{"title":"Balmat","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"great-times","title":"Great Times","description":"\u003cp\u003ePanoram makes soundtracks for daydreams gone sideways. Picture the scene: an afternoon nap with the television on, quietly, in the corner; snatches of conversation drift in through the open window. Wandering, half-formed thoughts take unexpected detours; before you know it, there’s a movie playing out against closed lids, the colors bright, the characters unfamiliar. Accidental rhythms, incidental melodies, imitations of life, messages in code.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Balmat","offers":[{"title":"Black LP.","offer_id":50385290887499,"sku":"2195096","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed_-_2024-04-12T103635.459_1533aae4_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726310703"},{"product_id":"1977-9","title":"1977","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere’s no shortage of familiar sounds on \u003ci\u003e1977\u003c\/i\u003e. There are echoes of raves and chillout rooms and transmissions from the fringes of techno; there are detuned synths and glistening reverb tails and, above all, gauzy vox pads, the eerie glue that holds it all together. The title, he says, is meant to invoke a general sense of nostalgia, bookmarking a year in his boyhood when he became more selfaware. More than anything, \u003ci\u003e1977\u003c\/i\u003e sounds like µ-Ziq distilled: Stripped of his signature breakbeats and customary chaos, Paradinas’ first-ever strictly (well, mostly) ambient album presents the essence of his music in a whole new light.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Balmat","offers":[{"title":"Yellow 12\"x2","offer_id":50417191944523,"sku":"2169700","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50417192206667,"sku":"2169701","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed_43_26a4bb3a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726720559"},{"product_id":"projections-of-a-coral-city","title":"Projections of a Coral City","description":"\u003cp\u003eCoral Morphologic and Nick León’s Projections of a Coral City marks a series of collisions between distant\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eworlds: the organic and the artificial, the Eocene and the Anthropocene, sea and cement—and even, perhaps, ambient music and activism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCoral Morphologic are the Miami duo of marine biologist Colin Foord and musician J.D. McKay; since 2007, they have used a variety of multimedia projects to generate environmental awareness of marine biodiversity—most notably Coral City Camera, an underwater webcam streaming live from an urban reef ecosystem in PortMiami.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTheir citymate Nick León is a linchpin of South Florida’s contemporary leftfield electronic scene, with releases for Tra Tra Trax, Future Times, and NAAFI, and credits on records by Rosalía, GAIKA, and Iceboy Violet, among others.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Balmat","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50451340919115,"sku":"2184158","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed_-_2024-02-22T162224.880_9a8ee9c5_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727123105"},{"product_id":"absent-friends-vol-iii","title":"Absent Friends Vol. III","description":"\u003cp\u003eMinor Science—aka UK-born, Berlin-based musician Angus Finlayson—makes his Balmat debut with \u003ci\u003eAbsent Friends Vol. III\u003c\/i\u003e, the third installment in a shape-shifting series across a variety of formats and platforms. And with it, he pushes forward his vision of ambient music as neither static vista or merely mood-setting atmosphere, but rather a dynamic matrix of textures, sensations, and even rhythms.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first two Absent Friends—a 2014 set for Blowing Up the Workshop, and a 2017 cassette and web player for Whities (now AD93)—were hybrid affairs, part DJ mix and part collage, mostly featuring music made by other people. Then, in 2020-21, Finlayson developed the project into a live show of his own material. Armed with hundreds of bespoke stems created in his studio—idiosyncratic FX chains, feedback loops through cheap rack gear, heavily post-processed field recordings, found voices, etc.—he would improvise on four CDJs, mixer, FX, and live synths, extending techniques he learned as a club DJ into a live context, accompanied by visuals by Stockholm-based artist Paul Witherden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAbsent Friends Vol. III\u003c\/i\u003e is an album of studio versions of the music developed for the live show. But in Minor Science’s world, even a category as simple as “studio versions” is slightly opaque. “Most of these tracks weren’t ‘composed’ in the studio,” Finlayson explains: “The sounds started out as stems and source material for the live show, and might not have been intended to go together—but then through performance, they settled into shapes that worked. I then recreated those performances in the studio.” That organic process of ideation and realization might help explain the unusual coherence of the album, in which sounds and textures flow seamlessly from one to the next, sometimes seeming to stand still, and sometimes looping back. There are virtually no melodies, few recognizable motifs or riffs, yet the eight-track album nevertheless moves with a distinctive logic and a determined sense of purpose, from the frozen-in-time shimmer of the opening “Introduction” through the early cuts’ studies of space and light; from the seemingly autobiographical “Summer Diary” through the rushing trance (yes, trance) arpeggios of “Contingency” and on to the dulcet denouement of the closing “Gather Your Party (Dispersed Mix).”