sever, split, tearcome back freeze, forget, neglectcome back detach, withdraw, dreamcome back thrash, recall, engulfcome back allow, receive, swellcome back trust trust trust The wound, as the saying goes, is the place where the light enters you. Even without a god though, the sensation of trauma, and the phenomenon of healing can be a sacred and enlightening experience. Experience always imparts something on those of us still here, for worse or for better. It’s this journey, from trauma to healing and understanding, that inspired Andrew Oda’s beautiful new album: Come Back To The Body. More delicate and plaintive than his previous work, but no less adventurous in its broad palette of synthetic and acoustic sounds, this music is the topography of a descent into the wisdom of the body, “as frightening and unsafe as it may feel” as the composer puts it. A sweet piano, a gently plucked guitar, and a mournful cello sit alongside garbled synth melodies, rustling field recordings, and sweeping cosmic backdrops throughout, a mimic of the counterintuitive harmony of sensations that meet the traumatised body. Emotions become deformed and bleed into each other. A ruptured sense of oneself collides with engulfing thickets of tension, and yearning. Come Back To The Body demarcates a new step in Andrew Oda’s catalogue, evolving his previously synthesised sui generis ecosystem mockups, into a more natural reflection of the human self, in light of trauma and unknowable emotions best put into music. Creaking synth chords hove into view on several of Oda’s new pieces, resembling the first rays of dawn and an imminent sense of absolution. A dull electric hum and submersible bass rumble similarly haunts many moments, like lingering tinnitus, only to be swept away by a host of fresh musical lifeforms, sounds, pulse, and melodies wandering spritely into Oda’s music. Healing isn’t simply the forgetting of a trauma; it’s the process of attuning to a wound and evolving into something new. It’s about moving towards a place “where true intimacy can happen,” as Oda describes it. “A place of forgiveness of self and other.” -- Composed by Andrew OdaArtwork by Stephen Alexander ClarkLayout by h5io6i54kBonus artwork by Ádám HorváthMastered by Adam Badí Donoval --- Special thanks to:Landon-for being on this path with me, for everything.Greg-for invaluable insight, encouragement, and guidance.Gita-for being in the waves and sharing your own journey of healing.Kyra-for understanding the wisdom of the body and sharing your practice.Lauren-for your vortex and mirror. Words by Tristan Bath Photography by Zoltan Czakó

To decay is also to transform. Rusting metal is the visible traces of passing time, as the oxidation process accumulates dampness in our atmosphere and imprints it as unpredictable patterns onto hard iron and steel. Working in construction for a year now, Kensho Nakamura sees rust all the time, clambering up ageing chunks of material. Normally discarded as waste, Nakamura began discerning beauty in the phenomenon, organically spiralling around and consuming some of the very hardest of manufacturing stuffs into unique new forms. ‘Electric Rust’ continues the conceptual electronic composition mode of Nakamura’s previous works with a series of fractured musical dioramas. These scurrying notes, sparse hums, and quivering bleeps explore the topics of rust and the accumulation of time. The music ticks like a clock, drips like a tap, and manifests unknowable inorganic shapes. Recognisable musical snippets of bells, pianos, or murmured voices are buried inside counterintuitive synthetic rhythms and tension. On ‘wet air’ piano notes tinkle and pipes gargle, digital detritus tap dances and arpeggios stumble. On ‘unique faces’, idle marimbas and malfunctioning animalistic squeaks flounder. This is music from the promethean space between being forgotten and being conceived. ‘Electric Rust’ is a topography of a world of rust, where corroding structures evolve into new — and beautiful — patterns of life. --- Composed, recorded and mixed by Kensho Nakamura in 2022Artwork and layout by Madzia ZalewaMastered by Adam Badí DonovalWords by Tristan BathPhotography by Zoltan Czakó

