Quindi Records

[QUI022] Roudi Vagou, Läuten der Seele - Taghelle Nacht

Across an extensive suite of enchanting miniatures, Matthias Kremsreiter and Christian Schoppik present the hypnagogic vision of Taghelle Nacht. Recording under their respective Roudi Vagou and Läuten der Seele aliases, Kremsreiter and Schoppik combine their distinct but equally accomplished instrumental practices into a new collaboration that weaves swooning samples amongst instrumental passages. They lead us through 16 vignettes that revel in the cognitive dissonance and seductive magic of moonlight at midnight.

Both artists have past form within the folds of contemporary experimental electronic music in Germany. Kremsreiter's work as alibikonkret has manifested on DIY tape releases created with a methodical, technically-minded approach. Debuting his Roudi Vagou pseudonym on Taghelle Nacht, he pivots to a more playful, instinctively felt method that allows the compositions to flow with a natural cadence. Schoppik has been a key figure in the celebrated dark-ambient-folk scene, not least as part of the group Brannten Schnüre. His work as Läuten der Seele includes the acclaimed 'water trilogy' of LPs between 2022 and 2024, with a greater emphasis on instrumental, atmospheric production, and a last, stunning collaborative album with Nový Svět’s Jota Solo.

On Taghelle Nacht the precise ingredients of each piece soften at the edges as tape loops and swathes of reverb seal the joints between spellbinding melodic refrains. Opening track and lead single 'Gleissende Lichter' sets the tone with ghostly murmurs, spine-tingling string refrains and splashes of cymbal that cut through the gloom with stark clarity.

A lilting romanticism stirs at the heart of the orchestral samples that populate the likes of "Grenzüberschreitung" — old-world beauty sometimes buried in dust, elsewhere rendered with startling clarity. 'So Süß' lets buzzing, sustained drones and dissonant sweeps of extended technique glide in and out of each other. Granular processing subtly breaks apart the mellow swell on 'Komischer Anruf', and forlorn sax calls out into heavy-hearted space on 'Glaskopf Mit Watte'. At every turn a new scene is painted, distinct from the last and yet all bound up in the pervasive, pale blue light cast over the sleeping landscape Kremsreiter and Schoppik have sculpted.

Snatches of song drift by like dreamlike fragments, and achingly tender flourishes fleetingly appear and retreat — ideas and expressions momentarily caught in the light before retreating into the shadows once more. This is the evocative world of Taghelle Nacht — an unsettling depiction of the surreal blend of memories and imagination that merge into each other once the sun goes down. 

[QUI021] Plants Heal - Forest Dwellers

Seeking out the inspirational intersection between free improvisation, rave and ancient mysticism, Plants Heal deliver an album of kaleidoscopic, organic beatdowns to Quindi.

Plants Heal is a collaborative project between Dan Nicholls on synths, Dave De Rose on drums and Lou Zon (aka Louise Boer) on visuals. The roots of the project are entwined with Dan and Lou's London-based event Free Movements, which began in 2018 to explore how instrumental music could merge with live electronics and DJ sets. Dave and Dan found themselves playing together frequently at the event and as part of Dave's free improv project Agile Experiments, with their accomplished track records as multi-instrumentalists reaching across many layers of music culture. The particular synergy of their partnership taps into the subliminal, surreal and transcendental soundscapes, but they're reliably anchored by instinctive rhythms and driven by a natural flow-state.

From the tentative steps of their first collaborations, Dan and Dave coalesced Plants Heal as a more pronounced project with Lou's live visuals, culminating in a first self-released album in 2021 and since organically fed and watered through continued performances across adventurous festivals and intimate club spaces. Every incremental step along the path of the project yielded new surprises and the deepening sense of a unique, powerful energy. The trio opted to pour this energy into two days of studio sessions at Sonic Playground Studios in Athens, maintaining their unplanned approach and letting the music and visuals unfold in the moment. The end result is Forest Dwellers, a sincere document of truly free music that uses the rhythmic structure of dance and trance music as a springboard into heightened consciousness.

