Jenny Hval & Håvard Volden’s Lost Girls to Release Debut Album

Photo: Lasse Marhaug

Norwegian duo Lost Girls—artist and writer Jenny Hval and multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden—will release their debut album, Menneskekollektivet, on Smalltown Supersound.

Menneskekollektivet is the duo’s first full-length after collaborating for more than 10 years, and it marks their first time they’ve recorded in an actual studio together.

The music flickers between club beats and improvised guitar textures—between spoken-word and melodic vocal textures, and between abstract and harmonic synth lines. “Throughout, Volden’s guitar and Hval’s voice come across as equals, wandering, wondering, meandering,” the label explains.

Menneskekollektivet was created in between set structures and the energy of collective exploration at Norway’s Øra Studios in March 2020. Hval concentrated on words as performed situations, sometimes just talking into the microphone to discover rhymes or musical phrases. They build emotional complexity like a club track would with its drum machine pattern, we’re told. Volden’s guitar, meanwhile, intensifies the feelings with lines that are sometimes jarring, sometimes harmonic.

Alongside the announcement, Lost Girls have shared “Menneskekollektivet,” the album’s title-track.

“The song started out with some synth chords Håvard played. I felt they sounded like the beginning of the world, or a world, so I wanted to improvise words to them that somehow expressed a beginning of a world,” explains Hval. “They don’t make sense like a written lyric should, but they are trying to make sense of something, a moment, a slow transition. On this track, the voice, and the music too, slowly makes its way from alone to together.”

Tracklisting

01. Menneskekollektivet
02. Losing Something
03. Carried by Invisible Bodies
04. Love, Lovers
05. Real Life

Menneskekollektivet LP will land digitally on March 26, with the physical release landing on April 23. Meanwhile, you can stream the title track below and pre-order here.

Podcast 683: Laila Sakini

Although we included Laila Sakini‘s Vivienne album in our favorite releases of 2020, we came to it extremely late. It was September when it first came across our desks and Sakini, a London-based Australian, released it in early February. As Boomkat said in their product review, the record sold out before anyone really had a chance to notice. It’s a wonderfully tender record, build around piano, vocals, and effects, and it’s been a source of indulgence for the XLR8R team ever since we discovered it.

Growing up in Melbourne, on Australia’s west coast, Sakini found music through piano, but she veered away in pursuit of academic work. As she began her career as a copywriter, she started to make music and mixtapes on the side, for nothing other than her own pleasure. While she enjoyed music, she didn’t want to “give it away if it is not wanted,” she says, but she found herself inundated with booking requests. Because there was clearly more demand for her music than for her skills in other fields, she decided to pursue it more readily.

In 2015, Sakini relocated to London, craving fresh musical input. It was a strange time to leave because her reputation in Melbourne was growing; she was DJing around the city around a couple of times each week, compiling mixes for local magazines like Careful, and co-curating Day Care, a Sunday afternoon event promoting non-club music. Slowly and steadily, London shaped her into a song-writer and producer, and she released her debut EP, Figures, in collaboration with poet Lucy Van in 2017.

In the years since, Sakini has drifted between London and Melbourne but the drive to produce has gripped her. It took until 2020 for things to speed up, beginning with Vivienne, on Total Stasis, and rolling through Your Day Is My Night, a sonic rumination on romance and and distance. She closed the year with two exclusives on Boomkat Editions, beginning with Strada, an outing in seductive spiritual jazz and trip-hop, and then Into the Traffic, Under the Moonlight, which expanded on the minimalist palette of Vivienne. Against a backdrop of global chaos, Sakini’s brittle, thoughtful compositions resonate even more deeply. You can file her work alongside her compatriots like CS + Kreme, HTRK, Jonnine.

Sakini recorded her XLR8R podcast this past week at home, and it follows the same vibe as her semi-regular NTS slot. Instead of committing to a genre, sound, or era, it flutters in-between, from jazz, to ambient, to trip-hop, showcasing some of Sakini’s favorite records of past and present. It’s a beautiful collection of emotions and, like Sakini’s productions, it feels tangible and personal. Watch out for the ear-worms that that’ll be sure to catch your attention—including the opener from Bohren & der Club of Gore, a German jazz band.

