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2025 Repress

2019 marks the year that Music for Freaks has officially been running for over 20 whole years. Two decades of topsy turvy, downright Freakish behaviour. How the hell did that happen?

So, what better time to delve deep into the labels vaults again and uncover more of its hidden treasures. Back in 2015, we approached some of today's most discerning producers, those who truly "get" the label's ethos from old, to let them loose on tracks old and new. It brought to the fore the "Freaks - Let's Do It Again" series of releases and we're super chuffed to bring you the 3rd in the series to kick off the label's 20th anniversary celebrations; a new collaboration with likeminded artists and we think you'll agree it's another testament to the divergent & insouciant house music that has always been the beating heart of this label.

First up, we welcome back the Chilean anti-hero Ricardo Villalobos.

When we sent Ricardo the parts to the Freaks album, "The Man Who Lived Underground" a few years ago, he sent back 5 interpretations which blew our collective minds. This is the 3rd of his journeys. Edited by head Freak, Justin Harris, it delivers a tripped out, discordant tech mix of the Freaks track, 'He's Angry' and is a wonderfully warped and highly hypnotic jam, that drives deep down into the subconscious.

The 20th anniversary wouldn't feel right without some brand spanking new music from Freaks themselves.
This track was properly hidden in the Freaks DAT vaults from the 1990's and Justin & Luke have dusted it off, mixed it down and "Unbeknown To Us" will finally see the light of day. It's safe to say Freaks have always had a timeless feel to their music and this track, despite being 20 years old as an original production, is no exception.

Next up, The Martinez Brothers make their MFF debut and to say we're chuffed to be releasing this one after 3 years of it being in the vault, is a huge understatement. There's nothing but good vibes, cranked to eleven, on this cut and the brothers have cooked up a true rip snorting tech house remix of "Time", that will charm the roof off any self-respecting club or festival tent.

And last but by no means least, fellow previous collaborators on Let's Do It Again, Part 1, Gerd Jansen and Phillip Lauer, aka Tuff City Kids, have graced us with another superb remix of a firm Freaks favourite from back in the day, "Turning Orange". The duo have whipped up an excellent stripped 808, electro-hop mix with low slung electro beats, minor key atmospherics and nostalgic 80s vocal pitch-shifts. Villalobos, Martinez Brothers, Tuff City Kidz and Freaks all on the same record? This is the type of house music madness that dreams are made of.
A fitting start to the celebrations - we reckon you'll agree!

Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble - featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children"s Choir), and dancers (members of Chicago youth dance company Move Me Soul). Where Future Unfolds is a live capture of the ensemble"s epic debut at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory on the West Side of Chicago. Recalling the spirits of Phil Cohran"s Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Eddie Gale"s Black Rhythm Happening, Archie Shepp"s Attica Blues, and Public Enemy"s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the album presents an inspired, innovative & immediate intersection of gospel, jazz, activism & 808 breaks.

Onward and upwards - the Belgian dubstep imprint Overdue maintains its super-heated release schedule with full force. With a meticulously curated artist roster and continued support by the likes of Mixmag and other vital institutions, this release yet again perfectly aligns with their vision of subculture sound system music. Spearheaded by a positively prolific artist, their fourth record features Teffa on the controls. Following up on some massive 12" releases on crucial labels such as White Peach Records and Foundation Audio, the up and coming artist furthers his status as a versatile and highly capable producer with three tracks of unadulterated sound system pressure - including a weighty collaboration with Chad Dubz.

Arming the record, "Shell It" heads straight into the matter at hand, precision engineered weaponry clocking in at 140 BPM. Drums like mountains, effortlessly heaving immense amounts of low-end, smoothly embedded on silky pad swells. Fusing old-school elements with the present like few others, the lively arrangement does the rest to keep the crowd aflame without end. Music with an attitude - rewinds assured.

Fasten your seatbelts as the record kicks into overdrive once again with "Sludge" as faint police sirens and reverberate into oblivion only for it to implode into an instant dubstep classic. Driven by its ridiculously effective and minimal instrumentation, the underground unravels itself in sonic form. Spacious pressure wave emissions, especially primed for the dance.

