With a self-proclaimed goal to showcase newcomers as well as established artists, Melodymathics hands out their 'second punch' with a killer track by Detroit veteran Gari Romalis. Gari is at the forefront of the Detroit techno scene, working close with Terrence
Parker, Mike Banks, Cliff Thomas and labels such as Tresor, Transmat, Soma and many more. His productions clearly show that his 30 years experience Dj'ing made him realize what works on the dancefloor. 'The Web' on Melodymathics Ltd.002 is a sublime example of soulful keys combined with funky rhythm, resulting in the ultimate Dj tool.
Our new talent 'Barce' was discovered in Spain and sets the tone with his 'SP' track for a possible lifetime relationship with Melodymathics. Barce's music speaks parts of his life and relfects a musical image of his soul. 'SP' brings deepness to another level in this release, with a manipulated organ chord - hypnotizing you throughout the whole chord -
and a story being told on top with various snares, dope basslines and sample work.
The traditional endless grooves, provided byThe Melodymann, are a nice addition for any Dj who wants that little extra..
Dj Feedback
SEAN DEASON (Matrix records)
Very nice! Smooth deep and funky as hell! Great work!
ROBERT OWENS
Great EP, would be nice to play.
SAMUEL JAMES (Elektrosouls Recordings)
One of the deepest releases of the year. Melodymathics is definitely a label to keep an eye on !
JULES WELLS ( KMS, Submerge records)
Great, I love it !!
RENNIE FOSTER (Transmat / Rebirth )
Sick
BEN SOLAR
Great Stuff
FABRICE LIG
Great EP, so deep !
TITONTON DUVANTE
All tracks are solid! Really like the way the Gari Romalis track builds. The Barce track is
cool in the second half. Expect some deck time for this one..
DONNA BLACK
This is DOPE!
SEBASTIAN SAN
Good stuff, Deep as i like it !
DIMITRI ANDREAS
Nice smooth and deep, Like it !
LA WILLIAMS (Peacefrog, DJAX)
PUREEEEEEE DETROITTTTTT ! Richard Pryor sample classic
PAT LEZIZMO
Vraiment Bien !
SATORE (Hizou Deeply Rooted House)
Really nice Ep!
AUBREY
really good .. like it.. deep moody stuff !!
PETE HOWL
Deep & smooth, great package! love it
ANAXANDER
'wow, strong EP, proper dancefloor killers'
BERNY GARDIN
Interesting, can feel lot of infuences, style!
ANDREW DUKE
Veteran artist Gari Romalis brings the heat as expected; both Barce's original and the
remix from The Melodymann hit the spot. With these 3 tracks all in my bag, Melodymathics
Ltd keeps bringing the goods.
DEEP MOVEMENTS LABEL
Instant support, will play for sure !
OLIVER KAPP (Indulge, Raygun Records)
Very nice old school vibe..... love it
Поиск:disco stu
Все
clear vinyl pressing!
Soundtravels Recordings proudly presents "Point Of View Part 1". We have compiled six contemporary, electronic bombs from artists all around Europe.
For some we didn't have to travel that far though...
The Hagues Baz Reznik provided us with "Nightdrive To Stuttgart", a moody, sinister track with that typical raw Reznik sound and a melody that will stick in your head for days after you first heard it.
Amsterdam based Arctic Boogie boss Endfest came up with another killer, "Von Heijden En Verre". Almost ten minutes filled with frosty synths and arctic melodies, accompanied by an ever present, very sophisticated 303 which peaks halfway the track, shivers!
Our last, but not least, Dutch contributor is Rotterdam based Louis Guilliaume who you might know from several straight forward techno releases on various quality underground labels. "Promiscues" is a rough edged, energetic track which fits somewhere between Detroit techno and Dutch Westcoast elektronica. At the end of 2013 he will release the "Unknown Forces EP" on Soundtravels.
Okay, now we fly all the way over to Croatia for Le Chocolate Noir with "Futu.e Is B.ight". A short but powerful EBM track with vocals from the man himself. Dark industrial mechanics accompanied by a threathening bassline, but no need to worry... cause Futu.e is B.ight! In 2014 he will release his first EP on Soundtravels.
