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The acclaimed and highly sought-after LP by Hailu Mergia and the Walias, Tche Belew, an album of instrumentals released in 1977, is perhaps the most seminal recording released in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. The story of the Walias band is a critical chapter in Ethiopian popular music, taking place during a period of music industry flux and political complexity in the country. Hailu Mergia, a keyboardist and arranger diligently working the nightclub scene in Addis Ababa, formed the Walias in the early 1970's with a core group of musicians assembled from prior working bands. They played Mergia's funk- and soul-informed tunes, while cutting 45rpm singles with various vocalists. While the Walias performed at top hotels and played the presidential palace twice, their relationship with the Derg regime was complex, evidenced by the removal of one song from the record by government censors. Decades later, Hailu Mergia was surprised to see the album fetching more than $4,000 at online auctions (it helped that the most popular of all Ethiopian tunes "Musicawi Silt" appeared on the record). Now everyone has the chance to listen again - or for the first time - to this timeless pillar of Ethiopian popular music. // 01. Tche Belew 05:01! 02. Yemiasleks Fikir 04:04! 03. Yikirta Lemminalehu 03:35! 04. Musicawi Silt 03:49! 05. Lomi Tera-tera 04:07! 06. Woghenei 03:58! 07. Ibakish Tarekigne 04:00! 08. Birtukane 05:30! 09. Eti Gual Blenai 04:59! 10. Yenuro Tesfa Alegne 01:46!

Ein wahrer Überraschungserfolg in unserem 2014er Release-Kalender, führte VERMONTs gleichnamiges Debüt-Album die Hörerschaft an eine überraschend andersartige Seite des musikalischen Schaffens der beiden Projektgründer MARCUS WORGULL und DANILO PLESSOW (aka Motor City Drum Ensemble) heran. Ein Langspieler voller abenteuerlustiger Jam-Sessions und schnittiger Synthie-Klanglandschaften, berief sich 'VERMONT' lieber auf kompositorische Neugierde und einen informellen, kollaborativen Geist als auf den laser-ähnlichen Fokus, welcher den Club-Produktionen der beiden Künstler zu eigen ist.

Mit VERMONT - THE PRINS THOMAS VERSIONS betritt nun ein weiterer, hochverehrter Held zeitgenössischer Tanzflure die Bühne: der norwegische Disco-Connaisseur und Bootleg-Experte PRINS THOMAS taucht mit drei brillianten Neubearbeitungen tief in die VERMONT'schen Klangwelten hinab und betont die rhythmischen Elemente der originalen Album-Tracks DYNAMIK, ELEKTRON und MACCHINA - ohne jedoch deren zurückgelehnten Grundgestus zu verraten. Er tut dies unter Zuhilfenahme von luftiger angelegten Varianten klassischer Tanzmusik-Stile - Techno, House, sogar eine Prise Dub Reggae - und lässt diese die Hauptbeinarbeit versehen. Das Ergebnis präsentiert sich dementsprechend so drängend wie nötig und so entspannt wie möglich.

In what will certainly be ranked as one of his most intriguing releases so far, Kompakt staple MATIAS AGUAYO not only takes a quick breather from his commitment to Cómeme, but also opens up fresh and exciting paths for him to explore with his music: LEGENDE is both the continuation and alteration of Matias' well-established aesthetic canon, drawing from all stages in his production career und ultimately synthesizing various sonic strains into a wholly new listening experience.

Having established a firm artistic presence in the annals of electronic music through iconic collaborations like Closer Musik or his genre-defying solo work, MATIAS AGUAYO is an artist well known for his deep investment with innovation in club sounds and a keen sense of the varying social context that informs them. This led to the inception of Cómeme, internationally acclaimed label by day, breeding ground for the revolution by night, sonically and otherwise. One can safely assume that - besides constant performing and travelling - this makes for a pretty busy schedule.

