Maestra Lacrymae
Anastasia Bay / Joseph Schiano di Lombo
Maestra Lacrymae
Anastasia Bay / Joseph Schiano di Lombo
Release Date Sept. 12, 2026
Originally developed as the sonic counterpart to an exhibition by Anastasia Bay, Maestra Lacrymae is a five-act opera conceived and directed by Bay, and written, composed and performed by Joseph Schiano di Lombo. Moving through five archetypal figures embodied by a single transforming voice, the work carries Bay’s visual universe into an autonomous double vinyl edition.
Double LP. 140 g black vinyl. Gatefold sleeve.
Edition of 300 copies, including 50 special editions featuring an original artwork by Anastasia Bay.
Catalogue number: SPT26-2. EAN: 7649988016547
Originally developed as the sonic counterpart to an exhibition by visual artist Anastasia Bay, Maestra Lacrymae is an opera conceived and directed by Bay and written and composed by multidisciplinary artist Joseph Schiano di Lombo. Originating in their 2024 collaboration at the Brussels gallery Sorry We’re Closed, the work has evolved into an autonomous double vinyl edition. Rather than documenting the exhibition, the record expands its visual universe into an ambitious, specific operatic musical work.
Structured in five acts, the opera unfolds through five archetypal figures: Golem, Artemis, Dibutadès, Penelope and Gille-en-Elle. Performed through a single voice transformed across multiple identities, these characters draw on mythology, art history, carnival traditions and contemporary feminist thought. As a way of conveying Anastasia Bay’s eerie, multi-layered Baroque visual world, the composition brings together ancient poetic forms, opera, spoken word and electroacoustic treatments in a work that moves freely between music, theatre and visual art.
Joseph Schiano di Lombo’s musical composition and performance navigate masterfully between genres, delicately touching on electronic ritual, psych-folk songs, ethereal modern classical music, and haunting minimalism. The LP presents the complete opera as a listening experience while preserving its close relationship to the exhibition from which it emerged.
Designed by Quentin Lamouroux, the album captures the complexity of this crossover experiment by presenting a complete libretto of the opera in the form of an art object. Anastasia Bay has also produced a limited edition of 50 copies, each of which includes an original, signed, and numbered artwork.
Side A
Act I: La Golem
Acte II: Artémis, La Génitrice
Side B
Act III: Dibutadès, Juste-la-Fille-du-Père
Act IV : Pénélope la Hackeuse
Side C
Act V: Gille-en-Elle, l’Arlequine
Epilogue de Gille-en-Elle
Side D
Ouverture / Fermeture
Placement du public
Anastasia Bay – concept, artistic direction and artwork
Joseph Schiano di Lombo – writing, composition and performance
Emilie Pischedda – dramaturgy
Merlin Modulaw – mixing
Frédéric Alstadt, Mont Analogue – mastering and lacquer cut
Quentin Lamouroux – graphic design
Produced by Sorry We’re Closed × Speckled-Toshe.
Maestra Lacrymae was conceived by Anastasia Bay as an opera for voice and keyboard and written, composed and performed by Joseph Schiano di Lombo.
The work is issued as a double LP in an edition of 300 copies. A special edition features covers individually overdrawn by Anastasia Bay.
Anastasia Bay creates paintings that draw upon mythological and art historical sources, blending ancient figurative traditions with contemporary culture. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the French, Brussels based artist’s work ifrom the powers of theater and opera in order to channel the subversive forces of carnival, extending the realm of painting to the environment and the stage.
Joseph Schiano di Lombo is a French composer, visual artist, and author based in Pantin. Initially trained in piano and clarinet, he graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs de Paris. His unclassifiable music explores the boundaries between songwriting, experimental music, and modern composition. Often working in collaboration, across disciplines, he composed for films, exhibitions, and fashion brands.
This edition is co-published by Sorry We’re Closed and Speckled-Toshe. The collaboration brings together the gallery’s work with Anastasia Bay and Speckled-Toshe’s editorial approach to artist records, considering sound, text, artwork and graphic design as interconnected parts of a single publication.
