#nijiumu

My albums selection , give a listen !

Kali Malone & Drew McDowall – Magnetism

CoH & Wladimir Schall - Covers

Leandro Barzabal - Monochrome Electronic Music

Eva Fernández Suárez & Thomas Barrière - Adela

Conrad Schnitzler - Convex

Cold Spring Japanoise Mix by Gydja

Ø – Sysivalo

Nijiumu - When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that…

Meredith Monk – Cellular Songs

Various Artists - Ambient 4: Isolationism

KK Null & Jim Plotkin - Lost (Held Under)

Jim O'Rourke - Flat Without A Back

Ice - The Dredger

Raoul Björkenheim - Strangers

Zoviet*France - Daisy Gun

Labradford - Air Lubricated Free Axis Trainer

Techno Animal - Self Strangulation

Paul Schütze - Hallucinations (In Memory Of Reinaldo Arenas)

Scorn - Silver Rain Fell (Deep Water Mix)

Disco Inferno - Lost In Fog

Total - Six

Nijiumu - Once Again I Cast Myself Into The Flames Of Atonement

Aphex Twin - Aphex Airlines

AMM - Vandoevre

Seefeel - Lief

'O'Rang - Little Sister

E.A.R. - Hydroponic

Sufi - Desert Flower

David Toop / Max Eastley - Burial Rites (Phosphorescent Mix)

Main - Crater Scar (Adrenochrome)

Final - Hide

Lull - Thoughts

Thomas Köner - Kanon (Part One: Brohuk)

BLUE TWENTY-TWO: WILD ANIMA

New, expanded C120 edition Out in February

The original blue twenty-two sold out, so we have not only reissued the release (on beautiful glitter-blue tapes!) but tripled it in length!

blue twenty-two now has three distinct movements - a suite of choral pieces known as Songs from Above; a version of Songs from Above reworked into an extended collaborative piece called Selene; and a set of remixes of the original recordings.

Nearly-not-words. Vocal tones that might be described as 'pure' if they weren't so smudged around the edges with reverb, obfuscating the words. Cadences heavy and almost sore, that angel of a voice struggling to lift.

Alex Alexopolous has previously recorded for Blue Tapes with her delicate, precise Kurosounds project (blue seven). As Wild Anima, Alex works with a select troupe of collaborators, applying her unique sound design skills to a set of minimal vocal studies.

Fans of blue eight (Katie Gately) and blue ten (EyeSea) will find much to love here. But where Katie crafted a kind of vocal-only future-pop - gibbering, amassed, wordlessly beautiful ADHD macro-melodies - Alex pares everything back to a monastic shaft of voice.

It's a voice that - on the first side of the tape, codenamed Songs from Above - appears to be deep in something that some people might call prayer, but is probably a lot more complicated than that.

The second side of the tape is one long piece constructed to evoke a lunar atmosphere: the transcendent Selene.

praise for blue twenty-two:

"Sitting somewhere between the madrigals of 16th century Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo, the decaying tape loops of 20th century minimalist William Basinski, and Enya, the music here is made up almost entirely of distant murky choirs. Side A was recorded on a farm in Devon back in 2013 before the project even had a name, deep under the spell of Tibetan culture and "feelings of compassion". The recording quality is muddy to almost alien degrees, as meditative repetitions of female voices seep into vast caverns of reverb. Keiji Haino’s short lived medieval music project, Nijiumu, springs to mind, if only for the sheer spiritual intensity of that vacant space. Side two’s side-long piece titled ‘Selene’ was recorded later, and integrates barely recognisable strings and echo-laden voices of Inuit shaman amid Alexopoulos’ epic vocals. The floaty amorphous soundscape strangely reminded me of The KLF’s trippy Chill Out - although perhaps swapping out Elvis Presley on a car radio for Pandit Pran Nath in a cave." - The Quietus

"Shamans’ chants weaving together to soundtrack a dream sequence where you can imagine the flashing lights and seemingly endless tunnel of that Willy Wonka psychedelic boat ride scene, only less scary." - Tabs Out

"It’s a meditative, internally explorative work, and the further her voice spreads outward, the deeper Alexopolous seems to journey into herself." - ATTN Magazine

One of Keiji Haino’s most awe-inspiring and engulfing works, Era of Sad Wings is powerful dark and modern ambient/drone years before the likes of Hecker and Frost would break onto the scene. The sixteen-minute second track is the most powerful; building slowly over experimental, freer music with audible creaks and scuffles in studio movements to something that sounds worryingly close to what one imagines is the sound of introverted insanity. Haino’s throbbing, sinister billows of sound and unnervingly high vocal passages aren’t like many others, and when mixed with a plethora of violins, drums, electronic distortion, bells and god knows what else, Era of Sad Wings is an event unto itself. A bit lengthy, it could accomplish what it does in half the run-time, but this is still an excellent release from an artist known for his impressively experimentalism.