Optimo Music is usually known as a 12" label, but occasionally something rare and dangerous comes our way that compels us to release a full length album...

It's not exactly a dance album, although there is music you can dance to on it. It's more filmic in nature, with gads of references to wonderful directors like Kubrick and Carpenter that will enthrall a film buff, particularly if they're interested in electronic and dance music. There's a sleazy and unsettling feel to much of the tracks ("Tina Weymouth" is a sleaze-floor monster groove...), but we hope it will intrigue and delight!

The film references are directly relevant as Felizol and The Boy are film directors Yiannis Veslemes and Alexandros Voulgaris, who live in Athens, Greece and have composed music for numerous feature films. They also perform live in house clubs, heavy metal dungeons and hippy-friendly festivals...

They have this to say about their release: "We had a loose concept for this album and we compiled tracks that we've recorded the last 3 years that have to do with the cannibalism. Literally but also as a metaphor for the blessing and the tyranny of paying homage and influenced from music and films (and directors and musicians).

So these are songs about the agony of creating something new and personal when so much information and influences are fused in them."

Population One returns on Metroplex. More info soon...

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

Visibility Is A Trap is the new EP by Dalhous, comprised of four originals together with a masterfully understated Regis remix of 'He Was Human And Belonged With Humans'. The EP heralds the arrival of the Edinburgh-based project's sophomore album, Will To Be Well, due out on Blackest Ever Black in early Summer 2014. Dalhous first announced its existence in 2012 with the Mitchell Heisman 10', and last year released its debut full-length: An Ambassador For Laing. Both Visibility Is A Trap and the upcoming Will To Be Well LP reflect writer-producer Marc Dall's continued interest in the language and imagery of self-help, R.D. Laing and the anti-psychiatry movement. Though recorded after Will To Be Well, the tracks on Visibility Is A Trap at first appear to have more in common with the blue ethereal drift of Ambassador. While 'Information Is Forever' and 'A Change Of Attitude' are firmly in the ambient mode, 'Active Discovering' fizzes with arpeggiated energy, and a battery of percussion disrupts the calm surface of 'Sight Of Hirta'. Something is up. All is not as it seems. The Regis remix of Ambassador highlight 'He Was A Human And Belonged With Humans' finds Karl O'Connor in unusually pensive mood. In fact this near-beatless, dubwise version is unlike anything he has put his name to before. Discarding the rhythmic skeleton of Dalhous's original, he gives their weeping saxophone more space to roam and resonate, adding off-beat, sleep-deprived keys, murmured vocal fragments and swells of sub-bass pressure. It could be construed as a love letter to his former home in West Berlin; certainly it evokes and effortlessly updates the drugsick grandeur of later Neubauten or Low side 2.

Informa Records 7th instalment 'Depth Surroundings EP' exhibits four original works from Deepbass (Informa Records, Dynamic Reflection) & nAX_Acid (Aconito Records, Phorma) Both artists have provided stripped back hypnotic productions immersed in deep tones and intense evolving atmospheres.
INFORMA007 stays true to the label's distinctive sound while it delves even deeper into
the depths of the abyss.

The Appointment program was launched by Marieu, EMG, John Swing and Lucretio in the early 2010. They started to record coarse functional hardware compositions in the cursory sessions they were able to set up when all the four could summon in the same city. After a couple of seminal releases on LiveJam Records and an official remix made for Moodyman on Decks Reworx, they decided to start their own imprint, with bare handmade ink graphichs on thier white labels and with spare press information and media promotion. To celebrate their 10th release, they have decide to tell the world who they are cutting on vinyl their personal reinterpretation of a live session recorded at the Restoration heaquarters. From Lucretio's post-rave techno, to EMG shrinked deep-house, through Marieu's breakbeat-electro science to John Swing's overloaded hip-house, what you find on this 12 is a true dedication to the sonic quest.
Out at the end of February 2014. ONLY ON VINYL.

