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PING 086LP
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Anadol and Marie Klock have teamed up for a joint album, La Grande Accumulation. They met in 2022 at a festival in England crowded with violent seagulls and outsider musicians. Klock being prone to barking on stage and Anadol not laughing at jokes she doesn't find funny, they straight away had the intuition that they would meet again. And so they did, a few months later, at Anadol's studio in Istanbul. Today, the two Pingipung artists present the fruit of this musical friendship. La Grande Accumulation was born out of the peculiar atmosphere of the studio neighborhood in Büyükada, an island where thousands of cats run free and humans randomly destroy things during apocalyptic times when parts of Turkey had just been turned into dust by terrible earthquakes. The French lyrics are inspired by hours of conversations, the music is consequently drenched in absurdity, overflowing with a strong urge to live and enjoy. La Grande Accumulation brings together Marie Klock's mysterious metaphors and Anadol's intriguing radiophonic psych-pop. Stretching forms beyond common sense to see how long they can resist is probably their favorite game. The result are six highly imaginative tracks that challenge the sub-three-minutes standards of Spotify pop. Gözen Atila aka Anadol is well-known to the Pingipung audience, with three solo LPs on the label. Her music follows a kind of collage logic, she interweaves countless styles, combining field and studio recordings with obscure quotation marks here and there. Marie Klock is a French writer and musician who produces songs oscillating between synthpop and neo-folk, full of anarchic humor and existential dread. Marie Klock delivers her lyrics in song or spoken word, stream-of-consciousness musings on strange human adventures, and her rich keyboard melodies culminate in a nonchalant dialogue with the bass trombone ('La Reine des Bordels'). In the opulent opening piece ('La Grande Accumulation'), a woman is cursed to take home everything she kicks in the street; a bit later, listeners stumble upon a ghoul hiding in the gutter ('Sirop amer'), Mona Lisa loses her teeth ('Sonate au Jambon') and a warthog struggles to climb the stairs of a silver tower ('Sabots triviaux'). La Grande Accumulation was mixed and mastered by Jonas Romann at Chaos Compressor Club in Hamburg and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer at D&M in Berlin. It's an audiophile LP that invites to focus on every detail in this heap of musical ideas.
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PING 088EP
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This is the second package of remixes for the hypnotic folk music of the Ainu a cappella group Marewrew. Ukouk Remixes Pt. 2 is dedicated to dub-infused remixes, featuring Elijah Minnelli and Peter Presto on a 7" single. Elijah Minnelli is a producer of dub music. The London-based artist specializes in a fusion of folklore and dub, which he masterfully demonstrates on his latest release Perpetual Musket on the FatCat label. His remix of Marewrew's "Uekap" is a deep and breathing take on the mesmerizing round singing vocals, dubbed in a live take through his mixing desk. The chopped vocals are used like percussion instruments. Elijah Minnelli has also contributed a moody DJ mix to the Pingipung podcast series, sharing some of his knowledge of pre-reggae roots music from the Caribbean and South America. Pingipung founder Peter Presto remixes the same track, "Uekap," with his unmistakable dubby playfulness. The vocals are merry, the groove stumbling and slow. The flute melody qualifies as a perfect stress antidote. The electronic dub trio Cloud Management added their version of "Honkaya" to the digital package. There is an Andi Otto remix in the bundle, "Hunpe Yan Na." The song is about a whale that has stranded ashore; Otto dubs the song with Heiko Gogolin's bass clarinet, blown organ pipes and his cello. Finally, Californian folk wizard Contact Field Orchestra adds his atmospheric, haunted version of "Etukuma Kara."
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PING 087EP
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The hypnotic folk music of the Ainu a cappella group Marewrew has received the first of two remix treatments by Pingipung artists. Part 1 is by Andi Otto and M.RUX. Andi Otto was the curator of the Marewrew album for Pingipung, released in 2024. He selected gems from their archive for the Ukouk LP. His remix pays homage to the frenetic vocal dynamics of the round canon Sikata Kuykuy. Beginning with a stubborn piano beat, it's the bass clarinets that sit in sync with the vocals that make this dance track so charming. Bonus fact: they're played by Pingipung co-founder Heiko Gogolin -- his first outing on the instrument for his own label. M.RUX's take on "Etukuma Kara" is playful and groovy. Many will remember his legendary 2018 remix of "Umeko Ando" (Iuta Upopo), which marked Pingipung's first involvement with Ainu traditional music from northern Japan. His reworking of Marewrew's vocal music blends elements of various tracks with his own percussion, and the result is nothing short of spectacular. The two tracks are presented on 7" vinyl.