A house is something that is so deeply temporary, yet it can hold so much energy. How do we carry or leave behind those energies while transitioning into new spaces? How does each space we occupy for some time shape us and how do we tear ourselves away from it and its influence once it’s time to go? These are some of the core questions behind CC Sorensen’s new album for mappa, ‘Phantom Rooms’ – it’s a record about movement, change, transformation, family, juxtapositions… but most of all, home. CC Sorensen was reflecting a lot on their childhood home in rural Kansas, USA while working on this music. The album could be characterised by a familial, chamber feel and both of CC Sorensen’s brothers, Ryan and Nyal Ruehlen, make an appearance on ‘Phantom Rooms’, among other instrumentalists. Using a wide palette of sounds – CC Sorensen alone in charge of keyboards, software instruments, voice, electronics, percussion, trumpet, guitar and field recordings, in addition to guests on pedal steel, voice, chimes, saxophone and drumset – the American musician crafts music as mysterious as it is inviting. The idea behind it would be almost surrealist – ghostly rooms in houses where we live – if we all didn’t know exactly what CC Sorensen means. Home isn’t something concrete, but it’s also not just an abstract concept. It’s a space beyond space; home in itself is a phantom room we enter. And what enables us to enter is the object of exploration here. CC Sorensen’s approach is playful – tracks like “Beat Bot” and “Plastic Portals” are almost fun – but also contemplative. They make thoughtful, meandering chamber music intertwined with field recordings and electronics. Reeds, strings and percussion often set the atmosphere – sometimes airy, gentle, at other points more insistent – as the music grapples with departure, instability, deep reflection and imagined future spaces. Especially in the closing “Bexar” there’s a tangible yearning for a stable home, a longing to rekindle and keep ablaze this beautiful familial connection to a physical place. It’s both music that invites to reflect and music that in itself reflects; desires, hopes and dreams. --- CC Sorensen - compositions, keyboards, virtual software instruments, voice, electronics, percussion, trumpet, guitar, field recordings Featured Artists:Damon Dennis - pedal steel (5)Alan Mudd - words & voice (4)Nyal Ruehlen - voice, chimes (3)Ryan Wade Ruehlen - saxophone (4,5,7)Scott Dean Taylor - drumset (5,7) --- Artwork and layout by Seth GrahamMastered by Andrew WeathersWords by Adam Badí DonovalPhotography by Zoltan Czakó

"wavesI’m not sure if the ocean is our sequestered delirium; feverishly complex, almighty and delicate, irreconcilably teeming with life that we physically cannot co-exist with, or colonise. Effortlessly overpowering to our multicellular selves, yet an accommodating host for even the single-celled amongst us. Ancestral, integral but largely peripheral, a container for consumerist miscellanea and other sinister debris and, most urgently, it is something that needs to be dealt with… later. However, in Alexandra Spence’s listenings, it’s encouraged that you shed your perceived physical dimensions and terrestrial limitations. Let yourself be carried into the slipstream of these vast, poetic ecosystems and enjoy a newfound existence as a fleck or a mote trailing behind a monumental tail. A devotional offering, a careful investigation of form, periphery and weightlessness, of connection and communication. Spence shares a reimagining of ocean strata that buoys and shifts the listener through sonic intimacies and expanses, to dreamt seabeds with distant sunlight, until you eventually find yourself adrift on some opalescent vessel (dimensions unknown, a tiny shell?), refreshed, journeyed and gently forewarned that our oceans are not infinite. dream A Northern Pacific Seastar trespasses blurred borders in semi-deep waters, unaware that it has the reputation of a voracious predator. A territorial Blue Groper continues to gain popularity among bipeds in a local Sydney swimming spot. waterbugs, shells rock, queña A subspecies of the Eastern Blue Groper, the Pacific Red Groper (Achoerodus Rosa), was seen to have made a series of significant biological advancements in response to the proliferation of offshore wind farms, and other environmental factors. Due to the significant noise pollution emitted from these farms, breeding cycles were heavily impacted over generations and the Eastern Blue Groper suffered critically reduced numbers, nearing extinction towards the end of the century. tape recording submerged in seawater Its successors became capable of both sound absorption and diffusion due to a thickening of the inner layer dermis, unique patterns in scale growth, and a protracted caudal (tail) fin. It’s understood that the ecological impacts during the Global Temperature Events era also resulted in another reactionary response, and subsequent speciation*. Until this era, no example of large metamorphic water bodies had been positively identified, and it is believed that the Pacific Red Groper strategically adopted its flushed red appearance in order to mimic the extreme colour deviation of Australian coastal waters.*The formation of new and distinct species. a veil, the sea The Pacific Ocean as a home - not only to marine creatures and sea currents - but to the obscure movements of global trade, offshore data barges, and sunken satellites deactivated and dumped from space. Vast bodies may seem infinite, but nothing is - the depths hold mysterious, beautiful, and troubling things.Sunken satellites, deactivated and dumped from space.Bottlenose dolphins, ancient artefacts, Lego pieces, approximately 36 species of shark, underwater mines…a non-definitive list of things found in the Pacific Ocean ceramic pipes in water, bowed cups pontoon Shore, kit,skipper, school,dock, deck,buoy, freight; Dutch maritime words from 16th C trade routes.Obscure movements of global trade.Offshore data barges.Gasbubbles in seawater scatter sound.The sound emitted by bubbles by the breaking waves of the ocean helps track atmospheric carbon transfer between the ocean and the air. Bubbles can also be used to predict sounds of liquid methane lakes on Saturn’s moon,Titan.Unequal forms; breath with wave, fish with fishing lineblown bottles, submerged tape recording of waves, handssubmerged hydrophone tape loop recordings…and, do jellyfish breathe?" - Brigette Hart ---  

