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viewing 1 To 24 of 24 items
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AVM 079LP
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Negore is the second album by the Kenya-based duo Odd Odokko. After their debut Auma (PING 068LP) saw percussionist Sven Kacirek work with pre-existing recordings of singer and instrument builder Olith Ratego, the two opted for a similar approach for the ten pieces to preserve the expressiveness of the latter's performance. Further contributions by sound artist KMRU and Angel Bat Dawid on bass clarinet expand the duo's sonic palette which draws on the dodo music of the Luo people and enriches it with percussive, melodic, and occasionally electronic means. The record's title translates to "petroleum lamp," signifying the transition from day to night -- when the time has come to dance. In this decidedly joyful spirit, Negore is dedicated to transitions and venturing into the future. Ratego's interpretation of the folk tradition is expressly contemporary, while Kacirek uses a rich variety of avant-garde and advanced electronic music techniques to propel it even further. Preceded by their first tour since the world first came to a grinding halt in early 2020, Negore marks a new beginning, but remains faithful to the unconventional working process of the two and the continuously surprising results it yields. With the exception of the track "Ochuya," for which Kacirek wrote a sketch in advance for Ratego to work with, the entire album is based on recordings of the singer that were made in a Nairobi studio. Accompanied by the sound of his odokko, a lyre that Ratego built inspired on the Luo instrument nyatiti, his highly expressive -- boundlessly anthemic in one moment, introspective and almost mournful in the other -- vocal performance is subtly accentuated and complemented by Kacirek on marimba, vibraphone, prepared piano percussion, drums or even programmed rhythms. The songs on Negore were written in Ratego's native Luo language and deal with subjects such as love, destiny, and perseverance. It serves as an introduction to his world, faith, and life in a rural community near Lake Victoria. It's hyper-specific and universal at the same time, much like the music that forms its foundation.
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AVM 077LP
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HJirok is a mythical figure, conceived as a fictional character by Iranian-born Kurdish singer and artist Hani Mojahedy. Together with versatile music producer Andi Toma of Mouse On Mars, she combined a variety of sounds collected during their joint travels to Iraqi Kurdistan and elsewhere with heavily processed recordings of Sufi drum rhythms and setar melodies. The result is a driving, dubbed-out, and deeply intricate soundscape that perfectly sets the stage for Mojahedy's extended, unconventional vocal techniques and polyglot lyrics. Both informed by tradition and rigorously forward-looking, Hjirok (with a lowercase J) is at once a profoundly personal album and a universal utopian promise. As a ghost from the past, HJirok draws on Mojtahedy's memories to mould a new future out of them. The foundation for Hjirok was laid in the city of Erbil in the Kurdish part of Iraq. During one of their stays in the region, Mojahedy and Toma recorded the three percussionists Hadi Alizadeh, Jawad Salkhordeh, and Serdar Saydan as well as setar player Ali Choolaei from Motahedy's backing band while they were playing the rhythms and notes that she had grown up with in the house of her grandfather in the Iranian city of Sanandaj. Her memories of that place revolve around hypnotic Sufi music, dervishes in deep trance, and ecstatic singing. Much like this music seemed to open a portal to other dimensions, the inhabitants of the house lived in a sort of alternative reality: It provided them with a hideaway from political circumstances. What the album conjures up from Mojahedy's memory is not only a very specific place during a unique time in history as experienced by a single person. It is also a metaphorical home open to anyone who wishes to enter -- promise of a better, more egalitarian future for everyone. Hence, HJirok will bring it on tour, presenting the material as an audio-visual live show that makes use of the photo and video material that Mojahedy and Toma have collected during their travels through Kurdistan.
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AVM 076LP
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Cloud Management is a project concerned with processes and progress. Featuring Love-Songs members Thomas Korf and Sebastian Kokus and the prolific Ulf Schütte, the Hamburg-based trio has tirelessly expanded upon its sound and extended its musical style. After 2022's S/T documented the results of their first jam sessions as a newly-founded group, V.A. started even more modestly and became an even bigger undertaking. Originally conceived as a small one-off release, it grew into a full record which sees the group embracing dub music, collaborating with Peaking Lights' Aaron Coyes and inviting other artists (No UFO's, Seekers International, Coco Em) who reworked select tracks in true dub style. V.A. is marked by inconsistency, openness, and heterogeneity in the best sense of those words: ever-changing, constantly surprising and consistently in motion. In calling it V.A., they paid tribute to their somewhat loose, but conceptually consistent concept of giving various artists full creative license over their own work. Neither a true album in the strict sense of the world nor just a compilation, V.A. is actually the essential Cloud Management record: ever-changing, constantly surprising, consistently in motion.
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AVM 075LP
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Teichmann & Söhne's Flows is not so much the result of a collaborative process as it is a process in itself. Over the course of nine pieces, Gebrüder Teichmann -- Andi and Hannes -- and their father Uli repeatedly find common ground between the very different musical styles, sound aesthetics, and subcultural codes they have internalized throughout their lives. The source material out of which the album evolved was culled from several recordings of rehearsal sessions in preparation for the trio's concerts that took place between the years 2012 and 2022. The three added only a few overdubs to those recordings but edited them rigorously to both preserve and transform the spirit of their unlikely collaboration. The combination of Uli's background as a versatile jazz artist and multi-instrumentalist with his sons' penchant for dub techniques, modular synthesis, and live sampling as well as their interest in electronic dance music take on ever-different shapes. Flows, released on the occasion of Uli's 80th birthday, is as joyful, lively and free-spirited as its makers. The cover artwork is a piece created by Lu, Andi and Hannes' mother, who died in 2016 and to whom the album is dedicated.
