Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

Polytechnic Youth team up with Morecambe’s Horror Pop Sounds imprint. (A previous collaboration brought the world the wonderful “Tisch Tennis” by XAM Duo in 2017). Both labels are incredibly excited to release - for the first time - and from the vaults of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio: “Smile Eyes And The Children Folk”.

“Usmiechniete Oczy I Dzieci” (Original Polish Title) was briefly aired on Polish TV in the summer of 1983. A bizarre and surreal show aimed at children; it was pulled from transmission after the first series for a variety of understandable reasons. The story told of a small rural community of children (all the adults had vanished inexplicably) who worshiped a mythical figure called ‘Smile Eyes’ residing within a giant mushroom cluster. The children must, at all times, adorn a variety of odd masks which reflect their status within the community. The show is somewhat forgotten now, yet there are a number of (now) adult groups that regularly gather to celebrate this brief curiosity from their youth.

The soundtrack is by little known Polish TV composer Szczepan Buczkowski who, after many years of serving up bland jingles and incidental music for TV, was finally freed to unleash his array of talents, and collection of Soviet built synthesisers to full effect. He composed a woozy soundtrack of early 80’s synth goodness, where moments of beauty and terror burst out of the murk to create a mood of mystery and menace. Buczkowski also utilised the Polish Television’s youth choir, subtlety weaving them into this incredible soundtrack. The disquieting leitmotifs contribute to the truly disturbing effect the show had on young TV audiences.

A fantastical piece of work that has finally been unearthed by the Polish wing of Horror Pop Sounds in their quest to release long forgotten TV and film productions. Previous releases on cassette by the likes of ‘Art of The Memory Palace’ (Voiture Blanche Dans Le Noir) and ‘The Asistent’ (Anja and the memory People) sold out long ago. Together with our comrades at Polytechnic Youth this album will be released on transparent red vinyl with full original artwork from Telewizja Polska design and includes full colour A4 original Polish TV studio print. Restored and mastered by Stephen James Buckley.

... This album is sure to appeal to aficionados of Krystof Komeda, Lubos Fiser, Andrezej Korzynski et al. 300 copies only to the world.

The record sleeve of Dark Loops was injected with carbon powder by the artists. Please be aware of this on purchase and handling of the record and inlays.

Dark Loops is the third instance of Carbon Theater, an ongoing research project by the Institute of Incongruous Translation (Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Ashkan Sepahvand). As the other acts in the series, Dark Loops unfolds from a found site, the abandoned Fort Walem, which was now turned into a bat habitat. The field recordings and synthesised loops on the record further investigate the discrepancies between sensing and knowing and challenge the anthropocentric narratives within current discussions on planetary climate change.

iven Jones’ rather slack approach to track titles (both being consistent with and sometimes even just supplying them), it’s a bit of a relief to realize that two tracks with the same name are indeed related. In the case of “Arab Jerusalem”, which makes up nearly half of the newly-released Lalique Gadaffi Handgrenade, that kinship is immediately apparent even though both tracks are clearly their own experiences.

Released as the first track on the Minaret-Spearker picture disc 7” in 1996, “Arab Jeruzalem” (spelling also sometimes being fairly slack) is 5:42 of effectively shifting dark ambience, wordless female vocals drifting over the hand percussion, chimes, and static of the track, with eventual conversational loops discussing... something underneath. The end of that version is especially striking for the way the woman’s wordless singing starts being sampled in such a way that it overlays the whole track (and, slightly, itself). The almost 24-minute “Arab Jerusalem” here might be called the Deer Hunter version of the same story, building with great patience and many more abstract detours towards what now seems like simultaneously an excerpt and, now, a climax. As with many of Jones’ more ambient tracks, the great length just lets it cast its spell more thoroughly and entrancingly.

The other three tracks, meanwhile, suggest some of Jones’ other work but never evoke them as directly as “Arab Jerusalem”. “Jordan River” is nearly as long (a second shy of 20 minutes) but strips out the vocal elements in its predecessor, focusing instead on a more active percussive workout (analogue and digital both) and a river of hiss running down the center of the track. The title track of Lalique Gadaffi Handgrenade might bring to mind the title of “Lalique Gadaffi Jar” from Libya Tour Guide (last reissued by Staalplaat in 2015), but if they’re sonically related Jones must have practically melted the other track to get this one. And the closing “Desert Gulag” (like the title track, a much more manageable length than the first two epic tracks here) bears a slight resemblance to “Negev Gulag” from 1996’s Fatah Guerrilla, here what was a piercing, repetitive drone is softened and looped over more of Jones’ percussion. The result is a well-rounded release that shows off many aspects of Jones’ sound as Muslimgauze, while existing (like many of these DAT tapes do) in conversation with much of his previously released work.

