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CD
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EMEGO 264CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/5/2019
After a trilogy of spectacular explorations of relentlessly driving rhythms -- Sagittarian Domain (EMEGO 144CD/LP, 2012), Quixotism (EMEGO 202CD/LP, 2014), and Hubris (EMEGO 227CD/LP, 2016) -- Simian Angel finds Oren Ambarchi renewing his focus on his singular approach to the electric guitar, returning in part to the spacious canvases of classic releases like Grapes From The Estate (BT 036LP/TO 061CD) while also following his muse down previously unexplored byways. Reflecting Ambarchi's profound love of Brazilian music, Simian Angel features the remarkable percussive talents of Cyro Baptista, a key part of the Downtown scene who has collaborated with everyone from John Zorn and Derek Bailey to Robert Palmer and Herbie Hancock. Like the music of Nana Vasconcelos and Airto Moreira, Simian Angel places Baptista's dexterous and rhythmically nuanced handling of traditional Brazilian percussion instruments into an unexpected musical context. On the first side, "Palm Sugar Candy", Baptista's spare and halting rhythms wind their way through a landscape of gliding electronic tones, gently rising up and momentarily subsiding until the piece's final minutes leave Ambarchi's guitar unaccompanied. While the rich, swirling harmonics of Ambarchi's guitar performance are familiar to listeners from his previous recordings, the subtly wavering, synthetic guitar tone you hear is quite new, coming across at times like an abstracted, splayed-out take on the '80s guitar synth work of Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell. Equally new is the harmonic complexity of Ambarchi's playing, which leaves behind the minimalist simplicity of much of his previous work for a constantly-shifting play between lush consonance and uneasy dissonance. Beginning with a beautiful passage of unaccompanied percussion dominated by the berimbau, the side-long title piece carries on the first side's exploration of subtle, non-linear dynamic arcs, taking the form of a gently episodic suite, in which distinctive moments, like a lyrical passage of guitar-triggered piano, unexpectedly arise from intervals of drifting tones like dream images suddenly cohering. In the piece's second half, the piano tones become increasingly more clipped and synthetic, scattering themselves into aleatoric melodies that call to mind an imaginary collaboration between Albert Marcoeur and David Behrman, grounded all the while by the pulse of Baptista's percussion. Subtle yet complex, fleeting yet emotionally affecting, Simian Angel is an essential chapter in Ambarchi's restlessly exploratory oeuvre. Personnel: Oren Ambarchi - guitars & whatnot; Cyro Baptista - percussion & voice.
Recorded by Randall Dunn, Joerg Hiller, Iuri Oriente, and Oren Ambarchi. Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis. Design by Lasse Marhaug. Edited by Joerg Hiller and Oren Ambarchi at Choose Studios, Berlin. Mixed by Joe Talia and Oren Ambarchi at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Executive Producers: Konrad Sprenger and Dick Wolf.
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LP
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EMEGO 264LP
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$23.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/5/2019
LP version. After a trilogy of spectacular explorations of relentlessly driving rhythms -- Sagittarian Domain (EMEGO 144CD/LP, 2012), Quixotism (EMEGO 202CD/LP, 2014), and Hubris (EMEGO 227CD/LP, 2016) -- Simian Angel finds Oren Ambarchi renewing his focus on his singular approach to the electric guitar, returning in part to the spacious canvases of classic releases like Grapes From The Estate (BT 036LP/TO 061CD) while also following his muse down previously unexplored byways. Reflecting Ambarchi's profound love of Brazilian music, Simian Angel features the remarkable percussive talents of Cyro Baptista, a key part of the Downtown scene who has collaborated with everyone from John Zorn and Derek Bailey to Robert Palmer and Herbie Hancock. Like the music of Nana Vasconcelos and Airto Moreira, Simian Angel places Baptista's dexterous and rhythmically nuanced handling of traditional Brazilian percussion instruments into an unexpected musical context. On the first side, "Palm Sugar Candy", Baptista's spare and halting rhythms wind their way through a landscape of gliding electronic tones, gently rising up and momentarily subsiding until the piece's final minutes leave Ambarchi's guitar unaccompanied. While the rich, swirling harmonics of Ambarchi's guitar performance are familiar to listeners from his previous recordings, the subtly wavering, synthetic guitar tone you hear is quite new, coming across at times like an abstracted, splayed-out take on the '80s guitar synth work of Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell. Equally new is the harmonic complexity of Ambarchi's playing, which leaves behind the minimalist simplicity of much of his previous work for a constantly-shifting play between lush consonance and uneasy dissonance. Beginning with a beautiful passage of unaccompanied percussion dominated by the berimbau, the side-long title piece carries on the first side's exploration of subtle, non-linear dynamic arcs, taking the form of a gently episodic suite, in which distinctive moments, like a lyrical passage of guitar-triggered piano, unexpectedly arise from intervals of drifting tones like dream images suddenly cohering. In the piece's second half, the piano tones become increasingly more clipped and synthetic, scattering themselves into aleatoric melodies that call to mind an imaginary collaboration between Albert Marcoeur and David Behrman, grounded all the while by the pulse of Baptista's percussion. Subtle yet complex, fleeting yet emotionally affecting, Simian Angel is an essential chapter in Ambarchi's restlessly exploratory oeuvre. Personnel: Oren Ambarchi - guitars & whatnot; Cyro Baptista - percussion & voice.
