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Circle 3 is the 9th vinyl release on Blank Code Records and is the 3rd release in the Circle series produced by Detroit native Mutate (Len Bartush), with remixes by Luis Flores, Mike Parker, and Project 313.

Circle 3 exemplifies the spirit of Detroit Techno. A deep, rich kick with a nice snappiness keeps the beat driving as heavily filtered synths reverberate through time, reminiscent of Detroit's classic M­Series records. Tight, delicate percussion plays with some aggressive claps creating the dynamic of a true modern classic.

Luis Flores delivers a solid remix that completely deconstructs the original track while keeping it's most bold elements. The kick is booming, the bass is tight, and there's a mean hook that loops it's way around the percussion, really drawing you inside the track's world.

Mike Parker dispatches an up­front rework, shrinking the original elements of the track into a veracious hook, supported by clock­like kicks and hats..

Project 313 deliver a stand­out remix that really highlights the atmosphere of the original track. The echo of the crunchy stabs dissolve into an endless feedback loop, as clicky hats and a solid downbeat pull everything together.

Exclusive to the digital version is another Mutate original, Recursive. This down­tempo track dives deep into dub, with sparse chord stabs that let their echoes form the dominant rhythm. A wicked groove is formed by the broken kick and finely chopped percussion that glitches on beat.

Fatima Al Qadiri is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Kuwait. In just a few years, she has quickly built a reputation as a conceptual artist, exploring themes informed both by her own background and global pop culture, through a number of highly acclaimed EPs, multimedia projects and writings. She is also a founding member of the production team Future Brown. Fatima's debut album is called 'Asiatisch', and as the track titles suggest, the record provides a simulated road trip through an imagined China. Musically, the album is an homage to that quietly influential sub-strain of grime, often loosely termed 'sinogrime' due to its preoccupation with Asian motifs and melodies, pioneered by the likes of Wiley and Jammer at the beginning of the 2000s in East London. 'Asiatisch' is a provocation which asks more questions than it answers. The title is the German word for Asian. Unlike its title, however, the music on 'Asiatisch' revolves around the fantasies of East Asia as refracted through pulpy Western pop culture, in particular Hollywood, literary fiction, music, cartoons and advertising. Fatima asks what is meant by the term 'Asian' in a digital age of viral interchange and the hi-speed trading of cultural bytes; the concept of 'shanzhai' proves pivotal, a term whose meaning stems from a wild, out of control zone of banditry, but which has come to be used to refer to the Chinese counterfeiting of Western brands and goods. While a number of producers have made takes on 'sinogrime' over the last few years, 'Asiatisch' is really the first record that attempts to articulate this weird complex of sonic interchanges between the West and China. With the exception of the opening track, 'Shanzhai', a haunting cover of 'Nothing Compares to You' with nonsensical Mandarin lyrics, and the shimmering 'Loading Beijing', 'Wudang' and 'Jade Stairs' which sample and distort classical Chinese poetry staging an epic confrontation between China's ancient soul and the onslaught of the industrial factory machine, most of the tracks blend mallets, bells, gongs, flutes, steel drums and choral atmospherics with the searing synth-brass and the skittering drums of grime, playing melodies that are inflected as much by classic R&B as to synthetic versions of traditional Chinese music. On "Dragon Tattoo" for example, stereotypical iconography of imagined China is slotted into a threatening, robotic R&B format. The carefree pirating of Western brands blurs into a soft-synth pirating of Chinese musical signs.'Asiatisch' is wrapped in pristine artwork by Babak Radboy from Shanzhai Biennial, and the music was given a 3D sheen by in demand mixer Lexxx. Proclaiming both its love of both ancient and imagined China, 'Asiatisch' is a rare album that is both icily beautiful and conceptually layered.

117 Presents Forbidden Codes.
This compilation project is compiled and envisioned by DJ Trace, a veteran of UK dance music.New School players Verb and Quartz take on two classics to kick things off.
Mutant and Sonar get a modern and minimal touch up on crystal clear 10" collectors vinyl. Three more 10's continue this sonic experience featuring a group of the finest underground producers in today's scene.Kid Lib, Tim Reaper, Gremlinz & Homemade Weapons, Friske, Fade and Genotype appear over 3 plates.
Artist's on the LP display their 2014 vision which compliments the direction that 117 is heading.This moves far away from the soulless noise that plagues in various electronic dance music genres today. They use in this compilation, modern studio techniques enhanced with a passion and respect for the history of drum&bass.This LP is not to be filed under throwaway music.
Breaks and vibes unite to reminisce the days agone whilst outlining a new blueprint that pushes the boundaries of music technology.The essence of the 117 sound is explored and continues into the 24 digital tracks written by a gifted selection of hand picked talent from around the world.
Now is your turn to be possessed by the sounds of the 'Forbidden Codes' Released 28th April via ST Holdings.Mastered by Beau @ Ten Eight Seven, London.

