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2LP
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HMS 078LP
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$29.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/30/2026
"Cindytalk has remained a majestic proposition over the decades, one marked by a continued process of disintegration and regeneration. Change has been a constant for Cindytalk, as has been the presence of the Scottish musician Cinder, who has fronted the project since the early '80s. The first Cindytalk albums embraced a dark theatricality of post-punk dissonance and abject rock deconstruction that coupled industrial dirges with Cinder's beatific vocals, these same vocals that were once plied to the earliest This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins recordings, forever binding Cinder to the 4AD lore. But even on those albums, Cinder was pushing the band to embrace the studio as a tool for further abstraction of sodden drones, cobwebbed dark elegance, and decayed textures. By the early aughts, Cinder had reimagined Cindytalk through the granular processes of digitalia with a handful of equally celebrated works of glitch-born expressionism for Editions Mego. Sunset and Forever is a labyrinthine opus, one that returns to the themes of the sacred and profane that have rippled through all of Cindytalk's recordings, albeit in various guises. The opening track 'Embers of Last Leaves' is a haunted piece of undulated, cyclical tones that entwine into a sorrowful chorale with Cinder's own voice. Thumps of electronic drum kicks and bass drops dot the apocalyptic menace of 'Tower of the Sun' but serve not as a rhythmic grid, but as painterly noises that further disrupt and disturb the machined dissonance. A cinematic radioluminescence blooms from the tempered electronics within 'For Those Eyes, Shadows Of Flowers.' The finale 'I See Her in Everywhere' bookends the opening number with a seemingly human chorus build from electronic tones cast in cathedral reverence. Sounds throughout may appear adjacent to those of Fennesz, Holly Herndon, or even Lovesliescrushing from time to time, but Sunset and Forever remains purely Cindytalk. Cover designed by Chris Bigg, known for his iconic design work for 4AD. Mastered by James Plotkin."
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LP
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HMS 025LP
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"Our man Millis is a Climax Golden Twin and a noted curator of globe trotting/time traveling esoterica, amongst other accolades. In the former category, Millis and Jeffery Taylor steadily release some of the most head-scratching amalgamations of avant-rock, decontextualized temple music, heightened-state minimalism, and collaged field recordings this side of the Sun City Girls (including the soundtrack to the cult film Session Nine); and in the latter, Millis has published a number of acclaimed anthologies for Sublime Frequencies (Scattered Melodies, This World is Unreal Like a Snake in a Rope, Phi Ta Khon, The Crying Princess, etc.) and Dust-To- Digital (our personal favorite, aptly titled Victrola Favorites). With his fingers in so many jars of jam, it can seem like an uncommon occurrence for Millis to release solo work although he is one to smear his sticky hands all over himself in performance, installation, and collaboration. Thus, The Helen Scarsdale Agency is delighted in presenting his latest opus, Relief. A fever dream of blurred harmonics and ethnomusicological spelunking, Relief repeatedly returns to variations on a peculiar yet beautifully serpentine drone, whose twinkling acoustic properties meld the hallucinatory mouth-music of the Bangladeshi Murung people and the curved air hypnosis of Terry Riley. Millis bookends and interrupts his mysterious miasma with comedic interludes snatched from his lauded collection of antique 78s, maudlin piano tone-clusters, and teleported crescendos of spectral ballroom waltzes. More Nurse with Wound than The Caretaker, this polyglot raga-drone of daytime somnambulism and psychedelic slipperiness speaks to the uneasy borders at psychological, cultural, and geophysical states of being. Oh, to be a human on this planet."
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