Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Vinyl 10 Inch 129 Items

After a first album as a duo released on Okraina Records: "Le Corps Défendant", Delphine Dora and Mocke invite us to join them again in listening to a new album. We slip into it as if in a dream, the music carries us away with its floating images.

Heard before on a handful of disturbingly beautiful solo albums and in collaborations such as Midget!, Arlt, Chevalrex, Mohamed Lamouri, Mocke (Dominique Dépret's nom de plume) is a subtle and inventive guitarist, who draws melancholic arpeggios, with a beautiful languor, that walk the line between tensions and tears. Delphine Dora has been heard with Roxane Métayer, Sophie Cooper, Andrew Chalk, Jackie McDowell, Helena Espvall, Valentina Magaletti ... meeting in a moment of improvisation, a solitary sincopated voice blooming between the black and white keys of her piano, tuning betwist these keys, or at other times in the gap of the right note. Here improvisation feeds on melody, or is it the other way round?

Recorded in an old church in the village of Mauzun in the Puy-de-Dôme, by Cyril Harrison, "L'invisible est multiforme" is an invitation to join them, to let these abstract songs erase our obsessive thoughts of the day, to open ourselves to the vibrant poetry of the air and the evening, to finally forget ourselves. Each note played by these four intertwined hands is like a slight break in the fabric of time, sliding one over the other, reminding us of mortality and its beauty. Ritornellas flow out of mechanical clocks, fragile, taking care not to hurt the silence. Both seek to dig and open up new paths to enrich their duet, to open up imaginary landscapes. Sometimes the guitar cuts through the fabric of an organ, fractures the song, just as the rain erases a landscape, redrawing it. But very quickly, both of them continue to follow this new path, improvising what will serve as a framework, a perspective, a language. There is a kind of praise for slowness in this "invisible", a desire to hold back the song, not to let it slip away, to let the listener's ear enter its course, to share the last note, its illumination. Each of these thirteen short sound pieces merge into a common colour, a vibration close to the different tonalities, which inter-penetrate, like a cubist painting. Words cannot take away the mystery of this record, words can only fail to describe the music, you must hear it.' - Michel Henritzi

Record is close to VG+.

Iterum will be available as white 10’’ LP, including a CD listening copy, and will be limited to 500 pieces.

10" EP by German producer Dan Bay. 3 Downtempo/World tracks dedicated to the Cassiopeia Greek myth

Close to VG+

Revealed last year as a side project by UK producer Shifted, Covered In Sand now returns with a new EP: Crescent Shaped Scars will be released on the sister label of his own Avian imprint Mira, which serves as an outlet for the more experimental and duskier side of electronic music.

The release features three abrasive noise workouts. Thud of drums and ritualistic rhythms define the opener Luarica on the A-side alongside a near-melodic whine that stays present throughout the tracks. Orapa (An Interview) on the flip swallows and evokes scuffed voices of a conversation, striving into isolation, while Venetia resumes the haunting rhythm and layers of distortion.

NOTON IS PLEASED TO RELEASE RAY COLLECTOR - A LIMITED EDITION VINYL FEATURING RECORDINGS SOURCED FROM TAPES PRODUCED BY CARSTEN NICOLAI' FOR HIS 2023 SOLO EXHIBITION STRAHLEN/RAGGI AT FONDAZIONE MODENA ARTI VISIVE.
IN FEBRUARY 2022, CARSTEN NICOLAI DISPATCHED TEN PARCELS FROM BERLIN TO VARIOUS DESTINATIONS. EACH PACKAGE CONTAINED A BLANK MAGNETIC TAPE CASSETTE, AN ILFORD DELTA 3200 ISO 1000 BLACK-AND-WHITE FILM, AND A KODAK ISO 800 COLOR NEGATIVE FILM. ALL PARCELS WERE ADDRESSED TO THE SAME RECIPIENT, MR. NEMO, THE UNFORGETTABLE CAPTAIN OF THE SUBMARINE NAUTILUS IN TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. THE IDEA WAS FOR THE RECIPIENTS TO RETURN THE PARCELS TO THE SENDER. EACH PACKAGE HELD MAGNETIC TAPES AND PHOTOSENSITIVE FILMS THAT WOULD BE EXPOSED TO ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES AND RADIATION DURING THEIR JOURNEY. UPON THEIR RETURN TO THE SENDER, THE LATENT IMPRESSIONS WERE DEVELOPED, DIGITIZED, AND THUS MADE BOTH VISIBLE AND AUDIBLE.

