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Hyperdub

  • Laurel Halo 'Dust' - Cargo Records UK

    Hyperdub

    Laurel Halo 'Dust'

    £11.99

    v

    Hyperdub

    Laurel Halo 'Dust'

    £11.99




    Laurel Halo returns to Hyperdub for her third LP with a fresh approach and a new sound. Routed out of the electronic abstraction of 2015's In Situ - but with clear reference to 2012's sleeper-hit Quarantine - Dust is an album revolving around loose and languid songs; warped, sun-filled, melted and at times, heavy-hearted and obscure.

    Recorded over a period of two years, the writing process began at EMPAC in upstate New York in January 2015. With access to microphones, percussion, keys and a wide range of routings, Laurel spent days alone in the cavernous space, later inviting musicians Eli Keszler and Lafawndah to join her there.

    Those sessions would eventually become this album: a collection of breezy, broken songs, based on woody instrumentation, sub bass and restless, intricate electronics. Earnest songwriting meets with modal cut-up strategies, improvisational playing with higrade digital dust. Tactile and fibrous throughout the record, the vocals and percussion coalesce and breathe life into each other. Swung grooves eddy and collapse; acoustic drums are warped into sensual, febrile melodies.

    The lyrics are themselves bricolage, without a specific narrator or place in time. They slip in and out of view, something that is visualised in the album's inner panel. Extending the influence, the album opener Sun To Solar'is an adaptation of 'Servidão de Passagem' by Brazilian concrete poet Haroldo de Campos. In line with the album's sound, Dust is 'Laurel Halo' as a flexible cast of characters.

    Filled with dialogue, the album helms an interchangeable ensemble of vocalists and musicians, featuring vocals from Klein, Lafawndah, and Michael Salu, as well as musicians such as Eli Keszler, Craig Clouse ($hit and $hine), Julia Holter, Max D, Michael Beharie and Diamond Terrifier.

    Laurel's omnivorous influences play out in mutated fashion - coalesced, unfettered and inclusive - a broad musical palette free from entrenched modes, catalysed by digital production that could only happen in 2017.

    Tracklisting:
    Side A:
    1.Sun to Solar
    2.Jelly
    3.Koinos
    4.Arschkriecher
    5.Moontalk
    6.Nicht Ohne Risiko

    Side B:
    1.Who Won?
    2.Like an L
    3.Syzygy
    4.Do U Ever Happen
    5. Buh-bye
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  • Laurel Halo 'Behind The Green Door' - Cargo Records UK

    Hyperdub

    Laurel Halo 'Behind The Green Door'

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    Laurel Halo returns with 'Behind The Green Door', a stripped back, rhythmic, and sonically absorbing EP.  While re-injecting rhythm as the central focus, Laurel's compositional senses of elevated flow and ambient detail remain intact, harking back to earlier releases like 'Hour Logic' on Hippos In Tanks, and the 'Spring' 12" under the King Felix alias. 

    However, the rugged, minimal grooves on display point to a new direction and shift in sound; these four tracks are hardware-only affairs developed from her live set, built from a kit focused on dancefloor-ready rhythms, enveloping bass, psychedelic detail and lush harmony.

    On 'Behind The Green Door', Detroit Techno influence from her Michigan upbringing shines in tandem with stylistic nods towards contemporary UK club music; at times cold, lush, sinister and elated, the EP is a meditative rush of exploratory dancefloor electronics.

    Tracklisting:
    Side A:

    1. Throw
    2. UHF F/O

    Side B:
    1 NOYFB
    2. Sex Mission

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  • Laurel Halo 'Quarantine' - Cargo Records UK

    Hyperdub

    Laurel Halo 'Quarantine'

    £11.99

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    Hyperdub

    Laurel Halo 'Quarantine'

    £12.99

    Since 2010's 'King Felix' and into last year's highly lauded 'Hour Logic', Laurel Halo has developed a self-contained take on electronic music, collapsing the boundaries between ambient, pop, synthetic psychedelia, dub and the techno music of her Midwest roots.

