Archive for the ‘Blog from Sam’ Category

Aug 27

Sam will be in New Orleans

I’m going to be in New Orleans

This Friday, August 31st, I’ll be in New Orleans for a 6pm meet-n-greet at Skully’z Records, 907 Bourbon St, New Orleans, 70116-3120; 504-592-4666 Facebook event page. Join me and Mercy West, Black Tape For A Blue Girl’s These fleeting moments and To touch the milky way cover model. Spread the word!

Aug 22

Explore Projekt’s Italian Grotto

On Saturday, I was listening to music here at home and it occurred to me, “Wow! Over the years Projekt has released a number of cool albums of Italian ambient/electronic music.” Earthy, textural, enveloping soundtracks. Then I thought, “I wonder if people have noticed these acts and albums that stylistically fit together?” Then I got back to enjoying my weekend 🙂 … Yesterday I was talking with a label-owning friend and I mentioned Projekt’s Spotify playlists, and the lightbulb went off. Of course! Curating a playlist of these artists from Italy is the way to get the word out about their fantastic albums. That’s what I did! The playlist is currently two hours long, I’ll be adding more tracks regularly. If there’s a track (on Projekt or not on Projekt) that you think fits the sound, please email me with a link, and I’ll see about adding it.

 

Give it a listen: Italian Grotto

To launch the playlist I’ve set these three Projekt releases (from Italian artists) to name-your-price on Bandcamp (for a limited time).

Lorenzo Montanà : phase IX | CD on sale for $9, name-your-price download at Bandcamp. 

jarguna and Friends: Trapped Vol. 1  | name-your-price download at Bandcamp. 

Alio Die & Sylvi Alli: Amidst the Circling Spires  | name-your-price download at Bandcamp. 

Aug 03

Steve Roach live on SomaFM :: two new albums from Steve

Steve Roach live on SomaFM for a worldwide audience this Saturday and Sunday

This weekend Steve performs two sold out shows in Santa Fe, NM. Both concerts will be broadcast live on SomaFM’s Space Station Soma at 8pm Mountain Time (7pm Pacific; 10pm Eastern). Pre and post show will be on SomaFM Live starting an hour before.

Steve says, “These Return To The Dreamtime concerts center around expanded and evolved pieces from Dreamtime Return. The set constantly emerges throughout the weekend, a breathing occurrence connected to the flow of the return to the dreamtime.”

(live photo above by Candice @ Journeyscapes Radio)

Return to the Dreamtime and Electron Birth

Two new albums on Steve’s Timeroom label available individually or in a $25 combo pack. Return to the Dreamtime (2CD $17) presents expanded and evolved pieces from Dreamtime Return, created live at the Galactic Center, Tucson AZ, Feb 10, 2018. Electron Birth (CD $14) is a mesmerizing masterpiece of multi-dimensional analog sequencer-spun music connecting directly to Steve’s passion for the interweaving of pure emotion, energy, delicate grace and driving flow.

pre-Order, estimated late-August shipping

 

jarguna and Friends: Trapped (on CD)

jarguna is Italian sound-artist Marco Billi: ethno-organic-ambient-electronic music in a mandala-like hymn to ethnic, tribal, ritual music. It’s a journey of sounds, feelings, contrasts, acoustics and electronics. TRAPPED Vol 1 and Vol 2 are collaborations with like-minded creators. These releases are limited edition run of 100 4-panel digipaks. These are CD-rs replicated at a pressing plant, not a CD run with a glassmaster.

pre-order: TRAPPED Vol 1 and Vol 2 $14 each.

Jul 18

10-FOR-$21 clearance box / Dust to Dust name-your-price

Super Clearance 10 CD box

While Supplies Last! This is a box of 10 random CDs available at our Bandcamp store.

• For USA orders, Media Mail postage is $3.50 • Export customers please note that shipping is expensive! This item weighs over a pound: Canada = $16, rest of world = $23.50 • 10 CDs in the box. 7 of the CDs are darkwave/goth/ethereal, 2 of the cds are ambient-electronic, 1 of the CDs is from a darkwave late we used to distribute in the webstore. • I pre-made these boxes from overstock CDs. I cannot put specific titles in for you. • Barcodes are struck with a black pen. • 8 of of the CDs are in digipaks or ecoWallets. 2 CDs were removed from jewel boxes (this saves on postage). • If you purchase two boxes, you will receive the same titles twice. • No refunds or replacements except if you receive a defective title. Then you will be issued a $2 refund.

And also, for a limited time…

Steve Roach / Roger King compact disc – 20 Year Flashback Sale & name-your-price download

Exclusively available at the Projekt Bandcamp Store. CD = $9 / download = name-your-price! This is the original 1998 jewel-box release, with the metallic logo ink on the black and white cover. These are newly replicated CDs, assembled by hand by Sam. They are *not* shrinkwrapped, to save a little garbage from going into the landfill.

Jul 16

3 for 3 | three name-your-price downloads from Paulina Cassidy

3 FOR 3 | all three of Paulina Cassidy’s Projekt releases are name-your-price for 3 days!

2012’s Ice Iris Holiday EP 2014’s Sugar Wingshiver | CD on sale for $5 2018’s Drawing Up a Storm

Sale ends Thursday July 19 at Noon East Coast Time

Peek A Boo writes: Canadian musician and illustrator Paulina Cassidy has just released her second solo album on the beloved US label Projekt Records. Drawing Up A Storm is twelve beautiful tracks that go from instrumental soundscapes to more song-oriented compositions but always very atmospheric and dream-like.

It’s easy to pigeonhole Cassidy’s music as fairy-like and there’s definitely a certain otherworldly quality to it, especially thanks to its connection with her work as a visual artist and illustrator, which always conveys a certain late-XIX century fairytale atmosphere. And yet her music is much more than that. Her use of electronic beats, synths and samples is fantastic (for example in tracks like ‘Ocean Nymph’ or ‘Seahorses’) and shows that she’s paying attention to contemporary electronic music and possibly also to impossible-to-classify artists like the Finnish producer Lau Nau (whose latest album I also reviewed here) and especially fellow Canadian band Tasseomancy, with whom she definitely shares a similar approach. All this reminds us that Projekt was always a very forward-looking and experimental label, especially in the nineties (what other Darkwave label could have released a band like lovesliescrushing, for example?). So this album sits well with both contemporary Dream Pop, and with the rest of the Projekt legacy.

Jul 13

Images from the Stark Corner – Lycia – an early 90s memory

From Projekt’s Sam Rosenthal:

There’s an ongoing fascination with 90s-era Projekt releases. For aficionados of those releases, here’s something really interesting! It’s a set of never-before-seen images from the photoshoot for one of Projekt’s iconic 90s albums! It’s been 24 years since the release of LYCIA’s A Day in the Stark Corner; back in 1993 Susan Jennings and I went out to the desert to shoot the cover photos. When I was redesigning the cover for the reissue, I asked Susan to digitize the 3 rolls of film we shot that day, 80 images in all. On this page you can see the progression of our ideas with 24 images in the order they were taken. All images are presented full frame (not cropped). I think it’s remarkable to peek into this moment in time in a way I didn’t think I would experience again. Enjoy!

If you have any questions you’d like to ask Susan and me, send a message; we’ll add your question and the answer to the page.

Today is the retail street date for the Stark Corner CD. Purchase at your favorite record store, Amazon, and of course at Projekt’s webstore and Bandcamp store.

A very limited number of the A Day in the Stark Corner t-shirts remain: 5 medium and 2 XL. We also have 2 of the 3-XL Ionia t-shirts.

On the follow-up to Ionia, Mike Van Portfleet continues his pursuit of an apocalyptic landscape of extremes in which rich gothic guitars and intense rhythms divulge a world of bleak desperation; with that unmistakeable unnerving whispered voice. Peter Steele of Type-O Negative said about Stark Corner: “Such simple hypnotic beats, everything is drowned in reverb. Yet, the emotion comes through so loud and clear. It’s just devastating, as beautiful as it is devastating.”

Apr 19

Sam on the radio / stream, Monday May 7

Monday May 7, 4-5pm PST on Portland’s XRAY FM, Sam Rosenthal (founder of Portland-based electronic/ethereal Projekt Records and 33-year-old darkwave act Black Tape For A Blue Girl) will drop by the “Double Bummer” radio show for a live in-the-studio interview. Sam will discuss the Kickstarter for Black Tape For A Blue Girl’s upcoming CD/LP release To touch the milky way, Projekt Records’ history, play some music, and catch up with host DJ Bob Ham. The show is “Double Bummer” and it will be streaming, for those of you outside of Portland. KXRY 107.1 / 91.1 FM (Portland, OR) and http://xray.fm

projekt.com | blacktapeforabluegirl.bandcamp.com | kickstarter link (to come)

Xray.fm: xray.fm website | Facebook Page | Twitter Page Double Bummer: Twitter Page Host DJ Bob Ham: Facebook Page | Twitter Page

Apr 02

March 2018 top-10

Joe is busy in Philadelphia packing up all your orders on the recent Chuck Van Zyl reissues.

