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HG 2407LP
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$30.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/6/2024
Night Keeper is a collaborative album by New York City-based artist Aaron Landsman and former Swans guitarist Norman Westberg that is based on the former's eponymous play. Westberg recorded it together with performer Jehan O. Young for the Swiss Hallow Ground label, with Landsman serving as the record's producer. The original piece was first performed in the Spring of 2023 at The Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens and filled the stark industrial space with spoken text, choreography, projections, and music in dim light and, occasionally, complete darkness. Westberg and Young afterwards brought it to the studio to record it as a two-part album in whose course his textural sounds, based on loops and samples, set the stage for her soothing, sonorous vocal performance. Night Keeper is a performance inspired by sleeplessness and the wanderings of the human mind at night -- about time and memory. Westberg and Young elegantly capture its essence in these roughly 44 minutes with a somnambulic album, letting sound and meaning flow into each other. The initial spark for Night Keeper was a run of almost sleepless nights in different neighborhoods of a city that is perpetually insomniac. Instead of trying to force himself to go back to sleep by any means necessary, Landsman started writing down his thoughts. Accordingly, the texts that Young reads on the record form a diverse collection of specific moments, imagining different speakers and evoking different situations. Westberg complements, accentuates, and juxtaposes these with different means. Ominous drones, soaring melodies, rhythmic bass sounds. Landsman makes it clear that Night Keeper was intended as an invitation to "stay up, look out the window, let what's happening outside spark reveries or predictions« or even take it on a stroll through the neighborhood" at night, of course. Much like the original piece, this album is then one dedicated to wandering around, both mentally and physically.
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HG 2403LP
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FUJI||||||||||TA returns to Hallow Ground with his second full-length for the Swiss label after it had released his international breakthrough album iki in early 2020. Active since 2006, the Japanese composer and sound artist has become prolific since the release of iki, releasing a slew of records while also touring the world. His new album MMM is Yosuke Fujita's most complex so far. Changing the set-up of his pipe organ by switching to an electric air pump allowed him to activate new sonic and compositional potentials of the instrument, while he also expanded upon his experiments with his own voice. MMM is a masterpiece of conceptual and formal rigour -- a testament to how multi-layered and versatile the music of FUJI||||||||||TA can be. Previous releases had already showcased Fujita's interest in working with the rhythmic potentials of the organ he built himself in 2009. Replacing its hand-operated air pump with an electric one allowed him to work with it more freely and simultaneously record its sounds. The subtle tonal shifts of the organ take on a more subdued role this time, and Fujita's scat growling and singing reappears in processed form. Just like its title can mean a lot of different things, MMM itself is ever-evolving, traversing different moods and opening itself up to a plethora of interpretations at each of its many turns.
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HG 2401LP
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Musique Infinie is the collaborative project of Manuel Oberholzer a.k.a. Feldermelder and Noémi Büchi. Their album Earth, released through the Hallow Ground label, is based on a spontaneously composed live score for Alexander Dovzhenko's groundbreaking 1930 silent movie Zemlya ("Earth") created for the 24th edition of the VIDEOEX festival for experimental film. Frequently cited as a masterpiece of early 20th century filmmaking, the movie deals with the collectivization of Ukraine's agriculture. The Swiss duo complemented it with atmospherically rich electronic soundscapes that are both deeply immersive and highly evocative. As a stand-alone music release, the two-piece Earth album captures the essence of Büchi and Oberholzer's collaboration that is marked by mutual trust and musical versatility that puts them in a state of "togetherness trance," as they call it. Oberholzer has been highly productive as a composer, musician, sound designer, and installation artist in recent years, releasing a slew of solo albums as well as a variety of collaboration records with artists such as Sara Oswald and Julian Sartorius. Büchi has recently debuted as a solo composer and sound artist working with electroacoustic techniques to create a »symphonic maximalism for "the end of the world," as she dubs it. Both are prolific and versatile artists with a penchant for working conceptually, however their collaboration as Musique Infinie is an improvisational and thus by design an intuitive one. Their sessions start with an exchange on emotions and thoughts rather than theoretical questions or aesthetic debates. When they get to work, they rarely talk. They approached Earth the same way, improvising freely together and using only a few select samples from the film's original score in the process. Their open-ended approach is marked by an aesthetic ambivalence that perfectly corresponds with the movie's own inherent contradictions. Dovzhenko approached his socio-political subject with poetic imagery and philosophical rigour, juxtaposing notions of traditionality with the depiction of modernity. Büchi and Oberholzer accordingly work with motives that at once seem anthemic and elegiac, working with sounds and musical motives that evoke a sense of familiarity in one moment before transforming into something futuristic and uncanny in the next. Their score for Zemlya is not to be understood as a mere interpretation of the movie, but rather a re-narration or even re-negotiation of its aesthetic and emotional qualities under their very own terms.
