'Oblique is one of only two quartet sessions the great vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson recorded for Blue Note (the classic Happenings being the other).
Both albums featured the seminal pianist Herbie Hancock and drum master Joe Chambers, with the only variable in the line-up here being bassist Albert Stinson. Hutcherson’s breezy opener “‘Til Then,” Hancock’s tremendous “Theme From Blow Up,” and Chambers’ adventurous “Oblique” are standouts of a session that, taken as a whole, is an incredible journey from hard bop grooves to exploratory sonic tone poems. Recorded in 1967, the album wasn’t first released until 1979.
Cerca:k sub
Anyone listening to contemporary jazz piano is very likely to tune
into the legacy of Bill Evans, particularly when confronted by the
work of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Brad
Mehldau. These artists collectively display various elements of
his style, ranging from reflection to subtlety and taste in the
extreme. His importance to the development of jazz is
unquestionable, the words of British jazz critic Barry McRae
being the perfect summation: 'A brilliant pianist who somehow
managed to disguise the fact, Bill Evans never paraded his
technique but, like all true virtuosi, he made no mistakes. His
home was the piano trio and he brought to piano, bass and
drums an orchestral awareness and expansiveness that belied
the size of the group.'
Ike Yard remain a legendary band of early '80s New York City – at once immensely influential, yet obscured by a far-too-brief initial phase. Their debut EP, the dark and absorbing Night After Night, sounds almost like a different group, so rapidly would Ike Yard evolve towards the calmly menacing electro throb of their self-titled LP.
Originally released on Factory in 1982, the album put Ike Yard's indelible mark on the synth-driven experimental rock scene then emerging all over the planet. While historical analogues would be Cabaret Voltaire's Red Mecca or Front 242's Geography, opening track "M. Kurtz" makes starkly clear that Ike Yard is a far heavier proposition.
With a thick porridge of bass, ringing guitar and strangled/stunted layers of voice, these six pieces are densely packed and perversely danceable. "Loss" sounds like a minimal techno track that could have been made last week, while "Kino" combines Soviet-era imagery with sparse soundscapes à la African Head Charge's Environmental Studies.
Ike Yard somehow pull off the toughest trick in modern music: making repetition hypnotically compelling through subtle variation. The effect of Ike Yard's first LP can be heard in many genres – from industrial dance labels like Wax Trax to electro-punk bands and innumerable European groups (Lucrate Milk, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, etc.).
The fact that the cover artwork does not include any photos of the band, but rather features the original catalogue number (FACT A SECOND) only further illustrates the release's importance and Ike Yard's timeless mystique.
San steps forward with idiosyncratic, textured jungle for the modern era on his debut 12". Anxious and introspective throughout, San's detailed sound design and close control of intricate drum edits clearly mark his pedigree. The jungle alias of a Bristol based techno producer, the San project reflects upon the rave landscape of 2020, and finds it to be a dark place.
We’re excited to presentStill Hope–the firstfull solo EP from Fluidity for Integral Records, following the success of ‘Feeling Inside’, his debut feature on the Glow VA series. This Bristolian is one of the future Dnb collective's rising talentsswiftly making his mark on the scene with a liquid style all his own;refined, subterranean, rolling.
Coming with four explosive tracks covering the full intelligent spectrum; fromthe very deepest and most intricate melancholic vibes, through to the harder edged sounds the listening journey is nothing short of pure vibe. Intertwining atmospheric pads, blissed out chords, slickened percussion and groove pass through harmonic growls and alluring sub basslines of infinitely emotive soundscapes.
Third number in the DDS split series after a pair of releases courtesy of Betonkust/Uj Bala and DJ Overdose/Sematic4, "DDS03" sees Budapest duo SILF (alias Farbwechsel chief-operators Alpar & S Olbricht) and Den Haag-based pair Intergalactic Gary and Pasiphae join forces on a quartet of elusive, unpigeonholeable power moves.
Four years after the drop of their debut joint EP on Biorhythm, "Made of Glass", I-G and Pasiphae are back at it with two left-of-centre hybrids of futuristic techno on a whirring electro-industrial tip. An off-kilter jam percolating fine hints of spiritual elation and post-apocalyptic anxiety, "Microwaves" gets the ball rolling on a dichotomous note. To slo-scudding flocks of loud, bouncy kicks supersede skeins of brittle chimes and rattling drums, all woven together by subtle tectonic shifts of moody pads.
A further hi-intensity affair, "Indistinct Chatter" drives that essential heavenly/nightmarish duplicity to higher spheres of consciousness. Fusing lighthearted, daydreaming tonalities with brooding, cavernous onslaughts from the depths, the track has us navigating in a zone of its own, deftly oscillating betwixt moments of mystique-imbued euphoria and darkling introspection. A choice exponent of the Hague-based dyad's capacity at busting antiquated patterns and limitations.
Having slept in the label's vaults for a few seasons, the two tracks composing the B-side emerge from their slumber in all their time-proof bravura. An in-your-face trampler, the ten-minute long "Mono Miner" takes no byway to get its point across, all set to smash basements and warehouses by the dozen with its electrifying compound of 909-emulated gut churn and spinning synth arpeggios circling like birds of prey over your sore, rhythm-enslaved carcass.
Closing the journey on a much softer, hazier vibe, "Aces" steers us towards a realm of ambient wonder, where slo-drip cascades of tapping percussions and elegiac synth waters flow into warm, glimmering summer beds. A most contrasting, tranquillising finale to an EP defined by its propensity to change colours and intensity throughout.
- A1: Sub_Modu - Water No Get Enemy
- A2: J-Felix - Be Thankful For What You Got (Feat Sol Goodman)
- A3: Soul Central - Teen Town
- B1: Mark De Clive-Lowe & The Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra - Caravan
- B2: Magic Drum Orchestra - Original Nuttah (Feat Bunty - Dj Madd Remix)
- B3: Adam Prescott & Deemas J - They Reminisce Over You (Troy) (Troy)
- B4: Sly5Thave - Super Rich Kids
Tape / Cassette
This record was primarily informed by grief & loss. It’s overarching theme relates to the cyclic, transient nature of existence and the fact that everything is impacted by the law of change with nothing ever attaining a state of permanence. Dedicated to Adam & Alix.
Following up his 2017 album on Avian and another EP on Rengaine in 2018, we’re glad to welcome Verge on Veyl with 12 tracks of doom & drones to soundtrack the rest of this awful year
Strut present the 4CD edition of Sun Ra's 'Egypt 1971' along with the original albums 'Dark Myth Equation Visitation', 'Nidhamu' and 'Horizon' released as individual LPs, documenting Sun Ra's first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971. In the years leading up to 1971, Sun Ra wrote many compositions and poems specifically inspired by the ancient African Kingdoms and many others with associated mythological and heliocentric connotations. As such, a visit to Egypt and the opportunity for the Arkestra to play there was a matter of necessity. Ra's first ever concerts outside of the US had occurred in late summer and autumn of 1970 with performances in France, Germany and the UK and a second European tour was arranged for late 1971. At the end of that second tour, Ra caught wind of cheap flights from Denmark to Cairo. This release comprises recordings made by Arkestra member Thomas "Bugs" Hunter made in December 1971 in the streets around the Mena House Hotel, Giza, from a concert held at the house of Goethe Institute ex-pat Hartmut Geerken in Heliopolis, from a live Cairo TV channel broadcast and a concert at the Ballon Theatre in Cairo. The impact and significance of these few weeks upon Sun Ra can be measured by the growth and development of his output over the next few years; the immediate post-Egypt period included new studio and live recordings on the Saturn, Blue Thumb, Atlantic and Impulse labels and the 'Space Is The Place' movie. Ra also edited the three LPs of the 'Live In Egypt' series which were subsequently released on his Saturn record label and its affiliated twin, Thoth Intergalactic: 'Dark Myth Equation Visitation', 'Nidhamu' and 'Horizon'. These three albums are now reissued as single LP editions in their original artwork. The 4CD set features these albums alongside previously unreleased material from the December 1971 recordings. All tracks are remastered from the original tapes and the CD set also features a 24-page booklet featuring new sleeve notes and rare photos by Hartmut Geerken and background information on the recordings by Paul Griffiths.
Strut present the 4CD edition of Sun Ra's 'Egypt 1971' along with the original albums 'Dark Myth Equation Visitation', 'Nidhamu' and 'Horizon' released as individual LPs, documenting Sun Ra's first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971. In the years leading up to 1971, Sun Ra wrote many compositions and poems specifically inspired by the ancient African Kingdoms and many others with associated mythological and heliocentric connotations. As such, a visit to Egypt and the opportunity for the Arkestra to play there was a matter of necessity. Ra's first ever concerts outside of the US had occurred in late summer and autumn of 1970 with performances in France, Germany and the UK and a second European tour was arranged for late 1971. At the end of that second tour, Ra caught wind of cheap flights from Denmark to Cairo. This release comprises recordings made by Arkestra member Thomas "Bugs" Hunter made in December 1971 in the streets around the Mena House Hotel, Giza, from a concert held at the house of Goethe Institute ex-pat Hartmut Geerken in Heliopolis, from a live Cairo TV channel broadcast and a concert at the Ballon Theatre in Cairo. The impact and significance of these few weeks upon Sun Ra can be measured by the growth and development of his output over the next few years; the immediate post-Egypt period included new studio and live recordings on the Saturn, Blue Thumb, Atlantic and Impulse labels and the 'Space Is The Place' movie. Ra also edited the three LPs of the 'Live In Egypt' series which were subsequently released on his Saturn record label and its affiliated twin, Thoth Intergalactic: 'Dark Myth Equation Visitation', 'Nidhamu' and 'Horizon'. These three albums are now reissued as single LP editions in their original artwork. The 4CD set features these albums alongside previously unreleased material from the December 1971 recordings. All tracks are remastered from the original tapes and the CD set also features a 24-page booklet featuring new sleeve notes and rare photos by Hartmut Geerken and background information on the recordings by Paul Griffiths.
Strut present the 4CD edition of Sun Ra's 'Egypt 1971' along with the original albums 'Dark Myth Equation Visitation', 'Nidhamu' and 'Horizon' released as individual LPs, documenting Sun Ra's first trip to Egypt with his Arkestra in December 1971. In the years leading up to 1971, Sun Ra wrote many compositions and poems specifically inspired by the ancient African Kingdoms and many others with associated mythological and heliocentric connotations. As such, a visit to Egypt and the opportunity for the Arkestra to play there was a matter of necessity. Ra's first ever concerts outside of the US had occurred in late summer and autumn of 1970 with performances in France, Germany and the UK and a second European tour was arranged for late 1971. At the end of that second tour, Ra caught wind of cheap flights from Denmark to Cairo. This release comprises recordings made by Arkestra member Thomas "Bugs" Hunter made in December 1971 in the streets around the Mena House Hotel, Giza, from a concert held at the house of Goethe Institute ex-pat Hartmut Geerken in Heliopolis, from a live Cairo TV channel broadcast and a concert at the Ballon Theatre in Cairo. The impact and significance of these few weeks upon Sun Ra can be measured by the growth and development of his output over the next few years; the immediate post-Egypt period included new studio and live recordings on the Saturn, Blue Thumb, Atlantic and Impulse labels and the 'Space Is The Place' movie. Ra also edited the three LPs of the 'Live In Egypt' series which were subsequently released on his Saturn record label and its affiliated twin, Thoth Intergalactic: 'Dark Myth Equation Visitation', 'Nidhamu' and 'Horizon'. These three albums are now reissued as single LP editions in their original artwork. The 4CD set features these albums alongside previously unreleased material from the December 1971 recordings. All tracks are remastered from the original tapes and the CD set also features a 24-page booklet featuring new sleeve notes and rare photos by Hartmut Geerken and background information on the recordings by Paul Griffiths.
Long sought after by collectors, DJs and lovers of hard salsa and boogaloo alike, 'Yo Traigo Boogaloo' is now lovingly reissued in replica form with the original cover art, remastered from the studio tapes, reproducing that magical MAG studio sound for today's aficionados to enjoy like it was 1969 all over again. Alfredo Linares is a globetrotting pianist, composer, bandleader and producer from Peru with a long, prolific career in latin music. His long sought after by DJs and collectors of hard salsa and boogaloo alike, 'Yo Traigo Boogaloo' is now lovingly reissued in replica form with the original cover art, remastered from the studio tapes, reproducing that magical MAG studio sound for today's aficionados to enjoy like it was 1969 all over again. Details: Alfredito "Sabor" Linares is a globetrotting pianist, composer, bandleader and producer from Lima, Peru with a long, prolific career in hot Latin music spanning more than half a century. Though Linares has come to recent international fame through his work with William "Quantic" Holland, he was already quite popular and famous in his adopted countries of Colombia and Venezuela in the 1970s and 80s during the salsa boom. However, his career began in Lima, backing timbalero Ñico Estrada at age 17 in 1961, and Alfredito's first notable recording as a sideman was a few years later on the now legendary 'El Combo de Pepe' album for IEMPSA/Odeon. Subsequently Linares would advance his career by recording two fabulous records under his own capable leadership as Alfredo Linares Y Su Sonora at the end of the decade for the MAG label. These releases capitalized on recent developments in New York Latin music, namely Latin jazz, boogaloo, descarga (jam session) and what would later be marketed as "salsa" with roots in the Cuban guaguancó and guaracha genres. One can hear direct inspiration coming from Joe Cuba, Ricardo Ray, and Eddie Palmieri, especially on the first album, 'El Pito', and yet by the second record, there are plenty of original tunes as well. More importantly there is a 'swing' and assertiveness to the playing (and arrangements) that prove every bit as authentic, tough and danceable as their New York inspirations. As Linares himself recounts, "In that era, we fought against a generation that was half-blind, because the people who understood what we were doing were few. We had to fight hard for our space in Perú, that's where the swing comes from." That special 'swing' also emanated from Linares' ace backing band, which happened to be a talented stable of MAG studio musicians who all understood Cuban and jazz music: percussionists Mario Allison and Coco Lagos, bassist Joey di Roma, Kiko Fuentes and Carlos Muñoz on lead vocals and Melcochita on coro (vocal chorus). According to Linares, the studio band was "open-ended, some musicians came some days, others on other days_Nilo Espinoza on saxophone, Betico Salas and Tito Chicoma on trumpets. Otto de Rojas played piano, and so did Charlie Palomares, who played vibraphone. Another good musician was guitarist Carlos Hayre." Though the recordings were cut "live in the studio" and many were basically composed on the spot, the intrinsic strength and maturity of the performances on 'Yo Traigo Boogaloo' stand the test of time as one of Peru's most important contributions to tropical music across the decades, establishing Alfredito Linares as a master of the idiom and serving as a harbinger for great things to come for him in Colombia and Venezuela. Long sought after by collectors, DJs and lovers of hard salsa and boogaloo alike, 'Yo Traigo Boogaloo' is now lovingly reissued in replica form with the original cover art, remastered from the studio tapes, reproducing that magical MAG studio sound for today's aficionados to enjoy like it was 1969 all over again. Pablo E Yglesias DJ Bongohead of Peace & Rhythm
One of the most expensive records in the world. The only available copy on Discogs is a mere £4,000!
This was Willie Tee returning to his '60s anthem "Teasing You" but updating it with a beautiful 1972 New Orleans production turning it into a Modern Soul anthem. It's a work of sublime genius and the fully remastered 7" reissue will have replica artwork of the original Gatur label. You have just been spoilt, again.
SUMMER OF SEVENTEEN are MONIKA KHOT (NORDRA, ZEN MOTHER), WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA (MAMIFFER), and AARON TURNER. (SUMAC, SPLIT CRANIUM).
Wildfires plagued Washington state during the summer of 2017, their smoke drifting westward toward the Seattle area and toxifying the air. Shortly before that trauma, MONIKA KHOT, WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA, and AARON TURNER had gathered at the latter two musicians' House Of Low Culture studio on idyllic Vashon Island with revered producer RANDALL DUNN. There they cut eight songs that capture the makeshift band's feelings of what COLOCCIA calls "a kind of doomsday lurking in the background." It's as if these highly attuned players had a premonition.
"Summer Of Seventeen" -which was edited and arranged by MONIKA KHOT, who records apocalyptic music solo as NORDRA and plays in the avant-rock band ZEN MOTHER—is a nuanced admixture of these musicians' sounds and a culmination of all of their previous collaborations. COLOCCIA and TURNER have created eldritch folk and chamber rock for over a decade in MAMIFFER while engaging in various solo and group projects that explore their profound spirituality in sound. MENCHE has been a fixture on the abstract composition scene for 31 years and COLLINS is a savvy explorer of drone and ambient forms. Their ephemeral summit meeting has yielded a masterwork for the ages.
A heaven/hell and beauty/beastliness dichotomy pervades the album—as if a titanic struggle was transpiring in that small studio. The fearsome trumpet fanfare that starts "Chorus Of The Innocents" heralds a baleful fate. With a subliminal industrial rhythm bristling beneath the eerie exhalations, the song submerges us in a slow-motion maelstrom, a horror-film facsimile of MILES DAVIS' "Bitches Brew". "Perceived Slight" threads death-metal screams through a stark, suspenseful atmosphere, with austere glints of guitar and beats like fists on a casket lid intensifying the dread.
Angelic chants and celestial drones perfume the air in several of the songs on "Summer Of Seventeen", countered with muted blast beats, serrated hums, jagged glitches, simulacra of grinding gears and lightning. It's as if no good deed goes unpunished. "Spirits Of Redeemer" could be an elegy for the human race while "Cultural Orphan" sounds like a symphony for a malfunctioning factory. The album ends with "Theatre Needs An Audience," a harrowing ballad somewhere between EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and MERZBOW; it's a savage rent in the space-time continuum.
"Thinking about this record now," COLOCCIA recalls, "it seems like we were all sort of anticipating something like this current pandemic happening, although we were thinking about it as fire in the hands of man (literal fire, and also gunfire) that would overturn the normal running of things and reveal the current false beliefs systems holding up most of America."
That grave aura infiltrates "Summer Of Seventeen", However, a hopefulness bubbles beneath the foreboding architecture of sound and noise summoned here. The bunker is the new penthouse.
-Dave Segal, April 2020
- A1: Infinite Stress/Stress Infinito (From 'Spasmo')
- A2: First Nebula/Nebulosa Prima (From 'The Seecret/Il Segreto')
- A3: 1970 (From 'The Cat O' Nine Tails/Il Gatto A Nove Code')
- B1: Disgust/Raccapriccio (From 'What Have You Done To Solange?/Cosa Avete Fatto A Solange?')
- B2: Followed/Seguita (From 'Cold Eyes Of Fear/Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura')
- B3: Lemon Obstinacy/Ostinazione Al Limone (From 'What Have You Done To Solange?/Cosa Avete Fatto A Solange?')
- B4: Glass Dolls/Bambole Di Vetro (From 'Short Night Of Glass Dolls/La Corta Notte Delle Bambole Di Vetro')
- B5: Foolish Suspension/Sospensione Folle (From 'Without Apparent Motive/Senza Movente')
- C1: The Serpent/Il Serpente (From 'Night Flight From Moscow/Il Serpente')
- C2: Infinite Stress/Stress Infinito (#4 - From 'Spasmo')
- C3: Solange's End/Fine Di Solange (From 'What Have You Done To Solange?/Cosa Avete Fatto A Solange?')
- C4: Evanescent/Evanescente (From 'Cold Eyes Of Fear/Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura')
- C5: Emmetrentatre (From 'Short Night Of Glass Dolls/La Corta Notte Delle Bambole Di Vetro')
- D1: Night Walk/Passeggiata Notturna (From 'The Cat O' Nine Tails/Il Gatto A Nove Code')
- D2: In The Middle Of The Chest/In Pieno Petto (From 'Without Apparent Motive/Senza Movente')
- D3: In The Void/Nel Vuoto (From 'Forbidden Photos Of A Lady Above Suspicion/Le Foto Proibite Di Una Signora Per Bene')
Giallo is the fourth in a series of five double vinyl releases that bring together some of Ennio Morricone’s greatest soundtrack music. Each collection centres on a different movie genre, together they allow the listener to rediscover the unmatched genius of the greatest movie composer of all time. The Maestro. This collection was announced before Ennio Morricone passed away on July 6, 2020. We’ll continue to release the series to honour this great composer.
When we think of 1960’s Italian pulp cinema, the spaghetti western is the genre that comes to mind. However, Italy was responsible for another classic cinematic exploitation movement around the same time, one that is equally as compelling, but less widely recognised. Giallo…
Giallo, meaning ‘yellow’, is the Italian term for crime fiction, it was named after the bright yellow colours of early pulp fiction paperbacks. Film audiences adopted it as the name for a peculiarly Italian sub-genre of thriller cinema that had its heyday in the 1970’s - just as the Spaghetti Western movement was waning. The Giallo can be difficult to define, but essentially it is an Italian crime film that draws from a pool of common themes: stylized murders, amateur sleuths, sleazy glamour, psychological crimes, enigmatic titles and all these themes are underpinned by creepily atmospheric Ennio Morricone music scores. Starting 70 years ago as an arranger for the piece Mamma Bianca, Ennio Morricone is the emperor of scores and soundtracks. Morricone has always been a huge influence for the likes of Hans Zimmer, Danger Mouse, Muse, Metallica and many more musicians. He was one of the most successful composers of all-time, selling over 70 million records and winning dozens of awards.
Giallo is available as a limited edition of 3000 individually numbered copies on “giallo and black marbled” (clear, yellow and black mixed) vinyl. The package includes a 4-page insert with liner notes written by Claudio Fuiano. The gatefold sleeve contains a silver foil spot varnish on the outside and images of iconic movie posters on the inside.
**EXTREMELY LIMITED RUN OF 150 - BEAUTIFULLY PRESENTED WITH HIGH SPEC SILVER AND BLACK MARBLE VINYL**
Diasiva return to Irish label Acroplane Recordings with another collection of uncompromising, bass-heavy, tales of the world decaying.
Diasiva is a collaboration between Monolog (Ad Noiseam, Murder Channel, Hymen) and Swarm Intelligence (Acroplane, Voitax, 47). As Diasiva they have previous releases on Ohm Resistance, Arboretum, Instruments of Discipline, Subtrakt and Acroplane Recordings.
- A1: Volume (Lp1 Gyrate)
- A2: Feast On My Heart
- A3: Precaution
- A4: Weather Radio
- A5: The Human Body
- A6: Read A Book
- B1: Driving School
- B2: Gravity
- B3: Danger
- B4: Working Is No Problem
- B5: Stop It
- C1: K (Lp2 Chomp)
- C2: Yo-Yo
- C3: Beep
- C4: Italian Movie Theme
- C5: Crazy
- C6: M-Train
- D1: Buzz
- D2: No Clocks
- D3: Reptiles
- D4: Spider
- D5: Gyrate
- D6: Altitude
- E1: The Human Body (Lp3 Razz Tape)
- E4: Working Is No Problem
- E5: Precaution
- E6: Cool
- E7: Functionality
- F1: Efficiency
- F2: Information
- F3: Dub
- F4: Modern Day Fashion Woman (Version 2)
- F5: Danger
- F6: Feast On My Heart (Working Version)
- G1: Untitled (Lp4 Extra)
- G2: Cool
- G3: Dub
- G4: Recent Title
- G5: Danger!! (Danger Remix)
- H1: Crazy (Single Mix)
- H2: Reptiles (Channel One Version)
- H3: No Clocks (Channel One Version)
- H4: Spider (Alternative Mix)
- H5: 3 X 3 (Live)
- H6: Danger Iii (Live)
- E2: Modern Day Fashion Woman (Version 1)
- E3: Read A Book (Instrumental)
In the late-1970s Athens, Georgia was buzzing with a raw but sophisticated music scene. Traditional Southern rock had been the Georgia musical export for years before but the turn of the decade began producing new sounds from bands like the B-52’s, REM and Alt Rock luminaires Pylon.
Before they were a band, Pylon were art-school students at the University of Georgia: four kids invigorated by big ideas about art and creativity and society. However, Pylon were less of a band and more of an art project, which meant they had very specific goals in mind, as well as an expiration date.
While their time together as a band was short lived (1979-1983), Pylon had a lasting influence on the history of rock and roll. Throughout their brief history, they were able to create influential work that would help foster the post-punk and art-rock scene of the early 80s. Artists like R.E.M., Gang of Four, Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, Interpol, Deerhunter and many more claim inspiration from the band.
Their 1979 single ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ reached legendary status, with Rolling Stone titling it one of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles Of All Time.
In 1980 the band released their first record, ‘Gyrate’, and began touring across the country in support of the release. The band would soon develop a following across the country and specifically in the bustling music scene in New York City. One of their earliest gigs was opening for the Gang of Four in the Big Apple.
Following the critical acclaim of their debut release, Pylon went back into the studio. They gleefully pulled their songs apart and put them back together in new shapes, revealing a band of self proclaimed nonmusicians who had transformed gradually but noticeably into real musicians. The resulting album, ‘Chomp’, was barely off the press when Pylon were booked to open a run of dates for a hot new Irish band called U2 (after previously playing two arena shows with them in the month leading to the album release). Most bands would have jumped at the opportunity but Pylon were sceptical. At a critical point in the life of Pylon, they opted to become a cult band rather than stretch their defining philosophy too far.
“We fully intended Pylon to be an almost seasonal thing that we were gonna do for a minute and then get on with our lives,” says Curtis Crowe, drummer for the band. “But it just never went away. It still doesn’t go away. There’s a new subterranean class of kids that are coming into this kind of music, and they’re just now discovering Pylon. That blows my mind. We didn’t see that coming.”
New West Records are proud to partner with Pylon to reissue ‘Chomp’ and ‘Gyrate’ back into the masses. Beautifully remastered from the original audio sources and pressed on vinyl (140g) for the first time in over 30 years.
New West Records also present ‘Pylon Box’, a comprehensive look at the band that features the remastered studio LPs ‘Gyrate’ and ‘Chomp’, the 11-song collection ‘Extra’ - which includes rarities and previously unreleased studio and live recordings - and ‘Razz Tape’, Pylon’s first ever recording: a 13-song unreleased session that pre-dates the band’s seminal ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ debut.
‘Pylon Box’ also includes a hardbound 200-page full colour book featuring pieces written by the members of R.E.M., Gang of Four, Steve Albini, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Interpol, B-52’s, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, Mission of Burma, Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and K Records, Anthony DeCurtis, Chris Stamey of the dB’s, Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and many more. Features an extensive essay chronicling the band’s history, with interviews with the surviving members of the band as well as members of R.E.M., B-52’s, Gang of Four, Method Actors and more. It also features never before seen images and artifacts from both the band’s personal archives as well as items now housed at the Special Collections Library at the University of Georgia and the Georgia Museum of Art, UGA.
FREEDOM/FICTION REMIXES is a compilation of six experimental dance tracks featuring an international mix of well known and upcoming artists. Opening with a hybrid rhythmic statement by Berlin based multimedia artist Zoë Mc Pherson (founder of SFX-Label), to be followed by L.A.'s performance duo Pacoima Techno, who bring track 9 – Apparatus – of L Twills' recently released debut album Freedom/Fiction to the Drexciyan dancefloors of their self-proclaimed genre Casa Teka, Xiu Xiu ends side A with a disturbing but electrifyingly lynchian noise interpretation of Freedom/Fiction. Side B takes the Album's tunes to another night's sight: Automatic Subject gets a new coat by John Tejada's well known and intriguing techno-sound, Montreal based Tobias Rochman (one part of Pelada) turns M.A.S.T.E.R.S. into a techno-drum'n'bass version, whilst upcoming Berlin based producer and Dj Nomi Elektra finalizes the spectrum with an acid-house interpretation of L.A. Automatic Subject pt.2. Releasing on the 16thof October, the compilation is a limited edition of 300 12” Vinyls and can be ordered through Word&Sound. The Cover shows “Autoportrait”, a painting by Mexican artist Frieda Toranzo Jäger.
