GEOGRAPHICNORTH

GN77
DANIAILYAS
Enough For Me to Remain
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DANIAILYAS

Enough For Me to Remain

Catalog #: GN77
Bone White vinyl

1. The World Spins
2. Be Where
3. Walking Through Another Door
4. Breathe and Start Again
5. The Pilgrim
6. Coming Home
BUY LP $26 BUY DIGI $9

DANIAILYAS is the collaborative, cross-continental project from Barcelona-based composer Dania Shihab (Paralaxe Editions), and Portland-based avant-gardist, Ilyas Ahmed (Grails member and collaborator with Liz Harris, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and Golden Retriever). Having both previously issued solo works through Geographic North, a remote one-off collaboration soon manifested into an on-going aural dialogue, yielding the duo’s debut ‘Enough For Me To Remain.’ The album stands as a hallucinatory masterclass, charting into the theater of the uncanny—Dania's transcendent vocal melodies and cathartic synths exquisitely woven between Ilyas' mercurial guitar in some vaporous dance of beauty. A love letter scribed in blood. A bloodletting drenched in hope.

Opener “The World Spins” immediately establishes Dania and Ahmed pairing as a truly exalted engagement—a nascent collaboration with boundless potential and cosmic chemistry. It’s the best of both worlds, with Ahmed’s spidery, open-ended acoustic gestures providing the perfect backdrop to Dania’s double-tracked and echoed lyrics spoken into the darkness. The morbid mise en scène of “Be Where” creaks with diegetic gloom and deeply sullen composure, straddling the physical, astral, and ethereal plane at once.

Commencing in a blur of solemn acoustic genuflection, “Walking Through Another Door” ambles along with wordless, funereal focus. Vocally, Dania meticulously layers various vocal parts into a unified, mellifluous missive delivered with disembodied elegance and weightlessness. It’s equal parts angelic and grievous, striking a chord of heart and mind. “Breathe and Start Again” continues the emotion into more kaleidoscopic patterns, with a heaving manipulated clarinet motif turning over and over again through its habitual dance and Dania’s spectral coos floating by like storm clouds at dusk.

“The Pilgrim” ushers in an unassuming epic of dust-swept vistas haunted with spirits of yore. Beyond capturing a “cinematic” feeling, the song is essentially “pure cinema,” conjuring aural images that are both historic and timeless. In the song’s final moments, Dania’s refrain “Feeling dark again” enters the weighted darkness, bringing a flash of light and hope amidst the oblique obscurity. Closer “Coming Home” offers the most vulnerable and delicate moments on ‘Enough For Me To Remain,’ creating ample safe space to console and comfort in these weary times.

GN76
Austyn Wohlers
Bodymelt In the Garden of Death
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Austyn Wohlers

Bodymelt In the Garden of Death

Catalog #: GN76
Blue Poppy Cassette

1. Grasshopper Heaven
2. An Angel’s Emerald Wing
3. Life-Near-Others
4. Preagricultural Summer
5. Attachment Illusion
6. How Heavy the Slow World
7. Meadow of Tears
BUY TAPE $10 BUY DIGI $8

As a member of Tomato Flower, Austyn Wohlers creates free-range art-pop that’s littered with atonal tendencies, rhythmic detours, and emotional indulgences for a wholly listenable barrage of sound. Now, the Baltimore-via-Atlanta musician, composer, and author joins the Geographic North family with ‘Bodymelt in the Garden of Death’, a richly enigmatic affair that explores harrowingly relatable themes in a sensory overload of aural viscera.

As Wohlers explains, “I recorded most of it during a pretty intense year for me -- the title [‘Bodymelt in the Garden of Death’] is a phrase that came into my head while I was hugging my mom in Atlanta the summer after an extreme medical crisis I wasn't sure she’d make it through. She's a gardener and we were surrounded by her flowers. It was sunset and had just rained and all the colors were lush and hot and glistening.”

Opener “Grasshopper Heaven” perfectly presents Wohlers’ tonal palette, permeated with a cacophony of cicadas, floating dust, and softly serrated textures. Seemingly a soundtrack of the uncanny, the song presents a despaired walk through the moonlit woods that rivals Wolfgang Voigt’s perfect permafrost sheen as Gas. The rustic psychedelia continues on “An Angel’s Emerald Wing”, a shimmering squall of celestial noise that features frequent Wohlers collaborator Ruby Mars on harp. A-side closer “Life-Near-Others” offers a kaleidoscope of light and color buried under a fertile layer of topsoil and delicate delay.

“Preagricultural Summer” is a symphony of stabbing electronics, flourished feedback, and clanging metal, while “Attachment Illusion” seemingly inverts the action into a howling chimera of solitude. Feeling like a tidal wave of sorts, “How Heavy the Slow World” swells into its epic frame through a cycle of maxed-out tones and dis-harmony, its swirling storm of sound plowing through everything in its path and changing the landscape in its wake. Album closer “Meadow of Tears” culls a siren-like setting that’s both unsettling and comforting, a nod to the dire dilemma we all inevitably face.

In the end, ‘Bodymelt in the Garden of Death’ is an unassuming triumph of sonic bereavement, transmitting and translating deeply emotional uncertainty into wholly consuming sounds.

GN75
Alejandro Cohen
Chamber of Tears
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Alejandro Cohen

Chamber of Tears

Catalog #: GN74
Penguin-swirl Vinyl

1. Instances of Silence
2. American Primitive
3. In Safe Gardens
4. The Seven Dolphins
5. Penguin
6. Del Mar
7. Heart-Shaped Rock
8. Sail-On, 1969
9. A Very Quiet Place
10. Otherwise
11. Chamber of Tears Part 1
12. Chamber of Tears Part 2
13. Deep Blue Dream
BUY LP $25 BUY DIGI $9

‘Chamber of Tears’ marks the poignant debut offering from the Los Angeleno (by way of Buenos Aires) composer Alejandro Cohen under his own name. Here, the chameleon-like boatswain of arts and culture sheds the detuned mutant -funk of his former ensemble Pharaohs (100% Silk; ESP Institute), instead opting for a solo LP of high-minded melancholy, platonic playfulness, and sardonic sweetness. Presented across thirteen songs, ‘Chamber of Tears’ allows Cohen to act as some kind of sonic-farmer tilling and toiling the Earth, gently excavating deep-rooted melodies with an air of open-ended rusticism not far removed from the likes of Penguin Cafe Orchestra, or even Gastr del Sol. Gentle vignettes of guitars plucked and strummed often transcend into lush canopies of texture and unhurried contemplation. It is this dichotomy that makes ‘Chamber of Tears’ grandiose in its limitless exploration, yet tender in its sincere intimacy.

“Instances of Silence” spills out onto the floor like an unearthed treasure box, filling the air with glittering dust for the forthright jubilance and lyrical instrumentation of “American Primitive.” “In Safe Gardens” bursts out the back door and burns across the lawn in crisp sunlight, into the cool shade of “The Seven Dolphins,” a bowed and jangly meditation that channels the same aquatic exuberance of the song’s bestial namesake. Furthering the animalian references, “Penguin” nearly waddles into frame with patience and quaint competence. The spurious simplicity is fleeting though, as the song morphs into a sort of Prog-petite. A-side closer “Del Mar” evokes the childlike composure of Penguin Orchestra, instilling a versatile sense of both complexity and simplicity in one fell swoop.

“Heart-Shaped Rock” is a balmy salve for the soul, employing a range of instrumentation from classical guitar, electric piano, malleted bars, and other sonic detritus in a calming symphony. “Sail-On, 1969” brings a bout of tear-streaked melancholy that rides the crashing waves in a stormy sea of emotion. For “Otherwise,” the LP’s solitary substantial vocal offering, Cohen sings longingly with inner turmoil but ultimate resolve. It’s a sweetly idyllic portrayal of nowness, loneliness, companionship, uncertainty, and an endless stream of potential epiphanies. The one-two punch of “Chamber of Tears” (parts 1 and 2) wallow in a wading pool of actual ambivalence, while album closer “Deep Blue Dream” drifts in a lulled cloud of airy hums and celestial melody.

‘Chamber of Tears’ reveals that Cohen’s aural world is full of sunlight in spite of shadows in between.

GN74
Haruspex Palace
Haruspex Palace
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Haruspex Palace

Haruspex Palace

Catalog #: GN74
Alabaster Cassette

1. Distraction
2. Pyre
3. Valley Light Show
4. Lens Deliquesce
5. Plateau
6. Homecoming
7. Spyder
8. Antica
BUY TAPE $10 BUY DIGI $7

Haruspex Palace is the solo recording project of Carrboro-via-Bellingham, WA sound engineer and songwriter Casey Proctor. Having release a number of small batch solo recordings, lent her talents to Pacific Northwest mainstays Grails and Holy Sons, and more recently formed the shoegaze parvenu Verity Den, Proctor now unveils an entirely new side of herself with Haruspex Palace’s self-titled debut, an eight-song suite of humble grandiosity and gossamery iridescence. Using an uncanny arrangement of mellotron, op1, acoustic guitar, autoharp, casio beats, electric guitar loops, layered vocals, Proctor deftly explores themes of potent self-reflection, intimate isolation, and inner solace for our collective, unrequited want.

“Distraction” bursts things wide open in a warm, cinematic glow. Proctor’s voice cycling through a glittering and hulled mantra, flanked by dusty electronic warbles and intricate vocal harmonies. The calm and balmy bossa nova groove of “Valley Light Show” is simultaneously psychedelic plastique and space-age fantastique, riding a weightless arc into space. A-side closer “Lens Deliquesce” brings a wordless, Morricone-like march toward the warm embers of a cool sunrise. It’s Faust-ian to its core, vibing with the godfathers of kosmische musik and entertaining a deal with someone’s devil.

B-side opener “Plateau” is quickly passing but nonetheless potent invites a calm vehemence that’s both comforting and unnerving. It mops up the same tears shed by Bronksi Beat’s heartbreak anthem “Smalltown Boy”, but modernized and mutated into something entirely its own. “Homecoming” is an endlessly cyclical earworm of art-pop in a round with each lyric and melodic note chained and overlapping in an elegant, melancholic tapestry. “Spyder” unfurls a rustic, moonlit drive in the back of a pickup truck perhaps, the fog in the air almost as thick as the sullen romance. Its beauty is obscured and hard to make out, but a surly spectacle nonetheless.

GN73
Ilyas Ahmed
A Dream of Another
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Ilyas Ahmed

A Dream of Another

Catalog #: GN73
Shattered Lapis Blue Vinyl

1. Etched in Smoke
2. Nasty Man
3. Twice the Memory
4. Little Devil
5. Waves
6. A Dream of Something
7. Imagine There
BUY LP $25 BUY DIGI $9

Ilyas Ahmed has spent nearly two decades trudging through the murkiest sonic territories with patient consideration on his own, as a full time member of Grails, and together with the likes of Liz Harris (Grouper), Golden Retriever, and most recently Jefre Cantu-Ledesma on their 2021 collaborative LP You Can See Your Own Way Out. Across a string of exquisite releases on Root Strata, Immune, Digitalis, and Time-Lag, the Pakistan-born, Portland, Oregon-based musician has spread out a tapestry of spectacular solitude, somewhere between off-kilter folk and grimly contemporary ambient music.

Now, Ahmed returns to Geographic North with A Dream of Another, a spiritual successor to the distantly seething Behold Killers and his most hallucinatory and benevolently bereft record to date. Here, Ahmed sets out a new, more oblique path than ever before, eschewing lyrics and vocals, incorporating a solemn drum machine, and charting a series of waking dreams.

The end result is a masterful LP written, recorded, and performed entirely by Ahmed, mastered by Chuck Johnson, and continues the excruciatingly beautiful, pained traditions of somber avant-melodists like Vini Reilly and Loren Connors.

GN72
Ki Oni
An Evening Stroll to the Garden Party
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Ki Oni

An Evening Stroll to the Garden Party

Catalog #: GN72
Ivy Cassette

1. Pergola
2. Ornamental Plants
TAPE SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $5

As Ki Oni, Chuck Soo-Hoo creates balmy soirees of bubbly minimalism and buzzy weightlessness. And while Ki Oni graced our 2020 Halloween compilation, his proper Geographic North debut An Evening Stroll to the Garden Party sees the L.A. resident and dublab delinquent bring two mini-magnum opuses that are rife with romance. Here, Ki Oni art directs an entire evening in a half-hour of moonlit mystique and lascivious luxury.

Pergola wanders and wades through an indulgent, glimmering din of gauze. As the sun begins to set, Ki Oni graciously takes your hand with his dear and deft touch, descending down the path to the scene of the sublime. There, melodies bloom and perfume on the scented scaffolding that towers toward the night sky.

On Ornamental Plants, Ki Oni cultivates a cerebral conservatory of flourishing flora. A sweetly scented stream of saxophone, wind chimes, and other terrestrial trimmings blur in a warm fog. Elsewhere, curious wildlife traipse around like some enchanted dream sequence.

An Evening Stroll to the Garden Party delivers two side-long odes to the night, ultimately heightening Ki Oni’s place as a consummate charmer and melodious master of ceremonies.

GN70
Andrew Osterhoudt
Out Together
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Andrew Osterhoudt

Out Together

Catalog #: GN70
Black cassette tape

A1. Wavelength
A2. Crowds (feat. Ka Baird)
A3. Undergrowth (feat. Ka Baird)
A4. Runoff
B1. Frequency (feat. John Also Bennett and Ka Baird)
B2. Everyone Arriving, Eventually
B3. The Breathing Green
B4. Tributaries (feat. John Also Bennett)
BUY TAPE $10 BUY DIGI $7

Over the past few years, Andrew Osterhoudt has quietly curated a slew of comforting kosmische musik that gazes deep into the stars while peering just as deeply inward. Now, the Brooklyn-based composer sets their sights on more tangible artifacts and nearby nuance with Out Together, an earthbound fit of maniacal mindfulness mixed with calm chaos.

Constructed on a scaffold of juxtaposed symmetry, the two sides of Out Together foil and compliment each other in delicate harmony. Live collaborations with Ka Baird and John Also Bennett (JAB) colligate with manipulated found sounds from records and digital audio files from old broadcasting sound libraries, recontextualized into moments of ambient turntablism. The search for harmony shines throughout. Take the final tones of A-side closer “Runoff” drifting downstream with bubbly textures and arpeggiated bliss, trying to reach harmony with the initial tones of B-side opener “Frequency.” The latter ultimately spotlights a fortuitous flute duet from Baird and JAB born from Osterhoudt’s own graphic score.