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AVM 074LP
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Leipzig-based musician, engineer, and producer Friedrich Brückner has, despite his youthfulness, been a decisive figure in the Leipzig music scene for literal decades, being involved, in one way or another, in many, if not most notable releases coming out of the city. Having received a classical musical education, Brückner most recently figured as part of the German-American band White Wine, playing the bassoon and bass, but has also, as either musician, producer or sound designer, toured internationally with the likes of Yoko Ono, Get Well Soon, Modeselektor, or Dear Reader. For a few years now, Brückner has been working on his solo debut, which now comes in the form of his remarkable Polyism, on Altin Village & Mine. On it, Brückner puts his considerable musical chops to use, in the service of a rollercoaster of an album that truly eschews categorization, being, as its title suggests, a work of being multiform. While the sound takes wide ranging cues from jazz, new age, dub, electronics to post punk, Brückner's compositions never feel accidental in the slightest. Instead, they share a distinctive sense of dramaturgy, a pronounced attention to sonic texture, and a sense of purpose both within the individual pieces as well as in the context of the album as a whole. The result is an LP that is astonishingly coherent, considering the multitude of means it employs. On Polyism, Brückner also enlists a veritable all-star cast of guest performances, ranging from his parents Isabell and Bernd Brückner, both professional musicians, on saxophone, clarinet, and flute, Martin Wenk (Calexico) on trumpet, to Hendrik Otremba (Messer) and Brückner's four-year-old daughter Rosa both on vocals, to name but a few. Each lend their own notes to Polyism, a work of what it means to live, that is, to be many.
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AVM 072LP
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The debut of Hamburg trio Cloud Management stages the meeting of three proven exceptional figures: Thomas Korf and Sebastian Kokus have been responsible for some stunning leftfield neo-kraut releases with their band Love-Songs in recent years; Ulf Schütte has been one of the most productive, and innovative protagonists of experimental electronic music in Germany for many years (see Datashock, Phantom Horse, or his collaboration with G. Steenkiste/Hellvete on Umor Rex, for example). Following Love-Songs' highly acclaimed collaboration with Schütte, Spannende Musik, released in 2021 (BB 383CD/LP), the formation of Cloud Management as a group in its own right marks a new beginning, which is celebrated with the long player on Altin Village & Mine. The album is characterized by a dense texture of repetitions in which (modular) synthesizers and bass go head-to-head. It is on this foundation that the formal grammar of the album develops over its nearly 45-minute running time, organized along precise interventions into the hypnotic pulse: What is recognizable as echoes of 1960s/70s minimalism or Cluster functions on Cloud Management not in the sense that the sequences or the sequencers are left to themselves, but as highly concentrated, microscopic work on repetition. This virtuosic arrangements, groove-based and even danceable density of the seven pieces never sounds strained or as an end in itself, but floating, cloud-like. The polyrhythmic workouts are at all times in the service of a refreshing expanse that opens up from the sonic saturation and is far removed from the formulaic box-checking often associated with the attribute "kosmisch". Cloud Management, thus, marks not an exercise in the traditions of a musical past, but a distinctive position within contemporary electronic music. All songs are written, recorded and produced by Ulf Schütte, Thomas Korf, and Sebastian Kokus. Mastered by Fritz Brückner at Haunted Haus. Sleeve design by TEOTH. Includes printed inner sleeve.
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AVM 071LP
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The duo met on a rainy day in Tilburg (NL) while working for a dance project -- they came down from very different roads. Gao Fhunyue, a stage director-performer-musician chameleon, works alone or collaborate with Annalena Fröhlich (Robinrobin, Just Another Woman In Space), Thom Luz, Unplush, Peeping Tom, Dorit Chrysler, Ko Murobushi, Damien Jalet, The Scottish Dance Theatre, Bern Ballett, for a most colorful variety of venues in Europe. She is a member of the music association Bongo Joe (Switzerland). Sven Kacirek, an established musician living between Hamburg and Nairobi, who released several records on Honest Jon's and Bureau B and collaborated with several artists like Shabaka Hutchings, Ogoya Nengo, Marc Ribot, John McEntire, Sofia Jernberg, Nils Frahm, Hauschka, F.S. Blumm, and Stefan Schneider. Their encounter quickly revealed that both their musical sensitivity and their instruments (marimbas, drums, percussions, electronics, theremin, Buchla synthesizer, piano) matched stunningly, and that they had to play together. After a short while of rocky life adventures and theater projects in which they collaborated, their off rehearsal sessions would become a lively necessity. The wish to give birth to a project entirely their own, grew so strong that they locked themselves in Sven's studio at Jaffestrasse in Hamburg, and started working on the debut of their duet. They present and share with you their labor of love, in hope that it will be good to your heart. Includes printed inner sleeve and download code.