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PING 085LP
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Marewrew (pronounced: Ma-leoo-leoo / mɑleːul̯ eːu)̯ is a female vocal group that sings traditional Ainu songs. The music of the long-suppressed people from northern Japan has been a particular focus of Pingipung's output in recent years, together with Oki Kano who recorded and produced many Ainu artists. Following various re-releases by Umeko Ando, the late grande dame of traditional Ainu music, the spotlight is now on the a cappella music of Marewrew, which by the way means "butterfly" in Ainu. Attentive listeners will recognize the voices, as some of the band have already performed as backing singers on recordings by Umeko Ando. Their a cappella versions of traditional Ainu music shed a whole new light on the fascinating songs that have been passed down through generations exclusively through song. Many of the songs are set as tightly interwoven canons: one starts, the others join in, but slightly out of phase. The short songs sometimes unfold into a wondrous trance that seems to spin round and round -- if singing can actually dance, then this is how. Nature sounds and woodpeckers can be heard, and there is a funny miniature in which the ladies imitate birdsong. Things get hypnotic with an evocative song about stranded whales or an ode to the Orca as "Little Sea God." The album culminates in unexpected pop or cumbia moments with a band line-up including percussions and Oki Kano on the famous Tonkori harp. Marewrew are Rekpo, Hisae, and Mayunkiki. Rim-Rim was a member of the group until 2022. Ukouk is a selection of Marewrew's work compiled from CD releases by Pingipung's Andi Otto. Oki Kano has contributed unreleased material and added new versions of the songs which had only been released in Japan. The album has been remastered by Kassian Troyer and is now available on LP for the first time.
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PING 084LP
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In the wake of a profound loss, Marie Klock, a neo-chanson singer and multi-instrumentalist from Paris, presents a poignant tribute with her debut on Pingipung. On Damien est vivant, Marie Klock pays homage to the late poet Damien Schultz. They were intertwined both in artistic collaboration and deep friendship. Marie Klock creates a powerful ode to Damien Schultz's surreal, anarchic, witty and at times provocatively obscene French (English translations are included in the vinyl release). The poet's own voice resounds alongside Klock's, oscillating between spoken word and neo-folk vocals. Recorded in an intimate lo-fi setting with co- producer Julien Louvet, the ten songs are far from a mournful requiem. They showcase idiosyncratic pop music brimming with humor and absurdity. Damien est vivant is a celebration of the unique bond they shared, in past and present. The melancholy sometimes takes on an almost whimsical quality, an allusion to the world as perceived through the lens of two kindred spirits. Marie Klock has appeared as keyboardist on international stages with Sofia Portanet and collaborated with artists such as Jean-Louis Costes, Chilly Gonzales, Charlotte Brandi, and Adrienne Pauly.
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PING 065CD
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Anadol is a psychedelic synth folk project by Gözen Atila, a Turkish sound artist and photographer based in Berlin. Her third album Uzun Havalar is based on collective improvisations of middle eastern folk songs called "uzun hava." They turn out as rich, atmospheric synth ballads. A diverse roster of improvising musicians creates their fascinating complexity. Anadol recorded them during extensive sessions in Istanbul. One can hear drummers laughing and playing guitars, composers howling, announcements in French and screams in no language, record collectors playing oscillators, and trumpets through spacious echoes. Anadol represents Gözen Atila's liberation from a rather academic approach to electronic composition which she pursued during her music technology studies in Istanbul. She calls her education the "darkness of serious music" where she first tried to belong, then to break free with the help of lo-fi synth pop. As a producer of radio plays and an expert field recording artist she has developed a distinct sense of timing, editing and sound design. Her Anadol project walks in the footsteps of lone synth experimentalists like Bruce Haack and The Space Lady with their childlike curiosity for electronic sounds, pushing the boundaries of minimal equipment. On Uzun Havalar she translates her experimental background into these floating folk ballads. The album was originally released on tape via Kinship in 2018.
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PING 060CD
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Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was a folk singer from Japan. She was a representative of the Ainu culture on the Hokkaido Island in the north of Japan. Ihunke is her first album which was recorded with the Ainu musician and dub producer Oki Kano in 2000. The 16 Ainu songs on Ihunke are delicate, natural gems. They are built on Oki Kano's tonkori patterns (a five-string harp), over which Umeko Ando develops her repetitive, mantric vocals, often in a call-and-response manner. Oki Kano is one of very few professional tonkori players who performs worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band. The songs possess a mystical energy -- when crows call accurately with Ando's brittle voice in the first song, it seems like natural powers join in with her music. Her voice sounds like animals of the sky and the forest. Oki Kano: "It was a lot of fun to record with Umeko Ando. Many Ainu hesitate to break from tradition -- if Umeko hadn't been so flexible to work with the younger generation and recording technology, this album would never have happened. Our sessions were intense, and we were proud and happy about making such beautiful music." Only recently (in 2008) have the Ainu officially been acknowledged as indigenous people who are culturally independent from Japan. This record is an example of how their music has been passed on through generations in the underground Ainu communities while it was oppressed by the Japanese hegemony. It deserves a huge audience. Includes liner notes and download code.