Automatic Subject pt2. Remix Nomi Elektra
Composed, produced, and arranged by Eartheater alone, Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin draws a path back to the primordial lava lake from which she first emerged, as it also testifies to the reincarnating resurrections the project has undergone over its first full decade of existence. While the album renews her focus on guitar performance and legible structure, Eartheater balances the unabashed prettiness of acoustic harmonic songs with the dissonant gestural embroidery of oblique instrumentals. Having fallen back in love with the idioms that first captivated her, she worked to crack open the techniques that had fossilized inside of her, while still seeking to apply the electro-alchemical knowledge she picked up along her journey. The result of a laborious revival in fire, Phoenix recontextualizes Eartheater’s combinatorial approach to production within her most confident abstractions, adjacent to some of her most direct songs to date.
Eartheater composed and workshopped most of Phoenix over a ten-week artist residency (FUGA) in Zaragoza, Spain, housed in a sprawling, cubic glass facility that looked out over wildflower-flecked mountains. Following an intensive period of recording and touring, the residency provided her with an unprecedented period of solitude in the small Spanish town. Her newfound sense of isolation ultimately became liberating, leading her to sidestep the crutches and steady grids inherent to electronic music, and to conceive pieces rooted in her guitar and her desire to perform with other players live.
Eartheater’s voice glows brighter than ever at the center of Phoenix’s arrangements — her familiar operatic highs are grounded by newly expanded velvety lows, leaping lucidly up and down octaves. Her intricate guitar work flits across baroque fingerpicked passages and latches into cyclical figures that meet her voice in lush harmonic progressions. From her own guitar parts, to the orchestral string arrangements she wrote for the Spanish conservatory group Ensemble de Camara, to the harp and violin lines performed by her close friends and collaborators Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz of LEYA, Eartheater’s applications of acoustic instruments bring an extraordinary emotional emphasis to her compositions. Phoenix prepares for a future where electronic sound — or even electricity itself — isn’t guaranteed, but where her music could still come to life with a group of hands dexterously winding across instruments against the light of the fire. Eartheater drew inspiration for Phoenix from geological imagery, whose turbulence and potential for genesis mirror the trajectory of her own life and relationships. The album’s instrumental pieces directly reference these moments of upheaval, colliding audio of volcano and lightning storms with resplendent string and vocal arrangements. “Volcano” looks out over the album from its peak at the center, its tectonic plates colliding in towering melodies and layers of vocal harmonies, as piano accents crest and cascade down the mountainside. When Eartheater sings, “I’m still building mountains underground,” she is trying to reconcile the pinnacles of her ambition with the comforts of a simple existence buried beneath the surface. “Diamond in the Bedrock” finds her admiring the gemstone forming under intense pressure inside her, but rejecting the romantic promise that the diamond signifies, choosing instead to escape a relationship that has come to stifle her.
With the album’s subtitle, Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin, Eartheater imagines being tempered to a state of perfect equilibrium, suspended between melting and freezing, where fire could streak across her body and appear as a crystalline blush. This image captures the tension at the heart of the Eartheater project, as she decides how best to distill her passion and render it cool to the touch; to find beauty in simple pleasure, while keeping one eye fixed on the peaks that loom in the horizon. The album is mixed by Kiri Stensby and mastered by Heba Kadry, featuring photography by Daniel Sannwald.
- A1: The Artistic Sounds - Give It Up
- A2: The Holy Lights Of Baltimore, Md - I'll Be Satisfied
- A3: The Swan Silvertones - Trust In God
- A4: Gene Martin - A Little Bit Of Faith
- A5: Myrna Summers - Have A Talk With God
- B1: James Cleveland And The Southern California Community Choir - I Want To Thank You Master
- B2: Betty Hollins - What A Time (When All God's Children Get Together)
- B3: The Metro Tones - Get Together
- B4: The World Wonders - He Made A Way
- B5: The Brooklyn Skyways - Dark Clouds
- C1: Sister Ida Maxey - Do Lord
- C2: The Thornes Trio - You Don't Love God
- C3: Mildred Clark And The Melody-Aires - Hold On, I'm Coming
- C4: The Highway Q.c.s - If You Fail, Try Again
- C5: The Gospelaires Of Dayton, Ohio - What Will Tomorrow Bring
- D1: The Holy Lights Of Baltimore, Md - Keep On Singing
- D2: The Exciting Supreme Highlights - Drowning In The Sea Of Sin
- D3: James Moore - I Thank You Master
- D4: Prof. Charles Taylor And The Charles Taylor Singers - Been Good To Me
- D5: The Brockington Ensemble - God Is God (He Won't Change)
The second volume brings sublime crossings of gospel with the soul, funk and jazz of the Black Power era. Twenty rapturous cuts dot dazzlingly between Muscle Shoals soul, screwed breakbeat, Mizells-style fusion, disco and proto-house. Triumphant re-workings of Sly Stone, Donny Hathaway and Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters will have listeners throwing their pew cushions into the air.
Full-size booklet; beautifully designed, with stunning, rare photographs and original Savoy artwork.
Favorite Recordings presents an exclusive collaboration between French producer Bruno ‘Patchworks’ Hovart (Voilaaa, Mr President, Taggy Matcher, …) and Australian NYC-based rapper and poet Nelson Dialect. The two artists met two years ago after Nelson’s gig in Lyon and, of course, they discussed and seriously planned to collaborate one day, both having an everliving love for early nineties hip hop. Then came the quarantine and Covid-19 with Patchworks locked in Lyon, Nelson Dialect in NYC: it seemed to be the right time to do it. A few months later and they finally drop Blue Benz, the result of their long distance collaboration, coming as a beautiful 7inch filled with proper Jazz & Soul Hip Hop vibes.
On A side, « Blue Benz » reminds indeed the best feelings of the nineties hip-hop with its infectious slapped bass rhythm and subtle Rhodes chords, all fiiting perfectly with Nelson Dialect’s serious flow!
On B Side, « Jazzy Blue Benz » offers an alternate take on the same groove, focusing more on the electric guitar gentle slides with a more percussive beat and horns arrangements with a proper NYC jazz
feeling.
From Adelaide, Australia, Nelson Dialect now lives in New York working with Bronx label Red Apples 45 started by AG of DITC and Ray West. Making music since he was 16, he has received critical acclaim for his work with producer Must Volkoff and their most recent album Magnetism. Before moving to New York, Nelson toured extensively in Australia supporting some of the biggest international Hip Hop acts including Mobb Deep, Lupe Fiasco, Ghostface Killah, GZA, RZA, Pharoahe Monch and DJ Premier among many more. He just released a new album Opal Mind with French producer NuTone.
The pioneering electronic composer Mort Garson (Mother Earth’s Plantasia) • takes on supernatural phenomena with lush synth grooves on The Unexplained, his only release under the name Ataraxia. Subtitled Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult, the album explores tarot, astral projection, seances, and more with Garson’s signature Moog synthesizer serving as the listener’s tour guide to the paranormal. The exploratory, whimsical spirit of its creator is evident throughout the release, but it also takes its subject matter seriously, making it essential for anyone interested in musical conjurations of the occult. This remastered edition marks the first official reissue of the album since its initial 1975 release, and it includes all the original liner notes.
ABOUT MORT GARSON: Morton S. “Mort” Garson was a Canadian-born composer, arranger, songwriter, and pioneer of electronic music. He is best known for his albums in the 1960s and 1970s that were among the first to feature Moog synthesizers. His bestknown album is Mother Earth’s Plantasia, a 1976 Moog album designed to be played “for plants and the people who love them.”
Sacred Bones Records has undertaken the project of giving official, licensed reissues to key releases from Mort Garson’s catalog, with the intention of bringing these bold masterpieces to a 21st century audience.
- A1: Is He Trying To Tell Us Something? (Instrumental)
- A2: Rhapsody In Green
- A3: Baroque No 2
- A4: This Is My Beloved
- A5: Music For Advertising #1
- A6: Music For Advertising #2
- A7: Music For Advertising #3
- A8: Killers Of The Wild
- A9: Realizations Of An Aeropolis
- A10: Music For Advertising #4
- A11: Music For Advertising #5
- A12: Z Theme From "Music For Sensuous Lovers" (Part 1 - Instrumental)
- A13: The Blobs Son Of Blob Theme
- B1: Cathedral Of Pleasure
- B2: Ode To An African Violet
- B3: The Time Zone Space Walker
- B4: Dragonfly
- B5: The Lords Of Percussion Geisha Girl
- B6: The Electric Blues Society Our Day Will Come
PURPLE VINYL[23,66 €]
Mort Garson’s road to cool cultural caché and the sublimity of Plantasia meant a decades’ long journey through an underworld of sophisticated, international, string-laced dreck (i.e., your great-grandparents’ record collection) to arrive at Music from Patch Cord Productions, this set of queasy-listening you now hold.
Music from Patch Cord Productions shows that Garson’s knack was to exist in both worlds, super-commercial and waaay out. He cut delirious minute-long blasts for commercials (as to whether or not they were actually ever aired remains unknown) and spacecraft-hovering études. Were there really account managers out there in the early ’70s that gave the greenlight to these commercial compositions which seemed to anticipate everyone from John Carpenter to Suicide? What were these campaigns actually for, Soylent Green? Regardless, Mort’s jingle work laid the groundwork for the future. As Robert Moog himself noted: “The jingles were important because they domesticated the sound.” Via Garson’s wizardry, the synthesizer transcended novelty to ubiquity and dominance.
Other curios and questions abound. How did Garson’s arrangement work for Arthur Prysock’s satiny body worship album This Is My Beloved transmogrify into the body-snatcher pulses of “This is My Beloved”? Are the two pieces even related? What is the IATA code for the airport of “Realizations of an Aeropolis”? What denomination is the “Cathedral of Pleasure”? If “Son of Blob” sounds like a hallucinatory melted ice cream truck theme, what on earth does Blob’s father sound like? Every sound wrangled out of that Moog by Garson pushes things further and further out.
Of course, these are all questions that may never get answers, as Garson wasn’t the most organized modern day composer, busy as he was conjuring strange new realms with his circuit boards and synths. He worked and wrote right up until his death in 2008, his daughter and Sacred Bones still going through all of the material left behind. He wouldn’t live to see it, but his renaissance was just around the corner, the seeds that had been scattered in record bins around the world suddenly coming to bear fruit. Take a bite!
So here we are with another first – the next vinyl debut on Cheezy Crust Records as well as thefirst ever release for the two-piece project that is CVSO which is their „Basic Cuts EP“.
Comprised of Mainz / Germany-based producers Mint Huus who made his solo debut on Cheezy Crust in 2019 and Get In Touch head honcho Willberg their joint venture project CVSO caters a total of four tracks on limited to 200 copies 12“ vinyl, all aptly named after their individual
placement and position on the actual record itself.
Mastered by electronic music legend and pioneer Thomas P. Heckmann the trademark sound of CVSO presented on this EP is informed by classic early to mid-90s Techno and Intelligent Techno vibes with its ever evolving flow and stripped down aesthetic which fuses subtle harmonic changes, spatial meanderings within the stereo field as well as a hypnotic, time-dissolving attitude for heavy dancefloor abuse.
This said, CVSO are aiming for nothing less than their introduction to the ivy league of Techno with these „Basic Cuts“, providing classy, absolutely timeless and expertly assembled DJ tools which are aiming to perfectly blend in with and match the vibe of all those now classic tunes that have never left a DJs bag for a quarter of a century or more, even though CVSO are tackling their sound design and production approach with a modern contemporary twist.
In the late-1970s Athens, Georgia was buzzing with a raw but sophisticated music scene. Traditional Southern rock had been the Georgia musical export for years before but the turn of the decade began producing new sounds from bands like the B-52’s, REM and Alt Rock luminaires Pylon.
Before they were a band, Pylon were art-school students at the University of Georgia: four kids invigorated by big ideas about art and creativity and society. However, Pylon were less of a band and more of an art project, which meant they had very specific goals in mind, as well as an expiration date.
While their time together as a band was short lived (1979-1983), Pylon had a lasting influence on the history of rock and roll. Throughout their brief history, they were able to create influential work that would help foster the post-punk and art-rock scene of the early 80s. Artists like R.E.M., Gang of Four, Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, Interpol, Deerhunter and many more claim inspiration from the band.
Their 1979 single ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ reached legendary status, with Rolling Stone titling it one of the 100 Greatest Debut Singles Of All Time.
In 1980 the band released their first record, ‘Gyrate’, and began touring across the country in support of the release. The band would soon develop a following across the country and specifically in the bustling music scene in New York City. One of their earliest gigs was opening for the Gang of Four in the Big Apple.
Following the critical acclaim of their debut release, Pylon went back into the studio. They gleefully pulled their songs apart and put them back together in new shapes, revealing a band of self proclaimed nonmusicians who had transformed gradually but noticeably into real musicians. The resulting album, ‘Chomp’, was barely off the press when Pylon were booked to open a run of dates for a hot new Irish band called U2 (after previously playing two arena shows with them in the month leading to the album release). Most bands would have jumped at the opportunity but Pylon were sceptical. At a critical point in the life of Pylon, they opted to become a cult band rather than stretch their defining philosophy too far.
“We fully intended Pylon to be an almost seasonal thing that we were gonna do for a minute and then get on with our lives,” says Curtis Crowe, drummer for the band. “But it just never went away. It still doesn’t go away. There’s a new subterranean class of kids that are coming into this kind of music, and they’re just now discovering Pylon. That blows my mind. We didn’t see that coming.”
New West Records are proud to partner with Pylon to reissue ‘Chomp’ and ‘Gyrate’ back into the masses. Beautifully remastered from the original audio sources and pressed on vinyl (140g) for the first time in over 30 years.
New West Records also present ‘Pylon Box’, a comprehensive look at the band that features the remastered studio LPs ‘Gyrate’ and ‘Chomp’, the 11-song collection ‘Extra’ - which includes rarities and previously unreleased studio and live recordings - and ‘Razz Tape’, Pylon’s first ever recording: a 13-song unreleased session that pre-dates the band’s seminal ‘Cool’ / ‘Dub’ debut.
‘Pylon Box’ also includes a hardbound 200-page full colour book featuring pieces written by the members of R.E.M., Gang of Four, Steve Albini, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Interpol, B-52’s, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, Mission of Burma, Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening and K Records, Anthony DeCurtis, Chris Stamey of the dB’s, Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and many more. Features an extensive essay chronicling the band’s history, with interviews with the surviving members of the band as well as members of R.E.M., B-52’s, Gang of Four, Method Actors and more. It also features never before seen images and artifacts from both the band’s personal archives as well as items now housed at the Special Collections Library at the University of Georgia and the Georgia Museum of Art, UGA.
After releases on Distinkkt, Blue Park, Woob.le Recordings
and a stream of free downloads and self releases Ali
Whitticase joins Motoring with an ear catching approach to
stripped back house music. The Birmingham based artist
has carved a distinctive sound pairing in§uences from
Europe’s minimalist expressions along with bold basslines
heard shaking Midlands dance §oors. Detective Sandy kicks
off the EP with crisp percussion, and a signature Whitticase
low end. Elements trail off into endless directions, subtly
teasing a hypnotic listen with a multitude of quirky sounds
held together by a seriously grooving bassline. Birmingham’s
Jordan Masters joins that side with a stripped back remix of
the title track, nimble hi-hats, shimmering percussive work
and §avours of minimal garage can be heard throughout, a
bouncing bassline delivers a rapid groove for a great balance
between ear engrosser and dance §oor mover. Jos of
EYA/Lonewolf records delivers his twist on Detective Sandy
for B1, a 90s inspired synth reigns through the entire
composition, sultry vocals, a darker rolling bassline and
sharp percussive elements all build into a suspenseful break,
where the listener is dropped back into the hypnotic twists
and commanding low end. (Premiered on Halycon Wax
08/10/2020) Saucy Thoughts rounds this EP off a Warm
and familiar atmosphere is paired with sublime skipping hi
hats which draw the ear. While Saucy Thoughts is more
chilled affair it still hits in all the right places, another bold
bassline builds throughout the track with deep accents
providing a bouncing groove before the track splits boldly
back into the §oating atmosphere. (Premiered on Rayzeh
02/10/2020)
Slick jungle, low-slung broken beat and even a deep house banger, 'Interlocked' assembles 8 tracks of some of the purest old-school vibes by a veteran of the scene under a brand new alias for a frustrated and precarious (post)-lockdown summer. Tapping the drama and energy of the largely pre-generic party days of '91-94 - a halcyon time of transition in which Drumskull himself, as a life-long skater otherwise stoked on the the raw energy of 80s skate video soundtracks - to Black Flag, JFA, Minor Threat, Stupids et al, to Primus, Gang Starr and Meat Beat Manifesto, made the passage into syncopated machine funk, to sub bass, time-stretched breaks and automated beat production.
Physically drumming in a couple of skate punk bands in the early 90s, exposure to hardcore and early jungle tapes in '93 by DJ Dimension and DJ Rob (Leeds Orbit, UK), amongst countless others, inspired an archetypal move to sell his drum kit so as to land a set of Technics 1210s. Spinning techno and jungle on the local free party scene and clubs as part of a DJ collective from '94-96, crafting early tunes on Amiga ProTracker software, and shortly after running club nights in mid-90s London with Mo' Wax and Ninja Tune artists, Drumskull expresses the eclecticism of the era across 8 big tracks of previously unreleased material. Evoking all the energy and excitement of being involved in those early years of dance culture, 'Interlocked' powerfully yet playfully connects then to now, reveling in a sense of timelessness, mutation and hybridity.
Album photography by Amir Zaki from his book with legendary Skateboarder Tony Hawk and author Peter Zellner 'California Concrete: A Landscape of Skateparks (2019). Graffiti lettering by original UK stylemaster and beatmaker REQ TDK.
We’re proud to welcome Robert Owens and Queer On Acid to Takeout, who present a ‘double-A side’ release. 2 sublime pieces of vocal-house and techno which will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
Robert’s hypnotic vocals weave between QoA’s beautiful production with both tracks enticing remixes from none other than in demand Fear-E, Polymod and MASC (Mark Archer & Shadow Child).
The music does the talking here, and with a limited vinyl run (which excludes the MASC remix) to support a huge digital package, we’re excited to have such quality on the new label.
Enjoy !
Worldwide Award winners First Word Records are pleased to welcome back Souleance; a duo that have been releasing music with us for a decade now, and triumphantly returning to the fold with some brand new music for 2020.
This vinyl / digital EP, 'Les Mouches', is their first release for First Word since the acclaimed beat-tape 'French Cassette' from early last year.
Expanding on the original Normand-Parisian super-duo of Fulgeance and Soulist, the Souleance crew now includes Vincent Choquet on synths and Guillaume Rossel on drums as part of their live outfit. Whilst sonically their style remains unchanged, the formation into a full band sees the Souleance sound become bigger, more realised and more formidable than ever.
The title track 'Les Mouches' sets off the EP in a playful disco manner - a chugging bassline, assorted synthesisers, disco claps and a four-to-the-floor drum track, inspired by the likes of Larry Levan and Candido. Meaning "flies", Les Mouches was a legendary Manhattan club that existed around the era of Studio 54, and was infamously a hangout spot for Imelda Marcos. The club itself was named after a play by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Next up is the single 'Aquarelle' (meaning watercolours), which contains more layers than a Bob Ross painting. With its various elements splayed across its aural canvas, sprinkled with some subtle scratches, it's four minutes of funk presented in Souleance's inimitable way.
'The Bounce' follows and enters a more soulful side of the dance, dropping the tempo a touch and inviting in a huge bassline, squelchy keys and intermittent vocal hooks.
'Mont Maudit' takes more of a latin jazz direction with big drums and cymbals rocking throughout, whilst an infectious piano hook cruises throughout, and an ethereal gospel choir switches up the proceedings mid-way.
Things get deeper still with the epic broken beat-esque 'Maneuevers'. Crunchy rhodes dominate this slightly tweaked-out rhythm, a delectable piece of heads-down nujazz fused with Souleance's unmistakable funk once again.
'L'Opuleance' closes out this EP with some more traditional Souleance fare - the tempo a little more head-nod, this one is comprised of some deliciously wobbly bass, chopped samples and hefty breaks.
This EP is essentially a set of grooves marinated in nostalgia whilst managing to sound entirely current. Analogue synths, live bass, sleek cuts and intoxicating drums. This is another round of sure-shot dancefloor fire from our favourite French family.
Previous support has come from OkayPlayer, Bill Brewster, BBC 6 Music's Gilles Peterson, Tom Ravenscroft & Huey Morgan, and various DJs on Worldwide FM, NTS & Le Mellotron,
Society is shaped by its history, stories that have evolved over time and held to be true. Stories of the imagination, stories from the ill-informed, stories conjured by favored subjects, but all loosely wrapped in the truth. Systems such as morals, religion, politics, and a culture are powerful enough to influence the mind of one and the minds of many and therefore direct the evolution of the species. Unseen Forces is a conceptual work that dissects this idea. A collection of four songs cause the listener to re-examine not only what they believed to be real and true but also why. Side A dives head first into testing your belief system by introducing the first stage of influence - Disruption and Experimentation. Introducing a simple question into the belief system that cannot be answered and observing the result. The Disruptor - subtle but powerful making its point with eerie, off center synth lines, and synthesized drums. Driving a wedge between the listener and the comfort of familiarity. Dr. Blowfin's Experiment - a long time and highly revered classic previously released on SID, continues to re-evaluate beliefs with modifications to the original. The question of why is still unanswered. Beliefs are broken and chaos ensues. Side B begins to take direct the chaos with another classic - Crossphaze - injecting live funk and modulated filters with this flexible floor mover previously released on Accelerate. Crossing into another realm unfamiliar to the listener as new beliefs are formed. Deconstructing the Immortals - leaves the listener with no other choice but to eagerly leave their old world behind and everything they know in ruins. This offbeat and mesmerizing anthem makes the question of why unimportant, because the answer is what now.
Today internationally renowned composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and visual artist Tim Koh announces the release of his debut solo album ‘In Your Dreams’, set for release on 18 September via Tim Burgess’ O Genesis Recordings. The announce follows the release of recent single ‘Fall Into Your Dream’ in May.
In Your Dreams is Tim’s most straightforward and accessible release to date, and an exciting addition to his body of solo work, which hitherto can broadly be described as experimental noise. The poignant song collection tackles core themes of life’s calamities, broken love, and transitory relationships, yet counterbalances its essential melancholy with a whimsical, upbeat, and playful spirit throughout. While not strictly autobiographical, the songs draw from Tim’s recent personal experiences during his two-year isolation from friends and family, and create a compelling narrative of alienation, loss, and love.
Tim wrote In Your Dreams in Amsterdam, L.A., and London in-between his time touring with Ariel Pink, and subsequently recorded the songs at home in Amsterdam while recovering from a near-fatal 2018 accident. The recurring hospitalizations that Tim has endured in recent years subtly find their way into the album through phone recordings from Tim’s actual hospital stints, underscoring the album’s themes on this highly personal work. In Your Dreams deftly juxtaposes lush, densely layered sounds with stark simplicity through a series of quick turnarounds, creating the captivating feeling of tension and release that characterizes this remarkable song collection.
Guest musicians on In Your Dreams include Chris Cohen on guitar, and drum help from Jay Watson (Tame Impala, Gum) and Josh da Costa (CMON). Adding to the family feel of the album, longtime Ariel Pink and Tim Koh collaborator Jorge Elbrecht performed mixing duties along with mastering by Heba Kadry.
DOWNFALL is the first album under the name SAITO created by Lena Saito, aka Galcid, and produced by accomplished analog synthesizer guru, Hisashi Saito, aka Lena’s husband. Having descended from a long line of Japanese sword-smiths, the industrial sound of smashing steel is embedded in Lena’s DNA and reflected in her music, however there are also refined, hypnotic tones showing a side with more finesse. The music itself is not scored and is predominantly improvised. Words and vocals are ad libbed as well. Sometimes the machines respond as if through telekinesis, altogether emitting a sound which can be categorized somewhere in the range between modern experimental dance music and something possibly making more sense to enlightened minds a thousand years in the future.
There is a new addition to the forge of talents of Mille Plateaux, a Japanese musician by the name of Saito whose album has been released on the label under the title of Downfall. After a whole series of releases under the signature tag clicks & cuts, there comes out a work, much more suited for a dance hall, that is different in terms of the genre from everything that has been published so far.
Like a bucket of ice-cold water poured over the head, erratic agressive hardcore rhythms pour all over the audience in the first track, interrupted only by grinding noises and minimalistic technogenic clicks.
Downfall won't fail to infect even the most experienced music connaisseur with its out-of-control energy, while offering a wide range of techniques: at times, robotic voices, one second long fragments of looped melodies and many other audio gimmicks.
Lena Saito (that is the author's name) is not afraid of conducting experiments in her chemical laboratory, freely mixing sound reagents without taking any precautions. It feels like, this new chemical substance, that she has been working on so thoroughly, contains quite a long list of ingredients, although its main component is the various rhythm breaks.
The synthesizer part of Red Hammer sounds in the best traditions of the acid style, and the rhythm section is akin to African tribal dances of the future. Downfall is absolutely unrelenting in its concept.
The melody of the composition Nucleosome is a little bit like the melancholic IDM of the 00s, finding itself secondary to the dominating, yet again convoluted rhythmical web meticulously woven by Saito.
This album can be definitely named as a big contender aspiring to start a new golden era of Mille Plateaux, and Saito as the hidden treasure of the label that can challenge even the veterans for the right to be the headliner.
- A1: Neon - My Blues Is You
- A2: (Pankow) - God's Deneuve
- A3: Le Masque - Mother And Son
- A4: N.o.i.a. - Forbidden Planet
- A5: State Of Art - Your Eyes
- A6: Jeunesse D'ivoire - Days
- B1: Monuments - Oblivious (Edit)
- B2: Rats - C'est Disco
- B3: Fockewulf 190 - We Are Colder
- B4: Luc Orient - Night In Paris
- B5: Illogico - Abilità Motoria
- B6: 2+2=5 - Mathematic'n Logarithm
- B7: La Maison - 40 Secondi
What exactly happened in the Italian underground / post punk scene 30 years ago, is not entirely clear. Therefore, this collection of 13 incredible tunes helps track down the feeling and focuses on the blurry images of a period that was mixing influences from the UK/USA scenes with a more national' approach to new music developments. The damage began in 1977 when a series of urban / suburban musical agitators, whether skilled or complete amateurs, decided to embrace instruments as weapons for a war against sonic stereotypes. Here's the result: a multiform sonic attack that marks the history of a movement that may have remained local in most cases but whose echo reflected the amazing creativity of a generation.
Wonderful. „I wanted my first long form album to represent the joys of life, strength of positivity, the wonderfulness of nature, and celebrate how music plays an intricate part in sewing all of that together.“
From the subtle rhythmic brush strokes of South American music to the sounds of Bern’s underground scene. Mirabile Dictu pulls from those spheres of influence and more to succinctly capture the translation of Adriano’s surname perfectly.
Veteran NYC based Scottish electronic musician Drew McDowall's latest work is his loftiest, most liturgical, and least industrial outing to date —and potentially the apex of his recent discography.Named after an ancient Greek word for votive offering, Agalmaexudes a hooded, devotional aura, creaking and keeling under vast rafters of stone, stained glass, and shredded wires. It's a music of majesty and mystery but also modernity, McDowall's refined modular system shape-shifting strings, piano, pipe organ, and choral masses into disorienting synthetic mirages of the sacred. He cites the intersection of “joy, terror, and the elegiac” as a centering inspiration –or, phrased more bluntly, “that 'what the fuck is going on' feeling.”
As a career collaborator himself, with stints in Coil, Psychic TV, and countless other shorter-lived partnerships, it's telling that McDowall chose this project to gather such an impressive spectrum of peers. Italian synthesist Caterina Barbieri, American drone organist Kali Malone, prolific multi-instrumentalistRobert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, operatic Humanbeast vocalist Maralie Armstrong-Rial, Saudi producer MSYLMA, and warped futurist beat-makers Bashar Suleiman and Elvin Brandhi cameo across the album's 42 minutes, contouring McDowall's nuanced negative spaces with shudders, shadows, and shivering flickers of serenity. Each of them shines in their spotlight, elevating these elusive alchemical states into surreal revelations of texture and transcendence.
