Cerca:future static

Melody Tomb is the first album in a new collaboration between Tokyo artist Teruyuki Kurihara and London drone pop band The Leaf Library. The nine tracks here have in common a metallic hum and a minimal, austere kind of beauty that recalls Teru's work on his 2020 Frozen Dust album (Mille Plateaux). Machine tones mix with static, noise and warm drones, whilst in other places the lineage of classic mangled Warp hardware is visible. In March 2020 The Leaf Library sent their friend Teru a batch of synth drones to play with in the hope a new collaboration would be born. "From the first time we heard Teru's music we knew we wanted to make something with him," say the band. "It has been such a pleasure seeing him take our minimal synth parts and turn them into something really strange and beautiful." The track Kite Beach was the first to arrive, featuring on The Leaf Library-curated Object Ten compilation on Objects Forever in 2021, with the rest of the album slowly appearing over the last year. The artists hope to continue the collaboration with another album in the near future.

For fans of: Autechre, Biosphere, Ben Frost

On the eponymously titled final song of her debut album Land of No Junction, Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances (pronounced Ee-fa) sings “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of the album, recalling journeys towards an ever shifting centre - a centre that cannot hold - where maps are constantly being rewritten.

The evocative phrase is the result of a fortuitous misunderstanding. Reminiscing about childhood visits to Wales, Aoife’s musical collaborator and co-producer Cian Nugent, mentioned a train station called Llandudno Junction, which she misheard. “Land of No Junction later became a place in itself. A liminal space - a dark vast landscape to visit in dreams… A place of waiting where I could sit with uncertainty and accept it. Rejecting the distinct and welcoming the uncertain and the unknown.” Reveals Frances.

The songs traverse and inhabit this indeterminate landscape: the beginnings of love, moments of loss, discovery, fragility and strength, all intermingle and interact. Land of No Junction is shot through with a sense of mystery - an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates with smokey luminescence. Yet, through the haze, everything comes down to what, where and who you are. Frances has built a universe full of intimacy and depth, with lyrics written through a process of free thought writing. It lends the record fluidity, each song in dialogue with the next not only through language, but the way each musical choice complements or threads into another.

Navigated by the richness of Aoife’s voice, along with the layers gently built through her collaborators’ instruments (strings, drums, guitars, keys, percussion), gives a feeling of filling up space into every corner and crack. A remarkable coherent sonic world: buoyant and aqueous, with dark undercurrents. The crossroads as a place where someone can be stuck, static in the face of the future, becomes instead an amorphous realm, where the remnants of the past and what is unknown meld together and come to an understanding. Where nostalgia and newness ebb and flow in equal measure.

Runhild Gammelsæter and Lasse Marhaug are two Norwegian musicians/sound artists. Both started in the early 1990s music underground and have worked in many constellations with a wide range of collaborators.

Despite knowing each other for a long time, Gammelsæter and Marhaug’s first collaborative work was the “Quantum Entanglement” LP in 2014. The album ignited a collective spark that both wanted to pursue further. Still, other commitments got in the way, and the project lay dormant until Stephen O’Malley, and Greg Anderson invited them to open for Sunn O))) for a special gig in the St. James Church of Culture in Oslo in the autumn of 2019. The two gathered for a long series of rehearsals, and after the successful performance, it was clear that it was time to start working on new compositions and recordings. That process initiated in late 2019 and continued to early 2021, encompassing before and after the world went through the lockdown. The result of this long development to be heard accumulated upon their new album “Higgs Boson” on Ideologic Organ Music.

Throughout the profound process of creating “Higgs Boson”, Gammelsæter and Marhaug drew inspiration from various subjects and artists. For Marhaug, it was concepts informed by the structuralist experimental cinema of Japanese directors Takashi Ito and Toshio Matsumoto, futurist worlds of French comic book artists Philippe Druillet and Jean Moebius Giraud, landscape photography of Fay Godwin, Kåre Kivijärvi, and Tamiko Nishimura, amongst others.

It became a metaphysical juxtaposition involving Gammelsaeter’s research and lyrical ideas based on several seemingly unrelated principles. A process of association inspired by “the Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse. The discovery of the Higgs Boson as a confirmation of the physical universe. The work of Ernst Schrödinger on the uncertainty principle. The four forces of physics. The Force. Helplessness under armed forces - as the war sailors in World War II. The influence of magic as expressed in tarot.

Gammelsæter experiments with a boundary involving the thresholds amongst various states of focus and legibility by forensic experimentation with techniques such as exclusive expression of consonants, syllabic repetition, retrograde text vocalisations and multi-lingual layering. Her vocal inspirational sources include Sidsel Endresen, Diamanda Galas, Natacha Atlas, the choral works of Rachmaninov, and the bands Carcass and Grave.

Two worlds coming together, making the music special. Mixing hard facts with science fiction helps create a kaleidoscopic cross point between the complex realities of the past and a possible future.

“Quantum Entanglement” featured two long-form pieces centred around a prepared piano and layered voice, while “Higgs Boson” developed a much more elaborate and ambitious compositional work. Across eight parts, the two artists brought a broad palette of instrumentation and sound. Electronic and acoustic, objects and field recordings, and pipe organ define the structures of which the centre is Gammelsæter’s magnificent voice. She has become known for her legendary voice, with her vast and unique range of inflective techniques and affective colour through her 30 years creating music. In the mix, Lasse approached the instrumental elements like landscapes, then Runhild’s vocals as characters that inhabit those worlds. Often, Gammelsæter multiple characters fused with the landscape. Make them occupy space, sometimes blend into it, sometimes dominate it. Constructing and setting visual guidelines helps set focus and open possibilities.

As an album, “Higgs Boson” is direct and focused, drawing on song structures. Within these tracks are vast strata of sound, an immersive multi-dimensional depth of music. Creating a feeling of depth while working with a flat two-channel stereo format - and how dimensions of texture and distortion can help develop the illusion of a space. The album structure is a story-like arc, a malleable subjective path, set as the album traverses oblique and suggestive areas, opening the concepts for the listener to unpack as they like.

– exclusive consultation with Gammelsæter & Marhaug, edited by Stephen O’Malley, June 2022

The LP ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release on 29th July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.
The album was all recorded, produced and mixed by Andy at Christchurch Studios, Bristol (home of Mezzanine era Massive Attack) with all vocals written and performed by T. Relly.
During 2021 the first two singles from the LP were released. The first was the juggernaut that is ‘Groove With It’. T. Relly growling out polemic against the relentless cacophony spun by Andy Spaceland, The brutality of the bass and horns is temporarily smoothed with Relly’s soulful, swaggering placation of ‘Turn your speakers on/ Till ya speakers blown baby/ If you’re feeling strong baby/ We can keep it going baby’.
This was followed in April by the 12” release of Combat featuring a thumping remix by Surgeon (Tresor Records) and an extended electro remix by Ree-Vo themselves.
2022 began with the limited red 7” release of remixes by NØISE and Batbirds with stunning original artwork by Shepard Fairey who came to the project via mutual friend Joe Cassidy (Butterfly Child). The release was announced on OBEY’s website
‘Spacebox’ which will be the last single to be released in time with the album is their hookiest, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control.
“Lift off, blast off, shirt off, dance off! Naked in the dancehall SPACE BOX!” is the beamed mantra, Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy.
“We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.
About Ree-Vo:
T. Relly​ is pure Bristol hip-hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 LP with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’. He collaborates with many crews including Innalife and Killer Crab Men.
Andy Spaceland​ (AKA Andy Jenks) got involved in Bristol bass music as soon as he moved to the city with Static Sound System​ and a collaborative 12” with Rudy Tambala (​AR Kane​) as Sugarboat Vs Sufi, before his band ​Alpha​ were signed to ​Massive Attack​’s label Melankolic, whilst he also became one of their tour DJ’s. His CV of collaborations range from ​Smith and Mighty​ to Madonna. He has released music on Dj Die’s label, Gutterfunk as White Bully and he is also currently releasing music with US producer ​Butch Vig​ in the band ​5 Billion in Diamonds​, whilst working on new tracks with ​Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) including remixes by Adrian Sherwood. His signature sound can also be heard on this remix for ​Elizabeth Fraser​ -

