Suche:feels

Drunk Uncle hail from Austin, TX, but their namesakes are probably drawn from someone you know. Think about your last family gettogether- Uncle Bill is halfway through a six-pack when the alien conspiracy theories start pouring out of his mouth. He starts chaotic and loud, then gets quiet and sad as he keeps drinking. His mood will swing wildly in-between emotions. His speech is raw and his vulnerability is beautiful. Bottle that energy up into music form and you have Drunk Uncle. Drunk Uncle's debut album "Look Up" draws on catharsis. Picture yourself in a grimy basement surrounded by your best friends, watching a band as music washes over you and you feel like everything is in the right place. You smile as frantic guitars fill the room and gruff vocals push out every emotion you could possibly feel. Drums and bass slow down and speed back up as the music moves from anger to regret to hope. You feel it all- every note, every hit, every strain. It feels good to feel. You open your eyes and you are in your room alone. You flip the record back over and you are back in the basement. All is right.

After a string of diverse EPs on Swiss labels Light of Other Days & Subject To Restrictions Ethimm returns in winter 21/22 with his debut album. The record delivers snapshots of a hopeless romantic’s life packed into an eccentric mix of genres, all in the spirit of balearic. Fever dreams of Disco, New Wave, Dub and Leftfield Pop echo throughout the 32 minutes. Tales from the jet set, delusions of grandeur and the hangover that comes after, long gone love affairs and one’s raison d’être are among the many subjects Ethimm touches. Distinctly nodding towards the 80ies without falling into cliché references, the album feels familiar yet uniquely contemporary.

The cover art features a bust of producer Elisabeth Thimm’s head, as interpreted by artist Paa Joe. The 12 inch comes complete with a 180g, heavyweight white vinyl with a beautifully printed inner sleeve revealing the albums lyrics.

**LTD BLACK AND RED MARBLE**

As humans, we are aware of our inner beast and should therefore be able to control it. We understand our hard-wired primal urges and why they exist in an evolutional sense. We understand the relationship between mind and body. Highly evolved and intelligent, we should be able to recognize these genetic hangovers and control them as a means to act positively and move forward as a compassion-ate species. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Recent global events have proven this. The human race is consuming itself.

World Eater, the new album by Benjamin John Power's Blanck Mass project, is a reaction to this. There is an underlying violence and anger throughout the record, even though some of these tracks are the closest Power has ever come to writing, in his words, actual love songs.'

Maybe subconsciously this was some kind of countermeasure to restore some personal balance,' Power explains.

On World Eater, Power further perfects the propulsive, engrossing electronic music he has created throughout his impressive decade-plus career, both under the Blanck Mass moniker and as one-half of Fuck Buttons, as he elaborates upon the sound of 2015's brilliant double album Dumb Flesh. As massive as the sonic world of the new record often feels, its greatest achievement is in its maximization of a limited set of tools, a restriction intentionally set by Power himself.

As an exercise in better understanding myself musically, I found myself using an increasingly restricted palette during the World Eater creative process. Evoking these intense emotions using minimal components really put me outside of my comfort zone and was unlike the process I am used to. Feeling exposed shone a new light on this particular snapshot. I feel enriched for doing so.'

(A) 1. John Doe's Carnival of Error
(B) 2. Rhesus Negative
(C) 3. Please
(D) 4. The Rat
(E) 5. Silent Treatment
(F) 6. Minnesota / Eas Fors / Naked
(G) 7. Hive Mind

