quête:mythos

Kristian Craig Robinson, aka Capitol K, is a multi-instrumentalist and record producer with a long history in London’s most interesting under-the-radar music places and spaces. With a musical story like his, you can expect side streams. New record ‘Birdtrapper’ is “the sound of an initiation rave in a utopian hidden village”, and his latest exploration of Mediterranean audio mythos following from ’Goatherder’ (2018). The six track mini-album was similarly formed from ritualistic improvisations performed in Malta (where Capitol K was born), using home-made flutes, reed pipe, bamboo percussion, drum machine, bass guitar, but this time features a wider use of synthesizers, with the alternative dance floor in mind. Where ‘Goatherder’ was an awakening of genetic primitivism, ‘Birdtrapper’ is an evocation of sonic bird callers, proto-rave abandon, ambient resonance and an ecstatic captive state, along with the previous work's visions of hunters, temples and scrub land music
‘Goatherder’ caused a quiet kind of quake and was beloved by The Quietus, BBCR3 and 6Music. Vinyl Factory described it as “like a series of manipulated field recordings that have an ancient, ritualistic quality … Goatherder shimmers with Balearic strangeness, rooted in an earthy outer-national dance music tradition”. For the last seven years K has been behind the consoles at the heavily influential Total Refreshment Centre, recording and mixing records with the likes of Trash Kit, The Comet Is Coming, Rozi Plain, Alabaster DePlume, Dry Cleaning, Flamingods Cykada, Ibibio Sound Machine, BAS JAN and John Johanna. It’s not just recording. He’s also become an influential if understated mentor to a new wave of producers and bands. His experience in studio environments is long and storied, including stints at Studio Plateaux on an island in the middle of the Thames and in the Royal Symphonia’s squatted rehearsal rooms. Capitol K has released seven albums and the 'Birdtapper EP' follows a legacy of influential releases on early 2000s electronica labels including Planet Mu and XL. Aside this he also runs the record label Faith & Industry. It’s a friends and family, love not money affair and he has released music by Champagne Dub, John Johanna, Super Best Friends Club, Blue House & Clémentine March.

Charlemagne Palestine's majestic 1976 work The Golden Mean, originally performed by Palestine on two pianos, is revisited here as The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn, a new collaboration between Palestine and enigmatic musician Rrose.

March 2018: the Festival Variations in Nantes commissions Charlemagne Palestine to reinvent The Golden Mean for two pianists. Palestine chose Rrose to join him in this new rendition of the work. Together, they performed The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn onstage at the main opera house in Nantes -- the sumptuous Théâtre Graslin – with extraordinary results.

The concept of the 'golden mean' goes back to the roots of mathematics, and ancient Greek philosophy. It is an important work in the Palestine mythos, embodying his total immersion in the power of the interval. "It's probably his most systematic work . . . a step-by-step journey through the intervals of the octave," says Rrose. "When we rehearsed it, we were noticing how each interval is like a universe of its own -- with its own history, emotions, and sonic qualities all mixed up together. Every time you move from one interval to the next, it feels like moving into another world."

"I love the interval," Palestine told me in a recent interview. "I love when it plays with itself. That's what I learned from organ musics too. You can just do an interval, and if they're just slightly out of tune with each other, then they shimmer . . . they play themselves. And it sounds like somebody's playing lots of notes. In your ear, it's like an aural phenomenon . . . that's my whole concept. I make something that then does itself somehow. It continues by itself. So I don't have to always be there. And that makes my music a little less egocentric. So there's more space. Also for the listener — the ear plays with these things, and you're not always being given orders. Your ear isn't given orders all the time of what to listen for."

Beautifully recorded, with mastering by Rashad Becker of Dubplates and Mastering, The Golden Mean + Sheeenn feels expansive, radiant and hypnotic, opening new ears to its enduring mystery.

Rrose adds this note to listeners: "Do not focus your attention on the notes being played, but on the ocean of overtones swimming, suspended, overhead, brushing against one another, kissing one another, melting into one another."

Ein 44 Minuten starkes Instrumental-Album inklusive eines Akere Vocal-Features.

Es ist Ansichtssache, ob ein Antlitz unfassbar schön oder besonders verstörend sein kann, sodass der bloße Anblick den Betrachter seiner Handlungsfähigkeit beraubt. Man sollte sich jedoch nie einzig von einer Erscheinung erstarren lassen.

Also heißt es:
Augen schließen und die Schönheit einer Mischung aus zeitlosen Vibes, warmen Klängen und verschobenen Rhythmen irgendwo zwischen Trip Hop, Boom Bap und G-Funk auf sich wirken zu lassen. Die Reise führt durch Höhen und Tiefen, beeinflusst von Musik aller Himmelsrichtungen und Sonderbarkeiten verschiedener Genres.

L One´s Medusa ist durchaus in der Lage den Hörer in den Bann zu ziehen. Jedoch ergibt sich dadurch keine langfristige Betäubung, sondern vielmehr ein Moment, der sämtliche Wahrnehmung der äußeren Welt an einen Ort unendlicher Möglichkeiten lenkt. Wo es hingeht und was passiert, bleibt jedem selbst überlassen. Quasi ein Mythos!

Medusa ist nach der Farska LP bereits die zweite Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem jungen Münchner HipHop Produzenten und dem jungen Münchner Label Beat Art Department und erscheint in Kooperation mit dem renommierten HipHop Label 58Beats, dem Label der Band Main Concept.

After releases on the Ninja Tune-backed label R'COUP'D, the mysterious Prequel Tapes surfaces with an EP for Midnight Shift. Composed of 3 tracks and 2 locked grooves, SHIFT LTD 003 fossilises transient moments in between gridlocks of tight grooves. Like a scan of light sweeping surreptitiously across a dungeon of darkness or a blinking throb pulsating from the corner of one's eye, these are the brief but blinding moments of illumination that capture time suspended on the edge of two worlds. Memory capsules slow-releasing an industrial mythos back into the clubbing consciousness. Prequel Tapes is a work of deep synthesis. Teenage recordings orchestrated into densely layered tapestries; a deeply emotional study on a life characterised by a shifting relationship to electronics. The pieces serve as a chronology of desire and reflection, reconciling a nascent passion for industrial music with a history in the club. There is a temptation to draw comparisons to Mark Leckey's excavation of UK rave culture, Lee Gamble's junglist memories or the hauntological approach of the Ghost Box label, however this is clearly a personal trajectory aesthetically distant from an English past. Oscillating between utopian to claustrophobic, the evolving synth work, deep techno atmospheres and traces of the clangorous energy of early European ambient and industrial tell a distinctly German tale, forged between the forest and the autobahn.