Throughout the album you can hear hints of the familiar — dub techno shimmers, trip hop boom-bap, kosmische momentum, snarling bass modulation, new age ambience and even the odd sizzle of disco. But none of these references are explicit, and they weave in and out of less placeable expressions deeply bedded into Dan and Dave's sonic practices. The end result is a swirling tapestry of unspooling groove, wide open and agile enough to shift gears mid-flow — just as comfortable letting the propulsion melt away as locking into a four-to-the-floor throwdown. From the slippery syncopation of 'Avena Moon' to the angular bait-and-switch of 'Alien Hardware', 'Yarrow's starry-eyed reverie and the rolling, warm-hearted funk of 'Space Ballad', the Plants Heal sound world is expansive and equally enthusiastic for immediate musical motifs as much as wild abstraction.

Lou's visual practice is an intrinsic part of the project. During performances she improvises with analogue footage from her library run through video mixers and synthesisers, focused on medicinal plants such as yarrow, hawthorn, nettle and thistle. All those plants feature in processed form on the cover of the record, which was designed in collaboration with Lou's brother Arthur Boer. Meanwhile, Lou recorded additional footage in Athens during the recording sessions to feed into the continued cycle of the project's live evolution.

Forest Dwellers' meaning honours this cycle and its reflection of the eternal undulations of the natural world. It's also a sincere tribute to the spiritual importance and radical potential of the dancefloor, drawn from the freedom taught by jazz and dedicated to reclaiming lost ideas about community, agency, bodies and the enduring allure of the unknown. 

Cosimo Querci - Rimane [QUI020]

Cassette | Digital

1. Telepatica Pretesa 06:11

2. Rimanemai 05:58

3. Nina Ferale 07:32

4. Caotico Dramatico 10:45

5. Manina Nera 03:47

“'Rimane' is a layered listen that deserves to be traversed frequently, in order to uncover fresh truths and arcane details contained within its labyrinthine walls.” Jeremy Allen - Electronic Sound Magazine

"As debuts go, Rimane is a winner with cult status written all over it; the artist leaving us wanting more of this musical world that he’s created in the ancient valley region of Casentino. Those Italian roots have been taken to far off and imaginative places; a psychedelic world of possibilities." Dominic Valvona - Monolith Cocktail

monolithcocktail.com/2025/10/06/the-perusal-72-will-glaser-peter-evans-cosimo-querci-sebastian-rojas/

"On the one hand, the dub derivation of post-punk that supports (and deviates from) elusive melodies; on the other, the motorik reiteration of Can, understood as an alien and mystical groove. DIY by vocation and necessity, romantically underground by elective affinity."

Mauro Fenoglio - Rumore Mag

Early support and airplays by Gilles Peterson, Nathan Gregory Wilkins on NTS, Tom Ravenscroft on Rinse FM, Gilliflower on XRay.FM, Zaereo on Worldwide FM, Jeff Conklin - Ambient Audiophile, Garbage Time on WFMU

In a mesmerising swirl of psychedelic songwriting shot through with lo-fi dub sensibilities, Quindi Records proudly present the debut solo album of Cosimo Querci. Taking cues from the motorik pulse of krautrock and the hypnotic romanticism of the 1970s Italian underground, Rimane offers a modern, singular approach to grandiose composition grounded by a naturalistic, earth-rooted sound.

Turin-based, Tuscany-born Querci decamped to an old barn in central Italy's Casentino region to record Rimane, playing electric twelve-string guitar, electric organ, bass and singing himself while Walter Bellini assisted with drums and percussion. Long, winding songs emerged from the sessions, bathed in the shimmer of delay and reverb, catching the dub-fusion spirit of post-punk but applying it to sweeping, majestic melodies with a melancholic beauty.

As well as the meandering narrative of each song, stylistically, Rimane roams freely through Querci's personal stew of influences. The insistent bass throb and driving guitar chops of 'Telepatica Pretesa' call to mind soundsystem spirituality, while 'Rimanemai' spirals with a more whimsical groove as it shifts from one passage to the next. 'Nina Ferale' opens with an extended passage of ambient meditation in the American minimalist tradition, nodding to Fourth World mysticism before the Can-schooled upthrust of the main song takes off. Determined to avoid being pigeon-holed, Querci charges 'Caotico Drammatico' with epic string swells and the relentless loop of a knotty drum machine as he plots a long and winding course through unabashedly beautiful landscapes brushed with the dying light of the day. 'Manina Nera' closes proceedings with the record's most concise, heavyweight pulse — a thrumming kick, looming bass and an intoxicating surge of sustained organ chords carrying Querci's treated, cooly detached vocals, sung exclusively in Italian.