Seule une étude concise des différents mouvements automates de la musique électronique et leurs constantes permet de les subsidier par des séquences pré enregistrées plus ou moins longues et des les varier dans leurs assemblages via dans un premier temps des outils informatiques simples avec des contrôleurs appropriés. Réunir l'esprit d'un studio d'une période, endroit, d'un style, d'un type de machines ou de marques, la multitude des genres et styles à travers sampling ou reproduction, les possibilités sont presque infinies dans un maigre espace après de longues heures de travail. Une sensibilité suffisamment entrainée peut les naviguer. Ainsi le glorieux "rétro boy" avec sa boite à rythme et son synthétiseur, manifeste de la préhistoire de la techno, tout comme plusieurs personnes manipulant ces machines ne sont qu'un simulacre de ces groupes musicaux des siècles précédents. L'artiste en sa matière assemblée, construite et mutante, lui seul touche à l'individu dans son plus proche appareil. Dans l'enfance de la musique électronique dansante, le musicien reproduit l'autrefois essentiellement acoustique dansant directement sur un petit ensemble d'appareils et ne pouvant qu'agir sur de faibles transformations sonores, restreint à des possibilités de son par les ingénieurs d'une firme parait bien triste dans l'échec de la libération de ses semblables. Aujourd'hui par le biais de la multitude des supports et leur consultation facilité par les nouveaux médias, naviguer entre pratiques d'autrefois et connaissances de ces anciennes cultures tout en les combinant au mode d'aujourd'hui permet le rassemblement de la culture d'une lignée dont le point vectoriel semble remonter vers la naissance d'un certain assemblage physique qui engage un peu près toujours un certain ensemble de mouvements déclenchés autour d'un axe sensible ici non seulement à l'interaction sonore dans un isolement provoqué mais aussi dans le rapport du corps dans l'environnement construit autour d'une énergie artificielle ayant pour but principal le déclenchement de couches successives de vents à modulation de fréquences variées et pulsées à de multiples échelles par la sensibilité humaine de plusieurs personnes à plusieurs époques et rassembler autour d'un même esprit festif harmonieux. Ainsi, c'est l'enregistrement de ces performances que nous vous proposons dans son grand esprit dérivé à l'architecture économique proposée par la société d'aujourd'hui.

After a string of releases on Drumcode Records, Pets Recordings and Hypercolour, Tom Demac has joined forces with Will Samson in a somewhat unlikely pairing for their debut release via AUS. Following on from AUS's celebratory 50th release from Deetron, a surprise re-release of Sei A and another solid EP from Dusky, this release takes the label along a more expansive and less dance floor orientated route. In 2012 Tom Demac established himself as one of the UK's most exciting producers after widespread acclaim for 'Critical Distance Part 2'. He followed up this success in New Release Information 2013 with collaborations and remixes with Glimpse such as 'L-Plates'. On the other hand Will had been touring indie venues with Kurt Vile, Marissa Nadler, Shearwater, Ólafur Arnalds off the back of his newly released LP, 'Balance' - an album of hazy, ambient & intimate tape recordings At the end of 2012 Tom stumbled across Will's album, although on opposite sides of the musical spectrum, the two shared a similar ethos towards their work - passionately creating, but never taking themselves too seriously. Having both experienced the recent and sudden loss of close family members just a few short months apart from each other, it was clear that there were both in need of a cathartic outlet. 'It Grows Again' and 'Chasing Shadows' reflects these experiences with a striking blend of wistful vocals and ambient guitar swells from Will Samson and Tom's distinctive grumbling and weighty bass lines. The final track on the EP is Tom's formula remix which seeks a more 4 to the floor approach, led by punchy beats and groove rather than intricate vocals. Tom Demac will be complementing the build up to the release by playing gigs and live shows across the Netherlands, Germany, Ibiza and the UK.

