Live @ BAF Club, Kantis, Helsinki 2008/11/22 (10pm->):
Niko Skorpio
Hæretici 7o74
Haare
+ video projection by 00130Gallery
Entry 4€
From Drone Records newsflash:
“The brandnew Drone EPs by OVRO, ARTEFACTUM and INFANT CYCLE are ready in a few days! Release-date is Nov. 15Â 2008″
As usual, Some Place Else will stock the 7″ and other Drone goodies. Stay tuned…
The new Black Sun Productions album The Milky Smell of Phantom Sperm (Old Europa Cafe) features, among other delicious bits, a remix/reconstruction by Niko Skorpio. It also includes collaborations with Sudden Infant, PSBEUYS, Baraclough and Devotchka’s Conundrum, and cover artwork by Ian Johnstone (Coil). We have some copies of the CD now available, click here to get yours.
Metaorganism in Heathen Harvest: From the first sounds, the drones and the hums, this Metaorganism is taking hold of you. Being dense and multi layered with deep sound processes , either manually played by Skorpio or created by the self contained sound organism, the haunting feeling of this dark room where these machines, these life preserving machines that keep this Baphomet alive are sitting, is vivid and strong.
Complete review here
Metaorganism in Pan-O-Ra-Ma Journal: Its better to experience Metaorganism in total darkness just in a comfortable position, preferable with a strong purple light in front of your eyes, and you can experience some shapes emerging from the lights, so such experiment works fine to me.
Complete review here
Ovro : Revisited in Lammas Zine: Revisited on kokonaisuus, joka kuulostaa saman aikaisesti kolkolta ja luotaansa työntävältä sekä lämpimältä ja luokseen kutsuvalta - vähän niin kuin Venäjän maa itsekin.
Complete review here
Niko Skorpio : Half Born in Half Light in Lammas Zine: Riipivän rytmikäs, vaarallisen viehkeä, kauhistuttavan kaunis - kaikki oivia termejä puhuttaessa Half Born In Half Lightin luomasta maailmasta.
Complete review here
Niko Skorpio : Half Born in Half Light in Kuolleen Musiikin Yhdistys: Levy on hyytävän kaunis, muodostaa häkellyttävän todentuntuisen orgaanisen äänimaailman sekä todella kauniin yhtenäisen kokonaisuuden. Ja ennen kaikkea se onnistuu olemaan synkkään musiikkiin turtuneelle ihmisellekin todella pelottava.
Complete review here
Niko Skorpio : Half Born in Half Light in Pan-O-Ra-Ma Journal: The album includes 7 visionary evocations bringing to explore the diverse magickal reality into audial shapes crawling as shadows behind you, as gathering through ethereal labyrinths of dense sounds manipulated in a in depth proper way and effects complementing it. Lyrically, the concept exploits from diverse perceptions handling atavisms, aethyrs, primal structures and cosmic elements emerging from within the sonic mantras developed here. Without a doubt one of the best albums this year.
Complete review here
Ovro : Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea in Pan-O-Ra-Ma Journal: Different states of mind veiled through minimal, surreal sounds and scratches, noises, cracks, and other elements surrounding the whole tracks.
Complete review here
Niko Skorpio : Escape from Heaven in Pan-O-Ra-Ma Journal: penetrating and abrasive, as walking in black, humid corridors searching for something which is invisible, but you must visualize entering yourself.
Complete review here
Pan-O-Ra-Ma Journal published an interview with Niko Skorpio recently. Click here to read it!
When creativity is explored without limits… when limits are broken by creativity… when everything collapses,a new dimension is opened… and from such void emanates Niko Skorpio…
Much to the surprise of everybody involved, a British extreme music magazine refused to publish an advertisement sporting, among other things, the cover art of Niko Skorpio’s Half Born in Half Light.
Niko Skorpio has renewed his website.
Check it out here: www.nikoskorpio.net
Here are some more review clips of our recent releases. Click the links for complete reviews, and to buy these great albums!
