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‘Dropped Out Sunshine’ is NYC mutant Madteo’s incredible new album of trigger-happy club graffiti on Demdike Stare’s DDS, weighing in a keenly anticipated follow-up to 2012’s cult-classic
‘Noi No’ LP for Sähkö Splitting at the seams with deviant funk and irrepressible attitude, Madteo’s first LP in 7 years forms a fractal, mixtape-like mosaic of asymmetric techno informed by skewed traces of rap, House, R&B and dancehall. Its 12 tracks are delivered in an enviably nonchalant, freehand style that’s become the Italian-American artist’s ear-snagging signature since 2012’s ‘Noi No’ and ‘Mad Dip Revue’ albums, and also a dozen 12”s and mixtapes over the interim; all of which exerted heavy inspiration for everyone from Andy Stott and Joy O to Demdike Stare over the past decade, making this new LP a perfectly unusual fit for the anything-goes DDS aesthetic shared by label alumni including Mica Levi, Equiknoxx, Iueke and Shinichi Atobe.
Without beating around the bush, ‘Dropped Out Sunshine’ is a straight-up masterpiece of cut-up sampledelia bound to make the club dance differently. Crammed with sawn-off edits that never lose the thread, its wild and effortlessly inventive turns of phrase are anathema to linear club music convention, generating fizzing alchemy from mutually exclusive bedfellows such as dancehall and techno, or R&B and noise that could really only be executed by a producer of Madteo’s calibre. Yet for all its singular nature, the album is also patently symptomatic of the times,
sub-consciously parsing a gripping intimacy, personality and urgent yet elusive psychedelia from ubiquitous media overload.
Kicking off with another *****-sampling zinger ‘1 4 U’ (following his infamous use of ‘Marvin’s Room’ on ‘Noi No’), and ending up mired in the melancholy gauze of ‘The Lies That Bind’, at each step the
album effortlessly resists a struggle to square the nature of artistic expression. Fragments of gospel blues noise intersect gauntlets of filtered house fuckry, while restless Autechrian electro rubs up against uncoiled trap and needle-worrying levels of textured bass turbulence, leading to an outrageous turn of stuttering ragga-tekno in ‘Resident Alien (Broke-’n-Steppers Reluctant Club Mix)’ and a final side of collapsed, post-club styles that will leave listeners wondering wtf just happened, and ready to do it all again.

Yellow Vinyl 2x12"

‘Dropped Out Sunshine’ is NYC mutant Madteo’s incredible new album of trigger-happy club graffiti on Demdike Stare’s DDS, weighing in a keenly anticipated follow-up to 2012’s cult-classic
‘Noi No’ LP for Sähkö Splitting at the seams with deviant funk and irrepressible attitude, Madteo’s first LP in 7 years forms a fractal, mixtape-like mosaic of asymmetric techno informed by skewed traces of rap, House, R&B and dancehall. Its 12 tracks are delivered in an enviably nonchalant, freehand style that’s become the Italian-American artist’s ear-snagging signature since 2012’s ‘Noi No’ and ‘Mad Dip Revue’ albums, and also a dozen 12”s and mixtapes over the interim; all of which exerted heavy inspiration for everyone from Andy Stott and Joy O to Demdike Stare over the past decade, making this new LP a perfectly unusual fit for the anything-goes DDS aesthetic shared by label alumni including Mica Levi, Equiknoxx, Iueke and Shinichi Atobe.
Without beating around the bush, ‘Dropped Out Sunshine’ is a straight-up masterpiece of cut-up sampledelia bound to make the club dance differently. Crammed with sawn-off edits that never lose the thread, its wild and effortlessly inventive turns of phrase are anathema to linear club music convention, generating fizzing alchemy from mutually exclusive bedfellows such as dancehall and techno, or R&B and noise that could really only be executed by a producer of Madteo’s calibre. Yet for all its singular nature, the album is also patently symptomatic of the times,
sub-consciously parsing a gripping intimacy, personality and urgent yet elusive psychedelia from ubiquitous media overload.
Kicking off with another *****-sampling zinger ‘1 4 U’ (following his infamous use of ‘Marvin’s Room’ on ‘Noi No’), and ending up mired in the melancholy gauze of ‘The Lies That Bind’, at each step the
album effortlessly resists a struggle to square the nature of artistic expression. Fragments of gospel blues noise intersect gauntlets of filtered house fuckry, while restless Autechrian electro rubs up against uncoiled trap and needle-worrying levels of textured bass turbulence, leading to an outrageous turn of stuttering ragga-tekno in ‘Resident Alien (Broke-’n-Steppers Reluctant Club Mix)’ and a final side of collapsed, post-club styles that will leave listeners wondering wtf just happened, and ready to do it all again.

Dope Drum work !

