Name: Unknown City
Brand: Sabasaba

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

MDR55

Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2024-03-08

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

5053760113720

Total Cap

Black LP

Artist

Sabasaba

Genre GB

Electronic

Label GB

Maple Death

Maple Death Records is an independent record label founded by Jonathan Clancy in 2015. Originally based in Bologna, Italy, the label is now located in both London, England and Bologna. Maple Death Records is known for its commitment to showcasing unique and innovative music from a diverse range of artists.

The label has gained recognition for its distinctive sound and uncompromising approach to releasing music. With a focus on underground and experimental genres, Maple Death Records has become a platform for emerging talent as well as established artists who push boundaries.

Distributed by The Business and Republic Of Music, Maple Death Records continues to make waves in the music industry with its carefully curated releases. Whether you're a fan of *Jonathan Clancy* or other talented musicians on the label, you can expect nothing less than exceptional sonic experiences from Maple Death Records.

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Creeping through an imaginary border, sidesteppin’ through the night like cyber phantoms eavesdropping on early morning machinery shifts, an industrial solstice for pagan mystics. After five years Torino’s mysterious SabaSaba are back with Unknown City an imaginary soundtrack for a dystopian city: digital raga, horror Exotica, half-speed techno, metallic dub and organic electronics.

The duo of Andrea Marini (synth, guitar, electronics, tapes) and Gabriele Maggiorotto (drums, percussion, effects, programming) return with their most political manifesto yet, an intricate musical essay inspired by China Miéville’s novel ‘The City And The City’, examining border control, repression, an unknown city where people move like ghosts without personality and without communicating, monitored on sight by the authorities. SabaSaba’s personal OST is a whirlwind of analog and digital instruments colliding, textured samples, syncopated drums and spiritual synth sweeps often heightened by Ambra Chiara Michelangeli’s eerie viola playing, an ancestral force resisting under a cement tower, modulars gasping for air, endlessly reverberating into noir-soul and gray landscapes. 

Like Miéville’s two imaginary cities Ul Qoma e Besźel, SabaSaba’s journey is cavernous, claustrophobic at times, but a clear sense of evasion and resistance breaks through, small flickers of light, like a cyborg calibrating himself - the hypnotic dub ambient of ‘False Speech’ - for an ecstatic liberation - the trance inducing ‘Wrists Free’ featuring UK industrial techno duo Jerome. ‘Ul Qoma’ unites Boards of Canada’s emotional detune, with On-U Sound’s terrestrial ground force, ‘Night Plotters’ kosmische elevation is chained to the ground, while ‘Guarantee Safety In The Cities’ fluctuates like a nightrider, eyes shifting left and right, a somber procession descending into grace and paranoia ; ‘Catatonia’ is a message of hope, off-kilter beats carrying solitude on an unknown path. 

Unknown City is an album for dark isolationists but also for people trying to connect, striving for freedom, be it primordial, celestial or written in dust.

Unknown City

Music GB

Discover Unknown City by Sabasaba. An intricate musical essay inspired by China Miéville’s novel ‘The City And The City’. Vinyl records available from Maple Death.