The LP ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release on 29th July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.
The album was all recorded, produced and mixed by Andy at Christchurch Studios, Bristol (home of Mezzanine era Massive Attack) with all vocals written and performed by T. Relly.
During 2021 the first two singles from the LP were released. The first was the juggernaut that is ‘Groove With It’. T. Relly growling out polemic against the relentless cacophony spun by Andy Spaceland, The brutality of the bass and horns is temporarily smoothed with Relly’s soulful, swaggering placation of ‘Turn your speakers on/ Till ya speakers blown baby/ If you’re feeling strong baby/ We can keep it going baby’.
This was followed in April by the 12” release of Combat featuring a thumping remix by Surgeon (Tresor Records) and an extended electro remix by Ree-Vo themselves.
2022 began with the limited red 7” release of remixes by NØISE and Batbirds with stunning original artwork by Shepard Fairey who came to the project via mutual friend Joe Cassidy (Butterfly Child). The release was announced on OBEY’s website
‘Spacebox’ which will be the last single to be released in time with the album is their hookiest, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control.
“Lift off, blast off, shirt off, dance off! Naked in the dancehall SPACE BOX!” is the beamed mantra, Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy.
“We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.
About Ree-Vo:
T. Relly​ is pure Bristol hip-hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 LP with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’. He collaborates with many crews including Innalife and Killer Crab Men.
Andy Spaceland​ (AKA Andy Jenks) got involved in Bristol bass music as soon as he moved to the city with Static Sound System​ and a collaborative 12” with Rudy Tambala (​AR Kane​) as Sugarboat Vs Sufi, before his band ​Alpha​ were signed to ​Massive Attack​’s label Melankolic, whilst he also became one of their tour DJ’s. His CV of collaborations range from ​Smith and Mighty​ to Madonna. He has released music on Dj Die’s label, Gutterfunk as White Bully and he is also currently releasing music with US producer ​Butch Vig​ in the band ​5 Billion in Diamonds​, whilst working on new tracks with ​Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) including remixes by Adrian Sherwood. His signature sound can also be heard on this remix for ​Elizabeth Fraser​ -

Trees Speak are back!
Speak’s new album, “Vertigo of Flaws: Emancipation of the Dissonance and Temperaments in
Irrational Waveforms” comes as a double-vinyl edition, single CD and digital release. The limitededition first pressing only of the vinyl includes a bonus 45 enclosed in an 8-page 7”x7” booklet
insert housed within the gatefold sleeve with cover artwork created by Soviet Union propaganda
artist Lazar Markovich Lissitzky in 1911.
Trees Speak are back!
This new release is a vast leap into an ocean of space and sound, a quantum leap into cybernetics, biology, anti-gravity,
time travel, dream speech and transfiguration. A seriously next step release!
Showing no signs of slowing down their rapid creative pace – incredibly this is their fourth album in the space of just over
one year – ‘Vertigo of Flaws’ is a mighty 29 tracks, one and a half hours of music across one double album that is surely
going to be a defining point in their musical career, a giant leap into the sonic unknown, an epic exploration of intensity
and sound.
Alongside their now trademark German krautrock motoric-beat rhythms, angular New York post-punk attitude, tripped-out
60s spy soundtrack, psyche-rock, and 70s synthesizers and vocoders, here you will also hear a new cosmic spacial
awareness (both personal inner space and galactic outer space) and a truly wilful pushing of sonic boundaries - as police
sirens, static noise, alarms, radio signals, avant-garde voices, and orchestral string quartets, all collide to add beautiful
dissonance to uber-powerful, intense, addictive and propulsive rhythms - in the process creating a truly unique
soundscape that Trees Speak have made wholly their own.
If you ever wanted to hear Can, Hawkwind, Destroy All Monsters, Pere Ubu, electric eels, John Cage, Liquid Liquid,
Tangerine Dream, Suicide, Neu!, Laurie Spiegel, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Barry, Mother Mallard’s Portable
Masterpiece Company, Sun Ra, Stockhausen, John Carpenter, Electro-Acoustic and Musique Concrete and Mars in one
band - then this is it!
Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz from Tucson, Arizona and their music often draws on the cosmic nighttime magic of Arizona’s natural desert landscapes. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing
information and data in trees and plants - using them as hard drives - and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.
Special guests from the hyper-creative hub of the Tucson music scene on this release are Gabriel Sullivan, Ben Nisbet, Saul
Millan, Stephani Guilmette, and Davis Jones.
The album Vertigo of Flaws was recorded in Brooklyn, New York, and Tucson, Arizona during the plague of 2021.
Extract from Vertigo of Flaws sleevenotes:
‘As we travel through space and time, avoiding the discarded remains of the industrial period, the
deconstruction of social norms through the expression of art, music, and philosophy guide the human
experience towards the unknown.
All that remains are musical echoes scattered throughout the universe, like ancient vibrations that now
populate the cosmos. These waves now show signs of decay. Melody, beauty, tonality have all but fallen
away as dissonance blossoms. As John Cage wrote in 1937,
“Whereas, in the past, the point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will be,
in the immediate future, between noise and so-called musical sounds. New methods will be discovered,
bearing a definite relation to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system and present methods of writing percussion
music and any other methods which are
free from the concept of a fundamental tone”.
Similarly, George Van Tassel claimed the Integratron as capable of
rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time travel. So, what remains of the
“people”? We have adopted from them our own Zeitgeber: their pulses
now guide our sun, our planets, our earths, and are the new circadian,
diurnal, and ultradian rhythms of the galaxy. Traumsprache, dream
speech, is now the internal language of trees.
Decaying metal and machines liberated the note unto nature’s table,
and we sip the delicious nectar of music once more irrational, elaborate,
violent, vast. The past is the future, musical disintegration its own rebirth.
We are nature, once more the computer of the Universe.’

