Suche:the nits

Rich-poor divide widens. Unemployment soars. The East and West eyeball each other on the brink. 2022 isn't too far off the 1980s. Contort Yourself know this.

Following the huge success of the prophetic 80s Underground Cassette Culture Vol 1, Vol 2 is set to hit shelves and screens with the same brand of distortion soaked didactics.

Twenty one tracks from across the globe make up this second installment with nothing being constant. Instead, the overarching message is one of wanton abandonment; burnt-out artists peddling an electronic punk profanity, marginalised musicians spitting on the establishment and industry.

Rusted guitar strings, cobbled drum machines and fire in the belly; this is the recipe.

A soundtrack of despondent despair, a lament of languid lechery, an anthem of what was then and still is now.

Clear Vinyl

Downwards’ deep bonds with NYC catalyse the debut LP by Jim Siegel’s Vivid Oblivion, a reveberating post-industrial salvo produced by adopted Brooklynite Karl O’Connor (Regis), and co-mixed by Anthony Child (Surgeon) and Simon Shreeve, who also mastered it. It’s a super deep, highly atmospheric beast somewhere between Valentina Magaletti’s most expressive percussion work, Bark Psychosis, and classic, moody 4AD, which is coincidentally referenced via the artwork, made by Chris Bigg - legendary graphic designer and longtime assistant to Vaughan Oliver.

Invoking the density, vertiginous scale, and dark grimy nooks of NYC, ‘The Graphic Cabinet’ was realised by Jim Siegel - hardcore legend and occasional/regular drummer with everyone from Raspberry Bulbs to Damo Suzuki and Boredoms, made in close collaboration with Karl O’Connor aka Regis during 2021.

Stemming from intently deep listening sessions immersed in LPs by Viennese aktionist Hermann Nitsch and the myriad eras of Killing Joke, while also absorbing the atmospheres of classic Tarkovsky flicks, the album began life as gonzo field recordings of Siegel smashing the f*ck out of his drum kit, zither, scrap metal and gongs in an array of abandoned warehouse spaces. The recordings formed the basis of Karl’s compound productions, which add depth charge bass and sonorous metallic atmospheres to the mix, along with birdsong and gibbon hoots, plus guitar textures by Nick Forté (Raspberry Bulbs, Rorschach) for a dread-lusting jag deep in the belly of the Big Apple.

With a palpable tang of rust and blood in the air and grime under the fingernails, the seven tracks evoke a resoundingly brutalist portrait of space and place. Siegel’s nervy percussive discipline is framed in alternating barometric and light settings from cut to cut, variously snaking from the poltergeist clang and haunted resonance of ‘Converging and Dissolving’ to slamming motorik thrum in ‘Oblivion’ via imaginative descent into cyberpunk simulacra of the city as jungle-at-night in ‘Remnant Corridor’, replete with animalistic atmospheres that recall Organum.

While the raw attack and devilish swerve of the rhythms are utterly fundamental to the record, Karl’s atmospheric content and the animist mixing magick of Anthony Child and Simon Shreeve most potently give flesh to its bones. Patently evident on the stepping pulse and searching zither that keens into detuned orchestration on ‘Immediate Possession’, the zoned-out klang of ‘Stand Aside’ or in the flooded warehouse chaos of ‘Test For Traps’. The attention to spatial, textural and proprioceptive detail is tightened throughout, peaking with ‘Bargemaster’, a dense slab of tension that sounds like Jon Mueller’s Silo recordings fed through The Caretaker’s fogged machinery.

It’s one of the most impressive records on Downwards for a long while, bound to gnaw and spark the nerves of experimental rock and post-industrial’s greats, anything from The New Blockaders to Faust, Flying Saucer Attack and into iconic Blackest Ever Black releases in the modern era.

With "Broken Land" Daniel Nitsch presents the first album of his latest project "Hounah" - and thus grants a deep look into his feelings and thoughts. Pieces like "Sorrow", "Fairbanks" or "Norton Bay", which invite you trace inside, are accompanied by those that present Daniel's personal views on very political and generally relevant issues, presented in songs like "Revolution", "Guilty State" or "Cash For Your Home". They cover topics like racism and gentrification, deal with the burden that imperialism places on us. Ask for what a future could look like - and how it could successfully happen at all. Thus, Hounah is not a feel-good project, "Broken Land", the title suggests it, a profound, here and there even painful inventory, which wants to stimulate reflection and further thinking. Very diverse, thematically as well as musically – and created with great attention to detail. Listening closely allows light bulb effects in terms of content, but also in terms of sound, lets us walk in the footsteps of downbeat, hip-hop, trip-hop, ambient, electronica and jazz. Hounah quickly reveals here that they are not afraid of breaks, but are also capable of soulful fusions in sound collages. The circle of friends behind Hounah, consisting of producer Daniel Nitsch, pianist Johann Blanchard, singer Lena Schmidt and guitarist Marten Pankow, came together for the album "Broken Land" in order to immediately try out further alliances: two of the songs on the album were created in creative cooperation with A-F-R-O, the internationally known rapper from Los Angeles. And so it is little surprise that each song creates a new world of sounds and thoughts – and one suspects already after the first tracks that there is more waiting for us, that "Broken Land" will not remain Hounah’s last work.

