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"Rauniot" by Jan Anderzén, a quilt used as cover art for Baldruin's album Mosaike der Imagination on Quindi Records

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Dead Bandit - Memory Thirteen [QUI011]

Three years on from the desolate beauty of their debut, Quindi Records is proud to present the second album from Dead Bandit. The ghosts of their past endeavours still haunt their guitars, but on Memory Thirteen the duo’s delicately dishevelled Southern gothic feels tonally distinct from their prior outing.

Dead Bandit is Ellis Swan and James Schimpl — the former a noted solo singer-songwriter from Chicago with a penchant for eerie, witching hour murder ballads and the latter an accomplished Canadian multi-instrumentalist with a bias towards heartworn, roaming soundscapes. Their instrumental collaboration has an open, lyrical quality which says as much as any spoken line, and on this album they’ve especially embraced the power of contrast as we’re guided between scenes, sometimes within the confines of one track.

‘Peel Me An Orange’ is especially instructive in this regard, beginning as a blown-out paean to sonic degradation and the acute sense of hopelessness it projects, only to yield to a lilting tape loop of twanging guitar before entirely widening out in an emphatic burst of post-rock optimism. Post-rock isn’t noted for its banal cheeriness as a genre, and Dead Bandit aren’t about to lay down feel-good drive-time anthems, but the sense of pulling at extremes of energy and introspection show Swan and Schimpl to be testing the emotional limits of their weatherbeaten sound. The cautiously sentimental mood of ‘Blowing Kisses’ hints at the hard-won light which can be encountered while pointedly driving into darkness.

Sometimes noise is a subtle device – a looming bed of unease under the forthright pluck of Swan’s distinct guitar tone or the cracking round the edges of a beaten up drum machine. On ‘Memory Thirteen’ the distortion on the bass becomes a central figure in its haggard waltz, while ‘Staircase’ and ‘Perfume’ leave the signal wet until the delay feedback becomes the body of the riff. Either way, the sound is never left untouched as Swan and Schimpl grow more comfortable in their exchange, blurring their respective sonic languages as they expand their shared vocabulary to create an album of depth, difference and devoted distortion.

Credits releases February 9, 2024 All tracks written, recorded and mixed by James Schimpl & Ellis Swan Quickscene recorded live 3/19/2023 in London by Ivan Muela Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi Artwork by Karolina Kolodziej Photos by James and Ellis Collages by Stella Laurenzi and Leo Calder Vinyl Manufactured at R.A.N.D. Muzik, Leipzig, DE and assembled at Quindi Studios Special Thanks: Rachel, Leo, Rowan, Hazel, Jason, Katherine and Jolene

License c + p Quindi Records 2024

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Fortunato Durutti Marinetti - Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter [QUI018-WAT018]

“Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter initiates the most natural union of Colussi’s immaculate craft and loquacious lyrics to date, yielding a set of sleazy-listening devotionals that don’t so much ramble as elegantly unfurl.”

-- Bandcamp Album Of The Day

“Music to imagine yourself slow-dancing to as the ship sinks”

-- Aquarium Drunkard

The best new albums out July 25

-- NPR All Songs Considered

“A melancholy record featuring a beautiful melding of Baroque art pop and vintage jazz”

-- Bandcamp, New & Notable

“A glorious splurge of prolifix a la Destroyer or Father John Misty, but backed by a band with serious Italian soundtracks chops.”

-- UNCUT

“These are songs that take on big ideas — about the human condition and dualities and the laws of attraction — and [in doing so they] make them sound relatable, funny, alive, as if there are still some permutations we’re hiding from the computers and their insatiable appetites.'

-- Ryan Dombal, Hearing Things

“The songs on Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter…play out just as much as essays or a book of short stories as they do songs. It makes the Fortunato Durutti Marinetti experience a multi-faceted one.”

-- Sun-13

"….What an album; the perfect one at that. A great songbook that just gets better with every single play. Colussi has produced his best work yet."

-- Monolith Cocktail

“His music speaks naturally speaks in a language a language of its own, without bothering to declare where it comes from”

-- Rumore Mag

" His most sweeping, absurd, and emotionally acute statement to date."

