Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

"Escapism" is the second album produced by Piotr Rajski also known as Pepe.. Once again, he offered us music that is hard to close in one genre and is best described by the artist himself:
At the time of creating this album, the world was absolutely dominated by the pandemic turning our lives upside down. Writing new music has became a way to escape from disturbing reality.

According to Paweł Bartnik who also mixed and mastered my first album "Afterimages", the second one is more colourful and vivid. I think he described well the idea I had in mind while recording the new tracks. I wanted them to stay in that dreamy tone which can't be referred to only one genre.

The record was pressed on 180g vinyl.

Limited version was made in 100 copies - each vinyl record has a different splatter color! "Very Limited Surprise Edition"

I found "Escapism" a great opportunity to combine my UK inspirations ("Vanity Fair", "WQRWY") and rap fascinations from Money Sex Records or Tartelet Records ("Realizm Magiczny"). While working on the album my biggest inspirations were i.a. Madlib, D'Angelo, Samiyam, Ras G, Jai Paul and Overmono.
I'm extremely happy I could create some of the songs with such talented people as Moo Latte, Kasia Siepka from Byty, Paulina Przybysz, Immortal Onion, Baasch and Wuja HZG. Everyone's unique personality enriched the sound and compositions on the album.

The cover was designed by Beata Śliwińska "Barrakuz" and it's based on the summer photo taken by Kuba Olachowski. It's worth mentioning that it was created using analog collage technique.

And where did the title come from?
The songs on the album are for me the way to escape from the pandemic and explore new musical areas. I just wanted to forget about all the laws, quarantines and restrictions. Imagination turned out to be the perfect cure for this.

Cafe OTO is a concert venue operating in Dalston, East London, specialising in various strains of avant-music: free jazz, song, electronics etc...



OTO have been professionally recording various shows on and off since the venue opened in 2008. Their plan is to start releasing some of these recordings in vinyl editions.



Available in a deluxe vinyl edition '...The Worse the Better' is a recording of the stunning first set performed by the trio of Peter Brötzmann, Steve Noble and John Edwards at Cafe OTO in January 2010 during Brötzmann's first residency at the venue. It was also the first time this trio had played together.



The concert was recorded at Cafe OTO by Shane Browne and mastered by Andrea (LUPO) Lubich at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. The 180g vinyl edition comes with two colour silk-screened artwork by Peter Brötzmann printed on acid-free archival card stock and the vinyl is housed in a two colour 300gsm OTO-roku stock inner sleeve.

(2022 Repress)

Tense, at times eerie Sci Fi Electro from Melbourne's Tx on his Debut EP. Being fascinated with the exploration of space and new landscapes, he dedicates the second Save The Books release to the Cassini research mission around Saturn and her moons. Unsuccessful scans for life, the final descent of the probe and an imagined journey through the warm salt water sea under the ice surface of the moon Enceladus are the themes of the three tunes and we can feel it. (We're afraid, Dave.)

2002-2022, that’s 20 years of Pingipung! The German record label celebrates its anniversary with exclusive tracks by a fine selection of artists from the label roster as well as new names. Instead of looking back at the classics, Pingipung chose to compile a kaleidoscopic preview of possible future directions for the label. The line-up features playfully melancholic songs by Museum Of No Art, Peter Power or The Notwist, an excursion to the desert by RVDS or a psychedelic take on Dub in Tolouse Low Trax’ remix for the Ainu singer Umeko Ando. Artists such as Anadol, Y Bülbül, MD Pallavi & Andi Otto, M.RUX, Sven Kacirek, Schlammpeitziger, Peter Presto and F.S.Blumm are already well known to the Pingipung audience. They contribute exclusive new tracks, adding to their existing output on the label.

It’s impossible to file this compilation under a genre, which is exactly the case with Pingipung in general - bull’s eye. The collection of tracks is pressed in the perfect format to match the Pingipung jubilee: A 2x10’’ vinyl in a gatefold sleeve.

