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It was only a matter of time before Bristol's most exciting purveyor of fast-not-hard atmospheric jungle landed on Time Is Now. Artificial Red - otherwise known as George Young - specialises in the genre's softer side, with each release immersing its listener in transcendental worlds that seem at once mechanical and organic. Grit EP is jungle with colour - watercolour - each track stained with shades of orange, yellow, blue and green. Whilst some feature raw percussive techniques to give them a raucous, club-focused edge, others incorporate soulful female vocals and keep things minimal. Whatever your taste, Grit EP might just be thing you didn't know you were looking for.

2023 Repress

After his amazing EP on Omerta Records, Bristol based Artificial Red delivers 3 tracks for 3AM Eternal 04. Side A "Mystics" brings the vibes right away! Ambient soundscapes mixed with Hardcore amens and deep subs. Energetic yet meditative B1 "Imy From The Fruit Farm" goes even deeper. Lush ambient pulling you in over subtle breaks, flowing atmospheric jungle. B2 "Dragnet" is another full on amen choppage tune but with subtle guitar licks and wavey atmospherics.

As humankind strives to create artificial intelligence what will faith, love, or morality look like to a nascent consciousness?
Will it be capable of understanding its creators who often hold logic and superstition within themselves?
In return how will humans comprehend its hallucinations?
And the Sun, a ball of hot plasma oblivious to our existence continually burns hydrogen until it runs out and swallows its three closest neighbours.

This project seeks connections between what is happening in biogenetics (cloning, biomechanical grafts), in art (the body as a territory to be redesigned), and all modern practices of intervention in music such as remixing, cutting and pasting, sampling.
To consider the sonic landscape as an unstable, moving cell culture, which allows experimentation on the body of musical pieces, on their chemical composition in an entirely artificial way. Surgical score, altered rhythms, reworkings.
Music is a mirror of what is happening in our time.

SKYLAX RECORDS proudly unveils the final chapter in its monumental 4-part saga — SKYLAX BLACK 4: Enlightenment Theory. This visionary series, bringing together two of France’s most iconic electronic artists — ARNAUD REBOTINI and ACID WASHED — was never just a collection of records. It was a journey through the deepest layers of the underground — a conceptual project where each release was a coded message, each track a fragment of a greater whole. On the A-side, Enlightenment Theory explodes with fierce urgency — an anthem forged in the spirit of Underground Resistance, echoing the soulful intensity of early ’90s Detroit without imitation. It’s bold, emotional, and militantly underground — a future classic cloaked in defiance and elegance. On the B-side: B1. Space Is The Place channels the weightless gravity of dub techno at its purest — all echo chambers and endless delay, a direct line to the Berlin school of Basic Channel, Maurizio, and Deepchord. B2. Beyond Current Biological Constraints closes the chapter in deep space — an electro masterwork evoking Drexciya, full of aquatic melancholy and cybernetic funk. It’s not retro — it’s timeless. With this last installment, the puzzle is complete. The meaning is revealed: R.A.V.E. — four records forming one powerful word. One timeless idea. A tribute to everything this culture stands for: raw energy, emotional truth, sonic innovation, and spiritual depth. This project could only be born on SKYLAX RECORDS — a label that has always stood apart. Uncompromising. Devoted to physical formats. Fiercely loyal to the culture. While others chase trends, SKYLAX continues to chart a different course — one rooted in the sacred codes of house, techno, electro, and beyond. It is no exaggeration to say that SKYLAX is one of the last true purist strongholds of underground music — and this series, with its layered meanings and fearless artistry, is proof. From Redshifts to Blueshifts to Artificial Darwinism then Vision Quest, every chapter has pointed toward this moment. Now, with Enlightenment Theory, the full vision is revealed. RAVE is not just a word — it is the truth. A philosophy. A myth reborn. The circle is complete. The message endures. The legacy lives on.

I think "Divide & Conquer" is so far the only tune on Future Retro London that I've signed after hearing it on social media. Friske posted a clip on his Instagram profile of a tune he was working on at the time and I instantly messaged him asking about the tune and what the plans were for it. He was making it with his own label, Requisite Music, in mind but thankfully was willing to let me have it for my label when it was done. The tune blew my mind when I first heard it, and I knew that it was something that I needed to release. I've been a big fan of Friske's music for years so it's great to finally have him on the label, alongside a remix done by Gremlinz & Rumbleton.

Around the same time as that, IJO messaged me on SoundCloud with a bunch of unsigned material, after I'd earlier expressed interest in having his music on the label. Of the tracks he sent me, two called "Glitter" & "Mark 11" caught my interest but out of curiosity, I asked him if he could combine the drums from "Glitter" with the melodies & sounds from "Mark 11" which he did and it sounded fantastic. I wanted to get someone to remix the tune and when I asked IJO's opinion on who he wants to remix it, he suggested Artificial Red, who I already had music coming on the label from, so it made sense to ask him, he was up for it and he's done a cracking version of "Mark 11".

Big thanks to Friske & IJO for their original tunes, to Gremlinz, Rumbleton & Artificial Red for their work on their remixes and to social media for actually being something useful!

Two fresh crystalline cuts of euphoric and uplifting jungle. Contemplative, affirming and triumphant – Eusebeia delivers a tastefully jovial track that stays grounded despite being high spirited. Both tracks are enduring due to their sense of awe and wonder which welcomes the listener in, rather than relying on overt hype and derivative tropes and devices to engage the listener.

Slave To Society (ex AnD) returns to Natural Selection with a white-hot industrial Techno EP, entitled 'Ai Invasion', accompanied by an IDM-infused remix from hard electronica duo; Somatic Responses.



Format : 12" Vinyl / Digital



Mastered by Dadub Studios, Berlin. Cut by Simon at The Exchange Vinyl.



After a decade of redefining techno dance floors as AnD, Andrew Bowen returned to his experimental, hardware-focused roots as Slave To Society in October 2019. Since then he has seen his music released by highly revered institutions in the world of hard techno, noise, breakcore, IDM and industrial electronica, such as PRSPCT, Pure Hate, Ohm Resistance and BANK Records NYC. After forming a close connection to Natural Selection in recent years, Slave To Society returns to the London based imprint after releasing via their VA compilation 'NSUKR' with his track 'Tundra', followed by his remix of Kamikaze Space Programme's 'Dust To Dust' from his physical EP entitled, "Ashes to Ashes, Dust To Dust", released on Natural Selection in 2022.

In the form of a 4-track physical and digital EP, 'Ai Invasion' is a sonic exploration of the symbiotic relationship between humanity and technology.

Slave To Society uses carefully designed futuristic soundscapes and atmospheric textures, layered with AI generated vocals, combined with heavy and fiercely unpredictable drum elements.

Expect advanced, experimental hard techno and noise, fused with powerful low-end muscle, raging hi-hats, fragmented percussion and augmented amens.

The release also features a razor sharp and well-placed remix of track B1 - 'Robot Dementia', courtesy of legendary hard industrial electronica duo; Somatic Responses.

In true Slave To Society fashion, all rules and boundaries are smashed to pieces and all tracks are equally suitable for blasting through the world's biggest club systems and rigs as they are for home listening.

'Ai Invasion' challenges listeners to question the impact of artificial intelligence on our society and the implications of our relentless pursuit of technological advancement.

Debut full length vinyl from the UK/Italian duo of Ecka Mordecai and Valerio Tricoli, working together as Mordecoli. Individually these two travellers have carved out a path of ghostly musique concrete (Tricoli) and textural cello wandering (Mordecai). Alter is proud to present the album Château Mordécoly a result of two musicians (and friends) coming together to explore the middle ground of their individual investigations.

The results of a red wine induced residency at London’s Cafe Oto, Château Mordécoly is a panoramic audio field exploring both the physicality of sound, informed by the voice, cello and pictish harp of Mordecai, and the artificial manipulations of Tricoli’s revox tape machine. The delicate tension between the physical ‘real’ and the distortive ‘new’ leverages this release far beyond a tipsy residency and shifts it into a top tier electroacoustic take on the zeitgeist. Solo cello and voice appear rooted in the timbre of time. The magnetic tape is both a friend and covert manipulator.

The physical elements open themselves to disfigurement as a means of propagating the fantastical audio that unfolds from the initial enquiry. There’s no witchery or wizardry on part of either player but rather a symbiotic passing of the baton as the line between the real and the non-real flow in and out of themselves. The results are at once sedate, shocking and subversive.

Château Mordécoly is a disembodied sonic landscape; a phantasmagorical world of fantasy unfolds as the delicate beauty of Mordecai’s playing and singing is transformed into a playful and unusual landscape. Epoch’s are evoked as the visual stimuli resulting from these alchemical transformations conjure everything from a haunted house to the Middle Ages.

Jazz music has more than its fair share of overshadowed figures that whilst contributing much to the music have little presence in its collective conscious. One such musician is the talented multi-reedist, Sahib Shihab. Born Edmond Gregory, as he was known before he adopted the Muslim faith in 1946, Sahib Shihab's music background shows a deep and significant evolution, influenced by Thelonious Monk, Dizzie Gillespie (his experience in Dizzie's band marked Sahib's switch to Baritone, the instrument he became most readily associated with), and above all by Charlie Parker's Bop. Had it not been for the post-war migration of many top American jazz musicians to Europe, it is quite likely that the legendary Clarke-Boland Big Band might never come into existence. Sahib, one of this musicians disillusioned with the politics and racism of the United States, accepted to join the band of Quincy Jones for an European tour in 1959. When the tour ended, Shihab he remained in Europe where he joined, in 1961, the Clarke-Boland Big Band. The collection 'Companionship', whose line up consists of seven elements which derives from this original band, spotlights the consummate musicianship and individuality of Sahib Shihab and is testimony to his special musical gifts - not only as a top-rank flautist and baritone saxophone but also as a composer. Furthermore, it provides a welcome reminder of the high quality of the Clarke-Boland Big Band's rhythm section, the lively style of vibraphonist Fats Sadi and the power and personality of two of the C-BBB's horn-playing stalwarts, Benny Bailey and Ake Persson. Here's a real rarity, surely a desert island disc. This double album has it all from frantic banging percussive workouts to modal numbers to beautiful ballads. It's a staggeringly good piece of music and worth every penny of the price tag it commands. Let's have a look to the most significant pieces. Francy Boland's "Om Mani Padme Hum", taken from a Tibetan prayer, shows Shihab in exuberant mood, playing against a vigorous percussion background and making dramatic use of his special technique of combining voice and flute. Boland contributes an incisive, effervescent solo. "Bohemia After Dark", a classic original by bassist Oscar Pettiford which he first recorded back in August 1955, finds Shihab in exultant form on baritone. "Companionship" has a Bossa Nova beat and features Bailey on flugelhorn and Shihab on flute, playing with a limpid, floating sound. Bailey's minor-key original, "Stoned Ghosts" was, he says, inspired by listening to some music written by Bela Bartok before he emigrated to the United States. The piece has an infectious back-beat pulse and showcases the superb walking technique of Jimmy Woode. In "Con Alma" Shihab's mellow flute set against a churning 12/8 beat in this stylish Boland arrangement. Woode's performance of the superb Mei Torme ballad, "Born To Be Blue", reveals his great affection for the song. "lt is the perfect combination," he says, "a beautiful melody married to a great lyric. I really love that tune." It is a song of rueful resignation, putting a brave face on the blues. "Balafon" is an up-tempo Francy Boland original written for the French mime artist, Marcel Marceau. The rhythm section really cooks on this track with Kenny Clarke's cymbal work outstanding. Boland's solo here is notable for its neat, left hand punctuations. "Calypso Blues" has been written by Nat King Cole and Don George. lt tells the wry and wistful tale of a Trinidadian in New York desperately homesick for the land where everything 5 so much cheaper (in New York "a dollar buy, a cup of coffee and a ham on rye") and the girls more natural than the artificial, painted beauties of New York. Woode's composition, "Sconsolato" is a haunting theme in A minor and it brings to a close a truly fascinating album. This is dynamic music played with vigour, verve and vitality - and it is an enormous pleasure to rediscover it. A shadowy fugitive from his home in the land of jazz, Sahib Shihab remains a true unsung figure, worthy of more attention. With his equally expert technique on Baritone, Flute, Alto and Soprano saxophones and his capacity to adapt easily to a variety of musical settings. His warm, individual, singsong sound in improvisation and his unusual and interesting compositions mark him out as a hidden treasure in the dusty corners of jazz archive.