The patient pointillism and avant assurance of “Crowds” balances out the opposite side’s “Everyone Arriving, Eventually,” a tone poem of sand-like textures flowing through melodic reeds and other sonic detritus. “Undergrowth” awakens in a steam-drenched run of modulated meditation, focusing on Ka Baird’s singularly enraptured vocal exorcisms which perfectly reflect its B-side counterpart “The Breathing Green,” engaged in a din of rustic psychedelia with waves of buzzing, ember-like tones and unseen fauna.

As a whole, Out Together presents a vibrant spectrum of feelings ranging from magnified isolation to zoomed-out, wide-angled euphoria.

GN69
Dania
Voz
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Dania

Voz

Catalog #: GN69
Black cassette tape

1. I Lied
2. Aleph
3. Fire Dash
4. Whale Song
5. An Individual
6. The Other Thing Is
7. Anomaly
TAPE SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $5

Born in Baghdad, raised in Tasmania, and now based in Barcelona, Dania Shihab moves between cultures and continents with an amorphous creative vision directly tied to her transient existence. As founder of experimental outpost Paralaxe Editions, Dania divides her time between Spain and the remote corners of Australia, where she works as an emergency doctor. Now, Dania presents her solo debut Voz, which finds her rediscovering her voice as a primary instrument.

The title “Voz”—Spanish for “voice” and signaling to her transnational experiences between Spain and Australia for the last decade—is especially fitting, as Dania grew up in a household where singing was culturally frowned upon.

Dania sets the scene with the melancholic majesty of “I Lied,” a solitary chorus of lifted and lilted vocals and peripheral drones wafting through the air. “Aleph” floats in an ascending, slow-motion sprawl of synth tones, distant pianos, and kaleidoscopic lyrical abstractions. The low-fi churn of “Fire Dash” offers a vibrant milieu of witching hour merriment; a sinister snapshot that searches in the shadows to find even odder beauty.

“Whale Song” departs the well-trodden path and ventures into a thick brush of humid ambiance like a sweltering aural travelog of some uncharted place. The backward drift of “An Individual” levitates in a bubbly fog of heavenly harmonics, while “The Other Thing Is” awakens in a calm, piano-drenched state of hustle and bustle. “Anomaly” closes Voz in a grandiose din of ethereal melody and glorious devastation.

GN64
Smoke Point
Smoke Point
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Smoke Point

Smoke Point

Catalog #: GN64
Black vinyl with locked grooves, limited to 300

A1. Awakening
A2. Steam Machine
A3. Waterwheel
A4. Locked Grv. A
A5. Locked Grv. B
B1. Spawn Point
B2. Smiley
B3. Locked Grv. C
B4. Locked Grv. D
LP SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $9

Smoke Point is a duo composed of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Leech, Kranky) and Sage Caswell (Spring Theory). With their self-titled debut LP on Geographic North, the Los Angeles-based duo takes a captivating cruise through heady ambient drifts and ruthlessly rhythmic loop dreams.

Foote and Caswell first teamed up to create a series of improvisational atmospherics throughout a multi-room art gallery. The pair conceived of a sprawling, dynamic experience with tones, rhythms, and textures that varied from room to room, yet were inextricably tuned and melded together. Visitors could serve as a sort of human crossfader, moving through the gallery and dialing up or down aural aspects as they pleased. And although the collaboration came together to create music for a specific physical space, the concept was never fully realized until what is now the duo’s first record.

Smoke Point brings five extended, cruise-controlled exercises that calmly violate the Venn diagram's overlap between boundless dance music and unfathomable ambiance. But beyond the boundaries of an album as a set of songs, Foote and Caswell cracked things wide open and recontextualized the album as an actual DJ tool onto itself; ambient leaning and melodically focused. To achieve this, Smoke Point offers a bounty of loops in the form of endless locked grooves on the vinyl edition and brief but equally utilitarian snippets on the digital edition of the LP.

GN68
Tekla Peterson
Heart Press
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Tekla Peterson

Heart Press

Catalog #: GN68
Transparent cassette tape, limited to 200

A1. Soda Pop Jam
A2. Swarm of Gnats
A3. Cancel Out Effect
B1. Between a Rock
B2. WWIB
B3. Count Out Shadows
TAPE SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $5

Forever an associate of the American avant-garde, Taralie Peterson has been baring her soul on outward-leaning recordings as a solo artist (as Louise Bock and Tar Pet) and with a dazzling array of collaborators (most notably and fruitfully with Ka Baird as Spires That in The Sunset Rise). The Madison, WI based musician now steps out as Tekla Peterson with Heart Press, a garishly gripping set of songs that simmer in a stew of heartbreak and survival. Put simply in Peterson’s own words: “This music came from the fiery flames of pain from the ending of my 20 year relationship.”

Matching these previously uncharted emotional areas are Peterson’s experiments with pop structures paired with fruitfully barren arrangements and vivid, pseudo-string textures. No polished ennui or overly gory details, just transcendent beauty and universal emotion.

The set opens with “Soda Pop Jam,” an eerily enchanted earworm that writhes in a sultry bed of melody and melancholy. “Swarm of Gnats” heightens the morbid musicality that drips onto a desolate dance floor littered with emotional detritus. “Cancel Out Effect” offers a scruffy, operatic opus that traipses through a litany of confessions and castigations.

Casting things in an entirely different light, “Between a Rock” and closer “Count Out Shadows” bring a neon-lit, neo noir of nonchalance that pair perfectly in a downstream drift of sullen musings. “WWIB” is a cacophony of catharsis, a fever dream fugue that cycles into an infinite blur.

Heart Press presents the ultimate breakup album that devastates everything in its wake, but Peterson finds true beauty in the emotional valleys and eventual peaks with poise and prowess.

GN66
Fruit Sweat
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Fruit Sweat

Catalog #: GN66

BUY BLACK $47 BUY ECRU $47

Heavy weight, 10.3 oz AS Colour sweatshirt in Black and Ecru. Re-seeded and re-harvested from our farm to your table.

  • Heavyweight construction
  • AS Colour 10.3 oz Cotton/Poly blend
  • Printed at Dangerpress in Atlanta, GA
GN65
M. Sage
The Wind of Things
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M. Sage

The Wind of Things

Catalog #: GN65
Sea-haze blue vinyl, limited to 300

1. Cloud Plexus
2. Harbor Dive
3. Launching Mossy Scow
4. Zephyr: Ponderosa Pollen
5. Starboard Reach
6. Luffing Adrift
7. Sail-Shaped Light
8. Slipping the Mooring/Pond
9. Dazzling Shallow Bay
10. Portside Mark
11. Tell Tail Tale
12. Spinnaker on a Southerly
13. Hiked Way Out
LP SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $9

Matthew Sage is about seeing the big picture, but focused through the most intimate and personal lens possible. Best exemplified on the gauzy, cartographical opus ‘A Singular Continent’, as well as his impulsively meditative Geographic North debut ‘Catch a Blessing’, Sage’s imagination yields fully realized sonic suites to worlds both imaginary and referential to his own.

Now, the Chicago-based composer, producer, label owner, and publisher returns with ‘The Wind of Things’, a personal and pastoral oblation to the wild and wind-blown waters and mountains, both from Sage’s own memory and writ large. Absent are the processed sounds and filters that have come to define Sage’s work; the album finds Sage stripping away the synthesized sounds that alchemied his past work into aural gold, instead favoring an entirely acoustic and natural palette.

Sage called upon a myriad of long-time collaborators, who together form the aptly-titled Spinnaker Ensemble (featuring Patrick Shiroishi, Chaz Pyrmek, Nate Henricks, Chris Jusell, Allison Sheldon, Martin Albertz, David Hirsch, Matt Wenzel, and Ang Wilson) to help realize his vision and further the melodic potential of the living and breathing field recordings that permeate the album. Tapping into an intimate sense of self, these field recordings derive from natural places that are significant to Sage. Lakes, mountains, and rivers he grew up boat-racing on and swimming in; tall fields of grass in rural Nebraska near his family’s birthplaces; wildlife on the pond of his in-laws home in Texas; the harbors and beaches of Lake Michigan that he frequents; all serving as places of occupation for these compositions to live in and blow through.

GN59
Carmen Villain
Sketch for Winter IX - Perlita
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Carmen Villain

Sketch for Winter IX -
Perlita

Catalog #: GN59
White cassette tape, limited to 150

A1. Everything Without Shadow
A2. Two Halves Touching
A3. Light in Phases
B1. Things That Are Solid
B2. Molina
B3. Agua Azul
SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $5

Ever the aural adventurer, Carmen Villain has long traversed a boundless array of sounds, deftly moving from art nouveau pop to fog-laden avant-dub. Yet at every artistic turn, the Norwegian-Mexican’s chameleon-like charm seldom loses its alluring, organic beauty. Fresh off her contribution to 2020’s A Little Night Music… compilation, Carmen joins Geographic North’s Sketch for Winter series for its 9th installment. Perlita, named after Carmen’s grandmother living in Puebla, Mexico, is a sweetly somber reflection on the ever-present cycle of and hibernation and reemergence.

The A side begins with “Everything Without a Shadow”, a wide-angled and windswept vista of expansive permafrost and still-glowing embers of a recently extinguished fire. A sign of life in an otherwise desolate place. “Two Halves Touching” continues to drift through the frigid scene, lightly pulsing underneath a muted but vibrant tundra until coming upon echoes of voices chanted into the snowdrift. “Light in Phases” follows the cue with hurried hesitance, uncovering a sonic slush of radiant zither, blurred voices, and calm resolution.

“Things That Are Solid” begins to thaw the B side, strolling through newly uncovered verdancy, welcoming murmurs peeking out of the snow. With “Molina”, any last remnants of Winter have disappeared, leaving only a solemn suite of piano motifs breaking ground like seedlings bursting to life. With help from Johanna Scheie Orellana on flute and alt-flute, the album’s closer “Aqua Azul'' floats along with unencumbered motion like a happy stone skating across a tranquil pond.

GN63
A Little Night Music: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North
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A Little Night Music:

Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North

Catalog #: GN63
Black/lavender 2-cassette tape, limited to 300, includes digital download

SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $15

All proceeds from the digital and cassette editions go directly toward Feminist Women's Health Center, an Atlanta-based nonprofit providing safe, accessible, and compassionate abortion and gynecological care to all those who need it without judgement.

The midnight hour crept unto thee with hasty caution, revealing ‘A Little Night Music: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North’, our third putrid prowl into Halloween-inspired sounds to torment and tantalize throughout the season. For this bout of distinguished dementia, we culled 31 brand new tracks of haunted hysteria conjured by some of the most alluring ambientists and outer auteurs from around the world.

Spanning over two hours across two cassettes, ‘A Little Night Music…’ unfurls itself in a literary horror structure, appearing and disappearing through a stirring Prologue and Epilogue by London-based cellist Oliver Coates, with each side of the cassettes introducing its Chapter with a chilling dirge courtesy of the inscrutable Geographic North House Band.

What fills the ensuing pages is a mirthful tale concocted by an assembly exploring a realm all at once mournful and fatalist at its core. Entries from Clarice Jensen, Malibu, and the collaboration of Like a Villain and Christina Vantzou bring about endless glacial landscapes accented by pitch-grey skies. Conversely, transmissions from Michael Valentine West, M. Sage, Gregg Kowalsky, and Austrian ambient stalwart Fennesz explore richly textured mines of foreboding glee.

Suspicion is the word when considering Zelienople’s eerie horse-carriage clip-clop, Nick Malkin’s neon-lit noir-jazz, or Carmen Villain’s gripping dub excursion. Elsewhere Ki Oni, Takagi Masakatsu, and Mary Lattimore (joined here by Paul Sukeena) provide glimmers of warmth amidst a tortured chill. Notable is the resurrection of Lotus Plaza and his solemnly hopeful piano composition, while barren hallucinations courtesy of Alex Zhang Hungtai, Ilyas Ahmed, and Danny Paul Grody set the stage for a third act confrontation from Atlantans Fit of Body and Algiers, providing a one-two serving of sensual unrest and cautionary homily.

GN62
Secret Pyramid
Embers
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Secret Pyramid

Embers

Catalog #: GN62
LP, limited to 250, midnight blue vinyl, includes digital download

SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $9

Secret Pyramid is the nom de nocturne of Vancouver, BC’s resident ambient explorer Amir Abbey. Having perfected his brand of elegant elegia over the past decade heard on albums released by illustrious imprints as Students of Decay, Ba-Da-Bing!, and Nice Up International and collaborated with the likes of Loscil, Abbey makes his Geographic North debut with Embers, Secret Pyramid’s most sincerely solemn and curiously calming work to date.

Embers’ six pieces find Abbey furroughing a few of his most trusted tools (including Ondes Martenot, sampler, Space Echo, two tape machines, and a computer), while taking a more compositional approach than his past works. This method opened entirely new aural possibilities and allowed Abbey to consider, manipulate, and re-consider each passing tone. The end result is an exquisitely enveloping work of contemporary ambient music that is equally inspired by and spiritually linked to influential French composer Olivier Messiaen, the progenitors of Dub, and a number of ephemeral oddities in between.

Sonically, Embers reveals some of Secret Pyramid’s most minimal and open works yet. Certain pieces (such as “Pins,” “Particles,” and “Ohms”) employ a single instrument or sound source with only a modicum of manipulation. This “less is more” approach gave each sound actual room to breathe and find a balance of beauty and dissonance, and the magical transition between the two.

Emotionally, the music was created during a particularly turbulent time in Abbey’s life, allowing him to process things musically. In his own words, “It’s a reflection of the impermanent, shifting, and fleeting aspects of our lives, both the good and the bad, that often spark something inside of us. Aspects of our daily existence, and the self (whether our emotions, surroundings, relationships,) that are constantly morphing, disappearing, reappearing, burning out, reigniting, and so forth, metaphorically like flares or embers.”

GN61
Keep Walking… Tee & Sweatshirt
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Keep Walking… Tee & Sweatshirt

Catalog #: GN61

T-SHIRT $26 SWEATSHIRT $40

Two-sided, five-color water-based screenprint on Bella + Canvas unisex jersey short sleeve tee shirt or Independent Trading Co. crew neck sweatshirt. From the makers of the "GEO-GRAP-HICN-ORT-H" shirt comes a strident suggestion that you can strut.

GN31-2
Fruit Tee Redux
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Fruit Tee Redux

Catalog #: GN31-2

SOLD OUT

Two-color water-based screenprint on Bella + Canvas unisex jersey shortsleeve tee shirt. Re-seeded and re-harvested from our farm to your table.

