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SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND

Kara-Lis Coverdale

From Where You Came

    A dynamic and sublime work rich in emotion and sensitivity, 'From Where You Came' unspools as a series of nocturnal transmissions, altered-state refinements, and vivid stories, rich in vibrant, illuminating qualities. Drawing together 19th century programmatic music, mid-’70s jazz, and her distinctively colourful and multi-dimensional approach to composition that embraces improvisation, Coverdale alloys synthesis with live instrumentation in a genreless yet distinctly identifiable gesture of reconnection with land and body through sound. Approaching composition as a diagnostic methodology to spiritual ends, she conducts emotional resonance like currents of charge, hard-wiring the purely felt into electronic signals.

    Though written and recorded on several continents, including at the GRM Studio in Paris and the Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm, 'From Where You Came' was completed in rural Ontario, Canada. Featuring contributions from multidisciplinary sound artist and cellist Anne Bourne and Grammy award winning trombone prodigy Kalia Vandever, the album’s 11 expansive yet condensed compositions incorporate strings, woodwind, brass, keys, software and modular synthesis, inscribing a musical language that resonates animations with unfiltered, striking clarity. “Anything can have a voice,” says Coverdale. “For me, voice is beyond human.” Fittingly, it’s the artist’s own voice that melts into air amidst the enveloping swell of the album’s opening prelude: “Everything you know is real,” she sings on 'Eternity', “I’m sorry, life is beautiful… .” As though in response, oscillating vividly between animism and animalism, the album that follows is absolutely brimming with life in all its stunning complexity.

    Reckoning with the experience of grief, dislocation, and the pressure of total freedom and independence, Coverdale yields supernatural capacity to transfer tribulation into highly imaginative and inspiring fantasy epics of sound. In the piloted flight of 'Daze', wind choruses dance and twirl in ornate punctuated cycles as dissonant portamentos annotate modulatory ascent to soaring heights, gliding and churning across turbulent gails to new pockets of harmonic plateaus, stabilizing periodically through rhythmic gait for rest. It feels like the joy of flight. In other spiritual quests, sound becomes a feat of physics; physical and subterranean, and even destructive, amongst highland drone figures in 'Freedom'. Sense melancholic restlessness, and desire to overcome in the furtive flurries of energy on 'Coming Around', the skittish, tacit, and reluctantly yearning chimes of 'Problem of No Name', and the ecstatic, messy-haired catharsis of the drummed sample-based sequences of 'Offload Flip'.

    Each new narrative finds rootedness in a changing environment, giving a sense this is ecological adaptation made into music, as a way to navigate being in the world. Speaking directly to the rootlessness and alienation of modernity while processing the thrill and pain of being alive, 'From Where You Came' draws immense strength through a commitment to material groundedness, from where we are able to view the scale of our own mythology, the worlds we want to build, and the stories we are determined to tell.


    TRACK LISTING

    1. Eternity
    2. Flickers In The Air Of Night
    3. The Placid Illusion
    4. Daze
    5. Coming Around
    6. Problem Of No Name
    7. Freedom
    8. Offload Flip
    9. Habitat
    10. Equal Exchange
    11. The Ceremonial Entrance Of Colour

    Hieroglyphic Being

    Dance Music 4 Bad People

      "I’ve been partying since 1984,” says Jamal Moss, the living Chicago legend known by his dedicated cult following as the one, the only, Hieroglyphic Being. “40 years later, it’s drastically different - everybody’s angry!” So sets the stage for 'Dance Music 4 Bad People', the artist’s first album for Smalltown Supersound. Tapping back into the same cosmic frequencies responsible for the prolific house virtuoso’s most vital work, the album sees Moss coaxing nine anthems for those up to no good from out of the ether. With driving drum machine workouts and low-slung synth sexuality, Hieroglyphic Being pays homage to human fallibility, drawing focus on the revolutionary potential of house music and club culture that is so often lost to the chaos of the present. “I have yet to walk into a club and see everybody hug and say: Let’s forgive each other, let’s move forward and make the world a better place,” he levels. “With all these conversations about sexuality, ethnicity, politics, whatever, when you walk into an environment with the music, you are supposed to celebrate all of that. Let it be and come together.” 