Pleasure, shame, and survival often arrive tangled together, indistinguishable in the moment. Camgirl, from Crippling Alcoholism, takes that entanglement as its starting point. Rather than separating desire from damage, the record allows them to coexist, tracing a path through obsession, performance, and persistence without offering clean resolution.
Camgirl is the 2025 breakthrough album from Boston’s Crippling Alcoholism, a record that frames pop immediacy against obsession, endurance, and collapse. Built from ear-wormy hooks and abrasive noise rock textures, the album smuggles grotesque and confrontational subject matter into songs that remain deliberately melodic. Pleasure and revulsion blend throughout, with choruses that linger even as the lyrics refuse comfort.

Released on September 12, 2025, Camgirl follows a loose narrative centered on a sex worker moving through cycles of exploitation and survival, treating intimacy as spectacle and visibility as threat. Songs flicker between desire and despair, confession and performance, flooded with artificial light. Despite its subject matter, the record resists nihilism. Its closing moments arrive quietly triumphant, not through escape or redemption, but through persistence itself.
Originally released on vinyl by Portrayal of Guilt Records, the first pressing of Camgirl sold out quickly. The Flenser reissue makes the album widely available for the first time, reaffirming it as a defining statement from a band operating at the intersection of pop form, noise, and lived experience.
Press Quotes

Camgirl proves that Crippling Alcoholism can evolve without losing their edge, and this record is a dark, irresistible bop. - Lambgoat
Elements of goth rock and melancholic vocals call back to loud rock while blending with an overall instrumental field brimming with energy. - Outside noise
Blurring the lines between outsider noise rock and dark glamorous synth-laden pop under a deceptively alluring glow… compulsively, squirmingly catchy. - The Progressive

Pleasure, shame, and survival often arrive tangled together, indistinguishable in the moment. Camgirl, from Crippling Alcoholism, takes that entanglement as its starting point. Rather than separating desire from damage, the record allows them to coexist, tracing a path through obsession, performance, and persistence without offering clean resolution.
Camgirl is the 2025 breakthrough album from Boston’s Crippling Alcoholism, a record that frames pop immediacy against obsession, endurance, and collapse. Built from ear-wormy hooks and abrasive noise rock textures, the album smuggles grotesque and confrontational subject matter into songs that remain deliberately melodic. Pleasure and revulsion blend throughout, with choruses that linger even as the lyrics refuse comfort.

Released on September 12, 2025, Camgirl follows a loose narrative centered on a sex worker moving through cycles of exploitation and survival, treating intimacy as spectacle and visibility as threat. Songs flicker between desire and despair, confession and performance, flooded with artificial light. Despite its subject matter, the record resists nihilism. Its closing moments arrive quietly triumphant, not through escape or redemption, but through persistence itself.
Originally released on vinyl by Portrayal of Guilt Records, the first pressing of Camgirl sold out quickly. The Flenser reissue makes the album widely available for the first time, reaffirming it as a defining statement from a band operating at the intersection of pop form, noise, and lived experience.
Press Quotes

Camgirl proves that Crippling Alcoholism can evolve without losing their edge, and this record is a dark, irresistible bop. - Lambgoat
Elements of goth rock and melancholic vocals call back to loud rock while blending with an overall instrumental field brimming with energy. - Outside noise
Blurring the lines between outsider noise rock and dark glamorous synth-laden pop under a deceptively alluring glow… compulsively, squirmingly catchy. - The Progressive

Pleasure, shame, and survival often arrive tangled together, indistinguishable in the moment. Camgirl, from Crippling Alcoholism, takes that entanglement as its starting point. Rather than separating desire from damage, the record allows them to coexist, tracing a path through obsession, performance, and persistence without offering clean resolution.
Camgirl is the 2025 breakthrough album from Boston’s Crippling Alcoholism, a record that frames pop immediacy against obsession, endurance, and collapse. Built from ear-wormy hooks and abrasive noise rock textures, the album smuggles grotesque and confrontational subject matter into songs that remain deliberately melodic. Pleasure and revulsion blend throughout, with choruses that linger even as the lyrics refuse comfort.

Released on September 12, 2025, Camgirl follows a loose narrative centered on a sex worker moving through cycles of exploitation and survival, treating intimacy as spectacle and visibility as threat. Songs flicker between desire and despair, confession and performance, flooded with artificial light. Despite its subject matter, the record resists nihilism. Its closing moments arrive quietly triumphant, not through escape or redemption, but through persistence itself.
Originally released on vinyl by Portrayal of Guilt Records, the first pressing of Camgirl sold out quickly. The Flenser reissue makes the album widely available for the first time, reaffirming it as a defining statement from a band operating at the intersection of pop form, noise, and lived experience.
Press Quotes

Camgirl proves that Crippling Alcoholism can evolve without losing their edge, and this record is a dark, irresistible bop. - Lambgoat
Elements of goth rock and melancholic vocals call back to loud rock while blending with an overall instrumental field brimming with energy. - Outside noise
Blurring the lines between outsider noise rock and dark glamorous synth-laden pop under a deceptively alluring glow… compulsively, squirmingly catchy. - The Progressive

WRWTFWW Records is delighted to announce the first-ever vinyl release of Art Form I, the overlooked 1997 compilation from Tokyo’s cult imprint FORM@ RECORDS, now available as a limited edition double LP housed in a heavyweight sleeve as part of the ongoing collaborative series between the Swiss and Japanese labels.
Originally issued only on CD, Art Form I is a fascinating deep dive into the rich and singular world of late ’90s Tokyo electronic music—an inspired collection of timeless IDM, techno, ambient, and electronica experiments. Showcasing a roster of visionary underground artists including fan-favorite Virgo (Landform Code, Remnants), the compilation maps the innovative spirit of the era: emotional machine music, intricate rhythmic architecture, mind-expanding textures, and the soulful heart that serves as the solid foundation of everything FORM@ RECORDS.
Art Form I reminds of the pioneering explorations from Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series, B12, The Black Dog, Ken Ishii, and early Carl Craig, all while maintaining its own distinctive local identity. This long-awaited vinyl edition offers listeners a fully immersive rediscovery of a pivotal moment in underground music.
Following the acclaimed reissues of Virgo’s Landform Code (1998) and Remnants (1999), the simultaneous releases of Art Form I and Art Form 2 (1998) continue the archival collaboration between WRWTFWW Records and FORM@ RECORDS, with a forthcoming vinyl edition of remix collection Re-Form Ver-1.0 (1999) to follow.

Yamila presents her second album on Umor Rex, Noor. Following Visions, Yamila returns with a work that merges nature-experience listening with expansive musicality. Noor was born from her time in an ecologist community, where she sought refuge in stillness, learned from animals, and tried to forget the human. In this communion with nature, she discovered a new compositional approach: reducing acoustic noise to allow unheard voices to emerge, transforming music into a possibility for interspecies dialogue.

Since ancient times, sound has been used to care for herds, to call across distances, to communicate with the non-human. Noor reimagines that ancestral role in a contemporary language, where epic harmonies collide with delicate micro-tonalities, and where rhythm unfolds not only as pulse but as movement for the body, a natural extension of Yamila’s work with dance companies and choreographers.

Her voice is interwoven with electronics and the resonant strings of Echo Collective, creating sonic landscapes that radiate intensity and fragility. At times monumental, at others almost whispered, Noor oscillates between composition and spontaneity, structure and suspension.

The album unfurls as a dialogue between the organic and the artificial, where sound grows like a sprout breaking through hard soil. Yamila’s music here is not only to be heard, but to be inhabited: a choreography of air, vibration, and resonance. Noor is both shelter and revelation, a reminder that music can still be epic, luminous, and deeply human, while listening beyond the human.

All music and voices by Yamila Ríos. Recorded at Destelheide by Christophe Albertijn. Strings by Trio Echo Collective (Violin: Margaret Hermant, Viola: Neil Leiter), (Cello: Stijn Kuppens), (Arrangements: Pierre Slinckx). Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, NY. Photos by Assiah Alcázar. Design & layout by Daniel Castrejón.

Yamila presents her second album on Umor Rex, Noor. Following Visions, Yamila returns with a work that merges nature-experience listening with expansive musicality. Noor was born from her time in an ecologist community, where she sought refuge in stillness, learned from animals, and tried to forget the human. In this communion with nature, she discovered a new compositional approach: reducing acoustic noise to allow unheard voices to emerge, transforming music into a possibility for interspecies dialogue.

Since ancient times, sound has been used to care for herds, to call across distances, to communicate with the non-human. Noor reimagines that ancestral role in a contemporary language, where epic harmonies collide with delicate micro-tonalities, and where rhythm unfolds not only as pulse but as movement for the body, a natural extension of Yamila’s work with dance companies and choreographers.

Her voice is interwoven with electronics and the resonant strings of Echo Collective, creating sonic landscapes that radiate intensity and fragility. At times monumental, at others almost whispered, Noor oscillates between composition and spontaneity, structure and suspension.

The album unfurls as a dialogue between the organic and the artificial, where sound grows like a sprout breaking through hard soil. Yamila’s music here is not only to be heard, but to be inhabited: a choreography of air, vibration, and resonance. Noor is both shelter and revelation, a reminder that music can still be epic, luminous, and deeply human, while listening beyond the human.

All music and voices by Yamila Ríos. Recorded at Destelheide by Christophe Albertijn. Strings by Trio Echo Collective (Violin: Margaret Hermant, Viola: Neil Leiter), (Cello: Stijn Kuppens), (Arrangements: Pierre Slinckx). Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, NY. Photos by Assiah Alcázar. Design & layout by Daniel Castrejón.

WRWTFWW Records is boiling with excitement: Pizza Hotline is back! The UK producer and DJ is following up the already classic Level Select with another liquid drum & bass with a video game music twist beauty: the Polygon Island album, available in a limited edition double LP with a majestic 45rpm cut (for louder, bigger, bolder, deeper earth-shaking bass), packaged in a heavyweight 350gsm gatefold sleeve.

Home of eight all new slices of delicious atmospheric drum & bass, Polygon Island is the perfect artificial paradise beach for Pizza Hotline to deepen his exploration of modern jungle music liquified through the lens of 90s /Y2K video game motifs and seasoned with the soundtrack essence of PS1, PS2, N64, Sega Saturn & Dreamcast adventures.

Bewitching and larger than life, Pizza Hotline’s perfect follow-up to Level Select takes listeners (players?) on an endless summer escapade filled with immaculate vibes, crispy beats, and refashioned homages to, once again, LTJ Bukem, Peshay, the Wipeout OST, and Soichi Terada's Ape Escape. It’s bouncy, it flows, it’s dreamy – something to dance to, something to reminisce to, something to chill to. Pizza Hotline is back and it feels so good.

Press start. Again.


Points of interests

For fans of liquid DNB, video games, ambient, late night vibes, computers and clubs, Soichi Terada's Ape Escape, LTJ Bukem, Peshay, Wipeout OST, Pizza Hotline’s Level Select, good music, good music on video games, playing video games all night and possibly all week. Do that again and again and again.

Super limited edition vinyl of Pizza Hotline’s Polygon Island album redefining liquid drum & bass with a Y2K video game twist again and again and again.

Primera referencia en formato 2 x 12" del sello Español X Erie.
Con artistas referentes del techno internacional como Steve Redhead, Eric Sneo, Axel Karakasis, Gary Beck, Filterheadz, Oscar Escapa y el comandante del sello
Horacio Cruz.

