SOPA CURIOSA
Price 50 dkk / 7 euro / 10 $
Total time: 78:37
100 copies
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"SOPA CURIOSA" is the second compilation from SOPA and follow-up to the critically applauded "SOPA DELICIOSA". 22 tracks by artists from around the world. Among them exclusive tracks by several of the SOPA artists as well as loads of other music by a wide range of other musicians. An exciting mix of genres, ideas and personalities.
The music has its origin in 11 countries: Denmark, United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan, Italy, USA, Canada, Germany, Sicily and Bosnia.
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Started out doing [ ] using a broken [ ] with its own inner life. Bought a [ ] and became more [ ]. Now use [ ] like everyone else but still rely heavily on [ ] and the [ ]. Don't have any [ ] to label our [ ] with. Don't [ ] very hard and don't have nothing to say. [ ] and [ ] are the main sources of [ ]. Always end up doing some good old grainy pulsating stuff...
Old effect boxes? Music? Delay pedal? Curiousity? 303? Mac computers? Inspiration? 303? Superlatives? Soundscapes? Work? Beat oriented? Revenge?
Jasmina Maschina's folk soundscapes transport you into her unique world of song. She melds the most simple and innocent chord progressions of time-honoured folk music with a noiseniks attraction to repetition, drone and inventiveness to create the sensation of paresthesia, tingling on both the skin and mind. Jasmina Maschina composed, produced and recorded her debut album, "The Demolition Series", at home in Berlin, released in Europe on Staubgold and the USA on Armed Orphan in 2008.
HAVE A TASTE
Golden Diskó Ship is a Berlin based musician named after a golden ship found forever waiting for the party in the harbour of Reyjkavik. She combines a mass of instruments and found objects (guitars, viola, glockenspiel, sticky tape, compact disc cases, toys) together with laptop electronica to form a world of beautiful, original and individual music. 'Dreamy, experimental folk electronica that sounds like walking on the beach with the sun in your eyes.'
Heidi Mortenson grew up listening to the metallic sounds of her dad fixing cars in the garage and her mum playing the organ. Her first audio modulations began on a small cassette player, La Bamba was a favorite. As a teenager Heidi moved to Barcelona and grew up in the Spanish ghetto. Mortenson began experimenting with recording herself singing inside a washing machine, rebuilding a telephone receiver into a microphone, hooking up with a walkie-talkie system and paid the rent from DJ giggs. This instrumental track "Universe" was made back then on 'the omni magic machine' and recorded onto tape.
Heidi makes colorful and textured music with a nerdy and dazed approach; her sound grows from playful experiments and inventive production. Add emotional drive, a mentalist flavor and soul of old cartoon. Sultry, silly, soulful and playful. So far Heidi has made two albums and a handpainted EP released by Wired Records. You can find out more on Heidi's website.
Text on the way...
In the past Daniela Cattivelli and Margareth Kammerer co-founded a few bands in Italy which were profoundly influenced by experimental music and collective improvisation and composition. After these common experiences in later years both took completely different paths. Margareth moved to Berlin where she began to compose for herself, minimal songs for guitar and voice, collaborating with different musicians from the experimental Berlin music scene.
Daniela stopped playing saxophone and became an electronic musician collaborating with videoartists, dancers, theater etc.
Last year they met again and worked together. The results are songs where the musicians enjoy to search for new structures and sounds and playing with different styles between the epic and minimal.
Looking like Victorian gentlefolk, wielding a distorted guitar and a tambourine, Sister Chain & Brother John relate stories of the wicked set and the lovelorn, of teenage daydreams and erotic nightmares, creating what can best be described as Parlour Punk or latter day chamber music. "Black Room" is taken from their home-made album "Darkness to Warm Your Heart" released on Dwarfhaus Records.
