SIMON SCOTT: Bunny (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on Oct 20th 2011 01:25 am

Simon Scott: Bunny

SIMON SCOTT
Bunny
MIA017
Miasmah Recordings  2011
08 Tracks. 40mins23secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD

Two years on from his stunning debut album, Navigare, Simon Scott returns to Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah with a much more ambitious follow up, where he revives some elements of the shoegaze he helped map out as a member of Slowdive nearly two decades ago, and weaves them together with atmospheric late night jazz and decaying ambient sequences.

Following his departure from Slowdive, after the band’s seminal second album, Souvlaki, Scott went on to perform with Lowgold for a while and later on formed Seavault, with ISAN’s Antony Ryan, and Televise, under which banner he released a number of albums between 2005 and 2008. Navigare represents however a watershed in Scott’s career as he finally stepped out in the limelights and fully assumed his position as a solo artist. Continue Reading »

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KABOOM KARAVAN: Barra Barra / KRENG: Grimoire (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on May 25th 2011 01:14 am

Kaboom Karavan: Barra Barra Kreng: Grimoire

KABOOM KARAVAN
Barra Barra
MIA015
Miasmah Records 2011
10 Tracks. 44mins37secs

KRENG
Grimoire
MIA016
Miasmah Records 2011
11 Tracks. 53mins45secs

Barra Barra
Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD
Grimoire
Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

This may just be a coincidence, but Miasmah are releasing almost simultaneously the albums of two Belgian collectives with activities reaching far beyond music to encompass other art forms, and each with a very unique and intriguing vision. While the two records are radically different in many ways, they feed from a shared aesthetic, and both show a similar taste for surrealist and enigmatic settings.

A collective activities ranging from theatre and film to dance and music, Kaboom Karavan are somewhat difficult to pin down. That they ended up on Miasmah is hardly a surprise though considering the dramatic nature of Barra Barra. Their debut on Miasmah, this album follows a first digital-only release, Short Walk With Olaf, published in 2007.

On Barra Barra, Kaboom Karavan distill generous portions of poetry and horror, weaving them tightly into the fabric of each track until they become almost indiscernible from one another. Continue Reading »

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JUV: Juv (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on Mar 8th 2011 01:12 am

Juv: Juv

JUV
Juv
MIACD014
Miasmah Recordings 2011
13 Tracks. 73mins08secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

The story behind this record is as odd and unusual as its content. Toward the end of the nineties, two Norwegian teenagers, Are Mokkelbost and Marius von der Fehr, were experimenting with dense guitar textures and bleak drones, but for one reason or another, the relationship collapsed before any music could be released, leaving the recordings they had gathered in the couple of years they worked together unfinished and abandoned, bound to never be heard. Fast-forward to 2009, when Mokkelbost, now a firmly established musician, happened to come across these long lost tapes and, having realised the potential of the music documented, decided to get back in touch with von der Fehr and the pair got down to work, editing down the wealth of material into an album, finally completing the work.

The particularly dark abrasive textures and bleakscapes collected here feel very much at home on Miasmah. Continue Reading »

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FNS: FNS (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on Apr 9th 2010 12:05 am

FNS: FNS

FNS
FNS
MIACD012
Miasmah Recordings 2010
06 Tracks. 45mins26secs

Amazon UK: DLD US: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

If spring is finally making an apparition in Britain, it appears as if Norway, or at least the corner occupied by Miasmah, is still in the grip of a permanent winter. The label headed by Erik Skodvin has claimed glacial landscapes as its own, and its latest signing, Oslo-based musician Fredrik Ness Sevendal, will do very little to contribute to a thawing in the aesthetic of its catalogue. Yet, Sevendal’s debut album for the label, very much like Simon Scott’s Navigare before it, scans a very different type of icy territories to that favoured by Miasmah until now. Continue Reading »

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SIMON SCOTT: Navigare (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on Oct 27th 2009 02:13 am

Simon Scott: Navigare

SIMON SCOTT
Navigare
MIACD011
Miasmah Recordings 2009
10 Tracks. 47mins59secs

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Once a member of early nineties daydream shoegazers Slowdive, for whom his manned the drums for four years, Simon Scott has since worked on a variety of projects, including, in recent years, atmospheric pop/electronic outfit Televise, and, more recently, Seavault, a collaboration with ISAN’s Antony Ryan. He is also at the helm of experimental imprint Keshhhhhh Recordings, which he runs from his native Cambridge.