McDowall's original working title for the record is revealing: Ritual Music.He speaks of his creative practice in ceremonial terms, negating binaries by seeking the middle path to anuminousequilibrium that erases the distinction between the inner and outer worlds.These compositions feel similarly processional and intuitive, at the crossroads of holiness and hallucination, the sacred vertigo of yawning naves rising into untouchable night skies. It's a vision of industrial music as enigma and invocation, cryptic hymnals of shroudedbeautysummoned in catacombs and crumbling cathedrals.
Despite its depths, Agalmais also an album of immediacy and emotion. Celestial laments of and for times of unrest and suffering. McDowall characterizes his initial intention for this music as an to attempt to convey experiences he felt incapable of putting into words: “To try and approach sublimity, or at least acknowledge it in some way.”Agalmamore than acknowledges the ineffable –it embodies it.
- A3: James Ocampo - One One Six Bee
- A4: Thabiso Makhetha - Coogan Radio
- A5: Rashid Al Balushi - Micro-Sister (Al'ukht Alsaghira) (Al'ukht Alsaghira)
- B1: Liv Jacobsen - Mond
- B2: Eteroa Apinelu - Sansobavo Mix
- B3: Zzodiakk - Sans Titre (Fumee V 3) (Fumee V 3)
- A1: Giuseppe Moretti - Ragazza Raddrizza (Live Excerpt)
- A2: Daryana Jean - Scvb
- B4: Alima Akmatova - Below The Rainbow
GRITTY, ODD & GOOD is a new weird, pseudo-music compilation curated by avant-garde experimental composer and audio artist Francisco López.
As far as creation itself is concerned, big cities do not manifest anymore as the catalytic cultural centers they used to be. Their iconic status as hip locations seems more symbolic than real. The combined mighty forces of neocapitalist gentrification and telecommunication / information decentralization might have generated a substantially different landscape of geographical cultural distribution. And so unlikely places are also sources of physically-isolated, but culturally-interconnected, new creation. This is just but one more example of the larger phenomenon of techno-cultural atomisation (not to be confused with the more restricted so-called “democratisation”) that allows millions of people to create and share, pre- and post-internet. The amateur is the new potential master; and that is decided by the crowd in the circus and the stadium, not at the academy. With all of this comes the potential for new aesthetics, or at least the open-ended evolution of the previous ones, –far better than the current confusion between ethics and aesthetics- from the uninformed and the unknown. Atomization of this kind also brings for some the desire and the right to anonymity. And so it is for the unknown obscure artists of this compilation of weird experimental music –“gritty, odd & good”, with drones, glitches, cut-ups and more- who won’t reveal anything beyond their unlikely locations: San Marino, French Guiana, Philippines, Lesotho, Oman, Faroe Islands, Tuvalu, Liechtenstein, Kyrgyzstan. An innovative compilation presenting a world of unusual experimental de-constructed and recombined music casting a strong and exciting light into the unusual corners of our world. Dive in.
Compiled and Mastered by Francisco López
Vinyl mastered by Rashad Becker
a 1 Ragazza Raddrizza (Live Excerpt) - Giuseppe Moretti San Marino 3:00
b 2 SCVB - Daryana Jean French Guiana 4:39
[c] 3 One One Six Bee - James Ocampo [Philippines] 5:37
[d] 4 Coogan Radio - Thabiso Makhetha [Lesotho] 3:18
[e] 5 micro-Sister (Al'ukht Alsaghira) - Rashid Al Balushi [Oman] 3:59
[f] 6 Mond - Lív Jacobsen [Faroe Islands] 3:10
[g] 7 Sansobavo Mix - Eteroa Apinelu [Tuvalu] 8:38
[h] 8 Sans Titre (Fumée v.3) - Zzodiakk [Liechtenstein] 6:38
[Kyrgyzstan] 1:17
A welcome reissue of the second Zion Train album, originally released on Universal Egg in 1993.
* Zion Train were at the forefront of the UK dub scene and took their sound worldwide from continent to continent and from festival to festival.
* `…Sporting Moments’ explores the outer limits of dub electronically and mind-bendingly with ample sub-bass to cause distress to your speakers.
It's been four years since Sweatbox Dynasty, the fourth solo LP from Pennsylvanian experimentalist TOBACCO. In that time, Tom Fec's project has toured with Nine Inch Nails, provided the theme song to HBO series Silicon Valley, and teamed with Aesop Rock for a collaborative album as Malibu Ken. He now returns to Ghostly International for Hot Wet & Sassy, a full-length album oozing with his most playful and approachable songs to date, which, conversely, express notions of antilove, self-hate, and disappointment in others. Pop impulses have always surged beneath the surface of his sound - blown-out bass, analog synths, drum machines, and Fec's unmistakable analog gurgle and hiss - here they've bubbled to the top. "I feel like it's the most I've been able to refine what I'm doing," says Fec. "For the past decade I've had this motherfxcker on my shoulder that makes me pick away at structure and melody. Purposely covering up moments because I can. That really came to a peak on Sweatbox. So I wanted the opposite this time. Write the songs without ripping them in half. I went from 'what would the Butthole Surfers do?' to 'what would Cyndi Lauper do?'" And what would Trent Reznor do? Fec found his answer straight from the source. Their collaborative track, "Babysitter," fuses their voices into one deranged presence: "I'm the new babysitter," they alert, before pivoting into a menacingly saccharine bridge. The track tumbles on a tom fill, then a punishing synth line rips into a cacophony of drums and feedback like a lawnmower gnawing through the living room carpet. "This was new for me, but I wanted to write a song that was everything I am and have been, and then like one notch further. Trent was the notch further," adds Fec. The collaboration is a work of alchemy seamlessly blending TOBACCO's trademarks with Reznor's industrial rust and sonic gore. Downcast, sincere, woozy, "Jinmenken" might be the closest Fec has come to a ballad. "Maybe you can find me down the line," his vocoded delivery bounces along the beat. "It's me trying to write a Jets song," says Fec. Album opener "Centaur Skin" presents the stylistic concoction that has been the TOBACCO MO from the beginning, crossing dreamy melodic shimmer with the sinister tones and slime. This has become easier to digest, but also far more potent. A motorik beat steadies the track's galloping arpeggio, acting as a springboard for Fec's dark ruminations as well as an uncharacteristically crystalline synth solo. "It's my feel good self hate anthem. Don't worry, I'm good. It was fun to write." TOBACCO hasn't been reinvented, but it has been refined and distilled. Brighter, sharper, and far more dangerous because of it. Hot Wet & Sassy is practically staring at the sun without shades and feeling those corneas roast. Everything looks good as your vision fades. The pop-forward structures exert their undeniable hooks with baneful precision, pulling listeners into their clutches; once there, sugary melody rewards submission.
Creole poetry, folk mysticism and heavy-grooving cosmic synths combine on this unprecedented survey of spiritual Martinique polymath Gratien Midonet's first four albums. For Midonet, pushing musical boundaries was less a choice than an extension of his spirit. A self-taught guitarist and composer, drawing on his childhood memories of bélé and beguine rhythms, Midonet's musical life developed in parallel to his academic and spiritual pursuits. Studying philosophy and psychopedagogy in France, it was his fascination with pan-Africanism and animism which fuelled the transcendent energy of his music. Although Midonet honed his sound in France, the four albums he released during the late '70s and '80s were heavily inspired by diasporic nostalgia, or what he describes as the "smells and colours... subliminal noises... fruity notes, the memories of funeral wakes, the bombastic organ of the cathedral and the gasps of the drums" of his childhood home on the Caribbean island of Martinique.
- A1: Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) (We All Shine On)
- A2: Cold Turkey
- A3: Isolation
- A4: Power To The People
- B1: Imagine
- B2: Jealous Guy
- B3: Gimme Some Truth
- B4: Come Together (Live)
- B5: #9 Dream
- C1: Mind Games
- C2: Whatever Gets You Thru The Night
- C3: Stand By Me
- C4: (Just Like) Starting Over (Just Like)
- C5: Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) (Darling Boy)
- D1: Watching The Wheels
- D2: Woman
- D3: Grow Old With Me
- D4: Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (War Is Over)
- D5: Give Peace A Chance
John Winston Ono Lennon would have been 80 on October 9th 2020. In celebration of his life and the incredible pleasure his music has brought to millions in his lifetime, a new Best Of will be released. A multi-format collection, entitled GIMME SOME TRUTH., this set has been personally curated by the Lennon estate and mixes the biggest hits like the classic and timeless “Imagine” with campaigning songs such as “Give Peace A Chance” and the evergreen classics like “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” and is culled from all of his solo albums including the posthumous “Milk And Honey”.
John Lennon is simply one of the most recognised and respected musicians of the modern era. As one half of perhaps the most successful songwriting partnerships of all time he deserves his place in history. That this partnership was with Paul McCartney in The Beatles means that he is also one of the most successful recording artists in history. With every succeeding generation falling for their genius, their legend continues to grow and they dominate the pop landscape.
Their split in 1970 allowed each of the band members, by now literally some of the most famous people on the planet, to find their own voice as solo artists and to grow beyond the confines of the band. For John Lennon, this meant throwing himself headlong into life with his new wife, Yoko Ono and eventually a new life in New York City.
Being a solo artist meant that he could delve deep within himself and realise music that was both deeply personal and challenging and which sometimes required a commitment from the audience too. His songs during his solo career mixed accessible pop melodies with sometimes stark and heart-rending simplicity and all points inbetween. His lyrics ranged from deep introspection and self-analysis to subjects that were more concerned with politics (of self, of relationships, of the campaign for peace, of the place of mankind as well as global politics). After a first rush of creativity, he took a step back from the limelight to care for his son, Sean, at home in New York, but when he was ready he returned to recording with one of his most successful and impactful albums. Double Fantasy, preceded by the single (Just Like) Starting Over had been released the month before his life was tragically cut short on 8th December 1980. But this album joins the rest of his solo canon as testament to one of the truly great and truly iconoclastic musicians and personalities of the era.
Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001 producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title "Heroin" and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions.
17 years later Heroin sees its first vinyl release to include all 13 tracks from the original CD track-list on this LP + 12“ set. The centerpiece "Herz" finally receives its long deserved vinyl treatment (side C, at 45rpm) and on the flip side Thomas Brinkmann contributes a mirror in a magnificent remix of that very piece on side D.
Ehlers and Mathieu were both highly prolific solo artists during the period 2000-2004, and in just two years after the initial release of "Heroin" each had produced over half a dozen new solo recordings: among them the serial masterpiece Ehlers' "Plays" (Cornelius Cardew, Hurbert Fichte, John Cassavetes, Albert Ayler, Robert Johnson) released as 5 stunning LPs in a series on Staubgold, while Mathieu's 'Full Swing Edits' spread over five 10" records plus his album 'FrequencyLib' on Mille Plateaux, 'Die Entdeckung des Wetters' on Lucky Kitchen and ‘The Sad Mac’ on Atsushi Sasaki’s Headz label were greeted to critical acclaim.
Both artists were expanding their conceptual sonic approaches in the glow of developing laptop technologies which would to these times in 2020 seem quite primitive, but these two in that period used the state-of-the-art to aid and abet their conceptual visions, while at times the duo used unorthodox experimentation - yet always had a distinctively melodic and musical form at its heart and soul.
Ehlers can be seen as a conceptualist, as a meta-musician who interrogates the mediums and methods of sound production - reflecting on the conditions and possibilities of improvisation (e.g. "Plays Albert Ayler") and exploits ideas of mutation and distortion of popular aesthetics played out within a ghostly form of divine pop beauty in his project März.
Mathieu, originally a drummer and co-founder of what has come to be known as the Berlin 'Echtzeitmusik' scene. His approach could be similarly described as working a critical analyst and researcher: Subtly and precisely working in the realm of processing as a method of intervening in melodious/harmonic analog sound sources.
Ehlers and Mathieu may not think too much about their singular productions and publications outcomes, but instead concentrate on the process and musical personality that characterizes their gesture- style itself stays in the background - and they usher a music from small minimal sound sources coaching a patient music of slow intervention - much like a refraction of light than a concrete painting or a blurred photograph - beatus accident.
And indeed, "Heroin" is an album that embraces the happy accident being made up of reduced, often very catchy and very direct micro hooks which seem laser-guided into a space accepting obvious melodic beauty in what feels like an observation of musics unfolding and revealing it's DNA, embed with for a kind of yearning for innocence and naiveté - as if Satie were on the jukebox in "The Crying of Lot 49". Not to say the music is "reduced", but rather: 'restricted' and born from acceptance of limitations, and the artists allowing the sounds to just "be.." with some incremental degrees of coercion.
The album not only sounds like that of 2 producers who are both dreamers and scientists, but that Ehlers and Mathieu chose to work with these means in a dialogue together to reduce pop music to its musical/tonal core, it is not Pop music anymore, rather a ghostly pointilistic itteration of song. "Heroin" is located at this transition, around that point at which tracks, that were or could have become pop compositions, irrevocably slip into a static harmonic nirvana. We are invited to follow the arch of Heroin in a slow-motion morphine musical haze.
Heroin sounded timeless when originally released and proof is that it remains so, one wishes that Ehlers and Mathieu would convene again for a week, a month or an entire year to continue this process of slow rumination, picking affectionately over the sounds they both love - and then maybe when everything is condensed, evaporated they would write more songs with those sonic refractive elements that remain.
Following up on their debut LP Kick Drunk Love for Marcel Vogel’s Intimate Friends imprint a few years back, we are proud to present the next installment in the sporadic KAMM legacy: Cookie Policies.
Far more sonically rich and musically adventurous than its predecessor, Cookie Policies sees the band make bold strides into new territories where classically hardwired categories such as jazz, indie rock, and electronica melt into one another with immaculate, timeless ease.
The band members’ positions are more clear cut as well this round, with Marc David Barrite (aka Dave Aju, who also did one of his coveted mix engineering jobs on the LP) on prominent lead vocals in many of the pieces, Alland Byallo on trumpet, Kenneth Scott on synth bass, and Marc Smith adding guitar sections while the others shared the arranging and programming duties. This makes for a deeper continuation of the otherworldly combination of their known individual production styles, as well as a musical whole truly greater than the sum of its parts.
The set starts off with “Bird Call”, whose opening ode to Morricone ok corral-meets-samurai showdown riffs flow into a loose and drifting psychedelic boom bap blip, building until a glorious change-up of key and energy brings the track to its peak and deconstructed back down. “Rachel, the Largest Bullfrog” then takes things in a sweeter, slightly more traditionally-structured direction where dusty indie-folk ballad vibes intersect with an array of twisted cosmic tones, bits of computer keyboard percussion, and deep rolling sub bass. “Buckle Down” then moves things back away from acoustic restraints into a beautiful synth-laden musing on potential regret, with an ultra-potent horn section from Byallo vs a nasty stacked Roland SH-101 finish.
“CCBPGC” cools things off for a few minutes with an ambient field recording slice-and-dice motif, which slowly but surely evolves into a slinking jazz noir groove from another dimension. The more traditional song structures return on the lovely “La Luna”, where Barrite’s pen and soulful voice take to nautical longing themes over apropos waves of sonic textures. The ebb and flow of the verse/chorus sections eventually rise and give way to an absolutely gorgeous denouement. “Shleem” then takes us into pure unadulterated soaring sci-fi soundtrack ambient blast-off bliss, while the epic closing track “The Soft Glow of Electric Sex” gives a hearty nod to early masters of sprawling psychedelic jam sessions, from Pink Floyd and Can to In A Silent Way-era Miles and Liquid Liquid, while bringing it clearly into futurist millennia. The gradual evolution of the piece into its grand finale is the stuff we true music-lovers live and die for. We hope you enjoy the ride as much as we do.
New Finnish imprint VIENO, kicks off with 10 track compilation of Finnish ambient, electronica & experimental music. Selection draws an emotionally infused red line throughout.
Travelling starts with "Pumpuli". Beautiful soft opener for ears and other senses. However, more deeper agenda follows. For darker soul searching Roberto Rodriguez provides 80´s synth driven "Third Act" followed by techno producer Satoi´s melancholic journey "Unohda".
B-Side goes on with dubby triphop influnced "Heimo M" by Aleksi Myllykoski with Finnish saxosphone legend Tapani Rinne. Paving the way for young and gifted Sansibar´s spacey techno breathing "ISS". Last track of the compilation, ”Ukki”, is a very personal, intriguingly gloomy, yet unpolished piano composition dedicated for recently deceased great grandfather of the artist, Mierka.
”I was just asked what’s my reason to create VIENO and bring out this compilation just now? I’ve been exploring the Finnish urban music and club scene for more than two decades and I recognize the space and craving is now present. Now is the right time to recreate and bring life to this art of subtle melancholy we Finns have always carried deep in us. In a way i´m tryin´to awaken the emotional energy more than just to paint insipid and expectedly ear friendly, atmospheric soundscapes.” - Jaako Hurme
Videosphere, the debut album by Kompakt’s latest signing, the London-based artist Lake Turner (aka Andrew Halford), swoons into focus with “The Sunbird”, a teasing drift of lilting, ambient tones, riding out a submerged piston-pulse rhythm. Across its brief 109 seconds, it manages to traverse evocative terrain – something mythopoetic, something both humble and grandiose, a glimpse of the other behind the sky’s curtain. “I wanted to conjure up something resembling an ancient ceremony or death procession,” Turner nods. “Like a hymn to the surroundings of a faraway hill.” It’s both sky-bound and earthen, a ritual incantation to call in the music of the spheres.
Turner was introduced to the Kompakt family by his sometime collaborator Yannis Philippakis of Foals. He’d previously made music in post-punk and indie groups Great Eskimo Hoax and Trophy Wife, but Videosphere is the first time he’s fully articulated his own vision of electronic music, aside from one limited lathe-cut 12”, 2018’s Prime Mover EP, on Algebra. The lush ambient-disco-techno dreams of Videosphere were constructed and completed in his London studio and at his parents’ arable and sheep farm in Worcestershire, which might help explain the hazy, unhurried pastoralism of the album.
“There was a slight bittersweetness in finishing the record (in Worcestershire) as my parents were in the middle of selling my childhood home,” he sighs, before quipping, “on the plus, I ended up shearing a lot of sheep over the summer.” A student of archaeology and ancient history, Turner is no doubt carefully attuned to the twisting cogs of history and memory, and it’s no surprise that Videosphere has a nostalgic, melancholic cast; much of its beauty rests in the way it tugs, gently, at the heart strings – see the tear-stained cheeks of the lush, dappled “Honeycomb”, or the sweetly sad electro-roundelay of “No Way Back Forever.”
It’s not all drift-dream hypnosis, though – Videosphere is very much grounded in the now. ““No Way Back Forever” is a nod to the linear nature of time,” Turner explains by way of example, “and the tipping point of the world climate crisis that scientists have now declared.” Jayne Powell’s vocals are sent spinning through the song, wound like candyfloss; she takes centre stage on the techno hymnal title track, too. Throughout, there’s a sense of forward movement, despite the life stasis we find ourselves collectively bound by in mid-2020; there’s also a yearning for the communal, for community, that’s captured in the album title, a nod to an object Turner encountered at London’s Geoffrey Museum, “a television set in the shape of a spaceman’s helmet from the 1970s.”
“The vision I loosely had was to make an electronic record that had a communal warmth and almost ceremonial or ritual feel. I wanted to examine the relationship of our archaic minds in the trappings of the modern world,” Turner concludes. “What the Videosphere also symbolizes for me is the oneness of humanity and community, prevailing.”
Eröffnet wird "Videosphere", das Debütalbum von Kompakts jüngstem Signing, dem in London ansässigen Künstler Lake Turner (alias Andrew Halford), mit "The Sunbird" - einem herausfordernden Strom aus Ambient Sounds, die zu schweben scheinen, um sich dann in einen subtilen, maschinellen Rhythmus zu verwandeln. In gerade mal 109 Sekunden gelingt es dem Stück, ein gewaltiges Terrain abzuschreiten - etwas Mythopoetisches, bescheiden und grandios zugleich, gibt uns eine Ahnung davon, was sich hinter dem Himmel verbirgt. "Ich wollte etwas heraufbeschwören, das einer alten Zeremonie oder Totenprozession ähnelt", sagt Turner, "wie eine Hymne an die Umgebung eines weit entfernten Hügels." Himmlisch und irdisch zugleich, eine rituelle Beschwörung von Sphärenmusik.
Der Kompakt Label-Familie wurde Turner von dessen zeitweiligen Mitarbeiter Yannis Philippakis (Foals) vorgestellt. Zuvor hatte er in den Post Punk- und Indie-Bands Great Eskimo Hoax und Trophy Wife gespielt. Bis auf eine limitierte lathe-cut 12", der "Prime Mover EP" auf Algebra von 2018, artikuliert Turner mit "Videosphere" zum ersten Mal seine eigene Vision von elektronischer Musik.
Die üppigen Ambient-Disco-Techno-Träume von "Videosphere" hat Turner in seinem Londoner Studio und auf der Schaffarm seiner Eltern in Worcestershire produziert, was den nebulösen, gemächlichen und beinahe pastoralen Charakter des Albums erklären könnte.
"Es gab einen bittersüßen Moment als ich mit der Platte (in Worcestershire) fertig geworden war, da meine Eltern gerade dabei waren, das Haus meiner Kindheit zu verkaufen", seufzt er, bevor er witzelt, "das Positive war, dass ich im Laufe des Sommers eine Menge Schafe geschoren habe". Als Student der Archäologie und der Geschichte des Altertums ist Turner zweifellos mit den sich unaufhörlich drehenden Rädern der Geschichte und der daran geknüpften Erinnerungen vertraut, und es ist keine Überraschung, dass "Videosphere" einen nostalgischen, melancholischen Einschlag hat; viel von seiner Schönheit liegt in der Art und Weise, wie es einem sanft ans Herz geht - die Tränen benetzten Wangen von "Honeycomb" oder der ambivalente Elektro-Reigen von "No Way Back Forever".
Trotz allem hypnotischen Driften und Träumen - Videosphere ist sehr stark im Jetzt verankert. "`No Way Back Forever`ist eine Anspielung auf die lineare Natur der Zeit", erklärt Turner beispielhaft, "und auf den Wendepunkt der globalen Klimakrise, den Wissenschaftler gerade ausgerufen haben". Jayne Powells Gesang wirbelt dabei wie Zuckerwatte durch den Song und steht auch im Mittelpunkt des technoid hymnischen Titelstücks. Überall ist ein Gefühl der Vorwärtsbewegung zu spüren, trotz der Stagnation, in der wir uns Mitte 2020 kollektiv befinden; trotzdem existiert eine Sehnsucht nach dem Gemeinsamen, nach Gemeinschaft, die im Albumtitel eingefangen ist - eine Referenz an ein Objekt, dem Turner im Londoner Geoffrey-Museum begegnete, "ein Fernsehgerät in Form eines Raumfahrerhelms aus den 1970er Jahren".
„Die lose Vision, die ich hatte, bestand darin, eine elektronische Platte zu machen, die eine soziale Wärme und eine fast zeremonielle oder rituelle Atmosphäre ausstrahlt. Ich wollte die Beziehung unseres archaischen Geistes in den Fallstricken der modernen Welt untersuchen", so Turner abschließend. "Was `Videosphere` für mich auch symbolisiert, ist die Einheit von Menschlichkeit und Gemeinschaft, die am Ende obsiegt".
Soulful selector and skateboarder extraordinaire Hugh Hardie is back with his latest EP, ‘Learning To Fly’, consisting of four sublime cuts, hot on the heels of his recent‘7 Tunes In 7 Days’ lockdown project. Produced from his home studio in Bristol, Hugh’s new release features collaborations with DJ Marky and singer/songwriter Cimone.
Named after the Indian mountain city in West Bengal, opening track ‘Darjeeling’ is a faultless embodiment of Hugh’s trademark jazz-inspired groove. Filled with transcendent piano chord progressions, rolling breaks and an enchanting upright bassline, ‘Darjeeling’ is a classic example of the soulful liquid beats the Bristol-based DJ has become known for.
‘Said & Done’ sees the commanding vocal talents of Cimone take the lead as Hugh Hardie and DJ Marky team up on the buttons to create a smile-inducing bouncer drenched in feel-good summer vibrations. Infectious descending bass wobbles lay the foundations below swinging piano licks and sharp-edged, shuffling percussions. With DJ Marky being an avid supporter of Hugh and Cimone’s initial link up on ‘Raindrops’, it only made sense for the trio to jump on a track together.
‘Learning To Fly’ with graceful strings and arpeggiated plucks, leads seamlessly into a crisp drum track and driving bassline. Hugh’s delicate yet powerful and uplifting pieces of music explore a broad range of emotions, taking the listener on a stimulating musical journey.
Drawing for original jungle sounds whilst staying true to his soul-heavy style, ‘Late Night Harp’ does exactly what it says on the tin as captivating harp melodies and acoustic guitar riffs are infused with fizzing sub-heavy basslines and steamrolling breakbeats generating a no-holds-barred banger.
His ‘Learning To Fly’ EP is the second project to emerge from Hugh Hardie in the 2020 lockdown. His previous ‘7 Tunes In 7 Days’ extended EP saw him create a track from scratch every day over the course of a week, and received support from DJs across the board including the legendary LTJ Bukem. With the success of both his ‘Shadows & Silhouettes’ and ‘Colourspace’ LPs under his belt, Hugh’s dedication to ensuring that soul remains the main ingredient in his productions is cementing him as a staple figure in the world of liquid drum & bass.
JON SPENCER, THE BLUES EXPLOSION MAN who put the BELLBOTTOMS on BABY DRIVER! The Top Cat who spread the
Secret Sauce in BOSS HOG! The Rockabilly Right-Hook from Heavyweight Outlaws HEAVY TRASH! The Swank-Fucking Master of PUSSY GALORE!
Jon Spencer is back! Often imitated, never duplicated, the original NYC underground-rock legend returns from the wilderness with twelve red-hot hits, each more powerful than the last!
This is Garage Punk for Now People! A wizard’s brew of rhythm & blues and subversive dance grooves, weaponized with sci-fi skronk and industrial attitude, calibrated for the Revolution, a Molotov cocktail of sound guaranteed to destroy any post-modern hangover!
Pulsing with energy, clanging with excitement, and dripping with radioactive soul and raw emotion, Jon Spencer opens up his heart like never before, exploring man’s modern condition with caustic guitars and outerworld crooning, asking and answering the musical question, “Is it possible to torch the cut-throat world of fake news and pre-fab, plastic-coated teen rebellion with the power of rock’n’roll?”
THE ANSWER IS YES! SPENCER SINGS THE HITS!
This is the truth serum America has been craving, the beginning of a rock’n’roll rebellion that takes no prisoners and puts the squares on ice!
Recorded and mixed with Bill Skibbe at the Key Club in Benton Harbor, MI. Featuring the talents of Sam Coomes (Quasi, Heatmeiser) and M. Sord (M. Sord). On tour in the Europe in Autumn 2018!
- A1: Strange Timez (Feat. Robert Smith)
- A2: The Valley Of The Pagans (Feat. Beck)
- A3: The Lost Chord (Feat. Leee John)
- A4: Pac-Man (Feat. Schoolboy Q)
- A5: Chalk Tablet Towers (Feat. St Vincent)
- A6: The Pink Phantom (Feat. Elton John And 6Lack)
- B1: Aries (Feat. Peter Hook And Georgia)
- B2: Friday 13Th (Feat. Octavian)
- B3: Dead Butterflies (Feat. Kano And Roxani Arias)
- B4: Désolé (Feat. Fatoumata Diawara) (Extended Version)
- B5: Momentary Bliss (Feat. Slowthai And Slaves)
- C1: Opium (Feat. Earthgang)
- C2: Simplicity (Feat. Joan As Police Woman)
- C3: Severed Head (Feat. Goldlink And Unknown Mortal Orchestra)
- D1: With Love To An Ex (Feat Moonchild Sanelly)
- D2: Mls (Feat. Jpegmafia And Chai)
- D3: How Far? (Feat. Tony Allen And Skepta)
Gorillaz started the year with Episode 1 - ‘Momentary Bliss ft. slowthai and Slaves’ - of Song Machine, a whole new concept from one of the most innovative bands around. Now, six episodes in, Noodle, 2D, Murdoc and Russel have visited Morocco and Paris, London and Lake Como, as well as travelling all the way to the moon, and Gorillaz is ready to bring you the full collection titled Song Machine: Season One - Strange Timez, out on 23rd October 2020.