‘Still Strange’ reaches back into the prized loft tapes of Jeff Sharp aka Orior following the revelatory discovery of his overlooked early ‘80s gems on 2016’s ‘Strange Dream’ collection, as coaxed out by
DDS dons Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty.
Huddling another sublime, dusty set of analogue tapes freshly baked and remarkably well-restored by Andy Popplewell, ’Still Strange’ contains four gorgeous flashbacks to the era 1979-1983
surrounding and even pre-dating ‘Strange Beauty’, and then shifts focus to recordings that Orior made around the early ‘90s.
As with its predecessor, Orior is not alone on the material in ’Still Strange.’ From those feted early tapes we find Phil Hollis returning to lend jagged guitar on the drum machine sizzle of ‘Feels Like
Summer’, while the mysterious synth player New Cross John makes vital contribution to ‘Invium.’
Along with the aching synth sigh of ‘To Return’, which pre-dated all of these recordings, and the nine minutes of haunting bedsit strums in ‘Larbico Alt Mix’ which came from the first batch, the
early material is all arguably worth the price of admission alone for seekers of lost synth treasures - really this stuff is just so good..
However, the album’s other six tracks expand knowledge of Orior’s work into the ‘90s and also contain some extraordinary material. Salvaged from further loft tapes found in various states of degradation, and subsequently mixed down between London’s Goldsmiths College and Miles Whittaker’s Whalley Range attic (and elsewhere), they are decidedly more blunt and gloaming, especially in the Deathprod-like ‘Under Shadow’ and the near static witching hour ambience of ‘Endless’, while shorter vignettes such as ‘Unknown Future’, ‘Gothic’ and ‘Another’ point to pre-echoes of BoC’s crepuscular scapes and even Bladerunner-esque sci-fi noir soundscapes

Recorded by Randy Williams in 1997 at home studio in San Francisco, California, after a two year stay at Camp Darby military base near Pisa, Italy and some occasional off-duty visits to Giancarlo Lobel in Rome and Marina di Pisa. The encounters made in that period were inspiring for Williams to create a strange and personal style upon his return to the United States. Released and distributed privately in Italy and USA to group of artists and appreciators as compact disc after spectacles, and as music library soundtrack.

Ok! HeRE wE HaVe SOMetHiNg nEw. SOmEThiNg NeW FrOM SoMetHiNG nEw. MuSiC ThaTS HeRE nOw. HoUSe/tEcHNo/SoMEtHiNg ElSe . Fully formed in MONTREAL. Designed for parties and the people who play them. Parties that take place at any time of day. Parties that have partygoers who began their evening 14 hours ago or 20 minutes ago. With music, music with sci-fi, horror and JOY. With people, people scraped from the edges. People who are exhausted. Who need somewhere. And, who are confused and looking for beauty. Who need beauty. Who need to witness things. Who, what you find in the camaraderie when you work in the bottom of a coal mine. What you find before you jump out of a plane. What you find in love, or after two years of being in love, or after four years of being in love. It's different. This is a record made from real life. It's hard.

'Extremely inventive EP all around... puts a smile on u while also keeping u near tears at its beauty... amazing.' - DJ Python

'Sometimes you just know... less televised deejays and more ooze! trip to this.' - PLO Man

'Killer conscious, brave and curious tunes that don't rely on a formula or what anyone else is doing - you can hear and feel what they make that resembles their connection as friends, partners and family.' - Bake

Pivotal Iranian artist Ata Ebtekar mounts a head-buzzing debut for Diagonal, pushing microtonal tunings and timbres into mind-bending geometrical designs that echo the modular synth + strings formulæ of Dariush Dolat-Shahi for Smithsonian Folkways, but keen much deeper into noisy, uncanny valleys of modernist perceptual exploration
‘Parallel Persia’ presents the latest iteration of Sote’s restlessly searching sound which has been in action for 30 years now. Commissioned for an AV performance at Donau festival in 2018, the album is a natural extension of his stunning ‘Sacred Horror In Design’ LP with Opal Tapes, feeding classical Iranian music tropes into a computer and modular synths to diffract and detach their meaning
and operation, open them up to strange possibilities of electro-acoustic practice in the process.
But more than ever in ‘Parallel Persia’, his focus turns from percussion to tonal relationships, combining various synthesis techniques and instrumental recordings at the service of a holistic
voice and “locked timbre”, or more simply a poetic way of uniting his sounds into a brilliant aural energy.
As Ebtekar explains, “Conceptually, Parallel Persia deals with the illusion and creation of an artificial hyperreal culture manipulated and controlled by an imperious agency somewhere within all galaxies. Like all realities, greed and arrogance channels destruction of life. However, the path to havoc includes resistance via beauty, grace and symmetry. Snapshots of an apocryphal Iran is presented via sonic schematics for a synthetic “Meta-Persian” experience. This experience can be in our present day life or maybe somewhere else somehow differently in a parallel world…”
In this surreal noumenal space, Sote triggers a series of beguiling chain reactions that resonate throughout each track, with electronic frequencies modulating the acoustic and vice-versa in a dizzying and mathematically sound “euphonious complete whole.” Here, the Tar and Santur initially sound like themselves in ‘Modality Transporter’, but by the end of this opener they are transformed into ribboning tendrils of extruded electronics, and continue to morph in fascinating ways, joined by unearthly voices in ‘Brass Tacks’, and pulled into bittersweet taffy on ‘Atomic Hypocrisy’, while utterly upending our proprioceptions in ‘Trans Force’, and ancient-futuristic chants and dance rhythms working in parallel dimensions to Rashad Becker in ‘Pipe Dreams’, until he’s speaking in a purely singular language of unique intonation and shatterproof, beatless rhythm on ‘Pseudo
Scholastic’.