“I like it when music builds itself up in an organic fashion,” says Duncan Marquiss. “When it just seems to emerge and almost writes itself.”
This natural, intuitive and free flowing approach is evident all across the debut solo album from the multi-disciplinary artist. From tender yet sweeping acoustic moments to experimental electronic guitar manipulations, the album feels like a ceaselessly sprawling exploration of texture and tone. Despite veering into what sounds like electronic ambient soundscapes, the entire album is rooted in the guitars. “I enjoy trying to stretch the guitar as an instrument,” says Marquiss. “That reflects my playing style, always trying to make the guitar sound different, or create non-guitar like sounds.”
Marrying earthy, textural acoustic instrumentals that feel rooted in open landscapes, with those that capture the pulse and hum of a populated metropolis (Marquiss resides in Glasgow). The album was recorded in Aberdeenshire in Marquiss’ parents' garage. “Apart from the wind and the swallows nesting in the eaves there’s not many distractions around,” he says. This is a solo record that goes right to the very essence of Marquiss as an artist. The expansive yet intimate sounds he’s created here stem from the same peaceful isolation of where it all began.
There’s a cosmic touch tracing back to 1970s Germany (Michael Rother solo, Cluster, Harmonia, Popul Vuh soundtracks) that infiltrates much of the album, alongside some of its more pastoral textures, with Marquiss citing a wide range of listening habits. These include Bruce Langhorne's The Hired Hand, Jim O Rouke's Bad Timing, Arthur Russell and Laurie Spiegel.
Despite containing no lyrics, the album feels rooted in narrative and development. As the album unfolds the acoustic guitar becomes more prominent over the electric, almost as if nature is slowly taking back and growing over abandoned human-made structures. A record that, despite being experimental in tone and essence, retains a very human and natural touch throughout.

Heiko Voss has earned near mythical status as a torchbearer for the emotional, deeply felt and quietly radical style of electronic music. The blissed-out radiance of his Kompakt Pop single, “I Think About You” remains one of the label catalog highlights and a stellar run of collaborative singles as Schaeben & Voss; others might know him for his stewardship of the excellent, much-underrated Firm imprint. But with his new album, 3:30 Minutes To Live, released by Michael Mayer’s label Imara, Voss returns after a long silence with a beautiful collection of songs that hymn heartbreak with a lusciously melodic touch.

There is something definitive and newly confident in 3:30 Minutes To Live that has it feeling like a real statement of intent if compared to his earlier releases. “Although it’s not, 3:30 Minutes To Live feels like my debut album,” Voss reflects. “All releases before were more song sketches or electronic dance tracks.” Bunkering down in Teary Eyes Studio, Voss worked up somewhere between thirty and forty sketches of songs, which he whittled down to the twelve collected here, all of them situated in a unique space, but very much in accord with Voss’s defining aesthetic, which he describes as “indie pop music with a lot of guitar, electronic elements and a great love for melancholic ‘80s synth-lines.”

Voss is sensitive to both variety and consistency – 3:30 Minutes To Live sits together as an assured, vibrant collection of pop songs, but it’s marked by all kinds of surprising incident, like the guitar solo that erupts out of “This Is My Life”, or the acoustic guitar-led melancholy of the closing “This Summer”. It’s all borne of the alchemy of the studio process and the intimate romance of music-making. “If you constantly feel a little bit like you’re in love while writing and producing your music – simply because of the sound of the synth flowing warmly and gently through the room, or because the sequence of notes awakens something in you, or even a randomly arising groove in the loop of a guitar lick makes you shout, ‘Ha!!’ – then it usually becomes a beautiful song,” Voss nods. “Those moments make me happy.”

There’s also a delicious tension between the push of the music, its melodic lushness and gliding, ballerina-like movement, and the darker currents that pull through Voss’s lyrics, inspired by a “short, dramatic and toxic love affair.” This may read like familiar terrain for a pop album, but the way Voss weaves language through both the extra-linguistic joys of music and the inarticulate speech of the heart somehow allows for direct communication that is simultaneously plain-spoken and deeply profound. “Say It” is a simple, devastatingly effective plaint of alienation; “She Wasn’t Lonely” a simple portrait of everyday living set to chiming, clacking guitars, the music in the bridge taking astral flight as the titular character ‘lets herself go.’