Song Machine is the ongoing and ever-evolving process which has seen Gorillaz joined by an expanding roster of collaborators captured live in Kong Studios and beyond. The result is an expansive collection of tracks embracing a myriad of sounds, styles, genres and attitudes from a breath-taking line-up of guest artists including Beck, Elton John, Fatoumata Diawara, Georgia, Kano, Leee John, Octavian, Peter Hook, Robert Smith, Roxani Arias, ScHoolboy Q, Slaves, Slowthai, St Vincent and 6LACK.
To date the project has seen over 100million streams on all tracks already and the band’s biggest period of sustained growth across both listenership and fanbase growth. All this before the album has even been announced!
Virtual band Gorillaz is singer 2D, bassist Murdoc Niccals, guitarist Noodle and drummer Russel Hobbs. Created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, their acclaimed eponymous debut album was released in 2001. The BRIT and Grammy Award winning band’s subsequent albums are Demon Days (2005), Plastic Beach (2010), The Fall (2011), Humanz (2017) and The Now Now (2018). A truly global phenomenon, Gorillaz have achieved success in entirely ground-breaking ways, touring the world from San Diego to Syria, winning numerous awards including the coveted Jim Henson Creativity Honor.
The band are recognised by The Guinness Book Of World Records as the planet’s Most Successful Virtual Act.
2 x 180g Black 12” vinyl
20 page hardcover 12” art book
Song Machine Season One Deluxe CD
Download card for the full deluxe album
3 x 12” art prints
1 x 12” label copy sheet
j 10. Désolé (feat. Fatoumata Diawara) Extended Version
j 10. Désolé (feat. Fatoumata Diawara) Extended Version
At the heart of Christian Stadsgaard's solo project Vanity Productions is a voracious emotive charge that's forever tempered by an austere and self-disciplined approach to composition. His new album for Posh Isolation, the label and project that he authors with Loke Rahbek, is the most thoroughgoing realisation of the tendencies and processes captured in the guise of Vanity Productions to date. Entitled 'But All Spiked,' the album presents a suite of five pieces that veer surely yet subtly through a complimentary range of acousmatic environments. Of his recent works its perhaps 'Only The Stars Come Out At Night' that most resembles a preliminary route in to the arena of his new album. Sometimes overtly, though often with a cryptic veneer, he modulates a central refrain across each piece that comes to engulf the stereo field with different intentions. Citing the influence of American minimalist composers, Stadsgaard has refigured some of the compositional practices towards his particular context and oeuvre. A medley of strings and electronics waver in and out of place on the opening piece, 'White Ribbons On The Ceiling,' introducing the careful preparation and treatment of sound as a means of articulating a profound though compassionate melancholy. The album is drenched in sorrow and seeks its expression with great economy. And it's around this detail that there's perhaps some slight indication of the album's turbulent personal context and the major life changes that underpin it. Stadsgaard's restraint proposes a wealth of wistful invocations. This control, once combined with the subdued presence of his penchant for glaring noise, is what organises 'But All Spiked' into the meditative and dynamic work that it is.
The latest record from Delinquent Delivery sees label-head Stephen Mahoney round up five of Dublin’s most prolific producers. Stuey Lyons, Jon Hussey, Jack Jennings, Stephen Mahoney & Rustal have contributed to Stretching Ohms, the fifth release on Delinquent Delivery. Dancefloor directed techno at its finest.
Stuey Lyøns & Jon Hussey have teamed up for A1, a straight-shooting dancefloor oriented techno work. With over forty years of experience between them,Lyøns & Hussey’s expertise is put to work on A1. Dark, pensive and groove-oriented, A1 never deviates too far from its source, making it a useful techno tool for any DJ’s arsenal.
Jack Jennings contribution on A2 is another dancefloor directed number, featuring a dissonant lead married with a swinging percussive section which creates an infectious groove. Jennings’ production style would be synonymous with dark, late night sets, such as those by Marcel Dettmann or Chris Liebling.
Mahoney’s input to Stretching Ohms is B1, a commanding techno banger. Mahoney’s production style is similar to his DJ sets, delicately blending subtle elements throughout B1 while never losing focus of the main driving components. B1’s direct approach makes it perfect for late night sets.
Rustal rounds the record off with B2, a groovy roller which echoes Detroit through and through. Chiming in as the fastest track on the record, Rustal effortlessly balances a funky bassline with a compelling lead, reminiscent of the Belleville Three’s earlier work. B2 marks the end of Stretching Ohms, continuing on the energetic path set out before.
Stretching Ohms delivers high-octane dancefloor driven bangers of the highest quality. Each track differs in style, but combined they all have similar DNA – they’re all made in Dublin. This release highlights the talent that Ireland has to offer to techno globally.
A very welcome reissue of this amazing LP. Beautiful deep Brazilian music that soothes the soul.. Tip!!
The self-titled debut by the duo Jaime & Nair is a revelation of all sorts. Released in 1974 on CID under the influence of albums like "Clube Da Esquina" it is an expressive album full of charm through a gesture of swing. It shows an overall dreamy lullaby vibe with subtle touches of Brazilian folk and features well-known artists such as Wilson Das Neves, Orlandivo or José Roberto Bertrami as studio musicians. The outstanding and largely hailed song 'Sob O Mar' brings us back to a pure Brazilian soft-bossanova-beat adorned by luscious orchestral arrangements. It became a popular DJ tune for those in the know after being comped in the fantastic "High Jazz" series in the early 2000s, gaining this album grail status among collectors worldwide. An essential addition to any serious Brazilian music collection.
Two years in the making, Future Ruins, TOM And His Computer’s debut album, will be released on Trentemøller’s In My Room label in October 20th. As a 20 year veteran of the Copenhagen music scene, Thomas Bertelsen has been releasing music under the sobriquet of TOM And His Computer for five years, merging the newest technologies with the old, while squeezing fresh sounds out of equipment that’s not only obsolete, sometimes it’s barely functioning at all. “I switch back and forth between the digital and the analog worlds. I’ll utilize old guitar pedals as well as the newest software,” says Thomas Bertelsen, producer behind TOM And His Computer. “It’s never about the gear, though, but rather finding that one little sound that can trigger an idea for an entire track.” Future Ruins was also co-produced and mixed by Trentemøller. While previous offerings have taken listeners to the outer boundaries of what can be considered “electronic music,” including nods to dark wave, dream pop, krautrock and modern psych rock, Future Ruins presents those influences in a new way and represents a great leap forward for the Copenhagen based producer.
The result is a genre-less collection of songs showcasing TOM’s obsession with propelling sounds of the past into the present, and future, combining noise and edginess with his “commitment to fresh ideas with a clear sense of melodies,” according to Clash Magazine. “My tastes are eclectic and I like to flirt with many different sub genres,” says TOM. “The aim was to combine various styles while trying to maintain a common denominator,” which committing to a full-length offered as an opportunity.
- A1: My Number (Hot Chip Remix)
- A2: Mountain At My Gates (Alex Metric Remix)
- A3: Into The Surf (Hot Since 82 Remix)
- B1: The Runner (Rufus Du Sol Remix)
- B2: In Degrees (Purple Disco Machine Remix)
- B3: Mountain At My Gates (Sebastian Remix)
- B4: Late Night (Solomun Remix)
- C1: Inhaler (Tom Vek Remix)
- C2: What Went Down (Haxan Cloak Remix)
- C3: Wash Off (Kuu Remix)
- C4: Hummer (Surkin Remix)
- D1: Mountain At My Gates (Jono Ma Remix)
- D2: What Went Down (Bandwidth Remix)
- D3: Miami (Lissvik Remix)
- D4: Night Swimmers (Mura Masa Edit)
- E1: My Number (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs Remix - Extended)
- E2: Give It All (Lindstrom Remix)
- E3: Dreaming Of (Joe Corti Remix)
- F1: Balloons (Kieran Hebden Version)
- F2: Spanish Sahara (Mount Kimbie Remix)
- F3: Late Night (Koreless Remix)
From their early days hosting parties in Oxford through to the huge success of their two-part ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost’ album, Foals have consistently explored their interest in dance and electronica. Now the band chart the most essential remixes from their career so far as they share the new remix package ‘Collected Reworks Vol 1’.
The tracks featured on ‘Collected Reworks’, are a compilation from an eclectic range of artists who have uncovered new angles to Foals’ discography. It includes one of their earliest remixes, from Ewan Pearson who blends Balearic bliss into ‘Olympic Airways’, as well as Solumun’s huge version of ‘Late Night’, which has been viewed over 50 million times at YouTube. Another standout moment is Hot Chip’s inventive interpretation of ‘My Number’.
‘Collected Reworks Vol. 1’ has been launched with Hot Since 82’s brand new remix of ‘Into The Surf’. The tech house producer / DJ behind ‘Buggin’’ and ‘Restless’ subverts the track from its original desolate beauty into something fresh and invigorating. The relentless driving beat maximises its energy throughout its eight minute duration, while its progressive leanings are given some unexpected throwback flavour with ‘80s style sax.
Ethimm scratches the pop, does a pirouette and then takes another direction. Both on stage and in his productions, the young producer from Zurich shows his unique style. After three releases on the cult label Light of Other Days he now shows himself more danceable and club-oriented than ever before. ‘Don’t Go Away’ has already been approved in clubs several times. At peak time the track shows all his power. On ‘Lies (feat. T.A.V.)’ Ethimm speaks directly to us. His pitched voice perfectly intertwines with the beat and the melodies. The slow groove of ‘Island Jam’ is peppered with a penetrating bassline and playful sound snippets. This EP is for DJs and home listeners alike.
Produced by Elisabeth Thimm. Vocals on A1 by T.A.V. Bass on A1 by Reto C. Gaffuri. Vocals on B1 and B2 by Geraldine Roth. B1 written by Warren Doris, Deirdre Heart and Elisabeth Thimm. Mixed by Hannes Bieger. Mastered by Reto Muggli.
GES: Anthology of American Pop Music
Six great pop standards remembered: five pop songs are dissected by sampler, stretched, compressed, and re-collaged. In this way, their identity is lost. What remains is a vague concreteness: flashes of déjà vu and remote echoes that evoke the original.
GES (Gesellschaft zur Emanzipation des Samples)
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Active members: Helmut Schmidt, Jan Jelinek
Founded: 2009
Headquarters: Federal Court of Justice, Karlsruhe, Germany
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GES Glossary
Acoustic Surveillance Series
A 7-inch vinyl record series curated by GES focussing on historical methods of acoustic surveillance. Each record introduces a surveillance system from the past. Starting with Uguisubari in 2017, the series will continue with the release of Orecchio di Dionisio in 2021. GES is open to further suggestions on this subject.
Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice), Karlsruhe
“The use of audio samples as artistic practice may justify the infringement of copyright and intellectual property rights.” (ruling of the German Federal Court of Justice pertaining to Metall auf Metall II, 2016). The court is also the official headquarters of GES.
Circulations
What happens to copyright claims when music from a passing car is captured in a street recording? Is it legal to use this recording freely or is it necessary to obtain licensing rights? Circulations re-enacts this recording situation: audio players are placed in public spaces, where they reproduce the desired sample material. The acoustically choreographed space is then recorded, creating a field recording in which everyday noises circulate together with seemingly incidental music.
Emancipation of Sampling
Fuelled by its criminalization, the act of sampling existing recordings forfeited some of its artistic prestige (see Sampling). GES wishes to rehabilitate and re-emancipate the practice of sampling as a form of art in its own right. Strategy: 1. Name samples and sources explicitly. 2. Choose samples that are as popular and as recognizable as possible (Beatles, Carpenters, etc.). 3. The editing and manipulation of the sample must not compromise its recognizability (negotiable). 4. Use as many samples as possible. 5. Always name more sample sources than were actually used in the composition.
Field Recording
A compositional practice widely used in sound art and ethnomusicology that involves the recording of natural acoustical phenomena. Two additional requirements are usually imposed: The recording process should take place outside a studio environment, i.e. outdoors. And the person recording does not generate any of the acoustic material him/herself. GES expands this definition by introducing the concept of choreographed public space (see Circulations).
Gambling
An acoustic event favoured by GES, already used in numerous sound collages (must take place in public). The most popular option is thimblerig, a cup and ball gambling game commonly played in the street. Compositional instruction by GES: Place an audio playback device in the proximity of a thimblerigger. Play works for orchestra (by Debussy or Mahler). Move slowly towards the gamblers with a microphone.
Helmut Schmidt
Multiple identity and fictional character devised by GES. Figures variously within the semiotic system of GES as member, guest artist or public representative. Following the historical example of Subcommandante Marcos (EZLN).
Kraftwerk
The German band founded by electropop musicians Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Hütter (a.k.a. Die Prozessoren) is the natural enemy of GES. Protected by computer-generated avatars, Kraftwerk operates a quote-hostile cultural hegemony. Their strategy: Install a special brand in the collective consciousness by means of a sophisticated system of quotations and references that may in turn not be quoted by anyone else. Other bands with such delusions of omnipotence: U2, Metallica.
Marcel Duchamp
As the inventor of the readymade, Duchamp may be viewed as a precursor to the art of sampling. However, the artist is appreciated above all for his sonorous qualities, as his vocal silence has often been sampled and processed. It was the inspiration for Jelinek's radio play Zwischen.
Orecchio di Dionisio
This 65-meter-deep limestone cave in the Sicilian town of Syracuse, carved out of a hillside in ancient times, has exceptional acoustics: A person standing at the cave entrance can hear every word whispered deep down inside it. The painter Michelangelo da Caravaggio gave it its name (The Ear of Dionysius) in 1608. The cave indeed resembles an ear and – according to Caravaggio – had a specific function: The tyrant Dionysius I imprisoned his political prisoners in the cave in order to spy on them. Orecchio di Dionisio will be featured in the Acoustic Surveillance Series in the near future.
Sampling
Compositional practice whereby recorded music is fragmented, turned into sound collages and transferred into different contexts of meaning. Since the advent of affordable sampling technology in the 1990s, the music industry has been trying to criminalize and/or promote the practice. Both strategies are driven by the same principle: Profit.
Uguisubari
Sound-making floorboards in Japanese temple and castle complexes, featured in the Acoustic Surveillance Series in 2017. In the Edo period, the “nightingale floor” (literal translation of uguisubari) was a popular acoustic warning system. The principle was straightforward: When someone stepped onto the boards, nails would rub against metal clamps beneath the floor, creating a tell-tale squeaky sound that was said to resemble the chirping of the Japanese nightingale.
Wind
A generator of acoustic events and an amplifier/transmitter of existing sounds. A meteorological form of energy appreciated by the GES on account of its unpredictability. A series about wind as an acoustic phenomenon is planned. Working title: Hotel Corridors.
Zwischen (Between)
Radio play by GES member Jan Jelinek based on recordings of various public interview situations. From the speech of the interviewees (all of them eloquent personalities) the pauses between coherent utterances were extracted and assembled. What we hear is an archaic body language: modes of breathing, word particles and onomatopoeic turmoil. A key question for GES: Which comes first, personal rights or artistic freedom? For Zwischen, Jelinek used only recordings by public figures that were already available to the public.
RICO PUESTEL debuts on his TIME IN THE SPECIAL PRACTICE OF RELATIVITY label with a mind-boggling journey of 41 minutes — split in two parts to fit on vinyl! HEPTAKAIDEKA is what it won't be and will be what it never was: Something from in-between worlds, a place beyond far beyond, where time dissolves into relativity...
Every modern electronic music presenter should be able to find joyful, elevated, convulsing or simply useful moments within the extent of this track that is designed to have its inherent connecting factors and starting points in place for every DJ set — letting it be just a few minutes, well-placed groove looping or bigger amounts of its entirety for diving into a long night, bringing it to an end or making it standing out in-between.
Starting off with a hazy half-grasp hint of what's to come, a mysteriously pervasive bionic loop emerges, slowly coalescing with a bone-dry groove on the rise. Taking up a first quadrant of the track, already gnawing into the long-term memory, it manages to gradually establish itself along the pathway while the "rhythmatics" endure some subtle layer-shifting with occult-like strings come sliding in from somewhere unknown like an admonitory subtext.
Being halfway through (and all the way in), everything smoothly crumbles down to its basic framework, still shaking off its own reminiscences while foregone vestiges almost perilously try to reassemble themselves. All of that leading to a clearly unforeseen yet fortunate drift into a 1980's-like synth peak time section after about 27 minutes being in that track, finally cherishing an evolving emotional felicity and the climax of its own being that tends to feel like an overarching salvation.
As everything being eventually finite, the track starts to bring to mind where it came from by assuredly falling back into a story told before with the well-established bionic loop that once used to run free, sounding somehow different and more tamed now. Ending with dignity, the consistently resurfaced admonitory strings lead the way to its conclusion and possibly new beginnings, solely leaving behind the heartbeat-like booming that carried it all, now fading away...
Coming into existence during a series of multiple productions of exuberant proportions with Rico making the studio his citadel-like stronghold, this is an extensive story of desires, instincts, pride, fall, mirth, solicitude, tension, détente and basically life itself while subtly yet versatilely entertaining on a dodgy yet accessible level throughout the wingspread of Techno, House, Minimal, Dub, Electronica and Ambient influences.
The CD version not only brings you the title track in the guise of its non-split completeness but eminently churns out the extra drumming dub treat DEKAEPTA for a pleasurable groove-delight as well as the trippy bonus beauty VOSEM' that transits as a precious component of infinity.
Fully remastered 7 inch reissue with replica artwork for the first time since its original release in 1971 - the sublime, raw and incredibly powerful gospel-soul song, ‘He's Forever (Amen)’ by The King James Version alongside the Sam & Dave channeling high energy gospel number, 'He's Coming'.
Original copies of this almost unattainable record trade hands for in excess of £375, so an official reissue will be welcome news to many that have been after this one for years. Black 7" dinked centre hole
Our third release of the decade comes from another new signee, Barcelona-based Kodama, who teams up with Dubstep OG LX One for the heavyweight A side.
Cronauer
Uplifting bells and pad harmonies pave the way to a gritty bass assault, striking with the power of a meteorite coming from outer space. Cronauer unfolds as these contrasting yet complementing parts engage and interwine, driven by heavily-swung hard-hitting drums which turn the track into a club weapon.
Piranha Plant
Time to turn page and enter the next chapter: Piranha Plant is a sublime oneiric journey of lush harps and heavenly bells, joining into masterfully composed layers of melodic bliss and. New sections keep introducing instruments like new characters in this dreamy fairytale.
Dorsia
A brisk intro catapults us straights into Dorsia, a high-energy introspective roller which joins two sides of Kodama's multifaceted output. Melancholic melodies dance over a powerful bass & drum synergy, until the second drop comes in with stomping weight, beautifully delivering our fix of bass-Nirvana.
- A1: Niels Landgren & Jan Lundgren - Blekinge
- A2: Gregoire Maret & Romain Collin & Bill Frisell - Wichita Lineman
- A3: Wolfgang Haffner - Tango Magnifique (Feat Ulf Wakenius & Christopher Dell)
- A4: Michael Wollny & Emile Parisien - White Blues
- B1: Paolo Fresu & Lars Danielsson - Darduso
- B2: Kadri Voorand & Mihkel Malgand - Ageing Child
- B3: Andreas Schaerer - Embraced By The Earth (Feat Vincent Peirani)
- B4: Joachim Kuhn & Mateusz Smoczynski - Epilog Der Hoffung
‘Hörtest-Edition IV - Visions of Jazz’ is a listening experience to be cherished. It offers a specially curated programme which can be compared across different media and in various formats. Enjoy an audiophile adventure in perfect sound quality: the 180gram LP, cut at half speed, has been subject to the most exacting demands during the pressing process, rendering the quality of a turntable audible. Compare the special features of vinyl with the strengths of a conventional audio CD, or alternatively feast your ears on the sound quality attainable in the hi-res world of 24-bit. For this listening experience, ACT has curated a selection from its current releases by renowned artists, all recorded and produced to the highest standards and with an uncompromising focus on sound quality. Test… compare… but above all, enjoy the music. Under the motto ‘Visions of Jazz’, ‘Hörtest-Edition IV’ presents a multi-faceted kaleidoscope of current jazz. This ‘Hörtest-Edition’ includes gatefold 180g LP, CD and 24Bit high resolution digital download files. Curated and compiled by Marco Ostrowski.
Motus is more (to me) than just music made with analogue synthesizers, it is about attitude, a way of relating to sound and the (e)motion it affects. A lifestyle, where movement, being moved and moving become one. My practice is vibrational, about the skin, touch and surfaces and the gaseous medium in between. I dream of a dance floor where Motus would be enjoyed. What kind of world, or rather, what kind of society would allow that? And when? Is this futuristic? A situation-to-come, where the understanding of music expands greatly, when blissful moments are independent of simple melodies, where harmony appears beyond I-V-vi-IV chord progressions, when the techniques of social alienation, which determine the use of all the drugs that accompany recreational music, are reversed into creative tools of exploration. ‘Motus’ is part of this exploration: to find dance, free of clock, and groove, free of rhythm. There is pulsation, and the downbeat connects to the downward beings as in stones and minerals, the upbeat connects to the upward beings as in grasses, flowers, trees and stars. Binding both together, connecting sky and earth, is the dancer. The moves / the movement is pure. It is the kiss of spirit and matter.” (Thomas Köner)
Counterchange presents 'Eigenlicht' by Portuguese-German multi-instrumentalist, producer and award-winning film composer John Gürtler.
Gently teetering between krautrock-influenced synth mantras and saxophone improvisations, down-tempo electronica, sound design experiments and moments of rich ambience, 'Eigenlicht' is a diverse album of electro-acoustic music. The 11 tracks were recorded between two studios and on location at Berlin's infamous Teufelsberg, the abandoned Cold War era US spy-radio and radar outpost named 'Field Station Berlin', surrounded by forest to the west of the city.
A document of Gürtler's development, many of the pieces here were first laid down in his bunker-like former basement studios at Drontheimer Straße in north Berlin, before he eventually elevated above ground - both physically and musically - building his current Paradox Paradise studio and becoming an established film music composer. In 2019 John won the European Film Academy Award for Best Score, for his soundtrack for Nora Fingscheidt's debut feature 'Systemsprenger' (System Crasher).
In recent years John collaborated on a number of projects with acclaimed German producer and composer Phillip Sollmann aka Efdemin, performing live and releasing the 'Gegen Die Zeit' EP on Sky Walking, a subsidiary of Dial records where he also remixed Efdemin's 'Parallaxis' under the moniker The Borderland State.
In part an ode to the Macbeth Systems M5 modular synthesizer, with its three oscillators, much of the album features the towering instrument, whose uniquely rich tone and rumbling, pure bass end characterises tracks like 'Eigenlicht', 'M5', 'Synthetics' and 'Five Voice'.
"The M5's built in spring reverb and huge sliders and faders - as opposed to all the tiny knobs on Eurorack synths - make it as playable as any acoustic instrument."
John's primary background is in acoustic music, coming from woodwind and keyboard instruments, improvisation and composition. The leap into working with computers and electronic instruments found him exploring ways to make synths and samplers sound as organic as possible.
Turned on by a new dawn of chemical love, Sydney dance-funk combo Bellydance laid down their sampledelica blueprint in 1991, thinking in parallel with Weatherall's revelatory work with Primal Scream. A candy flip of streetsoul, festival jam band and Chip Monck's cautionary brown acid address, 3 Days Man! was primed for open fields and discotheques, in an age when the deejay was royalty.
With an elastic lineup that boasted up to 9 members, Bellydance synchronised more with the club scene than the city's straight-ahead pub rock racket, naturally recruiting hometown heroes Peewee and John Ferris to remix their multi-track concoction. A certified party closing anthem, the brother's sun-smacked breakbeats elevate a collective consciousness beyond the clouds.
Originally issued on Regular Records sub-label Boomshanka Music as a precursor to their album One Blood, the now sought-after 12" sports characteristic artwork from Mambo visionary and Mental As Anything co-founder Reg Mombassa. Instigated by Sydney selector Ben Fester, this Efficient Space reboot arrives fashionably late to Woodstock's 50th anniversary but just in time to help soothe universal division.
Panic is the very first pseudonym of the legendary DJ and producer Aubrey, also renowned to have set the seminal label Solid Groove in the early '90s which includes licensing from the likes of Derrick May, Carl Cox, Pete Tong. The original release "Dialated Rhythms / Last Injection" fully remastered and reissued via the Italian La Bella Di Notte, is a sublime mix of techno and sophisticated breakbeat for a hypnotic journey all the way through any classic warehouse parties.
- A1: Negus Introduction
- A2: Creole Brothers
- A3: Feel That Today
- A4: Patterns Of The Maroons
- A5: We Keep It Up
- B1: This Kind Of Music
- B2: Sega Move
- B3: Mama Ode (Interlude)
- B4: That S Game
- B5: My Brother (Ti-Ton Lament) (Ti-Ton Lament)
- B6: My Brother
- C1: Don't Preach
- C2: All Of That
- C3: Going Right
- C4: Typik Morisien
- D1: Wadada Lasts
- D2: Creole Soul Clap
- D3: Descendants (Interlude)
- D4: Mele Mele Colonial
- D5: Tales Of The Maroons
Brothers Reginald Omas Mamode IV and Jeen Bassa come together as Mama Odé on full length album 'Tales And Patterns Of The Maroons'. At its core this is a classic "hip hop" format LP - but have you ever heard Creole Sega Rap Roots music before? Of Creole descent from a group of African islands that transiently have hosted many settlers, west African slaves, colonialists and the potentially indigenous East African-Malagache Maroons; the brothers have an inherent spirit of diversity that runs through their recordings. Musical influences consist of jazz, funk, blues and reggae to un-placeable but definite Afro-drum patterns, through to their Golden-Era-Rap vocal flows, which have a sure nod to ATCQ and Slum Village. The album's deep grooves overwhelmingly seed optimism, subscribing to a positive future drawn from historically multi-ethnic ancestral lines. The brothers' natural vocals carry messages of unity, love and well being as well as a conscious questioning of humanity's ill practices and ideas.
This is the debut release for WORQ RECORDS. An independent label out of Chicago USA. The label was an idea because of how hard it is these days to classify tracks into either House or Techno let alone one of the tons of sub genres of the two. Loving both genres and not wanting to label tracks or records with one group or the other, WORQ RECORDS was created. This debut release on 12" vinyl allows for a selector to blend these tracks into a variety of different mixes.
QUINROK1 sets the pace for what the WORQ RECORDS sound will be. A blend of House/Techno/Minimal/DubTechno. Born, raised and bred with the Chicago House sound and the underground rave scene culturing and shaping the flavor of where his House/Techno sound is today. This 6 track 12" will have something for your mix! Huge deep kicks, snappy snares, hats and claps with fat bass grooves and soul samples, its a recipe for some bangers!!
Released in 2011 on the compilation «Mental Beauty » on record label, Composite Records, DJ Yellow teamed up with his friends,Tiago Fragateiro and the sublime singer Tracey K, to create the song "Special". This track had major success in the clubs and on the radio, with DJ’s like Hot Since 82 featuring it on his Pirate Ship Mix, as well as it landing in the Beatport top ten.Now Poussez Music has decided to re-release « Special » on vinyl and digital including a new mix of the original , DJ yellow’s Sleep No More remix, and a brand new track « Don’t you know ».This EP will be released on 12" vinyl and digital on Poussez Music in May 2020.
Growing up in Milton Keynes, the largest of the "new towns" outside of London designed and built in the 1960s, perhaps explains why producer Nicholas Worrall is subconsciously drawn to clearly delineated sonic structures and flawed techno utopianism, two concepts that are ever present in both his sound and aesthetic approach to music.
Wordcolour was formed just two years ago, at a time when Worrall was habitually cutting up and splicing human voice samples ripped from YouTube memes, film dialogues and musique concrète tapes.
