RENE HELL
The Terminal Symphony
TYPE085
Type Recordings 2011
10 Tracks. 38mins22secs

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If there was any doubt to the electronic nature of James Witscher’s latest project, the title of his second album as Rene Hell spells it out loud and clear: this is music made for computer. The Terminal Symphony is however a much more ambitious project, which, while retaining much of its predecessor’s refinement, aims at reaching an entirely different level of creativity.

2010 was a busy year for Witscher, who, since the release of his debut album barely a year ago, has delivered a number of tapes, singles and split releases on Arbor, Kraak or Agents Of Chaos. But, as this latest offering prove, this was clearly not enough for the inspiration stream to dry up. Witscher embarked on a much more ambitious project when he set out to record The Terminal Symphony. Continue Reading »

DEAF CENTER
Owl Splinters
TYPE080
Type Recordings 2011
08 Tracks. 43mins17secs

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It has been over five years since Norwegian duo Deaf Center released their debut album, Pale Ravine, yet the ripples of its impact are still being felt today, so much it has proved at the forefront of a whole movement in contemporary music, its dark textured orchestral bridging the gap between atmospheric electronic music and modern classical. Since, Erik Skodvin, one half of the duo, has, through his solo projects, continued to explore deeply cinematic soundscapes, and has fervently promoted other like-minded artists through Miasmah, the label he originally set up in 1999. Otto Totland has remained more discreet, but he was however noticed as one half of Nest, a project set up with Huw Roberts with whom he released a digital-only mini album a few years ago which they complemented with additional compositions and published as Retold through Roberts’ Serein imprint last year.

Recorded in Nils Frahm’s Durton Studio in Berlin, Owl Splinters is a much more ambitious and accomplished piece of work than its predecessor Continue Reading »

THOMAS KÖNER
Nunatak/Teimo/Permafrost
TYPE072
Type Recordings 2010
25 Tracks. 125mins54secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD Boomkat: CD | DLD
iTunes: Nunatak: DLD Teimo: DLD Permafrost: DLD

A few months ago, Type began releasing entirely remastered vinyl editions of Thomas Köner’s long unavailable seminal three first albums, Nunatak (1990), Teimo (1992) and Permafrost (1993), all originally published on the now defunct Dutch imprint Barooni. All three have now been collected on a rather sumptuous triple CD set. This faultless triptych firmly established German-born Köner as one of the masters of dark ambient. He went on to release a number of albums for Mille Plateaux, Die Stadt and more recently Fario, and has, over the years, been commissioned a number of installations in various venues around the world, each new project allowing to explore the vast scope of his chosen field.

The sonic world created by Köner is one of glacial beauty, where deep undercurrents almost imperceptibly erode the dense sound formations which form the core of these records, relentlessly grinding down every particle of sound and noise until only the bare minimal is left. Continue Reading »

ON
Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not
TYPE062
Type Recordings 2010
05 Tracks. 48mins23secs

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The idea behind On is quite unique. Originally the project of French experimental pianist and guitarist Sylvain Chauveau and Chicago-based drummer and percussionist Steven Hess, On has always involved a third component, but instead of being a permanent feature as such, the pair have chosen to put their documented improvisations in the hands of another artist and give him carte blanche to create an album with this material. In the past, this duty has fallen onto the laps of Helge Sten, known amongst others as one third of Supersilent and for his production work for artists as diverse as Susanna And The Magical Orchestra, Motorpsycho, Arve Henriksen or Nils Petter Molvær. On Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night, Sten processed the duo’s original recordings into chilling atmospheric soundscapes close to his output as Deathprod. For their second effort, the pair enrolled the services of French musician Pierre-Yves Macé, who created extremely sparse ambient electro-acoustic pieces set on the outer boundaries of musique concrète.  For this latest escapade, Chauveau and Hess recorded a new set of improvisations in Hess’s Chicago studio and called upon Austrian guitarist and laptop experimentalist Christian Fennesz to rework them into the pieces presented on this third album. Continue Reading »

RENE HELL
Porcelain Opera
TYPE077
Type Recordings 2010
06 Tracks. 33mins58secs

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Sanctity and sleaze. That’s what seems to advertise the cover of Jeff Witscher’s latest venture, and in a way, it is what he delivers as he swaps the realm of noise which constitutes the bulk of his work for sparse synthetic textures and soundscapes reminiscent of Cluster and Harmonia on one side, and of early Tangerine Dream on the other. But, while he could easily be associated with the wave of Kosmische-obsessed acts that are currently pushing electronic music back onto its natural experimental track, Witscher’s take on the genre is distinctively modern, somehow bridging the gap between the German pioneers of the seventies, BBC Radiophonic Workshop oddities and the ambient electronica that has been in a constant mutating process over the last twenty years. Continue Reading »

JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON
And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees
TYPE64
Type Recordings 2010
13 Tracks. 40mins17secs

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Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson might be best known for the records he has been delivering since he made his debut on Touch almost ten years ago with the superb Englabörn, but the cinematic nature of his work has also led him to work on countless soundtracks for feature films, short films and documentaries. Originally released as a limited vinyl edition at the end of last year, And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees is Jóhann Jóhannsson’s soundtrack to the beautiful animated short film Varmints, created by Studio AKA member Marc Craste, based on the book of the same name published over two years ago by children’s author Helen Ward, which Craste also illustrated. Continue Reading »

