Label Description:
New album from the JK Broadrick & Diarmuid Dalton electronic music project Council Estate Electronics
Absorbing early industrial music, krautrock and dub / dub techno.
Exploring the immediate geography of the areas of Birmingham where Justin and Diarmuid were raised.
JK Broadrick – Electronics
Diarmuid Dalton – Electronics
Produced by Justin K Broadrick at Avalanche Studio, UK
2020 – 2024
AVALANCHE RECORDINGS / 2025 /
AREC081 /
Label Description: Nordvargr Announces the Release of Resignation 4, the Fourth Installment in the Resignation Series
Swedish dark ambient and experimental artist Nordvargr (Henrik Nordvargr Björkk) is set to release the highly anticipated Resignation 4, continuing his sonic journey through rhythmic, atmospheric, and melancholic soundscapes. Building on the foundation laid by the Resignation trilogy, Resignation 4 expands the project’s signature blend of techno-inspired beats, dark ambient textures, and hypnotic soundscapes.
A Continuation of Sonic Exploration
Resignation 4 picks up where the acclaimed 2022 Resignation box set left off, offering a deeper dive into Nordvargr’s evolving sound. The album maintains one foot firmly in the techno scene, while also embracing moments of eerie calm and reflective melancholy. It is an album where rhythmic pulses and deep atmospherics converge, presenting a sound that is at once mesmerizing and abrasive, pushing the boundaries of electronic music.
This latest chapter sees Nordvargr taking his unique grasp of genre fusion even further, blending ambient melancholia with hard-edged, rhythmic elements. Fans of both experimental electronics and the fringes of techno will find Resignation 4 to be a captivating continuation of his visionary work.
Origins and Evolution of the Resignation Series
The Resignation project began in 2008 as an exploration of rhythmic, repetitive music paired with dark ambient soundscapes. It was born from a collaboration between Nordvargr and Nils Ekholm, merging techno-inspired beats with samples from old 78 RPM records. The first album in the series was described as “techno, if invented in the late 1800s,” drawing inspiration from the ill-fated 1897 North Pole expedition by S.A. Andrée.
Over the years, the project has grown, with each album taking a distinct direction—ranging from dubby techno atmospheres to harsher, noisier electronic soundscapes—culminating in the haunting, cinematic experience that is Resignation 4. Along the way, the project has evolved from its early experimental roots into a genre-defying force, standing at the crossroads of ambient, techno, and industrial music.
A Look Back at the Trilogy
The Resignation trilogy was re-released in 2022 as a deluxe box set, remastered with unique and exclusive material, including previously unheard demo recordings and bonus tracks. This set offered listeners a complete exploration of the project’s evolution, from the early rhythmic ambient experiments to the harder, more distorted sounds of later volumes. Note that the quickly sold out 3CD has now been repressed.
Tracks like Totem Visitations, originally composed for a Polish film soundtrack, showcased Nordvargr’s ability to craft immersive sonic environments that complement the darker edges of film and narrative.
Looking Forward: Resignation 4
With Resignation 4, Nordvargr continues to refine his signature style, exploring new territories of sound and emotion. This album promises to be a highlight of his prolific career, offering a bold and dynamic listening experience for fans of experimental and rhythmic electronic music.
Release Formats and Artwork
The album will be available in multiple formats:
•Vinyl: Edition of 300 copies. 100 Special Edition on marbled brown & Black vinyl and 200 copies on black vinyl. Printed Innersleeve and matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 3770033798171
•CD: Edition of 300 copies in 4 panel Digipak, matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 770033798164
The stunning album artwork and photography are created by Sandrine Pelletier, capturing the stark, otherworldly aesthetic of the Resignation series.
Resignation 4 continues Nordvargr’s exploration of the balance between beauty and brutality, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in a world where atmospheric depth meets rhythmic intensity.
Label Description:
Having recently dropped two criminally overlooked, experimental dub LPs, with his ‘Dub Over Science’ series, the German producer/bass specialist, now stretches his own parameters of outwardness still further, with these twelve fresh explorations of dub deviance.
For those who feel the fusion of dub techno and ambient drone had creatively ended with the demise of the short lived, Berlin based Chain Reaction label. Ghost Dubs now upgrades, and extends that legendary blueprint’s abstract methodology even further and deeper, floating away upon a wonderfully warm sea of hiss and static bliss. This is dub so atomized that it disintegrates within your eardrums. Its music, where the machines take over and virtually all traces of humanity are erased. But thankfully, the warmest soul still oozes seductively from the pores of Fiedler’s robo riddims. Relentlessly hypnotic, seriously sedated, ‘Damaged’ celebrates the point of departure within it’s mesmerising low end grooves.
Album opener ‘Chemical’, provides an opiated slo-mo skank, which sounds like Plastikman’s ‘Consumed’ era pulsations drenched heavily in sub aquatic fx. A triumph of surface noise surfing and sub woofer testing relentlessness, it provides the perfect intro to this compellingly immersive album. For batty shakers and headtrippers alike, there’s added thrills aplenty, as Ghost Dub’s richter scale tremor rhythms remain impressively massive, and the atmospheric depths of ‘Damaged’ appear tantalisingly(sic) oceanic.
Throughout the duration of the dreamy selection, there is an obsessive balance of bewitching ambience and heavyweight bassbin shaking. The lead single ‘Thin Line’ itself provides a missing link between African Headcharge’s early percussive body probes and Rhythm & Sound’s addictive radiance, with the slightest hint of Burial’s doomed romantic hauntology added for good taste. Alternately, and no less gracefully, ‘Dub Lobotomy’ bizarrely resembles Miles Davis ‘Get Up with it’ chopped, screwed, and relocated to a futuristic Kingston Town. Impressive indeed, Fiedler’s mastery of live dubbing on his mixing desk shines accross(sic) the duration, and gives the album an improvised edge, and sense of peripheral chaos. Elsewhere, spooked steppars(‘Hot Wired’), haunting house (‘True to life’) and 4th World psychogeography(‘Undone’), combine to ensure there is a forever changing mixture of flavours percolating within the admirable consistancy(sic) of the overall sound.
With a tip of the cap, and nod of the head to Pole(‘Second Thoughts’), its no surprise then that PRESSURE would then turn to the great, Berlin based producer Stefan Betke, to master/cut this collection at his infamous Scape mastering room. And a fine job he did too, as high quality sound and levels are definitely maintained throughout.
If you like your melodies submerged, your dub narcotic, your basslines obese, and your beats evaporating, ‘Damaged’ provides the perfect prescription and entry point into Ghost Dub’s spectral soundworld.
Dive in. Enjoy !
Music / Production : Michael Fiedler
Mastered : Stefan Betke (Scape Mastering)
Artwork : The Pathological Puppy
Bass / Drones (‘Circles / Line’) : Fatwires aka John Eckhardt
Copyright Control MIchael Fiedler(Ghost Dubs) 2024
Music For The Rest Of Us 