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PING 074CD
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"Whether it is traditional or contemporary, we need to be authentic," says Gözen Atila who performs as Anadol. "I don't claim that I am authentic, but this is what I want to achieve." A sense of authentic exploration, introspection, and celebration coats every inch of Anadol's latest album. After Uzun Havalar, the Turkish artist returns with an album that continues to explore a variety of deeply embedded musical traditions while also hurtling into new terrain. The music and influences -- as well as the history, culture, and geography behind them -- that make up Atila as an artist all coalesce to create something entirely new. The result is something that is simultaneously exploring history and tradition, while harnessing innovative modern sounds and techniques. "If there is any tradition I am somehow connected to, or influenced by, then it's multi-genres," she says. "Such as Turkish Pop and Arabesk music from this country where I grew up. There is a connection to folk and also French pop or Flamenco, Middle Eastern melodies and orchestration, Greek adaptations, Kenny G. solos, American guitars." This can be heard on Felicita, not in as much as you can link up the influences directly but in the way it glides across genres, eschewing convention and predictability along the way, to result in a kaleidoscopic experience. For the album, Atila found a talented roster of jazz musicians in Istanbul who she recorded on top of her synth productions and field recordings. Soon enough saxophone, drums, and strings began to stack up against preset drum loops from vintage organs. It's a record where woozy psychedelic excursions bleed into dreamy synth lines, immersive ambience, and the occasionally disconcerting yet incredibly tactile use of field recordings. Felicita translates as "happiness" and this album is something that explores the complexities of such an emotion. "I did not name the album like this because I just wanted to call it happiness," Atila says. "A song like 'Felicita Lale' is a sad and confused song about a female character who can't get out of bed. It's a funny rumination, in her thoughts, saying to get up and lie down repeatedly. At some point the lyrics say: 'hep agla, felicita', meaning: 'Cry all the time, Felicita'. Like she is talking to happiness itself and telling it to cry. So it is not about happiness, it is more about the concept of happiness which can be very sad."
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PING 081CD
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Upopo Sanke means "Let's sing a song" in the Ainu language. Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was one of the best-known artists of the Ainu, an indigenous, long-suppressed community in northern Japan. She sings their traditional songs together with Oki Kano on the Tonkori harp, who also recorded the album. The two are supported by members of the female vocal group Marewrew as well as Ainu percussionists, a string player and a male singer who provides rhythmic shouts and also throat singing. The call-and-response structure of many of the songs is performed with a mantric quality in a vocal style that is perhaps best described as elastic and breathing. There seems to be a gentle smile in every note and syllable. This music softly hits the heart. Upopo Sanke was recorded on a farm in Tokachi in the summer of 2003. You hear dogs barking, a distant thunderstorm and voices imitating animals. The liner notes that accompany the double-LP release gather the anecdotal memories of Umeko Ando and Oki Kano about the stories of the 14 songs. Oki Kano is a musical ambassador of the Ainu culture who tours worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band and also gives solo concerts, always playing the Tonkori, the five-stringed Ainu harp. The Ainu have suffered from the oppression of their culture and language by Japan, especially since the 18th and 19th centuries. Only recently, in 2008, were the Ainu officially recognized again as an indigenous people culturally independent of Japan. As a result of the marginalization, there are now only a few hundred native speakers of the Ainu language left, making it a particularly worthy object of preservation.
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PING 083LP
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Two visionary maestros, Pierre Bastien and Michel Banabila, unite in their first collaborative album, Baba Soirée. The veterans of electronic music bring their unique expertise to the table, resulting in a captivating fusion of experimental styles. Bastien's mechanical loops and experimental instrumental setups merge seamlessly with Banabila's sound design and impeccable skills of sampling collages. Pierre Bastien is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with a background in French literature. He has spent decades crafting an idiosyncratic world of experimental sound with his self-built mechanical orchestra Mecanium. It was most notably showcased in audiovisual releases on Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Bastien's creations are a mesmerizing combination of traditional instruments (he has a vast collection) and mechanical automatons. The violin in the track "Rotomotor," for example, is physically played by one of his machines. In Baba Soirée, Bastien also plays a prepared cornet, infusing the recordings with a breathy, dreamy dimension. Michel Banabila, a sound artist, composer and producer, possesses an eclectic musical repertoire that defies genres. His seamless blend of minimal electronica, tribal ambient, and neo- classical influences has earned him a prominent place in the world of experimental music, and an impressive discography. Banabila serves as the creative sampling editor for Baba Soirée, expertly weaving together the recordings to craft an evocative sonic tapestry. The two share a curiosity for traditional instruments from various cultures. The instruments used in the recordings are shown in the cover artwork. A mutual admiration for each other's work paved the way for this fruitful artistic partnership of the Rotterdam-based artists: collaborating on a single as a fundraiser for Yemen in 2022 set the stage for the creation of Baba Soirée. The title Baba Soirée is an homage to Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg's Kleine Dada Soirée collaboration which took place exactly a century ago.