Tabustar
Rabasta
Tabustar
Rabasta
Tabustar develops an instrumental language built from rhythm, repetition and pressure. Taking its title from a passage in Pascal Quignard's The Hatred of Music, Rabasta explores the unstable territory between percussion, resonance and noise, shaping a record driven by pulse, texture and continual transformation.
Speckled-Toshe 2026, SPT25-2
Cover in two-colour screen print (printed by Atelier Obscur, Renens), inner sleeve in offset. Blue and black marbled vinyl. Limited edition of 200 copies; a CD version was released in parallel by Thödol Records. Blue-black marbled vinyl.
Taking its title from Pascal Quignard’s The Hatred of Music, Tabustar begins with an unstable word. A sound suspended between quarrelling and drumming, between human noise and resonant bodies. The title itself behaves like the music it names: resistant to fixed meaning, driven instead by rhythm, resonance and the physical act of sounding.
The record unfolds through insistent rhythmic structures, interlocking instrumental layers and a constant sense of propulsion. Rather than relying on melodic development, the music advances through pulse, repetition and subtle displacement. Patterns emerge, dissolve and return, generating a restless equilibrium between precision and instability.
Quignard remains present less as a literary reference than as an underlying impulse. Rhythm precedes language, organising movement, memory and listening before it settles into meaning. This shared intuition shapes the work without ever becoming a programme to be illustrated.
Across the duration of the LP, these shifting rhythmic relationships gradually reveal their complexity. Listening becomes an experience of continual reorientation, as recurring figures acquire new meanings through repetition, interruption and return.
“Tarabust is an unstable word. Two distinct worlds meet in it, attract it, and thus divide it according to two processes of morphological derivation that are both too plausible for the philologist to decide between them. The word tarabust is itself disputed between the group of that which belabors and the group of that which drums. Between the rabasta group (the noise of quarreling, the belaboring group) and the tabustar group (hitting, talabussare, tamburare, the family of resonators, of drums). Either vociferous human coitus. Or percussions of hollow objects. Acoustic obsession is unable to distinguish in what it hears between what it ceaselessly wants to hear and what it cannot have heard. An incomprehensible noise that belabors. A noise that could either be quarreling or drumming, panting or blows. It was very rhythmic. We come from this noise. It is our seed.
Pascal Quignard, The hatred of music, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, p. 39
A1 Flow 7:02
A2 Pulse 9:42
A3 Loop 2:38
B1 Sample 9:24
B2 Gust 6:57
B3 Loop 1:21
Benoît Moreau – composition, organ, electronics
Laurent Estoppey – saxophone
Immanuel Heitor Idéalen – guitar
David Meier – drums
Antoine Etter, Phonotope Studio – recording and mastering
Flo Kaufmann – lacquer cut
Benoît Moreau, Laurent Schmid – graphic design
Atelier Obscur, Renens – screen printing
MEK Vinyl – vinyl pressing
The title Tabustar derives from a passage in Pascal Quignard’s The Hatred of Music, in which the unstable word tarabustis pulled between rabasta—the noise of quarrelling or belabouring—and tabustar, associated with hitting, resonators and drums.
The edition consists of 200 copies on blue-and-black marbled vinyl, with a two-colour screen-printed cover and an offset-printed inner sleeve.
A CD edition was released in parallel by Thödol Records.
Rabasta is a project initiated by Swiss composer and musician Benoît Moreau. The name encompasses his solo performances as well as collaborative formations. On Tabustar, Rabasta takes the form of a quartet with Laurent Estoppey on saxophone, Immanuel Heitor Idéalen on guitar, David Meier on drums, and Moreau on organ and electronics.
Speckled-Toshe is an independent publishing platform for artist records and sound editions. Working in close collaboration with artists, musicians, composers, writers and designers, each release is conceived as an editorial work in which sound, texts, images and design form an integrated whole rather than separate components.