The first artistic demonstration of these ideas arrived in 2019 via his mixtape “I Want To Tell You Something” for the Blowing Up The Workshop platform. This unique set immediately grabbed the attention and support of the specialized music press and media, including Pitchfork and Resident Advisor.
“Tell Me Something” is Wordcolour’s official debut EP and heads straight for the dance floor. It is comprised of an unusual melting pot of influences that fuse the UK club sound, post-dubstep and a style akin to Paul Lansky's ‘90s musique concrète. “Tell Me Something” offers a vibrant leftfield, avant-garde techno and edgy electro, all immersed in the vast cosmos of the human voice.
Tape / Cassette
Longstanding collaborators & Bay Area based experimental duo Kush Arora & Lucas Patzek aka Only Now & Orogen return with ‘AVULS’, the project’s sophomore release.
Building on the unearthly, black hole transmissions and creaking, exospheric ambience of their self-titled debut, Only Now & Orogen present an abyssal, elemental broadcast from another unchartered extra-terrestrial zone. Remote and astronomical yet tied to a newfound sense of rhythmic structure, ‘AVULS’ navigates a course through inverted beat-led frameworks, surging detonations of sub-bass, and severely turbulent, monumentally scaled soundscapes.
Amidst this large, slow-moving cyclone of sound sit fragmentary emergences of choral voices and Gregorian chants; a distant, esoteric presence within dense eruptions of attritional noise and infinite recesses of low end.
In harsh, pointillistic detail and through infernal surround sound, Only Now & Orogen channel dub, noise and power electronics, evoking a distorted, ritualistic inflection on the Voyager Golden Record; a mass of tectonic motion and friction; a storm in deep space.
B•O•M is the fifth album by freak electronic producer NCHX (NOCHEXXX). A percussive planet of acid-techno, UK bass, house and electro-phonk, hosed down with a chemical wash of post-dubstep and UK bleep contaminants.
Departing with a tube station screech, HUNTING HIDES signals a lone defender’s ride through the underground - trace amounts of musique concrete dart around the tunnel walls, while sub-low cushions the rumble. ENTERCOL is perfect 3am mix fodder; saturation hot-points push beneath a middle eastern theme, whilst SEVENTH GUN TERRITORY is pure rapid-fire bongo bizness - a concrete terrain punctuated with corrugated metal grids and moving shadows: distorted poly-metered brutalism! CYBERTUSH is the perfect OST to a club littered with vape pens, while B-Boi bots flirt with promiscuous A.I.
Arguably the most fierce cut is TEFLONTUAN - an ode to NCHX’s favourite pro Antuan Dixon - the Deathwish skater lands bolts with the illest of steeze. Side-chained 303 squelch rattles alongside x0x sequenced drums as wavetable pads float above kinked rails. A nights gallop over city curbs. The LP signs off with LOCATION SCOUT, a SpaceX sample-return mission heading back to earth with a fistful of deep house red planet crumble.
“A dance floor’s dream and a mixing engineer’s nightmare” - Resident Advisor
Repress
René Pawlowitz presents himself in many different forms; whether it’s as Head High, EQD, Wax, WK7, The Traveller or more recently as Hoover - he consistently, and without any fuss or hype - produces some of the most effective, quality techno you can find on the planet. The Shed alias is usually reserved for his best work.
With this in mind, it really is a special event to announce this amazing new EP from Shed on Tectonic, showcasing 3 distinctive and highly effective techno cuts.
‘Try’ takes a broken-beat techno rhythm for it’s spine - reminiscent a little of the 2008/9 dubstep/techno crossover period. Tension is set with dissonant elements pulsing around swooping subs until we are saved by the heroic pads that ease in, building ever upwards to a lush finale. Close your eyes and be transported back to the rave.
‘Box’ is a darker, more percussive affair - claustrophobic and industrial. 130bpm 4/4 distorted kicks set the stage as frantic drum machine hats and claps crash about heavily reverb’ed ghostly samples.
Lastly we come to ‘Sweep’, a hypnotic bleepy roller with a bass heavy presence. As the riff loops up and over, drums build and a dissonant synth part creeps in. The not-quite 4/4 kick drives you ever forward with a gentle stumble as rattling hi hats flair about over head. Great finish to a great EP.
ATA's newest release comes from The Yorkshire Film & Television Orchestra and features the vocal talents of Bugalu Foundation & Mind On Fire vocalist Martin Connor. This cover of the Georgie Fame classic "Somebody Stole My Thunder" features a powerhouse vocal performance from Martin Connor alongside the heavyweight big band brass sound of the Yorkshire Film & Television Orchestra's 10 piece horn section. This 7" single is backed with Rachel Modest's debut recording for the label, her intense vocal rendition of the Ben E King classic "I Who Have Nothing". Both tracks feature the trademark elements of the ATA sound: Big brass arrangements sit alongside the propulsive rhythm section, perfectly supporting both singers incredible performances.
Originally appearing as part of ATA Records free download series "Hard Work, No Pay" these 2 tracks have been sought after on vinyl for some time after garnering radio play and positive responses from BBC6 Music's Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show and the Huey Morgan show.
The Yorkshire Film And Television Orchestra is the brainchild of ATA founders Neil Innes & Pete Williams and multi-instrumentalist/arranger Steve Parry, who was approached by Neil & Pete in 2014 to provide the horn arrangements and brass performances for a then untitled British library style track intended for release as a 45. That track went on to become the track "Hawkshaw Philly" and features on the compilation "Early Works: Funk, Soul & Afro Rarities From The Archives" released earlier this year. Their shared love of huge big band arrangements and British library music ensured future collaborations, notably on this year's "ATA Records: The Library Archive Vol. 1".
Martin Connor is a well known face to anyone familiar with the Mancherster music scene and has spent 10 years as part of the Manchester collective "Mind On Fire" before providing vocals for the Latin-Funk band Bugalu Foundation (Legere Recordings).
Sheffield born,Rachel Modest developed her unique vocal ability within the churches and gospel choirs of her local community. Now based in Leeds she has developed a powerful and soulful vocal style that takes inspiration from artists such as Madeleine Bell, Dee Dee Warwick, and Dusty Springfield. Her debut for the label was this cover of the Ben E King classic "I, Who Have Nothing", which was later followed by an appearance on the debut 45 by The Magnificent Tape Band "Patterns in My Mind"and her own solo 45 "I Try/Forbidden Love", as well as collaborating with The Magnificent Tape Band on their debut LP "The Subtle Art Of Distraction" all of which received radio support from the likes of Gilles Peterson (BBC6 Music), Huey Morgan (BBC6 Music/Radio 2) and Lauren Laverne (BBC6 Music).
The King & City label is the subject of three 12" reissues, starting with One Blood's classic Lovers Rock take of William DeVaughn's soul anthem, Be Thankful.
Taking the influence of reggae from the Caribbean diaspora within the cultural melting pot of 70s London, the birth of Lovers Rock, often-dubbed 'romantic reggae', is a uniquely black British sound, developed against a backdrop of riots, racial tension and sound systems.
A style suited to the London scene, it represents an apolitical counterpoint to the then dominant conscious Rastafarian sound and continued the soulful and commonly love-themed rocksteady style.
Active during the scene's peak, King & City was launched by Neville King and Lee Laing to champion the sound and alongside other producers like Dennis Bovell, created genre-defining hits.
Formed in 1979 One Blood was made up of the 5 Robinson brothers - Errol, Jerry, Lloyd, Trevor and Paul - and recording at the legendary TMC studios, went on to release two albums and countless singles.
Be Thankful pays homage to DeVaughn's original, with smooth vocals gliding atop tight drum and bass, vocal jumping up dub pom acapella to summer perfection. The tapes here passed to cohort Lexx, crafting a wonderful discodub that is all groove, expertly cutting back and forth...diamonds in the back, sunroof top.
Red Vinyl
With this three-cut EP, Andy Vaz pays tribute to Choutsugai, a Deep House DJ-and-promoter crew who booked him for many years of Tokyo gigs. Inspired by the unit’s love for “No Fairytale Luv feat. Detroit’s Eva Soul on Vocals.” Vaz decided to put it out as red transparent vinyl for VAZ-UP-001The two originals Tracks were created at Deutztroit Studios in Cologne, with vocals by Detroit’s Eva Soul on all three and “No Fairytale Luv” receiving a charged remix treatment from fellow Detroiter Niko Marks. The EP’s sound is classic Vaz, his own productions especially. The original “No Fairytale Luv"struts mightily, its pumping groove bolting from the gate with an acidy bass pulse, congas, and sparkling synths. With Soul draping her, yes, soulful musings over the energized groove, the gurgling floor-filler indelibly brands itself as Vaz’s craftsmanship. “U Got It Unlocked” is less urgent by comparison, this one more focused on a relaxed, funk-inflected swing given a subtle Latin feel with the addition of percussive accents. Soul again muses dreamily, though this time in a production that’s as much electronic reverie as club track. Of the three cuts, the EP’s primary house banger is undoubtedly Marks’s “No Fairytale Luv” makeover, which stomps even more forcefully. This one is a floorfiller
2LP Over the past decade, SUED co-founder SW. has arranged the building blocks of dreamy rave and techno music-billowing pads, undulating sub-bass and adroit, nuanced drum programming-into and novel dance floor structures. TRUElipS, SW.’s first full album since 2016 and his first for Avenue 66, is a beguiling, fully-realised statement. The 12-track LP is rooted in the storied ’90s era when the spirit of orbital raves and free parties was channeled into massive leaps forward in the studio. A combination of house and drum & bass looms large, as does the much-referenced intelligent techno era, but if you’ve listened to an SW. record, you already know TRUElipS is the work of a singular auteur. Breakbeats, rave stabs and major chords permeate the album, motoring along on a chassis of sine-wave bass lines and SW’s widescreen percussive vision. Forays into downtempo and sweeping ambience keep the listener’s head in the clouds, while the superb melodic techno constructions that comprise the album’s core are at once contemplative and liable to bring on a giddy head rush. TRUElipS brims with the optimistic, escapist spirit that fueled dance music’s original triumph, a throwback to bright, imagined futures.
Hotly tipped newcomer Yulia Niko joins the Watergate collective, delivering an exciting label debut to mark the occasion. The Russian-born, Berlin-based artist has piqued the ears of heads with quality releases on Crosstown Rebels, Get Physical and her own TochnoTechno imprint. She steps up for Watergate Records with an inspiring maiden EP, augmented by remixes from YokoO and Francesco Mami. ‘Manifesto’ is the intriguing opener, as intergalactic synths rub shoulders with a chugging groove for an ultra-cool finish. ‘Passion’ is heavy on vibes, pairing an enchanting vocal with a colourful bed of percussion. YokoO contributes a subterranean ‘Defragmentation’ remix of ‘Manifesto’ on the minimal tip, before adding some warmth to the palette teaming up with Francesco Mami for a ‘Vegas Mix’ primed for the afterhours with its deep grooves and shuffling beats. ‘Hurts So Slow’ reinforces Niko’s versatility, imbuing a dusty house vibe primed for late night sessions.
Imagine for a minute that Klein MBO would return from the Italo heaven to deliver a brand new EP. How amazing would that be? Sometimes such miracles lay just around the corner. Nijmegen based Luca Dell’Orso found some sort of time machine that brought him back to the days of Disco Magic and Il Discotto; a time where wobbly synths, heart felt handclaps and sweet melodies flled the air. After appearances on Red Laser Records, Bordello A Parigi and Shmlss’ label XXX it’s time for his debut on Utrecht based SoHaSo sublabel OOSSHA. Filled to the rims with stylish Italo-disco, the Eternal Waves-EP has it all. Slow motion Gaz Nevada-esque disco on Common Occurrence (which comes with two beautiful Cosmo Vitelli-remixes); sun blissed and fast paced happiness on Return Of You and stark new wave- vibes on Constriction. Closer Bont & Blauw proves that Luca understands the essence of the genre. It has the same fnesse of the best Gazebo-records, back in the day. If you have a heart for italo, you don’t want to miss this perfect wave.
Berlin techno luminary Jamaica Suk announces her most ambitious project yet: Uncertain Landscape.
This 17-track, 4x 12” vinyl release on her acclaimed Gradient label will be released in four installments from Autumn to Winter 2020 and brings together a host of diverse techno talent. She will release a DJ mix featuring all 17 tracks to complete the series accompanied by a film from Anthony Vouardoux. The project is made up of a wishlist of names whose music she has been heavily supporting in her sets over the last few years. “I wrote specific producers inquiring for tracks that would be fitting to the label and also fit the DJ mix that I’m recording from these tunes. I’m looking to promote music that shares the same vision as I do.”
It marks the first original releases on Gradient from producers other than herself, which is a change of tact from her original plan for her imprint. “Initially I wanted to only release my music on Gradient including remixes - but it doesn’t make sense as there’s so much inspiration out there. By expanding the label’s network we create our own tribe.”
Jittery rhythms with a touch of ‘Spastik’ about them propel BNJMN’s ‘Abyssal Surge’ into life, with a big riverbed sound abounding as the track builds through haunting sustained tones and glitching mechanics.
Arthur Kimskii thundering ‘Natasha’ pummels from the first moment, with shuddering sub bass carving its way through the sound field as hypnotic bleeps pulse in the distance. Rapid-fire. Filtering percussive waves accentuate the bassline’s incessant 16ths rhythms, all the while the resonant kicks hammering away beneath.
Wrong Assessment’s ‘The Eight’ is a dissonant avalanche of warped textures, where grunting synth thrusts rub up against industrious pulses and chattering hi-hat patterns weave in and out of the mix. Stuttering bass and cymbal rides complete the urgent feel.
Introspective respite comes from Electro Indigo’s ‘Volcanite’, a stirring piece of broken beat experimentation where graceful pads slide hauntingly over taut kick and bass patterns and beautiful ghostly analog synth notes.
Look out for parts 2-4 coming soon and special audio + visual showcases.
Pavlov’s Dog, the 70’s AOR / Prog-rock band, was an odd crew. The band combined guitar, keyboards, percussion and bass with mellotrons, flutes, and violins. Pampered Menial was their first album, originally released on ABC Dunhill and re-released on Columbia in 1974. At the time the band was signed, they received a $600,000 advance from ABC which was a record advance for any new group signed at that time. The songs “Julia” and “Theme From Subway Sue” received the most airplay. Pampered Menial is a crossover albums of 70’s hard rock and progressive rock and is strongly recommended to fans of either of those genres.
Available as a limited 45th anniversary edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on transparent & black marbled vinyl.
• 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• GATEFOLD SLEEVE WITH DELUXE LINEN LAMINATE
• LEGENDARY PROG-ROCK ALBUM FEATURING “JULIA” AND “SONG DANCE”
• LIMITED 45TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF 1000 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED COPIES ON TRANSPARENT & BLACK MARBLED VINYL
West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She's continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body's relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her most recent full-length, The Mosaic of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself. "I guess in one sentence, this album is my expression of love and appreciation for electricity," says Smith. While writing and recording, she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers. Not a dancer by any traditional definition, she taught herself improvisatory movement realizing flexibility, strength, and unexpectedly, a "visual language" stemming from the human body and comprised of vibrational shapes. Understood as cymatics, as Smith says, "as a reference for how frequencies can be visualized," much like a mosaic. Smith describes her first encounters with this mosaic; "the inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other...My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday...into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself." As it has arrived, in a completed state, The Mosaic of Transformation is a holistic manifestation of embodied motions. Smith's signature textural curiosity that fans have grown to adore pivots naturally into a proprioceptive study of melody and timbre. Airy organ and voice interweave with burbling Buchla-spawned harmonic bubbles. "The Steady Heart" quivers to life, peppering blasts of wooden organ between winding vocal affirmations. As with a body, moving one portion requires a balance and counterbalance; here, subtle tonal twitchy signals fire in conjunction with coiling arias to create a mesmeric core. When the beat arrives at the midway mark, a swooping and jittery waltz, a sense of stasis in motion, a flow state, is sonically achieved. As soon as it syncs, it disappears back into the swirling ebbs of electric force. Other tracks stray into more ruminative physical realms. "Carrying Gravity" is built around string-like pads that expand and contract like a solar plexus, becoming taught and then loose. If the record could be summarized in a single movement, it is the 10-minute closing suite, a rapturous collage called "Expanding Electricity." Symphonic phrases establish the piece before washes of glittering electric peals and synthesized vibraphone helix into focus. Soon, Smith's voice grounds it all with an intuitive vocal hook, harmonized and augmented by concentric spirals of harp-and-horn-like sounds. Smith's music doesn't capture a specific emotion as much as it captures the joys of possessing a body, and the ability to, with devotion and a steady open heart, maneuver that vessel in space by way of electricity to euphoric degrees.
The first vinyl release of 2020 on Nang, belongs to the Parisian producer and newcomer to the label, Kelton Prima. The veteran artist has been producing and Djing since the late 80's, also releasing under the alias of D_Tekt. Prima has released on the Belgian label Disco Praline, Chicago based imprint Mathematics Recordings, Pizzico Nobel and also has contributed remixes for Thieves Like Us and Plastique de Rêve among others. Along side him on this release features Hard Ton, the Italian artist, who released previously on NANG188. The duo deliver a cover version of Culture Club's 1983 hit, Miss Me Blind. The release sticks with a retro aesthetic, yet given a modern high impact make-over and features 4 edits.
The "Miss Me Blind" original takes you you on a voyage, straight to a dance floor worthy of the infamous New Dance Show in the late 80's. The upbeat, nu-disco grooves, with Solid bass lines (that later trans into squelchy acid affair) are counter balanced with Hard Tons sublime vocals. The Vintage drum machine sequence is perfectly matched with shimmering synths and guitar riffs.
Second on the release is the The Caribbean House "Vision". This edit takes things a little deeper with a modulating bass arpeggio, that pans across the stereo field. Spliced and pitched down vocal cuts feature in this version alongside chime bell melody and pads that creates a emotional ride.
DJ Rocca, the Italian producer a Nang Records regular, delivers a rhythmic and percussive remix. This is classic Rocca style with retro drum machine programming, and a variety of smooth and silky Italo synth patches. The final edit of "Miss Me Blind" consists of Club Domani's bouncy, bass heavy club version. This upbeat and energetic remix keeping things rolling with break-downs and snare filled drops.
b 02: Miss Me Blind (The Caribbean House Vision) feat. Hard Ton
[c] 03: Miss Me Blind (DJ Rocca Italo Vocal Remix) [feat. Hard Ton]
[d] 04: Miss Me Blind (Club Domani Remix) [feat. Hard Ton]
So much legendary hip-hop begins with a misunderstanding. You might not realise it on first or even hundredth listen, but ‘Insane in the Brain’ is a diss track. What has become one of the hip-hop’s most iconic party anthems, and one of Cypress Hill’s biggest hits, started out with them taking offence at Chubb Rock.
He’d flipped some of their lyrics on his own ‘Yabba Dabba Doo’ song in 1992 and the group didn’t like it. While B-Real’s lyrical attack on Chubb is subtle and almost subliminal, Sen Dog spends most of his verse making fat jokes at Chubb’s expense.
It’s a little known beef, hidden beneath the vast success of this single in 1993, with it reaching number one in the US rap charts and proving a pop hit worldwide too. At this stage, the group’s producer DJ Muggs had perfected an idiosyncratic sound all of his own, lending it to tracks for the likes of House of Pain and Funkdoobiest.
Here he melds samples from Sly and the Family Stone and The Youngbloods with a beat lifted from George Semper’s instrumental cover of ‘Get out my life, woman’. Those subtle songs are alchemised into a boot-stomping head-nodder that transcended hip-hop to become a festival favourite, a rise that ended in Ned Flanders delivering the line, “this may sound just a teensy bit insane in the old membrane, Homer,” in The Simpsons.
The only official 7” of this was released in the Philippines, and fetches prices in the hundreds of pounds – this reissue puts a hip-hop classic in crate-friendly form.
On August 21st rising DJ/producer Haider presents the ‘Endless Clouds’ EP on his own label Breaker Breaker, where pristine future electro meets high tech funk and raw, jacking house. This new release follows praise from a wide selection of world-class DJs and media for his past 12”s, not to mention achievements as label owner, party promoter, canny early spotter of talent and general proactive instigator. Now based in Berlin but originally from Sheffield via a stint in London, there’s a commonality throughout all of Haider Masroor’s music that links both thematically and geographically. His
productions recall both Steel City bleep and its distant younger cousin bassline, using only sparse elements, with beats and bass at the fore, to deadly effect. London is audible too via
the spiky energy of grime and the swinging shuffle of UK funky, and so is Berlin, evident in the sleek sheen and efficient precision.
On ‘Maracuja’ lush pads, pitched-up vocal snippets, bleeps and proper electro beats ride atop a deep, purring bassline that unfurls like giant waves, with sub bass punctuation adding further hefty depth.
The bouncy, punchy beats and pristine gleam of ‘I Came To Destroy’ are somewhere between celestial Miami bass and the aquatic grooves of Drexciya, again propelled by gigantic slo-mo bass tones.
A modern take on the cut-up samples of 90s house, on ‘Grove Street’ Haider mixes elements of classic French touch, Chicago rawness and low fi outsider grit, to create something very enticing indeed.
To challenge the leader of the five element ninjas, Shaw Cuts lines up a heavy squad on the next record, armed with versatile remixes of Farron's "Five Element Ninjas EP": Pugilist, Substance, Jonas Friedlich and Realitycheck.
First off the mark, Pugilist launches into battle dealing forceful blows with his version of "Liquid Shorts". Whirlwind breaks, sharp drum patterns and cavernous chords, lacerate the ninja leader. The heat is on!
Substance rolls in to support, shredding the field with his remix of "Contaship". With blood-spattered pads, a gargantuan rolling groove and harmonic synth elements, he brings the villain to his knees.
Jonas Friedlich blazes in with his remake of "Brooklyn Banks", catching the leader off-guard with dirty Hip-Hop rhythmics, swirling vocals and twist of the original's lead synth. The leader lurches forward...
Realitycheck furiously steps into the clash. His remix version of "It's Only 4 Life" circles the field, its propelling rhythm and floating percussions closing in on the enemy.
The target surrounded, attacking from four sides with full force and allegiance, they execute the ninja leader in one sweep.
The battle leaves them with deep scars, but suffering, like fate and death, is part of life. And through it, the strongest souls emerge.
GROUNDSWELLS’ is the third chapter in Wren’s seasonal lore exploration, and their first through Gizeh Records. These six melancholy-shrouded sonic ruminations swell between intimate performances devoid of adornment, and evolving soundscapes of auditory ruin. Tracing an elemental arch, 'GROUNDSWELLS' captures Wren delving into earthen awakenings.
Launching into a monochromatic dirge, ‘Chromed’ announces the LPs stylistic intentions, forgoing the trappings of traditional harmony with deliberate pendulums of pitch and tone. Swarms of percussion drag the track to its conclusion in a collage of insidious feedback, with oscillations sculpted by the record’s producer, Scott Evans of Kowloon Walled City.
Elsewhere, swift variance is displayed in Wrens’ deft handling of genre and form, refusing to be solely one of either. The record courses between rigid post-punk, broad waves of dreaded sludge, and austere choral reverberations. Pulsating Krautrock themes present in their previous work are revisited, with a focus on embracing archetypal motorik technique, as the LP stretches compositions to their furthest tensions through profuse repetition, straining the cracks between.
Inviting physical, elemental surrounds into ‘Subterranean Messiah’, Wren allow space for the sudden cloudburst of Middle Farm Studios in the introductory passage via location recording, embracing the interplay between source and locality. Combined with the painterly fretwork and ghostly chants of Fvnerals, the collaboration seeks an emotive new path of melodic vulnerability. In contrast, the closing elegy is layered with disharmonious cycles of agonised cello from Jo Quail. As with other conclusions on the LP, the track's commitment to strained repetition is rewarded with sonic climaxes of blackened psychedelia, led by stalagmitic spirals of atonalism.
Throughout the LP, Wren draws from their long-standing apologue, with a partnership of vocalists showcasing a lyrical and vocal interplay thick with a dense lore new to their compositions. 'GROUNDSWELLS' brings Wren to an equinox in their earthly contemplations. Ruminating on the decaying inanition that engenders renewal, this record is a revelry in the cyclical, repetitious infinity of planetary permanence.
Eho Kates is a new project by techno luminaries Todd Gys and Brendon Moeller. For trainspotters already familiar with their revered back catalogs, this outing is sure to offer some unexpected twists. The record is a grainy, caustic blend of atmospheric intensity, rhythmic dexterity, and occasional moments of sublime grace. Completely fresh, outsider sounds made with a beginner's mind and unbridled enthusiasm for sonic exploration.
The wind of change is blowing strong again in late 2020. Wich statement fits such worldwide transformation? We don ́t know, but we keep blending & interacting different cultures. One 7“ vinyl, two sides of the story. El Mago from Greece is hooking up with south american native ceremonials. The Berlin/Thessaloniki based ritual master (down)beats all strains of cultural appropriation with smart style and groove straight outta subcultistan. Followed by Mettabbana from the divided states of America, editing sahrawi classic on liberation, hope & vision. Seductive repetitions, subtle as the saharan sands, riding on trance- inducing guitar loops, arabic percussion & harmonies. This vinyl will last longer & will survive our thoughts and needs. For any queries: the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
Cogitate is the first release from NYC local Promoter and an invitation to gaze inward and sit with sound. Borne of hours lost in loops, Promoter calls forth deep, dubby bass rumble, off-kilter rhythms and murky atmospherics, relishing in repetition and evolving subliminally but surely. Disorienting, engaging and engulfing, Cogitate is the 4th release on NYC-based Patience, catching you off guard then inviting you in.
Cogitate offers two cuts from the same cloth - one locked into the grid, the other drifting far above it. Both begin with shards of static cascading over submerged synth stabs - on Cogitate 1.1 a bassline bubbles up from below before a kick drum sneaks in and drops anchor, driving forward a slice of sparse zero gravity dub techno for a zonked out dancefloor in a dream. Cogitate 2.0 offers a pared back version of 1.1, slowed down and stripped of the rhythm section. A gentle brain scrub or a cascade of mind tricks depending on your headspace. Is the sequence evolving or is your perspective on it shifting? Does this sound like something I know or nothing at all? Has this been going for 3 minutes or 3 hours? Is this climax sublime or simply creepy?
Whatever it is, Promoter presents an opportunity to let the mind wander, and offers proof that repetition invites participation. Both cuts simmer in ambiguous emotion, never spelling out what to feel but allowing the listener to be their own trip commander.
Promoter is a new project from a life-long NYC resident, most recently releasing a couple of 12”s under the Image Man moniker, who for the most part would prefer that the music is received on it’s own terms, with a mind wide open.
Cogitate 1.1 was mixed by Mood Hut mixologist CZ Wang. Both tracks were mastered by M. Geddes Gengras.
Following this release will be an extremely limited cassette of material recorded in the same time and (head)space. Keep an ear to the ground for that one.
Patience is an outlet for exploring further beyond the break than usual. Inspired by the music perpetually on rotation at HQ – with E2-E4 representing the format’s high tide mark – each release will be one artist’s deep dive down one inspirational wormhole spread across two sides of vinyl, or two side-long sojourns making full use of a round 12” piece of plastic. Set and forget, zone out to tune in.
“After a banner year that witnessed Lafawndah release her first album Ancestor Boy, the debut of her soundsystem Fara Fara, and further incursions into film, contemporary art and fashion, the ceaseless artist returns with another plot twist: The Fifth Season.
Inspired by her encounter with author NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, Lafawndah both pays homage to and extends further the elemental, emotionally charged myths of Jemisin’s books. These are stories where a broken heart can tear apart a continent. In contrast to the precision- tuned industrial productions of Ancestor Boy, The Fifth Season breathes a different kind of volatility. Inviting a new degree of spontaneity and freedom into her process, Lafawndah’s collaborators - Theon Cross (tuba), Nathaniel Cross (trombone), Valentina Magaletti (percussions), and Nick Weiss (keyboards) - encircle her confrontational character studies with iridescent, cinematic chamber-bass moves.
