BEACON SOUND - Forced Exposure

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Metal.wet is the new album from mercurial avant-pop shapeshifters Soft as Snow. Ten tracks of beat-driven synth-pop featuring analogue synths, samplers, live drums, and processed guitars, with Oda Starheim's evocative and layered vocals at the center of it all. Recorded in Berlin and Marseille, the album is an ambitious and atmospheric step forward for the duo, exploring themes of vulnerability and sensuality with a confident and uncanny approach to experimental pop production. Includes insert with lyrics. Mastered by Heba Kadry. "Whip" features London-based MC Brother May.

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On his third album as Etelin, Alex Cobb explores the intricacies of separation and belonging using field recordings and electronics, reconfiguring the dividing line between what is artificial and natural in the process. Maintaining a sense of playful reverence and lurking melancholy in its glitchy pastoralism, Patio User Manual hums with a meticulous and singular energy. From the loops and static pulses of "The Chemistry of Cobalt" to the tension and release of "Electrical Sailing," the listener is pulled into a sound world at once ambivalent and radiant, reaching its denouement in the lovely melody that closes the final track, "Picnic at Gas Station Park." Although the album might bring to mind the nuanced and imaginative ambient music published by labels such as Mille Plateaux, Sonig, and Silent Records in the 1990s, it is, in the end, a world of its own and very much of today. The patio as a stage for alienated life, pyrrhic in its isolation, deceptive in its promise of distinction. Orientation as disorientation, often unseen inside the frame but felt in the bones. What is out there, anyway, other than the thing we fear the most? Written, recorded, and mixed by Alex Cobb, 2022-2023. Mastered by Guiseppe Ielasi. Design by Keith Freund and Alex McCullough.

"Another day of weird weather and screens. What type of perfume did Philip Johnson wear when he designed Glass House? Is it actually possible to flee to the country when you've internalized a lifetime of intellectualized urban living? When you buy a DIY patio kit, you get instructions for how best to embed concrete or brick or flagstone into the natural world. The patio will make you enjoy your environment more. It will become yours. You can stand on it and think 'this is Mine.' The structuralists talked about the importance of fixed camera position, but didn't properly interrogate it because to do so would be impossible. It's hard to believe that it really wasn't long ago that computer music seemed exciting, novel, even radical. We're now thoroughly estranged from eating what's in season. Walking around the woods in southern Ohio in spring, I thought about the curious imperative of the patio, how my kids get excited about picking oyster mushrooms, the dynamics of switched capacitor filters, and how adequacy is tethered to doubt." --Alex Cobb, May 2024

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[sold out] Accurately described by Thurston Moore as "great for meditating to the cosmos," Terry Riley's classic Descending Moonshine Dervishes is available again in a limited edition repress. Originally recorded live in Berlin in 1975 and released by Kuckuck in 1982, Beacon Sound reissued the album in 2016 to widespread acclaim. Using just intonation and a modified organ, Riley conjures forth a rich and layered sound that challenges the Western ear, reflecting his associations with Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath and La Monte Young, whose Well Tuned Piano was well underway. Descending Moonshine Dervishes is a virtuosic and kaleidoscopic performance, standing as one of the finest works of a revolutionary composer and musician at the height of his powers. Recorded in concert November 29, 1975 at Metamusik Festival in Berlin. Originally mastered by Stephen Hill. Remastered in 2016 by Rafael Anton Irisarri. Front cover painting by Helmut Zimmermann. Back cover photography by Roberto Masotti.

"Descending Moonshine Dervishes' dates from 1975 and it belongs to a larger Dervish series of compositions whose origins predate Riley's two signature works of minimalism, 'In C' (1968) and 'A Rainbow In Curved Air' (1969)? (the piece is) structured around just intonation, which stretches the listening experience into new areas. Played on a Yamaha organ with a bit of tape delay that allows Riley to duet with himself, the music of Descending Moonshine Dervishes is an ear expansion that goes through skittering arpeggios and long, droning notes that indicate something of the many levels that it operates on." --Louise Gray, The Wire Magazine (2017)

"Terry Riley has become a totemic presence in music over the past half-century." --The Guardian

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Recorded in an abandoned water tank in rural northwest Colorado and inspired by Muriel Rukeyser's circa-1935 poem of the same name, violinist Leslee Smucker explores the range and saturation of intense natural reverb on Breathing Landscape. The artist pushes her instrument to the limit -- by turns percussive, sweeping, and scraping -- and, on several tracks, utilizes her own voice as well, resulting in an album that combines breathtaking beauty and visceral texture. Leaning into the meditative quality being present in one moment can provide, this is music you can feel on your skin, calling out from our decomposing modernity into the indifferent sky above. Conjuring deep time but captured in one day, the album is simultaneously immediate and vaporous, primeval-sounding yet unapologetically modern. In what she describes as a "sauna of sound," Smucker "was transported by the reverberation to another realm. Birds and trucks passed outside, while the wind was an integral part to the sound making."

