Elf Jahre nach ihrem letzten Kollaborationsalbum "Inlandish" veröffentlichten Hans-Joachim Roedelius, deutscher Experimental-Musiker und Krautrock-Legende (Cluster, Harmonia), und Tim Story, US-amerikanischer Neoklassik- und Ambient-Komponist, ihr neues Werk "Lunz3", angelehnt an ihr gleichnamiges Werk aus 2002. Das Ergebnis ist eine facettenreiche Exkursion im Spannungsfeld zwischen Electronica, Neoklassik, Ambient und Drone.
Shuta Yasukochi is an artist from the Saitama prefecture in Japan.
'In full Bloom' is Shuta's first outing on Vaknar, it sees the artist readapt the nature themed formula found in previous works, both sonically and in name, while expanding on the thematic by presenting the album in a story like arc, slowly unfolding throughout the duration of the album.
In Full Bloom is most aptly experienced in its entirety, revealing the albums mediative like properties as the listener is slowly enveloped in Shuta's graciously rippling compositions; glimmering chimes and faint strings quietly protrude through layers of serene, reflective ambiance.
Onward and upwards - the Belgian dubstep imprint Overdue maintains its super-heated release schedule with full force. With a meticulously curated artist roster and continued support by the likes of Mixmag and other vital institutions, this release yet again perfectly aligns with their vision of subculture sound system music. Spearheaded by a positively prolific artist, their fourth record features Teffa on the controls. Following up on some massive 12" releases on crucial labels such as White Peach Records and Foundation Audio, the up and coming artist furthers his status as a versatile and highly capable producer with three tracks of unadulterated sound system pressure - including a weighty collaboration with Chad Dubz.
Arming the record, "Shell It" heads straight into the matter at hand, precision engineered weaponry clocking in at 140 BPM. Drums like mountains, effortlessly heaving immense amounts of low-end, smoothly embedded on silky pad swells. Fusing old-school elements with the present like few others, the lively arrangement does the rest to keep the crowd aflame without end. Music with an attitude - rewinds assured.
Fasten your seatbelts as the record kicks into overdrive once again with "Sludge" as faint police sirens and reverberate into oblivion only for it to implode into an instant dubstep classic. Driven by its ridiculously effective and minimal instrumentation, the underground unravels itself in sonic form. Spacious pressure wave emissions, especially primed for the dance.
Stepping up to the title track, "Illegal" tops off the 12" most beautifully - packed with Grime and Breaks influences and mesmeric melodies. As unshackled 808's pound away alongside a murderous set of percussions, the electronic soundscape treads through hypnotic harmonies and dance-inducing groove - Teffa signature style at it's finest.
Gabe Gurnsey returns with another limited-edition, white label pressing that melds
together two of the standout moments from ‘Physical’ into one irresistible slab of nocturnal electro. Combining the tectonic sleaze of ‘I Get’ with the roll call to rave transcendence of ‘Harder Rhythm’, Gurnsey creates, naturally, ‘I Get Harder’. Mutating his work to further perfect his halcyon club sound, ‘I Get Harder’ releases a slow-crawl ecstasy that’s ideal for dark rooms and open minds. Not one for the faint hearted
After expanding its roster and musical scope into jazzier terrains with Jukka Eskola Soul Trio, Timmion now introduces Sami Linna Quartet. Led by guitarist Linna, this international group of elite players paves way for their full length album with the single release "Mode For Tomorrow" b/w "Umoya".
The single hints to what's to come with a deep modal tune referencing 1970's spiritual jazz on the A-side, and groovy soul jazz on the flip. You can immediately hear that these compositions have been crafted with thorough understanding of the tradition, but with passion and capability to breath them to life in this modern age.
The lineup is truly something to write home to. Linna himself has over 20 years of experience working in the Finnish jazz scene, same as saxophonist Jussi Kannaste. Organist Mikko Helevä plays in Jukka Eskola Soul Trio as well as a host of other top jazz groups. But it is drummer Dana Hall who's is the most seasoned member of this experienced troupe. Namedropping might seen lame, but in this case we'll take it there as Hall has worked side to side with Joe Henderson, Kenny Barron, Bobby Hutcherson, Ray Charles, Horace Silver, and Benny Golson to name a few.
