★Hallow Ground
Sound of Matter
»Sound of Matter« is the debut album by Romanian sound artist and composer Simina Oprescu. The two pieces draw on research conducted with 15 historical church bells at the Märkisches Museum and the Stadtmuseum Berlin. After the artist had presented the results of her studies of the connection between matter and harmony in the form of a multi-channel installation, she has translated the underlying approach of this site-specific work into an album that unfolds slowly, consistently setting in motio…
Earth
Musique Infinie is the collaborative project of Manuel Oberholzer a.k.a. Feldermelder and Noémi Büchi. Their album »Earth«, released through Hallow Ground, is based on a spontaneously composed live score for Alexander Dovzhenko’s groundbreaking 1930 silent film »Zemlya« (»Earth«) created for the 24th edition of Videoex – International Experimental Film & Video Festival. Frequently cited as a masterpiece of early 20th century filmmaking, the movie deals with the collectivisation of Ukraine’s agri…
Tropic of Capricorn
Tropic of Capricorn is the second album by Lawrence English and Werner Dafeldecker. Based on field recordings made by the prolific Room40 owner that were subtly but decisively altered with electroacoustic techniques through the German improv legend, these two long-form pieces blur the lines between acoustic ecology and aesthetic interventions, concrete local sound worlds and boundary-defying art. They put a focus on our relationship with nature as listeners as much as they call into question whe…
Matt
Martina Berther and Philipp Schlotter are prolific in their respective ways, having been active in pop and jazz music, respectively, as well as playing in bands and exploring the outer fringes of sound art or composing music for film. Their first joint album »Matt« was recorded over the course of four days in a church in the Swiss village after which the album was named. Berther and Schlotter worked with the buildingʼs organ as well as synthesizers and electric bass to follow an experimental app…
Seven Common Ways of Disappearing
Andrius Arutiunian’s debut album »Seven Common Ways of Disappearing« was first conceived as an installation for the Armenia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. The Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer uses hybrid forms of music, focusing on sonic vernaculars, hypnotic musical forms, and aural cosmologies. Arutiunian is known to work with installations, sound objects, and time-based collaborations with ensembles and performers. The piece on this record was written for two musicians, a ret…
Picture a Frame
"Picture a Frame" the debut album by the Belgian composer Elisabeth Klinck, was born out of strict isolation and is nonetheless a result of a collaborative process that saw her working closely with artist Oscar Claus. Enriching her compositions for violin with electronic soundscapes and field recordings from their surroundings, the two entered an artistic dialogue that took place inside its own idiosyncratic space outside of conventional time. It is an intimate record in which Klinck’s expressiv…
Triangular Progressions
»Triangular Progressions« can be considered a perfect synthesis of Petersson’s academic interests and aesthetic ideas, combining a mathematical approach with artistic rigour. The magic number triangle highlights the beauty of symmetrical properties.
Mt. Hadamard National Park
Electro-acoustic composer and instrument designer Matthias Puech uses math to spin filigree "audio-naturalist noise" yarns using processed environmental recordings, dissociated instrumental vamps and sculpted electronix.
