September 28, 2012

ASPIDISTRAFLY JAPAN TOUR 2012 ANNOUNCED!

We are pleased to announce ASPIDISTRAFLY Japan Tour 2012! Starting on 17th November, ASPIDISTRAFLY will be performing 6 shows in 5 cities around Japan including Tokyo, Kyoto, Tochigi, Toyama and Okayama to promote their latest album “A LITTLE FABLE”. More details of the shows and ticket reservations will be announced in the coming days. This tour is kindly co-ordinated by Inpartmaint Inc / p*dis.

シンガポールの男女デュオ、ASPIDISTRAFLY（アスピディストラフライ）が11月中旬からジャパンツアーを行います！ツアーの日程は下記の通り。

11/17 東京・VACANT w/ Masha Qrella、Masayoshi Fujita + usaginingen
11/18 栃木・starnet w/ いろのみ、AOKI, hayato と haruka nakamura
11/23 富山・nowhere
11/24 岡山・城下公会堂
11/25 京都・OIL w/ rimacona、Hideyuki Hashimoto
12/8 東京・富士見丘教会 w/ いろのみ、AOKI, hayato と haruka nakamura、Janis Crunch (special guest）

各公演の詳細は来週あたりに発表していきます。お楽しみに〜！

September 24, 2012

Nº 10 VANISHING MIRROR / PILL-OH – SHIPPING 30TH OCTOBER

Nº 10 VANISHING MIRROR / PILL-OH
CD + Art Book, Released 30 October 2012
Photography © Aëla Labbé
13 tracks, 44:54 mins
Specifications: 200mm x 140mm, 16pp loop-stitched book, offset printed, full color on uncoated paper, first edition of 500
Label: KITCHEN. LABEL

“I just allow the splendor of the day to absorb the darkness. My own light doesn’t last for long.”

A surface reflecting beauty through light. The eyes of someone reflecting your own inner soul. Images of a reality that exists only in wishes and dreams. We find ourselves when gazing into “mirrors”, but we lose ourselves if we gaze too much. Originally from Athens, Greece, electronic artist Hior Chronik (presently based in Berlin, Germany) and classical pianist-composer Zinovia Arvanitidi have crystallized a representation of time and memory, where dreams and delicate hauntings from the past merge with the present. “Vanishing Mirror” is their debut album as Pill-Oh, embodying 13 mesmerizing tracks of filmic romanticism and compelling detail.

Accomplished pianist Zinovia, whose roots are in the Satie and Chopin piano solos of traditional classical music, asserts her structures and phrases with an emotive power that is intense as it is controlled. Arranged around the piano’s deep, plaintive utterances, Hior Chronik’s electronic abstractions are fluid as the deepest rhythm of a dream, instinctively recurring between sounds and silences. Opening track “February Tale” conjures the image of a landscape vast and bare, questioned through the purity of a child’s eyes. In “Notebook”, Zinovia hammers percussively in long stretches of pulsing sixteenth notes to majestic and swooping ensemble arrangements. Where intensity rises, it’s the quiet spaces between these grandiose passages that demonstrates her masterful balance between strength and frailty with engaging restraint. Led forth by her melancholic piano phrasing, “Melodico” and “Memory” are manifested in a place of fragility and isolation where the surface of a lake is so tender it shivers at the smallest sound. Hior Chronik daubs over unsettling, sorrowful mirages with ambient dissonance. “I Wake Up And You Smile” demolishes the darkness and walls are broken, and nanaye’s feathery voice whispers illuminating words that sound distant yet familiar. In closing of these cinematic visions, Aaron Martin’s cello simmers slowly to the surface in “Promise” like a curtain call.

“Vanishing Mirror” is presented in a 16-page art book format featuring a collaboration with France-based photographer Aëla Labbé. Parallel to the music in her visual storytelling, Aëla’s ethereal images are rusted with burnished hues of childhood that probe deep into the consciousness yet shimmer with a child-like nostalgia. The children, as portrayed in her enchanting world find themselves intertwined with landscapes where the sun radiates with an vaporous, indeterminate glow. Produced over the course of two years with mastering by label curator Ricks Ang (also one-half of ASPIDISTRAFLY), “Vanishing Mirror” is an album destined to pique the interest of listeners of classically aligned contemporaries such as Dustin O’Halloran, Nils Frahm, Sylvain Chauveau and not to mention label mates haruka nakamura and ironomi.