    Fixed stylistic territories fold in on themselves, time quickens - her music is meant for transit, body listening and loud soundsystems. 'Quarantine', her debut album and first release on Hyperdub, is her most focused and evolved recording yet.

    This is an album of transporting songs, various altitude shifts via effecting pop-concrete, built on a rich synthesis of intuitive but exacting electronic abstraction, bass pulse and heartfelt songwriting. Like her previous releases, 'Quarantine' slams ambient suspension and disorienting detail up against each other. The 12 songs here operate as complex vacuums, airborne harmony and movement met with incidental noise and sub bass pressure, sample details and synth lines as trails across a mutilated sonic topography.

    What is different on 'Quarantine' is that Laurel Halo's voice is foregrounded - the vocals are dry against lush arrangements, and her confidence with lyrics and delivery is more pronounced. Her expressive singing works as a pivot in songs that eschew the usual melodic routes to generate emotion, serving as contour and human definition in contrast to the forbidden synthetic space.

    Sensual melodies are bent to the point of nausea, inducing the torque of a psychedelic pop that simultaneously recalls elevation and trauma. This is a kind of music you might not have heard before, and in 2012 that in itself is rare.

    Tracklisting:
    1. Airsick
    2. Years
    3. Thaw
    4. Joy
    5. MK Ultra
    6. Wow
    7. Carcass
    8. Holoday
    9. Tumor
    10. Morcom
    11. Nerve
    12. Light + Space

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  • Laurel Halo 'Chance Of Rain' - Cargo Records UK

    Hyperdub

    Laurel Halo 'Chance Of Rain'

    £10.99

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    Hyperdub

    Laurel Halo 'Chance Of Rain'

    £11.99

    In a few short years Laurel Halo has demonstrated an unnerving ability to question established idioms in electronic music. Throughout her body of work the Michigan-born producer has expressed musical representations of merged dualities; spirituality in the inorganic, space in the claustrophobic, hope in dread.

    As a result there's something uncanny about Laurel Halo's sound - the sonic templates may change, but the challenging of divides remains. Laurel Halo returns to LP format after two critically acclaimed EPs with the driving, meditative 'Chance Of Rain'. Evolving from earlier works, it's a cerebral exploration of the intersection between rhythmic and ambient music, drawing together moments of movement and stillness, psychedelia and presence of mind.

    On 'Chance Of Rain', rhythms melt with unpredictable structures, ambient drift and deep harmonic passages, while keyboard-based interludes reinforce both the far-out and contemplative aspects of the record as a whole. Halo's evolution as a live performer has directed her music's development in part, as the tracks on 'Chance Of Rain' are fleshed out versions of live hardware improvisations.

    This LP is far off from the definition of a traditional dance long player; where tracks like 'Serendip', 'Chance Of Rain' and 'Ainnome' invite with infectious grooves, others like 'Oneiroi', 'Still/Dromos' and 'Thrax' invert these energies, revealing sinister potential in the process. Again Halo's knack for illusory detail and sound design shines, and another duality feeling emerges, this time one of unearthly joy.

    Drawing inspiration from the music of her home state's music capital Detroit, in both harmonic and rhythmic palettes, the music showcases freedom within metric constructs, and skyward optimism in the face of decay. 


    The album comes packaged with artwork created by her father, an NYC-born, Michigan-based visual artist whose work focuses on industrial landscapes of Michigan and the Rust Belt at large. The artwork here is an early work of his from the 1970s, reflecting the album's twisted, hopeful tone. 'Chance Of Rain' was mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

    Tracklisting:
    1. Dr. Echt
    2. Oneiroi
    3. Serendip
    4. Chance of Rain
    5. Melt
    6. Still/Dromos
    7. Thrax
    8. Ainnome
    9. -Out

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