Eduardo De La Calle has been doing his thing since the early 2000s, but the last couple of years have seen him move into overdrive. Releases on Planet E, Hivern Discs, Nitsa Trax, Turbo Recordings, Gigolo and Darkroom Dubs to name just a few have shown he is both prolific and consistent, and this new four-track collection is just as compelling as his recent output.rnrnDistortion Theory III is a whirring hypnotic machine jam that melds shimmering synth snippets to mind-bending FX undulations and throbbing low end. Disorientating and wonky as hell, it's the sound of a funky computer malfunction somewhere in deep space.rnrnLight Tunnel continues the theme, coming across like the dying throes of space station spinning out of control due to excessive amounts of sub bass. It's a dizzying, disorientating ride.rnrnAcid Aaron C (Edit) wastes no time getting down to business with its gurgling, incessant 303 line present from the get-go. Shuffling percussion rubs up against heady female vocal lines and wonky detuned 8-bit synth blips, the undercurrent of the track swelling and calming seemingly at will. rnrnThe Dub Math takes things down a notch with hazy sounds and plodding sub bass combining with heavily reverbed vocal incantations which all combine to bring together the vibe referenced in the title.

Just a few months after its first release, Nitsa Traxx comes back with a very special 12'.
The project started with a file exchange between Eduardo de La Calle and Ferenc. They decided to work each track on their own side using only a few isolated sounds from the other. This way none of the tracks could never be treated as a full original, but proper remixes of tracks that never existed, building an uncanny, almost dreamlike emotion.
A Side is for Ferenc's 'Parón Largo', where synthetic strings are omnipresent and time and space unbends, evolving to an anticlimax where an eerie vocal and the longest possible drop are the leading trademark. A never ending and emotional standstill that goes deeper than the Mariana Trench.
Eduardo De La Calle uses his distinctive signature sound in the B Side. 'Cloaking Tech D Fly D' is an obsessive yet beautiful track that reminds us of the Somewhere in Detroit series. This is a mental and heart-warming tribute to the Motor City sound that just a producer like Eduardo could do.
Next releases are on the corner already, and we can't wait to share them with you.

This record is meant to be enjoyed like a seascape. It offers a Mediterranean journey, one that Ulysses, Aeneas, and Jason with his Argonauts charted first and Valencian artist, Pep Llopis, retraced and retread — from the islands of Menorca to Santorini. All of his experiences are aboard this vessel of sound: no format in mind, no course but the chasm within self. While Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes materializes at this moment as an album, another object suits Pep's project: Lewis Carroll's Map of the Ocean' from his The Hunting of the Snark. It's a simple illustration: the thin outline of a blank rectangle that represents the sea with no trace of land. Carroll offers this empty space as an object that all can understand, a container for possibility. Likewise, Poiemusia offers a musical language that any listener can understand. Untethered to the meaning of words, one is set adrift and free in minimalist sound and traditional music. Llopis, who often composed for dance, originally wrote Poiemusia for a performance at the Poiemusia festival (the Greek contraction of poetry and music). Peer composers, Carles Santos and Wim Mertens, also participated in the festival, which took place over several days at the Teatro Princesa in Valencia. Llopis paired his newly formed avant-garde compositions with the poems of fellow Valencian, Salvador Jàfer.

In the studio presentation of Poiemusia, voices softly converse, only to evaporate. The poetry is incanted by the poet himself. Jàfer enunciates at the verge of song, drawing dimension from his Mediterranean travels. He is accompanied by Montse Anfruns' vaporous voice. She extends the roll of her r's and the hiss of each s as if casting a spell of Salacia. Pep bathes their conversational performance in slight delays and reverb, allowing their voices to dissolve into an ocean of sound.

Llopis was influenced by minimal American composers like Steve Reich and La Monte Young. He embraces the melodic sides of these masters in the winds of El Vell Rei De La Serp' and the tender piano on Nits de cristall.' You will find yourself submerged in tonality on tracks like Jardins Aquàtics' and La Nau Dels Argonautes' which have a kinship to Philip Glass or Daniel Lentz. Each piece extends from 5 to almost 14 minutes. The music gently laps against listening skin— sometimes placid, sometimes shimmering. Ripples of sound swell and quicken. Flutes like schools of fish. The spray of chimes. Taught strings break like the shore. Tingling, undulating synths. The record cover acts as a map, tracing the forms of the original art and providing the poems in Catalana and Spanish. Once bathed in these sounds one will emerge like Carroll's map: a perfect and absolute blank.' Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonaute emerges in vinyl and digital formats on May 19, 2017 through Freedom To Spend.