Next stop... Düsseldorf. After discovering Dircsen's tracks we definitely had to have him on board. The first result of that can be heard on his astonishing "Aspiration EP" (Soundtravels 003). This guy keeps on producing his solid, high quality electronics and shows us his love for the TB 303 machine in a brilliant way. "Exist" is actually a downtempo dubtechno track but off course it has a fierce 303 all over it. Timeless again. Early 2014 his second EP named "Acid Wheel EP" will be a fact.
New to our family is the Russian Neotnas. He makes his first appearance with "Rewind". Typical for his sound is that warm, organic feel all over his house and dubtechno productions. Very often accompanied by female vocals and it's almost like you hear somebody play a live instrument if you listen carefully. At the end of 2013 he will release his "Slow & Steady EP".
William Kouam Djoko returns to Voyage Direct with Deflourished. After a year with a lot of high highs and some deep lows, William found himself on the dance floor listening to a set by Chicago Footwork specialists DJ Rashaad & DJ Spinn.
William experienced what religious people might call a divine moment. All the experiences, emotions and soul searching from the previous year came together in one emotional, energetic moment. William tried to recapture all of this in his studio the next day and within hours Deflourished was created. A pure form of energy shared by William for everyone to enjoy, hopefully as much as he enjoyed creating it.
B-side Behind Closed Doors completes the package; a lot more subtle and refined than it's A-side brother. A synth-heavy, down-pitched and outstretched song that builds heavily on space, both physical and mentally. On his Sophomore Voyage Direct release William Kouam Djoko truly sets out on a voyage to discover his inner-self. The result, whether it's the expressive energy of Deflourished, or the more mesmerising gloominess of Behind Closed Doors, is beautiful to say the least.
The package is completed by a stunning video of Deflourished made by graphic designer Saša Ostaja and animator Niko Lanzuisi. The video will be launched at a special party
Morn, even and next day. Man, woman and child. Can you see the rainbow there on a raining day... The welcome return of 10 Label the Japanese imprint co-founded by Katsunori Sawa and Yuji Kondo, from their first 'Mu EP' in 2011. TEN002EP is the second release in the various artists series. 'Replay' brings together the visions of Perc, Dalhous, Matthew Herbert and Steven Porter. However, there is a dramatic development in four artists' dexterous works. You discover that now you are standing on the centre of stark contrasts among all four tracks, with a photograph and your breath.
The vinyl is adorned with a stunning artwork by London's photographer Jone Reed. The print-design by Shinya Ishimura. Mastered by the Mastering Engineer of the Year 2013 at the Music Producers' Guild Awards, Matt Colton at Alchemy
Low Impossible Rendez-Vous is an hypnotic and meandering house excursion by swing maestro Guillaume and his jazzed out Coutu Dumonts. From the funked up and highly danceable heat of A1 to the spaced-out drum ornaments and rider-on-the-stormesque keys of A2, the wriggly run of this record finally flows over into a deep slow burner on the B side - atmospheric elegance. Guillaumes inimitable expertise for intuitive dance patterns made him a well seen suspect on neat labels like Circus Company, Hartchef Discos, Karat, Oslo, Mutek or Vincent Lemieuxs Musique Risquée. Long in the making this EP is the logical continuation of a longtime friendship between Guillaume and the Meander gang. 'Everything in good time' was the slogan on this one and Impossible Rendez-Vous seems to bring together elements that would have, otherwise, been pulled apart by gravity and time. This debut on Meander certainly shapes great things to come. Featured musicians: A1 - Vocal and lyrics by Dynamike (Michel Ndeze), Guitar by Alexis Messier, Keys by Nicolas Boucher and Saxophone by Sébastien Arcand-Tourigny A2 - Drums by Andre Seidel - recorded by Felix Gebauer at KMA Studios Berlin. Mastering and cut by Helmut Erler at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
D-Edge are proud to present "Black Belt", the stunning debut from one of Brazil's most important figures.