01. What have you been up to recently?

I am going through some 2021 proposals at the moment (there are some wild ones) and trying to sort out what’s viable/going to be fun, possible, etc., and I feel like I’m re-imagining what things could be like after lockdown and how to best use this transitioning period. I’ve also been playing with strings, cooking, hiding indoors from Covid, scheming, and surviving.

02. How did you find your way into music?

Via my parents, I’d say. They bought me instruments when I was very young and encouraged me and my siblings to use them. I seemed to take music a bit more seriously than the others, and I went on to take lessons, join the choir, etc. Then for the last decade or so I’ve been working as a DJ and event organizer, and now I’m limited to being a musician and producer which might be why my release output seems more concentrated. I’ve done other musical things such as work in a record shop etc.,—music always finds a way into my world, wherever I seem to be.

03. You had a big 2020, with the success of Vivienne. How do you reflect on the album looking back?

The album feels much the same to me as when I made it. Despite other interpretations, reviews, and what have you, it retains the same meaning to me. 2020 was a big year but Vivienne still seems small and private and it has been a nice parcel to carry with me through such a dramatic year.

04. How did you go about recording the album, and is there a story behind it?

I recorded it at home just playing with keys and I got a bit carried away. The recording was done with several takes and layers so it’s not actually a record that’s possible to play in its entirety as a “piece.” There is a story behind it, of course, and the titles and themes are almost embarrassingly confessional. If I were to explain in words then it would take ages and likely not make much sense.

05. What is it that motivates you to make music?

Curiosity at the moment. Hearing things take form is pretty exciting, and with autonomy so limited it’s a tempting proposal to go at things in a solo capacity, fleshing out your own ideas, in your own space.

06. What music did you listen to through 2020?

Ooh. Well, I believe I was still much in upbeat dance world before Covid, then I went through a Graham Lambkins “domestic settings” phase, then specific sections or chord progressions took my ear. Then gradually lots of throwbacks to old hype tracks. I believe I revisited Motown ballads, Beastie Boys, DJ Krush, female folk music from the ’60s, lots of trip-hop, ’90s electronica, and Lynch-ian score style pads.

07. When and where did you record this mix?

In my bedroom, over two cold, cold days.

08. What can the listener expect with it?

I would suggest keeping an open mind.

09. How did you go about choosing the records that you’ve included?

I started with what I’ve been listening to most recently—very winter-appropriate music by a group called Bohren & der Club of Gore, then I let things slip into other territories without ever really letting them settle in one place. The mix ends with a New Zealand song by a favorite singer-songwriter, Maxine Funke, which I certainly am happy about.

10. What’s on your horizon for 2021?

A few solid plans are in place but many are still up in the air. I think it’s best I don’t hazard a guess. Hopefully I can: (i) keep up with the music more; (ii) and witness a turn of events that sees some of the madness in the world wane.

XLR8R has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to hear the podcast offline you will need to subscribe to our Select channel to listen offline, or subscribe to XLR8R+ to download the file. The move to Mixcloud Select will ensure that all the producers with music featured in our mixes get paid. You can read more about it here.

Full XLR8R+ Members can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Bohren & der Club of Gore “Im Rauch” ([PIAS] Recordings)
02. Bohren & der Club of Gore “Patchouli Blue” ([PIAS] Recordings)
03. Unknown “Unknown” (Unknown)
04. Major Force West Productions “Heavy Loaded Head” (Mo Wax)
05. Techno Animal “Catatonia” (Force Inc. Music Works)
06. REQ & Smudge “Change The Beat” (ETCH Remix) (Seagrave)
07. AFX “qu 1” (Unknown)
08. Die Welttraumforscher “Darktown: Weites Feuer” (A Colourful Storm)
09. Kallista Kult “strings of life part three” (A Colourful Storm)
10. YLHOOI “When You’re Up There” (ALTERED STATES TAPES)
11. Heather Leigh “Passionate Reluctance” (Ideologic Organ)
12. Tim Jackiw “Composite Memory 7” (Daisart)
13. picnic “basket” (Daisart)
14. Malvern Brume “Tarmac Shakes Into New Shapes” (Forthcoming)
15. Razen “The Night Receptionist Pt. I” (meakusma)
16. Heather Leigh “Fairfield Fantasy” (Ideologic Organ)
17. SPIVAK “Hardware Store Ballad” (ECSTATIC)
18. Jonnine “I Feel Like I’m In A Film” (Boomkat Editions)
19. Maxine Funke “Moody Relish” (A Colourful Storm)

Cabaret Voltaire Reveals New EP and Two Drone Albums

Cabaret Voltaire has unveiled a new EP and two drone albums on Mute.