These are torch songs for when it rains ash, creation ballads for when the earth turns inside out. Ghosts of Art Ensemble of Chicago and Rahsaan Roland Kirk color the air, yet Lafawndah’s mastery of pop songcraft, vocal production and razor-honed clarity of purpose cut through. In addition to the Lafawndah originals, The Fifth Season features interpretations of hybrid-folk godfather Beverly Glenn Copeland’s “Don’t Despair” and acid-impressionist prodigy Lili Boulanger’s “Old Buddhist Prayer.” Album highlight “You, at the End” deploys a poem by poet-performer Kae Tempest to aching, rift-tearing ends, and french dream-trap wraith Lala &ce features on “Le Malentendu”.
The Fifth Season anchors Lafawndah as a descendent of forebearers Brigitte Fontaine and Scott Walker - a born theatric whose acid humor warps the sub-continental undertow of her emotive storytelling. Lafawndah’s elementalism on The Fifth Season finds her imagination more agile than ever, and recent live shows have evinced a drive to push these compositions further out, deeper, and more aflame.”
Mysterious and masked techno talent Paul Villard unveils more of his musical weaponry on the Lone Romantic label this August.
Nothing is known about this artist but from the fact that, “strange and unusual superhuman powers and abilities” came to him after a “gamma accident.” He has released on Blind Allies and Applied Research, remixed Carl Finlow and is a producer with a cinematic electro sound.
Futuristic opener 'Side Effects’ is a bumping electro cut with a stuttering drum pattern and squelchy synth funk from another planet. ‘Submarine Limousine’ keeps up the cyborg styles with a crisp electro groove that is run through by sci-fi vocals and effects, while ’Fluid Dynamics’ is all watery synth droplets and fractured vocals panning about the mix. Taught bass stabs keep you on your toes and make for an otherwordly robot disco vibe.
The second half of this well-crafted EP starts with the glowing pads and creepy atmospheres of
‘Bioluminescence’, a classic Drexcyian electro jam that charges hard and deep into the cosmos. ‘Neon Death’ is an explosion of coruscated synth lines and bumping bass, tripped out machine sounds and warped electro-techno before closer ‘C.A.R.R.I.O.N.’ zones you out with intense ambient pads and modulated synths that are restless and paranoid.
With this majestic EP, Paul Villard paints and vivid picture of some distant interplanetary world.
Repress!
For its second release, Radiant Love sticks to family values. Paying homage to the party and label’s co-director and resident Byron Yeates, Byron’s Theme comes from the likes of Vani-T (one half of Berlin’s forceful, femme party Climax) and D. Tiffany (who threw down a ruthless remix on the label’s first release by Fio Fa). Together, they take the name of Pillow Queen – a semi-pejorative term for the kind of sub who expects to receive pleasure like a well catches rainwater. No reciprocation, just a reign of sexual passivity.
Their tracks, however, give plenty. “Byron’s Theme” presents a rich palette in its 2-minute buildup: a dry trance hook, high-end synths buzzing and wavering, pitch-shifted voice samples and a pan-flute ran through with tremolo. Throbbing, the 303 bassline picks up after a breakdown at the 4-minute mark, and only then does one realise the song’s still building. There’s still room in the last 40 seconds for some percussion modeled on a breakbeat loop – which is to say, the track is incredibly cheeky and hard-hitting – all that I would hope for in any lover.
While the EP’s first track feels wide, rangy, “Estrel Nights” opens the EP’s B-side in a much closer, tighter space. The build is percussive: bongo taps, claps, cowbell; then a hi-hat snaps things into shape, and in lopes the kick drum. And rhythm remains the central player here. It’s not until 3 minutes in that the percussion finds a melodic backdrop – a dreamy, detuned pad, choral, like a moan.
Ex-Terrestrial’s remix of “Byron’s Theme” repositions some of the elements and ratchets up the tempo of the original, but maintains its respiration: the energy and erotics flow into a different structure, closer to traditional trance, with sharp hi-hats and loopy arpeggios that phase in and out of syncopation, measure to measure. Diagonal, we incline to a climax that dizzily plateaus at 6 minutes, de-escalates and breaks down over the next 2, glows until it’s just a kick drum, slower, slower still; we’re catching our breath.
Conceived as a loosely-based concept album around the idea of crushes and young love, that dog’s sophomore album Totally Crushed Out! is a touchstone underrated classic in line with of-the-era releases like the Breeders Last Splash and Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville.
From the Sweet Valley High reminiscent illustrated album cover, to the A minus rating given by the dean Robert Christgau, to the Jenni Konner songwriting credit (long before she was the showrunner for HBO’s Girls) this album is quirky, smart, well-written and most of all...enjoyable.
that dog’s touring behind Totally Crushed Out! found them sharing stages with Foo Fighters, Weezer and Teenage Fanclub, their songs being covered live by Pearl Jam, collaborating with Beck, and the vid for “He’s Kissing Christian” achieving sub-Buzz Bin status on MTV.
This 25th anniversary reissue marks the first EVER vinyl appearance for this album. Showing their attention to detail, Third Man Records sleuths got their hands on the original oil painting used for the front cover art and worked directly from that for all relevant artwork needs.
2024 Repress
KMRU is the moniker of Joseph Kamaru, a sound artist, and producer based in Nairobi. One of the leading exponents of the burgeoning experimental music scene in Nairobi and beyond he was listed by Resident Advisor as one of '15 East African Artists You Need To Hear' in 2018 and is a regular performer at the fabled Nyegenyege Festival having also presented live performances at CTM festival and Gamma Festival. Peel is KMRU's first release for Editions Mego. exquisite mix of field recordings and electronics unravelling at a repetitive and leisurely pace to expose a rich tapestry of sound that has been revered for it's ability to cross bordear with the sheer undertow of emotional content. The subtle calming atmosphere within Peel belies the compositional prowess as layers of delicate sounds wrap around each other creating a hybrid new form ambient musics both captivating through it's textural depth and kaleidoscopic patterns. The track titles lend themselves to the themes and mood set within: Why are you here, Well, Solace, Klang, Insubstantial and the title track. This is a deep heartfelt journey with a new strong voice being expressed through the means of organically presented electronic ambient sounds, one which reveals further layers on repeat listens.
"I am sitting in a garden, I haven't left the property in weeks, someone is dropping off food once a week. I haven't seen a human being in ages, I feel like a reverse Schroedinger cat - do I exist when nobody sees me? I must be somewhere in France but I don't remember. I have lost my consciousness again. When I wake up I hear a broken record looping somewhere in the mansion. A washed-out opera. Behind the trees I see the dilapidated hermaphrodite sculpture in a field of verdant nettles and fern. I hear gunshots far afield, aeroplanes in the sky, sirens on the main road.
When unconscious I dreamt of sitting on the Concorde observing the scarab blue ocean and iridescent clouds from above, an erstwhile receding memory. Sometimes I hear the organ of the nearby Renaissance Cathedral merging with the Russian Church bells.
I am hallucinating again. Someone's humming in the kitchen? Singing? A Radio? I overhear two young women talking about art galleries in the neighbour's garden. Bees attack, again…..again and again. The hairspray finally intoxicates them. An amphoric japanese voice is whispering in my head saying I will die soon. Someone (something?) bangs on the vases. The fountain's water turns dark red.
Fleur calls and says mum died. The funeral will be televised on tuesday. We opt for the synthetic choir for the service. The call is suddenly interrupted. Mold is slowly taking over the house.
I go back inside."
Une Fille Pétrifiée is the debut album of new Black To Comm related entity Mouchoir Ètanche (after one recent 12" on Richter's own Dekorder label). Combining real and fake acoustic instrumentation, sampling, field recordings and excessive yet inaudible post production this is another sublime and ethereal statement. Influences are ranging from (French) Classical & Opera to the anecdotical compositions of Luc Ferrari, Chinese Opera, Chanson, Sacred Music / Church Music, JG Ballard and Surrealism.
Marc Richter records as Black To Comm for Thrill Jockey, Type and Dekorder and as Jemh Circs for his own Cellule 75 imprint. He also produces soundtracks and acousmatic multichannel installations for institutions such as INA GRM Paris, ZKM Karlsruhe and Kunstverein Hamburg.
Bridging the link between the drummer's hometown in Montana and the love of african rhythms, Beat Bronco Organ Trio offer us this sublime, lilting instrumental full of precussive warmth and mid-tempo syncopations.
This 2-part song is not featured on their recent Road Trip LP, but following hot on the theme of musical travellings. Departing from the land of the shining mountains and heading across continents to the sound of the twangy, rolling guitar, parts 1 & 2 are a delightful yet raw aural journey carried out across a live, 4-track tape machine.
Totally analog and fresh, as we often wish music could be.
Caiphus Semenya, AKA Mr Letta Mbulu, is a South African legend, and Listen To The Wind, his iconic debut album, is simply a superb modern-soul/boogie album. It’s also incredibly rare, especially in good condition, so Be With is delighted to present this reissue.
Now a revered composer, musician, and arranger, Caiphus left apartheid South Africa in the 60s for self-imposed exile in Southern California together with his wife, Letta Mbulu. Settling in Los Angeles he started working with the likes of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba and other exiled and semi-exiled South african artists, as well as, of course, his wife Letta.
Caiphus also found himself working with and composing for a broad range of jazz and pop artists, including Lou Rawls, Nina Simone and Cannonball Adderley. His facility with both jazz and African forms served him well. His LA stay was also the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with Quincy Jones, the fruits of which can be tasted in Caiphus’s African compositions for the scores to Roots and Spielberg’s adaptation of The Color Purple.
Given his decades of work behind the scenes, it’s no surprise that it took until 1982 for Caiphus to get around to putting out the first album of his own. But all that experience shows. Listen To The Wind is a deeply impressive synthesis of early 80s US production and instrumentation together with his traditional South African musical roots.
It’s stylistically diverse but the ingredients are never diluted. There are elements of boogie, soul, funk and jazz, all shot through with pan-African flavour, and moving effortlessly from uptempo floor fillers to more meditative, slower soulful tracks. Produced by Caiphus himself, he makes full use of a stellar line up of session musicians including Nathan East, Michael Stanton, Sonny Burke and Paulinho DaCosta. And of course, there are Letta’s show-stopping vocals. To our ears, Listen To The Wind is just one big party, and lord knows we need that more than ever right now.
Opener “Angelina” is one of Caiphus’s most beloved tracks at Be With HQ. It’s a breezy, feel-good SA boogie-funk classic. Harmonic and horn heavy, it sounds as fresh today as it would’ve done in the early 80s. If this one doesn’t make you move, you may need your pulse taking. The drum breakdown alone, a little over halfway through, is sensational.
It’s followed by the gentle reggae lilt of “Play With Fire”. A real melodic slo-mo delight, carried by the tropical vibes and, above all else, by the extraordinary performance of Caiphus himself and his backing singers.
Closing out side one, the spectacular “Umoya” is driven by triumphant horns and slick bass. With its proto-Graceland vibes, we reckon Paul Simon must’ve been listening. Hard. Caiphus trades verses with the unmistakable tones of Letta, and it sounds divine. Yes, it’s as good as anything on Letta’s canonical In The Music… The Village Never Ends. A wide-eyed wonder, made for unity and togetherness, it’s all infectious, smiling faces for nearly nine minutes. But never mind nine, we could party to this for ninety minutes and “Umoya” would leave us re-energised for ninety more.
Elegantly firing up side two is perhaps the album’s best known track. “Without You” is a heavenly slice of modern soul, an end-of-nighter to end them all. Smooth strutting, disco-fied funk with that unmistakably South African sound, it’s just sublime, with those lyrics that keep coming back to smiling faces and community, “without You the sun won’t shine”. Big with the likes of Rush Hour’s Antal, this is aural perfection.
“Ziph’inkomo” is a soul-soothing, swooning epic. Gently building throughout, its final few minutes are genuinely stirring as the backing vocals and instrumentation swell. Jaw-dropping. The irresistible groove of frantic, percussive workout “Gumba Boogie” closes out what must surely be one of the greatest artistic statements of the 1980s. If his friend Quincy wasn’t feverishly taking notes for Thriller, then you could’ve fooled us.
With Simon Francis handling the mastering of this Be With edition, you know it sounds as fantastic as ever. The cover art, as breezy as the music, has been faithfully restored. All that’s missing is you.
- A1: After Hours (02:57)
- A2: Heaven On Earth (05:09)
- A3: Just Me ’N’ You (05:40)
- A4: She Called Me (04:42)
- A5: Cute As A Button (03:31)
- B1: Love, Love, Love (03:07)
- B2: I’ll Always Be Your Lover (04:11)
- B3: All Strung Out Over You (03:35)
- B4: Not Too Long Ago (04:08)
- B5: Everything I Want I See In You (03:05)
A dramatic, string-drenched epic, James Ralph Bailey’s Just Me ’N’ You has been a sought-after soul masterpiece for decades. A lush suite of beautiful songs, it was conceived as a concept album; a sophisticated paean to love.
Originally released by MAM Records in 1974, Just Me ’N’ You is a breathtaking jazzy soul album. It’s similar in style to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On - particularly the performances, orchestrations and chord progressions - but dealing with a different universal subject matter. If What’s Going On was about romance instead of politics, it would sound like this.
Fans of Marvin, Leon Ware, Donny Hathaway, Leroy Hutson and Willie Hutch will love this record. Not as well known - this is definitely an underrated gem - the work of James Ralph Bailey is no less mind-blowing. It’s got to be one of the best soul albums of all time.
The original productions were made on a basic home tape machine and enhanced with strings, rhythmic overdubs and a variety of other instrumentation. These are beautiful arrangements of strings and jazzy horns. Rhythm guitars and bouncy bass serve as the groove foundation, congas provide a Latin feel whilst the vibraphone and harmonica add colour. And then of course there’s JR’s voice.
His style recalls Hathaway, with a delivery akin to Marvin at the time. As he scats and sings, accompanying himself in sweet harmonies, there is still a rawness of pain and longing in his voice, the rawness familiar to all deep soul.
As an album, Just Me ’N’ You is no mere collection of songs. The tender, smooth tunes flow perfectly together into a fluid, single artistic statement. This is one where it’s hard to pick out any standouts. You may have heard the soaring title track before, maybe on Gilles Peterson’s Digs America compilation. The opening track “After Hours” sounds as fresh now as it ever was and segues beautifully into the majestic “Heaven On Earth”. Recorded by Hathaway the previous year, Bailey’s original of “Love Love Love” is incredible and arguably the definitive version. The powerful, dreamy, sax-and-harmony-laced “All Strung Out Over You” has echoes of the Chi-Lites, it’s that good. Goosebumps. And we could go on.
Mastered by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman and pressed at Record Industry, this Be With edition of Just Me ’N’ You sounds every bit as brilliant as it should. A joyous celebration of love, this album is perfect in every way. If you don’t already own a copy then now is the time.
Walter ‘Junie’ Morrison released his third solo LP, Suzie Super Groupie, in 1976. A slick, smooth and soulful record, it’s a genre-melting tour de force with rich elements of proto-boogie, funk and jazz. In short, this is yet another essential album reissue from Be With.
The sublime “Suzie Thundertussy”, is a favourite of Harvey and Theo, and was brilliantly sampled by Madlib for Kanye West’s “No More Parties In LA”. The track opens with a sinuous synth and combines Junie’s storytelling abilities with an emphatic vocal style and funky arrangements. The powerful bass and sinister chords create an undeniable groove, and the explosive chorus is full of ambition and joy.
“If You Love Him” is a great, mid-tempo soul song. With a swinging jazz-infused middle-eight, it demonstrates Junie was much more than a mercurial funkateer. The laconic groove of “What Am I Gonna Do” recalls “Fresh”-era Sly Stone, whilst the frantic “Super Groupie” showcases his sharp imagination and sense of fun. The lyrics range from humorous to dirty, all fuelled by an infectious groove and tight horn arrangements.
The P-Funk of B-side opener “Surrender” bounces and sparkles, with a strutting Junie backed by great harmony vocals and joyous horns. “Suzie” is a sleek, softer affair albeit with a disco pulse; a beautiful combination of bright, funky horns, fluid basslines and vigorous rhythms. “Stone Face Joe” is another character song, this time one that chugs along on a sweet boogie rhythm.
The winner for us, however, is the closing piece. An extended funk-rock jam, “Spirit” has a heart-rending spoken-word intro and, as a nod to Jimi Hendrix, creates a live concert sound, complete with screaming crowd and fuzzy vocals.
Junie made his name as the lead singer and keyboardist of the Ohio Players. As the mastermind behind “Pain”, “Pleasure”, “Ecstasy”, and the oft-sampled “Funky Worm”, he was beloved by countless musicians, not least Prince. As co-writer of some of Funkadelic’s seminal works - “One Nation Under A Groove”, “(Not Just) Knee Deep” – his standing as one of the structural fathers of funk is undisputed.
In late 2016, Solange’s “A Seat At The Table” featured a track called “Junie”, a tribute to the freedom he created in music. His work continues to be as relavent and inspiring as it was when it was first recorded.
In February 2017, Junie died, aged just 62. With records as mighty as Suzie Super Groupie, his legacy will live forever and Be With is proud to be able to do our bit to make this LP accessible again on vinyl.
The next single on All Nations Records is a tremendous stepper riddim of French dubmaker Higher Meditation now based in Leicester UK. Veteran UK singer Kulture D from the local underground scene rides this rough riddim smoothly, calling out the almighty one to set everyone free. His prayer is still resonating deep in mind when entering the dub version of this track with the help of a subtle melodica line.
- A1: L'aventurier (Feat Helena Noguerra & Louis Ronan Choisy)
- A2: Putain Putain (Feat Camille)
- A3: Marcia Balla (Feat Adrienne Pauly)
- A4: Sandy Sandy (Feat Soko)
- A5: Ou Veux-Tu Qu'je R'garde (Feat Emily Loizeau)
- A6: Two People In A Room (Feat Cocoon)
- A7: Dereglee (Feat Melanie Pain)
- A8: Oublions L'amerique (Feat Nadeah Miranda)
- B1: Voila Les Anges (Feat Coeur De Pirate)
- B2: Week-End A Rome (Feat Vanessa Paradis)
- B3: Mala Vida (Feat Olivia Ruiz)
- B4: Anne Cherchait L'amour (Feat Julien Dore)
- B5: Ophelie (Feat Yelle)
- B6: Amoureux Solitaires (Feat Hugh Coltman)
- B7: So Young But So Cold (Feat Charlie Winston)
- B8: Je Suis Deja Parti (Feat Coralie Clement)
The 80s owed everything to the punk revolution ... and betrayed it time and again.
ln 76-77, the incredible explosion of English-speaking bands focused the energies of a whole generation of Western youth - rebels ready to pick up a guitar and use it like a weapon. Yet more than punk music itself, it was the creative burst it triggered that radically shaped 80s pop and heralded an unending stream of inspired performers.
Although we often speak of the British and American golden age of post-punk from 78 to 84, with artists that included Talking Heads, Joy Division, PIL and Devo, France (together with Switzerland and Belgium) joined the movement too. Today, on a new album, the group Nouvelle Vague have paid tribute to this sumptuous "Frenchy" period clothed in the nihilism of punk, along with bitterness fuelled by the economic crisis and, paradoxically, the bewitching spirit of pop.
lts title, Couleurs sur Paris (Colours on Paris) is based on both a famous postcard collection and Oberkampf's 1981 punk anthem, and reflects the period, which oscillated between elation and despair. Written by artists sometimes known as "the modern young people" and including faux naïf electropop nursery rhymes by Elli & Jacno ("Anne cherchait l'amour", 1979), Lio ("Amoureux solitaires" , 1980)
and Etienne Daho ("Week-end à Rome", 1984), along with Lili Drop ("Sur ma mob", 1979) and Taxi Girl ("Je suis déjà parti", 1986), the songs clearly express the hopes and disappointments of the day.
The sense of melancholy suggested by the disenchanted lyrics of "Déréglée" - performed in 1977 by Marie-France, an icon of Paris nightlife - is even more noticeable on the 1981 hit by The Civils, who cynically sang, "Tonight, they're dying in Chad, but l'm buying my dream Walkman" before taking it to the chorus: "The economic crisis is fantastic, decadence is the right feel".
The punk shockwave con also be felt in the music of bands who radically shaped French culture and song. Like Rouen, with Les Dogs ("Sandy, Sandy", 1982), every provincial town and city in France began to produce bands at the end of the 70s and the start of the 80s. Wunderbach's 1983 punk pamphlet "Oublions l'Amérique" was a foretaste of what is now called alternative punk, a genre that won acclaim in 1988 with Mano Negra's "Mala Vida". Indochine, French pop legends for the last thirty years, also encouraged the trend in the summer of 1983 with "L'aventurier", after a first single brimming with the spirit of rebellion, "Dizzidence Politik".
Rita Mitsouko, the duo that emerged from the underground Parisian punk scene of the late 70s, rocketed to stardom in 1984 with "Marcia Baïla". Equally baroque, TC Matic - the first band fronted by Belgian singer Arno - released an ironic, political underground hit in 1983: "Putain, putain". Other artists fuelled a post-punk movement that explored the romanticism of machines and the darkness of new wave, including the cult, much-neglected duo from Nancy, Kas Product ("So Young but so Cold", 1982) and Switzerland's Stephan Eicher, whose "Two People ln A Room" (1985) followed on from "Eisbaer", a hit in a more underground style written with Grauzone in 1981. However, the genre's most influential practitioners were certainly Noir Désir. From their first single in 1987 ("Où veux-tu qu' je r'garde?"), they won mainstream success with their unique fusion of 80s gloom and power rock. Beyond from the meteoric success of Bordeaux's Gamine ("Voilà les anges", 1988) and the subversive spirit of Jad Wio ("Ophélie", 1989), French post-punk reached its climax with the success of Noir Désir, Rita Mitsouko, Stephan Eicher and Manu Chao, whose albums reigned supreme in the 90s French charts. From the underground scene to gold records: the eternal story of pop.
Back in 1999, label boss Ewan Jansen took receipt of demo tapes by Kai Kroker (AKA Rawell) who subsequently appeared on Red Ember’s very first compilation record ‘Deepsounds One’.
These forgotten demos (lost even to Rawell himself) plus further works from 1995-2002, span a 2LP release of deeply emotive minimal house, techno & leftfield; an earnest synthesis of minimalism and romance from Berlin in the 90s. Included also is an ambient/downbeat 6-track digital EP (including the original version of ‘Tailwind’).
Move D’s gloriously moody and life-affirming ‘90s galore mix’ of ‘Tailwind’ is a very special reunion between close friends; the pair’s last collaboration dates back to 2005 under the ‘Faked.Info’ moniker and both recorded together along with Jamie Hodge under the collective ‘Studio Pankow’.
Triangulating a slinky signal to a square mile off the Swan River, Glowing Pin bring us ‘Pentagon Palette’, a master blast of frequency adjusted house, swamp stomp and chakra charmers from Australian newcomer Jonus Eric.
Though opening brace ‘The Cult’ and ‘Collect’ made first contact back in 2014, a loose connection between Perth and Hamburg hindered progress before ‘Mirrors’, ‘Emulator’ and ‘Waterfall’ walked across the web in 2019 to round out a dope debut release from this house auteur. Specialising in mind altering sound design and melodic flair, Jonus generates a neon swamp on ‘The Cult’, serving up a psychoactive roller caked in radioactive fuzz and insectile fizz. Thick bass swells and circular marimba make for a hypnotic rhythm, while a shapeshifting vocal and moody keyboard riff drag us back towards terra firma. The paradisiac refrain of ‘Collect’ soon sounds out through the jungle with a euphoric haze,
its sub-tickling bass and acid gurgle riding hyperactive drum programming as the track warps in the humidity. Soaked in serotonin and brisk at 137 BPM, ‘Mirrors’ burns off the mist to offer an airy update on the French Touch template. Though frazzled circuitry and dislocated vox serve this one with a twist, the chiming pianos and bouncy beat are still best enjoyed in a Golf GTI in the summertime. Jonus reaches for the lasers via the restless rhythm and rave sirens of ‘Emulator’, a fresh take on the funky house of the late nineties updated with unexpected breaks, squealing feedback and treated vocals usually found on a Four Set banger.
Next it’s off to the chillout room for ‘Waterfalls’, a fourth-world tone poem describing crystal caves, undiscovered wildlife and a holographic waterfall. Ditching the doof, and letting those colours tesselate, Jonus offers a +2 bump to your mana, before the post punk bassline, growling EBM vocal and off key organs of ‘YR Mind’ combine for a confrontational bonus track, only available in digital format.
- A1: A Certain Ratio - Do The Du
- A2: Quando Quango - Love Tempo
- A3: 52Nd Street - Cool As Ice
- B1: Cabaret Voltaire - Yashar (John Robie Remix)
- B2: New Order - Your Silent Face (Live 1989)
- B3: Konk - Baby Dee
- C1: Section 25 - Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
- C2: Streetlife - Act On Instinct
- C3: Marcel King - Reach For Love (New York Remix)
- D1: Thick Pigeon - Subway
- D2: Ike Yard - Kino
- D3: Arthur Baker - Come On
- D4: Anna Domino - Summer (Arthur Baker Remix)
Factory Benelux and New Order present Of Factory New York, a unique benefit album released to assist Michael Shamberg, who ran the NYC office of Factory Records during the celebrated label's Eighties heyday.
Finally, after 53 years, "I Caught You In A Lie" is now rightly regarded as one the GREAT New Orleans Soul classics.
Whilst many people may only know the various cover versions, Robert Parker's original sublime slice of heartfelt Soul has steadily built in reputation, especially recently. That's why original Nola copies are £150+, even for battered ones! So here is the official legitimate, remastered repress on the sacred Nola label.
The Drumcode founder is measured when it comes to signing music to his own imprint, biding his time till the stars align. His last individual outing was 2015’s ‘Stone Flower’ EP, which included the thrilling label favorite ‘What You Need’.
A succession of classy collaborations followed, linking with DC’s most vital artists highlighted by ‘Your Mind’ with Bart Skils, proclaimed one of the best tracks of the last decade by Mixmag.
An EP that gives a nod to uncertain times, while remaining resolutely positive, ‘No Defeat No Retreat’ was written during Beyer’s fruitful production sessions during lock down. The opening track, ‘Park People’ sets the pace with an energetic, 80’s nu wave creating the track’s spine. Its hypnotic energy stems from a powerful synth riff and vocal sample culminating in a skillfully balanced track that neatly combines the old with the new.
The title track is a study in contrasts, deftly crafting a muted, nagging vocal hook and infectious bass line into a slice of forward-facing, edgy techno.
With its subtle, undulating layers of melody building in the background, it ushers in an understated sense of euphoria, making it a perfect end-of-set mood-maker.
A thrilling return!
Etrusca 3D is a new band that merges two current Audio and visual artists from the 21st Century, Francesco Cavaliere and Spencer Clark.
The album is the first to be released by Spencer Clark's label Pacific City Discs, as a subsidiary and in collaboration with Discrepant.
‘’One cannot underestimate the result of stating the names of certain gods at high voices. Something that sinuous and quiet enters into this disc for you to listen. What if the Etruscan Civilization instead of transforming or amalgamating into the roman one, was instead passed on to other worlds? Were the tombs, their spiral idols and funeral decorations a meticulous method for transmuting to something else?
Etrusca 3D is the juxtaposition of two imagineers friendship, as Francesco says, 'because I am Etruscan and you (Spencer) are 3D." There is a piece of the future of Etruscan civilization contained within this disc. It is with Spencer's remote viewing of a past and future creative culture and Francesco's birthright that we find a true insinuation of civilizations world body.
We decided to invoke various Etruscan deities or spirits by sampling Francesco's voice uttering their name. We put them inside the Emax 2 3D machine and we began to play these deities and thus incorporate a fresh and ancient music language to present the 21st Century Etruscan experience. In the meantime, these musical stories turned into Francesco's imaginary storytelling style to further present a narrated record of the intuited activities of Etruscan Gods...’’ - Francesco Cavaliere & Spencer Clark
All songs by Spencer Clark & Francesco Cavaliere
Tectonic is very proud to welcome Lamont to the team!