O’Tilli
Donnimaar
O’Tilli
Donnimaar
O'Tilli unfolds as an acoustic fiction in which voices, environmental sounds and instrumental textures form a shifting landscape of memories, myths and imagined places. Rather than following a linear narrative, the record constructs a listening experience in which sound becomes a space for orientation, association and transformation.
Speckled Toshe 2025, SPT24-4
blue marbled vinyl without paper label
O’Tilli forms part of Donnimaar, Marie Kølbæk Iversen’s ongoing artistic project spanning music, performance and visual art. The album draws on songs and narratives from the oral traditions of West Jutland documented in the nineteenth century by the Danish folklorist Evald Tang Kristensen, including material transmitted by the artist’s great-great-great-great-grandmother Johanne Tygesdatter. Anchored in this ethnographic archive, the work approaches these texts not as historical artefacts but as living material capable of continual transformation.
Rather than reconstructing a traditional repertoire, Kølbæk Iversen develops new musical works from the historical texts. Sung in the original West Jutland dialect and realised for solo voice, choir and strings, the four compositions allow the language itself to shape melody, rhythm and vocal expression. The accompanying Riso-printed songbook reproduces the original texts alongside English translations, making the linguistic source material an integral part of the publication.
The songs evoke a world populated by women, mermaids and other transformative figures whose stories often resist the Protestant, national-romantic framework within which they were collected. Rather than presenting folklore as a fixed cultural inheritance, O’Tilli reveals voices that remain unruly, contradictory and unexpectedly contemporary.
Donnimaar is a shapeshiftress. Throughout the project, historical voices, mythical figures and contemporary musical practice continually pass into one another, allowing the songs to remain in motion rather than settle into historical reconstruction.
Side A
1. Hustru og æ Man’ hans Mue’r (12:35)
Lead – Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Choir – Katinka Fogh Vindelev
Melody – Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Lyrics Traditional recorded in Midwest Jutland in the 1870s by Evald Tang Kristensen
Jutlandic reinterpretation from the Standard Danish: Michael Ejstrup
Choral arrangements and mix: Katinka Fogh Vindelev
2. Æ Hawwfrååw hon danser o Tilli (09:21)
Lead – Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Choir – Katinka Fogh Vindelev
Melody – Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Lyrics – Traditional recorded in Midwest Jutland in the 1870s by Evald Tang Kristensen
Jutlandic reinterpretation from the Standard Danish: Michael Ejstrup
Choral arrangements and mix: Katinka Fogh Vindelev
Side B
1. Agenetå i æ Bjææ’r (25:04)
Lead –Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Strings – Torleik Mortensen and Andreas Tykjær Restorff
Melody – Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Lyrics –Traditional recorded in Midwest Jutland in the 1870s by Evald Tang Kristensen
Jutlandic reinterpretation from the Standard Danish: Michael Ejstrup
String arrangements: Torleik Mortensen and Andreas Tykjær Restorff
Mix: Torleik Mortensen and Andreas Tykjær Restorff
Bonus track to download: (Download here with your corresponding code)
3. Adeluds i æ Bjææ’r (09:50)
Lead –Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Choir – Katinka Fogh Vindelev
Melody – Marie Kølbæk Iversen
Lyrics: Traditional recorded in Midwest Jutland in the 1870s by Evald Tang Kristensen
Donnimaar (Marie Kølbæk Iversen) – composition, melodies, lead vocals
Katinka Fogh Vindelev – choir, choral arrangements
Torleik Mortensen, Andreas Tykjær Restorff – strings, string arrangements
Traditional songs documented in West Jutland in the 1870s by Evald Tang Kristensen
Michael Ejstrup – Jutlandic reinterpretation from Standard Danish
Recorded at Jens Benz Studio, Copenhagen
Katinka Fogh Vindelev – mixing, Side A and bonus track
Torleik Mortensen, Andreas Tykjær Restorff – mixing, Side B
Cedrik Fermont – mastering
Martin Bubandt – cover photography
Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Laurent Schmid – graphic design
Actum – risograph printing
Nordsø Records, Copenhagen – vinyl pressing
The songs are based on traditional material documented in West Jutland by the Danish folklorist Evald Tang Kristensen in the 1870s. Among them are songs passed down by Marie Kølbæk Iversen’s great-great-great-great-grandmother.
