Häpna is a label interested in music that doesn't fall into genres easily, such as music that moves between the song-based, composed and improvised. Häpna also prefers music that combines different kind of sound sources in a natural way: electronic sounds, field recordings and sounds from acoustic instruments. Most important, however, is that the CDs have a clear focus, and that they are carried out without compromises.
Häpna has released CDs with international artists such as David Grubbs, Loren Connors and Oren Ambarchi, all well-known in experimental music. About every other release is with one exceptional Swedish artist after another that deserves greater attention, including Tape, Sagor & Swing, Eric Malmberg and Hans Appelqvist.
Häpna is based in Stockholm, Sweden, and run by Klas Augustsson and Johan Berthling.
Web site: www.hapna.com
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HAPNA 053LP
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"The eagerly awaited follow-up to Drape Me in Velvet (HAPNA 046CD, 2012) is here! In the making for quite some time it features a large cast of players and in the midst of it all Mr Musette himself -- Joel Danell. This man has carved a niche for himself with a sound world merging both the most ancient and the newest of the new. Hip hop, polka, novelty music and sound tracks all go down in the blender. For each record Musette has deepened the colours and now he's at a point where he's so much his own that his sound is immediately recognizable. Jack Nitzsche and his albums The Lonely Surfer and Three Piece Suite are opaque references, but this is just to point at the grandiosity A Cosmic Serenade has. It's music out of time, full of references but at the same time existing in a world of its own" --Chester Petranick. Music by Joel Danell. Musicians: Christopher Cantillo, Daniel Ögren, Edvin Nahlin, Vilhelm Bromander, Anna Dager, Hanna Ekström, Nils Berg, Anna Ahnlund, Anders af Klintberg, Johan Norin, Ylva Ceder, Joel Danell. Published by Music Super Circus Extravaganza. LP includes CD.
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HAPNA 055LP
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"Oren Ambarchi and Johan Berthling are two masters of reducing music's peak intensities to their root meaning. Oren's early solo guitar works rendered this process with an instantly recognisable combination of sine wave throb and precisely controlled attack that has bloomed in maturity -- concentrating the ecstatic potential of the guitar solo by folding it back on itself and stacking the points of greatest liminal intensity into waves of powerfully psychedelic excess while also encompassing more explicit references to his deep love of pop/rock songform and rhythmic/riffing minimalism. Johan Berthling's attention to purity of sound and his unflagging pulse has made him one of Europe's finest bass players whether invigorating numerous acoustic ensembles (Arashi/LSB/Martin Küchen etc) or keeping Fire!'s free/jazz/rock amalgam locked during explosions of orchestral colour. He first came to my attention in the trio Tape -- a group that have continued to refine an open approach to pastoral minimalism, rich and strikingly gorgeous without resorting to emotional posturing. Though Ambarchi has since joined Berthling in Fire! and its orchestral incarnation as a guest -- it's been well over a decade since they convened as a duo in Stockholm to record My Days Are Darker Than Your Nights -- a gorgeous half-hour of luminous sustained tones sourced from Ambarchi's guitar and electronics and Berthling on harmonium. Initially reacquainting us with those times Tongue Tied slowly drifts into consciousness -- an overture of flickering held hammond chords and harmonics set aloft like lanterns celebrating the new year before dramatically shifting into the present with a strummed double bass run and Ambarchi's swinging cymbals ushering in the pair's shared mode of simultaneous propulsion and physical suspension. We see things a little more clearly in this time. I think about The Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner -- the scene shot at 500 frames a second and played back at 24 -- but here it's just the core of music in motion -- the bottom of the tongue's tip tethered to the floor of the mouth sending the mind sky high" --John Chantler. LP includes CD.