RICHARD SKELTON
Landings
TYPE055
Type Recordings 2010
12 Tracks. 70mins05secs

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Richard Skelton is a totally unique artist, who, through a string of exquisite releases has defined a very personal space for his work. Released primarily through his own imprint, Sustain-Release, in very limited hand-made editions, and coming under a variety of pseudonyms (Heidika, Harlassen, Carousell, Riftmusic, A Broken Consort…), Skelton’s music has, until recently, been the privilege of a lucky few. Two years ago, he released Making Time (Preservation), his first album published under his own name, and consequently touched a larger audience.

Originally a very limited release on Sustain-Release at the end of last year, accompanied with a book of writings, diary entries and poems collected between 2004 and 2008, and subsequently released as a limited double LP, with an exclusive CD of unreleased material on Type, Landings, now also available on CD, is a vibrant impressionist journey through dense and warmsoundscapes. Continue Reading »

PETER BRODERICK
4 Track Songs
TYPE044
Type Recordings 2009
25 Tracks. 52mins41secs

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It’s just over two years since Peter Broderick’s debut mini album, Docile, was released on Kning Disk. Since, this prolific musician has released music on Bella Union, Erased Tapes, Secret Furry Hole and Digitalis. His most recent outputs, Music From Falling Trees and Five Film Score Outtakes, showcased his wonderfully airy and fluid classical work, but he is equally at ease with folk and pop songs. As the title suggests, this latest output, once again on Type, consists exclusively of songs recorded on tape, captured as and when they took shape, when Broderick was still pretty unknown, originally collected on two CDRs which were then sent to Type in the hope of getting him noticed. Continue Reading »

ON
Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night
TYPE050
Type Recordings 2009
07 Tracks. 63mins26secs

CD: Amazon UK | Boomkat | Download: Amazon UK | Boomkat

On is a project like no other. The brainchild of French composer Sylvain Chauveau and American percussionist Steven Hess, best known as one third of Chicago-based electro-acoustic outfit Haptic, On started six years ago when the pair met and recorded a session together, with Chauveau on prepared guitars and Hess on percussions. The recordings were then put in the hands of Norwegian ambient artist Helge Sten, who was then officiating as Deathprod and is, still, amongst others, a member of experimental jazz outfit Supersilent, and French composer Pierre-Yves Macé who each worked on a number of tracks, modelling them to their own sound world. The Sten tracks were collected on Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night and originally released in 2004 on Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L’Acier, and the ones processed by Macé were released on the album Second Souffle on Brocoli in 2007. Five years on from its original release, Type Recordings are now reissuing the Helge Sten collaboration. Continue Reading »

MOKIRA
Persona
TYPE047
Type Recordings 2009
07 Tracks. 53mins07secs

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Mokira is one of the many projects from Swedish musician Andreas Tilliander, who began operating under this particular banner in 2000, when Chiphop was released. He has since released a handful of albums and EPs on various labels. Two years on from his last album, Hateless, published on Swedish imprint Ideal Recordings, Tilliander returns to Type, five years after his first output for the label, with the eighth Mokira album.

Continuing on the path set with previous records, Tilliander creates once again a series of dense glitch-infused decaying electronic pieces which linger around textural atmospheric soundscapes. Continue Reading »

SVARTE GREINER
Kappe
TYPE033
Type Recordings 2009
04 Tracks. 44mins25secs

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Things have got a lot colder in Svarte Greiner’s epic aural world since his debut, Knive, was released, in 2006, and colder still since he last appeared as one half of Deaf Center the year before. Gone are the cinematic orchestral drapes, replaced with dense mournful sound formations drenched with chilling noises and spectral effects.

With his first output as Svarte Greiner, Norway’s Erik Skodvin already showed an unhealthy taste for dark matter, but he takes this to an entirely different level with his sophomore effort. Kappe flirts with desolate isolationist landscapes on more than one occasion on here, especially on its two centre pieces, Where Am I and Candle Light Dinner Actress, burrowing through vast spaces, filled with distant echoes, noises and distortions to create the soundtrack for a doomed journey through Hell. Continue Reading »

PETER BRODERICK
Home
BELLACD172
Hush Recordings/Bella Union 2008
10 Tracks. 40mins03secs

For the last year or so, home for Peter Broderick has been Copenhagen, where he was originally invited to move from his native Portland, OR, to join Efterklang as part of their extended tour family in his quality of violinist and multi-instrumentist, providing him with a splendid opportunity to showcase his own work by regularly opening for them too. Meanwhile, he was commissioned a mini-album of instrumental piano pieces by the excellent Swedish imprint Kning Disk, resulting in Docile, which was published a few months ahead of Float, Broderick’s debut album, released on Type earlier this year.

But while both Docile and Float were concerned with overly classical compositions, Home is carved from a different type of wood. Here, Broderick collects ten delicate folk songs built from essentially acoustic instrumentation. Continue Reading »