Bristol’s bendy-beats whizz kid is mainly known for dropping jaws with his releases on Swamp 81 and it’s various offshoots. This time, he’s been chipping away at 4 fine-cut gem, especially for Tectonic - bringing some darkside vibrations in addition to his usual bounce.
‘Hold Dat’ runs at 135bpm, sitting in-between grime, dubstep and housey/techno/whatever that thing Lamont usually does! Charged with a disgusting, totally greasy bassline, this one drops hard and keeps going - quality moves for (now, mostly imaginary) dancefloors.
‘Push’ takes it down a notch, to 130 for a more heads-y work out, laden with crackling, fizzing sonics - and heavily punctuated by sub bass hits. The energy levels step back a touch, while building intensity.
‘Brain’ sees Lamont working more familiar territories - sending a pounding 4/4 kick drum out to hold together a series of collapsing percussive hits and warping melodies - as a ‘brain’ sample, simply haunts your brain.
The EP closes off with ‘Open Letter’, taking things into a dread-space; dub wise, deep and dangerous. The lurching bass hits take charge and push you through layers of echo’ed hits and micro-melodramas, to round off this great EP in fine style.
The Magic Movement welcomes Anatta to the family with her Fields Of Play EP.
Following her debut Album on Random Collective, her new EP comes as a four-track package:
In the original mix, Anatta invites us to discover a sonic world between pitched down UK House and future-primitive downbeat.
Rough Drumbeats, quirky synths, and catchy vocal chops guide us through a sophisticated arrangement with unforeseen twists and turns.
Salon des Amateurs resident Tolouse Low Trax delivers the 'Knights & Wheels Remix' in his signature style: While a hypnotic vocal loop hooks you up from the very beginning, minimalistic and dreamy synths slowly submerge the listener into a jam of stripped-down Lo-Fi funk.
The 'Beat Mix' by Rio de Janeiro's sound wizard Carrot Green and long time family member of the label, speeds up the tempo, and puts together a groove of classic electro boogie vibes with a P-Funky bassline that sounds like a futuristic liaison between Afrika Bambaataa and George Clinton.
Increasing the UK house vibe with strong drums and a wobbly bassline, Noema's 'Acid Ghetto Style Remix' works the mysterious vocals of Anatta into a delicious hook and creates a highly animating and fun dancefloor monster.
And now, let's get weird!!!
Reactivated is the label’s fifth vinyl reference. For this work, ART21 has the participation of six artists: Hd Substance (Spain), Filip Xavi (Servia), Romain Richard (France), Pedro Pina (Spain), Kalter Ende (Spain), and dietriangle (Italy). Reactivated is a dancefloor focused dark mental techno LP that features hypnotic sounds created with both modular and analog synthesizers giving it the right warmth of sound. It is a work that invites us to reflect on the current pandemic we are going through and invites us to continue fighting and enjoying life. «As I didn’t worry about being born, I didn’t worry about dying» . – Federico García Lorca
For years, Frente Cumbiero has served as the torchbearer of a new wave of experimental exploration in the diverse modern-day cumbia canvas. Led by Mario Galeano Toro, a Colombian native and accomplished veteran of Bogotá's rich music scene, the group first connected with listeners outside of South America via their head-exploding 2010 debut on Names You Can Trust. "Pitchito" would become a cult favourite, a catalyst for the Brooklyn-based label, and soon after a bonafide rarity. Those beginnings of Frente Cumbiero focused on an honorary recognition of the massive musical impact that the many formations of cumbia have had over the decades within Colombia. Subgenres such as gaita, porro, vallenato, and caracolito, to name just a handful, have all played their part within the evolution of the country's tropical music lineage. That deep-digging determination coupled with a truly unique and talented musicianship has informed Frente's music, some of the most forward-thinking and reverential examples of the current tropical scene. It has led to some incredible opportunities and collaborations in Europe, Asia and the States, including genre-defying recordings with London's Mad Professor and Japan's Minyo Crusaders.
Still, Galeano Toro's assemblies with Frente Cumbiero have been scarce amongst his other exploits, splitting time as player and producer in other ground breaking projects like Ondatropica and Los Pirañas over the recent years. After three 45 single releases together with NYCT, the time away has left everybody wanting for more. Now, reassembled and seasoned with years of touring and gigging in a multitude of projects, the group's current quartet of Galeano Toro (keys and synths), Pedro Ojeda (timbales and percussion), Marco Fajardo (tenor sax) and Sebastián Rozo (bombardino) is a stripped down powerhouse of unadulterated psico-tropi swing, a beautiful Colombian musical stew, incorporating a host of flavors from the melting pots of the Pacific, Caribbean and Atlantic pathways. The final result is of course quite unclassifiable, simply a new breed of good music and a dancefloor delight.
Hypnoskull is part of the global anti-music conspiracy networkTM (since 1992). Hypnoskull was created in 1992 as a solo project in order to experiment in the area of electronic noise combined with rhythmical structures. In the first years of its existence, Hypnoskull was releasing cassettes and tracks on international labels in the so-called cassette network, a widely spread network of independent and experimental musicians and artists who expressed themselves throughout limited tape releases often including artworks, ideas, texts. In 1998, hypnoskull signed to the German label ant-zen and up to today he is still releasing his albums on this highly influential record label. That is not a coincidence: ant-zen stands for ‘anti-zensur’ (anti-censorship), one of the main starting points of the provocative hypnoskull project. Patrick Stevens does not limit himself to just producing music as such, albums always include a severe message, a thought-provoking underlying concept text, questions. The main philosophy: ‘the dance floors, the clubs, the festivals,… are staged warzones with a different set of rules – a therapeutic zone where hidden anger and even aggression of both the artists as well as the spectators can be released in a proper, human way. Music as a means to open up the deepest anger inside human beings, letting it out in a way which is not harmful to others. A strange symbiosis between the two worlds Patrick Stevens is a part of: the techno and the industrial scene. Techno being a genre promoting a peaceful yet hedonistic way of life, industrial on the other hand being a highly nihilistic, philosophic but pitch black reflection on society. The mix of both musical as well as content wise elements of these genres result in what hypnoskull is all about. Added to this an explosive mixture of post-war and contemporary western subversive philosophy – in a rather impulsive manner – makes the project what it is today, after 30 years of existence.
Senthulà is one of the many aliases of musical jack of all trades José Guerrero, a long standing figure in the already rich underground scene of Valencia. In this solo excursion he explores the vast possibilities of mechanical repetition, the machine funk of dirtbag rhythms and proper boogie DIY synth music, sculpting a syncopated sound that is both modern and atavistic. Coming from a deep knowledge and ability to communicate very diverse sounds, slow jams unfold into dance music for clear eyed lounge lizards for whom sleaze comes not dizzy but focused. Whitened african rhythms beat up no wave disco pleasure points, managing the hard task of being very cool and nonchalant, but also hot and dedicated.
This closed door nightclub music will appeal to fans of the new developments in dance music that put Cabaret Voltaire, impLOG or Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou into XXI Century basements. The record comes also with a killer remix by Tolouse Low Trax, probably our favourite producer in modern rhythmic music.
- A1: Brian Bennett - The Swan 1
- A2: Francis Monkman - Stargazing
- A3: Steve Gray - Billowing Sails
- A4: Frank Ricotti - Vibes
- A5: Frank Reidy & Eric Allen - Reflections
- A6: John Cameron - Tropic 2
- B1: Orlando Kimber & John Keliehor - One Language
- B2: Johnny Scott - Utopia Revisited
- B3: Les Hurdle & Frank Ricotti - Dissolves
- B4: John Cameron - Floatation
- B5: John Cameron - Drifting
- B6: John Cameron - Trek
- B7: Alan Hawkshaw - Saturn Rings
Rare musical magic from the Bruton library catalogue – ambient, spacey, pastoral and electronic. Music by John Cameron, Alan Hawkshaw, Fran-cis Monkman, Brian Bennett and more – all total masters of the scene. All very cool. All very now. All will sell very fast.
Over the last three decades Jonny Trunk has collected and written about library music. But he’s never had a great deal of luck with the Bruton catalogue. By this he means that he’s never stumbled across a massive stash, or lucked-out buying a huge run for practically nothing –that’s the kind of thing that used to happen in the 1990s and the early noughties if you were out there looking hard for library music. But he did manage to get about 25 in one hit about 20 years ago when the BBC shut down their “TV Training Department” near Lime Grove and also when a box of Brutons ended up being dumped at a hospital radio, and they didn’t want the records, so Jonny got a call.
There are lots of Bruton albums in existence – over 330 LPs in the vinyl catalogue, issued between 1978 and 1985. That’s a lot of music to wade through if you are looking for sublime modern day sounds. For many years now the “trophies” from the Bruton catalogue have been the beat or action driven LPs – the two Drama Montage albums (BRJ2 and BRJ8) have always been the big hitters, and others such as High Adventure (BRK2) too.
But Jonny has always found himself drawn to the lime green LPs, the pastoral, peaceful albums (The BRDs), which were full of the kind of gentle, lovely music that would turn up in Take Hart as Tony was paint-ing a woodpecker or a badger or an Autumn tree. The other Brutons he likes are the orange ones (The BRIs) simply because they are full of ex-perimental futuristic electronics and would remind him of 1980s ITV backgrounds. This LP series includes Brian Bennett’s cosmic classic Fantasia (BRI 10). Jonny has been knows to refer to this style of library music as “Krypton Factor library”, because it’s exactly what that strange but successful 1980s TV quiz show sounded like.
In recent years as interest in library music has expanded, we’ve watched
the price of a handful of Brutons really going through the roof - not the just the action and drama ones, but the more esoteric and experimental LPs too – like the BRDs and the BRIs. Jonny gets the vibe that people fi-nally want to hear this other more interesting and experimental side of the Bruton catalogue. So what better time than now to put together a compilation of such sublime period sounds.
Not only does this album bring together a set of fabulous cues that would cost the average man in the street a month’s wages (if the origi-nals were all wanted and if you could even track them all down), but it also chops out the need to listen to other tracks on library albums that are nowhere near as good.
The cues here all date from between 1978 and 1984. They come from the BRD, BRI, BRH, BRJ, BRM, BRR and BRs catalogues.
The composers are all legends within the genre, and here, were doing what great library composers do best – fulfilling a brief and utilising modern studio equipment to both commercial and beguiling effect.
Truth is stranger than fiction they say, 2020 has proven it. This is not the year we asked for, but it's the year we received. Remarkably, even as clubs and social events across the world shuttered, the spirit of Techno remained alive in living rooms, bedrooms, and basements planet-wide. We hope you still draw inspiration, and excitement in the culture we've collectively nurtured for so many years. Before long we will see each other again, hug and kiss one another, and reconnect under more auspicious stars. For now, we wait. Luckily, we have new music for you to pass the time. We present our latest vinyl 12” record release: 'Life Under Lockdown', featuring tracks by Kessell (1/2 of the legendary Spanish duo, Exium), Joton (founder of Newrhythmic Rec.), HD Substance (co-founder of Sub_tl, and teacher at the Bass Valley), and JX-216 (co-founder of From 0-1). Modern, syncopated Techno for the new world.
Westcoast Goddess first came to our attention at the end of 2018 following his debut release on Canadian label Heart To Heart, but his productions actually date right back to ’93 (under various different guises) when he first began making music with his trusty Roland DR550 and Kawai K1. With a fresh and distinctive sound, WG successfully fused soulful touches and late 80’s-era digital synths with raw, punchy grooves and a euphoric, ravey atmosphere. Since then, the Berlin-based producer has built a solid following amongst underground house heads with subsequent releases dropping on esteemed labels such as Omena, Slam City Jams and Let’s Play House.
Opening up the EP we have Step Inline (The Narcotic Soul), which is a piano driven, uplifting slice of house heaven. A simple repeating 2 bar chord pattern lays down the foundation for soaring strings, cascading chimes and seductive echoing vocal hook.
Next up we have The Devil In Mr Holmes (The Erotic Soul) which once again goes heavy on the piano stabs but this time developing the arrangement into something that feels more like an instrumental dub of a long lost Prelude release. Crystalline synth lines come and go, whilst electronic tom hits add pace and energy to the unrelenting house groove.
Flipping over we have the epic I Might Be Ok (The Faithful Soul) coming in at over 9 minutes and being all the better for it. A dirty Moog bassline leads the charge with beautiful synth lines layering up on top, creating a blissed-out vibe which can’t fail to lift your spirits.
The different seeds that have been planted throughout the life of Croatian Amor come to bloom on 'All In The Same Breath,' affirming an equilibrium that's all its own. Spiralling through the half-light electronics are gentle bumps and breaks that are layered into moments of elevation. A coarse edge remains just an arm's length away, but there is an unmistakable element of celebration throughout the album's 10 tracks. As the syncopated terrains ring out, their perpetual rhythmic motions call a medley of human voices that speak in security. They sing to everyone just as they sing to themselves. In the years since the seminal Croatian Amor album 'Love Means Taking Action' Loke Rahbek has strode a twofold path. There are the delicate, meditative compositions that he has made with Frederik Valentin; setting acoustic instrumentation against affecting digital treatments, each of their collaborative albums are an exercise in the magnificence of subtle restraint. And with the sharpest of turns you'll find Rahbek's parallel universe of rave-shocked rhythms and kinetic helixes that eddy through genre and tempo with few constraints. Collaborations with Varg²™ have yielded the wildest of this, and remain ongoing, yet the traces were already apparent across much of the previous Croatian Amor album 'Isa' with its treated vocalizations and cascading rhythmic mechanics. 'All In The Same Breath,' arrives as a steady handed synthesis of these divergent instincts. Elaborating the distinct techniques and themes that form the wistful essence of the project, the album's quiet composure is a sign that these familiarities have been set adrift to settle into their own private ecosystem.Small vessels travel in a perfect array. Light following shadows, following light. Every movement a signal, every second is camouflage. 'All In The Same Breath' is perhaps more than anything an invitation to be open to wonder.
For the first release, Giordano and Oniks, jin forces as ANAM.
Doppia faccia, where Erratic synths and tweaking patterns create an air of assonance throughout the track and spares minimalistic drums create the drive. FX laden hooks gather momentum as sub heavy drums and spacial atmospheres create the backbone.
Vertebrate leans more on a subtle build up pf the elements as each piece gradually builds and delivers on high intensity.
Don’t fight in the night, brings a more melodic tip but still retains a tough standard drum workout, soundscapes and breaks.
In the future, closes the first Senza Nome release with high-speed rave sounds, counterbalanced by atmospheric melodies.
With roots cemented in jungle, breaks and hardcore, Unglued injects his signature bassline badness into each tearout track, topped with euphoric classic house samples in the title track ‘Total XTC’, to hair-raising vocals from Truthos Mufasa in ‘War Dance’ featuring Whiney.
Total XTC fires us through a prism of late 80s nostalgia with pitched-up soulful vocal samples from Charvoni’s feel-good classic house groover ‘Always There’. Dreamy pads and playful vintage notes set the scene. Soothingly sustained vocals swim over raw, metallic, jungle-infused drums that introduce the subdestroying drop. A certified rave anthem that will have all the heads entranced.
‘War Dance’ raises adrenaline as Manchester-based Truthos Mufasa lays down slick and weighty bars that ricochet off skippy old skool-style drums right in the eye of the storm. Together, Unglued and Whiney conjure up bass-rumbling chaos as we’re pushed ‘right off the tracks’ with double-barrelled artillery in the heat of battle.
Charging in with twisted swagger, ‘Got 2 Have’ is a squelchy bass-ridden stepper that screams Unglued all over. While ‘Pigeon Funk’ swoops in and stares you down with electrically-charged squarks and funk-fuelled flare.
Introduced to jungle at an early age by his influential uncle Stoppy, Unglued demonstrates his ability to simultaneously stick and unpick these roots in his powerfully dynamic ‘Total XTC’ EP by fusing the old-skool style with his unique, forward-thinking flair.
Unglued’s rise since his anthemic ‘If We Ever’ remix, has brought in over a hundred intercontinental shows since 2019, and regular support from some of the biggest players in the game, including Andy C, Noisia and Randall.
Unglued is no stranger to spins on national airwaves, with BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac awarding him Hottest Record In The World for ‘Born In 94’, as well as regular support from Rene LaVice and Charlie Tee on Kiss Fresh. Everyone’s got their eyes stuck to Unglued!
This new compilation, a statement of intercultural music production, features collaborations of Slikback (PAN), KMRU, Tite (Fragile), Jinku, Pier Alfeo (Backwards) ... recorded during a residency in Elefant Studio, Nairobi.
The compilation will follow a 45mn documentary dedicated to the Kenyan Scene.
After two vinyl releases highlighting two musical currents rooted in an era and a territory - Benga in Kenya and Tarantismo in Italy; Flee Project unveils its sub-label, Extra Muros, linked to an itinerant creative residency program that aims to bring together innovative and creative artists from all around the globe for a two-week long production and writing camp. Open to all, it promotes underground sounds and artists in search of sonic experiments and discoveries. Is held every year in changing locations and countries.
Extra Muros - Kenya, is the result of the creative residency program organized by FLEE in September 2019 in Nairobi at the Elefant Studio. For three weeks, seven musicians: Slikback (KE), Karun (KE), Jinku (KE), KMRU (KE), Flexfab (CH), Pier Alfeo (IT) and Tite (FR), and producers from all over the world and from Kenya came together to produce and to create this unique sound that emerged from a large variety of artistic environments and soundscapes. This compilation is a statement of intercultural music production in the digital age.
Following the release of Milton Nascimento’s Maria Maria, Far Out Recordings proudly presents Nascimento’s 1980 follow up. With the success of Maria Maria in 1976 behind them, Nascimento reunited with his writing partner Fernando Brant in 1980 to produce another ballet, ‘Ultimo Trem (Last train)’. This time, they chose to tackle a more contemporarily relevant subject, the impact of the closure of a train line that connected certain towns and cities in the North East of Minas Gerais to the coast. “The military government shut down the route and the whole region began to fade away,” explains Milton. “I love train rides” adds the composer, “But today there are almost no trains to Brazil. So when I go to the US and Europe, any time I can, I go by train. The longer the journey the better.”
Featuring much of the same all-star line-up as Maria Maria – including legendary Brazilian musicians Naná Vasconcelos, João Donato, Paulinho Jobim and members of Som Imaginário, amongst many others, like Maria Maria, the album holds what Milton himself considers to be the definitive versions of some of his most beloved tracks, including 'Saídas E Bandeiras' and 'Ponte de Areia'.
The title track, ‘Ultimo Trem’ – performed exquisitely by Zezé Mota with a choir and piano – is a mournful lament about the human consequences of the axed line. The ballet brought great media attention to the campaign against closure. “Most of Fernando’s lyrics have some political tone,” says Milton, “This one helped the area a lot because the politicians grew concerned about the subjects.”
Fernando’s and Milton’s shared passion for the sounds, smells and memories of trains, inspired the soundtrack for the production which premièred in 1980. ‘A Viagem (The trip)’, launched with a train’s steam whistle, sees Milton’s guitar moving to a train’s rhythm. In contrast to the usual lyricism, ‘Bicho Homen (Beastly man)’ and ‘Decreto (Degree)’ are atypically upbeat and funky, their vocals a mesh of wordless male voices resembling the then fashionable Swingles Singers’ renderings of Bach. ‘E Daí? (And so what?)’, and ‘Olho d’Agua (Water’s Eye)’ were both drawn from ‘Clube Da Esquina’. ‘Olho d’Agua’ is mellow and delicate and Milton’s homage to the great voices of Brazil whilst ‘E Daí? (And so what?)’ is a stunning mosaic of voices. The unusual ‘O Velho (The Old Man)’ conjures up an image of an old shaman singing alone into the wind against the cries of nature. Perhaps the most affecting songs are Nascimento’s ‘Itamarandiba’ and ‘Oração (Prayer)’. The latter is a cry for a change in the situation whilst ‘Itamarandiba’ ends with an upbeat, whirling Hammond organ and guitar timepiece. The closing track ‘Ponta de Areia (Sand Edge)’, was based on one of Fernando’s newspaper stories and became one of Milton’s most famous pieces, covered by musicians across the planet, including Wayne Shorter and Earth, Wind and Fire. It reappeared as a ghostly 45-seconds memory on the ‘Milton e Gil’ album, his millennial collaboration with Gilberto Gil.
After 27 years of being locked inside contracts and record company legalities, these sublime songs were finally released in 2003 as a double CD package, along with Maria Maria. Set for its first ever vinyl release for this year’s Record Store Day, on limited edition red vinyl, Ultimo Trem sounds as fresh and relevant now as when Brazilian music was still a South American secret.
in a trio of records by Andrew Wasylyk which unearth and reshape the landscape of Eastern Scotland as shimmering and inventive instrumental music.
Where Themes for Buildings and Spaces (2017) toured the architecture and industry of Dundee, evoking a place caught between decay and regrowth, the Scottish Album of the Year Award shortlisted The Paralian (2019) explored the littoral exchanges between sea and shore on the North Sea coastline.! !
Fugitive Light And Themes Of Consolation carries a trace of this arc on a return upriver, drifting back inland along the River Tay's inner estuary: a record of the low light on winter fields, empty suburban streets at dawn, the deep clear waters of the quarry excavated to build the city.
Ten songs circling landscapes for meaning, channelling half-heard melodies and misremembered memories; caught somewhere between settling down and setting out towards the shining levels of the estuary and beyond.! ! The record is threaded with the influences of people, place and musical lineages – David Axelrod, John Barry, Virginia Astley, Mark Hollis, Alice Coltrane – yet as with all of Andrew's solo work it has a deft, clear voice all of its own. Recorded between Summer 2019 and January 2020, Fugitive Light…
displays his talent as a multi-instrumentalist and composer: all hushed drum grooves, rolling waves of plucked acoustic guitar, cascading upright piano, Bob James-inspired Fender Rhodes, rippling clàrsach harp, and ECM-worthy electric guitar motifs. As on The Paralian, string arrangements are by fellow Tayside musician Pete Harvey, known for his work with King Creosote, Modern Studies and The National Theatre of Scotland.! !
Along with its sister imprint Fluid Electronics - dedicated to all things more muscularly 4x4 oriented, from house to techno via ambient, Fluid Funk will offer a platform of choice for creators and lovers of soulful house, hip-hop, jazz, funk, disco et al. The goal of the label is to bring a community of like-minded people together, cleared from the complexities that sometimes hamper the good course of the label-artist relationship.
First to grace Fluid Funk's dance floor-ready grooves is Rotterdam-based emerging talent Beau Zwart. Fresh off a choice inaugural sortie on INI Movements that hit the streets a few weeks ago, Beau steps in with his debut 12", "Beyond Two Souls" - an infectiously smooth and solarpowered six-track platter featuring Dutch duo Fouk on remix duty.
Expect lavishly orchestrated cascades of ankle-twisting breaks, prismatic synthwork and summer-flavoured melodies to wrap your ears around as your feet and body give in to the power of that funky bass. Brewing elements of fuzzy pop, pixelated soul and tropicalised rhythms, Beau Zwarts sound takes us on a wildly enjoyable ride across luxuriantly flowered scapes and fluttering cosmic house horizons. Interlaced with sugary Rhodes stabs and 8-bit harmonics a la "Floating Points", Sykes' warm vox intonations shows us the way into a pulsating heart of wonky, bop-infused boogie.
Expanding to further out-there, club-optimised bravura, Fouk's take on the title-track is the kind of track that'll make an impact in the sweatbox as well as in a more cabaret-like setting. Pulling out the weirdo harmonics and left-of-centre jazz aerobatics, "Ixodus" lets its free spirited sense of playfulness take over completely. Flip sides and here's "Marble Book" unbolts the spacious pads and whirling alien riffs as a sturdy sub-bass and gut-churning kicks beat time onto further estranged
dimensions.
A slightly more muscular but thoroughly sensuous workout, "Bustin Out" fuses classical two-step-indebted breaks with lascivious "P-Funk" tropes into one compelling club heater, before the EP's sluggish closer "Illustrate My Way" sends us into orbit for good with its slowed down romanticism and otherworldly piano fantasy.
DJ Lily returns to LILIES this August with the label's sixth release, featuring a collaboration with label partner Sailor Juul and remixes from Inhalt der Nacht and The Mountain Range.
DJ Lily launched the LILIES imprint in 2018 as a Techno focused sub-label of his BROR imprint and has since gone on to release five 12" releases of material from himself, Svagila, Sandra Mosh and Jor-El. Here the label continues with more material from Lily and introduces the debut collaborative material with Sailor Juul, who has now joined ship to run both Bror and Lilies alongside DJ Lily, the fellow Swedish artist features on the lead track here while more productions from the pair will follow soon on the label later this year.
"Bequem ft. Sailor Juul" leads, a high-octane 140BPM cut driven by menacing bass pulsations, dynamic drums, tension building resonance and murky vocal chants. Lebendig label boss and Monnom Black artist Inhalt der Nacht delivers his twist on "Bequem ft. Sailor Juul" next, bringing crunchy percussion, distorted synth sequences and airy pads into focus for a typically upfront workout from the Berlin-based artist.
DJ Lily's solo track "Safeword Tegnell" opens the flip side, fusing bubbling percussion, bumpy drums and 8-bit synth chimes throughout. Christoffer Berg returns under his The Mountain Range (Aniara Recordings) guise next to complete the package, the artist who is part of Robyn's band and was the synth programmer for Depeche Mode on the album Delta machine amongst other things delivers a truly unique take on "Safeword Tegnell", amusingly described by a friend as "Scooter meets Dopplereffekt at Tresor". Berg twists the original elements with psychedelic sound design, ever unfolding drum patterns and a mind-altering feel across its six-minute duration.
Following a string of bag-on-site releases on leading 140 labels White Peach, Pearly Whites and his own No More Mailouts, Sir Hiss debuts on K-LONE’s label Wych with a pair of fresh 140 anthems. WYCH004 sees his signature sound on full display and at its best: all driving subs, skittish beats and N64-indebted earworm melodies. The record closes with a hyper-melodic K-LONE remix.
Appearing on Echovolt for the very first time, Vancouver-based producer Wolfey offers up a four-track excursion that draws direct inspiration from the often-rainy climate of his sleepy home city.
"Powell St. Blues" E.P. is a dance record of rare emotional depth that sees the Canadian bring out an impressive amount of warmth and soul from the machines he uses to make music. Drawing inspiration from early house and techno producers out of Chicago, NY and Detroit, Wolfey likes to work with a small selection of synthesizers, drum machines and outboard effects processors - only using the computer to record, edit and mix-down long multi-track takes and improvised jams. The resultant tracks bristle with vivid detail and texture while evoking distinctly hypnotic and alluring atmospheres.
Side A opener “Powell St. Blues” is a bittersweet melancholic chunk of deep house with spacey chords and subtle acid style motifs slowly undulating over dusty drum machine rhythms. Wolfey’s deep and emotive electro influences come to the fore on “No Fun City”, where tech-jazz style electric piano motifs, bleeping lead lines and dubby rhythmic delays dance around a tactile 808 groove. On languid B-side opener “Overcast”, aural storm clouds gather menacingly above a moody bassline and the crunchiest of machine rhythms. S.M.P (Slim Media Player) guests on the EP’s lusciously loved-up conclusion, “Southlands Transmission”, where morphing synth arpeggios, rich sunrise-ready chords and swinging skittering hi-hats recall the pitter-patter of rain on the windows of Wolfey’s Vancouver studio. It’s a fitting conclusion to an atmospheric, mood-enhancing EP.
After his debut album for Discrepant (Papillon, 2013) and a couple of tapes for Dinzu Artefacts (Aqueducts, 2017) and Sucata tapes (Cercueill Flottant, 2019) Papillon aka Gonçalo F. Cardoso returns to the wax treatment for one last hurrah into the depths of tropical disquiet.
Taking liberties from Henri Charriere’s book sequel of the same name, Banco, the audio reader here dives straight up/down into a world of random dream logic. The same themes of Nightmare vs paradisiac dreams are present here yet with more nuance than the first volume. The adventure here is more subdued, less spiritual as most of it is lived outdoors, free from the states shackles of abuse. A lighter tone then, for what will probably be the last Papillon adventure. As with the first volume the album counts with contributions from fellow label artists, Mike Cooper, Cédric Stevens, David Daan and Yannick Dauby all feature in a way or another, raw or cooked into a boiling pot of irreverence.