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PING 080LP
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Hatıralar was Anadol's second album, originally composed between Berlin and Istanbul around 2012 and released years later only in digital form on the Istanbul based label Inverted Spectrum. The title Hatıralar ("Memories") turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anadol recalled and revisited the music in 2023, gently editing and mixing the compositions for the newly mastered LP format in which they now see the light of day. Hatıralar represents an early version of the melodic, instrumental synth-pop that Anadol refined on her album Uzun Havalar (PING 065LP, 2019) before exploring the more free, krautrock-inspired musique concrète of her last album Felicita (PING 074LP, 2021). Here is the text that accompanied the original 2017 release: "Anadol, named after an old-fashioned Turkish automobile brand, is an instrumental synth-pop project by Gözen Atila, an artist, DJ and keyboard player. She records with mini organs manufactured during the 70s and 80s, the built-in rhythms and arpeggios of these machines provide the backbone of her sound, and her melodies are influenced by pop music and soundtracks from France, Italy and Turkey from the same period. The music is awash with allusions to the moods of old Turkish and European cinema, from the erotic to the melodramatic, and with a reminiscence of the sound and spirit of so-called 'tavern music' popular in Turkey's urban nightlife in the 1980s, a flexible pop style usually performed by a solo keyboardist-singer. Anadol is a continuation of the tradition of lone synth experimentalists like Bruce Haack and The Space Lady with their childlike curiosity for electronic sounds, and of the keyboardists pushing the boundaries of minimal equipment to entertain middle aged drunk couples in pubs and wedding parties of Istanbul."
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PING 081LP
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Upopo Sanke means "Let's sing a song" in the Ainu language. Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was one of the best-known artists of the Ainu, an indigenous, long-suppressed community in northern Japan. She sings their traditional songs together with Oki Kano on the Tonkori harp, who also recorded the album. The two are supported by members of the female vocal group Marewrew as well as Ainu percussionists, a string player and a male singer who provides rhythmic shouts and also throat singing. The call-and-response structure of many of the songs is performed with a mantric quality in a vocal style that is perhaps best described as elastic and breathing. There seems to be a gentle smile in every note and syllable. This music softly hits the heart. Upopo Sanke was recorded on a farm in Tokachi in the summer of 2003. You hear dogs barking, a distant thunderstorm and voices imitating animals. The liner notes that accompany the double-LP release gather the anecdotal memories of Umeko Ando and Oki Kano about the stories of the 14 songs. Oki Kano is a musical ambassador of the Ainu culture who tours worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band and also gives solo concerts, always playing the Tonkori, the five-stringed Ainu harp. The Ainu have suffered from the oppression of their culture and language by Japan, especially since the 18th and 19th centuries. Only recently, in 2008, were the Ainu officially recognized again as an indigenous people culturally independent of Japan. As a result of the marginalization, there are now only a few hundred native speakers of the Ainu language left, making it a particularly worthy object of preservation. Upopo Sanke was mixed again in part by Oki Kano, before being mastered and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer. This album was the second album by Umeko Ando, the follow-up to Ihunke (PING 060LP) and also re-released in 2018 by Pingipung together with Oki Kano. 45rpm.
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PING 079LP
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MD Pallavi & Andi Otto first crossed paths on a theatre stage in India ten years ago. They started collaborating instantly and in 2016 MD Pallavi's mesmerizing vocals for the downtempo raga "Bangalore Whispers" warmed hearts and ears. Their musical relationship flourished with artistic residencies in Bangalore and Hamburg, their respective hometowns, and a concert tour in Japan. The collaborative track "Six" made ears turn again on Andi's album Bow Wave (Multi Culti 2019). And now, years later, the fruits of this artistic endeavor are fully formed here on Songs For Broken Ships -- the debut album of the duo. The album presents an interwoven pop-aesthetic vision of the two artists with their contrasting musical backgrounds. It ranges from organically woven folktronica to cut-up disco tracks and acoustic ballads. Reminiscent of, but not akin to Nicola Cruz, Beach House, or Four Tet's early productions the music is experimental but focused on the listener and their experience. MD Pallavi is a singer, actress, filmmaker, and performer from Bangalore, South-India, where she trained in Hindustani music and poetry since childhood. On Songs For Broken Ships, poems in her native tongue Kannada, one of India's many languages, are performed over Andi's alluring production, translating the stories into musical narratives. The poems address topics that are as timeless as the music itself. Social equality is touched upon in Bayalu (written by Bontadevi in the 12th century). Artistic struggles -- communicated on "An Unwritten Word" (Gangadhar Chittala, 1865) -- are almost prophetic and the surreal, dreamlike scenario of "Clockshop" (KS Narasimhaswamy, 1958) brings you further inside the sonic journey. Andi Otto is a composer, cellist and DJ based in Hamburg, Germany, He is known for his idiosyncratic and unconventional dance music productions on labels such as Multi Culti, Shika Shika, and Pingipung (which he co-runs and curates). For this collaborative experience his dubbed-out basslines gently interlock with the 7/4 and 5/4 beats to create a backbone for the instrumentation and expressive vocal timbres of MD Pallavi. His sound design combines graceful acoustic recordings, juxtaposed against modern drum machines, computer-generated noise, and vintage synthesizers. LP comes with a text sheet containing all Kannada lyrics -- which have their own vocabulary and script -- together with the phonetic transcription and English translation.
