Inutile Discendere
Recorded between Po river, Trasimeno lake and Monte Catarelto.
Empires
*Limited edition of 200 copies.* A research on possible timbral encounters between percussion and electric guitar, aimed to make them indistinguishable. A sound force that generates dimensions and worlds, where the dramaturgical narration does not necessarily have to be present, since the sound itself already tells and describes. The form take second placet in favor of the timbre, that outlines unknown languages, fantastic machines, microorganisms, alien vegetation with new and curious colors an…
Fantasy Sex
* Limited LP. Two-sided insert with liner notes by Matthias Andersson. Mastered by Lasse Marhaug * Utmarken was a combined venue, record shop and recording space in Gothenburg that existed between 2008 and 2011. A short-lived under the radar hub for outsider art and fringe music, the place quickly became an oasis for an wide variety of local misfits and a hotbed for interesting sounds. The creative, multifaceted atmosphere spawned acts like Ättestupa, Lust For Youth, Street Drinkers and Arv & Mi…
Pangrams
"Pangrams" evokes a wide range of emotional moods, sketched in a chamber atmosphere. The four pieces stress the immediate and deep understanding of Di Domenico and Moberg.’ - Eyal Hareuveni
Point, Line, surface
*100 copies limted edition* "My music is an exploration of sterility, mundanity and stillness interpreted through personal feelings and subjective experience. My composition process is intuitive and personal. The recordings I use are of the following nature : souvenirs of lost moments, recordings of natural and urban empty spaces, microphone and object manipulation, deformed voices, non-expertly played instruments, resonances. I previously released music under the names a lie or and Perlesvaus" …
Four Works
Four Works is a split full-length album by Linus Hillborg and Theodor Kentros with two pieces by each composer. The music on this record was written and recorded during 2019-2021. Each side of the album begins with a piece for organ and electronics performed by Fredrik Lundqvist. The record opens with Hillborgs Auguries which examines microtonal register shifts and shift changes in register as well as density throughout its 14 minutes. In this piece the electronics act as a shading device outlin…
Interzone
Nichola Scutton'Interzone (Nonclassical, 2023) takes inspiration in the state of in-betweenness: not awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious, and at the border between daytime and nighttime. Two defined elements emerge fromInterzone: a careful use of electronics, and Scrutton's experimental vocal practice. The album was recorded in two steps, first by the artist herself in her studio in Glasgow, using field recordings and archival materials, resulting in the series of four Interzones which con…
Tether
Murmer is the long-standing project of American/Estonian field recordist and composer Patrick McGinley, and with Tether, The Helen Scarsdale Agency welcomes Murmer back to our roster, over a decade since he graced us with his last production for the Agency. His field recordings often center upon the amplification and activation of resonance from a particular space, landscape, or object. Such sounds emerge from a condition as being fleeting, inconsequential, or ephemeral and explode into that whi…
A Constellation of Anomaly
Following his Acoustic Masks, the new record Constellation of Anomaly is Vasco Trilla's 6th solo album, bringing a new palette of sounds with a vast array of percussion instruments played in numerous creative and unconventional ways. Russian Flat bells bowed and played with vibrating objects, a timpani full of wind-up music boxes and spiced up by a transducer speaker, an old zither hit as a drum with two snare drums as resonators, Iranian round bells mixed with gamelan strips, styrofoam and tria…
String Dialogues
String Dialogues is a collection of six duo recordings initiated by the renowned musician, composer, and improviser Peter Soderberg. Here, he investigates different tuning systems and the idea of hybrid instruments. Within various instrumental settings and informed by his musical co-partners and fellow improvisors Katt Hernandez, Stina Hellberg Agback, Mats Persson, Sten Sandell, My Hellgren and Vilhelm Bromander, he has sculpted an album highlighting complex timbres and intimate interplay.The a…
Detour Tunnels of Light
"In my experience listening to the music of both Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel, I’ve often detected what I perceive to be a (sometimes hidden) strain of romanticism, a deep and dark vaguely lyrical content that one doesn’t routinely identify with free improvisers. With Küchen, this could be heard most prominently in his solo recordings such as ‘The Lie and the Orphanage’ (Mathka, 2010) or ‘Hellstorm’ (Mathka, 2012). I had also heard Agnel give a memorable solo piano recital in Västerås, Sweden …
Neural
Intense, mind-bending, and spectral long-form drone works inspired by the way neural networks self-organise thru repetition, variation and reiteration. Features input of Lucio Capece and Judith Hamman.
