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.
Double LP compilation featuring Italian dancefloor music from the end of the Afro/Cosmic scene to the beginning of the Italian Rave era, between 1987 and 1994.
Stunning bit of research by Andrea Dallera (Dualismo Sound) and Gabriele Casiraghi who’ve been meticulously digging Italian bins. After endless sifting through this crucial time in Italian dance floor music, we are presented with their final distillation of this transitory period between 80’s afro cosmic and Italo’s peak into early 90’s rave and Italo house era. In their words: “The whole concept was born as we started to find records that were into a kind of hybrid zone that was clearly pre-announcing some of the huge musical changes brought by the 90’s. The sound at play can be understood as looking closely to Belgian New Beat, Uk’s Acid House and German early Techno but still connected with some dynamics of the ‘80s sounds: lashing snares and catchy melodic phrases joined by filthy acid bass lines, highly compressed kicks and ‘World music’ samples are just some of the most recurring elements.” Hands down mandatory for any dance floor oriented record collection.
Discrepant: inconsistent; conflicting; at variance [from Latin discrepāns, from discrepāre to differ in sound, from dis-1 + crepāre to be noisy]
Discrepant is a record label, founded in London in 2011. Our aim is to deconstruct, distort and re-assemble the lore of (un)popular music around the world.
Edition of 20 signed and numbered lathe cut 7” featuring two works from Kristin Oppenheim’s show “She Had A Heavy Day” at greengrassi, London (from 9 June to 30 July 2022).
This compilation of songs is not meant as a historic reflection of popular music of the “Arab world.” It is a very personal selection of songs we grew to like at Habibi Funk. It is music that historically never existed as a unified musical genre. We think it’s important to make this distinction and to have the listener understand that the majority of the music on this compilation does not come from the highly famous names of the musical spectrum of North Africa and the Middle East. Instead, the final body compiled for this record consists of some – at least for us – nichey pearls and often overlooked artists; resulting in a diverse range of styles from Egyptian organ funk, disco sounds from Morocco, an example of the lively reggae scene of Libya, political songs from Lebanon, soundtrack music from Algeria, a musical union between Kenya and Oman, and much more. The photo we chose for this cover somehow could be seen as an allegory of the sounds we feature on the label. It depicts Algerian composer Ahmed Malek at an ice cream bar during his stay in Japan for the World Expo in Osaka, 1970. He later said that his visit to Japan and especially the manga culture left a distinctive mark on the way he created his own compositions. With this in mind, it feels as a suiting visual representation for the mu- sic on this compilation.
Accordingly, the compilation you are holding in your hands offers a much wider range of music than just funk influenced sounds. Sure, it brings back Fadoul, who we have already dedicated a full length album to. He was the mystical Moroccan singer who – influenced by the sounds of James Brown- created his own musical vision full of energy but also still very intimate. Another artist we have featured before is Ahmed Malek, the grand Algerian soundtrack composer, whose music is largely connected by a distinct feeling of melancholic beauty or Hamid Al Shaeri, the Egyptian hit producer whose track “Ayonha” was probably the most widely appreciated track off our first compilation. But we have also learned that this format of a compilation can serve as a medium to introduce artists to our audience, who we are planning to dedicate full length releases to in the near future, such as Ibrahim Hesnawi. Hesnawi is the father of reggae music in Libya – a genre still widely popular in Libya – and whose presence in the country is commonly connected to the rhythmic similarities of reggae with some form of Libyan folkloric music. Nahib Alhoush is another Libyan artist, whose musical output we will spotlight in the near future. In the 1970s, he was the co-founder of Free Music, one of the first Libyan bands introducing western influences into their music. After the band stopped performing together he started an at least equally successful solo career under his own name.
When I got into Arabic music around five or six years ago, I knew pretty much nothing about it. Realistically, I still know very, very little about it and I’m by no means an expert. I just had the opportunity to visit the region frequently, trying to learn about music I might like. Most of the bands, I happen to enjoy, were fairly obscure and therefore a lot of the music on this compilation seems to be largely forgotten. After sharing many of the old records and tapes online through mixes, I have realized that there is a huge disparity be- tween the interest in the music on the one hand and its availability on the other.
All tracks on this compilation are fully licensed, most directly from the artist or in the case of artists, who are deceased licensed from the artist’s family. There are two exceptions: Hamid Al Shaeri’s track was licensed from SLAM! as the label is still active under the name Sonar. Zohra’s “Badala Zamana” from the great Belgian label MTMU, who has reissued this track under license from the producer on 7” format before. As a European label dealing with non- western artists we try to be aware of the responsibilities that derive within the making, regarded from a post-colonial point of view by demanding on ourselves not to reproduce exploitative economic patterns. We split all of the profits from our releases equally with the artists without deducting any costs that are not directly related to the release (e.g. we pay for our research to find an artist as well as all travel costs from our share of the profit). Our agreements are licensed deals with limited terms after which the rights fall back to the artist or the artist’s family. The master rights stay with the artists, we just license them. We do not include publishing rights in our deals. We think it is important in today’s reissue market, where too many shady business transactions happen, to be transparent about our licensing policies. We are always available for any questions, requests as well as more detailed information.
‘Agency’ is a document of the hold music for a Canadian Government helpline, and a text about quantum mechanics and the notion of free will seen through the lens of Miles Davis’ 1959 album Kind of Blue.
Hand-numbered edition of 100
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Recorded live 22/05/18 on hold to the Canadian Government agency ‘Service Canada’ Social Insurance Registration Office.
Side A (20’22”) Freddie Freeloader (part) Blue in Green All Blues (part)
Side B (18’16”) All Blues (part) Flamenco Sketches Flamenco Sketches (alternate take) Die Kleine Kneipe (part) *
*Perdu LP by Piezo After releases on Idle Hands, Version, Wisdom Teeth and his own Ansia label, Piezo lands on Hundebiss Records for his first full length. Perdu is all about stark contrasts: raw & dirty sub–frequency pulsating beats VS crystal–clear digital sounds and atmospheres. Piezo’s non-synthetic approach to sound design conveys a sense of ‘realness’ of the displacement, a dust blow cut by razor blade FM synths, pervaded by a sense of restless hypnosis.
*Kamil Manqus كَامِل مَنْقوص by Muqata’a ‘Kamil Manqus’ means “whole imperfect” or “perfect imperfect” in Arabic, referencing Muqata’a’s way of working that incorporates mistakes into the fabric of his work. The concept for the album’s construction is Simya’, an ancient Arabic science of combining numbers and alphabets to communicate with the unseen.
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
Kapriole is the debut album by Zurich- and Hamburg-based artist Leo Hofmann– after working in music theatre, sound art, and performance contexts. Central to the album, which refers in its title to a joyous jump, is the ambition to translate an ephemeral practice into recorded matter. Fixed but never static, Kapriole is informed by intimate and detailed listening situations and sound practices like ASMR or the acoustically sheltered world of noise cancelling headphones. And while it is apparent that Hofmann has a deeply rooted understanding of technology and its abundant possibilities, Kapriole is a tender and almost analogue feeling affair. The human voice occupies a central role in the musical configuration of the album: quirky repetitions, hushed fragments and poetic statements, circling topics like communication, mobility, and immersion occupy the album’s eight tracks. The result is a sonorous sensation, which, in its scarcity, paves the way for meticulously crafted and delicate soundscapes.
Written, recorded, and produced by Leo Hofmann.
Mastering: Stefan Betke (Scape Mastering Berlin) Graphic Design: Karan Kobel