'Moira', the new album by Monolithe Noir opens it's doors to the voices of a few fellow artists who can easily be described as "peers" - 'ROZI PLAIN' on the spellbinding 'Blinded Folded'.
'PETER BRODERICK' on the intimate 'By Twos' and Belgian Elsie dx on the haunting 'Valslava' - who are fuelled by the same drive not to settle for a single colour or tone.

Unpredictable by nature, surprising by choice, Monolithe Noir's music escapes all the over-used adjectives that divide our record collections but cheerfully digs into clearly distinct repertoires: from prog to ambient segueing into electronica and folk with a dip into the hidden gems of the Italian music library.

... It never hides behind a screen of fake complexity, clearly it speaks straight to us! Hope, you enjoy.

Since 2000 Mapstation has been the moniker for the solo work of TAL Label founder Stefan Schneider. Schneider has won international acclaim as a founding member of KREIDLER and to rococo rot as well as through unique collaborational works with artists such as Joachim Roedelius (Cluster/Harmonia), Bill Wells, Katharina Grosse, Dieter Moebius (Cluster/Harmonia) Sofia Jernberg or Jochen Irmler (Faust). There has not been a new Mapstation release since 2009's THE AFRICA CHAMBER which had former FELA KUTI member NICHOLAS ADDO-NETTEY on percussion.

The new album PRESENT UNMETRICS, is not entirely a stand-alone creation either. There are guest appearances by THOMAS KLEIN (KREIDLER) on percussion, MICHAEL ACHER (THE NOTWIST) on Sousaphone and an outstanding vocal contribution from japanese singer HACO, all deeply woven into the digital topographics of the music.

PRESENT UNMETRICS offers a collection of radically subtle music. The guiding principle of the album was to construct direct and nuanced tracks which embody a sense of open-ended incompleteness and heterogenous dynamics.

Out of sync bass arpeggios, infused with uneven rythms, fractured synth stabs and intimate melodies, frequently created here with a Schlumberg sine wave generator, are continuously engage with experimentation, both on sound and structure.

Expertly pieced-together and produced in timeless fashio, PRESENT UNMETRICS displays all the coherence and artistic authority of an album on a constant quest so vital to the music of Mapstation. An album that couldn't have been made by any other than Mapstation.

3x12"

The SENTINEL LP represents the manifesto of one part of the spectrum of MethLab's club-oriented sound. Featuring a cross section of our forward-thinking artists and special guests and illustrating a dynamic set of sonic aesthetics to usher in a new era of diverse music and an open-minded approach to the dancefloor. Expect searing audio that resides on the very cutting edge of bass music.

“The third part of our "Ode To The Soundsystem" is here and the abstract sound of the last Ossia album is no longer evident. The influence of the early Disciples 12"s shows up for the first time, with a Drexciyan connection happening on the b-side, creating one of the most lethal and militant 12"s that we have ever released. Ossia is back on Berceuse Heroique and we are very happy about it.”

Clear Vinyl.

Raime explore exquisitely honed rhythmic instincts with scintillating results on the 2nd release on their RR label.

Where the London duo’s 2018 EP and RR debut ‘We Can’t Be That Far From The Beginning’ evoked a meditative mood from the info overload of their home city that left acres of space to the
imagination, the ‘Planted’ EP rejoins the dance with four tracks that icily acknowledge strong influence from Latin American and Chicago footwork styles in a classically skooled mutation of hardcore British dance music.

In four fleetingly ambiguous dancefloor workouts they carry on a conceptual theme exploring the digital subconscious with persistently invasive, alien ambient shrapnel - half-heard voices, aleatoric prangs, and tag-covered signposts - woven into and thru their tightly coiled and reflexive drum programming.

UPTOWN, ’Num’ flexes tendons and hips like a Leonce riddim that danced all the way from NOLA and ATL to the wintery dawn of a LDN warehouse, while the lip-biting tension of minimalist 160bpm jungle/ footwork patterns and jibber-jawed vocals in ‘Ripli’ suggests the Alien film’s protagonist lost in a mazy rave space, chased by H.R. Giger-designed face huggers (or gurning energy vampires).
DOWNTOWN, ‘Kella’ then catches them on a grimy dubtech bounce, cocked back and straining at the harness, before ‘Belly’ shuts down the dance with invasive, demonic motifs exploding over dark blue chords and palpitating jungle subs with impeccable darkside style.

