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Something is looming on the horizon, a flickering presence, a sparkle in the twilight, hardly visible at first, then slowly taking shape and finally coming into view: "I will depart/I see, I will, I won't go far," Stefanie Boehm (Couch) sings on "Sirens", one of 10 tracks Ms. John Soda have recorded for "Loom", their first album in eight years – and it's true: It's a return that often feels like yet another departure, like it's time to say farewell once again, one last hug and off it goes into the valley, where life is already waiting.

A lot has changed since Ms. John Soda released the first 7" back in 1998, since Micha Acher (The Notwist, Tied & Tickled Trio, Alien Ensemble) joined Stefanie Boehm and completed the creative nucleus of this band around the turn of the millennium; day-to-day life indeed feels different some 16 years later (and half as many since the release of their sophomore album, "Notes and the Like"), but the basic chemistry, the intricate balance of electronic and analog molecules that orbit this nucleus – and thus, the resulting mood and vibe -, they're still recognizable, still undeniably Ms. John Soda: Whether it's the dense, intensely rushing soundscapes of "Hero Whales", numerous layers pushing and taking off into the same direction, the propelled clatter of "Sirens", a track like "Millions" that blows off more and more steam, a glistening, wheezing sort of madness even (though there is a tender side to it as well), the perpetual, magic lantern-like motions of "Name It" (think Trish Keenan and Broadcast) or the gradually descending melodies of opening track "In My Arms" – they're all lined with a certain tension, underpinned by a certain atmosphere, a unique brand of melancholy that never quite gives in, keeps searching for new outlets and answers.

The album title Ms. John Soda have chosen for their third full-length, "Loom", obviously hints at this feeling of re-emergence, gathering and looming, but according to the singer, it also refers to a weaving loom: It's about "weaving and combining a vast number of influences, ideas, instruments, melodies, rhythms, and layers to create a whole," says Boehm, whose vocals span these new tracks like thick, reliable ropes that glow with marine luminescence. "It's about weaving individuals into a group ('Millions'), weaving and merging former ideals and hopes with reality ('The Light'), combining 'hi' and 'bye', beginning and end ('Hi Fool'), interweaving opposite or contradicting concepts, such as pushing forward vs. being pushed ('In My Arms')." And while the weaving, just like life itself, can easily get out of hands, "because you lose track, and yet life goes on ('Name It')," a lot of these songs – e.g. "Hero Whales", the billowing "Sodawaltz", "Fall Away" – revolve around a shimmering sense of something we can't quite grasp or put a finger on just yet: "Intuitions, hopes, dreams, wishes, affinities, distances, temptations…"

Whereas Cico Beck aka Joasihno (drums, electronics), also part of Aloa Input and the latest addition to Ms. John Soda's live band, and drummer Thomas Geltinger helped out on various tracks they recorded with Oliver Zülch in Weilheim, Boehm and Acher were also joined by Karl-Ivar Refseth (percussions) and Matthias Götz (trombone). Together, they keep feeding the loom with countless spools of yarn, until epic piano closer "Fall Away" seems to offer a temporary respite: "find your way/take the dry suit off/for a night". Time to rest, to take a deep breath. Or is it already the first rays of dawn looming on the horizon?

Until December last year music was simply a hobby for Alex Crossan, aka Mura Masa. He may have had 7 million plays and 30,000 followers on Soundcloud but the 18 year old Channel Islander had never played his music live, DJ'd or even been to a gig himself. He had just started an English degree at Sussex University and was happy playing guitar and bass in function bands.
It was an email from Jakarta Records that changed everything. The Cologne-based label (previously home to Kaytranada, Iamnobodi and Sango) felt Mura Masa's mixtape 'Soundtrack To A Death' was too good to sit on Soundcloud and persuaded him to release it with them.
The following 3 months were a whirlwind, with 30 spins on Radio 1, a sold out debut show & a top 5 position on the itunes electronic chart in the UK and US. At one point Mura Masa had 4 tracks in the HypeMachine top 50 and remix requests from Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, RL Grime and iLoveMakonnen in his inbox, whilst still juggling his degree.
So as Mura Masa prepares for his first official EP release the stakes are very different and he has upped his game accordingly. As well as the sampling for which he known, Mura Masa plays live piano, guitar, drums and even sings on Someday Somewhere. He is keen to show that he is a musician and songwriter as well as a beat-maker and has called on new friends Nao, Denai Moore and Jay Prince to feature on tracks.
Paul Epworth (Producer for Bloc Party, Adele, Santogold): 'That 18 year old is taking over the world right now and he's just delivering the most deeply textured music around, we have got such a talent on our hands in the form of Mura Masa and i think the UK has finally got our very own Kaytranada and it's not beyond him to overtake that, so good, ridiculous....

