Category Archives: Allgemein

SABA ALIZADEH – Scattered Memories

Format: LP  / download

Release date: february 15th 2019

On his debut album “Scattered Memories”, the composer, musician and true master on the Iranian spike fiddle kamancheh SABA ALIZADEH blends his instrumental virtuosity with spherical electronics, samples of Persian music instruments and field recordings from his hometown Tehran. 

Born in Tehran in 1983 as son of the world renowned Tar and Setar virtuoso HOSSEIN ALIZADEH, SABA ALIZADEH studied the Iranian spike fiddle with SAEED FARAJPOURY and KEYHAN KALHOR plus photography and later experimental sound art with MARK TRAYLE at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles. His musical activities that lead him all around the globe for performances (a.o. at Carnegie Hall) branch into 2 different areas: on the one side ALIZADEH is a highly reputated virtuoso on his traditional instrument, on the other he likes to approach music from a more experimental / technological aspect in his electronic / electro-acoustic pieces. This not being enough, he founded Noise Works in 2014, a platform and label for organizing experimental concerts and for the transfer of knowledge of music technologies among young Iranian musicians which makes him a central figure at the forefront of the current, very vivid Persian music scene that gained a lot of attention through artists like SIAVASH AMINI, PORYA HATAMI and of course SOTE who included a track by ALIZADEH on the compilation “Girih: Iranian Sound Artists” that he had curated.

In 2018, ALIZADEH self-released his debut “Scattered Memories” on CD in Iran which now, in a reworked version, sees its deserved world-wide release as LP and DL. Over the course of 10 tracks ALIZADEH melts his 2 musical worlds into 1: tradition meets modernism, eastern sounds meet western production, folklore meets contemporary electronics. An album that will appeal to an open-minded “world music” audience as well as fans of current streams like ambient or drone in its most subtle forms.

BENJAMIN FINGER / JAMES PLOTKIN / MIA ZABELKA – Pleasure-Voltage

Format: LP  / download

Release date: february 15th 2019

BENJAMIN FINGER, JAMES PLOTKIN and MIA ZABELKA craft a mesmerizing sonic world that buzzes and drones, glitches and slithers, eventually careening into unexplored musical territory.

“Pleasure-Voltage” was born in the mind (and studio) of BENJAMIN FINGER – a composer, electronic music producer, DJ, photographer and film-maker based in Oslo / Norway who in recent years has become quite a prolific artist, expanding his stylistic palette from piano miniatures and off-kilter pop experiments to lysergic, dream-like sound collages spiced with gentle warmth and sublime melody. These ingredients are also characteristic on this latest work where FINGER set the musical frame before passing it on to his inspired collaborators: MIA ZABELKA who for decades now has been involved in countless projects, be it as musician (violin / electronics), curator or founder of the international sound art centre klang.haus and who has worked with a.o. JOHN ZORN, FRED FRITH, ELECTRIC INDIGO, ROBIN RIMBAUD (SCANNER), DÄLEK or PHIL MINTON. And last but not least there’s JAMES PLOTKIN who entered the scene with his first band OLD LADY DRIVERS (or OLD) on EARACHE in 1987 and later was a member of KHANATE (with a.o. STEPHEN O’MALLEY) while also exploring the areas of dark ambient and electronics by working with or remixing SCORN / MICK HARRIS,  K.K: NULL and many more.

On “Pleasure-Voltage” which had its live-premiere at the REWIRE festival 2018, the trio crafts a mesmerizing sonic world that buzzes and drones, glitches and slithers, eventually careening into unexplored musical territory somewhere between ambient / drone / psychedelia.

Benjamin Finger: synthesizers, piano, field recordings, electronic devices, alien objects.

James Plotkin: electric guitar, granular synthesis

Mia Zabelka: E-violin, electronic devices, alien objects.

Mixed by James Plotkin

Mastered & vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin

Artwork by Caro Mikalef
Mastered and vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin

JASMINE GUFFOND – Degradation Loops

Format: LP (100 handnumbered items, clear vinyl) / download

Release date: october 26th 2018

Australian sound artist JASMINE GUFFOND presents “Degradation Loops”, initially a sixteen day process of sonic destruction created for an art exhibition.

