★Hands In The Dark
Sleepy Jazz For Tired Cats
300 copies only! First-ever vinyl pressing of the band's inaugural EP, 'Sleepy Jazz for Tired Cats', featuring new artwork and mastering by Marta Salogni.
Established in 2013 by Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen, the duo operated until 2020 as a creative laboratory for the London-based musicians to explore beyond their traditional musical endeavours. They sought to deconstruct their usual sonic frameworks, venturing into a novel and unfamiliar auditory landscape. Their work seamlessly integrat…
Futura Grotesk
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tomaga's debut album, 'Futura Grotesk', Hands in the Dark are re-releasing the long sold out record in a limited edition of 500 copies. The reissue is accompanied by the first-ever vinyl pressing of the band's inaugural EP, 'Sleepy Jazz for Tired Cats', featuring new artwork and 300 units available. Both records have been remastered by Marta Salogni for the occasion.
Always in search of exploration, with an obvious obsession for deconstruction their norm…
Melos Kalpa
Melos Kalpa formed in 2019 around the vision of Tom Relleen; a quintet of musicians employing unconventional instruments and strategies to make music that exists somewhere at the intersection of improvisation, minimalism and sublimated reverie. Musicians Agathe Max (Abstract Concrete, Papivores, These Towns), Jem Doulton (Thurston Moore Group, Too Many Things), David John Morris (Red River Dialect) and Tom Relleen (Tomaga) perform via the conduit of producer Marta Salogni’s intricate tape prepar…
Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche
Tip Tip Tip! Christian Schoppik aka Läuten der Seele brings his “Water” trilogy to a close with his new album ‘Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche’ (The Journey to Monsalwäsche) following up ‘Die Mariengrotte als Trinkwasseraufbereitungsanlage’ (2022, Hands in the Dark) and ‘Ertrunken im seichtesten Gewässer’ (2023, World of Echo). This final instalment takes the listener on a sacred odyssey searching for the fulfilment of one's (or is it his own?) spiritual destiny, from beginning (‘Entschluss, Abschied…
Waves
*300 copies limited edition* Mondkopf, the brainchild of Paul Regimbeau, returns to Hands in the Dark with ‘Waves’, five years after his label-debut ‘How Deep is our Love?’. The French producer’s 9th album features two time-stretched, profound analog-textured pieces based on the physical and emotional swaying motion suggested by its title and recorded during some concerts played in the summer of 2019. The first track was performed at a secret gig in the Vincennes woods in Paris, accompanying a g…
Nattdett
*200 copies limited edition* Berlin-based, Italian-born sound artist Andrea Taeggi introduces his debut release on Hands in the Dark records with 'Nattdett', an album showcasing six mesmerizing and rhythmically intricate electronic compositions. Drawing inspiration from previous works such as 'Mama Matrix Most Mysterious' (2015), 'Batch 0006' (2017), and 'Zimní Král' (2018), Taeggi delves further into his exploration of cyclical patterns and tension-filled compositions within his creative proces…
Schatterau
Here is the debut, self-titled album from Schatterau, a Hamburg and Berlin-based three-piece consisting of Daniel Jahn, Jonas Meyer and Tobias Rutkowski. Having dug out their old 4-track cassette recorder, the group turned it into their primary instrument, spending many hours exploring textures, creating countless tape loops and weaving them into this elegantly crafted inaugural work of 15 miniatures. At times, some of these fully realised, lo-fi ambient tales have a warm dream-like feel to them…
Les siphonophores des eaux froides et profondes de l'Arctique
Named after a metro station located in East Paris, Pointe du Lac originated in 2014 as the brainchild of analogue gear enthusiast Julien Lheuillier, joined shortly after by multi-instrumentalist Richard Francés, followed by Quentin Rollet on Saxophone a few years down the line. Les siphonophores des eaux froides et profondes de l'Arctique (“Siphonophores of the cold, deep Arctic waters”) is the project’s third studio album, the first one written as a three-piece as well as their first release on…
A Crimson Shore
A Crimson Shore is Saåad’s first studio album since Présence/Absente in 2018. In the interim, Toulouse-based composer and producer Romain Barbot has enriched his experience as an artist through multiple collaborations, the composition of soundtracks and commissioned pieces, as well his involvement with the bands Foudre! and Sables Noirs.
This new chapter in the artist’s discography reflects this artistic maturity, evoking the project’s finest ambient recordings while revealing a new, unfiltered …
Hier, l'An 4000
Long after the year 4000, it's highly likely the sun will shine a different light. Equatorial rain belts may have turned into white-ash flotsam. Animal forms will have undergone a major metamorphosis, with only the memories of danger still archaically intact.