A smart and sharp collection of songs that captures you with its gorgeous melodicism just as it blindsides you with its aching heart, 3:30 Minutes To Live is Heiko Voss at his most assured and open-hearted best.

Heiko Voss hat sich als Fackelträger einer emotionalen, von ganzem Herzen kommenden und nicht auf den ersten Blick radikalen Spielart von elektronischer Musik einen nahezu mythischen Status erarbeitet. Das schiere Glück, welches seine Kompakt Pop-Single "I Think About You" aus dem Jahr 2003 immer noch ausstrahlt, macht sie nach wie vor zu einem der Highlights des Label-Katalogs, wo sie neben einer ganzen Reihe hervorragender Singles als Schaeben & Voss steht; andere kennen Heiko vielleicht durch das tolle und vielfach unterschätzte Label Firm, für das er zusammen mit Thomas Schaeben verantwortlich war. Mit seinem neuen Album “3:30 Minutes To Live”, das am 4. März 2022 auf Michael Mayers Label Imara erscheint, kehrt Voss nun nach einer langen Pause mit einer wunderschönen Sammlung von Songs zurück, die den Herzschmerz – getragen auf den Schwingen unwiderstehlicher Melodien – ausgiebig besingen.

“3:30 Minutes To Live” kommt mit einer gehörigen Portion Überzeugung und Selbstbewusstsein daher, was im Vergleich zu seinen früheren Veröffentlichungen wie ein bewusstes Statement wirkt. "Obwohl es das nicht ist, fühlt sich ‘3:30 Minutes To Live’ wie mein Debütalbum an", meint Voss. "Alle meine vorherigen Veröffentlichungen waren eher Song-Skizzen oder elektronische Dance-Tracks."

Im Teary Eyes Studio arbeitete Voss zwischen dreißig und vierzig Songskizzen aus, die er auf die zwölf hier versammelten Songs reduzierte, die alle ihren eigenen Raum einnehmen, dabei aber sehr gut mit Voss' übergeordneter Ästhetik harmonieren, die er als "Indie-Pop-Musik mit viel Gitarre, elektronischen Elementen und einer großen Liebe für melancholische 80er-Jahre-Synthies" beschreibt.

Voss ist sowohl für Abwechslung als auch für Konsistenz empfänglich - “3:30 Minutes To Live“ ist eine selbstsichere, lebendige Sammlung von Popsongs, die aber auch von allerlei Überraschungen geprägt ist, wie dem Gitarrensolo, das aus “This Is My Life” herausbricht, oder die von einer Akustikgitarre getragene Melancholie des abschließenden “This Summer”.

Das alles ist entstanden aus der besonderen Alchemie des Studioprozesses und der intimen Romantik des Musikmachens. "Wenn du beim Schreiben und Produzieren deiner Musik ständig das Gefühl hast, ein bisschen verliebt zu sein – einfach weil der Klang des Synthesizers warm und sanft durch den Raum fließt, oder weil die Notenfolge etwas in dir weckt, oder sogar ein zufällig auftauchender Groove im Loop eines Gitarren-Licks dich ein 'Ha!' ausrufen lässt – dann wird daraus meist ein schöner Song", nickt Voss. "Diese Momente machen mich glücklich."

Es entsteht eine besondere Spannung zwischen dem positiven Elan der Musik, ihrer melodischen Verschwendungssucht, den gleitenden, Ballerina-artigen Bewegungen und den dunkleren Strömungen, die durch Voss' Texte ziehen, die von einer "kurzen, dramatischen und giftigen Liebesaffäre" inspiriert sind. Das mag sich wie ein vertrautes Terrain für ein Pop-Album anhören, aber die Art und Weise, wie Voss die Sprache sowohl durch die nonverbalen Elemente der Musik als auch durch den nicht artikulierten Ausdruck des Herzens verwebt, ermöglicht eine Art direkte Kommunikation, die gleichzeitig ausgesprochen klar und trotzdem tiefgründig ist. “Say It" ist eine erschütternd einprägsame Anklage von Entfremdung; "She Wasn't Lonely" ist ein einfaches Porträt des alltäglichen Lebens, untermalt von klappernden Gitarren, in dem die Musik einen astralen Flug unternimmt, während die Titelfigur sich "gehen lässt".