The LP includes a risograph-printed lyrics insert and a download code for the bonus track Adeluds i æ Bjææ’r.
Donnimaar is the musical persona of Danish visual artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen. Through Donnimaar, she works with voice, sound and composition as extensions of her broader artistic practice.
Speckled-Toshe is an independent publishing platform for artist records and sound editions. Working in close collaboration with artists, musicians, composers, writers and designers, each release is conceived as an editorial work in which sound, texts, images and design form an integrated whole rather than separate components.
Joyfully Waiting – The Disc
Joyfully Waiting
Joyfully Waiting – The Disc
Joyfully Waiting
Joyfully Waiting – The Disc translates the online sound platform Joyfully Waiting into the form of an artist's record. Bringing together works by fourteen artists alongside newly commissioned printed material, the publication reimagines a web-based collection as a physical object whose sequencing, materiality and duration propose another way of listening.
Speckled Toshe / Joyfully Waiting 2023, SPT23-1
LP, Limited, numbered edition of 250 copies, slightly marbled red vinyl,
Joyfully Waiting has evolved over many years as an online platform for sound works by contemporary artists. Curated by Nathalie Rebholz together with Jeanne Graff, the project is published in successive editions, each usually bringing together seven to ten contributions by different artists. These groupings are rarely given a common title or accompanied by an overarching commentary. Instead, the selection and juxtaposition of the works establish the context in which they are presented.
The Disc takes this editorial practice into another medium. Fourteen contributions from Joyfully Waiting were selected and arranged across the two sides of an LP. The principle of bringing individual works into relation remains, but the record changes the conditions of their presentation. Here, the works are given a fixed sequence and a duration determined by the two sides of the LP.
The record is accompanied by an essay by Jazmina Figueroa and a series of printed inserts. These introduce text and printed material into a project whose individual online editions are primarily articulated through the works themselves and the way they are grouped.
The Disc makes a particular selection from a project that continues to grow and gives it the finite form of a record. The curatorial principle remains closely related to that of the online editions; what distinguishes The Disc is that this particular selection now has a fixed sequence and a physical form.
Tracklist
Side A
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綬草 Spiranthes Sinenis Pers Ames (The field twittering series) – Galaxia Wang (2:46)
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HDHD – Sandar Tun Tun (1:32)
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Coffee + Mushrooms, Meadow Session – Seth Price (4:43)
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Eroica 7 – Chino Amobi (1:54)
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Neither Or Not Either – RM (2:03)
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Between Tails Forever – Soraya Lutangu Bonaventure & Mohamed Almusibli (3:45)
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Bubble Radiation – Jan Vorisek (2:36)
Side B
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Waiting with Antoni@ – Arttu Palmio (3:18)
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Now, that I become resident in my own life, 3rd of June – Marion Neumann (2:37)
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Oui ou non (Oiseau de lyre series) – Galaxia Wang (2:24)
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Yum – Jim Fletcher (1:12)
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I love you – Jeanne Graff (3:22)
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Sound Object & Feeding Birds – Aline Zeltner (1:58)
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TextContact II (Die Flamingos, Rilke) – The Operator & Stanislav Iordanov (0:57)
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Troisième discours – L’Acte pur (Andreas Hochuli & Tristan Lavoyer) (2:45)
Nathalie Rebholz / Joyfully Waiting – curatorial concept and selection
Jazmina Figueroa – accompanying essay, Songs about Waiting
Guy Meldem – cover image
Cedrik Fermont – mastering
Laurent Schmid –graphic design
Joyfully Waiting – The Disc brings together key positions from the web-based project joyfully-waiting.ch, now gathered on one physical object.
The record is accompanied by Songs about Waiting, an essay by Jazmina Figueroa, and a loose collection of printed contributions produced in different formats and on different supports.
