One of our favorite Berlin-based projects is back November 3rd with the EP, Sentiment of Callousness, their debut on SNTS Records. Today we’re premiering Anhedon, the powerful and hypnotizing closing track.
Anhedon is OAKE’s final journey as they put together the pieces of past and present. It’s a short travel back to their first release Offenbarung, on Downwards Records, but without lingering in the past the duo are always looking toward the future. Voices crystalize, creating a cinematic tension which is slowly transforms into a crushing, yet at times, ethereal experimental techno piece.
Oake's creative process is a testament to a transformative journey which brought forth another side of them- more raw and ready to explore new avenues of sound and emotion. From the artists:
We started to write Anhedon out of an older project that was almost forgotten. It was one of the sessions, in which I (Eric) sat in the studio one night and just jammed for a few hours and recorded everything. The project was overblown with endless amounts of sounds, samples and ideas. When I stumbled upon it again in the course of writing the EP, I cleaned the whole project up, stitched new sounds together and stripped it back to what you can hear in the first 3-4 minutes of Anhedon.
Throughout every track of the EP we used variations of a specific CS-80 patch that sounds like a very raw and mean brass sound. It was important to us to have certain elements reoccur in every track to create a sonic consistency holding the EP together. The first versions of Anhedon lacked this particular sound but for us it needed to be in there. By recording these new sequences we could immediately feel how the whole energy of the track was slowly transforming into something different.
I wanted to show Bathseba an idea for the vocals and therefore used and processed the original “Erajh nur Dwfa” vocals from our first record Offenbarung. We both liked it so much that, in the end, we decided to leave them in exactly like that and recorded additional vocals on top.
When we thought the track was done, we packed our carriage and rode over to Headless Horseman and his studio. There were so many kicks, bass sounds and thuddy elements in the track that we needed a fresh pair of ears during our mixing process. We were also still mixing in our 5sqm chamber back at that time, which made it impossible to get the track sounding the way we wanted it to sound. HH helped us tons with this first initial mix adding a lot more punch and depth to the sound. After that we moved into a new studio, which sounded so much better than what we were used to… which also led to us starting another round of week-long mixing, fine tuning and re-arranging until we did hit record for the last time to capture what became the version of Anhedon that is now the closing of our new EP.
SNTS Records will release Sentiment Of Callousness on November 3rd, 2017 in 12" and digital format and Sentiment Of Callousness Remixed in early 2018 (track lists below). For more information visit SNTS.
Sentiment Of Callousness
01. Alog
02. Apath
03. Abul
04. Anhedon
Sentiment Of Callousness Remixed
01. Alog (SNTS Remix)
02. Apath (Regis Remix)
03. Abul (Samuel Kerridge Remix)
04. Anhedon (Phase Fatale Remix)
05. Anhedon (Stephanie Sykes Remix) (Digital Bonus)