Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

Album composed, recorded and mixed by Elko Blijweert. Mastered & cut by Frédéric Altstadt. Original cover artwork painted by Joe Brockerhoff. Album pressed on 180g vinyl, in an edition of 500 copies.

Here we add a new classic chapter to tradition. A tradition known as the many exotic sounds of Maestro Elko B. The multi instrumentalist member of bands like ‘The Horse Head Bed’, ‘The Groovecats Deluxe’, ‘Dino And The Chicks’ and many more has once again composed a new solo album for Ekster. This fine and tasty selection of musical pieces vibrate colourful echoes ranging from blossoming fountains over casino-esque gambling. Space-cowboys play hide and seek with childlike innocence in an adult world. Many of the songs on “Realm of Rides & Romance”
have found its origin in Blijweert’s work as a composer of soundtracks for theatre, dance performance and artistic installations. Cinematic reflections providing EXO “Paradise Moods” by this multitrack one man band.

Recorded from 2017 to 2020, Elko has expressed finding inspiration in chance, the Sphinx, the casino, the Decap organ, colonialism, bats and frogs.

At night, things get a lot more unpredictable. A stranger can become a friend, you suddenly become intimate with a woman or a man who's name you will never find out, while darkness also allows you to conceal your true identity - even become someone else. Inspiration for this album emanates from the fascination towards the intensity of what nightlife has to offer ; euphoria and melancholy, spotlights or incognito, sexual contact or lonely voyeurism... Francois X entertains the listener with playful ambiguity and unsettling, yet sensual atmospheres.

On his new EP ‘Music from Organ’, producer and live musician Giulio Aldinucci offers up four tracks of layered and meticulously-crafted ambience.

In his own words: “The EP explores the interaction between the pipe organ and the sound environment, in terms of architectural space and soundscape. Every single sound of this work is created from pipe organ recordings using different techniques related to sound reflection, from granular processing to filters that “carve” the sound emulating the phonemes articulation inside the human vocal tract.”

Farron joins the EP bringing a dreamy remix. Unlike Giulio’s approach, Farron portrays a left-field dance-floor feel throughout the track with beautiful ambient pads, pulsating along a warm electronic space journey.

Mutant jungle forms, hazy glitch experiments and trance inducing downtempo collide with sharp percussion and dense low end on this latest Alter 12'. Helm's recent 'World In Action' EP for The Trilogy Tapes is reworked by a whole host of favourites including Laurel Halo and Parris who offer up two distinctly different takes on 'Blue Scene'. No Symbols boss Beneath turns his hand to title track 'World in Action' with that typically murky, deconstructed club aesthetic whilst Parisian mainstay Low Jack gets deep on the A2, his five and a half minute version of 'Candy' sounding like a cross between Nuno Canavarro and Whitehouse. Delivering what might well be the records most subdued moment, Brussels' Sky H1 slows 'After Dark' way way down with some barely there auto-tuned vocals helping to bring things into the fold.'

As Hudd Traxx approach their 15th anniversary year, Iron Curtis steps up for a mini album split in 2 parts. As a long-time label collaborator and friend, it’s no surprise that Curtis delivers his 5th and 6th EP for the label. Total Art Of Living contains straight up house jams, hints of techno, nods to broken beat, references to Detroit and a few interludes for good measure. These new cuts are further proof that Iron Curtis music has always celebrated the deepest foundations of house and all its varieties, whilst resolutely refusing to get nostalgic. Curtis’ previous 4 Hudd EPs have gone on to be classics, Total Art Of Living has all the ingredients to become a future classic too.

TERRENG - a constitution of an open-ended landscape of contrasts defining space both in time and depth. a set of structuring elements forming by its positionally interaction a common platform created through its dimensional properties.

The drums and electronics on TERRENG trade off each other at times creating a sense of improvised space, but also comes together in parts to form a narrative structure of almost concrete sensibilities. Where the instrumental identities gradually bleed into each other to form a flowing texture of sonically defined terrain.

The multi-layered structure of the two tracks presented here draws upon a well of material, sources and references. Pandi and Wesseltoft build up a detailed and idiosyncratic work by the use of their constructive material. In parts quiet and open. In other parts chocked with information and intensity. Beautiful and fractured. Chaotic and meditative. TERRENG is a highly dynamic blend of improvisation, and a narrowly constructed electro-acoustic narrative.

Balazs Pandi is a versatile drummer with an almost encyclopaedic level of experience ranging from improvised music and modern jazz, to metal, noise and experimental electronics. Here he at times performs the role of improvising drummer trading off the collaborator, and at other times creates an almost ritually constructed sense of rhythmic space perfectly embedded within the overall structure.

Jon Wesseltoft is a musician and composer with a long history of work within the often overlapping fields of improvisation, sound-art, noise and electro-acoustics. He has a longstanding interest in musical systems and its concepts of representation, and psycho-acoustics and the phenomenology of sound and its narrative power. He has explored this interest in various forms ranging from solo work to various collaborations and projects to larger ensemble work.

Always one to explore, Shipwrec have set sail and discovered a new isle of musical experimentation. Phainomena is a terrain for ambient introspection, dream-filled drone and stunning soundscapes. An old friend returns to the fold to inaugurate this venture, Julian Edwardes. Seven works of abstract immersion coalesce to create "Consonance." The Dutch artist journeys into far-flung realms and worlds, sweet silken synthlines and juddering noise being his transportation tools of choice. Off-centre echo and muted delay swirl in these audio planets. Mountains, oceans, unending skies are conjured as notes bulge, expand and disperse. Wildlife buzzes, chirps and trills in this land of sonic undulations, plants are given musical form with modulated ruffles as bleeps of cloud scud across an expanse of frequencies. An album of brilliant brightness, shifting shapes and unearthed undercurrents where expression is as ephemeral as it is eternal, a sentiment captured in Rob van Hoesel's sublime cover work.

Stephen O'Malley & Peter Rehberg's KTL find the darkest space between black metal and computer music - or presence and absence - with 'The Pyre: versions distilled to stereo'; a score for french choreographer Gisèle Vienne.

Continuing Shelter Press's on-going documentation of Gisèle Vienne's work after Stephen O'Malley's 2015 score for her 'Éternelle Idole' piece, 'The Pyre' also sees Gisèle paired with Peter Rehberg for first time since his 'Work For GV 2004-2008' album, serving to tie up their many, long-running and overlapping strands of practice into a mighty new KTL opus.

As almost anyone who's heard O'Malley & Rehberg scores for Gisele's work will surely attest, the french choreographer always brings the best out of her sonic familiars, and their work on 'The Pyre' is no exception. Some 6 years in the works, it has undergone multiple stages of processing since the initial seed recording made at IRCAM, Paris, 2012, with subsequent live stems overdubbed at Fennesz's studio, and further mixing by Randall Dunn all aiding to bring the score to life as it's own, standalone work of art.

At the service of Gisèle's choreography - a play on the existential tension between presence and absence - KTL render some of the most pellucid and unfathomable sound designs in their considerable arsenal, layering up from near infrasonic-levels of subharmonics to filigree timbral thizz and sferic reflection, in the process creating an illusion of spatial depth and dizzy scale that beautifully spins our gauges...

With no sign of slowing down Rotterdam based Fokuz Recordings present their 79th vinyl release welcoming back Lenzman, the indisputed prince of soulful drum & bass. The flipside is covered by Hertfordshire based Peer Pressure Records head honcho Facing Jinx.

Random Movement's ''I Stayed Around'' taken from his 2015 Sleazy Bitch EP on Fokuz received critical acclaim and support by the likes of Technimatic and Spectrasoul fortifying his position as the go to guy for bridging the gap between rough and smooth. With this Lenzman reinterpretation the Dutchman turns the original concept into an energetic roller leaving his signature markings all over. Already one of the essential liquid tracks of 2016!

We continue on the flip with ''Meet You There'' by Facing Jinx feat. Peta Oneir that contains more subtle touches but is easily as strong in execution. Quality sounds coming from one of drum & bass' best kept secrets. A strong addition to any liquid DJ's record bag.

Following the 360-degree drum & bass experience that is ‘Waveforms’, Logistics continues his three-part EP series, linking the sounds of past, present and future on the ‘Headspace’ EP. With seven solo albums, six EPs and several collaborative releases under his belt, Logistics is one of Hospital Records’ most prolific artists. He’s joined by the lyrical extraordinaire Inja and the vocal stylings of family mainstay Thomas Oliver. Opening this four-track EP is ‘Stay True’, a sublime dose of rolling liquid with the workings of New Zealand’s singer/songwriter Thomas Oliver. Atmospheric pads, nimble organ work and graceful harmonies come together for an elegant dose of Logistics’ drum & bass mastery. Following a path of deeper liquid is ‘Rebuild’ with its low rumbling frequencies and super sharp sonics, topped with layers of mysterious atmospherics. On a darker tangent is the title track, ‘Headspace’, rolling and hypnotic, it’s a testament of Logistics’ long-standing ability to carve out timeless, melodic grooves. Switching up the vibe is ‘Brand New Beginning’ featuring the enigmatic Inja. Setting the tone with tranquil hip-hop beats, this nod to Inja’s history outside of drum & bass transitions into an upbeat number, beaming with Inja’s trademark positivity. As one of the most renowned artists in drum & bass, Logistics’ reputation is far-reaching with regular presence across major radio airwaves with support from the likes of the BBC’s Annie Mac, Rene LaVice and Mary Anne Hobbs. He can be found at festivals and events worldwide in 2020 including a main stage set at the forthcoming London D+B takeover, Hospitality Returns To The Dock.

