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12"
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CPT 614EP
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Remix EP 1 (includes remixes by Acid Pauli, Coldcut, DMX Krew, Shahrokh Dini, Frivolous). After the release of Felix Laband's highly acclaimed fifth album The Soft White Hand (CPT 605CD/LP), it's about time to give it some extra class remix treatment. So here comes a massive package with remixes by living legends Coldcut, Acid Pauli, DMX Krew, Frivolous, and Shahrokh Dini. Felix Laband's The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story. Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband's first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015. It is heralded by the single "Derek and Me", and is being pressed on vinyl for distribution globally.
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2LP
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CPT 605LP
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Double LP version. Gatefold. Includes download. Felix Laband's The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story. Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband's first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015 (COMP 470CD/LP). In The Soft White Hand, Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album's creation -- an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like "Death of a Migrant" -- is perceptible in Laband's desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life. Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like "5 Seconds Ago", "They Call Me Shorty", and in the strange and meditative "Dreams Of Loneliness". Yet, as in all of Laband's recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in "Prelude" or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in "Derek And Me". The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song "Fanta And Felix" imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband. Laband's eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in "We Know Major Tom's A Junkie" is another thrilling aspect of the new record. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer's AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations. The Soft White Hand is Laband's most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. His music reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband's considerable visual art output as seen in several solo exhibitions. With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one.
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CD
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CPT 605CD
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Felix Laband's The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story. Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband's first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015 (COMP 470CD/LP). In The Soft White Hand, Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album's creation -- an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like "Death of a Migrant" -- is perceptible in Laband's desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life. Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like "5 Seconds Ago", "They Call Me Shorty", and in the strange and meditative "Dreams Of Loneliness". Yet, as in all of Laband's recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in "Prelude" or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in "Derek And Me". The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song "Fanta And Felix" imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband. Laband's eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in "We Know Major Tom's A Junkie" is another thrilling aspect of the new record. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer's AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations. The Soft White Hand is Laband's most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. His music reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband's considerable visual art output as seen in several solo exhibitions. With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one.
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12"
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COMP 472EP
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Felix Laband: " 'Righteous Red Berets' is an ode to Stakerlee who kills another man cause he cheated his cards. Luke Vibert reinterprets the track with his unique brand of funk and soul. 'Bag Of Bones' is my personal ballad to a life with the lights turned off. Just me and my guitar. Shane Cooper adds his beautiful double bass to this track. 'Kill The Boer' is a remix of my 2002 kwaito bass classic 'Donkey Rattle'. I base the remix around a sample of a Toy Toy from Soweto 1960."
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2LP
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COMP 470LP
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2023 repress; Gatefold double LP version. Includes download. "Deaf Safari is an audio collage of subjects that interest me and speak of the world I live in. It is an album composed of sampled recordings from the media landscape that has been the soundtrack to my life over the last ten years. The most important development in my current music, as can be heard on Deaf Safari, has been my understanding of the beauty and power of the spoken word. I have experienced severe indifference to contemporary pop and electronic music as a whole over the last many years, as I have felt that social comment of any relevance has been ignored by music in general. Deaf Safari attempts to bring sociopolitical comment into my music without taking any specific stand. Sampled outside of musical influence directly from the news; from preacher sermons or from contemporary African documentaries. I have finally created a story with sound that I feel accurately conveys my personal experience with the African world I live in. My musical influences on this