Newcastle’s TUSK Music are delighted to announce the release of the first duo album by Tyneside’s electronic musicians Bishop/Rezaei – the duo of Stephen Bishop, head honcho of the irrepressible Opal Tapes label and producer behind names such as Basic House, Lacrima and others, and Mariam Rezaei, singular turntablist and perpetually productive producer of music and more.

Composed and produced by correspondence during lockdown in the early weeks of 2021, files flew and evolved between their respective North East locations and the album took shape with remarkable sense of purpose and a drive to continue to create their way through the apocalyptic murk.

To be sure of bringing out all the widescreen sound design elements of Veil to optimum effect, the album was mastered by Dom Clare at Declared Sound – Clare is renowned for his mastering work for the Nyege Nyege label and many others.

Bishop says: “I wanted to make a studio based album which was essentially "improvised" at distance, over time and without the two people ever meeting. As such the musical information is withdrawn from audio recordings of Mariam’s performance, transcoded into MIDI and used to perform and modulate sampled instruments or samplers containing non-musical audio. Mariam’s performance (timing, gesture, dynamics, volume and capture resolution) create the sound you hear from an environment I design them to work within. I try to be as hands off a possible using many modulation sources (triggered by note-on information from the transcodes) controlling panning, effects sends, mutes etc… essentially the performance re-dubs itself weeks after it was originally captured.”

“Furthermore the choices to use voice, strings, brass and then the trimmings of orchestral tune up etc were my paying homage to Mariam’s multi-tudinous involvement in new and experimental music in the UK. My idea of what might travel through her head, again trying to tie into the shared mindset heralded in good improvisation.”

Mariam adds: “I was skratching a recording of myself reciting Rumi’s poetry then messed around for ages on the decks! It’s very much sounds made from improv but set up with a structure and precomposed sounds.”

Bishop launched Opal Tapes in 2012 and quickly assembled an impressively broad catalogue of challenging and very influential international electronics caught midway between the dancefloor and the laboratory. He’s also the producer behind Basic House, Lacrima and others and has new releases imminent on the seminal label Sakho and L.A.’s Nostilevo imprint. Rezaei has become a figure of renown in contemporary turntablism and released two deck-based albums featuring collaborations with Tony Bevan, Rhodri Davies, Petronn Sphene and more. She presented her piece for turntables and strings – The 42 Mirrors Of Narcissus – in collaboration with Lasse Marhaug and players of the Royal Northern Sinfonia at TUSK Festival 2019. She recently released a collaborative album with Virginian drummer Samuel Goff.


This album also marks the first fruit arising from the change of direction taken by TUSK in response to the deathly pincer movement of Covid-19 and Brexit.

TUSK release this album in digital form only via Bandcamp. Opal Tapes will simultaneously issue the album on limited CD.
tuskfestival.bandcamp.com

Veil is also available as part of TUSK’s new TUSK Editions venture, its new subscribe-able monthly merging of old school record club and current evolutions in digital publishing.
tuskfestival.com/artists/tusk-editions/

Bishop and Rezaei will also talk about their album on the first episode of TUSK TV on April 2, presented by Jennifer Lucy Allan and with performances from William Parker, Nappy Nina, Valentina Magaletti and more.
tuskfestival.com/artists/tusk-tv/

PLEASE NOTE: this album is also available as part of TUSK Editions April 2021.