Australian sound artist JASMINE GUFFOND’s “Degradation Loops” started out as a sixteen day long composition for an exhibition at Sydney gallery 55 in December 2016. Literally using the ‘degrade’ object from the MaxMSP programming software, “Degradation Loops” gradually and completely bit crushed her 2015 album ‘Yellow Bell’. A process of sonic destruction unfolded in response to a group show where visual artists destroyed and reassembled their work, to create new work, and to question the dominance of commercial imperatives within art. Here GUFFOND has especially created a thirty minute variation for the vinyl medium.

Engaging the process of bit crushing, in “Degradation Loops” the sampling rate and bit depth of the audio signal is step by step, gradually, and completely reduced. The algorithmic unraveling of these tracks renders them increasingly discordant and unpredictable as time passes. Using intricate and highly articulate audio loops from an existing authored work, sound gradually becomes noise. Beauty is broken down allowing another type of beauty to emerge. By deliberately deconstructing the audio signal of otherwise highly deliberative compositions, “Degradation Loops” speaks to a contemporary audio realm where principles of High Definition dominate, in an overall musicscape preconceived as uniform. An industry standard sampling rate of 44.1kHz, and a bit rate of 16 was established by Philips and Sony with the Compact Disc format in 1982. At the time this became an encoding standard by which to communicate, listen, and make music.

JASMINE GUFFOND is a composer and sound artist from Sydney, Australia, who lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Focused on electronic composition across music and sound art contexts, her practice spans live performance, recording and the capacity of sound installation to interrogate site. Through the sonification of data she addresses the potential of sound to engage with contemporary political questions. Her music draws upon influences from experimental electronic, drone, techno and avant-garde. Working with abstract sound as much as traditional musical forms to create a concordant relationship between a sound that holds emotive power and musicality, and a sensitive microscopic study of electro acoustic phenomena.

Jasmine has exhibited internationally including Akademie der Künste (DE), Deutsche Oper (DE) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (AU), performed live internationally at music and electronic art festivals, and recorded music for CD and 12inch vinyl releases with the Staubgold, Monika Enterprise and Sonic Pieces labels. She completed the Sound Studies, master in arts program at the Universität der Künste, Berlin Germany, 2015 and received the ‘Working Grant for New Music und Sound Art’ from the Berlin Senate in 2016.

mastered + cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin
artwork by Katorina Pling

AUDREY CHEN – Runt Vigor

Format: LP  / download

Release date: september 28th 2018

AUDREY CHEN’s long-awaited new solo album “Runt Vigor” is an adventurous sonic exploration of the voice, cello and analog electronics.

AUDREY CHEN began her relationship with sound through the cello and voice over 30 years ago and since the past 15 years, her predominant focus has been her solo work, joining together the extended and inherent vocabularies of the cello, voice and analog electronics (with all sounds created without electronic effect or enhancement other than amplification).

More recently, she has begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument, delving even more deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. She derives her sound material in continuous process, championing the „in-between“ and overlooked. Regardless of instrument, CHEN’s mode of experimentation touches both the abstractly beautiful and the aggressively unsettling, creating a kind of curiously imagined architecture, non-prosaic song or ritual that reaches beyond gravity or language.

Recent projects, aside from performing solo, include her long running voices duo with PHIL MINTON, duos HISS & VISCERA with modular synth player RICHARD SCOTT, BEAM SPLITTER with Norwegian trombonist HENRIK MUNKEBY NØRSTEBØ, and the “romantic noise duo” AFTERBURNER with DORON SADJA (electronics/light projection). Past projects include work with German conceptual artist JOHN BOCK, a duo with NYC abstract turntablist MARIA CHAVEZ, and a quartet with NATE WOOLEY, C. SPENCER YEH and TODD CARTER that released a LP on MONOTYPE. Her new projects include a double duo/quartet with BEAM SPLITTER and STREIFENJUNKO’s, EIVIND LØNNING and ESPEN REINERTSEN and MOPCUT with LUKAS KÖNIG and JULIEN DESPREZ.

American born but currently based in Berlin, CHEN has performed across Europe, North/South America and Asia at numerous festivals including Festival Beyond Innocence (Osaka, JP), Maerzmusik (Berlin, DE), Klangspuren Festival (Schwaz, AT), Sound of Stockholm (Stockholm, SE), Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway, Jazzfest Saalfelden, Color Out of Space (Brighton), Wels Music Unlimited (Wels, AT), 2PI Festival (Hangzhou, CN).