Both tracks get a single edit treatment here and the full length versions will be available on the coming album. This is not jazz for the faint hearted, but the real deal meant for real people.
'Cala Bassa' oozes nostalgia with a nod to the Balearic sound of Ibiza. Those piano keys, combined with the faint female vocal bring that perfect House sound. On the B-side, 'Girl' from Sirkea - The perfect track to compliment 'Cala Bassa', making for more easy listening. Capturing the laid-back side of Nu Disco, with soft piano keys and broken vocal, this is some seriously stunning production skills and a must for every vinyl enthusiast.
Adam X returns to his imprint Sonic Groove with his first album in four years, a 56 minute excursion into EBM and Cyberdelic Industrial Techno titled RECON MISSION. The mission begins with beat driven hypnotic electronics that invoke paranormal illusions of Easter island mythology and Bermuda Triangle disappearances. Climbing forward the album crosses the line into harder industrial territories, conjuring visions of New York City's dystopian past and CIA shadow government experiments.
Adam's own voice adorns tracks such as "Never Ending Quest", "Modular Bodies" and the title track "Recon Mission", while manipulated dialogue samples take the stage on "Tales Of Mystery', 'Search & Retrieval' & 'Delusions Of Paranoia'. Subtle, whispered statements creep in and infect the listener's ear, guiding them deeper into mental oppression. This album is not for the faint of heart, and its meticulously detailed production stands as a testament to Adam X's enduring career in techno. Adam has survived the ups and downs of the industry while continually raising the bar for production value and sound design. RECON MISSION is a triumph, ahead of the curve of modern industrial techno. This is not a throwback, this is Future EBM.
Tompkins Square present the debut full-length by Welsh multi-instrumentalist, Gwenifer Raymond. Hailing from Cardiff and now residing in Brighton in the South of England, Raymond began playing guitar at the age of eight. Tompkins Square released her debut 7" on Record Store Day.
In Gwenifer's own words :
When I was about eight years old a pretty formative thing happened to me ... my mum bought me a cassette tape of Nirvana's Nevermind. Being so young I'd had no real interest in music prior to that, but I did have a 'My First Sony' cassette player that I used to listen to audiobooks. Anyway, I put the tape in, pressed play, and what I heard blew my little 8 year old mind. I don't know what it was about that wall of sound that so captured me, but I spent many hours hyperactively running around the house with headphones on, volume at full blast, and Nevermind on repeat. It was either for Christmas or my birthday that year, that I asked for a guitar.
I spent all my teenage years playing either guitar or drums in various punk and rock outfits around the Welsh valleys, but around that time I was also getting seriously into older stuff, Dylan, The Velvet Underground and the like. Through those cheap compilation CDs you could get then, I found that a common influence amongst these guys was pre-war delta and country blues, as well as Appalachian music. Eventually I stumbled upon Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Roscoe Holcomb, and they became the holy trinity of musicians I so wanted to able to play like. Eventually, I tracked down a blues man in Cardiff who could teach me and it was in studying these guys that I was introduced to John Fahey and the whole American Primitive thing.
I've always loved being in bands and the sonic chemistry it produces, but at the same time it's always a bit of a compromise that those sounds in my head have to pass through and be translated by someone else's. Sometimes it can be for the better, but sometimes not so much. American Primitive was the first time it had occurred to me that you didn't really need anything more than one solo instrument to fully express yourself, especially when those feelings and moods refuse to be articulated in words, sometimes it's a mystery to yourself what it is you're expressing. I still play in hard rock and punk bands and love to wail and hit my guitar with a complete lack of any subtlety or nuance, but in the end I think that all these things are really part of a circle, feeding back into itself. It's all just a lineup of strange mutations.
