Slovenska Televiza Are A Two-piece Act Based In Valladolid And Barcelona. They Produce Music That Is Hard To Define With Simple Comparisons Or Oblique Generalisations, But Perhaps An Amalgam Of Minimal Synth And Coldwave Would Best Express Their 'sound'. With That In Mind, There Is Also A Melancholy Underpinning This Release, Perhaps It's The Haunting Vocals Of Lunademayo, Or The Heavily Reverb Laden Soundscapes Of Wladyslaw Trejo's Analogue Synths. You'll Have To Wait Patiently To Find Out....
Slovenska Televiza
Slovenska Televiza Is A Minimal Electronics Duo Based In Valladolid And Barcelona. Wladyslaw Trejo And Lunademayo Stays Close To Coldwave Then Expands To Avant-garde And Experimental Approaches, Reaching A Proposal As Strange As It Is Fascinating.
It Must Be Said That Slovenska Televiza Is Not Only Limited To The Musical Arena, Its Commitment Extends To Other Artistic Facets As Already Shown With Their Very Special Debut, A Performative Action Implemented In Latvia, Where They Traveled To Leave Behind The Entire Output In Several Locations.
After a period of hibernation, aperture records awakens with a bang and a compelling program in the pipeline.
Following their first album released on aperture at the tail end of 2015 'no.3.obliate', the Italian duo T.e.s.o. bring us their second full-length album 'costruzione 04'.
As the title suggests, the album centres around an underlying theme of construction, inspired by radical architecture, brutalism and collages from Superstudio. The concept and title evolved from the nature of the album and the process of building up tracks from a number of separate samples, much like the singular elemental materials used to assemble a structure.
Alongside their music production, the duo have previously created a multimedia installation that investigated the geometric studies of Le Corbusier in parallel to the musical production of Erik Saite and Matteo Castiglioni continues to create impressive audiovisual installations such as the recent 'Freddo Flusso' and 'neon(i)', as well as a collaboration with Danilo Randazzo. T.e.s.o also continue to perform absorbing live sets of their own inimitable range of musical perspective and vision.
Intense, visual and structured, 'costruzione 04' again showcases T.e.s.o.'s complex, obscure and dominant beats and their oblique and sometimes challenging style.
LP There's been an air of hypnagogic mystery surrounding Acid Test's sublabel Avenue 66 from the start. Joey Anderson's oblique, Prince-inspired incantation "Above The Cherry Moon" set the tone for a label that's sound that has found beauty in the furthest recesses of the dance floor, in the murkiest decay of kick drums and rave stabs. Fitting then, that the first album on the imprint comes from Trux, an artist who has chosen to reveal nearly nothing about themselves. Following a cult classic mini-LP for Office Recordings, "Orbiter" bears out the anonymous producer as a master of liminal, conceptual dance music. "Orbiter's" ten tracks have a vaporous, shape-shifting quality, threatening to topple over into full-on kick drum bliss or vanish into ambience. Opener, "With It," moves from heady ambient rush to skeletal piano, while "Blinko" and "Roy's Garage" spell out a hazy memoriam for the UK continuum. Forlorn pianos ring out amongst the field recordings, excitable toms and jungle bass all softened in the enveloping gauze. "Orbiter" positions Trux as an unknown auteur who puts evocative world of tone and echo into dizzying motion, content to watch from the wings.
'On Line': a collaborative album in parts, focused on themes of repetition, poly-metrics, transformation and abstraction. Volume 1 features contributions from Livity Sound protégé, Simo Cell, Berceuse Heroique regular, Don't DJ, and Wisdom Teeth label head, K-LONE. All of the tracks were written specifically for the project and in tandem, and all are connected by a constant pulse and communal headspace. The record opens with Simo Cell's 'Symmetry': a slow crescendo of whirring pads, melodic percs and dotted rhythms, all underpinned by thick slabs of sub-bass that, with each heavy hit, seem to collapse the track's atmosphere down and in on itself. Next, Don't DJ follows with the oblique, discordant chug of 'Übergang Zur Metrotram'. As with all of Florian's works, the track pulses with an organic, animal quality that completely belies its mechanical origins. Again, the track's space is filled with drifting pads and clanging chimes - but this time the atmosphere is close, discordant and chokingly dense. Last up, K-LONE clears the air with 'Woniso'. The track grows slowly out of a series of beautiful harmonic counterpoints - morphing patterns that come and go in the mix to reveal their individual colours and contours.