2x12"

Karl O’Connor (Regis) rallies the Downwards troops for the odd family portrait of ‘Let Love Decide’, including the first new Concrete Fence collab between Regis and Haswell since that killer PAN hookup, plus all new and exclusive tracks by label staples Mick Harris, Nick Dunton, Simon Shreeve, DVA Damas and Karl Meier, plus Rachel Aiello’s Layne, and Khrone/Mjolsness (Male) and various appearances by Regis himself in different formations.
Cutting across the face of the label, ‘Let Love Decide Pt.1’ is the first part of Downwards’ contemporary portrait series aligning veteran hands with the new class of mutant industrial disciples. The nine tracks include a strong clutch of exclusive projects such as the EBM supergroup You Hung - a quartet of Nick Dunton (vocals), Jim Siegel (drums), Simon Shreeve (Live mix and Studio), and Karl O’Connor (synth) - and Karl & Ken Meier’s “ambient” alias Obelus, cued up beside previously unheard Fret gear by Mick Harris and a Cub collab between Karl O’Connor and Simon Shreeve, to highlight the label’s strength in diversity and shared purpose.
Naturally, the label kingpin Karl O’Connor is a constant throughout the compilation, a connective ligature that ties the slurred slow techno of Cub’s ‘Teenage Fists’ to the live band EBM praxis of You Hung, where O’Connor’s synth underlines Krishna Goineau-styled vox by Nick Dunton (65D Mavericks) and the gnashing drums of Jim Siegel (Raspberry Bulbs), as well as the welcome reappearance of his Concrete Fence duo with Russell Haswell in a sharp cut of pranging industrial funk that sounds like vintage Autechre, chopped and skewed.
Following his turn in Cub, Simon Shreeve also weighs in his powerful studio pressure on the soggy, gothic lurch of ‘The Space Between Cultures’, while Mick Harris ramps the distortion on a ravenous Fret cut ‘Helicopter Rig’. The rest is essentially a showcase of the label’s American ambassadors,
taking in the scuffed modular dub brawl of ’Scale Reference’ by Karl & Ken Meier’s Obelus beside Layne’s blank-eyed swagger, and a stark shot in the ambient unknown by Jonathan Khrone & Benjamin Mjolsness (aka Male), while L.A.’s DVA Damas stretch out across the D-side on a stripe of sexy darkwave-techno rolige.

Nach knapp 5 Jahren Funkstille meldet sich Squarepusher mit dem Teaser "Vortrack" aus seinem kommenden Album "Be Up A Hello" (Januar 2020) zurück, aufgenommen mit der gleichen, analogen Technik, mit der er in den frühen 1990ern seinen unverwechselbaren Breakbeat-Sound entwickelt hatte. "Vortrack" zeigt Squarepusher von seiner darkeren und härteren Seite, den Fractures Remix dann zu einer D&B-Granate perfektioniert.

Yes, at last! Kinky keyboard porn! Whisper porn! Vinyl Porn! And all at the same time.! And what an ASMR treat we have for you here.
Recordings of 12 incredible bespoke mechanical keyboards made and recorded by the master of this modern art, Taeha Types. Yes, this is actual typing sounds on amazing future/retro/cutting edge keyboards. Every track different. Every keyboard different. Listen and weep - Or sleep - Or something ... An INCREDIBLE & UNIQUE listening experience. The first mechanical keyboard album EVER !!!

For the last few years a small scene has been growing. The mechanical keyboard scene. It’s now quite a big scene actually.
It makes total sense as most of us use keyboards everyday, so why not have an amazing keyboard to use instead of the total crap one you have. I mean just look down. It’s shit isn’t it. So, some people worked out that things could be improved - A lot. - So they started to make incredible, kinky keyboards, using both old and new tech: and the possibilities and options in construction are endless.

There are key cap options (GMK ABS, PBT etc etc), spring options (Cherry MX, Pandas, Alps etc etc) and even backplate options (steel, aluminum, copper etc etc), and of course case options too. And all these options make a big or little difference. And once made these keyboards are carefully lubricated spring by spring to give them that little extra smoothness and “ping”.

The results are beautiful, fetishistic, futuristic in an odd retro style, and they sound AMAZING when they are typed on. This is classic ASMR / whisper porn, the gentle click and rattle of carefully lubed springy keyboards make the hairs on the back of your neck rise. Either that or they gently woo you into a peaceful, sublime state. This is a classic and groundbreaking new Trunk album for our modern stressful times.

The recordings on this album are the first ever release of mechanical keyboard sounds. They are from a selection of (enhanced) keyboards from the 80s, 90s and now. They were recorded by the master maker of the modern mechanical keyboard, Nathan from Taeha Types.
He has a large following on Instagram, YouTube (videos of his hands typing on his keyboards hit 10K in just a couple of days after upload), and he now has over half a million views on his Twitch channel where he constructs keyboards live.

Sleevenotes on the album have been put together by Jonny Trunk and Stu London (AKA Futurecrime) from the London mechanical Keyboard scene. He knows what the fuck he is talking about. And you might not understand it, but you can catch up real quick - like I did.