Recorded by Randall Dunn, Joerg Hiller, Iuri Oriente, and Oren Ambarchi. Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis. Design by Lasse Marhaug. Edited by Joerg Hiller and Oren Ambarchi at Choose Studios, Berlin. Mixed by Joe Talia and Oren Ambarchi at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Executive Producers: Konrad Sprenger and Dick Wolf.
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Cassette
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EMEGO 263CS
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$12.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/21/2019
Cassette version. On Proxy States, his third release on Editions Mego, Jung An Tagen continues to expand his unique vision of oblique electronic music mixed with future dance club sound. On Proxy States techno is evolving into another realm, manifesting as his most formulated attempt to combine modern composition techniques with ritualistic techno aesthetics. Here he takes his obsession with structure to a more narrative build-up, creating new paths and textures around his infectious beats. With this structure, Jung An Tagen develops an emotional relationship between repetition and dissonance -- it's addictive music, music in constant explosion. The 12 seconds of the first track, "Spill (False)" sound like a recreation of The Big Bang, creating the perfect intro for this molecular polyrhythmic adventure. It also creates the connection/disconnection with his previous work, Agent Im Objekt (EMEGO 248LP, 2018), bridging the two but also creating a space to embark on a new sonic trip. This self-contained explosion offers the right coordinates and propels the listener to Jung An Tagen's sonic realm. All of this is done with his usual fearless but mindful approach. His unique exercises with structure, time and sound create an ecstatic familiarity with the sounds while at the same time inducing a creeping physical alienation. In other words, some parts may be rhythmically infectious, others will give you no chance to immerse. The stimulation is astute and continuous, encouraging an out-of-this-world experience. The main arc of Proxy States consists of a 16 against 17 poly-rhythmic synth line that through different intonations of the kick drum always transforms its syntax. This synth line always scales up 1 key, in the middle of the track, foreseeing the upcoming structure. While these tracks (3, 4, 5, 6: "Wreath Products") follow an almost obsessive-compulsive order, the remaining tracks seem to blow up the structure entirely like the last scenes of the 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point, creating an event inside the event. Proxy States was impossible to press on vinyl but the fast, sharp and wild grooves of Jung An Tagen's new album are incredibly synched with the concept of an ever accelerating future. Mastering by Cam Deas, artwork and layout by Stefan Juster.
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CD
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EMEGO 263CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/21/2019
On Proxy States, his third release on Editions Mego, Jung An Tagen continues to expand his unique vision of oblique electronic music mixed with future dance club sound. On Proxy States techno is evolving into another realm, manifesting as his most formulated attempt to combine modern composition techniques with ritualistic techno aesthetics. Here he takes his obsession with structure to a more narrative build-up, creating new paths and textures around his infectious beats. With this structure, Jung An Tagen develops an emotional relationship between repetition and dissonance -- it's addictive music, music in constant explosion. The 12 seconds of the first track, "Spill (False)" sound like a recreation of The Big Bang, creating the perfect intro for this molecular polyrhythmic adventure. It also creates the connection/disconnection with his previous work, Agent Im Objekt (EMEGO 248LP, 2018), bridging the two but also creating a space to embark on a new sonic trip. This self-contained explosion offers the right coordinates and propels the listener to Jung An Tagen's sonic realm. All of this is done with his usual fearless but mindful approach. His unique exercises with structure, time and sound create an ecstatic familiarity with the sounds while at the same time inducing a creeping physical alienation. In other words, some parts may be rhythmically infectious, others will give you no chance to immerse. The stimulation is astute and continuous, encouraging an out-of-this-world experience. The main arc of Proxy States consists of a 16 against 17 poly-rhythmic synth line that through different intonations of the kick drum always transforms its syntax. This synth line always scales up 1 key, in the middle of the track, foreseeing the upcoming structure. While these tracks (3, 4, 5, 6: "Wreath Products") follow an almost obsessive-compulsive order, the remaining tracks seem to blow up the structure entirely like the last scenes of the 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point, creating an event inside the event. Proxy States was impossible to press on vinyl but the fast, sharp and wild grooves of Jung An Tagen's new album are incredibly synched with the concept of an ever accelerating future. Mastering by Cam Deas, artwork and layout by Stefan Juster.
