Anthology of American Pop Music
Six great pop standards remembered: five pop songs are dissected by sampler, stretched, compressed, and re-collaged. In this way, their identity is lost. What remains is a vague concreteness: flashes of déjà vu and remote echoes that evoke the original. GES (Gesellschaft zur Emanzipation des Samples) active members: Helmut Schmidt, Jan Jelinek Founded: 2009 Headquarters: Federal Court of Justice, Karlsruhe, Germany.
From the GES Glossary:
Sampling: Compositional practice whereby recorded music i…
Ballades sur lac Gelé
We met Franck Vigroux for the first time years ago at Berlin's Berghain during a soundcheck. At that time he performed with Mika Vainio, with whom Vigroux often worked together. The first track on Ballades sur lac gelé dates back to that time. It was created under the impression of this collaboration and friendship with Mika Vainio. This album is dedicated to him. Vainio's oeuvre is also significant in connection with the history of raster, so it was only logical and our wish to release this alb…
Velvet Noise
Velvet Noise is a collection of 7 experimental pieces made by Linja sometime around 2016-2017, using drum machines and a lot of modular synthesizers. The album is woven with Simple melodies that crack through the squeaks and the bleeps, eery pads that fill the voids all sorts of FX. Listening to Linja’s debut LP makes one think of Polish director Yuri Norstein’s gloomy melancholic (yet playful) movies, or perhaps just of a rainy day, or Chopin. The atmosphere becomes filled with tension when it …
GN / Scanner
Vladimir Ivkovic's Offen remains one of Europe's finest, broadest and least predictable electronic imprints, with the only real guarantee being that output will be interesting, weird and unarguably innovative. The latest from Gains't Nait, made with electronic near-deity Robin Rimbaud under his Scanner moniker (see also Githead), is another case in point.
Depth is the crucial factor - tracks feel dense enough to get lost in, catching listeners in a time-space warp, where there's as much to make …
Necrosis en la Poya
Esplendor Geométrico was a pioneer in the noise world and this record is one of his most edgy and advanced works of all. It is noisy, gauzy, confrontational and frankly weird for the way it mangles synths, layers up distortion and contorts vocals into dark apparitions and paranoid sound worlds. This is the first and only legitimate reissue of Necrosis en la Poya which was initially only pressed in very small quantities after an enigmatic fan decided to help out and stump up the funds. The artwor…
Lost & Found - MMXX-15
With touchstones in electronic dance music, and forward-thinking, synthesizer based abstraction, the Paris based organist, composer, and experimental musician Hampus Lindwall’s contribution to Matière Mémoire’s stunning MMXX Series, MMXX-15, weaves a singularly striking world of pulsing, organized sound. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, on a single sided crystal clear vinyl LP with a laser engraved artwork on the other, housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and con…
Fully Automated Luxury Communism - MMXX-14
Italian composer Mauro Lanza delivers a masterful work of electroacoustic artistry with Fully Automated Luxury Communism (MMXX-14), his contribution to Matière Mémoire’s stunning MMXX Series. Careful interwoven detail and buzzing electronics join to render glimpses of a visionary universe of sound. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, on a single sided crystal clear vinyl LP with a laser engraved artwork on the other, housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and containin…
Vol Sombre - MMXX-13
Kassel Jaeger’s contribution to Matière Mémoire’s stunning MMXX Series, Vol Sombre (MMXX - 13), is a subtle expanse of delicate ambiences and long tones, meticulously constructed into an immersive sonorous world. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, on a single sided crystal-clear vinyl LP with a laser engraved artwork on the other, housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and containing an artist print by François Bonnet.
Browner - MMXX-12
New York based minimalist legend, Phill Niblock, delivers a towering work of drone with Browner (MMXX-12), the composer and interdisciplinary artist’s contribution to Matière Mémoire’s stunning MMXX Series. Long tones and intimate harmonics dance in masterfully controlled interplay across this incredible single sided LP. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, on crystal-clear vinyl LP with a laser engraved artwork on the second side, housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo…
Öst-Väst Sommaren - MMXX-11
Stephen O'Malley’s contribution to the Matière Mémoire’s stunning MMXX Series, Öst-Väst Sommaren (MMXX-11), is a vast expanse of intricate ambience, texture, and tone that encounters the Sunn O))) veteran exploring quiet, introspective depths. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, on a single sided crystal-clear vinyl LP with a laser engraved artwork on the other, housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and containing an artist print by O'Malley.