“3:30 Minutes To Live“ ist eine kluge und scharfsinnige Sammlung von Songs, die den Zuhörenden mit ihren wunderschönen Melodien fesseln, aber auch mit einer Menge schmerzenden Gefühlen konfrontiert. Ein Album, auf dem Heiko Voss ganz bei sich ist und Euch dabei mehr als nur sein Herz öffnet.

Happy Floating is the debut LP of Italian composer, producer and reed player Damian Dalla Torre. Over the course of two years, the Leipzig-based artist recorded 19 musicians in all kinds of places to bring to life his unique blend of Avant Folk and Electronic. With reeds, brass, guitars, bass, drums, mallets, synthesizers, organ and electronics, the album feels like a mindful walk through a flowering meadow, tickling and caressing all at once.
Born in Northern Italy to a family of non-musicians, his knack for woodwind instruments was uncovered by the sight of a big shiny baritone saxophone in a red velvet case that belonged to his grandma’s neighbour. It was and still is an odd instrument for anyone to play in the Val di Vizze, which may have added to young Damian’s excitement. He opted for the slightly smaller tenor saxophone, took up lessons and eventually studied music in Vienna and Leipzig, where he’s currently living and working within a spirited network of musicians, of which many are featured on this record.

Alt-R&B singer, songwriter, and producer Marshall Vincent announces his new EP 'In No Particular Order', a collection of five tracks on SA Recordings. Inspired by his time living in Berlin, New York, and Chicago, Marshall weaves together a soulful blend of orchestral, electronic, pop and folk elements to tell stories of life and love in vivid colour. Songs that are a mix of heartfelt ballads, haunting basslines, and dramatic strings draw a strong line to the alternative R&B of Moses Sumney, and the folky inspired songs of Kate Bush. Following a series of EPs that have garnered him critical praise - as well as landing him a support set for Kelsey Lu - In No Particular Order draws upon a multidisciplinary background spanning orchestral and theatrical training to explore the idea of ‘provocative healing’ - the use of pain, conflict, and emotional turmoil to create love, honesty, and intimacy. Sonically, Marshall’s music can be defined as intimate R&B, but there are threads of classical, folk, and electronic present, and all woven together with the aim of honest, universal storytelling. More important than genre is the pursuit of clarity and meaning, and as such, the references found within Marshall’s work are abundant. "I have always been quite sensitive, since I was a child. I also experienced hardships that made me closed off, cold and detached. I had to learn to face my pain. This fight manifested itself into creation. The ability and need to create my own world helped me see myself in others. In a way, it feels no different than the creation of a universe… my mania, my intensity, and my stress go into themselves, and they explode in these moments… sonic textures, movements, visual cues… all acting as tools to put me back together." - Marshall Vincent