The first release on the newly established Greyhound Days imprint comes from Christian Kroupa alias Alleged Witches, hailing from Slovenia, who proved his skills and innovation as a participant at the Red Bull Music Academy in 2014. Since then he became one of the most prominent names of Slovenia's techno and house scene, with making appearance on the mighty Fabric mix compilation, producing a remix of Alex Smoke for legendary Belgian label R&S, while also releasing a 12" entitled Serve The Spirits on R&S sub-label Meda Fury.»One Skilled In The Black Arts« EP consists of four tracks, meant for dictating the dance floor with their drum workout, as well as luring you into its deep ritualistic feel, with distant native tongues echo.For an extra wonderful hypnotic polyrhytms, a rework has been provided by Passarani, one of the Italian leading dance music producers and DJs, who continues to be an inspiration and providing his knowledge and skills to younger generations. While Bristol based Jacob Martin alias Hodge demonstrated his expertise in percussion, resulting in an slamming rework, not meant for the faint-hearted. Just shows, why Hodge is one of Bristol's most exciting new names.
In 2017, Benedikt Frey released his breathtaking debut album with the ESP Institute, Artificial, and now as we finally come up for air, we're more than proud to offer an eclectic collection of remixes that's nothing short of essential. Side A leads with H For Hysteria remixed by a beloved hero, Nicolas Chaix a.k.a. I:Cube, one of the most prolific and respected electronic artists Paris has to offer. His touch is considered and elegant, imbuing the track with a tasteful 303+808 backbone to support an array of patiently floating melodies and angelic vocal samples. Following this, Tolouse Low Trax of Du¨sseldorf's infamous Salon Des Amateurs remixes the same track, stripping instrumentation down to a skeletal palette of bass guitar and stabbing percussive punctuations, chopped up inna minimalist stylee that has become his beat-making signature. Side B leads with a remix by another Du¨sseldorfer, DJ Normal 4, whose re-imagination of Private Crimes takes us for an even more menacing ride, half-timing the tempo and skillfully rolling out a barrage of jungle snares from rave days of yore. Closing the release is the most aggressive remix of them all, a bonafide techno beatdown of the same track by DALO, the co-producing artist to whose haunting vocals lace the original version. Her dark vision opens with sparse industrial drums that blossom into a driving assault of raw machinery, definitely not for the faint-of-heart. An all-around solid release here, fun for all the family... more than just the tip!
Music and Poetry of the Kesh is the documentation of an invented Pacific Coast peoples from a far distant time, and the soundtrack of famed science fiction author, Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home In the novel, the story of Stone Telling, a young woman of the Kesh, is woven within a larger anthropological folklore and fantasy. The ways of the Kesh were originally presented in 1985 as a five hundred plus page book accompanied with illustrations of instruments and tools, maps, a glossary of terms, recipes, poems, an alphabet (Le Guin's conlang, so she could write non-English lyrics), and with early editions, a cassette of field recordings' and indigenous song. Le Guin wanted to hear the people she'd imagined, she embarked on an elaborate process with her friend Todd Barton to invoke their spirit and tradition.
For Music and Poetry of the Kesh, the words and lyrics are attributed to Le Guin as composed by Barton, an Oregon-based musician, composer and Buchla synthesist (the two worked together previously on public radio projects). But the cassette notes credit the sounds and voices to the world of the Kesh, making origins ambiguous. For instance, The River Song' description reads, The prominent rhythm instrument is the doubure binga, a set of nine brass bowls struck with cloth-covered wooden mallets, here played by Ready.' According to writer and long-time friend of LeGuin, Moe Bowstern (who pens the liners for the Freedom To Spend edition of Kesh), Barton built and then taught himself to play several instruments of Le Guin's design, among them the seven-foot horn known to the Kesh as the Houmbúta and the Wéosai Medoud Teyahi bone flute.' Barton's crafting of original instruments lends an other-worldly texture to the recordings of the Kesh, not unlike fellow builders Bobby Brown and Lonnie Holley. Bowstern notes, Other musician / makers have crafted their own Kesh instruments after encountering the earlier cassette recordings that accompanied some editions of the book.' Both Barton and Le Guin are sensitive to the sovereignty of indigenous Californians and were careful not to trample the traditions of the Tolowa people who lived in the valley long before the Kesh. You research deeply, and then you bring your own voice to the table,' said Barton. Within the Kesh culture, the numbers four and five shape the lives, society and rituals. Barton composed loosely around these numbers, patiently listening to the land of Napa Valley for signs and audio signals from the natural elements. Todd incorporated ambient sounds of the creek by Le Guin's house and a campfire they built together. The songs of Kesh are joyful, soothing and meditative, while the instrumental works drift far past the imaginary lands. Heron Dance' is an uplifting first track, featuring a Wéosai Medoud Teyahi (made from a deer or lamb thigh bone with a cattail reed) and the great Houmbúta (used for theatre and ceremony). A Music of the Eighth House' sends gossamer waves of the faintest sounds to float on the wind.' Like the languages invented in the vocal work of Anna Homler, Meredith Monk, and Elizabeth Fraser, the Kesh songs and poems play with the shape of voice.