A decade ago, the static signal of “Terminal” booting-up sounded and Galactic Melt launched into the atmosphere for the first time; Seth Haley’s Com Truise project arrived in full. A graphic designer based in New Jersey at the time, Haley found a sound on his synthesizers that sparked an immediate nostalgia response, tapping into classic sci-fi and proto-electro in a way that felt early ‘80s in scope, but also remarkably weird — stutter-step proggy and intoxicatingly psychedelic. Unknowingly he had stepped into a genre prism; suppose we know it now as synth-wave though the tag never landed squarely. To Haley, this was a space to explore and a story to tell, which he’d do across a saga of releases that would resonate with a legion of fans and send the producer touring the world in perpetual orbit. His full-length debut on Ghostly International, Galactic Melt delivered on the promise of Haley’s Cyanide Sisters EP as well as high-profile remixes for Twin Shadow, Neon Indian, and Daft Punk. Bold, imaginative, and unapologetically cosmic, the set occupies a beloved coordinate in the Com Truise catalog, considered the gateway for many. To celebrate its 10th

anniversary, Haley and Ghostly have repressed the long-sold out 2xLP and added five unreleased tracks to the expanded digital edition, giving this classic its due treatment as it passes the milestone.

From the keyed-up, skyscraping machine love of “VHS Sex” and “Cathode Girls” to pulsing cuts like “Air Cal” and “Ether Drift,” the music on Galactic Melt is mathy, forlorn, funky, and mighty in technical ambition. That they’re all noticeably cinematic is, of course, by design. Haley envisioned Galactic Melt as a “sort of film score...from the mind,” chronicling the life and death of Com Truise, the world’s first synthetic/robotic astronaut, from his creation and time on earth to his subsequent mission to a newly discovered galaxy called Wave 1 (released in 2014).

Carl Finlow keeps on keeping on. As the world changes around him, the veteran producer continues to do what he does best - craft top-quality electro tunes which invoke the sound's Drexciyan heyday, yet carry themselves with an assurance that is all of Finlow's own.

Finlow remains a prolific producer more than a quarter of a century on from his emergence. Still averaging several records a year across a variety of aliases, recent times have seen Finlow forge particularly strong links with the Central Processing Unit label. Now, after a run of EPs for the Sheffield imprint which began with 2018's 'Projections', Finlow's Silicon Scally project offers up CPU's first drop of 2022 in the form of the 'Field Lines' LP.

Silicon Scally productions have long been marked out by how they combine piston-precise beat programming with more textured synth play. 'Field Lines' runs with this formula to deliver some of Finlow's most atmospheric material to date. At once shadowy and expansive, listening to 'Field Lines' is the aural equivalent of taking a night-time drive around some futuristic metropolis.

The beats cruise sleekly here. Many of these burbling machine-funk numbers hover at mid-tempo, the crisp clip of their drum programming given shape and depth by all sorts of percussive tones fizzing around at the fringes of the mix. Even when 'Field Lines' seems to set its sights on the club - the Bunker Records-aping 'Amino', for instance, or the dystopian whizz-bang of 'Static Fire' - the tracks here strut sturdily rather than giving in to full-on freakouts.

However, from this sturdy base, Finlow moves outwards. Working with tones which range from rapid-fire machine-gun bass to keening, dawn chorus keyboard pads, Finlow leads us through the futurescape with the expertise of a seasoned guide. Cuts like 'Submerged' and 'Yield' are brilliantly cinematic, blooming from those reliable drum pulses into miniature masterpieces of nocturnal electronics. Elsewhere on 'Field Lines' there is a mechanical majesty to 'Inhibitor' and 'Altered Domain' which invokes the brave new worlds that Kraftwerk repeatedly conjured in their heyday.

Central Processing Unit's first release of 2022 is 'Field Lines', an LP of electro-funk explorations from Carl Finlow's Silicon Scally project which will thrill regardless of whether it's experienced through headphones or out on the dancefloor.

RIYL: Drexciya, Kraftwerk, Cygnus, Annie Hall

Get yo ass in the house, robot-- you cyber-spectre, you outhouse prime minister, you hard-headed mirror ninja, snapping selfies, living in the pixelated seams between bursts the of flashing images, birthed in a pool of TV static and Tik Tok dust. BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AIR is here, not to save but to drown you. Heads better learn how to swim cause listen, this record is beat soup, hearty yet still minimal, a sonic mirage of prophetic soul that drop kicks your "chill beats to study to" Youtube playlist and hyper-intellectual rap podcasts into a hadron collider; it's only black matter on the other side-- 13 mesmerizing tracks about memory and imprinting and the future, all of them wafting through untouched space like the ghostly cinders of a world on fire, unbound and uncharted, vast and stretching across the universe. Moor Mother is a holographic figment of an Afrotopian dream, all at once goddess and warrior, mystic and cyborg, griot and future time traveller, etching noisy pieces of reverie into our consciousness for decades now. But check it: on BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA she's joined by a wide-range of friends, collaborators and co-conspirators on a trip through the murky cosmos, navigating the black universe with stardust as currency. In these times, they'll say, as they click and mash their way through the same inter-webs that seek to strangle them, BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AIR is just what we need: a post-everything, 12:01 on the doomsday clock, anti-trip hop type of situation. "We ain't gotta fight no more," they'll say; the rest of us, we'll put this record on and imagine again that it's real.

The Kniteforce Complete Collection Volume 4 does exactly what it says on the box, giving you the full Kniteforce Vinyl releases of the tracks from KF61-KF80, fully remastered, in both Wav and MP3 format. These tracks have NEVER been released on the digital stores, and until now have never been avaialbel in any digital format. All the tracks here are from the beginning of the new vinyl era, and as such feature some of the names that have made themselves in recent years, such as Mannik, Nicky Allen and Shadowplay, not to mention tracks from old skool masters such as Hyper-On Experience, Billy Bunter and The Fat Controller, right beside Kniteforce’s legendary roster of Dj Ham, Dj Force & The Evolution, Luna-C, Alk-e-d and many more…

Club / DJ Support
Jay Cunning, Ray Keith, Nookie, El Hornet, Billy Bunter, the Fat Controller, Liquid, Hyper On Experience, Glowkid, Slipmatt, Dj Jedi, Dj Luna-C, Dj Brisk, Jimni Cricket, Bustin, Sc@r, Doughboy, Saiyan, Dave Skywalker, Ponder and many others

May 28 will see prolific Japanese vibraphonist, multi-percussionist and composer Masayoshi Fujita mark a new sonic direction with his forthcoming album Bird Ambience on Erased Tapes.

Bird Ambience brings several fresh changes for the artist. Until now, Fujita would separate his acoustic solo recordings from the electronic dub under his El Fog alias and experimental improvisations with contemporaries such as Jan Jelinek, Bird Ambience sees him unite all of these different sides to his work for the first time, into one singular vision. He also makes a lateral leap from his signature instrument the vibraphone, on which he created his acclaimed triptych Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018), to the marimba, which takes centre stage on his new album alongside drums, percussion, synths, effectors and tape recorder.

“The way of playing the marimba is similar to the vibraphone, so it was kind of a natural development for me and easier to start with, yet it sounds very different”, explains Masayoshi. “The marimba bars are made with wood and it has a wider range than the vibraphone, which gives me a bigger sound palette with more possibilities. I play the instrument with bows and mallets, and sometimes manipulate it with effects.”

Bird Ambience also marks his liberation from fastidious preparation for past solo releases to new endeavours in improvisation. “I prioritised trying to capture the wonder which happens during those occasional magic improv moments. Sometimes the mic-ing and placement of instruments was pretty rough; things weren’t perfect and everything was done quickly, but it turned out as the final recording. Overall when I
couldn’t decide between two takes, I told myself to go with the first”, Masayoshi recalls.

