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LP
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PI 200LP
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Great Many Arrows is the sixth studio album from Damien Dubrovnik, the Danish duo of Loke Rahbek and Christian Stadsgaard. It is also the 200th release on their Posh Isolation label, marking eight years for both the label and project. The label's inception came with Damien Dubrovnik's debut album, and since then the two have been inseparable. Without Damien Dubrovnik there would most likely have been no Posh Isolation, and vice versa. Great Many Arrows is undoubtedly a high point in the varied discographies of both Rahbek and Stadsgaard. It is the most realized Damien Dubrovnik recording to date, and a standout in Posh Isolation's troves. As a record, Great Many Arrows manages to translate the intensity of the duo's often unrestrained live shows in to carefully crafted studio productions. Unlike the pair's earlier and largely electronic recordings, the compositions on Great Many Arrows set organs, cellos, violas, wind, and other acoustic instruments against the backdrop of an electronic landscape. The new toolset is as apparent on the surface as it is in the enclosed detail, taking the project further from its noise roots than it has ever been. This is not to say that Rahbek and Stadsgaard have traded ferocity for formal constraint. It is rather the opposite. While Great Many Arrows is certainly the pair's most "musical" work to date, its veneer of accessibility might also make it their most terrifying. The strength of the recording lies in the interaction between the melodic, acoustic instrumentation and the bulldozing electronics. Moments of beauty and light are transfigured into utter chaos and rage, the mesmerizing change an expression of the equal and opposite form's natural sway as it beckons and slips between its own passing. Great Many Arrows takes its name from a historic archery competition in Kyoto, Japan, in which archers would shoot as many arrows as possible for a 24-hour period. On April 26, 1686, Wasa Daihachiro from Kishū successfully shot 8,133 out of 13,053 arrows, averaging 544 arrows an hour, or nine arrows a minute, becoming the record holder.
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LP
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ALT 020LP
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Copenhagen-based industrial duo Damien Dubrovnik (aka Posh Isolation founders Loke Rahbek and Christian Stadsgaard) follow up 2013's First Burning Attraction (ALT 008LP) with Vegas Fountain. Rahbek and Stadsgaard have continued to be consistently busy as label bosses but even more so as artists, performing more frequently worldwide and building a reputation for their fierce and powerful live show. They have also continued to hone their craft in the studio and found a working rhythm in which their live performance feeds into the studio work and vice versa. 2014's Patterns of Penetration 7" (ALT 701EP) was a teaser for this developing practice, but it arrives here full-force with Vegas Fountain, Damien Dubrovnik's strongest work yet. In the first couple of minutes of opening track "On It's Double," you get a sense that things have moved forward artistically in Rahbek and Stadsgaard's world. The clear production breathes a subtlety into some of the sonics here that perhaps wasn't revealed through the murk on previous records, heightening a tension that at some points breaks and dissolves into something almost melancholic -- evoked by the reflective landscapes of "Interior 2: See Water Glass" and "Interior 3: Matching Window Blinds." The attack remains however, with the punctuating saw-toothed bass notes and screaming tones of "Interior 1: Upper Lip" (considered "problematic" to cut by the mastering engineer), and the finale of the title-track, which has all the drama and explosive euphoria of their live show. Vegas Fountain is co-released by Alter and Posh Isolation.
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7"
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ALT 701EP
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Damien Dubrovnik are Loke Rahbek (Lust For Youth, Var, Croatian Amor) and Christian Stadsgaard, two Copenhagen residents who run the prolific Posh Isolation label. "Penis Corset" is driven by a crude and primitive rhythm made from an electronic bass pulse and blown-out synth noise, punctuated by feedback and guttural vocals. On the flip, title-track "Patterns of Penetration" presents a calmer side of the duo's work yet also finds them at their most complex and rich, sonically-speaking, with a two-note synth lead, spoken vocals, and washes of analog tape noise. Edition of 400 copies with artwork by Danish artist Martin Erik Andersen.
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ALT 008LP
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Formed in 2009, Damien Dubrovnik is the Danish electronic duo of Christian Stadsgaard (Sarah's Charity) and Loke Rahbek (Sexdrome, Var, Lust For Youth), founders of the Copenhagen-based record label Posh Isolation. In their day-job as label managers, Stadsgaard and Rahbek have been instrumental in establishing the city's prolific and exciting noise/punk community and outgrowing their humble beginnings in noise/industrial culture by attracting a cult/fanatical worldwide following. Working together as Damien Dubrovnik, they have published work across two LPs, a handful of sought-after cassette releases, compilations and notched up numerous performances throughout Europe and Scandinavia. Their third LP, First Burning Attraction, draws explicitly from DIY minimal synth traditions and the canon of European industrial music, resulting in the strongest manifestation of their sound so far. Consisting of six powerful and varied tracks, the album features more of the brooding synth parts and ominous bass throbs that dominated the highlights of previous LP Europa Dagbog -- Europa Diary, yet it feels tenser and more atmospheric due to the application of new acoustic-based sound sources, primitive bass pulses and more disciplined dynamics. Rahbek's vocals, which were previously guttural and wild, appear more restrained here, giving the tracks an alluring air of ambiguity and suggestiveness -- no undirected aggression, but something more thoughtful and introspective instead. Mastered by Viktor Olsson and cut by Grammy Greg at Masterpiece studios in London, 2013.
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