★Umor Rex
Re:collecting
Re:collecting is the first collaborative album of Steven Hess (member of Locrian, Cleared, Pan•American, Haptic, and Innode) and Rutger Zuydervelt (also known as Machinefabriek).
Over that past years, Steven Hess has recorded piles of cassettes on an old four-track and classroom desktop tape players, going through a chain of pedals and loopers and then back into the cassette recorders again. Besides his usual drum kit and cymbals, the sound sources include guitar, bass, AM/FM radio chatter and w…
Living on Superstition
"Living on Superstition" is the debut LP from New York native Phil Tortoroli a.k.a. James Place. After his initial cassette release "An Entire Matchbook A Night" (Opal Tapes) in 2014, James Place returns with a harrowing, meditative record of candle-lit rhythms and frost-laden ambience. The album was composed using an intricate collection of analog equipment, including the TR-606, Casio SK-1, SP1200, and a multitude of vinyl and tape-based samples, and mastered by M. Geddes Gengras. James Plac…
Lie Together, Die Together
**100 hand-numbered copies** Lie Together, Die Together is a collection of images that work better as mental notes, sometimes just a reminder of a possible project to come, sometimes just falling for a strange aesthetic beauty. The memory images are at odds with photographic representation. From the latter’s perspective, memory images appear to be fragments —but only because photography does not encompass the meaning to which they refer and in relation to which they cease to be fragments—. Simil…
Perfect Fatigue
**100 hand-numbered copies** Perfect Fatigue is a collection of film photography taken throughout North America between 2009 and 2014. Directly engaging with the legacy of landscape photography, the images in this collection document a series of encounters between the elemental and the human. The natural world, captured with an almost mystical, luminous sense of place, becomes a sequence of sites that are both filmic and autobiographical.
Michael Vallera is a visual artist and musician currently…
Different Forces
“Different Forces” is the second album by Hamburg-based duo Phantom Horse, following their self-titled album debut on Dekorder. These polyrhythmic vehicles are driven under the influence of Cluster and Harmonia, that venerable school of out-there German explorers; the tuneful ghost of Moondog can also be seen on the rear-view mirror, while the landscape rushes by with the hypnotic pulse of 1960’s Minimalism. Packed in their distinct homelike, warm sound, Phantom Horse effortlessly follo…
Plural People
Roberto Carlos Lange is a Brooklyn based composer of Ecuadorian descent and a conceptual visual artist, also known for his work as Helado Negro. Plural People is a collection of music and sound pieces from 1999 to 2011. It all starts back in 1999 when Roberto was 19 and exploring computer synthesis parallel to making music with samplers like the MPC 2000 XL. At the time he was taking sound classes that explored max/msp, supercollider, reaktor and other software based sound programs and synthesiz…
Destroy Music
Gultskra Artikler is a project of Moscow-based Alexey Devyanin, who has to this date several releases including four albums in the marvelous German label Miasmah. Destroy Music is an exercise in —literally— destroying the music Alexey has been listening in recent years. Taking samples from countless sources, creating new patterns and then trashing them, these pieces are something we might call sound recycling, and there are plenty of moments of endless collage and layers. However, with the destr…
Cowries
Rémy Charrier is a French audiovisual artist based in México City. With a classic formation made sporadic due to frequent changes of residence, his approach to music was for a while basically made of improvisation exercises with a piano. After a couple of previous releases in the shape of a duo-project in France, Cowries is his first solo work. Once settled in Mexico, Rémy continues his practice with a Moog Little Phatty and a collection of objects used for rhythms and percussion, plus samplers …
Interpretations Of Superstition
“Interpretations of Superstition” is a revisitation of James Place’s debut album, Living on Superstition, released in Umor Rex in February of this year. Five songs from Living on Superstitionare reworked and performed direct to tape, a taste of James Place’s live set. One can perceive an increased intensity here— James Place took the opportunity to focus on the original record’s rhythmic elements and embolden with new ones, evidence of Phil Tortoroli (James Place)’s experience within the NYC dan…
Local Agent
Local Agent is the fourth lp by Charlatan, a.k.a. Brad Rose, label-head of Digitalis, also known as the north sea and one half of Safiyya. Local Agent is Charlatan's streamlined statement, an amalgam of spy and sci-fi techno with touches of abstract dub, finely mastered by John Tejada. Local Agent is a great culmination of several years' work by brad rose, who has been studying and styling a conceptual and abstract merge between industrial-beat and techno structures, with a sensitivity for narra…