When IANNIS XENAKIS (1922-2001), who had fought against the occupation as part of the communist Resistance, moved to Paris in 1947 it was the start of a highly creative and impressive career. XENAKIS not only studied composition with MESSIAEN and became one of the most innovative composers of the 20thcentury, he also worked as assistant to LE CORBUSIER and realized a.o. the Philips Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Brussels 1958. His compositions often are based on mathematical principles (in 1966 he founded the CEMAMu - Centre d'Etudes de Mathematique et Automatique Musicales), which give his music an unprecedented aesthetic and "shocking otherness" (The Guardian). The most famous works of XENAKIS, who won the Polar Music Prize (considered the unofficial Nobel Prize for music) in 1999, are his compositions for orchestra Metastasis, Pithoprakta and Terretektorh (where the 88 musicians are spread within the audience) and the electroacoustic compositions Persepolis (to be re-released later on as part of the PERIHEL series), Concret PH, Bohor and La Legende d'Eer where XENAKIS integrated his stochastic synthesis sounds for the first time. As legendary as this piece itself is the impenetrable thicket of versions and stories around La Legende d'Eer - it exists in different releases, wrong sample rates, digitized backwards ..., this now is a new version, using the 8-track-version that XENAKIS himself presented at Darmstädter Ferienkurse in august 1978. As the automatic spatialization is lost, this became the only original version of this composition and is presented here (mixed down to stereo by MARTIN WURMNEST who tried to preserve the spatial movements as perceptible as possible - mastered by RASHAD BECKER at D&M) for the very first time. La Legende d'Eer not only became a milestone of electroacoustic music but is also an important reference for noise and industrial musicians up to the present day!

Third 12inch four tracker on Dubcore by Istari Lasterfahrer. This was supposed to dive deep into rub-a-dub basslines and comes out with a wide selection of styles. `A Way She Want` kicks in with dancehall selection breaks and ping-pong percussions. `Brain Tuning` follows a more rave stabbing path. `Keep It Real` stomping up juke and jungle riddims in a trance mantra and `Fuck The Computer` ends up the plate with some 150 bpm hardcore jungle.

Tokyo-based producer Omar Santis returns for his 3rd Karakul EP following on from releases on Dionysian Mysteries and Envelope Audio.
'Thursday Night Funktion' is the 6th release on the imprint and really embodies the ethos of Karakul, soulful deep house workouts designed for the dance floor.
The EP is dedicated to his Tokyo club night 'Funktion'; a cultural party that's held every Thursday at one of the world's top ten small clubs, Oath in Shibuya.
Their events have caught the attention of Tokyo's local community and their international guests by its unique branding and "mature but wild" party atmosphere.

The EP starts on a high with the groovy sample heavy disco/house jam 'Nira'. Vocal chops and guitar licks build and culminate until a massive string section releases a second rush of energy taking the track to even higher ground.
The follow up 'Sakura Blossom' is the deepest cut of the release with washed out pads and bleeps cascading while a hypnotic bass keeps the track grooving.
Iron Curtis adds his personal touch and ups the energy on his remix of 'Cameo Appearance', adding a breakbeat, ethereal melodies and vocal snippets floating atop a plucky bass line.
Ending the release on a blissful note 'SpaceColorPalette' is a flurry of melodic synths and muffled percussion that swirl around over the top of a solid kick and bass groove.

Concrete Castle Dubs return with a double sided 10” rocket launcher from the legend that is Spikey Tee. Two heavy hitters on that ruffnek drum and bass tip, Badder Than Me and Bumbo Ras, coming on a frosted clear 10” vinyl.

Having been involved in the music industry since the early 90’s Spikey Tee is certainly no stranger to the game, not only on a production tip but vocally too. From being signed to Virgin as part of the groundbreaking crew The Sindecut, releasing and featuring on music with the likes of Bomb The Bass, Roots Manuva, Morcheeba, Sola Rosa, Mr Scruff, Jah Wobble and many more, releasing his own solo album on Tokyo Dawn in 2020, and bossing the decks as a dj around the globe too.

We’re very proud to have him deliver two sterling tracks for the label and bring the fire we like to represent neatly!

Acid Jazz presents the long-awaited reissue of The Aloof’s cult classic final LP ‘This Constant Chase For Thrills’.

 Formed in 1990, The Aloof were a pioneering electronic act, playing and touring with the likes of Massive Attack and Leftfield. After three albums with the Warner EastWest, they forged their own path, releasing ‘This Constant Chase For Thrills’ on their own Screaming Target label.

 Despite highlights ‘Doing It For Money’ and ‘Painted Face’, as well as ‘So Good’, which featured in the US version of ‘Queer As Folk’, the album didn’t get the coverage it deserved upon release.

 Within a dark and moody atmosphere, there is definite Ibiza and Balearic feel to the record, showing a band with a positive DIY spirit.

Reissue

Red Vinyl
The opening EP, in this frankly amazing series or remixes, is just pure fire! Each remix EP comes in a lovely colored vinyl…The Hyper-On Experience remix of TNO’s Xenotransplantation is a lesson on how to do a remix: take the best bits, amplify them, & add some secret sauce! Then we have a Kniteforce Radio favourite, Paul Bradley with his track Nobody Else remixed by KF’s very own Beeno. It is a raw, powerful & unashamedly banging version of the original. We have another headline level remix from Boykz & Chapman. They remixed Wislov’s My Mind In Your Eyes into a proper Boykz & Chapman classic, with the original proper early hardcore sound. Rounding out Volume 1 we have the husband & wife duo of Sunny and Deck Hussy remixing one of the tracks that brought Knitebreed back to life, The Timespan’s Lovely Piano Song. A perfect fit of remixer and track!

