Browse by Label: MIASMAH (UK)

Artist:	VA
Title:	Silva
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 001CD

Originally released in 2006. This compilation features appearances from Yasume, Julien Neto, Ryan Teague, Marsen Jules and Deaf Center. Silva is the debut release from Norwegian-based label Miasmah, yet it is by no means their first foray into the music scene. After working as a net-label releasing MP3 albums and EPs for years, featuring artists such as Helios, Paavoharju and Deaf Center. No surprise then, that holding the reigns at Miasmah is Erik Skodvin, one half of the aforementioned and always mysterious Deaf Center. While compiling this compilation, Skodvin asked artists he had worked with and who he admired to create a track with a theme in mind; theatrical and dark organic music. Hearing Deaf Center's Pale Ravine would give you a good idea of this sound, yet Skodvin wanted to take it further, and in doing so he has managed to collect some of the best artists working in the genre at the moment. Opening the compilation is newcomer Makunouchi Bento, who contributes a solemn piano piece, before Type mainstay Julien Neto launches into "Ninety Four." City Centre Offices double act Yasume also make an extremely rare appearance with "Wakare" (which for those interested means "Farewell" in Japanese...), a Lynchian fusion of strings and digitally-enhanced beats. Marsen Jules, also of City Centre Offices, offers up yet more of the droney orchestral goodness we have come to love with "Rainy Days In Milan," and Type's Ryan Teague takes the orchestral theme even further with a dark violin piece, guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. As the record comes to a close, with the blood curdling tryptich of Dead Center, Svarte Greiner (Erik Skodvin's solo project) and Lampse's Jasper TX one thing is on your mind, to press play once more and re-live the darkly mysterious dreamscape that is Silva. Other artists include Gultskra Artikler, Library Tapes, and Greg Haines.

Artist:	ENCRE
Title:	Plexus II
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 002CD

Originally released in 2006 on the Miasmah label. Frenchman Encre aka Yann Tambour has amassed an extensive and diverse back catalog of titles in his brief recording career. Though each has been as acclaimed as the next, with particular focus on the stunning Plux released in 2004, this disc, released on Erik Skodvin's (of Deaf Center) Miasmah label, is arguably his most personal and awe-inspiring release to date. The aforementioned Flux album ended with the track that gave birth to Plexus II, and in its second act, Tambour experienced a rush of creative imagination, forcing him to explore not only the use of electronic devices (as a dismissal to the previously strictly overbearing classical framework) but also to create music of warmth and uplifting spiritualism via multiple processed string instruments. These instruments morph slowly into different shapes and sizes, drifting, ebbing and flowing in a loosely looped framework not unlike the work of Steve Reich. Inspired by Japanese Butoh dancers and named after the solar plexus, the piece is most influenced by the old school of Gorecki, Tony Conrad, La Monte Young and Terry Riley, yet Tambour has managed to inject this reverence with a distinctly contemporary feeling, bringing to mind the work of Max Richter, Johann Johannsson or even Deaf Center. There is no shortage of contemporary classical music, but rarely is it approached with such pensive ease -- Yann Tambour has surely crafted a disc which will serve to inspire many composers, electronic or otherwise, to come.

Artist:	HAINES, GREG
Title:	Slumber Tides
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 003CD

Originally released on the Miasmah label in 2006. Hearing the expertly-constructed and deeply sensitive post-classical pieces featured on Slumber Tides, it is difficult to comprehend that this is a young musician. Harking from the boredom-filled lands of Greater Surrey in England, Haines quickly tired of school life and found himself immersed in music, and in a move indicative of the current trend of our disillusioned youth, became obsessed with the intrigue of experimental sound. Travelling through Europe whenever he could and sleeping on the floors of musicians he would contact by email, he quickly built up a network of friends, most importantly in Oslo, Norway where he spent time with Deaf Center's Erik Skodvin (who also runs the Miasmah imprint) and his collaborator Kristin Evensen Giaver who contributes her haunting vocals on a number of Haines' tracks. In Sweden, Haines met up with Lampse's Dag Rosenqvist (Jasper TX) who kindly provided his pump organ skills. His nomadic existence is represented beautifully on the album, which opens majestically with "Snow Airport," a slowly building work of looped cello sounds played by Haines himself. The structure is similar in sound to the phasing experiments of Steve Reich or the electronic/acoustic works of Ryan Teague, but Haines has injected enough of his own personality and experience to give the compositions a distinct sense of gravitas and a refreshing narrative. The second piece, "Submergence" builds over nine minutes with Kristin Evensen Giaver's shimmering vocals drifting over waves of cello and subtle electronic structures until it reaches an almost cacophonous peak and dips into breathless squeaks and groans. By the time we reach the album's centerpiece "Arups Gate," we have already been on a rich emotional journey, but Haines doesn't let off yet, instead, he takes us even further into epic territory with xylophone and glockenspiel tones serving as the backbone of the track as those signature cello sounds swoop overhead. This track feels as if it could be married with any number of films or stories -- yet Haines shows an incredible sense of restraint, never letting the music get too melodramatic or overdone. For a debut album, Slumber Tides is a simply remarkable accomplishment.