      TRACK LISTING

      1. U R Not Dying U R Just Waking Up
      2. The Secret Teachings Of The Ages
      3. The Map Of Salt & Stars
      4. Reality Is Not What It May Seem
      5. I´m In A Strange Loop
      6. Dispatches From The B4 Life
      7. Awakening From The Daydreams
      8. The Art Of Living A Meaningless Existence

      Barker

      Stochastic Drift

        Barker’s debut album 'Utility' (on Berghain’s Ostgut Ton label) was something of a sensation in the world of electronic music when it was released. 'Utility' made numerous Best of 2019 year’s end lists, including Pitchfork (8,2 review), The Quietus, DJ Mag, Resident Advisor (Recommends) and others. It also earned the title of Mixmag’s Album of The Year 2019. Now its finally time for the follow-up 'Stochastic Drift' on Smalltown Supersound. And where Barker on 'Utility' was "using ambient materials to remake techno” as Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne wrote, he takes this approach even further here creating - as the title suggests - a dreamy stochastic drift and beautiful freeform oat.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Force Of Habit
        2. Reframing
        3. Dierence And Repion
        4. The Remembering Self
        5. Posive Disentegraon
        6. Cosmic Microwave
        7. Fluid Mechanic
        8. Stochastic Drift

        Actress

        ДАРЕН ДЖ. КАННІНГЕМ (Daren Dz Kanningem)

          Actress delivered his mix for RA in June and it was suprisingly all new and exclusive Actress music. When asked if this was a new album, Actress aka Darren S.Cunningham simply answered that "it's a collage -Braque". Whatever you call this, a mix, a mixtape, a collage/braque, a new album, what it is, is another Actress statement. Actress grows music. Completely unconcerned with what it is, with what format it is or what it's defined as.

          STAFF COMMENTS

          Matt says: Very exciting to hear new stuff from the highly innovative Actress who, in the past, has often dictated the sounds of the near future with his inspired, sometimes challenging, always rewarding pieces of music.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. ДАРЕН ДЖ. КАННІНГЕМ

          Perila

          Intrinsic Rhythm

            With her second album for Oslo’s Smalltown Supersound, the St. Petersburg-born, Berlin-based sound and visual artist, DJ, poet and performer Perila takes aim at the harnessing rhythms both internal and external with a format-specific double album with 21 discrete compositions. In terms of medium, Intrinsic Rhythms is fundamentally a double album. However, it is less like the classic conceptual 70s variety and more like the outsider experimental 90s double album, such as Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives or Lake by R!!!S!!.

            Clocking at 64 minutes, Perila opts for more tracks with less playing time, eschewing long-format psychedelic exploration for more potent, condensed blocks of ecstatic introspection interspersed by a sonic palette cleansing of five-second breaks in between. The result is an album of rhythmic ambient, spectral electronics and intimate vocal exploration that strikes an elusive balance between intentional and aleatoric elements; between the rhythms and melodies generated and those harnessed from the environment; between abstract melody and concrete language; and between the complexities of life and spiritual regeneration.

            TRACK LISTING

            SIDE A
            1. Sur
            2. Deza
            3. Sepula Purm
            4. Nia
            5. Ways
            6. Lish

            SIDE B
            1. Realm
            2. Nim Aliev
            3. Mola
            4. Lys Riel
            5. Air Two Air

            SIDE C
            1. Angli
            2. Supa Mi
            3. Sneando
            4. Fey
            5. Lip

            SIDE D
            1. Message
            2. Darbounouse Song
            3. Note On
            You
            4. She Wonder
            5. Ol Sun

            Actress

            Statik

              “Listening closely, influential visions of aquatic realms, such as the mythic Atlantis, and evocations of flying birds (and, perhaps, humans) may reveal themselves. No matter if Statik inspires you to soar above or below the horizon, Actress and Smalltown Supersound promise you a safe and transcendent journey.”

              STAFF COMMENTS

              Barry says: I've long been a fan of Actress' unique brand of fractured almost-dance and shadowy crackling ambient fare, and for me not only is the name 'Statik' perfectly representative of his whole aesthetic, the album is a perfectly in-tune artistic representation of Cunningham's razor sharp production skills. Another brilliant development of that unique Actress energy.

              TRACK LISTING

              SIDE A:
              A1. Hell
              A2. Static
              A3. My Ways
              A4. Rainlines
              A5. Ray
              A6. Six

              Side B:
              B1. Café Del Mars
              B2. Dolphin Spray
              B3. System Verse
              B4. Doves Over Atlantis
              B5. Mellow Checx 

              Kelly Lee Owens

              LP.8.2

                Kelly Lee Owens returns with LP8.2 - a compendium to her LP.8 album from earlier this year, produced by Kelly herself along with Lasse Marhaug (Jenny Hval).

                This mini album contains four tracks and 18 minutes of new Kelly Lee Owens music following the abstract industrial beauty of LP.8.


