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Ancient Indonesian tradition meets doom rock in profoundly Ur ways on Stephen O’Malley and Senyawa’s collaborative commission for choreographer Gisèle Vienne Following a decade of creative bonds forged between theatre director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne
and doom sayer Stephen O’Malley that spans multiple soundtracks (solo and with Peter Rehberg in KTL)
and visual artworks, the pair travelled to Indonesia on a commission to explore the country’s rich culture in 2018. They immersed in a magical world of performative rituals where they encountered Wukir Suryadi, an experimental musician and instrument builder whose acclaimed releases both solo and as half of Senyawa have invigorated the avant and experimental rock scene over the past decade.
The six tracks of ’Bimi Sakti’ document groundbreaking ventures between Senyawa and O’Malley, yielding an incredibly powerful mix of electric guitar and bass guitar amp worship blended with the remarkable range of tonalities from Senyawa’s custom-built bambuwukir, plus traditional pipes and possessed vocals.
Practically without precedent in the modern musical sphere, the 44’ release speaks to a resounding mutuality and common musical philosophy between two musicians who are usually geographically separated by a hemisphere. Slow to start, but culminating in a wholly dilated musical vision, the performance effectively collapses eons of musical practice and thought into a singular yet timeless expression of beauty and anguish that transcends the sum of its parts.
Fleshing out the frequency spectrum between flighty, avian flutes and sprawling subharmonic bass riffs, they come to inhabit a thrilling mid-ground over the course of the performance as O’Malley moves up the registers to thrashing mid-range riffs while Suryadi invokes a range of demonic voices and unearthly tones from his bamboo instrument. The results come to prod the pineal like little else beyond, say, O’Malley’s Nazoranai trio with Keiji Haino and Oren Ambarchi, or the Phurpa album on his Ideologic Organ label, and we reckon should hailed among the boldest and most astonishing records of 2020.

Craigie Knowes continue their long-running War Child fundraiser series with a new 2x12" release featuring tracks from Eluize, DJ Python, Stellar OM Source, Innnershades, No Moon, The Burrell Connection and more. From ambient and downbeat through to techno and electro, the release spans the sounds that Craigie Knowes have embraced over the last 5 years. The fourth installment of the project also sees a completely new sleeve and center label design by Kyle Morrison. All profits donated to War Child UK, a charity helping children in areas of conflict around the world.

Amsterdam-based duo Wanderwelle presents their fourth full-length album titled A State Of Decrepitude. Inspired by the many aspects of impermanence and facets of decay, the duo composed their most intrinsic and detailed production yet.

After two successful albums on Silent Season and a recent collaboration album with Bandhagens Musikforening on Semantica, Phil van Dulm & Alexander Bartels have applied their talents to create a mysterious soundtrack focussed on the countless faces of deterioration. Recorded in 2018, Wanderwelle's first electroacoustic album is an anthological approach to a theme that is inseparable from our current global crises.

Quoted as a modern day classic, which has been supported by DJ Seduction, Jay Cunning, Faydz, Brent Aquasky & Billy Bunter.

‘Feel The Rush’ is the anthem here. It opens with JB breaks, big sub bass wobs and a ‘Feeeel The Ruuusssh’ vocal refrain.In come the 92 style hoovers and DJ Seduction esque stab patterns to elevate the rush to its peak. We’re off to the horses with a second injection of hoover stab business and cool beat rotations.

hree years on from their debut collaborative album “Passive Aggressive“, Jonny Nash and Suzanne Kraft return with "Knife", the lead single from their forthcoming album, “A Heart So White”.

The single comes with an exclusive bonus digital track, "Processing The Negative", which will not appear on the full album.

“A Heart So White” represents a continuation of the working philosophy adopted during the recording of their debut; immersion in an unfamiliar recording environment with a limited set of tools and the goal of exploring the possibilities that lie within these limitations.

The album was written and recorded in the Willem Twee Concertzaal, a converted synagogue in Den Bosch, Holland. Whilst “Passive Agressive” explored virtual instruments and environments, “A Heart So White” shifts the focus to acoustic instrumentation, breath, air and physical space. Using the hall’s mechanical drawer organ and Steinway piano, the pair craft a delicately balanced suite of compositions, stripping things back to reveal the bare essence of their shared musical language.

Over the last decade, Kassel Jaeger, the moniker of the Paris-based composer, writer / theorist, producer, and director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), François Bonnet, has meticulously sculpted a body of multidisciplinary work that rests at the forefront contemporary electronic and electroacoustic practice. He will release his new album ‘Swamp/Things’ on Shelter-Press.

Rigorously experimental without sacrificing the intimacies of self, his efforts as a composer and musician extend across live contexts and numerous critically heralded solo releases, as well as collaborations with Jim O’Rourke and Lucy Railton, both contributing to the record, alongside Stephen O’Malley, Stephan Mathieu, Akira Rabelais, Oren Ambarchi, and James Rushford, and others.

Deeply invested in the potential of sound as an elemental form - a root phenomenon with a profound capacity for meaning, as much as a multidimensional material for creative process and ideas – Jaeger’s work across numerous fields, be it in text, action, or sound presents a crucial bridge between the optimistic, philosophical origins of electronic and electroacoustic music, the present and where they have yet to delve.

Sound is abstract. When the source is elusive, narrative and meaning shift between the concrete and obscure. With his first solo LP with Shelter Press, Swamps/Things, Kassel Jaeger wades into this foggy, conceptual realm. From memory and metaphor - sliding fluidly through the imagistic and emotive - emerges an immersive, cavernous world that rethinks electroacoustic music on organic terms.

‘Swamps/Things’ was conceived as an opera without distinct characters or text. It draws Kassel Jaeger into his own history, experiences, and the unlikely double of the swamp, a landscape that has held literal and metaphorical sway over him since childhood. Merging 8 works as a total environment, abstaining from distinct shape or discrete articulation, across the album's breadth, sound becomes a shifting mirror for the bubbling, ordered chaos of organic life.

Resting at the junction of concept, emotion, and phenomena - tapping the multidimensional potential for narrative and meaning possessed by each - Swamps/Things encounters an artist of remarkable craft, delving toward the unknown, deploying organized sonority as object and environment, as much as action, movement, passage, and arc. Seemingly possessed by an entropy entirely its own, the temporal gives way to the poetics of space, while the density of an endlessly evolving climate, laden with cacophonous happenings, renders itself still. Flickering images of the natural world - memory and the imagined reformed as sound - present an operatic double for human action and thought. From deep, fog like banks of minimalist long tone, to industrial clamors left as tracks in the mud, or the collisions of shifting pulses, overtones, and textures - captured from across the murky, drone laden waters between the acoustic and synthetic realms - moody, howling cries and tense meditations merge in ambient sheets, capturing a fleeting image of where decomposition gives way to new growth.

