Collapsing Market

Lippard, Hanne

Work

Collapsing Market

“Lippard is an artist of some international acclaim, and as far as we’re aware ‘Work’ is her first recorded sound document available commercially. In it she takes a variety of empty, seemingly meaningless texts from Wiki pages, corporate websites, spam mail, museum FAQ’s etc and reenacts them vocally with some stylistic and semantic interventions. Her monologues take the texts out of cold states and into something that’s perhaps even more ambiguous - repetition, metre, intonation and the rhythm of the language itself all become tools for manipulation. One reading is intimate. The next, alienating. But why, and how? In part, ‘Work’ serves as a form of basic social commentary - illustrating just how mundane, repetitive and detached our lives have become in the digital age. But there is a deeper dissection of the human condition at play as well; the moments of vulnerability dotted throughout suddenly shift the emphasis and effect into a form of personal, almost sensual communication - despite the lack of meaning. Sometimes, it feels as though a fourth wall is broken - as if Lippard’s automaton is all of a sudden addressing you directly. The effect of this is unsettling, the out-of body dimension enhanced by the medium - making this a fascinating and surprisingly moving look into the uncanny properties of the spoken word.”—Boomkat

Morelli, Ron

Man Walks The Earth

Collapsing Market

“L.I.E.S bossman Ron Morelli returns with his fourth solo album and a shift of emphasis away from greyscale industrial to more introspective landscapes investigating atavistic ambient themes - highly recommended if yr into Tod Dockstader, Laurie Spiegel, Chris Marker’s ‘La Jetée’ and Jeff Mills’ recent astral excursions.  For the first time on record, Morelli more or less completely mutes his drum channels and allows his sounds to freely float in imagined air. In the process he crisply reveals a latent, introspective side to his music that’s been occluded by noise in his clutch of grubby sores issued by Hospital Productions since 2013 - back when he changed his address from Brooklyn, NYC to the heart of the Parisian electronic music scene. As such the 8 bony diffusions of ‘Man Walks The Earth’ mark distance travelled from the gobs of 2013’s ‘Spit’, documenting a change of mindset from grizzled and paranoid to a more soberly contemplative and drily poetic expression of self. Composed during 2015-2018, the 8 liminal zones of ‘Man Walks the Earth’ see Morelli switch out immediacy and brashness for a more considered longview of electronic music. In key with his previous work it’s a smart regression of sorts, but this time reaching back beyond industrial music to a primordial sound recalling Tod Dockstader dabbling at the GRM in ‘A Long Walk At Night’, or Laurie Spiegel glimpsing unseen worlds in ’Stone Tools’, while album opener ‘Fear Upon Seeing His Reflection In The Lake’ hearkens back to Delia...

Eszaid

Eurosouvenir

Collapsing Market

“Collapsing Market co-founder Eszaid sums up the mood of a Europe on the brink with ‘Eurosouvenir’, a raw and gloomy debut album inspired by the metaphoric symbolism of 0€ banknotes found at tourist hotspots across the continent. Highly recommended if yr into Ron Morelli, Pan Sonic, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement...  Leading on from Collapsing Market’s celebrated release of Persian Classical music by Morteza Hannaneh in 2017, ‘Eurosouvenir’ further examines Eszaid’s fascination with the connections between finance, human emotion, music and art, as previously explored in the impending atmospheres and blunted rhythms of his two previous 12”s, ‘€€€’ and ‘Geometry of Disorder’. The nine track essay offers Louis Vial a.k.a. Eszaid’s most concentrated yet spectral designs, using samples, machines and field recordings to limn a the outlines of overbearing machinery and the feeling of impending dread. But thanks to a fine, suggestive sense of minimalist ambiguity and ghostly inference, the session isn’t necessarily pessimistic, allowing for the notion that the darkest hour always comes before dawn, and that beauty may still spring in the space between “..an idealised ancient and creative Dionysian Europe and the current one, where free market and low-cost tourism values stand.” Working in aesthetic space somewhere between Eszaid’s fellow Paris resident, Ron Morelli, Tuning Circuits’ “power electronics” style, and the most stripped down S. English gear, the results range from pulsating steamroller rhythms such as ‘XEU.4217’, to isolated, empty stomach tones in ‘Derivation Lente’ and the subbass rumble of ‘Notre Mer’ on the first side, before opening...

Ssaliva

Wyin

Collapsing Market

The label that gave us that killer LP of Iranian Classical music from Morteza Hannaneh last year return with this curveball album of midnight anxiety and ambient trauma by ssaliva following on from releases for Leaving Records, Ekster, Vlek and Purple Tape Pedigree, among others. Highly recommended if you're into Oneohtrix, Arca, Mica Levi...  Pulling together material from blink-and-miss Bandcamp releases along with previously unheard works, WYIN coherently highlights a broader period of work than any of ssaliva’s previous releases, framing a probing and adventurous spirit at work in its element; modern digital ambient composition.  Coming off the back of Collapsing Market’s reissue of Tschashm-e-Del, an archival radio play of Persian Classical music conducted by the label’s grandfather, their first ssaliva entry keeps the label outlook as mutable as ever with a natural focus on atmosphere and feelings connoting existential angst and solitary psychedelia. It’s a product of the contemporary environment, which, more than ever, is bleakly electronic and at the mercy of rabid socio-economics, as symbolised in the sleeve’s illustration of a financial trader’s open palm, contrasting with the front cover’s zoomed in image of blood-spattered textures.  In six parts he just about keeps his head above the waves and acres of negative space, firstly buoyed by choral voices in Danger Came Smiling, then against the discordant fulgurite of Hell/Home, which both make the sublime timbral relief of a that much more effective, in the same way that the hyperreal, acrid sensation of For All I...

Morteza Hannaneh

Tchashm-e-del

Collapsing Market

A reeel gem of found art on this rare, lost recording by Morteza Hannaneh, co-founder of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. Made sometime in the 1960’s for Tehran Radio, the recording had long been thought lost until it was recently found on tape by Hannaneh’s grandson who has now pressed it to vinyl. A proper find this, aided by some handsome artwork by Thomas Jeppe, a noted artist familiar with Persian culture.  Without definitive records to go from, Tschashm-e-Del was presumably recorded in the ‘60s (certainly pre-revolution) and quite possibly broadcast on Radio Tehran. Now restored from the original reels, it reveals a gorgeous and important suite of music set to a Ghazal - an ancient Arabic ode, or poetic expression of the pain and beauty of love, loss or separation - written by Hatef Esfehani, who was a famous Iranian poet of the 18th century.   The ghazal deals with the founding principles of Sufism and monotheism through a love story between Hatef and a Christian girl, with Morteza Hannaneh’s musical arrangement matching the specific rhyming structure of its ancient classical form, itself rooted in tradition stretching back to at least the 10th century, whilst also incorporating string elements of western orchestration relating to Hannaneh’s background in composing for cinema.  It’s the kind of music you might expect to turn up on a Folkways or Dead-Cert release and has expanded our musical horizons, drawing parallels with everything from that magical Dariush Dolat-Shahi Electronic Music, Tar and Sehtar...