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti - Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter [QUI018-WAT018]

“Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter initiates the most natural union of Colussi’s immaculate craft and loquacious lyrics to date, yielding a set of sleazy-listening devotionals that don’t so much ramble as elegantly unfurl.”

-- Bandcamp Album Of The Day

“Music to imagine yourself slow-dancing to as the ship sinks”

-- Aquarium Drunkard

The best new albums out July 25

-- NPR All Songs Considered

“A melancholy record featuring a beautiful melding of Baroque art pop and vintage jazz”

-- Bandcamp, New & Notable

“A glorious splurge of prolifix a la Destroyer or Father John Misty, but backed by a band with serious Italian soundtracks chops.”

-- UNCUT

“These are songs that take on big ideas — about the human condition and dualities and the laws of attraction — and [in doing so they] make them sound relatable, funny, alive, as if there are still some permutations we’re hiding from the computers and their insatiable appetites.'

-- Ryan Dombal, Hearing Things

“The songs on Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter…play out just as much as essays or a book of short stories as they do songs. It makes the Fortunato Durutti Marinetti experience a multi-faceted one.”

-- Sun-13

"….What an album; the perfect one at that. A great songbook that just gets better with every single play. Colussi has produced his best work yet."

-- Monolith Cocktail

“His music speaks naturally speaks in a language a language of its own, without bothering to declare where it comes from”

-- Rumore Mag

" His most sweeping, absurd, and emotionally acute statement to date."

-- Various Small Flames UK

Known on both sides of the Atlantic for his baroque, poetic approach to songwriting, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti returns with Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter—his most sweeping, absurd, and emotionally acute statement to date. Calling it Poetic Jazz Rock—at once a private joke and an honest descriptor—the Toronto-via-Turin cantautore (Italian for singer-songwriter) delivers an album of maximalist grace, gilded sorrow, and lyrical intensity.

The title, Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter, nods to Anne Carson’s Eros: The Bittersweet, a book that launches a thousand ideas into the air: the impossibility of translation, the contradictions at the heart of desire, and the fluid spectrum between seeming opposites. That duality animates this album—from its two-headed dog cover art to its songs that twirl between beauty and grotesquerie, euphoria and dread.

While his previous album, Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean, sought sonic hybridity, Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter marks Marinetti’s dive into excess. Written with the intent to push his songwriting to absurdist extremes, the album features long, chorus-less compositions swirling in 6/8 time, packed with words, brass, and string flourishes. Recorded live with a nimble six-piece band in a cramped Toronto attic studio, the record captures raw performances—often tracked in first or second takes—and overlays them with meticulous arrangements.

Inspired by the iconoclasts—Annette Peacock, Rickie Lee Jones, Donald Byrd, Brigitte Fontaine, Fabrizio De André—Marinetti follows his craft wherever it leads. There are echoes of Destroyer and Tindersticks here, but also something singularly his: Maximally Graceful Funky Eloquence, as he puts it.

The songs on Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter grapple with empathy, ego, surveillance, spiritual exhaustion, and love in its various shades of delusion. Lead single “Full of Fire” opens the album with an explosive ode to romantic recklessness in the tradition of Thelma & Louise. Elsewhere, “Beware” offers bitter advice for bitter times, “Call Me the Author” references Joan Didion by way of Brigitte Fontaine, and “My Funeral” imagines a self-delivered eulogy set to sombre jazz-noir. The instrumental themes (“Theme I” and “Theme II”) give the band room to stretch, underscoring the record’s musical vitality.

The album features contributions from a revolving cast of heavy-hitters, including New Chance (co-vocals on “Beware”) and Jay Arner (clavinet on “Beware”), who also mixed the entire record. A longtime friend and collaborator of Colussi’s, Arner (of Energy Slime, also on We Are Time) brings a deep familiarity to this fourth recorded collaboration, giving Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter its surreal, shimmering final polish.

Recorded, produced and mixed at Dining Room Sound, Toronto

Louie Short -- Recording & Mixing (A Perfect Pair)

Jay Arner -- Mixing & Post-Production

Heather Kirby at Dreamland -- Mastering

Daniel Colussi -- Vocals & Guitar

Victoria Cheong -- Vocals (Beware)

Brandon Gibson De Groote -- Violins, Viola & String Arrangements

Alex Fournier -- Bass

Alex Hamlyn -- Saxophone

Stefan Hegerat -- Drums

Blake Howard -- Percussion

John Jowett -- Euphonium & Trombone

Jay Arner -- Clarinet (Beware)

Tara Kannangara -- Trumpet

Eliza Niemi -- Cello (Do You Ever Think?)

