Based in Helsinki, Finland, the cross-disciplinary platform and record label World Canvas is a hub that has been hosting over the last couple of years serious waves of experimental music in the form of conceptual post-club, glitching ambiance, and disrupted emotionalism. On their catalog have appeared cutting-edge musicians such as luxxuryproblems, Helena Pulkkinen, and Comastasis, while the visual identity is entrusted to the stunning skills and creativity of Gabriel Boicel, World Canvas’ co-founder together with Jussi Hertz.
Describing themselves as a place for “unconfined expressions of emotions“, and as a “blank surface open to fictional fantasies and outcries of yearning“, the collective will be releasing the second installment in the various-artist compilation series called Lost Memory, due Friday, May 28th in digital format. The release will collect contributions from eleven artists with different backgrounds (Keiska and Madrid’s Concrete Fantasies among them) who have been tasked with developing compositions around their interpretation of the concepts of escapism and fantasy.
Today, we’re happy to share with you an excerpt from the upcoming Lost Memory 02, namely the track titled ♂♀ by the Helsinki-based artist Daniil Mantere aka @exmantera (they/them), who previously released on World Canvas a two-track single called REGEN, contributed to the latest Audio Bambino’s compilation, and is also half of the NAIVE META duo. The song is an exceptional compendium of the latest laptop electronics artistic solutions used by inspired sound designers from the underground digital community, developed around distorted synth stabs and metallic percussions and bundled with an eerie and abrasive melody.
The piece, available on our Soundcloud portal, comes with a video clip by Elli Norrlin enriching the audio component with a visual commentary that adds feelings of desolation and desperation to an already dark emotional setting, shaken by gargling sounds panning through the ears, glitching artifacts, and corrosive wailing. ♂♀ is a black soundtrack for unexplored, repressed memories that leaves space for a suddenly relaxed ending providing the listener an ephemeral glimpse of serenity. Maybe, just at the very end, something good can survive.
Follow Exmantera on Soundcloud and Instagram. Also, follow World Canvas on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
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We are a non-profit organization registered in December 2018, operating since late 2015 as a webzine and media website. In early 2017, we started our own event series focused on arts, experimental, and dancefloor-oriented music. We reject every invocation to “the Future” meant as the signifier for capitalistic “progress” and “innovation”, fully embracing the Present instead; we renounce any reckless and ultimately arbitrary division between “high” and “low”, respectable and not respectable, “mind” and “body”; we support and invite musicians, artists, and performers having diverse backgrounds and expressing themselves via variegated artistic practices.