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viewing 1 To 6 of 6 items
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SKYWALK 005LP
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Here Appear is an invocation, a salutation, and a celebration -- of past and perfect lives, forgotten and remembered, exchanged and borrowed. Eve Essex's solo debut is a multi-instrumental fea(s)t combining synthesizer, drum machine, alto saxophone, piccolo, electric organ/harpsichord, harmonica, slide whistle, bells, guitar pedals, and voice -- composed, arranged, and performed by Essex herself. What began as an improv set at Berlin's Harlekin Bar developed over two years into a complete body of work evoking multiple time periods, genres, characters, and sonic landscapes. The seven tracks that make up Here Appear harness elements of classical, drone, avant-jazz, and distorted pop, coupled with an ambitious vocal delivery that draws on the phrasing and articulations of Essex's own woodwind playing, to create a quasi-narrative mélange retaining the vulnerability of live performance. On the opening track "Grind Away", otherworldly harmonica strains set the stage for lyrics citing Chinese sci-fi novel The Third Body Problem (2006) as source material. Saxophone and piccolo interludes "Immediate Communicator" and "Colorless Stone" move between medieval-tinged melodic inventions and textural noise, recalling a Pharoah Sanders-influenced fever dream, while the linguistic abstractions of Russian conceptual poet Lev Rubinstein guide the looped, layered, and textured vocals of title track "Here Appear". The album closes with a languid take on Jacqueline Humbert and David Rosenboom's 1978 composition "Clear Light" from My New Music, reissued by Unseen Worlds (2018). Here Appear owes its minimal production to the conditions of its genesis, evidencing the restrained process of the solo artist; instrumentation is confined to what can be played simultaneously. True to the album's avant-garde roots, each song involves an element of improvisation, often taking the form of prompts or variations on a melody rather than explicit compositions. Even its most structured pieces make use of live-sampled loops, which inject a spirited unpredictability into the songwriting process and subsequent performance. Recorded by Al Carlson at Gary's Electric, Brooklyn. Mastered by Helmut Erler at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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SKYWALK 004LP
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From the circles of Hamburg's Golden Pudel Club the duo Schluss presents their debut album 28 on Sky Walking. Éric Falconnier and Joachim Schütz join another adventure into spontaneous music -- free and intense, demanding and magical. A life dedicated to noise, experimental music, and free jazz, Éric Falconnier played in several formations such as Gebrochene Beine whom appeared with the most notable piece on the previous Sky Walking compilation (SKYWALK 002LP, 2016). Joachim Schütz is known for his collaborations with Ellen Fullman, Konrad Sprenger, Arnold Dreyblatt, and Samara Lubelsky, to only name a few. Schütz is also part of the Metabolismus collective. With their dynamic, fragile and highly surprising live sets and recordings, Schluss are on the path to decline expectations and burst conventions.
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SKYWALK 003LP
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On September 11th, 2015 the audience of the stunning "Rotor" concert series witnessed the first live appearance of John Gürtler and Phillip Sollmann underneath a highway bridge in Offenbach, Germany. Hosted by International Music Institute Darmstadt alongside Institut für Klangforschung Offenbach and HfMDK Frankfurt, the newly formed duo performed an aural conversation on stage within the incredible architectural environment. A year later, an extract of these live recordings became part of the Sky Walking label's compilation 41'36" (SKYWALK 002LP) that now leads to the debut album of Sollmann & Gürtler, Gegen Die Zeit. Phillip Sollmann and John Gürtler met as studio neighbors in the complex "The Meadow", rebuilt in 2011 in Berlin Wedding. Exchanging ideas and instrumental advice ever since, they soon became collaborators. An acoustic version by John Gürtler for Sollmann's scientific techno project Efdemin was the first result of their exchange. Besides his futuristic techno productions, Phillip Sollmann is best known for his sound installations and performances including work on the Harry Partch instruments, the Helmholtz Double Siren, and Bertoia's sound sculptures. Along with Konrad Sprenger, Sollmann is currently working on a unique modified modular organ system consisting of 93 church organ pipes that has been shown Kestnergesellschaft Hannover and Mathew Gallery Berlin -- the headquarter of Sky Walking Records. The multi-instrumentalist and singer John Gürtler co-founded the studio collective Paradox Paradise. The composer is mainly writing and improvising film scores, ranging from electronica to songs and orchestral works. Gürtler has won multiple awards, including Best Song in a Film in 2014 and Best Documentary Score 2015 for Above and Below. The former free-jazz saxophonist returns to his roots as an experimental improviser and producer with the newly formed Sollmann & Gürtler. As the record's title indicates, time seems to vaporize. While Sollmann's ring modulated electric guitar acts mainly as a fragile, percussive voice, Gürtler answers with dense and drifting modal atmospheres. A variety of reed instruments are sent through a cluster of electronic filters and devices. With Gegen Die Zeit, the Sky Walking imprint starts a series of releases that are focused on spontaneous music and live recordings. Artists such as the improvisation group Schluss and Golden Pudel Club's Nika Son will continue the program.
