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viewing 1 To 6 of 6 items
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LP
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MAMI 018LP
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Pop was promised to deliver the pleasures of pop; nothing less or more. What does a pop utopianism look like? Utopia is no-place; utopianism is concerned with the invisible potentials that sleep in the interstices of our world. Fenster's Lucas Ufo, who records as World Brain, is preoccupied with the ethers that surrounds us -- he lists among his inspirations for Peer 2 Peer, sitting at the windows and "watching WiFi enter the room". As the album's title suggests, this pop utopianism is often concerned with the romantic potentials of digital technology, and its central image, the network -- while the music often invokes the studios of the 1980s, the themes are more suggestive of the web-positivity of the '90s and early '00s. "Network" is a three-minute guitar solo impersonating those WiFi signals. "Hyptertext" call the links that weave our experience of the internet one of "the true modern things". "<3beat" imagines two computers falling in love, discussing the things that matter to them. Opener "The Pangean Anthem", by its name (after the no-place that was every-place of the first supercontinent) and infectious cheer, is a wordless declaration of intent for what follows. Lead single "Made U Cry", which made a splash in early 2018, is addressed to Satan, the original utopian, possessed of the prettiest smile. "Everybody Dies" featuring übercrooner and frequent Mansions And Millions guest Sean Nicholas Savage, is a kind of thanato-utopianism, a blissful, mellow meditation on the grand egalitarianism of mortality. "It's All True", driven by a maddeningly infectious riff emphasized with a Windows 95 system "ding", simply lists well-known and common phenomena, lost in wondrous awe at the simple fact of existence. In a similar mood, "Bubble Tea" asks "isn't it sweet to live on this sphere, isn't it wonderful?" Even the album's most melancholy moment, "Besides", takes a cosmic perspective, dwelling on the parallels between the proverbial grain of sand and the grains in a lonesome bowl of rice, meditating on the holographic quality of mood. Both sweet and silly, wistful and whimsical, Peer 2 Peer is always affirmative. Where others might mine the past as a cheap source of irony or nostalgia, World Brain has a made a clearing equidistant between then and now, a no-place in which to build a pop utopia in miniature. Includes printed inner sleeve; Includes download code.
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LP
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MAMI 016LP
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"If it's written in the stars", says a Bulgarian proverb. "Last year, every conversation I had ended with this sentence", Dena explains, "before I had the album, I already had the title. It's about believing and trusting in universal connections, trusting that everything will fall into place, eventually." And all has indeed fallen into place: Four years after her début Flash (2014), If It's Written marks a new chapter in Dena's musical and personal development. The product of major transformations in her life and work, If It's Written is the work of a grown-up woman who has taken matters into her own hands. The record is a celebration of individuality and independence, for the first time Dena has taken over producing the majority of the tracks herself. "For me, this is major progress", she says, "from writing the first song for this album to this point, it's been such a journey." It took two different versions and four mixes, but now that circle came to a closing and If It's Written is ready to be released unto the world. Inviting friends to collaborate on her very own terms, Dena created her own universe: features include the laid back "So Wrong", a duet with Canadian indie-crooner par excellence Sean Nicholas Savage, or the serene "Things That Mean A Lot", recorded with Filipino cool cats Eyedress and Rhxanders, beautifully describing the emptiness just before a relationship falls apart. Other guests include Berlin-based Argentinian singer Pictorial Candi on the outro "If It's Written" or longtime collaborator and friend Erlend Øye on the minimal and bone-dry "Speculations". The music scene of Berlin's infamous Neukölln district was highly influential for Dena: "It was so inspiring to be surrounded by all this DIY-spirit". This has left its mark on If It's Written, which she calls her "laptop-album", as she often sang directly into the computer microphone while producing the songs. No grand set-ups needed, just her, her ideas, and trust in her own plan. Fittingly, telecommunication, computers, smartphones, and all those gadgets were not only tools to produce the songs on If It's Written, but also a major theme in Dena's writing. "We're all woven into one big text message", she muses, "the album is about us and communication." Includes download code.