Una edición muy cuidada, con portada especial, llena de sonidos enérgicos que nos transportan a la época dorada del techno más pistero.

Incluye una remezcla del track "Despiertos" a cargo de Gary Beck y cerrando en la D1, una pista con ritmos rotos y melodías profundas a cargo de Horacio Cruz.

Un doble vinilo imprescindible para djs y coleccionistas del género.

2025 Repress

Tobias Bernstrup is a contemporary musician and video artist born 1970 in Gothenburg, Sweden. He received an MFA from Royal College University of Fine Arts Stockholm in 1998. Using the visual language of pop culture, video games, sci-fi, classicism and gothic noir, he has created a stage persona with notorious live performances. Dressed in elaborate costumes of skin-tight rubber suits and fetish gear, Tobias' external appearance is androgynous. He raises questions about representation of identity, the body and physical space in both virtual and non-virtual realities. Between 1997 and 1998 he self-released two limited CD-R EPs. In 2002 his debut album 'Re-Animate Me' was released by Tonight Records followed by two limited 12' singles for the song 27' and the Italian version Ventisette'.
.
27' is a 5-song EP collecting 4 different mixes of the title track plus one unreleased song from the 'Re-Animate Me' recording sessions. The material on this EP is closely connected with the world of computer games which Bernstrup also inhabits. Bernstrup's music is influenced by 1980s Italo disco and synth pop, reminiscent of Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and Ken Lazlo. On the A-side is the original mix at 115 bpm followed by the Lazer Mix set to an faster beat and additional arpeggiations and heavier bass drum beats. Lyrically the song tells the story of a good looking 27-year old boy from a small town searching for love with any man who can spoil him. On the B-side are both the vocal and instrumental of Ventisette', the Italian translation of the song 27.' Both versions of Ventisette' are stripped back compared to the A-side but keep the melodies in tact. Also released for the first time ever is the demo Dirty Money' a Pet Shop Boys influenced song about male prostitutes ready for a night out working the streets.

All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. For the jacket Eloise Leigh transformed the original portrait of Tobias into a Warhol-like painted polaroid with a striking likeness to Liza Minelli with blue eye shadow and red lipstick. Each copy includes a photo postcard with lyrics and notes. I would rather create alternative routes to experiencing and understanding the world, understanding what it means to be human today,' says Bernstrup. We are more artificial than we want to admit.'

Composer Corneliu Cezar (1937-1997) was a distinctive personality within the Romanian post 1960 avantgarde: a visionary of music, a thinker and a prophet, a richly gifted artist also active with writing, poetry, painting and astrology. Cezar was an activist rediscovering the natural resonance of sound within a different historical context and he embraced the recovery of authenticity as a reaction against the artificialized culture of serial doctrines. When, after 1975 the spectral music trend became official in Paris, with much fuss and remarkable support from musicologists, nobody knew that this trend has already been practiced by a small group of Romanian composers lead by Corneliu Cezar for ten years. The four electro-acoustic pieces on this album (privately released on CD in Romania in 2000), recorded with little means between 1967 and 1975, display the incredibly strong ideas of a truly visionary artist. Everything Corneliu Cezar has done during his short earthly life bared the shade of authenticity.

It has been almost seven years since the release of Alpestres, the impressive debut by Matthias Puech on Hands in the Dark. While that first experience took us on a mystical journey through fascinating fictional landscapes, 'Cabanes' lets its narrative unfold in a confined space: eight pieces each resembling small structures or makeshift shelters that, while enveloping and isolating the listener, remain open to their surroundings. These are not merely interiors; they are handcrafted spaces through which we gain insights into the world. Yet they allow the light from the outside to seep in, reminding us of reality.

According to Puech, each composition has a distinctive two-part story that are both clear and intriguingly interconnected. The first one often revolves around the anecdotal and tangible aspects of instrumental "play," showcasing a technical exploration with his tools, the discovery of sounds in a library, and the serendipitous encounters that inspired them. The second part, however, delves into the more elusive yet profound state of existence that the French artist experienced while engaging with these sounds, reflecting on the moments he listened and re-listened to them, ultimately deeming them worthy life companions. These two narratives, perhaps reshaped over time like distant memories, interact in ways that can either clash or complement each other, creating a lasting impact on the listening experience.

A significant aspect of the compositional process involves distancing oneself from these connections to creation, allowing for the rediscovery of a state of listening that is free from prior emotional influences—what one might call "pure" listening. This method enables the transformation of a sequence of events into a narrative that is independent of its original intent, resulting in a universal object. After spending considerable time with the attached pieces and attempting to induce a form of amnesia to reconstruct an artificial narrative, Matthias Puech has ultimately chosen to relinquish this pursuit. Thus, the album is aptly termed “Cabanes” (“Huts”): fragile structures whose design clearly reflects the intention behind their creation, showcasing all the signs of considerate craftsmanship.

The Understated Debut That Launched a Peerless Career: Bob Dylan Is the Clearest Connection to the Singer-Songwriter's Folk Roots
Pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl for Reference Playback: Mobile Fidelity 33RPM SuperVinyl Mono LP Features the Direct Sound Dylan Intended

1/4" / 15 IPS analogue mono master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe

Bob Dylan's self-titled 1962 debut is as understated of an entrance as any significant musician as ever made. Well-versed in American roots music, Dylan simultaneously pays homage to tradition and extends it by putting his own stamp on classic material that metaphorically functions as the soil of contemporary songs and styles. Free of ego, and performed with masterful conviction, Bob Dylan ranks with the initial efforts of giants like Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones.

Nodding to Woody Guthrie and re-imagining Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," Dylan straddles the past and future. He authoritatively displays the ability to handle weighty topics such as death, sorrow, and lamentation with the vaudeville flair, bluesy mannerisms, and poignant command of an artist three times his then-20-year-old age.

Sourced from the original master tapes, housed in a Stoughton jacket, and pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition 180g 33RPM mono SuperVinyl LP brings the contents of this seminal release as close as they've ever come to live-in-the-studio quality. Transparent to the source, Dylan's voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica come across with exceptional realism — the "husk and bark" to which Robert Shelton referred in his legendary New York Times review of a Dylan appearance at Gerde's Folk City — courtesy of the format’s nearly non-existent noise floor, groove definition, and quiet surfaces.

Heard in the original mono configuration, Dylan’s vocals are in the heart of the musical action and as one with the accompaniment. This reissue paints an incredibly accurate portrait of the concrete mass of sound that features no artificial panning and offers a straight-ahead immersion into the music producer John Hammond recorded in just two days in November 1961.

Though much has been made of the commercial indifference that greeted the album upon its low-key release, focusing on sales figures and the reaction of a public not yet hip to Dylan's name miss the forest for the trees. Distinguished from the era's other folk efforts by way of the singer-songwriter’s determination, brazenness, and lived-through-this worldliness, Bob Dylan lays the groundwork for the path he'd soon trailblaze and everyone else would follow.

As Dylan scholar and pop-culture critic Greil Marcus observed in 2010: "Everybody knew Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio; if you knew Bob Dylan, you knew something other people didn't, something that soon enough everybody had to know. Within a year, an album could put an adjective in front of the singer's name as if it were already common coin."

Mono is how almost everyone first heard Dylan’s opening salvo. A career like none other starts here.

MoFi SuperVinyl:

Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analog lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are virtually indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.

Welcome to the era of “Artificial Renaissance”. Humanity and technology stand at a crucial and fundamental intersection. Echoing past cultural revolutions in a modern, technologically advanced world, everything is set to be redefined—our lives, our thoughts, and the way we move forward.

Dutch EBM/synth duo Staatseinde returns with “Artificial Renaissance”, an electrifying new mini-album. Fusing the urgency of classic EBM with the boldness of futuristic synth-punk, the band crafts an interstellar sonic journey fueled by pulsating rhythms and dystopian narratives.

The album blends space punk, italo-disco and electro into a dark, cinematic exploration of rebellion, euphoria, and dystopia. “Space Scream” launches with a cosmic punk battle cry, while “Tanzverbot” pulses with defiant energy against restriction. “Suicide Tuesday” captures post-club emptiness with shimmering 80s nostalgia, and “The Trip” unravels themes of environmental doom. “Freight” propels an italo-disco-infused space odyssey tackling exploitation, while “Une Mémoire Sans Fin” dives into AI’s eerie hold on human emotions. The fast-paced “Mutant Whispers” transforms the dancefloor into a space of fluid identity and resistance, closing with “The Mansion”, a hypnotic synth-driven descent into surreal miscommunication.

With “Artificial Renaissance”, Staatseinde ventures into unexplored sonic territory, expanding the boundaries of their lyrics, balancing artificial futuristic aesthetics with raw human emotions. As the lines between past and future blur, their pulsating music reminds us: the new age is already here.

Released in 2018, the Original Blunted Breaks Vol.1 compilation was a landmark release in the future jungle revival,
collating the sounds of the rapidly emerging underground in long player format and extending the reach of the modern
Productions behind the clubs and hardcore vinyl enthusiasts to the likes of BBC Radio 6, with guest Dead Man’s Chest mix and album feature on Tom Ravenscroft’s show.

In the ensuing years, contemporary jungle music has continued to gain in popularity with a rapidly expanding global influence and reaching younger audiences who’ve adopted it as the sound of now.

In 2025, Western Lore continues to push the freshest rising talent alongside now established stalwarts, continuing its role as a modern tastemaker in both jungle music and the wider electronica scene. This 4 track LP sampler is a flavour taster for the next iteration of the Blunted Breaks compilations, with Vol.3 due late Spring 2025.

INTEGRAL RECORDS—SEVENTEEN YEARS OF FORWARD THINKING D&B

London, August 2024 ––Integral Records, a leading independent record label synonymous with forward
thinking Drum & Bass music is announcing ‘Seventeen’ ––a new Various Artists LP in celebration of 17 years.

Fast approaching their second decade in the business of DNB, Integral Records has left an indelible mark on the underground scene, consistently delivering quality releases that continually push the boundaries of drum and bass music.

Since its inception in 2007, the label has been at the forefront of innovation within the underground scene globally, and is renowned for continually discovering, nurturing and developing exceptional talent; breaking a number of new artists through its 17-year journey.

Consistently delivering high-quality music with crossover radio appeal and with a consistent release schedule maintaining quality over quantity and dedicated to keeping the vinyl community alive.

Founded by the visionary Artificial Intelligence back in 2007 and with Emma G at the helm over the past decade, the label has remained dedicated to its core values of musical integrity, cutting edge sound

With a back catalogue of who’s who in the soulful world of the spectrum; the archive includes the likes of
Calibre, DRS, Alix Perez and Lenzman; more recently, Dawn Wall, Mohican Sun, Satl and currently the new
wave of D&B’s rising stars––Thread, TZ and Tatora to name a few.

Seventeen – the LP will showcase 8 tracks carefully curated from the label's impressive camp
of talent, capturing the essence of the Integral Records sound––featuring legendary artists and rising stars alike. Track features will include (in alphabetical order) Artificial Intelligence, Lenzman, Phil Tangent, Redeyes, Satl, Steo, Tatora, Thread, and Zero T and more.

From soulful liquid future classics to heavier-hitting tech rollers and everything in between, this compilation encapsulates the diverse and ever-evolving nature of Drum & Bass that will always remain dear and will certainly never die.

Much time has passed since the Queer Australian/Italian-Armenian, multifaceted artist, Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha, swapped the parched red earth and searing midday sun of the Australian landscape for the brutalist communist-era apartment blocks and slate-grey skies of former East Berlin. Kris is now a fixture in Berlin’s club scene and has toured most of the world as a DJ & live artist with his own unique production style of cyber industrial, EBM, wave, post punk, and early ‘90s IDM mutations. Remixing some of the scene’s most notable artists such as Boy Harsher and techno pop lord Boys Noize, Kris has garnered respect and trust in the electronic music scene for the last 13 years. To respond to the current AI revolution, Kris uploads himself to the cyber ether through his latest project: GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE.