It's Nothing, But Still
*In process of stocking* Steve Fors offers deeply physical music on his Hallow Ground debut »It's nothing, but still.« Having already established himself as a composer of visceral drone and noise pieces in various Chicago- and New York-based underground projects, Fors’s first release under his given name is even more dense and evocative than his earlier work. A concept album on the subject of breath, the Siavash Amini-produced record sees the now Swiss-based composer blend field recordings with …
DarkSonicTales
DarkSonicTales is a project by Rolf Gisler and his eponymous album his first for Hallow Ground. Having been granted an artist residency by the label in a 300 year-old farm house in the Swiss countryside in autumn 2019, the Lucerne-based musician and sound artist explored the peculiar sonic environment of the building and its surroundings through the use of field recordings, modular synthesizers, guitar, bass, kalimbas, a singing saw as well as self-built instruments. The seven tracks, which were…
Dog Mountain
Tip! * 180 gram Vinyl * Dog Mountain is the second release by the Zurich-based producer and composer Laurin Huber on Hallow Ground. After last year’s »Juncture« saw the Edipo Re co-founder work mostly with synthesizers and programmed rhythms, the four tracks are much more restrained, drawing on tape loops and feedback, recordings of acoustic guitar and synthesizers such as the Korg MS-10 as well as field recordings that relate to the overarching topic that informed the making of the record. Whil…
Empty Room
On "Empty Room" David Granström works with slow transformations, cyclical and isometric patterns as well as just intonation as a way to create harmonic stability, allowing his long-form pieces to develop their own unique temporal and spatial qualities. A prolific figure in stockholm's experimental drone scene and a collaborator of Hallow Ground Label Mates Maria W Horn and Mats Erlandsson, the swedish composer navigates through moments of quietude and crushing volume on these five tracks. Sonica…
Aperio!
* 180 gram Vinyl * The title of Miki Yui’s seventh solo album “Aperio!” is derived from the latin origin of April, "aperire" meaning “to open” or “to reveal”. Hinting at the way her music unveils another reality which is hidden beneath the surface. The title also reflects the aperiodic character of the music, its irregularity. Like a magic word to reveal the mysterious cosmos, each song opens up another intimate world of wonders."All my work emerges from my physical experience, the inspiration o…
Arba, Dak Arba
Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« was conceived as the soundtrack for the eponymous installation piece by the French artist Fanny Béguély. First presented as part of the group exhibition »Panorama 21 - ›Les Revenants‹« at Tourcoing’s Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in December 2019, Béguély’s chemically painted photographs focused on humankind’s propensity for self-examination and its attempts to probe the mysteries of the past, present and future. Ob…
Juncture
In the etheric inertness of "Contemplating Nothingness", studio whiz and erstwhile Coil member Danny Hyde revives the Electric Sewer Age alias he began with the late, great John Balance.
Abandoned
Still und Dunkel is the project of musician and visual artist Christoph Brünggel, film maker Benny Jaberg and media artist Pascal Arnold. Their debut album Abandoned comprises ten compositions created for their audio-visual art live performances which draw on an ever-growing archive of moving images and sound recordings. The three artists started working together in 2011 and visited abandoned and hidden places at night or underground throughout the world to collect images and sounds. The trio do…
Hollow Body
Quietly brooding and enchanting debut from multi-disciplinary artist/researcher/field recordist Remo Seeland, accompanied by Reinier van Houdt (Current 93) and Norm Westberg (Swans) for a nocturnal record channeling experiences from New York City, Reykjavik and Zurich.
Viaje
Viaje is the debut album by Swiss musician Roland Bucher and was produced with an instrument developed and built by the artist himself, the noise table. Viaje presents the culmination of almost a decade of exploring the possibilities that the curious device offers. Combining the physicality of the improvisational praxis with a classical approach to composition, these five songs highlight the emotional, narrative and atmospheric potentials of granular noise. Viaje was not only produced with an un…
Lines
Distant Animals is the artistic output of Daniel Alexander Hignell, a researcher and sound, video and performance artist from South East England. Hignell has developed a practice indebted to political and participatory resonance of creative acts, interrogating notions of autonomy, collaboration, and the tension between sense (what is perceived by the senses) and sense (what is made sensible by the community). He has recorded, written, performed and researched numerous socially-oriented sound wor…
Igitur Carbon Copies
**180 grams clear vinyl** “A man wakes up in the middle of the night. Is there something there? Or has something disappeared? Outside are clouded constellations of stars, inside the radio plays idle sounds from beyond and the phone is dead. It seems as if something had been accompanying him already all the time, hiding in the corner of his eye, stealing his identity by being a double. Trying to escape this mirror phantom he leaves the room. Outside on the stairs he happens upon more reflections,…