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For this third release on Dais, Drew McDowall reaches into concept, ritual, and immersion, in an exercise of unravelling the DNA of hallucination. The Third Helix is McDowall's product of deconstructive exploration, twisting the fibers of being into new structure, shape, pattern, and pulse, without reconstituting its inscribed template.

The result is a true third act,in McDowall's career, that has seen him peregrinate from the late-70s art-punk of the trio Poems to his work with Psychic TV and Coil throughout the 80s and 90s, into his current home of New York City, where he has composed with CSD, Compound Eye, as well his solo work. That triangulation is central to The Third Helix, as it begins with his dive into the existence of a sensory toolkit unique to McDowall before twisting faculties and reconfiguring consciousness by honoring inherent power, cognizant of memory yet agnostic of context.

With the tenet that journey is rarely linear, but rather an omnipresent oscillation of matter, sound is stripped to salient and primal, propelled by McDowall's boring into the core of memory and impulse, suturing together the silent awareness of excogitating experience.

Featuring eight new tracks of McDowall's dark, experimental electronics, including the opener "Rhizome", The Third Helix is a churning descent into emotion, provoking thought and reflection while carving out haunting space only to fill it with baffling and wondrous structures of layered sound. McDowall solidifies himself as an architect who transforms otherworldly materials into something fascinating and challenging in the process.

Unnerving, trancelike anthems for nervous meditation and anxious relaxation, fans of Coil will immediately connect and immerse, while the complex compositions welcome listen for drone and ambient enthusiasts.

Packaged within a thick sturdy matte sleeve jacket featuring artwork/design by artist J.S. Aurelius (Ascetic House/Marshstepper).

Cat.no.: DAIS 122 LP

Tracklisting

For this third release on Dais, Drew McDowall reaches into concept, ritual, and immersion, in an exercise of unravelling the DNA of hallucination. The Third Helix is McDowall's product of deconstructive exploration, twisting the fibers of being into new structure, shape, pattern, and pulse, without reconstituting its inscribed template.

The result is a true third act,in McDowall's career, that has seen him peregrinate from the late-70s art-punk of the trio Poems to his work with Psychic TV and Coil throughout the 80s and 90s, into his current home of New York City, where he has composed with CSD, Compound Eye, as well his solo work. That triangulation is central to The Third Helix, as it begins with his dive into the existence of a sensory toolkit unique to McDowall before twisting faculties and reconfiguring consciousness by honoring inherent power, cognizant of memory yet agnostic of context.

With the tenet that journey is rarely linear, but rather an omnipresent oscillation of matter, sound is stripped to salient and primal, propelled by McDowall's boring into the core of memory and impulse, suturing together the silent awareness of excogitating experience.

Featuring eight new tracks of McDowall's dark, experimental electronics, including the opener "Rhizome", The Third Helix is a churning descent into emotion, provoking thought and reflection while carving out haunting space only to fill it with baffling and wondrous structures of layered sound. McDowall solidifies himself as an architect who transforms otherworldly materials into something fascinating and challenging in the process.

Unnerving, trancelike anthems for nervous meditation and anxious relaxation, fans of Coil will immediately connect and immerse, while the complex compositions welcome listen for drone and ambient enthusiasts.

* 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.

With his first EP on Orbis, Binny is ramping it up, once again.
We're very pleased & honoured to host him, his 11th appearance on a vinyl record so far.
Someone to watch out for!

"Resistance" & "Infinite Ratio" has a brilliant hypnotic tension to it.
We won't bother explaining these two. Simply Binny, UK tension building up and excellent for playing 3 decks.
Excellent DJ tools.

On the B-side, Lee takes it to the raw side of analogue techno.

Lee Holman, a veteran that should ring a bell.
Performing in clubs since the late nineties, he has travelled throughout Europe compounding a reputation for his unique vision on Techno.
Production has earned him international recognition, leaving his mark building a reputation for consistency, originality and delivering his dynamic sound on both cutting edge and classic Techno Labels. In other words, Perfect Orbis material!

"Instructional" is no-nonsense raw material, the way Lee likes to build up his tracks.
Straight forward. No compromises. Plain old good techno.
If you're a fan of some older and raw flavoured repetitive techno, you'll want this to light up the dancefloor!

"Urbanite" well. Quircky, filthy, heavy, stomping,... You get the picture.

We're very honoured to host these the gentlemen,
as we're convinced they are a very good fit that matches our vision: transcending mediocre electronic music.

Drew McDowall's back story reads like a primer of psychedelic fiction woven into statements of the unbelievable, superhuman and outright insane. Somewhere in the chaotic madness, comes an artist such as McDowall with total control and absolute calm within his songs and artistic method.

Growing up in the gangs of 1970's Scotland, Drew McDowall started to shy away from the daily violence once punk took hold of the counterculture youth. Drew McDowall quickly scrambled to form his own punk band in 1978 with his then wife, Rose McDowall, called The Poems. Shortly lived, the Poems released a single and various tracks but more importantly, the band allowed McDowall to network with other local musicians in Glasgow, such as Orange Juice, and allowed him to travel down to London thus forming friendships with Genesis P-Orridge, David Tibet and countless others, bringing Drew into the fold of the experimental revolution happening in the UK brought upon by Throbbing Gristle and executed by bands such as Psychic TV and Current 93.

During the 1980's, McDowall found himself in the ranks of P-Orridge's Psychic TV and collaborating with the mysterious duo comprised of former Throbbing Gristle creator Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and the enigmatic John Balance who had been creating esoteric and progressive electronic music under the title of Coil. It was during his formative collaborations with Coil that McDowall saw himself shift from occasional contributor to austere full-time member of the arcane outfit. McDowall's impact on the band's sound was apparent as the releases transformed from their previous avant pop signature to a more complex and methodic electronic imprint accompanied by even more abstruse subject matter than previous years. McDowall would continue honing his compositional skills with Coil until the release of the band's two most broad-minded albums, Astral Disaster and Musick to Play in the Dark.

The past decade, Drew McDowall found himself living in New York City and re-appropriating himself within the local music scenes he found himself contributing to. In 2011, alongside his friend and collaborator, Tres Warren (Psychic Ills), McDowall found himself exploring his passion of meditative drone and abstract sound patterns in their project Compound Eye. In recent times, McDowall's production work has provided the music world with some of the most outstanding remixes for bands such as Nine Inch Nails, Azar Swan and Long Distance Poison as well as his well-received scores he composed alongside artist Tamaryn for the works of Bret Easton Ellis. Outside of his collaborative duties, McDowall formed an audience as a solo artist, playing countless performances and showcases around New York's electronic music haunts.

Dais Records approached Drew to solidify his standing as a leading electronic musician with the recording of new material neatly wrapped up in his debut album entitled 'Collapse'. Recorded in 2015 in Brooklyn, NY, McDowall's synonymous modular synthesizer compositions are augmented by obtuse sampling cut-ups and contributions from Nicky Mao (Hiro Kone / Effi Briest) rounding out the lumbering sequential knot work that has become synonymous with McDowall and craft.