Arma HHV Records 5 Items

Following releases from Rude 66, Vakula and Mick Wills, Arma continues to explore the dark and wild corners of contemporary machine music via a new split 12” featuring LVRIN and Maoupa Mazzocchetti.

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Glimmering medieval weaponry forged, polished and brandished, Zhenya Lavrinov arrives to take us back in time and beyond the stars. As Lvrin, he appeared opposite Maoupa Mazzochetti on a split EP for Arma – but one pockmark in a scattering of machine-powered ruminations for respected, proudly underground labels – and now he returns to wield a new alias across five tracks of ominous, night-creeping sonics. The tracks making up Milky Way were recorded by Bryansk-based Lavrinov between 2013 and 2020, reflecting a side of his musical demanour not betrothed to the demands of the dancefloor. Golden Axe is far from ambient though – this is still resolutely rhythmic music spoken by specifically sculpted synths and powered by purposeful sequencers. There’s a cosmic theme at play here, but ‘Moon Influence’ speaks as much to ancient rites and man’s obsession with lunar forces as any space-age sci-fi symbolism you might associate with gurgling electronic patterns. ‘Rhythmbox From Space’ may be brimming with analogue freakery, but it’s also locked into a rhythmic mantra which tracks back to the dawn of humanity. Cementing the philosophy of the record visually, Milky Way comes clothed in a striking artwork by Alina Vinogradova. Lavrinov’s Golden Axe seems to hail from this very space depicted on the cover, speaking through time-honoured tools and revelling in universal mysticism as it opens a new chapter in his darkly seductive, psychosomatic music.

No romantic trip into the sunset here – Gaja and Huren come to Arma with a nihilistic determination and a one-way route into absolute darkness. Gaja, aka Alessandro Gaia, was last seen pounding out Bracny Chelloveck on falling apart. Once locked into the throes of Berlin’s ceaseless techno throb and now back home in Albenga, Italy, Gaia represents the gnarly, noisy extremity of modern dance music. It’s a desolate, distorted place where blasts of noise spit in the empty footprints once shaped by snares and hi-hats, and the bass bleeds out over everything. Listen closely though – the deeper you take yourself into this forbidding space, the more you can detect the subtleties. The delicate relief of the harmonic overtones, the brutally managed modulation. It’s bleak, to be sure, but it’s also beautiful. Huren is the current guise for David Foster, a Canadian techno vet of high standing thanks to his role in the seminal Teste project. A true underground lifer, he’s cavorted through a cavalcade of aliases and projects over the years – as Huren he’s most noticeably wielded rhythmic noise explorations via Clan Destine, Falk and, since the late 90s, on Zhark. You can sense the primal, instinctive act of creation in his three offering on Ride Or Die – this is the sound of someone for whom post-industrial rhythm mantras and exorcistic utterations are second only to respiring and perspiring. In two distinct but complementary ways, Gaja and Huren showcase the vivid expressions achievable within monochromatic, noise-oriented techno. It’s a sensory experience matched with unsettling accuracy by Judex Franju’s intense sleeve design.

7th Feb 2020 For the new Arma release Ena explores different, distinct facets of his sound across three productions. “Pale” distills his vision of techno as a minimalist, repetitive construct. Working around non-standard time signatures, he creates a densely woven lattice of percussive pulses, which cut a polyrhythmic path through nightmarish sheets of noise.