Bringing a mainstream appeal to obtuse variations of house, techno and disco music, John Talabolt’s Hivern Discs has no fear when it comes to leftfield, ambient and experimental either. Home to an extra special array of productions by the likes Red Axes, Marie Davidson, and Roman Flugel, Hivern Discs has in the process helped spur along the projects of INIT, Marvin & Guy and Dorisburg, alongside others like Lawrence Le Doux and Andrea Mancini’s Cleveland project. With concepts like ARIA and other Talabot collaborations coming through in Talaboman (with Young Marco) and Lost Scripts (with Pional), Hivern Discs continually adds to a top shelf of underground electronic music that shimmers just above the surface.
Review: Eva Geist is the alias of Berlin-based Italian Andrea Noce, a singer and synthesist who has released on French imprint Madam Macambo, Mehmet Aslan's Fleeting Wax and Gainesville, FL. cassette imprint Elestial Sound. This new one comes courtesy of John Talabot's Hivern Discs titled Urban Monogamy. Of the name, Geist says "a sort of Pandora's box opened up to offer me, and pretty much everyone around me, a variety of relationship forms..iIt was very confused. I think this represents that confused time." Features the transcendent kosmische tones of opening opus "Green Healing Highness" and the arcane yet seductive new beat groove of the title track. This is followed by the Velvet Season The Hearts Of Gold Remix which has already been played by the emperor of cosmic sleaze himself: DJ Harvey.
Review: Marvin Dan III and Lee "The Black Belt" Guy debut on the excellent Hivern Discs with the Egoista release and bring with them a wealth of knowledge and understanding of what makes a dancefloor tick. Most recently spotted on US label Young Adults, Marvin & Guy are known best for the series of cosmic disco mind benders issued for Let's Get Lost, On The Prowl, and their own eponymous label. That sense of cosmic sprawl is very much in evidence on this three-track release, with the seven minute title cut setting the tone, sounding akin to one of Joakim's more epic productions. The star gazing "Cancion (Para Ti)" has Lena Willikens set-opener written all over it whilst "The Man Who Lost The Hat" adopts a somewhat darker tone, despite the silly title. More great music from the Hivern crew.
Review: It's been a long time between drinks for Berlin-based Herzel, whose last releases surfaced way back in 2012. Here he resurfaces on John Talabot's Hivern Discs imprint. Herzel's three original tracks - "Daydreamer", "Closure" and "Shades" - are all superb, with fuzzy melodies, Balearic chords and shuffling beats wrapped in the kind of hissing, atmospheric production that will have the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention. Of the three, it's the dubby, tumbling, sun-kissed deep house of "Daydreamer" that most impresses. Lobster Theremin regular Palms Trax remixes that cut, delivering two tasty versions; the chugging "Backroom Office Tool" and the impressively breezy, melodious "Nothing But A Dreamer Mix".
Review: Reintroducing the sounds of Torsten Linds? Andersen to the world again is Hivern Discs with a second release by Rounds. It follows the artist's Glass / Foot single from 2014, with "Days" adding another deep and experimental touch to the glacial output of Round's discography. With yacht-rock like vocals blending with a Trancey '80s sound, "Days" goes deep, synthwise sub-licious in its fusion of genre and style. Hivern Discs boss looks to slow, dubby, tripped out and stripped back sentiments in his 'Skoooldub' next to some OG Detroit electro squelch from Aaron FIT Siegal (tip for the adventurous selector). Optimo's JT goes acid house to the point of didgeridoo in a remix indebted to a life of rave while the Ex-Terrestrial's mix hits the spot in a sweet, ethereal and trip hop version good enough for a release on Warp. Erryday.
Review: For Hivern Discs first release of 2021 the Spanish label welcomes the electrified and bassline driven sounds of Arnau Obiols, aka Velmondo and Barcelona duo Iro Aka. Both parties debuted their independent projects on Hivern last year, with the threesome combining here to drop something that merges traditional deep Italian techno and similar '90s flavours with touches of exotic folk elements and rhythmic percussion sequences. Graced by touches of acid and goa synth, Les Illes Del Cel pushes hard in tracks like "Left Channel" with a tougher and slower groove implemented in "Altar". Get your slo-mo touches of exotic balearic sounds through "Kyushu" next to some higher frequencies in "Substraction" - with "Wavefold" offering broken-beat drums and spacey atmospheres.
