Unlike much of Florian Hecker's recent work, such as 2021's 'Synopsis Seriation' or 'Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera', his acclaimed PAN-released collaboration with Mark Leckey, there's no single overarching narrative that binds 'Natural Selection'. Hecker describes the sprawling, nine-track album as a "constellation of pieces originating from related investigations", and the clue's in the title. Ranging from under a minute to over half an hour, these works have been grouped together because they share very specific properties, using correlated modes of synthesis and approaching timbral metamorphosis in a similar way. Pieces that might seem incongruous at first are united not by one concept, but by a cluster of queries that Hecker has been probing diligently for the last few years, ideas related to automated file selection, database-generating sequencing systems and the prospect of synthetic cognition.

They were written in parallel with a range of Hecker's recent multi-disciplinary inquiries: 2022's Galerie Neu exhibition TEMPLEXTURES, that examined machine listening and charted uncategorizable auditory sensations; 2021's diffusion of olfactory sonics and evaluation of the perception of space 'RESYNTHESIZSERS'; and 'INSPECTION', an algorithmic reconstruction of sounds that uses human hearing to parse their vital timbral characteristics. But 'Natural Selection' doesn't require any rigorous background study. In fact, it's one of Hecker's most playful and approachable sets in years, exhibiting the same balance of intensity, mischief and brain-twisting theory that made albums like 'Sun Pandämonium' and 'Acid in the Style of David Tudor' so enduringly influential.

Beginning with the brief 'f92ex0.03', 40 seconds of heaving synthesized textures and disorienting frozen reverb trails, the album immediately hits a different pace with the lengthy 'Syn 21845 8 J15 Q12', a piece Hecker wrote with the help of his friend Vincent Lostanlen, an applied mathematician who is one of the leading voices in the field of computational auditory analysis. The track takes microscopic glissandi fragments from a database of source material for Lostanlen's time- frequency scattering process and spatiotemporally reverses them, creating an unsettling, utterly beguiling audio illusion. What sounds like a barrage of whooshing, perpetually reversing acoustic impressions is actually a progressive metamorphosis of both forward and backward time - no audio is actually reversed.

Hecker's more succinct diversions are just as energizing and, inserted between his durational experiments, necessarily palate cleansing. On the jackhammer 'm syn 260e 2402', he turns an analysis tool into a synthesizer, rooting out spectral phantasms from runaway code, and on 'Layer', coaxes a digital reverb unit into shaping its "infinite space" into criss- crossing synthetic whirrs. There's even a move towards technoid cohesion on the hallucinatory 'm syn bold heuristic driver', that uses a revised and extended model of Lostanlen's time-frequency scattering process developed by members of the mathematician's team. Hecker transforms harsh digital noise into an emergent rhythm, scanning the detritus until it turns into a an unintentionally dubwise sequence of undulating pulses.

A variation of this process is also used to drive the album's extended closer 'M 35/36', a symphonic 35-minute blur of ghost frequencies and nebulous textures that's accented with kaleidoscopic xenharmonic iridescence.

TRACK LISTING

1. F92ex0.03
2. Syn 21845 8 J15 Q12
3. Nat. Sel. 260e I
4. M Syn 260e 2402
5. Nat. Sel. 2015
6. Layer
7. M Syn Bold Heuristic Driver 08. Seg Rev C
9. M 35 36

In evolutionary biology, the term spandrel refers to the features of an organism that aren't developments for survival, and seemingly possess no obvious purpose. The word is taken from an architectural label for the triangular spaces in the corner of an arch: small aesthetic elements that provide symmetry and demarcate boundaries. Musician and vocalist Evita Manji asks an opaque question on their debut album, wondering in the face of immense loss what elements of ourselves might be for endurance, and what might just be decoration. Their tracks, pieced together from the vapors of contemporary club music, baroque pop, and experimental sound design, are a way for Manji to examine their relationship with the world at large and within, disassembling systems of control and highlighting interconnectedness.

Manji has been an ethereal presence on the scene for the last few years, collaborating with numerous artists as both a sound artist and a creative director. Last year, they launched their own platform myxoxym, where they debuted two singles from 'Spandrel?' and assembled an ambitious fundraiser compilation featuring Rainy Miller, Palmistry, Cecile Believe and others, raising money for Greek wildlife fund ANIMA. Performing across the world at festivals such as Unsound, Lunchmeat, and Rhizom, Manji has also appeared at clubs in Berlin and London, and was picked to represent the Shape+ platform in 2022. These experiences teem through 'Spandrel?', helping them weave a complex artistic tapestry that seeks to look far beneath the surface of existence, attempting to balance the doom of global climate meltdown with themes of self-actualization, love, and bodily autonomy.