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The title of the Lau Nau's tenth album, Aphrilis, derives from the Latin word aperire, meaning "to open." A fitting verb for the month of the year it is closely associated with -- April. And while the images of plants and blossoms coming back to colorful life after a long, cold winter feels appropriate when listening to the rich and lustrous bloom of music on Aphrilis, another definition of open feels even more apt. For under the abundance lies the memory of times of austerity, the friction of hard choices, the acceptance that nothing is fixed and the future is unknown. This literal and metaphorical exploration of complexity and contradiction makes Aphrilis a multi-dimensional antidote for our troubled times, one that emphasizes the quiet and communal over noise and spectacle. Laura Naukkarinen, the Finnish artist behind this project, has long kept her mind and spirit open to whatever sounds and creative ideas felt appropriate for the moment. For the past six years that has meant primarily working with modular synthesis. Running parallel to this work, however, has been a continued exploration of acoustic instruments and group performances with her trio Lau Nau ja Seitsemäs Taivas. Aphrilis arrives then like fresh growth in a creative season cycle. A companion to her brilliant 2017 release Poseidon, the album, says Naukkarinen, "felt like a needed moment to embrace songs with lyrics again." And through the creation of this work, she remained open not only to her own creative muse, but also the input of her chosen collaborators. Each player on Aphrilis -- Matti Bye on celesta and synths, Pekko Käppi on jouhikko, Hermanni Yli-Tepsa on violin and contrabass, Topias Tiheäsalo on electric guitar, Samuli Kosminen (Múm) on various instruments -- was given free reign to arrange their own parts to accompany Naukkarinen's compositions. Kosminen's lush fingerprint can also be heard in the mixing and production of the album, as with Poseidon six years ago. The moniker of this project may be taken from Naukkarinen's own name, but Lau Nau feels more like a band than ever before. RIYL: Múm, Amina, Björk, Espers, Julia Holter, Ólöf Arnalds, Sigur Ros.

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LP version. Color vinyl. The title of the Lau Nau's tenth album, Aphrilis, derives from the Latin word aperire, meaning "to open." A fitting verb for the month of the year it is closely associated with -- April. And while the images of plants and blossoms coming back to colorful life after a long, cold winter feels appropriate when listening to the rich and lustrous bloom of music on Aphrilis, another definition of open feels even more apt. For under the abundance lies the memory of times of austerity, the friction of hard choices, the acceptance that nothing is fixed and the future is unknown. This literal and metaphorical exploration of complexity and contradiction makes Aphrilis a multi-dimensional antidote for our troubled times, one that emphasizes the quiet and communal over noise and spectacle. Laura Naukkarinen, the Finnish artist behind this project, has long kept her mind and spirit open to whatever sounds and creative ideas felt appropriate for the moment. For the past six years that has meant primarily working with modular synthesis. Running parallel to this work, however, has been a continued exploration of acoustic instruments and group performances with her trio Lau Nau ja Seitsemäs Taivas. Aphrilis arrives then like fresh growth in a creative season cycle. A companion to her brilliant 2017 release Poseidon, the album, says Naukkarinen, "felt like a needed moment to embrace songs with lyrics again." And through the creation of this work, she remained open not only to her own creative muse, but also the input of her chosen collaborators. Each player on Aphrilis -- Matti Bye on celesta and synths, Pekko Käppi on jouhikko, Hermanni Yli-Tepsa on violin and contrabass, Topias Tiheäsalo on electric guitar, Samuli Kosminen (Múm) on various instruments -- was given free reign to arrange their own parts to accompany Naukkarinen's compositions. Kosminen's lush fingerprint can also be heard in the mixing and production of the album, as with Poseidon six years ago. The moniker of this project may be taken from Naukkarinen's own name, but Lau Nau feels more like a band than ever before. RIYL: Múm, Amina, Björk, Espers, Julia Holter, Ólöf Arnalds, Sigur Ros.

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Methods Body's groundbreaking second record, Plural Not Possessive, is an opus against the algorithm -- ranging from 22 seconds to 15 minutes in duration, these five tracks reveal lush ecosystems woven out of the duo's spontaneous compositions. John Niekrasz (drums, voice) and Luke Wyland (keys, electronics, voice) create musical and technological strategies that force them to break old habits and patterns. Extrinsic song forms and standardized meters fall away. Time becomes a physical substance sculpted to alter the listener's emotional experience. Wyland channels his life-long stutter into a music of broken speech. There are lost languages in this record -- it is haunted by artifacts the musicians can't explain. Over two years, Niekrasz and Wyland worked together in their forest studio, staving off darkness at a time when it wasn't possible to be with others. Plural Not Possessive stands as a bracing evolution of the ensemble's previous work, but fans will still recognize Methods Body's hallmark microtonality, uncanny rhythms, world-building intricacy, and unmistakable collaborative chemistry. RIYL: Terry Riley, Autechre, Tyondai Braxton, Aphex Twin, Wendy Carlos, Pauline Oliveros, Iannis Xenakis.

Praise for their self-titled debut (BNSD 047LP, 2020): "In Methods Body's music, nothing feels fixed in place. The drums-and-electronics duo's debut album is as slippery as the deck of a boat in a storm: Muscular rhythms in strange time signatures, microtonal prepared-piano riffs, droning feedback -- they all careen back and forth, colliding, breaking into pieces. The result is a gnarled hybrid of free improv, minimalist composition, and dance music that advances in fits and starts, repetitive until it is not, knotty until it turns unexpectedly smooth." --Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork

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5 x 4 is a new solo collection from award-winning Finnish composer, producer, and musician Laura Naukkarinen, recorded at Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm using the historic Buchla 200 modular synthesizer, an AKG BX20 spring reverb, and, on two songs, her voice. The album shows yet another side of her singular musical universe, by turns aquatic and meditative, always pulsing with energy. Lau Nau's ninth solo album, 5 x 4 is being released by her longtime co-conspirators Fonal (Finland) and Beacon Sound (US). Composed and recorded at EMS over a period of five years, the title is a reference to the Buchla's sequencer, which has five steps and four tracks, thus creating the characteristic five-beat tempo behind the compositions. The eight tracks that comprise 5 x 4 fluctuate between different moods: the contemplative hum of "Isopoda"; the coral-like tones and lush vocal melodies of lead single "Sessilia"; and the carbonated radiance of "Hyperiidea" and "Amphipoda". RIYL: Laurie Spiegel's Expanding Universe, Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green.