DAVID HARRINGTON of the KRONOS QUARTET has described CHEN’s work as „fascinating and gripping“ and „possessing something extremely vital and vivid….“, and “Runt Vigor” exemplifies these sentiments and so much more!

Recorded by Koenraad Ecker and Roy Carroll (in Berlin 2015 and 2018)
Mixed by Richard Scott
Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin
Cover collages by Id M Theft Able 

Tracklist:  A1. Heavy  A2. In The  A3. Mouth  B.   Heavy In The Hand

GIULIO ALDINUCCI – Disappearing In A Mirror

Format: LP / CD / download

Release date: september 21st 2018

Italian sound artist GIULIO ALDINUCCI drops his 2^nd album on Karl: “Disappearing In A Mirror” is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed “Borders And Ruins” which made it onto several year’s best lists for 2017.

Over the course of four solo albums on labels like DRONARIVM plus EPs and collaborative albums (a.o. with IAN HAWGOOD), GIULIO ALDINUCCI successively has been refining his skills as composer and sound designer. His elegant style which blends ambient and field recordings came to full impact on his 2017 album “Borders And Ruins” which gained the Italian sound artist a lot of critical praise and made it onto several year’s best lists, a.o. Acloserlisten.com. ALDINUCCI’s latest effort is again not only a musical masterpiece of sublime beauty and sacral majesty, it also deals with philosophical concerns. Where “Borders …” was a reflection on the instability of borders – borders as an extreme attempt to discriminate and rationalize that turns into a source of chaos and cultural ruins on both sides – and their impact on the relationship between people and territory, “Disappearing In A Mirror” raises the very personal question of identity. In the words of ALDINUCCI himself:

“ ‘Disappearing In A Mirror’ focuses on the fluidity of the identity concept, highlighting the harmonious coexistence of contradictory elements and the transitional features that characterize every transformation. It is a reflection on the current situation of change and disruption and at the same time it is a gaze into the human timeless soul and its inner soundscapes.”

Available as limited edition coloured vinyl in silk-screened sleeve, CD and download.

Mastered by Alexandr Vatagin
Vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin
Artwork by Joe Gilmore

KONSTRUKT + KEIJI HAINO – A Philosophy Warping, Little By Little That Way Lies A Quagmire

Format: 180 gram LP incl. DL code / download

Release date: august 31st 2018

2^nd album by Turkish free jazzers KONSTRUKT and the Japanese avant-garde / noise icon KEIJI HAINO, this time recorded live in concert.

Celebrating their 10^th anniversary these days, KONSTRUKT have since been creating an impressive catalogue including collaborations / performances with significant musicians like PETER BRÖTZMANN, JOE MCPHEE, WILLIAM PARKER, AKIRA SAKATA, MARSHALL ALLEN, EVAN PARKER, THURSTON MOORE, MICHAEL ZERANG, ALFRED HARTH or ALEXANDER HAWKINS that gained them an ever growing audience and media attention (e.g. a recent WIRE feature), and they keep exploring new grounds. Like in 2016 when KONSTRUKT invited KEIJI HAINO to their home town Istanbul for a recording session that resulted in a quite unique album: “A Philosophy Warping, Little By Little That Way Lies A Quagmire” offered – besides all the elements you may well expect from such a musical meeting like KONSTRUKT’s “acerbic razor-edged sound” (MARK CORROTO, ALLABOUTJAZZ) and HAINO’s unmistakable voice / guitar explosions – some actual surprises like the really groovy opening track with a funky feel and a kind of 70’s fusion style album closer. Two days later the free jazz quartet and the Japanese avant-garde icon continued their adventure with a public performance at SalonIKSY, pushing things further and raising the level of energy and rawness. Carrying the same title ““A Philosophy Warping, Little By Little That Way Lies A Quagmire” proves a condign sister release to their previous studio effort. Or, as the famous Asian phrase goes: “same same but different!”

Press quotes on the previous KONSTRUKT / KEIJI HAINO album:

“…what we have here is basically a really fucking great free / fusion / jazz / thing band with Haino playing along. Possibly uniquely among Haino records I’ve heard …”     Freq.org.uk

“Recommendation!”     Freejazzblog.org

R.A.N. – Şeb-i Yelda

Format: 12inch + DL code / download

Release date: august 31^st 2018

KARL is excited to welcome a new artist on board: R.A.N. is the dark electronic / rhythmic ambient music project by HÜMA UTKU. “Şeb-i Yelda” is available as 12” and download.