Tralala Blip are an Australian unit of differently-abled musicians hailing from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Over the past decade they have carved out a unique position in the Australian electronic music community. Working to overcome a range of challenges imposed by their disabilities, Tralala Blip have created a range of approaches to instruments, performance and composition that allows them to seamlessly create music together. Eat My Codes If Your Light Falls is their first full length album in over five years. It charts out an entirely new sonic universe that is the resolution of several years of intense live performance and expanded studio experiments. Produced by Lawrence English, the record explodes their working methodologies and reveals a collective sacred heart that is fuelled by their intoxicating post-electro pop melodies and diarised lyrical poems.

Eat My Codes If Your Light Falls is in many ways the first work in a new chapter of what Tralala Blip are becoming. It resolves their experimental practices and focuses that energy within a tight framework of explicit song form and entirely personal production aesthetics. This is their voice, articulating their stories. It’s for us to listen and begin to understand that which lies in parallel with our everyday. Beyond their extensive performance commitments, they have presented their work as special guests of TEDx, have had a stage production created about them and have instigated many workshops for other differently abled musicians and artists. Their goal is to reconsider the nature of creativity, especially music making and to push these process beyond any sense of the normative or commonplace.

Celebrated internationally for their relentless pursuit of a level playing field in music creation, they have been fortunate to be supported by festivals such as Unsound, Liquid Architecture and arts facilities such as ZKM Kahlsruhe.

The future is expansive and multi-abled, Tralala Blip invite you to get amongst it.

With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of "using the studio as a compositional tool" and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: DOME (July 1980), DOME 2 (October 1980) and DOME 3 (October 1981). A final fourth album, WILL YOU SPEAK THIS WORD: DOME IV was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983.

These albums represent some of the most beautifully stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene.

Previously issued in the out of print DOME 1-4+5 box set in 2011. Now available as standalone LP with download card

Tokyo based H.Takahashi follows up his ‘Raum’ LP for Where To Now? with ‘Sonne und Wasser’, a continuation & development of his unmistakable brand of meditative Pulse Minimalism.

Where ‘Raum’ was concerned with architectural space and energy, ‘Sonne und Wasser’ turns its focus towards the lives of the plants & flowers that live amongst us. This LP has been born from a deep adoration of Horticulture and the microscopic lifecycle of the plant world, where themes of vitality & slow growth are explored through Takahashi’s gloriously delicate & considered movements.

In his own words… “I wanted to express the plant that was slow, quiet, powerful, and full of vitality. In an attempt to express the world of one plant, the four songs that make up this album are all based on the first one, ‘Nymphaea’… The melody, chord and tone throughout become familiar, and each change of scene is expressed by subtly changing the arrangement and development of sounds. This is intended for when you want to feel like a plant, or as an indoor soundtrack - I want the music to be played so that it decorates the plants within a room.”

The beauty of Takahashi’s work lays in his commanding ability to stop you in your tracks via a force that is barely there, embracing the use of space & silence to deliver a deep & considered trip. Back in 2017 we said of his then LP… “The music is to help us function - it's music to work to, to sleep to, to help us find a sense of space and oneness within a world that is increasingly wild and untameable.” A Couple of years down the line and our World has continued on its mad path, and it is a true privilege to enable a healing output, & to encourage a global opportunity to switch off and immerse oneself in H.Takahashi’s flourishing Fauna phantasm.

“Takahashi draws cues from a melting pot of closely connected yet wholly individual strands of Minimalism - from the Japanese Minimalist works from the likes of Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satoshi Ashikawa, to masters such as Erik Satie and John Cage, and Ambient leaders Brian Eno and Roedelius, Takahashi soaks this historical influence and rings it out it through a modern filter to create stillness, ethereal beauty, and transcendent energy.”

