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SP 034LTD-CD
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Nothing left but silence is Erik K. Skodvin's third solo album for Sonic Pieces and his most quiet to date. Subtitled as "Musical improvisations and quiet collages from the subconscious," Skodvin reduces his instruments to guitar, reverb and amp -- and creates a skeleton of eight hypnotic ragas that meanders in an eternal loop between ephemeral and singular. Only on the horizon it's possible to sense that Skodvin has also touched the neoclassical terrain in earlier productions -- on Nothing left but silence, however, he acts as a twilight player who is not afraid of the coldness of endless space and who knows how to subjugate the shadowiness of the visible world. Carried by the noise of the amp and the occasional click of the effects pedals, a monolithic, reduced blues emerges, whose mediumistic quality nevertheless reveals that Skodvin's music always comes from the body -- and as such is always searching for space. A space that -- in this case -- blends the vastness of the Norwegian steppe with the brittleness of American wasteland (as if Deathprod and Loren Connors were one and the same person), creating a persistent state between deceleration and absence of presence -- that leads Skodvin ever closer to the inner essence of sound. Initially recorded at Saal 3, Funkhaus, Berlin by Nils Frahm in 2015, the album has itself been subjected to silence as a forgotten relic, re-found and now released in a time where it might connect more with the contemporary state of mind. Welcome to the entrance to the periphery. CD version comes in edition of 150 copies, handmade textile artwork.
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SP 034LTD-LP
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LP version. LP version comes in edition of 300 copies, handmade textile artwork, printed inner sleeve; includes download code. Nothing left but silence is Erik K. Skodvin's third solo album for Sonic Pieces and his most quiet to date. Subtitled as "Musical improvisations and quiet collages from the subconscious," Skodvin reduces his instruments to guitar, reverb and amp -- and creates a skeleton of eight hypnotic ragas that meanders in an eternal loop between ephemeral and singular. Only on the horizon it's possible to sense that Skodvin has also touched the neoclassical terrain in earlier productions -- on Nothing left but silence, however, he acts as a twilight player who is not afraid of the coldness of endless space and who knows how to subjugate the shadowiness of the visible world. Carried by the noise of the amp and the occasional click of the effects pedals, a monolithic, reduced blues emerges, whose mediumistic quality nevertheless reveals that Skodvin's music always comes from the body -- and as such is always searching for space. A space that -- in this case -- blends the vastness of the Norwegian steppe with the brittleness of American wasteland (as if Deathprod and Loren Connors were one and the same person), creating a persistent state between deceleration and absence of presence -- that leads Skodvin ever closer to the inner essence of sound. Initially recorded at Saal 3, Funkhaus, Berlin by Nils Frahm in 2015, the album has itself been subjected to silence as a forgotten relic, re-found and now released in a time where it might connect more with the contemporary state of mind. Welcome to the entrance to the periphery. CD version comes in edition of 150 copies, handmade textile artwork.
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MIA 054LP
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Erik K Skodvin's feature-length score to Thomas Roth's thriller Schächten feels like the epitome of all his musical projects, conjuring a dark cinematic trip through 1960s post-WWII Vienna in a film that touches on topics such as law, justice, and revenge. Releasing a soundtrack as a stand-alone album can be challenging; and Schächten is by no means a typical listening experience. The record contains 24 more or less short pieces evolving through dramatic movements, underlaying menace and deep emotive scenes. One thing that stands out is the linear atmosphere throughout the story which creates a wholeness that keeps your attention to the very end. Set in wintery Austrian landscapes in dimly saturated colors, the film's dramatic events with dark political undertones feels like a perfect situation for Skodvin's atmospheric collages -- perhaps sounding closer than ever to his early works as Svarte Greiner or Deaf Center. Cello, violin, piano, analog synth, and plenty of hardly recognizable instrumentation come together in a record that feels very organic in its subdued tones. The score also features percussion by Andrea Belfi as well as a Chopin piano interpretation by Kelly Wyse to the bizarrely schizophrenic piece "Judenfreund". With the contemporary world sliding into darkness again, listening to the soundtrack feels like coming to terms with one's own anxieties -- something that in the end comes through as a cleansing experience. As quoted in the film "Everyone is their own devil. And we make this world our hell." Short synopsis: "Vienna 1960s -- the young Jewish business man Victor has to witness how the prosecution of a Nazi crime against his family fails. The political and legal system is still virtually run by former Nazis with large parts of society being entangled in the past. When Victor also loses his grief ridden father and his girlfriend's family opposes their relationship and his identity, Victor begins to lose faith in formal justice and takes matters in his own hands." Includes printed inner sleeve; includes download code; edition of 300.
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MIA 049LP
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"You know, hyenas aren't the bad ones... These days it's humans you should fear." Erik K Skodvin's first solo film score evokes otherworldly dreamscapes that capture the atmosphere of the film Anbessa (2019), shot in Ethiopia by director Mo Scarpelli. As a "creative" documentary the film follows Asalif, a 10-year-old imaginative boy caught between the ancient and the new, navigating modernization on his own terms. Asalif tries to make sense of things while living in a shed on the outskirts of Addis Ababa with his mom. A place where capitalism and "progress" is closing in on all fronts, and threatening their lifestyle. By becoming a lion (anbessa) he can fight back against the forces outside of his control. Pursuing escapism and moments in sound is something Skodvin has been dedicating his life to the last 20 years, with his various projects: Svarte Greiner, Deaf Center, Miasmah. Often in the darker, shadowy corners of sound, but never without glimpses of light and humanity. Anbessa can at first seem like an unlikely film to be his first venture into solo film scoring, and second in total, after his collaborative score with Raúl Pastor Medall for Birgitte Stæremose's thriller Darling (2017). But somehow, the playful, dreamy character of Asalif fits perfectly with his sound. The choice was made to mix field recordings from the film with the music, which creates a type of audio cinema that fully captures the atmosphere of Asalif's world: screaming hyenas, birds, animals, nature, Asalif repairing found electronic devices, talking and singing, seamlessly blend in with bowed guitars, electro-acoustic instruments, trumpets, long pipes, and clay drums, played by Skodvin and by Volcano The Bear's Aaron Moore. The result is an affecting journey. An escape into something hopeful. For the LP edition, the score is set to one vinyl side, while the other side has a series of lone field recordings with locked grooves that creates an eerie further immersion into the world of Asalif. A photo/screenshot from the film comes with the vinyl. Full-tone artwork. B-side contains exclusive field recordings and locked grooves. Includes insert; includes download code; edition of 500.
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SONIC 020CD
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Erik K. Skodvin (Deaf Center, Svarte Greiner) finalizes his nocturnal Americana-inspired pair of albums with Flame, the follow-up to 2010's Flare. The embers of Flare smolder patiently, searching to ignite the live branch that will grow into Flame. Within minutes, everything in your surroundings changes, everything you thought it would be, it is not. Building on Skodvin's past palette of sound with a quiet intensity, the album moves you further along film-noir backyards and oceanside pathways. On occasion, reverberating synths and rolling percussive moments open up the melancholic drift of the otherwise fairly dusty-sounding record. Whereas Flare transformed Skodvin's earlier projects, its 2014 companion sustains the newfound life into quietly psychedelic forms. Erik K. Skodvin is a master of enveloping the listener into a world that is both monumental and suspenseful. Flame does so by subtly patching together musical influences from all over the map, centered around a heap of instrumentation. He is also aided by Anne Müller and Mika Posen on strings and Gareth Davis on clarinet. While his Svarte Greiner albums might dwell on minimal atmospheric darkness, Flame is awash in its own destructive concept of light.
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