A remarkably intimate and forward-thinking aural balm, bristling with complex beauty, Shelter press is overjoyed to present Kassel Jaeger’s Swamps/Things. Two immersive, intoxicating sides overflowing with humanity and ideas.

As a child, almost every Sunday, I was wandering in the countryside, and usually, I was finding myself in my favorite spot: a swamp. Air was different. Trees were dead, but not really dead. Soil was swaying of clear water, and an everlasting mist was suspended all over the place. No one was there and nothing could happen even if some animal tracks were here to prove me I was wrong.
Much later, one of my masters made always this joke about my music. He said I was composing swamps, I guess because of the lack of demonstrative musical shapes and articulations. At the same time, he was acknowledging that I was building a “climate”.
It took me then almost 30 years to understand why I was so fond of swamps. It’s because a swamp is an intermediary space of the organic becoming and the blurry space suspending the cycle of the utilities, which is the cycle of history.

Swamps/Things has been conceived as an opera. An opera without characters, without text, but not without story. The story, here, is only an arc. Because what is an opera, if not an arc? And the arc, here, is the simplest. It’s walking through the swamp. Approaching it, leaching into it, becoming it. The Swamp is us. Our own disappearance, populated by all the beasts we have turned into, by the places we have haunted, and by the time we have consumed. We are traces in an always intermediate state. Animals tracks in the sodden earth of the Swamp. — Francois Bonnet (Kassel Jaeger).

Leaders of the new generation and purveyors of dancefloor chaos Serum, Voltage and Bladerunner return to the frontline of drum & bass with their debut, self-titled album 'Kings Of The Rollers'. Whilst each have their own high-grade production style, these three royals have managed to create a sum greater than their parts, as they steamroll through all the rules to deliver an absolute bruiser of an LP. Across seventeen tracks expect up-front rollers, techy 2-step beats and pure knockout D+B
bangers, complemented with slick jazzy numbers and a wide variety of vocallead tracks. It's safe to say they've lived up to the hype with their most dynamic and diverse release to date.
Amongst the carnage highlights include 'You Got Me'. A towering tear-out beast ladened with thrashing amens and a thundering bassline that's ready to push every speaker to it's limits. Low frequency growler 'Shella' is peppered with steppy jungle nuances, with Mancunian dance music innovator Chimpo
featuring on both production and vocals for an all-round roughneck sheller. 'Round Here' is a brazen jungle prowler with Bristolian lyricist Redders at the helm for a future classic anthem.
Whilst being predominantly known for their heavyweight productions and outrageous D+B screamers, the new album also showcases a variety of different flavours. Jungle roller 'On The Run' features the smooth spoken word of Queen Rose and 'Tisno' brings a warm steppy swing, inspired by their time
spent at the very first Hospitality On The Beach.
Hospital's three kings have set the scene on fire with their electrifying DJ sets and headline festival performances. Their new 'Royal Rumble' tour takes them
all over the UK in 2019 with shows in London, Bristol, Brighton, Manchester and beyond.

Nahash lands on Shanghai’s SVBKVLT label with his debut album, a frenetic re-mapping of dembow and junglist blueprints made in the image of the label’s wild and thrilling programme, featuring a collaboration with Osheyack plus remixes from Elvin Brandhi, Gabber Modus Operandi and DJ Plead.
Following a crazy run of releases from 33EMYBW, Gooooose, Slikback & Hyph11E, GMO and others, ‘Flowers of the Revolution’ almost feels like an updated mission statement from the label; a wild and futuristic tangle of opposites inspired by the legacy of U.S. interference in South American politics, deploying a rhythmic energy that feels angry and vital.
It’s an Amen-heavy landscape disrupted by a world of incongruous sounds like some colossal babushka doll revealing layer after layer of angular and liquid rhythmic structures, from the symphonic strings and clipped gun reloads on opener ‘The Horns’ to the adrenalised dembow mutation “A Secret Christian Influence” and the more brooding sci-fi swagger on ‘Pluie Éternelle’
On the remixes, Elvin Brandhi enlists Kanja from Nyege Nyege Tapes’ soon to be unveiled Duma project for a brilliantly unhinged sci-fi jamboree that reminds us of the wildest and most exhilarating end of the DHR spectrum, Gabber Modus Operandi turn ‘A Secret Christian Influence’ into a stripped, prism-pushing KuduroXGabber fantasy, and DJ Plead provides the biggest highlight here on his closing ‘A Better Future’ refix; a widescreen, sub-heavy anthem with signature Mahraganat drums and fucking amazing sidechain pads that makes for an almost misty-eyed finale to the dance.

Nídia flashes peak time dancefloor chops on a club-ready partner 12” to her superb 2nd album.
Where the album explores slower, melodic taraxho and R&B, Nídia’s 12” is built strictly for the rave with four tracks of proper dancefloor shapes made in her own style of electrifying body music compatible with heat from Nigga Fox to Nazar and the kind of style you might hear in a Shannen SP set.
‘Chef’ boots off royally with militant snares and rave fanfares locked to a churning technoid flow somewhere between Kuduro, Baile Funk and EBM trance, while ‘Hard’ rolls out on a stentorian, rictus march recalling vintage UKF, and ‘Jam Master’ strikes up high intensity trance riffs synched to industrial strength rhythms a la Nkisi, and the tumbling drums of ‘Munun’ sidewinds off along rhythmelodic vectors recalling a tempered Shackleton piece or a prime, deep Peder Mannerfelt workout.

Really strong, multi-layered new album from Olan Monk, released on the C.A.N.V.A.S. label/collective of which he is a co-founder and featuring vocals from Maria Somerville and James K, plus additional mixing by Xao.
Highly recommended if yr into John Maus, The Normal, Actress, Eartheater, Suicide.
In possession of its own unusual pace and styling, Love/Dead is a weird and brilliantly addictive gothic pop experiment that takes The Human League’s ‘Being Boiled’ as its starting point and builds from there in an asymmetric formation that feeds in elements from Suicide, Nine Inch Nails and John Maus, slows it all down and spits it back out covered in heaving subs, doom metal dynamics and distorted, angular electronics.
For goth credentials, Monk recorded the album between the west coast of Ireland and a coroner’s court and mortuary in south London, and if that seems a bit heavy handed - the music is anything but. Monk writes hooky, layered and memorable songs, something that’s so often missing from electronic music producers who mature (in the worst sense of the word) into working with vocalists as a mark of some dubious respectability.
Monk’s background isn’t in electronic music though, and so his imagination extends further out into the aether - guided by the three singular artists with whom he has already collaborated - Actress, Ashley Paul and Elvin Brandhi, with Actress in particular introducing Monk to electronic music “as its own process of creation, beyond production”. So although it’s the electronic treatments that startle, it’s Monk’s songs that hook and poke, making ‘Love/Dead’ a singular and strong addition to the C.A.N.V.A.S. label’s small but already beautifully formed catalogue of releases.

