{"title":"Light-Years","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"spirit-exit","title":"Spirit Exit","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe musical vortexes of Caterina Barbieri rewire time and space. Listening to the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso has felt like traveling at light-speed and slow-motion all at once since 2017’s breakthrough doublealbum Patterns Of Consciousness. 2019’s acclaimed Ecstatic Computation pushed even further with the lead single “Fantas”, where a haunting melody hurtling towards its supernova climax felt like witnessing the life and death of a burning star. Far beyond any new age trope or modern synth trend, her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact. Marking the debut album on her new label light-years, Barbieri now delivers her most profound work yet — a journey through inner-space as vast as a universe and as intimate as a heartbeat. \u003ci\u003eThe Spirit Exit \u003c\/i\u003eopens and we fall in.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSpirit Exit\u003c\/i\u003e is Caterina Barbieri’s time machine, primarily composed with a modular synth rig she thinks of more like a mechanical fortune teller. Whereas previous releases were constructed on lengthy tours, capturing only snapshots of continually evolving works, \u003ci\u003eSpirit Exit \u003c\/i\u003erepresents the producer’s first album fully written and recorded in her home studio amidst Milan’s two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It was during this extended isolation she found inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time, but united in their strength at cultivating vast internal worlds. St. Teresa D’Avila’s foundational 16th century mystical text The Interior Castle, philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman theories and the metaphysical poetry of Emily Dickinson act as thematic anchors throughout Spirit Exit, imbuing a life and death gravity into the composer’s most perception-altering music to date.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Light-Years","offers":[{"title":"Silver | LP | x2.","offer_id":50452741292363,"sku":"1152637","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD.","offer_id":50452741816651,"sku":"1152634","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/c0543fc7-3354-4704-a391-6c04a476998d_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727162626"},{"product_id":"caterina-barbieri-and-bendik-giske","title":"Caterina Barbieri and Bendik Giske","description":"\u003cp\u003eCaterina Barbieri \u0026amp; Bendik Giske's \u003cem\u003eAt Source\u003c\/em\u003e resounds music as wellspring, that which is essential and unknowable, and yet utterly primary. It finds two acclaimed composer-musicians building a world together in self-contained collaboration between analogue synthesis and an extended approach to the saxophone that conjures its own universe of sound. It is at once intimate and cosmic, drawing on the challenges and possibilities of their artistic exchange, tearing down technique to access all the expansive possibilities of their sonic meeting point.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAt Source\u003c\/em\u003e is a document of the world of sound to be conjured when two artists strive for something together, discovering the expansions and limitations of performance by bodies and machines. It is not an exercise in assimilation, but in productive exchange and creative confrontation. It does not draw on outside energies or influences, but grapples with what there is to find in their respective playing. \"It also reflects how natural the collaboration was,\" says Barbieri, \"a meeting at the source which was spontaneous, graceful and natural\".\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBarbieri and Giske first met and were enthralled by one another's performances at Kunsthaus Glarus in 2019, a meeting that spurred conversations on the power of transitions as a compositional force. Giske later contributed a rework of Fantas for Fantas Variations (Editions Mego, 2021), an ambitious undertaking to rescore Barbieri’s work for his saxophone and voice, a challenge Giske had started undertaking two years prior as an ongoing practice of transcription. “The request came as a proof of aligned ideas”, says Giske.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheir new collaborative project then started during an artistic residency in Milan’s ICA in 2021, by invitation of swiss artist and curator Jan Vorisek, as the world was emerging from lockdown. This meeting, and the preceding closure of sites for cultural exchange, made their work together 'feel like springtime' says Barbieri. Giske, who was on the brink of releasing his sophomore album, Cracks, then joined Barbieri's light-years tour, which functioned as an inaugural incarnation of her newborn label and platform through a series of multi-artist curated shows with appearances of Lyra Pramuk, Nkisi, MFO, among other artists.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThrough the tour, they continued to develop material live, and this release, laid down in the studio, is true to that ever-evolving process of creation, where live feedback stays essential to the vitality of this collaborative effort. The tracks are each named with two evocative words that contain the two poles of their sound. Theirs is both abstract and cosmic, in the synth as machine undermined by Barbieri's naturalistic playing, and in Giske's continuous exploration of the symbiosis between his instrument, voice, and body. These binaries, of body and machine, posed various challenges, notably in how the stepped patterns Barbieri uses were near-impossible to translate for Giske's body to perform, and other times where mathematical resolutions were needed to sync their playing. Explains Giske: \"It forced me to go to the core of what I am and what I have to offer”. Barbieri says that it \"explores the liminality between the machine and the human, and the vulnerability in this process\".\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAt Source\u003c\/em\u003e is testament to two divergent practices finding a whole cosmos in which to convene; music is crystalised and made utterly enveloping through the focused and critical work of two musicians working at their peak. The versions here are, temptingly, \"just one of many versions\" of this abundant source material Giske explains. Like the best collaborations, \u003cem\u003eAt Source\u003c\/em\u003e is more than the sum of its parts – bringing more to the feast than the simple combination of two musicians, promising versions upon versions of the exquisite material captured here.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Light-Years","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":56334190346571,"sku":"R2523-9932","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":56334190379339,"sku":"R2523-8671","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed-2026-01-19T133232.630.jpg?v=1768829559"},{"product_id":"club-imperiale","title":"Club Imperiale","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNamed after a now-shuttered nightspot that overlooked the beach on Italy's picturesque Tuscan coast, Maxime Denuc's\u003cem\u003e Club Imperiale \u003c\/em\u003eis a work of speculative historical fiction, a record that imagines a point of creative symbiosis between the Catholic church and the ecstatic dancefloors of the early '90s.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUsing a MIDI-controlled pipe organ, Denuc creates dense clouds of impossible-to-play notes that ricochet backwards and forwards through history, from Rome's reverberant cathedrals to the white, sandy beaches of the Balearic Islands. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTwo years ago, the Brussels-based French composer was forwarded a surprising video by a Belgian fan. It was shot during a Wedding at a church in Menorca, where the organist was playing 'Infinite End', the lead track from 2022's 'Nachthorn'. Immediately, Denuc knew that this was the thematic backdrop he'd been waiting for; he imagined the aftermath of the event, wandering through small villages and teetering on a cliff's edge, finding a provincial nightclub and retracing his steps back to the beach to witness the\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003esunrise. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis time around, Denuc was gifted the time and the access he needed to fully refine his concept. The technical side of the process had already been solved; after recording 'Nachthorn', he was now very confident with his system, able to control the pipe organ's keyboards, stops and pedals incredibly precisely using Max\/MSP and OpenSoundControl, or OSC. And his relationship with the St. Antonius Church in Düsseldorf had deepened significantly.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe cantor offered him a three or four days each month for a year to record the project and Denuc jumped at the chance. He moved into a small apartment nearby and spent every available hour behind the organ, working from 9AM until 5PM, stopping for mass and then returning for another long session, heading back to his studio on the off days to listen back to the recordings and plan fresh approaches.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis allowed him to sculpt the experience meticulously, thinking about the history of sacred music and considering the real reasons that its compositions have lingered in the secular consciousness for so long. He wanted to concentrate on the visceral acoustic qualities of the church itself, so used a spatial multi-microphone setup to situate listeners between the concrete walls, fabricating an acoustic experience that's multi-dimensional and cinematic.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Light-Years","offers":[{"title":"2LP - Black","offer_id":57758473158987,"sku":"R8239-7613","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":57793589838155,"sku":"R8239-7837","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/5e3c2bac-3b4a-ae07-cb33-3788d5787f8f.jpg?v=1783081773"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/light-years.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}