Luan Phung -- Lead Guitar

Chris Pruden -- Piano, Synth, Rhodes

IE - Reverse Earth [QUI019]

Emerging from the Minneapolis underground and heading straight towards the sky, IE arrive on Quindi with a full-length album of sparkling, sophisticated wonder. Touching on kosmische grandeur, Riley-esque cyclical patterns, lounge pop and dubbed out psychedelia, the five-piece allow their songs to unfurl with a natural, hypnotic elegance which can take many different forms.

There's a loose, live quality to the recordings IE's members commit to record, which reflects their steady presence gigging in Minneapolis and the surrounding area. Since putting out their first release in 2016, they've glided from drone and synth-led jam band ambience (2018's Pome) to strung out, stoner-tinted slowcore (on 2023's outstanding Junk Body). For Reverse Earth they strike a smoky note that wraps itself around your skull across extended run times that evolve with a meditative poise.

From the deceptively driving 4/4 thrum of the opening title track through 'Divination Bag's snaking tryptamine mantras on to 'Simplify's slow and smouldering indie-soul, IE's sound is bathed in a sumptuous warm glow that rounds out the lows and the mids, creating a nocturnal shroud in which their nebulous song structures can feel deliciously endless.

Meredith Gill's drums provide rolling and tumbling undercurrents for the slowly shifting phases of the instrumental players, as Michael Gallope and Travis Workman trade keyboard parts and Workman and Sam Molstad chop and pick at their six-strings. Atop the thrum of her bass, Mariel Oliviera's vocal adapts to the scenery, from a distant, dreamlike siren song on 'Reverse Earth' to a spoken word meditation on 'Babel'.

There's space in each track for every instrument to cut through and have its moment, from a spiralling key vamp to a chicken-scratch guitar flex. The gently twisting, head-feeding groove exercises of the first four tracks give way to a slow and powerful march on 'Dark Rome', closing the record on a noirish anti-ballad fit to peal out in the closing slot at Twin Peaks' Roadhouse (circa season three). As much as the tracks teem with composition, musicianship, and production to savor, a sound like IE's has a soporific quality that soaks in unconsciously. It's an evocative portal where the band feel as if they could just play on each piece ad infinitum — where the time itself seems to dislodge from its moorings. 

released May 9, 2025

Credits:

Michael Gallope, keyboards Meredith Gill, drums Sam Molstad, guitar and bongos Mariel Oliveira, bass, vocals, and flute Travis Workman, guitar and keyboards

Recorded by IE Mixed by John Dieterich Mastered by Matthew Castore at Soft Cult Studio Design by Brendan Wells Photography by Brendan Wells and Rachel White

Dead Bandit - Dead Bandit [QUI017]

Capturing phantom drones behind dusty beats and haunted twangs, Ellis Swan and James Schimpl return for their third album as Dead Bandit. Locked into a musical language unique to their collaboration, the duo once again put us out to pasture across broad sonic plains, drums flapping like loose fence panels in the prairie breeze and bass rumbling like distant thunder. True to their previous two records, Swan and Schimpl keep the strung out guitars at the front of what they do, whether playing a naked, desolate strum or running six strings through disruptive effects processing until they're barely recognisable.