- Album mastered by Jon Brooks, who also really understand these
sounds. And if you don’t, don’t worry - lots of others will.

'Oval' marks Konrad Kraft's third release on the German label 'aufaabwegen/Cologne', and is his second release in his current series. Clear textures, wobbling rhythm structures and unexpected melodic particles develop into unusual soundscapes. Blurred and foggy layers give way to clear musical accents.During the recording of the album, KK used mangled and destroyed field recordings, only two software synths and a modular synthesizer. Making use of his favorite modules, he merged the two worlds of sound design, digital and analogue. The result makes interesting listening.

"Drugstore phones" is a double LP from Russian wizard Piper Spray. This enigmatic producer is a hidden gem of Russian electronic underground. The album is taking you on an unexpected trip in many ways - it's hard to define the genre but one can feel the author's willingness to experiment and explore new sounds. This sonic documentary of Piper's world is breathing and constantly changing, though it's the most balanced and mature work of the author. A spectacular opener for GOST ZVUK's gatefold LP series.

'Matita Emostatica' is the re-issue of a sought after compilation connecting the most underrated outsider artists of the Milan scene, in the early eighties. The amazing artwork is the creation of influential designer and photographer Roberto Masotti, a very well known figure in the avantgarde and jazz realm (he made astonishing portraits for the likes of Anthony Braxton, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Carla Bley, etc.)

The compilation was produced in 1981 by Al Aprile and released by Materiali Sonori. Among the 10 artists you can find future journalists, unstoppable record collectors, renowned photographers and influential underground persona ... just scroll down the album and read the names of Monofonic Orchestra, Angelo Vaggi, Baker Street Band, Al Aprile, Roberto Masotti and many others. The result was quite unbelievable, ranging from small cosmic opus to avantgarde symphonies and asymmetrical etno-world jams. In the end ‘Matita Emostatica’ was quite in line with the efforts coming from the rest of Europe and the other side of the ocean, so to speak the compilation wouldn’t be out of place in the Ralph or Crammed Discs catalogue. A postcard from a country that is no more.

The title of Magda Drozd’s debut album, Songs for Plants, goes beyond the invocation of an unusual implied audience and indicates her desire to challenge conventional listening experiences.
Plants have been central to the writing-process of the eleven-song LP by the musician, artist, performer, and curator. Drozd’s sound palette includes synthesizers, field recordings, a violin, guitar, her own voice, and recordings of cacti, the latter of which were made using the latest recording technology that allowed Drozd to render audible the sound of the prickly pear for example.
In this way, Drozd raises questions about authorship while she also shows up the absurdity of the relentless pursuit of new sonic sources in contemporary experimental music.
All this leaves Drozd with a highly poetic album located somewhere between experimental electronics, ambient, off-pop, and dub techno. Tender and abrasive at times, she manages to combine the melancholic, critical, hopeful, and distanced - as if Grouper, Jan Jelinek, The Space Lady, and Hierglyphic Being got together to re-record Alec Empire’s Low on Ice.

Plants Dub is an art project of the homonym collective based in Lecce - Italy formed by Maria Teresa Santoro, art historian and light designer, Francesco Andriani De Vito aka Dubin dj and producer, and Andrea Presicce aka NoFinger Nails, dub master and producer. They work in Plants Dub project in a mutual exchange of skills so as to be able to research in a way where art and science has no borders. Plants Dub connects electronic music and bio-acoustic researches. Through samplings and synthesizers Plants Dub produces an inter-species communication in order to form a complete human-plant audio exchange. The album was composed using melodies generated by plants thanks to a special sound device that allowed the translation of the plants' electrical impulses into sound. Plant sounds were recorded between March 2018 and July 2019 in Salento. The musical production has followed a double register: in Acanthus Mollis, Morus and in Phoenix Canariensis the vegetable melodies overlap to specially composed dub rhythms, in Laurus Nobilis, Olea Europaea and in Quercus, the tree melodies are translated into ambient sounds.

“…Voices Heard From The Year Of Thirteen Moons…”
Beyond the decay of ruins hums the subtle sound of Vapor, a suite of dystopian instrumentals by Italians Do It Better visionary Johnny Jewel. His trademark analog synthesizers have never sounded more crystalline, their landscape never more evocatively barren. Chiming bells slowly twirl like the rusted music box of a child’s nightmare, a pitch-black bleak that is utterly frightful — Jewel channels the beauty & horror of a world that long ago abandoned its own destiny. This is a fever dream flashback. The kind that strikes you in the blur of night & refuses to weaken its grip until the sheets are drenched in sweat. This soundtrack is as elegant as it is violent, conjured in the deepest blacks & most vivid reds. These 21 celestial tracks clock in at just over an hour. Warping wind from a spiraling pinwheel…The sound of dust in the Garden of Hera, walking the tightrope between Life & Hades. The thin line that divides the Heavens from the Earth. Breathe Deep.