A limited edition 40th anniversary version of Unknown Pleasures will be released on June 14th, almost forty years to the day after it was originally released. The LP will be pressed on 180g ruby red vinyl with an alternative white sleeve resembling the original design idea.

It's a celebration of one of the most important albums of our time as well as a landmark in music/design crossover history.

One of the most significant debuts of all time, the album’s legacy continues to endure with NME claiming it to be ‘simply one of the best records ever made’

Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes is a new full-length by Philadelphiabased artist, poet, and musician, Camae Ayewa, who performs under the name Moor Mother.
A sonic black hole is a place where fluid moves so fast that it traps all sound.
To be entangled in its gravity is to feel the pressure of an unjust system -- corruption so powerful that it drowns out whatever you throw at it. Analog fluids are resistance -- individuals who work to create and preserve community in the face of immense darkness and cosmic pressure.
Begun in 2017 as a sonic counterpart to Ayewa’s art show at New York performance space, The Kitchen, Analog Fluids was refined through exhaustive touring. It tracks Ayewa’s emergence into an expanded artistic ecosystem, with contributions from a distinctive set of friends and collaborators like Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Zonal), King Britt, Saul Williams, Giant Swan, and Bookworms

Shogun Audio presents the third instalment of the ever popular Shuriken series, this time with an extra special line-up of four of the most requested tracks from the catalogue together on vinyl for the first time! Comprehensive promo campaign to seek specialist radio including but not limited to, Friction, Eddy Temple Morris, Annie Mac, Phil Taggart, Mistajam, Zane Lowe Hospital Records Podcast, D&BA Podcast, and ... many more.

Following up his pair of cryptically luminous EPs for Northern Electronics in the past years, Evigt Morker presents his debut album, Krona. With a shuffling atmosphere that's hard to pin down, the album chronically fixates on the degradation and construction of rhythmic drills with finely rendered parts and patterns. Spiralling the listener through a set of stormy soundscapes, Krona keeps placing the horizon just ahead, and just out of reach. The unease that Evigt Morker invites us into is electrically charged and threatening to crack. For all its syncopation we are relentlessly swerving through the works, afraid of teasing an arcing static shock from the blistering commotion. The album's propulsive tracks are settled against a pair of stunning ambient compositions that capture some of the tension from a distance. Technical dexterity and perfectly pitched intensity stakes out Evigt Morker's debut album as an impressive statement.

Mad Habitat returns with a serene full-length from Eye Nono. Channeling the more progressive side of American New Age and 80s Public Access soundtracks alongside the rich tradition of Australian ambient music, the record is awash with dreamy melodies and drifting pads. Evoking days spent by the water along the coastline, the album is a beautiful synthesis of the ocean's abundant natural beauty.

Ever since Kyam sent his track 'NOLA' through, we knew he'd be an artist to watch and now a few years after it's release on the 'Decade In Breakbeat' compilation we're following up with a 3 track solo 12".

Drift is the first official solo album of multi-instrumentalist Jana Sotzko. Having grown up in the plattenbau eastern part of Berlin, she has played in stylistically diverse bands and projects for over 20 years. Past and current groups include indie band DROPOUT PATROL and the experimental kraut trio SOFT GRID. In addition, she works as a freelance composer, especially in the fields of dance and performance. Drift, released under the alias POINT NO POINT, marks in many ways a return to early home-recording experiments with Tascam 4-track recorders and without a precise idea of ​​what it all should sound like in the end. The eponymous ‘drifting’ describes precisely this.

“Experimental trio Giraffe crystalize time on ‘Desert Haze’, their new LP on Marionette. Giraffe is the musical project of Sascha Demand (guitar), Jürgen Hall (keys), and Charly Schöppner (percussion). Sascha Demand is a composer that comes from a contemporary and improvised musical background, collaborating with the likes of Ensemble Integrales and Vinko Globokar. Jürgen Hall works in electroacoustic experimental projects, theatre and film scores, with releases on Staubgold and Edition Stora. Charly Schöppner is known for his popular music releases such as Boytronic on major production companies in the 1980´s and composes for theatre, dance, and film scores. With only a couple of releases to date on the wonderful Meakusma imprint as well as an EP on Marmo, little is known about Giraffe. After letting go of other artistic projects, the trio now focuses solely on Giraffe by continuously searching for and finding their own unique language.

Sascha, Jürgen and Charly have quite diverse musical backgrounds, though morphing into Giraffe they tower into one single composer. Their music is a critical statement, not in a political sense but rather an artistic one. Being mindful about what it means to create and how to position themselves as artists nowadays (without the constant hassle of being en vogue and short-lived trends) shaped their rather rare and stoic artistic stance. It is refreshingly honest to see their expression develop so naturally.

On Desert Haze, they’ve created a vibrant and minimalistic tribal sound that feels inspired by the Saharan traditional music of the Tuareg, Jazz, and German psychedelic krautrock. Giraffe themselves also list the radical music of the Viennese School (Schoenberg along with his pupils Berg and Webern) as well as the Köln School with its early electronic experiments as their main influence and inspiration. More precisely the composition process and the organization of musical material within space and time, where a conceptual and intellectual approach melds with an experimental yet expressive sound searching method.

Side A focuses on the trios studio work; it is built around tone color and pitch analysis of resonating prepared guitar sounds. Through a unique mixture of free improvisation and a serialism "rule set”, they develop instrumental layers and structures to form their tracks. Side B sees Giraffe playing more freely with a reduced setup - representative of what you may hear when listening to them live.
Desert Haze, along with its track-titles, showcases an almost mimetic approach to art. The haptic music grabs the listener not as a passive recipient but as an active resonant body to vibrate through. One can almost feel the Elements, pressure and heat forming a diamond, hypnotic overtones ringing through windy caves, shamanistic rhythms conjuring up mysterious and ancient landscapes - where the constant cycle of sedimentation and erosion reveals structures of fragile beauty - always gentle to the hand’s touch and the mind’s eye.”

Joy Orbison & Overmono team up a massive new 12" for XL.

"Two of theUK’s most respected and exciting prospects in electronic music, Overmono and Joy Orbison have joined forces to release a12” single that’s already been making the rounds on the DJ circuit to rapturous reception. But one of the decade’s final club bangers comes from an unlikely place-the rural London borough of Bromley. Overmono’s studio, based in a former magazine printers, already had a rich history in UK dance music before brothers Tom and Ed Russell arrived, having been in use by various prominent artists and DJs since the 90s. Leaving the city daily to commute to the studio in the suburb of Bromley-the opposite direction to the usual daily grind-helped back up the duo’s creative ethos and push them to make music further outside of the known and well-trodden paths. Sharing the same sentiments as the Russell brothers, Joy Orbison has been a staple of the U.K scene for over ten years and excitement still bubbles over whenever he releases a new record.This collaboration could hardly feel more natural; two intricate and detailed tracks holding a distinctly U.K feel.Bromley / Still Moving are an ode to the place where they were made, a moment in time tied and influenced inextricably by that particular geo-location, something once so familiar in dance music that’s now all but lost."

In 1984 post-industrial obscurists O Yuki Conjugate had completed their first album Scene In Mirage. At a turning point in their development, they released one side of their electronic sound, one side of their ambient. They had a choice of a musical route forward. They chose to pursue ambient/fourth world music and garnered a reputation for that particular sound. Now, 35 years later, they have come to reflect on their choice. What would have happened had they taken the electronic route? What would they sound like now? OYC decided to retrace their steps and imagine life as another OYC, the Ocean Youth Club. Divided Self is the result. Divided Self is thus a highly conceptual release, not just a clever disguise for their burgeoning electronic activities. Ocean Youth Club have performed live only once, in Barcelona where they supported the other OYC. They were immediately invited to do a release on Spanish label Hivern Discs. Divided Self is the Ocean Youth Club's first outing into electronica. It shows an exciting disregard for the convention of remixing, being an unapologetic four variations on a theme. Divided Self is a collaboration of current OYC members Roger Horberry and Andrew Hulme with the legendary producer Colin Potter, who jointly share the mixing and producing credits. Recorded at Colin's IC Studio live in a day, Divided Self was a semi-improvised work that took a couple of attempts to get into the groove of before the tape rolled and it was committed to the digital realm. The only regret is that real tape wasn't used on the day. Next time! Ocean Youth Club may be conceptual, but it's also an open and playful entity. Ocean Youth Club would like to invite anyone over the age of 50 to join them in unmaking music. The future is bright; the future is youth.

How could we describe multi-instrumentalist Penelope Antena ? From her Lo-Fi sounding EP ‘Down the Habit Hole “, to her soul infused duo “Honey Drips” with Swiss producer Deheb, to the fragile and tormented melodies of “33-1 Oak” her first single out on the new Parisian label Kowtow Records.

Penelope can proudly say she takes from her mother Isabelle Antena when it comes to cross musical genre. Though the commun thread between all the worlds she cleverly navigates, would definitely be her vocals. Experimenting instinctively with different techniques, Antena uses her voice as a harmonic lab of emotions. Sometimes intimate, sometimes haunted. Always Original.

Her first LP Antelope - entirely self-produced - comes as proof that the music she makes changes and evolves to perfectly match her personal story. After a painful heartache, Antena settles alone in her parents house, lost in the woods somewhere in the south of France. Surrounded by her grand father’s instrument (Marc Moulin- great Belgian Composer from the 70’s ) she writes this 10 tracks album field with melancholia and broken love. Like on the branches of the Cedars around her house, It’s a folky electronic breeze that hallows onto this record.

New sound, same familiar feeling when listening to Antena (be it Mother or Daughter) : acoustic and electronic have rarely been so intertwined, beautifully combined. And if Bandcamp placed her song “Abuse” as one of the best of 2018, 2019 is sure set out to be a good year for this multi-facetted artist with narrative propension.

Limited to 200 copies, this release is the first of the 5 12" from the Thomas Brinkmann Retrospektiv 5xlp box set. The 5 individual 12" will be released through 2018. Thomas Brinkmann is one of the great producers of Techno music and modern dance music. He initially gained notoriety in the experimental electronic music and Techno community for his full-length 'variations' of material by Wolfgang Voigt under his Mike Ink moniker, and Richie Hawtin. The variations were made by playback of the original artist records on a turntable of Brinkmann's design, which has two tone arms with separate outputs for left and right channels. The turntables were then pitched down from 33rpm to 27rpm and the results recorded and mixed. Both Voigt and Hawtin were sufficiently impressed they released the results on their own labels. Since then Thomas Brinkmann has produced some all-time classic dance tracks, many of which are collected here in what is a personal selection by Thomas Brinkmann himself. There are unreleased tracks, different versions, and tracks that have never been released on vinyl.

Overmono return to their own Poly Kicks label with their first release of 2019

TXLAX is Dave Aju’s first album in five years, and we couldn’t be more pleased to present it.

As always there is plenty of fresh genre-defying ideas in the music, but this time wrapped in a much more relaxed and focussed aesthetic - a fitting personal soundtrack for the homecom-ing theme of his move back to Los Angeles from Berlin, as the combined airport letters in the title suggest.

There is a sonic stylistic bridge of sorts between the sister cities on display as well, all im-bued with that inimitable combination of raw playfulness and warm refined soul as only Dave Aju does.

From the soaring West Coast future funk opener “Bird’s Eye”, the nautical disco-not-disco of tomorrow in “Out To C” and the bugged-out broken beat flavor of “Silverfish” to the slick me-lodic electro vibes of the title track, and gorgeous shuffling deep house closer “Yulia”, TXLAX is a masterwork filled with beauty, character, and detail that will reward many repeat listens. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Astrophonica welcomes veteran producer dgoHn to the family. Through releasing music over the past decade, dgoHn aka John Cunnane has acquired a cult following and gained DJ support from figure heads like Thom Yorke, Tom Ravenscroft and Aphex Twin.

2009 saw Rephlex Records release his collaborative album ‘Some Shit Saaink’ with fellow drumcunt Macc. Sitting somewhere between Jungle, Drumfunk, Experimental Jazz and brutal sub bass, dgoHn’s music is intense in both mania and serenity.

“dgoHn has long since been one of my favourite producers in the left-field jungle or ‘drumfunk’ world. He has a knack of applying brain melting beat science without ever interrupting the groove and rhythm of the track. It’s something that few people can do, and he seems to effortlessly. There’s also a certain sadness and melancholy to his chords and fleeting melodies, which creates a beautiful contrast to the frantic drum madness. Amongst all this, there is a lot of bass, real Jungle bass, that anchors but also adds the ‘sound system’ edge to the mix, resulting in something very unique.” - Fracture

The next installment to the AKO10 collection and this is one of the reasons why we started this series. DJ Trax one of the oldskool dons from the legendary Moving Shadows label. This is DJ Trax debut on AKO and what a way to to start with two stunning and we mean stunning tracks.

The Truth is what we like call hypnotic soulful jungle and when you finally get a copy you will agree. This has been played in AKO HQ every day since we agreed to take it for the label. Stunning intro with a vocal and when the amen and subs come in it will gives you goosebumps. Words will do this track no justice it’s just simply BEAUTIFUL.

Love Lies (the soul) – This track is another incredible soulful track that compliments what this release is all about bringing back that deep soulful vibe in the music where you can just close your eye and let it take you away. Another track where words do it no justice.

Hollie Kenniff is a Canadian-American electronic musician. The Gathering Dawn is her debut solo album .
The album, which is her first ambient proclamation, displays a sprawling looseness in sharp contrast to her works as one half of Mint Julep with husband Keith Kenniff (Helios, Goldmund).
The Gathering Dawn wistfully utilizes glacial synths, blurred out guitars and Hollie's melancholic vocal plumes as a basis. The album finds Hollie effortlessly folding classic ambient motifs in with minimal modernist brushstrokes.

The Gathering Dawn will be out on November 15th on limited edition 180gm pink vinyl and compact disc.

In her most personally narrative work to date, A Fossil Begins To Bray is the follow up on Dais Records for NYC producer Hiro Kone, furthering the dialogue set forth on her 2018 release, Pure Expenditure. While the statements on Pure Expenditure rallied behind a point of dangerous excess and injustice, the material on A Fossil Begins To Bray embark upon a journey of discovery and selfanalysis, proposing a potential reorientation towards absence in hopes of illuminating potential futures.