Diving into the depths of melancholy is not an easy achievement. And perhaps nobody knows this better than Esther Maria, who uses her songs to tell stories of heartache, loss and the unflinching beauty and light in a moment of sorrow. Spending her younger years trying to find her place in the modern worlds vast sea of musical genres, she at last returned to the place she herself began, back when she started listening to records, playing guitar and singing folk and country in a early age. She delved into the archives of the old masters, and started finding her foothold in a world of music, that for many has been long forgotten and overtaken by new genres. Listening intensely to musicians like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and The Band she wants to bring her music and songs back to a stage, where the singer and the guitar can stand alone, where the musicians can work together as an combined entity, in a simple and free form.
Under the Sherry Moon is Signe Marie Schmidt-Jacobsen (Daughters of Heavy, Paula NewWoman), Oliver Hoiness (Skammens vogn, Joy L, Don't go to NYand more) and Mikkel Holtoug (Decorate Decorate, Death by Kite) who each have their roots in widely different parts of alternative music. This becomes obvious when listening to their cocktail of genrebusting popmusic containg electro, dub, minimalistic keyboards and organ grinding. The reeling common ground is the smell of playfulness, creative zest, down-to-earth desire for beauty and naughtiness - and the result is their quirky and experimental circuspop.
Per Hoier is the elements of Bowie, OMD, Current 93 and a healthy portion of World Serpent, gathered in a sound that points forward towards a time when you're allowed to be serious. A time when synthetic pop is not a longing for lost decades, but an attempt to point at the wondrous uncertainty that you meet the future with. Hoier is folk-synth under the influence of a futuristic avantgard-flu. This has so far resulted in releases as part of Goodiepal's 7-inch series Demonbag and on LJUD Records.
Berlin-based Italian musician, graphic artist and dj Zelda Panda writes utterly charming tunes about travelling, life in the city and love. Using an old Italian 60's guitar, a loop-pedal and a toy-keyboard she works her unique lo-fi magic. Zelda is a very productive listener who draws upon a vast body of music for inspiration - among other things country, jazz, 80's pop and old italian crooner-classics - as welll as literature, film and her many personal observations. On this track she is joined by Big Daddy Mugglestone on drums and Mattef Kuhlmey on bass. It was recorded by Elisabeth Enke.
Formed in 2006, Héliodrome is composed of Khyro, from the Atach Tatuq collective and y.p.l., the mastermind behind the Rosemo(u)nt Antiquartet. The duo quickly bonded over their love of free-jazz, folk, hip hop, experimental music and religious studies. Being inspired by all musical eras since the early 1900s, their sound has a distinct timelessness to it.
Héliodromes lyrics, written and performed by Khyro, sit between the personal journal of intimacy and the quest for transcendence. To understand the difficulties of his daily life, he learned about himself through a meditation study group and his studies in Buddhism, Sufism, kabala and psychoanalysis.
Y.p.l. is no stranger to exploring his mind, which he uses to create the mood and harmony of Héliodromes music. His compositions are diverse and passionate but still maintain a flow that is captivating. Y.p.l.s complex drum programming and sound orchestrations are the perfect complement to Khyros intricate lyrics.
Always up for a challenge, Héliodrome have restrained themselves to the use of only four instruments per song, creating an intense lo-fi esthetic. Deeply Lynchean in their aesthetic; tiptoeing the fine lines between dreams and reality and allowing subconscious symbols to emerge in words and music, Héliodrome invite you into their world of experimental hip hop one song at a time.
Don Saund is a Danish backgrab artist, with live shows known for it's passion of emotion in dream control. A multi-musician mastering a long line of instruments including piano, keyboard, guitar, drums, human bass / beatbox / trumpet, percussion and the balalika. It's magnificent how he's beating all instruments within sweet power of grace. The enlighten of struggles between harmony and steady grooves is just marvels, and the connection of inner emotions cannot be touched without YOU!