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2LP
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RD6
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$32.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/21/2019
A biomedical scientist and an architect form a band in the early '70s with nothing by the way of traditional musical talent or skill but with endless enthusiasm and their own unique musical sensibility. The ensuing career and creative output of this ongoing home studio/bedroom band remains one of the most significant song based 'outre' catalogs ever produced in the United Kingdom. This comprehensive two LP set contains their first official LP (originally released on The Residents' legendary Ralph Records label) along with an extra album of different versions and extra tracks which reside here for the first time on vinyl. The duo Renaldo & The Loaf, originally Portsmouth-based, and now in Portsmouth and Mid-Wales, remain an enigma whilst amassing an enormous cult following worldwide. Their singular take on music encompasses wit, strange melodic construction and an off-kilter sensibility which successfully rendered them engaging for each emerging generation. The ability of Renaldo & The Loaf to unnerve and entertain in equal measure is what binds these songs to a musical universe outside of all other forms that existed around the time of release -- The Residents are obvious spiritual heirs. Songs For Swinging Larvae is a classic collection of confounding songs which lead the listener into a surreal world of twisted tunes and perverted pop. Songs From The Surgery is made up of improvisations, early/alternative versions of various Larvae tracks and unreleased pieces from the same period. The results leave one laughing through a thick veil of unease. As the original Ralph Records press release said of Songs For Swinging Larvae: "This is an album of primitive modernism, energetic obnoxious noises, manic high pitched vocals and sweet brilliance." All tracks written and produced By Renaldo And The Loaf, originally mixed at Elephant Studios, London, November 1980. Cover and layout by Nik Void, original album artwork by Gary Panter. Re-mastered for vinyl and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin, November 2018.
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LP
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DOME 002LP
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$22.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/7/2019
With the demise of Wire in 1980, founding members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio, Dome took the ethic of "using the studio as a compositional tool" and recorded and released three albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: Dome (DOME 001LP, 2019), Dome 2 (1980), and Dome 3 (1981). A final fourth album, Will You Speak This Word: Dome IV was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in 1982. These albums represent some of the most beautifully stark and above all, timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early the 1980s alternative music scene. Previously issued in the out of print DOME 1-4+5 box set in 2011, Dome 2 is now available as standalone LP, with new artwork by Dave Coppenhall. Floating-point re-master by Russell Haswell, August 2011. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering by Rashad Becker. Includes download.
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LP
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EMEGO 259LP
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Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object-oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism. Following 2017's acclaimed double-LP Patterns Of Consciousness (IMPREC 449LP), Ecstatic Computation is the new full-length LP by Caterina Barbieri. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged. Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion. Is this propulsive music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly enhanced and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation this question lies mute aside the thrilling and perplexing moment of the matter at hand. Vocals on "Arrows Of Time" performed by Annie Gårlid and Evelyn Saylor; recorded by Stefano Tucci at Failsafe Studio. Artwork by Ruben Spini. Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.
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CD
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EMEGO 239CD
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UUUU is a new outfit featuring Edvard Graham Lewis, Thighpaulsandra, Matthew Simms, and Valentina Magaletti. Individually these humans have implanted feathers in caps such as Coil, Dome, Wire, Tomaga, etc. Collectively they form UUUU, a powerhouse construction of fierce and free sonic exploration, as liberating as it is frightening, resulting in a richly rewarding sound. The artists united present a project of exquisite curiosity and confident chaos where the individual thumbprints mesh into a gloriously muscular frenetic free sonic soup. "It's Going All Over The Floor" presents itself as a terse meeting between dance, ambient, abstraction, and improvisation. "The Latent Black Path Of Summons Served" proceeds in a tense energy field where random elements bounce around until locking into a fourth world pattern designed to fall into a dense mass of ecstatic noise. "Boots With Wings" is classic Lewis -- a pop tune from the other side of the mind. UUUU is a schizophrenic seething/soothing masterpiece of a past/present hybrid, equally at home in the club, the home, and the mind. Photography by Antonio Curcetti. Recorded and mixed at Aeriel Studios, Brechfa by Thighpaulsandra; Mastered by Sarah Register. Track listing same as double-LP with bonus track "Electric Blanket" previously available on the UUUU 12" (EMEGO 239X-EP).
