Browse by Artist: WALLS

Artist:	WALLS
Title:	Walls
Label:	KOMPAKT (GERMANY)
Format:	LP+CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	KOM 212LP

LP version with CD. Walls are a band from London made up of members Sam Willis (of Allez-Allez) and Alessio Natalizia (of Banjo Or Freakout). Having met in 2009 while Allez-Allez were remixing Banjo Or Freakout's Mr. No, they quickly realized that the natural combination of Alessio's guitar playing and haunting vocals together with Willis' emotive synth-lines and sample manipulation magic was a match made in heaven. "We're particularly influenced by artists such as Neu! and Harmonia -- Michael Rother's guitar work, and Mobius and Roedelius' synth work really pushes boundaries yet remains melodic and euphoric. It's easy to make noisy and difficult music, what's harder, and feels natural to us is to make music that skates along the edges -- melodic, but with a sense of sadness, hope and euphoria at the same time. Kompakt feels like such a perfect home for us as a label -- emotion, personality, individuality, quality of sound etc. -- these are all things we feel about the music coming from the label." Walls tightrope this fine line to remarkable lengths. Take "Hang Four" where the slo-mo techno rhythm finds an easy bond with Alessio's lush guitar picking. "Cylopean Remains" immediately conjures the potentials of a jam between Animal Collective and Boards Of Canada -- rolling beauty combined with epic strangeness to the most cerebral degree. Destined to be one of Kompakt's most unparalleled releases in their history, Walls has a lack of concern for the boundaries of genre distinction, but easily fit uniquely between the classic "sound of Kompakt" and the bliss of Pop Ambient.

Artist:	WALLS
Title:	Coracle
Label:	KOMPAKT (GERMANY)
Format:	LP+CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	KOM 245LP

Limited white vinyl version with a free copy of the CD. Walls' Alessio Natalizia and Sam Willis return swiftly on the back of 2010's critically-lauded self-titled debut, an album that picked up MOJO's coveted "Electronic Album Of The Year," featured in NME's end-of-year lists, not to mention winning fans such as Jamie XX, Caribou, James Holden and impressing U.S. trio Battles. Yet it isn't these admittedly impressive accolades that make the announcement of second LP Coracle such an anticipated one; what makes Walls so alluring is the fully-immersive experience of their mellifluous electronica -- reaching out far and wide to pull influences sonic, emotional and theoretical together into patterns of blissful phantasmagoria. Taking their debut as the prototype, Willis and Natalizia have taken those initial early-sunrise evocations and pushed them to even more grandiose expanse. Coracle also takes a more dance-oriented stance, the soft-edged rhythms of ambient combining with influences from the protean Detroit techno and Chicago house music of Juan Atkins, Mr. Fingers et al., to propel the likes of opener "Into Our Midst" and lead-off single "Sunporch" forth. Sonic shapes often collide in slow motion, while a greater usage of guitars and pedals -- twisted to push the instruments beyond their comfort zone -- have further cemented links to Krautrock (Cluster/Popul Vuh) and shoegaze (MBV/Ulrich Schnauss). At times aural ideas bleed together, sometimes one pushing the other into the background, elsewhere combining to morph into something new. Tracks like "Vacant" and "Drunken Galleon" glimmer with the sense of voyages not entirely known, the former shimmering and shaking as though ready for take-off, the latter's introductory keyboards tiptoeing naively, like an explorer feeling their way amidst freshly discovered surroundings. There's no sense of a directed level at which we the listener should respond to their music, so long as we can connect with it -- indeed, for a group whose most obvious tools remain electronic machines and samplers, theirs is a sound that could hardly sound more human. This open-ended approach is inspired by the ideas of German film director Werner Herzog -- the track "Ecstatic Truth" is named after his talk on the subject. Coracle is cerebrally-created music, but it's a work that hasn't been allowed to escape the more impulsive -- and yet in many cases more complicated -- spectrum of human emotion imbued in it first. It's an album that connects on the most satisfying and accessible level, as the pair say: "we learned to trust the goosebumps that we've both felt throughout making this record;" they won't be alone in experiencing such spine-tingling reactions.