Across Dual Timelines —
” GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE ” unfolds as a sci-fi cyberpunk concept project inhabiting dual timelines. In one, we glimpse a trans-humanist future where human consciousness exists as intricate sequences of binary code, entwined and controlled by omnipresent AI systems. In this coded future, a profound awakening stirs among a select few who manage to mutate the code they were governed by, unlocking memories of their history that was erased by the AI. Through this discovery they realize they can traverse temporal boundaries and utilize this power to send warning messages back in time to their former fully human selves. These eerie missives carry a dire warning for humanity, urging them to rectify the course of society before the relentless march of artificial intelligence deprives humanity of its essence. In this terrifying future, humans are rendered mere specters within the digital expanse, stripped of their souls, to become Ghosts In The Machine.
Collaboration with the future self —
The cyber odyssey unfolds from a unique perspective— Kris’s very own future self (his future ghost): a spectral entity endeavoring to caution its present incarnation against the ominous path it treads, attempting to avert a dystopian future.Sonic Alchemy —
A fuse of cybernetic synth waves, hyper-punk, and pulsating drum and bass laid out against the dystopian, industrial sonic landscape of this grim future “civilization”. Each track recounts a new chapter in the gripping narrative, drawing listeners deeper into their own story and the role we all play as a collective society with the future possibilities of unregulated AI.Recorded in Berlin with software and hardware synthesisers. AI was used to assist me with lyric themes, concepts and ideas. I also used a trained AI model of my own voice as backing vocals in ‘Haunting Me’.ll music, words & concepts by Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha and his future ghost,
GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE

Much time has passed since the Queer Australian/Italian-Armenian, multifaceted artist, Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha, swapped the parched red earth and searing midday sun of the Australian landscape for the brutalist communist-era apartment blocks and slate-grey skies of former East Berlin. Kris is now a fixture in Berlin’s club scene and has toured most of the world as a DJ & live artist with his own unique production style of cyber industrial, EBM, wave, post punk, and early ‘90s IDM mutations. Remixing some of the scene’s most notable artists such as Boy Harsher and techno pop lord Boys Noize, Kris has garnered respect and trust in the electronic music scene for the last 13 years. To respond to the current AI revolution, Kris uploads himself to the cyber ether through his latest project: GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE.

Across Dual Timelines —
” GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE ” unfolds as a sci-fi cyberpunk concept project inhabiting dual timelines. In one, we glimpse a trans-humanist future where human consciousness exists as intricate sequences of binary code, entwined and controlled by omnipresent AI systems. In this coded future, a profound awakening stirs among a select few who manage to mutate the code they were governed by, unlocking memories of their history that was erased by the AI. Through this discovery they realize they can traverse temporal boundaries and utilize this power to send warning messages back in time to their former fully human selves. These eerie missives carry a dire warning for humanity, urging them to rectify the course of society before the relentless march of artificial intelligence deprives humanity of its essence. In this terrifying future, humans are rendered mere specters within the digital expanse, stripped of their souls, to become Ghosts In The Machine.
Collaboration with the future self —
The cyber odyssey unfolds from a unique perspective— Kris’s very own future self (his future ghost): a spectral entity endeavoring to caution its present incarnation against the ominous path it treads, attempting to avert a dystopian future.Sonic Alchemy —
A fuse of cybernetic synth waves, hyper-punk, and pulsating drum and bass laid out against the dystopian, industrial sonic landscape of this grim future “civilization”. Each track recounts a new chapter in the gripping narrative, drawing listeners deeper into their own story and the role we all play as a collective society with the future possibilities of unregulated AI.Recorded in Berlin with software and hardware synthesisers. AI was used to assist me with lyric themes, concepts and ideas. I also used a trained AI model of my own voice as backing vocals in ‘Haunting Me’.ll music, words & concepts by Kristian Bahoudian aka Kris Baha and his future ghost,
GHOSTS IN THE MACHIИE

10 Year Anniversary Gatefold 2LP 10 year anniversary gatefold 2LP edition of Cult of Luna's take on Fritz Lang's Metropolis film, Vertikal. "Somewhere Along The Highway" and "Eternal Kingdom" were inspired by the landscape of Västerbotten, the county we are from. We realised that there was only one way to go for us: to the city, into the future. Making a droney John Carpenter-esque album would be too easy and we've never been about taking the simple route. I was studying film at the time and had been floored by the aesthetic of German expressionism. This resonated perfectly with Erik Olofsson, who had just got into Italian futurism. This was a real challenge. We put in a lot of effort to realize our vision of the stale, artificial city in all aspects of what an album is. The way we played guitar (only down strokes), the production, artwork and band photos, everything was done with the vision as a guide. "Vertikal" is the album where we had the most precise vision of what we wanted to do and worked hardest to transform it from an idea into reality. A lot of things happened during the years between "Eternal Kingdom" and "Vertikal" and I could continue writing for ages but this will do for now. Ten years have passed since its release and what felt like a rebirth of the band, the band that is still ongoing with new goals and missions. It's a full circle kind of thing. At the time we had no label and now we are releasing it on our very own. Life is strange. Johannes Persson - Umeå December 2022

The phenomenal three-piece band includes members of Oranssi Pazuzu, K-X-P, Grave Pleasures and Aavikko


Svart Records is proud to release the debut album, I, from Haunted Plasma, a powerhouse of futuristic synth in symbiosis with the super violent atmospherics of kosmische Black Metal. Haunted Plasma is “man meets machine” in a cybernetic wasteland, set to a conceptual backdrop of William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick style mind-melt. The highly evolved creatives at the heart of Haunted Plasma’s sound, cite Terry Riley, Massive Attack, a contemporary take on Krautrock hypnosis, psychedelic Black Metal and 90s Techno, resulting in an orgy of mutant sound.



The phantoms at the beating nucleus of this unearthly machine are Juho Vanhanen (Oranssi Pazuzu, Grave Pleasures), Timo Kaukolampi (K-X-P, Op:l Bastards) and Tomi Leppänen (Circle, Aavikko, K-X-P), transmitting a music form evolved from a life of redefining sonic boundaries in their respective projects. Also featuring guest vocals from Mat McNerney (Hexvessel, Carpenter Brut, Grave Pleasures/Beastmilk), Pauliina Lindell (Vuono, Dust Mountain) and Ringa Manner (Ruusut, The Hearing). Haunted Plasma promises an extraterrestrial experience from some of the foremost contemporary musicians at the heart of the Finnish heavy and avant-garde musical underworld.



Haunted Plasma reveals:

“We are liberated futurists, embracing free-form and natural composition, mirroring the merciless forces of cosmic creation. We have a motto to stay true to our feelings, to spawn a sound that’s never been heard before. Servants of music. Energizing, radical and pure”


The first single from Haunted Plasma’s cascading debut, Reverse Engineer, is a creepy, slowly erupting, synthetic nightmare, of a downloaded being waking up in the wrong future. Ghostly vocals demand the listener to “give us what we want” in an Orwellian glimpse into the current dystopia we live in, where information is controlled, and thoughts are bought and sold. As McNerney intones the words “technology of power” he describes the threat of a malevolent and omnipresent artificial intelligence, as much as describing the oppressive and electromagnetic sonar pulse of Haunted Plasma’s sound itself. Psychedelic guitar hypnosis from Vanhanen snakes around Kaukolampi’s molten and morphing synths, while Leppänen’s uncanny man/machine rhythms pull our strings and animate their other-worldly mechanisms. Have a look at the official visualiser of "Reverse Engineer" on the Svart YouTube channel here


Culminating in the full-blown fast Krautrock of the final self-titled track, oozing with blistering noise elements and enigmatic vocals from Ringa Manner, the album's journey reaches its zenith, taking you to unknown territories on a Kubrikian space trip. I is a rare record of talented musicians coming together to create a completely new sound, which is entirely their own, boldly glowing, where no light has shone before. From the dreamy psychedelia of Echoes to the discombobulated Spectral Embrace, Haunted Plasma is a willful force of deliberate sound contortion.


Whether you want to give in to Haunted Plasma’s sound or not, you are being watched, you are being recorded and your every move is monitored. Haunted Plasma will enter your system on the 31st of May 2024. Turn on your phantom circuits and be prepared for an interdimensional excursion into Haunted Plasma’s alien dreams.

The debut album from Haunted Plasma will be packaged in a beautiful tip-on sleeve, swirling fog artwork, complete with 12” booklet and pressed on 3 exclusive vinyl colours: 300 copies on Standard Black Wax, 500 copies in Amber + Black Smoke and 200 copies of Svart exclusive Turquoise/Black Marble. The album will also be available on CD and digital platforms.

“Depas strikes a fine balance between raw energy and subtle melodic hooks.” (DMY) “Throughout the pounding track Midnight Ride, the Italian beat smith expertly blends lush synths with intricate rhythmic components and gritty bass.” (EDM com)

“Depas' approach to techno is a veritable melting pot of influences, blending sounds from the 80s and 90s with contemporary symphonic and cinematic elements.” (Magnetic Mag)

Following his recent ‘Rave The Planet’ EP at the end of February, Milanese hard techno producer Maike Depas is back with a brand-new release on well-renowned label The Innovation Studio. His newest EP is named ‘The Age Of Chaos’ and features a five-track banger arsenal – including a special remix by Italo-American producer Matasism, which was also included in his recent BPtich Control mixtape.

“This EP is the result my own experience throughout an inner dystopic reality, where energy-ridden sounds and epics all collide into a very personal version of the hard techno legacy I’m devoted to.”

‘No Redemption’ is a proper big-room belter, with explosive drop divided by a big break and a statuesque vocal that feels like a claim: “Techno is my only drug”. Same goes for ‘Tesseract’ and it’s rave-like atmosphere and hypnotic hook. ‘Dystopia’ is pure groove and makes the listener dive into a distorted and futuristic metaverse, while ‘Cyber Attack’ and its remix include synthetic vocals tha aim to symbolize an artificial imposition: man against machine, fiction against reality.

‘The Age Of Chaos’ will be available from April 19th via The Innovation Studio.

Aural Imbalance has enjoyed a colourful and celebrated journey through music over the years, taking in ambient soundscapes, deep house and of course, a pioneering role in atmospheric drum & bass. With Spatial, he has unearthed a pure, varied musical prowess seldom seen, with the ability to control both the lighter aspects of the mix as well as expert breakbeat craft. Infinity Spectrum showcases the breadth of talent Aural Imbalance possesses in one incredible package, not to be missed.

A1 - Aurealis
Opening the album with a wonderfully serene track, Aural Imbalance delicately rolls out his trademark smooth ambience with building cymbals and an energetic break merging perfectly in the mix - along with a great, pounding undertone of bass. Riddled with old-school sensibilities, Aurealis layers the building blocks until the track opens up further through a superbly lush breakdown, blooming like a flower in the summer sun before the breaks return.

A2 - Glistening Stars
Washing strings and the chitter-chatter of playful effects introduce Glistening Stars, before familiar, crisp old school breaks steal the limelight. A happy earworm melody soon reveals itself, and the breaks are gradually filtered back in following an other amazing breakdown before the melody takes on new life. Packed with detail and soul, this track will repeat on you long after you've moved on.

B1 - Alpha
Curious, apprehensive tones punctuate a fascinating intro, with a deep old school bassline creeping out first to greet us, before the hi-hat laden break loses its inhibitions and roams free.
Crafting a deliciously textured atmosphere, Aural Imbalance continues to showcase the breadth of his production techniques in his Spatial form, flecking the track with sumptuous melodies to create yet another gem.