Review: Made in association for a release at this year's Venice Biennale Of Architecture, John Talabot and vocalist Maria Arnal have combined for a new album called ARIA. Presented as a multi-channel sound installation to be played over more than 50 speakers at the Catalonia In Venice: air/aria/aire exhibition, the album's concept draws upon data taken from air quality readings around Barcelona. Released here as a stereo vision of windswept vocals, blustering synths, experimental vocal processing - with percussive touches of filtered drums added to the mix, Hivern Discs release of the album couples it with bonus 'Ethereal' and 'Aerial' versions of its more folkloric number "ARIA III". With a continuous mix of the three originals available as extended listening, ARIA channels a fresh look a urbanism, health and environmental sciences while embracing an unique collaboration between Talabot and Arnal.
Review: Comprised of Roberto Lobo and Ernesto Avelino, Spanish duo Fasenuova has been releasing CD-R and cassettes of what the duo call "battered free-noise" under the name since 2006, including an album titled A La Quinta Hoguera. Longstanding fans of the duo, Hivern Discs have elected to release 'Cachito Turulo' from that album together with a surprising set of remixes. Keeping in the spirit of the original track's No Wave vocals and motorik rhythms, Marc Pinol takes the track into darkly acidic territory, with a chugging remix whose creeping 303 wraps itself around nightmarish vocals. Meanwhile, Drexciya's Heinrich Mueller places the original's vocals within a crisp electro landscape as stark as anything he's put his name to before, but it's Legowelt's remix that hits all the right buttons, placing mad bleeps and dystopian chords over a rolling bassline that acts as the perfect foil to the ridiculously delayed vocals.
Review: Hivern Discs delivers a debut from Anton Klint, a Swedish artist who claims to enjoy "making music at night". Whether the two original cuts here are typical of his production style remains to be seen, but title track "Lyckliga Manniskor" - a slipped, off-kilter house workout full of layered hand percussion, fuzzy synth lines, tropical melodies and Swedish spoken word vocals - is both bonkers and brilliant. "Djembe Unchained", a dub-flecked, decidedly out their chunk of analogue-rich electronic deep house hypnotism, is also rather special. Berceuse Heroique regular Black Merlin naturally does a bang up job remixing that track, too, offering up a mind-altering blend of melodic synthesizer arpeggio lines, foreboding chords and unfussy machine drums.
Review: Juan Miguel Bassols first pricked our consciousness way back in 2012, when he delivered a fine debut under the JMII moniker on 100% Silk. He's not released all that much since, making this first appearance on Hivern Discs his highest profile EP to date. There's naturally much to admire amongst the three original productions present, from the stripped-back but melodious acid house shuffle of "Thrills", to the wild lead lines and chugging bottom end of the analogue synth-heavy proto-house snap of "Tightbrass". Christian S provides two tasty reworks of that cut, including a dark and seductive "Angry Dub". A woozy, dreamier John Talabot re-edit of "Thrills" completes an excellent package.
Review: Roving Romanians Khidja take us on a trip of a lifetime with "Impossible Holiday"... We take off with the stately, cavernous and slightly fuzzy "Die Wilde Spirale" and land in our improbable destination to the spiked out synth washes and dubby bass palpitations of "Pinnacles". We enjoy all sorts of unperceivable activities to the bouncy, analogue bed and fluttering, head-soothing arpeggios of "Haetrin" then fly home to our comparably dismal existences on the droning, groaning and ever-morphing "Kraftfield". Happy travels.
Review: Berlin's Hugo 'Discos' Capablanca and Spanish homeboy Marc Pinol (of the group Umbral and in Quentin with label boss John Talabot) team up here for the third time on Barcelona based Hivern Discs. From the trippy, heads-down mentalism of "Deine Hand" featuring a rather haunting Germanic dialogue, the hazy and downbeat post-punk experimentation of "Sendero Luminoso" and the very retro, acid house era tribute that is "Masa Y Poder" - the dynamic duo prove thus far that it really is quality not quantity: and their limited output over the last four years is testament to it.
Review: Having first joined forces last year to lend a hand of Massimo Pagliara's collaborative With One Another full-length, Benedikt Frey and Nadia D'Olo present their debut full-length under the Init alias. It's a thoroughly atmospheric, clandestine affair, with the duo delivering a dark-wave opus that tips a hat to early Depeche Mode, minimal wave, Detroit techno and the ambient soundscapes of Brian Eno. D'Olo provides the vocals, though for much of the time they're utilized as textures, rather than the central focus of the duo's shuffling, slowly evolving synth-scapes. As an album, Two Pole Resonance is initially attractive - albeit in a stylized, late night kind of way - but really comes into its' own after repeat listens. It is, though, definitely worth the effort.