Produced & Mixed By Johnny Jewel
Mastered By Mike Bozzi At Bernie Grundman Mastering
Cut By Bernie Grundman In Hollywood
Artwork By Johnny Jewel

Was the acronym WTF! first emitted in anticipation of trying to describe Berlin label Kashual Plastik

Label owner Frans Ambient himself morphs, swapping aliases, as his releases shape-shift, the imprint single mindedly crafting it's own sound world. With early releases by NY duo Georgia; a mixtape by DJ Richard; the multi-discipline compilation EP "A Weird State Of Experimental Experience' - housed in a grass matting cover, embellished with a screen printed itinerant monk; something akin a postal sack (screen printed again) containing early tape works of Australian electronic pioneer Any Rantzen; and the sharp, wire-bound hand-made EP by magical Japanese electronic / art duo group A.

Mind your fingers, filling is hot!

Kashual Plastik 007 is more than just a double agent, it's a costume changing fifth columnist, destroying and reassessing how we could or should release music in this spoon-fed era.

Established scholars Georgia, alongside freshers NAR, Paul Arambula and KC, mix drinks with F_ingers (a combo of Carla dal Forno, Tarquin Manek & Samuel Karmel (CS + Creme); A.K. Klosowski, the 80´s experimental tape artist from Hamburg, rubs shoulder pads with Brannten Schnüre fresh from their blinding album via Low Company; Nadine Byrne from Swedish noisesters Ectoplasm Girls; Andre Uhl, musician and futurologist - there's plenty of seats on top. The busload of creators on this anthology weave a psychedelic, dream-like state, with drones, opiated melodies and stellar visions. A pox on your coffee-table music, this wooden beast is both table and feast.

Greg Hates Car Culture was Venetian Snares' first ever vinyl release. Long out of print, it came out in 1999, as the third release on Minneapolis label History Of The Future. Aaron Funk's hallmarks were there from the start. His absurdist sense of humour, the razor sharp edits and his use of odd time-signatures. There is a rawness here, not often captured on later records, where you can imagine Aaron playing live in front of a room full of young breakcore fanatics. Indeed most of the tracks here were recorded live, tweaking his effects and EQ on the fly, to DAT from his Amiga. The album opens with "Personal Discourse", recorded in 1997, which samples Aaron calling into a Dominatrix live on community cable TV, while "Fuck A Stranger In The Ass" samples from the film The Big Lebowski. The track "Aqap" has a different sound to the others having been recorded later, in 1998, on Aaron's first PC.

We have also added three hitherto unreleased 1997 tracks to this reissue. Two of them "Eating America.." and "Punk Kids" appeared on Venetian Snares rare self-released 1998 cassette Spells and the long sought after "Milk" was only passed around by his friends.

Greg Hates Car Culture lets you hear the raw energy of a musician at the birth of his sound.

SC-164 is a project based out of Brooklyn, NY. The Channel series will include music exclusively by Greg Schappert aka Donor, under his SC-164 alias, and will be focused around Electro, Industrial and Experimental music.

A key player in the New York scene and boss of her own Dusk & Haze label, it was Francis Harris' Kingdoms that initially released Sophie Saze's standout two-part album, and that is where this forward looking package of highly original remixes lands. First up is German artist Roman Flügel, who’s responsible for a myriad of musical aliases and just as many different sounds. Here he is in experimental electronic mode and reworks 'Cure' into an elongated groove with twisted synth lines layering up over the shimmer, shadowy beats. It's a ghoulish track with a creepy atmosphere.
Swede Anthony Linell makes tripped out, heady techno on Northern Electronics, always with a stylish aesthetic. That continues here as he reimagines 'Aliens' as an absorbing cosmic soundtrack. Supple, rubbery drums bubble down low while broad pads and astral motifs colour the airways above and sink you into a state of trance. New York beat maker and Blueberry Records boss FaltyDL then steps up with a remix of 'Self'. It is a typically off-kilter groove that seems to float on post-jungle drums while distant synth details make for a dreamy atmosphere. Closing out this killer package is Saze's original track 'Dreams', an intense techno cut where coarse textures peel off the industrial clatter of the drums.

