In case you missed it, we recently unveiled a new online event in collaboration with SHAPE Platform.
The two-part takeover began with a crackaud.io series of new mixes, original compositions, and other audio works from the platform’s artist roster. Eleven musicians have created new pieces for the series, including Nazar, Grand River, Heith, TTristana and more.
We’ll be launching Part 2 of the takeover – which features video works by KMRU, Mathilde Fernandez and Shapednoise – on Wednesday, March 23. Before that, however, you can listen to all 11 audio contributions – which range from club-ready mixes to ambient, classic and drone offerings – below.
SHAPE Platform is an initiative to promote innovative music and audiovisual art. It is made up of 16 creative institutions across Europe and is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
The platform also invites listeners to show their support for Ukraine and its people by making a donation to National Bank of Ukraine and Ukraine Help Center.
Heith
Heith can best be described as genderless and limitless sound research, drawing inspiration from traditional folk to rave and ambient to electroacoustic. The pseudonym of Milanese artist and musician Daniele Guerrini, his music offers an intoxicating and disorienting journey through offbeat rhythms and a thick textural haze of distorted electronics, culminating in a certain spiritual quality to his creations.
With this audio piece for the takeover of SHAPE Platform, Heith creates a haunting and ritualistic subterranean soundscape. As with his productions, the mix comprises a resonant and eclectic collage of distinct sonic elements: celestial percussion intertwined with discordant mechanical oscillations with haunting Gregorian-style vocals over dark doubled rhythms. The hushed atmosphere is interspersed with birdsong and rainfall.
Sarvenaz Mostofey
Sarvenaz Mostofey’s background in photography and film seeps into his sound, lending vivid narratives to his music. The Iranian-born, Berlin-based sound artist and composer arranges electronic sounds to produce visceral designs that explore the relationship between space and physicality.
For the acquisition of crackaud.io by SHAPE, Mostofey brings two new elements: The poet’s ear and Rooftop drummer. The first is a recording of The Ear of Dionysos, a limestone cave in Sicily known for its acoustic properties. The piece delves into the history of the cave via disturbing spatial acoustics and whispered voices. For Rooftop Drummer, Mostofey “combines a maze of ideas and memories, guiding the storyteller and character player as if they were a cyborg contemplating the realities of social fiction”.
Big River
Grand River is the pseudonym of Dutch-Italian producer, composer and DJ Aimée Portioli. True to its name, Portioli’s musical output is lush and expansive, and remains in a constant state of flux. Like past projects – like the magnificent one from 2017 Crescent PE- As proof, Portioli’s music oscillates between ambient and experimental music, crossed by a cinematographic touch and its classical inclinations.
Portioli’s mix for the SHAPE platform takeover is populated with tracks from fellow downtempo dreamers such as Huerco S. and Guido Flichman, as well as work from Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi, and the late Jon Hassell. It also includes a track from Swedish duo Bandhagens Musikförening, who released a new project in November 2021 via Portioli’s own One Instrument label. Subtle and meandering with occasional detours through more vivid realms, it’s a perfect blend for deep listening and thoughtful contemplation.
Lisa Stenberg
Immersive is an apt description of the works of Stockholm-based composer Lisa Stenberg. His pieces, which are often site-specific and tailored to the unique acoustic properties of each location, are both intimate and intense; slow-burning instrumental and electroacoustic compositions that steadily unfold to reveal hidden depth.
Equally entrancing is Stenberg’s mix for the SHAPE platform takeover. With an emphasis on slow sounds and extended pieces, his contribution begins on a steady, evocative note. It remains unhurried – and all the more enjoyable for him – throughout, with the interjection of darker dronescapes and darker textures giving the mix tension and dimension.
Linda Leiman
The work of Latvian composer Linda Leimane is imbued with a visceral physicality. She regularly collaborates with orchestras, ensembles and soloists in all electronic and instrumental disciplines, creating evocative and textural avant-garde compositions. For the takeover of crackaud.io by SHAPE Platform, Leimane created a new work of haunting drone landscapes, spectral vocal incantations and experimental electronics.
On the piece, titled Through the rungs of eternityLeimane says: “In this work, I place particular emphasis on the voices of living individuals, their heartbeats and allusions to social gatherings with common goals: to destroy, to defend or to celebrate with symphony.
“To achieve this technically, I played with suspense and buildup, as well as planar motion. Although I want to create beauty, in this time when the enemy of humanity openly shows his hideous face, this work is my personal refuge and appeasement, my bullet in the head of cruelty, as well as my unshakable faith. in justice.
