Lars Gotrich
Painkiller, but make it John Carpenter. As if to score an alternate, dark-ambient soundtrack to Nicolas Cage's unhinged performance in Mandy, three-dimensional sound hangs in the air like a stupidly oversized chainsaw, its impact felt in excruciating slow motion.
Favorite track: Corpuscular Refraction.
Cosmographer
This is my favorite Bloodmist release so far. Here they nailed a stronger sense of narrative - granted, you’re alone and afraid and something truly terrible awaits you. I love Toby’s use of the electric bass and, to my ears, this record is more rhythmically interesting than previous efforts.
Jeremiah Cymerman has carved a world with his distinctly all-too-human suffocation-aesthetics, and MDL has gone beyond Earth with his expansive sonic palette. Together they make Bloodmist a unique venture.
Favorite track: Empathic Predatory Biome.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Six panel CD wallet with original artwork by Bloodmist bassist Toby Driver. All pre-orders of this CD will include a download of a bonus track from the Phos sessions, not to appear on the album.
Includes unlimited streaming of Phos
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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edition of 300
$12USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Phos
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Electroacoustic improvisation trio Bloodmist is proud to present Phos, their second studio album, scheduled for release in summer of 2020. The group’s most focused offering to date, Phos showcases an expansive exploration of vivid hellscapes, encompassing elegiac clarinet melodies, feral noise textures, multi-layered electronic percussion, and wildly evocative electronic processing.
Bloodmist is Jeremiah Cymerman (clarinet, electronics), Toby Driver (electric bass), and Mario Diaz de Leon (synth and drum machine). As individual artists, Cymerman is widely known as an improviser, record producer, and experimental music evangelist through his 5049 Records Podcast, Driver is celebrated as a solo artist and as the longtime mastermind of the endlessly eclectic band Kayo Dot, while Diaz de Leon has been recognized for his bold style of electroacoustic chamber music. Since their inception in 2011, they have been steadily forging a singular and enigmatic approach to free improvisation, drawing from the realms of dark ambient, noise, and extreme metal to craft surreal explorations of otherworldly sound.
Following the release of their acclaimed debut Sheen in 2016, the group’s approach and instrumentation evolved, with Diaz de Leon abandoning the electric guitar entirely for a boutique touch-controlled synthesizer (the Tetrazzi by Ciat-Lonbarde), as well as a drum machine, providing a polyrhythmic anchor to the timbral explorations of the group. Phos was recorded during a single session in November of 2017, at NYC’s East Side Sound with engineer and longtime collaborator Marc Urselli (John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Mike Patton). The group’s performance explored linkages between the energetic intimacy of a freely improvised trio, alongside the outer reaches of dub and the expansive saturation of dark ambient music. Cymerman edited the raw sessions into five distinctive songs, adding subtle overdubs using his own arsenal of analog synthesizers. These were then returned to Urselli for mixing, who maximized the sonic impact by revealing vivid nuances of timbre and dynamics, and enhancing low frequency weight. The resulting album evokes a sublime sense of foreground and background, evoking glacial expansiveness and saturated overload in equal measure.
The cover photography of Phos was executed by Driver, and illuminates the album’s sound through vivid evocations of otherworldly monoliths and shimmering geological forms. Individual track titles draw inspiration from the film Annihilation, in tribute to its depiction of a quarantined arboreal zone of mutating plants and animals, inhabited by an unseen alien presence.
credits
released August 7, 2020
Jeremiah Cymerman: clarinets, pedals, Soma Laboratory Lyra-8, Moog Mother 32
Mario Diaz de Leon: Ciat-Lonbarde Tetrazzi & drum machine
Toby Driver: Sorrentino five string electric bass & fretless four string bass
Produced by Bloodmist
Recorded & Mixed by Marc Urselli, Eastside Sound, New York City
Mastered by James Plotkin
Bloodmist is an electroacoustic improvisation trio, consisting of Jeremiah Cymerman (clarinet, electronics), Toby Driver (electric bass), and Mario Diaz de Leon (synth and drum machine).
Dark and existential music. Depression, nihilism and hopelessness come to the surface from every note, but therein lies the haunting beauty of this record, the slow dive beneath the surface of existence. The soundtrack to noir lives. jiristepan
Korean-Australian singer/composer, Armenian keyboardist, and American guitarist instill experimental jazz with neoclassical elegance. Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 13, 2023
Lovely guitar-based songs with melodies that occasionally hint toward a slack-key, all with a touch of tender melancholy. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 22, 2023