Always Stays The King This ist he Vinyl edition of Tigerskin's Album - All Those Goodbyes. This special Vinyl features 3 exclusive tracks that are not on the CD version of the Album. - The Essence', - Out of Breath' and - The King always stays the King' are three club bangers that will destroy your floor. As part of this 2LP we also added the strongest dancefloor titles from the CD. Main Info Album : After being the main artist on Dirt Crew Recordings for over seven years and with a staggering 13 EPs in that period either solo or with his buddy Till von Sein, the Berlin based Alexander Krüger has finally put together a full artist album for the Dirt Crew team. The album also features various collaborations featuring established artists such as Ulrich Schnauss, Eddie Richards and of course Till (all titans in their respective fields of 'electronica', 'techno and 'house') plus new producers and vocalists that Alexander has been working with such as The Lazarusman, Sebastian Oehlschlegel and Uffe.Alexander Krüger is one of Germany's most consistent producers and has a huge release list on Discogs ranging from the mid nineties when he started out as Korsakow and Dub Taylor on classic labels like Force Tracks, Müller and Raum Musik. The output of this man is enormous, not only solo under his 3 monikers but also with fellow producers he works with, most prominently the work he does with DJ Phonique. It has also been nine years since his last 'real' album on Resopal Schallware back in 2004 so 'All Those Goodbyes' comes as a welcome relief for Tiger fans. On the album you will find 14 tracks that reflect a broad variety

imited edition 10" vinyl, serial numbered
Short info: You're going to feel relaxed and ready for summer after listening to fenou #19. On this 2-tracker the Swiss guy Benotmane skillfully combines groovy basslines, melodic synths and carefully adjusted vocal parts. - Somewhere' is one of these tracks that carry you out in the morning sun. Later on when you listen again a melody snippet triggers memories of a perfect moment. The B-side is certainly no less exciting. Although the mood of - Submarine' is more quiet, almost dreamier. Eyes closed, you'll get wrapped in the sounds just to slowly drift away. As usual the 10 vinyl release is again a limited edition and numbered by hand.

Here comes the first release lf the outstanding super disco stars HARD TON on our label! With A-side track RISE UP we have the first track with chart potential on our label we'd say. We love it anyway! : )
B1 track WORK THAT BODY shows off the heavier jacking side of HARD TON and B2 MONOTONE rounds up the EP with its uplifting house chords.
Not our average cup of tea, but we fckng love it.
Instead of boring you to death with just another info text, we copy these words from I-D Magazine about HARD TON:
HARD TON are the Italian duo with the larger than life disco sound and a surprising love of met- al. Fused together in 2008 from the musical loins of DJ Wawashi and heavy metal singer Max. Sylvester-styled falsettos conjure up memories of smoky dancefloors during the heady days of HI-NRG, which combined with a contemporary sound of accelerated beats and screaming acid basslines, shows a nod to the past can result in a slap across the face for the present. Using analogue and vintage gear, from the 303, 606, 707, Oberheim DMX, Korg Monopoly, MS20, Prophet V5, the music is as organic as synthetic music can be, their equipment living and dying by its own unpredictable rules. (i-D Magazine)

2024 Repress

A puristic sound study with lots of bassdrum & a hint of flourish, which threw a girdle over Voigt's sonic cosmos.

Das formidable Porträt der Reggae-Ikone ist in der 10-Track LP-Vinyl-Edition wieder neu aufgelegt! - Lincoln Barrington "Sugar" Minott (25. Mai 1956 - 10. Juli 2010) war einer der ganz großen jamaikanischen Künstler, ein Sänger mit unnachahmlicher Stimme, Produzent und Soundsystembetreiber. Er begann als 13-jähriger Teenager im Trio The African Brothers, 1974 ging er zu Studio One, wo seine Solokarriere startete, er gründete sein eigenes Label Black Roots und feierte schließlich im Jahr 1981 den Top 5-Hit "Good Thing Going" in den englischen Charts.