Phil Von lands new album 'Von Magnet' on Unknown Pleasures Records - check out the first tracks

The Avignon, France based label Unknown Pleasures Records announces that Phil Von will release his all new album “Von Magnet” on September 1st via its imprint. A rather bold choice since Phil Von is part of the Von Magnet collective.

This is his 7th solo album. His first was “L’Autre Nuit” (2001) with Gnawa music and the musicians of Fès (Prikosnovénie records), followed by the “Deadline Now” (2006) soundtrack of performance for the Portuguese company Persona (Thisco records) and in 2015 the more intimate “Blind Ballet” on Ant-Zen Records. A selection of his best soundtracks written for the street theatre company Underclouds, entitled “Made Underclouds”, was released in February 2019 on Zona Music (LT) and Ant-Zen. In 2019 Phil Von self-released the album “Imagerie”. The album holds a selection of experimental & abstract soundscapes written for art projects and visual environments. His concert collaboration “Eiti Ramyben” with classical piano musician Rokas Zubovas revisiting electronically some piano works of famous Lithuanian composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was released on vinyl in 2021 on Zona Music.

With his latest solo album “Von Magnet”, a way of closing this artistic life chapter as well as giving another token of his love for intertwined flamenco and electronic music, he again combines electronics with Arabo-Andalusian music. On the album we find contributions from such musicians as Hugues Villette, Tit’o, Flore Magnet, Def, Hugues Vincent, Dani Barba, Yana Maizel and Algirdas Klova. The mastering was executed by Norscq while Svetlana Batura covered the photo work. The design was in the hands of Karim Gabou.

You can already check a few tracks below.

About Phil Von

Parallel to his work with Von Magnet Phil Von is composing as well as performing for different dance-theatre and street-theatre companies. He worked together with Norscq on the “Atlas Project”, wrote the piece “Compass” for Art Zoyd and the Musiques Nouvelles Ensemble of Jean Paul Dessy which was performed in Brussels. With Mimetic he created “Groundspace” for the GRM (Group of Musical Research) and the Radio France festival.

He was also a musician and performer with the Russian/German company Do Theatre (Anatomy of Fantasy), French performance company Materia Prima (Body Without Wings, Insomnia, Eternal, Batailles, Choir, Cabaret Rouge), Street Theatre companies Entre Terre et Ciel (Neige de Feu, Physalis, Alma, Envol) and Underclouds (Funambus, Petites Histoires sans Gravité, VerSant) & U-Structure Nouvelle (Strip-Tease Forain, Melankholia).

In 2016. together with Somekilos from 2 kilos & More, he created the tribal electro project Meta Meat and released the album “Metameat” on Ant-Zen and Audiotrauma.

In 2017/18 he wrote and performed the music of the theatre play Medea written with rage in London for François Testory (DV8 Physical theatre, Gecko, etc.) which they toured in Great Britain. He worked with butoh choreographer Sakurako in Paris for her company Re-United Now-Here (Banzaï 2.0, Corsonor, Not a Love Story) and in Lithuania he was composing for Sakurako and her new Baltic butoh dance-theatre company Okarukas (Now-Here, Voyager, Dolls, Spells, Here-After, Birds).

In 2019, he created in Lithuania his first solo dance-music performance “Human, Lost and Found” which was performed in MO Museum Vilnius, Post Gallery Kaunas and Menu Spaustuvè Vilnius. In 2020, he produced the solo album of Lithuanian folk musician Algirdas Klova.

About Von Magnet

Von Magnet is a theatre music band originated from the post-industrial musical current from the 1980s. Founded in 1985 in London, the group gathered around Flore Magnet (stage direction, actions, vocals) and Phil Von (composition, feet percussion, vocals) initiating a style of their own which they named “Electroflamenco”. Becoming rapidly well known in the underground because of their new approach to electronic music, firstly by incorporating the bases of flamenco (rhythms, dances and melodies) then later adding influences of Middle Eastern music.

Their compositions, either instrumental or vocal melodramas, poetic, lyrical, cabaret crooning are sung or spoken in different languages; English, Spanish, French, and also in Arabic, German, Turkish or Russian. Since 1985, even before the “Computer music” era, they experimented within the likes of the post-industrial musical movement (Greater Than One, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Coil…) using intensive sound collage and sampling techniques. This work would give birth to their motto: “Sample us as we have already sampled you”.

After a collaboration with Robert Rental with whom they prepared their first demo tapes, Von Magnet, helped by Hugh Griffiths at the Remaximum studios, composed their first auto-produced E.P : “I”.

The band’s last release was the 2012 album “Archipielagos”.

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