Timothy J Fairplay is back on the label with a 7” single containing two tracks cut from a rock of uranium. “Pathfinder Theme” and “UFO’s Over China” might differ in sound and tempo but are connected by a radiant feeling. The two tracks bathes in a greenish/yellow bright toxic aura.

This plutonium charged music carries with it some quality elements known from his earlier repertoire like for example a primitive yet crisp beat working as foundation to a few but very exquisite synth sounds.

Timothy J. Fairplay stands on the shoulders of past Italian masters and the works of John Carpenter but with an accentuated alien feel. Something otherworldly, maybe good, maybe harmful, is hidden in the vibe on both sides of this 7”. The balance between good and evil is very even - yin/yang from outer space!

TRACK LISTING

A. Pathfinder Theme
B. UFOs Over China

'This recording is dedicated to nomads, space travelers & free spirits that visit Earth for a brief time to make a mark here on their way to other worlds. They leave traces on tram wagons, walls and in our minds in our cities before moving on into the unknown. Especially one.'

A slow build up to a stoned and baggy downbeat is how “Iris” develops. Big bass plumes locking our gaze onto sweeping atmospheres as an end-of-night warmth emanates of this piece of cerebral after party music.

The dreamy music box intro of “Mast” falls into a deep half beat where warm E-bow guitars and sweeping synthesizers carry the music higher and higher away from the ground for another mind's-eye focussed trip that expertly guides us from acid house fallout to neo-spiritual shamanism.

Continuing to craft their own distinctly unique identity Höga Nord keep to the suspended and crystaline nature of Winter on this sincere release from Fontän - recommended!

TRACK LISTING

A. Iriz
B. Mast

Tecwaa is no newcomer in the Höga Nord-roster. He has already made two appearances on the label with an album and a single. This, his third release on the label is another 7” containing pure, high quality molusc chug™ and opiated dark disco. .

The sound in Tecwaa’s music might be explained partly by his geographic position. Being based in York the sound is not as predictable as it might have been if the music was produced in one of the country’s larger cities. It holds a lot of influences found in, say Manchester and London, but still the music holds a contrasting quality with equal parts of freedom and melancholy resounding in the tracks. And the result is unique and beautiful: Airy and free-floating piano drills, dub effects from space and ghost-choruses recorded from secret rooms inside York’s Minister give the electronic sound an organic feel. The melancholy is more of an eerie feeling hiding beneath it all. 

TRACK LISTING

A. Always & The End (Cosmic Dub Edit)
B. Those Collective Dreams

One of our labels of the year (2021), Höga Nord Rekords, continues to provide dark dancefloors and goth ravers with the black matter needed to commense shadow shuffling. One of two releases this week that finds the maverick, trend-shunning label in stonkingly fine form. 

A trademark feature of Fontän is their ability to sound far out into cosmos but still earth-bound. The spacious vibrations in the music seem to come from somewhere hidden deep beneath the moss, a sound travelling through thousand miles of mycelia from tree to tree covering vast areas of forest landscape before shooting out from the leaves through the atmosphere, straight into space.

Fontän pays justice to the term neo psychedelia. It´s easy to grasp the term psychedelic but harder to actually produce relevant psychedelic music. This band does just that; the respect for the for the past masters of psychedelia is obvious but Fontän doesn’t make sentimental music – they keep pushing the envelope of what this genre is.

In a parallel universe with the Kosmiche Musik being born in Sweden, this is how the Norse equivalent of Tangerine Dream might have sounded like.

TRACK LISTING

A. Svett
B. Bekçi

Imagine if Andrew Weatherall produced Pere Ubu. This new Pink Skull 7" on Höga Nord Rekords gives a hint of how such a collaboration might have soundsd. Mid seventies kraut rock á la “Neu 75” meet leftfield and sophisticated punk. The record has an organic warmth to it yet the excessive use of electronics: most instruments on the tracks are synthesizers and drum machines – all Moog, Korg and whatnot.

In the warmth of the Pink Skull-sound you suddenly get a wash of cold, hard rain from all directions. These elements of surprise create edges in the round soundscape and brings chaos to the mix. This is of course all part of Julian Grefes (founder of Pink Skull) plan.