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HAPNA 052CD
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The new album from alternative music veterans Tape marks their 14th year of activity. It's called Casino and was recorded in the legendary Atlantis studio in Stockholm by engineer Janne Hansson in December 2013. The music of Tape still continues its growth, in its own way, separated from the rest of the world in many ways. This time the emotional depth and interest in details are even stronger and clearer. The album has been mixed by Andreas Werliin and mastered by Mell Dettmer. Swedish trio Tape was set up in 2000 by brothers Andreas and Johan Berthling with Tomas Hallonsten. Taking cues both from pop, experimentalism, and minimalism, their sound, with a mixture of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, has become recognized internationally and is clearly something of its own. Their first album Opera (HAPNA 040CD) was released on the Häpna imprint (which Johan is a co-owner of) in 2002. Working intuitively, all by themselves, they created mini symphonies out of electronic sounds paired with a stunning melodic lyricism. 2003 saw the release of Milieu. These recordings had a more arranged feeling and a clear pop sensibility in some parts. In 2005 they went to Cologne to have Marcus Schmickler produce and record their third album Rideau. This was done in his Piethopraxis studio in Cologne and his involvement left traces; an almost architectonical approach was taken and some of the intimacy that characterized the first two albums was replaced by a somewhat harder edge. In 2006 they collaborated with Japanese duo Tenniscoats on their album Tan-Tan Therapy. That same year they recorded in Tokyo with Japanese quartet Minamo, which resulted in the record Birds of a Feather. Since Luminarium (2008) they have been working out of their own Summa studio in Stockholm and there they also recorded what became Revelationes (HAPNA 044CD), their fifth album. After a hiatus for two years the group did a tour of Europe in November 2013. They tried out new material, which later was recorded in Stockholm at the Atlantis studio and is now released as the album Casino. It's their sixth full-length album if you omit all the different collaborations and other stuff they've done throughout the years (all released on Häpna). Johan Berthling plays guitar and more in Tape but is also the bass player for the trio Fire! with Mats Gustafsson & Andreas Werliin and is involved with many other projects ranging from free-jazz to rock. His collaborators include Oren Ambarchi, Akira Sakata and Paal Nilssen-Love. Tomas Hallonsten is a keyboard player and multi-instrumentalist running the trio Time Is A Mountain, including Berthling on bass and drummer Andreas Werliin. He is a much-in-demand musician and works in many different contexts. Andreas Berthling is a musician using modular synthesis and laptop as his instruments. He has released a string of recordings under his own name.
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HAPNA 052LP
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HAPNA 050LP
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Vinyl-only release. "Any new recording by Eric Malmberg and his unique group Sagor & Swing is cause for celebration. If I had a radio show, I'd be cueing up 'Landet bortom landet Bortom' this very instant and just waiting for the phone lines to light up. I might play it five times in a row. I was first drawn to Sagor & Swing by swirling modal melodies that make the Hammond organ sound like the earliest of musical instruments. On Botvid Grenlunds Park, Eric's Hammond gets wrapped up in spirited dialogues with its infinitely more bouncy, bubbly colleague the synthesizer, all in a mirror unexpectedly brightly. I still hear the solemn beauty of previous Sagor & Swing, but something else is beginning to boil." --Pleasure Sounds, David Grubbs, April 2013
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HAPNA 049LP
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On white vinyl. It all starts with a sound: the sound of a monophonic synth -- then we have the drums and what binds it all together: the bass. Phrases, echoes, memories -- expanding lines that evolve and re-evolve. Escape from New York. Growing up. Possibilities and limitations. The smell of dust and electricity. A wish to go backwards and forwards at the same time. It all comes down to an introspective groove and the strength of the collective process. Time Is A Mountain is the brainchild of Tomas Hallonsten. Honing his craft in the group Tape and on numerous other recordings, he's now one of Sweden's most distinctive musicians, talking to his machines and coaxing totally organic sounds out of them. The music on this record throws its tentacles both into the future and back into history with a sound not to be confused with others. Together with cohorts Andreas Werliin (Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Tonbruket, Fire!) and Johan Berthling (Tape, Fire!) they've created a real gem of a record.