D-Edge Records are proud to present Black Belt, the debut
album from Brazilian DJ, producer, club and label boss Renato
Ratier. After emerging with some already impressive EPs, the
time has now come for a full artistic statement that spans 17
tracks of slo mo electronics, deep house ambiance and tripped
out, disco inflected grooves.
Rather than this being a collection of dancefloor tracks, its
more a carefully programmed journey that takes you up and
down through many different moods and grooves, but all of
them untied by Ratier's analogue textures, unfamiliar hooks
and futuristic melodies.
Opening with the found sound recordings and muffled ambiance
of 'Love Me Tokyo' the album goes through the funky licks of
'Jamaicanese', the well-sampled 'Midnight Sun' and freewheel-
ing deep house and ethereal melodies of 'Teatime'. The latter
half of the album points more towards the dancefloor with the
title track's knotted bassline, the deep and spaced out house
hypnosis of 'Fetisshu' and plenty more besides. It's a stunning
debut from one of Brazil's most important figures.
L/F/D/M is from London and studied art with Dom from Factory Floor, who encouraged him to work on music production. But his musical influences range from jazz, exotica, afrobeat, disco, post punk - you name it.
'I guess all the music you soak up just filters through one way or another. Music production is often about exploiting chance and about decisions made in that moment. I'm always trying to reach that magic point where you can remove yourself from what you're making, and the music starts to trigger an emotion rather than just being blocks of colour on a computer.' - L/F/D/M
- Turn Me On' by Jay W. McGee is the third release in a series of sought after boogie, disco and modern soul re-issues on Légère Recordings. The original 12inch vinyl single appeared on the tiny Canadian Indie label Love Productions in 1980 and is immensely hard to find these days.
- Turn Me On' is an unusual production for its time, grooving along unbelievably deep in a spartanic arrangement, and fuelled by vocals which are not too far away from Sylvester's iconic style of mixing soul, disco, funk and jazz.
Jay W. McGee has a strong opinion about disco music: - When disco came out, it had its own way of reaching people's hearts too. Being in a club, you know, it's escapism, like with soul music. Soul is addressing everyday life problems, disco is about how to forget and enjoy yourself. They each have their own unique place. I saw people railing on doing disco because they didn't understand the seriousness of it,' Jay W. McGee explains about - Turn Me On' when he officially commissioned this re-release: - The discrimination of disco was in reality a discrimination against black music.'
- Your Love', the flipside of this 12inch single, is an exciting ballad on the B-side and a surprise in itself. Both tracks feature a great combination of talents. Wayne Jackson, the trumpet player on - Turn Me On', played on Rick James' album 'Bustin' Out On L Seven', in the late Seventies. Glenn Johanson was the engineer on - Your Love'. He became Eddy Grant's house engineer at his studio in Barbados right after he mixed this tune. But there is also a little drama in the story. When Jay W. McGee returned to the studio where he recorded, "Turn Me On" he found out that the original version of - Turn Me On' was erased by another technician: - Everybody said it could have been a hit, and maybe the guy did it on purpose.' Nevertheless he recorded the song again with a now different arrangement and instrumentation. Maybe that is the reason why the production is so unique and also so different to - Your Love'.
Jay W. McGee could have been a solo artist on Philadelphia International Records, back in 1969, when he met Leon Huff of Gamble & Huff, in Philly for an audition, just before they recorded - Me And Mrs. Jones', - Bad Luck' and - Backstabbers' with Billy Paul, Harold Melvin and The O'Jays. They offered him a contract, but he refused, because he came with his whole group from Flint, Michigan and they wanted to be signed collectively.
Jay W. McGee kept just one of the original 12inches in his home: - Both songs were a profession of love to my wife. We are now married for 34 years.' Now if this ain't love, we don't know....'
Den meisten dürfte FREILAND eher von den jüngeren Profan
Veröffentlichungen Klaviermusik und Geduld bekannt sein.
FREILAND war aber vor allem das 1998 gestartete, auf 6 Maxis
begrenzte Nachfolgeprojekt der legendären Studio 1 Reihe.
Keine Hihats, keine Snares, keine Samples. Weniger ist Mehr.
Mit seiner konsequenten Konzeption, mit jeweils nur einem
einzigen synthetischen Sound, der in stoisch-minimaler
Rhythmik lediglich um eine Bassdrum kreist, war und ist
FREILAND, neben Sog, Wolfgang Voigts wichtigstes Projekt
dieser Art. Im Sinne der ' Kunst des Weglassens " stellt das
Stück FREILAND - ROT 2, gewissermassen den Inbegriff
dieses Konzeptes dar. So bildet auch 'ROT 2' den Auftakt der
Remixreihe 'FREILAND - FREIE SICHT'. Wie eine rostige
Stahlskulptur à la Richard Serra steht auch heute noch das
Original auf freiem Feld und trotzt Wind und Wetter. Für seinen
Z.O.M. Mix hat Wolfgang Voigt das Ding rein ins Haus geholt
und in einen fast discohaft, warmen Groovemantel gehüllt. So
verpackt geht's dann durch silbern glitzernden
Lamettamaschinenregen aus dem Arpeggiator. Ein kleiner
Vorgeschmack auf das im September erscheinende Album
'Zukunft Ohne Menschen'.
'ROT 3' , die Mutter aller Schaffelbomben, kommt im Gaffelmix.
Heißt: Gabber trifft Schaffel. Kompakt Extra / Speicher, die
Heimat des Edelschweinerock lässt grüßen. Gewissermaßen
als Ehrengast gibt sich auf B1 der Maler Albert Oehlen unter
seinem Musik -Alter Ego Wendy Gondeln die Ehre. Ganz der
expressiven Radikalität seiner Malerei entsprechend,
bearbeitet er das bisher als Originalversion unveröffentlichte
'ROT 4'. Vermittels aggressiv, abstraktem Geigeneinsatz in
Echtzeit bringt er die stabile Statik des Beats an seine Grenzen.
Ein kurzes aber intensives Intermezzo und ein Annäherung an
Techno, wie man sie so nur sehr selten gehört hat. Für smart-
souveräne Abrundung in Richtung Dancefloor sorgt Michael
Mayer im besten kompakt'schen Sinne. Er verdichtet die
Zutaten des subtil groovenden Schaffeltracks 'GELB 3' zu
einem zischelnden Geäst aus verwischten Drumsounds.
Musikalisches Eigenblutdoping mit knappen Breaks und
sparsam gesetzten düster-housigen Akkorden.
Back with another monster of a release, Ellum Audio bring you four heavy duty remixes of the infectious jam 'New York Is Alright' from TV Baby - a killer track with 'a throb of low-resolution low-end and caustic vocals' - in the words of label boss Maceo Plex. For the A side Blackspun deliver a sensational 'Minimal Mix' and 'Acid Dub', while over on the flip Maetrik injects plenty of groove and Idjut Boys take things into another dimension! All tracks are serious DJ weaponry, each served to dominate the dancefloor in their own way at peak time.
ELL014 comes as part of a joint release with DJ Spun's label Rong Music (USA), who will be releasing the original track plus remixes from Eric Duncan.
Blackspun is made up of Jason Drummond aka DJ Spun and Mark Bell aka Blakkat. Originally from San Francisco but currently residing in New York DJ Spun's journey and career through electronic music began at the birth of House and continues to this day. L.A's Blakkat is a vocalist, producer and first class DJ also working with the biggest names in the business and gracing the decks of the best clubs in the world. Together they make the perfect team with the results clear to see from this special release.
Flying high at the top of his game Eric Erstonel aka Maetrik (Maceo Plex) recently released his DJ Kicks album on !K7 which featured the Blackspun remix.
From their North London studio, Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell aka the Idjut Boys have run three record labels and produced their infectious dub-heavy disco sampling house for many more. They formed their first label, U-Star, in '94 on the back of their successful club nights of the same name.
All killer no filler on the new Legendary Sound Research release! We've got a split double A-side EP from The Saint Petersburg Disco Spin Club and head researcher of the label, The Legendary 1979 Orchestra.
