All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (Special edition). Soundwalk Collective. Analogue Foundation

Posted in film, music, photography, Vinyl on November 11th, 2023
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LIMITED ART EDITION WITH ORIGINAL ART PRINT FROM NAN GOLDIN, SIGNED BY THE ARTIST 

Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated film »All the Beauty and the Bloodshed« is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. Told through intimate interviews, photography, and footage, central to the story is her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis. The film cuts to the bone with its incandescent celebration of life and condemnation of those who threaten it. Art and activism are one and the same. 

Helping to interweave Goldin’s past and present, multi-disciplinary duo Soundwalk Collective soundtrack her personal and political struggles to sublime effect. The contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, the pair work with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, developing site-and-context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary, or artistic themes. And for all the beauty and the bloodshed on show here, the duo strike the balance just right; their compositions in collaboration with Zacharias Falkenberg and Johannes Malfatti producing a trance that oscillates between grace and madness. 

Within the score, Crasneanscki draws connections with the life and work of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who was removed from society through confinement in institutions. In his last poems, written as fragments while he was plagued by mental illness, Hölderlin renders nature, in all its fragility and ephemerality. Similar themes merge in Laura’s portrait of Goldin and serve as an inspiration for the composition of the choral songs and cantus within the soundtrack. Through the repetition of words and the layering of voices, the lyric scansion operates like a language possessed, echoing various styles from sacred music to modern minimalist techniques. The music is characterised by quivering strings and swells, de-tuning and lingering, shifting around the surreal, and creating a spectrum of musical experience. Exerts of Nan’s narration are featured in two of the tracks, her powerful narration offering a more direct approach to the storytelling. 

In »All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,« Poitras shows protest is really Goldin’s great artwork: Her entire life had been leading to this moment of passionate expression, an inspired situationist gesture which fused the personal and the political. Art can change the world, which Poitras and Goldin tell us with powerful results. While there are multiple threads in this remarkable portrait which could have carried entire films, the soundtrack provides a sonic identity that helps keep track of proceedings. Utterly unique in their approach, Soundwalk Collective have delivered a gripping and thoughtful score, helping turn Goldin’s personal pain into culture-rattling impact.

A1 Half Of Life
A2 Schimmer Sanft Den Klang Des Tages
A3 The Land And The Sea
A4 Sisters I – Feat. Nan Goldin
A5 Des Geistes Werden
B1 Before The Light
B2 Witnesses
B3 Zeitgeist
B4 To Zimmer
B5 Sisters Ii – Feat. Nan Goldin

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Chromacolor – Hanno Leichtmann (vinyl)

Posted in Motto Berlin store, music, Vinyl on June 1st, 2023
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»Chromacolor« is one of those records that immediately feels like home even though it is hard to locate stylistically. Written and recorded by Hanno Leichtmann in Berlin and Madeira between 2020 and 2022, it draws on rhythmic minimalism as a guiding principle and might call to mind organic, instrument-based ambient music, but also incorporates jazzy moments as well as Annie Garlids multi-layered vocals that permeate through these nine pieces.

The foundation for Leichtmann’s Chromacolor project was laid when the prolific Berlin-based producer, musician, and drummer borrowed a vibraphone and a Fender Rhodes from two friends. Combining their unique sonic affordances with those of a Guitaret, an electric lamellophone, he further expanded his sound palette by inviting other musicians—Anthea Caddy, Sabine Vogel, Tobias Delius, Els Vandeweyer, Sabine Ercklentz, Mike Majkowski, Andrei Ladeishchikov, Oona Farchy, Gonçalo Caboz as well as Rafael and Hugo Andrade—to play small but vital parts in the production of the album.

The opener »Kisses and Wine« masterfully sets the tone for an album that is as inviting as it is challenging. Working with relaxed repetitive rhythms, Garlid’s anthemic vocals and a sprinkle of saxophone and flute tones courtesy of Delius and Vogel, respectively, as well as tender piano notes played by Leichtmann, it evokes a lot with only few means: a certain melancholy, but also an elevated atmosphere that feels both exuberant and restrained. Leichtmann’s elegant study of the power of repetition, minute rhythmic shifts and subtle use of melodic and harmonic elements creates ambiguities and polyvalences like these throughout the entire record, up until its understated finale, aptly titled »A Beautiful Day«—a drone-jazz piece, if you will, both longing and joyful. As an album, »Chromacolor« is hard to pigeonhole, but rich and rewarding. All it takes is immersing yourself in it.

