{"title":"Beacon Sound","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeacon Sound is a Portland-based record label that has been upholding the power of culture over the culture of power since 2011. They primarily release new music of an unpredictable nature, emphasizing physicality and deep collaboration while occasionally reissuing past works. With a heterodox disposition and punk spirit, Beacon Sound transcends borders and remains project-based and artist-centered in its process. They create resilient space for on-the-ground culture while navigating the currents of capitalism.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"aphrilis","title":"Aphrilis","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe title of the Lau Nau's 10th album, Aphrilis, derives from the Latin word aperire, meaning \"to open.\" A fitting verb for the month of the year it is closely associated with — April. And while the images of plants and blossoms coming back to colorful life after a long, cold winter feels appropriate when listening to the rich and lustrous bloom of music on Aphrilis, another definition of open feels even more apt. For under the abundance lies the memory of times of austerity, the friction of hard choices, the acceptance that nothing is fixed and the future is unknown. This literal and metaphorical exploration of complexity and contradiction makes Aphrilis a multi-dimensional antidote for our troubled times, one that emphasizes the quiet and communal over noise and spectacle. Laura Naukkarinen, the Finnish artist behind this project, has long kept her mind and spirit open to whatever sounds and creative ideas felt appropriate for the moment. For the past six years that has meant primarily working with modular synthesis — learning how to build modules and releasing acclaimed work centered on its sounds like 5x4 (2023) or Puutarhassa (2022). Running parallel to this work, however, has been a continued exploration of acoustic instruments and group performances with her trio Lau Nau ja Seitsemäs Taivas. Aphrilis arrives then like fresh growth in a creative season cycle. A companion to her brilliant 2017 release Poseidon, the album, says Naukkarinen, \"felt like a needed moment to embrace songs with lyrics again.\" And through the creation of this work, she remained open not only to her own creative muse, but also the input of her chosen collaborators. Each player on Aphrilis — Matti Bye on celesta and synths, Pekko Käppi on jouhikko, Hermanni Yli-Tepsa on violin and contrabass, Topias Tiheäsalo on electric guitar, Samuli Kosminen (Múm) on various instruments — was given free reign to arrange their own parts to accompany Naukkarinen's compositions. Kosminen’s lush fingerprint can also be heard in the mixing and production of the album, as with Poseidon six years ago. The moniker of this project may be taken from Naukkarinen’s own name, but Lau Nau feels more like a band than ever before. The delicacy and softness of the music is reflected in Naukkarinen’s lyrics. Each song is rife with imagery and creatures from the natural world. The spiders in the forest. The animals that keep a young woman company in her refuge in the woods. Wet grass. The feeling of the music is almost tactile, as if listening to the album will leave a bit of dew or sap on your fingers. The theme of this material, says Naukkarinen, runs even deeper. “The songs tell about cracks and changes of direction in different histories: personal, societal, planetary,” she says. “About moments when a yes can become a no and vice versa. The album wants to propose that at the moment of a crisis there is a possibility to influence the histories by our choices.” That may feel like a lot for such a fragile sounding collection of songs to bear. But Aphrilis is an album of surprising strength and resilience.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Beacon Sound","offers":[{"title":"Black LP.","offer_id":50395874197835,"sku":"2164069","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/LAU_NAU_Aphrilis_de2bb5a6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726474485"},{"product_id":"starlight-and-still-air","title":"Starlight And Still Air","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Without exaggeration, Dominic Appleton is by far my favourite living male vocalist. 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Matteo Uggeri is a composer and producer living in Milan whose most recent solo album was released by Infraction in 2019. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRedolent of trip-hop, electro-pop, shoegaze and other beat-driven forms of modern pop music,\u003ci\u003e Starlight And Still Air\u003c\/i\u003e vibrates deeply with Uggeri's unique production language, Appleton's instantly-recognizable voice, and a supporting cast of European musicians on cello, trumpet, guitar, backing vocals, and more. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Beacon Sound","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50417387176267,"sku":"1135236","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/98c69ae0-5413-4264-a021-be34f104d184_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726728253"},{"product_id":"descending-moonshine-dervishes","title":"Descending Moonshine Dervishes","description":"\u003cp\u003eOriginally recorded live in Berlin in 1975 and released by Kuckuck in 1982, Beacon Sound reissued the album in 2016 to widespread acclaim. Remastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri in 2016.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUsing just intonation and a modified organ, Riley conjures forth a rich and layered sound that challenges the Western ear, reflecting his associations with Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath and La Monte Young, whose 'Well Tuned Piano' was well underway. \u003ci\u003eDescending Moonshine Dervishes\u003c\/i\u003e is a virtuosic and kaleidoscopic performance, standing as one of the finest works of a revolutionary composer and musician at the height of his powers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eDescending Moonshine Dervishes\u003c\/i\u003e dates from 1975 and it belongs to a larger Dervish series of compositions whose origins predate Riley’s two signature works of minimalism, 'In C' (1968) and 'A Rainbow In Curved Air' (1969)… (the piece is) structured around just intonation, which stretches the listening experience into new areas. Played on a Yamaha organ with a bit of tape delay that allows Riley to duet with himself, the music of \u003ci\u003eDescending Moonshine Dervishes\u003c\/i\u003e is an ear expansion that goes through skittering arpeggios and long, droning notes that indicate something of the many levels that it operates on.