GN58
Aria Rostami & Daniel Blomquist
Sketch for Winter VIII - Floating Tone
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Aria Rostami &
Daniel Blomquist

Sketch for Winter VIII -
Floating Tone

Catalog #: GN58
White cassette tape, limited to 100

A1. The Sloping Tower
A2. The Sleeping Floor
A3. The Guessing Hand
B1. The Running Glass
B2. The Sinking Tone
B3. The Floating Table
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Unsung heroes of the ambient underground, Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist have quietly created some of the most aurally alluring sounds released in the past five years. And although that time has solidified the duo’s prowess of production and tenacity of texture, it has also shown its share of disruption and disorder. Having met and recorded all of their past works together in San Francisco, Sketch for Winter VIII: Floating Tone marks the first release made by the pair apart, with Rostami’s recent move to Brooklyn. But rather losing touch or stalling collaboration, the duo’s bond only grew stronger.

Rather than perform live improvisations in the same room, Rostami and Blomquist repeatedly passed material back and forth to be altered over time - sometimes involving extensive alterations, and others barely none. The result brings an astoundingly varied mix of melody, texture, and movement that speaks to the pair’s inherent bond.

“The Sloping Tower” seeps into focus in a haze of pristine clatter, celestial chords, and synthetic detritus. Distant disembodied voices appear through rippling waves of melody, leaving only a tapestry of tattered sound. “The Sleeping Floor” meanders with a nocturnal melody that lulls and placates with a deft, delicate touch. A-side closer “The Guessing Hand” cultivates a seething but subtle soirée of nonchalant noir, suggesting some solemn and forgotten subterranean piano bar.

“The Running Glass” wafts in a cloud of blissful warmth, backlit with dimmed glee and neon vibrancy. “The Sinking Tone” turns the focus back to our piano, heaving in a lush and all-consuming storm of shimmering texture and noise. “The Floating Table” closes things out with utter resolve, reflecting on the receding action and dabbling in some amorphous beauty.

It’s a powerful new chapter in Rostami and Blomquist’s journey that solidifies their past and suggests endless opportunities ahead.

GN57
Louise Bock
Sketch for Winter VII - Abyss: For Cello
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Louise Bock

Sketch for Winter VII - Abyss: For Cello

Catalog #: GN57
White cassette tape, limited to 100

A1. Horologic
A2. Jute
A3. Actinic Ray
B1. Oolite
B2. Prithee
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Louise Bock is the nom de guerre of Taralie Peterson, a venerable veteran of the American avant-garde. Whether solo or together with Ka Baird as Spires that in the Sunset Rise, Peterson has spent nearly two decades exploring the outermost limits of ecstatic, free jazz-influenced improvisation. The sonic range of Peterson’s opulent oeuvre is matched only by the variety of instruments she employed, including but not limited to voice, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, banjo, lap harps, mbira, spike fiddle, and so on. Now, under the sobriquet Louise Bock and focusing solely on the cello, Peterson returns with Sketch for Winter VII - Abyss: For Cello, a profound work of considered minimalism composed during and intended for the dead of winter.

Deciding to focus entirely on the cello, Peterson rid herself of any other self-imposed rules, analysis, and judgment that ultimately unlocked unforeseen revelations. Opener “Horologic” offers a sustained seethe of heaving, serrated textures. “Jute” offers a dynamic run of striated tones that slowly dissolve into a pool of peaceful resolve. “Actinic Ray” brings a kaleidoscopic blur that offsets heaving lurches of chordal sound with almost acrobatic flecks of melody. “Oolite,” featuring Kendra Amalie on guitar, is an engrossingly unsettling piece of auditory hysteria, balancing a fascinating and fine line between allure and aversion. Closing track “Prithee” prolongs a potent interplay of deep, dense resonance and exquisitely elegant static.

Through these ruminations, Peterson’s cello exposes immense beauty, sorrow, and joy that is altogether deeply hypnotic and discreetly haunting.

GN56
Ilyas Ahmed
Behold Killers
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Ilyas Ahmed

Behold Killers

Catalog #: GN56
Black cassette tape, limited to 100

A1. Pass No Jazz
B1. Metal Freedom
B2. Mad Love
B3. Wild Violet
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Since embarking on an enchantingly forlorn run of musical activity, Ilyas Ahmed has remained incredibly active both as a visual artist and an incredibly versatile musician. Ahmed has cultivated vibrantly esoteric collaborations with Liz Harris (Grouper) and Matt Carlson & Jonathan Sielaff (both of Golden Retriever), among others, is an active member of heady, genre-defying experimental instrumental band Grails, and steadfastly issued quiet epics of psych-minimalism. Now, the Pakistan-born, Portland, Or.-based musician returns with Behold Killers, perhaps his most alluring and distantly seething work to date.

"Pass No Jazz" unfurls its tattered but tranquil tapestry over the entire A-side, tracing each step with unhurried care and curious composure. "Metal Freedom" leads the B-side in a synth-laden cloud of shimmering tragedy and seething hope. "Mad Love" dials things down for a modest symphony of gritted minimalism and soot-covered, negative space. Closing piece "Wild Violet" shimmers in a desolate dance of eerie weightlessness and wretched resolve.

Best consumed in the dead of night or frosted isolation, Behold Killers is an aural yarn explicitly woven for the trodden.

GN55
Sandy
Traces
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Sandy

Traces

Catalog #: GN55
Black cassette tape, limited to 100

A1. Holy One
A2. Signals
B1. Not There
B2. Spoken
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Sandy is a Brooklyn-based trio comprised of Samantha Pathe (synths/vocals), Stephen Pathe (drum machines/samples), and Jeff Carter (synths/vocals). The trio arose from the devastation wrecked by Hurricane Sandy throughout the Jersey Shore in 2012. After the storm destroyed the house Jeff was living in and left him stranded, Steve offered Jeff a room in his Manasquan, NJ house. Under the same roof, under unfortunate circumstances, the pair naturally started playing music together. They soon brought in Steve’s sister Samantha to play and write music with them and Sandy – the band – was born.

Traces – the group’s first release since its self-titled debut on Night People in 2014 – is a work of duality. The band’s layered synths and beats build a richly woven tapestry of seemingly disparate and opposing forces that forge new ground in electronic music. The songs are both ambient and anthemic. And yet, they are anthems with restraint, always pulling back just before entirely breaking through the carefully composed tension. The lyrics are both mournful and hopeful, a binary that is embodied in the music itself.

Dreamy, overlapping synth parts wash over you while the songs take twists and turns that command your attention and get your foot tapping, if not your body moving. Specters and spirits abound, as drums appear and later disappear out of nowhere like an apparition, and haunting synth lines sound like they’ve been ripped out of a score to an eerie sci-fi film of your imagination. By Traces’ end, you feel like you’ve experienced something – something cohesive and whole, carefully built within the fabric of these four songs, as if Sandy has told the story they wanted to tell in the amount of time it took it tell it.

GN53
Clarice Jensen
Drone Studies
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Clarice Jensen

Drone Studies

Catalog #: GN53
Black cassette tape, limited to 150

A1. The Organ That Made You Bleed
B1. One Bee
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Clarice Jensen is a composer and cellist based in Brooklyn, NYC. As a versatile collaborator, Jensen has recorded and performed with Jóhann Jóhannsson, Stars of the Lid, Owen Pallett, Max Richter, Tyondai Braxton, Blonde Redhead, and numerous others. As the artistic director of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), brought to life some of the most cherished works of modern classical music, including pieces by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Gavin Bryars, Dustin O’Halloran, and more.

Jensen now follows her debut album For This From That Will Be Filled with Drone Studies, highlights Jensen’s improvisational prowess, venturing even deeper into the meditative mire but with more organic, naturally expressive air.

“The Organ that Made You Bleed” presents a succinctly striking suite that opens in medias res, awakening in a howling chorus of disembodied tones. This tragic ocean of estranged sound ebbs and flows, almost unnoticeable growing in a swell of hymnal hysteria. The calmly chaotic frenzy soon gives way into a layered composite of deep drones and tidal textures. Hopeful harmonies clash with eerie dissonance, suggesting the deeply human balance between darkness and lightness. It’s a magnum opus told in a sequence sketches, and each new turn is a cavern of radiant resonance.

“One Bee” perfectly foils the A-side with an insomniatic interplay of pure tones and richly repetitive cello phrases. The piece begins as a blank canvas, simultaneously empty and brimming with potential. One by one, solitary tones reveal themselves in the foreground until forming a small choir of complementary combinations. This beautifully odd ritual plays out in slow motion as Jensen’s cello performs a tight loop of emotionally expressive notes.

Taken as a whole, Drone Studies a harrowing set of deep listening that uncovers new gifts with each repeated listen.

Copies available in the UK/EU via Boomkat

GN54
Moon Diagrams
Trappy Bats
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Moon Diagrams

Trappy Bats

Catalog #: GN54
LP, limited to 300, black & purple split vinyl, includes digital download

1. Trappy Bats
2. Trappy Bats Meets Shigeto
3. Wipeout
4. Daisychain
5. Daisychain Meets Deradoorian
6. Wipeout Meets Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
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Moon Diagrams is the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Two years after his debut album Lifetime of Love, Archuleta returns with Trappy Bats, a mini-LP that interweaves three brilliant new Moon Diagrams tracks with radiant reworks from Shigeto, Angel Deradoorian, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma.

Trappy Bats was largely recorded in a single night as a means to process the intense intersection of Archuleta’s social, political, and personal hysteria. Having been arrested for an unknown, missed court date, Archuleta spent 24 hours in a holding cell, offering ample time to reflect on his life, the current state of the nation (the jail televisions were showing a constant feed of the then-active Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville), and the other inmates stuck inside the containment center. Upon being released the next day, Archuleta found himself suffering from a bout of insomnia and feeling the need to process everything through music.

Here, Archuleta is in his freest and most grateful state, channeling the turmoil and confusion he was experiencing into an unencumbered fit of creativity. It’s pure, unadulterated escapism with an even more callous palette of sounds than before, clearly split between two different moods.

The end result is an extended traipse through Saturday evening fever-dream techno, Sunday morning cigarette jazz-pop, and every blank-thought in between.

GN52
M Sage
Catch a Blessing
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M Sage

Catch a Blessing

Catalog #: GN52
LP 2nd edition, green & transparent splatter vinyl, includes digital download

1. Avondale Primer Gray
2. Lions To Baffle
3. Elevator Straffing
4. Claiming Air Rights
5. Michigan Turquoise
6. Window Unit + Three Flat
7. Polish Triangle
8. Wolfe Point Fog
LP SOLD OUT
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Matthew Sage is a composer, producer, label owner, and publisher based in Chicago, IL. Since his earliest recordings, Sage has carefully considered and crafted each of his various approaches to experimental music. His debut LP A Singular Continent was an endless epic that charted imaginative aural cartography and seemed to soundtrack actual worldbuilding. Now, after five years personal changes and growth, Sage returns with his tried and true sonic trademarks, but with a noticeably liberated approach to his brand of experimental studio music.

Catch a Blessing shows Sage in a much more impulsive light. Where past work existed in space that was cerebral, meditated, and composed, the music here is more natural, playful, and effort-less.

Opting for chance and the unknown rather than rules and conceptual rigor, Sage "practiced" an amorphous technique that led to profound moments of accidental, unplanned beauty.

The moods and modes are constantly, entirely at odds with themselves: private vs. public, abject vs. profound, rural vs. urban(e), and so on. Where other players of experimental studio music take a more high-minded, often stuffy approach, Catch a Blessing floats in airier, more refreshing modes. It’s endlessly lush but sincerely marked by decay. This is naturalism in the truest sense.

GN51
Don’t Look Now: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North
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Don’t Look Now:

Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North

Catalog #: GN51
White cassette tape, limited to 300

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Geographic North proudly presents Don’t Look Now, our second frightening foray into Halloween-inspired sounds to delight and dismay throughout the season. Featuring 90 minutes of haunted, hellish hysteria composed by some of the most abominable names in ambient music, the compilation nearly splits at the seams with grotesque grace.

Featuring brand new music from Arp, Ka Baird, Algiers, Anjou, Clarice Jensen, Danny Paul Grody, CV & JAB, Eluvium, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Robert Donne, Ilyas Ahmed, Felicia Atkinson, Pinkcourtesyphone, Suzanne Kraft, Moon Diagrams, Roberto Carlos Lange, and Secret Pyramid.

All proceeds from this morbid mirth go directly toward youthSpark, an Atlanta-based non-profit that works directly with, and protects, at-risk youth from exploitation, abuse and trafficking in the Southeastern United States.

youth-spark.org

GN50
Nick Malkin
Slow Day on Brilliant Drive
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Nick Malkin

Slow Day on Brilliant Drive

Catalog #: GN50
Black cassette tape,
limited to 100

A1. Morning at Café Molly
A2. Slow Day I
A3. Slow Day II
B1. Key Lime Interval
B2. Unacknowledged Moment
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Los Angeles-based DJ and composer Nick Malkin is perhaps best known for his noirish, backlit ambient dance music under the name Afterhours (Not Not Fun). Malkin’s also moonlighted as a casual collaborator with LA Vampires and Sun Araw, served as an early DJ with Chinatown-based experimental radio station KCHUNG, and currently hosts a radio show of atmospheric selections on NTS radio called Post-Geography. Now, Malkin returns with Slow Day on Brilliant Drive, his most radiant work to date.

Along with Maxwell Sterling (double bass) and Jon-Kyle Mohr (percussion), Malkin self-instituted an intricate form of collaboration that required extensive amounts of improvisation, meditation, and editing. Malkin introduced a curated series of loops to his collaborators, who then embellished them with textures and muted motifs. Malkin then laid everything out and went to work scouring, polishing, and re-contextualizing certain elements into something entirely new, with elements within dating back to 2014.

The end result is a profound live-band ambient record that celebrates a curated but communal musical dynamic, along the lines of The Necks or Supersilent but heavily informed by the micro-delicacy of Mille Plateaux’s most fathomless works. Even with the highly disparate sound sources, Slow Day on Brilliant Drive is a deeply cohesive and surprisingly intimate work that speaks to Malkin’s uncanny ear and devotion to a concept.

GN49
Félicia Atkinson
Coyotes
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Félicia Atkinson

Coyotes

Catalog #: GN49
Black cassette tape,
limited to 100

A1. Lighter Than Aluminium
B1. Abiquiu
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Félicia Atkinson is a composer, sculptor, painter, poet, and publisher from Rennes, France. Atkinson has led a fruitfully fantastic run of eerily blissful, serenely euphoric sounds. Whether under her own name or via her defunct recording pseudonym Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier, Atkinson has released work on Umor Rex, Digitalis Limited, Aguirre, and Shelter Press, an imprint co-run with Bartolomé Sanson.

