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viewing 1 To 13 of 13 items
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LP
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PRTLS 017LP
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Kontrapoetik is a personal and simultaneously historical investigation, tackling the turmoil-ridden past of composer Maria Horn's home region Ångermanland in northern Sweden, and her own counter-exorcism project thereof. Drawing from archival material, she taps into the conflict of the worker's movement's clash with the Swedish military in the 1930's that nearly triggered a revolution. Before that Ångermanland was the site of an execution of women accused of witchcraft in 1674. Norrland is sometimes referred to as "the colonies" because of the uneven distribution of the wealth generated by its natural resources, little of which is reinvested in the area. Since the 1970's, it has seen depopulation and disintegration of the welfare state. "Ångermanländska Bilder" is based on material from a collection of films that depict the environment of Ångermanland from 1930-1940: the manor houses of the rural community, steamboats transporting timber along the river, power plants, and sawmills. Concurrent with Horn's Ångermanland research, she was part of an artistic research project in the form of a satanic feminist sect. The goal of the sect was to develop a practice of ceremonies and rituals from counter-readings of the Christian genesis narratives, dismantling its misogynist traditions. In these, Lucifer is re-conceptualized as a feminist liberator, and seen as an ally in the struggle against a patriarchy supported by God and the priesthood. Several of the pieces on Kontrapoetik were composed specifically for ceremonial practices, such as "Ave", a composition built from a text by sect member Michelle Jangmyr. Field recordings sourced from the archives of The Härnösand Art Museum thread through magnetic tape, formatting stark portraits of Horn's attested narrative. Harmonically, inspiration is drawn from ancient Swedish pastoral music, minor scales and free contrapuntal progressions. Recordings from Swedish radio were uncovered from the archive and sampled and reinterpreted. The fusion of these sources with mellotron, church organ and Buchla 200 synthesizer creates an immersive music that welcomes other forms of listening, unhinged from the cerebral and guided by intuition. The territories explored by Horn on Kontrapoetik are vast, but at the heart of each piece is a strong fundament of reductionist technique; deceptively simple harmonic progressions are re-fractured through the means of inversion and repetition. Coupled with this is an almost tactile relationship to texture as well as an immaculate sense of the physicality of sound. This work, while saturated by longing and loss, never gives in, but stands steadfastly defiant.
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CD
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PRTLS 014CD
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Mats Erlandsson's new collection of sound work, Hypodermic Letters, released on Portal Editions, embodies a vast array of sonic multiplicities, seamlessly blending texturized harmonicities with harmonized textures. Like light magically made audible, while in continuous disintegration, oscillating between the real and the illusory, the works contained in Hypodermic Letters insistently highlights the in-between only to forcefully push us to the beyond. By challenging conventional ways of structuring the sensory into categories, e.g. the pure and the impure, the changing and the unchanging, or the unitary and the manifold, Erlandsson's work provides an opportunity to let go and to dwell in unstructured phenomenality. Hypodermic Letters is a shimmering interplay of the extremely remote and the radically proximate, the vast and the intimate. A sense of substantial materiality and referential stability is established momentarily only to face its immediate dissolution. Erlandsson's use of ambiguity reveals a fundamental fragility at the core of certainty. But fear not, although elegantly masquerading as ambiguity, the dominating affective state of Erlandsson's Hypodermic Letters is that of clarity. The instrumentation of Hypodermic Letters is a careful combination of synthesized sounds, all of which were generated by analog means, recorded acoustic sounds of stringed instruments and the employment of algorithmic processing techniques. Erlandsson's display of the molding of multi-stable textures with continuities of intervallically modulating modalities ultimately lends itself to a listening experience as intense as it is pure: a non-referential melancholia, a sorrow beyond sorrow. With close attention to the most subtle facets of the sonic and a use of intonation and tuning as an integral part not only of harmony, but of the total field of sound itself, Erlandsson's work makes us aware -- that is, if you truly listen -- of your capacity to enter worlds, or modes of being, and perhaps more importantly, of our capacity to leave our dysfunctional constructions behind.
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CD
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PRTLS 015CD
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In the four years since Italian-born, London-based artist Roberto Crippa released his acclaimed album Reverse on We Can Elude Control (WCEC 010LP, 2014), Crippa has been lurking amongst London streets at night slowly developing alchemical thoughts which would cast the ten shadows that make up SELENIC. Whereas Reverse can be viewed as an introspective album constructed as a set of individual audio "objects", SELENIC is an album gazing out into the world, relentlessly exposing and toying with its very fabric. Painstakingly assembled over a number of years, SELENIC is an album of immense power and subtly conceived amongst the silver reflections witnessed amongst the silent lustrous environment that surrounds everyone at night. A visceral auditory experience rendering itself from the numerous collapsed and recomposed forms of quantified electronic outlay: rhythm, ambience, and concrete all configured to construct an amorphous narrative based work where each piece unfolds as a mutated container of previous identities. Distinctive in development, design, and execution, SELENIC stands as a solitary gesture of Crippa's idiosyncratic experimental research.
