2026

A new album on 12k is coming very soon.

New LP by Andrew Chalk

Una maravillosa noticia! Profundmente feliz de haber colaborado en el nuevo LP de AndrewChalk, que sale precisamente hoy. Música de sueños y telas evanescentes.

Se puede ordenar aquí: http://farawaypress.info/mail-order/4548469489
A wonderful news! The new LP by Andrew Chalk, in which I have the pleasure of having collaborated, is released today. Music of dreams and evanescent curtains.
Andrew Chalk
10”/25cm LP  ‘Painted
Screens’
Label : An’archives
Réf : [ An’08 ]
Edition of 250 copies in tipped-on sleeves with
Japanese obi, insert and postcard. Entirely handmade sleeve edition of Painted
Screens – designed & assembled at Impression Lointaine.
In this album (originally released in 2014), newly remastered for this vinyl edition, Andrew Chalk plays musical arrangements along with Federico Durand, Daisuke & Naoko Suzuki, Francis Plagne & Timo Van Luijk.
Music box: intimate music with a large palette of instruments; Voices and sounds, mixed feelings and mysteries…A window opened on travelling memories, half-awakened thoughts and shared moments – dreamed and nocturnal wandering atmospheres, with undulating rays sporadically lighting a subconscious painting.
Release
date :  09 June 2018

"La niña junco" reviewed by Loop (Chile)

Loop (CL)

This is the second album released on 12k after the following A Través del Espejo (2016) of Argentine musician Federico Durand, based in La Cumbre, a town of the of Cordoba’s mountain range, who in the last four years have seven releases on 12k, Spekk, White Paddy Mountain and Pudú labels.

In this breakthrough creative production, Durand recorded all nine songs on this album in two days, using his first Crumar Performer synthesizer along with two looping pedals and Roland Space Echo RE-201.

Immersed in small sounds that unfold slowly creating unpolished infant stories that release the hiss itself for nostalgia. The oscillations are like sea waves of the sea that come and go and small objects like palitroques beat each other. The dance of reeds shaken by the wind is the fresh air that shakes this disc for its simple beauty.

*

Muchas gracias Guillermo Escudero y Loop! Saludos cordiales desde las Sierras! F.

A wonderful review from UK!

Federico Durand - La niña junco (12k)

6 years ago I would have found myself revising in the garden for some of my last school exams at this very table, perhaps beneath this same umbrella. 2 years before that, and I was revising for my GCSEs when I was 16. The scenery’s different now; the family home moved and now I sit by the canalside, the furniture is certainly a little worse for wear, but there’s a certain sweet nostalgia to being here. I sit here like an echo, a fair-weather ghost returning to familiar spots to work and write.

Bittersweetness is a running theme with Durand, a consistent trend in his minimal, organic constructions; in equal measure the reductive nature of his music creates environments both lovingly reverberant and simple, as well as crooning and wistful, yearning for places and people since passed. Take “Navidad en el bosque”, Christmas in the Forest: a brilliant reflection of time and space, soft static fuzz gently dampening the slow synth movements as the trees and snow close in, the world muted in its blanket of snow and foliage. The faded, distal glimmerings of “Una plaza a las vias del tren” (The Square Beside The Train Tracks) are similarly wanting, trickling out in crooning and tired cyclings, nothing more than a dream of place.

There’s a pastoral, even perhaps parochial vibe to certain moments here; “Melodia de felpa” and its later continuation shine in thinned strands of electronica, slow and simple abstractions suspended in rarified drones that brush the senses like blossoms in the air, or adrift dandelion seeds. Later, “El cascabel de plata” unrolls in soothing passages of tumbling synth lines, like distant and unseen church bells that ring and echo about the landscape, a barely detectable breeze wafting each note towards us.

Everything is dreamlike, each piece sounding as though it’s being slowly washed up on the shores of our mind, every tide a slice of time returned, every sloshing wave a moment of memory. More than happy to let it continue, closer Rain of Stars, “Iluvia de estrellas”, hardly touches the senses as it allows precious few floaty, twinkling chords to penetrate the cool void. The select flurries that do make it out of the darkness are faded, ancient in sound and sight; their place in the heavens is secure and enduring, without concern for ephemerality or transience. How many humans have lost themselves beneath them, dreaming themselves back through time under their fixed, continual gaze? Sometimes I ask the same question of Durand’s music.

Chris Doherty for HearFeel.

¡Muchas gracias por la escucha sensible! F.

NEW LP! "La niña junco" (12k)

Federico Durand - La niña Junco

label : 12k (USA)

artwork : Lola Goldstein 

design : Taylor Deupree

master : Taylor Deupree

release date : 14 April 2017

format : Vinyl LP

Argentinian musician Federico Durand returns with his 2nd full length album on 12k following 2016’s A Través Del Espejo (12k1085). Taking his already minimalist composition style Federico challenged himself by using only one synthesizer for this beautiful album of sparse, hypnotic dustiness. His talent for creating works of so much emotion out of so little attest to his concentration when working and his passion for the craft. La Niña Junco is a handwoven gem. Music with a humble origin and a deep resonating soul. Famed Argentinian artist Lola Goldstein graciously illustrated the album cover, caputuring the idea of memory and object that is so infused with Federico’s work. 

"Immersed in the beauty of the very moment, the songs for La Niña Junco were recorded in one take during two days, in a rush of inspiration. I used a small sound palette: one instrument, a Crumar Performer synthesizer along with two looping pedals and Roland Space Echo RE-201. The Crumar was my first synthesizer. I bought it many years ago and then gave it to a friend, who later lent it to my brother. After a very long time, I got it back when we moved to La Cumbre, a small town in the central mountain area of Argentina. As this instrument has a very limited but beautiful oscilator, it was rewarding to make small melodies using only its almost magical sound. I was enchanted to have the chance to play with my Crumar again: in many ways this album feels like returning to an early home. The electric noises of my old, broken keyboard, were an unexpected and musical gift and a humble proof of the passing of time." 

- Federico Durand, La Cumbre, 2017

You can purchase the vinyl and digital thorugh 12k Bandcamp: