Baal & Mortimer - The Torso Tapes (2021)

Since 2014 Baal & Mortimer is the project of A. Grübler, dedicating herself to the sonic exploration of themes of resistance, autonomy and body conception. Her pieces combine rich textures of electronics with complex layers of experimental vocal counterpoint - an effect at once hypnotically beautiful and eerily destabilizing. After the release of the commissioned piece "Earthrise" on the Düsseldorf-based all-female label HEAVEN in 2018, her debut album "Deixis", completed in London and mastered by Rupert Clervaux, was released by Bureau B in June 2020. With an M.A. in aesthetics and philosophy, Baal & Mortimer now lives in Berlin, researching the concrete potentialities between tone and image, language and body, research and movement. She has collaborated with Black Merlin and Musiccargo and was the mentee of Laurel Halo for the Berlin Amplify program in 2018. With "The Torso Tapes" (ITALIC, 2021), Baal & Mortimer releases her new EP on 9 April 2021, a mini-LP: eight new tracks, including two short interludes. It folds up epochs, landscapes and languages, turning them into the vertical and a new place each time. Layers of orchestral vocals emerge from brittle fog, icy traces of human activity and its mistakes. German, english, machine, human, male, female: corresponding to the same origin, changed, subdued and always elastic. A non-linear time oscillating between grainy drums and the melancholic pull of soundscapes, eternally pushed by choral echoes, singing against themselves. Baal & Mortimer are masters of seduction. Everything is Now to them. It’s a dark play of eccentric folk - from a closed future, a Canterbury of the 23rd century.