But while there are details of disturbance when listening to Dead Bandit's self-titled record up close, the wider impression is a smoother, more direct affair that toys with post-rock complexity and matches it with the emotional weight of melodic simplicity, gentle grooves and conscious arrangements. 'Weeds' offsets its languid fuzz guitar with shimmering sustained notes before settling into a patient, heavy-hearted composition charged with heartbreak leads pealing out in the middle distance. 'Up To Your Waist' finds a cautious serenity in the lilt of its swing and wistful, picked-out A-B structure, striking the most open and optimistic tone on the album without ever lost in its own levity. By comparison, 'Glass' has a smoky, half-hidden backroom quality. Its brushed whisper of a beat, lingering guitar drones and subtle sub bass come on like a dub wise flip of a sad-eyed country ballad. The mood maintains on 'Half Smoked Cigarette', which captures the grey sky sullenness of post-punk and reframes it in the seductive isolation of rural America. While there's a thickness to the sound on these most direct of tracks on the album, there's also fragility inherent to the sound world Dead Bandit have been shaping out over these past few years. 'Buttercup' swaps sadness for sinister undercurrents, once more drawing on fulsome low end to fill out the sparse threads of instrumentation up top. 'Pink' finds a steady momentum for its own brand of brooding mystery, the sharp end of the beat bringing focus to the many-layered approaches to the guitar which roundly define the Dead Bandit sound. There's an even clearer direction mapped out in the vintage drum machine pulse of 'Koyo', all the better to carry swirling effects treatments and moody melodic figures. Even in these ominous climes there's space for plaintive, endearing hooks which land as the most direct phrases in Dead Bandit's musical lexicon to date. The fundamental sound across this album holds true, but Dead Bandit are never bound to a singular practice. 'Lucien's Bitters' strikes up a pronounced drum machine beat which comes on like 90s downtempo, and it feels like a natural vessel for the heavy, shoegaze tinted lament of the guitars. At every turn, Swan and Schimpl prove their affinity for all kinds of approaches, and yet the end product is a deeply cohesive, immediate listen that shows just how clear their creative vision really is. 

released March 14, 2025

Credits:

Written, produced and recorded by James Schimpl and Ellis Swan

Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi

Layout by Johannes Schebler

Photos by James and Ellis

Expose - ETC [QUI016]

In a continued disruption to the airwaves following releases from Bondo and Monde UFO, Quindi returns to the Californian noise rock scene-not-scene to dig on the gnarled riffs of Expose. On their second release, the LA outfit double-down on a unique blend of bloated guitar fuzz and grimy analogue synths, and come out with a curiously cosmic kind of kick-ass.

If there was a dreamy, sun-bleached quality to Bondo and Monde UFO, their label mates Expose sound more wrought from sweat-drenched jam sessions under halogen strip lights in grease-stained garages. But the guttural quality of their blown-out guitar tone is matched for vibrancy by the dexterity of their playing, bringing angular free jazz to post hardcore and sludge rock, capped off with the unearthly sonic possibilities of flamboyant synthesis.

This dual-layered wall of sound lends extra weight to the likes of shit-kicking 'Speed Dial', which thunders like a kosmische juggernaut with amped up leads and a dead-eyed vocal condensed into a visceral minute, all with enough time for a dramatic breakdown, synth eruption and a final thrust. Similarly scooped out of the trash compactor, 'Description' rides for longer with one foot pressed firmly on the fuzz pedal, letting the electronics squeal around the punked-up rush of the guitars.

But Expose are not a one-dimensional band constantly thrashing it out. By contrast, 'The Constant' hits a crushing emotional note in its more structured push and pull between delicacy and heaviness, hitting bittersweet notes along the way throughout the peaks and troughs of the arrangement. 'Self Terror' washes languid, discordant guitar strum into swirling FX accompanied by sax from Monde UFO's Ray Monde.

Smart as a whip, sharp as a tack and boiling over with an untameable urgency, Expose make their presence felt in brilliant, bruising form on this particularly fierce addition to the Quindi catalogue. 

Jeff Stephens - Guitar (all tracks except 4) / Bass (Track 1) / Piano (Track 12) James Novick - Synth on all tracks Jake Getz - Bass (all tracks except 1,4,6,10) Trent Rivas - Drums / Vocals (all tracks except 4, 10) Coleman Sawyer - Viola (Tracks 4,7,10,12) Duke Guisness - Guitar (Tracks 8,7,11) / Bass, Drums (Track 4) Brian Bartus - Saxophone (Tracks 1,4,7,10,12)

Produced by E Mixed by James Novick Mastered by Kern Haug

Baldruin - Mosaike Der Imagination [QUI015]

Turning their gaze to the buoyant culture of wyrd, modernist German folk music, Quindi welcome a spectacularly idiosyncratic offering from Johannes Schebler, aka Baldruin. Bewildering narrative twists, high drama and intricate delicacy make Mosaike der Imagination an engrossing listen from the outset, as baroque atmospheres and tumbledown drums intertwine with tactile string plucks and needlepoint synthesis in an authoritative bridging of ancient and hypermodern sonic sensibilities.