Johannes Schebler's musical output is all about establishing a dreamlike territory where sonic settlements can spread at ease. While Grykë Pyje (Johannes Schebler's duo with Jani Hirvonen) presents musical landscapes as open and clear spaces, Baldruin's miniature pieces tend to narrow them down, zooming into domestic sceneries that shift like malleable rooms inside a magic building. These are the quarters where the inhabitants of Schebler's musical world are configured. Rendered in a tender manner, the tunes in Kleine Freuden (in English: small joys) unfold like a collection of fairy tales and bedtime stories. Fables and lullabies performed in whispering tones seem to carry us through a child's dream where images blend into each other. Compact, yet gauzy and free flowing melodies gather up revealing an ensemble of households where fanciful entities play care freely, leading us along their musical maze. The music is placid, childlike and playful. It wanders around in unwavering estrangement, organizing an unprecedented and intimate space as seen from a bird's eye view. In the landscape of a bedroom where the night lamp is the sun, we take part in a lively journey, as wonder is warrant and keeper of a warm and pristine environment. Perspective shifts as we rise from bed sheet folds that turn into fragile mountain ranges. We crawl behind furniture and take shelter in secret hideouts while dust falls upon us like a blizzard. Transfiguring notions of scale and time, we are left wondering how long have we been here, wondering if music is the only true measurement of time.  --- Recorded in Wiesbaden, Germany in 2019 and 2020 by Johannes ScheblerArtwork and layout by Johannes ScheblerMastered by Pentti DassumWords by José Badía BernerPhotography by Zoltan Czakó

Very special release from filmmaker Lucia Nimcová and sound artist Sholto Dobie. Highly reccomended.  --- "I first discovered khroniky – Ukranian folk songs – in the Highlands of Scotland. I was watching a screening of Bajka, a mesmerising documentary made by the filmmaker Lucia Nimcová and sound artist Sholto Dobie. I knew nothing about these ballads beforehand, but I was fascinated by these odd, beautiful songs, especially the easy way in which they mixed misery and levity, where gentle melodies blend with tales of dark violence. The folk songs describe hardship, murder, torture, death in gulags, heavy drinking, outsmarting men, love affairs. But they’re often very funny too – many of the songs make fun of marriage, and there’s an amazing subcategory of khroniky songs called potka (vagina) songs.The khroniky have never been properly documented because they were considered too crude, or contained lyrics that were problematic, politically. When Ukrainian folk songs have been archived in the past, it’s normally a sanitised, more polite version of the ones that Lucia remembers from her childhood. Lucia grew up on the other side of the Ukrainian border in Slovakia. She is part of the Rusyn (Ruthenian) minority ethnic group found in the borderlands of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. Rusyn is a centuries-old Slavic language, looked down upon as a poor, uneducated dialect by the neighbouring Ukraine and Slovakia. It was forbidden to talk about Rusyn culture at Nimcova’s primary school, but the khroniky stayed in her memories.“I remember weddings when I was young,” says Lucia, who now lives in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. “At the end of the night, when everyone was drunk and the young couple would go around their guests, people would sing in Rusyn. There was singing and dancing, and songs about being in prison or falling in love. I picked up the lyrics and sometimes my mum would make my sister and I sing them for people we met on the train. I was about five or six but the lyrics still come back when I sing to my kids.”Determined that these rich, nuanced, unique songs shouldn’t be forgotten, she decided to record them. Over two years, Lucia, joined by experimental musician Sholto Dobie, visited Rusyn villages high in the Carpathian mountains to rediscover the songs and make the documentary. It was at the beginning of war breaking out in Ukraine in 2014.“The Rusyn community is a very closed one,” explains Lucia. “Sometimes we’d have to wait several days to hear someone sing; we had to earn their trust before they shared something very personal to them. We’d stay up ‘til 5am at a wedding, then go straight to a morning baptism, or collect haystacks with the villagers, hoping they’d sing while they were working.”DILO is named after an important independent Ukrainian daily newspaper that was shut down when the Red Army entered Lviv in 1939. The four long tracks on DILO blur field recordings with song; an unpolished, privileged glimpse into a private world. We hear dogs barking and insects buzzing in the summer heat, then a blast of hurdy gurdy or violin will drift in, or a plaintive song soars softly over the rural background noise, with casually harrowing lyrics about a cuckoo, “lifeless in a world of misery”, as translated in the album’s booklet.For both Lucia and Sholto, it was important not to tamper too much with what they heard. “When you think about ethnography,” Lucia explains, “you have to have a lot of time, love and respect to document it with sensitivity.”“The songs all have their own atmosphere and intimacy from the spaces they were recorded in and it was important to maintain these particularities and move with them,” adds Sholto, who now lives in Vilnius, Lithuania. “They guide and sometimes interrupt a journey between interiors – domestic spaces; in kitchens, by the fire – and exteriors; marketplaces, cow sheds. We used contact microphones to record metal bridges and fences, and we spent one afternoon recording a wool processing machine, the details of the rattling and tuning wheels are the ground layer for the third track.”Lucia took rough notes and diary entries during the recording process, which are now shared in the booklet alongside a selection of lyrics, loosely translated, but revealing the depth and astonishing beauty that sometimes lies in the language of these folk songs.The feel of the album is intimate, flipping between laughter, where a woman sings about selling her pussy to buy a cow in one track, then shifts to a raw, painful truth; an adult son asks his mother why his dad won’t be back for dinner, as he’s gone to war.Since Lucia and Sholto began working together in 2014, they have shared the audio recordings on radio and film and shown photos in gallery spaces, making sure these special, smutty, poignant songs don’t get lost. This new record and booklet joins that same continuum, another glorious fruit from the same rare tree. " ---- Concept, photography, notes, and research by Lucia Nimcováwww.luco.skRecorded and mixed by Sholto Dobiesoundcloud.com/sholtodobieDesign by Ondrej Jóbwww.setuptype.comMastered by Tomáš Vtípil / dinn (dinn is not noise)www.vtipil.czWords by Claire Sawersclairesawers.comPhotography by Lukáš Rohárikbit.ly/2QT4r49Released by mappa as MAP025 in 2021This project has been supported using public funds provided by Slovak Arts Council.    