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HG 2402LP
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Sound of Matter is the debut album by Romanian sound artist and composer Simina Oprescu. The two pieces draw on research conducted with 15 historical church bells at the Märkisches Museum and the Stadtmuseum Berlin. After the artist had presented the results of her studies of the connection between matter and harmony in the form of a multi-channel installation, she has translated the underlying approach of this site-specific work into an album that unfolds slowly, consistently setting in motion subtle tonal changes that continuously change the mood of the two pieces. Sound of Matter is both minimalist and maximalist, creating an infinitely rich and multi-layered dronescape that modestly invites its audience to get lost in the sonic experience. Oprescu has been fascinated by church bells since her childhood spent in Transylvania since the instruments were shrouded in mystery, as she explains in an in-depth essay that accompanies the album. She started working with the archive of the Märkisches Museum, which included 15 historical church bells that were built between the 15th and the early 19th century. Since every bell sounds different according to its shape, material, and density, Oprescu abstracted these qualities in a mathematical formula. This enabled her to recreate the harmonic tone of the individual bells with Max/MSP. She then composed a piece with semi-overlayed tones, i.e. overlapping frequencies. Naturally, this resulted in a beating effect that provided the music with a sense of urgency, though the five-second-long natural reverb of the Märkisches Museum's Große Halle turned it into a "warm blanket of sound," as the artist herself puts it. This is perfectly recreated on Sound of Matter due to the music being presented in mono, bringing out the intrinsic movement of the beatings with more nuance than a stereo version would. Sound of Matter feels warm and welcoming even when different frequencies seem to create friction between each other or when the subtle beating effects turn into throbbing rhythms like at the end of the record. It manages to explore both Oprescu's personal fascination with church bells and psychological and psychoacoustic questions relating to them as well as philosophical issues connected with them. This music is profoundly physical, but also intellectually stimulating -- perfectly at home in the catalogue of the Swiss Hallow Ground label between records by Kali Malone, Lawrence English, or Siavash Amini.
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HG 2301LP
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Tropic of Capricorn is the second album by Lawrence English and Werner Dafeldecker. Based on field recordings made by the prolific Room40 owner that were subtly but decisively altered with electroacoustic techniques through the German improv legend, these two long-form pieces blur the lines between acoustic ecology and aesthetic interventions, concrete local sound worlds and boundary-defying art. They put a focus on our relationship with nature as listeners as much as they call into question where nature ends and human perception begins. They are deeply confusing, disorienting perhaps, in the most beautiful ways. English recorded the material that form the basis of the duo's Hallow Ground debut on two different field trips. One led him from the Western coast to the Pilbara region in the North of the country called Australia, the other to the central desert into the lands of the Arrernte people. When recording the soundscapes, the artist put a focus on the residues of failed colonial aspirations. "The buildings and objects that remain from the failed cattle pastures and other endeavors create uneasy sound worlds of their own," English says of the regions that are also places of extraction, especially the heavily mined Pilbara. "There is a distant drone of industry in even the most remote of places; an unsettled sense of heavy breath on the land." He brought home a document of natural reclamation in time. The rich source material was then given to Dafeldecker. Spatializing the recordings with transducers applied to different surfaces such as wood, stretched animal skin, glass, or metal surfaces and also re-recording parts of the recordings, he created discrete events that were inserted into, or rather enmeshed with English's recordings. What Tropic of Capricorn invites its listeners to listen beyond the preconceived notions of how nature is supposed to be represented in sound and to instead embrace the immediacy of the sensation.
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HG 2306LP
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$28.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/1/2023
Arches is the first collaborative album by brothers Simon and Tobias Lanz. It was written for and performed on self-built prototypes of wind instruments that were inspired by the classic pipe organ, but allowed the two composer-performers to go beyond its limitations in several ways. The music on this 40-minute-long album for the Swiss Hallow Ground label was conceived and recorded by the two co-founders of the CRTTR collective and label during an artist residency in May 2022 in their hometown of Bern. More than a mere document of a performance however, Arches combines the artists' interest in exploring uncharted new creative and tonal ground inside of and beyond the realm of drone music with their background in visual art and design as a conceptually concise whole. Simon and Tobias have a combined background in electronic music as well as a shared penchant for drone music. They hence designed these novel instruments in a way that allows for microtonal tuning to be able to overcome the restrictions inherent to the dominance of a twelve tone-based scale in Western music and work with a sonic palette that is much wider and nuanced than that of the conventional pipe organ. Furthermore, the physical design of these instruments widely differs from that of those which inspired them. This allows -- or more precisely, forces -- the musicians to freely invent and explore entirely novel playing techniques. The Lanz brothers worked with a graphic score for the four movements of the piece that forms Arches so as to adequately visualize the manifold tonal nuances of their instruments. This graphic score in turn was reinterpreted for the album release by Ramon Keiming, adding another dimension to it. Read from left to right, this remix of the score allows the listeners to follow an interpretation of the evolution of these dronescapes while the record plays, urging them to add their own interpretation. This retroactive visualization and thus spatialization of the music is perfectly in line with its performance, which at all times factored in the acoustic affordances of the Prozess Bar in Bern. To call Arches a unique record with an unheard-of sound is not hyperbole, but only factually correct.