Schebler's catalogue as Baldruin is extensive, reaching back to the late 00s and covering a lot of ground through cassette albums on respected underground labels like SicSic, A Giant Fern and Lullabies For Insomniacs. Meanwhile, his work has been recognised as part of a broader movement of experimental electronic music in Germany taking inspiration from folk traditions, as documented on last year's essential Bureau B compilation, Gespensterland. Beyond his solo work, Schebler also works with Jani Hirvonen as Grykë Pyje (mappa), and both collaborate with Paul Wilson as Yayoba (Not Not Fun). Christian Schoppik of leading dark folk project Brannten Schnüre joins him as Freundliche Kreisel (STROOM). It's a tangled, fascinating and evocative sound world which Mosaike der Imagination offers a compelling window into.

No two tracks on the album follow the same pattern or palette, whether gliding through the Giallo synth undulations and post rock tonal arcs of 'Stimme des Wegelagerers' or spelling out miasmic incantations through flickering flames on 'Aus dem Feuer, aus dem Licht'. 'Hinein, hinaus, hinüber' revolves around meditative drum mantras and cascading melodic phrasing, densely layered and evolving with purpose. 'Gemeinsam hindurch' flicks between swooping strings and pizzicato plucks in a purely romantic expression of orchestration, 'Mit verbundenen Augen' is a bewildering choral voice study and 'Im Sternstrom' revels in ecstatic synth arpeggios. Nothing can be predicted except the vibrancy and clarity of Schebler's vision.

It's a vision which extends to the front cover artwork for Mosaike der Imagination — a glorious tapestry created by Finnish artist Jan Anderzén, with a responding design and layout from Schebler adorning the rear sleeve.

Stepping to the side of the cosy daydream reveries that inhabit much of the Quindi output, Mosaike der Imagination indulges the label's penchant for sophistication in a freakily fascinating new framework from the heart of an exciting movement in experimental folk music. 

Recorded in Wiesbaden, Germany by Johannes Schebler

Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi

Cover Artwork "Rauniot" by Jan Anderzén

Testbild! - Bed Stilt [QUI014]

Songs recorded in Malmö 2005-2006, with additional overdubs in 2023 and 2024.

Cover art - Amanda de Frumerie Cover design – Juliana De Nicola Mastering - Tomas Bodén

Matching breezy, Bossa nova-tinged sophistication with softly spiralling psychedelia, Testbild! arrive in the Quindi lounge as though they've always been there. On their 12th album, Bed Stilt, the Swedish collective cast their attention back to the earlier days of their 25-year trip through sweetly mysterious pop-not-pop rendered in warm tones and shot through with surrealism.

It's tricky to get a precise fix on the story and structure of Testbild! The project was spearheaded by Petter Herbertsson in his hometown of Malmö in the late 90s, although the story on their website credits the inspiration and source material to a chance meeting and unpublished manuscript from a retiring scientist. The collective's evolution since then is a tangled web of facts and fiction spun by a revolving cast of collaborators including Siri af Burén, Katja Ekman, Rikard Heberling, Douglas Holmquist, Mattias Nihlén and Petter Samuelsson. Along the way, their music has touched on chamber pop, post-punk and modern jazz with the elaborate harmonies and catchy songwriting charm of the Canterbury scene.

The tracks which make up Bed Stilt were in fact track recorded in Malmö back in the mid- 00s, lying in wait for the right opportunity to be brought to light with some delicate overdubs and finishing flourishes in the here and now. The core musicians working on the record were Herbertsson and Douglas Holmquist on a similarly expansive list of vocals, guitars, bass, synths and keys, Siri af Burén on lead vocals and Mattias Nihlén on synths and additional mixing. Meanwhile Tomas Bodén — better known as Civilistjavel — lent some additional synth work as well as mastering the record. Musically, Testbild! stay true to their idiosyncratic approach on Bed Stilt with six immaculately rendered sojourns through lilting harmonies and brushed rhythms, feeling nostalgic but beguiling in equal measure. Theirs is a luxurious sound, not least on the opening strains of 'The First New Years Eve,' which purrs to life draped in silky Rhodes and chiming vibes. Behind this comfortable veneer the enigmatic lyrical themes unfurl through Herbertsson, Holmquist and af Burén's vocal harmonies like fractalised puzzles waiting to be solved. The finger-picking delicacy and languid harmonica of 'Streams' strike a pastoral mood neatly countered by the elegant slide into dislocated ambience for the track's final stretch. By contrast, 'And Her Eyes Are Red' surges with a big beat urgency which plays beautifully with the mellow jazziness of the chord sequences, boldly toying with song structure to dart down curious tangents without losing the immediate impulse of a great pop record. Somewhere in this tension between clarity and chaos we can understand the addictive charm of Testbild! — a band steeped in the considerable craft of making accomplished and unconventional music so very easy to sink into. If that doesn't make for a perfect addition to the Quindi catalogue, we don't know what does. 