Pontiac Streator, Ulla, exael and Special Guest DJ convene as virtualdemonlaxative for this unhinged West Mineral.
The only info bundled with this one-off grind-trash sesh from the West Mineral crew is “cybergrind, danger music, FTP”. Through hoarse coughs, toxic belches and searing digital noise we’re introduced to
virtualdemonlaxative - a crude effigy with one foot firmly lodged in Napalm Death’s genre-defining “Scum” and a bloody stump cauterized in the smoldering ashes of John Wiese’s painfully underrated “Soft Punk”.
Arrhythmic blast beats collapse into digi-spliced howls, pre-COVID crowd hum echoes beneath anxious alien babbling, searing feedback wails to a disconcerting climax. If the rest of the West Mineral catalogue is simmered in psychedelic sensuality, virtualdemonlaxative is a rare antivenom; it’s the disquieted sativa
to Pontiac Streator, Ulla, exael and Special Guest DJ’s undulating indica. We’ve been informed informally that ‘Cruisin’ (forty seconds long) was performed and recorded in a moving vehicle, almost causing a car accident. There’s a metaphor here, but we’re tired - listen loud and fxcking riot.

Enchanted UK synth alchemist XVARR blesses Good Morning Tapes’ vinyl series with a gorgeous suite of ambient electronics certain to resonate with disciples of 0PN, Eno, Zoviet France, Colin Potter.
An eldritch beauty ripe with autumnal tone and mushied lushness, ‘She Healed Him In Her Sleep’ follows in the creeping vein of XVARR’s acclaimed 2018 tape ‘Serpent Power’ to bloom his sound with an organic, elemental quality and energy that binds Sufi trance to original kosmische and the kind of quietly humming, pastoral vibe typical of early British synth music.
In four tracks XVARR paints rolling sinewave vistas that unfurl with a timelessly slow-burning and romantic vision, ranging from cinematic sentiments that Eno would be proud of, to passages of amniotic ambient atavism and dream sequence arps that seduce listeners to the sweetest soporific states of mind and distract from everyday reality.
The gently elegiac synth-brass fanfare and strings of the title song unmistakably owe as much to 0PN as Eno’s stately early work, while the plangent jangle of ‘Past Masters’ surely recalls the hiraeth and pull of the sea and land found in Zoviet France’s enigmatic rituals. The pulsing ‘Echoes of Time’ most poignantly brims with the Eastern-oriented optimism of ‘60s and ‘70s electronics, channelling Harmonia via JD Emmanuel, and ‘Terminal Manoeuvre’ instinctively dowses a bout of BoC-like nostalgia in 3 minutes of lilting melody and elliptical oscillator wooze.
We could hardly imagine a lovelier fanfare for the change of the seasons. Time it all with sunset, fleeces and freaky fungi for optimal immersion (and possible optical side-effects).

Tape / Cassette
Somewhere between the buzzing Cyborg bugs and the whistling of extinct birds. Welcome to the hybrid zoo built on the ruins of the biotic crisis. You can explore the chirping, singing and trilling of birds and insects, which you know from pictures of cryptozoological encyclopedias or go straight to synthetic ornithology, where you can listen to mutated biorhythms. Everyone knows Mockingjay call, but who heard the voice of the Double-headed emu or the rustle of invisible community living in the crown of the Muku tree?

Felicity Mangan is an Australian sound artist, composer and an attentive listener based in Berlin. She plays her found native Australian wildlife archive and other field recordings, either through a stereophonic system or often via hand-made speakers and found objects – exploring the timbre and forms of found and self-recorded animal voices while mimicking biophonic patterns to create minimal quasi-bioacoustic environments.

"Tracks on Creepy Crawly were made between 2017-19. Samples were taken from found animal sounds and field recordings made in Berlin and trips to Japan and Australia.Some of the material was played live along side my collaborators in duo projects Native Instrument (Shelter Press, Entr'acte) and Plants and Animalia."

Five compositions are perfect gateway to the Mangan archive, which is rather embedded aural illusion- speculative echo of spieces than a reproduction of rural soundscape.

Felicity has presented projects in many different settings from galleries, gardens, clubs and festivals throughout Europe. Including National Gallery Denmark, Technosphärenklänge CTM/HKW and Sonic Act Academy.

The Oystercatcher is the first collaborative LP from Cucina Povera (Maria Rossi) and ELS (Edward Simpson) Recorded in London over two days, hours’ worth of improvisations have been edited down to form these six tracks. A fragile interplay is at work between Maria’s drifting vocals and the ominous churn of Edward’s modular synth. Each sonic element takes a turn at leading the way.

The opening track ‘Mantle’ is formed from sparse, monolithic electronics, woven gently with a thread of vocals. In the closing track ‘Eon’ Maria’s voice shepherds spontaneous bursts of sounds, almost Rave-like if order were imposed, through 15 minutes of turmoil and resplendent until the end. Maria’s vocals make their own trails amongst the noise, bringing to mind the the exploratory language from Ursula K. Le Guin’s album ‘Music and Poetry from the Kesh’, recalling the same understated mystery.

The overall effect of this collaboration is a completely unique creation albeit within a recognisable lineage of predecessors. The artwork reflects the vision of these two artists, collaged together. Both images are from a trip to Helsinki. Edward’s photograph of Tulips caught after dark are reviled by a flash. Maria’s seemingly abstract drawing is a graphite rubbing taken from a granite slab of a pavement somewhere in Kallio. Together the two images represent two different methods for capturing a city’s haptic landscape.

The album moves with a feeling of transience, which is no surprise given that the idea to collaborate was formed in Helsinki, realised in London and edited together in Rotterdam. The Oystercatcher tells a fragile tale, one that spins out into the unknown. A cold union of voice and machine, still tentative and probing, learning to co-exist. A kind of fundamental shift whereby shared moments have been turned to sound. The Oystercatcher is a bird that can freely travel between the earth, sea and sky. The motif is taken from a Tove Jansson short story. A dead bird washes ashore, two different versions of events are presented to how the bird came to die. The album feels like two different stories being presented on top of one another but ultimately coming to the same tragic conclusion.

One of the UK’s most respected electronic artists, Al Wootton (formerly known as Deadboy) presents his first album under the Al Wootton name, Witness.

Modest techno for mindful people. Venezuelan born, Swiss raised and Berlin living artist Arutani developed his own signature sound from early on. Very reduced, but sonically rich, reviving the golden era of minimal in his own in- terpretation. Subtle and detailed, dark at times, but always uplifting. Luise is proud to give home to his rst album. Hello Arutani.