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LP
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PRTLS 016LP
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Arikon is a solo project of Berlin-based drummer and producer, Arik Hayut -- half of doom-tech duo Gainstage with Pierce Warnecke. Loyal to the sonic concepts of Gainstage, Arikon presents The Prophet's Blood Is Boiling, a solo enterprise into deepest "drum & drone". Hypnotizing distorted polyrhythms puncture through shards of fragmented melodies, producing potent mixtures of desperate tin can banging, a panoramic sonic scope, and the bleakest of sound system nightmares. Across the album, Arikon deploys an arsenal of samples plus electronic, acoustic, and self-constructed percussion instruments, constructing eight powerful productions that manage to embody both brute force and delicate decay. Formerly active in Tel Aviv's leftfield experimental scene during the '90s, Hayut made Berlin his permanent home for working on his own projects while composing and performing music for off-theater and contemporary dance. In 2004, a severe health crisis initially threw Hayut into crisis, slowing down his activity to a standstill. However, the precarious process of his fortunate recovery contributed to Hayut involving himself more deeply with concepts of time, death, and decay. Inspired by the decadent still life paintings of the Flemish Baroque, the cover artwork for The Prophet's Blood Is Boiling comprises a bowl of decomposing fruit. Like the music, its aim is to illustrate the beauty and perfection of the decay process, whilst also referring to the west's hyper-capitalistic, technology-centric culture. The songs are inspired by the "beasts of holiness" -- mythological monsters that appear in the Hebrew bible and the Jewish apocrypha (non-canonical scriptures). There's the punching of bassy thuds out of an oceanic ambient swell throughout "Tanin Gadol", named after the ancient water monster of Babylonian times. The dense net of fumbling scrapes and amp-busting hits of noise on "Nahash Akalaton" similarly refer to a titular sea-snake monster, its tendrils lashing out of the speakers aggressively. These demons symbolize a force of evil equal in power, yet in direct opposition to the monotheistic deity of their time. They were therefore neither acknowledged nor canonized in much dominant scripture. Arikon invokes these demons across The Prophet's Blood Is Boiling, setting them loose across these gnarled noisy chambers of pummeling percussion and cracked sampled detritus.
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Cassette
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PRTLS 012CS
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Circular Ruins is the project of Netherlands-born, Berlin-based musician and visual artist Marijn Degenaar (b. 1987), whose "arcane, wistful and wishful ambient soundscaping" have been described by Boomkat as embodying "electronic music's potential for optimistic, dreamlike qualities." The Thorned Maze is a different, darker and more cerebral beast; one where the dreamy optimism is often interrupted by dissonant, atonal clusters, rattling textures, and rhythms that suggest subterranean infestations. The name Circular Ruins suggests the cyclical nature of being and time, and the atmosphere of his most cohesive release to date suggests a period of existential exploration; Touching on something eternal, conjuring images of fallen idols and ruined civilizations, past and present; an astral free-float through imagined eras and landscapes, as well as a hazy reflection on the cracked mirrors of the now, even hinting at the inner turmoil of a cyberpunk dystopia.
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12"
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PRTLS 010EP
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Jonathan Baruc, in the guise of Death Qualia, makes his burnt offering to the undead rave with Intention Versus. The architecture of longing, styled by the black hand beyond. The record leaps from tectonics to tenderness as it meditates on the violence of creation, reincarnation and rebirth. Cascades of sheetrock peel away to reveal a private bardo. Though a student of technical finesse, Baruc drives listeners to examine their inner mythology and confront the golems they have raised. He does not speak of another world ... his is a journey in intensity.
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12"
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PRTLS 009EP
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Black Manual was formed by Jan St. Werner in 2012, following with Mordendo (2013) which intertwined the dynamics of speaker compositions with Afro-Brazilian sound patterns. Portals Editions present four new distillations of "Mordendo". Cut Hands draws the spirit out of "Mordendo" in his signature glorious ritualistic fashion. James Ginzburg (Bleed Turquoise) of Emptyset, summons the soul and amplifies it with cathartic synth stabs in unison with martial percussive bursts. Africaine 808's Dirk Leyers (Format01) mechanizes the chaos in to a rhythmic spell. Ketev carries the listener off into the great unknown with his amniotic drones and hypnotic inward movements.