The Music and Poetry of the Kesh cassette was meant to accompany and enhance the experience of reading Always Coming Home. Presented in this edition as a long-playing album, where only traces of the book linger (the jacket offers some of Le Guin's illustration, and a letterpressed bookmark featuring the the narrative modes of western civilization and the Kesh valley is included), the music alone breaking the silence of what might be. It can transport—offering a landscape for imagining a future homecoming. One in which we are balanced, peaceful, and tend to the earth and its creatures. A line from the Sun Dance poem reminds us, We are nothing much without one another.' Freedom To Spend gives new life to the recordings of the Kesh people in the first ever vinyl edition of Music and Poetry of the Kesh, out on LP, and digital formats on March 23, 2018. The LP will include a deluxe spot printed jacket with illustrations from Always Coming Home, a facsimile of the original lyric sheet, liner notes by Moe Bowstern, multi-format digital download code and a limited edition bookmark letter pressed by Stumptown Printers in Portland, OR.
This past Monday, January 22, Ursula passed from this realm to another leaving a life spent building and exploring other worlds while challenging social concepts of the real word she inhabited.
Freedom To Spend had been working under Ursula's enthusiastic endorsement and with Todd Barton, her musical collaborator on Kesh, to give the music that accompanied her 1985 epoch a new life. With the Le Guin family's encouragement to move forward with our planned release, we are humbled to play this small role in sharing Ursula's work.
As Pete Swanson, one third of Freedom To Spend, stated, Ursula's legacy is her work which transformed the world, and this is another piece of the universe that her imagination birthed becoming real.' Listen to A Teaching Poem / Heron Dance' below.
* Following on from last year's debut release on Cold Recordings, Cocktail Party Effect makes a welcome return to the imprint with 4 new genre-melting rhythmical workouts, charged and ready for the dancefloor.
* 'Lemons', the eponymous EP title track, kicks things off, opening with dubbed-out chords and a fidgety, rattling percussive loop which eventually disappears into the background as the breakdown primes itself for the drop. Suddenly, in comes a hyperactive rhythmical workout, rolling at 128bpm but turbo charged with double time percussive flicks. Soon the dub elements return to fill out the sonic, keeping the pace lively and engaging. Quality, effective dancefloor music.
* Following straight on is 'Bangers' which almost sounds like an imagined collaboration between JA rhythms stars of the moment, Equiknoxx and Walton or Batu. Squelchy drums and a t'umping bassline roll things out in fine style.
* Flip the plate then for 'Quite' which brings things back into slightly more familiar territories, utilising a swooping bassline as pitched, deranged vocal stabs swirl about and tight drum programming keeps the pace moving. Last up is 'Flat Football' which returns to a similar form as the title track, 'Lemons'. Manic drum programming is used to create the impression of being in fast forward without moving the tempo over 130bpm! Not for the faint hearted.
Kalakuta Soul Records joins forces with waf80music to proudly present Kai Niggemann's solo debut, an all original album of outrageous poetically abstract music created live and without overdubs on a Buchla 200e Electric Music Box, one of the rarest and most sought after electronic music instruments. Working on the platform since 2013, Kai Niggemann has become one of Germany's leading artists who perform live with a Buchla 200e. His style is an electro-acoustic storytelling, a clubby dreamscape and a poetically-abstract kraut-infused energetic mix of new Elektronische Musik with contemporary club culture. Nerds love the technology and clubbers love the throbbing drive of the basslines. It's all improvised and recorded live in Berlin — yet it sounds meticulously crafted in a dark basement studio throughout the entire last winters. Kai is a member of the 30-piece kraut-noise-jazz collective "The Dorf" and the electronics duo "The Last Books" (with Achim Zepezauer), performs and records with Mia Zabelka (Vienna) as "Redshift Orchestra", cofounded the internet-computermusic "European Bridges Ensemble" (EBE, e-b-e.eu) and the electroacoustic duo "Resonator". His most recent releases were the CD/vinyl "Lux" (feat. the noise drone artist N), "EviL/EvyL" and the cassette "Made in Österreich" with The Dorf (feat. Caspar Brötzmann & FM Einheit (Ex-Einstürzende Neubauten) or "Thinking Light" by Redshift Orchestra (duo with Mia Zabelka). He performed concerts with Mia Zabelka (Wien), Yoshio Machida (JP), Trap & Zoid (BE), Stian Westerhus or Shahzad Ismaily (with The Dorf) among many others.