On these recordings Testbild! were:

Petter Herbertsson - lead and backing vocals, guitars, electric bass, piano, vibraphonette, Fender Rhodes, Roland SH-1000, Mellotron Mikro, Moog Voyager, banjo, ukulele, harmonica, percussion

Douglas Holmquist - lead and backing vocals, guitars, synths, vibraphonette, percussion, drum programming

Siri af Burén - lead vocals

Mattias Nihlén - synths, remix

Guests:

Tomas Bodén - synths Peter Jackson - synths

Thanks: Anders Hansson, Ann Jäderlund, Nic, Marleen Nilsson

Nový Svět - DeGenerazione [QUI013]

After having finished recordings for “Desde Infiernos De Flores“, Nový Svět immediately began putting down new songs for a follow-up album, which they planned to finalize benefitting from time won by releasing “Desde Infiernos De Flores” in slices (of CD EPs) over a period of some months.

J. Weber‘s and Frl. Tost‘s return to an earlier life in their hometown Vienna brought a new deck of cards into play and those by then already mixed new pieces, rumored to circle around all things dream and sleep and (waking up in) nightmares, suddenly were regarded as “too spanish”, hence “inappropriate” for release. Instead in late 2007 surprisingly a synth-only album named “Todas Las Últimas Cosas” (“All the last things”), accompanied by a collection of early demos entitled “Todas Las Primeras Cosas“, was announced by the acclaimed german label Treue Um Treue / Reue Um Reue.

During the following seven years it took Nový Svět to present their next album “Mono“, tons of unreleased music were made available on various formats. But none of the tracks being abandoned in 2007 showed up.

Years after their making those recordings were saved from a disintegrating master and compiled for the album DeGenerazione, which when it much later showed up online caught the attention of Quindi Records, now making the album available for the first time on the intended LP format, presenting a missing link in the Austrians’ discography and the final part of a musical triptych, the so-called Spanish Trilogy, a reflection on transition, begun with “Fin.Finito.Infinito” back in Vienna, where it now would also find an end.

Dead Bandit - Memory Thirteen [QUI011]

Three years on from the desolate beauty of their debut, Quindi Records is proud to present the second album from Dead Bandit. The ghosts of their past endeavours still haunt their guitars, but on Memory Thirteen the duo’s delicately dishevelled Southern gothic feels tonally distinct from their prior outing.

Dead Bandit is Ellis Swan and James Schimpl — the former a noted solo singer-songwriter from Chicago with a penchant for eerie, witching hour murder ballads and the latter an accomplished Canadian multi-instrumentalist with a bias towards heartworn, roaming soundscapes. Their instrumental collaboration has an open, lyrical quality which says as much as any spoken line, and on this album they’ve especially embraced the power of contrast as we’re guided between scenes, sometimes within the confines of one track.

‘Peel Me An Orange’ is especially instructive in this regard, beginning as a blown-out paean to sonic degradation and the acute sense of hopelessness it projects, only to yield to a lilting tape loop of twanging guitar before entirely widening out in an emphatic burst of post-rock optimism. Post-rock isn’t noted for its banal cheeriness as a genre, and Dead Bandit aren’t about to lay down feel-good drive-time anthems, but the sense of pulling at extremes of energy and introspection show Swan and Schimpl to be testing the emotional limits of their weatherbeaten sound. The cautiously sentimental mood of ‘Blowing Kisses’ hints at the hard-won light which can be encountered while pointedly driving into darkness.

Sometimes noise is a subtle device – a looming bed of unease under the forthright pluck of Swan’s distinct guitar tone or the cracking round the edges of a beaten up drum machine. On ‘Memory Thirteen’ the distortion on the bass becomes a central figure in its haggard waltz, while ‘Staircase’ and ‘Perfume’ leave the signal wet until the delay feedback becomes the body of the riff. Either way, the sound is never left untouched as Swan and Schimpl grow more comfortable in their exchange, blurring their respective sonic languages as they expand their shared vocabulary to create an album of depth, difference and devoted distortion.