Stepping up to the title track, "Illegal" tops off the 12" most beautifully - packed with Grime and Breaks influences and mesmeric melodies. As unshackled 808's pound away alongside a murderous set of percussions, the electronic soundscape treads through hypnotic harmonies and dance-inducing groove - Teffa signature style at it's finest.

LTD to 300 / SPLATTER VINYL. Planet Mu Recording artist, Gobstopper label boss, and Boxed club night founder Mr.Mitch provides the third PRESSURE release of 2019. This strictly limited, blue and yellow splattered vinyl platter is futurist dancehall at its most exhilaratingly demented. Random synth patterns, chaotic bleep emissions and all round oscillating madness ensures this furiously fresh track, flows freakily, like a bogle frenzied droid transmitting from Kingston, Jamaica, year 2049. Kevin Martin aka The Bug, nagged Mitch into submission, to release this Acid Ragga killer, after the PRESSURE label CEO, heard ‘Not Modular’ standing out clearly from Mitch’s gobsmacking one hour ‘Techno Dancehall Mix’ at the end of 2018. And as a tribute to South East London don dada Mitch, The Bug himself decided to slice, splice and dice ’Not Modular’ into two additional atomised remixes. The Bug’s ‘Straight’ remix, is sub aquatic bashment, pulsating deeply from the bottom of the ocean, buried in a blizzard of white noise and disembodied, hypnotic chimes, with panic sirens set to stun. Whilst the ‘Raw remix’ is no less disorientating and funky, sounding like Lenky’s classic ‘Diwali’ riddim rewritten by an 808 clap addict, with hips set to full rotation. Conclusively alien and ridiculously infectious.

„Pitcher“ is Nadia D’Alò’s very first solo appearance on vinyl. Playful forwarding drums running hand in hand with a laid back wuthering synth line, carrying her melting voice right in it´s fountain. „Benzin“ on the flip side is a much slower, charming impish early morning jam by INIT (D’Alò & Benedikt Frey), based on a simple 808 infrastructure that leaves space for weird guitar riffs, wavy vocals and a bassy undercoat.

Spearheaded by James Dean Brown (also known from Perlon's Narcotic Syntax) and Victor Sol, and featuring other rotating members, Hypnobeat is a true product of the open-ended spirit of DIY music that proliferated in the 1980s. The prescient project championed deft, machine-powered rhythm programming as its modus operandi long before the practice would become a dominant global cultural form. Since Hypnobeat was revived in 2012 with Helena Hauff joining JDB on stage for improvised live performances based on one 707 and three 808s, there have been a string of archival releases shining a light on the early and more recently recorded works of this forward-thinking venture.

This latest collection for Artificial Dance comprises three freshly unearthed iterations. Long-form A-side track 'Polychrome Desert' is a pure percussive exercise, programmed and recorded by JDB in 1986 with a chain of three 808s filling out a stereo panorama. The intention was to create a pure, meditative rhythm drawing on African influences and reinterpreted through what was then the music technology of the future. 'Spies In Malaysia' is a live recording from a concert Hypnobeat performed in 1985. Its lurid melodic passages and crunchy percussive blasts formed the closing track of the set, which was met with rapturous response. Recorded in the same year, 'Sumatra Railway' was the product of an impromptu session between JDB and Victor Sol. The song finds the pair exploring a more shadowy, surf-inspired sound, laden with echo and freewheeling through seven minutes of sun-kissed, subtly tropical subversion.

With each successive release, the plot surrounding Hypnobeat thickens in a tangle of 1/4' jack cables and ancient effect pedals. From its shifting line-up to the diverse sonic repertoire, it remains one of the wondrous plants of German electronic music in the pre-techno era.

Influential Chicago House DJ/producer Parris Mitchell teams up with Siberian producer-singer-songwriter and DJ Nina Kraviz on ‘Feel My Butterfly’ - their debut release on Riva Starr’s acclaimed Snatch! RAW imprint as part of a collaboration with Dance Mania, out 28th June 2019.

The special 2 track vinyl and digital release sees Kraviz and Mitchell officially team up for the first time with their only other release encounter being in 2014 when Kraviz remixed Mitchell’s ‘The Track Stars’, released via Berlin-based label Deep Moves.