All tracks were composed and edited by Gonçalo F Cardoso in the island of La Gomera, Lisbon and London between 2017-2019.
Composed & Performed by Gonçalo F. Cardoso with guest appearances by Mike Cooper, Yannick Dauby, David Naan and Cedric Stevens*
Special vinyl one time pressing to 300 copies
Mastered by Rashad Becker
The Danish label/imprint arbitrary announces the release of Framework 3 (arbitrary11) by Mads Emil Nielsen. Framework 3 is the latest instalment in Nielsen’s sequence of graphic scores and recordings. The series includes the Danish composer’s own subjective translations of visual materials and sound pieces accompanied by visual notations.
On this release he collaborates with Katja Gretzinger and Nicola Ratti. Published as a limited edition art print folder, Framework 3 consists of risographed scores and recordings on 10” vinyl and CD – with recordings by Nielsen, along with graphic scores by Gretzinger and contributions by Ratti.
Raised in a family of architects Nielsen has for several years been occupied with the question of “how do you intuitively sonify an image?” along with the complementary processes of translating sounds and music into illustrations and scores. In early 2019, he produced various drawings and sound pieces which formed the starting point for the three tracks on this 10” vinyl EP. The audio is derived from synthesizer recordings and basic electronic sound sources (sine waves, feedback, noise) and percussive loops combined with recordings made in the studios at EMS (Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm).
The audio material was translated by graphic designer Katja Gretzinger into a series of visual notations made while listening to the music. Gretzinger developed various symbols, forms and structures, such as points, bars, 3D balls, irregular patterns / “swarms” and regular patterns (vertical hatchings). These were combined with found image materials and cut-outs from old prints and layered with large geometric forms, which define the individual character of each of the three parts. The resulting 18-page graphic score is included in the release in the form of risograph printed sheets.
Nielsen then invited musician Nicola Ratti, who is also trained as an architect, to create sonic re-interpretations of the graphic score. Ratti reinterpreted the imagery as a selection of sound elements positioned in a three-dimensional area; which he visualized as the space between the composer / artist, Ratti himself and the loudspeakers. These recordings are included on the CD.
1, 2, 3 written & produced by Mads Emil Nielsen, Copenhagen / Berlin, 2019 / 2020 (reworked and combined with a live recording from Standards, Milan, September 2019). Recording by + thanks to URSSS. CD: 1, 2, 3 written & produced by Nicola Ratti, Milan, 2020.
Scores by Katja Gretzinger. Artwork/design (packaging, discs, text) by Mads Emil Nielsen.
A four track, vinyl only EP, that falls into an unspecified subgenre of techno with hypnotic and atmospheric influences, complete with a cinematic touch. Side A is slow and atmospheric, while side B is dancefloor oriented and focused on building ideas/themes using the track structure. The highlight of the EP is ”Never Relax”, which is a track inspired by the struggle of producing music in residential areas.
Two high grade tracks by one of Grime’s greatest producers D.O.K. 06 is Grime at its purest; gliding synths, weird bleeps and a heavy bassline whilst the flip Look Uno continues on the Coolie Joyride path. Relentless beats, a heavy sub and catchy samples. Perfect. Out on the 19th of July on marbled purple vinyl
A powerful 2 sider from the mighty Little Beaver right here! Both sides simply oozing that Florida Funk feeling, outstanding!
Another stone cold authorised repress courtesy of those TK folks, this 1977 jammer opens with the sublime instrumental 'We Three' - some serious Disco flavour, one for the late night action. 'Listen to my heartbeat' is the flipside, another wicked storming dancefloor cut, this time with the main man himself pleading for that special lady to come and find him and make an honest man out of him. Brilliant. They don't make records like this anymore - for real. This one's been repressed with the og CAT label artwork, and it looks great too. An all-round quality reissue of yet another rarity from the world of Funk. Essential.
Released with love and respect by: Above Board and TK Disco, Miami FL. 2020.
- A1: Miami - Chicken Yellow
- A2: The Sunshine Band - Black Water Gold
- A3: Freedom - Get Up And Dance
- B1: Joe Thomas - Polarizer
- B2: Herman Kelly & Life - Dance To The Drummer's Beat
- C1: T-Connection - Groove To Get Down
- C2: George Mccrae - I Get Lifted
- C3: Queen Samantha - Take A Chance
- D1: Ralph Macdonald - Jam On The Groove
- D2: Blowfly - Rapp Dirty
Presenting a collection of stone-cold classic breakbeats and b-boy jams from the sunkissed vaults of Miami's legendary TK Disco label!
NYC in the late 70's and early 80's saw a nascent street subculture fully evolve, a movement with it's own language, art, aesthetics, dances, fashion and way of living.
What would become what is now globally known as 'hip-hop' was in its infancy, with it's own legends and history being forged on an almost daily basis across the city's Black and Hispanic neighbourhoods. Music was central to hip-hop, the DJ was king and at the hands of people like Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Grandmaster Flowers, Mean Gene, Jazzy Jay, Afrika Bambaataa, Charlie Chase and numerous other groundbreaking DJ's of the era, music took on a whole new meaning that would reverberate through popular culture for the rest of time.
The breaks - minute sections or breakdowns of a record where we get to the unadulterated groove and the band on the record cut loose - is what it was all about! Unlike the discotheque DJ's who favoured the long mixes and blends in their club scenarios, hip-hop DJ's were amassing huge collections of records that had these magical sections on them, often x 2 copies of each, so that they could elongate the best part of the record ad infinitum by cutting them up live - all killer no filler! These special on the fly mixes and edits were then unleashed in the local parks of their neighbourhoods, on gargantuan DIY sound systems for all of their friends and neighbours to party on down until the wee small hours. These breakbeat segments also gave the MC's space to address the gathered masses without their voices colliding with lavish string arrangements or vocals underneath. A clear, concise, stripped back slab of funk on which to put forth their ideas, feelings and rhymes for all to enjoy.
Collected here are some of those most infamous breakbeats, all from the TK vaults. These records were studied by these young DJ's, coveted, covered up, hunted down, whispered about in darkened corners by those who needed and obsessed over the freshest of beats. There's a good chance you will have heard these records in some form or another as they have been covered, sampled, recreated and spun in clubs across the galaxy for over 4 decades. These are the very building blocks upon which popular culture and club music have been built, and here they are all in one place for your listening enjoyment!
Released with love and respect by: Above Board and TK Disco, Miami FL. 2020.
For Farsight, California’s bucolic San Geronimo Valley was the space that allowed for the creation of this handpicked selection of artistic output. Following a period of deep interest in abstract painting and its relationship to music, the artist found this lush and sparsely populated region to be an ideal location for contemplation and composition.
Although the majority of the work was executed in the first two months of 2020 in this forested setting, some of the pieces were based upon drafts created as early as Summer 2017. United in their eclecticism, the six cuts that comprise “Not Here, But Somewhere'' reveal a broad spectrum of musical influences. They are statements in an age in which influence is omni-directional, and in which the pace of artistic invention outstrips the ability of observers to identify and reify sub-genres. Although each track presents a unique approach, “Cadena,” “Sans Titre,” and “Door to the River'' reflect the continuing global suffusion of Latin American and Carribean styles such as reggaeton and dancehall. Simultaneously, the duo of “While” and “Hot Half” suggest the ongoing dialogue of techno, electro, and industrial music and the interstices between them. “Mid-Winter Burning Sun”
invokes the intensity of American trap music with its booming bass while touching equally upon the feel of early dubstep.
Ultimately, the idea that there is a “space for each artist” can be taken both in a literal sense— One’s physical environment— And also in the figurative sense that there is room enough for the ideas of all artists, who are kindred spirits in the endeavor of radical self-expression. In this way, “Not Here, But Somewhere” exists as an acknowledgement and gesture of goodwill towards every artist daring enough to explore the unknown.
HIGHLIGHTS First ever reissue of "Kabwlú", a very hard-to-find album released by Discos Fuentes in 1965. The mysterious Los Picapiedra (which translates as The Flintstones, inspired by the 1960s American cartoon show), was a short-lived studio group with one albumto their name, "Kabwlú", mixing 'folkloric' and 'modern' elements with calculated 'caveman' humor. It is very musically diverse; not only are there the requisite genres that could be found on similar Colombian teenage-oriented groups' records of the time, such as cumbia, gaita, rock, twist and pachanga, but there is also a smattering of surf, doo-wop, Latin jazz, guajira, ska, and calypso. But what makes the whole thing so special is the odd, off-kilter arrangements, spooky tunings, rudimentary clanging percussion, invented 'cave' language, prominent twanging electric guitar and many zany sound effects. Several of Los Picapiedra's songs became very popular in Colombia as well as Venezuela and especially in the 'rebajada' (slowed down) version as played by the 'sonidero' sound system DJs in Mexico, such as "La Hossa". Presented in its original artwork and pressed on 180g vinyl. Part of Vampisoul's reissue series of classic Fuentes LPs. DESCRIPTION While Discos Fuentes was known for recording all sorts of interesting sounds from traditional folkloric Colombian music to the latest popular international styles, every once and a while they would put out a "novelty" record, perhaps to exploit a passing fad, and at times the label would green-light something strange or even outlandish. Many of those left-field releases have their merits and have subsequently become collectors' items over the years. One such case is the mysterious Los Picapiedra (which translates as The Flintstones, no doubt inspired by the 1960s American sitcom cartoon show), a short-lived studio group with one album to their name, "Kabwlú" (an unpronounceable, invented "caveman" term that is also untranslatable, but seems to have been the 'traditional rhythm' of Los Picapiedra's 'homeland'). What is interesting about the record is that it is very musically diverse; not only are there the requisite genres that could be found on similar Colombian teenage-oriented groups' records of the time, such as cumbia, gaita, rock, twist and pachanga, but there is also a smattering of surf, doo-wop, Latin jazz, guajira, ska, and calypso. But what makes the whole thing so special is the odd, off-kilter arrangements, spooky tunings, rudimentary clanging percussion, invented 'cave' language, prominent twanging electric guitar and many zany sound effects. Much like its namesake American cartoon The Flintstones, "Kabwlú" trades in creative anachronism, mixing 'folkloric' and 'modern' elements with calculated 'caveman' humor that works on many different levels. For instance the title tune seems to have been inspired by the pachanga craze and recalls the vibe of Ray Barretto's massive 1962 hit, 'El Watusi', but it has a certain joyful simplicity and rock-solid underpinning that elevates it beyond mere novelty or exploitation - and argues for its timely reissue for today's audience. The band was a studio invention that had no major significance in Medellin's live music activity. However, several of Los Picapiedra's songs were very popular in Colombia as well as Venezuela and especially in the 'rebajada' (slowed down) version as played by the 'sonidero' sound system DJs in Mexico, such as "La Hossa". Pablo E Yglesias (aka DJ Bongohead, Peace & Rhythm) Additional research by Luis Daniel Vega
Affûté broadens the scope of its sound once more by adding Amandra to the roster. The young artist delivers two tracks made of his signature sound: mechanical rhythms and repetitive melodies.
French comrade AWB's remix is a distinctive and clever remodel cut of Ruban Rouge, further deepening the emotion of the track. Edit Select brings a darker, haunting touch to Tour Karin with his modus operandi akin to Amandra's: a slow, subtle and detailed progression.
Teo Drean gives Tour Karin more horsepower, coupling a heavy kick with wondrous choir sounds.
TWR72 opens the EP with 'Ultraviolet', an energetic, club-like cut based in a closed and looped rhythm, with a vibrant, minimalist and industrial vision. The sequencing of his bass - giving him futuristic feelings - and the subtle sound of bells adds attraction to a cut intended to blow up the toughest dance floors.
What Alderaan proposes with 'Lino' is an insider techno journey, introspective by nature, textured and exciting. From a dystopian environment and in loop, all of it has one main idea: moving and touching the listener's mind.
Tuber through 'Second Choice' bets on a predominantly techno cut, as floor-friendly as abstract. Here is a sign of his love for the anabolic and the fierce and for that mentaloid touch that sometimes becomes schizoid.
Albert Van Abbe closes the EP with 'Inguma One', a cut that is an extract from the 'Broken Cymbals' set he recorded for Semantica. It's a dub passage in which he uses granular synthesis to create deep and icy atmospheres, giving rise to complex and escapist textures.
ALTER is proud to present ‘Tendrils’, the first LP release from London based artist & musician Malvern Brume. After gathering some hushed praise from the UK underground for a couple of excellent cassette releases and strong local live performances, ‘Tendrils’ is the first definitive document of the Malvern Brume sound world. His instrumentation and sound sources would be considered familiar staples in the world of “experimental” music, but Salter does an admirable job of making them his own. Comprised of 8 pieces, this is electronic music at its core but a kind that sounds as if it’s being played through fog. Like spores growing on a damp surface. Densely composed and thick with an almost asphyxiating atmosphere - even during the record’s more minimal moments - track titles like ‘Caught In The Exhaust Trails’ and ‘Sunk Into Plastics’ only heighten the tone further.
Salter was originally born in the countryside and since relocated to London, a place he finds “over stimulating in every sense”. Much of ‘Tendrils’ could be taken as a response to the city and a means of equating the two. Camberwell is listed as the location for composition, but field recordings are attributed to rural landmarks. The Rollright Stones on the Oxfordshire / Warwickshire border and Seven Sisters Cliffs by the English Channel are two in case, but despite their picturesque origins Salter renders them into abstract clatter. As if dubbed from the private tape archive of an old eccentric. In addition, synthesised electronic tones hum and buzz, occasionally giving away to strange, slurring sequences that sound like lost transmissions from the radiophonic workshop. Despite the nod to this electronic music institution, it’s lacking the sincere level of esteem that can turn one into a heritage act. There is a strangeness and distant other worldliness to the music that feels unselfconscious and keeps Malvern Brume from being easy to define by contemporary terms.
Salter says the album is defined by movement and the environments that have inspired him over the years. In his own words, “each of these tracks is inspired by a journey or moving through a space, not in a wishy-washy cosmic sense but more as a practical A to B.” With that in mind, ‘Tendrils’ is perfect music for solitary inner-city marshland walks and urban bike rides to forgotten local suburbs.
The far west has long been known as hollowed ground for Dub Reflective arts, from the birth of Reggae and subsequent Jamaican diaspora to the more recently developments that ultimately informed Dubstep. Many key figures have emerged on the left coast of the USA throughout these developments in Culture and Roots-centric Dubstep, with key among them being the surfacing of LoDubs, and its rise near the advent of the sound in 2006 serving to inform and cement Dub's true DNA at a time when the field of those carrying the torch throughout the region could be counted on a single hand.
Keplrr returns to Control Freak with ‘Reconstructed Club’ - a collection of high-definition techno with a meticulous focus on sound design, careful arrangement, and a painstaking attention to
detail.
A-Side ‘Esoteric Functions’ is a screw-face roller full of anxious, rising pads, driving percussion
and an insistent sub rumble. On the flip, 'Convection' continues down the wormhole with a
propulsive, hypnotic low-end throb & trickling, dissonant arpeggios. Finally, the chugging triplet
groove of ‘Bods Realm' rounds off the journey with hair-raising whispers and warped, dubby
textures.
’Reconstructed Club’ is a call to an extraterrestrial dance floor, a catapult through the vortex -
strap in for the ride.
Philadelphian multi-instrumentalist, producer and engineer SWARVY makes his solo debut on Kamaal Williams's imprint Black Focus with a stunning new EP entitled ‘Sunny Days Blue’, his first release as
the primary vocalist.
Smoked-out sound beds and lofi guitars sit gently with SWARVY’s voice, creating a juxtaposition of melancholic, yet sweet, melodies that loop in your mind’s ear long after the record stops spinning.
‘Bones’ opens with a stripped back rhythm section and existential observations referencing the human condition of overthinking, a recurring theme throughout the EP. ‘Cool’, ‘No Compute’ and ‘Smile’
subtly infuse jazz, funk and hip hop elements, while ‘New Moon’ plays out as a low slung hypnotic hymn echoing gracefully into the record’s closer ‘Ginger’ - a meditative ambient spiritual for solo piano.
Since relocating to Los Angeles in 2015, SWARVY produced a variety of records via DJ House Shoes’ Street Corner Music, Leaving Records and Fresh Selects. His writing and engineering credits extend to dozens of tracks by artists such as Maxo, Earl Sweatshirt, Nia Andrews, Mndsgn, Liv.e and the late, legendary Tony Allen.
Green vinyl includes digital download card.
Eric D. Clark
"Written in approximately 1996 or shortly thereafter & born of a night out on the town naturally!
...having been to hear Ranga Tikki (Ms. Codi from New Zealand) drop knowledge in Berlin's SO36: she'd
played the "I have a dream" speech orated by Martin Luther King;
...the mind stopped at "From every Mountain Top"! I walked back through the streets shouting that to myself
until entering the flat then started immediately on the song!
Written and produced: ERiC D. ClARk
publisher: SUBCURRENT Music lTd.
Hans Nieswandt:
Between 1996 and 2000 (and in some cases beyond), Cologne project Whirlpool Productions produced a lot
of music, both as a group and as solo artists, at the legendary Can Studio in Weilerswist, a small town about
20 kilometres south of Cologne. Much of this music has been released, most notable the international
classic „From: Disco To:Disco“; but some of the music never saw the light of day. These two tracks I
produced myself at some point shortly after my first solo album „Lazer Muzik“ and I’m super glad to get a
chance to finally release them - because there is the important cause of helping to save the Paloma Bar, a
place where I played times and always loved it - an experience I dearly hope to repeat many times more.
And because I always liked those two tracks a lot, they just never found their proper platform, for whatever
reasons. As I think they are quite fitting to the sound of the Paloma, I’m more than happy to support this
unique place with this humble contribution. Written and produced by Hans Nieswandt around 20 years ago
at Can Studio, Weilerswist. Original date unknown.
Lowtec & Marvin Dash:
"Es gibt ein paar Lieblingsclubs in Deutschland, kleine Clubs wie z.B. Paloma in Berlin oder Pudel in HH -
wo es nur um die pure Liebe zur Musik geht - wo keine Kompromisse eingegangen werden müssen in
Bezug auf Trackauswahl oder zu deepen Sets, weil das Publikum einfach versteht worum es geht.
Sozusagen das verlängerte Wohnzimmer... Bei gefühlt jeder 2. Platte fragt jemand nach einer Track ID, alle
paar Minuten bringt jemand etwas zu trinken...das wollen wir unterstützen." (Lowtec & Marvin Dash)
Marvin Dash – Lost in the Woods: Written and produced by Ronald Reuter in around 2010. Previously
unreleased.
Lowtec – Museum Of Natural History Of Life: Written & produced by Jens Kuhn, 2000. Previously
unreleased.
The founder of Modern Obscure Music (MOM) presents this release which culminates a creative process that has led him to work during years with labels as respect- ed as Hivern Discs of John Talabot to Mathematics Recordings of Hieroglyphic Being.
Pedro Vian surprises us with a an album that is impossible to categorize into a single musical style. This LP guides its audience through musical scenes typically attributed to the artist, with atmopheric tracks like Pandora or Paradiso (available on the digital version). But it also travels through abstract, sonic labyrinths in songs like Maia or Nine is Nine, accentuates the rhythm with techno tracks such as Le Fou, Invisible Objects or Indian Strings, and even submerges us into the depths of pop with 801 Nite, where Pedro Vian collaborates with the young and talented singer of Mourn (Captured Tracks/USA) Carla Pe´rez Vas. Another cut that resonates is the influence of the Cocteau Twins.
Beautiful Things You Left Us For Memories is the most mature work signed by Pedro Vian, where he clearly manifests all of his influences and distances himself from the introspection prominent in his last EP’s, where he collaborated with artists like Inga Copeland from the Hype Williams Duet, or Pye Corner Audio. This is a bold move forward on an international trajectory that has received robust recognition from specialized, international critics.The new project will be published through a digital version with twelve originals; and through a reduced vinyl version where photographers Adria Can~ameras, artist Irene Royo and graphic designer Marc Monguilod have collaborated, and audio engineer Josh Bonati has mastered the sound. This is a kaleido- scopic work, adamantly supported by artists like Gold Panda, Laurel Halo, Barnt, bRUNA, and the north-american producer Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear) among others
- A1: Save Yourself First
- A2: Not In Love
- A3: Slowdiving (Feat Lossapardo)
- A4: Hundred Fifty Roses
- A5: Your Fruit (Feat Gracy Hopkins)
- A6: Flowers & Honey (Interlude)
- B1: Invisible (Feat Aurelie Saada)
- B2: Pointless (Feat Ichon)
- B3: Polterguest
- B4: Vicious Cycle (Feat Gracy Hopkins)
- B5: Ps (Feat Swing & Ph Trigano)
- B6: The One
- B7: Ten Years
Duñe and Crayon have been working together for a few years now. Crayon, discovered by Kitsuné is a close relative of FKJ and Kartell. Duñe, on the other hand, has evolved with the duo Saje.
It was within the Roche Musique family that they met and naturally started working on a joint-EP in 2016, soberly entitled Duñe x Crayon. Both self-taught producers, Crayon and Duñe, former inhabitants of Parisian suburbs located at opposite positions, yet quickly found each other.
For their first album, they lock themselves in their studio day and night, until they choke. It would take them several years - interspersed with a few solo projects - for the two artists to give birth to Hundred Fifty Roses. An album through which they expose themselves, both in production and in writing but also in interpretation. On rhythms sometimes inspired by Anglo-Saxon sensuality, but with a production that is indie enough to infuse more warmth. A groove with a soft pop feel to which Thomas Clairice, former bass player of HER, also contributes. To accompany Duñe, bright voices were invited on six of the album's thirteen tracks : We hear French singer and rapper Ichon‘s velvet voice (whom Crayon also produces) on "Pointless"; Gracy Hopkins brings his soul on "Your fruit". Ph Trigano - another artist who produces Ichon - participates in "PS" along with Swing.
Lossapardo - with whom Crayon had already recorded on his solo projects - close the album with "Slowdiving". On the English side, we discover Jadu Heart, a duet signed on Anchor Point, Mura Masa's label, giving the replica on "Invisible". More than perfection, Hundred Fifty Roses resolutely seeks emotion. The album is the musical result of an open discussion in an intimate context, halfway between the live experience and the digital exercise.
'Resonate,' Lettuce's seventh studio album, is a sonic continuation of the acclaimed sextet's 2019 GRAMMY Award-nominated album 'Elevate,' which earned Lettuce their first collective nomination in the category of Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. The new, critically-acclaimed 11-track collection, featuring the singles "House of Lett," "Checker Wrecker" featuring DC go-go music legends Big Tony Fisher of Trouble Funk and Tyrone"Jungle Boogie" Williams of Rare Essence, and "NDUGU," plays like a master class in funk sub-genres. On 'Resonate,' Lettuce continue to be celebrated boundary-pushing innovators nearly three decades into their lauded career, blurring the lines and smashing it up with jazz chords, psychedelic passages, big horns, strains of soul and go-go, hip-hop elements and a joyful, uplifting improvisational sound all their own.
Runden is a collaboration by Martin Brugger (bass) and Simon Popp (drums), both of contemporary Jazz quintet Fazer, and neo-classical pianist Carlos Cipa. Their debut LP is a conceptual record reflecting on Minimal Music, Afrobeat, and Dub Techno of the late 90s/early 2000s.
While Cipa's solo works build on clear harmonies, for the recordings of Runden he prepared the piano to make it sound like a faintly tonal percussion instrument and his mechanical patterns contrast the syncopated drum grooves of Popp and the deep and sparse basslines of Brugger.
The musicians explore, over the course of seven tracks, the concept of circular music. Each piece is based on a four-bar-motif played in a loop and varied subtly but steadily over time, creating a sense of eternal recurrence and timelessness.
This makes Runden a meditative but demanding record, that only grows with every listen.
Horse Meat Disco unveil the latest preview of their forthcoming album ‘Love & Dancing’ with ‘Message To The People’, featuring one of the main co-artists on the LP, Amy Douglas, alongside soul trio Dames Brown. A record that started as an adaptation of the Shirley Caesar original, recorded in the studio with the Dames; Horse Meat Disco and Luke Solomon then headed to Amy’s native Brooklyn, where she wrote her verses sat at the piano for this sublime disco jam. This 12” delivery features remixes from some of the genre’s most revered artists, each turning their hand at this labour of love. Up first, unrefuted master of the edit Danny Krivit delivers a blissful, club-friendly extended version, making full use of the longer playtime with an elegant, journey-like mix. The Key-A-Pella follows, an essential DJ tool that allows Amy and Dames Brown’s vocals to really shine. The funk-fuelled Michelle Mix kicks off the B-Side, an empowering, uplifting narration provided by a sample taken from none other than former First Lady Michelle Obama, inspired by Chicago legend Kelly G.’s creative sampling on his Deeper Message Groove mix, the track that closes out the release. Kelly’s mix is a soulful, grooving affair with dreamy keys you can’t help but move to.
Italian Disco remixer extraordinaire Moplen is back at the controls with a super sublime reworking of a wonderful and rare early 80's Leroy Burgess jam from the Salsoul vaults. 'Heartbreaker' is an underground classic, seeing Burgess back in the studio with longtime collaborator Sonny T. Davenport and Kiss FM mastermixer and producer Shep Pettibone on mixing duties. A tight and flawless early 80's production sensibility and the incredible vocal arrangements and lyrical performance of Leroy Burgess make this one a definite essential in any DJ's box. This is the real deal. If you dig that post-Disco electronic sound this one is for you, simply perfect in every way and quite tough to track down these days in its original form with copies reaching high figures on the second hand market. Needless to say, Moplen injects his own personal style into his remix and adds his unique flair creating an essential new version of this classic on the B-side. Always understanding, respectful and fresh, Moplen pumps 'Heartbreaker' in all the best ways, crafting a drum and bass heavy DJ version and new arrangement that you will be hearing for many years to come! Disco bliss.
This remix and reissue is 100% supported by Leroy Burgess, who dug Moplen's new vision of this 1983 classic. Fully licensed, sanctioned and released by Above Board distribution and Salsoul Records, 2020. Accept no imitations!
2020 Re-issue of Keith Kenniff's debut album under his Helios moniker. Originally only released on CD in 2004 via Miami based Merck Records, this album of hazy ambient electronica is now presented as a vinyl edition for the first time.
AllMusic Review by Joshua Glazer:
"Those who mistake ambient music for an endless tapestry of unwavering atmosphere, pleasant yet indistinguishable, should be handed as an argument to the contrary this album by a recent signee to Merck's rapidly expanding roster. Through 13 tracks of inarguably pretty music, Keith Kenniff displays the musical equivalent of a genius screen actor, able to send a million moods and messages with the most subtle of facial gestures. The opening pair of songs, "Velius" and "Cullin Hill," point to a blissful treat which sits on just the right side of new age symmetry (particularly given the former's live glistening piano treatment). But only eight beats into "Nine Black Alps," the sensation is irreversibly altered by a single, mournful bass note which rumbles like Hades against the bucolic tone that lead up to it. Unshackled, Kenniff continues to roam, drifting into circular beats on "Two Mark" before wandering off into weightless asphyxiation on "Samsara." He even allows for the organic sound of faint acoustic guitar and piano to join his endless travels, giving a moment of real world clarity at the eye of this hallucinogenic work. Few could get away with a singular ghostly voice transmission without implying a stretch for ideas, but by the time he reaches the song, "Suns That Circling Go," Kenniff is so recognized as an explorer that you cannot be surprised by where he may arrive next."
































































































































