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HAPNA 046CD
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This is the third album from Musette. The starting point of Drape Me In Velvet was a large collection of cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes from the 1950s and 1960s, many inherited from relatives. During the three years the album was recorded on these tapes, they were treated and mistreated with tools and violence. New sounds and instruments were recorded over the older recordings. The tapes were mistreated again, scratched, wrinkled. Layer upon layer of melodies and tape memories were brought together to a whole where music for silent films, exotic easy listening and French chanson are some of the strands in the braid. The result is a historical collage where the passing of time is heard in anachronistic piano melodies and disintegrating chords. Ghosts of former recordings whisper in the warm background noise. This is music for amusement parks with neglected maintenance. Drape Me In Velvet is an album so particular in nature, that one gets ecstatic. The melodies and production are instantly recognizable as Musette's own. A new language is created. What's perhaps the most unique is the marriage between the world of melodies and the lust to experiment. Seldom have we heard music with original ideas about sound and sound-making coming out this melodious, lovable and accessible. Joel Danell is Musette. Already with the last album Datum (2009, Tona Serenad), Musette showed that he had a unique musical character, but this is a work of an even greater magnitude. Participating on the album are Joel Danell, Andreas Tengblad, Christopher Cantillo, Lars Ekman, Johan Jonsson, Linus Hillborg, Anders af Klintberg, Oskar Moberg and Nick Clifford.
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HAPNA 046LP
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LP version. This is the third album from Musette. The starting point of Drape Me In Velvet was a large collection of cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes from the 1950s and 1960s, many inherited from relatives. During the three years the album was recorded on these tapes, they were treated and mistreated with tools and violence. New sounds and instruments were recorded over the older recordings. The tapes were mistreated again, scratched, wrinkled. Layer upon layer of melodies and tape memories were brought together to a whole where music for silent films, exotic easy listening and French chanson are some of the strands in the braid. The result is a historical collage where the passing of time is heard in anachronistic piano melodies and disintegrating chords. Ghosts of former recordings whisper in the warm background noise. This is music for amusement parks with neglected maintenance. Drape Me In Velvet is an album so particular in nature, that one gets ecstatic. The melodies and production are instantly recognizable as Musette's own. A new language is created. What's perhaps the most unique is the marriage between the world of melodies and the lust to experiment. Seldom have we heard music with original ideas about sound and sound-making coming out this melodious, lovable and accessible. Joel Danell is Musette. Already with the last album Datum (2009, Tona Serenad), Musette showed that he had a unique musical character, but this is a work of an even greater magnitude. Participating on the album are Joel Danell, Andreas Tengblad, Christopher Cantillo, Lars Ekman, Johan Jonsson, Linus Hillborg, Anders af Klintberg, Oskar Moberg and Nick Clifford.
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HAPNA 048CD
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Japanese duo Tenniscoats have been running together for more than ten years, and their music is all about catching the moment. They are true improvisers inside their own musical world. The music on this record adds a new facet to their universe -- deeper, more intense, but with still-visible signs of their trademark playfulness, despite the fact that the album was recorded during dark winter-time. This is the second time they went to Stockholm, Sweden, to record their music. Musicians around the group Tape and label Häpna gathered together with producer Johan Berthling during a week in the studio to record most of the music for Papa's Ear. Compared to the recording of Tan-Tan Therapy (2007) which was very haphazard, everything started on a new level. There was already a plan on how to work, ideas around the sound that was aimed for. In typical Tenniscoats fashion, Saya completed some of the lyrics in the last minute. There is always a new song to record, the flow of new material seems inexhaustible. Welcome to Tenniscoats' magical, mystery world. Participating on the album are Saya, Ueno, Johan Berthling, Tomas Hallonsten, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Lars Skoglund, Andreas Söderström and Andreas Werliin.
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HAPNA 047CD
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Sjunga Slutet Nu (trans. "Sing The End Now"), the new long-awaited project by Hans Appelqvist, consists of both an album and a film. The work is about the angst and silencing of death and the meeting with the final end. The film and album have the atmosphere of a fairy-tale that feels both natural and original, a world where talking levitating spheres seem as ordinary as man. In it, we meet Theodora, an elderly woman that lives in a lonely house by a lake somewhere in Sweden. We also meet her friends: the six-years-old boy Vissen and the levitating sphere Sot that often stays close to Theodora's house or rests in the pile of flour that lies prepared for him in the kitchen. Both the music on the album and the film originate from the same world. Part of the dialog, background sounds and musical scenes of the film are used to deepen the atmosphere of the album. The structure is complex -- threads are picked up and woven together in a way similar to the free, nonlinear narrative of dreams. Once again, Hans Appelqvist invites us into one of his oddly-constructed worlds, where you don't know what is dream and what is reality, and through this, he makes us face ourselves.