'Coyotes' is an EP inspired by Atkinson's last voyage to New Mexico in February 2017, when she visited and took in the geographic landscapes from Taos to Ghost Ranch. The same vistas also inspired much of Agnes Martin's and Georgia O'Keefe's painting, as well as Jerome Rothenberg's poetry and translation's works.

Atkinson describes a 'Coyotes' as a "Carnet de Voyage," a tape you could directly play in your car while traveling somewhere, a kind of imaginary map to a sentimental journey. A spontaneous gesture, close to the notion of gift or offering. Or, simply, a postcard to a friend. But it's also a praise to the conservation of national and state parks and its human and non-human souls, menaced as we know now by drilling and violent economic speculations.

Here, coyotes act as a kind of metaphor of ambiguity and doubt, a state of mind that Atkinson find interesting to transcribe musically; the ambiguity furthered by Atkinson as a literal "foreigner" in New Mexico. She conveys a sense of visiting these native sacred lands and wondering what you are doing there.

Musically, 'Coyotes' is composed of two long tracks, "Abiqiu" and "Lighter Than Aluminium." Each track features an effervescent froth of piano, midi sounds evokes marimbas, Fender Rhodes, bells, sub-basses, and spoken word poetry written by the musician to display a melancholic landscape made of transparent but deep layers of pale colors and blurry lines.

GN48
Rafael Anton Irisarri
Midnight Colours
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Rafael Anton Irisarri

Midnight Colours

Catalog #: GN48
Black cassette tape,
limited to 100

A1. The Clock
A2. Falling Curtain
A3. Oh Paris, We Are Fucked
A4. Circuits
B1. Every Scene Fades
B2. Two and a Half Minutes
B3. Drifting
B4. A Ruptured Tranquility
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Rafael Anton Irisarri is an American multi-instrumentalist composer, record producer, mastering engineer, and curator living in the state of New York. Irisarri embodies a new kind of composer: one who "exists in an undifferentiated welter of pop, techno, and classical," according to Pitchfork.

Irisarri's latest work Midnight Colours comes after a starkly stunning run of releases on Ghostly, Morr, Room40, and Umor Rex, among others. The eight new songs were conceived as a sort of soundtrack to the "Midnight Clock or Doomsday Clock" — a symbol which represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe. Recorded in 2017, when the Clock was at 2½ minutes-to-midnight (the second-closest to midnight since the Clock’s start in 1947), Midnight Colours permeates with the melancholy of memories resurfacing as you get close to the end of life: the regret, the closure, the uncertainty, the anxiety, and so on.

The result is perhaps Irisarri's most moving and introspective work to date, unfurling a sort of epiphany symphony and sounding like a sunrise in slow motion. Irisarri experimented with the use of heavily "degraded" tape, played through a mis-aligned Otari 8-track tape machine that was constantly on the fritz. "I felt using tape gave the music a particular texture & character, like when you watch old news reels from the 1950's, you know those that talk about the H-bomb, and how we are all doomed," he explains.

Opening suite "The Clock" and "Falling Curtain" offer an elegiac dirge into the unknown, soldering on with humanity but pessimistic reality. "Oh Paris, We Are Fucked" retreats into a blur of mournful curiosity, while "Circuits" brings a glimmer of tragic hope. "Every Scene Fades" is brimming with eerie beauty and a distant, heaving rhythm that perfectly contrasts the morbid optimism of "Two and a Half Minutes." "Drifting" and "A Ruptured Tranquility" bring a soberingly sense of reality, closing out Midnight Colours harrowing narrative.

GN47
Night Cleaner
Even
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Night Cleaner

Even

Catalog #: GN47
Neon Fog cassette tape,
limited to 100

A1. Forty
A2. Privacy Light
A3. Tight Nights
B4. WDE
B5. Solids (No Tint)
B6. Even
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Night Cleaner first surfaced early 2015 with 'Sketch for Winter III: Green Sleeves,' a hermetic dose of bedroom psych-music that saw Atlanta guitarist and songwriter Matthew Lambert diverting away from the sprawling squall of his main band All the Saints. Now, Night Cleaner reinvents itself with 'Even,' a new set of six songs written, performed, produced, and recorded solely by Lambert.

Using a mix of MPC, guitar, Juno, Casio, and Rhodes, 'Even' wafts in a woozy cloud of sounds from the underbelly. It's a dizzying and mystifying run of bizarre resonance, seemingly run through some disfigured diesel engine. In fact, the album was largely inspired by continuous drives around the city of Atlanta–downtown, East Point, College Park, and Decatur, to be exact.

Opener "Forty" sets the stage with an eerie mix of heaving, vaguely disgruntled guitar and slurred chants, all shepherded along by some autonomous and chugging vehicle. "Privacy Light" kicks into a slightly higher gear, stomping through its shambling beat culled from a drum machine and a slew of hand percussion. "Tight Nights" closes out the A-side with a blitz of isolated post-punk and a tonal symphony of feedback and noise.

"WDE" recalls Night Cleaner's early meditations on stoned and blissed-out psych-pop while "No Tint" is a modern kraut-pop masterpiece, riding a muted but brilliant riff and pushed along by a perfectly monotonous beat. Closer "Even" strips everything back for a more austere, altogether haunting drift of rural psychedelia that burrows deep into the subconscious.

GN46
Jon Porras
Tokonoma
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Jon Porras

Tokonoma

Catalog #: GN46
Neon Fog cassette tape,
limited to 100

A1. Generative Counterpoint
A2. Stochastic Return
A3. Still Life
B4. Dissolving Boundaries
B5. 22/7
B6. Ultraviolet Interval
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For more than a decade, Jon Porras has carved out a sprawling, emotionally evocative niche of sound using a variety of sonic elements and associations in his solo work on such seminal imprints as Root Strata, Important, and Thrill Jockey. But Porras has also been associated with a number of celebrated collaborations, with musicians Evan Caminiti (as Barn Owl), Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Ellen Fullman, Stephen O'Malley, Jacob Felix Heule, and visual artists Paul Clipson and Wilhelm Sasnal.

Tokonoma is Porras' fifth solo work, ending the almost four-year silence since his last release. More than a comeback though, the album serves as one of Porras' most enlightened works to date, touching on the dark, expansive tones explored on past releases and shedding light on Porras' bright future.

Assembled gradually from layers of Yamaha DX7, physical modeling instruments, synthetic voices and analog tapes, processed with complex programming and outboard patching, the six pieces explore the musical possibilities of improvising against mathematically generated patterns. Through these chance operations, MIDI programming and other generative principles, Tokonoma uses algorithmic tools to reexamine composition in the age of information overload.

"Generative Counterpoint" opens the set with a run of effervescent synth tones that beam up into the sky with unending hope and optimism. Deep throbs of rhythm pulse into the space as waves of color wash across the frame. "Stochastic Return" turns the narrative into more modern classical territory, performed by an entire virtual symphony of synthetic sound but conducted with entirely human sensibilities and emotions. "Still Life" continues the vibrant minimalism with a heaving hum of shimmering tones and meditative repetition.

On "Dissolving Boundaries," Porras examines an ever-evolving pattern of piano miniatures that shift and modulate into the infinite. "22/7" is perhaps the most pointillistic piece of the set, perfectly balancing moments of total sound and near-silence in a forceful blitz that's both highly complex and genuinely natural. "Ultraviolet Interval" closes the tape with a blur of phased color and chopped beauty that eventually dissolves into a cloud of static white noise.

GN45
Café Ale
Transformative Nature
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Café Ale

Transformative Nature

Catalog #: GN45
Neon Fog cassette tape,
limited to 100

A1. Devout
A2. Push-me Pull-U
A3. Subir Es Lo Mejor
A4. Hymn
B5. Stranded
B6. Dress'n Up
B7. Dead Child Song
B8. Fallen Angel
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Café Ale is Los Angeles-based musician and producer Alejandro Cohen. An irreplaceable fixture in LA's sprawling music scene, Cohen has contributed his deft auditory touch to projects ranging from the hallucinatory Balearic bliss of Pharaohs (100% Silk, International Feel, ESP Institute, Holy Mountain) to the fuzz-drench auteur pop of Languis (Plug Research, Pehr). In addition to his acclaimed musical output, Cohen is responsible for corralling a wholly inclusive and globally-minded stable of tastemakers as director of dublab, Los Angeles' long-running radio station.

Spanning eight shimmering sketches, Transformative Nature marks Café Ale's debut set of recordings. With help from a revolving cast of collaborators, Cohen has crafted a tantalizing medley of evocative, rhythmic burners suited more for a breezy sunset than the dance floor.

Opener "Devout" is an uplifting drift of noise and melody, floating down a river of serrated drones and serene piano keys. "Push-me Pull-U" unfurls its noir-ish, neon-flecked careen through saxophone-littered vistas. "Subir Es Lo Mejor" slithers with a muted and stuttering house beat, perfectly balancing rhythmic meditation with hypnotic transcendence. "Hymn" dials the narrative back into a warbled and woozy ambient symphony of synthetic beauty.

"Stranded" plays out like an autumnal raga for an unseasonably warm backyard house party, while "Dress'n Up" nods to some grand and cosmic melodrama. "Dead Child Song" brings a disarmingly moving melody of love and loss, countered by closer "Fallen Angel," a curiously shoegaze-y traipse through a slurred and heady, effects-laden dream sequence.

A captivating statement that shows Cohen's dynamic, wide-ranging, and wholly unique approach to dance music.

GN43
Algiers
Blood
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Algiers

Blood

Catalog #: GN43
7" single, limited to 300, Cerulean vinyl

A. Blood
B. Black Eunuch
BUY 7" $7 BUY DIGI $3 PREVIEW

Originally released in 2012 by the now-defunct Atlanta imprint Double Phantom, "Blood" b/w "Black Eunuch" marks the seething, debut transmission from avant-gospel-punk provocateurs Algiers. This critical, now-out-of-print 7" has been reissued on blue vinyl with alternate artwork by Geographic North to commemorate the band's 2017 European dates supporting Depeche Mode. Later rerecorded for their self-titled, 2015 LP on Matador Records, these original offerings remain as pertinent and compelling as ever.

"It sounds less like a song and more like a living, breathing condemnation from God that crawled out of a swamp somewhere in the South to force America to face down its hideous past and pathetic political present."
–Stereogum

"…the we-shan't-overcome dejection of 'Blood' is chillingly framed by a tambourine rattle and handclap that feel like lashes from a whip."
–Pitchfork

"Although the fusion may have been touched upon in recordings related to both The Birthday Party and The Gun Club, Algiers are dedicated to grafting gospel music onto post-punk guitar-cuzz…this record is mesmerizing and really sucks you in with its weird power."
–Byron Coley, WIRE Magazine

GN41
Moon Diagrams
Lifetime of Love
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Moon Diagrams

Lifetime of Love

Catalog #: GN41
2LP, limited to 300, pink & yellow vinyl,
includes digital download

A1. Playground
A2. Moon Diagrams
A3. Nightmoves
B1. Blue Ring
C1. The Ghost And The Host
D1. Magic Killer
D2. Bodymaker
D3. End of Heartache

Co-released by Geographic North (US/ROW) and Sonic Cathedral (EU/UK).

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Lifetime of Love is the debut album by Moon Diagrams, the solo recording project of Deerhunter co-founder and drummer Moses John Archuleta. Recorded in Georgia (Atlanta and Athens) and Manhattan (East Village) over a 10-year period, Lifetime of Love finds Archuleta processing various stages of love, loss, and regeneration via forlorn outsider pop, minimal techno, and warm, weightless experimentation.

Throughout each of the 8 songs, Archuleta follows sudden fits of inspiration or moments of chance. By lifting samples from thrift store-sourced LPs, removed from their sleeves and chosen at random to find loops and textures, Archuleta lets the unknown happen naturally, but still confined to a specific set of boundaries.

"Bodymaker" and "Nightmoves" feature Archuleta's earliest solo recordings, captured between the release of Deerhunter's 2007 breakout LP Cryptograms and 2008 LP Microcastle. The two songs also show Archuleta's willingness to venture outside of the taut, mesmerizing drone rock of his main band. The chilling, ambient techno of "Nightmoves" perfectly foils and compliments the broodingly sullen but sincerely beautiful shuffle into the dark.

In 2012, Archuleta decided to pick up his recording activity, challenging himself to make a solo album. Locking himself in his practice space and using only the spare instruments laying around, Archuleta would enter near-fugue states in recording sessions. This period yielded a disparate mix of sonic sketches, from eerily bucolic choir recordings ("Playground"), dusty art-pop ("Moon Diagrams"), and infectiously jubilant dance pop ("End of Heartache").

For the final period, Archuleta found inspiration after an extended stint in Berlin, estranged from his friends and family. But Archuleta used the relative isolation to take in the city's dark energy, eventually returning home to finish the album with a newfound sense of resolve. Subtly grandiose and quietly epic, the album explores a nascent beginning, a morose middle, and a bittersweet, optimistic end.

GN40
Hiro Kone
Love is the Capital
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Hiro Kone

Love is the Capital

Catalog #: GN40
12" LP, limited to 300, Clear vinyl,
includes digital download

A1. Being Earnest
A2. Rukhsana
A3. Infinite Regress (feat. Roxy Farman)
A4. The Place Where Spirits Get Eaten
B1. Less Than Two Seconds
B2. Don't Drink the Water
B3. Love is the Capital
B4. The Declared Enemy
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Love is the Capital the debut LP by Hiro Kone, the recording alias of Nicky Mao. The album is a follow-up to the incredibly well received Fallen Angels cassette, bringing with it some of Mao's most emotionally and politically driven work yet. It is Hiro Kone's long coming opus, examining a number of all-too-relevant themes: capital, the state, egoism, anxiety, and steadfast optimism.

The eight songs on Love is the Capital highlight Mao's austere, politicized techno battling for the greater good. Songs are visceral meditations of rhythm, noise, and melody in the vein of Pan Sonic, Chris & Cosey, Muslimgauze, and Kangding Ray.

The sounds were often recorded in scenes of isolation, whether physically or emotionally. "Infinite Regress" was during a trek with Roxy Farman (Wetware) up to the sleepy, upstate NY town of Palenville. There, frozen in a cabin with the most DIY of recording booths, Mao recorded Roxy's vocals and what would be the track that would put into motion the entire album. "Less Than Two Seconds" was written in a single afternoon in late December 2015 when it was revealed that the grand jury had declined to indict the police officer who shot to death 12-year old Tamir Rice.