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HG 2305LP
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Martina Berther and Philipp Schlotter are prolific in their respective ways, having been active in pop and jazz music, respectively, as well as playing in bands and exploring the outer fringes of sound art or composing music for film. Their first joint album Matt was recorded over the course of four days in a church in the Swiss village after which the album was named. Berther and Schlotter worked with the building's organ as well as synthesizers and electric bass to follow an experimental approach that oscillated between composition and free improvisation. The five pieces, recorded directly to tape by Flo Götte without any additional overdubs, are characterized by an intimacy and rawness that calls to mind the introspective atmosphere of Lawrence English's latest album for the Swiss label. Matt is the result of two versatile composers and musicians executing minimalist ideas by giving them plenty of space to unfold. The album opens with "Unruhe," a composition that is based on the twelve-tone technique. Using a stopwatch to ensure the adherence to the pre-determined temporal intervals between the individual notes, Berther and Schlotter used the church organ and synthesizers for an ominous piece that traverses different moods and levels of intensity throughout its 14-minute run time. "LFO1" and "LFO2" are different variations of the same concept: based on a synthesizer preset and structured by an organ drone, two tone generators slowly fall silent, resulting in elegiac pieces that call to mind the work of Éliane Radigue. "Frachter" and "Gallia" put more emphasis on percussive elements. Again working with organ as well as Berther's prepared electric bass, this improvisation comprises interlocking textures that sound almost menacing on "Frachter," while they create a very different atmosphere on "Gallia." These notable discrepancies in sound and mood are even more astonishing if you consider that the two pieces are based on the exact same recording, played at different speeds. As two variations on the same idea with very different results, these two pieces perfectly represent how the duo effectively creates emotionally affective sound worlds with very few means. Berther and Schlotter's conceptual minimalism yields rewarding, multi-faceted aesthetic results. Matt is an intimate album, marked by a sense of vividness and spontaneity, but also the product of compositional conciseness.
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HG 2303LP
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Debut album by the Belgian composer Elisabeth Klinck, was born out of strict isolation and is nonetheless a result of a collaborative process that saw her working closely with artist Oscar Claus. Enriching her compositions for violin with electronic soundscapes and field recordings from their surroundings, the two entered an artistic dialogue that took place inside its own idiosyncratic space outside of conventional time. It is an intimate record in which Klinck's expressive playing that incorporates unconventional techniques forms the basis of something much bigger: an invitation to inhabit a specific space at a specific time together with the two of them. For an entire week in the spring of 2021, Klinck and Claus stayed at an abandoned monastery surrounded by beautiful gardens, but with no power or running water. The intention was to record some of Klinck's musical ideas on violin, experiment with electronics and acoustic spaces and to get to know each other on a musical level. This proved to be an inspiring and deeply moving process -- and the starting point for more. In the winter of that year, the duo set out to the Spanish Pyrenees to build a DIY studio in a small village on a mountain top and record the eight pieces that form Picture a Frame. The idea of losing track of time and space is a theme that found its way in these recordings. The two spent their days and nights reading, walking, talking, cooking, and taking care of the animals living there but also experimenting with sound, improvising together and making field recordings. This deep focus on being present in the moment, listening to the world around them and each other resulted in a holistic experience that was translated into music and sound. Klinck and Claus understand this album as a collage, an attempt to evoke the implicit, an essay that suggests a time and space, and a gentle collision between two people that deeply resonate with one another. It's impossible to argue with that, and even harder not to be drawn into it. White vinyl.