Here’s the top-10 list for webstore sales in March: #1 Chuck van Zyl: The Relic (Limited to 300 Copies) (2CD) #2 Chuck van Zyl: Recitals 2 (2CD) #3 Steve Roach: Dreamtime Return (30th Anniversary Remastered) (2-LP VINYL) (pre-order, due early May) #4 Lisa Gerrard & Marcello De Francisci: Departum (CD) (Pre-Order, Expected Mid-April) #5 Chuck van Zyl: Recitals 1 & 2 (4CD Bundle) #6 Steve Roach: Dreamtime Return (30th Anniversary Remastered Edition) (2-CD) #7 Chuck van Zyl: The XYL File (2nd Pressing, Limited to 100 Copies) (CD) #8 Forrest Fang: Scenes from a Ghost Train (limited CD) #9 Chuck van Zyl: Celestial Mechanics (2nd Pressing, Limited to 100 Copies) (CD) #10 Robert Rich: The Biode (CD)

See all Chuck Van Zyl titles in the webstore here.

Jan 31

in the studio with Projekt’s Robert Logan

in the studio with Projekt’s Robert Logan

“Sovereign” – Listen at Bandcamp

Robert reflects, “‘Sovereign’ is a piece that seemed to compose itself over the course of a few months. It was partly inspired by the number of months I spent in Mozambique and something of the majesty of the land and people – as well as the music I encountered – influenced the entire composition. The piece utilises a large range of analog and digital synthesizers – including a custom ‘vocal’ synthesizer I created with vowel sounds to ‘sing’ the lead melodies that were played in – as well various kinds of hand percussion, vocal sounds, field recordings and much more besides. In the second half the music shifts and the opening melody returns, now feeling quite different against the new form the rest of the music has taken. The feeling that seems to be invoked in the second half is especially important; I’d describe it as ‘otherness.’ Japanese music also influenced this composition, particularly the ‘royal’ aspect of the ending.”

“The Weaver,” the fifth track on Robert Logan’s Sculptor Galaxy, was inspired by an enrapturing experience of the natural surroundings he encountered while working alone at his village studio in the Hungarian wilderness.

“The Weaver” – Listen at Bandcamp

Robert comments, “The weather patterns during the piece’s creation were wonderfully temperamental, with some incredible storms rolling in which shook the walls of the room where I created this music. But while those sounds and atmospheres did infiltrate the track’s formation, it was the unusual, wet stillness in the aftermath and quiet observations of plant life and intricate plantal sequences that particularly inspired the feeling behind the piece. Indeed, “The Weaver” has a somewhat different tonality to the rest of Sculptor Galaxy (even though the album is a continuous journey best heard as one long piece) in that it was written note-by-note in a microtonal 31-tone scale system, and an inspiration to its detailed interlocking threads was a book called The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants which explores the mathematical beauty and organisation of plant structures, along with minimalism/systems music. The piece’s dynamics flower in and out in rhythm to organic cycles.”

Robert Logan Sculptor Galaxy | CD for $14 at Projekt / Download for $10 at Bandcamp / Download for $9.99 at iTunes

Expose Online wrote: “(Robert Logan’s) disc takes the explorative route in lieu of the predictable, and for that I’m calling Sculptor Galaxy one of the best electronic based releases of (the year).”

After six solo electronic/ambient albums and his 2016 collaborations with Steve Roach (Biosonic and Second Nature, Projekt) Logan’s new album blends unusual electronic and acoustic sources, terraforming bright, melodic molten sound with an enraptured experience of the natural world. Vibrant electronic performances, detailed tone-sculpting, processed natural sounds (captures from Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Hungarian village life and the UK’s shores), and unusual acoustic instruments inform a musical world of exotic majesty and boundless adventure.

Jan 30

New release from Forrest Fang & Catalog Sale

Forrest Fang’s electronic creations are a surrealist blend of processed ethnic instruments and minimalist, ambient soundscapes. His new release, Scenes from a Ghost Train is in stores on February 2nd. We’ve put his catalog titles on sale through 1 am EST, Wednesday February 7th. Click here for a list of all titles.