Club / DJ Support
Jay Cunning, Billy Bunter, the Fat Controller, Liquid, Hyper On Experience, Glowkid, Slipmatt, Dj Jedi, Dj Luna-C, Dj Brisk, Paul Bradley, Jimni Cricket, Bustin, Jimmy J, Doughboy, Lowercase, Dave Skywalker, Ponder and many others

Green Vinyl

Here we have the third instalment of the highly anticipated Knitebreed Remixes series on clear green vinyl. Following on from volumes 1 and 2, we have yet another amazing remix EP. Our headliner this time is none other than NRG, remixing an Ant To Be classic. NRG has a sound all his own and he really expresses that with this remix. Heavy chopped vocals and sharp as a knife breaks throughout, that leave you in no doubt that this is professional at the height of his powers. Meanwhile, Paul Bradley remixes Knitebreeds very own Sunny & Deck Hussy taking their piano based track and adding some filthy stabs and toughening up the breaks. On the flip side, Tenerife meets Germany when Wislov remixes TNO Project. These 2 have very different styles, but Wislov’s style really fits the manic style of TNO and this remix is wonderful. Rounding out this EP is a Hired Gun & Lowercase remix of a Wislov track, Do You Wanna Stay. The original is a very atmospheric track so when it was time to remix the only way to do it justice was to make it jungle, Hired Gun provided that perfectly whilst The Lowercase pushed him to go harder and then bring it back with a piano

Club / DJ Support
Jay Cunning, Billy Bunter, the Fat Controller, Liquid, Hyper On Experience, Glowkid, Slipmatt, Dj Jedi, Dj Luna-C, Dj Brisk, Paul Bradley, Jimni Cricket, Bustin, Jimmy J, Doughboy, Lowercase, Dave Skywalker, Ponder and many others

Orange Vinyl

Rounding out this first round of what we have been calling the Breemixes, we have an absolute stormer of an EP. Worldwide Epidemik is a producer of amazing early style rave so there really was only one person we could think of to remix him and that was a legend in the scene Ron Wells. Ron has been around since the start and produced & engineered under many names such as Jack Smooth and Fast Floor, whilst being one of the pioneers of the jungle techno sound. Next up we have the man behind Cantina Cuts, Dj Jedi, remixing Wislov’s Rave In The Bunker. The original is like an early 1992 track but Jedi has turned all the dials up to the max and result is a late 1992 style track! Finally, we have Sunny & Deck Hussy’s Dreamin’ the Ant To Be remix. Ant took the massively popular piano breakbeat track and slowed it down into a beautiful atmospheric slice of 93, walking the line of light and dark to perfection, something akin to his Film Noir styled EP, Cinematography from a couple of years ago.

'Symmetry Systems' is the new LP by Dennis Huddleston AKA 36. Inspired by Warp's 'Artificial Intelligence' releases from the early 90's, it's a melodic, synthesiser-driven record, with a wink to the past and a nod towards the future.

"I have a deep love for those early Warp albums, particularly the Artificial Intelligence compilations. It was a wonderful time for UK electronic music. That beautiful, warm machine sound, with an optimistic (if somewhat naive) vision for the future. I found the whole thing incredibly inspiring and wanted to revisit those memories, albeit with a 36 twist"

Like 'Wave Variations' before it, this record explores various approaches to the theme, with each track directly inspiring the next one. All tracks are sequenced in the order they were made. 'Symmetry Systems' is a collection of hypnotic machine music, made with a delicate human touch.

Three slices of unashamedly old skool (two) stepping action from the Above Sound label and 2Step2 (squared) aka DJ Ruby and Jo Public, that'll transport you back to the Sunday scene and UKG's earliest days. On this EP's lead track 'Give Me Some Of That' the duo perfectly catch that intersection between rave elements - the wispy, eerie synths and pitch shifted vocals - and the sophisticated shuffle of American garage. 'Drop The Bass (2022 Remaster)' leans slightly more towards the hardcore flavour, its choppier beats more evocative of the inspired syncopations of breakstep,, while 'What's Gonna Happen' is the trippiest and most optimistic sounding of the three while still packing plenty of rhythmic punch.

