{"title":"Subtext Recordings","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSubtext Recordings\u003c\/em\u003e was founded in 2004 in Bristol, UK. Now based in Berlin, the label is curated by James Ginzburg and explores the numinous space between experimental electronic and composed instrumental music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe label has gained a reputation for pushing boundaries and challenging conventions within the music industry. With a focus on creating unique sonic experiences, \u003cem\u003eSubtext Recordings\u003c\/em\u003e offers a diverse range of releases that captivate listeners with their innovative soundscapes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCollaborating with talented artists from around the world, \u003cem\u003eSubtext Recordings\u003c\/em\u003e showcases their work through thoughtfully crafted albums and EPs. Each release tells its own story, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in an atmospheric journey of sound.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"lambda","title":"Lambda","description":"\u003cp\u003eZuli's widest-reaching and most ambitious album to date, \u003ci\u003eLambda\u003c\/i\u003e is a conspicuous left turn for the Berlin based Egyptian producer. Draped in gauzy, granulated textures and woven with enigmatic vocal flourishes from collaborators Michael Brailey, Coby Sey and Abdullah Miniawy, it's a vivid, soul-searching set of polychromatic reflections that sets fire to the boundaries between ambient, trip-hop, industrial music, chamber pop and symphonic noise.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn some aspects, \u003ci\u003eLambda\u003c\/i\u003e reveals Zuli's softer side; gone are the earth-shaking chopped rhythms and stopstart outbursts of corroded static that characterised his last full length, 'Digla Dive - Live'. But peer beneath the brain burrowing vocal melodies, mangled instrumental loops, anxious poems and subtle, harmonic synth washes and a new kind of intensity lurks in the shadows.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSince his early releases on Lee Gamble's UIQ label and his 2018 breakout 'Trigger Finger', Zuli has notched up major global acclaim for his futuristic, kinetic musical diversions. He cut his teeth supplying beats to local rappers back home in Cairo, soon shifting his attention to the city's burgeoning dance underground, promoting events, DJing prolifically and tirelessly supporting the scene's most experimental fringe. In 2019, Zuli teamed up with Rama to curate the irsh series of video transmissions, evolving the project into a label shortly afterwards. And now situated in Berlin, the duo have extended the concept to encompass an ongoing sequence of genre-averse club nights. All this experience and constant creative motion is etched into the foundations of \u003ci\u003eLambda\u003c\/i\u003e. It's an album that plays liberally with euphoria, but feels constantly precarious, intrepidly peering out from its tense internal world. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50440862564683,"sku":"2206923","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a2896138018_16_6ccef8c9_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726969115"},{"product_id":"kistvaen","title":"Kistvaen","description":"\u003cp\u003eRoly Porter returns to Subtext with 'Kistvaen'. The LP takes its name from a type of granite tomb found pre-dominantly in Dartmoor, an area in southwest England. Scattered across the moorlands, the kistvaens were often found covered in a mound of earth and stone. They housed dead bodies, allowing them to lie facing the sun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith 'Kistvaen', Porter speculates on the burial site as a mirror, or a gate in time. Excavating stories and images of ancient burial rituals, the record teases out similarities in emotional and social rituals between the Neolithic period and today. While a myriad of social, cultural and technological factors drastically differentiate our contemporary period and the end of the Stone Age, certain affinities may still be found in experiences of death across eras. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVenturing across histories, Porter soundtracks a moorland burial unanchored in time. Raw, unprocessed vocals are folded into field recordings made in the area, wordlessly relaying tableaus of burial rituals in Neolithic Dartmoor. 'Kistvaen' features three singular vocalists—Mary-Anne Roberts, from medieval Welsh music duo Bragod; Ellen Southern, of Bristol's Dead Space Chamber Music group; and Phil Owen, a singer and researcher in vocal traditions. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRecorded in part at BinkBonk studios in Bristol and during various performances and rehearsals, 'Kistvaen' is Roly Porter’s fourth solo studio album and his first since 2016’s 'Third Law,” released on Tri Angle. It follows previous releases on Subtext such as 2013’s 'Life Cycle of a Massive Star” and 2011’s 'Aftertime.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe pieces that comprise 'Kistvaen' were developed for an audio visual piece of the same name with visual artist MFO, which has appeared at Unsound, Berlin Atonal, and Sonic Acts amongst others.