Franco Battiato is often heralded as Italy's answer to Brian Eno. A quizzical composer/lyricist, Battiato turned pop music upside down in the early '70s with three classic LPs - Fetus, Pollution and Sulle Corde Di Aries - that formed a confluence of avant-folk sensibilities and analog electronics.
Pollution from 1972 is the captivating follow-up to Fetus. Like its predecessor, the album features Baroque textures, motorik rhythms, weird tape effects and Battiato's perfectly oblique vocals. Upon hearing Pollution, Frank Zappa joyfully proclaimed it "genius."
While Battiato's core group of collaborators remains largely the same as on his debut, this phenomenal band (joined by an eighteen-year-old Roberto Cacciapaglia on keys) appears even more in the foreground on Pollution. Out of the Ash Ra Tempel-like riffs and urgent guitar strumming emerge hypnotic grooves and cinematic flourishes, suggesting a futuristic meeting point between Stereolab and Ennio Morricone.
Dedicated to the Centro Internazionale Studi Magnetici, Pollution touches on themes of environmental catastrophe. Futurist allusions seep in through eccentric lyrics (at times sung backwards) about hydraulics, magnetic fields, etc., yet listeners don't need to speak the artist's language to grasp his melancholy vision. With Pollution, Battiato solidifies not only his cult figure status, but also many of his forward-thinking ideas on rock 'n' roll.
Superior Viaduct is honored to present the first-time domestic release of Pollution on vinyl. Reproducing the original gatefold jacket, this reissue is part of an archival series that chronicles Franco Battiato's masterful body of work from 1971 to 1978.
Following a killer debut on Optimo Trax Michele Mininni debuts on R&S with the heavy hitting psych detonation of 'Rave Oscillations'
Hailing from Southern Italy, Mininni's influences run to kraut, post rock, new wave and electronic amongst others, a long time DJ he manages to condense his influences into beguiling productions that come as a welcome breath of originality.
Taking a heavy dose of inspiration from seminal kraut groovers Silver Apples, 'Rave Oscillations' builds from the hypnotic motorik groove and off kilter bass into a pulsing peak time anthem.
On the flip, 'Vortex Stasi' takes things into a more psychedelic direction - dubbed out piano, jittery rhythms and spiralling swathes of guitar blossom into a truly tripped out, squalling, breakneck concoction.
Mininni's kaleidoscopic musical vision is a truly unique proposition, a myriad of different styles and genres deformed under his oblique lens to create sun-drenched space music.