R&S present the eponymous, debut, full length album transmission from Lost Souls Of Saturn.
Epic in scope, time and space, this multidimensional mind trip is for fans of Mark Leckey's 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore', David Morales' Red Zone dubs, Don Cherry's 'Organic Music Society', The Orb's 'Ultraworld' and KLF's 'Space' and much more besides.
This ambient house masterpiece combines flavours gathered from across the galaxy, stewing them up into a delicious primordial soup. Old sci-fi soundtracks, acid, free jazz, avant garde, musique concrete, world music and more all whirl around an underground-dance-music axis.
Primarily LSOS are Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa, plus further opaque participants congregating to combine music, imagery, and storytelling into an inextricably linked whole, all wrapped-up in a philosophy of their own making.

Mameen 3 are soFa and Cheb Runner from Brussels. Both versatile players in the rather niche scene of oriental electronic music in the European capital, they only ran into each other at the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda two years ago. They clicked and after a first jam session they immediately launched Mameen 3.

Cheb Runner is the young Moroccan producer previously known as Gan Gah, now focussing on giving a modern outfit to various MENA music traditions. soFa is a true digger between all crates (his Pingipung Podcast is a gem!), as well as the curator behind the highly recommended Elsewhere vinyl compilations, released on labels such as Emotional Response or Music For Dreams. Following the Mameen 3 debut singles on Bongo Joe with excellent spaced out reggae- disco hybrids, Pingipung proudly unearths the Collapse EP featuring two collabs with legendary musicians.

A side: "Impostrazione" is a collaboration with Claudia Radulescu and Walter Hus. Radulescu is a Romanian visual artist who has written the lyrics for the song, boldly interpreted by the legendary Walter Hus on the occasion of her exhibition 'Hit' in Kanal - Centre Pompidou Brussels in 2019. Hus gained international reputation as a pianist in the 1980s and works as an avantgarde composer today, among many projects he created an opera for the graphic novel “Lint” by Chris Ware. Walter Hus performs an effusive vocal style accompanied by his modified Decap organ which became his trademark sound in the past decade. This jam delivered the material which Mameen 3 subsequently transformed into a hypnotic oriental slow-mo banger.

B side: "Wireless C" features another music veteran, Rodion GA, who describes himself as „Romania’s first one man band". He produced a remarkable electro-prog output in the 1970s and 80s. “Rodion GA sounds like he learned about music from hearing someone describe it in their second language, drunk. It sounds like nothing else: wrong in all the right ways,“ says The Guardian about his music. His collab with Mameen 3 turns out as a balearic, space reggae trip, with dreamy vocals by Rodion and solid bass, definitely a hymn in this year’s festival season, if only there was one...

Nach dem überwältigenden Erfolg der beiden Solo Alben "Fatty Folders" (2011) und "Happiness is Happening" (2014), kehrt Roman Flügel zurück mit seiner dritten full-length CD/LP auf Dial Records. "All The Right Noises" vereint House/Techno adventures, feinste Ambient Works, und einzigartiges Material rythmischer und auraler Verspieltheit. Was für eine Intensität, ein Meisterwerk der einlullenden Wärme, des provokanten Exzess, umarmend und uplifting zugleich. Roman Flügel überrascht immer wieder mit seiner ganz eigenen musikalischen Vision!
Gleich die ersten Akkorde von "Fantasy" entführen uns in eine Traumwelt, in der das Unmögliche zu Klang wird. gefolgt von dem verführerischen"The Mighty Suns". Die Reise nimmt ihren lauf über die fantastisch schrägen Tech-Tunes "Dead Idols", "Warm And Dewy", "Dust" und "All The Right Noises" und zwei perfekt exzessive Festival Opener: "Namless Lake" und "Planet Zorg". Mit dem closing tune "Live Tends To Come And Go" lockt uns Roman Flügel zurück in eine Fantasiewelt, die kein zweiter so beherrscht wie er.

The LP edition will contain 2x180gr-vinyl Navigate between dreamlike electronica, hypnotic ambient and melodic techno. No doubt this is one of key electronic albums of 2012. Despite the many years still ahead of him, Rone has already come a long way, being one of the most acclaimed young French musicians on the electronic scene.

His videos have spread all over the World Wide Web with the speed
of light and his powerful liveset has been appreciated from Sonar Festival to Panorama Bar. Three years have passed since the release of 'Spanish Breakfast' and now his next album, 'Tohu-Bohu' (hurly-burly), is coming out 5th November 2012 via InFiné.

Rozzma ist eine fiktionale Figur, die nur auf der Bühne, in Videos und im Weltall existiert. Sie ist vor 7000 Jahren in Raum und Zeit verloren gegangen und kehrt jetzt auf die Erde zurück - nur um zu erleben, dass Tutanchamuns Totenmaske zu einem Ein-Pfund-Stück entwertet wurde und die ägyptische Münze kaum noch Wert besitzt. Als Rozzma das letzte Mal auf der Erde war, war Ägypten die am höchsten entwickelte Zivilisation auf dem Planeten. Eine schwer zu verstehende Situation für den Zeitreisenden, der auf der Suche nach den Ursprüngen die Tutanchamun-Maske von der Pfundmünze entfernt, um zu beweisen, dass es eine Ära gab, der die moderne Wissenschaft, Technologie und Technik ihre Existenz verdankt. Rozzmas
Geschichte nennt sich "Donya Fakka". "Donya" steht für "Welt" und "Fakka" sowohl für Kleingeld als auch lose bzw. demontiert. Mit anderen Worten dreht sich die 6-Track-EP um den Versuch, durch Zerstörung Entwicklungen zu markieren. Die EP ist die erste Veröffentlichung von Acid Arab Records, einer Kooperation
der Pariser Electro-Crew Acid Arab und des belgischen Labels Crammed. Auf diesem wollen sie die nächste Generation an Elektronikmusikern aus arabischen Ländern vorstellen.

SYNTAX Electronix (Valencia, Spain) continues with its second release based on Electro tunes.

"Worn was written in the summer of 2019 and was recorded using a Yamaha MT3X multitrack cassette recorder. The cassette tape itself was an old cassette tape which I used to record voice memos on when I was little. The recording process involved the recording of several sketches, which I then revisited and overdubbed every week over the course of 2019's summer."
- Robert Farrugia

Finders Keepers Records’ continued and unwaning commitment to preserving the archives of composer Suzanne Ciani pays off in an avalanche of dividends with this latest master tape discovery, placing further markers in the historical development of electronic music and cinematic composition. Developed at a lesser-documented axis combining Ciani’s key disciplines as a revolutionary synthesist and an accomplished pianist, these early works from 1973 capture a rare glimpse of one of the world’s most important electronic music figures embarking on the early throes of a fruitful career as a film composer and sound designer with this rare and previously unheard documentary music illustrating the first-ever skiers’ decent from the peak of the tallest mountain in Alaska. Capturing innocence and optimism in its composition, but never less than masterful in its realisation, Denali takes what would later become the yin and yang in Ciani’s versatile musical personality and provides unrivalled vistas from both side of the mountain, scaling a treacherous and fine creative line.