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP | x2","offer_id":50452733296971,"sku":"1093966","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a7616385-df3f-436a-97fa-b5417f179ae6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727162264"},{"product_id":"simulacrum","title":"Simulacrum","description":"\u003cp\u003eInspired in part by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard’s influential text “Simulacres et Simulation,” the record plays with synthesis and simulation, picking apart notions of modulatable, subjective veneers of reality. Informed by his experiences growing up while black in the French suburbs, Niamké, turns a critical gaze towards facades of inclusivity and equality, and how they diverge from lived experiences of discrimination and racism in France. Sonically, \u003ci\u003eSimulacrum\u003c\/i\u003e departs from ventures through Sun Ra and Afrofuturist music, as Aho Ssan dreams up new journeys and visions. Wanting to collaborate with a jazz musician but unable to find one, he turned to building patches in Max\/MSP to create simulations of them. The Mensah Imaginary Band features on tracks “Blind Power” and “We Don’t Have to Worry Anymore.” Taking shape across Max objects and patch cables, the ensemble takes its name from Niamké’s trumpet player grandfather Mensah Antony, who led a Ghanaian band in Ivory Coast in the 1950s and acted as a conductor at the country’s famed Abissa Festival. Aho Ssan, who never met Antony and has no access to recordings or information about his musical career, speculates on his musical heritage. Aho Ssan debuted \u003ci\u003eSimulacrum\u003c\/i\u003e at Berlin Atonal 2019. After studying graphic design and cinema, he started composing electronic music and creating his own digital instruments. Shortly thereafter Niamké went on to win the Foundation France television prize for his soundtrack to the 2015 film “D’Ingha Mago,” and has since worked on several projects affiliated with IRCAM. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50466463908171,"sku":"1133614","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/bc80fb1b-e975-4bb1-809b-1990dff15c99_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727313997"},{"product_id":"fifth-continent","title":"Fifth Continent","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlexander Tucker releases a new album, \u003ci\u003eFifth Continent\u003c\/i\u003e, a posthumous collaboration with Keith Collins (1966-2018). The album, which pays homage to Keith Collins, his partner and collaborator Derek Jarman (1942-1994), and the Kentish headland, Dungeness – is released on Subtext Recordings.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eComplex emotions are tied into the recordings, the words and sounds Collins recorded to his portable field recorder, and the instrumental improvisations Tucker made in Prospect Cottage. Each sound on the record leads towards its deeply moving finale, where we hear a ticking clock once more, and Collins talks about coming to terms with Jarman's death. Accompanied by Tucker's restrained instrumental flourishes, it's a piece of sound that's unabashedly moving, and one that will stick in your mind long after it's come to a close.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50468420026699,"sku":"2009233","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/f3e223db-4488-f25f-266e-126fb286caf4_a066fe35_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727347848"},{"product_id":"ash-3","title":"Ash","description":"\u003cp\u003eEmptyset present A\u003ci\u003esh\u003c\/i\u003e - a new collection of sound experiments developed over the last three years and assembled in Bristol during summer 2023.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe work draws on the project's roots in structural percussion and physical sonics, employing spatialised recording techniques and an array of analogue hardware,evoking the transformative and sculptural properties of sound.The release marks a return for the collaborative duo of James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas, following Ginzburg's work within the exploratory performance group Osmium and Purgas' extensive research into the history of India's first electronic music studio. It brings them back to Bristol where the project first began, channeling the echoes of the city's sound system culture and resonant musical continuum, anchoring their sound within its formative origins.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50529731674443,"sku":"2054935","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/9ec82f61-eac4-f7cf-93df-2561f11e631f_c6c70d46_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728065463"},{"product_id":"rewilding-3","title":"Rewilding","description":"\u003cp\u003eBaşak Günak is a Istanbul-born, Berlin-based sound artist and composer, also internationally known as Ah! Kosmos in the field of electronic music. Her work includes sound art, performance, sound installation, composition for theater and contemporary dance. On her solo album \u003ci\u003eRewilding\u003c\/i\u003e, Başak Günak has worked with the themes of (auto-)rewilding, foraging and decay, while also incorporating sounds she has gathered from her sound art and sound installations. Rewilding embodies the sounds of whistles, whispers, a deconstruction of a South-Eastern Anatolian folk song and the instruments; organ, bass clarinet, halldrophone, Buchla 100 and a broken piano. As foraging does not require territorial exclusivity, Başak Günak weaves together three songs from her sound installations presented in 2020 and 2023. While reimaging whispers, whistles, murmurs and sine waves as the auto-rewilders of the soundscape of the album, Günak creates a soft and porous medium that later disappears into the swamp. Sometimes these whistles take the form of a distant sound of a murmur that tends to disappear and then reaches to the surface again and overflows into audibility.