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LP
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DOME 001LP
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With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of "using the studio as a compositional tool" and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: Dome (July 1980), Dome 2 (October 1980), and Dome 3 (October 1981). A final fourth album, Will You Speak This Word: Dome IV was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983. These albums represent some of the most beautifully stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene. Previously issued in the out-of-print Dome 1-4+5 box set in 2011. Now available as standalone LP; Includes download card. New artwork by Dave Coppenhall. B.C. Gilbert: voices, guitars, bass, percussion, tapes, drums; G. Lewis: voices, guitars, bass, percussion, tapes, synthesizer; A.M.C. - voice on "Cruel When Complete". Recorded on March 10th & 16th, 1980 and April 1st, 1980; Produced by B.C. Gilbert and G. Lewis; Engineer - Eric Radcliffe; Asst. engineer - John Fryer; Floating-point re-master by Russell Haswell, August 2011; Cut at Dubplates & Mastering by Rashad Becker, August 2011.
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CD
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EMEGO 258CD
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As audacious as the sleeve it comes housed in, the UK's most eccentric audio malefactor returns with his eighth studio album, Practical Electronics with Thighpaulsandra. Unique in the Thighpaulsandra oeuvre, this one eschews the usual group-based recordings, consisting of electronics and vocals only. Hovering between haunted narratives and extended instrumental sequences, Practical Electronics is an eccentric excursion into playful pop and fearless electronic experimentation. Simultaneously intimidating and accessible, the energy of this untamed mind unleashes an artifact where high art unfolds as an oblique electronic cabaret. Having cut his teeth amongst such legendary outfits such as Coil and Spiritualized, Thighpaulsandra has constantly catapulted himself further and further into a musical landscape utterly of his own devising. Practical Electronics is the latest exemplary installment of a voice that is uncompromising as it is outlandish. Cover design by Liam Thonas; Photography by Siôn Oegon. Recorded and mixed by Thighpaulsandra at Aeriel Studios, Brechfa between 2017 and 2018. Mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, London.
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LP
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EMEGO 258LP
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LP version. As audacious as the sleeve it comes housed in, the UK's most eccentric audio malefactor returns with his eighth studio album, Practical Electronics with Thighpaulsandra. Unique in the Thighpaulsandra oeuvre, this one eschews the usual group-based recordings, consisting of electronics and vocals only. Hovering between haunted narratives and extended instrumental sequences, Practical Electronics is an eccentric excursion into playful pop and fearless electronic experimentation. Simultaneously intimidating and accessible, the energy of this untamed mind unleashes an artifact where high art unfolds as an oblique electronic cabaret. Having cut his teeth amongst such legendary outfits such as Coil and Spiritualized, Thighpaulsandra has constantly catapulted himself further and further into a musical landscape utterly of his own devising. Practical Electronics is the latest exemplary installment of a voice that is uncompromising as it is outlandish. Cover design by Liam Thonas; Photography by Siôn Oegon. Recorded and mixed by Thighpaulsandra at Aeriel Studios, Brechfa between 2017 and 2018. Mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, London.
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2LP
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EMEGO 261LP
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The playful confidence that exudes Finlay Shakespeare's practice is flagrantly laid out on Domestic Economy, his extraordinary debut full-length. Domestic Economy displays two eventful sides evidencing the unique musical approach Shakespeare has developed in such a short period of time. Let's get some facts straight, Finlay is young. And talented. His programming skills belie his years and one can detect a sharp appreciation of historical electronic pop whilst simultaneously developing a canny understanding as to where such a form exists in the current age. Shakespeare's brazen lyrical content and significant melodic prowess highlight a brave new voice in what can often be a sterile aesthetic environment. Domestic Economy bursts with edgy ecstatic electronic pop. A form not only unusual for Editions Mego (actually known for idolizing such forms) but somewhat of a scarcity amongst the modern electronic landscape. Belying age, form, and movement, Domestic Economy is a damn near perfect amalgamation of historical respect and contemporary anxiety wrapped in an exquisite song-form package. Made in Bristol. Published in Wien. Delivered to all brains, like a wayward dream. Artwork by Nik Void. All original material improvised whilst recorded live; All revisions made to pre-existing material carried out at B17, July-August 2018; All material by Finlay Shakespeare, except saxophone and clarinet on "Amsterdam" by Zoë Hutton and bugle on "Heston" by Jamie Neale. Mastered by Russell Haswell.
