Erik Wøllo
Silver Beach

Economy of Love by The Pink Noise

Hypnagogic Surge by AmselysenHYPNAGOGIC SURGE by AMSELYSEN is a dense setup of signal interferences, of jacked up, spliced, reconstructed digital snippets, of outbursts whose amplitude overcooks the microphone's defenseless circuitry. Anxious with unreleased energy build-ups, the music is always pregnant with a double quality, something like a dagger made from ice, the possibility to shatter or crumble into a thousand shards combined with the looming threat of clean rupture posed by the blade's edge. Digital distortion is used here to unmask materials, to frontally attack them and expose their shimmering metallic face; pitch-time processing dilemmas get dodged by exploding into the high frequency gleam embedded but hidden in their algorithms. Completely removed from the "Lo-Fi" paradigm seeking warmth or nostalgia, the present degradation-reconstructions result in newly audible chirp figures, the sparkle of aliasing and the descent into the grainy territory of microscopic sound events. From a more panoramic perspective, these tracks are continually transforming contraptions, with looping frames accelerating, doubling, halting or stuttering, overloading, seemingly struggling to buffer, sometimes mixing with immiscible materials to form a glistening suspension of new sound material.

Some old gems of Bens have resurfaced from the archives thanks to Danny digging through his crates.Ben grew out of the 1989 UK rave scene to dj, remix, produce and write for all sorts of artists from Prince to U2, djing around the world from Berlin to Buenos Aires.These are his own tunes made in the Matrix studio in London in 1990, a hive of activity and talent, Massive Attack in the next room making Blue Lines, Mark E Smith in another with The Fall, and Adrian Sherwood dubbing Tackhead in another!

At the turn of the 90s, Philippe Cohen Solal, then musical director for Virgin, becomes one of the first music supervisor in France and works on film scores by Arnaud Desplechin, Nikita Mikhalkov, Lars von Trier, Bertrand Tavernier or Kieslowski, then later composes for Tonie Marshall, Christian Vincent and Didier Le Pêcheur. He meets the very young composer and arranger Christophe Chassol with whom he will sign early 2000 soundtracks, during these sessions they create together the soundtrack of an imaginary film where music would be our spiritual food.The majority of themes are composed by Philippe with his musical partner at the time Christoph H. Mueller before they formed the Gotan Project. Unveiled here for the first time, this album pays tribute to the art of soundtracks, inspired by the world of sophisticated arrangements by Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin and so many others. Add a touch of folk jazz with the singers Nivo and Gabriela Arnon and the voice of the brilliant Welshman, leader of Scritti Politti, Green Gartside.

Voor Harmonium by HellveteIn his essay ‘The Meaning of My Avant-Garde Hillbilly and Blues Music’, Henry Flynt talks about how his music should be analysed as an intellectual tribute to the music of the autochtone, setting aside plain folk references, but adopting academic insights to mold the music one makes as a folk creature. Much of Flynt’s discourse applies to the music of Glen Steenkiste’s Hellvete. Over the past twenty years he has been thoroughly investigating both the ethnic musical language of various regions as well as the contemporary pioneers that preceded him as a drone musician, internalizing concepts such as e.g. deep listening or just intonation. Casting off any redundant ideas or sounds, and stripping down the focus to develop singular concepts, his working method lead to pieces such as ‘Droomharmonium’, in which he shapes the endless variations on a theme, emphasizing detail and nuance rather than multitude. The Indian harmonium here serves as the main device to worship ancient ghosts and masters, and to preserve a continuum in a tradition that touches both folk and avant-garde culture. The materialisations are sustained tone compositions which become a means of appreciation of the people and cultures that paved the way for forms of mutual escapism. This might well be the core of what Hellvete’s music is about. As much as it is a form of self-entertainment – like folk music in the old days – it also invites the listener to a shared experience of sonic reverie, it is a casual gift to the community. This is certainly true for the pieces presented on this album. They were first presented in a smoke filled and darkened art space in Ghent, Steenkiste surrounded by only a couple of candles and just enough stage light to see him erratically moving to the rhythm of the piece, occasionally twiddling the knobs of a Doepfer synth that processed the prerecorded harmonium tracks. Unlike most of his other performances this piece embraced the audience in a trance that was similar to that of an old-school rave club. Flynt writes: ‘The music should be intellectually fascinating because the listener can perceive and participate in its rhythmic and melodic intricacies, audacity of organization, etc. At the same time, the music should be kinesthetic, that is, it should encourage dancing.’ ‘Voor Harmonium’ does exactly that; it builds on the artistic ideas that have long been established in Hellvete’s oeuvre, but the ecstatic nature of these pieces merges the usual spiritual transcendence with one of determined physical bliss. It encourages both mind and body to step into the sound, to be enraptured, to celebrate.