuers found the scattered bodies, some bearing strange internal injuries, others with signs of radiation exposure. recovered journals hinted at strange lights in the sky and an oppressive sense of dread since the crash. theories swirled, but none explained the bizarre events. the incident became a haunting legend, a grim reminder of human fragility in the face of the untamed wilderness.
Label Description: Scottish experimental/electronic musician Drew McDowall’s lifelong interest in an elegiac solo bagpipe style called pibroch (ceòl mòr in Gaelic) has been an inspiration for much of his previous work (including Coil’s legendary Time Machines). This form, often traditionally used for laments and for tributes to the dead, fuses modal drones with flickering dissonance and plaintive melody evoking an ancient, solemn mood.
His latest work, A Thread, Silvered and Trembling, both incorporates and transforms these elements via exploratory electronic processing, weaving an electro-acoustic tapestry of strings, shudders, voids, and voices, alternately disembodied and displaced. Co-produced with engineer Randall Dunn at Circular Ruin Studios in Brooklyn, the collection’s four pieces capture McDowall at his most elevated and elusive, in thrall to “the ineffable – that which refuses to be spoken.”
McDowall’s palette here is unusually eclectic, sourced from a dynamic orchestral ensemble arranged by Brent Arnold and comprised of cello, viola, violin, harp (Marilu Donovan of LEYA), and french horn. Ebbing between shrouded electronics and enigmatic, sometimes spectralist orchestration, the album moves with a seething, simmering energy, surging into elegant, uneasy crescendos. The first two pieces are inspired by a liberatory hijacking and inversion of a grim biblical story (and by a cryptic and strange UK simple syrup branding). Opener “Out of Strength Comes Sweetness” shivers with short echo and resonant pads, before shifting into the album’s centerpiece: the 14-minute saga “And Lions Will Sing with Joy.” A murmuring electrical storm of keening strings and disorienting drones gradually grows darker and denser, until suddenly there’s a crack in the clouds, revealing mutated choral voices and sparkling harp. McDowall describes the track as “an incantation to help usher in a break, and a new beginning.”
The record’s latter half evokes a deep untamed animism shot through with spiraling radiance. “In Wound and Water” sways with harp, plucked strings and eerie cello undertows while lush layers of disorientated electronics hang in the dusk. There is no resolution, only a faint gradient of fragile dissipation, leading into the album’s harrowing and climactic closer, “A Dream of a Cartographic Membrane Dissolves.” Processed voices (credited on the liner notes to “The Ghosts Who Refuse to Rest”) contort, whisper, and gather as the rest of the ensemble sharpens, poising to strike. Then it does – grand, tragic stabs of strings and horns lashing the sky, storming heaven by force.
The fallout is poetic and inevitable, raining embers into a dark sea. But the journey and catharsis of A Thread linger long after it goes silent. Like so much of McDowall’s multifaceted catalog, this is music of immanence and alchemy, attuned equally to the sacred and the profane, to the tile and the mosaic.
Label Description:
Recently rescued from the dusty vault of DATs, this is the follow-up album to Off and Gone’s debut “Everest”, released on Harthouse worldwide in 1996.
Released now, in 2019, dedicated to Phil Western (RIP), who would be thrilled to see this collection unleashed into the world.
“This album and the yet unreleased Floatpoint material were written in parallel and constitute the last body of work Phil and I did together. After that our lives took different turns and we were each concerned with producing and releasing solo works. While we have always valued the tracks written in that period [spring and fall of ’96] once a few years passed they faded from memory and quietly waited on DAT tapes for the day of playback.
With the untimely passing of PW came the desire to expose the music we made back then, a concrete testimony of our joy of working together.”
Dan Handrabur, Bucharest 2019
Label Description: Words and music by Nigel Ayers.
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Originally release on Studio4632 Candy Lozier 17th January 2018
What a great time this was being support by the ever helpful Candy. Some of my best albums face the ears of the world over there.
This a different type, even more sinister, somber and dark as my current works with a complete instrumental set-up (to be honest, most of the used synth I don’t even remember anymore).
It was dark, it was ambient and it was experiemental.
Feel free to serve yourself as long as free downloads are available.
(P)+(C) 2018/2024 Christian Fiesel
Music For The Rest Of Us 