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Balmat","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50530174173515,"sku":"2054715","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Absent_Friends_Vol._III_8dfca741_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728073401"},{"product_id":"duvet","title":"Duvet","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the winter of 2023, Ingri Høyland and Ida Urd retreated to a Danish sommerhus, or summer house—the tiny, tidy shacks that are a central feature of the national culture, where for generations, Danes have whiled away the warm months with their families. Picture the scene: an abiding quiet all around. Gardens carpeted by snow; beach grass silvery against the silvery sky; a tendril of smoke rising from the chimney. Not another soul in earshot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis sanctuary was the origin for Høyland and Urd’s Duvet, a meditation on shelter, trust, and communication. They were motivated by the idea of nesting: finding ways of feeling safe and being at home while traveling, moving through seasons, enduring periods of change. “Establishing surroundings, rearranging furniture, moving towards the light, collecting flowers or other objects reminiscent of a river, a garden, a memory,” they write. “A gentle and careful process to make your surroundings feel open for playing, writing, caregiving, or resting.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHøyland and Urd both studied at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, which has turned out acclaimed artists like Clarissa Connelly, Smerz, and Fine; over the past few years, the two musicians have developed a collaborative method based on connection and trust. A practice, they write, “where composing, or rather suggesting, sounds and melodies for one another is a way of carefully talking, mending emotions and obstacles. Saying yes to one another. The compositional space becomes a nest for entangling whatever emotions, thoughts, or barriers one of the composers brings to the given day or moment.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSonically, Duvet feels like an extension of Høyland’s last album, 2023’s \u003cem\u003eOde to Stone\u003c\/em\u003e, which also featured Urd along with ambient musician Sofie Birch and visual artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund. But where that album, created in response to an open call for work themed around Denmark’s national parks, suggested rolling landscapes and endless horizons, Duvet turns inward, countering chill winds with glowing warmth. Its eight tracks seek a balance between abstraction and melody, intention and happenstance. “We had a truly inspiring and rewarding process working with Birk Gjerlufsen Nielsen from Vanessa Amara, who co-produced and mixed the album with us,” Ingri adds. “He approached the material with great care and sensitivity, while also bringing his own distinct presence and creativity into the sound.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuiet and contemplative, Duvet is simple on the surface but rich in timbral, textural, and emotional complexity. Høyland and Urd sourced their sounds from an array of instruments and techniques — electronic devices, modules, pedals, and also electroacoustic treatments of various wind instruments. Mixing primarily through analog tape units added further mystery and depth, weaving together wordless voices and unknown sounds—breathing, rustling, perhaps the coppery gleam of Urd’s electric bass—into a dynamic matrix. Like a nest, pull one twig and the whole thing unravels.\u003cbr\u003e of it in terms of possibility: a space waiting to be filled.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Balmat","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":52929960411467,"sku":"R1310-2899","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/888f839c-2d5b-ed5f-e6e9-6512aa86e569.jpg?v=1752744292"},{"product_id":"1979","title":"1979","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTwo years after he first appeared on Balmat with \u003cem\u003e1977\u003c\/em\u003e, Mike Paradinas returns with \u003cem\u003e1979\u003c\/em\u003e. The sense of continuity between the two records is clear, and not just from their titles. Both capture the Planet Mu head venturing into the wilderness, seeking something—half-formed memories, thoughts caught in midair—in some of the most abstract, searching music he has released.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003eJust like\u003cem\u003e 1977, 1979\u003c\/em\u003e surveys a synth-heavy array of ethereal soundscapes, ominous crevasses, and strange, psychedelic fugues. Like its predecessor, the new album’s atmospheric cast sets it apart from much of the work Paradinas has released as μ-Ziq on Planet Mu. It’s not strictly an ambient record, but it’s close, as close as this famously mutable artist ever comes to inhabiting a particular genre.