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WHAT THE PRESS RELEASE SAYS:

Portland-based composer Daryl Groetsch’s output under the name Pulse Emitter forms a catalog of nearly one hundred physical releases since the early ‘00s. The full scope of his wide-ranging experiments in synthesis and electronic arrangement encompasses everything from expansive new age drift exercises, to purely textural noise sculpting, to the strain of post-Berlin School cybernetic prog composition that characterized newer albums like Through The Portal (Phinery, 2016) and Digital Rainforest (Beer on the Rug, 2015). Swirlings, his first full-length LP on Hausu Mountain, follows a split release with Brett Naucke (HAUSMO53, 2017), and albums on labels like NNA, Immune, and Constellation Tatsu. Swirlings finds Pulse Emitter tempering his more recent melodic streak with a host of time-distorting compositional strategies from the ambient and drone traditions, yielding a hybridized vision of his music that spans distinct eras and styles of his output. Taken in the context of his cosmic song titles and long-standing incorporation of sci-fi themes and imagery, the album bears the outward signs of the ambient record that seeks to evoke the experience of deep space travel, or observing a lush garden of alien flora from the deck of a starship. Groetsch ornaments his gorgeous harmonic whirlpools and majestic spreads of smeared drones with layers of crystalline melody and flourishes of granular processing. His pieces stretch through minimal expanses in which individual pads and bass notes sketch out a churning rhythmic grid before blooming into mosaics of interlaced arpeggios and lead voices. Pulse Emitter approaches electronic composition from the perspective of a master craftsman, harnessing a fine-tuned sense of narrative development and a penchant for juxtaposing contrasting synth voices from far-flung corners of his arsenal of softsynths, app-based programs, and hardware instruments. While he conjures time-lapse vistas of galaxies and nebulas in our mind’s eye, the sophistication of his arrangements and the universal beauty of his harmonies pushes the lens inward on the self, resulting in a journey that is as personal and internal as it is celestial.
Swirlings represents a culmination of diverse modes of creation that Pulse Emitter has developed over the course of his recent releases. As on 2018’s Xenharmonic Passages, Groetsch moves beyond traditional tonalities and western scales to incorporate elements of microtonality into his percolating black hole soundscapes. As on his five volume series called Meditative Music, he hones in on 6 to 7-minute drifting pieces that balance a sense of delicate stasis with great depth of detail and movement. The lead lines present on Swirlings continue Pulse Emitter’s fascination with emulated instrumental tones characteristic of ‘80s synth composition, as more chintzy or brittle voices collide with patches of ultra high-fidelity synthetic pointillism. Far from the realm of plug-and-press-play ambient computer music, his hands-on input on his system of machines can compress time into pockets of acute structural turbulence, or lock into streams of slow equilibrium where one can trace his live manipulation of single voices or textural parameters. With Swirlings, Pulse Emitter taps into the benevolence and natural curiosity at the heart of his practice. After decades guiding us down a network of distinct paths through the cosmos, Groetsch has become the wise traveler that we turn to transfix and entertain us, to kindle a spark of warmth in the cold void of space.

CREDITS
Synthesizer music by Daryl Groetsch
Portland, OR
12/2018 - 4/2019

Mastered by Patrick Klem
Artwork by Max

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“A Typical Night in the Pit” is a collection of new music by Los Angeles’ Nick Malkin. It is an album that finds the artist absorbed in the density and chaos of the urban complex. It is unquestionably an “LA album,” but not the LA of hi-fi listening bars and twinkling, Instagram-ready New Age. Rather, Malkin navigates something more akin to the LA found in the films of Robert Altman or Alan Rudolph— overheated, tense, hazy, frayed— with blue-lit, nocturnal compositions that at times recall Mark Isham’s noirish scores for those subversive (anti-)Hollywood pictures. Enlisting a revolving cast of LA experimentalists, Malkin has assembled a record that is as chameleonic as it is cohesive, offering up vignettes ranging from the skewed MIDI-jazz of “Sixth Street Conversation” to the skulking menace of “Estacionamiento Privado,” before giving way to the wide-eyed, cloudy closer “View From Two Perspectives.”