Hailing from İstanbul and based in Berlin for a couple of years now, HÜMA UTKU has been a prolific artist lately: as R.A.N. (Roads At Night) she released her debut album “Her Trembling Ceased“, followed by the remix album ‚Remixed: Stories Retold‘ (both 2015, PARTAPART RECORDS), and contributed several tracks and remixes to various compilations. Besides studio production, she travels the planet to perform live or as DJ, and in November / December 2017 UTKU was Artist in Residency at YARA MEKAWEI’s Submarine Studio, Cairo.

The title of her debut on KARL, “Şeb-i Yelda” (pronounced Shab-e Yalda in English), is a Persian term that signifies ‘the longest night’. Inspired by the Ottoman poet BOSNIAN SABIT EFENDI’s verses, R.A.N. created four new, very personal tracks, developing further her musical language by fusing traditional instruments with deep electronic sounds, distortion and dark ambience, in order to create intense atmospheres of anger, anxiety, grief – but also empowerment and hope. These compositions are UTKU’s personal reflections on the long lasting devastation and turmoil in the Middle East as well as witnessing the individual experiences related to these happenings. The titles translate as:’“Şeb-i Yelda” (The Longest Night), “Ay” (The Moon), “Sabah” (The Morning) and “Kul” (The Servant).

NICOLAS WIESE – Unrelated

Format:  LP (200 handnumbered items, silk-screened sleeve, DL code, clear vinyl) / DL

Release date: june 29th 2018

VARIOUS ARTISTS: Karl Marx’s 200th !

Format: 2CD digipak / download

Release date: june 8^th 2018

28 artists celebrating the 200^th anniversary of the great philosopher and economist KARL MARX on may 5th with a benefit compilation! Exclusive / previously unreleased tracks by AGF, AIDAN BAKER, FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER, NATALIE BERIDZE, SCHNEIDER TM,  KAMMERFLIMMER KOLLEKTIEF, REINHOLD FRIEDL, JASMINE GUFFOND, CASPAR BRÖTZMANN, ANDREAS REIHSE (KREIDLER)  and many more.

In times of an untamed capitalism, seemingly endless greed and persisting exploitation of underprivileged humans, the 200^th anniversary of KARL MARX is a welcome and necessary reason to remember the great philosopher’s and economist’s theories on capitalism and to re-think the state of the world of today, look out for alternative ways of economic organization and appropriate means to bridge the gap between rich and poor.

28 artists express their upset with the current state of society by contributing a track to this benefit compilation – with one exception, these tracks are exclusive or previously unreleased, adding up to 2 hours of experimental music from diverse genres like ambient / drone, electronics, electro-acoustic, noise, contemporary music etc.

Besides the music, “Karl Marx’s 200^th !” provides essays and philosophical reflections by NINA POWER (The Guardian, Wire), KERSTIN STAKEMEIER (professor for art theory and -mediation at the Academy Of Fine Arts Nuremberg),  feminist philosopher EWA MAJEWSKA, artist ME RAABENSTEIN and ALEX GAWRONSKI (Sydney College Of The Arts / University Of Sydney).

ALL REVENUES from the sales of the CD / DL will be donated!

THANKS to:

# Helmut Erler at D&M Berlin who took care of the mastering for free in his spare time

# Ed Benndorf / dense promotion for handling the press work for free

Tracklist:

1-1       Andreas Reihse – Antikapitalist

1-2       Natalie Beridze – Mapping debris pattern

1-3       Aidan Baker – Sommerhaus

1-4       Kammerflimmer Kollektief – Wir bauen die Maschine um!

1-5       Jasmine Guffond – Niche service

1-6       Nicolas Wiese – The revolution will have been youtubed #2

1-7       ME Raabenstein – Language is a spy

1-8       AGF – Capitalism crashed (Karl Marx RMX)