September 24, 2012

Nº 11 FROM SCATTERED ACCIDENTS / SZYMON KALISKI – SHIPPING 30TH OCTOBER

Nº 11 From Scattered Accidents / Szymon Kaliski
CD + Art Book, Released 30 October 2012
Photography © Jan Hoffmann
8 tracks, 45:30 mins
Specifications: 148mm x 180mm, 16pp loop-stitched book, offset printed, full color on uncoated paper, first edition of 500
Label: KITCHEN. LABEL

“12th December 2010, Oldest sound, broken piano key….”

“From Scattered Accidents” is the first Kitchen. Label release from Polish multimedia artist Szymon Kaliski, who has up till now released 3 well-received albums by international critics. Known for combining lo-fi techniques with new digital technologies in exploration of for individual methods of expression, compositions are always borne of acoustic sounds which are then looped, decayed and reconstructed digitally through his own self-made software and unique hardware.

“From Scattered Accidents” centers around the themes of imperfection and fleeting phenomena. Recording began in the Winter of 2010, and the album chronologically documents his creative process over a year. Preferring to pick up anomalies in his recordings which arose from the process of constructing his acoustic loops or curated set of found sounds, a single key on a broken piano with its patina and wear was picked up as one of the few working materials. The young artist then meticulously crafted a world around it and allowed accidental collisions to occur till the arrangement seemed to quiver naturally on its own. This study of flawed beauty and quietude echoes the distinctly Japanese pantheon of Wabi-Sabi. Two collaborations precede, featuring prodigious young composer Peter Broderick on violin and Aaron Martin on cello who add variation in harmonics and dynamic ranges as well as the heightening of emotion and scenic intensity of this work.

“From Scattered Accidents” resonates a form of pastoral decay amidst the city dross, filled with cracks suspended in slowed down soundscapes. Accompanying the tracks are 16 pages of monochrome photography by Jan Hoffman, who has captured the desolate side of urban life and the lesser-seen parts of Paris from odd angles. To paraphrase Baudelaire’s observations on the city – absolute and eternal beauty are but an abstract notion, creamed off from the general surface of different types of beauty, and Parisian life is rich in poetic and wonderful subjects saturating us like the atmosphere but we fail to see it. These images have become a representation of memories fractured and broken in parallel to Szymon’s sound craft, and as part of the sound and visual diary the latter has kept over the period of time.

Szymon lets his subtly shifting textures flow on their own unhurriedly, almost with an organic sense of timing, and they seem to take us through scenes of smoke-filled rooms, the aroma of coffee on rainy days or the fragmented conversations of strangers dissolving into distant chatter. Evoking sentiments of desolation and solitude in the context of urban pastoralism. Ricks Ang, the curator of Kitchen. Label, and also one-half of ASPIDISTRAFLY, masters the final work. “From Scattered Accidents” is destined to pique the interest of listeners of Tim Hecker, Chihei Hatakeyama, Andrew Chalk and the early works of label mate FJORDNE.

Szymon Kaliski – http://treesmovethemost.com
Jan Hoffmann – http://whenwordsbetray.com

September 10, 2012

KITCHEN. LABEL ARTWORK FEATURED ON HARD FORMAT (UK)

Our album design works for ASPIDISTRAFLY “A LITTLE FABLE” and FJORDNE “Charles Rendition” are featured on Hard Format, a UK-based website focusing on brilliant music-related design. Thank you Colin (and Davis the cat) for the love!

HARD FORMAT: http://www.hardformat.com

September 7, 2012

ASPIDISTRAFLY “A LITTLE FABLE” REVIEW ON BEAT MAGAZINE (GERMANY)

ASPIDISTRAFLY “A LITTLE FABLE” has a review published in the October issue of Beat Magazine from Germany. “Traum-Folk” it says in German. Thank you Tobias Fischer for the review.

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