The music on this record was also commissioned two years before Suzanne’s first Buchla concerts in 1974 and 1975, which were accompanied by her seminal National Endowment Paper, and would reveal Suzanne’s proud commitment to the developed Buchla instrument and her confidence in its place in modern music, thus proving the likes of Denali to be an earlier showcase of the instrument in it’s advanced infancy although still robust enough to carry the emotive and ambitious songwriting skills of the classically trained Ciani. After hearing this record it will come as little surprise that the track known as Ski Song would later be reappropriated (and rerecorded) on Ciani’s globally critically acclaimed debut album Seven Waves (as the Fourth Wave), which was initially released exclusively in Japan before Turkish-born electronic music pioneer Ilhan Mimaroglu signed the record to his Finnidar imprint at Atlantic records, thus making musical history for Suzanne as a widely celebrated American-Italian female composer. It stands as testimony to the composer’s determination and inventive nature that this single track, which would later make its way on to every future music best-seller list in the country, was originally composed on just piano and the modular synth model which she had helped to assemble on Buchla’s production line ten years before her Tokyo debut. “Denali was composed using just Buchla and piano,” explains Suzanne in 2020. “It was recorded at Rainbow Recording, which is the studio I found and shared with recording engineer Richard Beggs, who then sold it to Francis Ford Coppola after I fell in love and quickly moved to LA,” she laments. “If I had stuck around I would have probably ended up doing sound for Coppola,” she jokes. Instead, Suzanne would in a short time find her filmic feet in Hollywood (providing sound design for Michael Small’s aforementioned The Stepford Wives soundtrack) which would later lead to her winning the accolade of first female film composer to single-handedly record a major motion picture with The Incredible Shrinking Woman in 1982. But it was ten years earlier with Denali that the ball had started rolling alongside the film reel sprockets at Rainbow Recordings. “I have very fond memories of first meeting Patrick and his thick French accent,” Suzanne explained. “He was a rugged looking young man who literally looked like he had just stepped down from the mountain himself.” The basic brief around Suzanne’s musical journey was to be “The story of the arduous ascent and joyous descent of the mountain,” which, with one of her most melodic and dynamic projects from her early years, she successfully illustrated with utmost aplomb. Although Suzanne would only see the short film a handful of times, mostly during intense late night recording sessions (“I used to dress like a sailor so I wouldn’t get street hassle on the way home”), and never meet to actual cast of the film, she can still remember mind-blowing shots of the skier cascading down the mountains, images that have remained with her throughout the subsequent five decades as a composer.

The release of Blessed Repair is a grand experiment for the Baldi/Gerycz Duo. The duo consists of Dylan Baldi and Jayson Gerycz, both of whom are members of the acclaimed rock band Cloud Nothings. With Baldi on saxophone and Gerycz on drums, they deliver an album that steers away from the process of slowly crafting lyrics and instrumental components. This time, their project is grounded in the gravitational pull of both of their instruments; two people creating and releasing tension in real time. Blessed Repair is an album that romps with the spontaneous energy of free-form jazz.

Baldi and Gerycz are quite familiar with each other as musicians, proving to be an advantage as they navigate the strange yet exciting new waters of Blessed Repair. Primarily, they work as bandmates in Cloud Nothings, but nothing resembles their improvisational work as a duo. In Cloud Nothings, songs are written beforehand and rehearsed, but as the Baldi/Gerycz Duo, they just play. Which is how the project first came to fruition — they are two friends who organically wanted to see how far they can take their music together.

The project uses two iconically jazz instruments, nudging Blessed Repair into the free-jazz realm. The saxophone soars and tumbles and the drums build and scatter, but both instruments are more linked by their playful experimentation and synchronicity than anything else. While they are fans of improvisational jazz music, neither Baldi nor Gerycz had formal jazz training past high school, making this album authentically experimental for them both. That being said, Baldi does recount that his first official gig as a musician was playing jazz music in the background of a wealthy Clevelander’s dinner party in 2008.

The Baldi/Gerycz Duo have taken the opportunity to harness the liberating energy of improvisation in Blessed Repair. And ultimately, they’re two friends exploring and pushing the boundaries of their music.

Drummer/producer Teppo Mäkynen presents a new album by his lauded trio ensemble 3TM in 2019. Before the second 3TM album "Lake" comes "Abyss", a collection of 10 ambient pieces laying the groundwork for the upcoming album. This prelude album is a full-bodied work in itself, a glorious and somewhat mysterious LP which brings forth yet another shade of multifaceted Mäkynen's musical vision. The 10 compositions on "Abyss" feel like the discovery of life and movement in deep waters, where only the rare shades of light breaking through indicate that another world exists above the surface.

"Abyss" will be available as a clear vinyl edition, on tape and digitally, and both as a standalone album and as a bundle with the upcoming 3TM trio album "Lake".

Teppo "Teddy Rok" Mäkynen is a drummer/producer from Helsinki, who works at the centre of the lively jazz scene in Finland. His work includes projects such as 3TM, The Stance Brothers, Teddy Rok Seven and the new duo with sax player Timo Lassy. Mäkynen also plays drums in several highly-regarded ensembles such as Timo Lassy Band, Aki Rissanen Trio, Jukka Eskola Soul Trio, Verneri Pohjola Quartet, Nicola Conte Jazz Combo, plus many more. As a producer, his work has been highly regarded in projects such as 3TM, The Stance Brothers, and the albums of Timo Lassy and Jukka Eskola.

Dick Verdult, a.k.a Dick el Demasiado is the Philip K. Dick of multi-disciplinary art, the Moby Dick of “cumbia lunática”, and the Charles Dickens of literature and experimental cinema. He first fell in love with cumbia when he heard his nursemaid singing the classic “La pollera colorá”. From this moment on, he adopted the genre and reinvented it, in a perpetual degeneration called Cumbia Lunática, twisting up the elements of traditional cumbia, the “cumbia of the mucamas”, to create an anarchotropical vertebral rhythm, one which supports every moving part.

Celulitis Illuminati is the powerful debut of the anarchotropical gentleman knight of the abstract, Dick el Demasiado, eight dangerous tracks recorded for the first time on vinyl, songs that, upon listening, will liposuck all that grotesque accumulation of adipose tissue out of buttocks and brain. They interweave an amalgam of South American folklore and the cables of electronic music, the plugged-in Ranqueles indians, as in “Asi Que Los Que Sí” (“So That Those Who Yes”) on Side A, surrealist and lugubrious beats, poetry made song and “the dead man’s drool is good for painting watercolors”, as he sings in “Búho Sin Un Ratón” (“Owl With No Mouse”).Euphony that will abduct you away to a viscous street party with “Son Cosas De Hoy” (“They’re Things For Today”) and to an eclectic and excessive dimension with “pero bien bweno” (“but very proper”).

