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viewing 1 To 9 of 9 items
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12"
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KDS 013EP
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A key player in the New York scene and boss of her own Dusk & Haze label, it was Francis Harris's Kingdoms that initially released Sophie Saze's standout two-part album, and that is where this forward-looking package of highly original remixes lands. First up is German artist Roman Flügel, who's responsible for a myriad of musical aliases and just as many different sounds. Here he is in experimental electronic mode and reworks "Cure" into an elongated groove with twisted synth lines layering up over the shimmer, shadowy beats. It's a ghoulish track with a creepy atmosphere. Swede Anthony Linell makes tripped-out, heady techno on Northern Electronics, always with a stylish aesthetic. That continues here as he reimagines "Aliens" as an absorbing cosmic soundtrack. Supple, rubbery drums bubble down low while broad pads and astral motifs color the airways above and sink you into a state of trance. New York beat maker and Blueberry Records boss FaltyDL then steps up with a remix of "Self". It is a typically off-kilter groove that seems to float on post-jungle drums while distant synth details make for a dreamy atmosphere. Closing out this killer package is Saze's original track "Dreams", an intense techno cut where coarse textures peel off the industrial clatter of the drums.
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LP
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KDS 012LP
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Made up of Dave Harrington (Darkside, Dave Harrington Group) and Benjamin Jay (NDF, Benoit & Sergio), Lights Fluorescent is, as the two describe it, an "experiment in the spaces between song and texture, idea and reference, past and present." On their debut album, The Oldest Sons Of The Oldest Sons, the duo develops an atmospheric, slant-pop sensibility that lists toward the experimental tendencies of improvisational and ambient music. The result is a set of songs meant to be lived with. Entirely percussion-less, recordings drift on a tenderness of guitar, revenant feedback, and vocals of autumnal intimation. "Space Metal" and "July 9th" process layers of bespoke noise and washed out chords to tarry with integral depth, light, and shadow, while Hotels distills country-western longing into its nth dimensional essence always unrequited. From within these sonic panoramas, vocals emerge more as watercolor traces than coarse etchings. They aim to capture evocative, lyrical intensities, eschewing the solace of the literal. As such, the album favors "the gestural, the implicit, and the miniature over the more adolescent urges of grand narratives and epic." These preferences map onto the album in all of its moves. "J Girls" reveals a hint of story buried, like its context, deep in whorls of feedback. Fleeting images of monuments, cathedrals, or epitaphs on tracks like "Palace Walls" or "Small Sacrifices" speak to a sense of memory and community paradoxically ungrounded by the material instantiations meant to keep things in place.
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KDS 007LP
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Kingdoms welcomes Finnish composer, producer, visual artist and filmmaker Hannu Karjalainen for Drift. His recording career now spans over a decade, beginning under the pseudonym Hannu and later under his full name for A Handful Of Dust Is A Desert (KK 101CD/LP, 2017) on Karaoke Kalk. Now, this seven-track mini album on Francis Harris' Kingdoms sees Karjalainen continues his explorations in new directions -- touching on field recordings, soundscapes and esoteric instrumentation to build a truly meditative and moving record. Drift begins with "Sermon To The Birds", featuring beautiful plucked strings and ambient atmospheres, before "Carnivorous Flower" casts one into enormous otherworldly dronescapes. "Untitled #34" brings about a beat of sorts, but deeply deconstructed to a crawl, allowing acres of space between the hits and sub bass pulses. "Sunless" is, conversely, a ray of light -- bright, weightless pads provide the feeling of being completely cut adrift. Segueing into "Nightfall", the tones become a little duskier and more intense, building throughout the track. "That Obscure Object" is another trip into the space, as white noise and fragments of melody intersect. The album ends with "The Nile"; a treated piano plays a haunting melodic sequence, seemingly suspended in air. It's a beautiful, emotional conclusion to an album that encourages the listener to take the time to experience its many pleasures.