Pink Skull propels you out of the quarantine like a shiny metal free bird released from its rusty cage.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Taki Chrome
B1. Strummer Maxx

Stuart Evans, aka Sordid Sound System is one of the founders of The Green Door Studio, a not for profit, analogue recording studio in Glasgow which emerged from an increasing disillusionment with the modern ways of music production. His sound holds outsider qualities, being everything but generic and predictable, mixing dub with movie soundtracks in the tradition of Carpenter and Italian likes.

On this 7” released on Höga Nord Rekords, SSS deconstructs and rebuilds music in an imaginative style, pairing tribe-ritual “back to ape”-beats with synthesized cosmic harmonies. In a way, we are enjoying straight up dub here but this record is also a display of the vivid and creative Glasgow scene centred round “The Green door studio” and record labels like “Invisible Inc” where krautrock and 80’s/90’s electronic music is part of the foundation. Boundless joy for every girl and boy!

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: I buzz off Sordid Sound System, and his first appearance on Höga Nord is a techno-tribal drug chug masterpiece, backed with a wonderfully wonky but of twisted dub.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Escape Temps Au Revoir
B1. Beginning To See The Dub

All formats come with a free Piccadilly Records EOY Sampler CD whilst stocks last.

What better way to celebrate 100 releases than with a handmade box containing soul expanding music!? Höga Nord Rekords have reached an important goal and releases a rare box set containing all 12” from the HNRUK-series plus a new record from Birds, unique for this box. Except Birds, this compilation includes Dark Strands, High Boys, Vox Low, Timothy J. Fairplay, Fontän, Bird Of Paradise, Mythologen, Jamie Paton and Frak.

The music is of course the main focus of all releases on Höga Nord Rekords but what birthday gift comes without a proper wrapping? This exclusive handmade box made in Norrmalms kartongfabrik in Stockholm, is a celebration to the Scandinavian Bronze age. You’ll find rock carvings like those on the artwork scattered over the land but mostly near Gothenburg, home of Höga Nord Rekords on the Swedish west coast.

Archaeological evidence proves similarities in ornaments and pictures between the Nordic and European Bronze age, just like you find common features in the music released on our label. Though the acts in this compilation box come from all over Europe and beyond, they stem from an obscured and mysterious common source of escapism, purity and creativity.

TRACK LISTING

Dark Strands - The Last Ride
Dark Strands - We Own The Night
Dark Strands - Black Dog
Dark Strands - Wandering Star
Vox Low - I'll Save You Anyway (Evelyne)
Vox Low - I'm Coming To Your House (feat. Tarik Ziour)
Vox Low - Loving Hell
High Boys - Drunken Master
High Boys - Down With Chaos
High Boys - This Is The Captain Speaking
High Boys - No Hope For A Sexual Revolution
Timothy J. Fairplay - Mindfighter
Timothy J. Fairplay - Nightmare City
Timothy J. Fairplay - Lost In The Mirror Maze
Timothy J. Fairplay - Jennifer Has Some Strange Ideas
Fontän - Sen Sen No Sen (Red Axes Remix)
Fontän - Mangsebung (Timothy J Fairplay Remix)
Fontän - Gangri (Khjinda Remix)
Fontän - Bardo (Mythologen Remix)
Fontän - Shadows (Pardon Moi Remix)
Birds Of Paradise - Tito
Birds Of Paradise - Joy-Rides
Birds Of Paradise - Smoking Holiday
Birds Of Paradise - Breather Resist
Mythologen - The Joy I Feel
Mythologen - Canavan's Peckham Pool Club
Mythologen - Blackheath
Mythologen - House Of Parakeet
Jamie Paton - Enhance 224
Jamie Paton - State Line
Jamie Paton - Disk Memories
Jamie Paton - Leviathan Aftermath
Frak - Corridor
Frak - Stetoskop
Frak - Micro Fisson
Frak - Arcitect
Birds - Solitary Dancers
Birds - Night Time Life
Birds - Dont Drink The Acid Water
Birds - Young Blood

Stiletti Ana, part of the dreamy sunbathed electronic duo Jesse and top tier in Finnish music production releases a new solo album, “I’m An Arpeggiator” on Höga Nord Rekords. This album carries similarities to Jesse in both production and sounds but hides more ancient wisdom. A refined sound but with more edges left sharp and more of a mysterious vibe.