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HG 2202LP
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Mattias Petersson debuts on the Swiss label Hallow Ground with Triangular Progressions, a suite in nine parts written entirely in the SuperCollider environment using additive synthesis. By exploring the harmonic progressions found hiding within the triangle, Triangular Progressions at once emits a sense of introspective calm that fosters deep listening and evokes a whole spectrum of emotions, mediating between the abstract and the visceral. The Stockholm-based Petersson, also known under the moniker Codespira1 and for his long-term collaboration with violinist George Kentros as There Are No More Four Seasons, has been active as a composer of computer music as well as an artist in the realms of live coding and modular synthesis for over two decades. Originally trained as a classical pianist, he also holds a diploma in electro-acoustic composition from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he currently works as an associate professor. Besides his activities as a musician and teacher, Petersson is pursuing a PhD in composition at the Luleå University of Technology. Researching modular systems comprising both human and non-human modules, he is part of the GEMM))) Gesture Embodiment and Machines in Music cluster. Triangular Progressions can be considered a perfect synthesis of Petersson's academic interests and aesthetic ideas, combining a mathematical approach with artistic rigor. The magic number triangle highlights the beauty of symmetrical properties. By exploring its idiosyncrasies, the composer manages to translate them into engaging sounds. The lush melodies and harmonies of the music at times call to mind the intimate organ and drone works by label mates Kali Malone and Maria W Horn while also maintaining a unique signature sound. The addition of pure sinusoidal waves enables a deep listening exploration of the counterpoint between melodic and harmonic rhythms, chord structures and spectral harmonies that Petersson extrapolates from those magic numbers.
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HG 2302LP
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Mt. Hadamard National Park is the Hallow Ground debut by composer, programmer, and instrument designer Matthias Puech. Informed by mathematical and artistic approaches that aim to both contemplate on and control complexity, the eponymous five-part composition explores natural and mystical forces through what he calls "audio-naturalist noise". The composition is complemented by two further pieces that follow similar concepts: "Suspension" emulates the chemical phenomenon of the same name, while "Imperceptible Life" hinges on the musical possibilities of stridulation. Over the course of the entire album, Puech's singular take on electro-acoustic and electronic music creates unique sonic spaces as much as it pays its dues to the unpredictability of the world that we inhabit. Jacques Hadamard was a pioneer among physicists and mathematicians who, in the early 20th century, were puzzled by processes that are deterministic but hard to predict. The sounds, arranged in sweeping and tense dynamics, serve as multiple agents within a complex system. The synthetic flora and fauna created through the use of the composer-performer's instruments feels uncannily familiar or even disturbingly hostile at times... This process is mirrored in aquatic yet tangible sounds as well as dynamics that slowly converge towards density before the composition ends on a quiet note. The 14-minute-long "Imperceptible Life" is based on a 2019 live performance first conceived as a full-scale test drive of some new electronic equipment Puech was designing at that time. It explores the musical potential of stridulation, the act of creating sounds by rubbing together certain body parts -- in the insect world, a common means of communication. Again, Puech's approach is neither purely naturalistic nor only mimetic. Rather, "Imperceptible Life" offers yet another artistic reflection on the theme of chaos and order, and how human perception and emotion relate to it. As a whole, Mt. Hadamard National Park thus not merely mirrors natural phenomena but transforms them in ways that are emotionally evocative: the complexity and apparent arbitrariness of Puech's compositions reveal an underlying beauty that is equal parts haunting and comforting.
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HG 2203LP
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Composer and sound artist Siavash Amini collaborates with author Eugene Thacker on Songs for Sad Poets. The collection of eight pieces draws its inspiration from the legacy of the so-called cursed poets ("poètes maudits") as well as the German-language tradition of song cycles and expands the structure of the classic art song through a process of lyric abstraction. Amini is no stranger to interdisciplinary collaboration, as seen in A Mimesis of Nothingness, his 2020 collaboration with photographer Nooshin Shafiee, also released through the Swiss Hallow Ground label. But whereas in Amini's previous collaborations music and other media are set in dialogue, with Songs for Sad Poets, Thacker's poems and Amini's soundscapes are deeply enmeshed with each other. In fact, none of the words printed in the record's booklet are being said out loud on this double-LP, but rather made tangible through the use of sound. Songs for Sad Poets was born out of a mutual admiration of each other's work and it is easy to see how the musician and the writer could relate to one another artistically. The Tehran-based Amini has released over 20 albums in the past decade that probe the physical world but also search for something beyond it. His compositions draw on field recordings as well as acoustic and electronic sounds, blurring the lines between what is conventionally perceived as real or authentic and the abstract or otherworldly. The New York-based Thacker on the other hand is known as a writer whose philosophical works like Infinite Resignation read like poetry while his poetry and other literary writing is inherently philosophically charged. What unites them on this project is an interest in the idea of the fragility of the human being set against the vast horizon of climate, planet, and the cosmos that produces a "sadness without cause." The pieces on Songs for Sad Poets translate this nearly inexpressible ambient melancholy into dense and sometimes claustrophobic pieces that are marked by internal tensions and slowly unfolding dynamics. The eight poems are neither only the starting points nor just the byproduct of the compositions, or vice versa. Instead, the entire record is one single result of a coherent creative process. Clear vinyl; 12-page booklet.