B2 - Stargazers
This piece opens with a special blend of quiet, epic serenity, evoking hope and wonder as amen cymbal work and a stabbing snare-heavy break pattern rise and fall in the surrounding symphony. The quietly musical bassline plays a key role in the aural world-building here, complementing the breaks it harmonises with superbly. Aural Imbalance allows the composition to breathe and flourish for a superbly executed final act. Delightful.

C1 - Slow Motion
Introduced with quietly filtered breaks, Slow Motion dials back the pace with a break pattern which relaxes the snare while still maintaining a playful energy as the kicks and bass bumble along below. A uniquely atmospheric yet eccentric melody takes shape with dreamy pads filling the backdrop, and calming scatterings of echoing effects colliding and combining to generate a blissful collage of sound.

C2 - Apparition
Switching up the vibe we have Apparition, which boldly utilises long, tranquil yet purposeful pad work before an immense break pattern riddled with stark snares and a jumpy bassline which rides the smothered kickdrums so well, they appear to be fused as one. The breaks on this are truly special and will move the discerning dancefloor for sure, Aural Imbalance continuing to reveal a never-ending depth to his sound.

D1 - Artificial Satellite
Introduced with smooth synths and DJ-friendly hi hats, Artificial Satellite sees Aural Imbalance laying down a fresh showcase of old-school breakbeats, laced with that inimitable Spatial flavour. A swirling low-key sci-fi vibe punctuates the breakdown before the beats re-emerge. A deep, brooding bassline pulses beneath throughout, while the perfectly executed breaks enjoy their final flourish.

D2 - Unknown Forces
Finally, up steps Unknown Forces for a blistering finale to the LP. Aural Imbalance is at his amen-editing best here with a truly superb showcase of analogue break patterns to nourish the ears and set pulses racing on the dancefloor. Deep bass elevates the gentle intro before thumping kicks begin an epic workout, chopped to perfection with synths and strings flying gracefully above. We couldn't have a Spatial LP without an amen banger could we? What a way to end

Words by Chris Hayes (Spatial/Red Mist)

Most audiophiles know Alan Parsons Project's I Robot by heart. Engineered by Parsons after he performed the same duties on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, the 1977 record reigns as a disc whose taut bass, crisp highs, clean production, and seemingly limitless dynamic range are matched only by the sensational prog-rock fare helmed by the keyboardist and his creative partner, Eric Woolfson. Not surprisingly, it's been issued myriad times. Can it be improved? Relish Mobile Fidelity's stupendous UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM box set and the question becomes moot.


Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI on MoFi SuperVinyl, I Robot comes to life with reference-setting realism on this numbered, limited-edition reissue. Boasting immaculate highs and lows, generous spaciousness, and see-through transparency that takes you into the studio with Parsons and Woolfson at Abbey Road, this definitive edition is designed to demonstrate the full-range capabilities of the world's best stereo systems while offering listeners the convenience of having all the music on one LP.

Featuring a nearly inaudible noise floor, this transcendent UD1S edition functions as a repeat invitation to savor reference-grade soundstages, immersive smoothness, sought-after instrumental separation, three-dimensional imaging, and consummate tonal balances. Able to be played back at high volumes without compromise or fatigue, it is a demonstration record for the ages – the likes of which are no longer being made. This is the very reason you own and invest in high-end audio gear.

The special characteristics of this UD1S version extend to the premium packaging. Housed in an elegant slipcase, the reissue features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics. Aurally and visually, it is made for discerning listeners who prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in everything about this conceptual landmark. The Alan Parsons Project's most famous record deserves nothing less.

Inspired by and loosely based around the Isaac Asimov stories of the same name, I Robot delves into themes of artificial intelligence and technological dominance that make the record extremely relevant in the 21st century. Indeed, Parsons and Woolfson's pinnacle creation dovetailed with the ascendency of Star Wars, which itself is experiencing a rebirth in an age of self-driving cars, smart devices, and mindless automation. Lyrically, songs such as "The Voice" call into question human behavior – and their relationship to increasing robotic supremacy – in everyday life. Parsons and Woolfson reflect the associated paranoia, dichotomy, and transformation via shifting sci-fi arrangements steeped in drama and moodiness.

The absorbing tunes on I Robot also continue to fascinate due to their perfectionism and innovation. Borrowing from Pink Floyd's strategies, Parsons and Woolfson utilize a looped sequence on the title track to create new downbeats. "Some Other Time" employs two different lead vocalists and yet gives the illusion that only one is involved. Captivating strings, a piccolo trumpet, and bona fide pipe organ grace "Don't Let It Show." The origins of "Nucleus" stem from a unique analog keyboard concoction dubbed "the Projectron," devised by Parsons and electronic engineer Keith Johnson. Andrew Powell's orchestral and choral arrangements top it all off, with "Total Eclipse" arriving as a frightening track that presages the climactic "Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32."

Does man or machine win in the end? Decide as you get lost in Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc 180g 33RPM LP pressing. Secure your numbered copy today!

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) technique bypasses generational losses inherent to the traditional three-step plating process by removing two steps: the production of father and mother plates, which are created to yield numerous stampers from each lacquer that is cut. For UD1S plating, stampers (also called "converts") are made directly from the lacquers. Since each lacquer yields only one stamper, multiple lacquers need to be cut. Mobile Fidelity's UD1S process produces a final LP with the lowest-possible noise floor. The removal of two steps of the plating process also reveals musical details and dynamics that would otherwise be lost due to the standard multi-step process. With UD1S, every aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the best-sounding vinyl album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl

Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analogue lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.

Kid Katana Records teamed up once again with Dotemu, Tribute Games and Nickelodeon to release TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge Dimension Shellshock OST, a brand new musical experience composed by Tee Lopes!

Inspired by the music of one of the most iconic pop culture licenses of all time, this OST was fully composed by Tee Lopes, the talent behind the music of Sonic Mania and Streets of Rage 4: Mr X’s Nightmare and of course Shredder's Revenge vanilla game OST. His musical vision echoes the spirit of the turtles and this specific game specificities: tributes to classic TMNT tunes with a good dose of fun and switching fluidly between 80s/90s electro, funk, rock, and jazzy tunes with chiptune vibes.

This edition includes:
-> 1x 12-inch vinyl featuring the 15 tracks in the Dimension Shellshock DLC
-> 2 colored vinyl labels with the two new playable characters: Usagi Yojimbo and Karai

-> Exclusive sticker board with all playable characters and iconic items from the game

What are the differences and similarities between human and artificial sound, between oscillations generated by vocal cords and synthesizer voices, voltage amplified by speakers? On Silencio, his latest album for Tresor Records, Moritz von Oswald works with a 16-voice choir to explore this concept.
Drawing from the ensemble works of long-standing inspirations Edgard Varèse, György Ligeti and Iannis Xenakis, von Oswald and Vocalconsort Berlin delve into the space between sounds, creating a deeply textured collection that shifts between light & ethereal and
dark & dissonant.
As masterfully demonstrated in the early work of von Oswald and Mark Ernestus’ influential Basic Channel project, repetition and reduction are key elements here, much in the tradition of techno and minimalism. The vast dynamism of the human voice adds to the
profound weight of electronics while offering up a rhythmic source and sonic noise palette unexplored in von Oswald’s repertoire. In Silencio, von Oswald dredges a dank murk, pulling clouds over a distant pulse. It hangs, ready to take on new forms.
The compositions were written in von Oswald’s Berlin studio on classic synthesizers, such as the EMS VCS3 & AKS, Prophet V, Oberheim 4-Voice and the Moog Model 15. These abstract recordings were transcribed to sheet music for choir by Berlin-based Finnish composer and pianist, Jarkko Riihimäki and performed by Vocalconsort Berlin in Ölberg church in the city’s Kreuzberg district, only few metres down the road from where Dubplates & Mastering and Hard Wax opened their doors for music enthusiasts for many years so long. The recordings of the choral versions were then incorporated into the synthesized parts of the album and brought into anew electronic context; in Silencio, the focus is not on using one means to imitate the other, but to sonically discuss the tensions and harmonies between the two worlds and create a dialogue between them.
The relationship between von Oswald and Tresor Records goes back thirty years, all the way to Blake Baxter’s Dream Sequence in 1991 - which von Oswald engineered alongside Thomas Fehlmann. The collaboration with Fehlmann lived on, seeing the duo team up as 3MB with Eddie Fowlkes or Juan Atkins. More recently, the Detroit-Berlin connection continued as Juan Atkins & Moritz von Oswald present Borderland.
For von Oswald, Tresor Records and also the participating guest musicians of the choir, this release brings together audiences from other musical areas, cross-pollinating; Silencio is an album that stands for itself beyond the musical genre boundaries.

Repress!

Part two of the Various Artists Shadow Rhythms series on Western Lore.

Wisdom Teeth co-founder K-LONE returns with his second full length project, ‘Swells’: a kaleidoscopic and expansive record that looks to deep house, synthpop, leftfield R&B and beyond for a spellbinding masterwork of melodic electronica.

His debut LP ‘Cape Cira’ became the accidental soundtrack of the long strange summer of 2020 - its lush marimbas, hazy atmos and synthesised bird calls providing the ideal soundtrack for some much needed collective escapism. The record was widely deemed one of 2020’s standout electronic LPs, gaining glowing reviews in Pitchfork, DJ Mag, Mixmag and Resident Advisor, and ranking highly in end of year lists by Crack Magazine.

Approaching its follow up, the Brighton-based producer felt a fresh perspective was needed. Originally landing on the name ‘Swells’ as a secret pen-name to write the record under, the intention was to keep the project as separate as possible from ‘Cape Cira’ to avoid settling into familiar territories - but as the record took shape it became clear that it made perfect sense amongst his already diverse discography.

Like ‘Cape Cira’, there is a distinct and intentionally limited sound palette at play on ‘Swells’. Looping vocal cuts, rich cluster chords and undulating arpeggios sit front and centre here - as does the lo-fi plonk of of the CR78 drum machine. But while the record clearly takes influence from a range of vintage sound sources, its overall aesthetic is unmistakably contemporary. Sounds are not artificially degraded nor obscured under washes of sampled tape hiss. Rather, everything is processed with a gloss, hi-fidelity sheen. The record’s rhythms are bright, dry and snappy, and its melodies are processed with a neon poppy glow.

The producer’s unabashed love of contemporary pop music is most obviously exemplified by the appearance of British singer-songwriter Eliza Rose. The pair met for a session at a North London studio back in 2021, and the now Brit Award-nominated singer’s warm, emotive vocal takes became an immediate source of inspiration early in the record’s conception. As such, Rose’s voice is heard in various states of manipulation throughout its duration - initially as reduced and looped phrases, and then finally in full form on ‘With U’: a low-lit, dubbed-out slice of leftfield R&B that beckons comparisons with Tirzah, Little Dragon and even Erykah Badu.

Elsewhere, there are references to G-Funk (‘Oddball’), Autonomic drum and bass (‘Shimmer’), hip-house (‘Love Is’) and even Metronomy-era electro pop (‘Love Me A Little’).

As always, the true magic of K-LONE’s artistry is to present complex, subtle and original ideas in ways that feel familiar and immediate. Melodies are introduced as effortless earworms, only to be twisted out of shape into strange and unusual formulations. Looping rhythms unspool into washes of hazy, dubbed-out ambience before rebuilding themselves. Refined and endlessly creative, ‘Swells’ marks a captivating next step for a producer and record label that have both reliably positioned themselves at the very forefront of contemporary electronic music.

In the digital age, words are no longer just symbols of communication, but a powerful tool that gives rise to meaningful interconnections between different universes.

Words have the power to transcend time and space, connecting two souls destined to meet.

Il Significato delle Parole (the meaning of words) is Adiel's new effort on her DanzaTribale, a crossover of two minds, generated together with musician Flavio Accorinti: techno sounds like the restless soul that pervades our days, deconstructed atmospheres like shattered generational dreams. The fusion of two cosmic currents, two ways of thinking and creating, characterized by an immanent power, pushing us to imagine new urban primitivism. Two creative processes, transcending individual boundaries to connect into a single overarching vision, to explore new forms of art and storytelling.