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7"
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EMEGO 260EP
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Snapshot release by new Editions Mego signing, the Bristol-based Finlay Shakespeare. Routine is a twitchy electro monster confronting the listener with a worked up a blend of AFX, Cabaret Voltaire, and New Order. The B-Side "Perris" propels itself as a crazed analog drama that is as ambitious as it is unholy. Simultaneously a modern throwback to the brooding synth pop age and an absolute belter in the contemporary mainframe, Finlay Shakespeare has made it quite clear, that he is here.
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LP
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EMEGO 249LP
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Hence is the third collaborative release from Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke, following on from Behold (EMEGO 176LP, 2015). Building on the refined combination of electronics and acoustic instrumentation found on their previous releases, Hence presents two side-long pieces combining synthesizers, heavily effected guitar tones, and tabla rhythms played by special guest Uzhaan. On the first side, an explosive opening chord sends out ripples of sparse, irregularly pulsing guitar and synthesizer tones, aleatorically changing in pitch and jumping around the stereo image. Combined with the tabla, which gradually builds in busyness throughout the side, the piece is like a dream collaboration between David Behrman and the Henry Kaiser of It's A Wonderful Life (1984), gradually overtaken in its second half by a swarm of lush live electronic sizzle. The second side begins in a similar area, combining tabla, shimmering Leslie cabinet guitar tones, and a wandering melodic line. Undergoing a series of subtle variations, this initial area eventually builds to a climax of twittering synthesized birdsong reminiscent of Alvin Curran's '70s work. As on the first side, Ambarchi and O'Rourke craft a piece that is both comforting and subtly strange, as the constantly shifting dynamics and changes of focus (which recall the flow of improvised music) refuse to allow the music to settle into any one moment for too long or to build in too linear a fashion. Combining influences from post-minimalism, the pioneers of live electronics, and eastern music into a unique sound world, Hence is a seductive work from two of the most singular sensibilities in contemporary music. Cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Photos by Traianos Pakioufakis. Sleeve/type design by Stephen O'Malley.
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LP
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EMEGO 254LP
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Ilpo Väisänen returns to Editions Mego under the guise of I-LP-ON with, ÄÄNET, an immense tribute to the outfit he played in alongside his friend and former creative partner Mika Vainio. ÄÄNET takes inspiration from the life of Pan Sonic, the outfit they inhabited for over two decades. Recorded in Kuopio, Barcelona and Karttula, ÄÄNET is made up of a series of miniatures that harness the many shadows this legendary act absorbed: industrial, ambient, dub and club all figure into this edgy slow burning menace of a release. Featuring recordings made on the 2000 Pan Sonic world tour, Väisänen has crafted a unique homage to the outfit which redefined experimental electronic music by embracing pulsing club aesthetics coupled with more abstract avant-garde tendencies. The seismic fingerprint left by Pan Sonic avoids dating and genre identification finding a new definition here both as a nod to a notorious past whilst laying the groundwork for reigniting something utterly contemporary. ÄÄNET is an essential release of Väisänen's as it allows further expansion and broadening of the paths carved out from this resolutely unique form of scratchy and sublime electronic music. All music and sounds by Ilpo Väisänen. Recorded at Kuopio, Barcelona, and Karttula. Contains (field) recordings from 2000 Pan Sonic world tour. Mixed at Juniper & Stone, Karttula, Finland. Record is influenced by the life of Pan Sonic. Recitation on B9 by Ilpo. Conversator on B3 Dave Burton. Mika photo by John Duncan. Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering. Cover by Ilpo, layout/typo via Soma. Mika Vainio 1963-2017.
