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HG 2102LP
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On Empty Room David Granström works with slow transformations, cyclical and isometric patterns as well as just intonation as a way to create harmonic stability, allowing his long-form pieces to develop their own unique temporal and spatial qualities. A prolific figure in Stockholm's experimental drone scene and a collaborator of Hallow Ground label mates Maria W Horn and Mats Erlandsson, the Swedish composer navigates through moments of quietude and crushing volume on these five tracks. Sonically and atmospherically, the pieces on Empty Room simultaneously call to mind Fennesz's most meditative work or the physical experience of seeing Sunn O))) live, blending guitar recordings and synthesized sounds with forceful effects similar to those of Mario Díaz de Leon's Oneirogen project while still being as moving and delicate as Alessandro Cortini's solo work. The album is marked by melodies and harmonies that are the product of a peculiar working process that turned the composer into an intent listener collaborating with, rather than simply using technology.
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HG 1201LP
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An unlikely meeting of two like-minded spirits, First Man in the Moon sees the former Swans guitarist and Hallow Ground regular Norman Westberg and the prolific double bass player Jacek Mazurkiewicz collaborate for five evocative tracks. The pair finds common ground beyond the boundaries of atmospheric drone, abstract jazz, and experimental music and blurs the lines between the acoustic and the electronic. The two first met when the composer Mazurkiewicz supported Swans with his solo project 3FoNIA on their 2014 European tour. "I really enjoyed his approach," says Westberg about the Polish musician's blending of the acoustic qualities of his instrument with electronically generated sounds. A decision to collaborate was made and when the US-American musician returned to Eastern Europe to support Michael Gira on his solo tour in late 2019, Mazurkiewicz reached out to him with the idea of booking some studio time before Gira's two concerts in Warsaw. "Recording was very fun and easy," remembers Westberg. "It was just two people enjoying hearing and reacting to what the other is doing." First Man in the Moon is not however a plain document of these improvised sessions, but also shaped by Mazurkiewicz's approach as a composer. Once the recordings were finished, he selected and edited the recorded material, refining the peculiar dialogue between the guitarist's meditative drones and bright chords and his own rhythmic yet subtle approach to playing the double bass, sometimes plucking the strings and occasionally using his bow to underscore Westberg's fleeting melodies, but also using the instrument in unconventional ways to generate sound. A feeling of weightlessness prevails throughout the aptly-titled First Man in the Moon. Even at their most abstract however, these five improvisations-turned-compositions remain tangible, lively, and joyfully explorative. It is a record that you wouldn't expect from either of these musicians, but the logical result of two idiosyncratic minds sharing not only space and time, but also their respective visions with each other.
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HG 2003LP
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FUJI||||||||||TA, real name Fujita Yosuke, is a Japanese sound artist. After countless performances in different contexts either solo or along artists such as Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms and the legendary avant-gardist Suzuki Akio as well as a slew of solo releases, his LP iki ("breath") for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label is his first sin 2011. On these four pieces, Fujita explores the idiosyncratic sound qualities of the pipe organ he has built all by himself in 2009. This -- quite literally unique -- instrument features only eleven pipes, an air pump called "fuigo" which was modelled after a traditional blacksmith's one and has no keyboard. Inspired by traditional gagaku, it was designed to evoke rich landscapes rather function as just another musical instrument. While his previous records saw FUJI||||||||||TA explore various modes of abstraction, iki is a highly emotive yet meditative album, musically restrained but full of imagination. "keshiki" immediately sets the mood for this record with a long sustained note that is punctuated by the soft clicking of Fujita's air pump. Once Fujita carefully starts bringing melodies into play, the interplay of the drone and the discrete rhythmic element gives way to a fuller harmonic whole. "keshiki" is an intimate piece that perfectly displays the artist's knack for painting a rich sonic picture with only a reduced palette. "nNami" juxtaposes the sounds of two pipes that are out of tune with each other, creating a hypnotic sensation of ebb-and-flow ("nami" translates to "wave") that is full