CD

René Margraff lives and works in Berlin. He started Pillowdiver in 2008. Before this he also pretended to be a Japanese girl under the name of Le Mépris. Previously he released on Home Normal with the highly acclaimed Two People In A Room album back in 2011. This is René’s first work under his given name and to say it covers a lot of ground would be a massive understatement. From contained harmonics through to the comedown choral end, ‘phasen‘ is a beautiful play in light refraction and subtle inflection. The frequencies open up, bringing forth shining melody as the light refracts, only to be covered by new objects, diminishing the index into the dimmest of views, a claustrophobic nightmare. Indeed, if ‘phasen’ were a film, it would be a Norman Bates character on an acid- trip journey through a futuristic Tokyo; all neon lights, rain, and well…Blade Runner really. How would that end? When all things go dark, what shards would be left to hang on to? Through glimmers, the faintest of which reach our eyes, we see that light does in fact remain…the index run ragged.

“It let them float and drift, break apart and converge. Where they broke away, cracks, rifts, trenches remain; where they collided, ranges of folded mountains appear.” – Hans Cloos Continental Drift came about from an idea inspired by Alfred Wegener’s book The Origin of Continents and Oceans. Fuzz Lee (elintseeker) is a believer in the romantic notion that a person is truly shaped by the landscape and environment the person is in. A person’s personality and character in daily life, because of the environment that he or she is in, will also be expressed naturally in musical form. With that in mind, what would the results be when three individuals from three different continents with their own unique approach and style to music making are made to work together? René Margraff (Pillowdiver) from Germany and Samuel Landry (Le Berger) from Canada were specifically invited by Fuzz to join him in this musical experiment. The tracks are made in a 3-way ‘triangular’ process. Each musician has to come up with two tracks or samples, pass it on to the second musician from the next continent to work on and once that musician is done, he will then pass the tracks on to the third and final musician from another continent who will do the same. The tracks can only be worked on once for each musician. If you replace ‘continents’ with ‘sound’ in structural geologist Hans Cloos’ quote about the continental drift theory, the creation, mixing, layering and other working processes of the samples and tracks are not too dissimilar, “It let them float and drift, break apart and converge. Where they broke away, cracks, rifts, trenches remain; where they collided, ranges of folded mountains appear”. These 6 tracks are the ‘trenches’, the ‘cracks’, ‘folded mountains’ and ‘rifts’ in musical form.

Ithaca Trio is Leeds based artist Oliver Thurley. He is one of our favourite artists, with notable releases on Hibernate and Under The Spire, as well as his highly praised split with Machinefabriek ‘Par Avion’ in 2010. He is currently studying a PhD in Composition at the University of Leeds, UK. ‘Music For Piano & Patience’ is a beautiful two piece album based on piano loops run through reel-to-reel. It was mastered on degrading 1/4” reels.