"The joyful, tender, almost too tender, but at times extremely intense album entitled Televize was made by the inflamed, wholly focused, at times completely scattered, dissipated and organically chaotic ensemble called the Roman Radkovič Collective. It throws at the listener a threshold music and a poetic experience of the world.If one record can mediate otherness, a music which can never be imagined without first-hand experience, it is the LP with the magical title Televize. It sounds like a gargantuan musical belly which can swallow anything, churn it, mix it and eject it back into the world in unexpected constructs. These are full of broken rhythms, dense layers of sound, disfigured melodies, chants, recitations, hectic yelps and urgent tidings, while showing occasional glimpses of precious lines of melody. Although it may seem that the main logic behind all the output of the Roman Radkovič Collective can be found in extensivity, a total surf on noise, free and grotesque pop-cultural soundscapes (we hear bits of classy Czech evergreens like Czech anthem, Zaľúbil sa chlapec, Yellow Submarine, Když jsem šel z Hradišťa, but also various confessions, laments, art brut poems, expressions of absolute spontaneity, imagination and boundlessness), after repeated listening the intensity of the protagonists shines through. Intensity in the sense of a measured deepening of the internal need to express oneself, to circle around the obsessively loved topics, texts, their heroes and loves.But screw all the trajectories of relations and discursive constructs, there are no similar records in the world, maybe with the exception of Schlingensief’s project Freak Stars 3000 with its similarly excited and possessed big band. The motto is: prophecy, joy, noise, only good things to the good, everything to everything and, most importantly, density embodied. Density which is intoxicating like Koulelo se koulelo červené jablíčko. There must be much of everything and it must go all the way and never fall short.This album is the funnel of the world. Televize will glut and mesmerize you. All power to imagination! Don’t search for idioms, wage death on virtuosity, let yourself be flooded by the breached dams of joy and consciousness." --- Roman Radkovič / guitar, voiceJosef Novák / keyboardJiří Šíla / accordionZdeněk Řihošek / harmonica, double bassZdeněk Caha / drums, voiceMiloš Šandera / percussions ---Construced by Roman Radkovič Collective (Roman Radkovič, Josef Novák, Jiří Šíla, Zdeněk Řihošek, Zdeněk Caha, Miloš Šandera), Tomáš Vtípil, Ladislav "Mirvis" Mirvald, Filip Johánek, Ladislav Soukup, Kristína Soukupová, Ján SolčániMixed, recorded and mastered by Tomáš Vtípil / dinn (dinn is not noise)vtipil.czDesign by Deep Throat Studiowww.deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepthroat.itVideo by Katarína Jonisováyoutube.com/watch?v=x89xVO6k3j4&tPhotography by Leontína Berkováleontinaberkova.comReleased by mappa as MAP017 in 2020

“This recording is based on a particular geographic area of Sydney: the industrial zone around Sydenham Train station. As with many inner city industrial areas in large cities all over the western world, this place is ripe for redevelopment. However, in this case, due to the zone being directly underneath the flight path to Sydney airport, as well as being flood prone due to environmental factors, unscrupulous property developers are not able to completely gut the place and erect hideous apartments. What is interesting to me, and what this recording aims to capture, is that these factors – the aeroplanes and the puddles – act as a form of resistance to the development.” (MP Hopkins) MP Hopkins is a hidden treasure from Australia, a sound artist known for his varied music projects and strange mix of lo-fi urban field recordings and intimate bedroom experiments. Sonic details of empty streets from close neighbourhood, subtle intervention and fragments of lonely voice comments are reminding distinctive forms of sound journalism or a diary for night adventurers. Aeroplanes & Puddles follows the previous Traipse - Marrickville (2015) album which is Hopkins's starting point for his walks along the Sydney suburb. Mappa presents the sonic evidence of this opposition; the non-human voices of resistance that the aeroplanes and water speak with in this acoustic environment. The work features field recordings of the area garnished with a text narrated by Hopkins which combines fragments of the 2017 Australian Federal Budget speech and parts of ‘The Powerhouse’ – a radio play by Richard Packer (Gargoyle Poets series, 1972).”Feel free floating in the holy sound voyeurism and thorough collection of evidence from the other world at the same time."   ---   Recorded, mixed and mastered by MP Hopkins. Artwork and design by Jakub Juhás, Richard Čecho. Photos by Nina Pacherová. Released by mappa as MAP09 in 2018