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HG 2222LP
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On Epiphanies, the first-ever "concept-compilation" to be released by Hallow Ground, artists such as Maria W Horn, FUJI||||||||||TA, Lawrence English, Siavash Amini, and Norman Westberg, who all have previously released music on the Swiss label, were commissioned to pursue a non-rational creative process in approaching the phenomenon of epiphany through sound. In very different ways, all of the compositions on the compilation draw on the unique emotional powers of certain acoustic instruments, obfuscating the borders between physicality and abstraction. The results, whether long-form, short vignettes, profane and concrete sounds, or spiritual and abstract pieces, perfectly encapsulate what Hallow Ground as a label has stood for since its inception in the year 2013: challenging not only conventional notions of what music is supposed to sound like but also the listeners' perception through the power of sound. On Epiphanies, Hallow Ground also welcomes artists including Magda Drozd, Akira Sileas, and Valentina Magaletti to make their first ever contributions to the label. For those who greet this compilation with open ears and minds, these 81 minutes will deliver on its title. Also features Remo Seeland (with Laya Ensemble), A Frei, Amosphère, Samuel Savenberg, Laurin Huber, Miki Yui, Reinier van Houdt, and Martina Lussi. White vinyl; gatefold cover; silver stamped, spotgloss-printed.
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On Empty Room David Granström works with slow transformations, cyclical and isometric patterns as well as just intonation as a way to create harmonic stability, allowing his long-form pieces to develop their own unique temporal and spatial qualities. A prolific figure in Stockholm's experimental drone scene and a collaborator of Hallow Ground label mates Maria W Horn and Mats Erlandsson, the Swedish composer navigates through moments of quietude and crushing volume on these five tracks. Sonically and atmospherically, the pieces on Empty Room simultaneously call to mind Fennesz's most meditative work or the physical experience of seeing Sunn O))) live, blending guitar recordings and synthesized sounds with forceful effects similar to those of Mario Díaz de Leon's Oneirogen project while still being as moving and delicate as Alessandro Cortini's solo work. The album is marked by melodies and harmonies that are the product of a peculiar working process that turned the composer into an intent listener collaborating with, rather than simply using technology.
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An unlikely meeting of two like-minded spirits, First Man in the Moon sees the former Swans guitarist and Hallow Ground regular Norman Westberg and the prolific double bass player Jacek Mazurkiewicz collaborate for five evocative tracks. The pair finds common ground beyond the boundaries of atmospheric drone, abstract jazz, and experimental music and blurs the lines between the acoustic and the electronic. The two first met when the composer Mazurkiewicz supported Swans with his solo project 3FoNIA on their 2014 European tour. "I really enjoyed his approach," says Westberg about the Polish musician's blending of the acoustic qualities of his instrument with electronically generated sounds. A decision to collaborate was made and when the US-American musician returned to Eastern Europe to support Michael Gira on his solo tour in late 2019, Mazurkiewicz reached out to him with the idea of booking some studio time before Gira's two concerts in Warsaw. "Recording was very fun and easy," remembers Westberg. "It was just two people enjoying hearing and reacting to what the other is doing." First Man in the Moon is not however a plain document of these improvised sessions, but also shaped by Mazurkiewicz's approach as a composer. Once the recordings were finished, he selected and edited the recorded material, refining the peculiar dialogue between the guitarist's meditative drones and bright chords and his own rhythmic yet subtle approach to playing the double bass, sometimes plucking the strings and occasionally using his bow to underscore Westberg's fleeting melodies, but also using the instrument in unconventional ways to generate sound. A feeling of weightlessness prevails throughout the aptly-titled First Man in the Moon. Even at their most abstract however, these five improvisations-turned-compositions remain tangible, lively, and joyfully explorative. It is a record that you wouldn't expect from either of these musicians, but the logical result of two idiosyncratic minds sharing not only space and time, but also their respective visions with each other.