Issue 9
The 9th issue of Lasse Marhaug's fanzine Personal Best. 100 pages, full colour offset-printed with glued spine. Nearly three years on from the last issue, Marhaug conducts in-depth interviews with: Christian Blandhoel, Martìn Escalante, Russell Haswell, Campbell Kneale, Tine Surel Lange, Greg Pope, Joe Potts (and Los Angeles Free Music Society), Mariam Rezaei and Edward Sol.
Reshape
The cover of Joachim Spieth’s latest album, Reshape, depicts a stony landscape against a moody sky at dusk, silver clouds backlit with soft orange light. His 2021 album Ousia featured a similar sun, only foregrounded by waves. It’s as if some lost, drowned continent rose from the murky depths, dotted with strange fossils and petroglyphs. That contrast is an apt analogy for Reshape — an album of remixes and reworkings from some of the biggest names in ambient, techno and drone in honor of the Aff…
Terrain
With ‘Terrain,’ Joachim Spieth presents the fourth long player on his Affin imprint. The follow-up album to ‘Ousia’ (2021), ‘Terrain,’ reflects on the human relationship with nature. The album title is a reference to a musical language that layers Spieth’s music production practices and intimacy with nature.‘Terrain’ was forged in deep solitude.“ It’s an interplay of euphoric flashes and introspection” – says Spieth. The eight compositions take the listener into a captivating cascade of sonic te…
Helios/Hind
*Limited to 231 hand numbered copies* The Universal Veil is a duo comprised of Sam McLoughlin (Twisted Nerve/Pre-Cert Home Entertainment) and Folklore Tapes head honcho David Chatton Barker. Their improvised live performances with their own handmade "ritual instruments" are by turns meditative, trancelike, joyous and surreal. Helios/Hind is a fascinating sonic artifact which unearths lo-fi cassette recordings from several years of past performances and weaves them together into a new whole, usin…
Nine Death Stages
* Edition of 325 copies, silkscreened sleeve w/ obi (black or kraft), postcard * Kusōzu : Nine Death Stages is the second album by the Tokyo trio Archeus, which consists of Keiko Higuchi (voice, percussion, trombone, shamisen), Shizuo Uchida (bass strings), and Tomo (hurdy gurdy, voice). It follows their debut, self-titled and self-released CD and cassette from 2021 and is further proof – if any were needed – that these musicians, who’ve known each other for some time, but only started playing t…
Monte Carlo Fallacy
In the lockdown of early 2020, Berlin fell silent. As reflects Nicholas Bussmann, “it felt like the early 90s in East Berlin”, the place where he grew up and experienced social change and uncertainty, and presumably a lot of empty, silent space. Here, on this duo with his long-term accomplice Werner Dafeldecker, we hear the sound of two instrumental practitioners as they explore the nature of their respective instruments with a paced and thoughtful guidance, with little intervention or overt de…
Discreet Music Mag #3
New issue! Interviews with Leda, Franciska, Troth and a feature on Incipientium. A5, 20 pages, written in English.
Chris Cutler in a Box
These 10 CDs (and DVD) collect together solo work, compositions and collaborations made between 1972 and 2022 by percussionist and lyricist Chris Cutler and include as well as three previously released solo CDs ('solo', 'twice around the earth' and 'there and back again'), more than five hours of unreleased materials, as well as a double CD collection of tracks culled from official recordings featuring Henry Cow, Art Bears, Cassiber, News From Babel, Aqsak Mabou, Duck and Cover, Peter Blegvad, R…