                TRACK LISTING

                A1. Rituals
                A2. Moebius
                B1. The First Song
                B2. Find Our Way

                Deathprod

                Compositions

                  A composition simply means things being put together. In music, we usually think of composition as a classical idea. But in recent years, the possibilities of what ‘composing’ can be, have dramatically increased. Based in Oslo, Norway, Deathprod (aka Helge Sten) has been making his own forms of music with no compromise since the early 90s. His specialty is a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. This music can sound forbidding and alien at first, but compared to his more brutal output, it’s an extraordinarily close and intimate experience. The first new Deathprod studio project since 2019’s OCCULTING DISK, Compositions is the result of an intense period at his legendary Audio Virus Lab studio in central Oslo. All tracks are released in chronological order – in other words, the order in which they were recorded. Helge used a personal, unique combination of obsolete digital audio processors and sound generators, combined with his own secret-sauce tuning system. Like gazing at the wonders revealed by an electron microscope with Helge compositional control directs your attention to a succession of ever more spellbinding details and textures. Helge adopted the Deathprod alias in 1991. A complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects – cumulatively known as the ‘Audio Virus’ – combined with obsolete samplers and playback devices, to distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable relatives of their former selves. On the new album Compositions, the virus has evolved into even more fascinating and kaleidoscopic new strains.

                  Electronically generated sounds vibrate and tremble like undiscovered metals ringing and resonating together. Sonic forms attract or repel each other as if under the influence of a strange magnetism. None of the tracks are over four minutes, but no way are these ‘miniatures’. Each one contains its own fully-formed galaxy of tones and clusters, while all tracks audibly belong in the same universe. These are 17 compositions in search of a sonic ideal. His off-grid audio control centre created a parallel acoustic universe which he filled with mutated samples and electronic textures. Even the gaps between the tracks are part of that universe. Helge left the almost silent, twitching crackles of his snoozing analogue gear intact, ensuring a smoother transition between them. Helge is continually striving to find new parameters and possibilities for what music can be – what you can affect with the medium of sound. From the intricate homemade miniatures of Treetop Drive to the bonecrushing electronic barrage of Morals and Dogma and OCCULTING DISK, the different sides of Deathprod are all products of the same obsessive focus and self-discipline in pursuit of sonic exploration. His Compositions are private rather than public music: like introspective chamber or solo compositions instead of the more strident, outward-looking tones of a symphony. Helge is a founder of Norwegian improvising group Supersilent and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. 

                  TRACK LISTING

                  1. Composition 1
                  2. Composition 2
                  3. Composition 3
                  4. Composition 4
                  5. Composition 5
                  6. Composition 6
                  7. Composition 7
                  8. Composition 8
                  9. Composition 9
                  10. Composition 10
                  11. Composition 11
                  12. Composition 12
                  13. Composition 13
                  14. Composition 14
                  15. Composition 15
                  16. Composition 16
                  17. Composition 17 

                  Kelly Lee Owens

                  LP.8

                    After releasing her sophomore album Inner Song in the midst of the pandemic, Kelly Lee Owens was faced with the sudden realisation that her world tour could no longer go ahead. Keen to make use of this untapped creative energy, she made the spontaneous decision to go to Oslo instead. There was no overarching plan, it was simply a change of scenery and a chance for some undisturbed studio time. It just so happened that her flight from London was the last before borders were closed once again. The blank page project was underway.

                    Arriving to snowglobe conditions and sub-zero temperatures, she began spending time in the studio with Lasse Marhaug. An esteemed avant-noise artist, Marhaug envisioned making music that would fall loosely in line with Throbbing Gristle. Kelly, on the other hand, had planned to create something inspired by Enya, an artist who has had an enduring impact on her creative being. They met each other halfway, pairing tough, industrial sounds with ethereal celtic mysticism, and creating music that ebbs and flows between tension and release.

                    One month later, Kelly called her label to tell them she had created something of an outlier, her ‘eighth album’.

                    TRACK LISTING

                    SIDE A
                    1. Release
                    2. Voice
                    3. Anadlu
                    4. S.O (2)

                    SIDE B
                    5. Olga
                    6. Nana Piano
                    7. One
                    8. Quickening
                    9. Sonic 8 

                    Kelly Lee Owens

                    Melt! (Coby Sey Remix) (Love Record Stores Edition)

                    Not content with somehow topping her debut LP with last week's superb "Inner Song", K-Lo keeps us cooking with a limited 'Love Record Stores' white label of disorienting club cut "Melt!" with a completely ketty mix from Coby Sey. 

                    On the A-side, Kelly's OG comes on strong at a rushy 130BPM, twisting our melons with the crystalling cascade of its leadline and sumptuous sub pressure of an interlocking bassline. When taken with the fact that the hard hitting drum programming sounds like it's thumping out of an unlikely "fortress of solitude" rave, this has entirely hallucinatory effects. 