Arranged with a perfect Kanso-like balance, the unhurried pace of Bird Ambience allows each sound and phrase enough time to be mindfully absorbed and savoured. This subtle but affective work carries ethereal remnants of Midori Takada’s minimalism, the static atmospheres of Mika Vainio, To Rococo Rot’s organics and the bucolic electronics of Minotaur Shock. Fujita vaporises contemporary and classical, ambient and dismantled dub, controlled noise and fragments of jazz into an atmospheric, static mist, which he skilfully coerces into new forms.

After 13 years in Berlin, Masayoshi recently relocated to a new home and studio in the rural Japanese mountain village of Kami-cho, Hyogo, following his life-long dream of creating music in nature. Even though the album was entirely recorded in Germany before he left, it has this palpable sense of reverie found in the natural world. From there we can only imagine the kind of impact his new life in rural West Japan will have on future works.

May 28 will see prolific Japanese vibraphonist, multi-percussionist and composer Masayoshi Fujita mark a new sonic direction with his forthcoming album Bird Ambience on Erased Tapes.

Bird Ambience brings several fresh changes for the artist. Until now, Fujita would separate his acoustic solo recordings from the electronic dub under his El Fog alias and experimental improvisations with contemporaries such as Jan Jelinek, Bird Ambience sees him unite all of these different sides to his work for the first time, into one singular vision. He also makes a lateral leap from his signature instrument the vibraphone, on which he created his acclaimed triptych Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018), to the marimba, which takes centre stage on his new album alongside drums, percussion, synths, effectors and tape recorder.

“The way of playing the marimba is similar to the vibraphone, so it was kind of a natural development for me and easier to start with, yet it sounds very different”, explains Masayoshi. “The marimba bars are made with wood and it has a wider range than the vibraphone, which gives me a bigger sound palette with more possibilities. I play the instrument with bows and mallets, and sometimes manipulate it with effects.”

Bird Ambience also marks his liberation from fastidious preparation for past solo releases to new endeavours in improvisation. “I prioritised trying to capture the wonder which happens during those occasional magic improv moments. Sometimes the mic-ing and placement of instruments was pretty rough; things weren’t perfect and everything was done quickly, but it turned out as the final recording. Overall when I
couldn’t decide between two takes, I told myself to go with the first”, Masayoshi recalls.

Arranged with a perfect Kanso-like balance, the unhurried pace of Bird Ambience allows each sound and phrase enough time to be mindfully absorbed and savoured. This subtle but affective work carries ethereal remnants of Midori Takada’s minimalism, the static atmospheres of Mika Vainio, To Rococo Rot’s organics and the bucolic electronics of Minotaur Shock. Fujita vaporises contemporary and classical, ambient and dismantled dub, controlled noise and fragments of jazz into an atmospheric, static mist, which he skilfully coerces into new forms.

After 13 years in Berlin, Masayoshi recently relocated to a new home and studio in the rural Japanese mountain village of Kami-cho, Hyogo, following his life-long dream of creating music in nature. Even though the album was entirely recorded in Germany before he left, it has this palpable sense of reverie found in the natural world. From there we can only imagine the kind of impact his new life in rural West Japan will have on future works.

The album follows the recent January 2021 release of single 'O.N.E.' and the band's sixteenth studio album K.G (the second volume in the band's previous explorations into microtonal tunings), as well as Live In S.F. '16 (ATO Records), a live album recorded during the band's 2016 U.S. tour stop at San Francisco venue The Independent. As the band enter their second decade – and their frontman still only thirty years old - the creative future of the band, as showcased on L.W., promises to be bolder, madder and more imaginative than ever.

Advanced Nature is the second offering from Chicago’s indy electronic label Tres Dias. Completed during a global pandemic this project for Michael Fabiano and Juanne had been a long time coming. The two artists had spoken about wanting to release a record together after years of working side by side in Chicago’s underground music scene. So with the time available during the wildest year in modern history they succeeded in creating a life during wartime record. With hints of industrial, ebm, acid and techno fueling the record. The two aimed to thrust back a bold tapestry of sounds. From sonic visions of a dystopian future to shamenistic prayer infused house. The two managed to flush out a record that has a raw juxtaposition that's grounded in a solid foundation. Chicago based producer Michael Fabiano debuts with the slinking, somber industrial sounds of Aesthetic Existence. Plastic Process wades into warehouse territory with its swirling, hypnotic synth lines and brooding bassline. Juanne continues with Before Midnight, a static charged minimal acid track that stabs and reaches out for more. Finally Juanne ends with Design Your Drugs, a strictly dark room magic piece that unleashes ritualistic vocals and a raging bassline that doesn't hold back.

Bristol hip hop duo release their debut 12” ahead of an album in July featuring a thumping electro remix by SURGEON (Dynamic Tension/ Tresor Records) and an extended remix by Ree-Vo themselves.

The lp ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release in July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.
T. Relly is pure Bristol hip hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 lp with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’

Andy Spaceland (AKA Andy Jenks) got involved in Bristol bass music as soon as he moved to the city with Static Sound System and a collaborative 12” with Rudy Tambala (AR Kane ) as Sugarboat Vs Sufi, before his band Alpha were signed to Massive Attack ’s label Melankolic, whilst he also became one of their tour DJ’s. His CV of collaborations range from Smith and Mighty to Madonna, and he is currently releasing music with US producer Butch Vig in the band 5 Billion in Diamonds , and working on new tracks with Mark Stewart (The Pop Group). His signature can be heard on this remix for Elizabeth Fraser

When a synth master like Steve Moore joins forces with the legendary KPM, magic must materialise. And so it does with Analog Sensitivity: cinematic, enigmatic synthscapes to both haunt and heal.

New York-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/film composer Steve Moore is probably best known for his synthesizer and bass guitar work as Zombi, together with Anthony Paterra. But he is also part of Miracle and Titan as well as being a prolific solo artist releasing music as Gianni Rossi, Lovelock and under his own name. Steve’s music has found a home across labels like Future Times, Mexican Summer, LIES, Static Caravan, Relapse, Kompakt, Spectrum Spools, Death Waltz and Ghost Box, and much of his recent work has been scoring films like The Guest and Cub. Prolific indeed.

The story of Analog Sensitivity starts with those soundtracks, or more specifically the time in between them. Rather than being commissioned by KPM, this LP comes from music Steve was recording sporadically and tinkering with for over three years during the downtime between his film projects. There were no ideas about what it was nor a plan for how it would be released, or even if it was going to be released at all.

However, after Jon Tye invited him to play on the Ocean Moon project for KPM Steve realised that the hallowed library label might be the perfect home for what he had been working on. The people at KPM agreed. Finishing production in late 2019 in Albany, NY, he came up with the track sequencing and suddenly, he had an album: Analog Sensitivity.

The LP opens with the dystopian electronic minimalism of “Eldborg”, its dark synth bass unfolding to ominous synth pads, shadowy sustains and glistening arpeggios. “At The Edge Of Perception” brings an unsettling retro-future of edgy analogue leads and desolate FX. The sound of a robotic core tears through the sparse textures of the enigmatic “Rose Of Charon”. A chilling breeze blows through a persistent, hypnotic synth sequence on “Time Freeze”. Title track “Analog Sensitivity” is a sparkling transcendental synthscape of melody, drones and celestial synth. The brooding “Behind The Waterfall” winds down the first side, building subtle strings and a desolate sound beneath its haunting organ.