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HAPNA 045CD
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This is the debut album by Sweden's Ohayo, which includes members Andreas Söderström (Ass), Johan Berthling (Tape) and Per Eklund. At the end of a tour as the backing band for Swedish artist El Perro Del Mar, these three musicians decided to form a new band and make music on their own. They started with just improvising in the studio and after several sessions, their sound began to form: a soft, somnambulant music with an underlying threat. Guitars intertwine with each other, Hammond organ, drums, double bass and trumpet create space in the music. This is music that plays itself and speaks for itself.
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HAPNA 044CD
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This is the eagerly-awaited fifth full-length album from Sweden's Tape. Tape has been around since 2000, making music in between experimentalism, pop and folk. Their first album Opera was released in 2002 by Häpna and in 2003 they did their first Japanese tour. Since then, they have toured the U.S., many European countries, China, Japan and Taiwan. They've toured together with people like Bill Wells, David Grubbs, Tenniscoats, Ass, Efterklang, and many others. This is Revelationes: Register. A. Obstinate. Pyramid-shaped body. A scent of camphor around him. Prefers mashed food to firmer consistencies. Thrives in the evenings. B. Past occupation as deckhand. Odd first look. Rests during daytime if given the opportunity. Kind but has high demands concerning one's friendship even in, to him, less flattering circumstances. C. Tubby and lively, gleeful -- but with sad false bottoms. Carries untreated ballast that rolls when the light is put out, screamed wildly in sleep once. Unexplainable interest in fruit cultivation. Applied working method. Information is written to the environment. Stimuli, atmosphere, delicate movements. A few channels are recorded, these trigger reactions, semi-automatic overdubs, complementary actions from others. Carried-out work seems to define new building structures. Instincts, learned patterns and responses, spontaneous additions and supplements. Two chords are played, then two again, four, they are lust-permuted, four, a metal whistle, a faint howl is cut in, the elements are permuted, permuted, lust-permuted.
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HAPNA 043CD
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This is the second full-length album by Sweden's Anna Järvinen, the follow-up to her debut Jag Fick Feeling. Man Var Bland Molnen ("One Was Among The Clouds") is produced and recorded by Gustav Ejstes (Dungen), who also plays a variety of instruments on the album. Other musicians include Reine Fiske, Fredik Swahn, Johan Holmegard, Leo Svensson, Mattias Bergqvist and Anders Nygårds. The collaboration with Dungen already began on Anna's first record, who participated on the main part of the album. Concerning the choice of Ejstes as producer, Anna says in Sonic magazine (Sweden) that "nobody has like Gustav, silently and immediately, understood my music. I wanted to try and leave the songs with him so he could put his mark on and in them." Seldom has there been such a breakthrough for an artist on a small label in Sweden as with the release of Jag Fick Feeling. Anna was nominated for a Swedish Grammy and P3 Guld prize, awarded Stockholm City's music prize, and was interviewed in virtually every Swedish paper. The record also got a lot of attention in Finland and Anna toured in both countries during fall 2007 and spring/summer 2008. The first single from Man Var Bland Molnen is the track "Äppelöga," ("Apple-Eye"), a song with an almost countrified, Americana swing. All tracks, of course, feature Anna's sweetly breathy voice in Swedish, and a wholesome helping of piano, harmonica, flute, strings, and laid-back acoustic guitar -- lending the whole affair a soft/light rock/California morning sunniness. Once again transcends all pop language barriers through its apple-cheeked charm.
"i wrote some songs
about sex, sorrow
abuse,
falling
in love and
pure summery frustration.
then
i lost my way.
you and i are
the only ones left now
here, among the clouds.
come." --Anna Järvinen
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HAPNA 041CD
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Milieu Plus is a reissue of Tape's 2003 second full-length, Milieu (HAPNA 014CD), with four new tracks taken from the original 2003 sessions. When this album first came out, it sounded like nothing else. Seemingly improvised but still so tenderly composed, it took cues from both the most gentle free jazz and Brian Eno's ideas of ambient music, but at the same time leaning against both Swedish folk music and broken pop balladry. Milieu -- together with its forerunner Opera -- became something of a stepping stone for, if not a new kind of pop, at least a new way of approaching it and a new way of seeing what it could achieve. Tape had very little to do with traditional experimental music, they never fitted into jazz and -- although many tried to -- their beautiful songs could not by any means be labelled electronica. Instead it was the genuine gentleness itself of Tape's music that spoke to their soul mates across the world. Milieu opened a door to a musical heart their contemporaries had been trying to reach for a long time. As Andres Lokko describes of this release, "Tape stir up such forgotten feelings, they restore fading pictures we don't really want to share with anyone else. Or in some cases have forgotten they were ever there in the first place. The aching slowness of these melodies awaken reluctant nostalgia; a forced sentimentality. And they do so without the aid of words, only with the purest music; the electricity in the air that surrounds the captured moment." Now in a digipak with new cover art.