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Dissolvè / Scillions. Antoine Hubineau. arbitrary

Posted in music, Vinyl, vinyl on March 29th, 2023
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arbitrary presents Dissolvè / Scillions by Antoine Hubineau. Derived from the same series of compositions, Dissolvè and Scillions are drawn from modular synthesizer recordings which have been reworked, treated and composed in the computer.

Dissolvè is a mosaic which is in constant motion. The inner details are guided by an outer structure which act as a kind of rhythmic subtraction. It is destabilised to the point where it fractures, from the macro to the micro level; abstracting a filigree from the original rhythm.

Scillions breaks an initial path into several directions which create new paths. Directional blur in harmonic motion makes it difficult to predict the outcomes. Contrary movements, synchronisation and desynchronisation build and break the relations between these new paths. Finally, altered versions of these new directions give some familiarity, while adding to the ambient disorder.

Based in Latillé (France), Antoine Hubineau works in the electronic music field, as a composer, musician, teacher and co-founder of the Sillages residency. His practice is focused on sound synthesis, which become alternately pseudo-acoustic instruments, abstract matter and surreal spaces. In his compositions, he makes the most of the cracks between free pulsation and collateral rhythms, between harmonic stability and sound spectrum tearings.

Written & produced by Antoine Hubineau, Saint-Etienne (France), 2020. Tombak recordings: thanks to Cinna Peyghamy. Mastered and cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin. Cover artwork by Morgan Cuinet. Layout by Mads Emil Nielsen.

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ZOMIANSCAPE I – II (LP). Kink Gong. ESITU Records

Posted in music, Vinyl, vinyl on February 21st, 2023
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“When asked what were my early influences in music, I get reminded of my teenage years in Parisian suburbs, simultaneously discovering from public libraries two important French record labels: OCORA and GRM. Then the roots of my interest in traditional music and electroacoustic experiments grew into doing it myself, recording ethnic minorities of the Zomian plateau of south-east Asia and composing a soundscape around it. This is what is happening here.” — Laurent Jeanneau aka Kink Gong

Kink Gong works with what is unknown to him, as an artist who’s attracted by beauty and strangeness. Like a stranger, he has been deeply curious about recording ethnic minority music isolated from dominating cultures within South-east Asia, thus working with musicians taking part in specific cultural communities to make almost 200 albums. Like an artist, he has been leaning towards strange marriages, building on these raw materials. They are lived moments that combine space, people and music, as if they were blocks made out of the same material.

— I
14 TUBES MOUTHORGAN PAKSE LAOS + BULANG LAWA 3 STRINGED LUTE (NIU TUI QIN) AND VOICE OF 2 OLD LAWA MEN + VOICES OF 3 AKHA WOMEN YUNNAN CHINA, FOREST LAO CAI HMONG WOMEN VOICES + ELECTRONIC MOUTHHARP (CHUNGJA) SAPA VIETNAM + BULANG LAWA MAN & DRUNK WIFE + ELECTRONIC MALIMBA TANZANIA + LUE WOMAN VOICE PHONGSALY LAOS + DONG PIPA 4 STRINGED LUTE GUIZHOU CHINA + LUE WOMAN VOICE NORTH VIETNAM + HMONG 6 TUBES MOUTHORGAN HA GIANG VIETNAM + YI NISU WOMAN VOICE + YI NISU SIXIAN 4 STRINGED LUTE YUNNAN CHINA

— II
BRAO WOMAN VOICE ATTAPEU LAOS + ELECTRONIC + METALLIC TOUPIE + UYGHUR DAP HAND PERCUSSION + BRAO MAN VOICE RATANAKIRI CAMBODIA + OIRAT MONGOLIAN MORIN KUR 2 STRINGED CELLO XINJIANG CHINA + 14 TUBES MOUTHORGAN IN BERLIN TEUFELBERG + SHUI MIAO WOMEN VOICES GUIZHOU CHINA + SANTOOR IRANIAN DULCIMER IN BERLIN + YI NUOSU WOMAN VOICE SICHUAN CHINA + ARAK 16 TUBES MOUTHORGAN SEKONG LAOS + TRIANG 5 WOMEN VOICES + BELLS SEKONG LAOS + ELECTRONIC + MIEN WOMEN VOICES SAPA VIETNAM

ALL RECORDED BY LAURENT JEANNEAU BETWEEN 2004 AND 2014 ON LOCATION IN

. SOME INSTRUMENTS (MOUTHORGANS & SANTOOR) PLAYED & PROCESSED & RECOMPOSED BY KINK GONG, 2016

LP COVER BOY ON THE ROCK TADLO LAOS, 2013

Mastered by Raschad Becker, Berlin
Cut by Frederic Alstadt, ANGSTROM STUDIO, Brussels
Artwork by João Basto

The edition of 300 copies are silkscreened and individually hand numbered

Silkscreened at Atelier Ice Screen, Brussels
Inside A4 risographed at Frau Steiner Studio, Brussels

Released June 18, 2021

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Delirious Cartographies (LP). Richard Scott. arbitrary

Posted in music, Vinyl, vinyl on February 2nd, 2023
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arbitrary presents Delirious Cartographies (arbitrary13) by composer, improviser and synthesist Richard Scott. Part of the Danish imprint’s Framework editions, this release includes three pieces on 12” vinyl and six printed drawings – as well as a text by Scott – published as a limited edition portfolio folder.

