It’s no coincidence that the label releasing this San Francisco-based ambient duo’s album is called Glacial Movements. That name is also a perfect description of the sounds they make together.BIG SHOT MAG

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Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist's debut album "Wandering Eye" was recorded over the span of a year and a half. "Dome A" and "Dome B" were recorded inside of a planetarium dome to no audience and it was the second time Rostami and Blomquist played together. "Ridge A" is the latest song recorded and it was performed live in Blomquist's basement. These live tracks use source material ranging from samples from the internet, to live field recordings, to synthesizers. "Dome C" and "Dome F" were compiled by sending material back and forth over and over again and then rearranged into coherent songs. These studio recordings mostly consist of processed piano originally recorded by Rostami. "Ridge B" originated as a cover of the Persian pop song "Do Panjereh" by Googoosh that Rostami had created but was manipulated and distorted in the process of sending the material back and forth. The song titles come from a paper published by Saunders et al. titled "Where is the best site on Earth?" which highlights the best places to observe space from the Antarctic Plateau. Antarctica is the coldest, driest and calmest place on earth. The astronomical sights there yield images of the heavens that are sharper and have more clarity than any other sight on earth. It is a gateway to observe other worlds.

Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist are from San Francisco, CA. Rostami and Blomquist's work occurs at two stages, the gathering/preparation of source material and the live performance. Primarily, Rostami and Blomquist's source material focuses on, digital information and the exchange of that information, repetition and decay, and non-involvement or surrendering aspects of creative control. Some of the piano recordings were created by answering a simple questionnaire Rostami made that uses letters, colors, numbers, major verse minor, and picking between flat, natural and sharp to create a framework for a composition. After the framework is created, Rostami creates a song on the piano, records and sends it to Blomquist who in turn manipulates it. In some cases, Rostami recorded the material using the audio recording option for the app Viber. Rostami used Viber to communicate with a friend who was visiting Iran. Since he had asked her to fill out the survey through the app, he also recorded the material through the low quality recording interface. Sometimes this material is thrown back and forth and sometimes it's processed only once or barely touched. The recording is then turned into a loop and recorded to tape. This system was developed to surrender control and allow the origin of the composition to come from somewhere else much like field recordings or sampling does (two other ways Rostami and Blomquist gather source material.).Time, entropy, and decay are central factors in Rostami and Blomquist's work. For live performances Blomquist works with samples gathered and manipulated digitally and then dubbed to analog tape, reconstituting the quality and predictability of the digital source material. By using loops, Blomquist can take a short audio clip and concentrate on processing it live and allow for improvised changes to that recording over long periods of time. Rostami adds in an extra layer of drones, fuzz, melodic ambience and crescendos with his synthesizer. Their compositions explore dynamic relations between digital and analog sound creating quiet transitions and soaring peaks.

Track Listing:

1. Dome A 80.37° S 77.53° E 4083m

2. Dome C 75.06° S 123.23° E 3233m

3. Dome F 77.19° S 39.42° E 3810m

4. Ridge B ~76° S ~94.75° E ~3750m

5. Dome B 79.0° S 93.6° E 3809m

6. Ridge A 81.5° S 73.5° E 4053m

Label: Glacial Movements

Artist: Aria Rostami & Daniel Blomquist

Release date : 24th June 2016

Format: CD Digipack ltd edition + Digital

Barcode: 8033959880227

All songs performed and arranged by Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist

Recorded/Mixed by Aria Rostami, Daniel Blomquist and Brian Adler

Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio at Gench Studio

Photography by Bjarne Riesto, layout by Rutger Zuydervelt.

A Glacial Movements Records Release, June 2016.