album lie mostly with local Kwaito house. Deaf Safari is an experiment within certain boundaries of the 4/4 genre, to create my own South African 'house' album. I am proud and inspired about the South African Kwaito house scene. However, as with my first three albums, Thin Shoes in June (2001), 4/4 Down the Stairs (2002), and Dark Days Exit (COMP 185LP, 2005), I am still interested in making strange and evocative music. American roots music from the earlier periods of the 20th century has deeply resonated with me during the making of this album. The incredible field recordings by Alan Lomax of Negro prison and chain gang work songs, and the beautiful early recordings of artists such as Leadbelly have had a major influence on Deaf Safari. I am truly excited to release this album and to start performing in the music world again. It has been ten years since I released Dark Days Exit, and although I have been purposefully absent from the music world, I have nonetheless never stopped making music. I feel that I have finally arrived at a mature and challenging stage in my pursuit of making emotional music of relevance." --Felix Laband, February 13, 2015
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CD
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COMP 470CD
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"Deaf Safari is an audio collage of subjects that interest me and speak of the world I live in. It is an album composed of sampled recordings from the media landscape that has been the soundtrack to my life over the last ten years. The most important development in my current music, as can be heard on Deaf Safari, has been my understanding of the beauty and power of the spoken word. I have experienced severe indifference to contemporary pop and electronic music as a whole over the last many years, as I have felt that social comment of any relevance has been ignored by music in general. Deaf Safari attempts to bring sociopolitical comment into my music without taking any specific stand. Sampled outside of musical influence directly from the news; from preacher sermons or from contemporary African documentaries. I have finally created a story with sound that I feel accurately conveys my personal experience with the African world I live in. My musical influences on this album lie mostly with local Kwaito house. Deaf Safari is an experiment within certain boundaries of the 4/4 genre, to create my own South African 'house' album. I am proud and inspired about the South African Kwaito house scene. However, as with my first three albums, Thin Shoes in June (2001), 4/4 Down the Stairs (2002), and Dark Days Exit (COMP 185LP, 2005), I am still interested in making strange and evocative music. American roots music from the earlier periods of the 20th century has deeply resonated with me during the making of this album. The incredible field recordings by Alan Lomax of Negro prison and chain gang work songs, and the beautiful early recordings of artists such as Leadbelly have had a major influence on Deaf Safari. I am truly excited to release this album and to start performing in the music world again. It has been ten years since I released Dark Days Exit, and although I have been purposefully absent from the music world, I have nonetheless never stopped making music. I feel that I have finally arrived at a mature and challenging stage in my pursuit of making emotional music of relevance." --Felix Laband, February 13, 2015
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LP
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COMP 185LP
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2023 repress; reissue of South African producer Felix Laband's 2005 album Dark Days Exit, released in advance of Laband's album Deaf Safari (COMP 470CD/LP). "Deaf Safari is an audio collage of subjects that interest me and speak of the world I live in. It is an album composed of sampled recordings from the media landscape that has been the soundtrack to my life over the last ten years. My musical influences on this album lie mostly with local Kwaito house. Deaf Safari is an experiment within certain boundaries of the 4/4 genre, to create my own South African 'house' album." Felix Laband is Pietermaritzburg-born, Durban-bred, and Cape Town-based. He thankfully took up computer music instead of surfing, and was in various guitar-based bands (including Fingerhead and Incurable) before having a solo piece included on the Koert Kotze en die Vrouekolonie CD in 1999. Laband's fiendish and phat foray into introspective electronics was highly promising and the highlight of a critically acclaimed project. He also had two notable inclusions on the excellent Sounds of the Durban Underground collection, and has released two albums on African Dope Records. He is celebrated like a star in South Africa. Dark Days Exit is deep; it comes from the deepest heart and reflects a fantastical sound-journey through strange land. As Laband told UK magazine Dazed & Confused, "South Africa is a land of weird contrasts which definitely comes through in my music. I'm not afraid to throw things around. A lot of European stuff is quite formulistic, people stick to a certain sound and a specific way of doing things. I try to throw that out of the window." Dark Days Exit, with its subtly puzzled-out electronica and sublime moody electro sounds, blends the artificial intelligence and sensitivity of electronica, indie pop, folk, post rock, and old school ambient with some warm jazz elements, while occasionally recalling French movie soundtracks. On the one hand, it approaches the works of Stereolab, The Notwist, Console, Plaid, and such; on the other hand, it truly recalls the old school Compost community as well. Many people compare the album to A Forest Mighty Black, Taran, or the classic Kruder & Dorfmeister releases (the duo loved the album from the very first note and gave it rave reviews). Indeed, it's got a little bit of everything, but self-contained enough to be one of the most outstanding albums of 2005.
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