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HAPNA 040CD
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Opera Plus is a reissue of Tape's 2002 full-length debut Opera (HAPNA 009CD), with three new tracks taken from the original 2002 sessions. Tape are Johan Berthling, Andreas Berthling and Tomas Hallonsten: guitars, laptop, pedals, synthesizers, harmonium, melodica, field recordings, percussion, harmonica, zither, piano, flute, bells, glockenspiel, accordion, trumpet, paper, styrofoam, yongmei. As Stephan Mathieu wrote at the time of this release, "Tape's music lives at the intersection of a 21st century chamber music and an imaginary folklore. Slowly passing by vast yellow rape fields and ancient, abandoned factories, the music on my headphones seems to fit almost too perfectly. The sun and nature are certainly core ingredients of Opera and its slowly floating melodies carry the spirit of travel, not on an aircraft, but submerged in a landscape instead." In the meantime, Tape have distilled their sound with their albums such as Milieu, Rideau, as well as collaborations with Tenniscoats more and more into an organic song-like format. While all of them are excellent, Tape's essence can be found in Opera. Listening to Opera again after almost six years, it proves to be a truly great and timeless album. Now in a digipak with new cover art.
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HAPNA 038CD
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This is the debut solo full-length release from Stockholm-based Anna Järvinen, former member of Sweden's Granada from 1998-2004. Granada released three albums and one EP on record labels such as Universal, V2 and Look Left Recordings, and were produced by Björn Olsson and Mattias Glavå, who also heavily contributed to this record. Jag Fick Feeling was recorded in the Kungssten industry area in Gothenburg during a rainy summer and cold winter with members of Dungen and The Works, amongst many others. For this record, Järvinen tried to make music she has always loved, with melodies that she grew up hearing: "...the soundtrack to Brideshead Revisited, The Carpenters, Elton John's darling '70s tunes, Vesa Matti Loiri's interpretations of Eino Leino's poetry, Woody Allen movies, Pentti Saarikoski, nature poetry, drug and alcohol abuse, nostalgia, the Finland of my dreams, falling in love, sorrow, homesickness." As a result, Jag Fick Feeling is full of longing, made with delicate orchestration, flute, vibraphone, piano and autoharp. On top of it all, Anna Järvinen's clear-as-a-bell voice rings with a tone not unlike The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler. Each song is sung in Swedish, but the heart doesn't need any translation.
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HAPNA 036CD
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This is the third and final album in the A Taste of Ra trilogy. Nicolai Dunger, and the cloak of mystery behind the Taste of Ra project has captivated many with its various incarnations of free-folk meanderings, Tim Buckley jazz-howl and Swedish pastoral indie-hum. Dunger describes Morning of My Life as follows: "When we moved to the tent and the light was golden and we were young, and the magazine was all there was to bring, and you woke in the night when the birds were singing just for you and the smell of soil and the warm breath over through you, ohh it moved you. All there was to it, was the morning of my life." He also describes that the overall idea behind the first two A Taste of Ra records was for pure vocal and instrumental experimentation -- using recording techniques on a more personal level. On this final record in the trilogy, he takes a different approach, starting off with one song that he developed together with Swedish musician, songwriter and producer, Jari Haapalainen. The song naturally broke up into six movements, creating a film-like, dramatic pattern, and Johan Berthling made some beautiful arrangements for three of the movements. Starsailor-esque vocals, jazzy horns and loose, clattering drums mix with piano, harp and guitar arpeggios -- just as much of an Impressionistic song cycle as Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.