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AVM 073LP
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The artistic oeuvre of Berlin-based Sonja Deffner is as extensive and diverse as its contexts are high-profile: If the classically trained musician could in recent years be heard as a member of the groups Jason & Theodor, Die Heiterkeit, Globus, and PTTRNS, as part of Christiane Rösinger's touring band, or as a recording musician on Andreas Spechtl's (Ja, Panik) albums, she has at the same time produced an acclaimed graphic work, video works and made her theater debut. Under the name Kalme, Deffner now presents her solo debut Neue Sprache, which feels like a culmination: Deffner doesn't need much space to present an artistic position of spectacular incisiveness and maturity. The formal language of Kalme's debut evolves with reference to experimental pop and R&B, but equally informed by ambient electronics or dub techno. Analog and digital sound synthesis meet Deffner's characteristic use of field recordings, acoustic instrumentation (clarinet, percussion) meets musical post-production, sampling meets expressive synthesizer playing. At the center of the album, however, are Deffner's remarkable lyrics, written in German for the first time. Deffner creates a language of stark, emotional poignancy that is as conspiratorial as it is precise. The themes of the tracks develop between the poles of movement and stagnation, understood as motifs of biographical as well as musical ways of being or relating. In this forcefield, personal and political considerations coincide again and again, for example when Deffner reflects on her experiences with the social conditioning of femininity and motherhood. The album title Neue Sprache (New Language), then, describes a search for forms of articulation of solidarization: language as a tool of a new relationship to the world that allows testimony to individual experience without reproducing categories of repression. In this way, Kalme's debut simultaneously achieves a radical intimacy, just as, on the other hand, the confrontation of language and sound repeatedly opens up fissures that deny any semblance of comfort. Neue Sprache does not stop at this modernist gesture, however, but unquestionably takes a stand. That's what Kalme's Neue Sprache ultimately is: the taking of a position. A statement.
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AVM 069CD
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Philipp Hülsenbeck and Michael Schönheit entered their collaborative space, the Great Hall of Gewandhaus Leipzig, in spring 2019, in order to explore the sonic potential of the Schuke organ juxtaposed with unrestrained electronic synthesis and otherworldly digital processing. With ease, clarity and fruitful respect towards the others craft, they composed Reaping From The Conflux, an hour-long work of music, condensed in a synergy of opposing musical aesthetics, teetering between acoustic instrumentation and digital manipulation -- a push-and-pull between discordance and tranquility. Intermingling the organic with the inorganic in an unbiased exchange, Hülsenbeck and Schönheit created a dense work shifting from somber to celestial, leaving enough space in the room to allow sound to breathe. In order to interweave digital and material realms, Hülsenbeck's software synthesizers blasting into the concert hall were given the same attention as the 6.845 pipes making up the gigantic organ, an instrument often referred to as the queen of instruments. The sharp, synth-driven Peak Independence is counterpointed by the serenity that inhabits the repeating Basso Ostinato in Entities as well as Hülsenbeck's piano playing on Now Smile. The latter two pieces feature contributions by Schönheit's wife Katharina Dargel (Gewandhausorchester Leipzig) on viola, Tsepo Kolitsoe Pooe (The Miagi Orchestra, The String Archestra) on cello, and Johannes Weber (Unguarded, Jungstötter) on double bass. After his studies in conducting, piano and organ, Michael Schönheit started his first organist position in 1985, just one year before being appointed Gewandhausorganist in Leipzig in 1986. In this position he assumes artistic responsibility for the Gewandhaus organ concerts and thematic cycles, as well as collaborating with members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Michael Schönheit has been Artistic Director of the Merseburg Organ Festival since 1994, assuming the additional role of Merseburg Cathedral Organist in 1996. He is in great demand as soloist the world over, appearing across Europe, the USA and Japan. He has performed as soloist with orchestras such as the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Munich Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic, to name but a few. Philipp Hülsenbeck started his musical career as part of the experimental pop outfit Sizarr. After the band went on hiatus in 2017, he started focusing on his solo works. Since 2017, he has been working with Fabian Altstötter as part of his project Jungstötter. Reaping From The Conflux was commissioned by Gewandhaus Leipzig in 2019 as part of their collaborative program Two Play To Play.