Lia Ices was pregnant with her first child when she started writing her forthcoming record, Family Album, a stunning collection of psychedelic-tinged Americana. She was living with her husband, a wine-maker, on Moon Mountain in Sonoma, CA, where she walked from house to studio through a rose garden with an orchard at its center every day to sit at her piano and see what fell out. It was a “total Eden,” Ices describes. “I got pregnant in January, and Una was born in September, so I was on the same ripening mode as all the fruit.” “This album is terroir,” she says, using a wine-making term used for the complete natural environmental factors that make something taste the way it does. Fully, spiritually connected to the soil on which it was made, to the air Ices breathed. Ices hasn’t released music for six years, since her last album, Ices, in 2014. It’s been a long personal journey to get to Family Album, which she’s putting out on her own label, Natural Music. The first song Ices wrote for Family Album was “Young on the Mountain,” a breezy folk-rock track about life and death and freedom that’s the album’s highest energy. “The more real life gets, the more mystical it feels,” she explains. This idea reaches throughout the album, like on “Anywhere At All,” which is essentially an ode to “how psychedelic it is to be a first time mother,” Creating a life and creating this record at the same time is only part of the story. Those two acts also brought Ices closer to who she really is, and to the music she’s supposed to make. There’s a holistic energy around Family Album, epitomized by the opening track, “Earthy,” a gorgeous, dynamic song that begins with Ices solo on the piano, and midway through becomes a total psych-Americana jam. Though it starts the album off, even by the end it’s clear this is the record’s centerpiece, both its introduction and its heart; she sings about the Muse, about life and death, about both being here and giving herself away in order to find herself. She worked with producer JR White (Girls) all over California: three studios in LA, one in Stinson Beach, and one in San Francisco. Ices describes White as a “Brian Wilson type” with a singular mastery over gear; she says even just the way he rigged the mic while she was singing allowed her to get some of her best-ever vocal performances. And for the album’s accompanying visuals, she entrusted good friend and filmmaker Conor Hagen to follow her and her band around the west coast of California on tour over the course of 9 months for the album’s first single ‘Hymn’, as well as director Aaron Brown (Cass McCombs, Arctic Monkeys) to help her make the aura-themed video for the record’s title track. Ices says of Family Album. There’s a “universal timing” to this record that it’s had since its beginning, with Ices’ ripening. “It keeps being a teacher to me, it has its own energy field around it.”

A homage to the wildlife and mountain people of Benedicte Maurseth’s home area in Hardanger. The acclaimed and innovative visionary musician Benedicte Maurseth is coming forth with the wonderful all-consuming album Hárr. The sound of her magic Hardanger fiddle is woven seamlessly together with that of birds and the other musicians’ musical impressions. Always moving forward with a steely calm disposition, the record draws you into a world where one feels to be one with nature, wandering over a mountain plateau. Benedicte was raised in Maurset in Eidfjord – near Hardangervidda National Park – and has hiked through the mountains her whole life, clearly laying the foundation for this musical expedition. As traditional folk musicians have always been, Maurseth is open to contemporary influences from interactive art and music styles. The work Hárr oscillates between Norwegian folk tunes, free improvised music, American minimalism, and extensive use of musique concrète. In the tracks you will also hear natural soundscapes via the shufflings of reindeer, reindeer herders, birds and insects all recorded in Hardangervidda. Benedicte Maurseth: Hardanger fiddle Mats Eilertsen: contrabass, electronics Håkon Stene: vibraphone, percussion, electronics Guests: Jørgen Træen: electronics Rolf-Erik Nystrøm: saxophone Stein Urheim: langeleik, harmonica, electronics, samples, percussion

Now on album number seven , Metronomy has continued where many of their 2000s ‘cool’ band peers have dropped off along the way. Small World is a return to simple pleasures, nature, an embracing in part of more pared down, songwriterly sonics (some moments wouldn’t sound amiss on a Wilco release), all while asking broader existential questions: which feels at least somewhat rooted in the period of time during which it was made – 2020. For all that Mount seems to think he has made a comparatively sombre record, much of Small World still pulses with the zesty, tongue-in-cheek joie de vivre you’d expect of a Metronomy record.
So sure, things are different now Joe Mount is getting older and what’s on his mind is changing, but that doesn’t mark a change in quality for Metronomy. An immaculate set of tracks, Joe Mount’s ability as a songwriter and arranger shines through on Small World, evergreen. Metronomy might be growing up, but they’re not afraid to still have fun with it all. Through the tumultuous ebb and flow of the years, Metronomy continues to endure and make great pop music – and, really, that’s all that we could ask for.