Artist:	IRISARRI, RAFAEL ANTON
Title:	Daydreaming
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 004CD

Originally released on the Miasmah label in 2007. Seattle-based multi-instrumentalist Rafael Anton Irisarri is the latest in a growing number of electronic musicians returning to that hallowed of instruments -- the piano. It has become something of a cliché now for the electronic musician to turn to the humble keys in the hope of adding something organic into the mix, but it would be frivolous to pass Daydreaming off in such a manner. Rather than an electronic album with elements of piano, Daydreaming sounds like a record written for piano which somehow manages to utilize current technology in its production. As the drifting synthesizers lap around the feet of a majestic piano part in the album's opening track "Waking Expression," it is startlingly clear that there is more to Irisarri than mere stereotyping. Rather, this is a carefully-constructed soundtrack to your most intriguing dreams, the dreams you might remember for a split second before losing everything, only to have images creep up on you some time later. Those of you left spellbound by Deaf Center's haunting and beautiful Pale Ravine album will be pleased to know that Daydreaming continues in the tradition of murky, theatrical and deeply imaginative music quite wonderfully. Even Lynch is hinted at again with the album's clear highlight "Lumberton" (possibly a reference to Blue Velvet's troubled small-town) and as the emotive piano shimmers around radio static and lightly picked guitar, it is impossible not to get drawn into the shattered American dream. This is rich, visual music showing a dark, melancholic side to American life and captured perfectly by an artist unafraid to bear his soul to the world. Uncluttered and subtly realized, Daydreaming is maybe best summed up as it draws to a close with a gaseous ambience, drawing you in for the last time before the inevitable repeat play. Pure, uninterrupted bliss.

Artist:	ELEGI
Title:	Sistereis
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 005CD

Originally released on Miasmah in 2007. Since Knive from Svarte Greiner (Miasmah boss Erik Skodvin), the world has been waiting eagerly for the next addition to the acoustic doom canon. Maybe fitting then, that it should also come from Oslo, as we all know that Norway is home to everything that is dark and all that is desolate. Sistereis is the debut solo release from Tommy Jansen aka Elegi, a man who besides crafting effortlessly mysterious Lynchian soundscapes, takes time out of his everyday life to go wreck-diving. For those of you unfamiliar with this sport, it involves diving into the deep sea to explore shipwrecks; empty maritime museums of lost life and forgotten history. This deep obsession is reflected in the album's title "Sistereis" which is a word used for a ship's doomed final voyage, a theme which is followed closely throughout the recording. It is hardly surprising then that Jansen, an experienced studio engineer and classically-trained musician, took his love of sound into the deep seas and while diving, made reel upon reel of waterlogged recordings. These passages of sound, which Jansen believes capture the ghosts of the shipwrecks, formed the basis of many of the album's tracks, and if you listen very closely, you hear the deep seas rumbling around you. Within the haunted piano melodies and scraping of damp wood, there are much deeper, much more frightening sounds to be heard -- and using his personal knowledge of all things watery, Jansen has truly created the next chapter in the black book of acoustic doom. Where better to find influence for such music than the frightening world of forgotten souls that is the sea, and while the choppy blue expanse may have lent itself to many an album, there is something devastatingly original about Jansen's approach. Maybe it is down to his deep historical knowledge, or maybe it is down to simple compositional skill, but it is almost impossible to listen to Sistereis without being thrust into a blackened world of stormy waters and drifting bodies. A truly epic record which is sure to appeal to fans of Earth, Wolfmangler, Angelo Badalamenti and of course, Svarte Greiner, this is something for the darker nights. Turn the lights down low, make sure the windows are locked tightly and drift away -- just watch out for that rolling fog -- there's no telling what the seas might bring.

