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viewing 1 To 5 of 5 items
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12"
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OOH 014EP
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After his last release got Aphex Twin's seal of approval, Holy Similaun debuts on OOH-Sounds with Hegenrax. The work (to be read "He-gen-rax") attempts to explore the fascination for contradiction and the opposites in a conceptual framework by ideally contrasting a motor disorder (Apraxia) caused by damage to the brain and a controlled chemical reaction (Heterogeneous Catalysis). Four tracks operate under the same blurry skies, polluting semantic memories with augmented-nostalgia and a sense of failure of the collective and apathy.
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LP
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OOH 007LP
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2016 release. Tre, the third release from Italy's Backwords, is an intimate, muscle-and-sinew-deep exploration of the mysterious meeting point of man and machine -- here, Pardo and vintage synths, drum machines, and miscellany from the second half of the last century. Twitchy beats, crackling textures and layers of tape distortion conjure a hallucinogenic universe that owes as much to heavy dub as it does to the techno-futurist optimism of the early modular synth pioneers. Recorded over a period of two years, Tre is the result of an intimate process that is strongly connected to an image of a bigger body, a complex sound ecosystem, where analog debris take shape through subtraction and precise layering. "Below/Above" and "Arpoon" begin with one "movimento" before slipping into another, approaching different time/space perceptions and juxtaposition of timbres and sounds with playful experimentation. The woozy looped basslines, distorted vocals and overstretched strings of "Wait!" suggest, in fleeting glimpses, the shadowy figure from whom all of these sounds flow. "Pas de Chance" clashes old samples against new granular synthesis and sequenced acid bass trying to find a meeting point between alien elements. "Tanzania" is a first take improvisation, simple and wild, in which static fuzz, sandpaper hisses and percussive clangs are cloaked in analogue warmth from a 1970s Amek BCII mixer and a Moog Prodigy. Includes download code.
"... heavily influenced by the full spectrum of current dance music, something clearly audible in the rattling, percussion-heavy beat tracks that make up much of Backwords' first album proper, Tre" --Rory Gibb, The Wire
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LP
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OOH 010LP
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The first in a series of six split records concerning dependencies, miscommunication and increasing complexity in our media-saturated digital era. Georgia and Bellows inaugurate the Decouple ][ Series with works between futuristic eclecticism and avant-garde pan-aesthetics, where musical themes flow tangentially. Similar, but without effectively engaging one another. A metaphor for a world of surfaces. Recorded in Georgia's Chinatown NYC studio, "Tiwala Sa Bhuay", featuring Gabi Asfour, abruptly throw us into freaky percussion clusters constructed from heavily processed sounds which seem to keep in balance just by the magic of repetitions. Justin Tripp and Brian Close's stylistic fusion acts like an antidote against GPS localization, with sounds and voices more reminiscent of data flowing through a proxy server than an acoustic performance -- a myriad of tiny elements resonates with the multi-cultural a-geographic perception of a contemporary metropolis. "A Habitual Sway" (an anagram of the first title) flows more slowly, mixing hypnotic rhythmic percussions loops, melodic sketches, and controlled distortions into sophisticated layers. Naïve digital strings pads incursions widen the picture further. Georgia run an NTS monthly residency of oddball electronics. Digging into their sound archive, Bellows build an immersive Konrad-esque 19 minutes of humid and winding electronics with "Untitled". Drawing on years of improvising experience, Nicola Ratti and Giuseppe Ielasi take a puristic avant-garde approach, using tape loops, static, modular synths and field recordings. A subtle nostalgia pervades the whole work - the music sneaks through lush, decadent dystopian visions like in a travelogue. Mallets, statics, cut-up white noise, synthetic kicks, and uncannily pitched voices branch out like roots, while digital birds whistle all around in an aquatic atmosphere, perhaps suggesting an ironic take on "Orientalism". All cover pictures for the Decouple ][ Series are taken from Alice Bonfanti's Transparent Things (1997), courtesy of the artist. Includes download code. Mini-LP split, with 14- and 19-minute sides.