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CD
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MAMI 009CD
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In his typically laconic, incisive manner, Jack Chosef says that Water&Fear was "influenced by the panorama function of my smartphone, motorbikes & landscapes." The idea of smartphone panorama music really captures what separates the CD's drum-centered sound from its motorik antecedents -- while that propulsive motion supposedly invoked a smooth ride on the autobahn, a relentless progression into the future, Water&Fear sounds a lot like an impromptu panorama shot taken from the road; extended, flowing, but jaggedly glitch-stitched together where the turbulence of the journey disrupts the technological illusion of faultless continuity. That jagged quality is provided by the agitated chopped and pitch-shifted vocals, which, previously only a background effect, now take on a prominent role -- an addition which dramatically expands Chosef's powers of song construction. If the styles of "krautrock" highlighted by the British music press allegedly put the strangeness of West Germany's "economic miracle" into sound, then Water&Fear is a kind of post-industrial update to them. Not that this is gloomy or pedantically conceptual music -- the tone is of amiable curiosity in the face of one's own pervasive anxiety. "Hard to Be," which sounds like a theme from the soundtrack of a giallo film set on a space station, "is about missing a person while standing beside that person," while the wavy title-track meditates on the curious surge of sweat that comes with an inconsequential visit to a roller coaster. Other highlights include the broken-cassette-deck-disco of "Rational" and the exceedingly catchy "My Fault," on which thick buzzy synth chords interplay with the bassline's churning bubble. Jack Chosef's background as a drummer continues to show through in his music and the focus on rhythm is both what allows Chosef to remain untethered to any particular genre and what allows him to linger on worry without being pulled under; it cuts to the simple truth that as long as there's a beat, you're alive. Limited edition of 200.
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LP
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MAMI 005LP
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Accidental Forever. The title itself captures the alienation that pervades the music. It could be the title of a creepy 1980s sci-fi television program directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski for the BBC, to which this album could easily function as a soundtrack. The album's sound is a unique take on coldwave, new romantic, and '90s pop music, built from raw, strange textures and straightforward lyrics sung in an ornately-accented English casting shadows of desperation. Listening to it feels at many moments like finding yourself in a new city, lost and unable to ask anyone for directions; at other moments like being trapped in a software demo run on Windows '95, which has been running for the last two decades, growing abandoned and decrepit. Suffused with isolation, it speaks to public spaces at once frictionless and oppressive, urban centers simultaneously hermetically modern and decaying, and to the claustrophobia of daily routine. It is music for life as a maze. But while it can be quite gloomy, it is not pessimistic: the centerpiece of the album is the serene, simply beautiful instrumental "Entertain." Originally from Poland, Normal Echo's Dawid Szczesny has released experimental music on labels around the world. Since 2010 he's made his home in Berlin, making him a natural addition to Mansions and Millions's growing roster of expats, transplants, and others linked by the city's far-reaching cosmopolitan gravity. He recorded Accidental Forever almost entirely with just a Korg M1 synthesizer, one of the most popular synths of the '80 and '90s, though somewhat forgotten since. Includes download code.
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12"
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MAMI 002EP
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"Track Your Mind" opens with a manipulated vocal sample that could work in a towering Kanyeeseque hip-hop construction. Instead, in drops the half-tempo bass kicks and portentous synths favored by '80s revivalists, the sorts that dream of a neon video-game Miami (Chosef says Yeehai is "inspired by girls and cars"). But the track could also be the sound of, for example, Pye Corner Audio's alternate history technological fantasies. Next come the insistent, melancholy "oohoos" of -- you guessed it -- "Oohoo," the immaculate chimes of "Golden Princess," the echoing keys of "Cubing," and the daintily twinkling synths of the title-track.
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12"
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MAMI 001EP
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Wasted Dawn developed under the influence of a close circle of Berlin-based artists and friends, including Touchy Mob and Montreal's Sean Nicholas Savage (Arbutus Records). "Baby Blu" epitomizes Magic Island's aesthetic: a crystalline sensuality, diffuse and subdued, fragile yet immensely strong. Pushed gently along by the imbricated earworms of an echoing Casio refrain and a twirling little piano figure, it is a love song whose directness is at once innocently flirtatious and maturely candid. Yet its complicating coda signals a melancholy embrace of contradiction and bittersweet impossibility that gives Wasted Dawn a unique depth. Includes download code.
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