C’mon, let’s go in here and get outta this heat.
Credits
Mastered by Kassian Troyer at D&M
Artwork by Alex McCullough and Niall Wynne Lewis

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WHAT HE SAYS:

This album was written for you, spirit friends, continuing the quest, stranded in the middle of a busy street, wandering the forest of fiery symbols. What did you leave behind you? Which path will you take? The undergrowth is getting thicker and more tangled. This is no time to abandon your journey & return to stone. Tonight the moon will be full. Arise & sing, wild children!

Dedicated with deepest love and appreciation to all my friends, and everyone who has been supporting Paw on this unfinished journey. There are no 'solo' artists. I could not do this without you.

Moon blessings from Paw!

Credits:
All music and lyrics by Burnt Paw
Guitar, vocals, unicorn autoharp, seashells, sticks, stones: Paw
Additional mystic chimes & rattles: Terry Stevens
Analogue recorded at Anvil Recording Studios, Ratho, Scotland.
Many thanks to Terry for the patience, skill and commitment in helping me to make these visions as strange and beautiful as possible.

WHAT THE PRESS RELEASE SAYS:

Erratics & Unconformities is the first album by Craven Faults.

It follows three EPs: Netherfield Works, Springhead Works and Nunroyd Works. Real-time journeys across decades and continents, and swathes of post-industrial northern Britain.

The journey on Erratics & Unconformities picks up where Netherfield Works left off. We take the canal towpath out of the city. We fork north shortly afterwards. Is this where it started? The terrain gradually becomes more rugged. Familiar. Wild. Evidence of human activity is less immediate in this glacial landscape. It’s there if you seek it. But easy to ignore. If you listen carefully, you can still hear the weight of the ice-sheet carving its way through the rock.

Scepter Studios, Manhattan. September 1967. Vox amplifiers driven to within an inch of their lives. An insistent rhythm. Familiar. Wild. We head across the city to 30th Street Studios a year later. More refined. Capturing a moment four years after its inception. We call into Command Studios in London on an evening in March 1972 before the pace drops. A moment to take in our surroundings. Music born in New York that has travelled beyond our solar system. A sense of weightlessness. We go as far back as 1906. Central Park. Tone poems underappreciated at the time - a visionary. We pay a visit to the village of Wümme in northern Germany. Forward momentum. There’s a nod to the rhythm of the loom. The studio building echoes with its own history by way of an early 70s Elka drum machine. We come to Van Gelder Studio in 1962 by a process of addition and elimination. We stay for the next three years. We’re also put in mind of the time we spent at Dierks Studios in 1972. A treasured record bought at sixteen. It takes time to reveal itself completely. Perhaps it never does. It would be lost now.

8th January 2013 – 19:16 – Farfisa drone through diode filter and phaser – 26 mins 38 seconds

Everything in its own time. The output from the old textile mill Craven Faults calls home is no longer as linear as it once was. There was no clear start point for the project, rather simply rediscovering the joy in experimentation with no material goals. Some of the recordings that make up Erratics & Unconformities go back almost seven years. Tracks have come and gone in that time. They don’t leave until they’ve undertaken a stringent quality control process. It started slowly, but has picked up momentum in the last eighteen months. Recorded and re-recorded to the correct level of imperfection, and then left to breathe. Mixed and re-mixed. Carefully compiled when the time was right.

3rd July 2019 – 12:34 – Mixdown

The journey is just as important as the destination. 

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Golden Mean is the brand new band formed by Tom Driessler of Yussef Kamaal and Luke Wynter of Nubiyan Twist... add to that killer synths from Lyle Barton and beats from Noya Rao's Matt Davies and you have 5 tracks that will keep you coming back for more.