Pink Vinyl

Austin-based DJ and producer riding a tide of success, dj poolboi, makes his return to Shall Not Fade's Classic Cuts with the sequel to his Rarities EP which kicked off the series. Like its first installment, Vol. 2 is a blissful and warm listen with tinges of party experimentation set to get feet moving.

Easing in with fuzzy, crackling chords and house rhythms, 'i know you tried' is a stylish start to the record. It's straight lo-fi house sound palette fades into buoyant pads and a trance-like use of spaced out vocals in 'with you', which is full of texture and production skill.

'yesterday' uses stunning organic instrumentation and hyper-glitched vocal samples to great effect, to which the final track 'early you' feels like the perfect match with similar muted and melancholy chords. The B-side comes to an end with the romantic atmosphere this track builds.

R&C Records boys are back with a new sampler of their "feels-good" sound, digging deeper into the 80's Italo Disco scene.
The logo side captures a Gaznevada inspired re-imagination, magically moved into a newElectro-SpaceDisco dream with a Balearic flavour; on the flip side a Firefly's classic disco anthem re-grooved to an Electro-Boogie 'desire', laid on spacey synths and balearic keys.
Limited. VINYL ONLY

Varaz (Steven Taelman, BE) returns to Moodfamily for a second time. His nifty synth work is this time accompanied by remixes of none other than Lawrence (Giegling), Dewalta & Moodfamily's very own AMyn.

Lovers of Berlin's nightly hours will certainly feel Baba Yaga's purpose. It's exactly how the boogeyman is supposed to come across: slightly haunting, in dark rooms, surrounded by smoke and people dancing as if they are summoning the demon of the early hours.

Terribly awesome, horrifically effective yet it feels like divine intervention. Hauntingly beautiful.

But like a sunbeam peering through a haze of wildfire smoke, Early Eyes have
somehow persevered through dashed dreams, fractured relationships, historic
social justice uprisings in their own hometown, and a society tearing apart at the
seams to make an album that is both responsive to the chaos and wearily
optimistic."It almost feels like Look Alive! is a direct response to the pandemic,"
bandleader Jake Berglove reflects. "It was like, oh, my goodness, all of our
capitalist anxieties just came true! We took all of that anxiety and angry energy
and put it into making a really f***ed up album." Look Alive! vibrates with angst,
punctuated by computerized glitches and disintegrating threads of abandoned
melodies that echo in the distance before roaring back to life. With the assistance
of producers Caleb Hinz and Jake Luppen (of the band Hippo Campus), Early
Eyes felt more liberated stylistically, and Look Alive! looks ahead to a post-genre
future where emo, post- hardcore, Japanese city pop, and musical theater can
coexist peacefully on one album. "We ran with so many different influences," John
says. "I mean, like, half the songs on the album just sound like a completely
different band. We were just more unafraid to commit — like, alright, we're just
going to make a punk song right now."

Reissue of George Duke's classic 1973 jazz-funk-fusion album 'The Inner
Source'
In 1971 George Duke, having just recently done his time with the Mothers of
Invention, was engaged by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. Beginning in April of
that year, Duke made two recordings over a short timespan that on their release
in 1973 as a double LP (against the desire of the artists, by the way), would be a
major statement.
On Chapter One of his fusion autobiography, "Solus", Duke, along with the
skeleton crew of bassist John Heard and drummer Dick Berk, tries out the new
compositional philosophy he had absorbed from his work with Adderley. On
Chapter two, "The Inner Source" " Duke lives it up as he shows off his exuberant
experimental synth side and also begins to vary the line-up here as some tracjs
are reinforced with Latin percussion, incisive horn and reed instruments or with
Duke on his first instrument, the trombone. As a curiosity, two basses compete
with each other on "Twenty Five".

