"Hidden Harmony Recordings is a record label, specializing in new perspectives of the meditative and ambient realm of captured sound. Rooted in Estonia, its objective is to release music on vinyl and to promote the work of artists working in electronic and experimental genres of music. Our approach aims to engage the listener/record collector both on the level of the musical content, and also to stimulate the act of listening visually and physically. Due to this intention, our team pays particular attention to the artistic effort on multiple levels: cover art, label design, layout and materials used during the production of the release. From the beginning of the development until the moment the listener can experience our product, our designers seek to augment and embellish the encounter which goes beyond being merely a sonic one. Emphasis on the conceptual aspects of our releases helps the listener to amplify the listening experience and explore the beauty and diversity of the multitude of cultural expressions which fail to acknowledge any borders. Therefore, it is worth mentioning that ⅔ of our label's small team consists of professional designers, and our roster of artists has so far included musicians from Estonia, Canada, Argentina, Siberia, France and Ireland. During the visual identity building process it is important to reflect the consistent core values at the heart of the label, encompassing every detail: from the digital representation to the physical vinyl record. Everything should speak of the balance, mindfulness and integrity of the release. Any little detail can be picked up by our potential listener/collector and travel through the vortex of their perception to stimulate the mind and imagination. At HHR we appreciate the complex filter that is the human perception and we do our best to feed it with the most intricate, opulent, copious, intriguing and sonorous impetus we possibly can while keeping it simple and honest. Through various experiments in presentation we settled upon a holding-pattern and label identity which exhibits a unified style among all of our releases. The conceptual intention of our vinyl releases gives optimal space for such expression by having outer and inner record sleeves, with a die-cut window illuminating the inner designs. The sleeves are then used as vehicles which carry design and artwork that can greatly enhance the listening experience by visually and physically engaging the mind of the person involved. Consistency in cover architecture and typography across the platform of releases drives recognition and gives space for artists to shine without enforcing strict boundaries on the form of expression. Such a concept helps to create artistic synergies between the audio and the visual artists and encourages a collaboration which can in turn enrich the overall aesthetic sensation for the listener/record collector. In our minds, uniform presentation in the outer sleeve gives way to creative input from the artist through the cover 'portal'. Through careful attention to detail, and consistently referencing the musical content of our releases against their visual representation, Hidden Harmony Recordings has created an iconic and immediately recognizable imprint as a label, allowing for creative interpretation while still retaining a persistent identity."
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HH 010LP
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Hidden Harmony presents the first full-length LP from Estonian composer and keyboardist Volodja Brodsky. The six compositions on Whispering Ln. were entirely recorded during Brodsky's trip to the USA in 2018-2019 and showcased his passion for the transformative power of minimalism as an art form. The follow-up to his keyboard duties on psych funk/rare groove Estonian outfits Estrada Orchestra, Centre El Muusa, Misha Panfilov Septet, on Whispering Ln. Brodsky reinventing himself as a minimalism evangelist in his own right. From space age pop shimmering sonatas to the monolithic drone/overtone hypnotics, Brodsky created an ascetic yet complex sonic landscape where less is more. Mastered by Jörgen Hermaste (Aine Lomalla studio). Design and layout by Ilja Tulit. Liner notes by Volodja Brodsky.
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HHLTS 002LP
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Jules Archive is a project founded by Marco Marzuoli and Marco Mazzei in 2016. By employing various technologies, instruments, and approaches, the duo strives to craft a mysterious and fantastical persona named Jules. Through this persona, they aim to immerse listeners in a dreamlike atmosphere, transcending reality and dwelling in imaginary spatiotemporal dimensions. Platonic Tales is the second chapter of Jules' journeys, more anthropocentric than the first album Adventures & Explorations (Volume 1), but equally exotic and dreamlike. The musical intention of this record was to rework a set of five (plus one) melodic tape loops, already structured in "song form", through detailed arrangements. The treatment followed an experimental-pop-oriented production approach. Recorded entirely at home by the artists, the music on the album features analog cassettes containing loops dating back to around 2016. The remaining arrangements were composed during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Several international guests collaborated on the album: Lino Capra Vaccina, the legendary Italian percussionist/minimalist composer, and Jefre Cantu Ledesma engaged in a musical dialogue on "An Ontological Novel." Andrew Weathers contributed his voice to the tracks "A Superior Truth" and "Exodus." Christina Vantouz participated in "Exodus" and concluded the album with a string composition arranged and conducted by Minna Choi, performed by Magik*Magik Orchestra. 12" 180-gram vinyl record in poly lined inner sleeves, 33RPM, black vinyl. Limited to 400 copies.