These new releases follow Shadow of Fear, Cabaret Voltaire’s first release with Richard H. Kirk as the sole member of the band.

The new EP, Shadow of Funk, is a three-track companion piece to the album and shows a harder, more propulsive side reflecting the album’s genesis: live performance. Elements of the EP will be familiar to attendees of Cabaret Voltaire’s more recent shows.

Shadow of Fear and Shadow of Funk are interconnected and form part of a series of four releases that continue with the release of two drone albums.

The first of these, a 50-minute piece entitled Dekadrone, is due out on March 26. The second and final release in the series, the 64-minute piece BN9Drone, will be released in April. Both will be available on CD and limited edition double vinyl.

Recent years’ live performances and 2020’s album release began a new era for the Sheffield outfit whose influence across electronic, post-punk, and industrial music remains an untouchable.

Originally active between 1973 and 1994, Cabaret Voltaire featured Chris Watson until 1981 and Stephen Mallinder until 1994. The group was inactive for 20 years until, with Kirk as the sole remaining member, a 2014 performance at Berlin’s Atonal.

Tracklitings, Shadow of Funk

01. Shadow of Funk
02. Skinwalker
03. Billion Dollar

Tracklisting, Dekadrone

01. Dekadrone

Tracklisting, BN9Drone

01. BN9Drone

Shadow of Funk EP is scheduled for February 26 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Billion Dollar” below and pre-order here. Dekadrone will follow on March 26, with BN9Drone on April 23.

Scotland’s Proc Fiskal Unveils New EP Ahead of Second Album

Scotland’s Proc Fiskal will release a new EP on Hyperdub.

Lothian Buses is the first EP that Proc Fiskal, real name Joe Powers, has released since Shleekit Doss in 2019. He released his debut album, Insula, on Hyperdub in 2018. We’re told to expect an an outing of “genre collisions” with Powers amalgamating his “twinkling, caffeinated grime sound” with the rhythms and sounds of other genres.

Alongside the announcement, Powers has shared “Thurs Jung Yout,” a kind of shoe-gaze drill with strings and gentle tones.

Hyderdub describes the release as a “strong prelude” to Powers’ new album, scheduled for 2021.

Powers is born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, far from the grime capital of London. He debuted on Hyperdub with The Highland Mob, exciting fans of footwork, drum & bass, and also grime.

Tracklisting

01. Thurs Jung Yout
02. Baguettes
03. Choco Frito (Calamari)
04. Scarab Aloph
05. HopeTak2
06. Mullit Madollock

Lothian Buses EP is scheduled for March 26 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Thurs Jung Yout” in full below and pre-order here.

London Grime Artist Mr. Mitch Lines Up Next Album

Mr. Mitch will release Lazy, his new album, next month.

Lazy is the first album that the London grime producer has released since 2017’s Devout on Planet Mu. Unlike its title, the album showcases the diversity and care that Mr. Mitch, real name Miles Mitchell, presents in his music, as seen on Devout. We’re told to expect a “reflection of the different situations” he finds himself in when producing, in between running Gobstopper Records, raising three children, and having a full-time job.

The label describes Lazy as a “compelling collection of 11 songs,” that provides “a glimpse into Mr. Mitch’s musical output whilst in those infrequent spaces of time.”

Ahead of the album’s release, Mr. Mitch has shared “Did We Say Goodbye,” which is a love letter to our favourite lost pastime: nightlife. Mitchell asked fans, friends, and followers to send him the things they missed most about clubs, and the results are moving and joyous.

The album includes art by New York artist Obi Agwam.

Tracklisting

01. Black Majik
02. Did We Say Goodbye
03. Make Time feat. Duval Timothy
04. In The Hills
05. Lazy feat. Manga Saint Hilare
06. Proud feat. miles
07. What They Want
08. Moving Up
09. Burn Down IDM
10. Sleep feat. Social State
11. Daydream Of You

Lazy LP will be released on Gobstopper Records on March 5. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “Did We Say Goodbye” in full below.

Download: Five Rituals “Decaying Ground” (D.J. Ritual Remix)

Lithuanian electronic duo Five Rituals (comprised of Deividas Jaroška and Andrius Grinevskis) will release their debut album, V Rituals, via Ledomat Musique on March 5.