The band take their name from the mysterious calculation that has consistently cropped up throughout the study of Music, Nature, History and Math; Also known as the Golden Ratio. Expect trippy beats, synths, catchy hooks, solos, and uptempo grooves.
Credits
Luke Wynter - guitar,
Tom Driessler - bass,
Lyle Barton - keys,
Matt Davies - drums

Produced by: Tom Excell
Recorded at: Henwood Studios (www.henwoodstudios.com)
Engineered by: Tom Excell, Joe Henwood
Mixed by: Tom Excell

Mastered by: Matt Lord
Date recorded: 15-17th July 2019

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BRAHJA is a new album of a band by the same name. We've been playing, in one form or another, since 2008. In this current incarnation, BRAHJA is made up of 10 musicians coming out of Montreal, New York City, Washington D.C. and Chicago, respectively. Core members — Damon Shadrach Hankoff, Isis Giraldo, Martin Heslop, Daniel Gelinas & I — toured throughout the US and Canada in 2015 & 16, oftentimes picking up a special guest in whichever city: a concept we called "Everybody's In The Band Tour." Luke Stewart, Anais Maviel, Margaret Morris, Sam Shalabi & Daniel Carter — all featured on this album — is an all star sample of the extended family which came from this process. I spent a year and some change composing the music for the album; and in the spring of 2017 we began recording in a former church in rural Quebec that Daniel Gelinas had converted into a studio. Back in NYC, where I live, additional layers were added to the recordings. Being my first trial with mixing, I realized a year into it that I had layered more sounds than I could even hear. So as I peeled away at the layers, eliminating some sounds and carving out a space for the rest, I learned to hear it all. These songs mostly deal with the purging of uninvited darkness. Some kind of cure for some kind of poison. Some kind of death for some kind of renewal.

I hope you can derive meaning and joy from this music.
With sincere gratitude,
Devin Brahja Waldman

Credits:
Devin Brahja Waldman - saxophone, piano, synthesizer, drums
Isis Giraldo - piano, synthesizer, voice
Damon Shadrach Hankoff - organ, piano, synthesizer
Martin Heslop - acoustic bass
Daniel Gélinas - drums, synthesizer
Margaret Morris - voice on songs #1 and #2
Sam Shalabi - guitar on songs #3, #6, #8
Luke Stewart - electric bass/pedals on #2 #4 #5, #6, #9
Daniel Carter - soprano saxophone on #5 and #10
Anais Maviel - surdo and voice on #10

Composed, Mixed & Produced by Devin Brahja Waldman
Recorded by Daniel Gélinas at Studio Chocolat Chaud at Graniteville, QC
Additional recording by Ambrose Bye at Fast Speaking Music Studios, NYC. Digital mastering by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Studio, NYC
Vinyl mastering by Louis Henry Sarmiento II at Sonic Vista Studios, Ibiza, Spain

Photography by Isaac Rosenthal
Outer sleeve artwork by Hanz Mambo
Gatefold interior artwork by Jason McLean
Interior photography by No Land (of M.M., D.B.W., L.S.), Thomas Sayers Ellis (of D.S.H., M.H., D.G., D.C.), Mazen Kerbaj (of S.S.), Simon DesRochers (of A.M.)
Layout by Ilja Tulit

RR GEMS RECORDS

WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE:

Welcome to the latest radio show for Radio Primavera Sound. An ambient mellow opening disguises the impending jazz fusion to come as styles for miles mix and match in an intense soundclash before some grooving swamp rock gives way to Caribbean and Somalian dub disco, tripped out cumbia and lysergic slow motion house.