“Mirror Mountain” ushers in side two, its woozy bass and arpeggio unfolding to envelop the muffled, muted echos of its organic leads. "Syzygy" emerges you in bubbling sequences, airiness and ambient electric guitar tones. It’s followed by the cinematic minimalism of “Pentagram Of Venus” and its trickling FX. The wind swirls through the otherworldly “Of Dust Thou Art” kicking up clouds of unsettling, plodding synth sequences leading to the uneasy atmosphere of “Message From The Beast” which builds to the echo of the last refrain of some choral incantation. Closing track “Urge Surfing” is as cool a climax as you’d hope from something so brilliantly titled, riding along hushed waves of brooding electronics.

With the clue right there in the title, Analog Sensitivity is built up from the quieter aspects of the sound Steve has been exploring and evolving for over 20 years. It’s a layering of ambivalently dense and airy, muffled and echoing sounds from his collection of synthesizers and other electronic music hardware. And whilst some of Steve’s other work uses this vintage equipment to conjure the past, that wasn’t his intention here. Steve explains “I wanted Analog Sensitivity to feel atemporal, as though it could have been released any time over the past 30 or 40 years. While not specifically in the spirit of any particular album, I’m really into old KPM artists like Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett”.

Rian Treanor returns to Planet Mu for his raw and energetic second album "File Under UK Metaplasm". The enigmatic, sweaty energy of Tanzanian singeli and Chicago footwork are juxtaposed with slick, high-def bass weight which sits at the centre of the album. Opening track 'Hypnic Jerks' is the perfect example of this, with crinkled percussive loops cut through by machine-gun kicks and acidic wobbles. Elsewhere, 'Vacuum Angle' takes Sheffield's Warp-ed legacy and brings it crashing into the future, with rhythms collapsing into static and noise but never deconstructing or losing the flow. 'Debouncing' meanwhile folds gliding square synths into rattling dancehall kicks, joining the dots between SND, Equiknoxx and Wiley with a neon Sharpie. "It's using all those formulaic dance structures but just slightly mangled or messed up," he says. "I'm still focused on making dance music for clubs, but how far can you push that before it's just no."

Siegmar Fricke has made a name for himself in the tape culture since 1981 - with a mixture of Musique-Concrète and Post-Industrial. As a former label owner of "Bestattungsinstitut" he released numerous works that went beyond EBM, Electro, Techno and Ambient. In the heyday of the netlabels he focused mainly on his own productions, which he then made available as free downloads. Since 2002 Siegmar has been active with clinical sound experiments under the pseudonym "Pharmakustik". In 2005 he started his collaboration with Maurizio Bianchi from Milan, who has dedicated himself to "industrial decomposition" since 1979. For his Time Compression EP on Infoline, Siegmar Fricke has unearthed compositions from the period 1992-1994 and curated them anew. A phase in which he listened to the radio day and night and connected his sampler to the stereo to record material around the clock. He listened to many radio shows from England or Holland, which often broadcasted techno, trance and acid. At that time those sounds were new territory for him. He recorded inspiring sequences at first go, edited them and then let them flow into his own productions. The result was "future-pop collages mixed with sequencer-controlled trance and sampled voices", to put it in the words of Siegmar Fricke.

"BRUK" is a new platform for fresh variations on the soundsystem ethic, in particular where high-end sound design intersects with formidable bassweight. It's an artist-focused endeavour geared towards producers with range, depth and ingenuity in their sound.

The first transmission comes from "FFT", the latest alias from accomplished producer Josh Thompson. Thompson established the Super Hexagon label with long time friends J. Wiltshire and Arthur Scott-Geddes and he's also released on heritage label R&S (as Alma Construct) and the excellent offbeat techno upstarts Power Vacuum, and more recently developed the FFT moniker via essential drops on The Trilogy Tapes as well as Super Hexagon.Thompson helps launch BRUK with a two-pronged attack that shows off the breadth of his artistic scope.

The lead 12" is a dynamic club release that pivots between razor-sharp drum programming, hyphy synth acrobatics, breakbeat science and dub-loaded atmospheres. If there's one constant that runs through all Thompson's work, it's a resounding confidence with melody, and that comes through even in the rowdy chops of "Month" – a track that exudes hope even in its gnarliest bars. From the dreadweight minimalism of "Fask" to the expansive electronica shock out of "Sacrifice (The Truth Mix)", this is a head-twisting release that feeds into the vital new energyreverberating around the 150+ axis.

Accompanying that 12" is a cassette album which provides that polar opposite side to FFT – a collection of compelling beatless ruminations under the banner of Total Self-Fulfilment. Gliding from low frequency industrial textures to expressive synth modulation, this is far from static music, even as it moves without the aid of a traditional rhythm section.

It's a strong first chapter for BRUK, with future releases lined up from artists similarly poking at the fabric of contemporary club music to find their own unique spaces for expression.

Fabrizio Lapiana's Attic Music label reaches release number 20 on the main series with a new EP from the boss himself: Collective Chaos features remixes from fellow Italian techno luminaries Neel & Laertes.

Rome's Lapiana has been a vital voice in the global techno underground for more than 10 years now. His Attic Music label has played a key part in that, while his own evocative techno soundscapes have come on the likes of M_Rec ltd, Figure Jams, ARTS and Out-Er. This is his first outing of 2020 and is a superbly stylish techno trip.

Opener 'Crystal' is deep, drawn out techno with perfectly smooth and supple drum programming that soon gets you in a state of hypnosis. Subtle synth loops rise up through the mix as things grow more urgent, and once the percussion joins you're utterly locked. The title track is a more turbulent and edgy affair that sound tracks a dystopian urban wasteland - the synths are riddled with static, the hurried drums are punchy and there is an urgency in the molten synth lines that keeps you right on the edge of your seat.

Sound sculptor Neel runs Spazio Disponibile with collaborative partner Donato Dozzy and has an impeccable knack for sound design. Here he links with Laertes (half of Modern Heads with Dino Sabatini), a Mental Modern and Concrete Records associate who produces artful techno. Together, they remix 'Collective Chaos' into a dark and moody techno roller with glitchy textures and high speed synth lines that sweep you off your feet.

Closing out this terrific trip is 'Koyuk', a Millsian adventure into an intergalactic techno future, with polyphonic synths rippling above a rubbery drum line that is both propulsive and pensive.

This is high grade, perfectly distilled and meditative techno from some of Italy's finest exports.