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LP
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OOH 009LP
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"Vis-Viva" is the surprise of movement, the wonder that leads to imagine new possible configurations of the present, objects created with materials not yet invented move in aseptic and virtual spaces without respecting the normal laws of physics. Used for the first description of kinetic energy in elastic collisions the historical term "Vis-Viva" titles second OOH-Sounds release from Voronoi, a work inspired by post humanism literature, experimental observation, and speculative evolutionism where sounds and motion seem to face over the contemporary techno-scientific corpus from a positive angle. Can sounds behave like particles do? How sound reacts and transforms if treated like organic matter? Voronoi tries to answer back by sculpting a precise and complex sound design in an anti-climax approach to composition. Rhythms are free, unpredictable, tracks always seem to respect some grammars of club-music but abstracting from its normal timbres and denying its conclusions to face a digital fantasy. Vis-Viva's experiment is completed by an extended six minutes re-work track by electronic music producer and multidisciplinary artist Jesse Osborne-Lanthier who reassembles Voronoi's sonic palette into his unique style. The result is as if everything has traveled outside the lab to be exposed to the outside world. The suspended atmospheres of "T-1000" set the Vis-Viva experiment with pulverized granular sound debris, occasional rhythmic pulses, and reverberant movements. Built over two distinct parts, in which the second seems to deny the first, "SPHERO 2.0" forces a dynamic dialogue between raw and ultra-processed sonic material. Elements orbit around a fast and joyous drum pattern that builds up in "Marbles", a more complex experiment in which particles slow down and accelerate in chaotic, though controlled, collisions to generate micro melodic bursts. B-side opens with innovative artist Jesse Osborne-Lanthier who re-works Vis-Viva's raw recordings in an apparent disassembled hierarchy, layering the original sonic elements over an amazingly sounding, erratic texture made out of what sounds like hyper-processed field recordings. "Gumbody Flash" closes with the slower, uncanny precision of an out-of-battery mechanism, whose degree of freedom decreases as its elastic repetitions get looser and contradictory. Mini-LP of five, four-minute tracks.
"Three-dimensional sound collage goes haywire on this mind-melting remix from Jesse Osborne-Lanthier, which builds up to a climax that sounds like a robot trying to destroy itself." --Andrew Ryce, Resident Advisor
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LP
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OOH 012LP
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Second release for the Decouple ][ Series, a project that aims to showcase artists working, in their own ways, at the bold fringes of electronic composition, experimenting around the topics of increasing complexity, dependencies and miscommunication in a media-saturated digital era. British producers Dale Cornish and Sim Hutchins join the project, the former playing with an anti-sober, almost eccentric euphoria, the latter with nostalgic and slightly eerie ambient feel. The thinness of reality is made of transparent things and refractions -- external and internal points of view of the same subject. Croydon's prodigy Dale Cornish joyously plays here with a terse, oblique, abstract, almost candid, almost brutal TR- 909's 'floor friendly pattern. Not immune to unpredictable subtle fractures, the witty nine minutes of percussive repetition stretches out beyond its physical form, hinting at moments of climax but never overwhelming its voyeuristic nature. Saturated handclaps and hi-hat pan-pots widen top-end frequencies while classic 909 claves incursions, cowbells, and tambourines counterpoint. What sounds like a recording of Dale's own voice lasciviously recurs so to become the track's title itself -- "California"! Playfully pointillist explorations, pulse, and percussive deconstructed gestures place this track into the elusive territory between dancefloor and experimental. "The product of a bleak winter night, cold fingers gripped tightly on restraint/release controls. Red wine sipped from a mug in lieu of adequate central heating. Stifled sense of euphoria inferred by subtle melodies not brave enough to visibly cross frozen pads, instead opting to lurk in the chill of closed hats and hollow bandpasses. Though unable to procure the resources required to stoke the internal flames of creative thought, I powered through instead and struck tipsily at chords, and at the red-skied February dawn 'Druk Pak' was the end result". No better words than Sim Hutchins' own to describe a tune of potential somnambulism, obscure awareness, and future nostalgia for the present-day. Another time his vision, sounds and impulses set markers of contemporaneity. All cover pictures for the Decouple ][ Series are taken from Alice Bonfanti's Transparent Things (1997), courtesy of the artist. Includes download code. Mini-LP split of ten-minute sides.
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