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HH 009LP
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Isabel del Bosco is part of a spiritual community based in Cordoba, Argentina. The music on this album is inspired by hikes in the woods, late-night conversations, current readings and the seeking of quietude. Hidden Harmony Recordings believes that music can be a medium for inner cultivation. Written, performed, produced and mixed by Isabel del Bosco.
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HH 008LP
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"What an interesting time to be alive full of hardship and love. Let's take it easy on ourselves but let us not forget to solidify our spirits with earthly challenges in the name of a better future here's a vinyl edition of an album I recorded in 2021 with a few extras that have been added quite recently for the sake of making it into a full LP (thanks to the initiative of Hidden Harmony Recordings). I have recorded the whole thing at my home studio with an upright piano, two of my favorite polyphonic analog synths -- Korg Polysix and Roland Juno-60, and a Greco Stratocaster, that I have bought accidentally because I understand nothing about guitars. The main material for this album was composed around 2017, when entering my mid-twenties and trying to overcome the disenchantments of some crucial personal realms of human life. As for the later added instrumentals (1, 4, 9, 10), I have kept the sonic consistency intact but with way more hopeful spirits during the process. Despite this ambivalent intervention from the future, this work feels even more complete to me now. Have a nice trip. And let every lacking soul on this planet find peace and love within the nearest time attainable. Let us all make an effort." --Settima Tacca 180 gram vinyl; edition of 500 (numbered).
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HH 007LP
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Hidden Harmony Recordings presents the debut album of Long Twins. Everyone In Water by the KV Hopper and Elizabeth LoPiccolo duo is a collection of delicate avant-pop songs that occupy liminal space between sophisticated songwriting and the eternal charms of warm modular arpeggios, the brilliant voice and flute sonority and blue-sky psychedelia of sequencers, generators, and filters, the merging compositional prowess and experimentation with pop sensibility. Everyone In Water deals with lyrical themes centered around the sense of place and everyday rituals which curve out into an incredibly serene peak of new sincerity. The thirteen songs on the album are a transcendental amalgamation of avant and pop traditions and of organic and electronic compositional structures -- an entire universe of a record blessed with its own beautifully bizarre logic. Die-cut cardboard outer sleeve, color print inner sleeve and poly-liner sleeves; includes color print inserts with album lyrics. 180-gram vinyl; edition of 500 (numbered).
KV Hopper is a musician and product designer living in Portland, OR. Originally from El Paso, Texas, during the mid-90s he helped form punk group, At The Drive-In and appeared on the first two releases (Hell Paso and Alfaro Vive Carajo). In 2001, he moved to San Francisco and created an instrumental prog-band, Crime in Choir (featuring Death Grips drummer, Zach Hill, synthesist Jonas Reinhardt, and other contributing artists). In 2019, he began a studio project, Long Twins with collaborations from guitarist, Phil Manely (Trans Am, Life Coach); vocalist, Meryl Press; percussionist, Warren Huegel (Damo Suzuki's Network); and vocalist, flutist, Elizabeth LoPiccolo.
Elizabeth LoPiccolo is a musician, film photographer, and performer living in Brooklyn, New York. She has been a member of Xhoir (an offshoot of Colin Self's Xoir), a contributor to the music and performances of Ziemba (René Kladzyk, who takes her band name from her grandmother's maiden name) and a longtime collaborator with her husband, Rhys Ziemba (no relation to René Kladzyk). Most recently Elizabeth has been a contributor of vocals, lyrics, and flute arrangements to the experimental synth tapestries of Long Twins. In her teens and twenties, she joined local bands and learned to write flute parts as a member of Flat Broke Folk, The Cripple Lilies, and You Win Instantly. She learned to sing by making lots of mistakes, many during late night karaoke. Then a speech therapist helped her become more tenderly aware of the voice as a place and as an instrument.
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HH 006LP
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C.R. Gillespie and Gareth Quinn Redmond on the album: "'The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine,' wrote the French Surrealists almost 100 years ago, and from this missive stems the parlor game in which we partake here. Through obscuring the tower itself, they cobble together meandering staircases in which to ascend with absent-minded haste; spontaneous line-weaving amasses figures and phrases into new planes of thought, therefore holding captive the illusion of creative reciprocity. Although housed in unrecognizable quarters, dull rain now tallies itself upon your window panes just as it once kept count on theirs. Apparitions unknown sound instruments of winding origin in celebration of the ink dry in the well. A graffito of tea leaves stains the porcelain cup. This cloven tall-tale traces an epistolary journey between id and consciousness upon a page that has been adorned and wiped clean again and again and again. The wet meadow expands and contracts within a breath, moving through the windpipe to expel upon the glistening dew. From this dew rises anthills of diminishing complexity, and busying themselves within insanity, the occupants labor to hold fast against the unseen wave of oblivion. An exercise in aleatoric sentence-finishing between two aligned performers, The Exquisite Corpse Shall Drink the New Wine mimics the economics of unconscious beauty-making to such a degree that light will neither pass through it nor divert its path. Draw upon it what you will, and ready yourself for the unrelenting ataraxy. The job's oxo." 180-gram vinyl record. Edition of 300 numbered copies. Die-cut cardboard outer sleeve, color print inner sleeve + poly-liner sleeves.