Omamy
* Edition of 100. Comes with small 16 page booklet * In what is best described as “horror musique concrète”, Polish multidisciplinary artist and musician Samutek has composed a 47-minute album that emits a distinctive, hypnotic aura — intricately developed and mastered over the years. Ingrained with echoes of gongs, chimes, crickets, drones and a plethora of haunted sounds recorded and found, “Omamy” (Polish for “Hallucinations”) is the soundtrack of a phantasmagoric spiral, summoning an unceasi…
Chorus
Chorus is the new single from Holly Herndon, the inimitable artist and technologist responsible for 2012’s acclaimed album, Movement. Another evolution in her production technique, Chorus bridges multiple disciplines and spaces to blur the politic between natural and synthetic. Crafted with polyphonic passages from live vocal takes and re-synthesized instances of her own voice and those foraged and sampled, “Chorus” continues Herndon's explorations in vocal processing with a basis in the banging…
UkabazUmorezU
"Sugai Ken follows in the vein of RVNG Intl’s Visible Cloaks release with an exquisite meditation on traditional Japanese percussion and 4th world electronics ruptured by unpredictable runs into more abstract terrain.UkabazUmorezU works like a stage set or a variegated series of sonic scenarios, at once smartly demonstrating his compositional versatility as well as a dilated vision of the connections between Japanese tradition and western-rooted electro-acoustic practice. In a way it resonates w…
Water Memory / Mount Vision
From the Catskill Mountains, Emily Sprague channels a timeless mix of new age ambience and poetry in her captivating debut for RVNG Intl. Compiling Emily’s two self-released tapes Water Memory (2017) and Mount Vision (2018), this sublime package brings us right up to date with her effortlessly enchanting solo output. Across 14 parts in 80 minutes, she proves equally adept at sprawling out in longer forms, as with At Lake, as she is at capturing crystalline vignettes like the kaleidoscopic minia…
Hazel
Cosmic yet intimate, long-gestating and free-flowing, diffuse and centered, Dukes turned toward their immediate sanctum, and a network of friends and colleagues, to realize the vision of Hazel. “Pretty much everything we do is without purpose,” the Dukes admit, in line with their pursuit of joy. But it’s not empty hedonism or passivity at play on Hazel, so much as an expression of freedom. “Why not?” was scribbled on the white frame of the Polaroid documenting their first appearance on Tim Sween…
The Twelve Secret Hometape Sessions
* Edition of 150 * Experimental improvisations recorded 1983 sound on sound on a Revox A77 two track recorder in Amsterdam. After recording, the tape was lost and forgotten, until after about 25 years the tape was found again. No Honey From These: Robby Horsfall († 2013) & Menko Konings (EM / S.M. Nurse). Vocals track 1, 4, 9, 10: Anneke Stempher (S.M. Nurse). Remaster by Ruud Lekx.
Initiation
Japanese industrial-experimental-synth outfit formed by Tommi Tokyo (synths, drum machines, vocals) and Sayaka Botanic (violin, sampler, tapes). They create a unique mixture of dark minimal synth and avant-noise with striking visuals and stage performances. Group A carries on the very breath of early pioneers such as Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and the Japanese underground scene from the early '80s. This is the vinyl edition of group A's second self-produced album released in October 20…
Stupidamutaforma
* Limited edition hand-assembled and hand-drawn uniquely by the artist * Early morning sensory comfort, eyes decompressing, mind unravelling and body detachment creating circular forms and layers of thought. It’s like being inside a prism of shadows and light slowly cascading through lost memory cells. This is where ‘Stupidamutaforma’, Fera’s debut for Maple Death reveals its groundwork.
Fera is Andrea De Franco, electronic composer from Southern Italy now residing in Bologna, best known for his…
Arispejal astisaró
Geometrik presents the reissue, remastered from the original tapes, of a classic Esplendor Geométrico. Arispejal astisaró was recorded between 1987 and 1989. an especially interesting period where the unique and characteristic rhytmic-industrial Esplendro Geométrico style, developed along the eighties, turns more minimalistic, schematic, cold and rough. Arispejal astisaró was firstly published in 1993 by the label Línea Alternativa in an edition of 500 copies. This new reissue is remastered from…
A Period of Review - Original Recordings 1975-1983
Incredible 30 track anthology ranging from spaced-out Kosmische to blunted & skewed pop - honestly one of the most eye-opening and worthy archival discoveries of the year RVNG Intl.'s issue of 'A Period of Review (Original Recordings: 1975 - 1983)' is a wide-reaching and revelatory survey of Kerry Leimer's prescient output operating on the cusp of ambient, 4th World and industrial musics. From his base in Seattle, Leimer accumulated a unique catalogue of recordings created on a Micromoog, drum m…