According to the duo, the LP is themed around love, despair, inner work, “and pollution in the outer world and the dangers we all face.” It utilizes field recordings made during lockdown of “now destroyed places.”

The duo worked with contemporary classic and alternative jazz musicians to refine their sound and further their exploration of electro-acoustic sample manipulation.

The two tracks that have been released, “Third” and “Pungi,” display an intriguing dichotomy of light and dark, employing hushed voices, stomach-churning bass, euphoric synth lines, and rolling percussion to great effect.

In support of the LP, the duo have offered up D.J. Ritual’s remix of the album’s closing track, “Decaying Ground,” as today’s XLR8R download, available to XLR8R+ subscribers below.

Focusing on ’90s rave-inspired breaks, D.J. Ritual takes the listener through a dizzying labyrinth of sounds that teeter on the edge of collapse, while retaining the emotional core of the original.

Tracklisting:

01. Pulchra Terram
02. From Dust to Dust
03. Third
04. ….. ……. .-. .. – ..- .- .-.. … –.. .— -… .
05. Fifth child was diff’rent
06. Gold and Glass
07. This (feat. Sheep Effect)
08. Tune in, Drop out
09. No Math At All
10. Pungi
11. Water
12. Decaying Ground

V Ritual will drop on March 5 digitally and as a limited edition double-vinyl, with pre-order available here. You can also stream a 50-minute live set from the duo below.

Full XLR8R+ Members can download the track below. If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Object Blue Returns to Tobago Tracks with New EP

Object Blue has unveiled Grotto, a new audio-visual EP on Tobago Tracks.

In 2018, Object Blue released her breakthrough debut, Do you plan to end a siege?, on the London label. Grotto, her latest outing, sees her pursuing a more melodically rich with her music. “Characterized by fleshy synths and drawing on the fantastical, Blue’s pinpoint percussion guides listeners through scenes of both lushness and macabre,” we’re told.

Speaking on Grotto, Object Blue says: “Grotto is a stage. It’s not a soundtrack to an existing play, but whilst creating it I was thinking about the space we move in, the characters we play, the dialogues that happen. Grotto is a bit like if King Lear had been a millennial soap opera with a happy ending; it’s me sublimating my difficult relationship with the home.”

Premiering alongside the release will be a unique virtual live show creatively directed by Object Blue and her wife and creative partner, Natalia Podgórska.

Over the past few years, Object Blue—a Tokyo-born, Beijing-raised, London-based producer—has become one of electronic music’s most crucial new artists. Her third EP, FIGURE BESIDE ME, came in 2019 before her sweltering collaborative club EP with TSVI on Nervous Horizons last year.

Founded in 2014, TT has established itself as a go-to for the most versatile young artists in London and beyond, being home to the likes of Organ Tapes, Object Blue, and Iceboy Violet.

Tracklisting

01. Opened Close
02. Fugitive’s Flourish
03. Exorcism of a Self-help Book
04. Procession Of Healers
05. Closed Open

Grotto EP is scheduled for March 5 release. Meanwhile, you can stream a teaser for Grotto below and “Open Closed” here.

Thomas Fehlmann Returns to Soundtrack Format on his New Album

Thomas Fehlmann has unveiled Böser Herbst, a new album on Kompakt Records.

For Böser Herbst, Fehlmann—a Swiss producer living in Berlin—draws from a similar lexicon of sounds as 2018s 1929 – Das Jahr Babylon, his last solo album. Like 1929 – Das Jahr Babylon, the album was produced as the soundtrack to a documentary made by Volker Heise, namely “Herbst 1929, Schatten Über Babylon,” which offers historical insight to the third season of the television series Babylon Berlin.

Fehlmann’s approach was to “capture” samples of contemporaneous music, “picking up the dust of original 1920s archive sound and music excerpts and shaping the essence into this selection of tunes,” he recalls.

After delivering the material to the editing room, Fehlmann “threw all the pieces up in the air, deliberately lost the overview in consequence, researched the atmospheric thread, and assembled it for this album.” That explains the singular nature of the material here, and its ability to sit together so neatly and discretely, as its own entity,” we’re told.

We’re told to expect a “music box” of possibilities, “shadowed by its historical provenance, but never crudely beholden to it.”