The taut techno, industrial minimalism, and aural upheaval is embedded in tracks "Rukhsana" (featuring Drew McDowall formerly of Coil & Psychic TV, on modular synthesizer), "The Place Where Spirits Get Eaten," and "Less Than Two Seconds," an emotionally wrought blitz of serrated Monomachine tones flanked by timeless recordings of essayist, poet, and social writer James Baldwin. Mao ventures deep into heady, prismatic runs of hypnotic techno, on "Don't Drink the Water" and "The Declared Enemy." On opener "Being Earnest" and "Love is the Capital," foreboding motifs brood their way back into the narrative.

Still, the album maintains a sense transformation, burdened with an alien tension—the awareness of an impending and necessary collapse. And what may come next.

GN39
Strategy
The Infinity File
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Strategy

The Infinity File

Catalog #: GN39
Death Aura black cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. Noise Tape Emax
2. Be Careful With That AX-60, Eugene
3. Two Echoes
4. Persistence of Memory
5. Occurrence At The Triple Door
6. Requiem For Apex Predators
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Strategy is the longrunning solo project of Portland, Or. producer Paul Dickow. While Dickow has been involved with a number of unusually varied bands, collaborations, and labels, Strategy remains Dickow's most prolific, perpetually evolving and versatile project.

The Infinity File presents the final chapter in Dickow's long investigation into the mysterious power of cassette tape loops – an exploration previously heard on Strategy's Noise Tape Reggae (Entr'acte, 2008) and Noise Tape Self (Further Records, 2015). This process was confined to only a variable-speed, four-track tape deck and Dickow's own hand-made effects boxes.

Opener "Noise Tape Emax" opens the set with a series of wide-eyed blips and a meandering, dislocated rhythm. The oddly-angled chant of synth noise soon takes shape into something else entirely. The various loops lock into one another at chance but perfect intervals. "Be Careful With That AX-60, Eugene" floats in a wash of clipped, stuttering clicks and shifting chords. You can't help but get lost in its calm, undulating hysteria. "Two Echoes" is a slow-burning drift of fluorescence that channels William Basinski without retreating into overly elegiac murk.

B-side opener "Persistence of Memory" distills an amorphous cosmic drone seemingly beamed from some distant and unknown place. "Occurrence at the Triple Door" and closing opus "Requiem for Apex Predators" unfurls a dopamine cloud of hazy bliss, not unlike pop ambient godhead Gas at his most lethargic and lysergic. The fog eventually dissipates, making way for a blurry bassline that recalls the atmospheric funk of Strategy's classic Future Rock (Kranky, 2007).

GN38
Death on the Hour
Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North
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Death on the Hour:

Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North

Catalog #: GN38
Wilted lilac cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. Moon Diagrams – Omegaplex
2. Landing – Halloween 2016
3. M. Sage – I Put a Spell on You
4. Ekin Fil – To Be
5. Leech – Utah
6. Jacober – Elly Kedward
7. Auburn Lull – Uncertain Color
8. TWINS – Show
9. Windy & Carl – Witch & a Cauldron
10. The Flag – Cannibal Nite-Life
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Geographic North proudly presents 'Death on the Hour,' a ghastly collection of Halloween-inspired recordings intended to spook and seduce through every turn of the season. Spanning 10 harrowing tracks, Death on the Hour boasts a ghoulish smattering of Geographic North mainstays and a healthy dose of new blood weaving through original recordings as well as disfigured renditions of Halloween classics.

Arriving long past the witching hour, the looping vignette of Moon Diagrams' (Deerhunter's Moses Archuleta) "Omegaplex" repeats a curious and oddly familiar phrase of suspense not far removed from the "Opening Titles" of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth's Prince of Darkness suite. Similarly, Leech's (Brian Foote, Peak Oil/100% Silk) "Utah" writhes in fits of rhythmic revulsion, perfectly soundtracking some doomed narrative of paranoia and peril.

For a more spectral sense of evil, Windy & Carl's (Kranky, Music Fellowship, Darla) "Witch & a Cauldron" drifts in a cloud of black feedback and tonal haze proving once again that Dearborn's darling duo can find weightless beauty in a fit of foreboding harmony. Another product of the Great Lakes, Lansing's Auburn Lull opens the B-side with "Unknown Color," layering distant metallic clatter, muffled low-ends, shuffled static, and processed throat singing. It's a jazzy and noirish waltz through similar scenes haunted by Pan•American and Moritz von Oswald.

M. Sage (Patient Sounds) revises "I Put a Spell on You" into something equally mesmerizing, covering Screamin' Jay Hawkins' blues ballad into an unsettling bit of obscured, manic pulsing, lo-fi pop.

A warm and delirious trip through hauntingly alluring astral planes.

GN37
Arp
Inversions
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Arp

Inversions

Catalog #: GN37
Enharmonic black cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. Raga for Moog & Violin
2. Flamingo
3. East of Sun, West of Moon
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Arp is the solo project of Alexis Georgopoulos, a composer/artist/producer based in New York City. Inversions is the latest chapter in Arp's evolving narrative, a diverse musical sprawl that has issued sets of captivating brilliance on the likes of RVNG Intl., Mexican Summer, and Smalltown Supersound. This cassette fortuitously bridges together Arp's shapeshifting identity, from avant-koscmische tinkerer to avant-classical composer and dance-floor modulator.

"Raga for Moog & Violin" and "Flamingo" were originally created for a sound installation presented at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York City in 2014. Both tracks were composed in the same key (C minor Dorian), chosen for its ability to be heard in great lengths of time, its root in cultures from ancient Greece to India, and its link to visions of futurism, Arp's sound installation reflects and refracts themes explored by both creative studio RO/LU and filmmaker Paul Clipson.

Using a Moog synthesizer, and featuring Nicky Mao (who records under the name Hiro Kone) on violin and piano, the mode allows the listener/visitor to focus on sound at times and plays a subliminal, sometimes barely perceptible role, at others. Analog synthesizer overtones give way to violin, moving gradually at first, then building into a cascade of sound, before receding. This process regenerates over the course of the piece, each time doing so differently.

Inversions also includes "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," a track intended for the installation that was not used in the end. Here, it refinds its original companions.

GN35
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
In Summer
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Jefre Cantu-Ledesma

In Summer

Catalog #: GN35
Barro negro cassette tape,
limited to 175

1. Love's Refrain
2. Little Dear Isle
3. In Summer
4. Blue Nudes (I-IV)
5. Prelude
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For nearly two decades, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has led an ambitious and exploratory trail through a variety of sounds and genres. As a member of longtime underdogs Tarentel, Cantu-Ledesma broadened the horizons, challenged genre constraints, and pushed the boundaries of the entire post rock genre. Later, Jefre established with several experimental bands (the Alps, Portraits, Moholy-Nagy, etc.) and collaborative projects (Raum, with Grouper). But Jefre has also operated a bit behind the scenes, issuing heady sets of experimental music and film through Root Strata, the label he co-runs with Maxwell August Croy.

As a solo artist, Cantu-Ledesma creates deeply emotional sets of drone, noise, tape collage, and field recordings on the likes of Type, Mexican Summer, Digitalis, Students of Decay, and more.

Jefre now joins Geographic North with In Summer, a cassette that furthers the nostalgia and melancholy portraits of A Year with 13 Moons (2015 Mexican Summer) and Songs of Forgiveness (2014 BARO) for briefer, yet more potent tape loop meditations.

"Love's Refrain" opens the cassette by plunging into depths of reeling, Cocteau Twins-esque clouds of guitar and patient drum machine. Riddled with static and glorious, hypnotic tape warble, the song perfectly sets the stage for In Summer's emotional arc. "Little Dear Isle" meditates on a series of field recordings and unbelievable calmness.

"In Summer" exists in a rolling simmer of aural infidelity and physical, circumstantial magic. "Blue Nudes (I-IV)" creates a deep and undulating traipse through various vignettes of hope, love, loss, and admiration, while "Prelude" closes things out with a calm, understated but permeating sense of calm optimism.

GN34
Danny Paul Grody
Sketch for Winter VI: Other States
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Danny Paul Grody

Sketch for Winter VI: Other States

Catalog #: GN34
Charred dirt cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. Other States
2. On Leaving
3. For Western Skies
4. Mineral Springs
5. Only
6. Cloudhand
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Although he spent a number of years traversing various astral planes with Tarentel and the Drift, Danny Paul Grody also records his own brand of vibrantly melancholic music for guitar and synthesizer. Having already issued a number of captivating and alluring recordings with Three Lobed, Root Strata, and Students of Decay, Grody now joins Geographic North's ongoing 'Sketch for Winter' series for a modest excursion to aurally catalog icy, western terrains.

Equipped with Cormac McCarthy's sense of brutally beautiful western naturalism and at times resembling Loren Connors translating a frostbitten, desertous sunrise through an electric guitar, Grody weaves frostbitten sounds for the American West.

The opening, eponymous track drifts into frame like a polar wind, charring the landscape before it with consuming frost and distant but legitimate hopefulness. "On Leaving" sees the clouds break for a moment of inner and outer meditation, accounting for the highs of lows of past, present, and future. The meandering optimism of "For Western Skies" is delivered with ambulatory glee, as Grody permeates space with illuminated and paced transcendence.

"Mineral Springs" opens the B-side in a wide-eyed state of bucolic rusticism, surveying the elusive but apparent sense of life and loss in this natural setting. "Only" hosts a brief and solitary contemplation on one's self and surroundings, retreating into a deeply introspective haze of comfortable isolation. Closer "Cloudhand" resembles an aural yarn of some lonesome cartographer in an unknown place, accompanied only by a set of mapmaking tools and the barest essentials of survival.

'Other States' speaks to the heart of our appreciation of the emotional scope of the season. This is Sketch for Winter VI.

GN32
Lyonnais
Anatomy of the Image
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Lyonnais

Anatomy of the Image

Catalog #: GN32
LP, Stranded violet vinyl,
includes digital download

1. Pavilionism
2. Vienna Circles
3. Labor
4. Friendly Fires
5. Muscle
6. Pan Am Sun Isles
7. Hyperblues
8. Or, The Anatomy of the Image
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Atlanta's Lyonnais returns with its second LP, strangling the expansive highs and narcotic lows of its 2011 debut full length for Hoss Records into a more rhythmic affair. The quartet, featuring members TJ Blake (drums, also of Lotus Plaza) and Lee Tesche (guitars, also of Algiers), Farzad Moghaddam (bass, synths, Geographic North co-founder), and Farbod Kokabi (guitar, vocals, Geographic North co-founder), parallel the frostbitten modes of This Heat and Clan of Xymox.

"Pavilionism," the unflinching opening transmission from Anatomy of the Image eschews any formal attempt at inauguration. Its purpose rather? A succinct 6-minute palate cleanser granting listeners left standing to permeate in a collection of spectral and skeletal drone-punk groovers.

Produced and mixed in the dog days of a Los Angeles county summer by Ale Cohen (Pharaohs, Languis), using sessions recorded at Brooklyn's Rumpus Room with the recording/engineering team of R. Mexico (Hoss Records, Mexcellent) and Ryan Rasheed (Leblaze, Prefuse 73), Anatomy of the Image stands a singular statement on the anxiety of self.

The stirring, moonlit gospel "Vienna Circles" is a liable force of nature, driven by a not-so-subtle sense of desperation. "Friendly Fires" sees Section 25's classic offering of modern warfare reworked and reappraised, stretching its post-punk canons into a breathless ambiance. The original's strident rhythm section remains, now existing in a vacuum co-inhabited by Playing With Fire-era Spacemen 3.

In "Hyperblues" we find Anatomy's linchpin. A romanticized, sympathetic listening; an arresting dream-pop epic exploring a trapdoor in the void. Apprehension, repentance, resolve—the ultimate human condition as defined by the anatomy of the image.

GN33
Mark Van Hoen
Sketch for Winter V: It's Not Me
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Mark Van Hoen

Sketch for Winter V: It's Not Me

Catalog #: GN33
Frosted noir cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. It's Not You (In A Way)
2. City Of Dust
3. Noise Blues
4. Frontier Song
5. Xmas
6. The Fall
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Reviving Geographic North's 'Sketch for Winter' cassette series and launching the label's 2016 output, Mark Van Hoen ushers in Sketch for Winter V: It's Not Me, a six-song suite tailored for the season's frostbitten aesthetic.

Van Hoen has been behind of some of the most emotionally-driven electronic music produced in the last three decades. Under a slew of solo aliases (Locust, W.F.O.) and revered collaborations (Seefeel, Scala, Black Hearted Brother), the England by way of Los Angeles producer's work has been highlighted on such hallowed labels as Touch, Editions Mego, R&S/Apollo, City Centre Offices, and the Tapeworm.

"It's Not You (In A Way)" leads the set with a dimly-lighted waltz around some forebodingly anonymous obelisk. Van Hoen choreographs the eerie ritual in a darkly seductive light, illuminating curious curves and revealing deeply emotional arcs along the way. "City of Dust" beams itself into the stratosphere, floating in a digitally-stricken haze and seemingly spiritually directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. "Noise Blues" closes out the A-side in a dreary drift of sultry, atmospheric tones, echoing through a desolate jazz bar that's been heartbroken but quietly content for years.

The B-side continues to ruffle through Van Hoen's wintry landscape, but in much more abstract terms. "Frontier Song" catalogs a number of lost souls stranded on a celestial plane, speaking to the highs and lows of each individual searcher in an amalgamation of hope and loss. "Xmas" processes the yuletide magic into a cascading wash of glittering texture, while closer "The Fall" dives completely into oblivion, collapsing in on itself in a glorious smear of retreating sound.

GN36
Robert Donne, Stephen Vitiello, and
The OO-Ray (Ted Laderas)
Nuvole
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Robert Donne, Stephen Vitiello, and The OO-Ray (Ted Laderas)

Nuvole

Catalog #: GN36
Lilted fog cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. Nuvole 1
2. Nuvole 2
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Featuring three of the brightest and boldest sonic tinkerers in modern experimental music, Nuvole is the debut collaboration between Robert Donne (Labradford, Anjou, Breadwinner, and Aix Em Klemm with Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie), Ted Laderas (The OO-Ray), and Stephen Vitiello (12k, Room40). Broken out into two sidelong parts, Nuvole finds the trio charting pitch black reveries masked by deep, elongated shadows and stashed down alluringly anonymous corridors.

"Nuvole 1" drifts in a distantly kosmische haze of elusive emotion, urged along by subtly throbbing low-ends, sustained cello drones, and micro-tonal ephemera. Vague scenes take shape and dissolve from moment to moment in an sort of lucid dream that's simultaneously comforting and haunting. The A-side ends in a flowing retreat of heaving, lamentful tones, leaving things in an air of impossible irresolution and warm, open-ended hope.