Artist statement: "I've been composing for five years at Elektronmusikstudion's Buchla. When I started the project, I wanted to compose about the change in the living conditions of plankton in the Baltic Sea and the variation in their biomass, but soon the logic and sound of the instrument took me with it. I started composing music for marine life, forgetting all the strict boundaries of the subject. The world of crustaceans and zooplankton opens up in the music: darkness and the light filtered by the eutrophicated sea alternate under the surface, the salinity of the sea varies and the turbidity of the water makes the observations soft and without contours."

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"Los Angeles musician Megan Mitchell returns with a new Cruel Diagonals album that resonates with maximum emotional impact. Constructed entirely with sounds generated by her own voice -- chopped up, warped, rendered unrecognizable, ringing out in hymn-like incantations -- Fractured Whole is a powerful and timeless exploration of vulnerability, resistance, and the freedom to be yourself. Megan Mitchell opens her latest album Fractured Whole in much the same way she did with her previous full-length 2021's A Dormant Vigor with the sound of her voice intoning a series of notes. But listening to them side-by-side, the differences between the two are stark. Not simply in the notes that Mitchell chooses to sing but in the emotion and depth and power behind that crystal clear mezzo-soprano. On 'Penance,' the first track on Fractured Whole, she bears the weight of hundreds of years of music written for singers and her own complex history with ease, evoking everything from the sacred music of Hildegard von Bingen to the satanic masses of Diamanda Galas with each intertwining melody. Mitchell's singing has been an integral part of her work as Cruel Diagonals from the start, but it has never felt so present as it does on Fractured Whole. That's simply because every piece of sound featured on this album was created using her voice. It may be stretched and twisted into unusual shapes, chopped up and shattered, or rendered unrecognizable by technology but it is still there, pulling at the corners of the conscious mind and conveying deeply felt emotions. This decision to use her voice as the only instrument was, according to Mitchell, a necessary step to move forward as an artist and composer -- a challenge that brought with it growth and confidence . . . Over the course of the 18 months it took Mitchell to compose and record Fractured Whole, she was working through a lot of emotional and psychological fragments, seeking better understanding of her life and her art. Though she had been receiving nothing but praise for her releases and live gigs, the accolades never sunk in. It was a disconnect steeped in trauma from her past and gendered socialization . . . Embracing that duality on Fractured Whole allowed Mitchell to produce art that feels unmistakably human and thrillingly alien -- an uncanny valley that she invites the listener to explore with her." --Robert Ham (excerpted from the liner notes)

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As Beacon Sound enters its tenth year as a label, the label's first release of 2023, by Cincinnati-based composer Tristan Eckerson, represents a change of palette for both label and artist, and a blissfully meditative one at that. Journey Test is Eckerson's first album under the moniker Purple Decades and his first foray into immersive ambient music. While Tristan's past work has focused largely on solo piano, his Purple Decades project is an exploration into soundscapes, electronic textures, and immersive musical environments. While many tracks on the album still feature piano or keyboards in some form, the compositional approach is accompanied by extensive work with reverb, foley, and orchestral electronic arrangements, and some tracks have eschewed the piano completely, opting instead for immersive and texturally rich auditory journeys. Each of the eight songs on Journey Test convey a sense of serene movement and cinematic scale, conjuring the horizon line of landscapes both distant and internal, a wordless dialectic between contentment and nostalgia. Tracks like the piano-driven "Kagami" and the slow-building title track (whose crescendo brings to mind Sigur Ros) emphasize beguiling and cyclical melodies while "Pathway" leavens the mood with a glacial sweep, all the while drinking from the same sense of wonder and openness that pervades the entire album. By the time "A Strange Dream" comes along to pull the curtain closed, the listener may be nagged by the sensation that something has been lost as well as gained along the way, that perhaps you've been leaning into the dying of the light all along -- a strange dream indeed, one that never turns dour as it weaves its tale of light and shadow. In the artist's own words: "After many years of writing nothing but music for solo piano, I was ready for something new when I began the process of creating Journey Test. I wanted to take the same vibe and overall aesthetic that I had created with my solo piano work, but really strip down the compositional approach into something that focused on the sound itself. Basically, bringing the background to the forefront. And instead of traditional instruments, I wanted to use electronic sounds, but still in a way that it sounded very organic, almost to the point where you didn't know if you were listening to an orchestra or a bunch of synthesizers. I didn't use a lot of different electronic instruments for the album, but rather I focused on what each instrument could bring to the table in terms of texture, noise, organic sounds, and subtle details..." RIYL: A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Helios, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jon Hopkins, Oneohtrix Point Never.

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Snakeskin is an album of visionary electronic dream pop, shapeshifting above ambient and industrial undercurrents. It is moody, unsettling, luminous -- the culmination of a decade of collaboration and friendship between Lebanese producer/musician/engineer Fadi Tabbal and singer-songwriter Julia Sabra from Beirut-based indie trio Postcards. The duo began working on Snakeskin in the aftermath of the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, which killed at least 218 people, injured 7,000, and left over 300,000 people homeless. Indeed, Julia's home was destroyed by the explosion and her partner and bandmate Pascal badly injured. The first song that they wrote together afterwards was "Roots", which closes out the album and was composed for the Ruptured-curated series The Drone Sessions in the fall of 2020. Snakeskin utilizes tape loops, synthesizers, vocals, and drum machines, combining Julia's pop-inspired melodies and choral roots (an echo from her religious upbringing) with Fadi's affinity for minimalism and musique concrète. The album seamlessly incorporates the melancholy electro-pop of "All The Birds", the quiet menace of "In Our Garden" (long-lost treasures, ancient lies/another buried paradise), and the beat-driven "Signs". The title track sums up their frame of mind, beginning as a lullaby and evolving into a glittering tapestry of distortion and feedback. As the artists write, Snakeskin is a product of "the disappearance of life as we know it, and with it the decay of nature and living creatures. There is no rebirth, no renewal. It's about what it means to feel at home in such a place." Some tracks were also inspired by events happening in the surrounding region, such as the invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan and the Palestinian uprising of May 2021 (Sheikh Jarrah) -- both events shedding light on relationships to home and land across the wider region. That such compelling art can emerge from unceasing tragedy may be the ultimate testament to human resilience and the pursuit of freedom and justice. "The moon speaks in tongues we can't discern/ A plastic dove hangs from a cypress branch/ Haven't you heard?/ Nothing grows here anymore/ The air is burnt/ Nothing grows..." RIYL: Gazelle Twin, Lali Puna, This Mortal Coil, Slow Walkers, Atlas Sound, Bowery Electric, Broadcast. Edition of 300.