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EMEGO 257CD
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On Throne, Heather Leigh takes her place as queen of pedal steel with a suite of heart-rending ballads cauterized with burning riffs. After the rawness of its precursor I Abused Animal (SOMA 023LP, 2015), Throne is a record of late night Americana and heavy femininity; intimate love songs smoked in sensuality. The songs on Throne are woozy, gorgeous and uncomfortable, smothered in thick layers of bass but lifted by multi-tracked vocals. These are rich song forms that stand in contrast to the stripped down steel in her duo with Peter Brotzmann. "Prelude To Goddess" sashays in wearing leopard-print jeans under the twinkling fluorescent illuminations of the British seaside, like Brighton Rock with extra bass. It is followed in by "Lena" -arguably Leigh's "Jolene" - a perverse love song soaked in a subversive sexuality, weighed down with a heavy pulse. "Soft Seasons" is anchored with sunken beats shrouded in wailing, growling steel and an earwormy melody. "Gold Teeth", the longest track on the record, crests and breaks in waves; ecstatic peaks balanced and echoed by melancholic troughs. It soars on an updraft, and from cosmic heights dives seaward into a gnarly and riotous pedal steel breakdown, before catching the breeze again. "Days Without You" and "Scorpio & Androzani" are shorter, intimate songs; in the latter the synths seethe and the steel bows and bends as Leigh's voice falters above a Greek chorus of shadows and reflections. But this isn't autobiography, and Throne departs on "Days Without You", a confrontationally unfinished romantic song, anxious with half-thoughts and missed connections. It glides into the night on stilettos leaving unanswered questions, in a fugue of psychic disturbance and lovesick sensuality. Leigh's artwork (which she photographed and designed) is a visual mirror of the songs on Throne. It is an album of cosmic echoes, abstractions and introspection, of characters and stories that make up Leigh's first best pop record, its melodies and hooks set alight with the fiery core of her unique and distinctive pedal steel. Additional instrumentation by John Hannon (violin, synthesizer) and David Keenan (electric bass). Recorded and engineered by John Hannon, Rayleigh, Essex, March 2018. Photographs and design: Heather Leigh.
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LP
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EMEGO 257LP
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LP version. On Throne, Heather Leigh takes her place as queen of pedal steel with a suite of heart-rending ballads cauterized with burning riffs. After the rawness of its precursor I Abused Animal (SOMA 023LP, 2015), Throne is a record of late night Americana and heavy femininity; intimate love songs smoked in sensuality. The songs on Throne are woozy, gorgeous and uncomfortable, smothered in thick layers of bass but lifted by multi-tracked vocals. These are rich song forms that stand in contrast to the stripped down steel in her duo with Peter Brotzmann. "Prelude To Goddess" sashays in wearing leopard-print jeans under the twinkling fluorescent illuminations of the British seaside, like Brighton Rock with extra bass. It is followed in by "Lena" -arguably Leigh's "Jolene" - a perverse love song soaked in a subversive sexuality, weighed down with a heavy pulse. "Soft Seasons" is anchored with sunken beats shrouded in wailing, growling steel and an earwormy melody. "Gold Teeth", the longest track on the record, crests and breaks in waves; ecstatic peaks balanced and echoed by melancholic troughs. It soars on an updraft, and from cosmic heights dives seaward into a gnarly and riotous pedal steel breakdown, before catching the breeze again. "Days Without You" and "Scorpio & Androzani" are shorter, intimate songs; in the latter the synths seethe and the steel bows and bends as Leigh's voice falters above a Greek chorus of shadows and reflections. But this isn't autobiography, and Throne departs on "Days Without You", a confrontationally unfinished romantic song, anxious with half-thoughts and missed connections. It glides into the night on stilettos leaving unanswered questions, in a fugue of psychic disturbance and lovesick sensuality. Leigh's artwork (which she photographed and designed) is a visual mirror of the songs on Throne. It is an album of cosmic echoes, abstractions and introspection, of characters and stories that make up Leigh's first best pop record, its melodies and hooks set alight with the fiery core of her unique and distinctive pedal steel. Additional instrumentation by John Hannon (violin, synthesizer) and David Keenan (electric bass). Recorded and engineered by John Hannon, Rayleigh, Essex, March 2018. Photographs and design: Heather Leigh.
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12"
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EMEGO 239X-EP
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Two new tracks from UUUU, featuring members of Coil, Wire, and Tomaga. The motorik music hinted at on UUUU (EMEGO 239LP, 2017) is given space to unfold here. "Electric Blanket" chugs along with perpetual percussion, blankets of feedback and state-of-the-art electronics all embedded with a spectral melody that moves into more mystical ambient planes. "Nice Setting" places a strange short spoken narrative at the center of a shifting sonic landscape of skittering electronic debris and a deep shifting sea of sound. A vibraphone holds proceedings together as well. UUUU are Edvard Graham Lewis, Valentina Magaletti, Matthew Simms, andThighpaulsandra.