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PING 076LP
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Y Bülbül is back on the controls accompanied by Yumurta, a percussionist from Istanbul. Pingipung introduced the London based artist in 2020 with his psychedelic, synth-laden debut Fever (PING 072LP). Not One, Not Two is based on a one-way transmission of improvised drum recordings from an industrial estate in Maslak, Istanbul to another one in Tottenham, London, where Y Bülbül laid down fragmented layers of bass, synths, guitars and field recordings over Yumurta's singular drum takes. The result is a free-form deep listening album for fans of dub, ambient, and kosmische music, where the groove and harmonies are mystically interwoven, yet somehow manage to stay on the brink of collapse. Although the sessions were non concurrent and scattered over two continents, the collaboration evokes scenes of a telepathic communion where individual perspectives, circumstances and stories are exchanged between the two. Resembling Moondog, Holy Tongue, or Luis Paniagua in the sense that they favor the raw over the polished, holistic presence over conceptual perfection and questions over answers, the duo's focus on bare sounds and repetition guides the listener throughout the album. The ride cymbal opening the minimalistic "I'm This", for instance, briskly disarms the listener who might have been looking for more traditional songwriting or production clues. There are plenty of immediately rewarding moments too in Not One, Not Two, like the organic acid bassline in "Maurin Quina", the euphoric drum fills of "Big K" and the intoxicating groove of the hypnotic vibe-setter "Jah Oto". Bülbül is Turkish for a singing bird while Yumurta simply means egg. Which one is first? Who is to follow? It's this enigmatic entanglement between the two artists which creates the lurking tension, emphasized by the Zen Kōan-like title. The beauty in this album is a peculiar one, and it certainly is a rabbit hole too. Dissonance is fluid as everything moves, and whenever two sounds collide, a third one emerges.
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PING 052-2EP
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Andi Otto's "Bangalore Whispers" gets finally repressed. The psychedelic track which he recorded together with the Indian singer MD Pallavi in 2016 has become a hit in the downtempo scene around the globe ("Saaaa - resa nisa"). Pingipung press a new edition of the much sought-after single on the occasion of their 20th label anniversary. In this 2022 edition the original track is paired with the Peter Power remix which has not seen the light of day on vinyl before. The Brazil-based producer slows the track down a notch and adds even more space. A perfect tune both for the dancefloor or meditation.
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PING 075LP
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Happy birthday dear Pingipung! 20 years! Wow! 2002-2022, that's 20 years of Pingipung! The German record label celebrates its anniversary with exclusive tracks by a fine selection of artists from the label roster as well as new names. Instead of looking back at the classics, Pingipung chose to compile a kaleidoscopic preview of possible future directions for the label. The line-up features playfully melancholic songs by Museum of No Art, Peter Power, or The Notwist, an excursion to the desert by RVDS or a psychedelic take on dub in Tolouse Low Trax' remix for the Ainu singer Umeko Ando. Artists such as Anadol, Y Bülbül, Andi Otto & MD Pallavi, M.RUX, Sven Kacirek, Schlammpeitziger, Peter Presto, and F.S.Blumm are already well known to the Pingipung audience. They contribute exclusive new tracks, adding to their existing output on the label. It's impossible to file this compilation under a genre, which is exactly the case with Pingipung in general -- bull's eye. The collection of tracks is pressed in the perfect format to match the Pingipung jubilee: a 2x10" vinyl in a gatefold sleeve.