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AVM 069LP
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Double LP version. Philipp Hülsenbeck and Michael Schönheit entered their collaborative space, the Great Hall of Gewandhaus Leipzig, in spring 2019, in order to explore the sonic potential of the Schuke organ juxtaposed with unrestrained electronic synthesis and otherworldly digital processing. With ease, clarity and fruitful respect towards the others craft, they composed Reaping From The Conflux, an hour-long work of music, condensed in a synergy of opposing musical aesthetics, teetering between acoustic instrumentation and digital manipulation -- a push-and-pull between discordance and tranquility. Intermingling the organic with the inorganic in an unbiased exchange, Hülsenbeck and Schönheit created a dense work shifting from somber to celestial, leaving enough space in the room to allow sound to breathe. In order to interweave digital and material realms, Hülsenbeck's software synthesizers blasting into the concert hall were given the same attention as the 6.845 pipes making up the gigantic organ, an instrument often referred to as the queen of instruments. The sharp, synth-driven Peak Independence is counterpointed by the serenity that inhabits the repeating Basso Ostinato in Entities as well as Hülsenbeck's piano playing on Now Smile. The latter two pieces feature contributions by Schönheit's wife Katharina Dargel (Gewandhausorchester Leipzig) on viola, Tsepo Kolitsoe Pooe (The Miagi Orchestra, The String Archestra) on cello, and Johannes Weber (Unguarded, Jungstötter) on double bass. After his studies in conducting, piano and organ, Michael Schönheit started his first organist position in 1985, just one year before being appointed Gewandhausorganist in Leipzig in 1986. In this position he assumes artistic responsibility for the Gewandhaus organ concerts and thematic cycles, as well as collaborating with members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Michael Schönheit has been Artistic Director of the Merseburg Organ Festival since 1994, assuming the additional role of Merseburg Cathedral Organist in 1996. He is in great demand as soloist the world over, appearing across Europe, the USA and Japan. He has performed as soloist with orchestras such as the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, Munich Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic, to name but a few. Philipp Hülsenbeck started his musical career as part of the experimental pop outfit Sizarr. After the band went on hiatus in 2017, he started focusing on his solo works. Since 2017, he has been working with Fabian Altstötter as part of his project Jungstötter. Reaping From The Conflux was commissioned by Gewandhaus Leipzig in 2019 as part of their collaborative program Two Play To Play.
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AVM 067LP
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LP version; includes download. At first glance, Garden Of Stone, the inaugural solo record by P. A. Hülsenbeck, seems to ripple serpentine. Scales over flesh topple softly as a snake piles high in the dim. Garden Of Stone is a molt, a shedding of one old thing to reveal something new. But instead of the shirking off of some glistening scaled skin, the record's nine pieces shed the raw human experience and from its depths rises Hülsenbeck. His voice, like his image on the album cover, is hidden under each piece. He uses it as an instrument that drifts in from somewhere deep, dark, and below. In front, around, above, and underneath swim guitar, synthesizer, koto, saxophone, trumpet, horn, drums, and bass to provide a soft, lush foundation. From somewhere distant, each note carries the scent of pine, forgotten cabins, and damp but breezy oceans. Each piece in this album reminisces of a well-laid plot, they swell to retreat, ebb to flow and just as distortion begins to drift in, swift wind carries the melody away. This music is the outcome of the search for sound, a polyphonic reflection of the music itself. It moves in the darkness and dances in the open; exposed and forever drifting. When after Hülsenbeck's first band Sizarr ceased to exist, the musician radicalized his language under the Doomhound moniker. After one year of touring he shed his electronic hide to reveal something gentle and new. Hülsenbeck's new album dances the way flesh might, whether it be by serpent or some other body. Beginning in Leipzig, P. A. became engulfed in techniques that explore relationships between body and mind through exercises in expressive movement improvisation. In other words, he began to dance. Through those physical techniques, he found the philosophy that from now on determines his approach: turn the inside out without question and give it freely to the outside world. A process in which Hülsenbeck routinely finds himself practicing in the distinctive dreamland of Garden Of Stone. While "Anima", "Säule" and "Vessel" are instrumental, the other six pieces on "Garden Of Stone" tell stories that conjure up a person who blossoms in the ether behind; Hülsenbeck is truly himself. The record was produced by Hülsenbeck with his friend Tim Roth (Drangsal). It was recorded by Joe Haege and Fritz Brückner (White Wine), and also features Johannes Döpping (drums), Johanne Weber (basses), and Max Kraft (horn/trumpet).
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AVM 067CD
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At first glance, Garden Of Stone, the inaugural solo record by P. A. Hülsenbeck, seems to ripple serpentine. Scales over flesh topple softly as a snake piles high in the dim. Garden Of Stone is a molt, a shedding of one old thing to reveal something new. But instead of the shirking off of some glistening scaled skin, the record's nine pieces shed the raw human experience and from its depths rises Hülsenbeck. His voice, like his image on the album cover, is hidden under each piece. He uses it as an instrument that drifts in from somewhere deep, dark, and below. In front, around, above, and underneath swim guitar, synthesizer, koto, saxophone, trumpet, horn, drums, and bass to provide a soft, lush foundation. From somewhere distant, each note carries the scent of pine, forgotten cabins, and damp but breezy oceans. Each piece in this album reminisces of a well-laid plot, they swell to retreat, ebb to flow and just as distortion begins to drift in, swift wind carries the melody away. This music is the outcome of the search for sound, a polyphonic reflection of the music itself. It moves in the darkness and dances in the open; exposed and forever drifting. When after Hülsenbeck's first band Sizarr ceased to exist, the musician radicalized his language under the Doomhound moniker. After one year of touring he shed his electronic hide to reveal something gentle and new. Hülsenbeck's new album dances the way flesh might, whether it be by serpent or some other body. Beginning in Leipzig, P. A. became engulfed in techniques that explore relationships between body and mind through exercises in expressive movement improvisation. In other words, he began to dance. Through those physical techniques, he found the philosophy that from now on determines his approach: turn the inside out without question and give it freely to the outside world. A process in which Hülsenbeck routinely finds himself practicing in the distinctive dreamland of Garden Of Stone. While "Anima", "Säule" and "Vessel" are instrumental, the other six pieces on "Garden Of Stone" tell stories that conjure up a person who blossoms in the ether behind; Hülsenbeck is truly himself. The record was produced by Hülsenbeck with his friend Tim Roth (Drangsal). It was recorded by Joe Haege and Fritz Brückner (White Wine), and also features Johannes Döpping (drums), Johanne Weber (basses), and Max Kraft (horn/trumpet).