He'll never hit the top. He won't bring you to a star. If you go out with him don't tell your parents and bring a lot of money for oh so many drinks. He'll always be late on Saint Valentine's day dinner and he'll get drunk until he'll try to kick you out of your own room. Those are 7 good reasons to love him to death... The song on this cd contains 9 bonus reasons.
The song has been recorded and produced by Barborini at Powermaracas! home studio by the warm light of the Chou-Chou.
In the moment when my memories, my soul and sound resonates my music appears in this place. I tell a minimal and compact story. Psychedelic, naive and humorous. The comical world might sneak up behind you any time. In the future it might become more ironic. However, it's entirely what I love to do. Prayer of thanks... appliqued.
REVIEWS
"The album works as an exciting collection of songs in itself and as it was probably originally intended: A showroom for the label. That's the way it should be, and therefore the album in itself is successful."
- Cd review by Danish independent music webzine Undertoner.
"This disc certainly works at bringing these artists to peoples attention and hopefully showcasing some of their talent. The tracks range from accessible, experimental, indie, pop, electronic etc. (...) Worth noting is that [most] tracks are exclusive."
- Norman Records (UK), rating 'Happy'
With origins in the Balkans and Sicily two southern europeans meet on a nordic winter night: melancholy strikes.
I've been playing the harp since I was 4 and I'm Italian-born and Berlin-based. I called this piece 'Frangipani': during a mid-August morning walk I discovered this scent called frangipani, and this name - for me - was the surname of a woman I knew years ago, but then I discovered that it's also the name of a tropical tree with beautiful white-pink/yellow flowers. I like this word so much, to my Italian ear it sounds like a word from Northern Europe or Asia or Italy or invented, too.
You know, I really want to connect, yet this feeling of disconnection lingers. Like the world is spinning, but I'm stuck in place. Some people seem to enjoy the disconnectedness, they cloak themselves in it, wear it all their lives. But somehow I can't do that, I have to reach out - this is why I sing to you. And then maybe you can do that dance, you know, the one that you usually don't do in front of people. The one that makes you, you.
Na Pravda? (a.k.a. Halfdan Abrahamsen) often incorporates the voices of good people and the sounds of nature, to sense our glorious living Earth in music. Na Pravda? sometimes gets lost in the rhytm of the machine which destroys the Earth. "Four Walls Odyssey" is inspired by a big machine and songs of freedom.
Coming from a background of music, Tom Bugs has been working with electronics for the last few years, beginning with circuit bending and simple guitar stomp boxes and gradually sinking deep into the circuitry for work on handmade noise systems and large scale modular synths. So despite producing music from time to time his main focus these days is constructing his Bugbrand sound devices.
Toms work tries to mix the worlds of art and science by opening up technological ideas to new controls and areas of chance or controlled chaos. His recent work is almost entirely with analogue electronics, with his ideas often taking existing designs, twisting them a bit and then combining and presenting them in new ways.
No Nebraska! is one guitarist, one bass clarinetist and one drummer in self-imposed exile from their respective homelands since may 2006. Huddled together in a dark Moabit basement during Berlin's 11-month-long winters, they fight the bitter cold with their own multilingual house blend of post-punk, math rock, minimalist classical, free jazz, power chords, sing-a-longs, and frog masks. They emerge only to shower, buy pierogies, and seek out even colder places to play their chaotic live shows. Influences include Chicago, Washington DC, Amsterdam, Guantanamo Bay, Barack Obama, Alien vs. Predator, Four Roses, penis jokes, gentrification, and explosive ordnances. Our musicbox is a planet and the ballrooms our playgrounds, thank you for inviting!
A.K. Hansn has for years baffled many a Danish mind with his wordplay and trademark odd suburban rock tunes in the bands Vildensky and Singvogel - the latter alongside poet Peter Laugesen. This is Hansn mainly on his own with a few friends to help out. And when they do help out the line-up is not necessarily always the same, but operating under a different name each time - chosen from titles of the Sherlock Holmes murder mysteries.
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