                    Meanwhile on the flipside Whities affiliate and NTS standout Coby Sey puts on the brakes / downs the benzoes to slow the track to a shuffling 104BPM before slicing and dicing that signature synthline into an intoxicated stutter. Essential listening for fans of Madteo me thinks.

                    TRACK LISTING

                    A1. Melt! 
                    B1. Melt! (Coby Sey Remix)

                    Kelly Lee Owens' masterful second album "Inner Song" finds the convention-blurring techno producer and singer/songwriter diving deep into her own psyche—excoriating the struggles she's faced over the last several years and exploring personal pain while embracing the beauty of the natural world. It's a leap in artistry from a musician who burst forth on the scene with a confident, rich sound, and "Inner Song" is endlessly enticing when it comes to what Owens is capable of.

                    "Inner Song" follows the star-making debut of her 2017 self-titled album, a quixotic blend of body-moving beats and introspective songwriting that garnered numerous accolades from the music press. Owens has indeed come a long way from her background as a nurse, since then she has remixed Bjørk & St Vincent, released an indelibly clubby two-tracker, 2019's "Let It Go" b/w "Omen," and teamed up with likeminded auteur Jon Hopkins on the one-off "Luminous Spaces."

                    Her latest album also comes off of what Owens describes as "the hardest three years of my life," an emotionally fraught time that, in her words, "Definitely impacted my creative life and everything I'd worked for up to that point. I wasn't sure if I could make anything anymore, and it took quite a lot of courage to get to a point where I could make something again." So while the lovely cover of Radiohead's "Arpeggi" might strike some as an unconventional way to open a sophomore effort, to Owens the winding take on the classic tune—recorded a year before work on "Inner Song" properly kicked off—represents the sort of sonic rebirth that's so essential to Inner Song's aura.

                    "Inner Song" was largely written and recorded over a month last winter. As with her debut, Owens holed up in the studio with co-producer and collaborator James Greenwood —and letting loose in the studio and being open to whatever sonic whims emerge was essential to Owens' craftwork. The evocative title of the album is borrowed from free-jazz maestro Alan Silva's 1972 opus, which was gifted to Owens by Smalltown Supersound's Joakim Haugland for her 30th birthday: "I'm so grateful for him and his perspectives—he's always thinking outside of the box. Those two words really reflect what it felt like to make this record. I did a lot of inner work in the past few years, and this is a true reflection of that." The hair-raising bass and tickling textures of "Inner Song" drive home that, more so than ever, Owens is locked in to delivering maximal sonic pleasure—as evidenced by the decision to make the album's vinyl release a sesqui album, or triple-sided album: "I'm still obsessed with frequencies that don't do well on vinyl if they don't have the space."

                    "The power of conceptualizing who you are has really informed this album," Owens states about Inner Song's essence, and her second album is truly a discovery of self— the latest statement from a fascinating artist who continues to surprise, gesturing towards a rich and varied career to come.


                    TRACK LISTING

                    SIDE A:
                    1. Arpeggi
                    2. On
                    3. Melt!
                    4. Re-wild

                    Side B:
                    1. Jeanette
                    2. L.I.N.E.
                    3. Corner Of My Sky (ft. John Cale)

                    Side C:
                    1. Night
                    2. Flow
                    3. Wake-Up

                    Following 2017’s Infinite Avenue and 2013’s Sleeper, Both Lines Will Be Blue is Carmen’s first full instrumental album. A 7 track collection of cosmic excursions and dubby ambient-jams, the album is written, recorded, played, produced and mixed by Carmen in her Oslo studio. The soothing atmospherics are made up of tapestries of field recordings, synths, piano, drum-programming, zither and modular sounds. Throughout, Carmen’s music is colored by experimenting with different sounds and learning new techniques or by adding new instruments to the mix

                    "I’ve been playing around with instrumentals for a long time, and it was something I wanted to do more with after I finished Infinite Avenue,” says Carmen. “Leaving out my voice and lyrics got me out of my own head a bit, which I needed. Working with sound is to me the ultimate meditation and is a more unconscious way of expressing whatever is going on inside.”

                    The flute, played by Chilenean-Norwegian Johanna Scheie Orellana (formerly of Sassy 009), is a central part of this new album. Carmen got her in to the studio to both record melodies that she had written, as well as making plenty of room for impro/freeform. Prins Thomas also appears on the record, playing percussion on “I Could Sit Here All Day.”

                    “I made this track based on a Roland SH-101 sequence run through various processing,” says Villain. “The whole thing came together kind of like a jam, I wrote the flute in one take, and it just felt right. I wanted real flute on this, so asked Johanna if she'd like to come in, and we've been collaborating ever since.”