Quindi Records returns once more to the swooning romanticism of Cabaret du Ciel, the long-running project from Andrea Desidera and Gian Luigi Morosin. After the contemporary material which made up long-player The Breath Of Infinity, Raintears heads back into the group’s archives and focuses on a limited cassette release from 1991. Originally released on Morosin’s own Ionisation Tapes, Raintears is described as heralding a new phase for Cabaret du Ciel following their earlier Solarisation and Weather Colours cassettes. This revised, expanded version of the release opens with ‘Raintears (Piano Version)’, which originally came out on an Ionisation compilation entitled Imago Sonora 1. Truly evoking the spirit of the track and its meaning, it was recorded on a rainy Sunday afternoon when Desidera’s friend and trained pianist Francesco Martignon heard the original melody for ‘Raintears’ and proceeded to improvise on the theme, with Desidera and Morosin embellishinbg Martignon’s exquisite playing with subtle touches of synth and sampling. In its fragile, tape-worn repose, the piece is loaded with the delicate ambience a rainy Sunday afternoon implies - calm, melancholic and wistful. ‘A New Day’ is a piece cast in light and shade, contrasting two core melodic phrases expressed through synth and guitar, with a light touch of speech sampling adding to the cinematic poise of the track. ‘Time Of The Twins’ originally appeared as a single track on the cassette release, but here it’s framed as two distinct parts which meet in the middle. The first half is patient, gliding ambience rich in the harmonic interplay and winding narratives which typifies Cabaret du Ciel overall.

A complete stylistic shift from his last two EPs, 'Rodent' marks an emphatic return to the dancefloor with a rolling four and a half minutes of the artist's hallmark wistful rapture, backed with a crackling 150bpm remix by Kode9.

After a near decade of solo and collaborative projects, Up in Air is Ben Pritchard's most confident foray into songwriting yet, nestling lopsided experimentation into a bed of lowslung blues and reflective folk.

Up in Air is sewn from threads of everyday life: trails of thought, small stories and conversations with his daughter. Collecting, layering and condensing the world around him, his musings spill out in a palimpsest that renders both the material and metaphysical world. From describing a time where he inadvertently found himself on a hunting trip, recalling stories from doing role play and drawing together with his daughter, or scribing observations on the strange dedications people make in their lives, he explores the banal and the fantastical; the whimsical and the serious; the light and dark. Each line, aphorism or vignette carries with it weight that is looking to free itself, to embrace the impossibility of life distilled into simpler parameters.

Ben's music acts as a motor for his words, weaving wistful melodic mantras and creaking guitar lines in and out as each song finds its feet. Although the album finds a rich array of influences dancing in an awkward balance, the emotive register of the music drinks from the fountain of the US rock continuum, with Supreme Dicks' uneasy indie, Low's slow unfurling grace and Neil Youngs' heart-worn drawl lifting each song to new heights. Expanding on this soundworld are collaborators Sholto Dobie (self-built organs) and bassist Otto Willberg, who provide drones, dissonant jolts and detuned paths for the music to open itself, but also curl into its own. Sounds are folded into one another, birthing new shapes, layers and sonic possibilities.

Ben describes the album as "permeated by the sense that came from being around this sort of connection to the world where everything is immediate and fundamental." The album is representative of this shift inwards: on his own, socially, as a parent. But with that it also represents a confidence to deal with everything. The album is an excavation, both finding strange joy in simple findings and an unburdening himself of everything else, letting every thought and feeling whisks itself away up in the air.'