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PING 074LP
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Limited 2022 repress. "Whether it is traditional or contemporary, we need to be authentic," says Gözen Atila who performs as Anadol. "I don't claim that I am authentic, but this is what I want to achieve." A sense of authentic exploration, introspection, and celebration coats every inch of Anadol's latest album. After 2019's Uzun Havalar (PING 065LP), the Turkish artist returns with an album that continues to explore a variety of deeply embedded musical traditions while also hurtling into new terrain. The music and influences -- as well as the history, culture, and geography behind them -- that make up Atila as an artist all coalesce to create something entirely new. The result is something that is simultaneously exploring history and tradition, while harnessing innovative modern sounds and techniques. "If there is any tradition I am somehow connected to, or influenced by, then it's multi-genres," she says. "Such as Turkish Pop and Arabesk music from this country where I grew up. There is a connection to folk and also French pop or Flamenco, Middle Eastern melodies and orchestration, Greek adaptations, Kenny G. solos, American guitars." This can be heard on Felicita, not in as much as you can link up the influences directly but in the way it glides across genres, eschewing convention and predictability along the way, to result in a kaleidoscopic experience. For the album, Atila found a talented roster of jazz musicians in Istanbul who she recorded on top of her synth productions and field recordings. Soon enough saxophone, drums, and strings began to stack up against preset drum loops from vintage organs. It's a record where woozy psychedelic excursions bleed into dreamy synth lines, immersive ambience, and the occasionally disconcerting yet incredibly tactile use of field recordings. Felicita translates as "happiness" and this album is something that explores the complexities of such an emotion. "I did not name the album like this because I just wanted to call it happiness," Atila says. "A song like 'Felicita Lale' is a sad and confused song about a female character who can't get out of bed. It's a funny rumination, in her thoughts, saying to get up and lie down repeatedly. At some point the lyrics say: 'hep agla, felicita', meaning: 'Cry all the time, Felicita'. Like she is talking to happiness itself and telling it to cry. So it is not about happiness, it is more about the concept of happiness which can be very sad."
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PING 073LP
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Cole Pulice is a saxophone player from Minneapolis. An improviser of ambient jazz who earned his merits touring with Bon Iver, working with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and releasing wonderful electroacoustic gems with the groups Iceblink (Moon Glyph) and LCM (Orange Milk). With Gloam -- his solo debut -- Cole Pulice offers six spacious audio holograms, one-take recordings of his saxophone entangled with live electronic hardware. You hear undulating pitch shifters, ring modulations, and spectrally rich harmonizers. Cole applies all signal processing live, augmenting the calm, serene melodies Cole plays on his saxophone. The electronics never serve as a mere effect here. Instead, Cole's fine-tuned setup functions as one whole instrument with which he effortlessly morphs shapes and colors, like fractals within a kaleidoscope or fragments of stained glass in a rock tumbler. Cole mentions the Synchromism visual art movement as an influence for this record, an American avantgarde style of the early 20th century in which color and sound were treated as equivalents. It's a spot-on analogy for these musical gems which serve to immerse listeners in imaginary prisms. Cole's sessions conjoin artificial processes with the vibrations of his breath to create electro-acoustic lullabies which reveal ever more timbral layers with each listen. Gloam was released on tape by the Moon Glyph imprint from Portland during the first lockdown in 2020 and has been licensed to Pingipung for this vinyl edition.
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PING 072LP
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When Yiğit Bülbül knocked on Pingipung's door and put his debut album on the table, Fever took the label's heart in a storm. The Turkish born, London based musician and producer knows how to craft his own contemporary avant-garde pop projections with a rich musical heritage shining through from the 1980s and '90s. His style erupts into silly, absurd moments of synth blurps, percussive extravaganza and psyched horns; it's always colorful and trippy, but in a light way. It's exactly what you want to release in a year of distress. The album is framed by two contemplative tracks, which are reminiscent of Holger Czukay's oeuvre. The saxophone in the opening track "The Heath" undulates like an introvert leading voice in a meditation. The long and meticulously crafted ambient outro "Txalaparta" features a spoken word sample by the Basque folk musician Txomin Artola from 1978. The four tracks at the heart of the album are beat driven, percussion-heavy, loaded with synths and random horn samples. "Alo?" sounds like Snakefinger tries to get on a Skype call with Serge Gainsbourg. "Cacti All Over My Head" could well be a Ween instrumental with long arching synth lines over a slowed down bossa nova beat. Fever is a frivolous album which bursts with exalted charm and guest musicians. This is not another greetings-from-the-lockdown album, but with the obvious reference in the title it's almost a tongue-in-cheek name about creative obsessions of our times. It's the debut album by the multi-instrumentalist Y Bülbül who has learned his trade working with various interesting artists and bands in London in the past ten years. He is also a passionate crate digger and DJ. His own radio show is unerringly titled "Bülbül's Gemüsement Park", which airs on Netil Radio, a community broadcasting station in Hackney. Bonus fact, Bülbül is the Turkish name for a brown-eared passerine bird, one that's into singing.