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12"
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PRTLS 008EP
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A staple of Bristol's thriving hardware electronics scene, Dylan Mallett is the sole force behind the exhilarating sonic currents of Silver Waves. Tightly orchestrated symphonic noise is paired with bludgeoning splinter rhythms and fractious melodies to create brutal electronic epics, which leave senses nourished and obliterated in equal part. EP3 sees Silver Waves's evoke complete junglist dysmorphia; a bruised and feedback-damaged take on amen break abandon that pounds like early Wolf Eyes. EP3 garners remixes shape-shifting noise techno duo Giant Swan and Ossia. Includes two color riso print inserts.
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LP
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PRTLS 006LP
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The flawed wonders that Yair Elazar Glotman, AKA Ketev, puts forth on his latest opus I Know No Weekend are the coldest dreams you would ever wish to immerse yourself in. They recall echoes of echoes, forced into slowly struggling shapes; ghosts of memories, whispers of life from another dimension. Shamanic-repetitive beats shift slowly beneath echoing bells and fragments of past transmissions. Overwhelmingly, one is taken upon a winding mental path, with no clear resolution in sight, although the journey is ever-evolving and new. The listener perceives a great mechanism at the edges of this mass of sound, a machinery of blackened iron that grinds ceaselessly, opening vast spaces to the ear. Howling winds caress the nerves like ground glass, opening up the long limits of the void. These are the harmonics of entropy. Centuries of thought dissolved into unusual dimensions, creating a new language woven from the fragment of a mad entity. Amorphous at first, it evolves to become as piercing as glass. Caught in a patiently eternal and animal-gaze, all that is left to do is surrender to the vacuum of this cosmos.
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Cassette
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PRTLS 007CS
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In this age of electronic surrender, when identities and realities slough off as easily as leprous skin, one must consider: What is the storage capacity of our personal spiritualties? Does our ease of transition affect only the exterior, or do our humanities become ragged with use? Or do they become compressed as these fragments of reality splinter away? What is the sound of a soul in 2016? The scream of such corruption may be incomprehensible to the untrained mind, yet in the aural abattoirs of Gainstage these flayed metaformations are brought into unreality. Beneath the sediment of humanity, the sun shines in RGB; convert to grayscale and watch a world of self-buried definition open up. In this landscape, cold light illuminates shattered ideologies and the dust of forgotten deities left behind from some cosmic flea market. Inhale this world; serrated serotonin dragged up spinal digitalis, crushed-god ecstasy snorted up behind the third eye. Pounding metamorphosis as the void whispers incessantly. A celebratory consumption of self, filling the pipes of the body with shambling effervescence and an eternity of hissing and indecipherable voices. Soft light -- the color of stone, of ancient mountains and dirty concrete -- fills the spaces behind the eyes: Eigengrau as lover, its crushing arms enfolding with the promise of silent dominion. In these alien pieces of audio, one need not find terror, but enlightenment. There is no deception in destruction or in death. Allow the weight of Elevated Noise to act as psychogenesis -- you may find yourself rising faster than you fall.
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12"
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PRTLS 005EP
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Exosomatic Artifacts inhabits the world of ideas while enacting the decay of the body. In "Sensorial Surrogate," the human sensorial experience is stripped of its physicality and mediated through plastic and glass, pixels and vibrating cones. "Envenomation" is an orgy of geometrical luminescent constructions of abstract realities, conceived and perceived by swarms of connected brains. "Computer Worm," a virus infecting a vast biosphere of code; occupying, multiplying, and corroding from within. When are we no longer the computer and in fact the worm? Features remixes from Fis (Tri Angle, Exit, Samurai Horo) and Shapednoise (Type, Hospital Productions, Opal Tapes).
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12"
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PRTLS 002EP
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Evoking the old spirits of the Earth using modern technology, Pierce Warnecke and Arik Hayut embody the truly terrible and awe-inspiring aspect of Gaia in their tribalistic doom-tech rhythms. Metallic crashes of industry, the warning wail of sirens, the chug of steel engines pounding the landscape into waste and ash. On this post-necropolictic plane, the ritual fires of Gainstage still burn. Featuring a murky remix from Cut Hands, reshaping "Obsidian Organ" into a clattering, serpentine slice of militaristic jungle-techno. Orphan Swords offer a different perspective on "Sun Burnt Cloud" -- weighty, slow-burning sci-fi-laden dance music for the grimmest of futures.
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12"
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PRTLS 001EP
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This is the agony and the ecstasy of Shaddah Tuum. The mysticism of "Merkahbah": a gateway to another realm. Dadub's liquid cold burns across the Merkahbahtic portal, offering a new world -- one of descent rather than "S-nInYourHead" ascension, spinning headlong into depths as crushing and black as a star's birthplace. Twisting further downwards, the hand of Kerridge corrupts both gateway and guide into a looming smear of entropic hatred. This is the sound at the center of the universe, a wail of eternal birth: terror, confusion, and pain. One color screen-printed PVC sleeve. Marbled vinyl. Artist edition of 300.
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