of subtle friction. It's a staggering artistic interpretation of the instrument's material characteristics. Clocking in at ten minutes, "osoi" ("slow") is an overall melancholic piece that explores the relationship between different tone colors through minute changes in pace. Finally, "sukima" ("blank space") is the shortest and the most rhythmic piece of the four. Composed of only staccati, it is a masterful exploration of the harmonic qualities Fujita's stunning pipe organ has to offer. Recorded between September and December of 2019, iki marks the culmination of FUJI||||||||||TA's ten-year-long work with the instrument that he had built without any prior knowledge and started to teach himself to play without a manual in sight. It is, in other words, the unique result of a unique musical mind paying his dues to the uniqueness of his own creation; introspective and welcoming at once. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 2005LP
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Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomazin's Arba, Dâk Arba was conceived as the soundtrack for the eponymous installation piece by the French artist Fanny Béguély. First presented as part of the group exhibition "Panorama 21 - >Les Revenants<" at Tourcoing's Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in December 2019, Béguély's chemically painted photographs focused on humankind's propensity for self-examination and its attempts to probe the mysteries of the past, present and future. Oberland's heavily processed electric hurdy-gurdy, the "boîte à bourdons," provides the foundation upon which the Borghesia member Tomazin unfolds her gripping vocal magic(k). Their dense mesh of soundscapes and singing mediate between the mystic and the modern, the natural and the all-too-unreal to further examine our persistent desire to decipher the signs we find in nature. As the first collaboration between these prolific experimental artists, Arba, Dâk Arba is as evocative and thought-provoking as the art that has inspired it. It's easy to see why a curious instrument like Oberland's electric hurdy-gurdy would be well suited for the duo's ends, and within its first few minutes the opening track "Grotta" makes it clear that the Oiseaux-Tempête co-founder is more than capable of weaving dark psychedelic sound tapestries with only limited means. The ritualistic energy that Béguély's Arba, Dâk Arba draws on is channeled through abstract drones that mirror the aesthetics of the eight suspended paper rolls the artist's audience were faced with. Even as the sound of the boîte à bourdons becomes more visceral and Tomazin's voice more discernible, "Grotta" remains as intangible as the mythological oracles that had informed the work of Béguély. Shorter pieces like "Amena" or the closing track "Hereafter," though condensed, offer just as much to decipher -- a whole musical world to get lost in. "Fumes" and "Hieromancy" in the second half of the LP are the best examples of how much creative friction lies at the heart of the French experimentalist and the Slovenian singer's collaboration. While in the former song, Tomazin first takes the lead singing uncanny, circular motives before stepping aside so Oberland can let the processed sounds of his hurdy-gurdy evolve into chilling crescendo. Blurring the lines between the physical and psychic as well as the real and the hallucionary with their music, Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomazin's Arba, Dâk Arba is one of the most radical albums in recent years. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 2006LP
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Siavash Amini returns to Hallow Ground with A Mimesis of Nothingness, his fourth album for the Swiss label. Following up on Harmistice (HG 1902LP, 2019) together with fellow Iranian artists 9T Antiope, the six tracks were conceived in close collaboration with another artist and see the prolific composer intensify his interdisciplinary approach. The six tracks enter a dialogue with the photographs of Nooshin Shafiee, an acclaimed artist whose work capturing their hometown Tehran becomes the starting point for one of Amini's most visceral and haunting records. A Mimesis of Nothingness translates the ephemeral situations and melancholic moods of Shafiee's pictures into suspenseful soundscapes that masterfully navigate between the concrete and the abstract. A Mimesis of Nothingness is a disquieting record precisely because it is a quiet one. Working with field recordings, Amini sculpts dynamic portraits that create an atmosphere of tangible suspense that is never fully released. Even when string-like sounds enter the picture as they do on the third track "Moonless Garden" or when the abstract and glacial noise on "Observance (Shadow)" demand the listener's attention, the six pieces take hold of the subconscious rather than trying to be direct and confrontational. It is sound conceived not as a description, but a circumscription of spatial relations and the eeriness embedded in them. Includes eight-page booklet.