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FUJI||||||||||TA, real name Fujita Yosuke, is a Japanese sound artist. After countless performances in different contexts either solo or along artists such as Yamantaka Eye of Boredoms and the legendary avant-gardist Suzuki Akio as well as a slew of solo releases, his LP iki ("breath") for the Swiss-based Hallow Ground label is his first sin 2011. On these four pieces, Fujita explores the idiosyncratic sound qualities of the pipe organ he has built all by himself in 2009. This -- quite literally unique -- instrument features only eleven pipes, an air pump called "fuigo" which was modelled after a traditional blacksmith's one and has no keyboard. Inspired by traditional gagaku, it was designed to evoke rich landscapes rather function as just another musical instrument. While his previous records saw FUJI||||||||||TA explore various modes of abstraction, iki is a highly emotive yet meditative album, musically restrained but full of imagination. "keshiki" immediately sets the mood for this record with a long sustained note that is punctuated by the soft clicking of Fujita's air pump. Once Fujita carefully starts bringing melodies into play, the interplay of the drone and the discrete rhythmic element gives way to a fuller harmonic whole. "keshiki" is an intimate piece that perfectly displays the artist's knack for painting a rich sonic picture with only a reduced palette. "nNami" juxtaposes the sounds of two pipes that are out of tune with each other, creating a hypnotic sensation of ebb-and-flow ("nami" translates to "wave") that is full of subtle friction. It's a staggering artistic interpretation of the instrument's material characteristics. Clocking in at ten minutes, "osoi" ("slow") is an overall melancholic piece that explores the relationship between different tone colors through minute changes in pace. Finally, "sukima" ("blank space") is the shortest and the most rhythmic piece of the four. Composed of only staccati, it is a masterful exploration of the harmonic qualities Fujita's stunning pipe organ has to offer. Recorded between September and December of 2019, iki marks the culmination of FUJI||||||||||TA's ten-year-long work with the instrument that he had built without any prior knowledge and started to teach himself to play without a manual in sight. It is, in other words, the unique result of a unique musical mind paying his dues to the uniqueness of his own creation; introspective and welcoming at once. 180 gram vinyl.
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Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomazin's Arba, Dâk Arba was conceived as the soundtrack for the eponymous installation piece by the French artist Fanny Béguély. First presented as part of the group exhibition "Panorama 21 - >Les Revenants<" at Tourcoing's Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in December 2019, Béguély's chemically painted photographs focused on humankind's propensity for self-examination and its attempts to probe the mysteries of the past, present and future. Oberland's heavily processed electric hurdy-gurdy, the "boîte à bourdons," provides the foundation upon which the Borghesia member Tomazin unfolds her gripping vocal magic(k). Their dense mesh of soundscapes and singing mediate between the mystic and the modern, the natural and the all-too-unreal to further examine our persistent desire to decipher the signs we find in nature. As the first collaboration between these prolific experimental artists, Arba, Dâk Arba is as evocative and thought-provoking as the art that has inspired it. It's easy to see why a curious instrument like Oberland's electric hurdy-gurdy would be well suited for the duo's ends, and within its first few minutes the opening track "Grotta" makes it clear that the Oiseaux-Tempête co-founder is more than capable of weaving dark psychedelic sound tapestries with only limited means. The ritualistic energy that Béguély's Arba, Dâk Arba draws on is channeled through abstract drones that mirror the aesthetics of the eight suspended paper rolls the artist's audience were faced with. Even as the sound of the boîte à bourdons becomes more visceral and Tomazin's voice more discernible, "Grotta" remains as intangible as the mythological oracles that had informed the work of Béguély. Shorter pieces like "Amena" or the closing track "Hereafter," though condensed, offer just as much to decipher -- a whole musical world to get lost in. "Fumes" and "Hieromancy" in the second half of the LP are the best examples of how much creative friction lies at the heart of the French experimentalist and the Slovenian singer's collaboration. While in the former song, Tomazin first takes the lead singing uncanny, circular motives before stepping aside so Oberland can let the processed sounds of his hurdy-gurdy evolve into chilling crescendo. Blurring the lines between the physical and psychic as well as the real and the hallucionary with their music, Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomazin's Arba, Dâk Arba is one of the most radical albums in recent years. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 2006LP
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Siavash Amini returns to Hallow Ground with A Mimesis of Nothingness, his fourth album for the Swiss label. Following up on Harmistice (HG 1902LP, 2019) together with fellow Iranian artists 9T Antiope, the six tracks were conceived in close collaboration with another artist and see the prolific composer intensify his interdisciplinary approach. The six tracks enter a dialogue with the photographs of Nooshin Shafiee, an acclaimed artist whose work capturing their hometown Tehran becomes the starting point for one of Amini's most visceral and haunting records. A Mimesis of Nothingness translates the ephemeral situations and melancholic moods of Shafiee's pictures into suspenseful soundscapes that masterfully navigate between the concrete and the abstract. A Mimesis of Nothingness is a disquieting record precisely because it is a quiet one. Working with field recordings, Amini sculpts dynamic portraits that create an atmosphere of tangible suspense that is never fully released. Even when string-like sounds enter the picture as they do on the third track "Moonless Garden" or when the abstract and glacial noise on "Observance (Shadow)" demand the listener's attention, the six pieces take hold of the subconscious rather than trying to be direct and confrontational. It is sound conceived not as a description, but a circumscription of spatial relations and the eeriness embedded in them. Includes eight-page booklet.