Julia Reydy
Julia Reidy’s solo work strikes a balance between dreamlike serenity and eerie darkness. With an avant-garde approach to composition, the Berlin artist’s music offers an intricate sonic tapestry of fingerstyle guitar, found sounds and spectral electronic drones.
Their takeover mix of the SHAPE rig showcases the processed and acoustic realms Reidy’s work intersects with, whirring modular electronics, resonant guitar melodies and natural field recordings. Featuring a selection of their works and collaborations, their mix also previews the title track from their upcoming release. world in the world, on which Reidy explores another angle of their sound with retuned multi-channel electric guitar.
Gryllus Shelters
Working through visual and sound media, Ábris Gryllus’ work is rooted in conceptual exploration. Through his music and installations, the Budapest-based artist distorts notions of time and space, and his soundscapes exist in a liminal realm. Alongside his own work, Gryllus also forms half of the noise improvisation project FOR alongside Miklós Farkas.
At the heart of Gryllus’ sound design is an attention to architectural detail, reflected in this esoteric new work he presents as part of the takeover of the SHAPE platform. Speaking about composition, he says, “I recorded this session in early 2020. I was reading a lot about the neural grid system behind rational and emotional behavior, spirituality in the digital realm, and the sensuality of robotics. . Some excerpts from the same session were also part of a contemporary dance score. The patch stayed on my modular for a while, so I ended up playing it on my last live set before lockdown. This is the home-recorded version of January 21 at 11:01 p.m., edited and mastered in 2022.
Nazar
Nazar’s productions feature a heavier, darker take on the Angolan dance style kuduro. The Angolan producer, who is now based in Europe, coined the term “raw kuduro”. Using this gnarlier approach to the generally upbeat sound, Nazar examines the hardships and realities of civil war in his homeland. His first album of 2020, Guerrilla, documents this, as Nazar reflects on the impact and consequences of the conflict.
For his takeover mix of SHAPE Platform, Nazar merges tracks from the disc – which was released on revered UK label Hyperdub – with previously unreleased material. The sonic journey begins with dreamy electronics, heavenly gospel inflections and vocal snippets before moving into distorted club sounds and abrasive beats.
Gaspar Claus
Cellist Gaspar Claus continually expands the emotional and evocative depths of his instrument. With his work, which includes a range of film soundtracks, Claus defies genre boundaries, lending his experimental cello compositions to collaborations between pop, contemporary jazz and electronica.
He presents here a documentation of his concert at the Café de la Danse in Paris on January 20th. Captured by Benedicte Schmitt and her backpackstudio, the recording follows Claus throughout the day of this performance, which was part of the celebrations for the release of his first solo album, Tancade. At Tancade, Claus transports his listeners to a secluded beach, a vivid daydream echoed in this atmospheric recording that weaves together fragments of conversation with Claus’s cinematic cello.
Jiska Huizing and Rudi Valdersnes
Ongoing collaborations between Norwegian musicians Jiska Huizing and Rudi Valdersnes rely on hypnotic club beats and electroacoustic vibes. In their complex sound, the duo use a range of techniques and instruments, including Valdernes’ in-house percussion and drum machines alongside Huizing’s field recordings, vocals and electric violin.
Together they have curated a graceful and ethereal mix for the takeover of SHAPE Platform, and it looks towards the arrival of spring and better days. “The mix was done while we were in two different cities, Oslo and Bergen, and while Jiska was isolated due to Covid,” they explain. The duo navigated the situation by sending sounds, sketches and leads back and forth between their locations. “[This] made us want to focus on the future: noticing the little signs of spring coming in the air, how the days are visibly longer and the birds have started to sing again. The eventual mix contains tracks that reflect this; it’s light on its toes and organic – an ecosystem of shifting rhythms.
TTristana
TTristana excels at creating fragmented club hyper-realities. In her work, the Marseille-based DJ and producer mixes hyperpop effervescence with apocalyptic club experiments and distorted vocals. Reflecting the spellbinding worlds of his own productions, TTristana’s mix offers immersive otherworldly terrain, traveling through mutant electronics, spectral incantations and the deconstructed club, featuring tracks from Samuel Organ, Satin de Compostela and unreleased material from the S280F of the i8i collective.
On the mix, which is shared as part of the SHAPE Platform takeover on crackaud.io, TTristana says, “Every set, every track produced, feels like an experimental space, the attempt to create a world, a story, outside the usual patterns. of genre and thought, with, as a backdrop, the search for a musicality that is fair and coherent in its complexity.
Visit crackaud.io for more mixes and podcasts