‘Still Strange’ reaches back into the prized loft tapes of Jeff Sharp aka Orior following the revelatory discovery of his overlooked early ‘80s gems on 2016’s ‘Strange Dream’ collection, as coaxed out by
DDS dons Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty.
Huddling another sublime, dusty set of analogue tapes freshly baked and remarkably well-restored by Andy Popplewell, ’Still Strange’ contains four gorgeous flashbacks to the era 1979-1983
surrounding and even pre-dating ‘Strange Beauty’, and then shifts focus to recordings that Orior made around the early ‘90s.
As with its predecessor, Orior is not alone on the material in ’Still Strange.’ From those feted early tapes we find Phil Hollis returning to lend jagged guitar on the drum machine sizzle of ‘Feels Like
Summer’, while the mysterious synth player New Cross John makes vital contribution to ‘Invium.’
Along with the aching synth sigh of ‘To Return’, which pre-dated all of these recordings, and the nine minutes of haunting bedsit strums in ‘Larbico Alt Mix’ which came from the first batch, the
early material is all arguably worth the price of admission alone for seekers of lost synth treasures - really this stuff is just so good..
However, the album’s other six tracks expand knowledge of Orior’s work into the ‘90s and also contain some extraordinary material. Salvaged from further loft tapes found in various states of degradation, and subsequently mixed down between London’s Goldsmiths College and Miles Whittaker’s Whalley Range attic (and elsewhere), they are decidedly more blunt and gloaming, especially in the Deathprod-like ‘Under Shadow’ and the near static witching hour ambience of ‘Endless’, while shorter vignettes such as ‘Unknown Future’, ‘Gothic’ and ‘Another’ point to pre-echoes of BoC’s crepuscular scapes and even Bladerunner-esque sci-fi noir soundscapes

Yellow Vinyl

Serotonin returns to revenge with Serotonin's Revenge 2, a four track compilation representing the depth and breath of what we live for.


While resting with his camel in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang this summer, bpmf noticed a shiny object. He picked up a DAT labeled "Static Breaker - 1994". It contained some solid electro, including "Transmission Complete”. Who made this? Did it fall out of a UFO? We may never know. Look for more releases from this find coming from Serotonin Records in the future.

Hailing from Biella, Piedmont and now based in Milan, Kreggo is an eclectic and versatile artist. Defined by Juno as part of "the gum-under-the-schooldesk underground", he has been active since 2014. Along with being the brain behind the Art-Aud label and the cult Secret Rave series, he has released collaborations and projects for labels such as Lobster Theremin, Helena Hauff’s Return To Disorders, Super Rhythm Trax, FTP and Melodies Souterraines to name a few. For Serotonin, he delivers evolved, deep breaks with an edge of electro funk.

Siviyex is Toronto duo Castelvi (Bass Guitar, Vocals, Synths, Vocoder) and M. Gomes (Synthguitar, Programming). Their sound combines elements of Shoegaze, Electro, Italo and New Wave, with the conceptual influence of alternate dimensions, space, dreams and out-of-body experiences. The next wave sound of "Dreams in Wannex" is a definitive part of the world Serotonin envisions.

Schooled in dance culture since a young age, with influences and experiences ranging from rock to rave, London based Nexus 23 brings a "Vortex" of his stark, bass-heavy blend of electro and industrial sound to Serotonin records.

Also included on the vinyl version 4 loops from Serotonin in-house artists: John Selway, bpmf, Synapse and Pointsman.

Look for the digital release everywhere November 5th, 2019 and the vinyl wherever cutting edge records are sold.

‘Synth Expressionism/Rhythmic Cubism’ LP from Chicago’s Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being is a collection of idioms that have no past and no future, his jarring use of polyrhythmic polyphony imbues a sense of timelessness.

The prolific catalog of Moss’ covers many musical dialects from his hometown and beyond. Never standing in one artistic sphere for too long, this adventure for On the Corner Records sees Hieroglyphic Being exploring a multitude of expressions of the American Avant-garde.

Abstractions Of The Future Past — Afro-Cubism: The Designation, conceived by an African With A Mainframe — An Etude Of Effigy — A Hieroglyphic Being.

Rhythmic Cubism: In this ‘Dissertation Of Disorientation’ Neal Andrew Emil Gustafson temporal considerations are put aside as polyrhythmic propulsion is the current flowing through the work. As prelude the fastidious ‘Rhythmic Cubism’, Moss enacts a flurry of white noise and musical coda as it phases in-and-out of synchronicity.

The disjointed dance of an alternative Black Music, ‘The Spiritual Or ‘Electromagnetic Worlds’ takes the meter down a fraction to exonerate a granular groove of visceral refracted complexity. Sonorus static sits alongside spastic shards of synthesis to reveal a melancholic medley before its conclusion.

‘Apocrypha’ collages distinct rhythmic source materials in an entrancing abstraction of ‘Hypersonic Hemiola’. An assertion of Art Blakey proportions. Perpetually pushed forward through the building of distorted percussion, Moss precludes into syncopated synapsis before and end of reductive symmetry.

Evolving into a studdered off-kilter groove, ‘The Redemption Project’ flows as a dissipating organ medley dissolves into a deluge of layered sonic textures, creating an indiscernible metric center before fading to a distant vanishing point.

Departing with a common-time ‘Timbuk2’ takes off like a classic Chicago Acid track, then makes a left turn towards the center as it drives the rhythmic motion into a dystopian dreamland, as the sax line surges forcing the track to break free from it’s charted course.

The Fragmented Fantasy of The Synth Expressionism/Rhythmic Cubism LP is a conclusive work that has no end, a conundrum of conceptual calculated improvisation. Drifting through time, this fragmented abstraction of Afro-Cubism leaves room for posterity, as each listen summons a new perspective on the suite. Something ever so common in the work of Jamal Moss. Charting new sonic directions, the very nature of its precedent makes it a truly Hieroglyphic affair.

Words By Neal Andrew Emil Gustafson

Destiny is made. Realised. Driven by the acts of vision. Hireroglyphic Being is a seer. Atomic resonance echoing from the big bang defies the conceptual reality of purity. The nuclear static of ‘white noise’ is HBs canvas. Channeling poly rhythms into the universe. Experience, repetition and eternal decay. From purity back to the absolute by way of a deluge of slurry across time. Infinite layers of distortion and refracted complexity. This is HBs canvas. Sound of eternity channelled through a bass bin, represented by its own impure reflection and fragments. Always more than it's whole but never as was before.

This album seeks to reach beyond ideas and emotions, beyond the comprehension of a human archetype. Beyond ultimate history, forwards and back. To ends and a singular beginnings. Timbuk2 is the frenetic intersection where the call and response of these ideas lock and dissipate back into the void.

2x12" Repress


January 1981 found Gudrun Gut and Bettina Koster in Christopher Franke’s Berlin-Spandau Studio recording their first Malaria! EP (Zensor Records). Christine Hahn of The Static with Glenn Branca and Barbara Ess, joined in from New York, and Manon P. Duursma fresh from Nina Hagen’s O.U.T. project and Susanne Kuhnke completed the Line-Up.

Malaria! started touring intensively soon after the release of their 12”, commencing with a concert with New Order at Brussel’s Ancienne Belgique, and going on from there to concerts with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Birthday Party, The Slits, The AuPairs, Raincoats, Nina Hagen, John Cale, Einstuerzende Neubauten. They played venues as diverse as the Mudd Club, Peppermint Lounge and Studio 54 in New York, the Documenta in Kassel, the Bat Cave in London, Les Bains Douche in Paris, Milky Way and Paradiso in Amsterdam, ICA in London, the Piazza Santa Maria Novella in Florence and Markthalle in Hamburg and naturally, again and again, at the SO36 in Berlin.

While touring, Malaria! used their time off to record in Studios in New York, London, Brussels, New Orleans, and in Berlin (How Do You Like My New Dog? 7”, Weisses Wasser 12”, New York Passage 12”, Revisited MC, Emotion Album). At the BBC studios in London Maida Vale Malaria recorded an Kit Jensen and a John Peel Session.