The result of the rare partnership is one to be relished, producing ‘Feel My Butterfly’ – a heady acid-laden dancefloor-ready masterpiece comprising of a sick ghetto house groove, an abundance of squelchy TB-303 acidlines and Kraviz’s distinctive spoken word vocal throughout.

To complement the Original Mix, Berlin’s DJ Krime steps up to deliver his own interpretation of the track for the B-side, delivering a powerful peak-time TR-808-tinged rework that boasts the original’s key elements.

Drittes Album des norwegischen Produzenten Andre Bratten nach den Vorgängern "Be A Man You Ant" (2013) und "Gode" (2015). Inspiriert von Boards Of Canada, Autechre und den Drexciya-Projekten The Other People Place und Transllusion, zaubert Bratten mit 808, Sequenzer, Reel-To-Reel-Tape und einem 1980er Mischpult aus den ABBA-Studios sechs bezaubernd-melodische Techno-Tunes, von denen einige bereits 2018 in einer limitierten 12"-Miniserie erschienen waren.

Welcome to the deeper end of the Hugh Mane spectrum. Mane’s third outing on Running Back captures his love for the spirit of early Detroit techno, IDM’s ambient aspects, the philosophy of the acid house experience and a natural production flow. Four tracks for fans of Larry Heard, Jungle Sounds, Nu Groove and the very early British response to that. Emotions electric. Vintage voodoo with modern spells. Equipment used:
Child Of Love: Lots of Alpha Juno 2 - which with the editor is such an underrated gem of a synth.
Everything Question: 808, Juno 60, Matrix brute. a big f*ck off vintage reverb
Vintage Voodoo: Alpha Juno 2, Oberheim DX for snare & toms, 909 claps, Korg DD1 hats
Free To Spend: Korg DD1 congas, snare and hats 808, Alpha Juno 2

For the 8th installment on Lossless Music's Dope Plates sub-label sees label boss Soul Intent drop 3 rave and jungle infused gems.

With Jungle making a come back Soul Intent thought it was important for the kids to not forget about rave and hardcore so "The Old Skool Is So Kool" was born. Five minutes of breakbeat hardcore and rave nostalgia... so much so when playing it out in clubs Soul Intent regularly gets ravers asking "which Ratpack tune is this again?".

"Lick Down" is an out'n'out classic amen and 808 bass roller (and we mean roller!) while "Got The Music" blends old and old vibes and production techniques resulting in a very fresh and unique sounding track.

Spread out over two 12"vinyls - this is the result from a two day recording session in Brussels by the duo of Beau Wanzer & Maoupa Mazzocchetti. 25 minutes of dance floor perversions that tackle an array of rhythmic forms. Sludgy synths, serrated percussion and viscous distortion goops over leviathan rhythms

Beau says, “We hooked everything up and just pushed play. We didn’t really discuss much about the process….it was very ‘spur of the moment’.” The equipment set up included a Roland TR-808, TR-606, SH-101, CR-78, CR-8000, two Syncussions and effects. Each EP contains 25 minutes of dance floor perversions that tackle an array of rhythmic forms. Sludgy synths, serrated percussion and viscous distortion goops over leviathan rhythms

Pumping West Coast electro in a new jacket, with bouncing 808's, driving acid, and old school futuristic vocoders.. Kleptocracy's are taking over the planet and humans are getting entangled in their own web. We need some extraterrestrial help. In the Thee J Johanz remix a bunch of oversexed electro disco aliens are coming to save the planet by love and destruction. Justin Cudmore (Bunker NY) is taking it to a darker space in his more abstract and highly effective remix. Three massive 808 floor fillers!

Musique Exotique’s Ayden Vice teams up with Czech upcoming star Andreas Rund and The Egyptian Lover to create a hypnotic fusion where West meets East, meets Middle-East. The Egyptian Lover leverages this hypnosis and casts some of his own with his signature 808 sound and enchanting vocals, a serenade if you will, which is guaranteed to seduce the freakiest of listeners.

Presenting 'Fire Zone'. Album written, produced & mixed by Zane Reynolds and pressed on 180g vinyl, by Ekster. Coming out May 2019, including poster 57x57cm artwork by the artist. Mastered & cut by Helmut Erler at Dubplates & Mastering.