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HG 2001LP
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The Electric Sewer Age project was originally started anonymously by the late Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson together with Coil affiliate and seasoned remixer Danny Hyde, who continued the project together with John Deek, who passed away in 2013. Contemplating Nothingness is the third release by Electric Sewer Age and the second one that Hyde finished alone. With his work as Electric Sewer Age, he explores the vast open space between the dark psychedelic aesthetics that he has helped establishing together with John Balance and his longtime collaborate Christopherson with a postmodernist approach that is deeply rooted in studio practice and sampling. On Contemplating Nothingness, disembodied voices mingle with subdued rhythms, muffled harmonies, or menacing string themes. Over just a little bit more than half an hour, Hyde conjures up traditional and contemporary production techniques and genres like plunderphonics, Leyland Kirby's V/VM project or early vaporwave, all while retaining his singular voice. Throbbing industrial gives way to jazz-inflected quasi-rap, autotune balladry and ethno ambient, before closing on eerily alienated synth pop sounds and a stunning exercise in psychedelic minimalism. Contemplating Nothingness is an album as surreal and beautiful as a half-remembered dream, constantly navigating through the liminal zone of the familiar and the great unknown. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 2099LP
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Laurin Huber is a prolific figure in the Swiss underground for experimental music and arts. He has been active as a musician and producer in a slew of projects like Wavering Hands, Frederik, or legendary Swiss institution Krankenzimmer 204. Having just released his first solo release under the R.E.R. moniker on the label Edipo Re, co-founded by Huber and frequent collaborator Rolf Laureijs in 2016, he now presents his first album under his given name. The four tracks on Juncture aim to work with "superimpositions, interactions, interferences, and modes of coexistence," as Huber explains. "I'm generally interested in thought that tries to look at the world beyond dualisms," says the artist. "Contemporary feminist theory and philosophies of difference, the critique of dualities such as nature/nurture, body/mind, object/subject or anorganic/organic are therefore important reference points." On a musical level, this means working with overlaps and interfering layers, field recordings as well as synthesizers and the experienced drummer's knack for intricate rhythms. Over the course of more than half an hour, the producer brings together dreamlike synthesizer pieces with stripped-down, mid-tempo techno pieces, feverish echoes of industrial music, and swelling sounds that are juxtaposed with subtle rhythmic counterpoints. In a world in which dualities reign and polarization increases both socially and culturally, Junction serves as an invitation to deconstruct binary thinking by affirming the coexistence of allegedly opposed elements. It does so with striking emotional ambiguity, sometimes lulling in its audience with soothing sounds and in the next challenging them with an ominous atmosphere. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1906LP
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Still Und Dunkel is the project of musician and visual artist Christoph Brünggel, film maker Benny Jaberg, and media artist Pascal Arnold. Their debut album Abandoned comprises ten compositions created for their audiovisual art live performances which draw on an ever-growing archive of moving images and sound recordings. The three artists started working together in 2011 and visited abandoned and hidden places at night or underground throughout the world to collect images and sounds. The trio documents and archives the transformative processes that these former symbols of civilisation have been undergoing since they had been deserted or forgotten -- that is, if they had ever before been accessible to the public in the first place. Abandoned contains additional information on Still Und Dunkel, as well as artwork by Arnold and Jaberg, including a 64-page booklet with images from the project and its creation as well as an essay by writer Brian Dillon. All this makes it one of the most ambitious releases on the Hallow Ground to date.
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HG 1905LP
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Viaje is the debut album by Swiss musician Roland Bucher and was produced with an instrument developed and built by the artist himself, the noise table. Viaje presents the culmination of almost a decade of exploring the possibilities that the curious device offers. Combining the physicality of the improvisational praxis with a classical approach to composition, these five songs highlight the emotional, narrative, and atmospheric potentials of granular noise. Viaje was not only produced with an unheard-of instrument, it also comprises music that no one ever has heard quite like that before. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1904LP
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Following the success of her 2018 solo debut album Kontrapoetik (PRTLS 017LP), the Swedish composer Maria W Horn returns with Epistasis, her most ambitious record to date. The title track, "Konvektion" and the two parts of "Interlocked Cycles" see the XKatedral co-founder explore radical approaches to composition that combine avant-garde methods with electronic means. While Kontrapoetik highlighted Horn's strength as a conceptual and political artist, Epistasis is to be understood as an advanced statement by a forward-thinking composer who throughout four pieces channels her influences, ranging from black metal to minimal music, through state-of-the-art technology. Originally composed as an audiovisual piece for synchronized multi-channel sound and lights and premiered in 2018 at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, "Interlocked Cycles" is a series of pieces exploring a gradual increase in tempo and density using various instruments. It was written to be performed by a computer-controlled upright Disklavier piano while the electronic part was generated within the Supercollider framework using phase modulation synthesis. An exercise in minimalism that combines the subtle gravity of Phill Niblock's work with the visceral theatrics of Anna von Hausswolff's organ pieces. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1802LP
