Weirdo Rippers #1

In a world of moving parts, sometimes ideas just develop out of thin air. Perfect storms where everything just lines up.

The submission rate of new music is never ending. Things need to align, and there’s a weird, inexplicable timing to it all. Being in the right frame of mind to actually indulge each piece of music that drops into your inbox is just the start. In many ways it’s a diarist experience, which – for those who care to read most days – is exactly what this site is.

And because of the above aspects, it may be a reason as to why some submissions are missed. It’s not for want of trying; the reality is that we’re low resource. Full time jobs are the norm, with no income derived from what we do here: this is purely DIY and that will never change, because, well… money pretty much ruins everything.

So all we have are ideas, and the ones which form out of thin air can be attributed to timing more than anything. Listening to one album when another in a similar vein appears. Then another one. All of a sudden, there’s a thread. Like this. Our new Weirdo Rippers feature. A space where we can share experimental, left-of-centre sounds from artists all across the world.

The idea first came when listening to the latest Ordos Mk.0 record (more on that in a bit). Then the new video for Bill Nace’s track, The Giant, dropped in the mail box (an artist who will be featuring throughout these pages in the coming weeks to talk about his latest album, Through A Room.) All of a sudden there was a plethora of ideas swimming around and before you know, there’s a new feature in the works.

So with that, here are some albums that reach beyond the scope of conventionality. Sounds that should be introduced into the staple diet for all the outliers out there.

Nickolas Mohanna: Sight Drawings
Self-released

Following his 2021 release, Nerve Plexus, New York producer Nickolas Mohanna returns with his finest work yet in Sight Drawings.

Mohanna produces fractured cinematic splendour seemingly birthed from another planet. Echoing the sentiments of Stuart Cook’s excellent 2021 release, Piano at 51​°​40’49​​​.​​​6″N 2​°​14’09​​​.​​​2″W, Mohanna blends together field recordings with sampled orchestral and digital noise, and alongside a series of off-kilter jazz arrangements, this passes as off something beyond the world of psychadelia.

We talk about experimentation a lot throughout these pages, and perhaps the finest literal representation of that lies within the seven tracks Mohanna has produced on Sight Drawings. Its production immaculate, and considering just how many ideas are stitched together on Sight Drawings, there’s an sparkling cadence from a producer well informed and at the top of their craft.

Sophia Subbayya Vastek: In Our Softening
Soft Music

Growing up with two professional pianists as parents, it was pretty much a given that Sophia Subbayya Vastek would follow suit.

Written, recorded and produced at Sophia’s home in Troy, New York, and engineered by her husband, Sam Torres, the compositions that comprise of In Our Softening aren’t designed to stir the consciousness. They are a remedy of sorts, the kind of gentle sound waves to alleviate the human mind.

It’s all in the album title. In Our Softening is gentle personified, and while weighed down with heavy emotion, this is the escapism record that we all need from time to time. With the kind of aesthetic that will assuage the worry and stress we all fall under at times, In Our Softening is a remedy, and alongside Noir et Blanc’s Wallflower Pedestrian, here are two albums in 2022 that feel like heaven on earth.

Sun 13’s Albums Quarterly #7

Ordos Mk.0:Sisyphean Audio Therapy 3
Self-released

Anonymous U.K. producer, Ordos Mk.0,  flashed up on our radar earlier this year with their LP, Sisyphean Audio Therapy 2. Rounding out the trilogy, they now return with Sisyphean Audio Therapy 3.

Ordos Mk.0 takes sound design into slightly new territory. This is music for the therapeutic state, and with Sisyphean Audio Therapy 3 they’ve given us their most expansive work yet. Like sitting by the fire on a cold winter night, listening to this doesn’t freeze time, it makes it redundant.

It’s no mean feat in a modern world that seemingly moves like a freight-train, and on Sisyphean Audio Therapy 3, Ordos Mk.0 finds the kind of solutions that make the simple things in life matter the most.

Halina Rice: Elision
Injazero Records

London producer, Halina Rice, has been making waves in the avant-garde world for some time now, and in 2022 she returns with her first full-length in five years, Elision.

According to Rice, Elision is an idea “to evoke places that don’t exist – like a surreal parallel world”. It makes sense, harnessing the fast progression of technology to chisel out slick beats and glittery, blurred collages of sound extracted from the fissures of IDM.

Like a broken mirror, the shards provide the kind of blinding reflection that provide the light that leads to a new world. Rice’s world. While Kelly Lee Owens has tried to go down this path with her last two records, while she may get there in time, the path has been unblocked by Rice with Elision.

Floating Points: In Conversation with Esmerine’s Bruce Cawdron

Cinchel: Disappear
Waxing Crescent Records

In 2022, Chicago sound purveyor, Cinchel, has made some of the most beautiful sonic collages to have met the ear.

Starting with A Plan For Some/Time, a beautiful series of sounds which dropped early this year via fellow Chicagoans, Trouble In Mind. Marking a quick fire return, Cinchel is back with his next slice of splendour, Disappear, via the U.K.’s number one oddity vessel, Waxing Crescent.

Inspired by an apartment move, on Disappear Cinchel explores the realms of long-form, with cascading drones and electric piano that produces a womb-like warmth of sounds. It’s hypnotic to the point where Cinchel lulls you into this kind of trance-state. Escapist experimentalism, basically.

There’s good noodling and bad noodling and Cinchel is most certainly in the former. Don’t let us be the sole judge, hear it for yourself with Disappear. Now.

BRB>Voicecoil + Omnibadger: Disco
Cruel Nature Records

The fires of rage are roaring in the north. The source? Newcastle-based noise agitators, BRB>Voicecoil, who release their collaboration LP with Stoke-based punks, Omnibadger, in DISCO.

Imagine an abattoir filled with robots and the subsequent noise that would transpire within these ghastly confines. That’s what this pair of hell-raising miscreants muster up on Disco. This is incongruous, unhinged noise-punk from the blackest of pits.

Abstract with the kind of short sharp explosions that would supersede your worst nightmares, Disco is gruelling stuff indeed. Kind of like what’s currently transpiring on Downing Street. Should we be surprised? No, not really.

Exclusive to Sun 13, you can watch the video for the new track, Subhuman.