SPDSC's 'Nightdriving' sounds like the soundtrack to an early 80s exploitation movie featuring crazy driving stunts! JKriv, of Deep & Disco fame, flips the track into a mid tempo piano driven stomper adding even more action to the scenes.
On the flip side, The Legendary 1979 Orchestra's 'Love Triangle Theme' is the actual soundtrack to the opening scene of the short horror film 'Matasari'. The track is moody and tensed but somehow liberating with its groovyness. Taking care of remix duties is analog veteran Ruf Dug. His take is reverby, atmospheric, sounding straight off a lost proto house tape.
Give the tracks a spin with the sun in your face or in a dark basement, you'll hear what they're meant for!
The story of Bonobo is one that's become uncommon in contemporary music. There was no sudden, viral internet sensation, no one-off big hit, no abrupt, accidental alignment with the zeitgeist. Instead, over the course of four albums, myriad tours, singles, remixes and production work for other artists, he quietly but very definitely became one of the most important artists in electronic music. The hard work paid off, and culminated in 2010's 'Black Sands,' a masterful album that married Green's inimitable melodic genius and musicianship to bleeding edge electronics, bass and infectious drums.
After a year plus of touring the hypnotic, extended live versions of Black Sands, he finally found time last year to embed himself in his New York studio and write his fifth studio album. Now, in 2013, he stands ready to take things up yet another notch. 'The North Borders' is a long stride forward - both a natural evolution and a continuation of the electronic palette of Black Sands. Thematic, resonant, addictive and perfectly formed, it's a thrillingly coherent statement piece.
It's also an album that shows just how far electronic music has come. Its richness of texture, emotive force and all round depth are facets found more often within, dare we say it, classical music. If there's a renaissance taking place within this scene, Simon Green could make a strong claim to being one of its key driving forces.
As with previous albums, The North Borders features a careful balance between vocal tracks and instrumentals, ensuring that the productions themselves get room to breathe and shine. When Green discovered that he and Erykah Badu shared a mutual appreciation for each other's work, he leapt at the chance to collaborate. The resultant 'Heaven for the Sinner' is one of the album's triumphs, a transcendental, incanted vocal masterclass married to a brilliant two-step glitch and a yearning melody.
NYC folk underdog Grey Reverend appears on album opener 'First Fires,' providing a raw, emotion-laid-bare growl that sets the tone for an album that's joyously unselfconscious. Bonobo has a long history of unearthing new talent, Black Sands having launched the solo career of guest vocalist Andreya Triana. The North Borders sees him do so once again. The startling, ethereal vocals of new collaborator Szjerdene are sprinkled across the album, and Green has yet again found the perfect voice to express where he's at. 'Transits' sees her vocal weave around a garage beat that's somehow fragile and purposeful all at once, a gradually emerging hook rising from the depths of the song.
'Emkay' is a stunning example of the album's marriage of addictive, urban-inflected drums to rise-and-swell melody that never fails to move the listener. Opening single 'Cirrus' sees a clockwork-precise rhythm drive a chiming, insistent melody that builds to one of the record's great emotional climaxes. This is where Green excels, he knows how to invest electronic music with immense feeling.
The North Borders - like all great records - is an album that demands to be listened to as such, a body of work with its own internal logic, themes and narrative arc. Bonobo's abilities are at an all time high, and The North Borders everything his growing army of fans will have hoped for - a sheer delight.
Diva is a project which explores the outer regions of techno's psyche - combining the trippy sensuality of Chris & Cosey with the brutalist analogue aesthetic of the likes of Robert Hood or Liasons Dangereuses.
Inspired by the vocal histrionics of strobe lit sirens such as Loleatta Holloway and Jocelyn Brown, Diva calls on the protean roots of basement club music. Lead track 'Paris Stabbing' is a stunning excursion into motor city madness, abstracted disco vocals clash with a broken digi-arpeggio and hooverish bass break down, whilst the flip side 'But I've Never' imposes a detuned synth siren over an industrial bass sequence and sp1200 piano stabs to eerie effect. Also included is the 'Paris Stabbing (Beats)' which pares down the original, adding detuned melodic percussion into a minimalist after hours tool.