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Having recently contributed to Goner's Yogascum LP, reissued in late 2017, Mark Godwin now returns to the Swiss label together with his musical partner Gareth Ormerod as zK. Drawing heavily on musique-concrète techniques, synthesizers, and sampling to create an immersive experience bordering on the synaesthetic, the six tracks capture the nervous energy of Thailand's capital after dark. Moving from the opener "Ouside Broadcast" with its collage-like juxtaposition of every-day sounds and squelching noise to the aptly titled "Cognitive Dissonance" and the aleatoric modular excursions of "Feral Confection" towards the more somber, lysergic undertones of the B side, ending in the both elegiac and haunting final track "Fleshpotting", Godwin and Ormerod explore the sharp contrasts which characterize the city. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1903LP
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Remo Seeland's Hollow Body is a suspenseful exploration of the interaction between sound environments and individual perception. It was sparked by an intense physical experience the Swiss artist had during a residency in New York City. "The subway became a sort of 'atonal symphony' for me, provoking a full-body experience with the rattling of the overcrowded, airless trains," the Hallow Ground founder explains. "However, while the old subway is not exactly beloved by everyone, it also represented for me the melancholic meta-level of the moloch above it." The album, his first under his given name, makes this disparity audible over six tracks in which the visceral and the personal become at once abstract and universal. Based on field recordings from both urban and rural environments, Hollow Body aims to mirror another of Seeland's psycho-sonic encounters. "In the highlands of Iceland, I noticed my pulse lowering and my breathing decelerating," he says. "Just shortly after that, a single insect's buzzing seemed so loud to me that I became even more aware of the silence surrounding me." Silence, perception, order, and the curious dialectics of the outside world and the inner workings of the human psyche are the central questions of Hollow Body. Recorded in New York, Reykjavík, and Zurich, Hollow Body draws extensively on field recordings and sees Seeland collaborating with Hallow Ground-affiliated artists Norman Westberg (Swans, guitar on "Body Innovation" and "Hollow City") and Reinier van Houdt (Current 93, e-bowed guitar on "Hollow City" and Rhodes organ on "Pulse Points Green"), as well as the Swiss-based US-American musician Steve Fors (Deaf At Sea, trombone on "Second Coming"). The diversity of the source material is mirrored in the stylistic richness Seeland lays out with this LP. From the lush, bass-heavy drones of the opener "Body Innovation", to the downbeat-driven "Second Coming" and, finally, the haunting organ sounds of "Night Within", Hollow Body forms a holistic entity that integrates idiosyncratic compositions into a coherent narrative.
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HG 1902LP
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9T Antiope have made a name for themselves in the vibrant experimental music scene of Iran over the past years. Now based in Paris, Sara Bigdeli Shamloo and Nima Aghiani are expanding their stylistic scope and team up with long-time friend Siavash Amini for their debut release on Hallow Ground. After 2017's Tar (HG 1703CD/LP) and Foras the year after 2018 (HG 1805LP), Harmistice is Amini's third LP for the Swiss-based label and his first in collaboration with other artists. Recorded in Paris and Tehran, the four tracks are the result of "all the long hours of speaking online, being kilometers away, it is a love child of those short times we actually got to be physically in one place." Vocalist and lyricist Shamloo enters a dialogue with Aghiani and Amini's sound art, which is from restrained but interlocks voice and noise with striking subtlety. Harmistice seamlessly blends the visceral with the sublime, the abstract with the oh-too-real. From the very first second of "Blue As In Bleeding", Harmistice evokes a sense of suspended terror. Shrill frequencies and aleatoric bursts of feedback give way to a hard-hitting bass drum until Shamloo's voice arises from the chaos with an uneasy clarity. It's the perfect opening for a record that is built upon stark contrasts like this one. Amini and Aghiani bring together synthetic sounds with acoustic instruments, creating a tangible tension on which Shamloo's sometimes sensitive, sometimes emotionally detached delivery thrives. "It's all based on a dream, a nightmare about war," she says in regards to her lyrics that move between poetic abstraction and first-person prose, blurring the lines between lived experience and sinister premonition. Harmistice takes inventory after the oneiric damage has been dealt in real life. As a whole, Harmistice is thus as ambiguous as its title suggests. As an all-too-lucid dream about unspeakable things that are being lent a voice it overwhelms the senses with an unheard-of volume. Drawn from the depths of the subconscious, Harmistice may just be the most challenging album in either 9T Antiope or Amini's discography. 180 gram white vinyl.
