Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

DJ Nigga Fox’s most substantial release to date sets a new benchmark for Lisbon’s revered underground ghetto dance scene, pulling traces of jazz, acid house and cinematic sound design
into his deeply rugged and exceptional sound with effortless style. Highlighted as one to watch in Lisbon’s virulent club scenius since appearing on the ‘Bazzerk’ compilation which introduced many
ravers to Kuduro in 2011, DJ Nigga Fox’s productions have become acclaimed for a mix of abstract weirdness and proper dancefloor impact that’s hit ‘floors hard across the world. Following 2018’s
‘Crânio’ 12” and remix of How To Dress Well, he now returns to the Príncipe powerhouse, home of his first trio of 12”s, with a definitive statement that arguably ranks among this year’s strongest,
rhythm-driven LPs, bar none.
In a way that mirrors UK dance music’s transition in the ‘90s from hardcore jungle to garage and D&B, or in the ‘00s from grime and dubstep to more “sophisticated” styles of deep house,
broken beats and UK Funky, Nigga Fox’s longest release to date appears more layered, plusher and, ultimately “musical” when compared to his earlier work. Using sparing but knowing dabs
of noirish jazz keys, live-sounding double bass and expressively off-kilter synth tones, he binds rippling, colourful flesh to his flexing, bare bones drum torque in a way that boldly blazes a trail for his local scene without ever losing sight of what makes it so thrilling in the first place.
This inch-tight refinement of Nigga Fox’s already distinctive style is characterised by the twisting,
unpredictable arrangement of ’Sub Zero’, where stealthy waves of swingeing drums and vintage horror movie tropes are ramped with feral electro scuzz to killer effect, or equally in the freaky tension between lissom jazz chords, jaws-harp buzz and wild acid lines on ‘Faz A Minha’, and likewise the way he meshes roiling drums with complex, asymmetric electronics on ‘Vicio’, or simply forges his own, outstanding form of slow, psychedelic dance-pop replete with his own,
Quasimodo-Styled vocal in the shocking closer ‘5 Violinos.’
By any measure ‘Cartas Na Manga’ is a singular album-length EP that stands miles out from the crowd. Its only comparisons really lie within Lisbon’s club scene, with the likes of DJ Firmeza,
Marfox or Nervoso. As such it’s best taken as symptomatic of their collective scenius, and is keenly ready to be mixed with music from all corners of the Black Atlantic.

Genre defying, post-industrial adventures from France Sauvage, a DIY trio mixing outsider art, collage and darkwave influences in their own style of “Free Rural” and “Bruit Concret” music for
Paris-based label; In Paradisum France Sauvage play their own custom-built instruments in a way that shirks showing-off and
doesn’t pay heed to trend, while fully entrusting in the power of their collective instinct. ‘L’Homme À Zero’ is the band’s cyborganically diverse debut LP for In Paradisum and their first record since 2015’s ‘Jeux vocaux des bords de Dronne.’ It yields a half-true image of the band in action, using edited recordings to construct an album that demonstrates their tastes for off-kilter, hypnotic sounds and rhythms between the piercing folk rituals of ‘La folie chez les animaux’, the black metal techno grind of ‘Parle-toi de nous’, and the Ghédalia Tazartès-like avant-chanson of ‘Je suis sorti de ma maison.’
Essentially the band specialise in avant-garde music without pretension. There are no grand concepts or to fall back on or mask a lack of original music. On the contrary, ‘L’Homme À Zero’ is fizzing with effortlessly tight and playful invention and tona contrasts. From the cyber-folk fanfare of their puckered intro, the album saddles up a trip of Jodorowskian dimensions; traversing from desert-at-night scenes in ‘Brex me down’ to passages of psycho-cinematic harps and something like trembling R&B emoted by John Duncan, and sideways, ever sideways into chunks of Pan Sonic-like gristle and disorienting field recordings that recall a 4.1 world parallel to David Toop’s General Strike.
While narrative form surely emerges from the album’s mazy structure, it was never intended as such. It’s more testament to the band’s loose yet focussed intuition and naturally sprawling,
explorative tendencies that a surreal tale emerges which will have different meanings for every listener.