Nuvole picks back up with "Nuvole 2," an extended, slow-motion traipse through scorched terrain and frostbitten color. Laderas' strained cello creeps through space like a hobbled but hopeful journeyman, spiritually akin to Tony Conrad's virtuous violin. Elsewhere, Donne and Vitiello perform grimly heady experiments that reach the deepest corners of dark and lightly abrasive sound. As the set comes to a close, the cadre dissolves into a shapeless mix of blown-out dub and droning post-industrual feedback.

Mastered by Taylor Deupree.

GN29
LebLaze
When Doves Fly
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LebLaze

When Doves Fly

Catalog #: GN29
Mechanical smoke cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. Flamboyant
2. I Know U
3. Island Fantasy
4. Jonzin
5. Brokenhearted
6. hgLexus
7. Castle Stalker
8. Purple Heat
9. When Doves Fly
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LebLaze is the moniker of Brooklyn-based producer Ryan Rasheed whose collaborations with Prefuse 73 (Warp) and super-collective Risil (featuring members of Hella, Tortoise, Battles and School of Seven Bells) have established his prowess as a multifaceted and ever-adaptive artist. Having already issued solo suites of sample-happy abstractionism via Asthmatic Kitty and Prefuse's Eastern Developments, in addition to a split with Brooklyn psychonauts Excepter on Hoss, LebLaze now returns with When Doves Fly, a nine-track beat tape that upends the modes of the mixtape world.

Informed by the heady, agile complexities of The Fear Ratio, Hector Zazou, Dem Hunger, and Airhead, When Doves Fly serves as a brief but potent dose of headphone escapism fitted for vivid introspection and vibrant solitude.

"Flamboyant" opens the A-side in a fluid run of paced synths and clipped beats, sauntering into the scene backlit with neon and furnished by a flurry of distant textures and oddly angled samples. "I Know U" teeters on an aural confessional, professing it's genuine desires before collapsing into a fit of slurred juke and future-RnB that is "Island Fantasy," a midnight haze of gated percussion ushered along by a steady, malleted xylophone. "Jonzin" unfolds its basement-tested vibe with glittery, inverted loops into the soulful, A-side closer "Brokenhearted," a Madlib-ian crate digger that mines our collective, unrequited passions for past, present, and future loves.

The B-side's "Purple Heat" rivals Four Tet's lush arrangements but with a subtle sense of serration and subterranean beauty that only Rasheed could attain. The closing, eponymous track surfaces the narrative back to daylight, meditating on the receding action with total closure and a subtle, soothing choir of vocals ushering in a new day.

GN28
Jesse Osborne-Lanthier (Noir)
& Robert Lippok
Timeline
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Jesse Osborne-Lanthier
(Noir) & Robert Lippok

Timeline

Catalog #: GN28
Gray area cassette tape, limited to 100

1. Aperiodic
2. Many A Moon
3. Visit
4. Haste
5. Stint
6. Allotment
7. Juncture
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Timeline finds two of the conceptual electronic world's most earnest players teaming up for an extended improvisational session that pushes each party's respective boundaries while emphasizes their inherent sonic charms. Jesse Osborne-Lanthier is the Berlin-by-way-of-Montréal transplant largely known for his racketous bouts of rhythm with Bernardino Femminielli (as Femminielli Noir) or drifts of minimal techno with Hobo Cubes' and Hobo Cult-head Francesco De Gallo (as the H). Robert Lippok is the Berlin native who spent the past two decades as one-third of seminal electronic post rock band To Rococo Rot (Domino, City Slang, Staubgold, Raster-Noton).

Executed in a one-shot jam-session and loosely inspired by a designed timeline that was exchanged back and forth throughout the months prior to the artists physically meeting, Timeline's songs react and adapt from moment to moment. "Aperiodic" maintains a sordid simmer of modular patches, kinetic clatter, and curiously paranoid melodies that launch the set's open-ended purview. "Many a Moon" wades in an oceanic drift of tidal throbs and electrified air, forcing the hand of fellow tectonic, textural meditators to reveal their bluffed mechanics. "Visit" is a potent dose of noirish avant-gamelan, operating a surrealistic and schizophrenic account of some anonymous, foreboding follower.

"Haste" opens the B-side in a minimal torrent of industrial static and meditative, metallic dust, perfectly setting the scene for the melancholic modality of "Stint," which traipses through air with the muted beauty befit for Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project or the similarly minded minimalists of Mille Plateaux. The bucolic bleakness eventually dissolves into the heightened obsession and sardonic seduction of "Allotment," exploiting micro-house's sublime ambivalence to ante up the genre's heady hedonism into more abstracted terms. "Juncture" closes out Timeline in a subdued fit of glitched beauty, fixating on a series of micro-tonal epiphanies and refined resonant frequencies.

GN23
The Flag
Heat Waves
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The Flag

Heat Waves

Catalog #: GN23
LP, Fertile verdance vinyl,
includes digital download

1. Heat Waves
2. Bang.
3. To Meet a Bad End
4. Deletion
5. The Horror
6. To Wear the Vest of Wealth
7. Shoot the Messenger
8. Heat Waves 2
9. I Was Lied To By the Teenage Moon
10. Just Like a Magic Bullet
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A civilized man with savage sight. A blistering product of collective urban psychoses. A torchbearer of the future primitive. In his first and final days, Ted McGrath is The Flag.

After exhuming skeletal grooves of pristine noise during the first iteration of shape-shifting weirdo outfit These Are Powers (Hoss, Dead Oceans, RVNG Intl.), McGrath ventured out on his own, surviving on the expected trials and unlikely fringe benefits of the so-called "solo artist." The Brooklyn-based painter and musician has since used his modest but ample survey of pedals, drum machines, and ephemeral fuckery to issue brief but potent sketches of the American underground, signal flares, warning shots.

Recorded and mixed from 8-track cassette by McGrath during late-night sessions at his painting studio in the endless bummer of 2014, Heat Waves marks The Flag's debut LP. Throughout the album's ten staggering and stifling tracks, McGrath dares deeply human, promises nothingness, then changes course and ends up dancing on the edge of the proverbial volcano. Uncanny pop song-craft sweats through the sweltering heat of modern No Wave, artful noise, and timeless lo-fi sensibilities, triangulating a dimly lit back alley in the same neighborhood as There's A Riot Goin' On, White Light/White Heat and Bad Moon Rising. Like these sonic forbearers, McGrath rolls with the punches and dishes them out when necessary, but this music is more interested in the unassuming beauty and chance magic of ignored details or cast-off situations.

An evocative and hallucinatory assault on cronyism, this is mutated class-warfare music, a mischievous and crooked grin barely concealing the exposed nerves of the everyman. Littered with guttered gems and clouded with hazy curiosities, this is Heat Waves.

GN31
Fruit Tee
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Fruit Tee

Catalog #: GN31

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A threaded essential for your wardrobe. Printed on 100% white cotton Canvas brand shirts and limited to 50. Please enjoy our forbidden fruit.

GN27
Moon Diagrams
Sketch for Winter IV: Care Package
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Moon Diagrams

Sketch for Winter IV:
Care Package

Catalog #: GN27
Blank slate cassette tape,
limited to 300

1. Scratch the Snow
2. Sweet Surrender
3. Elurra Urratu
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As Moon Diagrams, Moses Archuleta takes a few comfortable and casual steps away from being Deerhunter's co-founder and all-around percussive extraordinary to spend some quality time with a few hidden pleasures.

Sketch for Winter IV: Care Package, Moon Diagrams' debut release, rounds out our winter cassette series in a paced propulsion of braced percussion and muted melody, burning off any residuals from the receding autumnal embers. The slow and steady rhythm of "Scratch the Snow" trots along with steadfast subtlety, ushering along the striated synthesizer chords that chop through the air with Reich-ian precision and Kompakt-esque modernity. As the frost begins to creep in, Archuleta lights a low fire in the form of warm, tonal throbs and doubled over drum loops. Soft shards of sound invert themselves in intersecting, omnidirectional lines. The overall effect is palindromic - gentle waves of headphone electronica, without the tired connotations the tag denotes. The organic, pulsing hum rides its course in an unencumbered drift before dissolving into a heartfelt and heartbroken interpretation of "Sweet Surrender," a modern pop classic that unassumingly carries a formidable baggage all its own.

Archuleta strips away certain components of the original version, leaving plenty of room for the song's tragically catchy and forlorn melody to smear itself over his canvas. Traces of sound blur into one another as the track plays out with the cues presented earlier on the tape. As the song drives itself into a forlorn bliss, you can't help but fall for the beautiful despair.

The B-side-long "Elurra Urratu" plays the lushly elusive counterpart, existing in the tonal plane of orchestral, krautish ambient music. Accompanied by a roiling rhythm of gated noise, the chordal display bows it's muted melodrama across the canvas. Think Stars of the Lid remixed by Axel Willner, or Aphex Twin's "Donkey Rhubard" retooled by Donnacha Costello.

Archuleta's thawed beauty provides safe haven from winter's retreating cold.

GN26
Night Cleaner
Sketch for Winter III: Green Sleeves
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Night Cleaner

Sketch for Winter III:
Green Sleeves

Catalog #: GN26
Narcotic soot cassette tape,
limited to 100

1. Double Natural
2. Green Sleeves
3. No Show
4. Cold Diver
5. Night Cleaner
6. Steel Wheels
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Up to this point, Matthew Allen Lambert's most visible contribution to the contemporary musical landscape of Atlanta would be as one-third of the sprawling drone-rockers All the Saints, a darling of Touch & Go's late era roster. But there's much more to Lambert's sonic cacophony than meets the ear. Largely lumped in with the more bombastic end of the psych realms, Lambert's heart actually lies with the hermetic beauty of sullen singer-songwriters and basement tinkerers who moonlight on meticulous song craft for nobody in particular. With Night Cleaner, Lambert (along with contributors Cyrus Shahmir and Chris Kaufmann) finally realizes these micro mental vacations into something tangible: a wholly personal world steeped in sweeping pop and blanketed in cold modulation.

Pulling from the textbooks penned by John Cale, Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt with heavy but imperative doses of shoegaze and space rock, Night Cleaner is sublimely hedonistic, coolly captivating, and endlessly addicting. Throughout Sketch for Winter III: Green Sleeves, the project's debut, Lambert strolls through song after song of seductive desolation and buzzing warmth.

Opener "Double Natural" wafts into space in dusty, reverb-ed haze that's spiritually akin to Flying Saucer Attack's rural psychedelia, succinctly setting the stage for "Green Sleeves," an addled waltz that swaggers in and out of its lysergic daze. "No Show" resembles a long-lost 39 Clocks ditty while "Cold Diver" serves as a fitting foil, resembling Daniel Lanois' lilting ambiance and Excepter's grotesque, basement funk than any psych progenitor. "Night Cleaner" coasts along with careless pacing, cycling further and further down the sonic routes with careless abandon and demented focus, leaving only "Steel Wheels" to plow its paced urgency and obliterating charm.

GN22
Mountains
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 11
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Mountains

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 11

Catalog #: GN22
7" single, limited to 300,
Harvest Peach vinyl

A. Parallel One
B. Parallel Two
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PREVIEW

For the past decade and in one way or another, Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp have been behind some of the most profound recordings of modern kosmiche music. At the helm of the Apestaartje imprint, the duo facilitated expansive and mesmerizing sets of tonal beauty by artists all over the world. In their respective solo releases, Anderegg (sometimes as Charter Oak) and Holtkamp (sometimes as Aero and A Silent Partner) create pristine tones and drones that speak to each musician's unique personality. Together as Mountains, the pair charter entirely new paths of organic experimentalism that feel wholly complete, and wholly consuming.

Following an exquisite run of LPs for Thrill Jockey, Catsup Plate, and Apestaartje, Mountains now return with the 11th installment in the You Can't Hide Your Love Forever 7" series, a two-track EP that goes as deep inwardly as it does outwardly. Incorporating bits and pieces from the ephemeral ethers the duo has mined since its inception, traversing the astral plane with a bevy of modular synthesizers, effects processors, and acoustic accoutrements. Aptly titled "Parallel One" and "Parallel Two," the two sides feed into one another in a Möbius strip of chorded ecstasy.

North-side's "Parallel One" opens in a pleasant onslaught of layered clatter, directing attention to miniature symphonies that play out in the foreground and way off in the distance. Melodies fall from cliffs high above in a harrowing descent into oblivion, as counter-melodies ripple from said melodies' demise in a hopeful ascent into space. South-side's "Parallel Two" foils and compliments "Parallel One" by repurposing its fragments into more ambient realms, humming along in tectonic shifts of tonal color and eventually dissolving back into "Parallel One."

It's an addicting aural anagram that seeps into all things.

GN25
Pan•American
Sketch for Winter II: Rue Corridor
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Pan•American

Sketch for Winter II:
Rue Corridor

Catalog #: GN25
Obsidian midnight cassette tape,
limited to 300

1. The Terrace
2. Rue Corridor
3. Pasqual
SOLD OUT
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Through a number of musical projects, both solo and collaborative, Mark Nelson has been behind some of the most movingly melancholic and beautifully bleak sounds released in the past two decades. From his work with Robert Donne and Carter Brown in seminal ambient-rock band Labradford to his recent foray into aural austerity with Labradford-mate Donne and Steven Hess (drummer with Locrian, Fennesz, Haptic, On, and others) in Anjou to his solo work as Pan•American, Nelson's sonic signature resonates with immense presence and fleeting agility.

Depending on the Pan•American LP, Nelson shifts from noirish, ambient dub to jazzy, minimal techno while maintaining a mesmerizing sense of patience and intimacy throughout. With Rue Corridor, the latest Pan•American EP and the second part of Geographic North's Sketch for Winter series, Nelson retreats even further into the hazy, pitch-black realms he's flirted with in past recordings.

Opener "The Terrace" is an extended foray into glitching, slurring ambiance. The track opens in a simmering drift of frayed blips and inverted melodies. A mirrored narrative unfurls itself as deep outwardly as inwardly, and motion both accelerates and comes to a complete halt. Muted and mutilated drones gradually fill the space as clipped cymbal ticks clutter the walls. Consumed by pleasant paranoia and reassuring restlessness, the piece hovers through the air weighted with a narcotic hum present in all things.

The eponymous track roils in a mechanical suite of malfunctioned arpeggiations, spiraling outwardly in a glowing, pointillistic din. Nelson blankets the bleary-eyed symphony with just enough light to entice curious onlookers, attracting perilous tones to an exquisite demise. "Pasqual" is the resolved closer, bowing out of the droning desolation with a hint of hope and ember-like glimmer of warmth. Waves of subtly distorted noise wash over space, encompassing everything in their wake.