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Endlessly evolving in a non-too specific way but which fires up your senses. MAGAZINE 60

You can almost hear the sounds of icebergs colliding, bouncing off one another and thawing into the Arctic meltwaters. NORMAN RECORDS

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Johann Malfatti is a composer and sound designer based in Berlin. He composes music for film & theatre as well as art projects. Over the years he has contributed to numerous music releases ranging from electronic music, noise to chamber pop on labels such as Deco, Klangkrieg, Fat Cat Records, Planet Mu, WMF Records, Subrosa and Polydor. Most notably, he is part of Ensemble (Fat Cat Records) that has collaborated with Björk, The Twighlight Sad and Cat Power. In his solo work he composes for solo piano, drawing inspiration from computer-based processes like granular synthesis and time stretching algorithms. Surge (Glacial Movements) marks his first solo release and is an ambient album of sonic landscapes dealing with the perception of time. Surge was written in the winter of 02016 in the Austrian alps. The music is based on textural developments that evolve very slowly over time. The composition tries to evoke a sensation of experiencing a slower, deeper layer of time. It draws inspiration from concepts like geological time and pace layers, that describe the idea of different scales of time. Most processes in nature are too slow to be perceived by the human senses. We merely experience the ripples on the surface, like the passing of hours, days, of changing weather or trends in fashion. The all underlying stream of geological change, like the flow of glaciers or the drifting of continents, is outside our field of experience. However, some events bring these streams closer to the surface. In a glacial surge, the flow velocity of a glacier suddenly increases up to tens of meters per day, making the otherwise imperceptibly slow movement tangible. As in earthquakes, the geological dimension of the process at hand is transposed into the realm of human experience. In that same sense the composition acts as a window into the vastness beyond it`s sonic surface. The music has the viscosity of a slowly moving mass of ice. Like a glacier, that contains thousands of layers of snow, the vertical structures of the sonic layers are infinitely complex and ever changing. From minimal textures of white noise grow massive swells of sound. From floating fields of color rise mirages of melodies. Inspired by the music of Morton Feldman, John Cage, John Luther Adams and Radu Malfatti, Surge is an abstract state of non-time and non-space in which the listener is kept suspended in a sonic haze. The music stays intangible and abstract, yet vidid and full of details. Static, yet transient. It is neither now nor past nor future.

Track Listing:

1. Surge (57:49)

Label: Glacial Movements

Artist: Johannes Malfatti

Release date : 15th January 2017

Format: CD Digipack ltd edition w/special finish + Digital

Barcode: 8033959880241

Composed, produced & mixed by Johannes Malfatti in February 02016

Thanks to Nino, Radu, Olivier, Paul & Alessandro

Photography by Bjarne Riesto, layout by Rutger Zuydervelt.

A Glacial Movements Records Release, January 2017.

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Aware presents this startlingly impressive collection of music. MAGAZINE 60

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Aware is the alias of Alexander Glück, born 1983, who studied philosophy and physics in Vienna, where he currently lives. Apart from music, he writes monographs in the field of philosophy, which revolve around Christian mysticism, Buddhism and the poetics of modern cosmology, recently Poesie des Kosmos (2016). He wants to believe that someday, out of nowhere, a human, animal, or extraterrestrial being will accidentally produce the right sounds in the right order, and suddenly, everyone will be saved, forever.

Simone Weil believed that only downward motions are real. In contrast, the will to ascension always constitutes an illusion. She noticed the strange feeling of sadness mixed with joy, naturally occurring when hearing sounds that gently move from higher to lower notes, from greater to lower expression, from intensity to stillness. Feelings of joy rely on the reassurance that no one has to conquer the world. Sadly enough, music is only a small glimpse of a pacified universe. The Book of Wind is a collection of short essays which never reach their goal, but vanish into nothing, to which they belong.

Track Listing:

1. so he got up and ate and drank

2. and travelled forty nights

3. until he reached the mountain

4. there he went into a cave

5. and spent the night

6. a powerful storm tore the mountains apart

7. but god was not in the storm

8. after the storm there was an earthquake

9. but god was not in the earthquake

10. after the earthquake came a fire

11. but god was not in the fire

12. and after the fire came a gentle whisper

13. so he pulled his cloak over his face

14. and went out

Label: Glacial Movements

Artist: Aware

Release date : 28th February 2017

Format: CD Digipack ltd edition w/special finish + Digital

Cat. Num: GM028

Barcode: 8033959880258

Music by Alexander Glück

Mastering: Christoph Amann, Amann Studios Vienna

Photography by Bjarne Riesto, layout by Rutger Zuydervelt

Thanks to Alessandro Tedeschi, who payed attention and listened in silence

A Glacial Movements records release, February 2017

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