Radically shapeshifting and surrealist, as spinning sonic prisms taunting the ears, 'Cercle Vicieux' and 'Cercle Vertueux' channel Fluxus artistry, straying past jazz-licked drones, avalanching low end and blood red scatting. Scenes both condescending and anxious -- this release is carried by its interwoven conflicts, where strange attractors reveal knots at each listen. The fifth Plafond is a special joint project tying the synchronicity of two contemporary minds. Both Zoe Mc Pherson and Rupert Clervaux are known to actively transgress art forms, reconstituting production methods through respective audiovisual and literary pursuits. The listener is relocated in their musical interzone, bordered by avant-garde experimentalism on one side, and bass-heavy club mutations on the other. This ambiguation lays out a gateway, one through which modern producers can re-adopt the revolutionary energy of those who unraveled conventions on music and sound in the first place -- a 'Cercle Vertueux', indeed. Comes in a hand printed sleeve with multiple tints grey and silver, including an Obi-strip, by the BAKK Interzone Alcazar.

Strafe F.R. are from Dusseldorf, Germany and have been releasing albums through Touch on and off since 1986...

Shasta Cults is the musical project of Canadian electronics technician Richard Smith. For almost two decades, Smith was the official Buchla & Associates go-to repair person for studios, collectors, and musicians around the world, having worked with artists like Aphex Twin, Suzanne Ciani, Mort Subotnick and institutions like NYU, The Library of Congress and Mills College in Oakland, Ca.

Recording demonstrations of the rare equipment that found its way on to his workbench is how Smith describes the origins of Shasta Cults. Although sounds have been trickling out for decades via Soundcloud and other outlets, it wasn’t until 2017 that Smith recorded his first album using one of these rare instruments – the Buchla 700. Configurations, released this past September by Important Records, features eight tracks of heavily-modulated, wave-shaped explorations drenched in effects, and was the catalyst for his latest releases.

Recorded over the span of 3 months in the fall of 2018, this album was programmed solely on the only fully-functional Buchla Touché. Developed in the early 1980s with hardware by Don Buchla and software programmed by musician David Rosenboom, the Touché features waveforms generated internally by twenty-four digital oscillators using frequency modulation and sophisticated digital and analog signal processing for timbre and output assignment, all of this controlled via a six-octave black and white keyboard, unusual for a Buchla instrument.

This LP is a continuation on themes first heard on Configurations, with more consideration given to the generation and capturing of the pieces. This album is less dark than previous releases, showcasing the incredible fidelity of the hardware used and Smiths evolution as an audio engineer. Put on some headphones, find a comfortable chair, and let this LP transport you to the mystifying southern cascades of Siskiyou County.

CA2+ first appeared on last years compilation Scandinavian Swords II and Gait Cycle EP further showcase excellent, sterile and cerebral noise rhythms from this upcoming Stockholm producer.

Make Noise Records is excited to announce our upcoming release of Brett Naucke's "Electronic Hypnosis Program" EP.

Recorded in Chicago on a Eurorack system full of Make Noise modules, "Electronic Hypnosis Program" presents an eclectic collection of experimental electronic works for sampled voice, field recordings and synthesized sound.

"Electronic Hypnosis Program" follows Naucke's acclaimed 2018 release "The Mansion" (on Spectrum Spools), and continues his exploration of marrying an ever-evolving practice of advanced synthesis techniques with personal and conceptual narratives. Beyond live performance, Naucke has provided the original scores for several films, sound design for interactive gaming, and presented many works for multi-channel audio installations.

" Music may not actually have height, width or depth, but Brett Naucke's certainly feels three-dimensional. Using synthesizers, field recordings and a variety of other sources, the Chicago-based artist crafts expansive pieces that are like physical spaces you can enter and explore."

-Marc Masters, NPR

"Electronic Hypnosis Program" will be released on November 1st, on clear 12" vinyl in an edition of 300, with full-color artwork by Chicago-based visual artist Bill Connors.

Contagious is a solid blending of avant-garde experimentation and electronic music. Formed by two innovative voices from the Improvisation scene of Berlin (Andrea Neumann and Sabine Ercklentz) and Mieko Suzuki, a well-crafted and creative DJ and musician who’s operating in Berlin venues and festivals since a long time.

Contagious is one of the most forward thinking, mind-melting projects to hit the electronic music scene. Intense and powerful, yet rooted in a tradition of crafting and sculpturing of in the most creative ways, all this building up within a solid structure of instant composition and improvisation. The trio plunder each other’s musical spheres, appropriate them and switch roles. Andrea Neumann on her infamous Inside Piano, an instrument she pioneered and crafted, is applying the most creative feedback processing to simple piano strings and sending them occasionally to Mieko Suzuki’s processing rig, who also uses her own pre-recorded sounds and her skills on turntables, while Sabine Ercklentz’s trumpet sounds blast through her processing system and altogether the three musicians communicate into logics of composition and futuristic structures, where fragile sound textures and pulses become monumental.