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Recorded both in Spain and Finland, the 13-track album Myriadi documents Tatu Rönkkö and Raúl Pastor Medall's first standalone collaboration, entirely created, performed and mixed by the pair. With Myriadi, the two artists walk listeners into a world that somehow manages to feel ancient and modern at the same time. It is peaceful and dreamy but also raw, solemn and unsettling. Tatu's improvisational, crude and almost ritualistic sonic approach blends in seamlessly with Raúl's more melodic and melancholic schemes of composition. With its simplicity and clarity, Myriadi belongs in the realms of dark ambient and drone as much as it belongs to a tradition of minimal acoustic music. Myriadi embraces loose ends, harmonic freedom, and even atonality; regardless of whether it involves the sound of glass-blowing water bottles, a small Finnish harp, bell-like sounding metal plates or piano strings played with paint brushes and sticks, the overall improv-based character of the project gives Myriadi a primal, unpredictable, and meditative feel. This spontaneous study of form and timbre has room for bold rhythmic pieces played with a drum set consisting of six floor toms, but also for hypnotic chants of granular flute-like sounds and spoken word poetry (featuring voices by Raúl and Tatu's moms). The spontaneity and lack of premeditation that permeate through Myriadi paradoxically reinforce the cohesiveness of the record. Rauelsson (Raúl Pastor Medall's musical moniker) and Tatu Rönkkö met in 2015 through common friends. They both have released music on the Berlin-based label Sonic Pieces and have collaborated on stage and in the studio on a number of occasions. Tatu appeared as a guest musician on Rauelsson's Mirall (2018) and contributed significantly on some film and TV projects that Raúl has worked on for the last couple of years. For the recording sessions of the dystopian TV Series Anna (2021) Tatu travelled to Spain where they explored countless rhythmic ideas with relatively untraditional instrumentation. These free and relaxed creative meetings led to other recording sessions completely unconnected to any scoring project, planting the seed for what Myriadi would become. RIYL: Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Brian Eno. Mastered by Martyn Heyne at Lichte Studio, Berlin, Germany. Cover art by Tatu Rönkkö. Photo by Saku Soukka.

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Chicago by way of Portland musician Dominic Voz fuses ambient, classical, spoken word, and deconstructed dance music into an album of visceral beauty and heady ideas. Grappling with themes of urban contestation and dispossession, Right To The City celebrates our communal fabric in the face of contemporary capitalism's social stratification and endemic violence. The album is the first co-release between Accidental Records, renowned electronic musician Matthew Herbert's hub of experimental releases, and Portland's Beacon Sound, a stalwart of gorgeous and innovative music from the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The album features several collaborators, including Patricia Wolf (Balmat) and Jonathan Sielaff of Golden Retriever (Thrill Jockey). "As far back as I can remember, I have been obsessed with cities. As a child, I was fascinated by their richness and mythology -- the romance of cities, which is so ubiquitous across the American psyche. No doubt aided by the lore of countless films and photographs, I grew up yearning for an identity filled with grit and relevance that a city life seemed to provide. As an adult social worker and city dweller, my fascination morphed into a focus on the social arrangements and contestation produced in urban settings. Right to the City is my own way of unraveling these ideas through a process of fractured storytelling; some of the songs are meant as imagined ethnographies of the people dispossessed and marginalized in cities while others are vignettes meant to soundtrack a besieged urban existence -- a visceral immersion into the warring sounds of the city. They are decidedly not 'protest songs'; they are my love letters to, and nightmares of, Portland and Chicago over two fraught years, told through characters from every corner of my life. I ripped samples of riot munitions and street chants from television news and YouTube, recorded police sirens in the street, enlisted friends to play cello and clarinet and to recite fragments of poems, and experimented with a half dozen forms of synthesis. In the end, I tried to make something that molded all the inputs into a coherent story that was by turns hushed and wailing." --Dominic Voz RIYL: Holly Herndon, SND, Autechre, SOPHIE, James Ferraro, Ikue Mori, Nobakazu Takemura, Mouse of Mars, Matmos, Foodman, Laurel Halo, Jim O'Rourke. Edition of 300.