Side B is pure dynamite: “Mecha flan” (“Pudding Fuse”), “Sábado cultural” (“Cultural Saturday”) and “En la jeta” (“In the face”) represent the perfect blend of Lucho Argain (La Sonora Dinamita) and Muslimgauze (Bryn Jones). On top of this, the album includes an as-yet unheard gem, “Llama Mi Abogado” (“Call My Lawyer”), produced by Dick himself and Manuel Schaller, the telepathic mage of the Theremin. When the Dutchman stepped off the boat and onto the block, as well as offering us the TV set, the sculpture of a deranged English woman who devours islands like they were sandwiches, the synthesizer, the sound effect, the African drum, the maraca, the indigenous whistle, he obtained for us the song and the stanza, he provided us with the language and the poetry, the truthful, the epic of the ugly. Cellulite for mortals, cumbia lunática for the enlightened ones! Alfredo Padilla (Trans. Komurki)

Winner of the 2018 BASCA British Composer Award for Solo or Duo

"Bloody hell that was good" Tim McKinney, BBC Radio 3

Dominic Murcott – The Harmonic Canon

A music project featuring a specifically design half-tonne double bell, an array of rare percussion and two highly virtuosic percussionists.

Dominic Murcott is a composer, percussionist, curator and educator based in London. Much of his work combines acoustic instruments with computers, film and other media. He has a continuing interest in work that is personalised for specific performers and has created acoustic/electronic pieces for trumpeter Noel Langley, percussionist Joby Burgess, clarinetist Joan Enric Lluna, harpist Sioned Williams and the Elysian String Quartet among many others. He has taken an unusual path to his current position, starting out as a self taught musician, his early career included playing drums with no-wave pioneers 'Blurt' and composing for the highly successful V-Tol Dance Company throughout their ten-year history. Changing from drums to vibraphone he became a member of art-pop band The High Llamas and has played on records by many influential artists including Stereolab and Pavement.

Created in collaboration with sculptor Marcus Vergette, The Harmonic Canon is both the name of the piece and the double bell that was custom-made for it. Comprising of two bells tuned a semitone apart, the bell was created using Finite Element Analysis, a type of structural analysis that determines the vibration patterns of the bell, manipulating its harmonic series to create a complex series of frequencies that make up a note. Part One is made up of rapid, high energy, virtuosic passages, articulated with the ominous striking of the bell while the second part contrasts with a single resonant tone that evolves and shifts over time. This is part of nonclassical's 21 Minutes series, a new project commissioning 21-minute pieces.

The piece won the BASCA British Composer Award for Solo or Duo. Premiered in 2018, the piece has had radio play on BBC Radio 3, broadcast from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

6 remixes and reinterpretations by Freakadelle resident artists Pawa, Mad Rider, Juergen Vonbank, Markmechanik & guests Patrick Pulsinger & Karafiat.

2020 repress
Concret PH (1958)Brussels World Fair, 1958 : The industrialist Philips commissioned Le Corbusier's famous "Philips Pavilion": "I'll create an electronic poem for you, he said. Everything will happen inside: sound, light, colour and rhythm." Iannis Xenakis designed the architectural blueprint and composed "Concret PH", meant to psychologically prepare the public to the show created inside, accompanied by a musical piece by Varese. The 400 speakers that lined the inner shell were meant to fill the space through the sound sparkles of "Concret PH" and achieve a joint emanation of architecture and music, conceived as a whole: the roughness of the concrete and its internal friction coefficient found an echo in the timbre of the sparkles.
Orient-Occident (1960) The work was originally composed for a film by Enrico Fulchignoni for UNESCO. The film describes a visit to the museum suggesting to compare artefacts produced by various cultures and highlighting their interaction that dates back to the most ancient times. From an abstract point of view, the composer regards this work as a solution to the problem of finding highly diversified means of transition, meant to link a type of material to another. One indeed witnesses a varied gradation of mutations, interplays, overlaps, cross-fading, sudden shifts and hidden junction points.
Diamorphoses (1957-58)Continuity and discontinuity within evolution, here are two aspects of the being, whether in opposition or in communion. In "Diamorphoses" this antithesis was worked on in the sections of some sounds strongly opposed to others, and particularly in organisations of continuous variations of average or "statistical" heights.
Bohor (1962)Bohor (referring to Bors the Younger, Lancelot's cousin), is a character from the medieval cycle of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. 'Bohor' is dedicated to Pierre Schaeffer. The author deliberately abstained from giving and descriptive information on his piece, letting the listener choose an imaginary route for himself. For this release, we have chosen the 1968 version, revised by Iannis Xenakis himself and as yet not made available to the public.
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Even though Iannis Xenakis never made "musique concrète" in the sense given by Pierre Schaeffer, the GRM was a locus for experimenting with his ideas about sound and sound structures. The works, composed between 1958 and 1962, show a boldness as advanced as in his orchestral approach. The relationship between Xenakis and Schaeffer was often tense. It nevertheless entailed mutual recognition and respect towards each other's musical approach. Moreover, "Bohor" is dedicated to Schaeffer, as evidenced by the letter Xenakis sent him on October 8th, 1968: "Dear Pierre, I have decided to dedicate Bohor to you, out of friendship and gratitude for your contribution to music. I hope you are pleased with this." Schaeffer found the piece disproportionate in terms of intensity but was indeed pleased by the dedication.The four pieces presented here, all produced at the GRM, undoubtedly demonstrate the experimental intent and the strictly "physical" character of Xenakis' music, in that it provides the audience with a listening experience of a rare intensity.
(François Bonnet & Christian Zanési)

Frankly, this EP is ridiculous. It was originally planned as a double pack, so we were excessive with getting both a Pete Cannon remix and a Hyper On Experience remix. I was tempted to do one myself but I though "nah, no one can top the original" and then had to eat my words because all 4 of these meet, if not beat, the original classic tune. Petes is of the hook madness, hands in the air biznizz. Hyper On take it to a whole new crystal clear and completely complex level. HSI changes it from what Stompin Tunes would do to what perhaps Reinforced would do. And Wislov roles it back in time to an almost Njoi-esq style 1991 banger. Absolutely amazing...

Club / DJ Support
Billy Bunter, the Fat Controller, Glowkid, Slipmatt, Dj Jedi, Dj Luna-C, Dj Brisk, Clayfighter, Jimni Cricket, Bustin, Sc@r, Doughboy, Saiyan, Dave Skywalker, Ponder and many others

Insane times like these call for insane measures to counter all that's going to shit in music these days. Great music in all its glorious forms should be timeless with no expiration date. Here at PRSPCT this has always been our mission and especially now this should count for every record any of the labels releases.

