★Umor Rex
Hawaiki Tapes
Recorded during a vacation on the big island, Hawaiki Tapes is somewhat of an anomaly in the M. Geddes Gengras music - A series of short, improvised sequences voiced by a small plastic digital synthesizer, minimally processed in real time & jacked straight into a handheld recorder. It was made at night, on a little hotel room desk. The internal sequencer of the volca greatly influenced the pieces, since it only goes so slow and is limited in it’s voicing. It was windy and cold for most of the tr…
Exit Future Heart
"Exit Future Heart" is an LP of improvised sessions by the conjoined ensemble of Tokyo—based abstract pop duo Dustin Wong and Takako Minekawa and Chicago’s free music trio Good Willsmith. "Exit Future Heart" follows three Good Willsmith albums released on Umor Rex and three albums by Dustin Wong and Takako Minekawa on Thrill Jockey. Recorded live at home in Chicago over the course of one night when Wong and Minekawa passed through on tour, Exit Future Heart showcases a program of spontaneous com…
Confluence Patterns
Byron Westbrook is an artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. His work focuses on dynamics of perception using sound, lighting and video to interact with architecture and landscape, often pursuing routes that involve social engagement. Confluence Patterns is an eclectic collection of recordings, containing both the sharpest and most pastoral material Westbrook has released. The pieces range from the textured drones of "Vanishing Action" to the Tony-Conrad-plays-Black-Sabbath riffing of "Perce…
Learned Ethics / Imposed Ethics
Kohl is the dub-based project of New York City artist and musician Nathaniel Young. With Kohl, Nathaniel focuses on enveloping melodies and sounds that are often contrasted with subtle and evolving minimal textures and the rhythmic patterns generated from them. The resulting music is contemplative and warm, invoking reflection while maintaining a sense of motion/evolution. The Kohl project is an outlet for personal transformation; it is Young rewiring his understanding of morality and ethics. In…
Frgl
Hand-numbered cassette limited edition of 120 copies Leslie García and Paloma López (Mexico City) have been working for several years around the intersection of music, art-installation and science, with sound being the primary objective of their analysis, acting their roles as composers/creators and observers of the physical phenomenon. Their work ranges from experiments with bioelectrical sounds created by living organisms like bacteria and plants, to the use of custom-made sets of hardware the…
Als Ob
Umor Rex saddle up a session of dusty modular kosmische from Phantom Horse, paying homage to the original templates of Cluster/Harmonia and the rhythmelodic patterning of Moondog in five horizon-scanning variations. Best checked for the alien tone of Always Too Late (Reprise) or the wickedly curdled, keening synth discord of Skeptical Island, and its giddy resolution. “Packed in their distinct homelike, warm sound, Phantom Horse effortlessly follow their path to find a melancholic playfulne…
Levels
Recorded with a modest hardware setup in Geneva - one drum machine, a few synths, a sampler, plus effects - the ten miniatures on LEVELS’ debut S/T are nonetheless dense in atmosphere and mood, often immensely beautiful beyond their means. As suggested by the project’s name, each track has the feel of a new level on a video game; a new environment to explore, to feel around for new clues, and ultimately to conquer. Referencing classic anime, movie, and videogame scores, LEVELS’ willfully …
I
Hailing from Cologne, Mikrovolt is the nom de plume of music journalist and radio author Veit König. Recorded sporadically over the last six years, his first release I is the culmination of a hitherto undocumented musical journey. König has always made music for the last two decades, initially starting more pop-oriented before heading into a space disco direction, ultimately arriving at the retro-robotic synthesizer kraut of Mikrovolt’s I. Assembled in his DAW from a host of vintage organ,…
Illumina
“By restricting myself, I feel like I'm connecting with a larger arc of producers throughout time,” explains Leo Maymind. “People who were crammed into a corner of their bedroom with headphones on while the rest of the world was out gallivanting.” Following nearly a decade entrenched into the Brooklyn DIY scene, a move to Los Angeles signalled a change in approach for Maymind, limiting his gear to a small tabletop hardware setup, sometimes as little as a single drum machine and a rackmoun…
Transgression
Damon Carruesco departed his decade on bass with Chicago’s minimalist fringe rockers Disappears in 2015, deciding experimental music more his thing and opting to pursue the bold sound of TüTH. Aiming to search out his own limits, potential, and abilities as an artist, the atmospheric sounds on Transgression are Carruesco’s attempt to make atmospheric electronic music that exists outside of "the grid". Transgression draws from field recordings and hand-made sounds, taking key inspiration fr…
Voices Bloom