Welcome reisssue for monster soul-funk LP 'Disconnection', one of the most obscure and sought-after releases from top 70s disco label, Prelude. Ridiculously expensive and hard-to-find in the original, this album is stuffed full with killer tracks spanning warm, soulful disco, high-stepping groove and boogie-heavy funk all written and produced by Robert Holmes. Standouts include the jazzy free-style 'Dead On The Case', later reworked for the mysterious French Skyline project, cool jazz-funk groover 'Bay City', recently edited by none other than Balearic maestro Lexx, and the floor-friendly chunky funk workout 'Cash Money'. However no track is a filler on this superb album which fully deserves its 'holy grail' status with collectors. Essential!
Oh Holy Molar is the second album from UK trio Felix. The group produces a bewitching, minimal chamber pop that works as the perfect framework for singer/songwriter Lucinda Chua's oblique and emotionally immediate stories of superstition and searching for protection against bad omens.
*As a follow up to their debut You Are The One I Pick, the band return with a collection of songs with a sound stripped back to its very core. Something is said to have "teeth" when it has the ability to make an impact. This record certainly has "teeth", and sharp ones at that.
*" The album was recorded in a vast, spooky 1940s cinema in Nottingham, England, now converted into a studio. After recording was completed the band discovered that underneath the live room lay an abandoned Dental Laboratory. "Oh Holy Molar" indeed.
*" Since the release of the rst Felix album, pianist/vocalist Lucinda Chua, also an accomplished photographer, has been working on a number of projects, most recently with Wallpaper* in Detroit. Guitarist Chris Summerlin has been recording and touring with his new band Kogumaza. The group is completed with the recent addition of drummer Neil Turpin who, when not performing with Felix, can also be found touring the world with French composer Yann Tiersen.
press quotes for You Are the One I Pick
'It's a gateway into another headspace, one aglow with uncertain magic. As statements of romantic intent go, 'Death To Everyone But Us' must represent either the most straightforward, honest distillation of the love song, or the creepiest.' BBC
'In Felix's world, everyday mundanities give rise to furtive explorations of human interaction and ineptitude in a manner as oppressive as it is oddly and honestly addictive.' Drowned in Sound
'The duo keep things refreshingly simple, with single strands of piano, guitar, and cello in quiet symmetry, leaving the listener ample room to savor Felix's knotty, enigmatic songcraft.' Pitchfork
'There is mystery and elegance in the marrow of this music, and I imagine this record will prove to stand the test of time, reserved to be pulled out for the perfect accompaniment to just the right brooding but whimsical mood.' Delusions of Adequacy
track list:
1.The Bells 2. Sunday Night 3. Oh Thee 73 4. Don't Look Back (It's Too Sad) 5. Hate Song 6.Oh Holy Molar 7. Blessing Part I 8. Blessing Part II 9. Rites 10. Who Will Pity the Poor Fool 11. Pretty Girls 12. Practising Magic 13. Little Biscuit
Up and away / To your journey to the sun / Drink your rocket juice / Fly away (Hey, Shooter).
High up in the skies, amongst the clouds, Rocket Juice & The Moon was born. Literally. It happened back in 2008, when Damon Albarn, Flea and Tony Allen convened on the same Lagos flight, to play and exchange musical ideas in that city as part of the Africa Express collective. Relishing a shared enthusiasm for one another's work, and bonding immediately, there and then the triumvirate laid down the blueprint for Rocket Juice.
Still, more than a year passed before conditions were set for three weeks together at Albarn's West London studio, recording and refining two-dozen startlingly out and deeply funky instrumental grooves. The next stage was to invite onboard some extremely talented friends, with further sessions in Dallas, New York, Chicago and Paris... Erykah Badu, no less, queen of contemporary soul. Three companions from Africa Express: Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, whose debut album has topped World Music charts since its release last Autumn; her multi-talented compatriot Cheick Tidiane Seck, whose prodigious keyboardism has lit up releases by artists ranging from Youssou N'Dour to Hank Jones; the young, Ghanaian rapper M.anifest, quizzically existential, switching seamlessly between Twi and English. And the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, long-time stalwarts in the Honest Jon's set-up — since one of the team discovered them busking near the shop in Portobello Road, on his lunchbreak — with a second album for the label due in May... Finally, the tracks were dispatched for mixing to Berlin, to be meticulously honed, polished and envenomed by Mark Ernestus, one half of the legendary Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound partnerships.