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Wake is a distillation and reflection of the work of three Portland musicians thrown, like the rest of the world, into forced isolation by the continually-mutating curse of a natural world in disequilibrium. The product of involuntarily inward-looking emotional landscapes, Wake emerged sounding surprisingly expansive and confident. The trio uses a variety of instruments -- including harp, fretless bass, piano, and a variety of synthesizers -- to conjure sparkling panoramas of the imagination that are deep-pooled and impressionistic, bracing yet comforting. Mike Grabarak and Joshua Ward have performed together for years as a duo under the moniker of Location Services, while Derek Hunter Wilson has primarily worked as a solo composer in the classical realm. For the Points Of No Return compilation, Beacon Sound's 50th release and a benefit for the Beirut Musicians Fund, they recorded a collaborative piece entitled "Interdependence In Solitude" that was so promising the label offered to release an album if they continued down the path they had started upon. The resulting eight songs are simply mesmerizing. Made during a period of change and upheaval in the world and society where many people were disconnected from others, the album is the product of a collage-like dialogue built on trust and patience. While the musicians couldn't physically be together for much of this time, they began sending musical ideas to one another in a conversational back-and-forth that acted as an anchor of stability -- something they found they could turn to and depend on when things felt uncertain elsewhere. This comfort zone led to some transcendent moments of experimentation. "Delicate Need", for example, features recordings of exaggerated pizzicato that were sampled and then run back through processing effects, which were then subsequently performed live over the original track. As things became less risky on the Covid front, they would occasionally meet for backyard rehearsals. Indeed, a recording of one of these rehearsals became the basis for the opening track "Photo Aware". Design work by Berlin-based Studio Bernhardt. The cover painting was created by Portland artist Nate Ethington. RIYL: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Daniel Lanois, Loscil, K Leimer, Deaf Center, Tangerine Dream, Arvo Pärt.

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Montreal composer and cellist Justin Wright's sophomore album is an ode to the creative process, intricately stitched together from cassette loops, string improvisations, modular synthesizer patches, field recordings, and orchestral arrangements. While the cello remains a central engine behind many of the tracks, A Really Good Spot is a drastic departure from Justin's previous records. The transparent result, mixed by Pietro Amato (Bell Orchestre, The Luyas), intimately and honestly embraces the beautiful spontaneous moments, tribulations, and studio edits. A Really Good Spot is a celebration of process. Justin met Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw as he was experimenting with cassette loops during a residency at the Banff Centre. Shaw pushed him to apply for Princeton University's highly selective PhD program in composition with her recommendation, where he was accepted despite having no formal music education. At Princeton, Justin completed the album with instruction from composers such as Donnacha Dennehy, Steve Mackey, Dan Trueman, and Juri Seo. Over the winter of 2021, Justin was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer (prognosis: likely OK), adding another layer to the story of this album and leading to an earlier-than-expected release. Stemming from an eventful five years, A Really Good Spot presents an abstract exploration and appreciation for the processes of artistic and personal evolution, pushing boundaries while still maintaining an emotional and evocative sound. Co-release with First Terrace Records.

"When I first started writing tracks for A Really Good Spot, I didn't have much in mind other than wanting cello, wanting synthesizers, and feeling like I was long overdue for writing new material. But once I got started, I was having so much fun coming up with new methods for writing that I wondered: what if 'procedurality' could appear on a spectrum, just like dynamics or tempo? Why is process something we try to cover up? There is something that feels so dishonest about a pristine, polished album that fits together a little too perfectly, as if all the tribulations leading up to it are swept aside in the name of presentability. Of course, time is an enemy of simplicity, and what began as an attempt to bring process to the foreground turned into what the album is today: a surrealist spectrum of methodology, where the techniques showcased may or may not be real, where the orchestration confidently reinforces the most haphazard nonsense elements, and where the playfulness occasionally steps aside for moments of somber clarity." --Justin Wright

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"At the invitation of composer Martin Sturm, Singh composed four pieces for the Liszt organ at Denstadt, which, inspired by the composer's 'rural organ experiments' with cantor and organist Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg, explore the sound spectrum of this unique instrument. The approach is far less strict than that recently adopted by Éliane Radigue or members of the loose association of Stockholm composers and organ nerds such as Kali Malone or the Berlin-based Ellen Arkbro. Singh's composition and Sturm's playing respectively concede the instrument its own peculiarities and thus a ghostly life of its own. mewl infans offers yet another of the numerous contemporary and forward-looking perspectives; one of the most innovative ones at that." --Field Notes Berlin (Releases of the Month)

In the 1850s the influential composer Franz Liszt, who was living in Weimar, Germany at the time, carried out, with the famous cantor Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg, a series of "ländlichen Orgelexperimente" (rural organ experiments) in Thuringia -- investigating various instruments and their capabilities for contemporary music. They eventually settled on the organ in Denstedt because of its high quality. Many years later, award-winning organist Martin Sturm would invite the Berlin-based composer Rishin Singh to repeat these "ländlichen Orgelexperimente" with him and they again chose the organ at Denstedt, now named in honor of Liszt, as the best instrument -- the most flexible and expressive -- to perform and record Singh's music for organ. mewl infans is a contemporary classical piece that invites modern listeners to ponder the enduring pull of an instrument that was first conceived more than 2,000 years ago and has, in recent years, been rediscovered by a new generation of composers and listeners. Throughout the larger architecture of the four movements, melodic motifs return over and over, fractured by noise, fragmented by carefully calibrated alternate tunings, dissolving into thin air, and generating drones which then transform into new melodic variations. Over the 44 minutes of the piece the organist at times attempts to exert complete control over the instrument, and at other times relinquishes all control entirely. Conceptually rigorous and emotionally charged, mewl infans rewards deep listening and patience. At times conjuring a sense of doom, at other times suspense, pastoral drift, or aquatic submersion, the album is a universe of tiny details comprised of noise and air, of the journey each tone takes from birth to expiration. Singh has been commissioned by the GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet. RIYL: Anna von Hausswolff, Olivier Messiaen, Max Reger, Kali Malone, Ellen Arkbro, Kevin Drumm, Maria Horn.