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HH 002LP
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2020 release. Conservatory of Flowers is the second album by a Siberian-born, Moscow-based musician and composer Maria Teriaeva. Following her solo debut Focus in 2017, Conservatory of Flowers focuses on rhythm and percussive elements, cutting down ambient passages and leaning even more toward traditional song forms, structuring compositions into pop-length pieces. Recorded over a period of three years, mostly composed during one summer at her dacha (cottage in Russian) just outside of Moscow, resulting in a vibrant and light sound inspired by her surrounding nature. In addition to analog synthesizer, the album also features Nikita Shishkov on trumpet, Vasiliy Yanik on saxophone, Yana Chekina on cello, Sasha Elina on flute, and Vadik Korolev on vocals, with the album closing off with a remix by Sapphire Slows.
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HH 003LP
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2021 release. artist and producer based in Buenos Aires. She manipulates her voice through reverbs, delays, and whispers, singing in a self-invented "language". The sound of Morita's voice is a portal into her thriving, dreamlike world brimming, shimmering and beating with unrefined natural sensations which stimulate something primordial yet strangely contemporary. As far back as 2014 she began work on her first productions -- early sketches which later became the basis for 8. It all started off as voice memos on her phone (recorded while roaming the streets and riding the trains of Greater Buenos Aires). Later on, Morita introduced various instruments into her vision: kalimba, harmonica, keyboard, flute, tambourine, chajchas, and cajón. Composed and performed from that period until its original release in 2018, 8 features ten original voice-led compositions that in scope recall evocative portraits of synthesized landscapes and rainforests, attuned to a vibrant modern pulse and enchanting vocals. Morita Vargas's 8 has achieved a kind of polyphonic soundscape which evokes unfamiliar realities through voyages within and between the realms of ambient and experimental music. In numerology the number "8" symbolizes the transition between heaven and earth, the illumination of our infinite capacity for various metamorphoses. Tackling ideas of transformation, mutation, cyclical processes, death, creation, melancholy, and joy, the album is a monumental and deeply personal statement. Walk barefoot down the mystical path and indulge in the process of spiritual expulsion and renewal that is 8. The path lies along the route of infinite meanings, somewhere on the border between dream and reality. 180 gram vinyl. Edition of 1000 numbered copies. Die-cut outer sleeve, color print inner sleeve + poly-liner sleeves.
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HH 004LP
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Ramona Córdova on Naïve: "When I first started working on Naïve I was completely consumed by all of the technical details involved in making a 'professional studio recording' on my own -- one which could not be refuted or disregarded as subpar. My only other hope was to tell some sort of story with whichever songs I could piece together. The content and message of which were much less important to me. The story that Naïve ended up telling comes from a cohesion of themes, ceaseless in my personal experiences living day to day in the world. Although the album dares to tread on tact while speaking poetically and lyrically about issues such as systemic oppression, racism, misogyny, policing, and patriarchy -- I think the album really just wants to reflect -- to serve as a reflection -- in order to foster healing and healthy growth towards maturing. I feel it commanding a kind of firm kindness as a reminder to love yourself enough to accept others, by way of accepting yourself. Pressed onto this 180-gram vinyl are ten songs I wrote while living in many different places around the world. Spontaneous recordings of inspired notions of song, written one rainy evening up high above the vineyards in Banyuls-sur-Mer became 'Men on the Mountain'. A scrap of paper holding jots about a sudden storm on a hot day in August while helping friends on their farm in Puglia became 'Mouth of Autumn' and 'Peace Through Violence'. As I dressed myself into the fragile reality of the United States, I became flooded by its manipulative social governing systems. As the monuments of slave-owners, colonizers, and white supremacists came crashing down in the name of responsibility and accountability, 'The Bridge Works' was built, a song about crossing bridges towards empathy and equality. Civil rights activist and American-football quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, taking the knee during the United States national anthem pre-game ceremony, brought about 'So Long'. The incessant murdering of black, brown, and transgender citizens brought 'Woke', 'Scared I'll Bite You', and 'The End'. The murder of Eric Garner and the feeling of being choked-out and suffocated under the weight of systemic oppression brought about 'Still'. From all of this birthed the collection of songs that is Naïve, a title given to the album by French Ghanian artist Eden Tinto Collins. Although written both in Europe and the U.S., most of the songs were performed and recorded at the end of the year 2018 in Philadelphia, during the American-holidays season..."