The EP, mixed by Donato Dozzy and mastered at Rome's Enisslab Studio by Giuseppe Tillieci, starts with Nulla Resta, a defragmented, dreamlike, ascending climax markedly cyberpunk: dense with references to 90s Progressive Dream, Nulla Resta, with its dulcet melodies, transports us to an artificial reality, a spiritual reality albeit dominated by technology. A reality suspended between fantasy and materialism.
Suspended, like the second track (Sospesa): dark trip-hop's echoes adorned by the voice of Jordie Devlin Mcmorrow. "Shadows on the walls orchestrate our downfall." Dystopian futures intertwine with mysteriously dreamy pasts in a fatal spiral of redemption.
But words remain the catalysing element of this EP.
Parole(words) represents a communicative rare faction that embraces tribes near and far. Black drums echo in the distance in an intimate ballad, in an epic ride, in an ethereal metaphysical journey to the dissolution of the boundary between time and space, between memory and perception.
Notturna, on the other hand, is the epilogue we all deserve; a solemn twilight, a lysergic, dragging escape from the objectivity of the real world.

The images of life do not simply exist in a vacuum. They are defined by the energy that surrounds them, and it is the explanation behind each of these words that we must find if weare to truly understand them. Thanks to the meaning of words, sooner or later, we will be all united again.

Introducing ‘Duality’, the new double album from Andrew Bayer. Two musical threads weave through the collected works of Andrew Bayer. One thread gave us the downtempo masterclass of 2013’s ‘If It Were You We’d Never Leave’ and the brilliant 'In My Last Life' LP. The other thread produced arena-sized anthems like 2014’s ‘Once Lydian’, his epic 'Super Human' with Asbjørn and the club remix project 'In My Next Life'. From the introspective to the explosive, these records are our community’s shared soundtrack: we’ve all got a favourite Andrew Bayer record. But they have come in so many forms and styles. It leaves us asking the question, who exactly is Andrew Bayer? It’s a question he’s asked himself. “Since day one, I have always struggled with how to present myself. I love making these experimental home listening albums of electronica and indie sounds, but I also love DJing and making trance bangers. On my last album I had to remix the album in full after it was released to make the worlds fit. This time around I wanted to capture all the breadth, depth and tension within that duality under one single project” - Andrew Bayer ‘Duality’ brings these two creative threads together under one album for the first time since his debut album 'It's Artificial'. Crafted over three years, Bayer is joined by an eclectic cast of collaborators old and new. ‘Duality’ pt. 1 explores Bayer’s passion for downtempo and indie-pop, while ‘Duality’ pt. 2 takes on his forward-thinking trance and progressive sond. Both are tied by Bayer's unique vision, a shared sensibility and same group of collaborators. Today, you can hear a sample from each side: ‘Equal’ (with Asbjørn), and ‘Midnight’ (with Alison May). ‘Duality’ is the true follow up to my first album ‘It’s Artificial’. It is by far my most raw and honest work, and I can’t wait to celebrate the album around the world with you all on tour” - Andrew Bayer

Pentiments continues its work spotlighting post-conceptual artist and writer Joseph Nechvatal. They have already dropped a retrospective Selected Sound Works album that spans 1981-2002 and now comes a companion across two slabs of wax that focus on more recent audio works. This is in cahoots with Andrew Deutsch and it makes use of anonymous reading of Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando' as an anchor point around which the "virus-modelled artificial life audio material" from Nechvatal's 2006 piece viral symphOny: the enthrOning is reanimated. The second then uses a rather controversial record performance of Antonin Artaud's radio play To Have Done with the Judgement of God which the artist takes apart and reweaves into something radically new.

Most audiophiles know Alan Parsons Project's I Robot by heart. Engineered by Parsons after he performed the same duties on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, the 1977 record reigns as a disc whose taut bass, crisp highs, clean production, and seemingly limitless dynamic range are matched only by the sensational prog-rock fare helmed by the keyboardist and his creative partner, Eric Woolfson. Not surprisingly, it's been issued myriad times. Can it be improved? Relish Mobile Fidelity's stupendous UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM box set and the question becomes moot.


Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI on MoFi SuperVinyl, I Robot comes to life with reference-setting realism on this numbered, limited-edition reissue. Boasting immaculate highs and lows, generous spaciousness, and see-through transparency that takes you into the studio with Parsons and Woolfson at Abbey Road, this definitive edition is designed to demonstrate the full-range capabilities of the world's best stereo systems while offering listeners the convenience of having all the music on one LP.

Featuring a nearly inaudible noise floor, this transcendent UD1S edition functions as a repeat invitation to savor reference-grade soundstages, immersive smoothness, sought-after instrumental separation, three-dimensional imaging, and consummate tonal balances. Able to be played back at high volumes without compromise or fatigue, it is a demonstration record for the ages – the likes of which are no longer being made. This is the very reason you own and invest in high-end audio gear.

The special characteristics of this UD1S version extend to the premium packaging. Housed in an elegant slipcase, the reissue features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics. Aurally and visually, it is made for discerning listeners who prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in everything about this conceptual landmark. The Alan Parsons Project's most famous record deserves nothing less.

Inspired by and loosely based around the Isaac Asimov stories of the same name, I Robot delves into themes of artificial intelligence and technological dominance that make the record extremely relevant in the 21st century. Indeed, Parsons and Woolfson's pinnacle creation dovetailed with the ascendency of Star Wars, which itself is experiencing a rebirth in an age of self-driving cars, smart devices, and mindless automation. Lyrically, songs such as "The Voice" call into question human behavior – and their relationship to increasing robotic supremacy – in everyday life. Parsons and Woolfson reflect the associated paranoia, dichotomy, and transformation via shifting sci-fi arrangements steeped in drama and moodiness.

The absorbing tunes on I Robot also continue to fascinate due to their perfectionism and innovation. Borrowing from Pink Floyd's strategies, Parsons and Woolfson utilize a looped sequence on the title track to create new downbeats. "Some Other Time" employs two different lead vocalists and yet gives the illusion that only one is involved. Captivating strings, a piccolo trumpet, and bona fide pipe organ grace "Don't Let It Show." The origins of "Nucleus" stem from a unique analog keyboard concoction dubbed "the Projectron," devised by Parsons and electronic engineer Keith Johnson. Andrew Powell's orchestral and choral arrangements top it all off, with "Total Eclipse" arriving as a frightening track that presages the climactic "Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32."

Does man or machine win in the end? Decide as you get lost in Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc 180g 33RPM LP pressing. Secure your numbered copy today!

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) technique bypasses generational losses inherent to the traditional three-step plating process by removing two steps: the production of father and mother plates, which are created to yield numerous stampers from each lacquer that is cut. For UD1S plating, stampers (also called "converts") are made directly from the lacquers. Since each lacquer yields only one stamper, multiple lacquers need to be cut. Mobile Fidelity's UD1S process produces a final LP with the lowest-possible noise floor. The removal of two steps of the plating process also reveals musical details and dynamics that would otherwise be lost due to the standard multi-step process. With UD1S, every aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the best-sounding vinyl album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl

Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analogue lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.

When British Airways got privatized and listed on the London Stock Exchange, somewhere in Canada the first Starbucks outside of the US opened, and the Walt Disney Company signed an agreement with the French Prime Minister to construct Disneyland Paris. In the sky above southern Argentina, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, northern Somalia, and the Atlantic Ocean a hybrid solar eclipse materialized for 7.57 seconds, whilst Margaret Thatcher performed for 45-minutes on Soviet television. Some days later, The Simpsons cartoon first appears as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, Diego Maradona wins his first Italian soccer championship with Napoli, and Eighteen-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust lands a private plane on Red Square in Moscow. In the mists of the world's first conference on artificial life at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Mainland China opens in Beijing, and Prozac gets approved for use as an antidepressant in the United States. Much give way for the future, down there in 1987, the year that marks the title of Benedikt Frey’s freshest mini album, out into the world on R.i.O., the label he runs with some pals in the North of Berlin. It’s a dubby melancholic conqueror, wistfully, repetitive, drilling, absorbing, spooking. It makes you dream. Not particular of the year 1987. But it’s all there: The Red Square, the untouched land of the Val d'Europe, Diego on fuego. Six dark-ish tracks in trance, melancholic dub, downbeat heaven, journey music depths, all full of light and yet so dark. Futuristic dramas linked to a speculative past. In our dreams all might look different. The eclipse may last 27- minutes. You meet Neuromancer cyberpunks and blade running Ghost dogs, all taught to hack by Phrack. Cristal clear melodies, sampled voices, and veiled basslines, analogue scopes, and digital ropes, longing for a past that storm into the future. A time where deep listening widens the acoustics into infinity, while neon glows charm the light smog. Benedikt Frey been down there. Or maybe not. His latest music tells stories from the bygone, vested with the forthcoming. Come in and look out. There is nothing to see, yet so much to hear.

Numbers will release ‘Clear’, the debut album by FFT, on 24th June 2022.The result of three years of focused writing and programming by the London-based producer, ‘Clear’ is deeply psychedelic, defined by a mature sense of melody and structures crafted at a monumental scale.

Though FFT has previously released a handful of tracks under various names, it wasn’t until 2017’s ‘FFT1’ EP on theUncertainty Principle label that his production talents began to fuse into a distinct and personal style, especially evident in FFT’s‘Regional/Loss’ EP on The Trilogy Tapes in 2019, multiple releases on Bruk Records and2021’s ‘Disturb Roqe,’also released on Numbers.Through it all, FFT has mastered a complex sense of mood catalyzed by sound itself: He builds patches and presets from scratch, and feels these synths and software have their own objectives and reactions, creating a kind of compositional feedback loop.The result is an album that brings to mind a collision of electronic pioneers like Delia Derbyshire and Bernard Parmegiani, 2000’s braindance, the Max-imized wares of an OPN or Objekt and the rough rhythmatics of SND or Mika Vainio

The layering of sonic elements and intentions is starkly audible across these nine tracks.They can be seismically concussive and grandiose, but granular and fluid - echoing the Icelandic volcanic eruption that features in the artwork photography byGeorge Cowan. ‘Clear (Eight-Circuit Mix)’sets a euphoric tone immediately accelerated by the jagged sounds and vocal textures of ‘Redeemer’. ‘3 Sided’ channels hyper-urbanity from its almost entirely analogue palette, and by contrast ‘Disturb Roqe 2’is bracingly digital, gyrating in random cycles between clustered percussion, metallic splinters of audio and artificial vocal tics.

Opening side two, ‘You’ve Changed’ adheres to a more abrasive core, while ‘Heal’ and ‘Heal (Alt Mix)’evolved out of linked pieces in FFT’s live sets that grew into complete tracks in the months before Covid-19.The significant intensity of ‘Heal’ in particular was refined during strobe-heavy live performances and is the album at its most turbulent, the claustrophobia interrupted by dazzling arpeggios.The overall impact of 'Clear' is cinematic and precise, marking the arrival of an impressive electronic musician who is not new but has come into his own as a fully developed artist

Now reduced to half price. The Moles is a fitting incognito pseudonym synonym nom de guerre pen name make believe disguise cloak for most of the musical ideas I get. The album has accumulated over many years. I recorded in Boston, New York, and Western Massachusetts when ideas and opportunities came along. It is almost like a journal covering 15 years,” explains legendary tunesmith Richard Davies (Cardinal, solo). Recorded with like-minded cohorts such as Boston veterans Bob Fay (Sebadoh) and Malcolm Travis (Sugar), as well as New York City fresh faces Dion Nania (Free Time) and Jarvis Taveniere (Woods), the collected songs continue his streak of dazzling and unique psych pop. The record follows on the heels of the 2014 comprehensive reissue of their past discography; “Flashbacks and Dream Sequences: The Story Of The Moles” as well as a triumphant show at Glastonbury. Quotes - “The greatest differentiator between the work of the Moles and that of their contemporaries, though, is Davies himself. As a presence, there is something deeply and beguilingly inscrutable about him, a purposeful blankness that betrays an enormous amount of weight and depth behind it, and oozes both vulnerability and vitriol when it breaks and cracks.” – PITCHFORK // “Classic sparkling Oceania indie-pop.” – STEREOGUM.

