Subtext HHV Records 3 Items

Emptyset present ash — a new collection of sound experiments developed over the last three years and assembled in Bristol during summer 2023.

The work draws on the project's roots in structural percussion and physical sonics, employing spatialised recording techniques and an array of analogue hardware,evoking the transformative and sculptural properties of sound.

The release marks a return for the collaborative duo of James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas, following Ginzburg's work within the exploratory performance group Osmium and Purgas' extensive research into the history of India's first electronic music studio. It brings them back to Bristol where the project first began, channeling the echoes of the city's sound system culture and resonant musical continuum, anchoring their sound within its formative origins.

Alexander Tucker has announced details of a new album, Fifth Continent, a posthumous collaboration with Keith Collins (1966-2018). The album, which pays homage to Keith Collins, his partner and collaborator Derek Jarman (1942-1994), and the Kentish headland, Dungeness – will be released on Subtext Recordings on February 24th, 2023.

An accompanying anthology, Fifth Quarter, will be published on the same day. The book will collate new and archive work by artists, photographers and writers reflecting on Collins, Jarman, one of England’s most unique landscapes, Dungeness and Prospect Cottage, their former home and sanctuary.

Artistic collaborations don't have to be exhaustive, competitive or combative. And for Berlin-based producers James Ginzburg and Ziúr, their work together as myxomy has been almost effortless. Both artists bring with them a deep history of recording in vastly different circumstances: Ginzburg has worked on bass music, folk, experimental techno (as half of Emptyset) and experimental drone, while Ziúr played in a number of bands before settling into her current explorative electronic mode. So when they started working together in 2020, it was their respective backgrounds that provided the touch-paper for an explosive artistic head-to-head.

Ginzburg instigated the process by sending Ziúr beats he'd made in Bristol in a former life, and Ziúr, fresh from finishing her PAN-released third solo album "Antifate", set about sculpting them into completely new forms. In response, Ziúr dispatched vignettes to Ginzburg and he did the same. As they exchanged ideas back and forth and lapsed into absurdity, the songs followed suit, evolving from raw concepts and loops into proper songs as both Ziúr and Ginzburg traded melodies, lyrics and production tricks. The duo's fragmented sketches and scribbles took on new life, channeled, refined and re-invigorated as they developed into anxious, hybridized pop jewels.

Their surprising stylistic choice is revealed immediately on opening track 'Sloppy Attempt', a fractured mood stabilizer that dissociates from Bristolian trip-hop into glossy android pop. Ziúr's singing voice carries the track into a sonic black hole, mutated into an alien gurgle as she gently coos the prophetic words, "a sloppy attempt won't cut it, no no." And as Ginzburg takes the reins on 'A little opaque', singing over Ziúr's twisted neon electronics, it's clear that both artists have pushed each other outside of their comfort zones, providing the reassurance and comfort necessary to evolve.

On 'In and Until', they find an exact median between their two most recent albums. Twanging hurdy-gurdy sounds remind of Ginzburg's 'crystallise, a frozen eye', compelled forward by brittle foley percussion we last heard on "Antifate". A scalding industrial boil of deranged synthesizer squeals and rolling drums parts like the Red Sea on 'Toxin Out', cooling to a crust for Ziúr's half-sung words to echo overhead. "Burn the bridges it's a choice, eat the rich, and throw up on the fuckbois."

"Myxomy" isn't an overtly political album, but driven by a desire to create and a shared philosophical space, Ziúr and Ginzburg are naturally outspoken. Their vision of pop is twisted through history and floated on frustration, growth and constant reinvention. It's a unique mix of polar elements - light and dark, noise and silence, joy and melancholy - that centers itself on one important theme: together, we're far more powerful than we ever could be alone.