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HH 005LP
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The music on Oko is conceptually woven into an evolving sonic tapestry threaded with a meditative ambient synth which warps around Sasha Vinogradova's hypnotic vocals, glowing, melting, and molding with Alina Anufrienko's exceptionally delicate cellos. The tapestry is as fragile as it is powerful and transcendental. Its potent poetic imagery blends with the aura of flowing, swaying tones into something the listeners of Hidden Harmony Recordings have an acute ear for, namely exquisite harmony. 180 gram LP, edition of 800 numbered copies. Die-cut outer sleeve, color print inner sleeve + poly-liner sleeves.
Abstract/ Remember: "you could be dreaming. Sinking or flying, sound-catching or singing. Witnessing a distant storm in silence, how it exposes purple clouds in unpredictable flashes. Hearing a submarine eruption and finding natal comfort in the warm, fragrant smoke that only wants to sheathe all your edges. The circus has left, only placards remain. And the snow. Look how the flakes sway to your feet without effort -- any distance is misleading, illusory. There's only dream and memory -- the two wings of a bird that flaps with an ocean wave, blinks with an eye of a lighthouse. Fragile, you could be dreaming not alone, holding hands with the core of things. The molten core, like touching ice. You could be dreaming. Dreaming in perfect memories of shapes imperfect. Dreaming of the earth raining from the sky, of the wind inside the sea, of the lighthouse & the ship kissing, of exotic fishes in the bay of your ear. Everything is real. If you play. If you dare to ignore the margins. Echoes go on forever. They play with themselves in a stream of mirrors. Echoes of a forgotten language, of a language unwritten -- a soothing, indifferent creole that reconciles feeling with understanding. Bathe in the fountain at the source of resonance. Bathe in the clouds on the eyes of intimate strangers passing. Disappear. Disappear and be seen, like the moonlit mist behind your eyes. And sway between hope and wisdom."
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2LP
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HHLT 001LP
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2023 restock. Valentina Goncharova's double-LP fundamental conceptual musical work released in full uncut form as part of Hidden Harmony Lost Tapes series. Restored and mastered from the original 6.3mm analog tapes. A large-scale work comprising eleven parts of varied, brooding, mystical reflection in which the author alters the instrumentation to fit both programmatic and musical character of each section.Ultra deluxe archival release from Hidden Harmony Recordings, based in Tallinn, Estonia. 2x12" 200-gram vinyl records in poly lined inner sleeves, 33RPM, black vinyl. Thick old style tip-on gatefold outer sleeve. Includes a 12-page booklet, which detailly explain the album conceptual basis, background and creation context, and provides insights into unique sound recording and technical solutions adapted during album recording in 1988. Created and written with direct involvement of V. Goncharova and I. Zubkov.
Liner notes: "My task is to allow the listener to penetrate deeper into the music. The music is wholly improvisational. It has no concept in the rational sense of the word. Its concept is purely intuitive. It presumes The Law of Analogies: 'As above so below. Man is the same as the Universe. The Universe is the same as Man.' ('Emerald Tablet' by Hermes Trismegistus). This intuition is a kind of rephrased logic which uses many more symbols which contain not only philosophical but also imaginative meanings/visionary interpretations. This music is a stream of consciousness in its purest form: not an imitation of a stream, as in the 'suggestive poetry' of the 20th century, but a stream where one flow is superimposed on another (a multilateral passage of recording). And, if we think this flow of music will be better understood under the influence of a verbal flow, then the verbal flow should also be more intuitive and associative, as objective for this short write-up you are currently reading. Ocean did not appear within the coordinate system of logical scientific thinking of the last four centuries. It can be said that it is based on an intuitive concept of representations of the world which are captured in music figuratively. Similar to how myths were created in time immemorial with only partial support from verbal associations. Ocean is an experience of passing the human, soul, and mind through the different states of the material world: birth, development, and achievement of perfection, transformation at the points of 'The Way' and 'Silence', the manifestation of the harmony of the world (Om), which until then had remained in a latent state. It is averse to both mainstream contemporary physics and fringe scientific research. It exists outside their explanatory power. Ocean is the source of all forms that can receive their life within time and space. Here it is. It has everything: beautiful and terrible, good and evil, self-sacrifice, and betrayal. Boundless love and inspired creativity. But contact does not happen immediately. The memory of a bygone civilization is still fresh, and of the dearest things left with it."
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