Malaria! took a break in 1984 - Bettina and Christine re-located to New York, and Gudrun and Manon stayed in Berlin to form, with Beate Bartel, Matador, but not before they recorded their Mini-Album, Beat the Distance. 1992 Gudrun, Bettina, Christine, and Manon met up in New Orleans with Jim Thirlwell (Foetus) to record Elation 12”. Elation was followed by Cheerio, Album, which again was recorded in Berlin.

Chicks on Speed did their own version of Malaria’s song, Kaltes Klares Wasser in 2001, and the Remix went into the German Top 10.

Malaria has been an instrumental part of Berlin Music History, as recently presented at the „Zurück zum Beton“ at Düsseldorf’s Kunstakademie, Kunsthalle Wien „Punk!“, „Geniale Dilletanten“ Goethe Institut, and in B-Movie.

BIBA KOPF 2019
The theme song for that great German road movie yet to be made, Malaria!’s 1981 single “How Do You Like My New Dog?” etched the E into the motion music of their soon-come debut album Emotion with its trail-out line “Immer vorwärts, nie zurück...”. Always forward, never back: from West Berlin to London, Paris, New York and Tokyo... from here, there and everywhere to eternity, the Autobahn goes on forever, with Malaria! at the wheel, spinning new moves from timelines crossed in records and songs right on the money evoking Zarah Leander, fighting the power, staring down Death, and a whole lot more. In all, one merry hell of a ride, and on the evidence of Compiled 2.0, it’s not over yet.

MARK REEDER 2019
"Even today, their originality in everything from sound to style, has proven just how relevant Malaria! are. In my opinion, their music has stood the test of time. To me, Emotion sounds as good today as it did when it was first released and it was a pleasure to revisit it. They might not have had any zillion selling albums, and their image might have been copied, while their sound could never be. They remain exclusively unique and their influence and legacy will reach far into the future. This band is both an inspiration and a statement and they prove what five very creative girls can achieve, if given the right support to allow them to evolve, and it is exactly that, which has made Malaria! Germany’s most successful and renowned, all-girl band...“

DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN 1991
"...Malaria! put across so many clear, manifest, attractive, certain, muscular, and harsh symbols, just as they refused - defying the customs intrinsic to these symbols and the worlds in which they circulate - to weave all these things into a readable, reproducible and manageable, generic text..."

'World' is the debut album dreamt up by Barcelona based DJ / Production duo Memorial Home. Comprising of Paul Roux (France) and Jeremy Pinchasi (Belgium), 'World' is the exciting result of their shared desire to push the limits of their own brilliant musical foresight. It's an ambitious 20 track longplayer which effortlessly showcases the incomparable sonic space shared between both musical masterminds.

Sitting somewhere just to the left of Nicolas Jaar, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Mike Dehnert and Ostgut Ton, Memorial Home has managed to craft an album absolutely unique to their sound, impossible to categorise and sure to catch the attention of music lovers of all shapes and sizes. Techno without a dancefloor, experimental electronica fit for the warehouse raves. It's an exciting, perfectly confusing album which simply works wonderfully.

Heavily textured in incredible atmospherics, dub effects and crisp, clear percussion, 'World' spreads over an excellent array of individual tracks full of groundbreaking musical magic. Incorporating a stunning fusion of live instrumentation and electronic craftsmanship, 'World' is an audio adventure into emotive soundscapes, with a clear focus on the subtle saturation of melancholy. It's a soundtrack for a dystopian film yet to be written. A sonic painting for the coming winter months where the trees are all but dead and frozen; and the ground a thick layer of glowing white snow.

Memorial Home are the founders of the independent label Rapid Eye Movement, which has seen a breadth of incredible EPs riding the balance between experimental Techno and introspective electronica. They first met by random chance in their newly adopted home of Barcelona, Spain. This unexpected encounter quickly developed into a full-fledged musical kinship through their shared interest in crafting cinematic, experimental techno music. Each release from the label and duo showcase their clear passion to unearthing sounds beyond the expected. With their debut LP about to drop, the future is looking certain for the duo, the label, and the changing face of modern day electronic music.

North East duo Forriner are back with their third and final instalment in the samurai trilogy on their eponymous 'Forriner Music' imprint. Following a couple of impressive showings with previous EP's 'Condor' and 'In the B' they return for their hattrick with '17:17 Neon'. A four tracker of experimental club music for powerful dance floor experiences that offers two originals as well as a banger from Bird Of Paradise and a mouthful of mathematics from Legget and Suade for the remixes.

First up, 'The Jungle Is Deep' which immediately sets off at a rate of knots! Its sharp pace is tempered by the sound of the drums: dull kick, wooly clap, rattling hi-hats while its bassline bleeds in slowly as a dark repeating tone and subtle chord swell and a haunting, cautious vocal reminds you that 'The jungle is dark and deep'. The second half of the track balances its steamrolling kick with an intricate, hypnotic lead as a growling synth line shuffles and recombines over its rumpled techno groove. It's feeling is transportive, the kind of music that makes you close your eyes on the dance floor.

Fellow Northeast alumni take up the remix for 'The Jungle Is Deep'. Steve 'Four Hands' Legget and Suade Adapted hammer a hefty slice of future dub techno from the skeletal remains of the original! Its chunking, discordant drums and manic echo chamber combine with a lilting bassline making sure you know that this is tough music but that it also has a tender heart. Clipped vocals squelch and flutter throughout but these are more textural than melodic, adding extra depth to the track. This trip is all about striking, psychoactive grooves, pushing the swing settings to extremes. Equal parts sinister as it is are playful. Fitting the typical tradition of winsome, weird dance music.

Over on the flip is the title track '17:17 Neon' featuring vocalist Louis Adams and violinist Late Girl (Laura Stutter Garcia) Breathy melancholic vocals and pitched down, endorphin flooded electronica. This is techno in a state of dewey eyed delirium. The neon of the title is very much instructive here, with the vocal being the scattered, shining light that the track playfully hangs itself from.

Jo Howard aka Bird of Paradise takes the reins for the final remix delivering a charging peak-time club tool with relentless batteries of percussion setting the stage for a trippy soundscape. Other than their Northern roots, what these producers have in common is a distinctive approach to rhythm. The restlessness of the sharp stabs of static perfectly guiding the darkly pulsing mood.

originally released in 1990-with Liz Lamere - Never released on vinyl-

Born in Brooklyn, Alan Vega was reared on the rock 'n' roll sound of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, but originally struck out on a career as a visual artist and light sculptor, making pieces out of electronic debris. But on the occasion of seeing Iggy Pop fronting the Stooges at The Stooges at the New York State Pavilion in 1969 was an epiphany for Vega. It showed me you didn't have to do static artworks, you could create situations,' he said. That show was the first time in my life the audience and the stage merged into one." It was that eradication of barriers between the two that Vega took to heart.

Their first two albums, 1977's Suicide and their 1980 follow-up, remain two of the era's greatest touchstones, beacons for others seeking to transform their worlds with sound. And even during the group's hiatus through the 1980s, Vega continued to pursue his singular vision across an individualistic solo output. From his 1980 self-titled debut and rockabilly-infused albums like Saturn Strip, through bracing albums like Power On to Zero Hour and IT, Vega forged his own singular path.

