Title : The Intimate Overlap
Artist : o[rlawren]
Formats : CD, Digital
Date : 2025
Label : Dronarivm/Fonodroom
a structure in naming
a nearness to the world
“The record unfolds like a conversation between matter and perception, exploring how sound inhabits the body, how memory and texture overlap,
how listening becomes an act of attunement to the world around us.
It’s a music that rejects hierarchy.
Every sound, no matter how faint, is treated as essential. This is what gives the album its strange intimacy: the sense that everything we hear is happening not in front of us, but with us, at the same molecular level.”
Escala de Grisos - full review is here
“Amazing album !”
Emilia Tapprest - nvisible.studio
“Thanks for the music. I love it.”
Nick Luscombe - New Ratio/Mscty Space, Tokyo
“Listened to The Intimate Overlap this past weekend and it is a genuinely stunning work of electronic music.
It’s really a uniquely emotional and enveloping experience.”
Matt Abajian
“I really like the music.”
Elizabeth Alker - BBC 3 Unclassified
“What a wonderful record you made, thanks for bringing this music, The Intimate Overlap, it made my day.”
Johan G. Steller
“I admire your music very much and I commend you for continuing to fight the good fight and bring
quality music into the world.”
Ron Shepper - Textura
“Tui’s introspective melodies are paired with clusters of electronic and acoustic sound, appearing and disappearing in a shift that is analogous to sitting in a meadow - as your awareness senses the changes of the day all around you, without concern to their origin or destination.
And that is the key to Orla Wren’s music – one is completely relaxed in it - like a blanket around you.
There is an amazing animism in his work and soon I'll be mostly inside in the recovery that this music brings and most likely near the fire.
And I know I'll have the warmth and life of this music to transport me to a meadow in some other world.
Isn't this the finest state we wish to achieve in listening?”
Stephen Spera - LOOP - full review is here
“The music cannot be described in words.
I consider myself lucky to have acquired two copies of these magical recordings.
What I don't understand is... why is there only an edition of 120 copies of such magnificent music?”.
Wolfgang Spelmans
“I can’t stop listening to both of these.”
George - 8fold
“Instant buy as usual. Thank you for the music, dear Tui!”
Gosh Snobo - VINYLLA.LV
The Intimate Overlap is the first of two simultaneous album releases from Dutch based label Dronarivm/Fonodroom from the Scottish based sound artist and electro-acoustic musician o[rlawren] and almost nine years since the label issued his 2016 album Branches, a collaborative album with French guitarist Cyril Secq.
Active for over two decades in the electronic music scene, o[rlawren] has developed a distinctive and intuitive approach to emotional and intimate details that unfold in his electroacoustic constructions, documented in a string of solo and collaborative releases.
Working with field recordings, acousmatic and modular synthesis techniques, The Intimate Overlap is presented in a suite of two parts
‘a structure in naming’ and ‘a nearness to the world’ over four longform pieces covering the album’s 73 minute running time.
Created over a nine year period as a delicate micro-drama of shifting proximities, each holding onto their roots,
folding, seeking nutrients, learning and unlearning.
An ecological relationship with micro sounds that are at once ecstatic, animated, tentative and visceral.
A neurodivergent yearning for new ways to connect, articulate and circulate.
An ecology of the senses in a music used as language.
a structure in naming
i. rhizomatic choreography [primitivistic touch]
ii. senses as limbs [an agreement of footsteps]
a nearness to the world
iii. the rhythm of the dividing pair [tender aspect]
iv. each to mine each [folding, every meaningful embrace]
Layout & design by Tui.
Sculptures by Norihiko Terayama, from his works Crust of the Polygon [studio-note.com].
Tui - eurorack modular system [make noise, instruo, pladask elektrisk, mutable instruments], monophonic synthesizer,
critter & guitari pocket piano, hikari monos, soma terra, wooden whistle, dilruba, clarinet, acoustic guitar, piano, maxforlive,
ableton live suite 12, field recordings.
Cyril Secq - charango (iii).
Claire Whyte - vocals (ii).
Aaron Martin - cello (i, iii).
Katie English - flute (i).
Mastered by Tui at High Todholes,
Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland.
Thank you to Norihiko, Cyril, Claire, Aaron, Katie, Dmitry and Artém.
“The temple bell stops, but the sound keeps coming out of the flowers”.
matsuo basho/eya klp