SUSS - Salt Flats (Northern Spy)
Rebecca Foon - Dreams To Be Born (Constellation)
3TM - Contrail (We Jazz)
Jeff Parker & The New Breed - Max Brown - Part 1 (International Anthem)
JJ Whitefield - 14-08 (Kryptox)
Ryo Kawasaki - Quasar Infection (Nu Northern Soul)
REVBJELDE - Swamp Gas (Buried Treasure)
Bro David - Experience,  DJ Duckcom Discomix (Cultures of Soul)
Mukhtar Ramadan Iidi - Check Up Your Head (Analog Africa)
The Mauskovic Dance Band - Take The Money, Octopus Version (Bongo Joe)
A Separate Reality - Everywhere You Look (Bandcamp Self Release)
RAMZi - La nuit l'été 1996 (Fati)

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Sound In Silence is happy to announce the return of Test Card, presenting his new album Music For The Towers.

This is his second release on the label after the highly acclaimed, and already sold out, album Rediffusion back in 2017.

Test Card is the solo project of Lee Nicholson, based in Vancouver, Canada. Nicholson was a member of Preston’s Formula One in late 1990s and Brighton’s Domestic4 in early 2000s, having released albums and EPs on many independent labels such as Kooky, Fierce Panda, Liquefaction Empire and others. Later, he moved to Vancouver and from 2012 to 2015 he released two albums and two EPs under the alias of Electrohome and an album in 2015 as one half of the folktronica duo Future Peasants.

Music For The Towers is Test Card’s third full-length album, following his debut album on Symbolic Interaction in 2016, his second album on Sound In Silence in 2017 and an EP on The Slow Music Movement Label in 2018. Made up of eight captivating tracks with a total duration of about 45 minutes, Music For The Towers is a dreamy blend of gentle ambient, hazy electronica and minimal post rock, full of delicate guitars, hypnotic bass, warm synthesizers, glitchy electronics and field recordings.
Beautifully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), Music For The Towers is a wonderful album, highly recommended for devotees of Fripp & Eno, Labradford and 1 Mile North.

This is a limited edition of 200 handmade and hand-numbered collectible copies. It is packaged in a lovely hand-stamped 127mm x 127mm 280 gsm cream cardboard envelope with the front cover image printed on a polaroid style photo paper and an insert sheet containing tracklist and information printed on a 190 gsm reddish-brown cardboard. It also comes bundled with a download code coupon and a Sound In Silence card. 

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An enigma this one, the debut release - a decade in the making - from an artist about which we know very little. It’s a mysterious, confessional beauty -  a diaristic mix of half-cut songs and textured, bittersweet electronic collage that we urge you to check if you’re into anything from Klein to Burial, Tricky to Mica Levi, Young Echo to RZA’s Ghost Dog OST.

Soaring wayne phoenix story the earth is a fascinatingly intimate yet elusive record that was made by a trained pianist creating a kind of all-encompassing audio diary that subsequently spent a decade filed away in a drawer. After marinading in the archive while trends passed by, the fleeting stop/start collage of honest humility and ephemeral thoughts resembles a time capsule of a former, or parallel, self; one the artist is only now at ease to come terms with. Vacillating moments of profound lucidity and penetrative pangs of anxiety, Wayne lays his soul bare in that most vulnerable way that can sometimes lead to the greatest art, and finally finds himself in solid, empathetic company among Halcyon Veil’s sensitively intuitive spirits such as Myslma, Mhysa and of course, Rabit.

One of those debuts that feels uncannily familiar on first encounter, the album dredges a remarkable and unshakeable depth of feeling and human insight via its mazy tile of vignettes, drifting from softly textured, deep blue witching hour logic to more grizzled, Tricky-esque realisations and glossolalic expressions that practically, poetically say as much as his legible lyrics. In between, pockets of fractured music box melody and sorely textured beats flower and weed in the gaps, sounding something like RZA’s ‘Ghost Dog’ OST adapted from dilapidated NYC rooftops to the same drizzly London streets inhabited by Burial, Klein and Mica Levi.
Maybe best of all though, there’s very little pretence to this record. It simply sounds like the artist is working out their feelings thru music in an exposed, genuine way - you get the sense that it really didn't matter to them if nobody else ever heard it. But here we are, and Wayne Phoenix’s frayed, dreamlike tapestry of self reflections are set to become part of our contemporary consciousness in 2020.