After the release of ‘Hello Darkness‘ in 2017, a collaboration with Dag Rosenqvist, ‘Uzonia’ is the fourth solo album of the Scotland-based composer Matthew Collings. His acclaimed 'audio-visual opera’, ‘A Requiem For Edward Snowden’, for strings, clarinet, electronics and real-time visuals was premiered to a sell-out crowd in October 2014, and has been performed at Glasgow CCA, Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Utrecht's Gaudeamus Muziekweek (NL). He’s responsible for several installations using custom-made software, which have been exhibited at Burning Man Festival in San Francisco or Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts. His work for films includes a specially commissioned live score for Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent classic, ‘The Man with the Movie Camera’ and an invitation to work on ‘The Invisibles’, a commission from Amnesty International.

Matthew about his concept and the initial ideas to write ‘Uzonia’:

‘Usonia’ with an ’s’, was a term coined by architect Frank Lloyd Wright about an ideal view of America, and of living. There is something very optimistic about the idea, not only architecturally but aesthetically, which other people have picked up on over the years. With the name ‘Uzonia’ I’m almost imagining someone appropriating the phrase for their own means; respelling and reselling it, in the same way that ideas, and facts seem fluid and up-for-grabs these days, in our post-Trump, post-Brexit landscape… the symbolism of anything can be shifted, manipulated into another idea for political or social means at any times. As a meme, as an agenda, as a pseudo-fascist icon. So the phrase sums up, for me, this balance between something utopian, and something potentially dangerous, and/or meaningless, which feels like a good analogy for the time we are living through.

The feeling running through the record is of energy, of trying to find something positive in dark times, of being confronted with vast forces, often beyond your control, surveillance, social media, climate collapse. It ends with a question mark, and has energy but also an aspect of despair; to me at least.

I generally make lists of interesting ideas, concepts and phrases which pick up from all over. I then just assign a title almost randomly from the list when a piece is coming together. I think there is more truth in this stream of loosely grouped concepts than a conscious choice of a title with a piece of music (which is always abstract for me, no matter what). Since a lot of my work and reading is focused around technology, most of these relate to this. There’s a lot of exciting things in tech these days but a lot of very scary things. There are incredible things happening these days but so many terrifying things beyond our control. It’s as if there is a terrifying cosmic balance.

Meetsysteem's debut album Geen Signaal gets a remix treatment by Prins Thomas, Levi, Ranie Ribeiro, O.C and Elkan.

Struggle Artist is the new album from Justin C. Meyers, the Minneapolis-based composer, artist, and head of the Sympathy Ltd. label.
Meyers is a unique, underappreciated talent in contemporary electronic music. His greatest strengths are twofold: his compositions have a meticulous structural logic, revealing a hermetic and austere formalism; concurrently, his compositions have a deep, introspective narrativity grounded in his lived experience, evoked with a mature clarity. Together, they make Meyers one
of the most interesting electronic musicians working with cutting-edge sonics today, unlocking their latent powers of metaphor and figuration.
Struggle Artist portrays Meyers' expectations and disappointments arising from making art in his free time. Created initially during lunch breaks and in hospital waiting rooms, and finished after being laid off from his job, it catalogues the despondency of the precarious life. If Negative Space was about the fallible body, Struggle Artist is its violent collision with late capitalism. He sets up scenarios that anticipate some musical event or flourish, only to renege on them with stark
about-faces or resolutions into dissonance. These rhetorical figures reproduce the difficulty of maintaining artistic integrity and motivation while working a day job and dealing with chronic illness..
The impression is not entirely bleak. Meyers' sound design is buoyant and luxurious with its clean edges and lush tonalities, such as in 'Draw Distance' or the 'Expectations' diptych. This is Meyers' most playful record, albeit always gesturing towards its melancholic narrative. This guarded, dark humour is alluded to in his sleeve art and track titles.

MIKE ASH'S NEW ACID TECHNO EP SOUNDS LIKE IT WAS MADE SOME TIME IN THE DISTANT PHUTURE, LONG AFTER THE FINAL HUMAN DOWNFALL BUT AT THE HANDS OF ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT ROBOTS FROM A DISTANT GALAXY ROAMING THE EARTH DESTROYING THE MEGA CITIES AND ITS INHABITANTS WITH SONIC DEATH RAYS.