Review: Spanish techno legend Eduardo de la Calle on John Talabot's Hivern Discs? Yes, he sure is but it somehow finds a fitting home here for this release. A side tracks "Format Times" and "Hope" might be a bit slower and deeper than what you'd usually expect from the Analog Solutions main man, but still have all his trademark hypnotic and droning qualities. On the flip he gets stuck into what he does best; cleverly sampled and restructured DJ tools such as "I Think I Love You" which is totally off the hook; do yourself a favour and listen to this absolute gem. Finally "Passage 2561" which references his love of Detroit so well on this sublime hi tech soul excursion. Brilliant.
Review: New Hivern signing Cleveland - AKA up-and-coming producer Andrea Mancini - is living proof that there's more to Luxembourg than tax-dodging corporations and trilingual residents. Certainly, this is an assured label debut, packed full of atmospheric, off-kilter compositions and ear pleasing, analogue-sounding deep house. He begins with the starry synths, bubbly electronics and scattergun drums of the colourful "Shine", before melding electro sounds and breakbeat drum patterns on the similarly melodious "Mercury". He successfully strips back that track on the superb "Early Dub" - think Wolf Mueller on anti-depressants - while "Atlas" sounds like a deep house tribute to vintage Detroit futurism. It's the finest moment on a pleasingly strong EP.
Review: Alexander Berg has been a busy boy of late. Hot on the heels of his druggy, voodoo-inspired "Time Stretch Totem" 12" comes this expansive album for the consistently impressive Hivern Discs stable. In keeping with both his work and that of the label he's starring on, Irrbloss is hard to place, featuring as it does atmospheric, out-there explorations that variously touch on experimental deep house, IDM, ambient, crystalline techno and throbbing late night wonkiness. Despite the eclecticism, it all makes perfect sense, and comes cloaked in an air of feverish confusion that's never less than beguiling. We shouldn't have expected anything less.
Review: John Talabot's always interesting Hivern Discs has enjoyed another strong year, with top-notch releases from Red Axes, Marvin & Guy and INIT amongst the highlights. To round off 2015, Talabot has turned to Franc Sayol's Mistakes Are OK project, which was last featured on Hivern Discs back in 2012. "Forgiven" is a wonderfully rich and enjoyable concoction, with headline synth lines, steel drum melodies and Balearic chords riding a rolling, reggae-inspired house rhythm. Edward serves up two reworks on the flip, of which the straight 'Remix' - a late night tech-house throbber complete with alien synth flourishes and rolling, dubwise stabs - is probably the pick.
Review: The latest venture from John Talabot's Hivern Discs label is the Parple project, a seemingly anonymous endeavour that has a lot in common with James Holden and his Border Community label. "Sacred" sees beats double up and shift in and out of time as airy melodies are fused with moody bleeps to create a dense but atmospheric style. "Ritual" sees Parple use a similar method and the wind chimes and tonal frequency shifts sound more compatible. However, on this occasion, despite the groove sounding pulsing and the rhythm more functional, the track's ethereal qualities prevail.
Review: Although his releases can be frustratingly sporadic, there's no denying that JMII AKA Juan Miguel Bassols not only makes great music, but also seems to be getting better with age. A few have commented that "Modulations" - his first EP for three years and second for Hivern Discs - is Bassols' strongest collection of tracks to date, and we'd tend to agree. For proof, check the deep and psychedelic flex of "Synthesizer", where dub techno style synth stabs and undulating acid lines rise above a locked-in groove, and the mangled late night strut of "Modulation", whose reverb-laden percussion hits and cascading synth lines help to create a a mind-altering mood. There's plenty to set the pulse racing elsewhere on the EP, too, with the skittish drums and dreamy, meandering musical flourishes of "Communication" standing out.
Review: Ralf Schmidt aka Aera's last outing was on Innervisions and it's not hard to understand why he commands the support of Dixon as well as John Talabot's Hivern. Aera is a gloriously colourful smorgasbord of influences - including house, acid and trance. "Bibimbap" unfolds to metallic, futuristic drums accompanied by trippy acid lines and shiny trance synth. Meanwhile, "Thai Park" sounds like a logical but subtle conclusion to electro house, as Schmidt tweaks and teases a bass that modulates its tone against the backdrop of a rickety rhythm over the course of its eight-minute duration. By contrast, "Rotunde" is far lighter and dreamier: teeming with feather-weight, lullaby melodies and irresistible thumb-clicking percussion, it is nonetheless shot through with a bleeding bass. By the time he gets to the pulsing groove of "Lumen" - also remixed by La Gomera - the sound is tracky but still deliciously tripped out.
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