-- Various Small Flames UK

Known on both sides of the Atlantic for his baroque, poetic approach to songwriting, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti returns with Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter—his most sweeping, absurd, and emotionally acute statement to date. Calling it Poetic Jazz Rock—at once a private joke and an honest descriptor—the Toronto-via-Turin cantautore (Italian for singer-songwriter) delivers an album of maximalist grace, gilded sorrow, and lyrical intensity.

The title, Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter, nods to Anne Carson’s Eros: The Bittersweet, a book that launches a thousand ideas into the air: the impossibility of translation, the contradictions at the heart of desire, and the fluid spectrum between seeming opposites. That duality animates this album—from its two-headed dog cover art to its songs that twirl between beauty and grotesquerie, euphoria and dread.

While his previous album, Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean, sought sonic hybridity, Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter marks Marinetti’s dive into excess. Written with the intent to push his songwriting to absurdist extremes, the album features long, chorus-less compositions swirling in 6/8 time, packed with words, brass, and string flourishes. Recorded live with a nimble six-piece band in a cramped Toronto attic studio, the record captures raw performances—often tracked in first or second takes—and overlays them with meticulous arrangements.

Inspired by the iconoclasts—Annette Peacock, Rickie Lee Jones, Donald Byrd, Brigitte Fontaine, Fabrizio De André—Marinetti follows his craft wherever it leads. There are echoes of Destroyer and Tindersticks here, but also something singularly his: Maximally Graceful Funky Eloquence, as he puts it.

The songs on Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter grapple with empathy, ego, surveillance, spiritual exhaustion, and love in its various shades of delusion. Lead single “Full of Fire” opens the album with an explosive ode to romantic recklessness in the tradition of Thelma & Louise. Elsewhere, “Beware” offers bitter advice for bitter times, “Call Me the Author” references Joan Didion by way of Brigitte Fontaine, and “My Funeral” imagines a self-delivered eulogy set to sombre jazz-noir. The instrumental themes (“Theme I” and “Theme II”) give the band room to stretch, underscoring the record’s musical vitality.

The album features contributions from a revolving cast of heavy-hitters, including New Chance (co-vocals on “Beware”) and Jay Arner (clavinet on “Beware”), who also mixed the entire record. A longtime friend and collaborator of Colussi’s, Arner (of Energy Slime, also on We Are Time) brings a deep familiarity to this fourth recorded collaboration, giving Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter its surreal, shimmering final polish.

Recorded, produced and mixed at Dining Room Sound, Toronto

Louie Short -- Recording & Mixing (A Perfect Pair)

Jay Arner -- Mixing & Post-Production

Heather Kirby at Dreamland -- Mastering

Daniel Colussi -- Vocals & Guitar

Victoria Cheong -- Vocals (Beware)

Brandon Gibson De Groote -- Violins, Viola & String Arrangements

Alex Fournier -- Bass

Alex Hamlyn -- Saxophone

Stefan Hegerat -- Drums

Blake Howard -- Percussion

John Jowett -- Euphonium & Trombone

Jay Arner -- Clarinet (Beware)

Tara Kannangara -- Trumpet

Eliza Niemi -- Cello (Do You Ever Think?)

Luan Phung -- Lead Guitar

Chris Pruden -- Piano, Synth, Rhodes

Maddee Ritter -- Vocals (A Perfect Pair)

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Baldruin - Mosaike Der Imagination [QUI015]

Turning their gaze to the buoyant culture of wyrd, modernist German folk music, Quindi welcome a spectacularly idiosyncratic offering from Johannes Schebler, aka Baldruin. Bewildering narrative twists, high drama and intricate delicacy make Mosaike der Imagination an engrossing listen from the outset, as baroque atmospheres and tumbledown drums intertwine with tactile string plucks and needlepoint synthesis in an authoritative bridging of ancient and hypermodern sonic sensibilities.

Schebler's catalogue as Baldruin is extensive, reaching back to the late 00s and covering a lot of ground through cassette albums on respected underground labels like SicSic, A Giant Fern and Lullabies For Insomniacs. Meanwhile, his work has been recognised as part of a broader movement of experimental electronic music in Germany taking inspiration from folk traditions, as documented on last year's essential Bureau B compilation, Gespensterland. Beyond his solo work, Schebler also works with Jani Hirvonen as Grykë Pyje (mappa), and both collaborate with Paul Wilson as Yayoba (Not Not Fun). Christian Schoppik of leading dark folk project Brannten Schnüre joins him as Freundliche Kreisel (STROOM). It's a tangled, fascinating and evocative sound world which Mosaike der Imagination offers a compelling window into.