Thank god we got Limewax aka Maxim Anokhin in our ranks delivering a work so unique, only this artist could even be capable of producing. An album that for sure will survive the test of time and not lose any of its relevance in the years to come.

Limewax at his absolute best bringing his signature out of the box sound. Snaredrum warfare. Pots & pans, Moodswings, Weirdness, Dancefloor smashers and total mindfuckers. Settime LP by Limewax is a record any lover of good music needs in his or her life.

11 tracks on this record. 8 solo tracks + 3 collabs with KRTM, Dolphin and Baseck. Available as 2 12" in printed gatefold sleeve & digital formats.

Designed by Mike Redman.
Mastering by Bryan Fury.








h C2 Fingers With KRTM

The Magic Silk EP marks ROTCIVs return to Luv Shack Records - with three fresh original joints, this time alongside brother in arms Das Komplex, who delivers two new originals on the B side.

“It’s the Magic” is an italo infused house track, brimming with dramatic leads, a super tight and intelligent drum sequence, deep harmonies and solid bottom end. While being a lot slower in tempo, “Your Highness” lacks nothing in the power department - a fat rhythm section and a soaring acid line are the spine of this extraordinary cosmic stomper. Lastly, ROTCIV takes us on to a trippy tropical island with the synth heavy shuffler “Moleggio”.

On the flip, we have “Silk” by Das Komplex. Starting off as an EBM track with industrial feel, it gradually evolves into a hypnotic chugger with a sneaky boogie Bassline. The EP closes with “Aurora”, a perfect blend of NY disco attitude, synthesizer weirdness and balearic sleaze.

LTD. COLOURED VINYL

Vinyl: heavy sleeves + heavy printed inner sleeves, 180g vinyl, free download code. ""There is harmony, geometry, metaphysics everywhere and, in a way, morale as well"" Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz // Everyone knows these moments, hours or days, where one is feeling cornered, it is like running in circles or one is just trying to see something from a different angle. The new album by Sankt Otten - ""Lieder für geometrische Stunden"" (""Songs for geometrical hours"") - offers tracks for these kind of scenes. It's the soundtrack of the ups and downs of life and everyone's entirely personal geometrical hours.A very gentle and meditativ sequence introduces us to this new creation. Is it a synthesizer or a guitar? Whatever! A floating pad passes and returns, layers and shapes are rising. At the end the interaction of man and technology merges into perfect harmony. We are heading monumentally towards a futuristic world, which is frigid and surreal with a monotonous, sometimes gloomy and dark mood. Also beautiful. ""Du hast dem Schicksal die Show gestohlen"" (""You upstaged fate"") by contrast comes along with a minimalistic attitude. To some extent, sounding like rock music without being rock music. It's the perfect intersection of Minimoog sequences, acoustic drum sounds, ebow guitars and synthetic strings. Conny Plank would approve. ""Wer trifft schon immer den Ton"" (""Who always hits the mark""): A rhythm of nested patterns, a subtle arrangement, gentle choirs, pauses, compaction and thinning. Is this already jazz? Greetings from the echo chamber. The machines are trying hard. They deform the beat into geometrical forms, the bass jumps in circles, covering the tracks with ghostly choirs, creating an illusive, cuddly dreamworld. By the way, it's a long time ago, that rototoms have been heard in electronic music. Great! ""Dann doch lieber weisse Wände"" (""I'd rather have white walls""), the secret hit on the album? ""Die Blumen darfst Du behalten"" (""You can keep the flowers""): The pause is breathing, constantly wrapped in the elapsing tone of the night. A guitar in a slow-motion dialog with a synthesizer. Finally both burned up within the interstellar space. That shoud be a title for the next Blade Runner movie.This exactly 45 minute-long album fits on a C90 cassette side and thus closes properly with warm, analog 80's electronica. Man and machine are going hand in hand, infused by a hypnotic, motor function 808 beat, encouraging everyone to head-nodding by being almost danceable. Again, the central theme of this release is definitely the minimal, repetitiv drum play of Stephan Otten, whereas Oliver Klemm's ebow guitar drones hovers the tracks through this album. Sankt Otten do not disappoint. Founded in 1999, the duo from Osnabrück releases since 2009 on Denovali. With their 11th release, they give us a gem of timeless instrumental music. The holy trinity of krautrock, ambient and contemporary electronica, but always sophisticated and unique Sankt Otten. The mastering of the album was made by New York-based Rafael Anton Irisarri. Also the cover layout shows their great taste once again. This outstanding punch artwork was created by graphic designer Daniel Castrejón. Sankt Otten: Stephan Otten: Drums, Programming, Synthesizers / Oliver Klemm: Guitars, Synthesizers, Bass

LTD. COLOURED VINYL

Vinyl: heavy sleeves + heavy printed inner sleeves, 180g vinyl, free download code. ""There is harmony, geometry, metaphysics everywhere and, in a way, morale as well"" Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz // Everyone knows these moments, hours or days, where one is feeling cornered, it is like running in circles or one is just trying to see something from a different angle. The new album by Sankt Otten - ""Lieder für geometrische Stunden"" (""Songs for geometrical hours"") - offers tracks for these kind of scenes. It's the soundtrack of the ups and downs of life and everyone's entirely personal geometrical hours.A very gentle and meditativ sequence introduces us to this new creation. Is it a synthesizer or a guitar? Whatever! A floating pad passes and returns, layers and shapes are rising. At the end the interaction of man and technology merges into perfect harmony. We are heading monumentally towards a futuristic world, which is frigid and surreal with a monotonous, sometimes gloomy and dark mood. Also beautiful. ""Du hast dem Schicksal die Show gestohlen"" (""You upstaged fate"") by contrast comes along with a minimalistic attitude. To some extent, sounding like rock music without being rock music. It's the perfect intersection of Minimoog sequences, acoustic drum sounds, ebow guitars and synthetic strings. Conny Plank would approve. ""Wer trifft schon immer den Ton"" (""Who always hits the mark""): A rhythm of nested patterns, a subtle arrangement, gentle choirs, pauses, compaction and thinning. Is this already jazz? Greetings from the echo chamber. The machines are trying hard. They deform the beat into geometrical forms, the bass jumps in circles, covering the tracks with ghostly choirs, creating an illusive, cuddly dreamworld. By the way, it's a long time ago, that rototoms have been heard in electronic music. Great! ""Dann doch lieber weisse Wände"" (""I'd rather have white walls""), the secret hit on the album? ""Die Blumen darfst Du behalten"" (""You can keep the flowers""): The pause is breathing, constantly wrapped in the elapsing tone of the night. A guitar in a slow-motion dialog with a synthesizer. Finally both burned up within the interstellar space. That shoud be a title for the next Blade Runner movie.This exactly 45 minute-long album fits on a C90 cassette side and thus closes properly with warm, analog 80's electronica. Man and machine are going hand in hand, infused by a hypnotic, motor function 808 beat, encouraging everyone to head-nodding by being almost danceable. Again, the central theme of this release is definitely the minimal, repetitiv drum play of Stephan Otten, whereas Oliver Klemm's ebow guitar drones hovers the tracks through this album. Sankt Otten do not disappoint. Founded in 1999, the duo from Osnabrück releases since 2009 on Denovali. With their 11th release, they give us a gem of timeless instrumental music. The holy trinity of krautrock, ambient and contemporary electronica, but always sophisticated and unique Sankt Otten. The mastering of the album was made by New York-based Rafael Anton Irisarri. Also the cover layout shows their great taste once again. This outstanding punch artwork was created by graphic designer Daniel Castrejón. Sankt Otten: Stephan Otten: Drums, Programming, Synthesizers / Oliver Klemm: Guitars, Synthesizers, Bass