Contagious is also the debut album recorded and produced by Rabih Beaini. The Trio wanders in new aesthetic areas, sound is a texture where the processing rigs are constantly developing new forms and evolutions. Structures and grooves implode in noisy fragments, growing into a deep trance state.

moonraker's second full-length release comes as a split-LP: Unvarete I and II. The duo continue to develop their inimitable approach to extended thematic development, melodic and rhythmic counterpoint, and chromatic harmonies.

10"

Roving punk ethnomusicologist Julien Hairon aka Judgitzu delivers fire on Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Tapes with two cuts of high tension, cheek-pulling club G-force.
After spending the past 6 years recording soundscapes and traditional musicians across Asia,
Oceania and Africa, and releasing them on his Les Cartes Postales Sonores label (along with reissues of tape and CD discoveries on his petPets label), Judgitzu’s finally presents his first electronic music productions as the result of his residency in Tanzania since 2017. Clearly inspired by the domestic, hyperlocal sound of Singeli, but more stripped and tipped towards minimalism, the results have been lighting up clubs, back-rooms and festivals from Kampala to Salford and beyond over summer 2019, and are only set to go further with this full release.
‘Umeme’ is grade A rocket fuel that runs at 180bpm for nearly 7 minutes of unyielding, panic-inducing stabs and undulating bass rhythms. It starts up ferociously and does not let go until the end, sustaining a state of high alertness that will leave even the most reckless ravers breathless but ready to go again. ‘Kelele’ follows with equal regard for your heart rate and rave health, but this time by stealth and less in-your-face, filtering the drums with field recordings of revving
motorbikes and squawking animals in an ebb and flow of pilly rushes and tropical hyperdelia.
Hands-down it’s one of 2019’s deadliest dancefloor sessions and hopefully the start of many to
come from an exemplary new producer.

New York based Irish artist Orlando drops Happy Bossman, three different styles of bass cuts with the A1 "Happy Bossman" on a more grime club sound tip aswell as "Orogony" and "You Still Echo In Me" on the more experimental side. The b-side features two tripped out mixes by WhereTheTimeGoes head Lastminuteman known for his excellent tape series."

Clear Vinyl

Regarded by Dominik Fernow as the “best US noise project in terms of texture and composition”, Skin Crime return to Hospital Productions with an immanent inversion of noise convention
exploring ideas of tense, slow-burn patience instead of aggressive intensity.
Brutally active between the early ‘90s and mid ‘00s, Skin Crime took a 12 year hiatus until 2016 and the bloodshed of their instantly sold-out, 20CD boxset of archival material. That same year they
also issued ‘Ghosts I Have Been’, a crushingly bleak album inspired by Japanese mythology and ghost stories which have paved the way for this new one, where the band’s Patrick O’Neil and Mark Jameson continue to refine their instincts into the dankest brand of organic ambient noise.
In key with their ghostly Japanese muse, specifically the “Bakaneko” or “Ghost Cat” movies of the ‘50s and ‘60s, as well as the writing of Lafcadio Hearn aka Koizumi Yakumo - author of ‘Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things’ - Skin Crime’s music in ‘Traveller on the Road’ is all about presence and the suggestibility of hypnagogic and half-awake states. Their cold-fingered sleight of hand is applied to exceedingly fine layers of textural enigma in long, unbroken tracts that hold the listener’s gaze with frightening power.
‘Avoid Large Places At Night’ takes hold with intravenal potency, very subtly drawing eyes to half-mast with its mechanical womb-like ambience, and stealthily introducing subharmonic rumbles
and peripheral rustles that suggest unseen spectres lurking in a thicket of ghosts. A lack of sudden movement only ratchets the threat levels to seat-edge. Likewise with its deeply soporific subs
and texturhythms, the B-side’s ‘Black Cat From The Grove’ continues to numb the senses in a noise style, but eviscerated of all open aggression, preferring a dense mode of suggestion that only emphasises the unheimlich nature of their music.
It’s a masterclass in saying it without saying it, and effectively amounts to a missing link between Kevin Drumm, Painjerk and Mika Vainio, or even Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement and Meitei, that should not be missed by any fans of the above.

First reissue of this long time looked after Japanese experimental gem from the 80's !

A walk in Paris somewhere between the 30's and the 50's made by a Japanese lost soul. "Montparnasse" by Yoran is a surreal journey into an era which has maybe existed but long gone. A melancholic phantasy about a time you'll never know and can only smell the atmosphere. Memories and flashes come from an ancient time, cobbled streets where heels crack far away surrounded by the tickle of a street musician, a classical dance class directed by some piano notes or an announcement from an old train station. The cryptic french spoken-word infuses the extracts and sound collages taken from different french movies looped into a broken tape player. The result is one of the most mysterious and looked after japanese 80's underground record.This reissue is pressed for the first time on 12" at 45 RPM. Remastered and limited to 500 copies.