A distillation of cultural memory through electronic process, James Place - the creative guise of New York native Phil Tortoroli, returns with his third release for Umor Rex. The sonic realization of love and loss, re-sculpted for the Post-Modern age, pursuing his glacial take on techno into newly intimate depths. Departing from a line in TS Elliot’s Four Quartets “the moment in and out of time”, its works take form through the haze of a dream. Over the course of several months Tortoroli t…
Forest Structures
Thé Déluge is the new moniker of French musician Vincent Caylet. While Caylet’s previous outings as Cankun (released on Not Not Fun and Hands in the Dark) were blissful psychedelic sundrenched jam sessions, Forest Structures sees Caylet largely jettison cosmic tropical islands and guitar twang. Thé Déluge deals in moonlit electronics and nocturnal transmission that consistently bleep into each other and overlap. Recorded mostly on analog gear and inspired by both nature and urbanism, Thé Déluge …
Dame Ningen
Mukqs is the solo moniker of Max Allison from Chicago trio Good Willsmith. ダメ人間 ("dame ningen," which translates into "useless person" from Japanese) comes off the heels of Good Willsmith’s well received Things Our Bodies Used to Have (their third release with Umor Rex). For ダメ人間, Allison assembled his analog rig (four-track tape player, two EHX2880 loop pedals), and recorded the full 40 minute suite in one live take with no overdubs. The goal was to make a piece of music just as dense / intense…
Old Speakers
Missing Organs is Tristan Bath, a British musician and writer based in Vienna, Austria. Old Speakers deploys a bottomless variety of instruments, beats, and techniques, all refined and rewritten —somewhat accidentally— into a document of the period of personal and international upheaval during which they came to life. Old Speakers is his Brexit album; a document of the dread, quiet chaos, and bitterness in European society which came to the surface in 2016. Field recordings and improvisations fo…
Radiations
The fourth album of Driftmachine is not an album in the classical context, it´s a collection of new studio music, remixes of Shackleton and The Sight Below, and material previously available only in digital formats.LP limited edition of 350 copies pressed on purple colored vinyl, includes a post card with original artwork and free download coupon.
The album starts off with the surprising Shackleton remix of Radiations, a little gem gleaming with all the spacious percussions you can expect …
Voice Model
Koen Holtkamp’s music is never quite what it seems. There are distinct textures, tones, structures, relationships, and references —the things that bring us back again and again, but the undercurrent remains elusive. For listeners unaware of Holtkamp’s solo efforts, most will have encountered him as half of the Brooklyn based duo Mountains (Thrill Jockey) —a project which has pushed musical boundaries for more than a decade. Voice Model wades effortlessly into this same ambitious territory, but f…
Colliding Contours
Berlin-based duo Driftmachine returns with another striking piece of music. "Colliding Contours" is a shape-shifting album made from kosmische, dub, Industrial and Avant-garde elements. It's all held together by tense grooves and a post-club, eerie electronic atmosphere. The latest work of Driftmachine offers a complex dialogue between genres and music styles, transcending the familiar by generating a peculiar mood through its unique take on modular synthesis and its obsessive bass-structures an…
Things Our Bodies Used To Have
Things Our Bodies Used to Have”, the second LP by Chicago-based trio Good Willsmith, explores possible intersections of textural noise collage, cosmic synth meditation, and abstract music in a live suite of layered improvisations. Limited clear vinyl edition of 300 copies, packaged in uncoated stock jackets with double sided insert, black inner sleeve & free download coupon. In-house design featuring original photographs by Sam Prekop.“Things Our Bodies Used to Have”, documents a 36 minute sessi…
Split
Split album of the Berlin based artists Shapes a.ka. Niklas Dommaschk (member of Phantom Horse) and Oliver Koch as Melfi. There’s some peculiar mutuality in the works of Melfi and Shapes that add an unexpected kind of conceptuality to that split tape on hand. Both artists work with machines that are older than themselves, and it is obvious that their approach alleges some kind of antiqueness that sets the listener on the wrong track. There’s an inheritable sadness to all of these tracks, friendl…
Two Variations
Two Variations marks the return to Umor Rex of the Los Angeles based musician & producer M. Geddes Gengras, following his two volumes of “Collected Works” from 2013 and 2014. The two pieces here are the result of Gengras’ continuous exercises and obsession with his modular synthesizer, —technique apart—, “Two Variations” is a new statement, the reinforcement of MGG’s prowess in this area, and how through these machines, he is able to build harmonic music pieces, contours between the electronic c…