“These compositions capture aspects of my personal sonic experience of specific times and places. Extending beyond my usual work with analogue synthesizer, these pieces open the doors and windows to the outside world, incorporating field and live recordings made in various locations and situations. Rather than intending any clear sense of narrative, these are molecular dialogues between elements and geographies which do not necessarily share organic points of connection, other than my own incomplete experience and memory of them.”

The final piece 6 Graphic Etudes (included as digital prints) is intended as a set of visual / sonic sketches, each of which describes a discrete kind of movement or texture. These may have a variety of uses; as musical exercises, as scores, combined as parts of scores, or simply as stand-alone visual propositions / artworks.

The pieces were composed between 2017 and 2021 at Sound Anatomy, Berlin, Spektrum Berlin, EMS Stockholm, NOVARS, University of Manchester, the Electronic Music Studios, University of Huddersfield and in Boliqueime, Portugal.

As well as various microphones, hydrophones and recorders, the instruments used on this recording are mostly analogue and modular synthesizers: Hordijk Modular, Serge Modular, EMS Synthi A, various Eurorack modules, Buchla Thunder midi controller, Oberheim Xpander, Clavia Nord Micro Modular, CataRT and maxMSP, Rob Hordijk Blippoo box. On Thunder, actually bicycles… Axel Dörner plays a Holton Firebird trumpet with additional live-sampling via maxMSP and a controller interface developed by Sukandar Kartadinata.

Written & produced by Richard Scott. Drawings by Richard Scott. Graphic design by Mads Emil Nielsen. Mastered & cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin. Thanks to Axel Dörner, Rob Hordijk, Beatriz Ferreyra, Ricardo Climent, David Berezan, Joseph Hyde, Richard Whalley, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Tim Scott, Andy Adkins, Electric Spring Festival, Sines & Squares Festival, Basic Electricity and Sound Anatomy.

Released 2 September 2022

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Lucky Mulberry Tree (LP) – Green Edition. Kink Gong. Sorcerer Productions

Posted in field recordings, music, Vinyl on December 19th, 2022
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Special Green Edition LP

Kink Gong (aka Laurent Jeanneau) was born in France in 1965. 

He started making electronic music around 1995 in NYC, and in 1999 went to live with the Hadzas in Tanzania to record their music, since then he started to record the music of mostly endangered minorities in many different places, mostly in Southeast Asia. He lived in Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and many other places. He also composes electronic music that includes and transforms those recordings. With a huge catalog of his work, he released music from the label such as Sublime Frequencies, Akuphone, Discrepant, and more. 

This album is to celebrate the music I was involved in while living in Dali, Yunnan, China between 2006 and 2012. As usual with Kink Gong compositions, they contain all kinds of field recordings, mostly in Southern China, Laos, and Cambodia; local instruments that I play and electronic to melt them together, resulting in experimental soundscapes. Each element of the composition relates to this period with people (the dramatic voices of Hani or Yao singers) and spaces (park, jungle) and the long hours of creative enjoyment in our house by the Ear lake (Erhai) to put those elements together, using my neighbour (Li Daiguo)’s skill on pipa or new electronic toys I got around that time. 

Our son was born in Dali in 2008 and this LP is called Ji Sang (literally translated as Lucky Mulberry Tree) after his name. 

Side A 
– Fishermen Boats of Erhai Lake 
Electronic, Dali China 2010 + Punoy Mouthorgan, Laos 2010 + Khmu Man Voice, Phongsaly Laos 2010 + Metallic Boats on Erhai Lake, Dali China 2010 + Electronic, Dali China 2012 + Dong Niutuiqin + Woman’s Voice, Guizhou China 2012 + Electronic, Dali China 2011 + Hani Vocal Polyphony, Yunnan China 2011 + Chinese Pop Singer, Shanghai 2001 + 2 Yao Women’s Voices, + Frogs, Yunnan China 2011 