For all the darkness and despair that encompasses this moment in our world - and despite his work being depicted as bleak and nihilistic - for Vega there was always a sense of hope and a place for dreams to become reality. People have always told me that my music is angry,' he said. To me, it was always just an energy. It was the way I perceived the world. The key Suicide song was 'Dream Baby Dream,' which was about the need to keep our dreams alive. I knew back then that something poisonous was encroaching on our lives, on all our freedoms.' He fought to his very last breath for that freedom.

ossession Records proudly present the new album by Soft Riot, entitled 'The Outsider In The Mirrors'.Soft Riot is the stylised musical alter-ego of JJD, Canadian by birth and an ex-resident of London and Sheffield, now based in Glasgow (so not unfamiliar with sites of post-industrial decay!). With over twenty years of playing in various post-punk and synth-punk bands, he has been crafting the sound of Soft Riot since the early turn of the decade, releasing a slew of albums across a multitude of labels and touring obsessively around Europe and beyond.With 'The Outsider In The Mirrors', his sixth full-length, he has found a new home for his sound on Possession Records, a fledgling Glasgow imprint founded by JJD, Claudia Nova (aka Hausfrau) and Andy Brown (Ubre Blanca). Their aim is to bring together their pool of musical talents and provide a more permanent home for their future creative endeavours, whether it be music, video or otherwise and to experiment with what it is to be a 'label' in the ever evolving 21st century. Future projects and releases will see them getting a select group of their peers and friends involved in Possession's focused vision, locally or from further afield.'The Outsider...' is a consolidation of all the stylistic elements Soft Riot has pursued in the past; the manic propulsive energy of 'Waiting For Something Terrible To Happen', the infectious, off-kilter dynamics of opener 'The Eyes On The Walls' and the pulsing, elegiac synth washes of 'The Saddest Music In The World'. Throughout the album Soft Riot fuses his maximalist sonic palette with a sharp-edged sense of post-punk anxiety, unique synth interplay and brooding, claustrophobic new-wave dread. Comparisons to musical kindred spirits like John Foxx, DAF, early Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget and Virgin-era Cabaret Voltaire would be analogous, but JJD is defiantly fusing these basic references into something highly idiosyncratic and personal.
The music on 'The Outsider...' is evocative of an kind of nostalgic futurism, of a refusal to give up on a desire for the future (dystopic or otherwise) and the unpredictable nature of the urban situation. The music is tense, synthetic and precise, embodying and exploring issues of isolation, urban alienation and social paranoia. Yet despite these dark thematic preoccupations the Soft Riot sound is not without its warmth and humour. Wry and self aware without irony, the songs are hook laden, infuriatingly catchy and designed for dancing as much for static listening. It is a peculiarly Soft Riot take on the electro pop sound that will engross and captivate any adventurous listener.

Inspired by a longstanding respect for the pioneering sounds of Cluster, Neu!, Harmonia & John Foxx, the legendary K. Leimer fuses tape loops, Moog tones and a variety of real and imagined instruments into an immersive journey brimming with electronic emotion throughout this homage, 'Mitteltöner.'

A key figure in America's musical avant garde, Leimer's experiments with tape manipulation, fractal loops and textured ambience have been well documented in recent times, with RVNG and VOD both offering excellent and exhaustive retrospectives of the artist's seventies and eighties output. Tracing Leimer's discography from 1979's 'Translucent: / Memory' to 1983's 'Installation View', via the dislocated rhythms of the Savant project, these archival releases detail a move from the pastoral synthesis of kosmische into more angular, experimental territories. Simultaneously looking to the past and the future, this Origin Peoples release is both a return to Leimer's earliest stylistic explorations, and his first vinyl release of original work in twenty five years.

Oddly for such a sonic outlier, 'Mitteltöner' (midrange to non teutophones) takes its conceptual cues from the idea that the midrange contains all the core information. Over ten tracks, Leimer employs subtlety and skill to navigate the emotional depth of the kosmische genre while maintaining the focus and detail which has remained constant in his work.

Opener 'Dunne Luft' owes as much to post rock as krautrock, evolving from chiming harmonics and understated rhythms into an optimistic roar of motorik percussion and towering guitars. From there, 'Webermelodie' dives into crystalline calm, tracing delicate arps around a processed groove before 'Anode' sends us skywards, drifting through glistening piano refrains and hypnotic sequences. Te dramatic 'As Long Ago As This' glides through a deserted city of metal and glass leaving the measured ambience of 'Entferntemusik ' to close out the side in a swell of static.

Leimer shifts tone as we move onto the flip, segueing the stomping, cybernetic Sturm Und Drang of 'German Defaults' into the propulsive electronics of 'London Interiors', a dynamic sample-topped suite in the tradition of Bill Nelson. The addition of graceful piano motifs and swathes of hazy synthesis lends a tranquillity to the pulsating bass of 'Auf Einem Fahrrad', while 'SHM' marries soothing melody and crunching rhythm into a thoroughly medicated experience. Finally, 'Café Florian' pays homage to Schneider or Fricke with a euphoric fusion of metallic percussion and esoteric energies.

Far from a simple homage to the electronic idols of his youth, 'Mitteltöner' finds K. Leimer reimagining their nuanced sonic framework through a lifetime of musical experience and experimentation.

After nearly a decade in the making, Zomby finally dispatches Mercury's Rainbow, his astonishing and uniquely formulated dedication to Wiley's series of Eskibeat releases, a.k.a. the cornerstone of grime.
Originally recorded over an intense couple of weeks while suffering from circadian dysrhythmia,
Mercury's Rainbow documents Zomby riffing on intricately hand-programmed arpeggios, using theories of colour and its relation to the sonic chromatic spectrum - the circle of fifths - to place an expressively avant spin on the Wiley Kat's slyding Triton squares and frozen, post-garage drum patterns.
Rather than simply imitating Wiley's foundational unit of grime currency, Zomby innovates with a structure of bewildering, modal styles, refracting 16 diamond-cut permutations according to a colour-sound spectrum of tonalities. In the process he effectively loosens up and liquifies the Eski riddim, rendering its bones and sinew in varying states of reactive, physical deliquescence or GIF-like micro-organisms.
For dancers and DJs, the fluid contours and viscous, displaced rhythmic anticipation of Mercury's Rainbow suggests myriad geometries for movement in-the-mix, and serves to single-handedly put to sleep a whole genre of also-ran, prosaic 'future grime' thru its methodical, inventively ground-up construction.
While it's difficult to say with certainty, if Mercury's Rainbow was issued at the same time it was created, it may have arguably altered the course of UK grime instrumentals in much the same way
Wiley's original template coined a whole new genre, essentially making it the last word in grime futurism, proper.

August 2016 saw Running Back release a first volume of live tracks from Redshape, but January 2017 sees the much loved artist return to Delsin, his most regard label, for a second offering of the same. This time the EP has one track made in Paris, and one in London, and both are filled with the sort of beautifully bleak and lo-fi sounds that have made this man such a standout artist over the years. Up first is 'London,' a chugging track that builds in pressurised layers of coarse hi hats, gurgling bass and pinging kick drums. It is a hypnotic groove that teases you as elements drop in and out and hisses of static and broken little guitar riffs add some cheeky funk. On the flip-side, 'Paris' is much more playful, with colourful pixelated melodies dancing about the mix, industrial drums working down low and steppy synths fleshing things out. Overall it sounds like a future disco for inebriated robots and is one of Redshape's more party starting tracks.