This bundle includes the following releases:

Marja Ahti "Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth" LP
Marja Ahti / Manja Ristić "Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth" CD

Marja Ahti "Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth" LP

Marja Ahti is a Swedish artist living in Turku, Finland. She works with found sounds, objects and electronics, creating auditory assemblages that reveal a profound sensitivity to sound’s tactile potential. This new record sees her palette expand to include more recognisable acoustic instrumentation, albeit working in collaboration with musicians who are already reconfiguring how those instruments can sound.

Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth has its roots in a tape piece presented at Lampo in Chicago. Ahti then started working with Isak Hedtjärn (clarinet), Ryan Packard (percussion) and My Hellgren (cello) at the electronic music studios (EMS) in Stockholm. Incorporating recordings from those sessions, Ahti presented a new iteration of the work at the Seventh Edition Festival for Other Music in February 2024 with the trio performing live on stage whilst Ahti helmed the mixing desk, spatialising a specially made tape part through the INA GRM’s Acousmonium speaker orchestra. The piece has since gone through several further iterations before arriving at the version we have here on the LPs B-Side where immense bass pressure and high frequency tones buffer restless amplified breath and scrape that folds over itself with extraordinary dynamics and subterranean activity before giving way to gorgeous resonant forms and passages of ritual purpose and sheer, unmistakeable beauty.

The A-Side is Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth’s gentle double. Still Life with Poppies, Mirror and Two Clouds offers a companion reconfiguration of Ahti’s resynthesised percussion sustain and the same recordings of Hedtjärn and Hellgren from EMS, but here they’re nestled in a sonic landscape of calm and restraint that gives them a wholly other character. Ahti also draws on older recordings she’d made of Sholto Dobie’s diy pipe organs and uses these to create repeating patterns and flourishes of sliding pitches that emerge unexpected out of cycling passages of Ahti’s clear struck metal, destabilising electronic interventions and minimal piano figures.

Marja Ahti / Manja Ristić "Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth" CD

In the ever-expanding constellation of transnational electroacoustic collaboration, Marja Ahti and Manja Ristić present Transference, a profound investigation into the movement and transformation of energy between distant practices and places, arriving August 8, 2025 via Erstwhile Records. Transference emerges as what the artists describe as "a dialogue of sonic gestures and traces of visits to places and the spirit that occupies them." This collaboration transcends geographical boundaries to create what they term "a map of subtle and drastic differences, a space where the contours of sound and silence merge, and where listening becomes a collaborative act of discovery and associative intuition."

Marja Ahti, the Finnish-born, Netherlands-based artist whose work has consistently pushed the boundaries of electroacoustic composition and field recording, contributes recordings, electronics, objects, piano, percussion, and bass harmonica to this cross-continental dialogue. Her approach to sound as both material and metaphor has established her as a crucial voice in contemporary experimental music, with previous releases demonstrating an acute sensitivity to the relationship between acoustic space and electronic manipulation.

Manja Ristić, the Serbian sound artist and composer whose practice spans installation, performance, and recorded work, adds her own recordings, electronics, objects, piano, violin, and cello to the collaborative matrix. Her work has long explored the intersection of field recording, electroacoustic processing, and the politics of place, making her an ideal collaborator for this investigation into sonic "transference."

The album's conceptual framework positions itself within what the artists call "the ongoing metamorphosis of the sounding world as we observe it." This philosophical approach suggests that Transference functions not merely as documentation but as active participation in the transformation of sonic materials across time and space. The work "suggests the movement, transformation and metabolization of energy between two practices," creating a feedback loop between distinct artistic approaches and geographical contexts. The production involves Taku Unami's mastering, whose work with artists like Taku Sugimoto and Manfred Werder brings a crucial understanding of silence and space to the project. Visual elements include photography by Marja Ahti featuring sculptures by Lujo Lozica, with design by Yuko Zama and production by Jon Abbey, creating a comprehensive artistic statement that extends beyond the purely sonic.