                    TRACK LISTING

                    1.Observable Future
                    2. Are You For Real
                    3. Type
                    4. I Trust You
                    5. I Could Sit Here All Day
                    6. Sometimes I Love You Forever
                    7. Impossible Color

                    Neneh’s new record pointedly asks the question; how do we conduct ourselves in extraordinary times? In an era where the signal-to-noise ratio is more uneven than ever, what are the measures we must take to retain and remember our own personhood? It searches for answers, patiently and with great care, and with a fearlessness to acknowledge that sometimes the answers don't even exist. It’s a record that’s equal parts angry, thoughtful, melancholy, and emboldening, as Cherry and her collaborators continue to expand her ever-widening sonic palette to craft truly singular and potent music.

                    Work on Broken Politics began as touring wound down behind Cherry's previous full-length, 2014's Blank Project, and she felt a drive to continue creating after collaborating on that record with Kieran Hebden (Four Tet). "That last album was much angrier and forceful, whereas this one is quieter and more reflective," she states. "I haven't always been so good at getting things out so quickly, and it still took a while—but that's okay."

                    Cherry, writing partner Cameron McVey, and Hebden decamped to Woodstock, New York for a week-long recording session at the Creative Music Studio, a recording space founded by jazz pianist Karl Berger—who, in a stroke of providence, was a band member of Neneh's stepfather and Don Cherry as well as being friends with her mother Moki. "Being in a studio with them was like being in a familiar space. It was easy to reach into myself for the feelings I needed to be in tune with a song—and at night, Cameron and I would have dinner with Ingrid and Karl and they'd tell stories about my father. There were deep threads."

                    "It was one of the best writing periods I've had in a really long time," Cherry continues while discussing the creative process behind Broken Politics. "I got out of the waiting room and into the inner sanctum.”

                    "I'm very shy about taking on big themes with the airs that I've got a solution—who has the fucking solutions?" Cherry admits while talking about the album's title. "I like writing from a personal perspective, and the time we live in is so much about finding your own voice. People have been left feeling misheard, misunderstood, and disillusioned. What the fuck can I do? Maybe politics starts in your bedroom, or your house—a form of activism, and a responsibility. The album is about all of those things: feeling broken, disappointed, and sad, but having perseverance. It's a fight against the extinction of free thought and spirit."

                    "I have a name. You have a name. We're not just these faceless mounds you can put in the ground," Cherry proclaims when talking about her worldly vision that seeped into Broken Politics. "We're human beings with lives and stories." Art can often remind us of how it feels to live in the moment, and it can also be instructive in helping understand how to preserve that moment. Broken Politics finds Cherry at her most generous and benevolent towards a world that is often anything but. She puts it best in the chorus of LP track "Fallen Leaves," in her own defiant way: "Just because I'm down/ Don't step all over me.”

                    STAFF COMMENTS

                    Barry says: Neneh Cherry's unmistakable vocal style and soulful leanings are harnessed here by the dreamy, otherworldly percussion and electronic momentum of Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) on production duties. His impeccable ear for sonic space only accentuates her flawless songwriting skills, making for a brilliantly listenable and absorbing outing.

                    TRACK LISTING

                    Fallen Leaves
                    Kong
                    Poem Daddy
                    Synchronised Devotion
                    Deep Vein Thrombosis
                    Faster Than The Truth
                    Natural Skin Deep
                    Shot Gun Shack
                    Black Monday
                    Cheap Breakfast Special
                    Slow Release
                    Soldier

                    Will Long

                    Royal Blue / Mustard

                    As much as is said of our current times being new lows, where things have changed for the worse and we're unsure of the future, it's worth returning to study the past to understand how steadily low we remain. "Nothing's changed," says a younger Barack Obama in a sample for the opening track for the second album from Tokyo-based, American musician, writer, and photographer Will Long. The album is released as three separate 12” singles, and CD. Since 2005, Long has produced ambient music under the name Celer, and is a member of the pop music band Oh, Yoko with Miko. He curates and manages the label Two Acorns, and is also involved with the Normal Cookie and Bun Tapes labels.

                    Second 12" in this album series, split across three discs, we get more Obama tit-bits segued into a flawless skeletal deep house groove. Introspective and political, but with a delicate, sparsely populated sonic environment... 


                    TRACK LISTING

                    1. N
                     A.

                    In between the release of Dungen’s most recent two albums (2010’s Skit I Allt and 2015’s Allas Sak), the beloved Stockholm quartet was asked to create an original score to Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 touchstone The Adventures of Prince Achmed, understood to be the oldest surviving full-length animated feature film. Inspired by the work and the characters – Prince Achmed, Peri Banu, Aladdin, the Sorcerer, and most of all, the Witch – the members of Dungen immersed themselves into the groundbreaking visual language of this landmark film.