In Mao’s own words, “This album considers the power of absence as neither a lack or deficit, but as a quiet, indeterminable force to cultivate in this time of looming and unrelenting techno-fascism. It asks that we take pause to consider our learned languages and actualities and to better consider how desire shapes our recollections and interpretations of this ‘existence.’” This allegory is expertly applied to every song on A Fossil Begins To Bray. Mao has established a long history of employing absence in her productions to maximum effect. With a vast assortment of diverse elements at play, no single track ever feels overly convoluted and further illustrates Hiro Kone’s skillful attention to dynamic tension and flow. Tracks such as “Fabrication of Silence” and “Submerged Dragon” perfectly represent the power of absence, utilized in a matter to create unique amalgams of decisive, cinematic techno rhythms from the electronic void. As the melodic elements contained within A Fossil Begins To Bray begin to unravel and slowly take form, the unaware are rewarded with a driving yet tangible refrain that offers resolve in contrast to the dense, textureladen backdrop that forms the album’s foundation. The first single, “Feed My Ancestors”, expands upon Hiro Kone’s signature take on electronic music structures. Seemingly free from the predictable contracts imposed by any one genre’s stereotypes, Hiro Kone throttles the foreboding bassline in favor of more calculated, abstract cut-ups that gracefully hold the track in place between hopeful utopia and something more ominous.

With his new record Tape Anthology Vol. 1 Christoph Berg kicks off an album series mainly focusing on works based on Tape manipulation. At the same time it marks the inaugural release of his own imprint Monochrome Editions.

Christoph is a classically trained piano and violin player whose curiosity and cultural interest are by no means bound to that category, or any others for that matter. For the past few years he has also been broadening his approach to composition by researching and experimenting with tape machines and reels of field recordings — and directing sounds into physically immediate shapes and atmospheres. Through an initially improvised approach to sources and his analogue assembly of the emerging recordings afterwards, he is methodically avoiding predictable conditions.

The raw, extensive material became subject to meticulous organisation and arrangement: Tapes have been cut, manipulated, destroyed, fixed, and reshaped into a treasury of experiences. The overall process is, in many ways, similar to the way Christoph travels and absorbs situations: curious, spontaneous, attentive, and modest. His work is less about destination than about the journey, and these compositions magically manage to capture a history of sounds, embedded in one’s own (temporary and partial) perception of them.

While most pieces on the album are dominated by field recordings and tape manipulation, they are occasionally accompanied by an array of instruments — most prominent in the three movements of the “Concertino for Tape and Violin” — including an amalgamation of violin, upright bass, organ, found objects, and synthesizer contribution by Midori Hirano on two of the album’s compositions, all of which are effectively molding chance encounters into individual and intentional entities.

However, the greatest idiosyncrasy of the album might also be the most subtle and, probably, irritating: The collages of things, places, people and events deliberately renounce conclusions, by which Tape Anthology Vol. 1 also evades any obvious stagnation. Even when themes are appearing, everything stays in constant movement, away from, towards or around you. The few palpable aspects welcome you and immediately drag you in, but without releasing you in the expected or a familiar location. It is a captivating voyage through an ever-changing landscape that — through abstention of any predictability — is not only the core of improvisation, but a philosophical approach to both traveling and being in general.

By never succumbing to tradition, expectation or comfort, Tape Anthology Vol. 1 is continuously reaching out for the capture of our surrounding — and our agency within it. Herewith the record embodies the ever intriguing cor-relation of spontaneity and subsequent mapping.

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Still Und Dunkel is the project of musician and visual artist Christoph Brünggel, film maker Benny Jaberg, and media artist Pascal Arnold. Their debut album Abandoned comprises ten compositions created for their audiovisual art live performances which draw on an ever-growing archive of moving images and sound recordings. The three artists started working together in 2011 and visited abandoned and hidden places at night or underground throughout the world to collect images and sounds. The trio documents and archives the transformative processes that these former symbols of civilisation have been undergoing since they had been deserted or forgotten -- that is, if they had ever before been accessible to the public in the first place.

"Abandoned" contains additional information on Still Und Dunkel, as well as artwork by Arnold and Jaberg, including a 64-page booklet with images from the project and its creation as well as an essay by writer Brian Dillon. All this makes it one of the most ambitious releases on the Hallow Ground to date.

Long-dawning long-player by Pacific Northwest producer Hunter P. Thompson aka Akasha System spins a suite of remote outpost rhythms and old-growth electronics variously inspired by “days and nights spent in the forests,” “long stretches of back road trails,” and “sitting alone under moss-covered trees.” It’s club music for misty mornings, towering redwood canopies, and overcast skies above uninhabited terrain: Echo Earth.