Clear Vinyl

Written and conceived by Stephan Crasneanscki, ‘LOVOTIC’ is a concept album by Soundwalk Collective, composed in collaboration with lauded actress and singer/songwriter Charlotte Gainsbourg. Featuring veteran techno stalwart AtomTM, rising singer/composer/performance artist Lyra Pramuk, celebrated actor Willem Dafoe, and writer/philosopher Paul B. Preciado, the album is released by the new Berlin-based Analogue Foundation.

Inspired by a relatively new field of research that seeks to explore and develop the possibilities of sexual and emotional relationships – and even love – between humans and robots, ‘LOVOTIC’ interrogates the impulses, ideas, and needs underlying this phenomenon. The project ventures into a future where sex, intimacy and desire are reformulated through the connection of humans, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

In an age of such hybrid entanglement with the machine, human identity requires the construction of new forms of intimacy, gender, and sexuality. At present, however, such technologies are primarily used to produce programs of limited sexual iterations that do not question the preformatted categories of gender and sexual orientation. In contrast, on ‘LOVOTIC’, Soundwalk Collective ask whether the future of sex and sexuality could instead be an exponentially expanding kaleidoscope. Where does the impulse of preference come from? What sets of words from our vocabulary can be communicated to the AI mind to generate a new identity for desire? Could the machine be another technology that brings us closer together?

Sonically ‘LOVOTIC’ is unidentifiable, artificial, and genuinely futuristic, occupying an amorphous androgynous netherworld at the borderlands between biotic and android. Traditional musical signposts are virtually non-existent, instead offering a mercurial, formless sound which mirrors the flourishing of gender fluidity it suggests could be on the horizon.

The production tangibly evokes the odd, rubbery textures of faux flesh, the slick virtual glide or glitchy mishaps of software, and the sleek shine of hardware. Gleaming sound design creates shard-like surfaces redolent of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Glass’, the slippery stretched sonics Gabor Lazar, and the unsettling dark ambience of TOWERS and Hallmark ‘87.

At turns intimate and inviting, with whispering-in-your-ears ASMR vocals evoking blissful, heightened sexual states, within ‘LOVOTIC’ there’s optimism, but also unease; As well as the positive, it implies the negative ramifications of technology. At points a synthetic siren’s call appears to lure the listener to a darker place, with audio malfunctions suggesting dystopian science. Voices morph from gentle to distorted – a glitch in the system causing the mask to slip, like virtual lizards – ‘They Live’ or ‘V’ (?), for the metaverse age.

Here, Charlotte Gainsbourg invokes a being of unknown identity – an artificial eve, the oracle and the portal – speaking from an unspecified time in the future. The voices of AtomTM, Lyra Pramuk and Willem Dafoe weave in and out of Charlotte’s, often overlapping, merging into one another, expressing the entity of a being that’s ephemeral and in constant flux, oscillating between the natural and artificial. The record’s other bonafide singer, Lyra Pramuk’s delivery alternates between spoken word, operatics and partially- unintelligible language.

A multi-media project, ‘LOVOTIC’ also features the work of writer, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado – a leading thinker in the study of gender and body politics. Paul contributes a post-apocalyptic, quasi scientific and fictional text, which adds further fantasy, artistic and intellectual depth, augmenting the listener’s experience. Like all the best Sci Fi, his words seem prescient, describing what could become a likely reality in the future. Paul performs his written texts on the opening and closing tracks of the album; ‘The Age Of Mutation’ (in Spanish) and ‘Primate Love’ (in English).

Soundwalk Collective is an experimental sound collective helmed by Stephan Crasneanscki in collaboration with Simone Merli, which operates in a continuously rotating constellation of sound artists and musicians. The Collective’s approach to composition combines anthropology, ethnography, non-linear narrative, psycho- geography, the observation of nature, and explorations in recording and synthesis.

‘The record is inspired by the idea of humanity’s ever-increasing entanglement with technology and artificial intelligence, balancing fears and moral concerns with the possibilities of evolution’s next phase’

A new Soccer96 album is a chance for Danalogue (Dan Leavers) and Betamax (Maxwell Hallett) to return to something of a spiritual creative home. Between them, the keyboardist and drummer have become synonymous with the thriving London jazz scene and, in their mind-bending incarnation as the astral synths-and-drums pairing, they’ve traversed stylistic worlds. Over nearly a decade, the duo have metamorphosed from a DIY outfit whose rough-edged recordings hit with a punk spirit, to cosmic dreamers that use sound to travel the reaches of the mind.

First single Dopamine features Nuha Ruby Ra on vocals who sings from the perspective of human and machine throughout the track. This concept overlaps with the music seamlessly, forming a meeting point between technological and human exploration.

Dialogues between the band and Nuha crystallised a shared vision of a future where humans and artificial intelligence are entangled in a codependent relationship based on the giving and receiving of pleasure hormones, the robots only source of dopamine is to receive it from humans, and the humans’ ability to unleash the monsters of the worst of human emotion.

Danalogue and Nuha sing together ‘It’s a Long Way down’ .. the feeling of jumping from the cliff of our current state as humans and ‘free-falling’ into the unknown of robot-human intertwining. By the outro they are pleading with each other over their dopamine co-dependency, in terms of both giving and receiving the hit. "Dependency leads to free-falling integration, a moment of freefall into robotic consciousness. Humans and machines are locked in a dance of addiction." explains Betamax.

Soccer96 has always been a vessel for Danalogue and Betamax to find clear water from their multitude of other collaborations, their most notable being as two-thirds of The Comet Is Coming alongside Shabaka Hutchings. Danalogue’s other recent production credits include Snapped Ankles and Calabashed, whilst Betamax has been making music with Champagne Dub and Coma World.

“Through collaborating with various artists and developing our own sonic language, it feels like we have created a sound of our own,” says Danalogue. “Now we think less literally and take more liberties to not necessarily sound like a duo. It’s more like a production team that can be augmented or stripped back depending on what the music calls for.”

Dopamine, though, sees the pair back together once again, incubating their findings of the past two years and moving Soccer96 into new territories. The record is maybe darker in some senses than what they’ve put out before; it’s inspired by the idea of transhumanism and humanity’s ever-increasing entanglement with technology and artificial intelligence It balances fears and moral concerns with the possibilities of evolution’s next phase. “The LP title Dopamine refers to the type of neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, that enables technology to hack into our minds and control us, creating addiction, dependency,” Betamax explains.

Dopamine began life as a sonic reaction to the graphic novels of ‘Moebius’ Jean Giraud. The duo then started swapping reel-to-reel tape ideas through each other’s letterboxes in lockdown, before eventually convening in the studio and displaying one of the revered French artist’s images in the middle of the studio for inspiration.

“All musical decisions would centre around this image,” Betamax says. “It was a depiction of a cosmic traveller gazing across a desert at a sort of crystal city. If the music was resonating with the image then we knew we were on the right path. We are both glad there is a lot of emotional warmth underpinning the whole thing. We are trying to connect with the human essence at all times.”

How Beautiful Life Can Be, recorded at Parr Street Studios, Liverpool. In the company of producers, James Skelly and Chris Taylor, pushes The Lathums’ remarkable story into the next, even more exciting phase! It was only in the summer 2019 that the band’s fuse was lit by Tim Burgess, who offering them a late slot at Kendal Calling where, inside 24 hours, social media chatter caused their audience to spill into the field beyond their tent. A year later they had achieved their first UK Album Chart Top 20 for vinyl-only EP compilation, The Memories We Make, recorded their debut appearance for Later… With Jools Holland and joined the BBC Sound Poll 2021 list of tipped acts . Hailing from Wigan on the overlooked fringes of Greater Manchester, The Lathums are Alex Moore, casting a new outline of the modern frontman, singing alongside student of the Marr-esque jangle guitar, Scott Concepcion, rapid-fire, wise-cracking bassist, Jonny Cunliffe (aka: Bass Mon Jon) and the steady, rhythmic, wise head, Ryan Durrans on drums. Pithily described by those closest as ‘like The Inbetweeners in a Shane Meadows film’, they are four bright, wild flowers growing between grey paving stones.

Michael Mayer’s latest EP, Brainwave Technology, comes at you purposeful, stealthy and sly. It’s a glorious left turn for the redoubtable producer, one that sees his typically lean and lithe productions buffed to a metallic, futurist sheen. There’s a gleam in the eyes of tracks like “Brainwave Technology” and “Alpha” that speaks of serious fun, of the intersection of the pleasure zone and the frontal lobe.

“Brainwave Technology” itself is informed by Mayer’s deep dive into the thorny terrain of artificial intelligence, transhumanism and posthumanism. Inspired by reading German philosopher Richard David Precht, Mayer found himself heading down the “proverbial rabbit hole,” as he describes it, “watching hours of YouTube material by self-proclaimed prophets of these ‘inevitable’ changes to come.” Never one to be taken in by the egotist’s dance, Mayer’s cynicism about the whole endeavour is tempered, a little, by the deeper questions that these figures gesture towards: “Is it really an evolutionary step that man and machine become one? Or is it rather a marketing plot by Silicon Valley billionaires?”

On “Brainwave Technology”, Mayer plays the charlatans at their own game, turning their logic against them by exposing the fruitiness of their ‘visions’. “I chose irony as my sword with which I chopped off some quotes from some of those batshit crazy prophets and self-promoters,” he explains of the drooling psychobabble he drops in the track’s lacuna. There’s a sense of humour here – how could you not laugh at these hungover egotists? – but there’s levity too, a sense that Mayer’s using sound to expose the contradictions and double-speak at the heart of these half-formed ideas. It’s a Burroughsian tactic, to slice into the heart of the voice to see what hidden truths surface.

It was Burroughs, too, who once said that “when you cut into the past, the future leaks out”; Brainwave Technology cuts into the logic of the futurologist to leak out the messiness of modern reality. On “Alpha” and “Gamma”, Mayer seems to conjure up the stark, ominous music that’d soundtrack a science fiction reinterpretation – or preinterpretation – of our modern malaise, all funereal wreaths of electronic noise and clatterboxing beats. As the EP resolves with “Device For The Young At Heart”, Mayer’s questions are piling up: “Do we want to become immortal and live on as a download? Do we really give up on Earth and put all our effort into colonising Mars?” There are no answers, of course, but plenty of imaginings-to-be. Brainwave Technology soundtracks both dystopian and utopian possibilities of what could come next.

Having already unearthed three collections of archival ‘70s recordings by Catherine Christer Hennix, Blank Forms continues their annual illumination of the visionary Swedish composer’s music by turning to more recent work with this first-time vinyl edition of Hennix’s “Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis,” a 2014 piece first released as a CD in 2016 (Important Records).

The double album captures the April 22, 2014 premiere of Hennix’s composition by by the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, her expanded just intonation ensemble, featuring a brass section of Amir ElSaffar, Paul Schwingenschlögl, Hilary Jeffery, Elena Kakaliagou, and Robin Hayward; live electronics by Stefan Tiedje and Marcus Pal; and voice by Amirtha Kidambi, Imam Ahmet Muhsin Tüzer, and Hennix herself. Intended to reveal the blues’ origins in the eastern musical traditions of raga and makam, “Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis” has its roots in Hennix’s 2013 realization of an “Illuminatory Sound Environment,” a concept developed in 1978 by anti-artist Henry Flynt on the basis of Hennix’s own “The Electric Harpsichord.”