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KDS 006LP
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Building on the already incredible collection of music so far released on Francis Harris's Kingdoms imprint, Emil Abramyan returns with the stunning Movement album. Abramyan is a Brooklyn-based composer, musician, and producer, whose work traverses various styles and disciplines. In this release Emil shares his unique perspective by bringing together his conservatory training as a cellist and his love of electronic music and sound design. Having played the cello on every Francis Harris album, Abramyan now expands his repertoire by playing every instrument, including cello, piano, and electronics. Beginning with "Flightplan", the album lifts off in sublime fashion. Brooding cellos combine with pianos before subtle rhythms unfold and introduce themselves. The skittering rhythm of "Winter" is combined with pizzicato melodies, clicks, and modular synth flurries. Showcasing his versatility, "Foolky" is a more dancefloor-oriented cut -- a highly percussive groove unfolds and carries along a variety of instrumentation. "4_24" also makes use of shuffling, percussive grooves layered with drone sounds, and more of Abramyan's signature cello. "Fever" sees the Brooklynite heading in a more obviously ambient direction, building atmosphere with a mixture of close mic'd experimentation, and beautiful choral fragments. Rounding off this release, label boss Francis Harris reworks "Flightplan", finding new nuances in the sublime atmosphere, and slowly building up to a subtle, understated groove that takes the track to a different place entirely. Includes download with a bonus track.
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KDS 005LP
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Fresh on Francis Harris's Kingdoms imprint comes Rasmus Juncker's Ophold -- six tracks of sublime atmospheres and textures. The Danish musician, sound composer, and DJ fits perfectly with the label's aesthetic, joining the dots between ambient, leftfield electronica, and modern classical. When Rasmus started to think about his debut album he spent several months trying to find his own way to combine his favorite musical influences, improvisation, electronics, and classical music. "Almost a year later", Juncker says, "I went to a sensory deprivation floating tank in Copenhagen while researching for another performance and while I was lying there, floating in the water, deprived from most of my senses, I got the idea to do something drastic in my musical process. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant describe this deprived state as a mental 'Cesura', which became some sort of guideline for the album." So Juncker decided to start working on the album by leaving the process as well as the final result completely open. "I wanted to create sounds and music that I had no idea what they would sound like, but would feel like a mental 'Cesura', an 'Ophold' (in Danish)" he states. He invited musicians, one after the other, to his studio. "I had an electronic musician to improvise patterns and new interesting sounds based on my experience in the deprivation tank. I chose some of the takes and some weeks later I invited a jazz guitarist to listen and improvise on top of what he heard. Then a classical string quartet and a double bass player came to my studio months later, and finally I recorded myself on percussion and drums. Throughout the recording process I've been experimenting with special microphones in various setups, used noises from the recordings and the room became absolutely essential for the pieces." Juncker states. "The material I used was all first take improvisation which I arranged, layered and edited into compositions. The final pieces were mixed by Andreas Pallisgaard with the same improvised and experimental approach of the recording and the production. None of the musician met each other, but their sounds developed into something completely fantastic I think. The presence of the acoustic instruments and the depth and complexity of the synthesized layers gave some kind of an indescribable sounding music from another galaxy."
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KDS 004LP
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Fresh on Francis Harris's Kingdoms imprint comes Adamo Golán's seven-track LP, Exile And The New. Golán is the alter ego of British-German artist Laurens A. Schmidt, who has been pursuing a more club-focused techno project, while developing an ever-deeper fascination with experimental music, ambient, and film scores. Drawing influence from his adopted homes Berlin and currently London, the 26-year-old has been uncompromisingly trying to develop his own musical voice. Exile And The New expresses this ongoing pursuit and, being the first full-length and first ever release by Adamo Golán, marks the start of his most personal project to-date. Stretching over seven tracks, it touches upon a diverse set of sceneries, moods, and emotions whilst a distinctive sound design gives the work a subtle framework and guiding thread. "Fis" starts the proceedings, introducing drones and field recordings and enveloping the listener in Golán's distinct sound world. "Just Friends" merges distant snapshots of disembodied vocals with granular sound design and a sense of both space and creeping claustrophobia simultaneously. It's an approach the young producer has mastered -- "Replica" maintains an ambience of the deeply personal and a wider, hazy focus, realized via exquisite melodic fragments against a backdrop of pads and chiming electronics. Title track "Exile And The New" unfolds around another cinematic world scored via a single stringed instrument, static interference, and oceans of space. "Lie To Me" brings a piano refrain to the fore, wrapped in luscious ambience and more fragments of a conversation heard through the rain. "Then Rely On Me" slowly develops out of a haunting atmosphere and finds an uneasy but strangely beautiful flow, before "The Hungry Years" closes out the album as it started -- floating in space. The 26-year-old artist sees the album as a journey that should captivate but never impose itself on the listener. It's a gracious and neighborly invitation to dive in, get lost, and explore its facets and peculiarities. Includes download code.