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AVM 066LP
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LP version. Includes download code. The Room, Fenster's fourth album and their first release on Altin Village & Mine, marks the beginning of a new chapter for the band. After releasing three albums, a feature length film, and touring extensively throughout Europe and North America since 2012, The Room serves as an entry point into their sonic evolution. The essential characteristic of the band is transformation - within and between genres, albums, and songs. Their sound is a window framing psychedelic, groovy, hypnogogic, playful pop. Fenster is Elias Hock, Jonathan Jarzyna, Lucas Ufo, and JJ Weihl. Their mission in creating this album was to compose and arrange every song together in a room. It is an experiment in collective creativity that pushed all of them to transcend their individuality and create something together which is greater than the sum of its parts. The songs were tracked live in a house where the band ate, slept, and played together. They were intent on finding and locking into a human groove, one open to imperfection, while still maintaining tightness among them. They wanted to make the songs feel alive, as if the listener were present in the room with them. The album's title track "The Room" opens the record like a rollercoaster ride. There is a tension in the first bars that ties us to earth, a minimal riff that guides us to the first chorus where we feel we are slowly lifting into the air. By the time we reach the second chorus, it has exploded into a space far away from the planet's gravitational pull. The band's use of juxtaposition is not just a way of channeling a vast library of musical genres and concepts, but also a means of expression. Combining tender pop melodies with kraut-beats, disco grooves and psychedelia frees the band from any one sound and creates a genre all its own. This playfulness is especially vibrant in songs like "Rhythm A" and "Haha Lol", which deconstruct and fuse together disparate moments of explosive rock, tender harmonies, percussion made of splashing water, voices from a radio, and electric piano. Thus, the whole process of making a record is about capturing a moment in time. This is the record they made at this point in time, all together, in a room.
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AVM 066CD
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The Room, Fenster's fourth album and their first release on Altin Village & Mine, marks the beginning of a new chapter for the band. After releasing three albums, a feature length film, and touring extensively throughout Europe and North America since 2012, The Room serves as an entry point into their sonic evolution. The essential characteristic of the band is transformation - within and between genres, albums, and songs. Their sound is a window framing psychedelic, groovy, hypnogogic, playful pop. Fenster is Elias Hock, Jonathan Jarzyna, Lucas Ufo, and JJ Weihl. Their mission in creating this album was to compose and arrange every song together in a room. It is an experiment in collective creativity that pushed all of them to transcend their individuality and create something together which is greater than the sum of its parts. The songs were tracked live in a house where the band ate, slept, and played together. They were intent on finding and locking into a human groove, one open to imperfection, while still maintaining tightness among them. They wanted to make the songs feel alive, as if the listener were present in the room with them. The album's title track "The Room" opens the record like a rollercoaster ride. There is a tension in the first bars that ties us to earth, a minimal riff that guides us to the first chorus where we feel we are slowly lifting into the air. By the time we reach the second chorus, it has exploded into a space far away from the planet's gravitational pull. The band's use of juxtaposition is not just a way of channeling a vast library of musical genres and concepts, but also a means of expression. Combining tender pop melodies with kraut-beats, disco grooves and psychedelia frees the band from any one sound and creates a genre all its own. This playfulness is especially vibrant in songs like "Rhythm A" and "Haha Lol", which deconstruct and fuse together disparate moments of explosive rock, tender harmonies, percussion made of splashing water, voices from a radio, and electric piano. Thus, the whole process of making a record is about capturing a moment in time. This is the record they made at this point in time, all together, in a room.
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AVM 065LP
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What potential does popular music, with its notorious obsession with the past, hold for the imagination of future communities? And how can, in a most general sense, pop help us think about this? In other words: What are the domains and possibilities of "political" art today? These questions, as questions about the time and temporality of the political, are at the core of PTTRNS' new album Material Und Geschichte, produced with Andreas Spechtl (of Ja, Panik, among others) in a long Berlin summer in 2017. Over the course of 47 minutes, the album submits, lyrically and conceptually, the outline of a pervasive futurity. On the record's eight tracks, this futurity figures in three ways: First, as the time of the performance -- a time of the present that becomes indistinguishable from the future. This time of the event is marked in the physicality that has featured prominently on the band's last efforts and has always made for their famously infectious live appearances: the jam-like, funky quality of their sound. Secondly, time is introduced as a time of repetition: an excessive time that itself comes from the future and, in its exceeding the material present, folds it back to its origin. This repetition, presented with equal attention to form and expressivity, invokes a tradition that has, somewhat unfortunately, been identified as "krautrock". Thirdly, time features on Material Und Geschichte as a technological counter-time, or "Contretemps", as registered in a song title: This is the time of the producers' intervention, the dub, which opens up in the record's most free moments and, calling attention to the materiality of the record itself, marks the temporal suspension of the listener that always also is a possibility for action. Lyrically, the collective that is PTTRNS speaks in a communal voice. Connecting to their previous work, which focused on the possibilities of individual instances of sense-making, Material Und Geschichte frames these instances as ways of relating, as the presents of a future solidarity. This is mirrored in the production values of the record, which, as is usual for the band, is a communal effort. The record boasts a cast of notable collaborators in Rabea Erradi (Die Heiterkeit, Sleep) on saxophone, Sonja Deffner (Jason & Theodor, Die Heiterkeit) on clarinet and vocals, and Andreas Spechtl on vocals and guitar; the artwork is designed by Our Polite Society. Includes download code.