1-9       Hans Castrup – Produktiv.Kräfte

1-10     Gitter – Webt, spinnt, bohrt, dreht, baut, schaufelt

1-11     Yr Lovely Dead Moon – Kali

1-12     Frank Bretschneider – 50% positiv waghalsig

1-13     Pharoah Chromium – Der Zerfall des Systems

1-14     Caspar Brötzmann – Marx crash

2-1       Alexandre Babel – Karlstag

2-2       Marc Weiser – Kapital

2-3       Jens Pauly – Erinnern_rework

2-4       Dominika Jerkic – Form – Auflösung des Bestehenden

2-5       Narrow Bridges – Making this now

2-6       Nickolas Mohanna – La semaine sanglante

2-7       Philippe Petit – Engels of Death Metal

2-8       Seda Mimaroğlu – Circuitous

2-9       Reinhold Friedl – Mehrwert for-of James Whitman

2-10     Wi Tiarks – Circusization

2-11     Schneider TM – Hand in den Mund

2-12     Guido Möbius – Werkzeug und Ressource

2-13     Porya Hatami – Senior’s „last hour“

2-14     Warnings – Juif

CRETA- Creta

Format: 180gr LP , silk-screenesd sleeve + DL code / download

Release date: march 2nd 2018

CRETA is the new project by MASSIMO PUPILLO (ZU, LANIAKEA), electronic artist LUCIANO LAMANNA and string instrument virtuoso ROBERTO ZANISI. As trio they explore an adventurous sonic territory between COIL in their ambient moments, dark bass pulses and bucolic-mediterranean string sounds.

CRETA is a new trio of artists coming from very different backgrounds: ROBERTO ZANISI is a finger picking guitar player and a virtuoso on strings of all kinds, including “exotic” instruments like the Turkish Cümbüs, the Greek Bouzouki or the Albanian Cifteli. Since 2003 he has been active in many contexts: he worked with GIOVANNI VENOSTA producing sound tracks for SILVIO SOLDINI’s movies, took part as soloist musician in STEWARD COPELAND’s tour “La Notte della Taranta (Night of Tarantula)”, played with the American musician AMY DENIO and performed with SAINKHO NAMTCHYLAK. LUCIANO LAMANNA’s main characteristics are experimentation, analog synths, vinyl and a big love for techno. In 2015, the resident DJ at Ex Dogana, Roma and member of the Italian artist collective LSWHR launched the modular synthesizer project BALANCE (with DAVIDE RICCI), and in 2017 he released the album “Divus” with ZU member LUCA T. MAI, to name a few of LAMANNA’s many releases on labels like EARACHE, BORING MACHINES, SCUDERIA et.al. And, last but not least, there is MASSIMO PUPILLO, highly acclaimed bass maniac with ZU, LANIAKEA and in countless other constellations (a.o. PETER and CASPAR BRÖTZMANN, FM EINHEIT, CHRIS CORSANO). As CRETA, they create outlandish sonic pieces that blend sci-fi ambient atmospheres with dark bass pulses and bucolic-mediterranean string instruments – an unique and yet coherent mix of elements that adds consequently to the oeuvres of the three artists!

Tracklist:
1 … And Everything That Shines
2 Babe In The Egg Of Blue
3 Future Humans In Form Of Aur

IANNIS XENAKIS – Persepolis

Format: 180gr LP incl. 4c insert + DL code / download

Release date: march 2nd 2018

After “La Légende d’Eer” in 2016, the PERIHEL series presents one of the milestones of electroacoustic music: IANNIS XENAKIS’ mindblowing 54-minutes oeuvre “Persepolis”, mixed from the original 8 track tapes by MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered / cut by RASHAD BECKER.

“Persepolis” is the longest electroacoustic composition by IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001) who ranks among the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. Commissioned by the Persian Shah, the piece was part of a multimedia performance – XENAKIS’ so-called “polytopes” – which premiered in 1971 in Shiraz-Persepolis (Iran) as a performance including light-tracks, laser beams, groups of children walking around with torches and 59 loudspeakers to project the music in an open-air situation.
XENAKIS had realized “Persepolis” on 8-track analogue tape in the Studio Acusti in Paris and released a stereo reduction on vinyl in the famous Philips series “Prospective 21e Siècle” in 1972, adding the new subtitle “We bear the light of the earth”, his most hymnal title ever.
Out of print for decades now, the LP became – especially the Japanese edition from 1974 – one of the most expensive collector’s item of electroacoustic music. There were some later CD versions with different durations – too long due to a wrong sample rate, others shortened by 3 minutes due to other reasons. The PERIHEL series now presents a new version: mixed from the original (!) master 8 track tapes by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer MARTIN WURMNEST and mastered by RASHAD BECKER at D&M, Berlin – the same experts who had already taken care of the 2016 KARLRECORDS release of “La Légende d’Eer”, another milestone composition among the works of the Greek-French avant-garde composer.