Limited, numbered edition of 250 copies on marbled, semi-transparent red vinyl.
In Songs About Waiting, Jazmina Figueroa reflects on the emotional and philosophical dimensions of waiting through a personal narrative set in an airport. Using Fugazi’s Waiting Room and Genesis P-Orridge’s Frozen Velocity as auditory companions, she explores waiting not merely as delay or suspension, but as a state charged with ambiguity, resistance, and potential transformation. Through poetic and critical language, the essay dwells on waiting as both burden and agency—a space of soft endurance, affective suspension, and sonic revelation.
Curated by Nathalie Rebholz, Joyfully Waiting is an evolving collection of sound works by contemporary artists. The project exists primarily as an online listening platform and periodically takes other forms, including editions and exhibitions. Joyfully Waiting – The Disc translates a selection from this collection into a vinyl publication with accompanying printed materials.
Joyfully Waiting is an independent platform for sound works by contemporary artists, initiated by Nathalie Rebholz. Bringing together online publication, exhibitions and physical editions, the project explores listening as a shared artistic and editorial practice.
The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable
Parker Williams
The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable
Parker Williams
The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable brings together a sequence of texts attributed to Parker Williams in a work where writing, voice and fiction continually shift their positions. Interpreted and set to music by soprano Claire Michel de Haas, the publication transforms language into a vocal composition in which literary and musical forms become inseparable.
Speckled Toshe, 2022, SPT22-1
Clear transparent Vinyl, 12”
Cover Art: Individually painted covers by John Armleder.
225 numbered and signed copies with 12 pages booklet containing the lyrics.
All lyrics by Parker Williams, except ‘Nothing’s Left’ by Fitzgerald Warth Fallsworthy
The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable was developed by John Armleder and Claire Michel de Haas around a selection of unpublished texts attributed to Parker Williams and Fitzgerald Warth Fallsworthy, two heteronyms created by Armleder. Both fictional authors have appeared at different moments in his work, extending questions of authorship into invented identities and literary production.
Claire Michel de Haas developed the musical setting of the texts, composing and performing the vocal parts. The writings are not simply read or recited: their words become the material for melody, rhythm and vocal phrasing, giving each text its particular musical form.
The record brings these fictional writings and Michel de Haas’ compositions together in a publication conceived jointly with Armleder. For the edition, Armleder painted each record cover individually, making every copy a variation within the edition.
The resulting publication combines texts by Armleder’s fictional writers, compositions and vocals by Michel de Haas, and an individually painted cover by Armleder.
A1 Un Monde Qui Pouvait Te Sembler Familier 0:57
A2 Che Fare 1:00
A3 504 3:38
A4 Nothing’s Left (Text by Fitzgerald Warth Fallsworthy) 4:32
A5 Work Art In Progress 2:46
A6 Ne Dites Pas Non 2:34
B1 The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable 1 5:12
B2 La Chapelle Du Souvenir 7:32
B3 The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable 2 6:10
Parker Williams, John M Armleder, Speckled-Toshe – record concept
Parker Williams – texts
Fitzgerald Warth Fallsworthy – text for Nothing’s Left
Claire Michel de Haas – musical settings and vocals
John M Armleder – individually painted covers
Eleonora Polato, Masé Studios, Geneva – recording
James Plotkin – mastering
Flo Kaufmann – lacquer cut
The texts were written by Parker Williams and his shifting fictional identities, then interpreted and set to music a cappella by Claire Michel de Haas in exchange with their author; or authors.
Each copy is housed in a unique, hand-painted cover by John M Armleder. The paintings are original works; all copies are individually signed and numbered.
Limited edition of 225 copies on clear vinyl, accompanied by a twelve-page booklet containing the complete texts.
The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable was developed by John Armleder and Claire Michel de Haas. The publication brings together texts attributed to Parker Williams and Fitzgerald Warth Fallsworthy, two heteronyms created by Armleder, with music and vocals by Michel de Haas. She developed the musical concept, composed the music and performed the vocal parts, while Armleder conceived the publication and painted each record cover individually.