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PING 071EP
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Mameen 3 are soFa and Cheb Runner from Brussels. Both versatile players in the rather niche scene of oriental electronic music in the European capital, they only ran into each other at the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda in 2018. They clicked and after a first jam session they immediately launched Mameen 3. Cheb Runner is the young Moroccan producer previously known as Gan Gah, now focusing on giving a modern outfit to various MENA music traditions. soFa is a true digger between all crates (his Pingipung podcast is a gem), as well as the curator behind the highly recommended Elsewhere vinyl compilations, released on labels such as Emotional Response or Music For Dreams. Following the Mameen 3 debut singles on Bongo Joe with excellent spaced out reggae- disco hybrids, Pingipung unearths the Collapse EP featuring two collabs with legendary musicians. "Impostrazione" is a collaboration with Claudia Radulescu and Walter Hus. Radulescu is a Romanian visual artist who has written the lyrics for the song, boldly interpreted by the legendary Walter Hus on the occasion of her exhibition "Hit" in Kanal -- Centre Pompidou Brussels in 2019. Hus gained international reputation as a pianist in the 1980s and works as an avantgarde composer today, among many projects he created an opera for the graphic novel Lint by Chris Ware. Walter Hus performs an effusive vocal style accompanied by his modified Decap organ which became his trademark sound in the past decade. This jam delivered the material which Mameen 3 subsequently transformed into a hypnotic oriental slow-mo banger. "Wireless C" features another music veteran, Rodion GA, who describes himself as "Romania's first one man band." He produced a remarkable electro-prog output in the 1970s and '80s. "Rodion GA sounds like he learned about music from hearing someone describe it in their second language, drunk. It sounds like nothing else: wrong in all the right ways," says The Guardian about his music. His collab with Mameen 3 turns out as a Balearic, space reggae trip, with dreamy vocals by Rodion and solid bass.
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PING 070LP
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F.S.Blumm enters Andi Otto's studio with a whole palette of strings and a mission to create quirky, peaceful soundscapes. The artists intertwine acoustic and electric guitars, harps, electric bass, psaltery, and cello in eleven electronica compositions ranging from neo-classical gravity ("Entangleland") to spaced-out dub jams ("Active Fault Map"). "Yukiyama" evolves in multilayered patterns braided over warm tape-noise. "Kilani" reminds of Rabih Abou Khalil's ECM recordings, with its oriental scale and a beat that counts to seven. The tunes shine most when silence takes over, when the sounds find space to unfold and decay. Far from being trivial ambient lullabies, these compositions burst with detail: Bells rattle, a kalimba resonates, and vintage synths induce their voltage into the acoustic framework. Andi Otto and F.S.Blumm have been musical collaborators in the studio as well as on stages between Berlin and Tokyo for more than a decade now, the heyday being their previous duo album The Bird And White Noise in 2014. On Entangleland, Andi Otto contributes the cello, harp, and synth recordings and takes care of the mixing. Compared to his recent releases on Multi Culti or Shika Shika, these tracks are less dancefloor oriented. The calm of this album is a flourishing environment for Otto to pluck the acoustic cello which we usually hear in a more processed way in his solo works. F.S.Blumm contributes guitar and bass recordings as well as saturated percussion echoes from his self-made spiral box. Blumm is famous for his acoustic solo productions since his early outings on Morr Music or Tomlab. He has also appeared on Pingipung a few times, for example with his album Up Up And Astray (2013) or as a Lee "Scratch" Perry collaborator with the Quasi Dub Development project PING 040CD/LP, 2014). He recorded three duo albums together with Nils Frahm and is a member of the mighty Jeff Özdemir & Friends collective in Berlin. Entangleland sees the two artists weave together a mass of acoustic motifs, synthetic melodies, riddims, and improv jams where the magic emerges from the sum of the parts. "It's not about accompanying a cello theme with the guitar or vice versa," Andi Otto says. "Entangling sound means letting go of hierarchies, that no one is first. Our studio is not a control room, it's a place of imagination where we take things apart and make things whole."