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HG 2001LP
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The Electric Sewer Age project was originally started anonymously by the late Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson together with Coil affiliate and seasoned remixer Danny Hyde, who continued the project together with John Deek, who passed away in 2013. Contemplating Nothingness is the third release by Electric Sewer Age and the second one that Hyde finished alone. With his work as Electric Sewer Age, he explores the vast open space between the dark psychedelic aesthetics that he has helped establishing together with John Balance and his longtime collaborate Christopherson with a postmodernist approach that is deeply rooted in studio practice and sampling. On Contemplating Nothingness, disembodied voices mingle with subdued rhythms, muffled harmonies, or menacing string themes. Over just a little bit more than half an hour, Hyde conjures up traditional and contemporary production techniques and genres like plunderphonics, Leyland Kirby's V/VM project or early vaporwave, all while retaining his singular voice. Throbbing industrial gives way to jazz-inflected quasi-rap, autotune balladry and ethno ambient, before closing on eerily alienated synth pop sounds and a stunning exercise in psychedelic minimalism. Contemplating Nothingness is an album as surreal and beautiful as a half-remembered dream, constantly navigating through the liminal zone of the familiar and the great unknown. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 2099LP
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Laurin Huber is a prolific figure in the Swiss underground for experimental music and arts. He has been active as a musician and producer in a slew of projects like Wavering Hands, Frederik, or legendary Swiss institution Krankenzimmer 204. Having just released his first solo release under the R.E.R. moniker on the label Edipo Re, co-founded by Huber and frequent collaborator Rolf Laureijs in 2016, he now presents his first album under his given name. The four tracks on Juncture aim to work with "superimpositions, interactions, interferences, and modes of coexistence," as Huber explains. "I'm generally interested in thought that tries to look at the world beyond dualisms," says the artist. "Contemporary feminist theory and philosophies of difference, the critique of dualities such as nature/nurture, body/mind, object/subject or anorganic/organic are therefore important reference points." On a musical level, this means working with overlaps and interfering layers, field recordings as well as synthesizers and the experienced drummer's knack for intricate rhythms. Over the course of more than half an hour, the producer brings together dreamlike synthesizer pieces with stripped-down, mid-tempo techno pieces, feverish echoes of industrial music, and swelling sounds that are juxtaposed with subtle rhythmic counterpoints. In a world in which dualities reign and polarization increases both socially and culturally, Junction serves as an invitation to deconstruct binary thinking by affirming the coexistence of allegedly opposed elements. It does so with striking emotional ambiguity, sometimes lulling in its audience with soothing sounds and in the next challenging them with an ominous atmosphere. 180 gram vinyl.
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2LP
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HG 1906LP
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Still Und Dunkel is the project of musician and visual artist Christoph Brünggel, film maker Benny Jaberg, and media artist Pascal Arnold. Their debut album Abandoned comprises ten compositions created for their audiovisual art live performances which draw on an ever-growing archive of moving images and sound recordings. The three artists started working together in 2011 and visited abandoned and hidden places at night or underground throughout the world to collect images and sounds. The trio documents and archives the transformative processes that these former symbols of civilisation have been undergoing since they had been deserted or forgotten -- that is, if they had ever before been accessible to the public in the first place. Abandoned contains additional information on Still Und Dunkel, as well as artwork by Arnold and Jaberg, including a 64-page booklet with images from the project and its creation as well as an essay by writer Brian Dillon. All this makes it one of the most ambitious releases on the Hallow Ground to date.
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HG 1905LP
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Viaje is the debut album by Swiss musician Roland Bucher and was produced with an instrument developed and built by the artist himself, the noise table. Viaje presents the culmination of almost a decade of exploring the possibilities that the curious device offers. Combining the physicality of the improvisational praxis with a classical approach to composition, these five songs highlight the emotional, narrative, and atmospheric potentials of granular noise. Viaje was not only produced with an unheard-of instrument, it also comprises music that no one ever has heard quite like that before. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1904LP
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Following the success of her 2018 solo debut album Kontrapoetik (PRTLS 017LP), the Swedish composer Maria W Horn returns with Epistasis, her most ambitious record to date. The title track, "Konvektion" and the two parts of "Interlocked Cycles" see the XKatedral co-founder explore radical approaches to composition that combine avant-garde methods with electronic means. While Kontrapoetik highlighted Horn's strength as a conceptual and political artist, Epistasis is to be understood as an advanced statement by a forward-thinking composer who throughout four pieces channels her influences, ranging from black metal to minimal music, through state-of-the-art technology. Originally composed as an audiovisual piece for synchronized multi-channel sound and lights and premiered in 2018 at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, "Interlocked Cycles" is a series of pieces exploring a gradual increase in tempo and density using various instruments. It was written to be performed by a computer-controlled upright Disklavier piano while the electronic part was generated within the Supercollider framework using phase modulation synthesis. An exercise in minimalism that combines the subtle gravity of Phill Niblock's work with the visceral theatrics of Anna von Hausswolff's organ pieces. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1802LP
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Having recently contributed to Goner's Yogascum LP, reissued in late 2017, Mark Godwin now returns to the Swiss label together with his musical partner Gareth Ormerod as zK. Drawing heavily on musique-concrète techniques, synthesizers, and sampling to create an immersive experience bordering on the synaesthetic, the six tracks capture the nervous energy of Thailand's capital after dark. Moving from the opener "Ouside Broadcast" with its collage-like juxtaposition of every-day sounds and squelching noise to the aptly titled "Cognitive Dissonance" and the aleatoric modular excursions of "Feral Confection" towards the more somber, lysergic undertones of the B side, ending in the both elegiac and haunting final track "Fleshpotting", Godwin and Ormerod explore the sharp contrasts which characterize the city. 180 gram vinyl.