We should be grateful to live in the same era as Spencer Clark, in a time when we hear that there's nothing new to be done or discovered, his musical career has shown that there are myriad worlds available to be found. Earlier this century he created a sound phantasy with Skaters and after that he pursued a new alchemy under various aliases (Charles Berlitz, Fourth World Magazine, Monopoly Child, Typhonian Highlife, etc.) and projects (like Egyptian Sports Network, Tarzana or The Temple Defectors). If in Possible Musics Jon Hassell began creating sounds for his Fourth World', Spencer has been creating possible worlds' where his music can exist in his own Fourth World'.The different aliases aren't a mode of dispersion or to create onfusion, they're setups for the different possibilities he imagines for music. Make Mine, Macaw (previously released in 2010 as a limited CDR on Pacific City label) references a large long-tailed parrot, common in Central and South America. Make Mine, Macaw is part of a trilogy about birds, Spencer's Tropical Bird Romance Audio', which also includes, Bamboo For Two (Olde English Spelling Bee, 2010) and The Garnet Toucan (Underwater Peoples Records, 2012).

A deep dive into this record makes it clear why it should be re-released. Spencer's chaotic and mysterious approach to releases, made some really hard to find or listen to due to the nature of them and how they were made available. Despite his career not being very long and that the internet has made it easier to trace most of his back catalogue, in order to understand Spencer's work some archaeology needs to be done. To better understand his own Fourth World', or his alien language music, and to expand its vivid musical colours, records like Make Mine, Macaw need to have the special treatment and attention they deserve.

Let's just say that in the field of experimental-tropical-cocktail music, no one does it like Spencer Clark, especially through his output Monopoly Child Star Searchers. Make Mine, Macaw explores the best cocktail recipes through five colourful pieces, using Clark's premium technique of blurry repetition and dreamy percussions. It's Fourth World' is one fulfilled with many dimensions that needs the attention you give to a Rubik's Cube when you play with it for the first time. After that it gets better and better. A tropical fantasy that starts in your ears, feeds your brain and changes your life. You won't know what a pacific city sound vision is until you see one. Make Mine, Macaw makes you see one clearly.

The latest Subaltern release comes from new signee and rising talent Mrshl. Hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, California, this powerful grime-influenced debut also brings British Grime star and Mike Skinner collaborator Grim Sickers along for the ride:

A - The Crown feat. Grim Sickers
EP opener ‘The Crown’ lines up to be nothing but a true anthem. Rough and tough bass-lines complement a barrage of razor-sharp bars, which Grim Sickers delivers in true UK style. Beware, strong stuff!

B1 - Death Dealer
Digging deeper on the second cut of the record, ‘Death Dealer’ fuses MRSHL’s grime influences with a meditative sound system vibe. The hypnotic riff gives space to waves of bass and detuned oneiric pads, alternating into a mind-twisting dance-floor weapon.

B2 - Endless Mirrors (Harp Riddim)
‘Endless Mirrors’, presents an intelligent and carefully constructed melodic piece. Bouncy kicks complement light harp lines and piano riffs, merging into a dreamy soundscape which takes us back to the times of Legend of Zelda.

Norman Westberg is perhaps best recognised for his truly individual approach to guitar with the band Swans. His playing with them has influenced a generation of musicians across genres.
His particular approaches to that instrument, in creating both harmony and brute force, have challenged and ultimately informed a great many players.
His new solo record, After Vacation, is his first full length to come in the wake of the final Swans outing in its current configuration. More importantly it is also the first record to see Westberg move beyond a more performative mode of single take composition.
After Vacation sees Westberg significantly expand his sonic palette. He opens up the tonal and harmonic possibilities of his instrument in unexpected and profoundly beautiful ways. His guitar, as singular source, becomes transformed through a web of outboard processes. He transforms vibrating strings completely, taking singular gesture and reshapes it through webs of delay, reverb and other treatments.
Moreover he finds a new sense of space and dimension with these recordings. After Vacation has a decidedly more topographic sense. It charts out the dark contours of places unseen but imagined. It traverses a divergent range of places in search of a ever opening compositional approach. The results are in excess of anything Westberg has created previously. His melodic capacities come to the fore; matching his distinctly personal approach to the textural qualities of his instrument.
From Norman:
"This is the first recording that was not done in my 'one take; it is what it is' method. For me, this was like jumping into the pool with a blindfold on! Due to this shift, After Vacation is something
of a collaborative record with the very capable and caring Lawrence English, acting as producer for the sessions; taking my sounds and weaving them into finished pieces. I listen to them more as stand-alone stories, rather than my usual style of bouncing conversation. The title 'After Vacation' came from the feeling that something was changing. Not that playtime was over, just that last week was fun and all, but now is a good time to move around into something more realised."