TONGA, the balloon filled rap, grime and dubstep party by Mike Skinner and Murkage Dave, had been a series of shoobs to remember. Copenhagen to Manchester to Berlin. Brum to Brixton. Usually arriving with a coterie of legendary UK figureheads and gobby upcomers in tow, like Kano, Giggs, Jammer or Jaykae, the pulsating essence of the nights needed to be immortalised.

The original plan had been to release a TONGA album. But as night moved to day, and day moved along to night, it… just didn’t happen. Instead, a new mixtape titled None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive steps up to take its place. Recorded between work on the accompanying film to The Streets new album, it is the unpredictable sonic continuation of those parties.

Taking in UK Funky and twilight zone UK rap, and with guest spots ranging from Grammy nominated psychedelia sovereign Tame Impala to cult south London rapper Jesse James Solomon, as well as 2019’s key-fiend-friendly drum’n’bass collab with Chris Lorenzo, None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is the most eclectic and highly collaborative collection of songs from The Streets yet. Or as Mike puts it with characteristic distinction: “it’s really just a rap duets album.”

Every track on None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive has one if not two guests, who, though underpinned by Mike’s distinctive lyrical flair, usually perform atop a genre or sound not previously explored within the realm of The Streets. “You know that thing where if you wore it the first time round, don’t wear it the second time round? I would never put on Aquascutum at this point in my life. It would be stupid, a pastiche of what I did twenty years ago. For all of us. Whereas now I’m going back and I’m picking things that I didn’t pick before.”

The inclusion of, say, Mercury Prize nominated punk group IDLES (who perform what Mike describes as a sea-shanty tinged track inspired by an overnight ferry to Dover) and teenage wünderkind Jimothy Lacoste help ground things firmly in the here and now. But there are familiar faces of the past too. Birmingham legend, Dapz On The Map, pops up on merky rap track “Phone Is Always In My Hand”. While Rob Harvey, previously of The Music and Skinner collaboration The D.O.T, tunes into pensieve penultimate track “Conspiracy Theory Freestyle”.

“The guests had to be into me, as much as I was into them,” jokes Mike, of the featured artist selection process. Really, though seemingly disparate on paper, the acts on the record are connected by their singular talent for “talking about normal stuff.” “All the different things I’ve tried to do, they’re who is doing that now.” “But instead of talking about abstract emotions on this record, I’m talking about things and objects and details.”

Couched in those UK and Euro wide experiences with TONGA, this results in tales of hardly partying, but partying hard. The path to excess. The morning trying to climb in under the curtains as you’re busy putting the world to rights. Like anything that happens between the nightclub and the bus home, there’s as much connection as disconnection in this world; as many new relationships forged as there are trails left behind from the ghosts of previous companionships past.

Communication, or lack thereof, plays a huge part in this present-day experience. “One thing I’ve ended up doing is talking about being on my phone,” says Mike. “It was very easy on my first album to say, well: where am I? I’m in a pub. I’m at home. I’m in a betting shop. I’m getting a kebab. It felt fairly straightforward and no one had really written about it. Whereas when making this record, everything now basically happens on your phone.”

These dual themes of nightclub and connection land the record in the simple yet eternally complicated prism of human interaction. “You’re ignoring me but you’re watching my stories”, on “Phone Is Always In My Hand”, is a black comedy mantra of our times. Same goes for “every girl has a dude in her inbox talking to himself” on the Oscar #WorldPeace featuring “The Poison I Take Hoping You Will Suffer”. References abound to missed calls (on opening track “Call My Phone Thinking I'm Doing Nothing Better”, Kevin Parker sings, trance like, about neglecting to call someone back) and “five minute” journeys (the kind where you lie about leaving the house).

The mixtape is the seventh full length from The Streets, who broke through in 2002 with the Mercury Prize nominated Original Pirate Material – widely regarded as one of the most influential British albums of the decade. Four BRIT Award nominations came that year too, for best album, best urban act, best breakthrough artist best British male solo artist. “Dry Your Eyes”, from 2005 follow-up album A Grand Don’t Come For Free, won an Ivor Novello for Best Song Musically And Lyrically. There was also a BRIT Award win that year, for best British Male Solo Artist.

Since then, and across his other records and guest features, Skinner has collaborated with a whose who of British music – from Kano, to Pete Doherty, to Giggs. In recent years, and with his Mike Skinner LTD label, he’s worked with acts like Flohio, Ghetts and Grim Sickers. When The Streets announced a comeback tour in 2017, tickets for the dates sold out in less than a minute. It’s all testament to the impact The Streets have had, across several generations of musicians.

And so, despite its humble mixtape beginnings, None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is a precise and very human body of work from a modern UK music pioneer. Emotionally poignant, full of one liners, club ready. More than anything, it’s exciting – a call back to those fun and responsibility free evenings at TONGA. Yet “the result is much more than I thought it would be. It’s become a real album,” says Mike. And so, as the new decade begins, so too does a new era for The Streets...

2x12'' bundle includes the original album and remix EP with
reinterpretations by Freakadelle resident artists Pawa, Mad Rider, Juergen Vonbank, Markmechanik & guests Patrick Pulsinger & Karafiat.

Absolute Unity' is the new Dance Music project from Ryan Grieve, a cofounder of Hole In The Sky Records. Ryan has produced as one half of bands Canyons, Fred Cherry and Heart People, among others, with releases on labels DFA Records, Modular Recordings, Universal Music, Warner Music, Hole in the Sky & I'm A Cliche.

Returning from the haze of major record label obscurity and confusion, Absolute Unity is a return to roots with a focus on simple, raw sounds aimed for DJs to play to dance floors.