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LP
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EMEGO 253LP
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Editions Mego present the first outing from the legendary English musician, songwriter, composer, and producer Simon Fisher Turner alongside the highly acclaimed emerging Swedish sound artist Klara Lewis. Care is a unique outing rife with delicious dichotomy. The opening track positions the aggressive directly against more fragile moments. On the subsequent track medieval melodies sprout from a dense rhythmic hiss. Witness a Middle Eastern song appearing amongst a haunted rattling reverb in the epic "Tank", whilst a beautiful force of hope can be found within the sound world of closing track "Mend". The wide scope of references and constant pull of forces make this debut offering a timeless patchwork of sonic spaces. Care is an album which sways in such a salubrious manner one can't help but delight in its unique form of location/disorientation.
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EMEGO 250LP
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Editions Mego's 250th release continues its ongoing legacy of cross-pollinating and perverting various threads of radical 20th century music whilst concocting and propelling further ideas into the nebulous region where we all currently reside. With Ex Nihilo, Editions Mego resumes its enduring relationship with long-term collaborator and stalwart representative of the label's aesthetic with a new release from London's most charming deviant occupant, Bruce Gilbert (formerly of Wire, Dome, etc.) Gilbert's peculiar approach to sound over four decades has seen him engage with a wide variety of practice and performance always hovering amongst the grey area between his mind and the surrounding architecture. Ex Nihilo is another significant entry into Gilbert's outer sound-book. Inhabiting a murky zone between interference and trauma, Ex Nihilo is a daring and dark audio ride through a contemporary ketamine haze, one which haunts identifiable parameters whilst remaining too oblique to be truly quantified. "Change And Not" teases discomfort, "Black Mirrors" embraces disorder, "Nomad" skirts the unsettling. Whilst never quite resolving its own logic, Ex Nihilo invites the casual listener to privy a devastating peculiar and somewhat paranoid fantasy (reality?). Another effortless Gilbert classic. Design: David Coppenhall; front image/concept: Bruce Gilbert. Mastered by Russell Haswell. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin.
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EMEGO 248LP
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Jung An Tagen is practicing sonic animism on a molecular level. With Agent Im Objekt he confronts his listeners once more with a form of highly abstracted electronic music -- puristic club sounds for an accelerated future. Kicking off with an accumulation of high-pitched, psychoactive sounds, Agent Im Objekt takes you into a hyperreal sphere reigned by sonic entities. Playing with swarm-dynamics and singular signals, moments of distance and proximity and noise textures that stimulate perception, Jung An Tagen transgresses the common syntax of club music. His strategies resemble computer music composition and focus on timbre, texture, and structure in an almost analytical way. The sounds filtered from his synthesizer are polished and bright, but behave in an astonishingly organic way, forming propulsive melodic sketches. Arranged in multiple layers of versatile polyrhythms, the tracks are nurtured by the forceful dialectics of precisely arranged chaos and ecstatic order. With his titles, Jung An Tagen is further adding an enigmatic narrative to his tracks, transcending the actual sphere of the dancefloor towards fictional storytelling. Following the structure of a one-sided chat log, they evoke associations from the X-file series or mystery novels, revealing a brainteaser that is drawn from mysterious coordinates and secret codes. In addition the official video "20:03 [Y] HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?" underlines Jung An Tagen's interdisciplinary interest in synesthetic processes. Developed in collaboration with the programmers JeongHo Park and Scott Sinclair the video visualizes particle explosion data from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Inspired by Peter Kubelkas's Arnulf Rainer (1960), the resulting geometric figures are exposed to a "complimentary stroboscope" that glitches your receptors and stimulate your brainwaves with photo- and EEG-stimulation close to seizure, inducing a hallucinative reality. Agent Im Objekt is playful but analytical, uplifting but mentally disturbed. While the dynamic use of reoccurring motives forces your body to move, cerebral timbres provoke a series of stimuli to massage your brain. It is intellectual body music that might mark a poetic turn in progressive dance music. Composed, recorded, and mixed by Jung An Tagen in the VIV. Titles by Stefan Juster. Artwork and layout by J. Fröhnel. Mastered by Rashad Becker.