As the sound professor he is, Stiletti Ana takes you in a tour of his vast collection of vintage synthesisers and in centre of attention sits the arpeggiator (hence the album title) which gives the sound much of its repetitive character. Recorded in the legendary Haista II-studio outside Helsinki, “I’m An Arpeggiator” channels the energies from the waters and forest surrounding the studio, giving the music its’s escapistic and romantic character.

This record is a transcendental trip down the paths of Boards of Canada and Manuel Göttsching, dedicated to the ancient Babylonian fishing god, Dagan.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Light Chords
A2. A To B
A3. Piilevä
B1. Pikku-Karhu
B2. Waiting For EMP
B3. Takaisin Pangeaan

Rickard Jäverlings music can deservedly be described as playful and searching but for that sake not fumbling or too loose around the edges. On Album 4, the second album release from Jäverling on Höga Nord Rekords, he dwells more in dub than on his prior album release, and Jäverlings skillful songwriting is carried smoothly by the soft and fluffy production: the rhythm section sounds as if resting upon a sun warm bed of moss and elements flows in and out of the production like a freshly rippling stream of water deep in the summer forest. Echoes shoots through the pines, the hills and the valleys and makes the album a premium dub experience which dominates large parts of the album.

Aside the obvious references to nature that comes in mind listening to Jäverlings music, this album is more than a romantic view on the Swedish wilderness. It flirts, like all quality dub from the seventies and eighties with science fiction and space with broad synthesizer sweeps and delay drenched clouds like imploding and exploding stars somewhere in the outskirts of the Milky way, spreading dust over the Swedish forest. On the final three tracks, Ganjaman_72 takes the album out of the galaxy with spaced out-remixes on some of the songs.

With his feet steadily grounded in jamaican music tradition whit a non sentimental and curious view on production, Rickard Jäverling have together with Johan Holmegård (Dungen, Goran Kajfes), Andreas Söderström (ASS, Goran Kajfes) och Ganjaman_72 created the natural follow up to Album 3.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Set Piece
A2. Road Across World
A3. Rising Skies
A4. Bruised Banana
A5. I Won’t Get Your Love
B1. From Left To Right
B2. Radiation
B3. I Won’t Get Your Love
B4. From Left To Dub
B5. Radiation Dub

The Mothership has come! It has arrived in the form of the strictly limited collection box “Upwards at 33 1/3 Degrees”. There’s only 50 copies, and it contains all the singles released on the label between 2017 and 2020. Goth electro, dark tape jams, fluffy krautrock and moist world music coalese with underwater techno, celestial rave and EBM-space-funk. Although, what it is that defines the Höga Nord sound is not genres, instead it is, to cite Mathias Nilsson, founder of and boss for the label, music ‘strongly connected to fantasy, to the creative world.’

The collection is an overview on Gothenburg’s underground music and on an international scene that breathes similar air as the local Swedish acts that Höga Nord Rekords has chosen to highlight. The kinship between Pardon Moi’s 80’s varnish sports car-electro and DRUK 11000’s more traditional mountain sound can appear distant but the artists come together in their free spirited approach to their own productions – what all acts on this collection has in common is that they move toward something new, something beyond the genre they are in.

“Upwards at 33 1/3 Degrees” mark the closer for Höga Nords first run. The 2010s are over and the 2020s lies open for further investigation of the cream of the Swedish and international of underground scenes!

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Quietly establishing themselves as a one-stop-shop for nocturnal misfits across the board, the Hoga Nord label expertly closes off the troublesome teens with this beautifully presented aural compendium.

TRACK LISTING

Pardon Moi - Power To The People
Pardon Moi - Touch 2 Much
Max Von Sydow - Insecto
Max Von Sydow - Cardboard Pope
Dungeon Acid - Dog Acid
Dungeon Acid - Sex Beat
Västlänken - Moebel
Västlänken - Autobaba
Druk 11000 - Zamboling
Druk 11000 - Sibsoo Bazaar
Ultra Satan - Freedom Rock
Ultra Satan - Anti-Clock
Golden Bug - Viaje A Tenderloin
Golden Bug - Hitodoma
Osynlige Mann - Airports
Osynlige Mann - Exodus
The IDEALIST - Inner Space Dub
The IDEALIST - The Fire Of Moses (feat. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge)
Al Lover - Dark Matter Discothèque
Al Lover - Mark E. Moon