"An endless and captivating exploration of one organ's timbres and tones. Both whispered and shouted, large and small, close and far, Singh's work is both unsettling and a balm, and has invited me to reconsider pitch, consonance, dissonance, tension and release." --Clarice Jensen, artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME)

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Valo Siroutuu (The Light Scatters) is a collaborative song cycle written on and for the island of Kimitoön, home to Finnish artist Lau Nau. Incorporating in-situ field recordings, impromptu outdoor songwriting, contemplative and patient chamber arrangements, and lyrics delivered both in Finnish and English, the album thematically pursues observations of and meditations on place, time, nature, home, play, and language. Less a record of songs and more a continued, braided rope of ephemeral moments and turbid musical events, this work exists in a suspended dream or flow state, billowing up momentarily like wind breezing through spruce leaves or cresting over like the initial breaking waves of an oncoming high tide, yet always eventually rippling out back into quietude and solace like the patient floating fractures of light scattered across water's surface. RIYL: Juliana Barwick, Volcano Choir, Grouper, Amiina, The Album Leaf, Microphones, Múm, El Perro Del Mar, Sigur Ros, Kemialliset Ystävät. "A travelogue of sound" --Drifting, Almost Falling

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LP version. Includes 7'. In early 2019, Dominic Appleton met up for lunch in London with 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell while the long-retired label boss was visiting from his home in New Mexico. At the time of their lunch Appleton had already agreed to work on an album with Italian composer and producer Matteo Uggeri but was suffering from a minor crisis of confidence. Thanks to Uggeri's persistence and Ivo-Watts' timely encouragement, Starlight And Still Air exists, their stunning, memorable, and downright addictive debut album as Starlight Assembly. Drawing on a foundation of song-oriented electronic music while hewing to no single genre, Starlight And Still Air conjures up a sound palette that is both redolent and familiar yet very much its own. It is accessible, yes, but its layered complexity, evocative lyrics, and deft use of field recordings will likewise keep listeners returning for more. After the skittering drums and detached rhythms that introduce opening track "Afternoon Update", the album settles into itself, unfurling a run of songs that could each be a standalone single yet also work perfectly together as a fully-realized song cycle. Askew yet deeply grounded and personal, featuring beats that lock in over a bed of dubby low end, songs like "Cold Sun", "There Is No Crisis To Come" and "Look What We've Wasted" have a propulsive, move-your-body intensity that demand attention. "Still Air" sounds like a lost gem from the edges of trip-hop. "Looking For Clues", with its siren strings and relatable frustration, is taut and wiry. "The Long Goodbye" and "Bloodlines" move at a slower pace with their respective nods to partnership, mortality, and the familial. All ten tracks are centered around the melancholic, ambiguous lyrics of Dominic Appleton and his sonorous, instantly-recognizable voice. Starlight And Still Air begs for a long drive across troubled yet soothing landscapes; it treads the line between pop-forward and something more idiosyncratic and resistant to being captured. Most of Starlight And Still Air was meticulously constructed by Uggeri, who built each track from a vast range of sounds from his network of collaborators, in most cases tapping into folders of recordings given to him by these friends: drums, cellos, trumpet, violins, bass, guitar, plus quite a lot of beats, electronics and field recordings created solely by himself. The fine tuning seemed nearly done after a few other final adjustments, including a new closing track built from a piano improvisation by Francesco Giannico.

$20.00 IN STOCK

After making a name for himself over the last decade in Beirut's vibrant contemporary music scene, Anthony Sahyoun unveils his solo debut, the evocative and atmospheric Proof By Infinite Descent. Using guitar, synthesizer, and voice, Sahyoun tackles themes of mourning, accidental prophecy, and the new holy trinity of God, capitalism, and technology -- all while mining the seams of experimental electronica and gravity-defying ambient music. Restless, haunting, at times breathtakingly beautiful, this is an album that seeks to rattle cages rather than soothe the comfortable. Proof By Infinite Descent is the first installment in the Corrosion Series, a new project by longtime collaborators Ruptured and Beacon Sound that aims to showcase Beirut's blast-resistant music scene while building cultural connective tissue in a time of institutional corrosion. RIYL: Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Anna Meredith, Fennesz, Blanck Mass, Eartheater, Holly Herndon, Liturgy. Clear vinyl; edition of 300.

Sahyoun on Proof By Infinite Descent: "This album is a response to contemporary Lebanon -- and, by extension, our fractured world -- and is inspired by the complex web of institutions (religion, family, capitalism, etc.) that work together to preserve the status quo despite looming catastrophe. Grief, futility, and perpetual chaos mix and reconstitute themselves in these songs, each of which contains a story within. 'Irhamna', for example, was written as a prayer to Mar Roukoz, the patron saint of plagues and epidemics. It's a piece that I produced in late 2019, thinking that it was a reference to the plague that is our government, completely unaware that in just a few months the world would be dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. 'Jesuit Literature...' was written in an attempt to make boat sounds with my bows, reimagining the Levant without its history of colonization by external forces, specifically the Jesuits beginning in the 1600s and by the French after the defeat of the Ottomans. 'Khifat Al-Atraf' (loosely translating to 'mourning' in English), the piece featuring Firas al-Hallek, is a poem for his mother, who passed away when he was 14; Wasted Efforts, featuring the voice of Julia Sabra, is likewise dedicated to my own mother (still very much alive, thankfully). Requiem is an offering to those who lost their lives in the Beirut port explosion of Aug 4, 2020. Proof By Infinite Descent might represent my own futile expedition towards making sense of the present but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless, finding beauty in the cracks, which grow larger by the day."