\" \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Beacon Sound","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50426814103883,"sku":"2197762","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ead0a460-d404-655f-efe3-9c7bfbfd3b3e_eed9f044_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726817987"},{"product_id":"journey-test","title":"Journey Test","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"From start to finish, the record is contemplative and serene. 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Constructed entirely with sounds generated by her own voice – chopped up, warped, rendered unrecognisable, ringing out in hymn-like incantations –\u003ci\u003e Fractured Whole\u003c\/i\u003e is a powerful and timeless exploration of vulnerability, resistance, and the freedom to be yourself.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Beacon Sound","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50510589755723,"sku":"2015609","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/crueldiagonals_5112e6cb_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727877043"},{"product_id":"breathing-landscape","title":"Breathing Landscape","description":"\u003cp\u003eRecorded in an abandoned water tank in rural northwest Colorado and inspired by Muriel Rukeyser’s circa-1935 poem of the same name, violinist Leslee Smucker explores the range and saturation of intense natural reverb on Breathing Landscape. The artist pushes her instrument to the limit –by turns percussive, sweeping, and scraping– and, on several tracks, utilizes her own voice as well, resulting in an album that combines breathtaking beauty and visceral texture. Leaning into the meditative quality being present in one moment can provide, this is music you can feel on your skin, calling out from our decomposing modernity into the indifferent sky above. Conjuring deep time but captured in one day, the album is simultaneously immediate and vaporous, primeval-sounding yet unapologetically modern. When you travel out of the mountains down into the rangelands of what we know today as western Colorado, the horizon opens up to reveal an ancient and scarred land. Cell phone coverage is spotty at best and towns are sparse. Time escapes our efforts to contain it and is instead etched into the hot, dry canyons. Approaching The Tank, outside the settlement of Rangely, oil pumps work ceaselessly on the other side of the gravel road, extracting a grim future. Inside The Tank it is 20 degrees warmer than outside, a zone of strange harmonics, exchanges of sound and stillness, and explorations of landscapes both exterior and interior. In what she describes as a \"sauna of sound\", Smucker \"was transported by the reverberation to another realm. Birds and trucks passed outside, while the wind was an integral part to the sound making.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Beacon Sound","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50541994049867,"sku":"2170967","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Leslee_Smucker__Breathing_Landscape_11450d0e_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728293387"},{"product_id":"metalwet","title":"Metal.wet","description":"\u003cp\u003eUnbound by place or genre, mercurial, experimental pop duo Soft as Snow find freedom to intuitively reflect the disarray of human connection with their intricate, shape-shifting pop production. With each successive release, the duo evolves, unfurling into their own poetic sound, now fully realized on their intimate, third full-length, Metal.wet. The oft-present trappings of male-female duos are eschewed here as the Berlin-based Oda Starheim and Øystein Monsen contribute equally across a canvas of analogue synthesizers, samplers, live drums, and processed guitars. At once a part of and yet apart from the zeitgeist, their forward-thinking modernity stretches the limits of expectations across Metal.wet's ten insouciant tracks. Fans of Tirzah, Hype Williams, and even Angelo Badalamenti will find much to love in this haunting work peppered with ASMR moments and rough sampling wrapped in high production –– twinkling glasses and sirens in the distance, rhythms and voices up front. The result is synth-driven, noisy, and dripping with laidback, confident sensuality. Although Starheim's voice begins the album in a whisper, it quickly becomes apparent that the group has jettisoned their previous tendency to bury and distort her vocals. Nested in a bed of thorny electronics and broken rhythms, her multifaceted vocals might bring to mind Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead or Hope Sandoval fronting Massive Attack. London MC Brother May (Mica Levi, CURL) makes an appearance on the driving and ethereal “Whip,” while Øystein’s own voice appears for the first time in a state of languid background haze. Soft as Snow create and record across Europe. Defiantly averse to genre, the pair become vessels for their “electronic music pushed to the brink of collapse” (The Wire), previously released by Infinite Machine and Houndstooth. Informed by backgrounds in film and performance art, “there’s a surrealism that comes with watching Soft as Snow in the flesh,” (Vice) as seen at L.E.V. and Lunchmeat Festivals. Collaborations with visual artist Guynoid, designer AGF Hydra, and sculptor Camilla Steinum add depth to the corporeality of their “strange, mesmerising and utterly unforgettable” electronic experimentations. 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