RAAR is deeply proud to present the first full length album from label co- founder Maelstrom, entitled "Her Empty Eyes". Both an evolution of the producer's rich history and an intellectual departure from everything that has preceded it, "Her Empty Eyes" is a work that is uncanny, challenging and meditative.
Continuing upon the cross-media mission of RAAR, the LP is in fact the outline of a sonic novel. Maelstrom describes:
"As a kid I was a voracious reader. I used to live in stories. I used to go to sleep dreaming I'd wake up inside one of them. Sometimes I still do, and this album has been recorded inside one of these dreams.
During the last 12 months, my music started to become the soundtrack of an imaginary novel taking place between 1936 and 1939 in Spain.
The novel depicts the life of Marina, a news photographer covering the war during these 4 years, meeting John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemmingway at "Hotel Florida" in Madrid, Georges Orwell and Buenavaentura Durruti on the frontline, or anonymous volunteers of the International Brigades in Barcelona. We follow her investigating the death of Jose Robles, a Spanish intellectual who was allegedly killed by members of the soviet secret police lead by Alexander Orlov, also believed to be responsible for the torture and death of Andres Nin, leader of the POUM, during Barcelona's "May Days"
of 1937.
While looking into the murder, Marina keeps on covering the war for international magazines, travelling with the Lincoln Brigade during the Battle Of Jarama or with Spanish civilians fleeing Malaga by the road as bombs fall and planes strafe the ground with machine-gun fire. The story ends with the exile of hundreds of thousands of Spanish refugees across the mountains and the French border in the winter of 1939, and with the death of Marina. The album's title refers to our heroine's untimely demise, and the evidence of what was captured in her empty eyes, burned forever into the film in her precious Leica.
This is not a metaphor nor an essay, this is the outline of a story. It's the listener's place to make sense of it. The context is a civil war. The characters are a photo-reporter, famous writers and anonymous heroes, and my music is its soundtrack."
Recording Process:
«My recording method has drastically changed since I started experimenting with Milton H. Erickson's self hypnosis techniques about a year ago. I went from overthinking every part of the recording process multiple times over, resulting in dozens of versions of each of my tracks, to a state where thinking wasn't part of the equation anymore. Self hypnosis is quite impossible to describe - more than anything, it's a way to fully exist in the present. After a few weeks of experimentation, it became possible for me to record tracks in one take, without feeling any urge to refine or rework them. I would switch on the studio, work on a sound palette, and then press play and record, every day ».
Rather than focusing on club bangers, Maelstrom depicts a future of techno that is intellectual, historical, spiritual and emotional.
Maelstrom cofounded the label RAAR where he released his debut album in 2017. Throughout the next 2 years, he delivered EPs for electro imprints such as CPU, Cultivated Electronics, or Private Persons
supported by 4 fans who also own “Her Empty Eyes (RAAR006)”
The Colossus EP is wonderful. This was a birthday present to myself and I am extremely pleased!
Several words that come to mind are: chunky, harsh, subtly relentless, nasty, well thought-out.
Danke schön Liebknecht! Oliver Lovley
Neon-bright techno on the latest from Karim Kahar where sheets of synth pour down in bright cascades over nervous rhythms. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 5, 2022