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HG 1903LP
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Remo Seeland's Hollow Body is a suspenseful exploration of the interaction between sound environments and individual perception. It was sparked by an intense physical experience the Swiss artist had during a residency in New York City. "The subway became a sort of 'atonal symphony' for me, provoking a full-body experience with the rattling of the overcrowded, airless trains," the Hallow Ground founder explains. "However, while the old subway is not exactly beloved by everyone, it also represented for me the melancholic meta-level of the moloch above it." The album, his first under his given name, makes this disparity audible over six tracks in which the visceral and the personal become at once abstract and universal. Based on field recordings from both urban and rural environments, Hollow Body aims to mirror another of Seeland's psycho-sonic encounters. "In the highlands of Iceland, I noticed my pulse lowering and my breathing decelerating," he says. "Just shortly after that, a single insect's buzzing seemed so loud to me that I became even more aware of the silence surrounding me." Silence, perception, order, and the curious dialectics of the outside world and the inner workings of the human psyche are the central questions of Hollow Body. Recorded in New York, Reykjavík, and Zurich, Hollow Body draws extensively on field recordings and sees Seeland collaborating with Hallow Ground-affiliated artists Norman Westberg (Swans, guitar on "Body Innovation" and "Hollow City") and Reinier van Houdt (Current 93, e-bowed guitar on "Hollow City" and Rhodes organ on "Pulse Points Green"), as well as the Swiss-based US-American musician Steve Fors (Deaf At Sea, trombone on "Second Coming"). The diversity of the source material is mirrored in the stylistic richness Seeland lays out with this LP. From the lush, bass-heavy drones of the opener "Body Innovation", to the downbeat-driven "Second Coming" and, finally, the haunting organ sounds of "Night Within", Hollow Body forms a holistic entity that integrates idiosyncratic compositions into a coherent narrative.
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HG 1902LP
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9T Antiope have made a name for themselves in the vibrant experimental music scene of Iran over the past years. Now based in Paris, Sara Bigdeli Shamloo and Nima Aghiani are expanding their stylistic scope and team up with long-time friend Siavash Amini for their debut release on Hallow Ground. After 2017's Tar (HG 1703CD/LP) and Foras the year after 2018 (HG 1805LP), Harmistice is Amini's third LP for the Swiss-based label and his first in collaboration with other artists. Recorded in Paris and Tehran, the four tracks are the result of "all the long hours of speaking online, being kilometers away, it is a love child of those short times we actually got to be physically in one place." Vocalist and lyricist Shamloo enters a dialogue with Aghiani and Amini's sound art, which is from restrained but interlocks voice and noise with striking subtlety. Harmistice seamlessly blends the visceral with the sublime, the abstract with the oh-too-real. From the very first second of "Blue As In Bleeding", Harmistice evokes a sense of suspended terror. Shrill frequencies and aleatoric bursts of feedback give way to a hard-hitting bass drum until Shamloo's voice arises from the chaos with an uneasy clarity. It's the perfect opening for a record that is built upon stark contrasts like this one. Amini and Aghiani bring together synthetic sounds with acoustic instruments, creating a tangible tension on which Shamloo's sometimes sensitive, sometimes emotionally detached delivery thrives. "It's all based on a dream, a nightmare about war," she says in regards to her lyrics that move between poetic abstraction and first-person prose, blurring the lines between lived experience and sinister premonition. Harmistice takes inventory after the oneiric damage has been dealt in real life. As a whole, Harmistice is thus as ambiguous as its title suggests. As an all-too-lucid dream about unspeakable things that are being lent a voice it overwhelms the senses with an unheard-of volume. Drawn from the depths of the subconscious, Harmistice may just be the most challenging album in either 9T Antiope or Amini's discography. 180 gram white vinyl.
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