UMWeLT
by Igor Ballereau
![Rusty Hodge [SomaFM] thumbnail](https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0007263241_42.jpg)
-
Streaming + DownloadIncludes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Purchasable with gift cardDownload available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
€9 EUR or more
-
PFCD047
CD + 24bit Digital
Includes unlimited streaming of UMWeLT via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.ships out within 7 daysPurchasable with gift card€15 EUR
-
-
VIP membership
Join now to receive all the new music Pharmafabrik creates, including this release and 13 back-catalog releases, delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android. Learn more.Join Now €20 EUR/year or more
-
Full Digital Discography
Get all 35 Pharmafabrik releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of UMWeLT, Pristine, Nokturno, Tensor, Tetragram, Udkraxsha, Ptyx, Integral, and 27 more.
Excludes supporter-only releases.
Purchasable with gift card€92.50 EUR or more (50% OFF)
1. |
Umwelt - i
12:03
|
|
||
2. |
Umwelt - ii
06:56
|
|
||
3. |
Umwelt - iii
08:45
|
|
||
4. |
Umwelt - iv
13:13
|
|
about
In UMWeLT, the arrangement of sounds delimits an ever-changing space that liquefies, as if in a dream, to alter its form. A closed, fluid world, almost amniotic, crisscrossed by indistinct voices, truncated presences and obscure events. Something is going by and something is going on. As the music develops, the signal resounds, necessarily incomplete, of something experienced, already necessarily lost for itself, but whose preserved intensity resonates and spreads. An echo, a sonic ruin. Something has happened to someone, and all that remains is a vibrant trace of it.
+++
Igor Ballereau is a French composer of contemporary music. He writes primarily for the voice, often adapting the correspondence and diaries of authors such as Lewis Carroll (Lettres à des amies-enfants, 2001), Franz Kafka (Briefe an F., 2005), and Katherine Mansfield (I – the defeat of the personal, 2010). During these eighteen years, he collaborated with several instrumental and vocal ensembles, participated in various festivals, became a resident at the French Academy in Rome in 2003–2004, and founded the netlabel SHSK'H with soprano Jody Pou in New York, producing eight studio albums between 2008 and 2013. In 2021, after a seven-year silence, he re-emerged with a new musical direction, situated between electronic and acoustic worlds, darkness and enchantment—music for non-existent films and an intimate confrontation with his ghosts. Following ijkl (2022) and the seventy-minute album Ptyx (2024), UMWeLT (2026) marks a new step in this exploration.
credits
"Something has happened to someone, and all that remains is a vibrant trace of it. The only real way in is to surrender to the flow and follow it—entering a musical world almost without reference points, where you stand fascinated, a little in awe, a little alone." ~ Martin Hufner, Neue Musikzeitung
hoerbar.nmz.de/2026/04/igor-ballereau-umwelt/
"Not a simple album, but a perceptual chamber where sounds drift, unravel, and return in fragments. Igor Ballereau composes here a fluid, haunted inner world, crossed by indistinct voices, acoustic traces, and electronic mirages. A record of liquid memory, intimate cinema, and subjective ghosts." ~ Olivier Lehoux, Solénopole
solenopole.com/chronique/igor-ballereau-umwelt/
"Drawing from literary sources in earlier works, Ballereau maintains a focus on voice as structural element rather than narrative carrier. The material moves through incomplete signals, recorded fragments, and layered timbres that function as shifting perceptual fields." ~ Nicola Orlandino, SOM
www.sonofmarketing.com/2026/05/03/album-streaming-igor-baillereau-umwelt/
"You hear the blood rushing round your head. You hear sounds leaking in. You almost hear the sound of yourself thinking. And again, rather like track two, it reminds you not to discount background noise. Some of it is almost poetry. But it’s all relevant. It’s all relevant. Nothing is chaff. You just have to really look for the wheat, sometimes a little bit harder." ~ Daz Lawrence, Weird Bones
weirdbones.co.uk/igor-ballereau-umwelt/
"Umwelt is less a collection of tracks than a continuous journey through Ballereau’s inner world—drone-like, shaped by fragments of field recordings whose origins have dissolved, unfolding somewhere between introspection, enchantment, and the echo of a film that doesn’t exist." ~ Patrick Bruneel, Luminous Dash
luminousdash.be/internationaal/igor-ballereau-umwelt-pharmafabrik/
"UMWeLT gives, takes, and continuously challenges the listener to remain curiously wandering within this obscure, cinematic cloud of imagination. Using headphones is therefore strongly recommended in order to fully experience this delightful auditory journey." ~ Patsker Omaer Beguin, Da Music
damusic.be/cd/igor-ballereau-um-we-lt
+++
Video teaser: youtu.be/4PUvLoTfhkQ
+++
All tracks composed, recorded, and mastered by Igor Ballereau,
March – November 2024
Artwork by Igor Ballereau © 2025
Special thanks to Simon Šerc
Pharmafabrik
PFCD047 - 2026
www.pharmafabrik.com
license
tags
contact / help
If you like UMWeLT, you may also like:
-
-
-
Mirror at Night B-Sides
by Eric Angelo Besselsupported by 10 fans who also own “UMWeLT”
go to album -
A visceral LP centered on the subject of death; deft layers of instrumentation that blurs the line between organic and electronic.
go to album -
Graces & Muses
by Victoria WijeratneThese four works from composer Victoria Wijeratne have the broad sweep of post-rock and the gentle ache of Romantic music.
go to album -
Hushed and twinkling acoustic music as gentle as feathers drifting on a breeze—warm and beautifully melodic.
go to album -
supported by 9 fans who also own “UMWeLT”
Aepochs is an album that feels as if it exists scattered across various planes of existence. Glowing synth lines pulse in the language of alien plant life, drum pads disperse in soft patterns like the spores of mycelium; this is music that breathes and squirms and confounds the mind, and yet it never feels anything less than welcoming in all its indecipherable mystery. A reminder that sometimes it is the things we understand the least that bring the most meaning to our lives.
go to album
