Tuesday, December 14, 2021

amek061 VA "Vanishing Standards II" CS

Order at Bandcamp.

Two years later, Vanishing Standards returns with 15 exclusive tracks by Amek regulars and a very special selection of guests. The new volume of what is now a compilation series, aims at revealing new and exciting works by our expanded family of artists thus the epic tracklist, spanning over 80 minutes of music in a plethora of contemporary experimental music genres. Vanishing Standards II collects works from debuting projects and unexpected collaborations, as well as a few remix and cover versions.


Artwork by Nikola Kostov
Mastered by Marius Costache






Monday, November 29, 2021

Vanishing Standards II - Listening Party at Koncept Space

Last one for the year. A pre-premiere listening party of Vanishing Standards II is happening at Koncept Space, Sofia on Dec 13. We spin these 80 minutes of pure experimental bliss, that we've collected on the tape (TWICE) and then we go home happy that we've survived another year. Free entry. 



Friday, November 19, 2021

amek059 Undantem "Alterity" (CS)

 

Order at Bandcamp.

For over a year we’ve observed the growth and transformation of Undantem’s debut full-length ‘Alterity’. The first glimpses of it were heavy on field recordings and rawer ambient sound. The harshness gradually surrendered to the more majestic and calming dronescape-driven atmosphere, with the field recordings only carefully nuancing the sound and giving it that much needed organic element, that grounds the music in the very realm we’re sharing with its creator.


‘Alterity’ was written in Sofia between 2020-2021 by Irish-born, but Bulgaria-based artist Ronan Considine. This debut album is a lesson in tranquility, patience but also of structure, sense of space and melody. ‘Alterity’ allows you to observe, feel and experience the world it unfolds but maintains a delicate distance, making it harder to senselessly lose yourself in it.




All tracks written and produced by Ronan Considine
"Little Kingdom" written by Ronan Considine and Siún Considine
March-October 2021, Sofia, Bulgaria
Artwork by Nikola Kostov

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Undantem "Alterity" (video premiere)

"Alterity" from the debut Undantem full-length of the same name. Out in mid November via Amek Collective on tape & digital at http://amekcollective.bandcamp.com.


Thursday, September 9, 2021

amex004 mother spit "extraction 19" CS

Order at Bandcamp.

mother spit is Angel Simitchiev & Martin Lukanov and "extraction 19" documents two of their 2019 live performances. The sound of the duo feels most at home in large, badly resonating rooms, where its defective sound artefacts and industrial debris can uncontrollably unfold and mutate into vast and bleak lo-fi soundscapes. mother spit operates with guttural basses, abrasive mid range and synthesised sound that lingers between precision and chaos. Those are let to wander freely into the performance space and only now and then are recaptured, of course, as carelessly as possible.



side A was recorded live on October 5, 2019

side B was recorded live on March 16, 2019 (tape exclusive) 

Artwork photography by Silvana Ilieva. 

EXPERIENCE is a tape series of live recordings, captured during Amek Collective events or guest appearances.

Thursday, August 26, 2021

a-m_e|k p_89 Overdriven Dreams (Serbia), TFSL Mono, mother spit at Фабрика Автономия 10/09

Second attempt at doing this show, which we had to cancel last year due to the strict anti-pandemic measures being enforced in Bulgaria on its very same day. Only difference is that mother spit are on the bill this year. Hope it will happen.

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/266000231786291




Sunday, August 22, 2021

a-m_e|k p_88 Stefan Christoff (Canada) piano improvisations, Studio 1, БНР

RSVP: https://facebook.com/events/360582885733620

Another last-minute magic we've managed to arrange with the mighty Alarma Punk Jazz! Stefan Christoff (Montreal, Canada) is in Sofia next week and we'll see him not at one but at two very special events. 

23/08 (Monday): Art + Activism - презентация на музикантa и активист Стефан Христоф (Канада), Фабрика Автономия 

24/08 (Tuesday): Стефан Христоф [Монреал]- пиано импровизации, Първо студио, БНР

To attend the free concert at the National Radio please download this invitation on your phone or print it to show it at the door: https://we.tl/t-vGMq43lbfp

Monday, August 16, 2021

amek057 slntsqencs "haar" CS

 

Order at Bandcamp.

The collaboration between classical guitarist Petar Petkov (ate) and producer Arkadiusz Krupiński (random_orb), both based in Gdańsk, was first hinted at in the compilation Vanishing Standards (Amek, 2019). Two years and a couple of shows later, the duo, now known as slntsqencs (reads as Silent Sequences), is presenting their debut full-length album 'haar'. Named after the meteorological phenomenоn cold sea fog, which occurs when warm air passes over a cold sea front, the record combines the soothing feeling of atmospheric ambient music with just the right amount of tension and uncertainty.



Simultaneously drawing from each artists' previous works and striving to reach a sound of its own, the music on 'haar' feels just as evocative as its title suggests. Its dense layers of guitar work and synthetic textures are vast and often disorienting, yet beautiful enough to contemplate over. Existing on the boundaries between ambient, drone and sequenced-electroacoustic music, the album is a promising beginning of what we hope will grow into a long-lasting musical outlet.


Written and performed by Petar Petkov & Arkadiusz Krupiński in Saloon Studio during 2019.
Mixed and mastered by Marius Costache (Studio 148).
Artwork by Arkadiusz Krupinski

Monday, August 9, 2021

a-m_e|k p_87 * Art + Activism - A presentation by Stefan Christoff at Fabrika Avtonomia

It's been a while since we hosted a lecture, so here we are. Musician and community activist Stefan Christoff of Anarchist Mountains fame is coming to Bulgaria and we cannot wait to hear his presentation on the crossing points between art and anarchism at our favorite Fabrika Avtonomia. See you there.

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/1003609960413418

A presentation on multiple intersections of art and activism by Stefan Christoff, a longtime community organizer and musician living in Montréal / Tiohtià:ke. This presentation will highlight various fronts of expression of the arts within social movements against systemic oppression, injustice and for collective liberation, from street art collaborations with the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, to music programming collaborations with the Suoni per il Popolo festival surrounding building support for Palestinian human rights and the global Boycott, Divestment and Sancations (BDS) movement. Also Stefan will highlight active collaborations with the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) and efforts to build support within networks of artists and cultural workers for efforts to defend the rights of precarious workers within the context of the pandemic who are holding down frontline positions. Stefan has collaborated with artists and activists globally and this talk will focus on the intersections of Stefan's work within this sphere. 

Stefan Christoff is a community organizer, writer and musician living in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. Stefan is a longtime community radio show host on CKUT 90.3fm and produces the program Free City Radio that explores the intersections between the arts and social activism. As a community organizer, Stefan is on the board of the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) in the city and has been deeply involved in migrant justice movements over the last two decades. In activism Stefan has worked to explore the intersections between struggles for justice locally and globally, working toward the mobilizations of the anti-corporate globalization movement in Québec City in 2001 to oppose the now defeated Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement and also the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Montréal in 2003. Stefan has a longstanding connection to anti-colonial struggles of Indigenous communities, having spent time on the frontlines with Indigenous land defenders in the Algonquin community Grassy Narrows, the Mohawk communities of Kanehsatà:ke, Akwesasne and Kanesatake, as well as with the Secwépemc people fighting colonial land expropriation by the Canadian colonial state. Stefan has been a longtime organizer within the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian liberation globally and helped to coordinate programming around the Palestinian freedom struggle at both the World Education Forum in Ramallah, Palestine, in 2010 and the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2011. Stefan is a musician who has collaborated widely with musicians both locally and globally having released numerous albums in collaboration with various art and music collectives globally. As a writer Stefan has contributed to many publications both locally and globally, including Al Jazeera.

Thursday, July 22, 2021

a-m_e|k p_86 Maltash, Zhe Pechorin, Evitceles, Late at Koncept Space - Aug 21

Aug 21 back at Koncept Space, Sofia for a night of heavy electronics, event program curated by Evitceles. Super excited to be having Maltash (Lebanon) & Zhe Pechorin (Serbia) playing Sofia for the first time. Poster by Nikola Kostov




Tuesday, July 20, 2021

amek058 Discordless "Fear On Every Side" CS

Order at Bandcamp

In the three years since Marius Costache’s previous full-length album for Amek as Discordless, his usual menacing and anxiety-fuelled music has reached even further into the sonic extremes. We can blame it on the world we live in, on the year that just passed or on Costache’ very own distortion-worshipping approach to electronic music and his decades-worth of experience as a sound and recording engineer. Whichever you pick, ‘Fear On Every Side’ will remain a brutal take on contemporary noise music. It is demanding, disorienting and primal work but still captivating and sincere.

 

Every element found on the record contributes to a narrative that feels simultaneously vast and intimate. ‘Fear On Every Side’ can be perceived both from a first person perspective and as an overview of our decaying reality. The record doesn’t want you to overcome the sense of hopelessness, paranoia and tension it unfolds in front of you, but rather to plunge you deeper in this place of no way out.
Created at Studio 148 by Marius Costache 
05 featuring Stefan Panea 06 & 09 featuring Silviu Badea 
Photography by Marius Costache & Alexandru Das 
Design by Alexandru Das

reamek001 Contorsionist "Modern Faith" CS

Order at Bandcamp
"Modern Faith" is the third album of Romanian artist Silviu Badea under the moniker Contorsionist. Initially released in December 2013 and recorded live a month earlier through a multichannel guitar and bass amps setup, the music in the album is certainly something of its own kind. The raw, aggressive, yet highly textured and precise, sound allows for the complex and multilayered pieces of Contorsionist to transcend genres and label tags. "Modern Faith" is an experimental work that dares to tame chaos, chance and extreme volume in order to create its aural world.

 

The album was mixed and mastered by Marius Costache and was originally released as a free download on 148, an imprint closely tied to Studio 148, where he and a trusted circle of artists and sound specialists operate. ‘Modern Faith’ is now available in a physical format for the first time. 
"Modern Faith" is the first release in our new tape series REamek, dedicated to reissuing obscure, forgotten, overlooked or simply sold out releases from our region.

Music by Silviu Badea 
Recorded live at Studio 148 in November 2013 
Mixed and masterd by Marius Costache 
Originally released by 148 

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Lukanov, Shentov, Simitchiev & Ambient Folklore в Национален студентски дом (gallery)

 


Lukanov, Shentov, Simitchiev









Ambient Folklore

Lukanov, Shentov, Simitchiev & Ambient Folklore
Национален студентски дом, Sofia
Alarma Punk Jazz
July 2, 2021


Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Vanity Productions, Rangelova, Niandraz & Cyberian в Koncept Space (gallery)

 

Niandraz


Matthew Dervenkov (visuals)


Cyberian



Vanity Productions




Rangelova


Niandraz shot by Veronica Hristova (ph. 1, 2) & Valentin Yordanov (ph. 3, 4)
Cyberian, Vanity Productions, Rangelova shot by Zlatina Tochkova

Koncept Space, Sofia
June 19, 2021

Monday, June 14, 2021

amek055 Evitceles "Naive Slumber" CS

Order at Bandcamp

For “Naive Slumber”, his long due full-length album appearance on Amek, Evitceles reached deep into his well of emotional ambient and carefully picked nearly 60 minutes of music, which we couldn’t be releasing at a more appropriate time. Mostly melancholic, border-line uplifting and always deeply contemplative, the album unfolds and blooms into vivid visions of vast rainy gardens, secluded urban passages and abandoned seaside resorts. “Naive Slumber” is structured by warm, swirling synth loops, floating melodies, subtle pads and hidden audio artefacts. Its tight and focused production turns the album into a gripping musical experience, which reveals its deepest secrets only with the listener put into full submission.



Produced by Etien Slavchev
Mastering by Marius Costache (Studio 148)
Artwork by Niels Geybels