No two tracks on the album follow the same pattern or palette, whether gliding through the Giallo synth undulations and post rock tonal arcs of 'Stimme des Wegelagerers' or spelling out miasmic incantations through flickering flames on 'Aus dem Feuer, aus dem Licht'. 'Hinein, hinaus, hinüber' revolves around meditative drum mantras and cascading melodic phrasing, densely layered and evolving with purpose. 'Gemeinsam hindurch' flicks between swooping strings and pizzicato plucks in a purely romantic expression of orchestration, 'Mit verbundenen Augen' is a bewildering choral voice study and 'Im Sternstrom' revels in ecstatic synth arpeggios. Nothing can be predicted except the vibrancy and clarity of Schebler's vision.

It's a vision which extends to the front cover artwork for Mosaike der Imagination — a glorious tapestry created by Finnish artist Jan Anderzén, with a responding design and layout from Schebler adorning the rear sleeve.

Stepping to the side of the cosy daydream reveries that inhabit much of the Quindi output, Mosaike der Imagination indulges the label's penchant for sophistication in a freakily fascinating new framework from the heart of an exciting movement in experimental folk music. 

Recorded in Wiesbaden, Germany by Johannes Schebler

Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi

Cover Artwork "Rauniot" by Jan Anderzén

Layout by Johannes Schebler

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Nový Svět - DeGenerazione [QUI013]

After having finished recordings for “Desde Infiernos De Flores“, Nový Svět immediately began putting down new songs for a follow-up album, which they planned to finalize benefitting from time won by releasing “Desde Infiernos De Flores” in slices (of CD EPs) over a period of some months.

J. Weber‘s and Frl. Tost‘s return to an earlier life in their hometown Vienna brought a new deck of cards into play and those by then already mixed new pieces, rumored to circle around all things dream and sleep and (waking up in) nightmares, suddenly were regarded as “too spanish”, hence “inappropriate” for release. Instead in late 2007 surprisingly a synth-only album named “Todas Las Últimas Cosas” (“All the last things”), accompanied by a collection of early demos entitled “Todas Las Primeras Cosas“, was announced by the acclaimed german label Treue Um Treue / Reue Um Reue.

During the following seven years it took Nový Svět to present their next album “Mono“, tons of unreleased music were made available on various formats. But none of the tracks being abandoned in 2007 showed up.

Years after their making those recordings were saved from a disintegrating master and compiled for the album DeGenerazione, which when it much later showed up online caught the attention of Quindi Records, now making the album available for the first time on the intended LP format, presenting a missing link in the Austrians’ discography and the final part of a musical triptych, the so-called Spanish Trilogy, a reflection on transition, begun with “Fin.Finito.Infinito” back in Vienna, where it now would also find an end.

Although noisy and rhythmic in parts, “DeGenerazione” closes the passage of Nový Svět‘s exile on an overall introspective note. It stands as a document of a band at the point of implosion, another dark hole – in a story full of them – illuminated and evidence that J. Weber‘s Spanish did not improve a bit. Not even living there. A triumph of the will.

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The Inspiration Of: Cabaret du Ciel [Quindi Mix Series]

With this almost 3 hours mix long Quindi Records introduces the next artists releasing on the label: Gian Luigi Morosin and Andrea Desiderà

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WOO - Arcturian Corridor [QUI001] Quindi Records

Incl. remixes by Wino Wagon & Ultramarine

Written & Produced by Clive Ives

Mastered by MarcoAntonio Spaventi

Artwork and Graphics by Nora Zimmerman, Clive Ives and Ivana Šurdić, photo by Matt Gross

Manufactured at RAND Muzik - Record Manufacturing

Distributed by wordandsound.whatpeopleplay.com

Tracks A1 to A5 play in continuous mode. Includes download code reedemable via Bandcamp page

https://quindirecords.bandcamp.com