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AVM 064LP
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Double LP version. Includes printed inner sleeves; Etching on side D; Includes download code. "I want to fall in and out of the cracks of genres, finding the nerves not yet hit. It's usually in the disturbing part of the spectrum..." So says Joe Haege, who's earned a reputation for unsettling sounds with 31 Knots and Tu Fawning. He was also a member of Menomena and The Dodos. Haege formed White Wine (known earlier as Vin Blanc) as a solo project, but it developed into an informal duo following the release of their second album, 2013's In Every Way But One, after Haege invited Fritz Brückner (Tu Fawning, Menomena) on his European tour. When an apartment fell vacant next to Brückner's home in Leipzig, Haege deserted Los Angeles, and, newly settled in Eastern Germany, added Chistian "Kirmes" Kuhr (Zentral Heizung Des Todes) to the coven while helping to build what would become White Wine's default home and fully functioning studio, Haunted Haus. This new line-up finds Haege delivering the most realized, intense and, at times, horrifying music of his career. The product of 18 months spent touring together, Killer Brilliance emerged, he says, from the trio's need "to get something dark and sinister out of our systems", and this is reflected, too, in the album's title. This sordid realization is mirrored in Killer Brilliance's disturbing, sometimes even distressing songs. Brückner's effects-heavy bassoon gives the record a macabre depth, while Kühr's aggressive drumming and percussion, firmly upfront in the mix, drives songs relentlessly to their ultimate demise. Haege, moreover, displays the urgent, menacing air of a preacher man delivering sermons about an imminent apocalypse. Punctuated by contrastingly feminine, spoken-word vignettes that add to the uneasy cinematic mood -- one that draws upon dystopic visions to '60s style film noir -- Killer Brilliance piles in with the rabid "Broken Letter Hour" and the desperately tense "Hurry Home", before the extraordinary title track pops eardrums and eyeballs. There's also the Birthday Party malevolence of "Falling From The Same Place", the growing threat of "Abundance", the baroque, carnivalesque "I'd Run", and the deceptive calm of "Bird In Hand". Musically, White Wine feed upon a diverse range of ingredients, including PJ Harvey, Liars, Beak, Suicide, Minutemen, David Bowie, Chuck D, and Diamanda Galás. Lyrically, Killer Brilliance exhibits Haege's self-confessed "weird affinity for double entendres" and "need to hold onto the sheer madness of existence."
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CD
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AVM 064CD
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"I want to fall in and out of the cracks of genres, finding the nerves not yet hit. It's usually in the disturbing part of the spectrum..." So says Joe Haege, who's earned a reputation for unsettling sounds with 31 Knots and Tu Fawning. He was also a member of Menomena and The Dodos. Haege formed White Wine (known earlier as Vin Blanc) as a solo project, but it developed into an informal duo following the release of their second album, 2013's In Every Way But One, after Haege invited Fritz Brückner (Tu Fawning, Menomena) on his European tour. When an apartment fell vacant next to Brückner's home in Leipzig, Haege deserted Los Angeles, and, newly settled in Eastern Germany, added Chistian "Kirmes" Kuhr (Zentral Heizung Des Todes) to the coven while helping to build what would become White Wine's default home and fully functioning studio, Haunted Haus. This new line-up finds Haege delivering the most realized, intense and, at times, horrifying music of his career. The product of 18 months spent touring together, Killer Brilliance emerged, he says, from the trio's need "to get something dark and sinister out of our systems", and this is reflected, too, in the album's title. This sordid realization is mirrored in Killer Brilliance's disturbing, sometimes even distressing songs. Brückner's effects-heavy bassoon gives the record a macabre depth, while Kühr's aggressive drumming and percussion, firmly upfront in the mix, drives songs relentlessly to their ultimate demise. Haege, moreover, displays the urgent, menacing air of a preacher man delivering sermons about an imminent apocalypse. Punctuated by contrastingly feminine, spoken-word vignettes that add to the uneasy cinematic mood -- one that draws upon dystopic visions to '60s style film noir -- Killer Brilliance piles in with the rabid "Broken Letter Hour" and the desperately tense "Hurry Home", before the extraordinary title track pops eardrums and eyeballs. There's also the Birthday Party malevolence of "Falling From The Same Place", the growing threat of "Abundance", the baroque, carnivalesque "I'd Run", and the deceptive calm of "Bird In Hand". Musically, White Wine feed upon a diverse range of ingredients, including PJ Harvey, Liars, Beak, Suicide, Minutemen, David Bowie, Chuck D, and Diamanda Galás. Lyrically, Killer Brilliance exhibits Haege's self-confessed "weird affinity for double entendres" and "need to hold onto the sheer madness of existence."