Strut team up for the first time with respected French label Heavenly Sweetness for the brand new album by the inspired poet, novelist and musician, Anthony Joseph.The Caribbean is an influence that runs through Joseph's discography, obliquely or headon, suggested or on full display. It resonates on each of his albums, from the furious trance of 'Bird Head Son' to the more polished 'Time'. On 'Caribbean Roots', he has now decided to turn a guiding thread and a reference point into a communications cable - a powerful bond that makes light of distance and braves the seas to link his island to that of his friends in the Caribbean arc, dancing to the strains of tumbélé and mendé only a few miles
from Port of Spain where people live it up to rapso and soca beats. Caribbean Roots' represents a return to his roots for Anthony Joseph, who has always remained true to a powerful, deep-seated sense of his Caribbean identity. Having started
out as a joint project with the outstanding percussionist Roger Raspail (Cesaria Evora, Papa Wemba, Kassav), 'Caribbean Roots' swiftly grew into a creative force incorporating
the rhythms, sounds and vibes that rock the Caribbean from San Fernando, Scarborough, Kingston and Les Abymes to Port-au-Prince and Havana. Backed by a band made up
of a blend of local musicians, the album attempts to unite the different islands into a single entity whilst ensuring that the identity of each is in no way diluted by the mix instead creating a richer and stronger alloy. The saxophones of Shabaka Hutchings (The
Heliocentrics) and Jason Yarde, the trumpet of Yvon Guillard (Magma), the bass of Mike Clinton (Salif Keita) and the trombone of Pierre Chabrèle (Creole Jazz Orchestra) all combine to form a group of Caribbean All Stars to which Andy Narrell, the master of the steel pans, brings ringing drum beats. The album features bursts of catchy rhythms and slow percussive riff progressions, as on a film soundtrack, incandescent voodoo funk and rhythmic high-speed frenzies shot through with free-jazz sax. This reunion of the Caribbean diaspora was never meant to come up with a formula divisible into eleven separate tracks - its goal was to explore and discover new sounds. And all of this under Anthony Joseph's guidance, as he spins his lyrical blend of afro-futurism and surrealism, commemorating the Caribbean people's sometimes violent resistance to colonialism. Anthony Joseph, one moment a chronicler reciting his text against a background of simple percussion, the next a storyteller possessed by the power of a hypnotic bassline, then an adventurer chanting among mangroves where the rhythm section and the brass have created an impenetrable thicket. At turns, an MC too, strutting to a fat, throbbing groove in vocal tandem with Sly Johnson or David Rudder to pay tribute to Mighty Sparrow, the undisputed and indisputable king of calypso
Oh Holy Molar is the second album from UK trio Felix. The group produces a bewitching, minimal chamber pop that works as the perfect framework for singer/songwriter Lucinda Chua's oblique and emotionally immediate stories of superstition and searching for protection against bad omens.
*As a follow up to their debut You Are The One I Pick, the band return with a collection of songs with a sound stripped back to its very core. Something is said to have "teeth" when it has the ability to make an impact. This record certainly has "teeth", and sharp ones at that.
*" The album was recorded in a vast, spooky 1940s cinema in Nottingham, England, now converted into a studio. After recording was completed the band discovered that underneath the live room lay an abandoned Dental Laboratory. "Oh Holy Molar" indeed.
*" Since the release of the rst Felix album, pianist/vocalist Lucinda Chua, also an accomplished photographer, has been working on a number of projects, most recently with Wallpaper* in Detroit. Guitarist Chris Summerlin has been recording and touring with his new band Kogumaza. The group is completed with the recent addition of drummer Neil Turpin who, when not performing with Felix, can also be found touring the world with French composer Yann Tiersen.
press quotes for You Are the One I Pick
'It's a gateway into another headspace, one aglow with uncertain magic. As statements of romantic intent go, 'Death To Everyone But Us' must represent either the most straightforward, honest distillation of the love song, or the creepiest.' BBC
'In Felix's world, everyday mundanities give rise to furtive explorations of human interaction and ineptitude in a manner as oppressive as it is oddly and honestly addictive.' Drowned in Sound
'The duo keep things refreshingly simple, with single strands of piano, guitar, and cello in quiet symmetry, leaving the listener ample room to savor Felix's knotty, enigmatic songcraft.' Pitchfork
'There is mystery and elegance in the marrow of this music, and I imagine this record will prove to stand the test of time, reserved to be pulled out for the perfect accompaniment to just the right brooding but whimsical mood.' Delusions of Adequacy
track list:
1.The Bells 2. Sunday Night 3. Oh Thee 73 4. Don't Look Back (It's Too Sad) 5. Hate Song 6.Oh Holy Molar 7. Blessing Part I 8. Blessing Part II 9. Rites 10. Who Will Pity the Poor Fool 11. Pretty Girls 12. Practising Magic 13. Little Biscuit