"Are you still there?"
"Yeah so she said the body is the mind's measuring instrument or something - the mind renders information registered on its sensory surface, combines it with old info from the same source and keeps the whole accumulated stock poised to guide action"
"Hence why it sounds like this?"
"Yeah exactly"

8 Spinhaunt Coil

'Verzamelen I' is the first volume in a retrospective series in which we look back at the work of Wouter van Veldhoven. Throughout the past decade, the Dutch composer built an impressive catalogue of music in which tape loop and modular synthesis experiments hold a central place. Both collaborations and solo-work saw the light through some distinctive labels such as Slaapwel, The Tapeworm, Umor Rex and Digitalis among others.

With this series we want to dive into some work which slightly went under the radar. The pieces are collected from several releases and are re-mastered for the occasion. Some of them were never physically released before.

Marcus Fischer and r beny kindly joined this trip by offering two new reworks which close this first volume.

Songs taken from ‘A head stuck in tapes’, ‘Een paar schetjes en optredens 2005-2006’ & ‘Slow lullabies for babies’.

LIMITED TO 300 COPIES - HAND PAINTED BORDER

The sounds Jan Harder and Steve Hartmann discover in their studio sessions unravel their power between the notes. What they capture is for us to marvel at. The eeriness, the beauty. Like observing a ghost in the headlights.

Terry Fox was a first generation Bay Area conceptual artist. Beginning in the 1970s, he worked extensively with sound, especially the use of piano wires detached from their native instrument and anchored between opposing walls of the performance space.

Linkage, Fox's first album, was originally released in 1982 to accompany an installation at Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland. The record would mark Fox's first attempt to realize his groundbreaking and visceral piece "Berlin Wall Scored for Sound."

Side one links five ways of playing the piano wires: drumming, pulling, bowing, beating and scraping. The room itself acts as a type of natural resonator as Fox moves the wires with padded mallet, his bare fingers, violin bow, wooden shish kebab stick and rusted metal rod. The effect of such plain arrangements can be utterly hypnotizing.

The second half of Linkage was recorded in the attic of Künstlerhaus Bethanien, West Berlin, in May 1981. A thirty-three meter long wire was held in contact with a sardine tin. Over the course of 20 minutes, pulsating drones dissolve into rhythmic patterns that sound almost synthetic in origin. As noted in the original LP pamphlet, all these sounds were strictly acoustic; the only electronics involved was the recording equipment.

In an introduction for this edition, Marita Loosen-Fox and Ron Meyers write, "The desire to eliminate any barriers between the art and the viewer/audience connects all of Fox's situations/actions/performances. The ultimate goal is to communicate as directly as possible, which finds its most concentrated expression in the artist's works with sound."

This first-time reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with booklet.

VIAJE" is the debut album by Swiss musician Roland Bucher and was produced with an instrument developed and built by the artist himself, the noise table. VIAJE presents the culmination of almost a decade of exploring the possibilities that the curious device offers. Combining the physicality of the improvisational praxis with a classical approach to composition, these five songs highlight the emotional, narrative and atmospheric potentials of granular noise. VIAJE was not only produced with an unheard-of instrument, it also comprises music that no-one ever has heard quite like that before.

Combining the reacTIVision software with Max/MSP programming, the noise table is both a controller and a granular synthesis sampler. This makes it possible for Bucher, a seasoned drummer in bands like Blind Butcher or Kion, to improvise freely in front of an audience. Small musical instruments and everyday objects provide the input for the samples. Those samples are then connected to objects that Bucher moves around on a glass window inserted into the table which is being filmed from below, thus controlling the output. Starting from improvisations much like in his live sets, VIAJE slowly took form during Bucher’s 2018 visits to Chile and Brazil as part of a scholarship programme which also saw him perform several times to South American audiences.

The quiet moments on these five tracks are all part of a greater dynamic, one that is thoroughly composed by still marked by the physicality of how the sounds were achieved. The juxtaposition of the abstract and tangible is mirrored by reality effects that create moments of irritation. After "Acamar" opens the record with a crescendo of harsh electronic sounds, "Curinanco" seems to draw on natural sounds and even birdsong. Can this be… real? And if so, what about the raging jazz drumming of "Ircan" - is all of that played by hand, or just something that Bucher triggered by moving around some objects on a piece of glass? Also "Praecipua" and "Cau-Cau" surely do not answer these questions. Both under five minutes long, they however brilliantly prove that a complex entity like Bucher’s noise table can yield very different, direct emotional responses. After the blistering first three tracks, they serve as a melancholic coda to an album like none other.