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: Having featured on some of the label's compilations, Exercicis Ritmics is Oma Totem's first solo EP on Hivern. "ER-1" is based on complex drum patterns, which provide the basis for sweet deep house textures. On the second "ER", that approach evolves to include a chiming bass and filtered percussion. Meanwhile, the third iteration see the tempo increase - like Oma Totem's idiosyncratic take on 90s UK techno, featuring muffled vocal samples and belching tones. That interpretation of classic techno continues on the droning, hypnotic sound of "ER 4", while the fifth and final track closes out the release to the sound of slowed down but equally impactful dubbed out drums.
Review: Amazingly, 11 years have now passed since Khidja made their debut. Their sound has subtly evolved over the years, getting more hallucinatory and sonically left-of-centre. There's much to set the pulse racing on the Romanian twosome's first Hivern Discs EP for five years, not least dystopian, effects-laden lead cut 'The Future Has Disappeared', which peppers a lo-fi drum machine rhythm with creepy electronics, metallic motifs and paranoid aural textures. They relieve a little of the paranoia on the fluid, tribal-tinged dancefloor psychedelia of 'Back To Vid', which comes accompanied by a superbly spooky and subtly jazz-tinged Azu Tiwaline remix. Elsewhere across the EP, 'Science of Ghosts' and 'Obdissian' both sound like Snivilisation-era Orbital after copious amounts of horse tranquilisers and 'The Exchange' is a chugging shuffle through minor-key melodies.
Review: It's hard to believe that Found Ritual is Absis' first release - it's impressively formed and teems with intuitively hypnotic sensibilities. "Floating Around" and "Break Through Far" start the release with eerie synth lines and ominous bass pulses. Absis then ups the pace for "Search And Find", delivering a multi-layered, throbbing piece of techno that is redolent of producers like Dozzy and Neel. On "Running Uphill", he changes tact again, and drops a broken beat arrangement that resounds to a cacophony of bleeps and tones. Meanwhile, "Dive Inside" reverts to the slower, drawn out approach that prevailed at the start of the release, this time with the added benefit of a layered sub-bass.
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: 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: 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: Introducing C.P.I. An almost forgotten project from Capablanca & Marc Pinol granted a full album release via John Talabot's Hivern Discs! Emerging in 2014 with a rare 7" release, Alianza follows a brace of EPs spread across a four year peroid, with this album diving deep into the submersive ambient realms of analogue, machine made music. Full of tension, lo-fi industrialisms and atmospheres that play with themes of giallo italo ("Osera"), and winds of the new age in "Islaalsl", find spiritual spoken word in both "Rasa" and "Epileg", with the latter drifting unnoticed into a haunted cathedral of choirs. For lovers of ambient 4th world music, dub techno noise-floor, crackle and pop ("I/O") and epic space western drone ("Sol"), C.P.I. have arrived.
Review: Now here we do have a bit of a gem as Hivern Discs present the latest chapter of wonderful musical creation from Mistakes Are Ok with a brand new album project entitled 'Outward Summer'. From start to finish, the project gives us a direct look into soundscaping at it's very finest, with each track breathing an incredibly refreshing array of pads and synthesizer harmonies. This is most definitely a project float away to, with our favourite inclusions being the cloudy arrangements of 'Glass Sunset' and the shimmering melodies of 'Certified Clouds'.
Review: The Lost Scripts project returns to follow up 2016's Hiverned #4 EP. Hivern Discs chief John Talabot and the ever reliable Pional now restart a series of releases featuring some of the jams they have been recording during these past years between Barcelona, Madrid and Giske (Norway). Speaking of the latter, the slow motion groove of "Giske" is an utterly hypnotic and mesmerising minimal techno journey deep underwater, while "Mozart" is more upbeat, featuring an abundance of dancefloor dynamics on this evocative and majestic deep house journey - equal parts tension and suspense throughout.
Review: After presenting material on White, Batti Batti and ESP Institute, Brussels based producer/DJ Andrea Mancini aka Cleveland showcases an evolution of his sound into more minimalist and forward looking grounds - with another release on John Talabot's Hivern Discs. The seven tracks on NDSi are 'an exploration of futuristic soundscapes delineated with swirling tones, understated rhythms and ever-evolving patterns... often drawing inspiration from happy accidents with half broken synthesizers". Mancini presents some electronic music with a real soulfulness here: from the deep electro cut "Polar", the emotive tribal hose of "Dx6", the downbeat bleep IDM of "6lx" or on the hypnotic underwater techno of "Kobu".
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: 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: 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: 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: Following releases on Be As One and Eduard de la Calle's Analog Solutions, Orbe drops this superb six-tracker for John Talabot's label. "Somebody Bring Me Here" is a deep, broken beat affair with a breathy voice asking "when did you first hear acid?". "Visceral Terror" is preceded by an abstract, noisy intro before it moves into a wigged out, pulsing minimal groove. The mood shifts back to the reflective on the title track's jazzy guitars and off centre beats, before making a dance floor detour for "Unexpected Dream's Rave". Underpinned by the kind of rough beats and rhythm that Lone makes, Orbe then drops layers of dreamy synths, making for a blissed out but clubby track.
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.
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