Junes Kicks Off A New Imprint, Dote, With A Full-length Exploration Of The Direct Yet Dreamlike Sound He's Made His Own. With His Usual Flair For Crisp Grooves And Ghostly Palettes, A View Reveals A Broader Range Of Nuanced Vibes. Second Wind And Stop, Elate Show A Playful Buoyancy, And A Sense Of Discovery In Tracks Like Balancing Act And Two-sided Embrace Add A Narrative Pace To The Collection. There's Time For Some Of The Creeping, Spaced Out Atmospheres That Hallmark Some Of Junes' Previous Best, But With Tracks Like Packaging, The Realisation Of This Sound Is Richer Than Ever. There's A Restless Feel Throughout The Work, Too - Especially Evident In The Closer Spooked - And A Feeling That We've Been On A Trip That Doesn't End Here.

Günter Schickert, krautrock maestro of echo-driven psychedelia, returns on Marmo one year and half after the release of the Labyrinth LP. Mauerharfe consists of old and special material, which has officially never seen the light before. It is due for release on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall fall, as 12” LP with CD, CD and digital formats. The physical versions contain exclusive pictures, liner notes, a prose poem by Peter Unsicker and some draft writings by the artists with reflections on the project.

Berlin, August 1990, first post-wall Summer. Two friends, the locals Günter Schickert and gallerist Peter Unsicker perform a spectacular yet symbolically intimate interpretation of those epochal changing days by building a sound installation with a damaged piece of the Berlin Wall. They persuade the patrol “Feliks Dzierzynski” of the DDR army to transport and relocate a the piece outside Peter's Wall Street Gallery on the Zimmer Strasse, in the borough of Mitte, where only a few months back the intact structure actually passed through.

Once the wall was positioned, they bend down the bars of the iron structure that crop out the concrete, bind piano chords to them, stretch the strings down to the bodom base of the construct and connect guitar amplifiers to the set up. The Berlin Wall is ready to be played as a harp.

Günter Schickert's Mauerharfe are executed between August and October 1990, resulting into three long field recordings.

As Günter Schickert claims, the idea behind the project was the one of representing, in a personal musical way, the feelings and sensations that he – as well as many others experiencing the division and eventually the removal of the Wall - felt through the decades around the presence of this monstrous separator. The wall becomes an instrument, seen both as an object and executor of the experiment, while the human and artistic presence almost vanishes. The atonal and harsh sounds embody the ugliness of an inhuman separation, the terrible echoes of prisons and the lament of its prisoners. The pulling of the strings suggests the repression of a regime, while releasing these it indicates a dash of freedom.

You can get lost into the intensity of the Mauerharfe, find always new sensations and a countless amount of details. If you approach the listening with adventurous spirit and a good dose of curiosity, it can really throw you back into the past, a past of segregation, austerity and suppression, yet of an urging desire of liberation.

The tracks:

Side A features a 19 mins long piece. The tape-induced background noise lays down a carpet of haunting atmospheres and introduces the experiment. Günter starts to test the chords by pulling out, with his fingers, dry and acid timbers. The warm up evolves by investigating wider sinusoidal waves and dilated metallic riffs. The track takes the form of a more conventional music narration, as the artist bangs the harp with a sort of rudimental violin bow creating marching percussive paderns. Layers of psychedelic ambience take over the scene before mixing up with roaring industrial spasms. Lunar sceneries seem to emerge, paving the way to sudden strings feedbacks, crackling distorted clicks and menacing reverbs.

Flip-side, a similarly long take opens up with ferocious urge, like being catapulted into a warfare between iron and cement, sounding like a real military operation. As the strings get hit and pulled, the metal seems to crash into thousands of pieces, dissolving into merciless distortions. Yet it is intriguing to notice how these dynamics of madness occasionally generate wavy and gentle sub-harmonics. This piece adds up intensity in comparison to the previous one, containing enhanced abrasive and distorted frequencies. The final part is marked by monstrous echoing rhythms, before drijing back to a chaotic rumble of fire, metal and concrete.