                    Häxan (translation: “The Witch”) is Dungen’s first all-instrumental album. Produced by Mathias Glavå, and recorded, mixed, and edited by hand to tape entirely in the analog domain, Häxan was sequenced away from the linear narrative of the film. This process helped to create a path of its own, fully capturing the rawness and spontaneity present in the sessions, as well as a loose, abstract, and fragmented collage feel. Dense with dissonant free-form rock-outs, haunting ambient passages, and gorgeously cinematic soundscapes present in the work, Häxan is a record that stands on its own outside of the presence of its primary inspiration. Moody, evocative, stormy, and brimming with life, Häxan provides both a tacit summation of the Dungen journey until now, and gives the beloved group a chance to stretch out like never before.

                    Experience the possessed prowess of "Jakten genom skogen,” the first single from Häxan bearing all the marks — from Mellotron to mood — of a classic Dungen composition.

                    STAFF COMMENTS

                    Barry says: From serene post-rock passages to lengthy psychedelic freakouts, and flowing jazzy interludes, Dungen pull out an instrumental stunner. Progressive and profoundly varied, this has something for everyone.

                    TRACK LISTING

                    Side A.
                    1. Peri Banu Vid Sjön
                    2. Jakten Genom Skogen
                    3. Wak-Wak’s Portar
                    4. Den Fattige Aladdin
                    5. Trollkarlen Och Fågeldräkten
                    6. Grottan
                    7. Häxan
                    8. Aladdins Flykt över Havet

                    Side B.
                    1. Kalifen
                    2. Achmed Flyger
                    3. Aladdin Och Lampan, Del 1
                    4. Aladdin Och Lampan, Del 2
                    5. Achmed Och Peri Banu
                    6. Andarnas Krig

                    You can’t accuse Supersilent of keeping the noise down. Ever since the Big Crunch of 1997, when Norway’s finest free music outfit came together for the first time, their unpredictable noises and rapturous textures have been heard all around the world – and maybe somewhere outside the stratosphere too. Currently a trio featuring Helge Sten, Arve Henriksen and Ståle Storløkken, Supersilent ’s album number 13 marks a turning point in the group’s two-decade career. After a dozen recordings under the umbrella of the diverse Rune Grammofon label, Supersilent have now signed to Oslo based Smalltown Supersound, where they join the likes of Lindstrøm, DJ Harvey, Prins Thomas and Andre Bratten as labelmates.

                    Supersilent is a platform for a highly physical improvised electronic music, made by a trio that’s a kind of supergroup of Norwegian players in their own right. Arve Henriksen’s hypnotic trumpet has been heard with everyone from David Sylvian and Laurie Anderson to Jan Bang and the ice music of Terje Isungset, as well as releasing a string of acclaimed solo albums on Rune Grammofon. Keyboardist Ståle Storløkken has worked with Motorpsycho, Elephant9, Terje Rypdal, and the Humcrush duo with Sidsel Endresen. Helge Sten uses a complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects – cumulatively known as the ‘Audio Virus’ – in his solo ambient music as Deathprod, as well as having worked with Motorpsycho and producing artists like Susanna.

                    Supersilent was born when Sten injected the audio virus into a pre-existing late 90s free jazz group called Veslefrekk. Originally featuring drummer Jarle Vespestad, Supersilent slimmed to an electronic three-piece core in 2009, with all three often handling their respective instruments as if they were percussion, stabbing buttons and keys in real time. Recently Supersilent threw the legendary Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones into the mix for a series of improvised concerts and recordings.

                    Most of 13’s nine tracks were taped in an Oslo studio at the end of 2014. The band record everything live, while blasting their sound through a PA system, so that they can feel the physical air moving as if they were on stage. Tracks 1 and 5 date from 2009, immediately after their drummer’s exit. ‘They were tryout sessions to see how we should proceed,’ says Helge. ‘It was a kind of research for the band to feel how is to be three, not four, and to blow off some steam.’

                    All of Supersilent’s music is entirely unplanned, with all three experienced musical adventurers throwing themselves into the moment and riding the emerging maelstrom. They always manage to surprise you, whether it’s the Indonesian ritual music heard from a Scandinavian mountaintop on the opening track ‘13.1’, to the demonic organ blasts at the end of ‘13.5’; or from haunting, pastoral atmosphere pieces (‘13.6’) to all-out splatter-improv (‘13.7’) and the compressed digital labyrinths of 13.9.