John Armleder
John Armleder is a Swiss artist based in Geneva. A co-founder of the Ecart group and closely associated with Fluxus, his practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, performance, sound and publishing. Collaboration, appropriation and the displacement of artistic identities recur throughout his work, alongside an interest in the conditions through which artworks are produced, presented and circulated.
Claire Michel de Haas
Claire Michel de Haas is a Geneva-based vocalist, musician and artist. Her practice brings together voice, composition, performance and collaborative artistic projects. In The Botanical Speedboat Experience Inevitable, she transformed texts written by John Armleder under two heteronyms into a sequence of vocal and musical compositions.
A-Sides is a series of artist records developed within the research project A-Sides at HEAD – Genève. Conceived around the vinyl record as a medium for artistic research, the project brought together artists, musicians and researchers in editions where listening, publication and exhibition became part of a shared editorial practice. Several of the editorial and conceptual approaches explored in A-Sides later became integral to the direction of Speckled-Toshe.
Furnica
Olga Kokcharova
Furnica
Olga Kokcharova
Furnica originates from a field recording that gradually turns against its own means of production. As ants invade the recording device, environmental sounds become increasingly intertwined with electronic interference, until the system ultimately falls silent. The work transforms an unforeseen encounter between living organisms and recording technology into an autonomous sonic composition.
Speckled Toshe 2022, SPT21-1
One sided 12′ black vinyl disc in a folded, screenprinted grass cardboard cover.
Furnica begins with a simple act of listening. While recording the sounds of an anthill, Olga Kokcharova’s recorder is gradually invaded by ants. As they enter the device, its electronic components begin to fail, producing glitches that increasingly displace the surrounding soundscape until the recording abruptly collapses into silence.
The malfunction was accidental. Kokcharova decided to retain the damaged recording, allowing the ants’ interference with the equipment to become part of the work itself. What begins as an environmental recording is gradually altered by the activity of the very organisms being recorded.
The one-sided LP presents this process as an uninterrupted sequence. Sounds from the anthill give way increasingly to glitches and electronic instability as the recorder deteriorates, until the device ceases to function. The duration of the record follows this transformation without reconstruction or correction.
Furnica thus documents not only the sounds surrounding an anthill, but what happened to the recording apparatus while those sounds were being captured. The recorder is no longer a neutral means of observation: its physical presence in the environment becomes audible in the recording itself.
A1, (one sided), Furnica, 11:57
Olga Kokcharova – concept, field recording and composition
Pali Meursault – accompanying text
Lucile Durpraz – translation
Giuseppe De Giacomi – cover design and screen printing (Hùrdega stamperia d’arte)
Cedrik Fermont – mastering
Flo Kaufmann – lacquer cut
Furnica originated from a field recording made by Olga Kokcharova at an anthill in the forest. During the recording, ants entered the device and gradually damaged its components. The resulting glitches increasingly overlay and displace the sounds of the forest until the system collapses and the recording falls silent.
The one-sided 12-inch record is housed in a twelve-page, multi-folded cover, screen-printed on grass cardboard. It includes an accompanying text by Pali Meursault in French and English.
Olga Kokcharova
Olga Kokcharova is a sound artist and composer based in Geneva. Her practice encompasses electroacoustic composition, field recording, installation, performance and radio. Working with recorded environments, acoustic phenomena and spatial conditions, she examines how listening shapes our perception of places and the relations that unfold within them. Her projects often develop through site-specific research and collaborations across sound, visual art and performance.
Speckled-Toshe is an independent publishing platform for artist records and sound editions. Working in close collaboration with artists, musicians, composers, writers and designers, each release is conceived as an editorial work in which sound, texts, images and design form an integrated whole rather than separate components.