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eParadinas’ inspiration for the record began on visits to the Spanish cities of Ávila and Majadahona, where his family hails from. That might account for the sense that there are spirits flitting through this music, presences you can intuit if not quite grasp. But 1979 is also a record to meet on your own terms, and to find your own meanings in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s a stunning record, every track a world unto itself: the mysterious contours of “Majadahonda at Dawn”; the playful melodic fillips of “Clari”; the airy melancholy of “Galletas”; the full-scale breakbeat abandon (yes, you read that right) of “Houzz 14,” the rarest of dancefloor detours for Balmat. There are echoes of classic braindance and isolationist ambient and golden-age IDM; there are easter eggs and recurring themes and hidden symmetries. Every time we listen, we discover something new. Despite what the title might suggest, it’s less a trip back in time than a portal to another universe, a destination for(to?) which only Mike Paradinas knows the exact coordinates\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Balmat","offers":[{"title":"2LP - Black","offer_id":53320009154891,"sku":"R5937-4588","price":34.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ad1a2ba0-8547-ea2f-aed9-a4e0f2893bcd.jpg?v=1757066447"},{"product_id":"possible-utopias-for-jazz-quintet","title":"Possible Utopias For Jazz Quintet","description":"\u003cp\u003eSometimes the title of an album tells you everything you need to know. Laurence Pike’s \u003cem\u003ePossible Utopias for Jazz Quintet \u003c\/em\u003eis like that: The music within represents a search for freedom, potentiality—liberatory strategies that transcend the ego and the solitary, atomized figure.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut in this case, the album title is also a red herring, because there is no jazz quintet here—just Pike, his drums, and his machines, not so much an ersatz ensemble as a purely notional one, a thought experiment equipped with drumsticks, circuitry, and the desire to go beyond hardwired limits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd the results, strictly speaking, aren’t really jazz, though they incorporate the vocabulary of jazz, along with that of ambient, electronica, and post-rock. They are some other thing, cognizant of genre but never beholden to it. Again, we’re talking about a search for freedom here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Sydney-based musician has a long history of coloring outside the lines, not just in his solo recordings—including four albums for the Leaf label between 2018 and 2024—but also in the trio Pivot (later PVT); Szun Waves (alongside saxophonist Jack Wyllie and Border Community’s Luke Abbott); Triosk, which recorded an album with Jan Jelinek in 2003; and even post-punk titans Liars, whom he joined in late 2018.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf his first album for Balmat, Pike says, “My loose concept was: What does music sound like when the expectations of late capitalism are removed from it? How might a jazz musician from an idealised culture of the future, or even another world, utilise musical language when the conventions of style and marketing are no longer a factor in music making?”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat inquiry, he says, connects to his “guiding principle: that the purpose of music is to access something bigger than the individual, and reveal a sense of possibility and freedom in the world to the listener. To create an understanding that the future can be something other than what we imagined or expect, even unconsciously.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHeady ideas, but plug into his stream-of-metaconsciousness flow and you may start to intuit what motivates him. There is a deeply lyrical expression in these pieces—in the ruminative piano of opener “Guardians of Memory,” for example—but also a sense of exploded perspective, of ideas approached from more angles than any one mind could dream up. Of a collectivized consciousness, of mycelial networks branching across tone and rhythm and timbre, of ideas articulated in distributed fashion, nodal points dancing across drum heads.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePike’s imaginary quintet is hardly without precedent; it’s a continuation of concepts floated across Jan Jelinek’s Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, Burnt Friedman’s many guises, and much of the recombinant improv of the International Anthem roster, not to mention the far corners of ECM’s catalog in the late 1970s and 1980s, which Pike says have been integral to his development since he was a teenager. \u003cem\u003ePossible Utopias for Jazz Quintet\u003c\/em\u003e is a point in a continuum, a voice in a conversation, a question with no obvious answer: How can the search for otherness in music manifest something true about ourselves?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Balmat","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":56878936752459,"sku":"R1840-1155","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":56878936785227,"sku":"R1840-3014","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/466c57f1-e817-31c6-da0b-36962f48debc.jpg?v=1774446199"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/balmat.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}