The third piece, Mauerharfe 3, is a 30 minutes long performance dated August the 13th 1990. As Schickert recalls, 29 years before exactly on that same date, the construction of the Berlin wall was accomplished. This take appears exclusively on CD, with copies included inside the vinyl package and as a separate CD format release. The recording is cleaner than the previous two, giving more width and definition to the sounds. As opposed to Mauerharfe 1 and 2, where the wall of sound is overwhelming, in this 3rd take human presences can be heard : fragments of women voices, a baby crying, the siren of a police car. The compositional approach is more sober, the tones of the harp warmer, closer to an actual one, its notes more gentle, discrete and meditative, sometimes resulting into deep, gong-like percussive timbers.

Fresh, fried, and freewheeling debut by Owosso/Lansing, Michigander Cameron Weede aka Cammi checks every SILK box in the book: teen MPC experiments, thrifted hardware jack, tape noise dumpster dub, longform luxury house, department store boogie, standup comedy groove, etc. Tracked in fits and starts over the past eight years, Look At The World runs on immediacy and intuition, man/machine symbiosis at its loosest and most liquidated. Early years spent jamming improv trombone with free jazz hillbillies eventually led to a love of classic house and cheap gear, with a special fondness for “ugly 90’s FM/romplers and digital synths because it’s all I can afford.”

But limited means don’t mean limited ends: across 54 minutes Cammi cuts a sweaty swath of raw rhythm, busted bass, and plastic passion, from outer rings to inner circles. Take a Look: “I just do whatever’s in my head, it’s all subconscious. I’m def not a purist – about anything, really.”

Skin/Glove is the second LP by Belgian musician Mathieu Serruys, following the release of his B.A.A.D.M. debut On Germaine Dulac back in 2014. Compiled over the course of a fortnight, the record features material recorded over the past five years: creaks of ice buckling under heat, thick hums like nauseating headaches, plumes of evaporated organ hymns, frostbitten crackles of dying tape loops. These disparate sources are unified by the pervasive corrosion of pain and time, which presses into the surface of every sonic object. Melodies splinter under the strain of being pulled apart; drones tremble under the gathering gravity of fatigue; dissonances flicker like candles on the brink of extinguishment. Yet despite the emotional density of the material itself, the process of composition provides a route toward comprehending how these sounds and experiences are connected. Skin/Glove reads as a constellatory map of adversity and grief, beautifully coalesced through the cathartic distance of retrospect, haunted by the sibilant whispers of distinct memories in dialogue, latticed by lesions that fatefully and poignantly intersect.

With over 2 decades of formal exploration and exhilarating abstraction Get On is, somewhat surprisingly, only the fourth solo Pita full length. Peter Rehberg has always been vouched for pushing the very limits of the technology du jour, be it software or in recent years a complex modular set. Rehberg’s motives are one of unbridled exploration often resulting in extreme and exhilarating audio works.

Having spearheaded the contemporary electronic sound with his uncompromising explorations of noise, rhythm and extreme computer music, he has also worked with numerous experimental musicians in collaboration. Rehberg stands in the wake of a sonic revolution, once fringe, which transformed over time into the sound of a generation of experimental geeks and club freaks worldwide.

Get On follows on from the 2016 release Get In. As with other titles in his ‘Get’ series we have an unwieldy blend of noise, abstraction, gnarled rhythm and blurred melody. Both analogue and digital tools are deployed as a means of expressing something outside of everyday electronics. ‘AMFM’ launches proceedings with some delightfully disorientating ricocheting electronics setting off a subversive sonic spectrum. ‘Frozen Jumper’ presents some ugly skittering electronics which rotate into exquisitely mangled forms before launching into an unsettling euphoria. The last piece ