News & Events
This album is about resonance: on Saman, which means "Together," Hildur melts her voice with her cello, connecting the two instruments together. The result is a highly involving and moving album, recorded, mixed and mastered in Berlin. Hildur's sylph-like vocals contrast beautifully with rich cello tones, resolving the tension between light and dark to produce a unique listening experience.
More information can be found here.
Brand new double LP from the duo of Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella, who also play in Cerberus Shoal and Fire On Fire. The duo also performed on Michael Gira's Swans LP, The Seer in 2012. Based out of Portland, Maine, Big Blood has dropped a ton of stunning self-released CDs and cassettes since 2006 as well as some fantastic vinyl releases for Time-Lag, Feeding Tube, Phase and Immune.
Big Blood's sound is rooted in folk and prime '60s / '70s garage psych. This new double LP sees them focus more on the electric side of things than on some previous releases with the addition of drummer, Shon. The record was recorded after Colleen spent a lot of time listening to Sabbath, Zepp and Dead Moon, so it definitely has a heavier vibe than some of their past releases.
The gatefold sleeve features artwork by Colleen, Unlikely Mothers refers to Colleen's mother (pictured on the inside) and Colleen's aunt (pictured on the outside), both were nuns. Her aunt stayed a nun and colleen's mom left (obviously) during Vatican II. The two images for the sleeve are from an ongoing series about women who buck common notions of who are the mothers in our lives.
More information can be found here.
Wilderness of Mirrors is the new album from Lawrence English. It is two years in the making and the first album created since the release of his 2011 ode to J.A Baker’s novel, The Peregrine. It is English’s most tectonic auditory offering to date, an unrelenting passage of colliding waves of harmony and dynamic live instrumentation.
The phrase, wilderness of mirrors, draws its root from T.S Eliot’s elegant poem "Gerontion." During the cold war, the phrase became associated with campaigns of miscommunication carried out by opposing state intelligence agencies. Within the context of the record, the phrase acted as a metaphor for a process of iteration that sat at the compositional core of the LP. Buried in each final piece, like an unheard whisper, is a singularity that was slowly reflected back upon itself in a flood of compositional feedback. Erasure through auditory burial.
Wilderness Of Mirrors also reflects English’s interests in extreme dynamics and densities, something evidenced in his live performances of the past half decade. The album’s overriding aesthetic of harmonic distortion reveals his ongoing explorations into the potentials of dense sonics.
“During the course of this record,” English explains, “I was fortunate enough to experience live performances by artists I deeply respect for their use of volume as an affecting quality, specifically Earth, Swans and My Bloody Valentine. I had the chance to experience each of these groups at various stages in the making this record and each of them reinforced my interest in emulating that inner ear and bodily sensation that extreme densities of vibration in air brings about.”
The album is moreover a reflection on the current exploitation of the ideals of the wilderness of mirrors, retuned and refocused from the politics of the state, to the politics of the modern multiplex. The amorphous and entangled nature of the modern world is one where thoughtless information prevails in an environment starved of applied wisdom. Wilderness Of Mirrors is a stab at those living spectres (human and otherwise) that haunt our seemingly frail commitments to being humane.
“We face constant and unsettled change,” English notes, “It's not merely an issue of the changes taking place around us, but the speed at which these changes are occurring. We bare witness to the retraction of a great many social conditions and contracts that have previously assisted us in being more humane than the generations that precede us. We are seeing this ideal of betterment eroded here in Australia and abroad too. This record is me yelling into what seems to be an ever-growing black abyss. I wonder if my voice will reflect off something?”
Wilderness Of Mirrors is reflection upon reflection, a pure white out of absolute aurality.
Out July 21, 2014. More information here.
Melt Into Nothing is ENSEMBLE ECONOMIQUE's most lucid seance to date. The prolific Humboldt County musician has stripped layers off of his trademark haze but retained the beautiful desolation that’s earned him a rabid fanbase. The solo project of former Starving Weirdos member Brian Pyle, Ensemble Economique has crossed a land bridge from apocryphal world music and dusty soundtracks to gauzy 4AD-style atmospherics. Trellises of guitar embolden Pyle’s whispered, threadbare lyrics. On "Hey Baby," the itinerant tone feels like an update on Neil Young's stark and beautiful soundtrack for Jarmusch's "Dead Man." "Melt Into Nothing," like that beautiful film music, evokes the great American expanse.
Field recordings slip in and out of the mix. On "Fade for Miles," Pyle's adroit effects and backwards tape manipulation make the long trail on his vocals fade into waves on a rocky beach. Pyle combines minor-key organ and spacious string synths on "Never Gonna Die," recalling the grey grace of the releases on Factory's gothic cousin, Benelux. Thunder accentuates the dubbed-out machine drum programming as Pyle's dulcet tenor floats in storm clouds. The full-length also features contributions from Toronto artist DenMother and Parisian artist Sophia Hamadi, also of dark-wave Opale. This music is not excessively dark or severe. Rather, the record explores the internal dialogue of solitary walks. "Melt Into Nothing" is for making sense of humanity in nature’s unforgiving face. Ensemble Economique has made his most accessible record yet, but the complex emotion behind these tracks remains resonant and ultimately mysterious.
Out June 27th, 2014. More info can eventually be found here.
Mind-shattering double LP of dysphoric space-rock minimalism from two luminaries of the Swedish punk underground.
Second Launch follows Bremen’s self-titled debut of 2013 and comprises 11 controlled improvisations, reinforced with overdubs, that take clear inspiration from the dark side of kraut and progressive rock, early electronic and drone music, whilst also owing something to the fathomlessly bleak interior landscapes conjured by Nico/Cale on The Marble Index and Desertshore.
The complex dialogue between Lanchy Orre’s guitar and Jonas Tiljander’s organ, by turns pensive and combative, bound up with their mastery of reverb and feedback, is the focal point of the record; supplemented with drums and sparingly deployed analogue synthesizer tones to evoke nothing less than the vast emptiness of outer space and the obliteration of all meaning and identity in the face of it.
From the full-throttle motorik and bonehead repetitions of "Sweepers" and "Entering Phase Two" (echoes of Tiljander and Orre's alma mater, Brainbombs) to the deep astral psychedelia of "Static Interferences," via the mournful Northern European ambience of "Walking The Skies," the rolling thunder of "They Were Drifting" and the poignant, stargazing blues of "Hollow Wave," Second Launch charts impossible gradients in its search for answers to the oldest questions of all.
More information here.
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and installation artist based in Berlin. Since 2006 his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge analogue modular synthesizer.
Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound have been an important part of his work since the early 2000's.
In the winter of 2011-2012, Ankersmit was invited by the CalArts electronic music studios, Los Angeles, where the Serge was originally developed in the early 1970s, to record new music with their heavily customized and recently restored "Black Serge" system.
In addition to conventional analog synthesis techniques (FM, AM, ring modulation, filtering, enveloping and panning under voltage control), Ankersmit used various kinds of waveshaping, distortion and feedback (both internally as well as via a microphone and speaker setup in the studio); oscillator-generated frequencies at the upper and lower limits of auditory perception; a patch matrix to control quick transitions; a homemade circuit-bending type interface to create momentary interruptions to the signal flow, and the scraping of a contact microphone. Aside from recording, editing, and a few instances of reverb, no digital technology was used.
The music is finely tuned and highly detailed, yet also visceral and raw. Marked by sharp perceptual contrasts, the piece shifts between dense formations of electric noise, to fields of micro-events moving with an intuitive logic, and feedback-drones of overwhelming intensity. The sounds have a real-world physicality, bringing to mind swarms of locusts, distant storms and creaking machinery rather than "synthesizer music."
The piece was premiered in North America at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles and in Europe at Berghain, Berlin, for the MaerzMusik Festival.
The music is originally quadraphonic and mixed to stereo for this release. Figueroa Terrace is Ankersmit's first full-length solo studio release.
Thomas Ankersmit: Serge analogue modular synthesizers, contact mic. Recorded at CalArts, Valencia and in Los Angeles, December 2011-February 2012.
More information is available here.
Jeff Burch's first solo full-length album is comprised of two expansive instrumental compositions anchored by beautiful old acoustic guitars and a modular synthesizer.
He hoists his sounds up through the remnants of the 60's downtown drone spirit, through the fetid fruits of post-war central Europe and the scattered output of present-day suburban outsiders. The arrangements shift gracefully from floods of lush string texture to driving guitar and drum motif, from ebbs of brass and deep electric sine wave to thick hazes of clanging din and steely whine.
Cover photographs by iconic New York artist Roni Horn.
Composed, recorded and mixed between 2010 and 2012.
Recorded with Casey Rice/Designer (Tortoise, Dirty Three) at Classicx, Melbourne and Jamie Kennedy (of Surf City) at Henry Street Studios, New York City.
Featuring guest percussion by Stephen James (Songs, Rand and Holland), electric guitar by Tres Warren (Psychic Ills, Compound Eye, Messages), tenor saxophone by Marcus Whale.
Mastered by Patrick Klem (Sonic Youth, Six Organs of Admittance, The Dead C) at Klemflastic Sound, Phoenix.
Originally from the crystalline shores of northern New Zealand, Jeff now resides in New York City's torrid Lower East Side. Head of imprint The Spring Press, he has also founded numerous groups in both New Zealand and Australia.
Out May 13th.
More information will eventually be found here. Listen here now.
An all instrumental offering from Carl Hultgren (one half of Windy & Carl) is set for release on 20th MAY 2014. A Limited Edition Double LP of 500 copies (one album on ORANGE VINYL, the other on BLACK VINYL) will include a DOWNLOAD CODE of the complete album, along with 6 ADDITIONAL BONUS SONGS recorded during the same sessions.
It's been nearly 5 years since Brock's highly acclaimed White Clouds Drift On And On debuted on Echospace earning a plethora of critical acclaim including many coveted top albums of the year list from RA to The Wire. Brock returns in beautiful form with what he's said to us is his most personal and self-defining moment in his fruitful musical career. This album, however, strikes on a very different chord from the last: rather than find contentment in repeating himself, he's sculpted a unique sound slightly out of focus from his previous work, a sound one could only say is like drifting in and out of consciousness. A place where early LSD experiments reveal third dimensions of the mind and evoke emotions so powerful they haunt you forever.
Here we see Brock's true dedication to vision, maturity and growth, the reason why so many people have gravitated to his heart-tugging productions. On Home, he paints a near 3-hour exploration so beautiful and hypnotic the listener feels as if only moments passed by, a second to forever. This is a welcome return to form in the one place Brock refers to as "Home": here on Echospace. If Burial were to meet Eno in the studio of a BBC radio workshop session with Tape masters sent to Steve Roach for further deconstruction, this might be the unique result, residing somewhere in the ether. Brock has truly blown us away yet again with another stunning masterpiece.
More information is available here.
Young God Records is delighted to announce the release of a new album, To Be Kind, out on May 13, 2014. The album will be released on Young God Records (North America) and Mute in the rest of the world.
A NOTE FROM MICHAEL GIRA:
Hello There,
We (Swans) have recently completed our new album. It is called To Be Kind. The release date is set for May 13, 2014. It will be available as a triple vinyl album, a double CD, and a 2XCD Deluxe Edition that will include a live DVD. It will also be available digitally.
The album was produced by me, and it was recorded by the venerable John Congleton at Sonic Ranch, outside El Paso Texas, and further recordings and mixing were accomplished at John's studio in Dallas, Texas. We commenced rehearsals as Sonic Ranch in early October 2013, began recording soon thereafter, then completed the process of mixing with John in Dallas by mid December 2013.
A good portion of the material for this album was developed live during the Swans tours of 2012/13. Much of the music was otherwise conjured in the studio environment.
The recordings and entire process of this album were generously and perhaps vaingloriously funded by Swans supporters through our auspices at younggodrecords.com via the release of a special, handmade 2xCD live album entitled Not Here / Not Now.
The Swans are: Michael Gira, Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Phil Puleo, Thor Harris, Christopher Pravdica.
Special Guests for this record include: Little Annie (Annie sang a duet with me on the song "Some Things We Do," the strings for which were ecstatically arranged and played by Julia Kent); St. Vincent (Annie Clark sang numerous, multi-tracked vocals throughout the record); Cold Specks (Al contributed numerous multi-tracked vocals to the song "Bring the Sun"); Bill Rieflin (honorary Swan Bill played instruments ranging from additional drums, to synthesizers, to piano, to electric guitar and so on. He has been a frequent contributor to Swans and Angels of Light and is currently playing with King Crimson).