$14.00 IN STOCK

In early 2019, Dominic Appleton met up for lunch in London with 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell while the long-retired label boss was visiting from his home in New Mexico. At the time of their lunch Appleton had already agreed to work on an album with Italian composer and producer Matteo Uggeri but was suffering from a minor crisis of confidence. Thanks to Uggeri's persistence and Ivo-Watts' timely encouragement, Starlight And Still Air exists, their stunning, memorable, and downright addictive debut album as Starlight Assembly. Drawing on a foundation of song-oriented electronic music while hewing to no single genre, Starlight And Still Air conjures up a sound palette that is both redolent and familiar yet very much its own. It is accessible, yes, but its layered complexity, evocative lyrics, and deft use of field recordings will likewise keep listeners returning for more. After the skittering drums and detached rhythms that introduce opening track "Afternoon Update", the album settles into itself, unfurling a run of songs that could each be a standalone single yet also work perfectly together as a fully-realized song cycle. Askew yet deeply grounded and personal, featuring beats that lock in over a bed of dubby low end, songs like "Cold Sun", "There Is No Crisis To Come" and "Look What We've Wasted" have a propulsive, move-your-body intensity that demand attention. "Still Air" sounds like a lost gem from the edges of trip-hop. "Looking For Clues", with its siren strings and relatable frustration, is taut and wiry. "The Long Goodbye" and "Bloodlines" move at a slower pace with their respective nods to partnership, mortality, and the familial. All ten tracks are centered around the melancholic, ambiguous lyrics of Dominic Appleton and his sonorous, instantly-recognizable voice. Starlight And Still Air begs for a long drive across troubled yet soothing landscapes; it treads the line between pop-forward and something more idiosyncratic and resistant to being captured. Most of Starlight And Still Air was meticulously constructed by Uggeri, who built each track from a vast range of sounds from his network of collaborators, in most cases tapping into folders of recordings given to him by these friends: drums, cellos, trumpet, violins, bass, guitar, plus quite a lot of beats, electronics and field recordings created solely by himself. The fine tuning seemed nearly done after a few other final adjustments, including a new closing track built from a piano improvisation by Francesco Giannico.

$18.50 IN STOCK

Sage Fisher returns with Body Of Water, recorded last year against the backdrop of the emerging Covid-19 pandemic with Grammy-nominated producer Tucker Martine. Body Of Water represents both a deepening and an expansion of her singular sound. Although the harp retains its pivotal role as Fisher's instrument of choice, the album features a stronger emphasis on her voice, delivered in a series of arresting incantations that take flight over a bed of ground-shifting beats and percussion. Mining the rich seams of experimental pop music, Fisher projects warmth and vulnerability alongside a newfound clarity and confidence, bringing themes of betrayal, transformation, and self-renewal into her songwriting process in a true symbiosis of life and art. Few artists can tackle such complex subject matter, yet leave you exhaling in wonder midway through the album as "Break" ("I'm making preparations for the apocalypse/everything I touch, I break") unfolds out of its percussive frisson into an utterly gorgeous and transportive ambient soundscape. Body Of Water lives and breathes at the intersection of contemporary pop and the intertwined worlds of electronic, ambient, and neoclassical music -- witness an artist metamorphosize in real-time, and with the deft hand of one of the world's most renowned producers by her side. Indeed, as Fisher writes, Body Of Water "moves in and out of the physical, fluttering between worlds, just as I was." Music composed and performed in Portland by Sage Fisher. Produced by Tucker Martine. Recorded and mixed by Tucker Martine at Flora Recording and Playback. Assistant engineer: Cole Halvorsen. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio. RIYL: Holly Herndon, Björk, Colleen, Mary Lattimore, Fever Ray, Zeena Parkins, Kate Bush, FKA Twigs.

$18.50 IN STOCK

"Led by composer Rishin Singh, this sublime ensemble fits neatly into the complex of Berlin musicians devoted to alternate tunings. Blending exquisite, enveloping long tones, the measured singing of Annie Gårlid and Stine Sterne, and stately, slowly unfolding melodies, Leider is an art-song combo that finds the commonalities in John Dowland, the Velvet Underground, and La Monte Young." --Peter Margasak

Leider is an ensemble that plays songs by Rishin Singh and hails from the city of Berlin. A Fog Like Liars Loving, their debut album, is fragile and delicate music that reflects the darker side of urban living -- themes of addiction, alienation, casual cruelty, and paranoia are present throughout -- while maintaining an understated gallows humor. Though difficult to categorize, they can reference the textures of musique concrète or the structures of Wandelweiser. They can also devolve into cascades of no-wave inspired noise and are almost always just at the edge of falling apart. These eight songs extend a patient hand to the listener, playing with chance and human idiosyncrasy: exposed instrumental playing where the hairs scraping across strings and the air required to produce a note are as important as the notes themselves. Hardly ever truly in tune or in time with one another, yet fully in conversation. Hardly a note that isn't broken or damaged in some way, both antidote and mirror to the disintegration of sedentary life. A Fog Like Liars Loving is an album that takes its time and trusts its audience to do the same, a Cagean unspooling of our "great expectations" that will keep you coming back for more, humming along all the while. Simultaneously unnerving and pleasantly tranquilizing, a path without a path, clear in concept yet deeply sensual, A Fog Like Liars Loving exists in a world of its own. RIYL: Olivier Messiaen, Eva-Maria Houben, John Cale, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Jürg Frey, Morton Feldman, Alexander Scriabin, Nico (minus the racism), Richard Strauss, Scott Walker, Low, Carlo Gesualdo, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Yo La Tengo. Recorded in Summer 2018 at studioboerne45, Berlin. Recorded and mixed by Adam Asnan. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, New York. Design and photography by Anna Bernhardt.