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12"
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AVM 063EP
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Von Spar present their Garzweiler EP on Altin Village & Mine, named after the Garzweiler surface mine in the outermost western corner of Germany. Opener "Metaxourgío" features a futuristic atmosphere, which is most prominent in the fantastic and strange nucleus of the EP. "Garzweiler III" and "Garzweiler IV" are among the band's most abstract work in the past decade. Here, Von Spar realize a breezy, machinic anonymity to which any "human touch" is foreign and external. "Omónia" works as a sort of unexpected summary of the record transposed to the dancefloor, the urgency creating a grandiose, almost anthemic, finale.
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12"
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AVM 060EP
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Jan Barich, aka Map.ache, presents Perception Shift /A. For Perception Shift /A, Barich worked his way through the Altin Village & Mine catalog: Skeletons' "All I Want is You", Phoebe Killdeer & The Shift's "Let's Talk A Good Story", Urban Homes' "Tropical Jam", and Sven Kacirek's "Turkey Dance". Barich gently, but decisively, reworks their grooves into a collection of reverberating, feathery tracks that take cues from minimal music as well as house. He spreads Skeletons' "All I Want is You" into a polyrhythmic synth meditation, and the Sven Kacirek rework layers the original's percussive grooves into a melancholic house number.
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2LP
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AVM 059LP
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Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve. Includes download code. Over the course of a staggering 78 minutes, big things happen on Jams, Urban Homes's monumental sophomore album. The 13 songs on Jams go back to recordings of years of communal, MIDI- and hardware-based jam sessions which, over three years, were painstakingly discarded, condensed, reconstructed and provided with occasional guest vocals by Hanitra Wagner (Oracles, Die Heiterkeit). On Jams, Benjamin Riedl, Stephan Weinand and Oliver Bersin explore a history of dance music that is retraced in the 13 tracks. The seemingly clear cut references in titles such as "Verdub Lang Her (Stripped Down Killer Dub Jam)", "Blue Note Jam" or "As High Acid Can Get (Acid Jam)", however, are not to be taken as letters of intent, but - despite the playful handling of genre conventions and clichés - as homages to the immaterial architecture of the club: the atmosphere, the vibe, the jam. In its rich texture, the dramatic composition of Jams reconstructs the resonance space of an excessive, foggy, and steamy night at the club, thereby approaching its point of interest. Despite the clear club compatibility (each of the 13 tracks will work on a dancefloor worth its salt), Urban Homes do not shy away from sticky harmonic arrangements and melodies that are bound to be called "pop". They do however, and this is one of the points of this great album, avoid any overarching narrative of organic-ness or authenticity which might refer the record to a context of "indie" music. Unlike the acclaimed and award-winning debut Centres (2013), which wore the socialization of the (previously four) Urban Homes on its sleeve, this is rootless, nomadic music that is in the most beautiful sense "out there". So far out there, in fact, that gurus such as Pharaoh Sanders or Sun Ra can be made out through the ever-present fog (see titles such as "4/20 Jam" or "Summer Rolls (Midnight Munchies Jam)" for reference). What seems so effortless, casual and relaxed over the entire run time, is in fact merely evidence of the band's musical mastery and precision. Mixed by Jan-Philipp Janzen (Von Spar) at Dumbo Studios. Mastered by Cem Oral at Jammin Masters. Sonja Deffner (Die Heiterkeit, Jason & Theodor) is responsible for the stunning artwork.
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CD
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AVM 059CD
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Over the course of a staggering 78 minutes, big things happen on Jams, Urban Homes's monumental sophomore album. The 13 songs on Jams go back to recordings of years of communal, MIDI- and hardware-based jam sessions which, over three years, were painstakingly discarded, condensed, reconstructed and provided with occasional guest vocals by Hanitra Wagner (Oracles, Die Heiterkeit). On Jams, Benjamin Riedl, Stephan Weinand and Oliver Bersin explore a history of dance music that is retraced in the 13 tracks. The seemingly clear cut references in titles such as "Verdub Lang Her (Stripped Down Killer Dub Jam)", "Blue Note Jam" or "As High Acid Can Get (Acid Jam)", however, are not to be taken as letters of intent, but - despite the playful handling of genre conventions and clichés - as homages to the immaterial architecture of the club: the atmosphere, the vibe, the jam. In its rich texture, the dramatic composition of Jams reconstructs the resonance space of an excessive, foggy, and steamy night at the club, thereby approaching its point of interest. Despite the clear club compatibility (each of the 13 tracks will work on a dancefloor worth its salt), Urban Homes do not shy away from sticky harmonic arrangements and melodies that are bound to be called "pop". They do however, and this is one of the points of this great album, avoid any overarching narrative of organic-ness or authenticity which might refer the record to a context of "indie" music. Unlike the acclaimed and award-winning debut Centres (2013), which wore the socialization of the (previously four) Urban Homes on its sleeve, this is rootless, nomadic music that is in the most beautiful sense "out there". So far out there, in fact, that gurus such as Pharaoh Sanders or Sun Ra can be made out through the ever-present fog (see titles such as "4/20 Jam" or "Summer Rolls (Midnight Munchies Jam)" for reference). What seems so effortless, casual and relaxed over the entire run time, is in fact merely evidence of the band's musical mastery and precision. Mixed by Jan-Philipp Janzen (Von Spar) at Dumbo Studios. Mastered by Cem Oral at Jammin Masters. Sonja Deffner (Die Heiterkeit, Jason & Theodor) is responsible for the stunning artwork.