Side B 
– Morsing Bimo 
Morsing Indian Mouthharp, Chennai India 1997 + Nuosu Yi Bimo, Sichuan China 2010 + Electronic, Paris 2000 + Santur Persian Dulcimer, Berlin 2017 + Nuosu Koxian Multiblades Mouthharp, Sichuan China 2010 

– Pon Dao 
Flute Siem Reap, Cambodia 2003 + Electronic, Dali China 2008 + Mum 1 Stringed Bowed Instrument, Krung Ratanakiri Cambodia 2004 

– Chengdu Park 
Electronic, Dali China 2008 + Park in Chengdu, Sichuan China 2008 + Pipa by Li Daiguo, Dali China 2011 + Nyaheun Mouthorgan + Voice, Champasak Laos 2006 + Lisu Chibeu Guitar, Yunnan China 2012 

released December 2, 2022 

All music recorded & recomposed by Kink Gong 1997 – 2012 
Kink Gong plays Mouthharp, Mouthorgan, and Lisu Chibeu 
Mastered by Thomas Stadnicki 
Layout by 若潭 Ruò Tán

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Remain Calm (vinyl). Nile Koetting. INFO

Posted in art, music, Vinyl, vinyl on September 16th, 2022
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INFO is pleased to announce Remain Calm, an LP and booklet cataloguing Nile Koetting’s performative installation and its immersive soundtrack produced in collaboration with Nozomu Matsumoto and Miriam Stoney. In Remain Calm, Koetting draws inspiration from the earthquake and tsunami drills he experienced as a young student growing up in Japan. Through blending sci-fi narratives with ready-made technologies, Koetting creates scenographic performance environments where an omniscient technocratic authority softly mediates between performer, audience, and natural disaster. Matsumoto’s sound design and Stoney’s texts read by computer speech synthesizers are a fundamental facet of the work, and in this LP version, they culminate into a compelling and singular listening experience.

Edition of 400 copies, includes a full sized booklet of text and images, with words by Miriam Stoney.

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Voices Fill My Head (2LP). Kristin Oppenheim. INFO

Posted in art, music, Vinyl on June 4th, 2022
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INFO is pleased to announce Voices Fill My Head, Kristin Oppenheim’s second double LP release on the label documenting her early sound works from the 1990s. Recorded between 1993 and 1999 in her Brooklyn studio, Voices Fill My Head features eight pieces composed solely of the artist’s voice. For listeners who were fond of Night Run, Oppenheim’s first release on the label, this record reveals yet another important chapter in Oppenheim’s oeuvre.

Since the early 1990s, Oppenheim has produced vocal compositions for gallery and museum settings, making compositions not as music, but as repetitious sound installations designed to drift back and forth across wide stereo fields. Oppenheim’s installations saturate space, touching on fragmented memories that blur the lines between reality and abstraction.

Kristin Oppenheim is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for installation art based in writing, performance, film, and sound. She is represented by greengrassi in London and 303 Gallery in New York. 

Since the early 1990s, Oppenheim’s work has been exhibited internationally. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including the 45th and 46th Venice Biennale, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Among others, She has had solo exhibitions at MAMCO Musée d’Art Modern et Contemporain, Geneva; at Secession, Vienna; KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; at FRAC Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Oboro, Montréal; the Jewish Museum, New York; and at the Villa Arson, Nice. 

Her work has also been seen in exhibitions including “X”, at FRAC Des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou (2021); “Sound Museum” at D MUSEUM, Seoul (2020); “H(a)unting images. Anatomy of a shot” at Fundación la Caixa, Barcelona (2017); “Never Ending Stories” at MAMCO Musée d’Art Modern et Contemporain, Geneva (2014); “The International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias”, (2014); “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”, ‘Nuit Blanche’, in Paris (2013); “NYC 1993: Experimental, Jet, Set Trash and No Star” at New Museum, New York (2013); “Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou” at Seattle Art Museum, (2012); “Volume” at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2011); “Silence. Listen to the Show” at Sandretto Foundation, Turin (2007); “Don’t Call it Performance” at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2003); “Voices” at Witte de With, Rotterdam (1998); “Young and Restless” at Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997); “29’ – 0 / East” at New York Kunstahalle (1996); “Threshold” at Fundacao de Serralves, Porto (1995); “Murs du son” at Villa Arson, Nice (1995); and “Encounters with Diversity” at PS1 MOMA, New York (1992). 

Kristin Oppenheim’s work is included in public collections of the Art Foundation Mallorca Collection, CCA-Andratx in Mallorca; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the FNAC Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; the FRAC Des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; MAMCO Museum d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York. 

INFO is a label and interdisciplinary platform highlighting unique applications of sound in the field of contemporary art.