GN24
A Sunny Day in Glasgow
Sketch for Winter I: New Christmas Classics
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A Sunny Day in Glasgow

Sketch for Winter I:
New Christmas Classics

Catalog #: GN24
Black liquorice cassette tape, limited to 300

1. Shut Your Mouth, It's Christmas
2. Saturn Pulls Me Apart (Death of the Unconquerable Night)
3. Fantasia on Xmas (From Vaughan Williams)
4. The Strange Presents of Idols (Merry Christmas!)
5. All I Want for Christmas Is You (This is Peter McCallister, The Father Version)
SOLD OUT
PREVIEW

When it comes down to it, there's no one else we'd rather settle down with for Christmas festivities than A Sunny Day in Glasgow. The Philadelphia six-piece has always had a knack for unexpected arrangements, meticulous layering and editing, and downright addicting wordplay and melodies, all delivered with the band's dark sense of humor. Now kicking off the first in our four-part 'Sketch for Winter' cassette series is A Sunny Day in Glasgow's aptly titled New Christmas Classics.

Hot off the heels of Sea When Absent, the band's fascinating fourth LP released earlier this year on Lefse, New Christmas Classics both heightens the band’s sense of detail and concept while simultaneously stripping it all down to an intimate affair. Featuring heartfelt covers and artful, shoegaze pop, Sketch for Winter I's five songs play like a holiday mixtape to anyone willing to listen.

"Shut Your Mouth, It's Christmas" sets the scene with unabashed flair and enthusiasm for the season, immediately inserting itself into your psyche with an earworm's hook and instilling aural space with faux snow and genuine sentiment. "Saturn Pulls Me Apart (Death of the Unconquerable Night)" continues the bizarro festivities with super-saturated passages of frigid, amped-up shoegaze that snugly soundtracks our collective, snow-bound melancholy.

"Fantasia on Xmas (From Vaughan Williams)" mines the trusted songbook of yore, providing more than an ounce of trusted chamber pop and showing A Sunny Day in Glasgow in their most intimate, acoustic form, warmly accompanying the figurative yule log. "The Strange Presents of Idols (Merry Christmas!)" speaks to the band's vocal pop expertise, playing up the alluring seduction of a lost Stereolab B-side produced by Phil Spector, leaving only New Christmas Classics' closing tune, which will surely be recognized by anyone lucky enough to catch a holiday-time set by the band. Bundle up and come along!

Starts shipping December 3rd

GN21
M. Sage
Data in the Details
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M. Sage

Data in the Details

Catalog #: GN21
Rosso Corsa cassette tape, limited to 100

1. Data in the Details
(heads up extended edit)
2. Data in the Details
(mover isuzu dub edit)
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Born and raised in Ft. Collins, Colorado, Matthew Sage established himself a formidable player in the greater experimental scene as a producer of utterly monumental works of processed ambient music using anything and everything at his disposal as M. Sage, along a bevy of other pseudonyms. From guitar, pedals, cello, field recordings, and severe but tasteful post-production, sound takes shape in a carefully focused but altogether organic way. Sage's acts of grandeur don't simply fall back on piling on just any noise or sound. Tones are sifted out of the ether naturally, separating themselves with the ease of an inherent belonging, best heard earlier this year on the sprawling A Singular Continent LP, wherein Sage created sonic worlds, fabricating entire geographies, geologies, latitudes, and histories.

With Data in the Details, Sage turns the focus inward, pulling from a series of deeply personal scenes in his final two months in Ft. Collins ranging doing data entry and moving high-end furniture into high-end mountain homes. The resulting two tracks process the experiences in disparate but inextricably linked ways. A-side's "Data in the Details (heads up extended edit)" routes an amorphous and elusive trail of textured ambient modes. Glitched and muted melodies fold on top of one another in ways only Vladislav Delay previously mastered, while frigid patterns of sound ice over similar to Fennesz's alluringly processed tones.

B-side's "Data in the Details (mover isuzu dub edit)" repurposes the ample washes of the original track into more rhythmic and minimal acid-dub. Calling to mind Porter Ricks' sub-aquatic dubbiness, traversing Jan Jelinek's mutant, kraut techno, Sage revels in a sort of muted throb that flows through the entire side with both nothing and everything to lose.

GN20
Hiro Kone
Fallen Angels
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Hiro Kone

Fallen Angels

Catalog #: GN20
matcha-green cassette tape, limited to 100

1. Jungle
2. Ferry Home
3. Days of Being Wild
4. Islands
5. Ashes
6. Recall
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Since leaving the calculated grooves and anxiously kraut-ish post-punk of Effi Briest behind, Nicky Mao (AKA Hiro Kone) has delved deep into the curiously insidious realms of experimental techno and artful rhythms.

Hiro Kone's latest EP, aptly dubbed Fallen Angels, sources Mao's earliest memories of her childhood in Hong Kong, repurposing vibrant fragments of the past through a suitably disorienting array of sonic imagery. Using Wong Kar-Wai as her muse, Mao's six tracks presented here celebrate the dichotomy of sharing roots with equally foreign lands. Centerpieces are dismantled and absorbed into atmosphere as background ephemera takes the spotlight.

We begin with the pummeling serration of "Jungle," a dizzying spat of curt serrations that revolves around its axis in locked rhythm. The aural display slices through air with the premeditated sharpness of Pan Sonic before a sudden sample literally suggesting Mao's upbringing collapses into the frame. "Ferry Home" continues the narrative with a slew of vignettes rooted in swampy, neon-lighted realms. A-side closer "Days of Being Wild" unfurls its caustic movements through the dancefloor, simultaneously alienating and comforting anything in its wake.

"Island" opens the B-side in a slightly lighter headspace, channeling Steve Reich's clipped symphonies and celestial levitations of the krautrock movement's Berlin-school of kosmische musik. "Ashes," one of the more dynamic sets of the EP, revels in a glitchy terrain previously plowed by globally-focused manics like Muslimgauze and modern beat-and-atmosphere surgeons Holly Herndon and Huerco S.

With Fallen Angels, Hiro Kone demonstrates an effervescent bob of basement sonics and tectonic-shifts, recalling a future firmly suggested by the past.

GN16/CGI006
TWINS
Love Is A Luxury
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TWINS

Love Is A Luxury

Catalog #: GN16/CGI006
transparent red, hand-stamped 12" vinyl, limited to 400

A. Love Runs Deep
B. The Empty Deep
BUY $8 STREAM

TWINS is the paranoid outsider-pop project of Atlanta-based producer Matt Weiner. Having spent the better part of a decade reveling in a mutant murk that intersects seductive synth-pop with Featureless Ghost and grotesque industrial-dance grooves in his own right as TWINS on LPs issued by Ruralfaune and Clan Destine, Weiner has more than proved his sincerely sinister and auspiciously artful finesse of synth-based music. Operating from his home studio, arrayed with various tools of the trade, Weiner culls his subtle scourges of sound with an unending sense of bold exploration, processing tracks of rhythmic, aural catharsis.

Now returning with the Love Is A Luxury 12-inch, a two-track EP co-released by Weiner's own CGI and Geographic North, TWINS ventures deep into the collected unconscious of our singular broken heart. Elegantly expansive and densely fluid, each track a fragmented careen of erotic house music. With more than an eye on the dancefloor and an ear for hypnotic luster, A-side "Love Runs Deep" hosts dubby house perfectly suited for Basic Channel's low-end minimalism. B-side "The Empty Deep" conveys the desolate counterpoint, enchanting in its sullen hysteria.

Weiner's dubby explorations of an exposed vulnerability manifest in the vinyl itself, containing and exposing both tracks with complete transparency, baring themselves on clear crimson wax.

GN19
Auburn Lull
Hiber
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Auburn Lull

Hiber

Catalog #: GN19
blueberry cassette tape, limited to 100

1. Moterm
2. CA1
3. Sosna
4. Hiber
5. Static Partition
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In their six years of dormancy, Lansing Michigan's Auburn Lull have patiently refined a distinguished and highly idiosyncratic vision of celestial minimalism that began with 1999's landmark debut Alone I Admire. Long regarded as unsung heroes of listless shoegaze and vibrant drone-pop, to confine the current trio to such terrestrial descriptors would be simply unfledged. Rather, the five selections that comprise the Hiber EP reinstate the band's timelessly melodic guitar whispers, now gracefully accentuated by a nimble sense of restraint equipped not with the mono-vision of just another shoegaze band, but with the stereoscope of a living legend.

"Moterm," a brief palette cleanser of looping melancholy cut from Robin Guthrie's silk-lining sets the scene for "CA1," a ten-minute suite of focused transcendence through sustained strings and washes of elegiac light. From the life-affirming highs to the consciousness questioning lows, the group conducts a desolate, miasmic symphony for the hollow.

B-side opener "Sosna," is a modest but expansive segue into "Hiber," a genuine mini-epic of sorts that resembles a piano exploding underwater, gently splintering into a thousand, floating and fractured flecks of sound. The scene is both beautiful and atrocious. This all leads to the solemn but resolved closer "Static Partition," whose chords of nuanced remorse and glorious grief waft through the air in a near-tangible arc.

GN18
James Conduit
Two Lines Thick
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James Conduit

Two Lines Thick

Catalog #: GN18
cotton candy cassette tape, limited to 100

1. Peak Distractions
2. Creased
3. Ancient Spine
4. Body (Version)
5. Two Lines Thick
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In former lives spent with School of Seven Bells and Bear In Heaven, as well as under the solo-moniker Ateleia, James Elliott has explored the threshold of avant pop and minimalist, neo-psychedelia. With Conduit however, Elliott takes an unsavory and insoluble turn for the worst. Simply put, James Conduit is not in the mood for love. There's no room on the vessel for sentimentality—merely a glass overfilled with primordial destitution and a mischievous grin.

On Conduit's debut release, color and luminescence peak through the cracks, vibrating up through the murk in moments of sudden seduction. The dimly-lit synth line of "Peak Distractions" subtly pulses through, shrouded in a heap of electro-obsessed blips. The heaving pulse of "Creased" drives through its weighted course amid a flurry of collateral clatter and disjointed rhythms, simultaneously focused and careening off the rails.

"Ancient Spine" brings with it Two Lines Thick's linchpin, an artful centerpiece that lenses the EP in full-frame. With guttural and gut-wrenching low-ends hammering through its grey-toned modes, the track places itself within the context of the Greats of dark electronic, from Warp's earliest acid-soaked experimentors to Kassem Mosse's modern basement beat obsessives.

GN17
Lotus Plaza
Overnight Motorcycle Music
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Lotus Plaza

Overnight Motorcycle Music

Catalog #: GN17
seafoam cassette tape, limited to 100

1. Indian Paintbrush
2. Gemini Pt. 1
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Lockett Pundt has never shied away from spiraling fractals of guitar-based ephemera, charting new routes of art-punk and experimental pop with Deerhunter, while creating breaths of cyclical dreamgaze under solo moniker Lotus Plaza. While ever earnest, seldom has Pundt reached the degree of intimacy found on Overnight Motorcycle Music. The EP's two offerings subscribe to a comfortably isolated space, while reducing LP's assured nostalgia to its solemn core.

"Indian Paintbrush" unfurls its quietly disarming movements, exploring dimly lit textures and muted tones, once enigmatic yet still warm. Nary a rhythm section to be found, and clocking in at just under 14 minutes, it is a rigid masterpiece of modest, guitar-based symphony.

Further down the psyche we are greeted with the softly haunting "Gemini Pt. 1" hosting sheets of tonal bliss ideal for the serenity of the open road, but crafted in the most confined quarters. There is little distraction here—simply some soul-baring.

GN15
Tinniens
Dub Guns
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Tinniens

Dub Guns

Catalog #: GN15
orange cassette tape, limited to 100

1. Rough Suite
2. Veer
3. Return-Report
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Tinniens is the kaleidoscopic pairing of Landing's Aaron Snow and Daron Gardner working within a minimalist setup and a beachcomber psyche. The duo's exploration of wandering dream pop is only a brief stones throw from Landing's own reverie, yet routing the listener to their destination with only minor discourse in the drift.

Dub Guns, the group's debut entry, boasts Snow and Gardner's exquisite knack for processing tightly-locked runs of concentric, mechanized loops while balancing a humanist, song-based approach. Fleeting moments of Michael Rother's solo tendencies and a modest helping of Seefeel's sub-bass masterpiece EP "Starethrough" are certainly mile-markers.

With Dub Guns, Tinniens scout a scorched tundra of slighted tones.

GN14
Clipd Beaks
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 10
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Clipd Beaks

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 10

Catalog #: GN14
7" single, limited to 300, grey vinyl

A. Hard Daze
B. Sky Burial
BUY $7

Lingering behind the tender dusk, Oakland necromancers Clipd Beaks reveal a pair of errant SOS missions for Geographic North. Embracing 11 years as a unit, there is nary a trace of noise or an experiment to obscure — instead we are graced with a vividly realized yet deceptively soulful shade of a band that has never allowed for genre-stagnation.

Equal parts hunter and hunted, the north side's "Hard Daze" lurks with a purpose. A moon-drenched, hypnotic call carries under galvanizing drums and drones, making for a drugged ancestor of Red Mecca-era Cabaret Voltaire.

As the name suggests, the south side's "Sky Burial" finds the Beaks in a mist of reverb guitars howling into the stratosphere before confessing a bassline suitable for end of days.

BT001
Lyonnais
Terminus OST
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Lyonnais

Terminus OST

Catalog #: BT001
7" single, black vinyl

A1. Slow bleed
A2. End of education
B1. I am the healer
B2. Slow bleed requital
BUY $7

Lyonnais (featuring Geographic North founders Farzad Moghaddam and Farbod Kokabi) return to the fold with a stack of brooders for Solomon Chase's post-apocalyptic short "Terminus". Released by Chase's production company Battery Fire as a Kickstarter gift for contributors to the film, Geographic North managed to grab a handful of these 7"s for the public.

The film follows a young woman and her brother as they traverse an unexplainably barren Atlanta, coping with the loss of their father and a life once known. Lyonnais' first release since 2011's Want for Wish For Nowhere (Hoss Records), the score burns with a murky underbelly of tension and pensive fate, ultimately landing on a false sense of security.

GN13
Test House
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 9
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Test House

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 9

Catalog #: GN13
7" single, limited to 300, transparent
midnight purple vinyl, interchangeable
cover art

A. Hold Your Form
B. One Immeasurable Place
BUY $7

Test House is the duo of James Elliott (ex-Bear In Heaven, ex-School of Seven Bells) and Peter Schuette (ex-Silk Flowers, ex-Psychobuildings). Together these dance floor seductionists craft intricate and rousing mutant synth-pop gems with an ear for darkly complex corridors and arrangements. Think Depeche Mode curves, tip-toeing (even further) into the ether.