"Mappa editions presents special project of Bruno Duplant and Pedro Chambel duo which connects field recordings (2 CD) and Duplant's photographic project emerging from the same concept. “All my new pieces with field recordings are "autofictions/self-fictions". Field recordings, like always with me came from lot of places. I don't care about where were recorded the sound, but much more how to create new entities, territories (the self-fictions/autofictions), which are both fictive, intimate and personal. I like the idea that listeners will enter in that fictive places like if they were real, like they did with a great novel.” Bruno Duplant is sound enthusiast, composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist living in the north of France. In his work he is creating new fictional universes and uncharted territories using many field recordings collected in different parts of world. Architecture and culture of these sonic environments is created in two ways. First one is listening and collecting of surrounding sounds, not especially “natural” ones, but more “cultural” ones. Second one is shaping the sound and the composition itself. “Recording and editing are two different states, one more passive for me (the recording) and the other more active (the work on the sounds, the composition itself). The collection of sounds can be seen as fishing, an artisanal harvest in which one can have good surprises and less good ones. The whole approach is about accepting to make do with this. With this method of work I have to accept the hollow periods, failures and even the doubt.” In this case the role of active listening is shifted from recording in certain time and space towards studio work and to finding new sound elements, relations and spaces. “I see and name my compositional process (whether for instruments or for field recordings) as an "attempt at organizing chance". The composition allows me to assemble more or less logically and incongruously the different sounds collected. I never try to reproduce the sounds that surround me in a logical and precise way. I try to create something new, a new fictional entity that I have named “autofiction”, "self-fiction".” The result is discreet witness of everyday life, where the listening ear is trying to decode and create an imaginative model of well-known place. It is a timeless place, which is possible to visit again and again and explore its hidden corners and details. The orientation in space is not easy since whole surroundings is misted by electronic sounds of Portuguese musician Pedro Chambel. “The use of discreet electronic sounds came from the idea about to ask oneself the question: where does those sounds came from? Are they from the field recordings? Some sounds came from there, some other not, but which ones? I also like the idea of using those sounds as some disruptive elements, like in most of stories, novels or movies.” Duplant is autodidact who following and renewing concepts of John Cage, Luc Ferrari, Rolf Julius or Toshiya Tsunoda. In his work we can also find parallels to literary techniques and space or to forms of reading. “First of all, I am teacher, a librarian teacher. I only make music when I have time, in the evening, on the week-end, in my holidays. I spend most of my time surrounded in books. I have this opportunity. Some authors, some texts, some works have become great sources of inspiration for me. This is the case for all the poetry of Francis Ponge, the texts of Georges Perec, the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard. So, my life, my practices are not compartmentalized. Besides collaborative sound projects duo Duplant/Chambel is also known for their curatorial work in delicious label Rhizome.s. In past they collaborated with Ilia Belorukov, Lance Austin Olsen, Barry Chabala, Nate Wooley, Ryoko Akama, Manfred Werder. Quotes are taken from interview between Bruno Duplant and Tobias Fischer for 15 Questions. www.15questions.net/interview/fifteen-questions-interview-bruno-duplant/page-1/     --- Bruno Duplant / composition, field recordings & discreet electronics Pedro Chambel / discreet electronics    --- Dedicated to Georges Perec. Assembled in Waziers during 2016/2017. Mixed & mastered by Bruno Duplant. Photos from self-fictions/autofictions series by Bruno Duplant. Design by Jakub Juhás. Thanks to Alžbeta Halušková.

"In the two compositions for vibraphone she wrote for mappa editions, Sarah Hennies analyses the psychoacoustic dimensions of space. Sisters is a sonic exploration which opens the space between the rough walls of the church, an infinite pulse penetrating into every crinkle, hole and fold. In the sense of her quote "When you pulse one note on a vibraphone for 20 minutes, why do you need to do anything else?", we witness the fullness of one single tone, disappearing resonances and gentle changes, which reveal various performative, spatial, psychic and listening situations. Sisters was a challenge for Lenka Novosedlíková, who is slovak composer, performer and organizer. Novosedlíková is well known distinctive figure of the youngest composers generation in Slovakia. She moves across contemporary composition and interpretation (percussion instruments), improv or electronic music projects. She is member of Cluster Ensemble which is renowned Slovak ensemble with many international achievements.    We discovered the church in Kyjatice three years ago during our irregular wanderings across southern Slovakia. We were completely enchanted by this well hidden medieval building standing over the village, surrounded by sunny fields and dense forests. We asked ourselves how we could bring life again to the church, how we could fill it with sound which would not interrupt the contemplative character of that specific environment. The result should have been the sound intervention which would awaken and reveal every corner inside of the church. Just for a moment, we wanted to caress all the monumental fresco paintings, creaking wooden benches, pipes of howling organ, hand painted ceiling and carved saints by sound which could release them from the long guarded and abandoned silence.  The church in Kyjatice is a sacred place of mappa editions. It blesses all our activities. It's a place of inevitable distance from our everyday life. Here we find distance from our everyday lives. By buying a recording you contribute to better accessibility and maintenance of this significant Roman-gothic monument with valuable fresco decorations.    --- composed by Sarah Hennies performed by Lenka Novosedlíková    ---Recorded by Jonáš Gruska. Mixed and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Design by Jakub Juhás and Zoltán Czakó. Cover photography by Zoltán Czakó. Liner notes by Jennie Gottschalk. Special thanks to Janka Miháliková, Nina Pacherová and Lukáš Ďurian. Released by mappa as MAP011 in 2018 Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council

