BELL ORCHESTRE - 'HOUSE MUSIC'

Formats

• ERATP141LP - LP

  3700551783328

• ERATP141CD - CD

  3700551783311

Details

Erased Tapes announce Bell Orchestre’s House Music — an immersive ecosystem of an album to be released on March 19, and the first full-length work released by the acclaimed Montreal-based outfit in over a decade. House Music unfolds as one long piece, a recorded-then-sculpted improvisation that vastly expands their work, coalescing classical and electronic instrumentation in the creation of genre-defying musical worlds. After having shared the short film “IX: Nature That’s It That’s All.” — which layered archival visuals of blissed-out crowds at a carnival over one of the later, dreamier sections of House Music — Bell Orchestre presents a video for the one-track album’s most anthemic and explosive segment, “V: Movement”, directed by band member Kaveh Nabatian. In the album’s liner notes, the group recalls countless moments when, in kinetic moments of improvisation, “a nuanced piece of music would emerge organically, completely formed, without any plan or discussion or rational thought” — and then be lost because it wasn’t recorded. In conceiving a new album, they decided to celebrate the spontaneous and accidental, to centrally situate the act of collaborative, democratic creation in their finished work. With the legacies of improvisation-exploring greats like Talk Talk, The Orb, Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis and the late Ennio Morricone in mind, on House Music, Bell Orchestre captures the impulsive, connective, mysterious poetics of musical invention happening in real-time. With help from engineer Hans Bernhard, the band wired every corner of Sarah Neufeld’s (Violin, vocals) multi-story rural Vermont house. She and the mini orchestra’s other five members — Pietro Amato: French horn, keyboards, electronics; Michael Feuerstack: Pedal steel guitar, keyboards, vocals; Kaveh Nabatian: Trumpet, gongoma, keyboards, vocals; Richard Reed Parry: Bass, vocals; and Stefan Schneider: Drums — assigned themselves to different rooms. They spent two weeks together in camaraderie, creation, and focused isolation to record their improvised sessions every day, but ultimately structured a 45-minute album out of a one hour-and-a-half long improvisation. “If you sliced away the front wall of the house and looked in, you’d see the horn section — with so many different things going on — down on the first floor of what would normally be the living/dining room, and it was full chaos with tables and tables of kalimbas and harmonicas and synthesizers and horns. Then you travel up a floor, and there’s me and Richie in an empty, warm sounding wooden bedroom. Mike was on pedal steel in the bathroom, on the same floor as us. And then up the stairs, through the ceiling and in the attic, was Stefan, alone on drums. It’s a big piece of land, and if you went outside to take a break, you’d look over and hear all of this crazy shit coming out of all the different floors, and it filled this valley, and there were lots of rocks so the sound would bounce around. It was spooky and glorious”, describes Sarah. While edited and trimmed, and occasionally added to, the album itself is in large part the original recording — with the broad structure of its movements kept intact. This single piece of music — written almost entirely as it was being recorded — emerged with no parameters beyond the inclusion of a short harmonic loop Parry had brought in as a starting point, which coheres and propels the album as it moves forward through the birth; vigorous, unrestrained growth; and ultimate slowdown of the musical ecosystem it creates. What the band generated is an album that lays bare the contours of a lived musical moment. “Most of my favorite recordings have some element of an explorative and accidental feeling within the music, a feeling which reflects the truth of musical minds which are partially super focused on specific musical ideas and partially wandering, exploring the musical world surrounding those ideas,” says Parry. “I think it’s really satisfying as a listener when you can hear a musical mind exploring an idea — not just a musician who has pre-formed an idea and rehearsed it 100 times until it’s totally perfect and ironed out. In this recording, every one of the six of us is simultaneously exploring our own ideas, House Music will arrive in its full glory on March 19, 2021.

Tracks

I: Opening
II: House
III: Dark Steel
IV: What You're Thinking
V: Movement
VI: All the Time Sorrow
VII: Colour Fields
VIII: Making Time
IX: Nature That's It That's All.
X: Closing

Press

Arcade Fire side project does instrumental post-rock the right way: brimming with sound but uncrowded and dazzling with finesse rather than force. 7.5 - Pitchfork

Audio & Video

EXEK - 'BIASED ADVICE'

Formats

• CF128 - LP

  767870664861

• CF128CD - CD

  767870664878

Details

“A weird trip of a band…the second this was playing I was immediately hooked. I initially dove in because their name was attached to Mikey Young for mastering (I have a rule with Mikey…if he had his hands on it, it’s probably worth a listen). This band exceeds in all my trials. “Esoteric nature, but oddly poppy and ready to prick up any ears out there. Deconstructed, but full of hooks. If I were a lazy man, and I am, I would say its for fans of PiL, but they transcend that pigeon-hole. “Wonderful production lends its self to this unique LP. It seems as if the room expands and contracts throughout songs. Pulling away, then blocking your field of vision entirely. Wasteland funk. Dub from the depths. Punk from the pit. “Even the instrumentation is worth mentioning: saxophone, drums (and cut-up drums), guitar, synthesizer, vocals (poetry) and general fuckery all combine to make this a very interesting and worthwhile escape from the average. And thank the Gods for that right now. Inspired and desired by the active mind. A job well done by EXEK, and there’s new stuff brewing too... “For fans of BEAK>, Phantom Band, PIL and general Jah Wobbleness, Magazine, short-wave radio, ESG and underground Kraut”. —John Dwyer

Tracks

1. Submitted
2. A Hedonist
3. Foreign Lesions
4. Replicate
5. Baby Giant Squid

Press

For fans of BEAK>, Phantom Band, PiL,
Jah Wobble, Magazine, ESG

Audio & Video

MIA MARIA JOHANSSON - 'SLAY'

Formats

• LAZYOCT029 - LP

  634457047204

Details

Mia Maria Johansson has been active on Sweden’s underground scene since the early 2000s, both as a part of indie/electro/punk band Meine Kleine Deutsche and critically acclaimed and award winning punk act Snake but also choring with Swedish indie rock star Hurula. On March 19, her debut LP ‘Slay’ is out on Lazy Octopus Records (MANKIND, Holy Now, The Presolar Sands etc.) ‘Slay’ was written at home after a messy break-up, the Garageband home recordings have then been perfected in the studio with the ambition to keep the simple and direct feeling of the beats and melody. Mia Maria Johanssons’ debut is a record that treats the subject of owning your own destiny and allow yourself to dream. To let go of the thoughts that hold you back. This have been melted down into eight straight-forward alternative rock anthems that are instantly memorable.

Tracks

1. Devils Dance
2. Don?t Fall
3. Clowns
4. Hunt
5. Out Of Time
6. Sk?ldm?n
7. The End
8. Electro You (ft. Hurula)

Press

Audio & Video