North-side's "Hold Your Form" shimmers with striated synth pulses, pairing tectonic shifts of melody with nuanced subtleties of romance. Like a long lost New Order demo dusted off and transmitted by the ghost of John Peel, the forlorn beauty is as wrought with angst as it is pure joy. This one's sure to get stuck in your head.

South-side's "One Immeasurable Place" carries the scene home, finding solace in the shadows of the after party. Arthur Russell's minimal art-disco provides the palette (both sonic and sentiment), but Test House hones the execution. Phantom sounds form a spotted fog of rhythm and noise as the duo performs their black magic. It's a propulsive meditation, concisely disguised as the best song you've ever heard.

GN12
Windsor for the Derby
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 8
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Windsor for the Derby

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 8

Catalog #: GN12
7" single, limited to 300, transparent
pumpkin orange vinyl, interchangeable
cover art

A. Speaker Special
B. Heard Worse
BUY $7

“'Speaker' Special threads the group's atmospheric qualities through looped and subtle bass-tones and far-off melodies that drift like lingering echoes of a distant and very massive explosion somewhere deep in the cosmos.”
-Creative Loafing

“'Heard Worse' floods the aural space with blinding illumination from the outset, the listener dizzied by a phantasmagoria of oscillating vapour trails and siren flares.”
-Textura

GN11
Landing
Landing
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Landing

Landing

Catalog #: GN11
12" LP, limited to 500, black vinyl,
includes a digital album download

A1. Finally
A2. Heavy Gloss
A3. Heart Finds the Beat
A4. Crows
A5. Like the Tide
B6. Decades
B7. We Lie in Fields
B8. Migration
B9. Native Land
LP SOLD OUT
BUY DIGI $9

“Lead track "Finally" feels like a shuttle launch, the bass and drums propelling a momentous, climbing trajectory while the trebly guitar and synth peel off and fly back where in the past they would have accumulated and dissipated. In fact, Snow's trademark masterful touch with delay and tempo is often reshuffled into less recognizable, more experimental forms. Throughout we hear Landing diving into new territory without trepidation.”
-Delusion of Adequacy

“If you're not yet familiar with Landing, I encourage you to fill up the peace pipe and figure it the fuck out.”
-Adhoc / Distonal

“Landing, paradoxically, spends most of its time not landing. They are constantly lifting off, soaring ever higher, ever farther into the outer reaches. To listen is to feel the cool winds whistling by, the wetness of enveloping clouds, and the unending freedom of the outstretched blue. Wispy vocals, crispy drums, driving bass, and the mix just soaking in an ocean of reverb all make "Heart Finds the Beat" quite the aerial swim.”
-Tiny Mix Tapes

GN10
Windy & Carl
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 7
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Windy & Carl

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 7

Catalog #: GN10
7" single, limited to 300, transparent
blue vinyl, interchangeable cover art

A. A Thousand Miles
From Nowhere
B. Geographic
SOLD OUT

Subscriber copies still available.

“Based around Detroit, Windy & Carl have been producing elegant, transportational dream-pop drones since the early 1990s. This single catches them in a very song-focused mood, with strumming guitars, floating vocals and gently dodging electric leads on one side. The flip is collapsing towers of electric guitar tones. Gorgeous stuff.”
-The Wire

“The A-side features a reinvention of Dwight Yoakam's '90s country hit "A Thousand Miles from Nowhere." Weber's chilling rendition of Yoakam's lyrics, "I've got bruises on my memory/I've got tear stains on my hands," resonate on a deeper and more ethereal level than the original song's rustic ruminations… sprawling, haunting ambiance is what they do best, and juxtaposing it with such a heartfelt offering on the flip side only draws out the potent quality of both cuts. (4 out of 5 stars)”
-Creative Loafing

HOSS23
Lyonnais
Want for Wish for Nowhere LP
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Lyonnais

Want for Wish for Nowhere LP

Catalog #: HOSS23
12" LP, limited to 500, black vinyl

A1. Transitive Properties of Youth
A2. The Fatalist
A3. A Sign from on High
A4. Modern Calvary
B5. Repeat Sunset
B6. Dusted at Mount Sinai
BUY $13

Debut LP from Geographic North co-founders Farzad and Farbod, released on Hoss Records.

“Could be easily compared to any Crime and the City Solution record or perhaps even the best of Einstürzende Neubauten.”
-De La Vie TV

“I imagine that if the legendary 1970s collaboration between Tony Conrad and Faust had concentrates on melodies and jams rather than drones, it might have turned out something like this.”
-Scribblers

“A well-imagined, consistent soundtrack to lurking 'round the bell tower at midnight, pacing the moors with Heathcliff, driving the Indy 500 smashed through on pharmaceutical-grade opium or hunting the last lion on earth blindfolded and with a dull spear.”
-Magnetic

GN09
Warm Ghost
Claws Overhead EP
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Warm Ghost

Claws Overhead EP

Catalog #: GN09
12" EP, limited to 500, white vinyl

Includes a download coupon with additional remixes by David Daniell, Ekkehard Ehlers, Ateleia, Phonophani, Oren Ambarchi & Fred Longberg-Holm

A1. Claws Overhead
A2. Resignation Rights
B3. Open The Wormhole In Your Heart
B4. So Sick Of The Sun
BUY 12" EP $13 BUY DIGI $6

“… marries a lush, woozy, electronic cunning with pure-pop sensibility, bridging the enveloping work of texture purist Christian Fennesz and the enigmatic, though self-moderating, songwriting acumen of Depeche Mode”
-Magnet Magazine

“beautiful mixture of dark 80's, synth pop, early techno, some 4AD influences”
-Small Town Romance

“…the artists they evoke are sufficiently diverse musically and vocally that Warm Ghost can touch on several similarly moody genres without sounding like an out-and-out tribute act to any one group (witness how the pro forma shoegaze feel of "Resignation Rights" gets undercut halfway through by Knife-ish synths).”
-Pitchfork

GN08
Soft Circle
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 6
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Soft Circle

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 6

Catalog #: GN08
7" single, limited to 300, purple vinyl

A. End of Summer
B. Climb High
BUY $6

“10/10. …tom-heavy poundings to chanted vocals, swirling guitars come in between, but that's the meat to the sandwich really. It's easy to get your head caught up in it, but ends so quickly (especially for those nurtured on some long krautrock jams) that it's a bummer. You could really stand to hear that stretched out to a full LP side.”
-Foxy Digitalis

“'Stuff We Like.' Bharoocha started out making tribal/electronic/ambient anthems, and while the current iteration of Soft Circle remains true to that vision, their new sound has gone further into the direction of heavy beats and more solidified song structures.”
-Insound

GN07
Landing
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 5
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Landing

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 5

Catalog #: GN07
7" single, limited to 300, white vinyl

A. Into the Hall
B. Following Daylight
SOLD OUT

“…paints a gentle, steady portrait, utilizing hushed vocals, marching snares and cloudy guitars, coming close to some of Yo La Tengo's quieter moments.” “…forgoes rhythm and vocals for a sweetly burning drone featuring heavy delay and some sounds in reverse. …it's exactly the type of piece that's transformative once you immerse yourself in it, and it's a prime of example of why I adore Landing.”
-Foxy Digitalis

“The slow tension buildup, sounding kind of classically influenced…it's really reminding me of Locrian or Godspeed you… like on the B-Side with 'Following Daylight'…those slow, shifting layers of sound fading in and out. Just a huge black wall, you can't see the ends or top, it's just closing in.”
-7 Inches

GN06
Belong
October Language LP
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Belong

October Language LP

Catalog #: GN06
12" LP, limited to 500, 180-gram black vinyl

A1. I Never Lose. Never Really
A2. Red Velvet or Nothing
A3. October Language
A4. I'm Too Sleepy… Shall We Swim
B5. Remove the Inside
B6. Who Told You This Room Exists?
B7. All Equal Now
B8. The Door Opens the Other Way
SOLD OUT

“Tense, expectant, on the verge of understanding, you submerge yourself in streams of long notes swathed in static, slow moving processions of sounds, each element disappearing just before you get a clear glimpse of it. The melancholic aura, the overtones, the fuzzy-edged mystery is reminiscent of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, and like them, October Language is meant to evoke decay, but it could just as easily represent birth, with nearly endless possibilities unfolding from each shape-shifting note.”
-Dusted

“A-. …the debut release from the New Orleans duo Belong, is one of the most unabashedly emotional and cinematic ambient albums to come along for quite some time. It's a record with an immersive nature, capable of filling the furthest corners of the room with sound-sometimes, it can be overwhelming. At turns recalling the sputtering post-apocalyptic soundscapes found during the more ambient moments of M83's Before the Dawn Heals Us or a 21st century remake of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless as produced by Christian Fennesz, the album is a furious maelstrom blistering with emotional tension.”
-Stylus

GN05
Psychic Powers
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 4
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Psychic Powers

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 4

Catalog #: GN05
7" single, limited to 300, pink vinyl

A. Wellington
B. Foreign Photograph
BUY $6

“a scrappier, more depressive New Order only just updated for modern ears” “Wellington is a shining example of great downer pop”
-LA Weekly

“Sassy, high-grade synth-pop composed via the throbbing connects of the internet. New Zealander Nik Brinkman and American Alejandro Cohen draw a pair of prime time New Order-esque rabbits out of the hat, while doffing said headwear to the temple of Stephin Merritt's Future Bible Heroes. Wellington is the stronger of the two cuts, with bouncy key stabs, a catchy chorus and a string-driven refrain that'd make Hooky piss his leather kecks. Foreign Photograph is a little pedestrian in comparison, but still a fuck lot better than anything The Lightning Seeds have recorded since Pure.”
-Record Collector Magazine

GN04
Tarentel
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 3
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Tarentel

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 3

Catalog #: GN04
7" single, limited to 300, mint green vinyl

A. Space Junk A
B. Space Junk B
SOLD OUT

“…jagged blasts of electronic noise and feedback jostle with sparse, tense guitar figures that never coalesce or resolve, before breaking down into waves of delay. The atmosphere is threatening from start to finish, suggesting a sound environment that could explode into virtually anything, the music stalking the surface of the mint green marble vinyl on which this was pressed searching for any escape.”
-Foxy Digitalis

“…sounds like it could have come from the same performance, very drum heavy, a loping groove that sounds almost looped, as the drums are subtly effected and all around them swirl bits of feedback and blurred noise, very krautrocky, with that noisy backdrop surprisingly caustic at points, but just as often smoothed out into buzzing snarling dronescapes, still littered with jagged shards of feedback, and still hovering over that relentless rhythm.”
-Aquarius Records

GN03
One Poster
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One Poster

Catalog #: GN03
1-color silk-screen poster
12.95x19
limited to 100, 80 for public

BUY $10

A free gift for our first 100 subscribers of You Can't Hide Your Love Forever. Designed by Geographic North, screened by Richie Bearden

GN02
Tussle
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 2
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Tussle

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 2

Catalog #: GN02
7" single, limited to 300, yellow vinyl

A. Animal Cop
B. Room 191
BUY $6

“The A-side track, "Animal Cop" begins as a lackadaisical dance rhythm with some fuzzy bass before breaking down into percussive clatter and switching gears into what sounds like a seventies cop theme, albeit one buried in fuzzy reverb. While the B-side, "Room 191", is a heavy slow dub with distorted synth crashes put through a wobbly syrupy filter that almost sounds like a Screw backing track. Our only complaint is that it's too short! We could have easily listened to 5 minutes of that!”
-Aquarius Records

“The A-Side, sorry the North side, 'Animal Cop' is very bassline groove driven. This had to have been the foundation for the track, it's so right up front and sure. The drums are so clean sounding, I'm having trouble telling what could have been recorded live and what wasn't…aside from the obvious electronic glitchy hits. So many different sounds are used, cowbells, warning alarms. There's a breakdown part of just live minimal drums at one point. It doesn't sound too far away from Tortoise, Pullman…that post-jazz influenced sound. It's instrumental, and full of little twists and turns.”
-7 Inches

GN01
A Sunny Day in Glasgow
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever vol. 1
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A Sunny Day in Glasgow

You Can't Hide Your Love
Forever vol. 1

Catalog #: GN01
7" single, limited to 300, blue vinyl

A. (Cult of) The Cemetery Flowers (Mandolins Version)
B. Walking Pneumonia
SOLD OUT

“Techno beats, spoken-word snippets, chopped-up female vocals, and shimmering shoegaze electronics dissolve against each other-- and, over the course of nearly six minutes, cohere into something sweetly effective. It's closer to the feminine electro-twee atmospherics of High Places or Land of Loops than the noisy textures of My Bloody Valentine, but unless you're also trying to clean out your earwax that's probably good enough for what ails ya. So consider this track a healthy sign for any follow-up to the brother-sister group's haunting 2007 debut, Scribble Mural Comic Journal.”
-Marc Hogan, Pitchfork

“These two new songs find ASDIG in perfect form, delivering more of their swirling daydream delights that remind us of brighter sunnier Cocteau Twins. Perfect for the 7" format as this is a band who creates songs that only get better with constant listens, we've been playing this over and over!”
-Aquarius Records

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info@geographic-north.com

Geographic North
901 Bouldercrest Dr SE,
Atlanta, GA 30316
United States

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Geographic North is a record label.

Shipping

Shipping costs vary depending on delivery address and size of order. Domestic and international shipping can be calculated on the Paypal order form once an order is created. Feel free to send us an email if you have any questions or problems when creating your order.

Demo Policy

We are currently accepting demos but can't respond to all submissions. We are few, so make sure you're fully aware of our sound and aesthetic before submitting anything. Links to mp3s (Soundcloud, myspace, bandcamp, etc.) are preferred, but physical submissions can be sent to our mailing address.

Availability

Items listed as “sold out” on our Releases page are no longer available through us. Please check with our distributor MVD for physical copies.

Distributors

Geographic North is distributed by boomkat in the UK/EU. We offer wholesale prices for (and prefer ongoing relationships with) retailers and distributors in the US/ROW. If you’re interested in placing a wholesale order, please email us for information.

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You Can't Hide Your Love Forever 7” Subscription

The second-half of our subscription
mailorder series with six exclusive 7”s
releases from:

BUY $42

Geographic North is proud to announce the second-half of our 7” subscription series, You Can't Hide Your Love Forever. Launched in 2008 with a contribution from A Sunny Day in Glasgow, the series delivers semi-regular demonstrations of the seductive intimacies a 7” has to offer. A subscription consists of six 7” records featuring exclusive songs from our curated list of artists, as well as a subsciber gift to be announced. The records are delivered to your mailbox at the pace of production (roughly one every two months). Each record is limited to 300, with 100 subscriptions available.

Artists from the first-half include: