Today we’re proud to launch our new digital series called <facets> in collaboration with Art North Magazine. This series will involve a range of composers and sound artists, teaming up with talented visual artists, for an audio-visual release. For this first edition, we welcome back Icelandic artists Mikael Lind and S.hel who both released solo albums on Whitelabrecs last year. They’ve been paired with Slovakian painter and artist Rachel Jutková who took her one metre square painting out into the fields to shoot photographs of it, which placed the art in a new ‘frame’. RAMMI is coincidentally the Icelandic word for frame, as Mikael and Sævar re-contextualised piano sounds within the plush surroundings of Valgeir Sigurðsson‘s renowned Greenhouse Studios.
Each <facets> edition will include either an EP or album of music available in a range of high quality audiophile formats, accompanied by a work of art as the cover image and a booklet PDF which contains art, profile imagery, background information and an interview, featuring both the sonic and visual artist.
RAMMI is released today, Saturday the 24th of April with no pre-order. If you join our mailing list , we’ll make sure you’re the first to hear about future editions.
press release
“<facets> is an audio-visual series, co-curated between Whitelabrecs and Art North Magazine. This collection provides a space in our catalog for digital music, in which we aim to provide more than a few mp3s and a low resolution square image. Each edition of <facets> is pitched equally at both your eyes and ears. Sonic and visual textures overlap as we pair musicians, composers or sound designers with painters, sculptors or photographers. The work includes the music in a range of formats, specially created visual artwork and a PDF art booklet containing imagery, interviews and liner notes. Our collective aim is to create a coherent work of cross-media art, where the creative outputs of a sonic artist and a visual artist complement each other as a singular creative output.
In this inaugural edition of <facets> we welcome back two artists from Iceland who each released solo albums with us in 2020. This four track EP combines the contemporary modern classical work of Mikael Lind with the prepared-piano sound of S.hel. ‘RAMMI’ was recorded at Valgeir Sigurdsson’s Greenhouse studios in Reykjavik. The collaboration is complete with Fine Art BA (Hons) student Rachel Jutková, who has contributed her painting ‘Morning fog and walking on painting’. This is a mixed-media intuitive painting which was created in her studio and then later placed outdoors in a foggy field.
‘RAMMI’ is Icelandic for frame and this takes on its loose meaning to reflect the processing and techniques of the pianos that Mikael and S.hel created, as they aimed to extend beyond the framework of piano music. The rearrangement of the recorded sounds is also reflected in the track titles, as the letters of RAMMI are shuffled to give way to new meanings. This links into Rachel’s idea of placing her work outside of its usual context, physically, to allow for alternative meanings to be reflected upon.”
credits
Music: Mikael Lind & S.hel
Mastering: James Edward Armstrong
Art Direction & Editing: Ian McKay
Additional Camera Work: Rachel Jutková
Featured artwork by Rachel Jutková: ‘Morning fog, walking on painting’ 100 x 100 cm, 2021
Music & Artwork © 2021, The Artists (Mikael Lind, Sævar Helgi Jóhannsson, Rachel Jutková), All Rights Reserved. Video ℗ by Art North Projects. Music ℗ by Whitelabrecs, 2021
Project Curators: Harry Towell (Music) & Ian McKay (Visual Art)
whitelabrecs.com
whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com
artnorth-projects.org
mikaellind.com
facebook.com/shelmusik
instagram.com/racheljutka
whitelabrecs.com 