A black hole full of early UK Hardcore intensity, the minimalism of MF Doom's beatmaking and the imaginative dancehall productions of Steely & Clevie.

After several acclaimed EPs, including Risk in a New Age(Desire Records 2014), License To Desire (Desire Records 2015, reissued by Aurora Borealis recordings in 2017) andWeehawken (Clan Destine Records 2016) – Orphan Swords’ debut LP, Ascent, finally arrives. In recording the album, the duo took the radical decision to interchange their usual respective input in the creative process, which resulted in a revelatory piece of music, one that functions as an initiatory narrative summarized as follows:

Ascent is the story of an enigma vanishing into a mountain, somewhere undefined. You left your home long ago but still you endeavor to solve this mystery. At last, today you reach the highest town in the mountains, the ultimate refuge before the loftiest peak. You prepare yourself for the culmination of your search, the ascent.
As you climb, the path gets steeper and steeper, the air thinner and thinner. Exhausted and out of breath, you push on. Surrounded by clouds and ice-cold stone, through the haze of your confusion, you’re struck by the thought that the object of your obsession, the missing entity you’re driven to find, is a part of you. It was lost long ago along with every memory you had of its form and shape. Nevertheless you know for sure it’s what you seek.

Ascent is the story of that search for inner unity, through transience, emptiness, and finally, acceptance. Through profound introspection we ascend.’

Ascent is the first part of a diptych. Breach – also recorded during the same period – will follow and conclude the two-part conceptual series at a later date.

Written and produced by Pepo Galan recorded between Berlin and Malaga, mastered at Black Knoll Studio (NY) by Rafael Anton Irisarri.

* The second chapter in Petit Singe's travel through Akash Ganga comes in the form of four remixes curated by members and friends of the Haunter Records extended family. They all applied their peculiar agencies and experience to the original recordings.
* Danse Noire boss and spiritual explorer Aisha Devi combined elements from all the tracks of the album with her own production to assemble Necromedia', a powerful take on the sidereal source material. Haunter veteran Weightausend delivers a psycho-dub version of the frantic OXO', while Zuli (of VENT and UIQ fame) deconstructs the same track turning into a kind of post-human and post-colonial beat he labeled Astrogangsta'. The final track is an alteration of the album's finale 27.09.87' by Canadian experimenter Jesse Osborne-Lanthier, who let it mutate like a self-sufficent biodigital organism, opening it up for new experiences.

Philip Jeck works as a composer, multi-media artist, choreographer, but above all, he is most well-known as a turntable manipulator. At the end of '90s, he produced something which later would be considered a cult piece - his four part masterpiece Vinyl Coda.

It is probably his most important work and the peak of his art, it defines not only his musical language, but also the entire turntable culture, as well as the deconstruction of vinyl. The work is nothing less than a powerful lo-fi symphony which, through magical looping, allows the listener to hear things they otherwise wouldn't hear.

This 3 track EP comes out of the Limited E's vault called Retro Vol 2 produced by Potential Badboy. Each of these tracks represents when we started to push the boundaries of Jungle and being more experimental back in 1992.

The now long running and still essential RZONE series hits release number 18 with four more busy and bristling cuts of club focussed weaponry. 01 has huge and coarse claps and skittish drums, frazzled synth lines and a rising sense of sci-fi tension throughout. It's a blizzard of sound that is unrelenting. 02 is much less full, and instead its menace comes from a dark, gurgling bassline and razor sharp hi hats. Stomping drums drive it along and at various points things pull back to a creepy, paranoid synth line. 03 is a mix of intergalactic sonar pulses, roaming and writhing synth lines and clattering drums and perc that push and pull you in many different directions at once. It's intense and mind melting before 04 takes a step back and layers up the sound of uncontrollable machines with pained synths. It's an unusual yet tender track that sounds like little else.

Duality Research presents it's first release with the sounds of the lost african Rahsaan Nova. Taking a peek into the mind of this mysterious producer, Rahsaan explores the world of afrofuturism and delivers a fresh and diverse release on this new imprint. check!

Realistic Monk is the new performance project from Carl Stone in collaboration with artist and composer Miki Yui. Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music and has been composing electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. The Village Voice has famously hailed him as 'the king of sampling'. Miki Yui is an artist and composer who develops pieces of music, drawings and sound installations that start from a perception of the faintest sounds and noises and subtly reference existents. Realistic Monk has previously released the recording of their 2017 live performance at Caf Oto, making Realm their de facto debut album. Over the course of five pieces, they focus on small sounds, often at the edge of perception, aiming at a deeper listening and perception of their musical stance and technique. Soundscapes that play with enchantment and disenchantment, emerging out of voices, noises and field recordings and acoustic feedback, their work is as subtle as it is fearless. Realm's play with musical and other signifiers make the album into a highly relevant and even outspoken take on electronic music today.

Today Rozzma announces the ‘Khatar Sayeb’ EP, the artist’s first release for XL Recordings. He kicks off the EP release with ‘Hout’, a track that displays Rozzma’s knack for combining tribal sounds and contemporary urban/street music with a sharp, idiosyncratic flair.

Rozzma is an Egyptian sound artist inspired by the era where sound preceded music – he finds inspiration in the similarities between the wilderness of prehistoric times and modern-day chaos. Having already performed his particular strain of music across the world and at festivals like Sonar and Unsound, Rozzma releases ‘Hout’ into the digital world with an animated video created by the artist’s close friend Mahmoud Shiha.

“Hout is a celebration of beating the odds,” says Rozzma. “It’s about a specific state of mind where one finds comfort in the most extreme and unfortunate circumstances to beat the odds that one could instead fear.”

The EP’s title ‘Khatar Sayeb’ means 'loose danger’. “The release challenges the idea that danger and fear are uncontrollable circumstances,” explains Rozzma. “We cannot fully diminish fear or danger. We can only condition ourselves to believe that safety exists during the absence of fear. It is however more dangerous to deny the uncertainty of danger itself. Danger is a very broad state with infinite circumstances. But it is also infinitely uncertain and mainly linked to luck. We do not control our luck; good or bad. And it is solely luck that dictates danger and safety. It is for that reason that one’s best chances may be to condition themselves to find comfort in danger. Loose danger to be specific.”

Rozzma’s world is one of status quos being challenged, whether that be the real world, the historical world or specifically in the world of music. Rozzma won’t let you settle with what you believe. Everything deserves to be challenged.

NOTE: The tracks on the 12" are exclusive to the format not available on any digital format.

Recorded Dec 2019 - Feb 2020. Mastered Mar 2020. Published by mute song.

Used = ADDAC Systems, ALM/Busy Circuits, Cwejman, Epoc Modular, Expert Sleepers, FANCYYYYY Synthesis, flight of harmony, Make Noise, Tiptop Audio…

Coventry's most notorious export celebrates 50 years of existence with an expansive new set on Editions Mego. Spread across 2 x vinyls (LP and 12") and digital formats. Please note the 12" tracks are exclusive and do not appear on the digital release.

Having spent decades carving out his very particular niche which takes influence from a vast range of extreme music this is Russell's nostalgic nod to his influences whilst forging onwards with his perpetually unforeseen experience. Working in a variety of media over decades Haswell's belligerence towards his craft and critique of others has allowed him to operate in a zone outside of peers. As daunting as it is refreshing Haswell's output is always on the very edge of genre.

2001 saw the release of his first audio documentation with Live Salvage 1997→2000, a compact disc that compiled a series of ferocious live performances.Paradoxically precise and reckless, Haswell's music has an uneasy relationship with the predictable but acknowledges being birthed from a variety of 20th Century radical forms such as metal, noise, electro-acoustic, power electronics and techno.

Haswell's ongoing output resides as a continuously in-flux, inquisitive and predominantly improvised exploration of the extreme limits of machine based art. Haswell has never been a 'studio artist' or 'producer'.

12" channels the original role of the medium with 2 tracks of beats that present themselves in unpredictable ways. 12" also features the head shattering bonus cut, Always Check Their Instagram. LP cut at 33rpm allows explorations into broader territories with deep ambience running into twisted acid and splattered shapes bouncing amongst rapid fire rhythms,

This set is both a celebration of new forms whilst making many a sly nod to nostalgic influence throughout.

LP+12" and Digital is an unexpected experience from one of contemporary music's most ruthlessly exhilarating and uncompromising figures. Raise a glass and listen LOUD.

Gel Stations Past brings together tracks from three shadowy self-released cassettes by Russian Tsarlag: Decrepit Gas Station, Living in the Past, and Dipped in Gel. Dubbed in minimal quantities and cloistered for private worship, much of Russian Tsarlag's recent output remains hard to find. Each of these albums dispersed instantly among friends and fanatics and receded into legend.

This record consolidates the great pieces of crooner dejection that typify Tsarlag's recent music. These are his saddest and slowest-burning songs, drawn in dour guitar, sweeping keyboard, and sedated vocals that teeter well below mid-tempo. Many share a somber two-chord schema that slips in perfect doses of dissonance and distortion. The results are at once refined and totally ragged, seductive, woozy, and smeared in Tsarlag's shapely four-track atmospherics.

Debut by Julia Bu¨nnagel, Patricia Koellges and Tamara Lorenz who have a background in the visual arts. The title SPEC- TODRAMA goes back to a concept by Xanti Schawinsky, a Bauhaus artist who developed his ideas of expanding theatrical possibilities by integrating sound, light and forms as elements equal to the actors. Sculptress of Sound do alike in their mul- tifaceted performances, weaving abstract stories by means of voice, custom-made instruments, bass guitar and synths along with overhead projections, visual effects and objects. Softness meets hysteria in SOS's music: word collage, drony sounds and noisy elements form a peculiar landscape, immersing us into a feverish world where jewels seem to work as some kind of strange attractor and Andy Warhol is being deconstructed.
SPECTODRAMA comes as beautiful 180g black vinyl. Sleeve and inlay designed by the artists. Limited edition of 300.

The gun tune to end all gun tune, ‘The Guncontrolla’ is a righteous pacifist dub statement from
the Seekersinternational posse, who go about field recording a workshop on a classic firearm
disassembly and reassembly demonstration conducted by a Cold War veteran at a military surplus
shop; a practice known in the community as “field-stripping”.
Armed with a battery-operated 1987 Tascam Porta Two 4-track recorder and a Shure SM57
cardioid microphone, the SKRS dismantle the disassembly of a Colt British Service Pistol, a Glock
34 Competition Pistol, a Kalashnikov 1967 Soviet Rifle, and a Springfield M1 Garand Rifle, in a
temporal warp of dreamlike dread tension, where, crucially, not a single shot is fired.
It’s clear and fair to say the SKRS treat their subject carefully to avoid any sort of romanticisation
or fetishisation of guns or violence. Instead they carefully but ruggedly use dub’s transfigurative
techniques to turn the workshop recording into an absorbingly abstract warning shot coaxed out
of their mythical echo chamber.
Drawing on ideas of metaphysics, metallurgy, and telekinetic mysticism, the results are
fascinating, conjuring some imaginative intersection of a back yard GRM and the Black Ark,
and characters from ‘The Harder They Come’ spliced into scenes from ‘Falling Down’, fed thru
psychodelic, dematerialised concrète that intends to defuse and diffuse the curse of gun violence
with the black magick of dub musick.

Staggering volley of hyper junglist killers from Sophia Loizou on a new EP of pressurized subs, hoover and percolated vocals taking us somewhere between Lee Gamble's classic Diversions, Metalheadz Blue Note Sessions and some forward Arca x EVOL collusion. TIPPED!!!

Sophia's first release since the much acclaimed Singulacra (Kathexis, 2016), Irregular Territories provides a definitive example of Loizou's sound as it firmly asserts her music in a rarified hauntological rave headspace that meticulously explores an exploded deconstructionist style that she's developed since her 2014 debut Chrysalis.

With one foot in late '90s halcyon daze, and another toeing the future, Sophia combines a lust for the ruffneck with a sharp mind for complex structural integrity and inventive aesthetic. Synching fragmented beats with human gasps, choral synths and richly ephemeral textures, she bridges temporalities and dimensions in a way that recalls an auditory DeepDream composite formed from millions of eyes-shut moments at Metalheadz sessions.

Album opener Loop of Perception quite literally takes off like a jet engine in the rave, while Memories of Angels conjures and sustains a lump-in-throat suspense through unresolved pads and hide 'n seek breakbeat edits, before it all comes together, gelled by wide, pressurized subs in Shadow Box.

The brief vignette of hoover and percolated vocal motifs in Frozen Dust opens up the B-side like some Arca and EVOL collusion, and The Interior Life of Another feels like a jungle inception of 4Hero's Parallel Universe, leaving the poignant Morphogenesis to sum up the metaphysical flux of her sound in febrile detail

Conceptually linked to its predecessor Silent Earth from 2016, Refugium delves deeper into the same vision of a peaceful and apocalyptic utopia. Taking an intimate and introspective point of view, the album explores the quiet and in-between moments of being. Using hypnotic patterns, organic pulses and complex layered drones, Refugium is ambient music that spins around its own set up atmosphere. It evokes a pendulum of emotion and thus creates an in-between moment all by itself, a refuge, a haven.

'strange Rabbits' Is A Bittersweet Kiss To Chill-out Room Jungle And Ambient Techno By Jimmy Donadio, Using An Early Alias, Stabudown Productions, To Mark His Return To Personalised, Esoteric Electronics After Years Of Raw Bangers Under The Prostitutes Guise.
Pushed To Write Some Melodic Tracks For The Crack Of It By Powell, Jimmy Drew From His Current Record Buying Habit For Early Jungle And Ambient Techno To Produce An Unusually Affected Batch Primed For The Kind Of Back Room/chillout Room Sessions Which Used To Be Common In Clubs, And
Have Essentially Morphed Into Afterparty/domestic Rave Soundtracks Nowadays. Reacquainting Himself With The The Shine-eyed Wonder And Sensuality Of Dance Music's Beta
Stream, 'strange Rabbits' Refracts Nyc Deep House And Neuropean Electronics Via The Prism Of Early Jungle And Jimmy's Fuzzy Memory. Its Ten Trax Reveal His Tender Underbelly Like Just The Right Amount Of Mandy, Resulting A Psychedelically Sensuous And Driving Album Characteristic Of The Sincerity And Allusive Impressionism That's Long Been Key To His Work, But Rarely So Thizzingly Effusive.
Hypnotic Highlights Such As 'wizard Upholster' And 'teenage Scream Dreamer' Recall Stakker's Early Techno Prototypes, While 'new Ogre' And The Cubist-electro Of 'warm Woods' Shimmy Like Richard H. Kirk In Nyc. Yoghurt Weaving Proto-goa Trance Shares Dancing Room With The Gnostic Bleeps Of
'wizard Upholstery', And The Slow Burn Swing Of 'totally Coral Reef' And 'koln Alone' Properly Nail A Hair-kissing, Head Massage-worthy Technohippy Vibe That's Been Conspicuous By Its Absence From Contemporary Floors - Especially For Anyone Old To Remember How It Used To Be. The Deeply Charming Results Amount To The Most Diverse, Techno-spirited And Pop-friendly Work In Stabudown's Singular Catalogue, Serving To Lend A Lush New Horizon To Jimmy Donadio's Previously Furrowed Rave Outlook, And In A Way Comparable With Everyone From Nwaq And Dj Sprinkles And Not Waving.

This futuristic proto Drum & Bass was previously unavailable on Vinyl this was a single sided Dubplate from 1993 by the great DJ Tango (RIP). The master is from DAT Tape remastered by Subvert Central Mastering.

The Amorphous Androgynous return with the symphonic, 40-minute prog/space-rock concept album ‘We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal’. The album contains 5 epic parts, featuring the legendary Peter Hammill (the Van Der Graaf Generator) on vocals alongside a host of musicians including: Paul Weller (piano and guitar), Ray Fenwick (Spencer Davis Group/Ian Gillan) onlead guitar, Brian Hopper (Caravan/Soft Machine) on sax.The Chesterfield Philharmonic Choir and a 25-piece live orchestral string section round out this sumptuously-recorded album.

‘We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal’ opens with the 13-minute epic of the title track (written with Peter Hammill and Paul Weller).The themes of mortality/immortality are then musically and conceptually catapulted to the far-flung corners of the AA sonic multiverse over 40+ minutes. Channelling A Space Odyssey,the dystopian choirs and moog of ‘Hymortality’ crash full-force into the John-Bonham-like drums of ‘The Immortality Break.’Meanwhile, ‘Synthony On A Theme of Mortality’ lives up to its name, utilizing the classic 70s Yamaha CS80 synth before progressing to a female wailing aria against classic vintage guitar rock. The whole cosmic trip cascades finally into the harp daydream reverie,choir and romantic strings of ‘Physically I’m Here, Mentally Far, Far Away.’

*Repress*

Stamped, solid orange 12'' vinyl featuring a set of reworks of two of the hottest cuts out there. Absolute sickness and highly addictive. Guaranteed to get the ladies shake their tail feathers. Bound to sell like hot cakes so act quick.

Solid orange coloured vinyl with handstamped whitelabel

Nerike Primate's sixth release features A. Stantz of Peel MD and Nimam Spregleda of Helltown Acid Militia showcasing some raw, acidic electro on the A-side while Nonolith and Omnimatter take the sounds into melodic scifi territory on the flip. Limited to 100 copies!

Wælder are moving between ambient, industrial and pop. Their rhythms and soundscapes of voices, obscure samples and distorted field-recordings build spaces of barren material and soft ground, which teem and crawl - strange and harmonious. To present their music live, Wælder are mixing analogue and digital effects with guitar, synthesizers, vocals and loops. Rhythms and atmospheres blur, dissolve and re-assemble. Their live shows are often framed by visuals, generated in collaboration with various visual artists.