'Moonshine Heater' is the debut release from Marlowe, a new studio and live project from Laurent Bovey (AKA Laps). The title track is a crisp and melodious piece, the mechanical groove bubbling with dubby FX and heavy synth shots against the hypnotizing melody. On the flip, 'My Minds Mine' comes in a darker shade, paranoid synth sweeps and a brassy analogue riff weaves around a minimal yet funky drum arrangement. Another great groove from Marlowe, and capturing that classic early Cadenza sound perfectly. Wrapping up the release is 'Power Plant', another detailed and precise mood piece, deep and unique, taking it's time to build and take effect. Marlowe does not deal with 'bomb tracks', these are sophisticated tracks for the more discerning music fan. Marlowe AKA Laurent Bovey has amassed an impressive catalogue of work since the mid-2000s, solo and as part of Digitaline. Releases on Cadenza, Smallville and Cityfox have set the standards for minimal electronic music.

After 4 years of putting out various hit releases via Thema, the mother ship, its first sub-label or satellite has come to be. We are proud to announce SPACIAL! It will consist of various remix projects, outtakes and B-sides from the parent and digital labels this new realm will function as a showcase for some of the more esoteric creations from our ever expanding roster of artists.

2024 Repress

Hurray! PROFAN is back from the future to complicate things again. But let's have a look back in the past: in the mid-1990s, Wolfgang Voigt, under his innumerable aliases (M:I:5, Digital, Grungerman, Wasserman …), unsettled the minimal world and its straight grooves with his right-at-the-threshold-of-pain abstract techno. As a DJ, you sometimes even thought that the vinyl was scratched. "Distort the listening habits until they break up" has always been the leitmotiv of this exceptional artist from Cologne. In 2000 however, after having created another promising trademark: WASSERMANN - W.I.R. that - in spite of or because of its unconventional structure (abstract beat, German vocals) - ranked among the number one hits in any important club and DJ charts and which was even remixed by Sven Väth, Wolfgang Voigt decided to discontinue the label for a while. PROFAN produced two sublabels each devoted to the refinement of specific minimal variants: STUDIO 1 and FREILAND. FREILAND in particular was and still is one of Voigt's projects that manifests his artistic and deconstrucivist approach to the aesthetics of techno beats. FREILAND's concept is radical: the only reference to techno is the bass drum and a sound reduced to the utmost that is moving around it. No wonder that now, eight years after the last PROFAN release, Wolfgang Voigt is back under his alias FREILAND. With KLAVIERMUSIK (piano music), Voigt continues his way towards atonality and electronic art music. The straight bass drum still is the only pulsatile instrument and sometimes it is not even that. WOLFGANG VOIGT / FREILAND - KLAVIERMUSIK is radical, puristic, uncompromising, elegiac, difficult, defiant, true and absolutely necessary. The record, including artcover designed by Wolfgang Voigt is strictly limited.. Greed sucks.

Hui Terra. The dreamlike shape of the half-heard word, abstracts with faint impressions of bucolic landscape, or handfuls of translucent and brightly-colored gemstones that hold odd, elusive, asymmetrical form. This enchanting, gently surreal debut album from Alex Cobb's Etelin project explores the power and playfulness of impulsive action diffused through electro-acoustic and ambient sound.

This music was created with digital synthesizers and a sampler in the four months immediately following the birth of his first child, a hazy period marked by a lack of regular sleep and a diet of INA-GRM, Nuno Canavarro's "Plux Quba", and Microstoria's "Init Ding" - records that appeared to produce both stimulating and soothing effects on a newborn's nascent consciousness. Recorded and arranged at all hours, this is an album that reflects on moments of tumult and fragility. Cobb sews small sharpnesses and surprises into its movements to uncover different aspects of each sound source, doubling as hypnic starts cast to advance and variate the narrative in subtle and unexpected ways. Sound and atmosphere manifest in eccentric, alchemical fashion, as though forming in processes of sublimation - solids dissipating into vapor - and deposition - clouds resolving and dropping to the ground in piles - to an obscure and domestic rhythm. There's the purveying sense of moving within the boundaries of small, hermetic ecosystem. This is underscored and doused by a slow, blooming sense of warmth; growing joy without bombast. Even the more startling textures conceal this same truth and emphasis, such as the alien, sour salt-butter electronic babble in "Little Rig", largely sampled from Cobb's son's voice at just a week old. It is emotional music - devoted, affectionate, and playful.