"IQ+1’s third album, titled Conversaphone Plus, as the result of several séances recorded at the end of 2017. Every submersion in its depths is an unrepeatable experience. The organic sonic material is constantly contracting and expanding, adapting itself to the listener’s context, escaping beyond the horizon, creating mimicries, and enticing us to bubbling, popping, and jingling polyrhythms to then release its protective toxins. All six pieces boil on the narrow edge of chaotic decomposition and celestial order in which every sonic detail has its precisely determined position. Field recordings permeate the instruments on an equal footing, making it difficult to identify the sound, instrument, or player, so that each time the record is turned over, a new adventure begins. Federsel (B4, Handa Gote, Gurun Gurun) took care of the connective tissue between the pieces and the balanced post-production architecture. Avoiding irritating instrumental exhibitionism, and egocentric deafness, Conversaphone Plus is nothing less than an uncompromising electro-acoustic testimony to the vitality of the Czech improvising scene. And it is nothing more than an attempt to connect sonic geology with astral listening. Open the window a little – a messenger from the spacecraft known as IQ+1 is descending through the opening."   ---  George Bagdasarov / vintage turntable, FX, baritone sax Veronika Hladká / violin  Jana Kneschke / violin  Jaroslav Tarnovski / synths, electronics, percussion, field recordingsPetr Vrba / clarinet, trumpet, electronics  Michal Zbořil / analog synths, electronics, Indian harmonium Kateřina Bilejová / body weather    --- Recorded by Federsel @ Divadlo Ponec, Prague (1-5) Školská 28, Prague (6) Mixed & mastered by Federsel @ CSN, Prague Artwork by Christian Orlock & design by Kella Translated by Ian Mikyska Thanks to Lukáš Jiřička, Divadlo Ponec, Jakub Juhás, Josef Jindrák Special thanks to Federsel 

“Orienting Response was written specifically for Cristian Alvear at his request. In writing the piece I wanted to see if I could create the same kind of focus and intensity I have created with percussion instruments using an instrument (the nylon stringed guitar) that is naturally not well-equipped to produce the type of timbres or high dynamic levels that I have worked with up to this point.” ... The score Orienting Response (2015-16), written by Sarah Hennies specifically for Chilean guitarist Cristian Alvear, is composed of six parts with short instructions describing some unusual techniques, such as: Play as accurately and consistently as possible but with the assumption that “mistakes” are inevitable. Allow “mistakes” to occur, do not attempt to correct them. All sounds should ring freely (as long as is possible) unless otherwise indicated. All timings and tempi are approximate and flexible. 

"Jani Hirvonen (Uton) and Johannes Schebler (Baldruin) reconstruct the mesmerizing world of the Grykë Pyje swamp tribe. Vinyl in your hands is a ceremonial sonification of the sacred herbarium, painted myths of the animal kingdom and voices behind the thicket. A return to the time when the forests, tree crowns, soil, thickets and heaven were full of continuous murmur. Or, on the contrary, a vision of a future in which the chaos of natural noises will reign. Slimy earthworms and phosphorescent bugs crawl out of the holes and gaze toward the sky. Brightly colored birds pick juicy fruits and there is no silence, because it is absorbed by the buzz of a virgin ecosystem. In the caves, marshes and hollows of trees, the most important questions are decided. A polyrhythmic rain falls from the sky and washes the prehistoric mud from mammalian hair. Somewhere to see human footprints, but those who have left them are long hidden under giant leaves. The light, reflected from the vibrant structure of life itself, dances for all, in full color. The feast of photosynthesis. Nothing to see from the top. Plants, moss and mushrooms grow at a tremendous rate. They climb each other to break through the lush green blanket. And above all, the orange disc shines pleasantly." --- All tracks recorded in Turku (Finland) and Wiesbaden (Germany) by Jani Hirvonen and Johannes Schebler in 2018 & 2019 Cover Art: "Encounter", 2019 by Mevlana Lipp & Gallery KUK Colognemevlana-lipp.com Mastered by Pentti Dassum Thanks to Jakub Juhás

The Dalmarnock Tapes is a collection of previously unreleased tracks by Cucina Povera. They were recorded in 2017 during snowstorm flurries in Dalmarnock, in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland. Cucina Povera is the alias of the Glasgow-based sound artist Maria Rossi, who is originally from Finnish Karelia, the European region that borders Finland and Russia. Cucina povera refers to a style of southern Italian traditional cooking evolved out of precarity and making do. Rossi’s music shares that same ethos of simplicity. Her experimentations with voice and field recordings create gossamer loops – heavenly repetitions and soporific undulations; an utterly sublime and ethereal language that is all her own. This new series features stunning, celestial vocalisations from Rossi over eight tracks. The recordings were made in the dark, winter months when she was briefly renting a very cheap, rundown studio space in a damp, old warehouse in Dalmarnock. She made it there every day despite bad heating in the building. The snow piled high that year. It was also a period in Rossi’s life when she was moving house every couple of months. The tracks reflect that mildly disturbed and displaced feeling, with a sense of aloneness at their core. Layering her own harmonies to create a mystical solo choir, Rossi builds an echoey wash of soft sound, using her dreamlike voice as the main instrument and Finnish as the main language. They are spontaneous vocalisations, recorded on the cuff, riffing on a very simple idea or pair of words, such as ‘I hear the floor creaking next door’ or ‘Alone at night’. Her stripped back, ultra soothing meditations take on an almost spiritual quality, ebbing and flowing in waves of warmth and purity. The lapping, lilting motion of her cycles of song has a gentle, comforting quality despite the sense of isolation that inspired them. Hypnotic shimmers of sound wrap around rhythmic samples of clanking metal in ‘Kahleet’ (‘Shackles’’) creating a ritualistic or ceremonial feel. Elsewhere in ‘Yksin yöllä’ (‘Alone at Night’), her gentle refrains become an otherworldly lullaby. Much like simple Italian cooking, the minimalist approach generates powerful results, distilled with depth and intensity. --- Eight previously unreleased tracks recorded among 2017 snowstorm flurries in Dalmarnock, Scotland.Music, recorded and mixed by Cucina Poveracucinapovera.bandcamp.comCover by Krzysztof Marczakinstagram.com/ycszwText design by Awe Ixquantumnatives.comMastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Claire Sawersclairesawers.comCassette photography by Zoltan Czakó

Over the last decade, Toronto-based composer Nick Storring has become well known for his unique, painstaking compositional style of layering performances on a plethora of objects and musical/electro-mechanical instruments to deeply moving effect. ‘Newfoundout’, his seventh album, follows last year’s lush and nocturnal ‘My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell’ (Orange Milk Records) with more rhythmical material and an almost theatrical, phantasmal sensibility. The music here doesn’t just evoke imagined landscapes or unique sonic worlds, but it seems to be toying with the idea of a protagonist or a narrative. The pieces move with intent, unravelling in their course moving tales, haunting ancient stories and whispered rumours. There is an underlying aura of mystery and ghostliness which is also reflected in the track titles: all are named after ghost towns around Ontario, Canada. ‘Newfoundout’ is a truly fascinating new entry in Storring’s discography; one which not only highlights his strengths and refines his approach, but also showcases the breadth of his vision. It’s an album where hyperrealism meets psychedelia, where strange dreams meet cinematic grandeur. - Adam Badi Donoval --- All selections are named after ghost towns around Ontario, Canada.Dome is dedicated to the memory of Noah CreshevskyComposed, performed, recorded, produced, and mastered by Nick Storring using acoustic and electromechanical instruments/ treatments, and only the minimum of effects processing.nickstorring.caPhotography by Nick StorringArtwork and layout by Richard Čechoinstagram.com/riko_ceko/Words by Eric Chenaux and Adam Badí Donovalericchenaux.comabdonoval.comSpecial thanks to: Nathalia Sanches, Colin Fisher, Katrina Orlowski, Yvonne Ng, Peter Hatch, Noah Creshevsky, Seth Graham, Keith Rankin, Jakub Juhás / mappa, and John Farah (for the continued use of his Rhodes and Pianet).

"Stumbling into the Age of Loneliness I carry cloudy glass bottles to the edge of the Pacific. After 100 years in dirt beneath San Francisco they breathe fresh ocean air, fill with the energy of breaking waves. Microphones inside, ear to conch, I hear shadows: scurrying, wing flaps, chirps and chatters, whimpers and bellows. So many creatures, once emerged from the sea, now gone. How many vessels would the disappeared fill? What is the weight of a lost species? I make an offering of listening to help me carry all these ghosts we made." ⟶ Cheryl Leonard Life through the computer. We all have had to grapple with it over the past year, as we attempt to wring as much meaning, intimacy, experience and variety as we can from our shiny boxes of electronics. Concerts, plays, ballet, meetings, dates, dinners, coffees and conferences all became just a click away. Some of us cocooned ourselves in soundscapes lost, from old streams from noisy bars, to recordings of natural locations we could no longer get to. It was by turns revelatory, empty, full, sad and comforting. In Schism’s title track Cheryl E. Leonard treats us to her own imaginings of the world within her laptop; a pulsating, flickering, stuttering morass of coil pick up recordings, set amid the co-mingling of crickets, squirrels, birds, bats, and sounds played on natural-object instruments. She asks: “What does it mean when our mediating technologies have both the power to connect us to and distance us from the ecosystems we are part of?” Certainly this is a question which predates the pandemic, but it is one which we grapple with now with a set of new knowledges which speak to both the possibilities, and the shortcomings of a life lived digitally.In addition to her laptop recordings Leonard also turns to mics placed inside bottles to render the second piece on this release, Eremozoic. In the context this simple gesture takes on new resonances; a separation, enclosure, limitation which captures and reverberates particular tones, while missing others entirely. When I think of the computer in this era, I think of it like this, it exists as both echo chamber and conversation; alienation and hope. I think many of us have felt the last year, a little like life was lived inside a bottle. With this release Leonard reminds us of what we lost during the pandemic, but more profoundly what we might lose more permanently as we continue into the climate crisis. - Kate Carr --- Composed, performed, and recorded by Cheryl E. Leonard Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio at Gench Studios   Liner Notes by Cheryl E. Leonard Words by Kate Carr  Artwork and design by Juliána Chomová  Stone composition and photography by Ester Sabik  Risograph print by Kudla Press  Photography by Zoltán Czakó Dedicated to Patty Chen-Wei Liu Released by mappa as MAP026 in 2021

‘Sotto’ is Andrew Oda’s attempt at world building in sound. Meshing method, mind, metaphysical and mundane into massive murals, its triptych of vivid compositions seem to wield electronic sound like a magic paintbrush. Inspired by the paintings of Otto Marseus van Schrieck, Ljubomir Popović, and Nicole Duennebier, ‘Sotto’’s three parts inhabit environments bursting with explosive internal ecologies of synthesized pulsations, yawning drones, tinkling imaginary chimes, and abstract noisy rumblings that flow, ebb and breathe with the infinite complexity cognition meshing with the chaotic order of natural greenery. Side A’s two pieces – ’Sotto’ and ‘Spirit’ – are both only made up of synthetic sound, created via computer and other synthesizing methods. The spark came from an attempt to show the process of creation, life and the final union through sonic means, spiralling into a dense lattice of lifeforms, spirits, and objects realised in sound. “The original goal of the project was to convey the idea of this sound visualization for creatures and textures that are fluid, tangled and morphing into and around each other,” explains Oda. While imagination and spirit are the subjects of the first two pieces, the final piece of the triptych, ‘Enfold’, emerges into a luscious and staggeringly beautiful material world. Oda turns here to acoustic recordings made in the field, as well as pianos, bells, and flute (performed by Susannah Oda), layering the results into the trembling organic soundscape suggested by Jonáš Gruska’s cover photography. The entirety of ‘Sotto’ is a living and vivid sound world of Oda’s creation – the first in a pegged trilogy of triptychs – brimming with beauty in which to wander and bask.  --- Side A contains only sound synthesisSide B contains field recordings, piano, bells, as well as flute recordings from Susannah OdaSOTTO was made in Indiana, California and Virginia from 2018-2020Cover and photos by Jonáš Gruskainstagram.com/jonas.gruska/Mastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Tristan Bathtristanbath.comPhotography by Leontína Berkováleontinaberkova.com

As a project, Line Gate has been undergoing a slow, steady transformation, much like the longform drone works that have come to characterise it. What began as a band in 2010 and most recently surfaced as a solitary hurdy-gurdy resonance on 'Den' in 2017 has now flourished into ‘Apex’, Michal Vaľko’s latest album. 'Apex', simultaneously an album about perceiving the beauty around us, about sacredness, and a meditation on a state of timelessness and seeming non-action, is divided into two 30-minute pieces.The gently modulating drone of the hurdy-gurdy remains present during the first piece, along with its very characteristic (almost psychedelic) resonances and overtones. However, the listener's ear is almost immediately drawn to another sound source - the human voice. 'Apex I' presents an interplay between these two instruments, which, strangely enough, are positioned in a similar space on the frequency spectrum. The result is a mind-bending interplay between the hurdy-gurdy and the voice; one weaving around the other in seemingly indeterminable patterns.'Apex II' takes Vaľko’s explorations of the human voice even further: the hurdy-gurdy is withdrawn. Layers of voice, some processed, some raw, are the only building block here. A resonant layer of sampled voice, not dissimilar from the hurdy-gurdy, acts as an unstable, shifting sonic bed around which a gradually growing choir of voices orbits endlessly. Sibilants, consonants and vowels recited in mantra-like cycles form a non-linguistic vocal tapestry, one without explicit meaning, but imbued with huge emotional gravity and a unique enchanting quality.