Fielding Hope (curator, Cafe Oto, London)

feat. Georgia Anne Muldrow ... incl. Floating Points Remix

Avont is a music project by Amsterdam based artist Arjan Timmermans The music on Avont's #1 EP was mainly created with the use of a four-track tape machine, guitar, hardware synths and a eurorack modular synthesizer. Avont juxtaposes the element of chance and the glitches that are inherent in the use of tape loops, with meticulous sound design and synthesizer programming.

Atra Bilis - latin name for black bile - is the artist name chosen by the Milan based composer, who develops his practice from the idea that the dark liquid is vital to the creative process: ” the black bile is specifically responsible for dark and cold moods, which eventually turn into melancholy. Everyone, in different ways, is affected by this on daily basis. Atra Bilis transforms this condition into something eternal, like sound”. Launch Into is the first release by the Milan based produce. His references span from the 90’s UK rave and jungle scene to the maverick breakbeats such as Coco Bryce and Seagrave, crafting his own path towards a futuristic journey: kinetic jungle drum kicks, gloaming synths and shudder baseline.

Only one copy per customer!

Martinique is an island in the Lesser Antilles, a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea found between the Greater Antilles (Jamaica, Cuba, and Puerto Rica) to the north-west and the continent of South America to the south. Martinique is one of the eighteen regions of France (there are five overseas regions) and an integral part of the French Republic. As part of France, Martinique is also part of the European Union, and its currency is the Euro. The official language is French, and virtually the entire population speaks Antillean Creole. It was first claimed by France in 1635 under the reign of King Louis XIII.

Located geographically closer to the United States than to Europe, the Antilles absorbed jazz and mixed it with the traditional rhythms of their islands: the Biguine, Gwo Ka, Tumbélé. Many artists over the years have explored this uniquely affecting mix: D’Alexandre Stellio, Jean-Claude Montredon, Al Lirvat, Acques Coursil and Mario Caning. But one of the best exemplars of this fusing of American jazz and the Antillean musical tradition was pianist and composer Marius Cultier.
Marius Cultier was born in 1942 in Fort-de-France, Martinique. A precocious talent for an early age, at nine he conducted with the L'Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Fançaise, the French national public broadcasting organisation.

As a young man, Cultier hosted a radio show, ‘Punch en Musique,’ which proved a hit with the public and his name and reputation slowly built. Tragedy struck him at 14 when he was orphaned and he was looked after by this elder sister.

As tragic as 1956 proved for Cultier, it was to be a watershed year for another reason - it was the year he discovered jazz. It wasn’t long before he was fusing the musical styles and language of the West Indies with jazz and he began live performances at the Hôtel l’Impératrice.

Very quickly Cultier became an in-demand concert attraction in Martinique and venue owners soon began to book him across the island. His reputation grew and before long he was also performing across the Caribbean.

As his stature grew, he began to receive accolades and prizes, including the International Piano Conquest prize in Puerto Rico for his performance of "Round Midnight”.
He went to Canada in 1966 - initially for a few weeks - where he stayed for several years. Whilst there he met and played with established jazz artists before continuing his journey in the United States, and then Europe, where he played in Paris at the Palais des Congrès at the invitation of the then President, Valérie Giscard D’Estaing, before returning to Martinique in 1973.

This release is pressed on heavyweight vinyl. The cover is presented on original glued prints on thick cardboard in a PVC outer sleeve.

Apichat Pakwan is a music collective put together by Olivier Schreuder, an Amsterdam-based musician, DJ & producer.

Together they produce “Isantronics” - a hybrid approach to blending Molam (folkmusic of the ethnic Lao, of whom the largest population is living in Isan, another name for Northeast-Thailand), electronic music, Dub & Hip Hop.

Apichat Pakwan consists of Olivier Schreuder (electronics, production, percussion), Pongsapon Upani (Kaen), Artit Krajangsree (Phin, bass), Robin Koek (drums), Angkanang Pimwankum (percussion) and is based in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Khon Kaen (Thailand). TIP!!!

Expect immersing yourself in various layers of field recordings, alienated acoustic instruments and floating arrangements!