This bundle includes the two latest vinyl offering from Hundebiss.

Over the course of its nearly two decades of activity, the Italian imprint, Hundebiss, has remained nearly impossible to nail down, operating at the most ambitious boundaries of experimental music and popular culture. Two of their latest drops, “NigmaEnigma أنيجم النَجم”, the debut solo offering by the Egyptian composer, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and singer, Abdullah Miniawy, and “The Island of Bouncy Memories”, the latest from Ciro Vitiello - the alter-ego of Naples-born/Milan-based electronic artist and data scientist Giuseppe Federico Pastore - perfectly illuminating the remarkable space they’ve carved out in the world. Each drawing on palettes of rich cultural origins, spun into swirling expanses of ambience, texture, vocalisation and meaning, and issued in beautiful, highly limited clear vinyl editions, these are that rare kind of records that build bridges between worlds.



Abdullah Miniawy "NigmaEnigma" LP

With a proactivity that extends over multiple creative idioms, Abdullah Miniawy is primarily a writer, singer, and composer from Egypt. Largely known for his collaborations with the German trio Carl Gari, blending avant-garde electronic sounds with his poetic lyrics that received acclaim in Pitchfork, The Quietus, and Wire Magazine, and his work within the trio, Le Cri du Caire, his efforts as a composer have appeared within the context of dance, theater, and fine art, including Wael Shawki’s “Cabaret Crusades III”, premiered at MoMA PS1; Kirsten Dehlholm’s “AMDUAT”, premiered at Hotel Pro Forma; “Insurrection” by Jilani Saadi; and “On the Hill” by Belhassen Handous.

“NigmaEnigma أنيجم النَجم”, Miniawy’s debut solo LP, draws the artist’s longstanding practice as lyricist, which has consistantly resonate deeply across the Middle East - especially during the Arab Spring, where they were displayed in places like Syria's Yarmouk Camp, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries - threaded into a palette of electroacoustic ambiences, drawn from instrumental, non-instrumental, and electronic sources. The album’s title, an illuminating gesture of poetry in itself: Nigma means a star in Egyptian dialect—written like this نجمة. Enigma is the dilemma of the dialogue.

Speaking of the album’s germination, Miniawy describes: “a record inspired from nothingness with what I have next to me spontaneously, raw but direct as a child’s first words. A call to play all roles at once. A raw state of improvisation… It is research through voice, modulars, radio station samples, and walks at lonely nights in Paris that brought me to question my art again. The work envisions an Opera for Muslims, falling in untouched definitions such as Paradise and Inferno, which cross and match with Coptic culture, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and The Divine Comedy, where I stare at Dante handing me with his popped eyes a new cape, this time in white.”

From this complex and heady brew, Miniawy manages to weave something that feels effortless and full of grace: networks of electroacoustic sonority - tones, textures, buzzing electronics, captured fragments, punctuations, and resonances - threaded by poetics, that sculpt haunting spaces that bridge the realms of abstraction and the cultural specialities of Egypt and the Middle East.

Not unlike Holidays Records’ recent release of Nancy Mounir’s “Nozhet El Nofous”, Abdullah Miniawy’s “NigmaEnigma أنيجم النَجم” takes great lengths toward unlocking the thrilling context of experimental music currently unfolding in Egypt for adventurous audiences in the far flung corners of the world. Deeply engaging, this is a fantastic debut from an artist to watch. Issued by Hundebiss in a beautiful, highly limited clear vinyl edition, grab it while it lasts!



Ciro Vitiello "The Island of Bouncy Memories" LP

Ciro Vitiello is the moniker of the Naples-born/Milan-based electronic artist and data scientist, Giuseppe Federico Pastore, who, since emerging a handful of years back has issued a string of cassette and CDr releases on imprints like Aught Void, Opal Tapes, and Strange Rules. Belonging to a broad context that combines music, fiction and visual arts - encountering him in regular collaborations with multimedia artists and collectives like Kenshiro Caravaggio Carena, Salvatore Pastore and Naturamorta Studio, Ciro Vitiello's work is firmly rooted in ambient/noise culture and investigations into man-machine dialogues, regularly drawing on a pallet of analog synth, field recording, distortion and manipulation of A.I. generated voices. His latest, “The Island of Bouncy Memories” - jointly issued by Hundebiss and Haunter Records - is his debut vinyl release.

Rooted in memories - which Ciro Vitiello points out “can weigh us down like stones or be treasured in their unresolved ambivalence” - dreams, and imprints of childhood experiences - “a threshold between the comforting embrace of nostalgia and the acceptance of adulthood” - the inception of “The Island of Bouncy Memories” was rooted in a series of recordings of toy instruments, made by Vitiello over an extended period of time, that were subsequently woven into the synthetic fabric of cloudy ambience and waves of melancholic, melodic structures that eventually developed into the album’s 13 tracks.

While, in the most general sense, the musical framework of “The Island of Bouncy Memories” rests within the frameworks of electroacoustic ambience and experimentalism - threading states of instrumental abstraction with bubbling textures - numerous contributions by the vocalist Zimmy, the vocalist/guitarist Cræbabe and guitarist Attilio Novellino, draw the centre toward left-field song-craft at varied points, as well as helping establish a tension between the conceptual poles of childhood states and the nostalgic gaze of adulthood.

Remarkably beautiful and deeply engaging on creative terms, “The Island of Bouncy Memories” - Ciro Vitiello’s debut vinyl release - is a world in itself: a deeply psychological space of complex sonority and meaning. Issued in a stunning, highly limited clear vinyl edition, we couldn’t think of a better way to ease into the early days of a new year.