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LP
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PI 253LP
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The fourth piece in Varg² and Croatian Amor's ongoing collaboration embraces the novel unions and arrangements of our digital world. Whether thought of as patchwork, medley, or chorus, Body Of Content brings together a long list of accomplices from many places in the world. NikkiH2OP, Vallmo, Charity SsB, Exploited Body, Alberto, Olimpia, CTM, Jeuru, MaS Bye, and LYZZA are brought into a united congregation. An asymmetrical body rises. Body Of Content is made almost entirely as an email collaboration. A product of a year of lockdowns, it can be thought of as a coping mechanism given form, yet it could be heard as proof that meaningful creative collaborations will persist in times of global crisis. These exchanges stood in for movement between continents, countries, and regions, tracing a network that feels uncanny for its playful communication at a distance. As a reflection of the real life of screen life, there's a new kind of "we" that is being intimated with every interaction. It's a frontier that contorts. It's infinitely reciprocal, and the plasticity of assemblages are prized. Fluidity persists, if only because that is all that will. Movement changes with new stitches undone, and all work is play. Across nine tracks, each artist's contribution sums to an album with a strangely luminous hue. Human and uncanny, the delicate foley of virtual worlds is coupled with a palette of vocal treatments that braid the vocal cords to our new platforms of communication. Beginning with 2018's Body Of Water EP, and then following with "Body Of Carbon" and "Body Of Lila," each of Varg² and Croatian Amor's serialized collaborations have brought different aspects of our hyper-compressed present into a spirited frame. Exploited Body's additional production work, including mixing and mastering duties, caps the many-armed exercises of Body Of Content.
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LP
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PI 238LP
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The different seeds that have been planted throughout the life of Croatian Amor come to bloom on All In The Same Breath, affirming an equilibrium that's all its own. Spiraling through the half-light electronics are gentle bumps and breaks that are layered into moments of elevation. A coarse edge remains just an arm's length away, but there is an unmistakable element of celebration throughout the album's ten tracks. As the syncopated terrains ring out, their perpetual rhythmic motions call a medley of human voices that speak in security. They sing to everyone just as they sing to themselves. In the years since the seminal Croatian Amor album Love Means Taking Action (ALT 028CD/PI 180LP, 2016), Loke Rahbek has strode a twofold path. There are the delicate, meditative compositions that he has made with Frederik Valentin; setting acoustic instrumentation against affecting digital treatments, each of their collaborative albums are an exercise in the magnificence of subtle restraint. And with the sharpest of turns you'll find Rahbek's parallel universe of rave-shocked rhythms and kinetic helixes that eddy through genre and tempo with few constraints. Collaborations with Varg²TM have yielded the wildest of this, and remain ongoing, yet the traces were already apparent across much of the previous Croatian Amor album Isa (PI 220LP, 2019) with its treated vocalizations and cascading rhythmic mechanics. All In The Same Breath, arrives as a steady handed synthesis of these divergent instincts. Elaborating the distinct techniques and themes that form the wistful essence of the project, the album's quiet composure is a sign that these familiarities have been set adrift to settle into their own private ecosystem. Small vessels travel in a perfect array. Light following shadows, following light. Every movement a signal, every second is camouflage. All In The Same Breath is perhaps more than anything an invitation to be open to wonder.
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LP
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PI 220LP
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In 2019, Croatian Amor returns with a new album, Isa. Copenhagen's Loke Rahbek works in a wide variety of forms. His prolific rate of activity is best viewed through his and Christian Stadgaard's Posh Isolation label. Of Rahbek's many projects, his most eloquent and gentle is Croatian Amor. 2017's single "Finding People" bloomed from Croatian Amor's previous album, the widely acclaimed Love Means Taking Action (ALT 028CD/PI 180LP). These melancholic transmissions presented a kind of alien pop. For Isa, he has drawn on an impressive list of guests to realize a nauseating narrative of virtual communication and eschatological programming. The album's title invokes a messianic entity, and though it's hard to tell what's imagined or remembered anymore, the play that Croatian Amor is known for feels far more vivid today. "Enhance photo to reveal a picture of Bird caught mid-flight; enhance again, the bird has a human face screaming." Never pessimistic, Croatian Amor circles themes of tragedy and comfort to animate a sense of hope. His accomplices pluck details from his graphic scenes like a searchlight drifting over a starlit surface. Alto Aria, Soho Rezanejad, and Jonnine Standish of HTRK, each contribute vocals across the album, cloaked and kerned on Croatian Amor's inimitable stage. "Eden 1.1" and its accompaniment "Eden 1.2" feature the voices of Frederikke Hoffmeier (Puce Mary) and Yves Tumor, respectively. These are some of album's most delicate pieces, and where one may find respite from the helix of damaged rhythms that eddy across Isa. Familiar faces from Copenhagen are solicited throughout, and perhaps the album's most endearing quality is the space for volatility that all of the collaboration has invited. All the signals and timelines lead everywhere and back. Maybe it's only the myths that get us? The cover of Isa features work by artist Amitai Romm. "Tracing reflections that float in the pool: the water is lost in all images. Two skies hold glass billboards."