Electro Spanish label Mars Frequency Records celebrates 10 years of life with a limited edition vinyl with new tracks from previously released artists: Mike Ash (United Kingdom), Robert Cosmic (Spain), Downrocks (Spain), Enigmatic Astronaut (Spain) and Fleck Esc (Japan).

Stretch and Enjoy returns to the AKO Arcade Series with two soulful jungle grooves.

Share your dub is a groove that rolls and then the amen drops with edits and deep subs but doesn't lose that soulful element and keeps moving on the dance floor.

Hold On is a soulful jungle banger that just rolls and rolls which takes you on a journey with sweet vocals, melodic pads, rolling breaks, and deep bass lines. One for the movers and groovers.

Quandary is a work of electronic music that wants to balance between opposites - nature and technology, human agency and artificial thinking, ritual and machinery. That’s how quandaries emerge, as an impossible choice between two extremes. But music isn’t binary thinking and allows the exploration of obscure connections. Underground, a growing mycelium intersects and communicates with a fiber optic backbone: on the surface, the curtains open, and the quandary may begin to dissolve.

Produced in Berlin between 2019 and 2021, the album originates from open jams, which were then deconstructed through heavy editing - and finally recomposed, sometimes challenging the original spirit.

Bob Meanza's oblique approach to music production encompasses the creative textures of guitarist Alex Baboian, and is enriched by the vocal appearances of Bianca Guitton. A small orchestra of three that already implies roots in Germany, Italy, USA, Armenia and France - each musician carrying him/herself the «quandary» of having at least two homes. But again, this unexpected network can bring precious fruits to the surface.

Dark Purple Vinyl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lasse Marhaug is one of those characters that operates at the nexus of so much stuff that’s important to us here - working as a producer (over the last couple of years alone he’s helped shape albums by Jenny Hval, Kelly Lee Owens, Okkyung Lee, Hillary Woods etc etc), a mastering engineer (far too many releases to mention), a prolific sleeve designer (likewise), publisher (his occasional Personal Best magazine is still going strong) and, perhaps most importantly - a recording artist in his own right. ‘Context’ is his most substantial release in years - a crushing assembly of bone-dry/darkside drone/machine malfunctions that’s bursting with a visceral, throbbing, mass of feeling. If yr into anything on the spectrum from Mika Vainio to Grouper to Kevin Drumm or Deathprod - this one’s as good as it gets

Over almost three decades of activity, Marhaug has carved out notoriety as a solo performer, a prolific collaborator (working with everyone from Sunn O))) to Jim O'Rourke) and as a busy producer, who's notched up credits on some of the most striking-sounding albums of the last few years. This new album was created as a swan song for the infamous Oslo studio that he's inhabited for 17 years, prior to his move back to the Arctic Circle where he originally came from. Recorded over a 14-month period and painstakingly edited from hours upon hours of material, it might just be the most impressive, moving record we’ve heard from him so far.

The interplay between piercing softness and deafening noise is the key to "Context", displaying a philosophy Marhaug has been exploring for years. Few other artists are able to balance chaos and harmony with such ease; Marhaug does it without grandstanding, it's music that sounds as simultaneously beautiful and as daunting as the Arctic landscape he's returning to. At any moment a sound can be alluring or treacherous, like the frozen sun reflecting on a snowy mountaintop. Marhaug's deftness with rhythm and bass emerges on 'Context 3', as he pairs Vainio-esque low-end pulses with crumpled noise and widescreen tones; as disquieting music-box chimes absorbed into the blasted soundscape on 'Context 5', while we're thrust into the freezing cold on 'Context 6', subjected to punctuating gusts of white noise and trapped string loops.

Trust it’s a rare and near-mythical beast, conjuring vast, treacherous soundscapes illuminated with pangs of sentiment that naturally weave strands of his non-musical practice in their psychosensual lustre and gritty attrition. As he steps into a new phase of his career, we're left with a concluding chapter that stands as a summation and open-ended post-credits reveal.

The Idealist is one of the many projects of Joachim Nordwall who has a long history in Swedish experimental music running the quintessential iDEAL Recordings record label since 1998, as a member of the psych-drone duo Alvars Orkester, avant punk rock trio Kid Commando and ritual drone rock group The Skull Defekts and through his many solo recordings and collaborations with people such as John Duncan, Aaron Dilloway, Mika Vainio, Mats Gustafsson, Leif Elggren, Gabi Losoncy, Mark Wastell and Christine Abdelour.
As The Idealist, he has been delving into an amalgam of experimental techno, dub and industrial music since 2006. His new A Lion Is A Lion And Not A Lamb continues this perspective unabatedly, conjuring up six tracks that shimmer with an almost psychotropic intensity, sometimes including acidic touches, dwelling in a confrontational minimalist musical stance where repetition, bursts of gorgeous noise and dubbed out skeletal rhythms make for wayward yet driving grooves at home on the dance floor and a set of headphones alike. The Idealist looks for engagement within rhythm, in its almost purest
form.