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HAPNA 034CD
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This is the second solo release from Sweden's Eric Malmberg, former songwriter and organist for the now-defunct Sagor & Swing. Featuring guest musicians such as Goran Kajfes, Lars Skoglund, Johan Berthling, Cecilia Österholm and legendary organist, Bo Hansson. Malmberg-fan and Häpna label-mate David Grubbs describes Verklighet & Beat thusly: "'Till Minne Av Lilly Lindström' is the album's effortless high-water mark in providing instrumental coloration for what had previously been implied by Eric's bare-bones melodies. Are those guitar strings fifty years old? Sleigh bells haven't sounded so good since the first Stooges album. Then the descending disco strings carve up the dancefloor. The other surefire smash in the Top 40 of my mind or dreams is 'Söndagskonsert,' which holds its own when compared to the most moving of Peer Raben's scores for films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Verklighet & Beat suggests that an impeccably programmed movie theater has opened in Eric's neck of the woods. The album's opening track, 'Finalen' is a signature gesture of Eric's, wherein stirring, nearly martial melodies are rendered with maximum Hammond mellowness. A number of these pieces are essentially marches, and yet they could hardly be less bellicose. 'Finalen' is another in a series of Malmberg earworms: melodies that after a few listens seem as if you've known them since childhood. 'Min Kompis Anton' is another bittersweet, inward-turned march. It incorporates the musicality of distantly-heard recordings of kids' laughter -- an intuitive gesture that seems so right as to preclude further comment. Synth is used sparingly, to merely indicate the stratosphere. 'Slutet På En Epok' is hard-rocking and frantic, much more like the S & S live sets, and a style only occasionally hinted at by previous studio recordings. Ascending modulations are handled in the style of a surf instrumental. The brushes are out on 'Leksand, Tidigt Nittiotal,' a series of reexaminations of a single melodic line. A key fiddle can sound as lonesome as any harmonica. Verklighet & Beat is paradigmatic of Häpna in that its execution is improbably beautiful. It's better in practice than in theory. And Eric Malmberg's vision now radiates color." --David Grubbs, New York, March 2007
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HAPNA 035CD
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This is the fourth full-length release for Sweden's Hans Appelqvist, his third for the Häpna label. Hot on the heels of his last record Naima, released in November 2006, Hans has a new album ready, entitled Sifantin och mörkret, containing 12 new tracks and a beautiful video for "Tänk att himlens alla stjärnor," made by Andreas Nilsson (The Knife, José Gonzales and The Soundtrack Of Our Lives). The music shows Hans from a new side, the album being more open and spontaneous than previous works. Animal noises, doors creaking, children shouting, delicate acoustic guitar, and rollicking instrumentals, Sifantin och mörkret is a patchwork symphony. It oscillates between the sweet and grotesque, the nice and the ugly, harmony and terror, light and darkness. As Appelqvist lyrically proclaims, "Me, a cuckoo. Of all the great things in Africa my eyes have met, one I can never forget. On the savannah a rhinoceros stood proudly, gazing in the distance. Its belly ripped open in battle with the one that always wants more."
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HAPNA 032CD
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This is a collaborative release by Cologne experimentechnician Marcus Schmickler (aka Pluramon) and New Zealand-based saxophonist Hayden Chisholm. Schmickler is internationally well known in heterogeneous contexts of contemporary music. He is closely associated with the a-Musik label and over the last years he has worked in different fields of electronic, instrumental, improvised, experimental and new music. His latest releases feature choir and chamber music pieces, a new computer music composition, as well as a new release under the banner of Pluramon with Julee Cruise. His continuous collaborations feature settings with analog synth wiz Thomas Lehn and British pianist John Tilbury. He has received numerous prestigious prizes and his work has been represented all over the globe. Hayden Chisholm is a saxophonist and a composer internationally well known for his work with the artist Rebecca Horn and as a performer in jazz and contemporary music. Originating from New Zealand where he won the Young Achievers Award, he studied music and philosophy in Germany, India and Japan and has since performed at major festivals all over the world. He currently performs with Burnt Friedman, Root 70 and Pluramon as well as creating music for several of Rebecca Horn's installations. He currently lives in Barcelona and Cologne. Amazing Daze tracks the intersections where Chisholm's striking sax punctuations and Schmickler's slabs of electroacoustic wall-building meet.