4x12 LP, Limited to 150. Deluxe Outersleeve with Punched Out Centerpiece 'Window' and 4 Printed Innersleeves. Deltawerk is the newly Amsterdam based project of Pascal Terstappen aka Applescal and Polynation member Hessel Stuut. Together they are releasing their debut full length LP, entitled 'Passages",
Applescal has to date released on labels including Ghostly International and Traum Schallplatten, while the efforts for his own label Atomnation have seen him welcome music from the likes of Gidge, Weval, David Douglas and Sau Poler, amongst others. Voted at a very respectable #03 for XLR8R's coveted 'Best New Act' in 2015, Hessel Stuut is a member of Polynation and has significant experience not only playing live music, but as a producer, visual artist and designer too. Together, they form Deltawerk, a dynamically electronic duo whom when united create human and lucid music, which feels as much at home in an underground rave as it does in an open-air live performance. While there is a faint echo of artistic collision, the album undoubtedly provides an eerie sense of unity for both Pascal and Hessel's own discography, conserving the warm subculture of
analog and modular instrumentation.
We are proud to unveil our next vinyl release of 2017 on Dust Audio.
* Mikal takes his first bow for Dust Audio in the form of 'The Spirited EP'. The break and bass craftsman reigns down an assault of almighty weight for the imprint which holds no barred.
* Off the back of his critically acclaimed 'Wilderness' album on Metalheadz, Mikal continues to seek out the dance floor through his precision target and locks on for a serious assault of the senses.* The EP's title track 'Spirited' see's the sinister intro build up and transform into a bass laden drop. The stepping drums and jungle infused shuffles entwine with the ghost vocal, whilst the modulated bass will move even the harshest drum n bass skeptics. Unrelenting throughout.* The flip sees Mikal spread his considerable studio talent over two further tunes of constant surprise.
'Low Note' wastes no time in getting to the drop before you've had chance to take a breath. A thunderous one note bass underpins the mid ranged reece and stabs whilst the chunky drums compliment the tidy percussion nicely. A haunting vocal then sets off another 16 bars of unclouded rawness.* 'Linear' finishes the EP with aplomb. Synth chords open up into what you might expect to be a lovely liquid-esque style roller... think again! Mikal takes that premise and turns it upside down and inside out before bringing the dirty funk. Keeping in line with the 2 tunes before, this isn't for the faint hearted. Definitely one for the drum & bass purest, who may well be dancing, but will also be taking down mental notes!
* Mikal and Dust Audio continue 2017's release schedule in style...
If Aphex Twin and Mike Dred had a kid, they would have called him Analogue Bipolar Boy for sure. Colin Q Smith belongs to the old guard of ravers who grew up to the U.K. and Belgium sound in the early 90's.
Follow up to his must have Tales From An Analogue Graveyard EP' on Acid Night label last year, Into Darkness EP' sees the London based don finding again another french im-print, New Flesh Records, to serve up six wild, untouchable, brutal, old school-acid-industrial songs of his trademark. From the sinister overture of the beat less Into Dark-ness Theme', to the analog madness of Entangled', passing through the evil vision of Sad Robot', ABB blends an obsessive use of analogue synths textures, fusing with his un-limited talent horrific sororities to merciless rhythm constructions.
Many tracks were buried deep in a safe located on a secret analogue graveyard a long long time ago only to be recently unearthed onto the world... The recordings using only old analogue synths and you will probably notice the difference! Not for the fainted hearts, Into Darkness EP' is no doubt one of New Flesh most savages and intense EP's to date. In the AFX vein! Hear it and fear it.