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HG 1901LP
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Vegetal Negatives is a game of sonic mutations, mimicry, inversions, and association inspired by a text called "On pataphotograms", by the French writer René Daumal -- a quasi-metaphysical essay that toys with breaking the conceived separateness of natural forms through poetic imagination. Marja Ahti (b. 1981) is a Swedish-born artist living and working in Turku, Finland. She has been an active part of the Finnish experimental music scene for more than ten years, performing with Ahti & Ahti and under the moniker Tsembla. Now arriving at her debut LP under her own name, Ahti explores a new formal language and sonic palette that ventures far from the path of her earlier work. The four electroacoustic compositions on the album combine and arrange field recordings, electronic feedback, Buchla and ARP synthesizers, bowl gong and harmonium, textures of detailed acoustic sound, and sustained tones with gentle microtonal beating into a precise musical narrative. She juxtaposes recordings of rooms and empty vessels, natural and artificial climates, spontaneous and staged events. Ahti draws upon Annea Lockwood's ideas about associative movements between sounds based on shared characteristics and sonic energy. The sounds hover between abstraction and the deeply familiar, moving into a realm of poetic metaphor where they are set in relation to each other, fleetingly mirroring or shadow-dancing. Acoustic environments mutate into synthetically derived shadow forms.
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HG 1806LP
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Originally issued by Ascetic House as a small limited-run cassette release, PLYXY's Gloryland now be available on vinyl by Swiss imprint Hallow Ground. The nostalgia that informs Gloryland is PLYXY's longing for his cultural-geographic roots while feeling adrift in an alien environment. Born in Dnepropetrovsk, then the rocket-making capital of the USSR, Knopov immigrated to New York City as a child in 1989. In Gloryland, he dives deep into his uneasy childhood memories and their warped reflections. PLYXY marks the unreliability of his recollections by making it heard; the anthemic qualities of the five pieces are coated in an opaque layer of dream-like textures. From the elegiac opener, "It Will Be Beautiful", to the blaring rhythmic noise of "March of Youth", the greyscale picture painted by Gloryland becomes more and more refined below the surface. PLYXY's search for a past is, however, less a sentimental journey, and more a radical confrontation with the politics of memory and the materials that serve as mnemonic devices. Gloryland draws on field recordings from Knopov's adopted hometown New York and Soviet films as well as performances from his collection of analog and digital keyboards, with the results filtered and re-textured through the producer's modular synthesizer setup acting as the final editorial layer in the creative process. The result is lush and warm throughout, but also demure and distant.
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HG 1807LP
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Reinier Van Houdt returns to Hallow Ground with an album based on the unfinished gothic tale Igitur, a collection of texts that eventually was abandoned by its author Stéphane Mallarmé in 1869. Connecting with Mallarmé's obsessions about chance and destiny, Igitur Carbon Copies is the fragmentation of all the roots that ran under its predecessor Paths Of The Errant Gaze (HG 1606LP, 2016) and brings these to a provisional close: guided by David Tibet's voice reading the reworked text we descend through spheres of deserted anthems, disembodied voices, Morse signals, crank calls, corroded tapes, radio statics, stones, while doing counting games. Here the acoustical spaces are manifold, blended or shifted in a heartbeat, where far and near, up and down are relative, where Riemann's god is pointless and angels are enjoying their space. Here perception is a vice that constantly hallucinates realities. Van Houdt has built himself an unusual repertoire that consistently resulted from personal quests; from composing with non-musical sources, from collaborations with composers & musicians, from research in archives or from unorthodox studies of classical music. He collaborated with artists like Francisco López, Maria de Alvear, Robert Ashley, Luc Ferrari, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Curran, John Cage, Christian Marclay, Walter Marchetti, Charlemagne Palestine, and joined the legendary outsider-collective Current 93 in 2012. 180 gram clear vinyl.
