It was really fun to do this mix for Ivo who runs the Mahorka label that released my band Takamu about 18 months back. Here’s some words about my selections.
0:00 Zander Raymond – This (Sound As Language)
I guess there’s a reason I approach labels to release my own stuff, right? So no surprise there’s a couple of Sound as Language selections in here. This album sounds mostly like processed guitars and this particular moment doesn’t, but I wanted to mix the sparse beats of the next track with something purely tonal and this (This) felt like a cool place to start.
1:10 Minced Oath – A Game Of Skill and Forethought (Countersunk)
I got hipped to this EP via an online DJ mix, and while it might seem circular it felt nice to put something from that into my own mix. The EP has two beatless tracks and two sparse rhythmic things, and I love both those latter tracks. They’re so open and cool, trance-like though not like the genre.
3:48 Adriaan de Rooever – Dank u (Dauw)
I’ve got plenty of respect for the label Dauw and keep tabs on what they’re releasing, but find I’ve drifted away from being passionately into most of what they put out now. I think it’s me that’s changed, not them. Anyway, this de Rooever album is one of the most recent things in the mix and it’s got some spiky edges and variety to it that got me immediately excited. So I wanted to include something here and it turned out one of the nicest bits, this track with its guitar twangs and such, worked best. The string-like keys and monster bass remind me of Alva Noto, and the I think literally inhuman vocal noises really add something.
7:50 Ulla – Somewhere Else (Motion Ward)
Ulla is just one of my definite faves of recent years, though I don’t think she’s put anything out for a while. I was going to go for one of her sparse beat tracks, something closer to the Minced Oath one, but ended up with this quiet maybe-guitars number. “Maybe-” is my fave genre descriptor, heh.
9:47 Erik Mowinckel – Utsikt (Breton Cassette)
This was one of a lot of tracks I collected up with the intention of having them make up most of the mix. They all have a kind of contemporary electronic lounge feel, but not entirely easy listening. The mix ended up going another direction, but I have played the release this is off a lot this year so far. Those dusty textures, the cruisy bass part, the wandering piano… All things I reckon land perfectly here.
12:26 Usof – Goodbye Forever (Enmossed)
I thought of this as another very new selection, but it’s 6 months old. Is that new? I think of Usof as being part of a nexus of young music makers who have a bit of that turn of the millenium “clicks and cuts” kind of vibe – blends of electronic dub, dance music influences with digital glitchiness but chilled right out. I love these shimmering chords and the very slight edge that bright, insistent tink tink tink sound brings throughout.
15:05 Alexandra Spence – Air Pockets (Room40)
Spence does cool things with very very unadorned electronic sounds (no fancy studio polish) field recordings and a bit of ASMR type spoken words. But here I think she’s literally capturing air under a container and recording the sound of it bubbling up? I just knew this would be another fun open kind of track to mix with other things. Such as…
16:28 Belly Full of Stars – Tidal Crossings (Fallen Moon Recordings)
The evolving drone of this is cool on its own, but it was fun to cross-mix it with Spence’s number above. This is off a split Belly Full of Stars with Meg Mulhearn. I found their conversation about that album really interesting. Kim’s someone I encountered online through the Disquiet Junto – and of course in that classic small world way, it turns out even though she’s in Nashville she knows another Wellingtonian making ambient music there (Dream Chambers).
19:16 Zachary Utz – Evinrude Rising (Sound As Language)
I love how bright and full of life this whole album is, and decided to include the first track I heard. Something about very abrupt, digital editing / processing of “nice” and acoustic sounds really does it for me. This was the next album after my Epiphytes on the same label and I really felt like I was in good company when I heard this. I should actually contact the guy! I wrote some more words on the album last December.
21:17 Carmen Villain – Subtle Bodies (Smalltown Supersound)
And I wrote about the album this is off earlier too, 18 months ago now. I actually thought of Villain because she plays a lot of flute and I thought that would flow from Utz’s track, but I ended up back in the hypnotic, drum-having territory and was very happy to go there.
25:54 Picnic – Homework (Daisart)
I wanted to include something from Daisart because the label has just shut it doors. Like when a cool TV show wraps up while it’s still going strong, it’s kind of bittersweet! Like, well played, but I’ll miss the sounds… I think I found Picnic via C-Minus, which I think is based in Kansas City, while Daisart and maybe Picnic are in Melbourne. Anyway!
28:26 Olga Wojciechowska – All I Have Not Seen (A Strangely Isolated Place)
I think I’ll always hold Wojciechowska’s album as Strië, Struktura, dearest, but I wanted to bring the mix back towards piano and something quite sweet and, yeah I’ll go there, “cinematic”…
32:05 Atte Elias Kantonen – Leafcomb (Soda Gong)
… so I could contrast it with something more abstract I’ve been loving recently. This album is so heavy on the sound design in a way I find so compelling. The spiralling, glitches and that impossible submerged boom… If you’ve ever heard completely improbable natural sounds like fish chatting and Weddell seals and such – this almost feels like it’s coming full circle and we’ve got electronic emulations of nature doing things that sound artificial! Like with the Utz album I want to say this one is full of life. Micro activities.
34:45 Roméo Poirier – Statuario (Eli Keszler Remix) (Faitiche)
And to round stuff out, another in that kind of lounge-but-a-bit-weirder vein. Keszler adds some jazz flavour to Poirier’s exotica loops. If you haven’t heard Keszler in his own right, he’s an insane drummer, but keeps things super restrained here. This is on Jan Jelinek’s often-interesting label – Jelinek who feels like a bit of a daddy of a whole lot of that new era I was trying to describe when writing about Usof.
Good times. I hope you enjoy(ed) this.