For more information on Fehlmann, check out his XLR8R podcast here.

Tracklisting

01. Vergessen
02. Karnickel
03. Mit Ausblick
04. Umarmt
05. Abgestellt
06. Vulkan
07. Wunschwechsler
08. Auf Die Spitze
09. Freche Freunde
10. Überschneidungen

Böser Herbst LP is scheduled for April 9 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here, where you can also listen to clips.

Lawrence Wrote His New Album For Tokyo Audiophile Bar Studio Mule

Peter Kersten (a.k.a. Lawrence) has a new album on the way via regular home Mule Musiq.

The LP, titled Birds On The Playground, is the Dial Records co-founder’s fourth studio album. In 2018, he released Illusion, which he followed last year with Music For Plants (I+II). Lawrence’s last album on Mule came with 2016’s Yoyogi Park.

The album’s nine tracks were written specifically for Studio Mule, Mule Musiq label head Toshiya Kawasaki’s new audiophile listening bar in Shibuya, Tokyo. Having not been to the bar, Kersten imagined listening to the music on the bar’s vintage sound system, “slightly drunk with an always special drink in my hand,” he says. “The music is therefore also very eccentric and ‘tipsy,’ improvised on acoustic instruments, synthesizers, and computer, combined with recordings I did in Berlin’s central Tiergarten park.”

The record “features deep pulsating music that unfolds its true absorbing character when the auditor listens carefully to the detailed storytelling of Lawrence,” we’re told.

As Birds On The Playground isn’t aimed for the dancefloor, the overall coating of the music is a relaxed, cautious one, that goes beyond the average definition of ambient music. Each track builds up gracefully, in order to present a “mesmerizing musical architecture, that offers new sound dimensions with any fresh listening turn,” the label tells XLR8R.

Continuing the record’s Mule Musiq collaborative affair, the tracks were mastered by label regular Kuniyuki, with the Mule Musiq’s visual artist, Stefan Marx, providing the cover artwork.

You can read more about Lawrence in his XLR8R podcast here.

Tracklisting:

01. Grazing Light
02. Drunken Cats
03. Everglade
04. Highland Spores
05. Birds On The Playground
06. Yufuin No Mori
07. Meadows
08. An Evening AT Studio Mule
09. Donkey’s Dream

Birds On The Playground LP is set to drop on March 26 on 2xLP and digitally. Meanwhile, you can stream clips below.

RVNG Intl. to Release Album from the Late Pauline Anna Strom, a Pioneering Blind Synthesist

Following news of her passing in December, RVNG Intl. will release Pauline Anna Strom‘s first album in over 30 years.

Strom was a blind American electronic music composer and synthesist best known under the pseudonym Trans-Millenia Consort. She made seven recordings between 1982 and 1988, including three LPs and four cassette tapes, before selling her equipment and concentrating her energy on spiritual practices. It wasn’t until 2017, when RVNG Intl. compiled Strom’s early catalog on the anthology release Trans-Millenia Music, that she became inspired to make music again.

Angel Tears in Sunlight is an assemblage of music that “refracts the expansiveness, and minutiae, of imagined realms while embracing the kaleidoscopic echoes of our distant epochs,” we’re told. She composed and recorded it in her San Francisco apartment populated by a compact array of modern instruments and her beloved iguanas, Little Soulstice and Ms. Huff. This sanctuary is where she recorded all her work in the ’80s.

Where Angel Tears in Sunlight opens a new passage in the transportive power of Strom’s work, the synthesist also nurtures more space for restorative listening, drawing from her experience in spiritual healing.

The album is dedicated to Strom’s dear friend John Jennings, who passed away during the making of Angel Tears in Sunlight.

A portion of the album’s proceeds will benefit the International Iguana Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting conservation, awareness, and scientific programs that enhance the survival of wild iguanas and their habitats.

Strom died in December 2020, aged 74. You can read her New York Times obituary here.

Tracklisting

01. Tropical Convergence
02. Marking Time
03. I Still Hope
04. Temple Gardens at Midnight
05. The Pulsation
06. The Eighteen Beautiful Memories
07. Equatorial Sunrise
08. Small Reptiles on the Forest Floor
09. Tropical Rainforest

Angel Tears in Sunlight LP is scheduled for February 19 release on RVNG Intl. You can order the album here and stream “Equatorial Sunrise” below.

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