Recorded across the fall of 2018 at Thompson’s lava-lit Portland home studio, the album’s eight tracks trace cyclical arcs and seasonal tides, churning and yearning, meditative motion patterns flickering like holograms projected in the rain. Following key appearances on Elestial Sound, Neo Violence, and New Information, Echo Earth embodies all Akasha’s most evocative and elusive sonic strategies in a nuanced naturalist landscape of rust and radar, information and isolation, wires woven like roots beneath ferns.

It's been 12 months since Ramon Quezada's last solo EP as DJ Qu. "Heed The Message", then, is arguably long overdue. It's a pleasingly eclectic affair, with the A-side alone boasting both a funk-rock sampling deep house shuffler (the eccentric "May I Say") and a percussively wonky, undeniably druggy fusion of loose-limbed MPC drumming, sustained chords and woozy vocal samples. Over on the flip, Quezada continues to surprise, first by serving up the densely layered tribal drums and rolling jazz bass of "Picazon", then via the hazy, field recordings-laden dub techno/deep house fusion of atmospheric closing cut "Circumvent".

Transdisciplinary NYC artist Gavilán Rayna Russom beautifully comes into her own with a distinguished solo debut album statement including the voice of Cosey Fanni Tutti and brass
arrangements by downtown legend Peter Zummo. After decades exploring her sonic personality in various projects inspired by her deep immersion in NYC’s club and avant-garde scenes, Rayna
uses ‘The Envoy’ as a vessel to firm up and convey her personal conclusions on intersections of gender and electronic music.
Enriched with complex human experience and key influence from sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel ’The Left Hand of Darkness’ - a book that strongly resonated with her due to its descriptions of an alien race with multiple sexual characteristics - the album is intended to realign misconceptions of Russom’s prescient early work such as 2005’s ‘The Days of Mars’ LP for DFA, which arguably foreshadowed a rise of beat-less and more ambiguous urges that are now commonplace in contemporary dance music, yet were at the time lumped in with retro-fetishist trends. With ‘The Envoy’ Russom returns to a 2019 music scene that’s better prepared with the politics of an emerging new world.
Entwining Russom’s perspectives on gender, the occult, and spirituality, and how they relate to the body and music’s healing properties, ‘The Envoy’ expresses the artist’s concerns in nine
interrelated parts. Practically devoid of percussion, but full of body-moving polyrhythmic pattern, the pieces spill out of the lines of any typically imposed “grid”. Within this loose context, porous to the chaos of noise, Russom smudges a blend of analogue and digital synths to connote an elusive sense of self, encouraging the listener to navigate the music’s curves and silhouettes by instinct.
Employing the fluid potential of electronic music at its most fundamental in a way that loops right back to the glyding suspense of her prized early work, even literally incorporating elements of
long form solo recordings made in the late ‘90s in the wake of Russom’s psych/noise band Soma.
Unanchored by kicks, yet pulsing in its own ways, the album flows with an underlying elegance from Cosey Fanni Tutti’s spellbinding recital of Russom’s text in ‘Kemmer’, set to an organic, orgiastic writhe of arps and stressed noise, and on thru the free-floating organ scape of ‘Envoy’, to acknowledge more industrial impulses with ‘Strength out of the Dark’ and a towering highlight of the album in ‘Discipline of Presence’, where Russom’s throbbing mass is hauntingly illuminated by plangent brass arrangement from Peter Zummo (key Arthur Russell collaborator). The 10 minute ‘Winter’ then wraps it all up under a titular reference to Ursula K Le Guin’s novel, placing Russom as a filament of solo piano-playing light within the cold expanse of NYC.

Arguably the Netherlands’ most prominent grime artist, JLSXND7RS’ name is synonymous with some of the most iconic productions around, with a vast back catalogue including collaborations with Wiley, Footsie, Rocks FOE and Discarda. For the debut vinyl release on his fledgling label, Dark Knight, he’s brought out a long-awaited fan favourite alongside two gargantuan reimaginations.

From its brassy opening notes, “ Marching” is instantly recognisable – a minimal, yet menacing instrumental which has enjoyed countless plays from esteemed DJs including Slimzee and Sir Spyro since it first surfaced on the airwaves in 2016. It also comes with Mala’s seal of approval; the Digital Mystikz legend has cut the track to dubplate for use in his sets.

On side B1, dubstep royalty Caspa pares back the original to its base elements, instead introducing gritty basslines, mesmerising percussion and a grimy harmony to bridge the gap between the two genres.

The release concludes with a remix from Brighton innovator and Sector 7 signee J ook, which Outlook festival-goers will recognise. His melodic interpretation of the song includes swelling reversed synths, shuffling drums and cinematic breakdowns.