                    The trio swap instruments with abandon: percussion, trumpet and woodwind, electronics and Storløkken’s collectable assortment of vintage keyboards. In this technologised environment, sounds are passed around, distorted and spat out again in tantalising splurges. ‘It takes time to shape a band from the beginning,’ says Helge, ‘but for us now the trio is working really well’. With Supersilent’s lucky 13, now you can be the judge of that.


                    TRACK LISTING

                    1. 13.1
                    2. 13.2
                    3. 13.3
                    4. 13.4
                    5. 13.5
                    6. 13.6
                    7. 13.7
                    8. 13.8
                    9. 13.9

                    Prins Thomas

                    Principe Del Norte

                    Nordic disco / house hero and Piccadilly Records favourite Prins Thomas is back, gracing Smalltown Supersound with his fourth solo LP. Here is a little message from Thomas about the album:

                    "There's a certain risk some of you are already overfed, with the 'Paradise Goulash' still piping hot on the stove…but anyway, here it goes… I've known Joakim (Mr. Smalltown) professionally for quite a few years now and I've worked on many projects for him, mainly doing remixes like Nissenenmondai, Lindstrom, Alf-Emil Eik, Idjut Boys and so on.

                    A couple of years ago he asked me to consider doing an album for him. At the time I was busy concentrating on gathering material for what would become my 2nd album (Prins Thomas II) on my own label Full Pupp and I was not entirely friendly to the idea of giving away my solo material to somebody else's label. However, the possibility of doing something different seemed an option but at the time I had no “different" in mind and I generally try not to force ideas.

                    Then, roughly a year ago an Instagram-post and a recommendation of a posthumous release by Swedish producer Joel Brindefalk, sparked an idea. I likened his "Doobedoo Dub’e'dope" release under the moniker Ü’s to KLF's "Chill Out” and The Orb's "Peel Session EP". That had Joakim and me enthusing about those early 90s electronica releases. So I set off on the task at hand, making an ambient album, leaving conventional drums and drum machines out of the equation.

                    So that's basically it, a few tracks loosely inspired by the braindance of the 90s and its themes and components reworked into slightly more danceable counterparts. The song "titles" refers to the sides of the vinyl version. Matching tracks up with their melodic partners is up to the listener. How you listen to this album is entirely up to you but I'd recommend finding center position in front of your speakers, a comfortable couch or chair and dedicate yourself to the music for a long hour" - Prins Thomas,

                    STAFF COMMENTS

                    Martin says: Thomas Moen Hermansen always drew his influences from a broad musical palette, even if at first he confined his genius to the seemingly oxymoronic Norwegian disco genre. It is no surprise then that Mr.Hermansen might want to express his talent in other areas - he has injected psyche and kraut rock into the beats in more recent work; in Principe Del Norte he explores more meditative electronic territories, although consistency is maintained here with nods in the direction of Harmonia, Manuel Göttsching and Cluster.

                    TRACK LISTING

                    01 A1
                    02 A2
                    03 B
                    04 C
                    05 D
                    06 E
                    07 F
                    08 G
                    09 H

                    “'Gode' is a personal album. It's the album I have always wanted to make” says André Bratten.

                    The album was made between 2012 - 2015 in Oslo and Bratten sites artists like Giacinto Scelsi, Arvo Pärt, Gescom/AE, Brian Eno and Norwegian compatriot Biosphere as inspiration. “Gode" has a dual meaning in Norwegian. It’s a Middle English word that gave us the modern English word “Goad” (meaning to provoke or annoy). On the one hand it literally means “cattle prod”, a farming tool used to, er, prod cattle. But it also came to mean “a right or privilege” as the cattle prod came to symbolize the indentured labour of the Norwegian rural working class. The land owning aristocrats would exploit the people as if they were so much livestock. Like a stark black & white film, the record is a meditation on the darker days of Norway’s past, before the country discovered its oil wealth. From 1900 - 1939 it was one of Europe’s poorest countries, beset by illness and starvation even. Rural poor depended completely on their families and had more children to work the land. Only the privileged could afford to make art, and Bratten thinks of the void all the music and art from the poorest families that was lost. “Gode” is a hymn to those people.

                    “Gode” is Bratten giving free rein to his imagination and further deepening his unique musical practice. His previous work was made with synthesizers, drum machines and computers but this album is recorded through tape machines, layered with field recordings, heavily modified piano, string arrangements and even vocals (amongst others Susanne Sundfør).