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HG 1801LP
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Collaborative project of Algis Kizys, Norman Westberg, and Lynn Wright. Having previously released a limited-edition cassette tape in 2016 under the name of ALN, their self-titled album for Hallow Ground is to be considered the three-piece's definite studio debut as This Is Where. Recorded and mixed by Kizys, This Is Where delves even deeper into the psychedelic and at times cosmic drone sound previously to be heard in the New York City-based trio's live recordings. As a logical next step after what the Swans guitarist Westberg has presented on recent solo albums like The All Most Quiet for Hallow Ground (HG 1605CD/LP, 2016), it integrates three distinct musical visions into a whirling ocean of sound. This Is Where's sound is neither dominated by the thundering brutalism of Swans nor the gloomy doom pop of Wright's Bee And Flower. Instead Kizys, Westberg, and Wright use delay, reverb and effects to weave a pulsating web of sonic textures, moving effortlessly from dark depths to almost jubilant high notes. With Kizy's roaring bass guitar as a sonic backdrop, Westberg and Wright give rise to a musical dialogue marked by density and tension. Over the course of 40 minutes, This Is Where create a mesmerizing musical experience, divided into four discrete movements.
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HG 1805LP
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After 2017's Tar', Foras is Iranian sound artist Siavash Amini's second album for the Hallow Ground and his sixth solo album in only six years. The four tracks see him returning to his singular approach that blends harsh electronic noise with lush granular synthesis and classical compositional techniques. Over the course of roughly 38 minutes, the album navigates between different and at times seemingly contradictory moods, thus mirroring its underlying concept. Foras explores how individual sorrow relates to and is triggered by space. Similar to what the late theorist Mark Fisher has dubbed the "eerie," the LP focuses on how landscapes and buildings connect to and transform the inside world and thus the psychological experience. May it be by passing through a space haunted by collective memories of loss or tragedy, or by means of interpersonal dialogue, or even a memory of such events in each individual's mind elaborates Amini on the starting points from which Foras dives further and further into the darkness. It is no surprise then that the incredibly lush soundscapes of'Foras evoke distance as much as depth.
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HG 1804LP
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Distant Animals is the artistic output of Daniel Alexander Hignell, a researcher and sound, video, and performance artist from England. He has recorded, written, performed, and researched numerous socially-oriented sound works across Europe, often choosing to work with a diverse range of collaborators, including visual artists, choreographers, theologians, lawyers, and political activists. Drawing upon the works of La Monte Young, Morton Feldman, Eleh, and Mauricio Kagel, Lines employs a highly conceptual approach to its genre, incorporating the notion of the drone as both a compositional method, a spiritual approach, and a participatory tool for engaging its audience. The album contains a pack of four postcards, documenting a land-art intervention undertaken during the creation of the score. Included in each pack is an individually hand-stamped and numbered print, created by artist Layla Tully. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1803LP
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Kali Malone's sophomore LP Cast of Mind investigates the use of harmony as a force of psychological impact through the exclusive use of the Buchla 200 synthesizer in combination with acoustic woodwind and brass instruments. The record begins as a cascade of battle calls from the wind instruments that shift between triumphant and anguished howls. While the other pieces pull from the septimal harmonic framework of the title track, they extract a more confined palette to depict their sonic identities indicated by the song titles. "Bondage To Formula" weaves synthesis, trombone, and bass clarinet in a delicate pattern, conjuring an ambiguous assimilation of the acoustic and synthetic. Dominated by columns of sawtooth waveforms, "Arched In Hysteria" unravels as a sharp and sober harmony perched on the border of violence, ringing in paranoia amongst a foundation of low beating oscillators. The record concludes in the rapture of "Empty The Belief", swollen with undulating bassoon striving to intonate to the towering stability of machine-generated harmony. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1707LP
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For over two decades now, Martin Maischein has dedicated himself to all things adventurous on labels such as Editions Mego, Force Inc., or Position Chrome. In 2017, Maischein released Yogascum as a small-run cassette release on Hospital Productions under his Goner moniker. This re-release marks Yogascum's first time on vinyl. Having received a grant by the Musicboard Berlin, he developed an audio-visual show around the three tracks at the core of Yogascum, all of which feature instruments and sounds previously unheard in his work. Cellist Unter Lala weaves her signature screeches into the pulsating drones of "YS- 1" and "YS-3", zK member Mark Godwin on "YS-2" injects the subtle influence of a band whose records he has been working on as a mastering engineer, Coil. While the title of Yogascum is a tongue-in-cheek riff on one of Maischein's favorite pastimes, it can indeed be taken at face value: The newest of the three core pieces, "YS-1", is in fact meant to support a slow and focused breathing rhythm. Built around Unter Lala's evocative sustained notes, it harkens back to the cultural origins of drone music. While "YS-2" is based on an elegiac industrial rhythm, "YS-3" sees Unter Lala and Maischein opting for a more abrasive approach. "Endtitle", the credit music for the audio-visual show built around the three compositions, comes as a wake-up call. It also serves as a firm reminder that Maischein hasn't forgotten about his own roots in IDM-tinged electronica. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1706LP
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The material on Martina Lussi's Selected Ambient oscillates between electroacoustic composition, sound art, and live performance. The pieces are named after precious gemstones, all of which are traditionally ascribed with special powers. In using these names, the artist seems to refer to the esoteric roots of the genre invoked by the LP's title. The compositions, however, resist the genre's characteristically naïve re-enchantment of the world and distrust holistic esotericism's promise of healing and restoration. Instead, they are defined much more by an interest in affective uncertainties. The gemstones don't want to affect or influence -- they simply want to exist as witnesses of/to the ultimately incommensurable reality that lives beyond our own horizon. Lussi holds a Master of Arts in Contemporary Arts Practice. Lussi has performed work between the disciplines of sound art and music performance at places like LUFF (Lausanne Underground Film Festival) and the festival Oto Nove Swiss at London's Café Oto. 180 gram vinyl.
