Members Only is back for 2024 with another entry in what must be one of the most creatively off-the-wall series of edits ever committed to wax. The 4 cuts on offer here deftly blur the lines between disco, house, and EBM reminiscent of The Music Box or Medusa’s.
Viernulvier Records presents its new LP release ‘Quadric Surfaces’ by iconic electronic producer Hieroglyphic Being aka Jamal R Moss. It collects the soundtracks Moss wrote for ‘Parallel Spheres’ & ‘Figures in Mynd’, two parts of an abstract animation film by visual artist Gabriela González Rondon. The film premiered in October 2023 during Videodroom / Film Festival Ghent.
Since 2019, Amsterdam-based curator Pieter Jansen has used his yeyeh label as a vehicle for carefully considered (and sometimes unlikely) ‘first time’ collaborations between different experimental and avant-garde artists. The idea of getting saxophonist/composer/producer Jerzy Maczyński in the studio with Chicagoan DJ/producer Hieroglyphic Being was the genesis of this record, the debut album by Universal Harmonies & Frequencies. In June 2022, Hieroglyphic Being flew to Amsterdam to spend five days improvising with Maczyński in a rented studio beneath Volkshotel, under the watchful eye of recording and mix engineer Rein De Sauvage Nolting, better known in electronic music circles for his work as RDS. During those sessions, 26 long, improvised compositions were recorded, with Maczyński contributing saxophones and electronic tools, and Hieroglyphic Being laying down synthesizer parts and vocals. These sessions were captured on film by VLF (Katarzyna Debska), who later created the artwork and visual language for this record release. Some days after the recording sessions, Sauvage Nolting – who had delivered artistic input during the improvisations – sat down with Jansen to select 13 pieces to put forward for the album and a loose conceptual framework. It was then that the hard work began. While a decision was taken to present some improvisations in full, most of what you will hear on Tune IN, as the album is titled, is based on fragments of improvisation. The resultant pieces were reconfigured, re-worked and re-produced by Maczyński and Sauvage Nolting over many months, and in discussion with Hieroglyphic Being. Maczyński added more layers of instrumentation, creating a “whole digital band of reed instruments” – a method he previously utilized on Sariani. What you hear when you play the record defies categorization. It is rooted in a specific moment in time and the spontaneity of musical improvisation – both Maczyński and Hieroglyphic Being are experienced improvisers, albeit with different musical instruments and tools – but also the product of extensive post-production and reflective re-shaping. It is not free-jazz, ambient, electronica, rhythmic cubism (as Hieroglyphic Being’s distinctive sound has previously been called), or avant-garde experimentalism, but something that combines all these musical approaches and more, with a sprinkling of far-sighted futurism mixed in. It is a magical and mystical meeting of musical minds that will pass the test of time in decades to come.
Members Only – The Worst Edits Vol. 10, is material edited and deranged sonically in 2001, pulled from the vaults of baked cassette tapes and VHS.
Members Only – The Worst Edits Vol. 9, pulled from the archives of baked cassette & VHS tapes, sonically abused for demented intake.
Members Only is back with the 8th volume of The Worst Edits. Four edits chopped in & turned out for the mechanically insame minds. from the vaults of the baked tapes scenario 2000 era.
‘The Moon Dance’ Mark’s the come back of one of Chi Towns most innovative and iconic figures to Apnea Records. Jamal Moss (Hieroglyphic Being) sound’s were first released on Apnea in 2007. Now, in 2023, he’s back with this double 12” album flooded with synth jazz and cosmic acid explorations in his signature and irreverent style.
London-based label Release Sustain announces the release of a brand new EP by Chicago’s Jamal Moss, Mathematics Recordings label head, one of the most uncompromising artists in the game. Famed for his raw, lo-fi approach to house, he messes with the rules and makes unpredictable, unforgettable sounds like few others. Here he arrives on London’s Release Sustain with four cuts of relentless drum programming and acid melodies that traverse the line between house and techno. From the slow and wonky opener to the coruscated ‘The Dark Hold of the Bold’ via the distorted and deprived ‘The Nu Glance Sound’ this is a fine EP.
Hieroglyphic Being with a collection of 10 tracks on volume four of ‘The Black Box’.
Hieroglyphic Being with a collection of 8 tracks on volume three of ‘The Black Box’.
Experimentation on edits is a lost artform where one could be fearless and make things nasty. This is just the artistic endeavors of editing, looping and effects for historical purposes. Edits created and twisted over 20 years ago by Jamal Moss.
“A Memoir Of Life In The Lust” is a collection of tracks from Hieroglyphic Being aka Jamal Moss released in 2011 on Music From Mathematics.
Members Only is back at it with a double 12″ featuring 8 previously unreleased tracks of the off the wall lo-fi edit madness they’re known for.
Natural Sciences Recs marks its 60th release with a split 12″ from Beau Wanzer and Hieroglyphic Being: two cult names from Chicago’s underground releasing on record for the first time, with Wanzer’s hybrid industrial rap alongside Jamal’s wired space ritual.
Hats off to Jamal Moss for the tongue-in-cheek title of his latest album as Hieroglyphic Being, which is naturally another pleasingly wild, freewheeling, imaginative and out-there excursion in his now trademark style. It sees him sprint between mutant electronic jazz (‘Circumploar’), out-there analogue techno (’21 Days’), organ-rich post-beatdown chuggers (‘Foreboding Self Pleasure’), reverb-laden ambient soundscapes (‘A Dream Within a Dream’, ‘Delta Opus L’), industrial-strength dancefloor weirdness (‘The Prograde Direction’), sub-heavy lo-fi deep house (‘Black Love On An Early Sunday Morning’), sparse electronic future funk (‘Future Shocked’), and jacking, sci-fi seeped brilliance (‘The Andromeda Strain’). In other words, it’s another excellent collection from one of dance music’s genuine geniuses.
“There is no Acid in this House” is Hieroglyphic Being’s third solo album on Soul Jazz Records, a resolute and powerful statement of Jamal Moss’s raw, vital, pioneering, Afro-Futurist electronic (dance) music. Moss once-again draws upon the vast scope of experimentation that has defined Chicago’s musical universe over the last half a century – from the birth of house music with the pioneers Ron Hardy, Marshall Jefferson, Lil Louis and others to the radical avant-garde jazz legacy of the city, The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Sun Ra.
Members Only returns with 4 more Worst Edits. “Fake News” sets the tone with pulsing synth bass and New Wave guitar. Heady cut-up psychedelia and an appearance from John Cooper Clark on “Pagan Paradise”. The B-side opener is pure intensity, before a soft landing on tropical “It’s A Long Way Back”.
The Hipodrome Of Music 