12k is very happy to welcome Uwe Zahn, aka Arovane, to the roster. Arovane, a well-respected artist in the field, hailing from within the German countryside, has been active since the early 2000s beginning with releases on City Centre Offices and DIN in the heyday of the IDM and microsound years. He has since gone on to release work with n5MD, Pure Magnetik, and Strangely Isolated Place, among others. With Reihen he takes his characteristic pointillist synthetic structures and impeccable sound design and lays them in a web of fagility, decay and etherealism that feels like new a new direction for Zahn.

Soul departure time. Drowning in a dreamlike state where drifting with the current is free movement. Driven by echoes of serious intentions and playfulness. The order of music takes you further. In time, on the floor, under the skin, melting measures and dimensions. On a way back to where the future of your comfort has dawned. Through zones of whispers and expanding beauty. On a memory lane while passing all your favourite things and sentiments. On a straight, gently quantized line through tunnels of love and liberation. To a vanishing point where the soul is exposed to a scattered radiation of joy, content, revival, liveliness, melancholia. Feels like an arrival, no detour or deviation. Soul: its vulnerability becomes a superpower.

The mysterious trio Pandilla LTD provide the first release on Ozy, a new sub-label run by Miguel Melo from Lisbon’s Carpet & Snares family. Never ones to tread the easiest path, Pandilla show off their full range of moods and tempos on this 4-tracker, opening with the jazzy and glitchy breaks of vignette ‘Beat Untitled’. This leads into ‘aWARe’, a downtempo epic of cinematic ambience and released tension that contrasts with the more dancefloor-ready cuts on the B. With its patient dubby tick-tock, ‘Mind Trick’ feels like a long-lost Basic Channel side-project, while the more extrovert ‘Trying To Go’ closes things in style with a shimmy and a shake.

This is the fnal chapter in a series of three 7" records which see Stefan Goldmann probing the upper temporal reaches of techno. Clocking in at 150 bpm, these tracks are bold and blazing signals for a
collective return to highly energised club experiences. 'Singing Wire' is playfully swinging and feels surprisingly natural and decelerated for what it is – while taking you decisively and rapidly to its farend destination. 'Geared' is raw voltage with all the sparks fying. More bouncy than harsh, these tracks show impressively how diferent tempos allow for their own variety of joyful expression.
Beautifully packaged, all three 7"es come in a thick matte-black outer sleeve with front side cut outs and refective-lacquer details, with individual colour-coded inner sleeves. Comes with download card.

"Black Truffle proudly presents The Refrain from Melbourne-based artist Francis Plagne, whose growing catalog of collaborative and solo releases range from song-based work to abstract audio collages.

Closely aligned with Plagne's Moss Trumpet LP (released by Penultimate Press in 2018), The Refrain’s two side-long tracks mix sounds of the mundane with the otherworldly; rising, receding and overlapping. The result feels like being led through a series of scenes devoid of context or direction. Furthermore, it’s hard to define the scenes as either inviting or disconcerting, as they’re often both at the same time. As the record progresses sounds reappear and are juxtaposed so as to only hint at the familiar. A hall of mirrors, perhaps?

Completed in 2020 using material recorded from 2012-2020, the record uses tapes of shelved, unfinished, and forgotten projects that featured field recordings from various locations, domestic sounds of plastic bottles, bubble wrap, creaking chairs, voice, and instrumental recordings, including an appearance from crys cole on Casio. These pieces were re-amped, processed and edited, then additional instrumental pieces featuring synths, guitars, plastic saxophone, melodica, and percussion were added, the results shaped into drifting, episodic assemblages.

Although essentially a tape piece, The Refrain presents as a crude, non-idiomatic composition that feels both timeless and transitory. It’s a million miles from the polish and rigour of GRM, perhaps more in line with Jacques Bekaert’s eponymous Igloo LP, or Costin Miereanu’s Luna Cinese. The Refrain could be read as a psychedelic Krapp’s Last Tape; one man’s response to listening through forgotten and discarded tapes, reflecting, reconciling, and forging a new path. A potent tonic for these absurd times."

-- Nick Hamilton, August 2021