12z (pronounced “onetwozed”) is a Hungarian electro-acoustic duo and member of SHAPE that has released albums on Farbwechsel and, most recently, Nicolas Jaar’s Other People imprint. In their music, Bálint Szabó and Márton Kristóf channel our soft-focus habits and culture-vulture aesthetics through unpredictable configurations and fluid recombinations, finding a seductive, always-shifting middle ground between improvisation, electronic composition, and appropriation.
For Streams Of Rising Air, a 17-minute work that they call a mixtape, 12z offer “special fragments of the recording process” from their upcoming album, Trembling Air. These fragments unravel slowly and methodically, blending hazily into each other to create a rich tapestry of harmony, melody, and timbre, with repetition, sampling, and processing continually shaping the sounds and, therefore, our reception of them. According to the group, the fragments “somehow reflect the concept of the album not in its entirety but like tiny mosaics and one can still get an immediate taste of how shortly cut and heavily processed traditional music samples from all around the world can be merged with uncompromising yet melodious electronic music.”
12z’s Trembling Air is expected in the fall on Other People. Stream Streams Of Rising Air here:
12z will be performing as next week’s ICAS Festival alongside many other SHAPE-affiliated artists. Since our last story on ICAS, the fest has announced two new waves of artists, including TMT favorites like Lotic and Evian Christ. 12z will be playing SHAPE’s showcase, alongside DJ Nigga Fox, RSS B0ys, Yves De Mey, Borusiade, Chra + Irradiation, Martin Bricelj Baraga & Olaf Bender, Etienne Jaumet, and many others. Check out the full lineup here.
• 12z: http://onetwozed.com
• SHAPE: http://shapeplatform.eu
• ICAS Festival: http://www.icasfestival.net
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