Artist:	GULTSKRA ARTIKLER
Title:	Kasha Iz Topora
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 006CD

Last time we came across Russian pranksters Gultskra Artikler, they were a duo comprising of Alexey Devyanin and Dmitry Garin, but since the release of the haunting Pofigistka on the Lampse label in 2006, Garin has left the band leaving Devyanin to come up with the most definitive Gultskra Artikler statement to date; Kasha Iz Topora. The entire record, which plays continuously through its hour-long duration, is set to a fairytale written by a friend of Devayanin, detailing the adventures of a man with an axe that makes flying porridge (based on a traditional Russian tale). The macabre elements of the disc's storyline provides ample source material for Devayanin to weave his processed darkness in and out of folk-tinged guitar parts, knee-trembling vocals and all manner of other obscure instrumentation. Kasha Iz Topora is one of those records that truly sounds on its own in an overpopulated music scene, and Devyanin has truly developed his windswept sound stories over years of careful experimentation and fine-tuning. Hailing from Novosibirsk in Siberia, he has much to draw influence from -- wrapping up warm and constructing choppy experimental music on an archaic personal computer was only one way of keeping his mind off the intense world outside, drawing influence from such artists as Leafcutter John, Jackie-O Motherfucker and Tod Dockstader. This record is a new stage in the development of not only Gultskra Artikler, but in the ever-growing Miasmah label. If you give this album the time and let yourself fall into its cryptic story, you may find this the strangest and most involving record you'll hear this year.

Artist:	JACASZEK
Title:	Treny
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 007CD

Michal Jacaszek's Treny is the seventh release from Norway's Miasmah label -- a label that has already created a unique and distinctive identity for itself through a string of releases existing on the darker side of the musical spectrum -- each artist shares a similar aesthetic and a penchant for introspective, lamenting, classically-influenced music. With this in mind, no better home comes to mind for Poland's Jacaszek. The opening track, "Rytm To Nieśmiertelność I" sets the dimly-lit scene perfectly. A beautifully-arranged string quartet and a lonesome female voice are framed with waves of distant underwater rumbles and creaks, with fragments of harp occasionally surfacing to release mournful motifs onto the dense musical canvas. Jacaszek so perfectly blends acoustic and electronic sounds, that it is hard to tell where tape loops end and forlorn violin melodies begin. By the beginning of the second piece, the appropriately titled "Lament," Jacaszek has already firmly established a sound for himself. Clearly influenced by the liturgical compositions of Henryk Gorecki and John Tavener, with a healthy pinch of Angelo Badalamenti's mood-setting soundscapes, Jacaszek manages to find his own niche somewhere between Murcof and Francois Tetaz's indispensable score for Wolf Creek -- somewhere dark and mysterious, but ultimately beautifully rewarding and moving. There are traces of optimism in these songs, and as the album ends, the clouds turn from a heavy grey to an uplifting palette of autumnal shades, as a subtle rhythm emerges to gently guide the listener into lighter pastures. Despite the somewhat uplifting ending, as the last note strikes, you may find yourself wanting to turn back into the darkness and start the whole adventure again.

Artist:	JASPER TX
Title:	Black Sleep
Label:	MIASMAH (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MIA 008CD

This is the fifth full-length release by Swedish musician, Dag Rosenqvist aka Jasper TX. Black Sleep, in a way, feels like the album he has been building up to for some time now, as if all his previous experiences in creating haunting, oft-beautiful soundscapes have been harvested and fine-tuned. Originally conceived as one continuous track, Black Sleep is no random collection of songs -- it is one work, one statement. Ambitious as it may be, it's impossible to deny its resounding success. As is often the case with Jasper TX's music, the guitar plays a prominent role. This album sees every conceivable sound caressed and tortured from the instrument, from the romantic and direct chimes of "Pt. III" to the distant whisper of "Pt. IV." Rosenqvist states Oren Ambarchi, Johann Johannsson, Arvo Pärt and Tim Hecker amongst his influences -- something that gives some insight into the sound and scale of this release. Impossible to explain in simple terms, comparisons could also be made to Deathprod, with sounds slowly emerging and disappearing into thick clouds of murky warmth. Black Sleep is also akin to a symphony -- its orchestra made from guitars, pianos and synthesizers instead of the usual strings and brass. This release is possibly one of Rosenqvist's darkest moments, its bleakness somewhat in tribute to the soundtracks and visual artistry of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. This is music for rainy days spent indoors, looking out towards a vacant street while tracing the build up and release of condensation droplets. This release is a stand-out for the Miasmah label and will undoubtedly be remembered as Jasper TX's most concise and accomplished album to date.

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