The music of Zane Reynolds AKA SFV Acid celebrates lysergic life in small town America. His are urban hallucinations. Conceived in 'business parks, strip malls', in 'blue collar luxury'. On a diet of 'diner burgers'. From the self-released, hand-painted cassettes of his high school years, he has moved to work commissioned by locals 100% Silk, Japan`s Big Love, and Dutch imprint, BAKK. His latest long-player, Fire Zone, will be issued by Belgian label, Ekster.

The album continues to reference Zane's Los Angeles home, and in this case the devastation that rages there every Summer. The concept however, reaching away from the horror and flames, to offer an escape.

There are moments, interludes, that hint at, and hide, something darker. Where drone twists from tape hiss. Bends. Out of shape. Where chords distort. Their degraded edges disintegrating. Charred perhaps But Ai welcomes you to 'San Fernando Valley', and a low-riding 808 booms. Less L.A. More Overtown, or Liberty City. Its racing booty bass calmed by wind chimes. The rapid Electro-Funk clip countered by modal synths. Its sunny disposition reflecting the SFV climate.

Playful rhymes, fragmented dialogue, and answer phone messages, rub up against Rave sirens. Roland`s silver box squeezes out a Sci-Fi Jazz. Through ping-ponging percussion. Through a drum and bass battery. Punched by keys that wanna be horns. Rewinds that create a bin-blowing vacuum. Shore-line samples washing the more head-nodding tempos. Euphoria rising while a perfect beat pops and locks. (text: Robert Harris)

After the praise for Morning Worship, released back in 2015 on Royal Oak, Portuguese duo Sabre returns to releases with the EP "Fora de Turf", pointing directly towards the dance floor. There is in "Fora de Turf" a certain idea of transient existence as a series of car journeys cruising the night with no clear sense of direction, recalling the gradual disappearance of public space and loss of community. The weight of Kraut references such as Kraftwerk's Autobahn or Stratosfear by Tangerine Dream is somehow clear in its alignment with a 1995 Carl Craig who had just released Landcruising

On the A side, 'Condor Sense' and 'Sem Terra'. The first one is a banger built around broken beats and repetitive synth chords that guide us through the drone landscapes on the background, very clearly marked by the 808's rhythms. The second one is anchored in a broken kick and on a growing acid line, punctuated by warm chords and some sliced pads that reminds us of the pulsating heart of the city of Detroit.

On the B side, "Condor Senses" and "Driving Bruno" got some sort of a gliding character. "Condor Senses" is the only track on the EP to accept the classic four-on-the-floor to guide some dubby chords along a quieter landscape where organic and natural sounds lurk. Is it dawn arriving No. On the last track of the album, "Driving Bruno," Sabre get in the car and step on the throttle, full speed, on a bassline that could resemble some synthwave releases if synthwave had been lucky enough to be born a decade earlier and in the center of the state of Michigan.

Lurking in the shadows of the underground since 2013, subtly shifting trends and creating new bass cultures with a firmly understated frame of mind, Itinerant Dubs resurface with three new dance experiments that cross the boundaries and join the dots with brutal simplicity of thought. No tricks, cheap thrills or passing tastes; this is pure UK heat coming straight from the machines to your needle. The opener, "Dub This", lashes out heavy 808 percussion amid a blur of sparse, jagged licks of acid, while "Human Emulation" uses electro science as its platform for dancehall annihilation, leaving "Three Four" to linger more placidly in a hazy, mid-air smoke that we've come to recognise as the apex Itinerant Dubs sound. Murderous and iconic. The shadows resurface.

moogmemory is the latest album from multi-award winning pianist and composer Matthew Bourne, who has turned his considerable talents to the world of analogue synthesizers.

Very much in demand as a collaborator and co-conspirator, Bourne has his fingerprints on a huge number of projects, having worked with artists as diverse as John Zorn, Annette Peacock, Nils Frahm, Nostalgia 77, Amon Tobin and Broadway Project.

Growing from spontaneous improvised live performances, the album took shape in the studio as Bourne explored and moulded the vast sonic possibilities of voltage-controlled oscillators, creating beautiful, brooding landscapes of thick impasto and translucent sunbursts.