NIKO SKORPIO : Half Born in Half Light
“Visionary, experimental, magickal and evocative, the new work by Niko Skorpio Half Born in Half Light is a blend of ritualistic scenarios and music experimentations. … What impressed me most is the balanced sound mix and the crispness of sounds. This ability into giving the right space to sounds help a lot the creation of a functioning audio world where the listener is surrounded by hypnotic a semi psychedelic atmospheres.” (Chain D.L.K.)
“Albumin alati muuttuva äänimaisema heilahtelee pahaenteisistä vaimeista kohotuksista aina väkivaltaisiin, mutta samalla tarkoin hillittyihin äänipurkauksiin saakka. Irrallisten äänten verkkoa manipuloidaan, muokataan ja väännetään hiljaisuuden korostamisen ollessa kaikessa työssä avainasemassa. Satunnainen ja voimakkaasti efektoitu puhe sulautuu kuin huomaamatta surinoihin, kalahduksiin ja huminoihin. Taustasäteilyn kaltainen humina limittyy rakenteisiin, joissa sykkii toisinaan voimakas rytmi, mutta jotka saattavat jo seuraavan kulman takana vaieta kuolemaa enteilevään kuiskailuun.” (Desibeli)
“The song that sticks out the most for me now is NeitherSphere (third track). I very much like the tribal elements in that song. Also the kind of Goblin/Argento atmosphere is very much present and the whole album gives it a somewhat cinematic, and occult, quality.” (Gothtronic)
“Kuulokkeilla kuunneltuna levy pyyhkäisee tajunnan tyhjäksi. Pysäyttävä, vangitseva levy sekä äärimmäisen hyvä keino nollata infoähky. Kaiuttimien välittämä tilantuntu laajenee myös mieleen.” (Sue)
“Varoitus! Ovron lähistöllä sää on poikkeuksetta usvaista ja sumuista, eikä kompassiinkaan voi luottaa magneettikentän voimakkaiden häiriöiden takia. Tämä ei ole musiikkia kaikille tai joka tilanteeseen, mutta olosuhteiden ollessa oikeat saattaa tapahtua vaikka mitä.” (Desibeli)
“It’s like to be drugged and walking by the city. It’s a strange aural experience as each sound float back and forth while you lose the sense of balance. You have to experience it more than listen to it also because otherwise you would find that the overall atmosphere is pretty the same.” (Chain D.L.K.)
“Although there are little surprises to be found here, it is an accomplished album and has some great dark ambience to it. Also, the long tracks work very well for this kind of music so you can delve into your worst nightmares. All in all, it’s certainly something to pick up if you’re into very dark soundscapes, though don’t expect it to be earth-shattering.” (Gothtronic)
We are happy to present two new releases, now available as downloads. Those who prefer a physical format need not worry, those will be available in the near future.
NIKO SKORPIO : Grey Bloom Complete
Grey Bloom Complete gathers early material by Niko Skorpio from 1996–98, containing the tracks from Grey Bloom LP originally released ten years ago, and recordings done for the defunct Cold Once Turning Dust project. Remastered autumn 2007. The recordings were made on a portable Fostex 4-tracker. Tape hiss, crackles and other noises are considered essential, inherent elements in these recordings and have thus been preserved in amounts optimal to create and maintain the particular atmosphere.
“What we have here are some of the primal recordings of an artist who has shed his skin and regained a new creative urge leading to domains unknown. There is virtually nothing on these recordings that would suggest his past in doom metal or goth/shoegaze bands (Thergothon and This Empty Flow). This is isolationist soundscape muzak and ambient noise eccentricity that draws from wholly Other currents of inspiration. Besides that, if you listen carefully, you might find a curious stain of ‘pop’ sensibility under all the bleak grey mud. These primal clawprints indicate that from very early on Niko Skorpio has been treading his very own path, away and separate from the few other Finnish post-industrial and experimental artists who were around at the time.” (Pekka Härmälä)
NIKO SKORPIO : Short Cuts & Dead Ends
Short Cuts & Dead Ends is a compilation album that consists of rare and unreleased Niko Skorpio material from the period of 2000–2004. Central to this compilation are the EPs ChAmber Moosick (tracks 1-3, originally released 2001) and Stainway to Heaven (tracks 5-8, originally released 2002). The rest of the contents are previously unreleased; rough demos, remixes, tracks destined for compilations that never happened etc.