For his first release under his own name, Scott couldn’t have found a label more adapted to the vast atmospheric stretches of Navigare than Erik Skodvin’s bleak house of Miasmah. Continue Reading »

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KRENG: L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on Jul 10th 2009 12:39 am

Kreng: L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu

KRENG
L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu
MIACD010
Miasmah Recordings 2009
18 Tracks. 55mins19secs

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Miasmah’s ill and sombre hinterlands welcome their latest dweller in Belgian artist Pepijn Caudron. When he started as Kreng some years ago, Caudron’s work was entirely sample-based, his music borrowing from classical, jazz, electronica or improvisation. Over the years, Caudron developed a more cinematic feel to his work, leading him to work on soundtracks for films and theatre, and in particular with a company named Abattoir Fermé, based in Mechelen, half way between Brussels and Antwerp, where Caudron resides. While he is credited with a number of original pieces for both film and theatre, the ambitiously titled L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu is his first official release, and follows a couple of digital EPs.

Dark, haunting and unsettling, this album is undeniably at home on Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah, yet its theatricality gives it a certain grandeur that is new to the label. Continue Reading »

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ELEGI: Varde (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on Jan 22nd 2009 01:48 am

Elegi: Varde

ELEGI
Varde
MIACD009
Miasmah Recordings 2009
12 Tracks. 53mins46secs

Elegi’s Tommy Jansen returns to the contaminated shore of Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah with the follow up to his 2007 debut album Sistereis, and adds another shade of noire to an already sombre catalogue. In the ten years the label has been around, in one form or another, Miasmah have carved a perfect niche for themselves by releasing some of the most haunting and dark music around, from artists such as Greg Haines, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Gultskra Artikler or Encre. Continue Reading »

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GULTSKRA ARTIKLER: Kasha Iz Topora (Miasmah Recordings)

Joe Muggs on Nov 14th 2007 10:54 pm

Gultskra Artikler: Kasha iz topora

GULTSKRA ARTIKLER
Kasha Iz Topora
MIACD006
Miasmah Recordings 2007
18 Tracks. 66mins48secs

Isn’t technology beautiful? Now that even the cheapest PCs are capable – in the right hands – of sophisticated sound manipulation, the way is open for ever more peculiar people to realize the sounds in their heads no matter how far outside normal musical frames of reference they might be. No longer does a Captain Beefheart need to capture, imprison and brainwash talented young musicians in order to create a Trout Mask Replica. Instead, people with a unique vision need only lock themselves away with a computer and tweak and twist and warp whatever sounds are around them until they have an album’s worth of the sounds that will allow others access to their soundworld. Burial – if the myth is to be believed – is one such visionary, sat in his room with the TV on and an old PC with a fan so knackered it smokes, editing sound without even recourse to a sequencer in pursuit of the perfect aural painting of the fears and joys of the South London night time; and Siberian-born, Moscow-dwelling Alexey Devyanin is without doubt another. Continue Reading »

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RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI: Daydreaming (Miasmah Recordings)

themilkman on Jan 31st 2007 01:11 pm

Rafael Anton Irissari: Daydreaming

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI
Daydreaming
MIACD004
Miasmah Recordings 2007
07 Tracks. 34mins07secs

Since Norwegian duo Deaf Center deployed their voluptuous blend of Gothic electronica back in 2004, there has been a pretty regular stream of associated releases related to Erik Skodvin, from his solo project (Svarte Greiner) to that of Miasmah, the imprint he set up (Greg Haines, Encre). Sound artist Rafael Anton Irisarri hails from Seattle, where he curates the Kupei Musika imprint. He has released minimal electronica as Luken, but this is his first album under his own name, and here, he explores radically different forms of music. Continue Reading »

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