This EP was made during a period where my whole outlook on everything was transforming. The Voidloss project started as an investigation, I was conducting a lot of research and study on the mind, the occult, on different thought modes, and the Voidloss project represented this. The idea was about a leap in to the void. A leap of abandonment into the dark, with total acceptance, total commitment. The idea was to lose myself to the void. This was mainly a spiritual journey for me, and could be best explained by 3 things, the void of Miyamoto Musashi from Go Rin No Sho, The concept of the Tao from the writings of Lao Tzu, and the concept of the abyss from the works of Aleister Crowley. Part of this journey deep inside the self was frightening and horrific, the total loss of self, of all identity and ego, and part of it was beautiful and enlightening. I wanted the music to reflect this, and I wanted the music to change as I changed, as I went to and through all these interesting places. In essence this was about freedom. So fast forward some years and I felt I had sharpened my mind quite effectively, the music had twisted and changed and flowed with me. At the point I began making the music for this EP, I had grown quite angry with the amount of conformity I was perceiving in life. Politically, socially, musically, there was this drive of conformity in the world. I think part of it, and only a part, comes from the prevalence of social media, the need to belong and to be liked, the idea of judging yourself and your works through the perception of others. Musically I felt that within techno there was a tendency for the music to fit within a set of confines dictated by fashion and hype, and this was reducing the diversity of the music, it seemed also that the practices of commercial music were seeping in to techno as the music became more popular. Hype and business driven decisions, brand building and so on. I always felt techno was more about art, and I began to get frustrated. Equally I felt that politically there was less and less choice, as all decisions seemed to lead to the same outcomes. I became more interested in the concept of anarchism, of the idea that government was no longer needed. I have always in my life had a drive to question everything. I've always been 'naughty' and rebellious and done things my way, to my advantage or my disadvantage, I could never accept being anything other than myself all the way. If everyone walks in one direction, I will walk the other way, even if it takes me over the edge of a precipice, just to see what is there. All this stuff influences my music, and during the period of making this EP I was angry, kicking against the things I no longer liked or wanted, screaming dissent. There is a lot of anger and rage, and of course rebellion. I wanted the music to capture that unbridled fury you have when you are in your late teens, when you just start learning about yourself and you start rebelling and questioning things around the time the world is really pushing you to conform. I was soundtracking my own philosophical riot. Previous to this my Voidloss stuff had been more introverted, more pensive and melancholy, more self destructive, more cerebral. For this new music I wanted something more immediate but without being too obvious. In terms of the choices I made I still leaned more towards broken rhythms for beat structure. I find it very difficult to do anything interesting with 4x4 kicks any more, it's too rigid for me, it limits my freedom. I like the looseness you get from more 'drummer' like beats, I guess probably because I have been playing drums all my life. The challenge is to get the same rolling power from broken rhythms as you get from 4 to the floor. It's not easy, there is a ridiculous amount of trial and error and the rejection percentage is high. I also was trying to use less 'synthy' sounds. I wanted to try to take a more acousmatic approach to sound design. With the current modular synth revival in techno I was hearing a lot of 'old' synth sounds re-emerging, and this didn't seem like a progression to me. I wanted to make sounds that were hard to source for the listener, where they weren't sure if it was synth or real world sample, digital or analogue. This involved a lot of experimentation. My process involved a lot of field recording, especially with contact microphones, which open up a whole new world of interesting sounds. You are effectively recording sounds through objects in the environment, 'hearing' the world as these objects hear them, I was using guitars, feedback loops, handmade instruments as well. So I was combining this with different synthesis, granular synthesis, sample synthesis, physical modelling, FM synthesis and of course analogue. Everything was reprocessed and re-synthesised, I tried hard to obscure the source and make something new as much as possible. The stuff on this EP was part of my live PA for some time, so as I learned how the music worked live I could go back and make changes, sometimes the environment I was playing in transformed the sound as well, and so I would try to go back an incorporate this in to the music. For remixes I wanted to choose artists that I respected for their vision as well as for their output, so my list of people I wanted was extremely short. Inigo Kennedy has always been an artist I have respected greatly. His music has always been unique to himself, he remains outside of fashions and trends even though his name has become very big recently. He takes risks with his work, experimenting and exploring, yet remaining relevant to the club, and just tirelessly forging ahead, seemingly for the sake of art above all else. And he's just a really nice guy to deal with. His remix is everything I expected it to be in that it is the unexpected. Regis is another artist who forges his own path in music, you cant really even begin to discuss the avantgarde in techno without including his name, he is one of the foundation stones for artistry and the outsider mentality in techno. His music is always unique to his own vision, and along with it comes an interesting artistic philosophy taking in situationism, post punk and industrial ideology and a good dose of tricksterism ala PT Barnum, all of which comes out in his music and the way it is presented. The man is a truly singular force and it is an honour to have him on this record. Overall the concept here is that of rebellion and dissent. Of asking questions, following your own path, of maintaining some place in yourself that burns like a forest fire.