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SKYWALK 002LP
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After releasing their own debut record in 2014, the Hamburg based group Sky Walking, formed by Peter Kersten, Christian Naujoks and Richard von der Schulenburg, now celebrate the launch of their self-titled label. By bringing together an international line-up of artists mostly associated with the new and experimental music scenes in cities like Hamburg, Berlin and New York, Sky Walking not only establish a link between different locations and their local scenes, but also link different generations of artists from these scenes. By choosing Sergei Tcherepnin's "Queer 1" as the first track on 41'36'', as the record is simply called, indicating the length of the album in John Cage style, the compilation not just draws on the legacy of early modular synthesizers (his uncle invented the "Serge"), but also - in a manifesto like way - points out the hybrid and genre-bending approaches many of the artists on this record share. The ten tracks on the record are characterized by an openness towards improvisation and collaboration as well as an experimental attitude towards technology. The outcome is sometimes weird and nerdy, sometimes playful and humorous - never taking either the music categories "new" or "experimental" too seriously. Konrad Sprenger for example, featured with the track "Distain", invented a robotic multi-channel electric guitar, which uses the strings as frequency generators. It is tuned and set into motion by various electronically controlled mechanical movements. An even more performative quality has the black metal influenced duo Misanthrope CA, whose members Robert Kulisek and David Lieske prefer to play their dark and drone-y ambient tracks in neoprene suits. Jazz influences can be heard both in the fully improvised, cartoon-like piece by Sky Walking themselves and the filmic quality of Philipp Sollman's and John Gürtler's collaboration in "Gegen Die Zeit". While these two tracks were produced in the studio, Eve Essex and Dan Fox as well as Nowerk (F#X and Christian Naujoks) work with different means of live-recording in their collaborative projects. Rather mysterious appearances are the ones by Keller G and Gebrochene Beine. Whereas the latter mixes broken beats with a saxophone going wild, the first offers a dark and atmospheric, slightly uncanny soundscape. Nika Son takes the listener on a tense-ridden sonic journey with her track "Drissk", purposefully paying tribute to the grand dames of the synthesizer. Cover art by Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho.
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SKYWALK 001CD
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Five years ago Christian Naujoks, Peter M. Kersten and Richard von der Schulenburg started a series of spontaneous recording sessions without any intention or idea. The only thing that held the group together were the immediate results hitting the three musicians straight inside their hearts. Jazz as a metaphor of instrumental conversation, improvisation in the most dilettante way, science as a matter of exploring the opposite sound of what instruments were built to -- these might be parts of a concept where there was none. Evangelisti & Ennio Morricone, Gerard Grisey and the school of GRM, Psychic TV -- none of the influences of Naujoks, Schulenburg, or Kersten inspired the sound of Sky Walking as much as the rotten studio in a backyard of a record store in Hamburg, including a definitely weird collection of instruments, some Russian microphones and the saddest-sounding steel drum. Even their solo careers are separated from what became an album yet: Richard von der Schulenburg -- the magician of the keyboards who is part of the Pudel Apparat and piano-player in the 440Hz Trio (feat. Jacques Palminger) released a couple of vinyl records and a tape under his moniker RVDS. Christian Naujoks recorded the second of his two albums at the Hamburger Laiszhalle with the legendary producer Tobias Levin. Both of his albums came out on Dial Records -- the label Peter M. Kersten founded almost 15 years ago. Kersten is much better-known as Lawrence for his countless releases on Smallville, Mule Musiq, Kompakt, Styrax, and Ghostly International. The artist's history plus endless inspirations... forget about it! Here comes Sky Walking.
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SKYWALK 001LP
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LP version. Five years ago Christian Naujoks, Peter M. Kersten and Richard von der Schulenburg started a series of spontaneous recording sessions without any intention or idea. The only thing that held the group together were the immediate results hitting the three musicians straight inside their hearts. Jazz as a metaphor of instrumental conversation, improvisation in the most dilettante way, science as a matter of exploring the opposite sound of what instruments were built to -- these might be parts of a concept where there was none. Evangelisti & Ennio Morricone, Gerard Grisey and the school of GRM, Psychic TV -- none of the influences of Naujoks, Schulenburg, or Kersten inspired the sound of Sky Walking as much as the rotten studio in a backyard of a record store in Hamburg, including a definitely weird collection of instruments, some Russian microphones and the saddest-sounding steel drum. Even their solo careers are separated from what became an album yet: Richard von der Schulenburg -- the magician of the keyboards who is part of the Pudel Apparat and piano-player in the 440Hz Trio (feat. Jacques Palminger) released a couple of vinyl records and a tape under his moniker RVDS. Christian Naujoks recorded the second of his two albums at the Hamburger Laiszhalle with the legendary producer Tobias Levin. Both of his albums came out on Dial Records -- the label Peter M. Kersten founded almost 15 years ago. Kersten is much better-known as Lawrence for his countless releases on Smallville, Mule Musiq, Kompakt, Styrax, and Ghostly International. The artist's history plus endless inspirations... forget about it! Here comes Sky Walking.
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