The result is Rocket Juice & The Moon — out March 26, 2012, on Honest Jon's Records — a triumphant exploration and proliferation of kinetic Afro-funk rhythms: organic, exuberant, communal music-making, evidenced by the project's live debut on stage as part of the Honest Jon's Chop Up in late 2011, which hit London, Marseille, Dublin, and Cork to such great acclaim (witness the flurry of smart-phone film-clips uploaded in the days thereafter).
From the inaugural bars — that absurdly funky slice of instructional timekeeping, 1-2-3-4-5-6 — the liquid pulse of Fela Kuti's classic recordings drives the action through a suite of 18 shape-shifting compositions. The greatest drummer in the world has never sounded so good as he does here. His intricate cross-patterns jostle and lock with Flea's nimble, rumbling bass riffs. Joined by Seck on There and Extinguished — 'when you dispose of something burning, be sure it's out' — Albarn's keyboards spray synth fusillades up top, over, and under... splicing into the mess of wires running between the freaked Afro-disco of William Onyeabor and the space-jazz-moog of Sun Ra. The HBE brings extra intensity and drama to Leave-Taking — likewise Flea's trumpet to Rotary Connection — teasing out the haunting melody coiled in the mix.
Where the best of vintage Afrobeat sides sustained their concentrated energies over the course of sprawling, marathon jams, RJ & TM manages something altogether different: the group bottles the idiom into capsules of funk... and real songs. Beautifully buoyed by Erykah Badu's unmistakable vocals, Hey, Shooter brilliantly traverses metaphysical spaceways sans any semblance of noodling. Lolo and Follow-Fashion — featuring the open-hearted sensuality of Diawara's singing, M.anifest's quick, brawny science, and more brass blasts — play like its musical cousins or codas. Indeed, the album's shrewd sequencing creates the composite effect of tracks working both individually or within the context of an extended song-cycle.
The lovely ballad, Poison, is bittersweet and ruminative: 'If you're looking for love, beware the signs / They will paralyze you one by one / Poison, it will only break your heart.' Down-tempo and dubby, Check Out and Worries amplify the range of styles and moods. And by the time of Fatherless — a chugging Afro blues that evokes John Lee Hooker lost in Lagos, one gets the sneaking suspicion there's very little outside the reach of this collective's inventive musical grasp.
There is, in fact, a palpable openness pervading Rocket Juice & The Moon — the sense of a limber willingness to follow creative impulse — right down to how the group acquired its name. When Ogunajo Ademola — the Lagotian commissioned to do the album's cover artwork — dubbed his submission 'Rocket Juice & The Moon', it quickly morphed into the formal name of the project, like trying to hold onto mercury.
Surely, the stars above also approved.
SK 011, 444, Centralbron, Midsummer Night, Babar, Russian Folksong, Carbon Oxide, I Love Water, all those brilliant Tiga productions... We really don't know what else to say - just try to imagine the history and future of this dance music thing we're all involved in without Jesper Dahlbäck... Nah, rather not, right Being part of Jesper's discography is the greatest thing that has happened to Studio Barnhus up until now and these two tracks, Fransson and DX2 RMX, are up there with all those previously mentioned masterpieces.
After releases and remixes out on Lovemonk Records and Nickodemus' Wonderwheel label Pablo Sanchéz is currently throwing out hot jams from his studio in Barcelona.
For GAMM he sorted us with a blazin' discoish dub of Pointer Sisters 'Yes We Can Can' that gives the original a more dj friendly push.
On the b-side 'Monkiez' delivers a classic meltdown of hip hop beats Thelonius Monk jazz samples.
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.




