Whether or not I have succeeded I guess is down to the listener, I'm never happy with my music, I keep wanting to move forwards, or somewhere else, and am constantly trying and failing to capture some essence of perfection. But like Bukowski said
'It's the only good fight there is'

Following the digital premiere of the track 'Nobody knows' at the beginning of September, myr. is an artist who remains shrouded in mystery. His debut EP 'Nobody knows Avalon' is set to be released through recognised Cologne label PNN on January the 19st, yet as the title suggests, still very little is known about the man behind the music.

myr.'s wish to withhold information is made obvious through the choice of track names on the EP: 'Nobody Knows', 'Avalon' and 'Homii' are all titles clearly designed to provoke the listener's curiosity, whilst upholding a sense of the enigmatic.

Although some might argue that such conscious obscurity is little more than a publicity stunt, surely at a time when the cult of DJ and celebrity are often intertwined there is something refreshing about myr.s decision to step-back. You only have to look at the homemade, monochrome videoclip that accompanies 'Nobody knows' to realise that myr. is about as removed from the glitz of DJ culture as it is possible to be.

It is this determined distancing from the norm that comes through is his music. The minimal sound is carried through by an underlying warmth, a grittiness that sets it apart from the often near-perfect production of popular techno. The first two tracks 'Nobody knows' and 'Avalon' create a sense of anticipation, with minimal, ambient beats that build, the listener is left with itchy-feet and a hankering for more. In the final track on the EP 'Homii' there is a change in tempo, the monotone beats make way for some slowed-down, trippy vocals that open the listener up to myr.'s versatility as an artist.

'Nobody knows Avalon' is an EP that represents a return to something raw and removed from popular music. As for the mystery surrounding myr. Well if you can't put a face to a sound then the only option is to listen.

Listen to this if you like: anything that we've put out last year, wrapped together in a lovely double pack of a 12 and 10. The Roundup part 1 is the first part of an annual recurring event: the big Heist family remix EP, where all artist names get put in a big bowl, and by luck of the draw, find themselves remixing (and remixed by) another Heist artist. We've got Max Graef remixing Detroit Swindle and turning the break up into a full on Graef-affair. The label heads themselves take 'The Organ Grinder"'s 'Change all the time' and turn into a deep Chicago-esque tune and completing the 12, there's Frits Wentink's take on Bluebottle, experimenting with his trademark shuffle. On the 10, Standout track of the first year of Heist 'Jungle' gets a lovely rework by Nachtbraker, giving it a more 4x4 feel than the original and The Organ Grinder who turns Frits Wentink's Schrewd into a full on Filter house cut. The artwork is handmade and photographed by Baster. Sincerely yours, Lars & Maarten

In the 1970s the American composer Henry Flynt started a series of pieces under the title - New American Ethnic Music'. In so doing he worked together native styles of music such as blues, Country or Hillbilly with electronic production methods to make something altogether new. So far in Germany it has never been attempted to rework folklore electronically for a compilation. However, this picture changes if one redefines the idea of who the population is. Incomers have brought new - national anthems' to Germany, which means: even the Portuguese Fado, the African Gnawa, the Croatian Klapa or the Vietnamese Quan ho are these days at home in Germany.
With the cultural project - Heimatlieder aus Deutschland' ('Native songs from Germany') founded by former Spex editor Mark Terkessidis and label manager Jochen Kühling all the various styles of traditional folk music now found in Germany has been collected. Thirteen of the songs recorded for the project have now been transformed by contemporary electronic producers to present a - New German Ethnic Music'. But why remixes For one thing electronic music has recently focused a lot on the past (Ghost Music, Hypnagogic Pop etc.) - electronic editing is well suited to follow the effects of the immigrant music which the - imaginary national anthems' has created. Furthermore the project's instigators were curious how - electronic musicians' would handle folk music and folk songs which is a hugely difficult task. To this end artists were sought out who could get along with the idea of each music style and who are known to already have experimented with the human voice. The results are as varied as the music styles and Djs involved. Some melodies remain completely intact while others are abstracted beyond recognition.
Margaret Dygas' associative approach ensured that she presents a polish song about a girls arranged marriage with a claustrophobic feeling. With his remix of the Marrabenta of Mozambique Mark Ernestus has continued the rhythmic experiments he is known for with Jeri Jeri. Thomas Mahmoud translated Gnawa into dub and finally Ulrich Schnauss turned the song of the Italian Chorus of - Donni So' into a hymn for the horizon-expanding power of migration.
Hopefully this compilation will also expand some horizons.

Margaret Dygas - Impulse Remix



Thomas Mahmoud - Arab Disco Dub Remix