Back at it, the PXWHITE series returns with another round of electro re-works. This time giving Ludacris & Mariah the PXWHITE treatment alongside a glitched out remix from Planet Euphorique s D.Tiffany!

Featuring Artists Pugilist, Caldera, Dawn Razor, Lithe & Imitation Therapy, Harrta and Barley. Branch Points first V/A is a exploration into functional leftfield club sonics. BPA003 is pressed on 140g 12" sustainably using recycled vinyl.

The new album by the Peruvian-born / Berlin-based experimental artist Ale Hop was conceived in a context of immobility and provides six sonic vignettes that wonder about location, circularity, rootedness and experience. In collaboration with Ana Quiroga,
Concepcion Huerta, Daniela Huerta, Elsa M'balla, Felicity Magan, Fil Uno, Ignacio Briceño, KMRU, Manongo Mujica, Moises Horta, Nicole L'huillier, Raul Jardín, Sukitoa Onamau, Tomas Tello.

Following her explorations on music's inherent fixation to geographic space and time, be it through the longing of home ("Apophenia" 2019) or scientific magnification of invisible worlds ("The Life of Insects" 2020), Berlin-based Peruvian-born experimental composer Ale Hop's fourth album, "Why Is It They Say a City Like Any City?", was conceived in a context of immobility. During the lockdown
months, she started a process of remote collaboration, by sending messages, posted from various cities along a South American trip, to thirteen musicians from around the world. She journaled her impressions upon these places to an intimate fictional character while reflecting on matters of time,
sound, space, cosmology and colonial memory. The thirteen musicians dialogued with this voice by taking upon the challenge of responding to the messages with sound collaborations.
Field recordings, mouth drumming, drone cellos, electronic loops, arrhythmic rhythms and voices came back from this experiment. Ale assembled them, by layering, twisting and turning, into sonic vignettes that wonder about location, circularity, rootedness and experience, making it the first time she's set her guitar aside. Expect no answers to the album's title question, but an innermost psychedelic rumination.
"Despite the technological resources that appear to dilute distances, the simulation of closeness mirrored on the digital space is an emptied body, a state of precarity, a flat surface; unable to withhold an experience of exchange," Ale states. "So, I began this project by asking myself, how can we escape from the reduced experience of the virtual? The idea behind this experiment was that my messages and the places they describe could drive the composition, be a catalyzer, a
score. Thus, to use geography as a tool to remember and imagine, to allow new soundscapes to emerge."
"Memory, diffuse and divergent, sometimes reaches out to the future in its search for form, taking shape from the reflections and echoes that come back … like throwing a rock in a pond and having a rock thrown back at you."

Amaretto is one of the new breed of old skool artist, hailing from Japan. He is a producer who loves his old skool rave music, and he has been producing for a while now. This is his first EP on Second Drop and his second vinyl release. As the title of the EP would suggest this EP is two very different sides of the same coin. The A side is the lighter side with pianos and vocals, while avoiding the cheese factory for a fat slice! Then the flip walks the dark line with film samples and a much grittier vibe, whilst still having superb production on the heavy beats. You can hear the dark style hardcore influences here, those that sampled the likes of Predator and other such films back in the day.

Club / DJ Support
Jay Cunning, Billy Bunter, the Fat Controller, Liquid, Hyper On Experience, Glowkid, Slipmatt, Dj Jedi, Dj Luna-C, Dj Brisk, Paul Bradley, Jimni Cricket, Bustin, Jimmy J, Doughboy, Lowercase, Dave Skywalker, Ponder and many others

A world in flux; temporal and metaphysical realities questioned. The unit - us and self - entering a new phase. With two dark, discordant EP's of eccentric and kinetic music - the aim is connections conceived. Avidya is experience, seeing the ignorance and understanding in one.

002 starts with Aphonia, L.A. based producer and sound designer Matia Simovich's new solo (ad)venture. As part of Inhalt (Dark Entries / Emotional Especial), he pushes new wave and dark synth-pop for the future. Exploring rhythmic, long forms of ritual, Burning Fields' jacking schematics were conceived of and from the severity of the California wildfires.

Industrial, metallic, lo-fi Angels Of Pompeii are a by-product of Montreal's Italian diaspora, an assemblage of Matt D'Alessio (Temple Records) and Anthony Gallati (Solitary Dancer), who pay homage to the motherland's electronic pioneers like Kirlian Camera and Victrola. Moscow's sons, Odopt (Discos Capablanca / Hivern Discs) explore cavernous, virulent techno and soporific atmospherics and tonality in Athma. Finally, St Petersburg's Linja offers Retreat, a brooding aura of slo-mo-proto trance to wrap within the first essence of Avidya's crown.

It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still love it.

In response to the current political and ecological turmoil, the famous Malian quintet BKO appeals to the magical spirit of the djinn with Djine Bora (the appearance of the genie). An explosive and mystical third album, embodied by a music of resistance, the fruit of their unique experimentation with Mandingo music and their extraordinary history

The three letters B.K.O. are the code for Bamako airport. It is in the Malian capital that the group has been rehearsing since 2012. In the same year that Mali declared a state of emergency, no one could have imagined that these musicians would be responsible for three albums and over 450 concerts in 25 different countries. BKO fights, does not fail, unifies and looks like no one else.

In this album, the band delivers an abrasive music where tradition is tinged with rock, polyphonies, distortions and shrill breaks. They invoke ancestral spiritualities by marrying for the first time in Mali
two diametrically opposed traditions.

In the course of the ten tracks of Djine Bora, BKO propels the traditions within a powerful and hybrid universe, just like Bamako. In this bewitching atmosphere, crackling concrete and ritual ceremonies
meet. The group has released one of its most accomplished albums, tinged with trance, enigmatic melodies (Ntiaro's Peulh prayer) and unifying messages (Maya, Bamako, Toumaro).

Repress !

Dream team collaboration from 2 of the finest Drum & Bass artists in the scene.

Christopher 'Lav' Landin is a master of ambient sounds but it's been a while since we heard from him after 2017's collab with Purl on A Strangely Isolated Place. A New Landscape is a fresh album on Past Inside The Present that comes on limited and transparent orange vinyl. Contained within are a beguiling bunch of tunes with soul stirring pads, gently propulsive rhythms and gorgeous sound designs that call to mind various different references from deepest space to a warm spring day. It is an accomplished album design for mental escape.

For Richie Culver and Pavel Milyakov to call their first collaborative project A Change of Nothing is a gesture both wryly paradoxical and unflinchingly diagnostic. The EP marks in sound and spoken word a soul-searching response to periods of extreme transition, an intricate and melancholy reflection on just how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. In Culver’s case this preoccupation is something that has long been a source of inspiration for the artist. In his infamous visual works autobiographical vignettes of outsider observations and junkie proverbs are scrawled and sprayed across canvas, fleeting and fraught glimpses of a difficult past. The hard fought journey from battling drug abuse, alcoholism and homelessness to family life, sobriety and making art for a living has always been the backbone of Culver’s work and the same applies to his recent excursions into music. “Like my paintings, some of which take 10 seconds, 20 seconds, it's taken 40 years of experience to be able to do these things. I wanted to bring that concept into making music,” he explains. “I feel like I've got a language that's coming together.”

The same visceral immediacy of his paintings crackles through DID U CUM YET / I’M NOT GONNA CUM, his debut collaborative project with kindred spirit Blackhaine, as well as in Post Traumatic Fantasy, a singular assemblage of modulated speech and spirallic DIY electronics for Superpang. A Change of Nothing introduces a new perspective with Milyakov, also known for his work as Buttechno. “Pavel is someone that I’ve been watching and listening to for years,” explains Culver. “I wanted to keep the project in that pocket, it was a natural progression for my sound.” Starting life as a series of sketches, Culver reached out to Milyakov with the project, and it was the music’s continuity with Culver’s visual art that resonated with the producer. “When I pick artists to collaborate with it's always about experiencing the same feeling but with different approaches,” says Milyakov. “When he sent me the audio recordings, they reflected the same attitude. You can hear the same kind of phrases, it’s the same language that he uses in his paintings.” Running Culver’s initial recordings through a series of bespoke and borrowed Max/MSP patches, Milyakov crafts a dense and evocative soundstage for Culver’s blood letting, rendering decades of pent up anxiety, paranoia and depression in tense oscillation and restless granular pulse.

For Milyakov, too, A Change of Nothing arrives at a time of severe disruption and abrupt transition. Forced in the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to abandon his home and studio in Moscow to relocate with his Ukrainian wife, Milyakov spent the following months travelling through Europe. “A lot of crises have happened in my eyes,” he explains. “I saw the tanks that hit the White House in Moscow when I was a kid. I lived through the nineties, which was the darkest period. I had always wanted to leave Russia, but the start of the war made my stay there completely impossible. I condemn the Russian war against Ukraine and I stand against the Russian regime and its imperialistic colonial ambitions towards Ukraine and other neighbouring countries.” Describing his experience living in Russia as “dark and gloomy from the start,” Milyakov channels trauma past and present into A Change of Nothing, a weary lament and defiant transmission in the face of continued adversity. Orchestral swells of noise and cavernous reverb situate Culver’s doom-laden intonation, cold pockets of ambience and void drones, like a horror OST sounding deep within a sea cave, the occasional clank of processed percussion echoing off damp stone.

This eeriness is occasionally dispersed with moments of illumination; a short burst of aquatic surf guitar warble, a low ebb of industrial whir broken by a sequence of crystalline synth smashes, iron lung bass throbs pierced by granulated high-end, chains dragged over concrete, each presenting a fleeting flash of something resembling hope amidst darkness. Swinging from desolate resignation to a narcotic detachment disguising crippling uncertainty, Culver draws from a deep well of pain without romanticising the process, communicating rawness without wrath, struggle without shame. Devastating snapshots of oil rigs in the bleak North sea, the unchanged bedroom of a dead son and hitting rock bottom yet continuing to dig ring out across this uncertain sonic terrain. Yet, while never shying away from dwelling in utter despair, both artists allow themselves to excavate an escape, to make space for forward progression. Culver promises a change of season and a change of clothes, demonstrating a dogged will to survive. Milyakov builds to cathartic washes of powdered glass noise and transcendent cacophony, finding release through amplification. Both paradox and diagnosis, A Change of Nothing reveals how far both artists have come while remaining able, at least in part, to stay the same.

A Change of Nothing will be released on July 29th, 2021 by Participant, on limited edition chrome cassette tape, and digital download via the Participant Bandcamp. The release will be accompanied by a film directed by multimedia artist Max Kreis.

All proceeds from A Change of Nothing will be donated to Livyj Bereh, a volunteer group from Kyiv working across multiple regions in Ukraine to supply food to those displaced and to repair buildings destroyed by Russian bombardment.

Text by: Henry Bruce Jones

Participant is a record label and creative studio run by filmmaker William Markarian-Martin and conceptual artist Richie Culver

Turn up the volume and look how time bends before your eyes because that is what Robyn Schulkowsky and Andi and Hannes Teichmann do with their music. They bend time.
They make a ring out of it or some sort of ellipse, and then they pull it straight again, they transform it into a rope, and then, of course, they balance on it, forwards, backwards, half speed,
double speed, 33 rounds per minute, or was it 45? Just try both.

World percussion meets Techno and Berlin club culture, one might be tempted to say. One would be wrong to do so. This is not just crossover, this is just not an "encounter" between different generations, different experiences, different cultures, traditions and attitudes and form asossations of expressions, or, to put it in a more simple way, an "encounter" between drums and gongs and bells and stones and on the other side hardware-electronic and sequencing, delay and reverb. This is far more complex.No need to put a label on it.
by Roland Schimmelpfennig / excerpt

Tras una larga espera, ya tenemos aquí Gente Seria Viste Chándal Volumen 2. Un disco

que, como el anterior, se ha gestado entre Iruña y Barcelona.

Este vvaa cuenta con los siguientes artistas: Honexters con un electro un tanto experimental. Vema Diodes con su contundencia de siempre, afilando melodias. Carlos Sicrock, electro espacial y melódico. Korrupted Brothers north bass atemporal, reconstruyendo el tema Computah Life de Dark Vektor. Gravedad Cinética con su electro casi místico y Robert Cosmic en el lado más pistero del puro electro, el hit chandalero que todos cantaremos este verano.


El disco ha sido elaborado con total seriedad y como en la anterior edición, rebosa calidad.

Ranging from sanguine emotional clarity to distortion and unrest, Wow Sailor voyages through sunlight and storms in this mindful and explorative album. Happy Fear is an intricate tapestry of emotional experience, where fear and joy clash heads in the pursuit of self-understanding. Scattered field recordings of literature, ambiance and chance encounters provide atmospheric depth to enrich a resonant and meditative soundscape.

This tale begins with fond yet powerful nostalgia, before segueing into a range of hybrid instrumental explorations in which guitar, voice, violin, and trumpet blossom alongside refined electronic foundations. The album closes off with indulgent melancholia reminiscent of the opening, providing lifelike circularity to the album.

All songs remain connected; one leading into another without pause or silence. This urges the listener to digest the work in a single sitting as elements of the story seem intrinsically connected.

The first half is studded with gems of atmospheric conversation and recordings, providing a living and textured environment for the crafted synthetic sounds of Wow Sailor to evolve. Most songs are free from percussive structures, but In Her Gaze breaks the mold with clear percussive dictate. The middle and latter titles are connected by ominous frequencies that err on the darker side of curiosity - encouraging exploration into the transformative power of fear.

All in all, the work glimmers with spontaneity and diversity that resembles real-life experience. Carefully crafted sonic interplays bare semblance to the fluctuating emotional life of the ever sensitive and sentient human being.

Dugnad Rec sits at the helm of yet another wonderfully creative and philosophical work. This release gives verity to the artistic integrity, sound design, and mental exploration of the label. Wow Sailor’s work radiates an enticing, authentic, and indelible mark of individuality.

zake & Wayne Robert Thomas come together to serve up a thoughtful and healing deep dive into "what it means to continue living life in the face of loss and uncertainty." Their album is one of great depth emotional and full of subtle struggles that we can all relate to. 'To Those Who Dwelt in a Land of Deep Darkness' was first put out as a 10" lathe but now gets pressed dup properly to 12" vinyl with three extra tracks taken from the original recording sessions. They say the best art comes out of adversity and that is certainly true here.

On "C.H.R.O.N.O.S", their 3rd album on KARL, AROVANE and PORYA HATAMI deliver five delicate ambient pieces, rich in textures and zen-like atmospheres. Available as 180gr LP and DL.

After "Organism" (2017) and the musique concrete influenced "Organism_evolution" (2018) UWE ZAHN alias AROVANE and PORYA HATAMI continue their sonic explorations with "C.H.R.O.N.O.S.", the fifth collaborational album by the German electronic producer and the Iranian sound artist. While the duo's last album was a collection of 23 mostly short tracks, each an acribic examination of sounds that treated by techniques like modular synthesis, granular synthesis, spectral processing, granular synthesis, resynthesis and resonator / modal synthesis, ""C.H.R.O.N.O.S." consists of five longer compositions that focus on creating a contemplative, zen-like atmosphere of subtle beauty. Rich in details, carefully sound-designed, AROVANE and PORYA HATAMI prove once more their top notch skills when it's about creating state of the art contemporary ambient.

all sounds written and produced by AROVANE + PORYA HATAMI
mastered + cut by MIKE GRINSER at D&M, Berlin
cover sculpture by MICHAEL HITSCHOLD

Repress


* Spearhead Records label boss Steve BCee returns with his 4th studio album, and it's safe to say that it's his best one yet. Not just a solo affair, BCee has also drafted in some of the finest vocal and production talent around. With features from two time best d&b vocalist winner Riya and d&b legend Logistics being just the start.

* 'Northpoint' is BCee at his most diverse. From the early 90's hardocre influenced 'Keep Moving On' to the Jungle roots of 'Hollow Eyes' this is an album that really showcases how broad the D&B spectrum can be while still keeping to the Spearhead ethos of being uplifting musical d&b packed full of heart & soul. BCee said 'I wanted to make an album packed full of d&b that would work in a club just as well as it would in the car. No fillers, no showcasing how I can produce house or hip-hop or whatever, just pure no nonsense drum & bass'.

* With BCee's Spearhead Presents brand regularly selling out shows at clubs like the legendary Egg in Kings Cross & Shoreditch's Village Underground, plus his growing DJ & production schedule and 'The Vanguard Project' his alias as a duo with fellow d&b produced Villem, it's safe to say that even though BCee has been in the game for 16 years, he's only just getting started.

* Support from Friction, Mistajam, Metrik, Technimatic, S.P.Y, Nu:Tone, Logistics, London Elektricity and a whole load more...

A Colourful Storm presents Enteha, the latest piece by Elodie, the duo of Andrew Chalk and Timo van Luijk.

Chalk and van Luijk embody a free-spirited approach to music making whose improvisational process can be traced to a distinct period of Europe's post-industrial landscape. More than two decades of ambitious solo and collaborative work would solidify both Chalk and van Luijk as masterful craftsmen exploring the tension between composition and free improvisation: their individual lists of collaborators boasts Christoph Heemann, Giancarlo Toniutti, David Jackman and Colin Potter, to name but a few.

A figment of two imaginations, Elodie appeared in 2011 almost fully formed with each record patiently revealing glimpses into a world concerned with time dilation, the phantasmagoric and spirits of the everyday. Enteha is one of the duo's more melancholic pieces and can be seen as a human response to seasonal transition. It's one of their uniquely longform explorations of mood and atmosphere as an air of romance drifts deftly into mystery and despair. The delicate hues of autumnal haze. The deceptive optimism of morning light. A work of supremely understated beauty that will appeal to anyone who finds solace in Harmonia, Gas, Joanna