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LOVOTIC (vinyl). Soundwalk Collective w/ Charlotte Gainsbourg feat Atom™, Lyra Pramuk, Paul B. Preciado, Willem Dafoe. Soundwalk Collective

Posted in art, music, Vinyl on May 8th, 2022
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Written and conceived by Stephan Crasneanscki, ‘LOVOTIC’ is a concept album by Soundwalk Collective, composed in collaboration with lauded actress and singer/songwriter Charlotte Gainsbourg, Featuring veteran techno stalwart Atom™, rising singer/composer/performance artist Lyra Pramuk, celebrated actor Willem Dafoe, and writer/philosopher Paul B. Preciado, the album will be available from April 1st via the new Berlin-based Analogue Foundation.

Inspired by a relatively new field of research that seeks to explore and develop the possibilities of sexual and emotional relationships – and even love – between humans and robots, ‘LOVOTIC’ interrogates the impulses, ideas, and needs underlying this phenomenon. The project ventures into a future where sex, intimacy and desire are reformulated through the connection of humans, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

In an age of such hybrid entanglement with the machine, human identity requires the construction of new forms of intimacy, gender, and sexuality. At present, however, such technologies are primarily used to produce programs of limited sexual iterations that do not question the preformatted categories of gender and sexual orientation. In contrast, on ‘LOVOTIC’, Soundwalk Collective ask whether the future of sex and sexuality could instead be an exponentially expanding kaleidoscope. Where does the impulse of preference come from? What sets of words from our vocabulary can be communicated to the AI mind to generate a new identity for desire? Could the machine be another technology that brings us closer together?

Sonically ‘LOVOTIC’ is unidentifiable, artificial, and genuinely futuristic, occupying an amorphous androgynous netherworld at the borderlands between biotic and android. Traditional musical signposts are virtually non-existent, instead offering a mercurial, formless sound which mirrors the flourishing of gender fluidity it suggests could be on the horizon.

‘LOVOTIC’ is available as an artist edition double LP pressed on transparent vinyl, featuring a hand engraving on each side. It includes a 16-page booklet containing lyrics and painted artwork, both by Stephan Crasneanscki.

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Free/Apples (7″ vinyl). YS & Alex Bienstock. ERF Records

Posted in music, Vinyl, vinyl on April 16th, 2022
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High gloss jackets with resin stickers on the front. Each copy comes with two double-sided paper inserts featuring drawings by Alex Bienstock & Johanna Owen.

Limited to 30 copies.

Alex Bienstock aka ‘Doctor-of-fine-artz’ aka ‘Dummy-data-in-the-omni-cringe’ is a ‘Post-Artist’ Get with the program & read the manifesto ‘We, the post-artists’ if you want to understand.. or in this case overstand – www.alexbienstock.com/files/we-the-post-artists.pdf – An answer to your disenchantments in creative pursuits? Remember that your day job is art. Here’s something to unravel – As a post artist – forget about ‘pedigree, money, laborious ambition, or skill – the only things that matter are ideas, attitude, seduction, compulsive will and unfettered energy’

‘I would say that I work from a mentally amoral place, people can think of it what they want. Sometimes it’s just a feeling and I just need to make something so I can look at it. I try not to judge what I am doing. I want to embarrass myself more, and entertain myself. Occasionally I think I am doing something smart, but to me nothing is smart. Sometimes what I’m saying is like a thank you and a middle finger at the same time. Sometimes I am confusing a message’ – Alex Bienstock

These two cuts emerge as dense atmospheric dirges. A syndicate of sound & stream-of-consciousness spoken word deliveries caught in the flow-state, probing and riding the sensor ’Poetic logic in chaos’ A seepage of information, jumbled buzz words, thoughts & statements, humor & doom. Processings from the overload, floating in the concentrated sonic space of elucidated pathos. A vivid monologue in fleet, where nothing lands on concrete. It doesn’t matter what it ‘means’, as long as we can get between things.

After a call for collaboration at the tail end of 2020, these vocals were screen captured by YS from one of Bienstock’s now Zucc’d instagram profiles. This release is a diverging path from his project ESCBAS, in which Bienstock forms many groups with different concepts and people. “This is done even if collaborators used shared material differently for their own purposes, or sees the project as something completely different. The philosophical purpose of doing this is to create and support an anarchic anything-goes mentality. The result is an etheric and intimate collective, with works remaining highly personal and singular. Works that are post-genre at it’s core and meta-schizophrenic in it’s post-ironic awareness” These recordings eventually became – ‘Free’ & ‘Apples’ – Available digitally and on a limited edition run of 7inch Records. A sound of the times – Bless

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