CALIKA
Crooked
AB024
Audiobulb Records 2009
05 Tracks. 22mins04secs
Format: Digital

CALIKA
Slack Jaw
HPLL043
Highpoint Lowlife 2009
05 Tracks 20mins32secs
Format: Digital

Crooked
Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD Boomkat: DLD

Slack Jaw
Amazon UK: DLD Amazon US: DLD. Boomkat: DLD

Clearly willing to spread his music to the cream of British electronic imprints, Brighton-based Calika has, in recent weeks, returned to both Sheffield’s Audiobulb and London’s Highpoint Lowlife, offering each label five tracks of fine electronic music compiled on two EPs. Simon Kealoha, the brain behind Calika, has, in the past, released two albums on Audiobulb, worked with Benbecula and contributed one track to Highpoint Lowlife’s excellent Analog For Architecture compilation, published in 2006. Beside his solo activities, he has also worked with Seefeel’s Mark Clifford, with whom he has recorded two albums worth of material, the first, Running Tapper, released through Clifford’s Polyfusia imprint, the second yet to materialise. Continue Reading »

ALPINE.
Fr:om Harmed Weather To Stark, Micro, Climates
HPLL038
Highpoint Lowlife 2009
06 Tracks. 18mins45secs
Format: Digital

Download: Amazon UK | Amazon US | iTunes | Boomkat

Alpine. (note the dot as part of the name) is the latest recruit of the Highpoint Lowlife squad, and this EP is his first release. Behind the project is Alex Smalley, already known of Highpoint Lowlife for being one half of Pausal, who published a digital-only EP on the label two years ago, while Smalley’s video work was also featured on the label’s Analog For Architecture compilation released that same year. Fr:om Harmed Weather To Stark, Micro, Climates., also a digital-only released, is made up of six tracks, each track title, added to the previous, forming the full title of this release.

Exploring beautiful ambient musical forms, built around vaporous soundscapes and gentle electronic brushes which have a tendency to evaporate all too quickly, Smalley deploys here a series of nuanced and fragile compositions dotted of a great evocative scope. Continue Reading »

THE VILLAGE ORCHESTRA
I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again
HPLL037
Highpoint Lowlife 2009
01 Track. 58mins36secs

Buy: MP3

Scotland has long been a fertile ground for electronic music, and one of the country’s best exports is undoubtedly the Marcia Blaine School For Girls collective, whose three members, Bryan Kerr, David Donnolly and Ruaridh Law, have released music on labels such as Benbecula, Unlabel, Static Caravan or Metal-On-Metal, either collectively or individually, for over ten years. It is however on London-based Highpoint Lowlife that the trio have found their natural home, first producing the excellent Some Paths Lead Back Again project four years ago, then their album Halfway Into The Woods two years ago. It is also on Highpoint Lowlife that Ruaridh Law’s seminal solo effort Et In Arcadia Ego, as The Village Orchestra, was published, again in 2005. Continue Reading »

10-20
10-20
HPLL034
Highpoint Lowlife 2009
08 Tracks. 50mins26secs

Buy: iTunes

Hailing from Devon, in the South West corner of England, the mysteriously named 10-20 is a music producer who has just dropped something of a bombshell with his self-titled digital-only debut album, released on London-based Highpoint Lowlife. In just eight tracks, he sketches an intense, often oppressive, universe, cut from dark soundscapes and coarse electronics which are assembled into complex patterns and applied over broken urban beats. These seem as far removed from the tranquil countryside and wild coastal nature of Devon, anchored instead in some suffocating industrial wasteland, where decay and rust are common currency. Continue Reading »

KWAIDAN
Kwaidan
HPLL030
Highpoint Lowlife 2008
02 Tracks. 23min27mins

Kwaidan is a one-off project from Mat Ronson, who usually officiates under the Fisk Industries banner, released on the ever-excellent Highpoint Lowlife imprint as a digital-only EP, available to buy straight from the label.

With this release, Ronson turns his attention to dark and dense urban electronic by cutting two thick slice of haunting and caustic dubstep-infused techno, each clocking at over eleven minutes. Continue Reading »

Latest in the excellent batch of very limited releases from Highpoint Lowlife is the dense experimental guitar textures of British sound artist Stray Ghost. Following a web-only release at the end of last year, already through HPLL, Stray Ghost now returns with Losthilde, an album counting four epic instrumentals clocking between twelve and twenty four minutes.

Claiming influences from Godspeed, Tim Hecker, Murcof, The Mars Volta, My Bloody Valentine and Autechre, amongst others, Stray Ghost is described on the HPLL website as creating ‘a mythic sound hybrid between shoegaze and ambient noise – deeply mesmerizing and deliciously immersive!’

The album is available as a digital download and as a very limited CDR release, which comes housed in a DVD type box with superb artwork.

Stray Ghost (MySpace) | Highpoint Lowlife

Hightpoint Lowlife will be hosting two parties at the end of the month to celebrate the release of the forthcoming new EP from Dutch duo Funkarma. The 12″, entitled Dubstoned EP1, will be released on 25 June 2008 on Highpoint Lowlife and is the first in a series of dubstep-infused EPs from the duo.

Requirements Of A Modern, the launch parties, will be held at Plastic People in London on 25 June and Cube Cinema in Bristol on 27 June, with live sets from Funkarma, Ikonika and Fisk Industries.

For further details, check the Highpoint Lowlife website.

Highpoint Lowlife

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Magnetism, That Electricity
HPLL026
Highpoint Lowlife 2008
12 Tracks. 74mins46secs

For some time now, the excellent Highpoint Lowlife have refocused their outputs by publishing extremely limited hand crafted CDR editions, but the quality of the music released has in no way waned, as recent releases by Tigrics and Erstlaub have shown. Magnetism, That Electricity is the latest project initiated by label head Thorsten Sideb0ard, and follows the Analog For Architecture DVDR compilation released a year and a half ago. The project was devised primarily to be pressed on vinyl and released as a double EP, with four very different acts from the HPLL stable given the full run of a side each. Answering the call are atmospheric drone rockers Mandelbrot Set and electronic outfits Fisk Industries, The Village Orchestra and The Marcia Blaine School For Girls. Continue Reading »

ERSTLAUB
On Becoming An Island
HPLL025
Highpoint Lowlife 2007
01 Track. 43mins49secs

Second in the Highpoint Lowlife series of exclusive digital releases and very limited CDRs is the latest offering by Scottish artist Dave Fyans, here operating under his Erstlaub guise. Hailing from Perth, on the East coast of Scotland, Fyans has previously been spotted on the excellent Some Paths Lead Back Again compilation put together by the Marcia Blaine School For Girls crew just under three years ago, where he contributed three tracks as Daigoro. More recently, he contributed a remix on the digital-only companion EP to the Marcia Blaine album, and he has self-released a handful of CDR albums. Continue Reading »

TIGRICS
Synki
HPLL023
Highpoint Lowlife 2007
09 Tracks. 73mins13secs

After a few months of non activity due to a deep rethinking of intentions and aspirations, the ever-excellent London-based Highpoint Lowlife are back in business, having decided to focus largely on extremely limited numbered CDR releases, with digital albums made available from the label’s website. This process, which mirrors the label’s Analog For Architecture DVD-R of a few months back, aims at recapturing the original Highpoint Lowlife ethic and provide music enthusiasts with unique artifacts rather than mass produced items.

Inauguring this new phase for the label is Hungarian musician and illustrator Tigrics, born Róbert Bereznyei, who hails from Budapest. Continue Reading »