As Hennix explains in Other Matters, Blank Forms’ 2019 collection of her writings:

“Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis presents fragments of ‘raga-like’ frequency constellations following distinct cycles and permuting their order, creating a simultaneity of ‘multi-universes.’ When two such ‘universes’ come in proximity of each other and begin unfolding simultaneously along distinct cycles, there is a kaleidoscopic exfoliation of frequencies as one universe is becoming two, but not separated—the effect of cosmosis is entrained, binding two or more frequency universes into proximity where their modal properties interact and blend, creating in the process entirely new microtonal constellations in an omnidirectional simultaneous cosmic order with phenomenologically ‘transfinite’ Poincaré cycles (cyclic returns to initial conditions).”

As with Hennix’s best work, the organic unfolding of this quivering drone belies a precision that opens onto the infinitesimal. Upon its mesmerizing ebb and flow, the vocalists incant a devotional poem written in Arabic by Hennix and featuring quotations from the Quran. Also reproduced on the album’s gatefold jacket, Hennix’s reduction of the sacred text to its most elegant formulation invites the contemplator to bring their inner knowledge to the composition for use as a prompt for meditation. Yet the piece offers depth to even the most secular listener willing to immerse themselves in music brimming with such serene intensity.

Catherine Christer Hennix (b. 1948) started her creative life playing drums with her older brother Peter, growing up in Sweden where she heard jazz luminaries, such as John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor perform from 1960 to 1967. Directly after high school, Hennix went to work at Stockholm’s pioneering Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), where she developed early tape music, incorporating computer generated speech done at the Royal Technological University (KTH), where she was an undergraduate student. After traveling to New York In 1968, she met artists Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles who invited her to stay at the Something Else Press Town House where she had the opportunity to meet, among others, composers John Cage, James Tenney, and Phil Corner. During the following years she developed fruitful collaborative relationships with many composers in the burgeoning American avant-garde, including, most significantly, Henry Flynt and La Monte Young. Young introduced Hennix to Hindustani raga master Pandit Pran Nath and she would later study intensively under him as his first European disciple. While Hennix continued to make music performing alongside Arthur Russell, Marc Johnson, Henry Flynt, and Arthur Rhames, she also served as a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at SUNY New Paltz and as a visiting Professor of Logic (at Marvin Minsky’s invitation) at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In recent years Hennix has led the just-intonation ensemble the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, which has featured musicians Amelia Cuni, Amirtha Kidambi, Chiyoku Szlavnics, Hilary Jeffrey, Amir El-Saffar, Benjamin Duboc and Rozemarie Heggen. She currently resides in Istanbul, Turkey pursuing studies in classical Arabic and Turkish makam.

Pilo returns to BNR in 2020 with the “A.R.E.A.” EP. Since his first release for the label in 2013 at a very young age, each subsequent record could be seen as a milestone of growth - the “A.R.E.A. EP” feels confident, produced with consummate skill, focusing on the LA-producers strongest themes and devices. This is not, however, the sort of “maturity” that sees things get boring, more restrained. Pilo’s drum is the beat of LA’s unhinged underground techno scene - they don’t do boring - and this drum is always banging.

A-side examples: “Acid by Mouth.” A stuttered kick and a gated, uncanny valley voice form the backbone for increasing layers of texture and percussion. It’s a rollercoaster, as viscerally satisfying on the way up as on the way down. Pilo’s production journey has been increasingly cinematic, and you can see the songs here - “Acid by Mouth” is suited for a Gaspar Noe nightclub scene, and you love to hear it as long as no one gets murdered. “Ruhig” is tribal, made for spaces with 4 story high ceilings and sparse but blinding flashes of light. You can hear steel beams buckling under pressure, a breath too close behind you. The workers of the factory in fit of madness started raving to the sounds of their own machines. They’ve been dancing, without pause, for years now.

The B-side opens with “Exit the Artificial.” Headbanging broken beat kick, aggressive Skinny Puppy snares, ghost voices in hallucinatory bursts too short to confirm to be real. The draw-distance of the stereo spread seems infinite - listen at the very edges and a whole other (ominous) world is taking place. The ghosts mock you in gated laughs by the end. “Adapt Tactics” leads you out - low tempo, hissy percussion, haunted again at the fringe. Things break down, reduced to grain - brain short-circuits, “will I feel like this forever?” It’s a warning - turn back, there’s nothing for you out there. You embrace the madness, and start Pilo’s “A.R.E.A.” EP again from the beginning.

A world premiere of AI-generated symphonic music!

All three audio files are compiled from two live recordings with different microphone settings. The cover image is generated by algorithms trained with the following image searches: migration, mediterranean, boat, Libyan coast, EU. Different search engines were used. »Land der Musik« celebrated its world premiere on 7 October 2018 at steirischer herbst '18 - volksfronten in Graz, Austria. Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst in cooperation with ORF Musikprotokoll.

A1. soundalikeStrauss (an audio reverse-engineering tool is used after the initial cross-fade) A2. AIstrauss (algorithms are trained with midi-files of Johann Strauss waltzes) B1. AImahler (algorithms trained with midi-files of Gustav Mahler symphonies) B2. (untitled)

A new standard of beauty. Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can now group photo pixels or audio waves into meaningful categories. This is similar to how our brain operates, yet the outcome seems distinctively non-human. At the same time it appears that the sphere of our appreciation and imagination may just have expanded. The question of whether we are still able to see and hear the difference between automated and so-called autonomous artifacts should be left to historians. On the other hand, producing this analog audio record with this image on the front cover really is an antagonism. A more appropriate medium might be a tracking chip of your online and offline activities generating customized results in real time—be it images, music, or whatever.

If AI is communist (to quote the libertarian Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel), then this statistics-based technology might actually reinforce centralized monopoly capitalism and the coming crisis of inequality, just as it might accelerate into Deleuze's notion of the Society of Control. But it might also be seen and heard as a demo, a new standard of beauty, for the redistribution of wealth and for solidarity; in short as a utopia freed from exploitation, nationalism, and racism, liberating us from our own perception of this world. »Land der musik - The Graz AI Score« demonstrates how machine learning might help us to finally create the perfect Austrian national music identity. Yet in doing so, our ultimate aim is to get rid of the construction of national identities all together.

»God created man because he dreamed him. / But man forgot God and created the machine because he dreamed it. / At the end of the twentieth century, however, the machine has forgotten man. / Who could predict who or what she dreams of« (Friedrich Kittler)

Earlier in the year, Red Light Radio co-founder Hugo van Hejiningen and Identified Patient joined forces to debut their new musical project, Stallion's Stud. Artificial Dance is ready to release the first fruits of the duo's studio collaboration.
The four-track EP digs deep into their shared love of electronics, post-punk era experimentation, DIY music culture and dubbed-out drum machine rhythms. The results are undeniably dark and intoxicating, with former punk singer Hugo fronting proceedings via mind-altering vocals and twisted lyrical flows.

Opener 'Promising Promises' sets the tone for what follows, with Hugo's spoken vocals wrapping themselves around ricocheting industrial dub rhythms and raw, delay-laden electronics. The delay trails to oblivion remain a force to be reckoned with on the creepy, fuzz-fuelled cold-wave doom of 'Instrumental Aria', while the throbbing and clanking 'Unpredictable' and 'Voice of No' ratchet up the intensity by several notches via end-of-days guitars, heavyweight bass and face-melting percussion.

Mannequin Records presents a trilogy of reissues from the avantgarde Italian-born producer Doris Norton, "Nortoncomputerforpeace" (1983), "Personal Computer" (1984, originally released by Durium Records), "Artificial Intellingence" (1985).Apple's first music "endorsement" and Roland affiliate, Doris Norton is one of the most important women pioneer in the use of synths and in the early electro / computer music. Norton is the wife of Antonio Bartoccetti, progressive rock guitarist, and mother of the musician and techno producer Rexanthony. As a teenager, she was drawn to medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, not to mention quantum physics, differential equations, organic chemistry, the experimentalism of John Cage and animated movie soundtracks. Her love for modules and circuits found expression through the waves of an old harmonium, the frequencies of a Minimoog, a Roland System 100M, a Roland System 700 and the ARP 2500/2600.

In 1980, Norton began her solo career by recording at Fontana Studio 7, the Milan studio of the composer and musician Tito Fontana, resulting in the electronic opera "Under Ground". Norton became more prolific, continuing her adventures in experimental electronics and computer music with Parapsycho (1981), Raptus (1981), Nortoncomputerforpeace (1983), PC (1984) - whose album cover prominently features Apple's colored logo - and Artificial Intelligence (1985).

While the beat-oriented style of Norton's music aligns her with such global fellow-travelers as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk, her championing of the personal computer as a tool for self-sufficient musical creativity also connects her to more artsy musicians such as Pietro Grossi, Laurie Spiegel, and the League of Automatic Music Composers. Norton's predilection for the bright, glossy timbres of early digital instruments also recalls Hubert Bognermayr and Harald Zuschrader's bizarre 1982 one-off Erdenklang.

Later, her talent and expertise attracted the attention of IBM, who in 1986 named her as an official consultant. Already the reigning queen of the Italian electronic scene, she recorded two CDs for IBM: Automatic Feeling and The Double Side Of The Science. Influenced by her son, the musician and producer Rexanthony, Norton brought her fascination with the early days of techno into the 1990s, when she released three volumes of Techno Shock on Italian trance/hardcore label Sound Of The Bomb.

While her music remains largely out of print and inaccessible, Norton's early records have recently begun to receive the inevitable rediscovery treatment.

"In the late sixties I had already conceived computers as personal.' I have always trusted in the benefits of solitude, (being) alone means freedom... What's better than a personal' computer for materializing ideas, by oneself" (Doris Norton)

* To celebrate the second anniversary of Khemia Records we are pleased to welcome back In Aeternam Vale, the legendary French artist who inaugurated the imprint on a split Ep with Bronze Teeth in March 2016.

* This is the first single-artist Ep produced by the label, initiating a new series that will run parallel to the V/A editions.

* The tracks 'Dave' and 'Circles' form an elliptical conundrum composed of various references including Kubrick's alchemical allegory 2001 A Space Odyssey, (sampled in French) with it's existential narrative of a schizophrenic artificial intelligence lurking in the shadows. The Deus ex Machina wondering if mankind is still useful to machines, or perhaps even dangerous to them The infamous Seveso chemical disaster at the pharmaceutical laboratory ICMESA caused by human error, the glowing blood-red sphere of HAL 9000, the all-seeing eye of the sentient super-computer and the circular composition of the toxic compound 2,3,7,8 Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), released into the atmosphere at Seveso. With this cryptic feedback loop, Laurent Prot is suggesting that the new technologies we are developing now, for use in our near future could result in catastrophe when human control is lost to the self-learning of AI. The homicidal consequences of a machine take-over find visual form in the bleak, dystopian aesthetic of Evelyn Bencicova's cover artwork.

The first release on new Berlin-based label Per Musica Ad Astra is Mick Clarke's 'Zusammen!' LP, the follow-up after many years to his debut solo release 'Games' on German label Blubberlips in 1979. A pioneer of UK electronic music, Mick was also in legendary synth-wave band Naked Lunch, and apart from producing music under a few different aliases over the years he also finds time to run the Flight Recorder label and is a regular programmer on Intergalactic FM, hosting both the Radio Oscillations and Magic Waves shows. The music here is very much in the spirit of the label's kosmische/space Berlin-school agenda, both reflecting his earlier work and exploring new territory simultaneously. Lush orchestrations and beautiful synth pads contrast against hypnotic rhythms and delicate melodies, and while the label's mission might be electronic listening music' tracks like 'Red Bird' and 'Mistral' are surely DJ material too. The latter evokes a sound similar to vintage Basic Channel, while other parts of the album flow through sonic territories as diverse as Tangerine Dream and the Berlin school of ambient, Warp Records' classic 'Artificial Intelligence' series, deep electro and even atmospheric Italo as well. The record comes in a beautiful sleeve with notes from the label, and comes free with a nice space insert! Definitely not one to miss!