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PING 069LP
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Vermonische Melodien is a collection of compositions by DJ-producer M.RUX, made with old Vermona machines from Eastern Germany. The nine electronica tracks can't conceal their influences from Exotica records of the 1960s as well as their fondness for vintage music technology. You hear voices singing lullabies ("Magische Time"), mumbling chopped-up syllables ("Seelnatrax"), or reciting a Shakespeare quote ("Bakelit") - are they real? Yes! But they are mostly generated by the world's first speech synthesis hardware, the IBM 704 from 1954, and processed into off-key melodic beauty with vocoders. "I've always been curious about musical visions from the 1970s", says M.RUX about his inspiration for Vermonische Melodien. "Those nifty Vermona machines can today be seen as future machines from the 1970s. They seem almost mystical to me. Like relics from an epoch long ago... and I wanted to find out how music from that time could have sounded." On the album M.RUX uses, above all, equipment by Vermona, a brand from Eastern Germany manufacturing electronic musical instruments until 1990. The drum machine Vermona ER-9 (1976) was the first instrument M.RUX ever possessed. It forms the rhythmical backbone of his studio on this record. The melodies on the other hand have mainly been played on a Vermona Formation-1, a suitcase synthesizer from 1980. Although these two machines are joined by countless other instruments and effect units, their particular soft sound is present in every single moment of this soothing album. "I also take a deep bow to the late Reinhard 'Lacky' Lakomy", M.RUX adds. "His releases were the first electronic instrumental records on the Amiga label which has been a huge influence for my work in general and this record in particular." M.RUX has appeared as a solo producer with his In the Hold EP (2016) on his own YNFND imprint. Before that he had become famous for his edits which gently transform songs by Nina Simone, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Zé, and many more into slow, dancefloor-ready gems. Pingipung present this first full-length album by M.RUX. He is not only a talented multi-instrumentalist and original producer but also a skillful remixer -- as he has shown twice to the Pingipung audience with his touches on Umeko Ando's Ainu folklore songs.
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PING 068LP
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Odd Okoddo is a Kenyan/German duo consisting of Olith Ratego and Sven Kacirek. The two artists met in Kenya, around 2009, when Sven Kacirek was recording his Kenya Sessions (PING 020CD, 2011), an album that put Kacirek on the map of outernational producers. It was reviewed as a "World Music 2.0" (de:bug magazine), whose "fascination endures" (The Wire). Olith Ratego also made an appearance on the Kenya Sessions, on the track "Too Good To Be True". The duo formed the project Odd Okoddo in 2018, with the two musicians joining their various talents which dovetail in perfection. Ratego writes the lyrics and vocal melodies while Kacirek composes, records and produces the arrangements of all nine songs on Auma. They create a colorful, dynamic sound which is defined by both Ratego's enormous vocal compass and range of timbres as well as Kacirek's outstanding skills as a sensitive percussionist. Olith Ratego sings in a musical style called "dodo", which originates from the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya, high in pitch and soulfully expressive. He refers to his music as "dodo blues". His lyrics touch upon the topics of politics, family and of course: love. As a skilled luthier, Ratego builds his instruments himself, like the five-stringed Okodo which lends its name to the project. Sven Kacirek is a multi-instrumentalist who has been commuting between Germany and Kenya for many years now. In the past he has closely collaborated with various international musicians, among them Nils Frahm and Shabaka Hutchings. Kacirek's sound builds upon a powerful bass marimba which is present throughout the album. It sometimes invokes the sound of a tuned 808 kick-drum. He works with Kenyan an arsenal of percussion instruments as well as household objects and found materials. Kacirek has now settled into a signature sound which has been described as "thrilling and dizzyingly inventive" by the Australian magazine, Cyclic Defrost. LP comes with a printed inner sleeve with liner notes by Tabu Osusa from the Nairobi based label, Ketebul, as well as explanations about the song lyrics.
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PING 067EP
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Odd Okoddo is a Kenyan/German duo formed by Olith Ratego and Sven Kacirek. This vinyl single marks their first outing, announcing the album Auma which will be released in Autumn 2019. Ratego performs his immaculate vocals in the musical style called "dodo", which originates from the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. Kacirek is a multi-instrumentalist commuting between Germany and Kenya for many years now. "Okitwoye" is one song from Odd Okoddo's first album Auma. It comes in a multi-layered, ambiguous rhythm between three and four. The remix by Peter Power (Voodoohop collective) amplifies the essence of the song.
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PING 065LP
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2023 repress. Anadol is a psychedelic synth folk project by Gözen Atila, a Turkish sound artist and photographer based in Berlin. Her third album, Uzun Havalar, is based on collective improvisations of middle eastern folk songs called "uzun hava". They turn out as rich, atmospheric synth ballads. A diverse roster of improvising musicians creates their fascinating complexity. Anadol recorded them during extensive sessions in Istanbul. You can hear drummers laughing and playing guitars, composers howling, announcements in French and screams in no language, record collectors playing oscillators, and trumpets through spacious echoes. Anadol represents Gözen Atila's liberation from a rather academic approach to electronic composition which she pursued during her music technology studies in Istanbul. She calls her education the "darkness of serious music" where she first tried to belong, then to break free with the help of lo-fi synth pop. As a producer of radio plays and an expert field recording artist she has developed a distinct sense of timing, editing and sound design. Her Anadol project walks in the footsteps of lone synth experimentalists like Bruce Haack and The Space Lady with their childlike curiosity for electronic sounds, pushing the boundaries of minimal equipment. On Uzun Havalar she translates her experimental background into these floating folk ballads. The album was originally released on tape via Kinship in 2018.
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