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Out Today: Sound Meditation Album
by The Hague Philharmonic’s Solo Flautist Eline van Esch

Something different out on Mink today: a collection of tracks by classical musician and sound healing expert Eline van Esch (who is also a solo flute player in The Hague Philharmonic Orchestra), specifically created for meditation, relaxation, sound healing, yoga, sleep, being in stillness… anything that involves winding down.
The album is available on streaming services, and on CD in our webshop.

We are very happy to support this project and thank Doris Veldman for recording and mixing. Artwork by Michiel & Marieke. 

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Torii Release ‘Heat Lightning’ & Announce
Album Release at De School, Amsterdam

Here’s the music video for Torii’s recent single ‘Heat Lightning’, created by band member Jilles van Kleef and Pauline Bauvin.’Heat Lightning’ is the first single released by Dutch psychedelic pop outfit Torii, taken from their upcoming album ‘Return To Form’ (out February 2020).

Torii shrewdly borrows stylistics and bends them to its whims, like on the sweltering soul melodicism of ‘Heat Lightning’, which thrillingly accelerates into a motorik-indebted slipstream.

Many thanks to Spotify for placing the track in New Music Friday, and all other radio stations, blogs and playlists who have shown their support.

The album release show in Amsterdam, plus shows in Utrecht and Rotterdam have just been announced:

  • 1/2 Utrecht, Ekko | FB Event 
  • 13/2 Den Bosch, Willem Twee | FB Event 
  • 22/2 Amsterdam, De School | ALBUM RELEASE | i.c.w. Subbacultcha | FB Event
  • 29/2 Rotterdam, V11 | support: Global Charming | FB Event 

 

Pitou at L’Olympia, Paris

Last night Pitou supported Tamino at a sold out show in legendary venue L’Olympia in Paris. We are so proud to see how far she has come, and how she keeps developing as an artist.Pitou is currently working on a new album. Her first two records can be found on streaming services, and on vinyl & CD in our webshop and record stores.

Image by Ramy Moharam Fouad

Torii to release album ‘Return to Form’ on Mink

As some of you already know, we’re absolutely over the moon to welcome one of our favourite bands to the Mink Records & Mink Music Publishing family: TORII

This Friday will see the release of their first single ‘Heat Lightning’ from their upcoming album ‘Return To Form’, which will come out in February 2020.

‘The psychedelic pop of Dutch quintet Torii seems to deftly breeze by without a care in the world: warm, wistful and weightless. Multiple listens to the band’s debut LP Return To Form (due early 2020), however, reveal a stark antithesis of that snap judgment: each one of these eleven tracks was written, composed and recorded with painstaking, deliberate care. Founder Domenico Mangione transmutes troubled feelings of trauma, lonesomeness, and alienation into his intricate, spectral production values.

Torii started as a solo project that found Mangione demoing tracks in an abandoned school building. This rather desolate scenery, plus the screeching of the seagulls that terrorized the area, provided the perfect echo chamber for the Dutch musician & producer to find his definitive voice, at his desired pace. That being said: Torii’s early incarnations – with a revolving line-up of musicians around Mangione – were, as a result, much more erratic in sonics and live performance. During ‘Human’ – off of the band’s 2016 Submerged EP (Geertruida Records) –, he would often exert himself in cathartic guitar noise, failing to straddle his own non-conformist lexicon to his bandmates – and vice versa. Soon after releasing their debut record, the band played critically-renowned festivals and venues, namely Paradiso, Vera, De School, Incubate, Grasnapolsky and Le Guess Who?.

Now a steady five-piece ensemble – Mangione, multi-instrumentalist/producer Tijmen van Wageningen, guitarist/lap steel player Willem Oostendorp, keyboardist Jilles van Kleef, and drummer Olivier Schiphorst – Torii began using Mangione’s free-spirited recording methods as the root for fully-realized studio splendor, giving themselves ample time to blur the sharp frontiers in skill and philosophy. Each musician handled Return To Form’s makeup with kid gloves, harvesting wayward sounds in meticulous fashion.’

– words by Jasper Willems
– photo by Rick Erfmann

Mink Records DJ Set at Le Guess Who? Festival

Founder of Mink (Marieke McKenna) will be spinning records at the amazing Le Guess Who? festival this weekend! Two sets on Sunday, in the main hall (Ronda), between 18.30-19.30, and 20.23-21.35.

Read more about the festival on the official website. 

Make sure you check out the line up for this amazing festival, which kicks off today.

It truly is the most adventurous music festival The Netherlands has on offer in terms of line up.

Hope to see you there!

Image by Pierre Zylstra

The Mighty Breaks Host
‘Master Club’ Album Release Show

Last Friday we released The Mighty Breaks’ debut album ‘Master Club’ in style at our very own night club ‘Master Club’, named after the real deal in Italy, for one night, at The Grey Space in the Middle. The turnout was more than we dreamt of in advance, thank you all so much for being there, for sharing this special moment with us.

You can listen to the record here, it’s also available on 12” vinyl, in our webshop and record stores.

The always amazing Philine van den Hul took some cool pictures of people attending the event, to be seen here.

 

Much love!

 

 

The Visual impress at Best Kept Secret Festival

We are so proud of The Visual, who absolutely killed it at Best Kept Secret Festival, gracing the line up amongst acts like Guided By Voices, Kraftwerk, Fat White Family, Stereolab, Spiritualized, Mac DeMarco and more. Some reviews of their show (in Dutch):

3VOOR12
“Op het climaxmoment schuiven wolken voor de zon, alsof de weergoden begrijpen wat voor setting deze act nodig had. Het moment geeft meteen rillingen over de rug, en is een gevalletje ‘nomen est omen’: we zijn een kind geworden in de dystopische, zwart-wit arthouse film van The Visual.”

Dansende Beren (BE)
“Hun korte set ging van chaos naar extreme sereniteit in de finale. Nadat Anna met haar gitaar de microfoonstaander aan diggelen gooide, sloot ze in haar eentje af met het rustgevende “Hold Your Breath”.

The Daily Indie
”Tussen alle mystiek door vallen invloeden als Jeff Buckley en Beach House op. De hoogtepuntjes uit dit optreden zijn toch echt wel de nummers Lost in Translation en Under My Skin.’

Image by Willem Schalekamp

NME & Line of Best Fit
praise The Visual at The Great Escape

Thank you NME for the beautiful review of The Visual’s show at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton!

“The three-piece band’s sound tickles the same parts as Nick Cave, PJ Harvey or – most aptly – Jeff Buckley, thanks to the transcendent vocals of frontwoman Anna van Rij. Lost in the music, she at one point swiped her mic stand with her guitar, sending the microphone flying. Not quite Hendrix burning his Stratocaster, but an affordable version of the same.”

The Line Of Best Fit named the group one of the highlights of the festival:

‘The Visual are a trio from Amsterdam who make textural and affecting music which snaps between the epic and the angular. Fronted by the husky-voiced Anna van Rij, their best songs find a place when the ambience is tuned up a notch with synthetic beats and loops. But it’s really van Rij’s voice which remains the core of the set – winding the audience along with it and leaving smoky trails behind. Cinematic is an understatement.’

? by Jamie MacMillan Photos