Credits releases February 9, 2024 All tracks written, recorded and mixed by James Schimpl & Ellis Swan Quickscene recorded live 3/19/2023 in London by Ivan Muela Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi Artwork by Karolina Kolodziej Photos by James and Ellis Collages by Stella Laurenzi and Leo Calder Vinyl Manufactured at R.A.N.D. Muzik, Leipzig, DE and assembled at Quindi Studios Special Thanks: Rachel, Leo, Rowan, Hazel, Jason, Katherine and Jolene

jota solo - nessuno

[QUI012 - neko20]

ltd clear lathe cut made at Burbi Dubs. hand numbered edition

basics recorded at home 11/22 to 2/23. additional instruments and vocals recorded by T. Sasao at Junges Wien, 03+04/23 written and performed by Jota Kaza Lax: cello Ev3 ov Destruktion: add. guitars

mixed by Jota & T. Sasao mastered by Martino Marini

artwork by Frl. Tost cover design by Jota co-released with nekofutschata.

The infamous Signore Jota, known or unknown for his monolithic lifework alongside Frl. Tost as Novy Svet and essential contributions to Mushroom’s Patience, Unitad Sasao, The Tiny Men, Severin Bestombes, Indra 1996, Gnostic Gnomes and a myriad of other musical lifeforms now all stardust – this elusive, serpentine Magi of the post-post-industrial underground is shedding his skin once more on Nessuno, a record of confrontational and permeative isolationist bliss. As with every re-configuration in his artistic vita, Jota drops a few scrambled jigsaw pieces in front of our eyes that remind us of everything and nothing at the same time. Kicking off with a sampled quotation from John Lennon’s “Watching the wheels” (“people say I’m crazy, doing what I’m doing…”), Nessuno transports us into a ritual space right behind Jota’s mind’s eye. And there’s lots of stuff going on here for the forty minutes to follow: the cavernous, residual pulse and hum of abandoned temples, trembling and staggering synth chords that seem to be plucked by invisible hands like will-o’-the-wisps across a nocturnal scene, fragments of acoustic guitar strings that appear more like a reminder of a song that once might have been than an actual instrumentation, the feel of open cables and cold energy, stabs of radio hiss on its ongoing, futile quest for an indefinite frequency. There is a whole world of puro rumore / puro amore being hinted at when Jota’s smoky signature croon strikes through the damaged, hobbling trip hop of Canzone della vita, an early highlight of the record, a few minutes into Side A. Other times, his words, all sung in Italian, bounce on and off the interior walls of the songs like the voice of a speaker who has long since left the room. There is the downward spiraling febrile delirium of Freddo uno and the unholy incantation of self-indictment on 6 || 6. When the fog and hiss of personal history and inner conflict has dissipated on the noise-addled ballad SacrifiZio Vittime, Jota halts to take a startling and rapt look at the inscription of scars torn open once more. For a short glimpse we’re tempted to believe that Jota has gone a skin too far this time, and now he sits naked to the core amidst the beautiful rubble of life. But nah… think twice! There will always be a plethora of mirrors lurking in every corner of the room, re-modeling the artistic persona of Jota Solo into a labyrinth that ramifies deeper than a Borges-ian nightmare. Enter the starlit odyssey dopo mezzanotte that is Il Mare, a melancholic instrumental piece, to touch at the darkly glistening ground of Nessuno’s journey. We can sense the dangerously haunting melodies of sirens shot through with windswept noises, but in the midst of it all there is also peace and contentment here. And then again, closing track Giorni due breaks off midway a demented braindance, waving goodbye in contorted poses whilst the credits roll on, leaving us nonplussed once more to where all of this has just sprung from and where it is heading now. If you’re asking yourself for references, Novi Svets more electronic adventures like Todas las ultimas cosas (2008) and Mono (2015) might pop up as first-choice. In the rare case that you’re novice to the whole microcosm, think Richard D. James having a field day with the ghost of Franco Battiato. Or maybe don’t, if that’s too outré. Either way, Jota’s new record is testament to the fact that he is still way ahead of the game, or more precisely, laying down the rules of a game all his own. However, it’s not this technical aspect, innovation of the hand, but innovation of the soul that lingers with us when the last grooves run out. Like it did so often before. Part of our future, part of our past.

Margot Benetti, Totensonntag 2023

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti - Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean

[QUI010 - SAB104]

Co-released with Soft Abuse

American Cream Band - Royal Tears