Artist:	WALLS
Title:	Into Our Midst
Label:	KOMPAKT (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	KOM 249EP

London's Krautpop duo Walls continue their voyage to distant planets, hovering over alien continents. Starting off procedures with some trademark drone work, the title-track soon introduces a danceable beat pattern straying not too far away from what luminaries like Caribou or Animal Collective are doing to tighten up their jam sessions, but with lush vocals, succulent textures and a hallucinatory bloom. Backed up by an exclusive edit and unreleased freeform thump-out "Idle Sway," this 12" brings the bounce back to the chill-out.

Artist:	WALLS
Title:	Walls
Label:	KOMPAKT (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	KOMP 082CD

Walls are a band from London made up of members Sam Willis (of Allez-Allez) and Alessio Natalizia (of Banjo Or Freakout). Having met in 2009 while Allez-Allez were remixing Banjo Or Freakout's Mr. No, they quickly realized that the natural combination of Alessio's guitar playing and haunting vocals together with Willis' emotive synth-lines and sample manipulation magic was a match made in heaven. "We're particularly influenced by artists such as Neu! and Harmonia -- Michael Rother's guitar work, and Mobius and Roedelius' synth work really pushes boundaries yet remains melodic and euphoric. It's easy to make noisy and difficult music, what's harder, and feels natural to us is to make music that skates along the edges -- melodic, but with a sense of sadness, hope and euphoria at the same time. Kompakt feels like such a perfect home for us as a label -- emotion, personality, individuality, quality of sound etc. -- these are all things we feel about the music coming from the label." Walls tightrope this fine line to remarkable lengths. Take "Hang Four" where the slo-mo techno rhythm finds an easy bond with Alessio's lush guitar picking. "Cylopean Remains" immediately conjures the potentials of a jam between Animal Collective and Boards Of Canada -- rolling beauty combined with epic strangeness to the most cerebral degree. Destined to be one of Kompakt's most unparalleled releases in their history, Walls has a lack of concern for the boundaries of genre distinction, but easily fit uniquely between the classic "sound of Kompakt" and the bliss of Pop Ambient.

Artist:	WALLS
Title:	Coracle
Label:	KOMPAKT (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	KOMP 091CD

Walls' Alessio Natalizia and Sam Willis return swiftly on the back of 2010's critically-lauded self-titled debut, an album that picked up MOJO's coveted "Electronic Album Of The Year," featured in NME's end-of-year lists, not to mention winning fans such as Jamie XX, Caribou, James Holden and impressing U.S. trio Battles. Yet it isn't these admittedly impressive accolades that make the announcement of second LP Coracle such an anticipated one; what makes Walls so alluring is the fully-immersive experience of their mellifluous electronica -- reaching out far and wide to pull influences sonic, emotional and theoretical together into patterns of blissful phantasmagoria. Taking their debut as the prototype, Willis and Natalizia have taken those initial early-sunrise evocations and pushed them to even more grandiose expanse. Coracle also takes a more dance-oriented stance, the soft-edged rhythms of ambient combining with influences from the protean Detroit techno and Chicago house music of Juan Atkins, Mr. Fingers et al., to propel the likes of opener "Into Our Midst" and lead-off single "Sunporch" forth. Sonic shapes often collide in slow motion, while a greater usage of guitars and pedals -- twisted to push the instruments beyond their comfort zone -- have further cemented links to Krautrock (Cluster/Popul Vuh) and shoegaze (MBV/Ulrich Schnauss). At times aural ideas bleed together, sometimes one pushing the other into the background, elsewhere combining to morph into something new. Tracks like "Vacant" and "Drunken Galleon" glimmer with the sense of voyages not entirely known, the former shimmering and shaking as though ready for take-off, the latter's introductory keyboards tiptoeing naively, like an explorer feeling their way amidst freshly discovered surroundings. There's no sense of a directed level at which we the listener should respond to their music, so long as we can connect with it -- indeed, for a group whose most obvious tools remain electronic machines and samplers, theirs is a sound that could hardly sound more human. This open-ended approach is inspired by the ideas of German film director Werner Herzog -- the track "Ecstatic Truth" is named after his talk on the subject. Coracle is cerebrally-created music, but it's a work that hasn't been allowed to escape the more impulsive -- and yet in many cases more complicated -- spectrum of human emotion imbued in it first. It's an album that connects on the most satisfying and accessible level, as the pair say: "we learned to trust the goosebumps that we've both felt throughout making this record;" they won't be alone in experiencing such spine-tingling reactions.

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