{"title":"Grand River","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"in-uno-spazio-immenso-2","title":"In Uno Spazio Immenso","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen the world's chatter is hushed to a whisper and emptiness replaces clutter, time falls away completely, exposing a vast, open canvas for the imagination fill with reflection, contemplation and abstraction. On their first collaborative album, released via Caterina Barbieri's light-year's label, Grand River and Abul Mogard gaze longingly into the abyss, capturing atemporality, splendour and tranquility with confident, impressionistic sonic strokes. Dynamic and poignant, 'In uno spazio immenso' balances on a knife-edge between booming, operatic grandeur and soft-focus simplicity, casting as much light on the subtle outlines and illusory rhythms as it does its dense, almost overpowering textures. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBerlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, has been evolving her unique musical language since she released 'Crescente' on Donato Dozzy and Neel's Spazio Disponibile imprint in 2017. A trained linguist, she uses her instrumentation and advanced processes to challenge cultural perceptions, portraying emotions and moods rather than fixed, visual images. Abul Mogard meanwhile is just one of veteran Italian producer Guido Zen's many aliases, and over a series of acclaimed albums for labels like Ecstatic, Houndstooth and VCO, he's muddled fiction with stark reality, shaking kosmische synth fantasies into post-industrial ambience and blissful shoegaze memories. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWorking together, Portioli and Zen find unity in intensity, freezing their discrete concepts and techniques into a glacial emotional expanse. On opening track 'Dissolvi', they peer out hand-in-hand over a colossal, reverberant landscape, conducting booming basses, evaporating voices and brassy synthetic swells that pick out the formidable topography. Beatless but not without rhythm, the composition moves at its own pace, twisting time and form to suggest the duo's obliquely hypnagogic narrative. And with each action, there's inevitably a reaction: 'Frantumi di luce' is a hushed refraction that simmers with intrigue, decorating its subtle, flickering pulse and dazzling rays of thoughtful ambience, while 'Altrove, lontano' transports listeners into a different locale entirely, cloistering its meditative mood with angelic choral echoes and evocative strings. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe album's most devastating track, 'Archi' is an apex of sorts, a collision of widescreen electroid oscillations and overdriven drones that careens into a grinding industrial beat, and 'Sulle barcane' is its serene inverse, a breathy exhalation fashioned from cryptic environmental recordings, static washes and weightless pads. But 'In uno spazio immenso' isn't a story about Portioli and Zen, exactly, it's an invitation to listen to an inner voice that's different for each listener. Space is whatever we want it to be, and how we decide to fill it is a choice that's dependent on the depth of the imagination.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Light Years","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50433183416651,"sku":"2200721","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/In_Uno_Spazio_Immenso_c09336a2_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726877692"},{"product_id":"all-above","title":"All Above","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn her third album, Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, asks what guiding forces might be driving us, enticing us, and affecting us. \"All Above\" is rooted in her deeply personal philosophy as an artist, blurring the boundaries between electronic music and acoustic music and sculpting familiar ambient forms into personal themes painted with rich emotional colors. Written painstakingly over the last two years, the album is the most ambitious and divergent set of music Portioli has assembled so far, put together with a wide variety of instrumentation (including voices, strings, organs, guitars, and synthesizers) and focused around the piano.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe's keen to assure listeners that while that instrument isn't always heard, it's constantly at the forefront of the album, shepherding its emotions and anchoring its mood. It makes sense then that on opening track 'Quasicristallo', the acoustic piano is the first element we hear, recorded closely so its characteristic rattle and creak can speak as loudly as the familiar tones themselves. When the music blooms into abstraction and processed electronics, it's almost imperceptible at first: reverb mutates into ghostly vapor trails, and distortion forms the keys into another instrument entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePortioli's more electronic inclinations transpire on 'Human', as the piano punctuates a rhythmic synthesized bassline and smudged choirs that can't help but trace out the silver screen. But she's careful to state that \"All Above\" isn't an imaginary film score; in fact, she doesn't think of her music (or sound in general) in visual terms. Portioli studied as a linguist and uses her art to develop an emotional language that's not bound by expected cultural constraints. When she adds a different instrument or process it's not to reference a visual cue, but to mark a journey through different states of being. Each element embodies a different emotion or mood: the electric guitar represents strength or even violence, synthesizers shuttle us into the dream world, and the acoustic instruments are there to highlight intimacy and warmth - even heart. Read like this, the tracks are like meditative poems rather than cinematic vignettes: 'The World At Number XX' is seemingly centered around a chugging synthesized arpeggio, but the cosmic, Klaus Schulze-esque pads, strangled guitar and evocative organ tones hint at the open-hearted, literate psychedelia of the 1970s; 'In The Present As The Future' meanwhile is breathy and windswept, juxtaposing urgent rhythmic phrases with light, flute-like gusts of harmony.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDedicated to Editions Mego founder Peter Rehberg, who died suddenly last year, \"All Above\" demands engagement and refuses to evaporate into the background. It's a statement of intent from Portioli, who has been entangled in the experimental ambient world for years at this stage, running the One Instrument imprint and releasing on labels like Australia's Longform Editions and Italy's Spazio Disponibile. The album asks listeners to not just absorb the album as a whole, but notice the cracks in the structure and discern the tension they cause. That's never more evident than on closing track 'Cost What It May', a piece of music that's almost jarring when Portioli chops into noisy waves of electric guitar. In the wrong hands, this might sound like a power move - some kind of rock posturing to act as a finale. But Portioli's expression is different, she's forcing a level of engagement that perceives the negative space as just as important as the saturated positive, and what could be more haunting and emotionally resonant than that?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Editions Mego","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":51245966164299,"sku":"2005642","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/cover.ki_14_16804355_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1739230120"},{"product_id":"tuning-the-wind-sx","title":"Tuning The Wind","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover Tuning The Wind by Grand River on vinyl from Umor-Rex. An innovative musical piece where nature and music merge seamlessly.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Umor-Rex","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":51641265357131,"sku":"2243078","price":25.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/2243078.jpg?v=1744712252"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/fr\/collections\/grand-river.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}