$18.50 IN STOCK

Fusing spacious electronic minimalism, shimmering guitars, and the empyrean voice of Misty Mary, Portland's WL (pronounced "well") arrive at the end of 2020 with an album of lustrous, crystalline Left Coast pop that is destined to be a trusted companion during the long nights ahead. ADHD is a defining statement of purpose for the group, made during a time of personal upheaval and featuring an evocative song cycle that begs to be listened to on repeat. From the slow gallop of "Show Me" to the all-consuming gale that is "Voices", listening to the album from start to finish is like taking an autumnal walk across one of the city's iconic bridges, a cinematic embrace that feels both protective and expansive. The album's alchemical magic is revealed through the depth of its deceptively simple song structures, with each song blooming into its own mini-cosmos. Ruminative, self-assured, and spun through with warmth, ADHD reveals WL to be in a class of their own. And if "Water's On My Side" isn't the most Portland of songs, we don't know what is. RIYL: Still Corners, Chromatics, Broadcast, The XX. Recorded in North Portland, 2019. Mixed By Spencer Doran. Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk. Cover art by Jonathan McCabe. Includes download; edition of 500. "WL makes the kind of music that's so visual it doesn't even need the customary accompanying video. Like the Oregon Coast, the band's atmospheric sound is vaporous and brooding." --Willamette Week

$18.50 IN STOCK

Lebanese musician, producer, and sound engineer Fadi Tabbal's work consists of guitar pieces ranging from stripped acoustics to ambient and electronic-inspired treatments. He has released four solo albums since 2013, including The Museum Of Disappearing Buildings (BNSD 023LP) and Music For The Lonely Vol. 1 (2017-2018) and recently spearheaded the Beirut Musicians Fund, set up to aid musicians in Beirut who lost equipment in the explosion at the Port of Beirut. Tabbal is a full-time member of several Lebanese bands including electronic duo Stress/Distress and The Bunny Tylers (with Charbel Haber) and has collaborated with Mike Cooper, Postcards, Sharif Sehnaoui, Kinematik, and Oiseaux-Tempete, to name but a few.

Lebanon's capital city of Beirut sits on one of the world's most turbulent fault lines, with a hostile and expansionist neighbor to the south (the settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel), a civil-war-riven country to the east and north (Syria), and a domestic situation that features a deeply-corrupt sectarian ruling elite, millions of refugees from Palestine and Syria, months of revolutionary protests, and a collapsed economy. Beirut, however, has long been a vibrant and diverse beacon of Arab and Mediterranean culture. Recent decades have seen the emergence of an internationally-recognized contemporary music, art, and dance scene; a vocal LGBTQ+ movement; and an interconnected web of efforts around refugee rights, democratic government, public health, and environmental concerns. Equal parts heartbreaking and inspiring, the city carries on, even thrives, against all odds. The massive explosion at the Port of Beirut on August 4th, which decimated some of the city's most beautiful and progressive neighborhoods, stands indeed as a tragic example of some of the worst ills afflicting humanity in 2020. But it also revealed a few long-simmering reasons for hope: citizens coming together in widespread acts of mutual aid, emphasizing what brings people together over what divides them, and rising up en masse against a corrupt economic system and the geopolitical power structures it engenders. As American cities revolt against totalitarianism and for racial justice, with Portland at the forefront, Lebanon beckons as both a cautionary tale and an example of the persistence necessary in order to take down a dying order in an era of existential threats.

Recorded and mixed between January and April 2020 at Tunefork Studios and at home, Beirut. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll. Release by Beacon Sound and Ruptured. Includes download; edition of 300.

$18.50 IN STOCK

Beacon Sound presents the debut album by Portland duo Methods Body, a co-release with New Amsterdam. "Dark twin, meet your light twin." That's how musicians and best friends John Niekrasz and Luke Wyland were first introduced to each other in 2007. It's an apt description of the duality and synergy of their musical project Methods Body. Using keys/electronics and percussion, the two maximize the duo configuration to create music at once primal and futuristic. Overflowing with polyrhythms and layers of microtonal melodies, the two suites on Methods Body's self-titled debut conjure a sense of traveling through space and time to a prismatic, post-human landscape. No strangers to instrumental innovation, Niekrasz and Wyland are known for their previous acclaimed projects: Wyland's art-pop ensemble AU, and Niekrasz's virtuosic experimental duo Why I Must Be Careful. Having played together in improvisational contexts for more than a decade, they committed to Methods Body in 2016 by spending five days a week in their Portland, Oregon, studio composing and interrogating themselves about their usefulness as artists in "combating the distressing geopolitical climate." Working with the same therapist, Wyland and Niekrasz began to focus on their personal relationship "as a model of creative love through nurturant masculinity." Their vision for Methods Body crystallized as they journeyed to remote landscapes to record together. First, to a historic saloon in the Mojave desert -- Pioneertown's Red Dog Saloon -- then, to a 12' by 16' cabin in the primeval Oregon forest where they slept on the floor beneath their instruments. Methods Body creates instrumental music with language at its core. Niekrasz and Wyland's contrasting relationships with language allow a real alchemy to emerge from the tension between them. Language is foundational for Niekrasz, a poet from the Iowa Writers' Workshop who studies the cross-cultural traditions of verbally-inspired drumming. He uses syllabic notation to form intricate rhythmical patterns that bloom into wild tangentry. As a stutterer, Wyland's approach to music is informed by his idiosyncratic relationship with language. The cadences of broken speech and use of technology as an aid in communication are fundamental to his musical vocabulary. Featured on track "Claimed Events Pt. 2 - Overheard", vocalist Holland Andrews (Like A Villain) reveals the linguistic heart of this music with a virtuosic call to action. RIYL: Terry Riley, Dawn Of Midi, Konono No 1, Silver Apples, Aphex Twin, Battles, Four Tet, Kelly Moran.