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50531621011787,"sku":"2224740","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Rewilding_6836e937_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728110551"},{"product_id":"spomyn","title":"SPOMYN","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUkrainian composer Katarina Gryvul presents her \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ethird LP, \u003cem\u003eSPOMYN\u003c\/em\u003e, on Subtext. \u003cem\u003eSPOMYN\u003c\/em\u003e ('recollection') is an exploration of memory’s fragile, fragmented nature, revealing how it shapes the core of who we are. Each track is a fragment — a flicker of something lost, distorted, or forgotten — brought to life through unmediated emotion, acting as an invocation of continuity, connecting us to those who came before us and the fleeting moments of their existence that still resonate within us, and become elements in the lattice of our own selves. Gryvul’s corrupted choral pop compositions, augmented with full frequency electronic and organic experimentation, characterize \u003cem\u003eSPOMYN’s\u003c\/em\u003e uncanny and chimeric sound. Much like the blurred edges of memory itself, \u003cem\u003eSPOMYN\u003c\/em\u003e resists resolution, inviting listeners to disintegrate into worlds that linger in shadow and evoke the beauty of the unknowable. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":51670692430155,"sku":"R8185-3014","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a0182514777_16.jpg?v=1745141914"},{"product_id":"atamon","title":"ātamōn","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWith simple materials found in hardware stores — PVC pipes, water hoses, and ball valves — powered by a construction-site air compressor, mesmerizing drones emerge that challenge expectations of the material. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOriginally inspired by foghorns and sirens, Amina set out to gain control over these sounds by building a foghorn organ. What emerged was something far beyond foghorns: a haunting, electronic-sounding acoustic instrument that spreads frequencies like lasers. Amina refers to these as sound crystals. They translate surprisingly well to recording and are best experienced through speakers. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eConceived during a residency at Skogen in Gothenburg, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eātamō\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003en \u003c\/em\u003eis the result of a personal and spiritual exploration. Drawing from years of conversations with a spiritual advisor and therapeutic work on inner archetypes, Amina transforms composition into a tool for self-inquiry. The piece centres on a deconstructed foghorn organ, with eight pipes placed throughout the room, each representing a distinct psychological archetype such as The Safe Place, Hyperarousal, or Original Face. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe title\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eātamō\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003en,\u003c\/em\u003e derived from Old High German meaning “to breathe”, reflects the instrument as a living, communicating organism. With pipes instead of actors and sound in place of speech, the composition unfolds like a wordless theatre in which frequencies enact the tensions, longings, and contradictions of human experience. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRecorded in the vast, reverberant space of Spelhuset at Ställbergs gruva, an out-of-use iron mine in rural Sweden, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eā\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003etam\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eō\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003en becomes a sonic ritual — an encounter between body, resonance, and the infinite. The space itself amplifies the work as each sound lingers, refracts, and folds back into itself. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eā\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003etam\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eō\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003en I, the play unfolds as the different parts communicate and test one another. Each archetype believes it serves a purpose, even when its effect is painful. The work gives these parts space to speak, bringing them into balance through listening rather than judgement.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eā\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003etam\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eō\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003en II, the space itself speaks with the instrument. Moving through the sound field with microphones, Amina activates the acoustic properties of the chamber, inviting the mine to respond as sound draws from the resonance of the place. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe result is drone-based music in which textures emerge slowly, punctuated by moments of sudden intensity — alarm-like signals and interlocking polyrhythms that cut through the density. Elsewhere, the sound becomes vast and oceanic, inviting the listener to drift through a continuously shifting field of resonance. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eInformed by inner inquiry, symbolic systems, spiritual science, and the re-enchantment of sound, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eā\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003etam\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eō\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003en constructs an architecture of vibration — a memory not of events, but of presence. Rather than telling a story, the work opens a space for listening, sensing, and transformation. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Subtext Recordings","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":56391732691275,"sku":"R7751-2951","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a3005895770_16.jpg?v=1769453489"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_779c4d84_thumbnail_4096_4fe4a150-1b39-43dc-b8e7-300bba2c4e7d.jpg?v=1726969096","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/subtext-recordings.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}