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LP
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AVM 057LP
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Phoebe Killdeer and The Shift is the collaboration between Phoebe Killdeer (Nouvelle Vague, The Short Straws) and experimental musicians Thomas Mahmoud-Zahl (SFX, The Nest, Tannhäuser Sterben & das Tod, Von Spar) and Ole Wulfers (Kapaikos, Party Diktator), supported by actress and singer Maria de Medeiros (Pulp Fiction (1994), The Saddest Music in the World (2003)). The Piano's Playing The Devils Tune. is free music in the most emphatic sense; the interplay between the abstract instrumentation on one hand -- which equally recalls genres as diverse as noise rock, bass music, and musique concrète -- and the intimate, concrete humanity of the sound on the other establishes a sprawling sonic space that gravitates around the haunting vocal passages of Phoebe Killdeer and de Medeiros. The Piano's Playing The Devils Tune. thereby succeeds in combining a decidedly experimental gesture with an urgent, uncanny familiarity and warmth; a precise sense of composition with an almost lavish casualness. Phoebe Killdeer and The Shift do not resolve the numerous paradoxes that mark The Piano's Playing The Devils Tune.; the result is an equally challenging and rewarding album that in fact -- as played-out as this claim may be -- truly defies categorization. Devils tunes. Includes download code.
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LP
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AVM 055LP
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LP version. Includes printed inner sleeve, lyric sheet, and download code. Die Goldenen Zitronen ("The Golden Lemons"), born a punk band in 1980s Hamburg and since developing into a seminal art punk collective, present their 2015 album Flogging a Dead Frog. After 11 long-players and countless collaborations with artists such as Peaches, Wesley Willis (with whom the band toured the US), Chicks on Speed, Françoise Cactus (of Stereo Total), Mark Stewart (of The Pop Group), DJ Koze, and Michaela Melián, Flogging a Dead Frog is their first release on Altin Village & Mine. The album collects instrumental and, for the first time, English reworkings of songs from their most recent albums. Far from being a complacent "best of," the album directly plugs into the band's impressive body of work. Flogging a Dead Frog unfolds a re-contextualization in two senses. First, its instrumental tracks emphasize the fact that the band's sound has always been much more than a musical accompaniment for the unrelenting social commentary of singer Schorsch Kamerun, bringing out the band's tremendous nomadism between punk, techno, and krautrock and mirroring the diverse engagements of the six members in theater and film projects. On the other hand, in the English versions of songs such as "If I Were a Sneaker," a song about European immigration policy, or "The Investor," Flogging a Dead Frog proves a consequent re-adjustment of the band's political scope, opening discourse on matters that have disastrously proven to not be exclusively pertinent to Germany. As is typical for Die Goldenen Zitronen, these two perspectives -- one concerning the band's oeuvre, the other its environment -- are inseparable and testify to their political aesthetics, a political aesthetics of which Flogging a Dead Frog is not a review, but a substantial extension.
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CD
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AVM 055CD
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Die Goldenen Zitronen ("The Golden Lemons"), born a punk band in 1980s Hamburg and since developing into a seminal art punk collective, present their 2015 album Flogging a Dead Frog. After 11 long-players and countless collaborations with artists such as Peaches, Wesley Willis (with whom the band toured the US), Chicks on Speed, Françoise Cactus (of Stereo Total), Mark Stewart (of The Pop Group), DJ Koze, and Michaela Melián, Flogging a Dead Frog is their first release on Altin Village & Mine. The album collects instrumental and, for the first time, English reworkings of songs from their most recent albums. Far from being a complacent "best of," the album directly plugs into the band's impressive body of work. Flogging a Dead Frog unfolds a re-contextualization in two senses. First, its instrumental tracks emphasize the fact that the band's sound has always been much more than a musical accompaniment for the unrelenting social commentary of singer Schorsch Kamerun, bringing out the band's tremendous nomadism between punk, techno, and krautrock and mirroring the diverse engagements of the six members in theater and film projects. On the other hand, in the English versions of songs such as "If I Were a Sneaker," a song about European immigration policy, or "The Investor," Flogging a Dead Frog proves a consequent re-adjustment of the band's political scope, opening discourse on matters that have disastrously proven to not be exclusively pertinent to Germany. As is typical for Die Goldenen Zitronen, these two perspectives -- one concerning the band's oeuvre, the other its environment -- are inseparable and testify to their political aesthetics, a political aesthetics of which Flogging a Dead Frog is not a review, but a substantial extension.
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