The album opens on the title track, an introductory précis that prepares listeners for what they're about to hear. Manji's vocals hum with a plugged-in sense of cybernetic melancholia, filtering the world's barrage of rhythms and harmonic themes into lithe, clubwise pop that's buoyed by their advanced sonics. From there, we’re wrenched into the sadness of atmospheric lament 'Pitch Black', a meditation on death that submerges deep bass beneath layers of choral bliss, evoking the church and the dancefloor without sacrificing the power of each polar element. Their darkness is pushed from the inside to the outside on ‚'Oil/Too Much’, a commentary on the oil industry from the perspective of the animal kingdom that doubles as a neon-hued expression of contemporary depression. But it's on 'Body/Prison’ where Manji sounds most naked, speaking honestly about their life’s darkest moments and confessing their deepest feelings over searing trance-inspired synths and grotesque percussion. 'Spandrel?' is an album that takes time to unravel, and Manji's themes resonate through history that's older than pop music. It's tragic, romantic, and poetic, and resolutely refuses to turn away from the era's most urgent concerns.

TRACK LISTING

1. Spandrel?
2. Pitch Black
3. Oil/Too Much
4. Closer To Midnight
5. Body/Prison
6. Lies?
7. Eyes/Not Enough
8. The Lungs Of A Burning Body
9. XYZ/Labyrinth
10. Black Hole

STROBE.RIP
Amnesia Scanner’s third full-length album titled 'STROBE.RIP' is a collaboration with the artist and musician Freeka Tet, who joins the album and associated live performances as a vocalist and creative collaborator. Released by PAN records, 'STROBE.RIP' is part of a broader series of live performances, installations, videos and physical products created by the group. Since its inception in 2014, Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala have continued to evolve and redefine Amnesia Scanner through experimentation across online and IRL realms. This album brings them a step closer to the latter. With French-born, New York City-based Freeka Tet on board, 'STROBE.RIP' acquires a new array of influences that draw from the multidisciplinary artist’s hacker mindset, shaping the sound into new forms. As a programmer and technologist, Freeka Tet’s work straddles commerce and art, combining intuitive and performative modes of expression with emergent technology and creative coding. Much like Amnesia Scanner, Tet draws from online vernacular and techno-magic to create satirical, uncanny work – artificially augmented, and highly engineered sounds, textures, images and ideas that translate memes and code into a more human and affective language. Haimala and Kalliala say, “Amnesia Scanner is now living in the world it has built,” signaling a sincere commitment to the act. The human dimension in 'STROBE.RIP' is chaotic: a reverse hero’s journey that merges deep-fried baroque with the quasi-angelic into a psychotic megamix of tropes, lyrics, genres, and sonic palettes that are both disorienting and deeply resonant.

HOAX
Mutating out of the collaborative practice established on 'STROBE.RIP', Amnesia Scanner and Freeka Tet are so back with a new dual record project that explores and explodes norms of music production, songwriting and sonic aesthetics. 'HOAX' is *not* an album and remix released together, but rather, a singular experience unfolding as two mirroring, mutually-reinforcing (or perhaps deconstructing) records. The Amnesia Scanner “ AS HOAX” record administers the liquid drip of devastating ballads, wandering mosh-ups and industrial flood lights that we fiend for. But, as with every AS record it is impossible to mistake the grunged-out doom for nihilism: there is simply too much raw emotion, vulnerable narrative and playful experimentation. With drums and chaos from Freeka on four “ASFT” tracks, AS has delivered perhaps their most prescient, hopeful and soon-to-be-seminal record of their genre-defining career. Against this belligerent crispness emerges the sublime obelisk of noise in Freeka Tet’s “FT HOAX”. This is the debut full-length record released under the Freeka Tet moniker. It is a conceptual art piece that is unapologetically immediate. Using custom bashed scripts the AS record is negated, inverted and buffed down to reveal underlying rhythms and textures. Freeka has taken the ubiquitous technology of noise-canceling headphones as a point of departure for this experiment in music-denial. The desire for eliminating environmental sounds is turned inwards to undermine the music itself. A variety of original techniques are used for ambient AS cancellation including creating a virtual space simulation and adding noise to spectrogram images. While Freeka’s gesture is extreme, the result brings you to a serene contemplative plateau. The dual mirrored records are meant to be unlocked together: listening to the drone-ification opens up patterns and movements previously hidden, your newly trained ear will go deeper into the layers of subliminal encoding on HOAX leaving you reprogrammed. The lyrics are a sticker suspended above reflective abyss: labeled ingredients are anchors that pull a connection out of the crashing shores of Oracle’s baritone sax croning and operatic countertenor samples from latent space. The resulting They Live glasses that are ripped from your eyes makes this dual record project a scathing polemic on state of music and creativity, thus raising the stakes of what it means to be an artist in the post-post-post-digital-crypto-AI-utopia-anthropocene.

TRACK LISTING

1. ASFT Ruff
2. AS Over
3. AS Amygalda
4. AS Neverend
5. AS Mantra
6. ASFT Tazzie
7. ASFT ISSOK
8. AS Disco
9. AS Back
10.AS U
11. ASFT Icaros
12. FT Ruff
13. FT Over
14. FT Amygdala
15. FT Neverend
16. FT Mantra
17. FT Tazzie
18. FT ISSOK
19. FT Disco
20. FT Back
21. FT U
22. FTAS Icaros
23. Tongue Demons
24. Giggle
25. Bounds
26. Ledge
27. Disperse
28. Ride
29. Damon
30. Clown
31. Abandoned.club
32. Scorpions, Bats & Spiders
33. Cat
34. Merge