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viewing 1 To 4 of 4 items
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TTR 022LP
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The central theme of Steady is perseverance. Each track is based on a personal story or a fleeting encounter with people these past few years, from close friends to total strangers, either at home or on night shift commutes. People navigating their own hardships, almost giving up but always struggling through. More broadly, it's about multiplicity, and contradiction. These central figures displaying hope and determination within a city of development and neglect, uniformity and chaos -- an unfiltered representation of a city with all its jagged edges, darkness, and shards of light. It's broken and disheveled, but never not beautiful, just like the people in it. Musically, Steady continues where Bleach (Hyperdawn's debut album) (THEMTHERE 013LP, 2019) left off -- a sonic language of glitch, decaying tape and analogue distortion through which hints of RnB and soulful ballads bleed through. With a greater emphasis on beats, albeit lopsided on pitch-shifted tape loops, Steady feels more self-assured, more confident, more recognizable. At the same time, it's never stable or predictable -- choruses break down early, harmonies bend into beating microtones, tracks emerge before others have finished. The symphonic scope of Bleach is still retained in Steady though. This is music of motivic development, of micro and macro form, of meticulous refining. The work of two classically trained composers, the album's chaos is heavily considered and carefully shaped. Hours of improvisation sessions have since been painstakingly refined into ten distilled tracks, owing to Steady's three-year gestation.
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LP
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THEMTHERE 012LP
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Bunny Hoova is the producer otherwise known as D.Loman. 2019 marks the release of the auspicious debut album. Originally from Rotterdam now residing in Manchester, Bunny Hoova has found a comfortable home amidst the city's burgeoning music scene. Three years in the making, Longing connects her movements from music school in Amsterdam to recent ventures across Lancashire through to her new found home in the rainy city. Anchored around a slurred, soulful vocal, the 13 tracks interweave treated samples and guitars with spare, low key drums; all glued together by Hoova's imaginative production. Striking her own wavy line between garage art-pop and ramshackle soul. Bunny Hoova's witty songcraft characterizes the album. Demonstrating a distinct duality in style, as half of the album rushes with punk energy, the other leans with an ambient, smoked-out flex. Lyrically self-assured and not ashamed to be vulnerable, Longing wrestles with various states of realization as online relationships build and crash, emotions blur and trust is drawn into question. The arrangements are packed with surprises. Longing jukes and jolts, consistently pulling the rug out and offering another fine moment of pop seduction. Catchier moments are curbed by subtle, off-kilter production techniques avoiding any fashionable convention. Obscure samples and found-sound smatterings add texture for the more experimental souls. Limited edition blue vinyl.
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LP
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THEMTHERE 013LP
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Hyperdawn are Salford-based experimentalists Michael Cutting and Vitalija Glovackyte. Off the back of their prolific individual projects, ranging from multimedia performances to studio releases, orchestral works to solo live sets, the duo has steadily developed a distinctive voice as Hyperdawn, forging modified keyboards, homemade instruments, and reel-to-reel tape recorders. Their debut album, Bleach, takes their physical, process-based aesthetic with imperfections of warped tape and faltering hardware and pushes it towards the boundaries of pop music. Hints of verse-chorus structures are now apparent with the use of Vitalija's voice as an essential introduction, giving the duo's rough grained instrumentals a new level of poignancy. While the reel to reel machines provide the album's characteristic sound, this isn't music for the analog purist. Digital processes have their place here, countering the warmth of valve amplifiers with glitchy pitch-bending effects, matching un-quantized tape loops with high frame-rate playback. Bleach displays a delicate balance between new and old, skeletal and substantial, rigor and recklessness. The result is a broken pop music borne out of hours of improvisations and experimentation that feels at once completely foreign and entirely familiar. Ambiguous textures and structures are contextualized by Vitalija's confident vocal delivery. Beats are left off-kilter, intonation is approximate, while clicks and pops protrude over decaying instrumentals, suggesting music that is already disintegrating in time.
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LP
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THEMTHERE 009LP
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Organ swells interact with angular tones and propulsive pulses throughout, as the duo Le Fruit Vert cast intricate, vocal-led narratives that develop into a unique form of unearthly baroque-pop experimentalism. Passiflore reflects two artists engaged in a dynamic synergy with a singular vision and a deep understanding of their craft. Originally released in 2013 on cassette via Montreal based label Los Discos Enfantasme, Passiflore raised intrigue as an album steeped in sedated vocals, layered electronics, and field recordings. Portrayed as the "priestesses of melancholy", Andrea-Jane Cornell and Marie-Douce St-Jacques have since released their follow-up record Paon Perdu through three:four records (2017). Passiflore was recorded at home in Montreal, Canada between January and May of 2013. The new edition has been remastered for vinyl at Grey Market Mastering by Harris Newman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt Zion). "Honourary enchantresses-de-Montreal, Andrea-Jane Cornell et Marie-Douce St-Jacques, raise our gaping eyes to a misted sonic eclipse while slowly uncloaking their sounds of the witching hour at the pace and shade of pitch itself." --Nick Schofield, Weird Canada
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