Search:kinetic pleasure

With »The Future Is Futuristic«, the fifth album for Haleiwa (and third with Morr Music), Stockholm’s Mikko Singh draws from a deep well of nostalgic feeling, while making music that feels razor-sharp, on point, and full of hazy dream-pop pleasure. After 2019’s »Cloud Formations« and 2022’s »Hallway Waverider«, which imagined psychedelic post-shoegaze and mantric pop songs into being, »The Future Is Futuristic« feels like both consolidation and magnification; the noise-drenched songs feel thicker, heftier; the electronic interludes playful and kinetic; the rhythms boundless. It’s as though Singh has truly found his metier, his voice, a place from which he’s comfortable to indulge in the kind of home-recorded worldmaking that has always marked Haleiwa out as something special.

»The Future Is Futuristic« passes by in a rush of whiteout tones and scurrilous energy; the whole thing is over within half an hour, Singh ensuring his songs say exactly what they need to say – no more, no less – before bustling through into the next ecstatic pop moment, pushing the music further into the zone. While his music often has a similar, drenched quality to shoegaze, on »The Future Is Futuristic«, Singh seems to be settling in alongside other spirits – there are touches of the experimentation of both A.R. Kane and Flying Saucer Attack here; the more motoric tunes recall New Zealand’s Snapper; the glitchtronics have a City Centre Offices sensibility, while the sparkling folksiness of the melodies can recall Bristol bands like Light or AMP.

But it’s ultimately not about influence, beyond perhaps Haleiwa nestling alongside some like-minded souls in perceptive listeners’ minds. Instead, thrill to the rush of rhythms that float between jungle and punk on »Flourishing« and »96«, the latter a reference, from Singh, to moments of early revelation – »it’s about being thankful for having found punk rock and skateboarding at a young age, in 1996.« There’s also the hypnotic dream-rush of the opening »Smoke Will Rise«, the beautiful Cure-esque guitars swimming through »Sunset Street« and »Strange Notes«, the tumbling rhythms and heady, elated chord changes that grant lift-off to »Wave Chaos«… A real panoply of pleasures, in fact.

»The Future Is Futuristic« was recorded solely by Singh on four- and eight-track in his home studio, with a quick trip to Telefonstudion to record drums. Recording at home grants a certain intimacy to »The Future Is Futuristic«, even as the songs, at times, bliss their way off into the skies; there’s something both expansive and intimate about the music here, as though Singh is grappling immensities into intimacies. It also feels deeply personal for Singh, a summation of much of what he’s done over the years; as he says, simply and clearly, »The album is in my interpretation a mix between punk, electronic music, and dream pop.« The threads that connect these creative phenomena? Energy, texture, melody, tone, sensuality; pure pop pleasure.

There is a kinetic energy that binds drummer and producer Karriem Riggins and singer-songwriter, rapper, and producer Liv.e, the spark that happens when instinct meets flow and spirit finds rhythm.

Their collaborative debut as GENA (short for “God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” and loosely inspired by Gina from Martin), The Pleasure Is Yours feels like a playful, soulful conversation between two kindred improvisers: Liv.e’s smoky, unpolished vocals glide through Riggins’ warm, percussive universe. Rooted in jazz, soul, and hip-hop, Liv.e brings a raw, experimental approach to R&B, while Riggins known for his work with Common, Erykah Badu, The Roots, Madlib, and his close kinship with J Dilla, extends his lifelong dialogue between jazz improvisation and beat science.

Together they create a world that’s analog and ethereal, percussive and poetic, bridging eras without settling in one, the sound of two artists finding a new shared language rooted in rhythm, vulnerability, and exuberance.

Pressed on 180g vinyl, the album comes in an embossed sleeve and is avaible in red and black splatter.

There is a kinetic energy that binds drummer and producer Karriem Riggins and singer-songwriter, rapper, and producer Liv.e, the spark that happens when instinct meets flow and spirit finds rhythm.

Their collaborative debut as GENA (short for “God Energy, Naturally Amazing,” and loosely inspired by Gina from Martin), The Pleasure Is Yours feels like a playful, soulful conversation between two kindred improvisers: Liv.e’s smoky, unpolished vocals glide through Riggins’ warm, percussive universe. Rooted in jazz, soul, and hip-hop, Liv.e brings a raw, experimental approach to R&B, while Riggins known for his work with Common, Erykah Badu, The Roots, Madlib, and his close kinship with J Dilla, extends his lifelong dialogue between jazz improvisation and beat science.

Together they create a world that’s analog and ethereal, percussive and poetic, bridging eras without settling in one, the sound of two artists finding a new shared language rooted in rhythm, vulnerability, and exuberance.

Pressed on 180g vinyl, the album comes in an embossed sleeve and is avaible in red and black splatter.