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PIC. DISC + CD
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HG 1705LP
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Ivan Pavlov pays tribute to the late Sentrax founder and prolific musician John Everall, who passed away in September 2014. Sourced from analog material, the six tracks are an exercise in minimalism and subtlety singular even in Pavlov's impressive back catalog. Pavlov focuses on swirling arpeggios whose colorfulness is mirrored in Ruth Stofer's artwork. From the joyful, handclap-driven "2016", to the hectic gabber derivate "Overbeat", the Russian producer explores a minimalistic yet organic palette of synthesizer sounds that stylistically reach from the hymn-like poise of "Wavetrap" to the playful and warm vibes of "Alone (Minimal Selfie)". With a feature of Coil's John Balance on the CD-only bonus track "Hunger Remix", Pavlov adds yet another facet to this evocative marriage of sonic purity and emotional rawness. Over a throbbing rhythm, the late poet's dry intonation serves as an eerie coda to this tender tribute to lost friends. As a dialogue between this world and the other, CoH's digital manipulation and Everall's analog source material as well as stark minimalism and tonal richness, CoH Plays Everall captures two kindred spirits bidding each other farewell. Limited edition picture disc includes a CD.
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LP
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HG 1704LP
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Trance-derived melodies, murky industrial grooves, and all-consuming harsh noise attacks from Dedekind Cut. Created in transit between New York, Seoul, and Berlin and recorded between the fall of 2016 and the winter of 2017. Over 23 minutes, the release shifts from densely layered textures to subtle piano notes and hard-hammering beats, seemingly mirroring the drastic changes of the times in which they were conceived. With the help of Dirch Heather (modular synths), Elysia Crampton (piano), Mica Levi (dubbed piano), Jesse Osborne-Lanthier (synths), as well as Dominick Fernow alias Prurient and Death Grips drummer Zach Hill on percussion, Fred Welton Warmsley III reminds his listeners that now is not the time to give up. Warmsley left behind a career as Joey Bada$$'s producer and his previous moniker Lee Bannon to pursue a more experimental musical approach as Dedekind Cut. It's a conceptual entity that draws on creative collaboration and aims at gathering unique artists under a single musical vision. Amidst the cacophony, a distinctive voice can be heard. The Expanding Domain might sound bleak and unforgiving at first, but it also communicates a hope as well as a desire to resist. After all, there is a reason that this record was created as a loop.
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CD
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HG 1703CD
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Continuing his experiments combining elements of drone and modern classical music, Tehran based composer Siavash Amini's fourth solo album Tar explores the fragile tensions between an individual and a collective subconscious. Making its starting point the expression of these feelings in dreams and nightmares of each individual, Tar translates the images, feelings, and textures into sound. After a series of noisier and less melodic albums, Tar catches the active listener with a subtle tension created by oscillating sounds somewhere between discomfort and transcendence. Even if some parts of Tar are quite disturbing, the record never becomes simply dark. "Amini provides a satisfying mix of modern classical composition, ambient noise, granular synthesis and musique concrète with a hint of muscularity below its serene surface." --The Guardian
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