Razen tackle the theme of reincarnation hypnosis on Hier L'an 4000, their new album for Hands In The Dark, set for release September '23. Inspired by the writings of Donoso and Slauerhoff, by 1940s SF drawings, sky burials and a fantasy of …
Mesmerizer
Going past musical genres and instead straight towards something more elemental - Selvhenter’s music creates a strikingly direct, physical experience of sound composed of polyrhythms, acoustic and electric melodies, heavy music and improvised beauty. Since forming in Copenhagen in 2010, drummers Jaleh Negari and Anja Jacobsen, saxophonist Sonja LaBianca and trombonist Maria Bertel have forged a unique approach to making music that starts with their instrumental setup: two drummers that interlock…
Music for Open Spaces
Super Tip! *Edition of 350 copies, die-cut sleeve, 6 double-sided inserts, incl. download * "Tom and I started recording »Music for Open Spaces« during our travels to Joshua Tree, just at the edge of the desert. Other tracks were recorded while on a trip to Cornwall. We loaded the car with tape machines, a couple of synths and Tom’s bass. When we arrived, we set up a small studio in the living room of a rented house, facing the ocean. The last pieces were made in our familiar places, in London. …
Staran Wake
*300 copies limited edition* Staran Wake is a collaborative project by Andrew Bunsell and Tom Relleen. After several years creating music in various groups together, followed by countless hazy late night recording sessions at each other’s studios and crisper afternoons producing the results, the British duo’s musical vision materialised with this self-titled instrumental album, taking nearly 4 years to complete.
This collection of pieces is composed with a wide range of instruments and combines …
Die Mariengrotte als Trinkwasseraufbereitungsanlage
Tip! The prolific German musician Christian Schoppik is dropping his second solo album of 2022 under the moniker Läuten der Seele, following up his critically acclaimed self-titled debut album released at the start of the year.
Once again, “Die Mariengrotte als Trinkwasseraufbereitungsanlage” (The Mother Mary Grotto as a Drinking Water Treatment Plant) is a work based on a mix of sample collages and recorded instruments that are often used sparsely but as load-bearing elements. However, this ti…
Läuten der Seele
Tip!**Much-needed small repress available, and in process of stocking** Behind the mysterious name 'Läuten der Seele' comes the eponymous solo debut-album from Christian Schoppik, half of the confidentially acclaimed experimental dark folk duo Brannten Schnüre from Wurzburg (DE). The record is composed of 12 abstract audio collages based on transformed sampled loops from German 50’s Heimatfilme features -a popular domestic genre involving rural settings, romantic tone and simplistic morality, c…
Extended Play 1 & 2
*2022 repress* That dynamic of all dynamic duos Tomaga return with the amazing double LP Extended Play Vol 1 & 2. If you haven't checked into Tomaga yet you are in for a real treat. They make the best soundtrack you've never heard. The London based musicians who employ prepared percussion, oscillators, drum machines and more in their attempt to deconstruct standardised sonic palettes. Their improvised music contains elements of minimalism, Free jazz, electronics, noise, exotica and new wave all …
Intimate Immensity
* 2022 repress * The last, outstanding release of the London based experimental duo (Tom Relleen and Valentina Magaletti), accomplished just before Tom’s passing in August 2020, is the distillate of two years of new creative enhancement. Mostly recorded at Tom’s “Bunker” – as he called his house in London – during the days off from live performances and challenging collaborations throughout the world, Intimate Immensity collects ten intense tracks that outline a breath-taking epiphanic journey r…
Blue Rot (LP)
Razen are back with a second album on HITD, follow up to last year's release 'Robot Brujo'. On 'Blue Rot', the band introduces a softer palette and a new quartet, as the core duo of multi-instrumentalists Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour is augmented with new band member Berlinde Deman on Serpent and guest Thomas Bloch on Glassharmonica and crystal Baschet. Drawing inspiration from late 19th-Century Symbolist art, 'Blue Rot' summons heartbreak and the perils of isolation in languid, hypnotic modes,…
Distortion Hue
** Edition of 300 ** For more than a decade, the Los Angeles based musical and composer, Byron Westbrook, has woven a progressively intricate tapestry in sound, bridging the worlds of sound art, avant-garde electronic music, and synthesis. He is an artist of rigorous detail, for whom the creation of hyper specific environmental contexts is a means to deconstruct what is presumed or imposed upon a given spectrum of sound. Extending from and beyond the ground covered by his 2017 LP, Body Consonanc…
Parallel Voices
* Edition of 200 * Chicagoan Brian Case is returning to Hands in the Dark with his fourth release under his own name, Parallel Voices.
In a sense, the album is elliptical: Whilst, musically speaking, the American artist comes back to the start of his solo work by producing a fully instrumental album, he also delivers a story which informs the landscape Case lives in now, and always imbibes it with a sense of tension and dark undercurrents. You might think at first that the voice he uses is abstr…