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HAPNA 030CD
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The mysterious pseudonym remains, in this, the second release in the Taste of Ra trilogy. The accompanying information describes the music as such: "When your ears are gates and they're wide open. Levels of sound will chase you down, collide, kiss and fight. In the yard that you now found; The past will meet the present, you're paying past with present. When you finally hear her voice that makes you leave your body behind and meet as gods...Sound will evolve and something that was once heard by the keeper of the horizon is now heard by you." The familiar song titles on this record imply that this is a stylistic continuation of the first album's cryptic new-folk experimentation. One hopes for further promise of pastoral Swedish psych weirdness, acoustic tranquility and harmonium drones topped by a troubadour's trilling howl, that served to put Banhart and Chasny to shame.
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HAPNA 029CD
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This is Italy-based Andrea Belfi's second full-length release. Belfi is the drummer of Rosolina Mar and is a member of Medves along with Giuseppe Ielasi, Stefano Pilia, Renato Rinaldi and Riccardo Wanke. In 2002, Belfi embarked on a vast project, which, in time, would become Between Neck & Stomach. The first recordings took place at Valerio Tricoli's (member of 3/4HadBeenEliminated) house in Bologna. Between Neck & Stomach is grounded on two core elements: the first is the material collected during the unique experiment of turning a house into "a living creature with its own voice" (just one example: a synth emitting one continuous note shaking a cupboard filled with pots, pans and plates). The second core element is the choice of just one thematic note per song, around which each track is built and balanced. In this challenging album, the acoustic elements and the electronic ones mingle, intertwine and sometimes switch places: the acoustic sounds are treated as if they were electronic, and the actual electronic sounds are played at the very moment. This album sketches imaginary landscapes where drums, guitars and voices blend into a bunch of eclectic tracks, which, in spite of their radical minimalist roots, are definitively worthy of the name "songs."
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HAPNA 027CD
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This is Sweden-based Anders Dahl's first release on the Häpna label. From documentary audio recordings of his travels to India, electronic manipulations of toxic ooze, to "wildlife" recordings of digital birds, Dahl goes places where the natural and the digital world meet and obfuscate one another. Using steel bowls, bouzoukis, bottles, pans, drums, guitars, electronics, and anything else on hand or in his surroundings, Anders Dahl, much like his esteemed botanist compatriot of the same name, seeks to minutely observe, identify, and record even the smallest environmental event. Hundloka (cow parsley) is a common meadow flower; a weed whose distribution is restricted with great difficulty. Hundloka is also the name of three pieces of music which, in similarity to their namesake, grow in areas between the wild and the cultivated, 'twixt nightly woods and lit up cities. Hundloka is the music of the late afternoon, a catnap of civilization where waking and dreaming can hardly be distinguished from each other.
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HAPNA 028CD
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Giuseppe Ielasi is an Italian experimental guitarist and electronic musician, and this is his second release for the Häpna label. Known from his improvisatory work with Dean Roberts, and his highly inventive guitar explorations in the vein of Oren Ambarchi and Loren Conors, Ielasi also founded the well-respected Fringes label. The new untitled album by Giuseppe Ielasi lives in a land of light and shade. The mist lies thick but close to the ground, and it's glowing and sparking. Reflections shoot wildly in encrypted tongues. The log-cutters are working with their timber. This is Ielasi's most complex work to date, both in regard to instrumentation and compositional form. A well-prepared decoction of dark cinema, wanderlust and experimental sound manipulating techniques.
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HAPNA 024CD
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A new release from Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda who was the first artist to be released on Häpna in 1999 with the album Extract From Field Recording Archive #2: The Air Vibration Inside A Hollow. This household name in the art of field recordings has produced a discography of highly sublime recordings capturing the finest details of sound. This new work is no exception. The work of Toshiya Tsunoda is concerned with the relation between sound space and cognition space, and often investigates stationary waves formed by fixed conditions in closed systems. Toshiya Tsunoda is a founding member of the influential WrK collective and has previously released CDs on the WrK, Selektion, Sirr, Korm Plastics and Lucky Kitchen labels. He also works with sound installations. As Toshiya elucidates, "The vibration of a thin metal plate and the huge waves of a vast seashore... similar phases can be observed between them... like wrinkles on clothes remind us of mountain ridges."
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