                    TRACK LISTING

                    01. Intro
                    02. Cave
                    03. Quiet Earth
                    04. Philistine
                    05. Bivouac
                    06. Cascade Of Events Feat. Susanne Sundfør
                    07. Ins.
                    08. Gode
                    09. Space Between Left & Right
                    10. Iconography
                    11. Primordial Pit
                    12. Zero
                    13. Math Ilium Ion

                    Dungen

                    Allas Sak

                      Dungen frontman/mastermind Gustav Ejstes has been making music for nearly twenty years—at first for himself, then eventually and inevitably for all of us. As a teenager in rural Sweden, he became obsessed with hip-hop and sampling. Digging through crates and searching for obscure source material provided him with an informal education in ‘60s pop and psychedelia, and soon he learned to play the bits and pieces he was sampling. He took up guitar and bass, drums and keyboard and even flute, then took to his grandmother’s basement to put it all on tape.

                      When Ejstes recorded his first album, he released it in 2001 under the name Dungen, which means “The Grove”— a nod to his village upbringing or perhaps a deeper reference to American folk songs like “Shady Grove.” While his music has routinely garnered comparisons to acts like Love, Pink Floyd, the Electric Prunes, and Os Mutantes, he has always emphasized a strong sense of songcraft. The music has deep roots in the past, but it blooms in the present.

                      With 2004’s breakout Ta Det Lugnt Dungen garnered an avid fanbase outside of Scandinavia. Only on the road did Dungen blossom into a full band, with a rotation of musicians joining Ejstes onstage and eventually coalescing into a fully democratic band that includes Reine Fiske on guitar, Mattias Gustavsson on bass, and Johan Holmegard on drums. Starting with 2007’s Tio Bitar and 2009’s 4, the band members helped Ejstes realize his own vision while adding flourishes of their own. As a result, Dungen grew into something bigger and more formidable: one of the best and most consistently inventive psych rock bands in the world.

                      At the height of their powers, however, the band took a step back. It’s been five years since the last Dungen album, 2010’s Skit I Allt, which is by far the longest interval between releases for a band that proved especially prolific and inspired during the 2000s. Allas Sak picks up where Dungen’s previous album left off, but somehow it sounds bolder and livelier, feistier yet more focused. The quartet jam with greater purpose and principle on songs like the otherworldly instrumental “Franks Kaktus” and the stately “En Gång Om Året,” while the prismatic “Flickor Och Pojkar” and closer “Sova” reveal subtle nuances in the band’s arrangements.

                      The band brought in “a good friend of ours” named Mattias Glavå to produce the record. In addition to helming records for the Soundtrack of Our Lives, Sambassadeur, and the Amazing, Glavå worked with Dungen on 2005’s Stadsvandringar, which made these sessions a reunion of sorts. “Mattias is a true wizard of analog sound engineering, but he’s more than a technique nerd,” says Ejstes. “He’s the ultimate hand between my vision of a sound and reality.”

                      Glavå suggested the band work out songs before they entered the studio, rather than writing during the sessions. It was a different way of working, but one that Ejstes found invigorating. “He suggested we come to his studio with finished songs, and we did live takes directly to tape—the old-school way. It has truly been a quite different experience from the earlier records.” Allas Sak is about everyday matters: family, friends, the fine texture of life. Common but never mundane, these subjects anchor the music in the here and now, while the music lends a certain grandeur to ordinary moments. “Lyrics are very important to me,” says Ejstes. “These songs are my everyday experiences, my thoughts and stories from the life I live. I hope people can create their own stories around the music and maybe we can make music together, the listener and I.”

                      TRACK LISTING

                      Side A
                      1. Allas Sak
                      2. Sista Festen
                      3. Sista Gästen
                      4. Franks Kaktus
                      5. En Gång Om Året
                      Side B
                      1. Åkt Dit
                      2. En Dag På Sjön
                      3. Flickor Och Pojkar
                      4. Ljus In I Min Panna
                      5. Sova

                      Wildest Dreams

                      Last Ride / Call To Prayer

                        THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

                        This is the first taste of DJ Harvey's Wildest Dreams.

                        TRACK LISTING

                        A: Last Ride
                        AA: Call To Prayer

                        For RocketNumberNine, capturing the spirit of the music is paramount and with their debut album, 'MeYouWeYou', the London-based Page brothers - Tom (drums) and Ben (synths) - invite you into their tribal Chingford roots, taking music forwards to reach where it came from. This is hard hitting, modern dance music played live without a single click track in sight. With a name taken from a song by space jazz crusader Sun Ra and musical influences from Detroit to London to Africa and beyond, RocketNumberNine, have spent the last eight years shaping, breaking and squeezing their sound into what it is today.

                        TRACK LISTING

                        1. Lope
                        2. Rotunda
                        3. Slide
                        4. Steel Drummer
                        5. Symposium
                        6. Deadly Buzz
                        7. Black And Blue
                        8. Lone Raver
                        9. Matthew And Toby


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