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EMEGO 251LP
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NPVR is moniker taken on board by Pita, AKA Peter Rehberg, and Factory Floor's Nik Void. Peter and Nik both share formidable reputations in the post-industrial shape-shifting world of sound and form with a vast range of releases and collaborative endeavors over a number of years. Together they tie together their collective experience into a vast array of sonic devices unleashing an album of pragmatic imbalance and psychedelic orientation. Blurring the lines of techno, ambient, avant garde, noise, etc. 33 33 positions itself in the nebulous realm of contemporary (dis)comfort presenting itself on the border of music and sound, the social and the private. Recorded and edited at The Premises, London, July 2017. Artwork by Nik Void; Photography by Georg Gatsas. Mastered by Russell Haswell at Haswell Studio, London, August 2017; Cut by CGB at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, September 2017.
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2LP
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EMEGO 246LP
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The title of the debut album from The Transcendence Orchestra outlines the modus operandi of this pairing of Anthony Child and Daniel Bean. Recorded in a remote English rural setting over a period of 24 hours, this is an apt location for a recording that eschews time and space in favor of methodological displacement and deep psychological navigation. Modern Methods For Ancient Rituals is an experiment in acoustic and synthetic symbiosis which is deeply influenced by the atmosphere and acoustics of the rural location of Cats Abbey resulting in a set of recordings which can aid to the transformation of consciousness. Deploying a range of ancient and modern instruments and effects, including Buchla Music Easel, harmonium, shruti box, bass guitar, hurdy gurdy, Electro Harmonix 45000, Strymon Blue Sky, and Roland RE 101 Space Echo, among others, Child and Bean conjure an audio experience which encapsulates elements of drone, trance, pulse, rhythm, and melody, subtly shifting all into a psychologically penetrating experience beyond the aesthetic and into the comforting unknown. Front cover image by Ali Wade; Back cover image by Cathrin Queins; Design by SOMA. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, 2017.
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EMEGO 244LP
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On her latest release, Chra, aka Christina Nemec, sketches out a psycho-geographical map that guides you to the border of the internal and external world -- On A Fateful Morning lets you enter a sphere where the imaginary and the subliminal cross. Evoking abstract images that transcend reality, Chra installs an autarchic time-and-space continuum of vague, nocturnal beauty. Pastose bass drones, airy ambient synths and processed audio samples form a hypnotic stream that lets you enter an altered state of mind. By subtly intertwining musical and non-musical sounds, Chra weaves an intensely atmospheric, poetic tableau of emptied spaces left to the listener's imagination. It's the pulse of arcane memories that is filling these sonic landscapes, operating deep within the subconscious. On A Fateful Morning is haunting music to play in the dark -- conspirative, uncanny, with a dystopian smack. Artwork by Susi Klocker. Recorded and produced by Christina Nemec in Vienna and Horner Wald, 2016; Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin 2017.
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EMEGO 243LP
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Originally developed as a film score, Takt Der Arbeit is inspired by a handful of industrial and instructional films from the early 1960s until the early 1990s that portray different forms of work. Felix Kubin translates these historic documents into a musical poem of conceptual depth. Takt Der Arbeit - "the beat of work" - is not only serving as a title but also as constructive element in this endeavor. Being hunted down by the ever-accelerated pulse of our reality is an omnipresent issue in capitalist societies of the Western world. Living in times of constant exhaustion, it's not only our bodies that have been disciplined by and synchronized to the rhythms of working processes, but also our minds that rage in the tempo of our surroundings. Following an almost analytical effort, Kubin and an ensemble of three percussionists investigate the different qualities and intensities of time that are catalyzed in working processes. While picking up precise temporal and motoric motives of the films, condensing paces and excavating rhythmic patterns, the ensemble maps out an animist choreography, shifting from a time when labor was still relying on bodily efforts to a time when machines and ticking clocks seem to reign and model human perception. While side A is dedicated to procedures that are still based on manual and mechanical movement, side B is inspired by the digital age, marked by invisible processes and subcutaneous pulses that humans internalize. The result is a critical and poetic reflection on the rhythms of our daily life and yet another example of Felix Kubin's skills as a composer, placing him in the field of orchestral music. Works commissioned by NDR das neue werk (North German Radio). Personnel: Felix Kubin - organ, electronics, sampler; Miłosz Pękala - vibraphone, xylophone, sampler, percussion, effects; Magdalena Kordylasińska - marimba, percussion, effects; Hubert Zemler - glockenspiel, drums, percussion. Artwork by Stephen O'Malley; Engineered by Robert Migas; Mixed by Tobias Levin; Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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