Opening with the buzz of a smartphone on vibrate, First Hate’s sophomore album Cotton Candy launches to life with “Someone New,” a synth-driven statement of intent. The Danish duo’s charged songs are rooted in a recognizable universe, but traverse a wide array of genre experiments and pop detours. Cotton Candy follows the quest of its protagonist stumbling through a crumbling world, winning and losing lovers, swinging from extreme highs to hopeless lows. The title alludes to transience and ecstasy, the surge of a sugar rush before nausea sets in, the way cotton candy dissolves into nothingness leaving only sticky fingers. Throughout, the productions glitter with synthetic detail and hypermodern finesse, effervescent but elusive. “Life is a rollercoaster and we’ve ridden the ups and downs.” During the recording sessions, a collage of Copenhagen musicians flowed through the studio. First Hate is a fixture of the city’s creative community, but ultimately exists in their own sphere, carving a niche as parallel universe pop stars, embracing sweet and bitter, risk and reward: “Sometimes the ones who love you most are the ones who hold you back.” Anton and Joakim grew up in Copenhagen and met when they were 15 through common friends on the street where they lived. “I didn’t enjoy being home so I used to stay at my friend Jakob's basement in an old church on Willemoesgade street,” says Wei. “His mom was the priest. She baptized Anton at age eight during his Jesus phase when he demanded a late baptism from his atheist parents. Jakob was friends with Elias who lived up in Anton’s end and they introduced us to each other. One summer my parents finally married after 20 years of dating. Joakim moved in for two weeks and we accidentally trashed the apartment while they were on their honeymoon. Later on Jakob, Elias, and two other friends, Dan and Johan, formed the band Iceage. Watching our friends’ growing success was a catalyst in creating our own project. At that point everybody in our friend group was making punk music, so the most punk thing we could think to do was start a pop duo.” The First Hate catalog comprises more than nine years of work, including their 2017 cult classic, A Prayer For The Unemployed, a collaborative album Dittes Bog, two EPs and several singles. All of the recordings are self-produced, until they are ready to be finished in the studio. “We have sort of a twin alliance. Like couples finishing each other’s spaghetti at restaurants, we finish each other’s music. Having people enter this sacred mix has been such a pleasure.” On stage Anton and Joakim embody the contrasting yet complimentary energies of yin and yang: Joakim pushing buttons, steering the ship, working synths and samplers with harmonious calm, while Anton’s body bullets around the stage, pounding out his kinetic dance moves. The name Anton means fragile flower, an apt metaphor for his stage presence. A fragile flower shooting through concrete. To behold a performer who consistently delivers such intense live performances is a rare pleasure. “Live means love. When everything is right. When we meet the audience heart to heart. Then the planet spins even faster.” First Hate has performed over a hundred shows across Europe, Asia, the U.S., and Russia, both as headliners and alongside fellow Copenhagen acts Iceage, Lust For Youth, Communions, Soho Rezanejad, Trentemøller and Grand Prix. “We are on a quest of love, yes it’s as cheesy as that.”

Microdosing is a series of compilation 12”s selected by Julienne Dessagne aka Fantastic Twins, and designed in collaboration with French visual artist Geff Pellet. Microdosing is a collective experiment aimed at helping you fighting back your modern obsession with happiness. You may deserve a nice day but the day does not need a nice you, nothing should be forced, everything is permitted. Microdosing will provide you with sonic healing weapons on regular basis and at irregular dosage. Those doses will favour psychedelic social techniques against self help tyranny, creation over soma, provoking over numbing, our outer-selves over our inner-selves. Microdosing refuses the fatality of the pleasure principle. Life is a struggle, time to embrace it. —— "My battery is low and it’s getting dark” We at Microdosing will make Opportunity’s famous last words fully ours. Some would see these as an epitaph on a black screen, we embrace them as a reclaimed fragility. Are we grains of sand wandering in space, hoping for a goal? No. We are the cosmos, the cosmos is us, unafraid of the end, unafraid of the void. Before the rise of the infinite silence, Microdosing brings you new guiding lights, white sun or black hole being a simple permutation of the kinetic rainbow. Oceanic’s “Parallel Lines Of Stripes” is a meandering mantra, an synthesised Moebius ring, a mission to your heart, that furthest star in the sky. Gilb’R’s “Cosmogonie” simply reminds us of the profound relation between spatial systems and the holy act of birth (cosmo, world and gon, conceive). The universe is a body, your body is your universe. Lucas Croon’s “Threshold Stimulus” is the soundtrack of a never ending voyage, the man is on a trip to the core sanctum. Imagine Space as a reverberation room cladded with bakelite. Losing yourself in delay repeats sometimes is the shortest way. Neuzeitliche Bodenbeläge & Sam Irl’s “Faeden” is another hymn to the umbilical chords joining us to the outer world, a black monolith of kraut acid, a pagan dance as portal to a destination only you can choose. Microdosing will be back soon with more enablers, helping to turn your petty struggles into a search for a meaning of life. The Quest lives on.