Staircase Mystery
Karl Holmqvist
Staircase Mystery
Karl Holmqvist
Staircase Mystery presents language as sound, rhythm and structure. Drawing on newspaper headlines, fragments of conversation and pop lyrics, Karl Holmqvist recomposes found language into spoken works that move between poetry, performance and visual art. Recorded in Geneva and Berlin, the LP brings together four readings in which repetition, ambiguity and voice continuously shift the meanings of familiar words.
A-Sides/Speckled Toshe 02, www.a-sides.ch and HEAD-Genève, 2020, SPT20-AS2
LP, black vinyl
Rather than conveying fixed meanings, Karl Holmqvist’s works expose language as something unstable and performative. Quotations, slogans, everyday speech and song lyrics are displaced, repeated and recombined until familiar expressions begin to oscillate between sense and sound. Rhythm gradually takes precedence over narrative, while repetition opens language to unexpected associations.
Read in the artist’s characteristically restrained voice, these recordings continue Holmqvist’s long-standing exploration of the territory between concrete poetry, visual art and spoken performance. His delivery avoids theatrical expression, allowing the slightest shifts in rhythm, emphasis and repetition to become central compositional elements.
Selected by the artist, the four recordings were made between the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and Holmqvist’s Berlin studio. Together, the four recordings unfold as a single listening experience, their differing rhythms, repetitions and vocal cadences continually echoing across the two sides of the record.
Staircase Mystery – 13:39
The Man Who Sold The World – 02:07
Declare Independence – 06:54
Addition Addiction – 03:58
Karl Holmqvist – concept, texts, text selection and voice
Recorded at Centre d’art contemporain (A1, A2), Genève and in Karl Holmqvist’s studio in Berlin (B1, B2)
Cover – Karl Holmqvist
Laquer cut – Flo Kaufmann
Staircase Mystery was recorded in two sessions: Staircase Mystery and The Man Who Sold the World at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and Declare Independence and Addition Addiction at Karl Holmqvist’s studio in Berlin.
The selection was made by the artist. The Geneva recordings were subsequently complemented by a second session at Holmqvist’s studio in Berlin.
Karl Holmqvist
Karl Holmqvist is a Swedish artist and writer based in Berlin. Working with language across poetry, performance, publications, painting, installation and video, he draws on quotations, song lyrics, slogans and everyday speech. Through repetition, rearrangement and shifts between written and spoken forms, his work examines how language circulates and how meaning changes through voice, rhythm and context.
A-Sides is a series of artist records developed within the research project A-Sides at HEAD – Genève. Conceived around the vinyl record as a medium for artistic research, the project brought together artists, musicians and researchers in editions where listening, publication and exhibition became part of a shared editorial practice. Several of the editorial and conceptual approaches explored in A-Sides later became integral to the direction of Speckled-Toshe.
L’Appétence
Anne Le Troter
L’Appétence
Anne Le Troter
L'Appétence explores the voice as a space where intimacy, desire and social conventions are continually negotiated. Developed in collaboration with a group of ASMR practitioners, the work was first conceived as an audio installation before being reconfigured as an autonomous publication for vinyl, where listening itself becomes the site of the work.
A-Sides / Speckled Toshe 2020, SPT20-AS3
LP, blue translucent vinyl
The two works on this record have different origins. Blue is based on a research by Anne Le Troter concerned with biography, fiction, and fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams. L’Appétence was developed in collaboration with a group of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) artists, drawing on voices and the particular vocal techniques associated with ASMR.
Both works were originally developed for audio installations. For the record, Le Troter returned to this material and extensively reworked it. Voices, words, breathing, pauses and repetitions were cut, rearranged and assembled into new sequences. The resulting pieces are not simply transfers of the installations but compositions shaped through editing and montage.
Although their source material differs, both pieces are constructed through the same intensive process of editing. Le Troter cuts and rearranges recorded speech into sequences in which repetition, interruption, rhythm and the placement of individual fragments determine how the voices are heard.