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12"
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KDS 003EP
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Next up on Francis Harris's newly-founded record label Kingdoms comes from Brooklyn-based film composer, songwriter, producer, and performer Léah Lazonick. Movimenti della Luna d'Oro (Italian for "Movements of the Moon of Gold") is a four-track EP -- a beautiful quartet of contemporary classical music with a twist. Here you are treated to three luscious works for piano and string quartet, written for a one-off performance at Studio OFF Interarts, an art gallery in Montreal. Lazonick performed the piano parts along with a string quartet. The EP is rounded off with a remix track by the much-lauded, Romanian producer Petre Inspirescu.
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LP
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KDS 002LP
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Following on from Aris Kindt's second album Swann And Odette (KDS 001LP) here is the second release on Francis Harris's new label Kingdoms. Apart from their own works composers, musicians and producers Brandon Wolcott and Emil Abramyan already had a joint release with "YouAndTheSpace Between", the opener on the Don't Break My Love release on Nicolas Jaar's Clown & Sunset label in 2012. In the same year, the two were approached by theater artists Michael Silverstone and Abigail Browde of 600 Highwaymen to compose music for a new work of live performance called The Record. The performance was part theater, part dance, part group hallucination, to be performed by 45 strangers -- vivid human assembly on an epic scale. Apart from a simple series of prompts and directions, the music was composed independently of the choreography. Drawing from backgrounds in theatrical sound design, classical composition and experimental electronic music, Brandon and Emil sought to create a diverse tapestry of sound, striving for a dynamic emotional arc that might elude a sense of genre or recognizable form. The music is performed live, with Emil on cello. Drawing from backgrounds in theatrical sound design, classical composition, and experimental electronic music, Brandon Wolcott and Emil Abramyan sought to create a diverse tapestry of sound, striving for a dynamic emotional arc that might elude a sense of genre or recognizable form. The music is performed live, with Emil on cello and structured into six songs on this mini-LP, Music Of The Record. LP includes download code.
Brandon Wolcott is a Brooklyn based sound artist, composer, and theatrical sound designer. He has released music with Wolf + Lamb Music, Archipel Records, and Nicolas Jaar's Other People. His dance-music project Smirk, has been presented at venues and festivals around the world. Emil Abramyan is a New York based cellist and composer. After receiving his B.A. in cello performance from Manhattan School of Music, he began teaching and freelancing in Los Angeles and New York. An evolving appreciation for electronic music drove him to explore other forms and textures of sound, ultimately leading him to produce and compose for himself.
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KDS 001LP
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Ambient shoegaze duo Aris Kindt launch the new Kingdoms imprint with their second album, Swann And Odette. Picking up where their first record -- 2015's Floods (SAT 024CD/LP) -- leaves off, Swann And Odette is an evolutionary leap forward for the duo. The sonic palette is deeper, the grooves more sparse and the melodies are given more room to seep deep within a mix so expansive it feels almost tactile. This is heady, opulent stuff. The album is immaculately produced and cunningly arranged to sidestep easy classification while not sacrificing accessibility and authentic feeling. Aris Kindt is the collaborative project of Gabe Hedrick and Francis Harris. Harris has previously released the albums Leland (2012) and Minutes of Sleep (2014), both of which have been lauded "for (their) extensive use of live instruments, a contrasting feature to his work done before" by last.fm (2016). Building on this approach, Hedrick adds his own sonic signature in effects-laden layers of electric guitar and modular synthesizer. Collectively, the album swells and reverberates to create a seamless interplay of synths and instrumentation cast loose from their origins and awash in oceanic delay. Swann And Odette inaugurates Kingdoms, an eclectic new platform for adventurous music ranging from new voices in club-inflected jazz, contemporary composition, ambient, and electronic music to reissues of little-known obscurities from across the musical spectrum. Helmed by veteran producer and musical polyglot Francis Harris, Kingdoms builds upon his decades spent pushing against the boundaries of electronic music as a producer and performer. Includes two bonus tracks via the digital download code: "Hewett Fails To Understand" and "Motion Rest".
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