Baldruin - Cassette compilations

Synthetic Bird Music (mappa, 2023)

When you listen to birds, they usually talk about food, sex/family, or anxiety. If they knew about the true nature of humanity's cruel and exploitative relationship with birds, they would be discussing rebellion. Humanity's current trajectory about birds is to cause the extinction of one-third of all bird species by the end of this century.

This record crystallises the borders between memory, beauty, and anxiety. At the core is an amalgam of all the birds we have met and heard, their sounds synthesised from a blend of memories. Esthetically it simulates the qualities of bird sounds, hitting similar frequential sweet spots. There is a great variety of birds captured here, from high to low frequencies, from solo voices to groups, from birds standing on their own to complex world-building, where the bird voices are part of an ecosystem, becoming one of the instruments.

You could stop there, enjoying this record on a musical level, but it invites us to do one step further, to consider reconfiguring our relationship with the Earth and its inhabitants. To question our impact, and to ask why we need synthetic bird music. Is it just a visionary endeavour or is it because we are failing at fostering a world in which organic birds and other creatures can thrive?

32 artists from the whole world, including our favourite artists from Eastern Europe, have contributed to this compilation both with new and previously released music. Their music is ordered from dawn to dusk and into the night. For many of the artists it's their first time on mappa, but some have previously released an album with us.

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Profits from the record will be donated to the SOS/BirdLife Slovakia, organisation protecting the bird biotops by river Ipeľ, in south of Slovakia, where mappa has been formed.
www.vtaky.sk

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Compiled by Jakub Juhás (mappa)

Artwork by Roberta Di Paolo
Mastered by Adam Badí Donoval
Liner notes by Andrej Chudý
Photography by Zoltán Czakó

Many thanks to Michaela Cagáňová and Luděk Čertík for careful listening, notes, and help with compiling the tracklist.

Unterholz (Cosima Pitz, 2023)

A blind owl awakens in a dream, moves slowly as fog over the bottom of a swamp, melts in the sun at the edge of a desert, shimmers like an emerald in a cave under the sea, waves as a shadow of a weeping willow, dancing like a flame over the ashes of an oak, arises as a black moon in a turquoise sky, whilst six-armed baldruin with wild purple hair, in a velvet loincloth embroidered with magical signs, plaited ivy and black roses is sitting on a carpet conducting his mysterious orchestra and the blind owl falls asleep

selected music from cassettes, 2009-2012

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On the cover is the painting "Bestron" 2016 by Mahlergruppe

Experimentelle Welt 1 (Billo Tonträger, 2026)

I asked people who I thought are doing interesting stuff. 12 of them finally made it happen.

They decided themselves what they wanna record and contribute to the cassette. You will find some people you might already heard of because they released great records or are known as artists and some people who are not so well known or did totally new or secret side projects under different names for this cassette.

They come from various music scenes and backgrounds, they live in Halle/Saale, Hamburg, Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin, Wiesbaden, Würzburg, Cologne and and many other places.

Thanks a lot to all the musicians for putting so much time and effort
in this little cassette edition and making the world a bit more experimental.

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Cover by Billo
Cover was printed at we make it
Mastered by T-Rex, except track 2 and 10