Side A: Blue (version augmentée, 2019) – 17’35
Side B: L’appétence (2016) – 9:53
Anne Le Troter – concept, composition, editing and mixing
Final ASMR
Made in France ASMR
Miel ASMR
Mr Discrait
Sandra Relaxation ASMR
The French Whisperer
– collaborating ASMR artists
Anne Le Troter – cover concept
Antonin Horquin – photography
Cedrik Fermont – mastering
Both works were originally developed as sound installations and subsequently reconfigured by Anne Le Troter for the record.
Blue emerged from a cycle of writing concerned with biography, fiction, and fulfilled or unfulfilled dreams. L’Appétencewas created in collaboration with a group of ASMR artists and explores the forms of language produced through their practices.
Anne Le Troter
Anne Le Troter is a French artist based in Paris. Working across sound installation, performance, literature and poetry, she examines how speech takes shape within particular social and professional groups. Her projects often begin with recorded voices, which she edits, repeats and recomposes into sound works that draw attention to the rhythms, physical qualities and collective structures of spoken language.
A-Sides is a series of artist records developed within the research project A-Sides at HEAD – Genève. Conceived around the vinyl record as a medium for artistic research, the project brought together artists, musicians and researchers in editions where listening, publication and exhibition became part of a shared editorial practice. Several of the editorial and conceptual approaches explored in A-Sides later became integral to the direction of Speckled-Toshe.
JE D’EAU
Hannah Weinberger
JE D’EAU
Hannah Weinberger
Je d'EAU extends Hannah Weinberger's sound practice into the format of the artist's record. Composed from voice, field recordings and subtle electronic transformations, the work unfolds as an acoustic environment in which listening becomes a way of navigating space, proximity and duration.
A-Sides / Speckled Toshe 2020, SPT20-AS1
LP, black vinyl, red cover. The edition was published in two series: one with a pale green cover for the Centre d’art contemporain Genève, and this one with a red cover.
Je d’Eau brings together voices, environmental recordings and electronic sound in a continuous composition extending across the two sides of the record. Some of the material was originally recorded for Oceano de Amor, a film by Alexa Karolinski and Ingo Niermann, for which Hannah Weinberger created a sound piece.
For Je d’Eau, these voices become part of a composition in which recorded and electronic sounds recur in changing combinations. The record does not separate the material into individual tracks, but develops as a continuous sequence, with repetition and transitions providing much of its structure.
The connection to Oceano de Amor also belongs to the context in which the record appeared. The film was screened at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in parallel with Weinberger’s exhibition we didn’t want to leave, on the occasion of which Je d’Eau was published.
The title moves between je, jeu and eau, without resolving these possible readings into a single meaning.
Side A 20:23
Side B 20:05
Hannah Weinberger – composition, field recordings and voice
Alexa Karolinski, Ingo Niermann – film, Oceano de Amor
Nicholas Bussmann – mastering
Ronnie Fueglister – graphic design
Volker Zander – production management
Produced by Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and HEAD – Genève, Haute école d’art et de design, as part of A-Sides – Audio Editions by Artists.
Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève:
Andrea Bellini – director
Marie Debat – general project coordination
Carole Jauffret – communication
With the support of Société Générale Private Banking Switzerland.
The vocal material was originally recorded for Oceano de Amor, a film by Alexa Karolinski and Ingo Niermann from 2019.
The record was published on the occasion of Hannah Weinberger’s exhibition we didn’t want to leave, presented at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève from 8 November 2019 to 5 January 2020.
Hannah Weinberger
Hannah Weinberger is a Swiss-American artist based in Basel. Working with sound, video, installation and performance, she develops compositions in response to particular spaces and social situations. Her installations often distribute sound across an exhibition space, allowing it to shift as visitors move through it. Collaboration and the relation between individual and collective experience are recurring elements of her practice.
A-Sides is a series of artist records developed within the research project A-Sides at HEAD – Genève. Conceived around the vinyl record as a medium for artistic research, the project brought together artists, musicians and researchers in editions where listening, publication and exhibition became part of a shared editorial practice. Several of the editorial and conceptual approaches explored in A-Sides later became integral to the direction of Speckled-Toshe.