The seed for this project was planted when Bourne acquired an uncooperative 1982 Memorymoog, having it painstakingly modified and upgraded by Rudi Linhard in Germany .

Created without the use of computers or sequencers,Moogmemory is the first album to be recorded using only the Lintronics Advanced Memorymoog.

Bourne will tour moogmemory in collaboration with brilliant visual artist Michael England, who has worked with Autechre, Bola, Leila, Demdike Stare and many more.

The album will be available on CD and as a limited edition LP (with CD) in an intricate embossed sleeve designed by England.

Album press release written by Bourne fan Graham Massey (808 State).

The album follows the critical success of Radioland: Radio-Activity Revisited, a visceral live audio/visual experience created to mark the 40th anniversary of Kraftwerk's seminal album, with Franck Vigroux and video artist Antoine Schmitt.

Bourne's first solo studio album, Montauk Variations (The Sunday Times' Leftfield Album of the Year in 2012), was celebrated for its sense of stillness and serenity, marking an important musical turning point in his career and the beginning of a new creative direction.

Tracks from Montauk Variations have appeared on compilations by Bonobo and Needwant.

The First Release On Power Trio, The New Label From Ben Nevile Dedicated To A Return To Musicality. More Than 15 Years Ago This Montreal-based Artist Created Many Of The Seminal Deep, Minimal Tracks For Labels Such As Mosaic, Telegraph, Context, Background, And Vancouver's Nordic Trax. Ben's Contributions To Music Extend Into The Technical Realm As One Of The Programmers Of Max/msp, The Signal Processing Environment Integrated Into Ableton. But As A Musician In The Studio, This Artist's Work Is Intentionally Not About Technology. It's About Performing Songs That Tell A Story. The Three Tracks On This Power Trio Record Are Inspired By Physical Instruments And Acoustic Space. The Power Trio Is An 808, A Rhodes Piano, And A Bass, With Stunning Saxophone By Erk Hove. Vital Sales Points: - Previous Releases On Mosaic, Telegraph, Context, Nordic Trax

Cement returns with its second story - this time delving deeper into the dub techno abyss on the A-side with Montreal veteran Mateo Murphy's banger "Black River". It has peak hour written all over it with its full-on sound and tantilising dub atmosphere; a dark flowing bassline builds into a droney crescendo. Next Sonitus Eco of Silent Season, his label HAAV and the crucial Verdant delivers a coup de grace of dub techno. Stripped back with an effective 808 pattern, his tenacity with pads and atmospheric space echo gives "Ruffcut" its character and leaves you wanting more.
On the flip side, the elusive CMNT returns for another arpeggio-laden journey. With a constant kick and airy hats pattern, occasional stabs, melodic notes and some random human voices give texture to "White Heat".
Finally, label founder Caspian Rabone's electro moniker Fourmatic, drops a spacey electro workout "Ectosketch". Playing with tonal rhythms, the track unveils awkward synth hooks and metallic strings to keep things edgey.

This EP focuses on the group's prescient dance-floor DIN-sync workouts which share sensibilities with contemporaneous early Detroit experiments by Juan Atkin's Cybotron, Ron Hardy's visionary Kikrokos tape edit, Shoc Corridor's extended 808
exercises, and 90s Techno Pop by Haruomi Hosono. Rounding off the EP is the existential electronic soul ballad Words. Remastered from the original reels, 45rpm DMM pressing.

Kansas City, 1983: a band formed, wires connected and synapses fired. Three friends, tired of guitar/bass/drums rock started jamming with newly acquired synths and Roland TR 808. They called themselves Short-Term Memory. Thanks to the vanguard technology of the time, these electronic instruments spoke to each other, and Jim Skeel, John Paul & Robert Duckworth could program their instruments, riding the DIN-sync wave. Weekly jams became more ambitious, and in 1983 they released their first album Every Head Needs Cleaning on their own Silly Poodle Music label. Over the 80s members drifted in and out of the group, and they released two cassettes, an LP and a 7' EP. By the 90s Jim Skeel was at the helm, the only original member, and joined by Tim Higgins he continued to record in MIDI mode for a few years before pulling the plug, leaving recordings and memories that resisted the great fadeout of time, and today sound vibrant and more visionary than ever.