Musically, this is a fractal kaleidoscope “almost ritual in its expression”, “of dark droning ambient and some sample oriented electro madness, recycling some funk and eastern psychedelic records and just about anything you could imagine, really making it a diverse and fresh listening experience”, ranging from “low humming space sounds slowly forming weird melodies” to “happy melodies beating and crackling on top of a fast jazz-accompaniment” to “noise-y buzz of ambient and fragmented resonance”. Niko Skorpio “has a sound of his own and a caring hand for details” and his “musical menu has contained more alternative auditory meals than many will even taste in their whole lives”. This musick is manic, ecstatic and meditative, and sometimes simply undescribable. Forget coherence, embrace wild mood swings and expect bumps on the road!
Niko Skorpio says: “I like to view this album as a kind of shadow album to Escape from Heaven. Besides the chronological overlap there are several more or less obvious parallels between tracks on these two albums. Despite whatever flaws these songs may carry, I find this collection quite enjoyable and meaningful to myself. Thus I want to make it available for a wider audience. Bon voyage!”
Reviews of our new releases have started appearing here and there. Some short clips here, more can be found on each release’s info page (click titles).
“Kokonaisuus on ehjä ja tasainen, kappaleraitoja ei voi juuri nimetä toista paremmaksi tai huonommaksi. Revisited on levynä hyvin taustakuuntelumainen, sillä vähäeleisyydessään se kuulostaa ujolta ja kainostelevalta paketilta, joka ei edes yritä nousta soivan tilan hallitsijaksi. Omassa genressään miellyttävä tuotos.” (Imperiumi)
“The seven pieces which result from this are dark, spooky affairs of ambient/drone music. All generated through (lots of) processing on the computer, stapled together into some nightmare like music. The dark trip doesn’t fit the mood of summer day entirely, but would do well at night” (Vital Weekly)
NIKO SKORPIO : Half Born in Half Light
“dark atmospheric drone music, based on synthesizers and field recordings, bass guitar, sound effects and voice.” (Frans De Waard/Vital Weekly)
“Minimalistisimmillaan levy on sen todella pahaenteisissä ja painostavissa dark ambient -hetkissä, joissa vain harvat äänikuviot käyvät yhteisessä rintamassa kuulijansa kimppuun vyöryttäen matalia taajuuksia ja muita äänisäikeitä. Vastavuoroisesti monimuotoisimmillaan ulos syydetään samanaikaisesti efektoituja puheosuuksia, erilaisia rytmejä, dronemaisia sävyjä ja mitä milloinkin. Näiden kahden erilaisen idean yhdistäminen toisiinsa tekee toisaalta levystä elävän ja dynaamisen kokonaisuuden, mutta samalla se varmasti jakaa kuuntelijakuntaa erilleen sen mukaan millaisesta ambient-, drone- tai electro-kamasta kuulija sattuu pitämään.” (Imperiumi)
“Skorpio is a Finnish producer & synthesist who declaims his portentous poetry in a highly stylized Foreign-as-Fuck voice over the kind of swishy cosmick wind that puts me in the mind of Dr Fiorella Terenzi accompanying Todd Clark c. Into the Vision, or maybe a more cunted & extended version of John Cale’s The Jeweller, as orchestrated by black metallers on an electro trip. Elsewhere, bubbling pans of Jupiter-sized effluent steam & seethe endlessly, as though the still be-apron’d Creator has been caught in a millennium-long natter with the postman.” (Head Heritage)
“High quality retro-ambient with a great price-quality ratio. If you’re at all into old school and analog sounds, this is a must-have.” (Kuolleen Musiikin Yhdistys)
“Machines that interact with eachother, slowly change color or shape or both, and which actually makes a very fine listen. Dark, atmospheric, drone ambient – nothing new under the sun there, but he does a very fine job at this.” (Vital Weekly)