The third release on Ascorbite's own Corseque Records is not for the faint-hearted. Advance the flight and Inadequate Demeanor are clearly twins, delivered from the darkest corners of Ascorbite's mind. The bold, pounding quality of the EP brings Adam X or Grovskopa to mind but Ascorbite has a dystopian touch that's entirely his own. Advance the flight is like a battle track for an intergalactic armada being attacked by an infinite horde of swarming space ants. Inadequate Demeanor, on the other hand, is a grim steampunk fantasy of a black, shining locomotive plainly out of control, raging on red hot rails towards the end of the line. However, while both tracks are rough and unforgiving, Ascorbite manages to invigorate them by the use of subtle melancholic atmospheres - like rainy skies over a concrete desert. A balance between brutalism and vitality. A trademark of Ascorbite and Corseque Records.
Following his debut solo release 'Altar Ego EP' on La Mission in early 2016, J Choirboy returns with more bombastic breakbeats and raucous rave chords for your earholes. Another sharp shot of nostalgia to the heart to have you waking up spluttering in the glory days of '92. Simpler times when the internet was still in black-and-white and you and seven of your mates would pile into Gaz's Vauxhall Corsa and drive to a field somewhere off the M25 for a 'propa wicked' rave which you found out about from a party hotline on a crumpled flyer with some tenuous reference to science in the title. It's once more time to don the boiler suit and your rose-tinted Lennon frames, bask in the smell of Vicks VapoRub, and pour over the Polaroid albums of yesteryear. A colossal bass drum with a healthy slathering of reverb lays the foundation in 'Full Effect'; the interlaced hardcore stab sets a melancholy tone. But lo! In rush the clattering chords of the piano, refuelling the piece with MDMA-laden euphoria. In 'Lights Down', J Choirboy explores the sombre and reflective modes of the hoover synth. Subtle plaintive chords offset the characteristic rumbling bass drum and syncopated cadences of the breakbeats. As the first release on new label Rough Grade, the EP provides an uncompromising dance floor onslaught, occasionally soothing the listener with catchy melodies before continuing course through a stormy sea of roaring beats. Not for the faint of heart. Vital Sales Points: - support from Answer Code Request, Ryan Elliott, Boys Noize, Dustin Zahn, Fiedel, Martyn, and many more for previous release 'Altar Ego EP' on La Mission.
Our latest Looking for Mushrooms' EP comes to us from a collaboration between long time Dirt Crew resident Tigerskin and gifted jazz pianist and composer Grambow. We first heard from Grambow when his fluid key stylings featured on Tigerskin's Faint' in 2015. The title track is a suspenseful and moody journey, lead by live double bass from feature artist Das Eb". Building in intensity with Tigerskin's warm production and steady percussive instrumentation until Grambow's live lead on a gritty synth growls in over the top. A true modern electronic classic as far as we are concernred. Tsukiji' is a playful deep house groover. Balmy tuned percussion and shaken highs roll along under the light hearted piano which cruises along throughout the whole tropically touched endeavour. This track has Party' written all over it! Octocat' is a tougher italo disco tainted work out, tightly programmed live and analogue percussive elements push along, while wailing keys lick over a tenacious grunting bass. You can really taste and feel the long studio sessions the guys had to compose this great track. It is so much more than generic dance music. Red Fox' is a divine culmination of the pair's compositional prowess and dance music knowhow. A cinematic and spirited house track that glides and glistens via delicate piano, plucky percussive riffs, bright strings and woodwinds. We are very honoured to release this outstanding musical release by Tigerskin and Grambow.
Mesdames et Messieurs,
Ramona is proud to welcome back one of the most delicate flowers in the business to her flock of loved ones. Alan Abra-
hams, better known under the monikers of Bodycode and Portable, returns with a fragile and romantic piece of house music
"I Reflect Thee" under the Portable alias into Ramona's bosom. "I Reflect Thee" features all his great sound signature
moves, comes with an Acappella version for brave DJs and a serious Flutramental on top of it all for the faint at heart.
Bon voyage,
Ramona
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