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12"
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PI 194EP
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An assembly of choral traces and transmissions, these four new tracks are Croatian Amor's clearest move towards pop. At the same time, this is perhaps the weirdest record yet from Croatian Amor, introducing a complexity previously not seen. From the cut-up, granulated rhythm section and auto-tuned choir of the opener "Sky Walkers", to the duetting ballad of "Finding People" -- featuring additional vocals from new name Khalil -- the record never rests for long. The exploration is soothing, its search a tonic to the swarm of emotion it provokes.
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LP
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PI 192LP
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Remixes of Croatian Amor's most recent album, Love Means Taking Action (ALT 028CD/PI 180LP, 2016), as a one-off limited pressing. Features: Brynje, Age Coin, Why Be, Yen Towers, CTM, Félicia Atkinson, Drew McDowall, KYO, and Health & Safety.
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LP
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PI 119LP
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2016 repress of the 2014 debut album by Croatian Amor, which followed a long row of limited tapes on Posh Isolation. The World runs like a soundtrack on which the actors's voices were never cut from the score, field recordings and synth blends together in a beautiful yet nauseating audio pool - Transit, plastic interior, insomnia, pornography and being alone. Being alone in large groups of people, being alone in thousands of years of civilization, being alone in a lover's bed copulating. Euro magic, bubble-gum industrial, 1989.
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CD
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ALT 028CD
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Multi-faceted Copenhagen-based artist Loke Rahbek presents Love Means Taking Action under his alias Croatian Amor. It is the first full-length Croatian Amor recording since 2014's The Wild Palms, a release that was made available on cassette for a single month, and only in exchange for a nude self-portrait. Since the inception of the project, Croatian Amor has dealt with a mixture of fiction and reality, often using real events and places as a platform for a largely fictional play. Where there is playfulness, there is revelation. On Love Means Taking Action - without a doubt the project's strongest work to date - the effect of the perpetual collaging of information is keenly felt. Short, unnerving moments appear with slick familiarity. Voices repeat and quietly glitch through tonal shifts. Listeners are ushered along by the shuddering effect of the samples and field recordings on the pristine synthesis, with motifs and plot lines presented as quickly as they disintegrate. Listeners are enticed to find comfort here but are not guided through a space as with much ambient music. The textures and terrains that Love Means Taking Action presents form an array of scenarios with what at times feels like a punishing degree of indifference to the listener. Listeners are bluntly shown snippets of impassioned architectures. It is a process that draws the listener in through alienation.
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LP
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PI 180LP
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LP version. Multi-faceted Copenhagen-based artist Loke Rahbek presents Love Means Taking Action under his alias Croatian Amor. It is the first full-length Croatian Amor recording since 2014's The Wild Palms, a release that was made available on cassette for a single month, and only in exchange for a nude self-portrait. Since the inception of the project, Croatian Amor has dealt with a mixture of fiction and reality, often using real events and places as a platform for a largely fictional play. Where there is playfulness, there is revelation. On Love Means Taking Action - without a doubt the project's strongest work to date - the effect of the perpetual collaging of information is keenly felt. Short, unnerving moments appear with slick familiarity. Voices repeat and quietly glitch through tonal shifts. Listeners are ushered along by the shuddering effect of the samples and field recordings on the pristine synthesis, with motifs and plot lines presented as quickly as they disintegrate. Listeners are enticed to find comfort here but are not guided through a space as with much ambient music. The textures and terrains that Love Means Taking Action presents form an array of scenarios with what at times feels like a punishing degree of indifference to the listener. Listeners are bluntly shown snippets of impassioned architectures. It is a process that draws the listener in through alienation.
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