Moths: “Summer”.

30 Mar 2011 — Henning Lahmann

Summer still feels ages away, but here's a nice little teaser brought to you by Ireland's 17 year old rising chop'n'screw talent Jack Colleran aka Moths. Sometime back in early 2010, someone might have called this "chillwave", but we're more than happy to eventually leave this misguided labeling alone for good and confine ourselves to telling you that this lil gem really is evoking some lush and easy summery feelings in our hearts. Moths - Summer Read more →

Premiere: Raw Thrills: “My Life Was in Chains”.

29 Mar 2011 — Henning Lahmann

After last month's utterly brilliant Shakedown LP (see here) and the upcoming 7 inch Freak Funk Boy under his Greatest Hits moniker (see here), Brooklyn's principal wunderkind Zak Mering aka Raw Thrills already has another recording to be dropped soon via Sixteen Tambourines. Raw Thrills and his Chain Gang is a 13 track collection of "mostly covers and stuff", including songs with illustrious names such as Mrs. Robinson, Sunshine After the Rain, or Sweets For My Sweet. But as we have been shown before, Mering's reinterpretations of all-time classics are way more than mere apprentice pieces or simple pastime. In fact, his cover of Harry Nilsson's Without Her, featured on the recent So Post cassette, is without doubt one of my favorite Raw Thrills jams. The below premiered My Life Was in Chains, however, is an entirely new song by Mering. Featuring Zak's Sweethearts partner in crime Sam Mehran aka Outer Limits Recordings etc. on guitar, the tune is just another example of Mering's boundless talent for the perfect pop song, filled with his sweet voice and sugarcoated with sampled, nicely off-kilter and skewed strings that leaves us jamming through the early spring sunshine. Raw Thrills and his Chain Gang comes in a strictly limited edition of only 60 tapes, so don't hesitate and pre-order over here Raw Thrills - My Life Was in Chains Oh, and the gorgeous artwork above was done by our very much adored Teresa of Relentless Noisemaker together with Mering. Read more →

Nima: “Wet Dream”.

29 Mar 2011 — Henning Lahmann

Completely ravished by the fragile and enchanted, pristine lo-fi pop by Irvine, California's Kristine Lirio aka Nima, who just released her debut cassette Demon + Wet Dream via our cherished Southern Californian imprint Bridgetown. The C25 is filled with slow, ethereal casiotones and hushed, reverberated piano melodies driven by simple rhythm patterns seemingly recorded on the cheapest drum machine available, a fact that gives the whole thing that kind of honest bedroom feel that so many young talents fail to fake nowadays. The most outstanding, almost devastating feature however is Lirio's frail yet assertive voice, evoking an intimate atmosphere that makes the listener feel virtually intrusive. Listen to the b-side's title track below, and stream the whole recording over here. As usual, the pro-dubbed cassette is available directly via Bridgetown. Edition of 100. Nima - Wet Dream Read more →

Mike Shiflet: “Honeyed Crest”.

28 Mar 2011 — Henning Lahmann

Crawling out of the dark like all the hell's demons, Mike Shiflet's Honeyed Crest is a terrifying piece of noise, a nightmare made of layers of drone and sheer guitar fuzz that nonetheless shows its marvelous core of gratifying dignity after a few minutes of subtle alterations in the ostensibly monolithic wall of sound, eventually revealing a work of purely sublime quality. Mike Shiflet's Honeyed Crest C22 tape is out now via Burlington, Vermont imprint NNA Tapes. Mike Shiflet - Honeyed Crest Read more →

Keep Shelly In Athens: “Yellow Man”.

28 Mar 2011 — Henning Lahmann

Our dearest Greek haunted electro pop outfit du jour Keep Shelly In Athens has a cassette coming out in April via one of our favorite tape labels (as you should be aware of), the wonderful Sixteen Tambourines. The tape is limited to 150 and includes - among some other well-known and rightfully adored tunes like Running Out Of You or Hauntin' Me - the brand new track Yellow Man, which features just about everything we love so relentlessly about the music of KSIA. Pre-order the tape over here and help the label to help the Japanese victims of the earthquake and tsunami. Read more →

Fabio Orsi: “Wo ist Behle?”

28 Mar 2011 — Henning Lahmann

"Wo ist Behle?", Taranto native Fabio Orsi asks on the cover of his latest work, to be released April 6 (Orsi's birthday) via Italy's Boring Machines. Though we don't know where Behle is, either, let alone who that fella might be, we are sure that the record's German title is anything but incidental. Rather, Wo ist Behle? is the result of the artist's relocation to Berlin, from the perennial warmth of his hometown in southern Italy to the harshness of the eastern German winter. Accordingly, in the label's words, "the sound of the new record is made of pure and cristalline glacial sounds (like snow)". And indeed, unlike the rough, guitar-based noise on Orsi's last effort Stand Up Before Me, Oh My Soul! on Australia's Preservation that we had written about last month, the music on Wo ist Behle? focuses on clear, cool ambient sounds that evoke images of remote cityscapes covered in beautiful yet merciless snow. Subdividing the record into five tracks ranging from three and a half to almost 15 minutes, each numbered and otherwise simply dubbed Loipe - which is the German expression for tracks primed for cross-country skiing - Orsi takes the listener on an imaginative trip through the wintry city made up of meandering synthesizer patterns and restrained rhythm sections, resulting in an extraordinary piece of avant-garde ambient that subtly borrows from kraut as well as more recent psychedelic experimentalism. Below, watch the video and listen to Loipe 01, a track that slowly grows, unfolding its magic over the course of nearly 13 minutes, heavily relying on repetition to create a mesmerizing, engrossed vibe. ___________________________________________ If you are in Berlin, we recommend you catch Fabio Orsi live at Kreuzberg's Madame Claude tonight: Read more →

Another Pop #3: Matthias Heiderich

25 Mar 2011 — Henning Lahmann

It's been a while, but here's the third installment of our Another Pop series, NFOP's delightful excursions into realms of pop music that we don't cover all too often. We're more than happy to present our first homegrown guest this time, Berlin-born/based photographer/net label co-runner/electronic music producer Matthias Heiderich. Before we share a few words about Heiderich's new exhibition White Noise, starting tonight at Friedrichshain, Berlin's Spot Galerie, enjoy the artist's notes about some of his recent musical obsessions, neatly compiled into a splendid mix that you'll also find below. Matthias Heiderich: In 2007 my good friend Dorothea aka Wolfseule and I started a netlabel called WeirdAndWired. We release weird, dark, experimental underground music. Although I am generally interested in almost all kinds of music, my main field of interest lies in the darker subgenres of ambient music - namely drone, noise, dark ambient and neoclassical music. Ever since I came across productions by musicians like Biosphere, Tim Hecker, Thomas Köner, or Deathprod, this music has captivated me with the dark, melancholic, dystopian feeling it has to it. Mainly the Norwegian school of dark ambient and noise music has been in the focus of my musical interest ever since my first contact with the Rune Grammofon label around the beginning of the naughties. People like Helge Sten, Espen Sommer Eide, and Geir Jensen with their experimental and often wildly improvised production methods have created an incredible amount of influential output that has a massive impact on all my activities as a music producer and netlabel owner, and also my work as a photographer. Norway as a country predestined to breeding musicians focusing on the darker side of ambient music still is a lively microcosm in itself. Like Rune Grammofon the label Miasmah, run by Erik Skodvin aka Svarte Greiner and half of Deaf Center, has released a couple of absolutely stunning dark ambient releases in the last years by Norwegian artists like ELegi, Juv, and Skodvin himself, but also non-Scandinavian artists like Rafael Anton Irisarri and Simon Scott. Of course there is more than one country on the map of dark ambient music, but Norway is definitely somewhere near the center. My mix includes some of those mentioned dark ambient producers and others from around the globe that have been with me during my phototrips quite often in the last years. Thomas Köner - Teimo: The subfrequencies of German Thomas Köner's productions always blow my mind in an absolutely positive way. I became a huge fan of all of his work in the recent years. Elegi - Despotiets Vesen: Elegi from Norway released some of the most depressing tracks I ever came across. That's enough to make me love him. Jacascek - Taniec: Polish Jacascek released one of my all time favourite albums ever, Treny. Wonderful, deep, melancholic neoclassical music. Deaf Center - The Clearing: Svarte Greiner and Otto Totland from Norway are two of the most prolific producers in the Norwegian dark ambient scene. Their Album Pale Ravine is absolutely brilliant. Biosphere - Poa Alpina: Biosphere is without doubt the most influential producer in the (dark) ambient scene. Deathprod - Treetop Drive 3: Helge Sten aka Deathprod and part of Supersilent is a master in the field of experimental production methods. His 4CD Box released by Rune Grammofon is a collection of morbid masterpieces. Aaron Martin - Marrow Cycle: Aaron Martin from the US is a streneous musician and likes to torture his instruments (often it sounds as if they were screaming in pain). His sound is absolutely unique. Phonophani - Mendel: Espen Sommer Eide is an experimentalist and squeezes his sounds out of amazing instruments he invents. He releases truly inspiring stuff. Clouwbeck - Oxide: One of many monikers of Richard Skelton whose music always sounds like deserted landscapes and windy shores, at least in my opinion. Hecq - Above: Hecq from Berlin made a couple of awesome dark ambient tracks. He's a master of music production and his low frequencies give me the shivers. Some words about Matthias Heiderich and White Noise: Having started with fine art photography not too long ago, until recently Matthias Heiderich mostly focused on the architectural landscapes of his hometown Berlin. The monochromatic, eerie shots of a forlorn countryside drenched in fog shown at White Noise hence opens a whole new perspective on the artist. The term White Noise, of course, mainly refers to that certain kind of aural signal and as such also hints at Heiderich's background as an electronic musician devoted to dark, noise-informed ambient music. At the same time, the obvious contradiction of the term in regard to the photos themselves, given that fog is the meteorological phenomenon connected to the end of all sounds due to its physical properties in relation to sound propagation, offers a lot of possible interpretations considering the interrelationship between contemporary visual art and music, without relying on obvious means of cross-media techniques. The exhibition officially starts tomorrow, March 26, and is open till April 23, Tuesday to Saturday between 1 PM and 7 PM. You can find more samples over here. All photos taken from White Noise. © 2011 Matthias Heiderich. Read more →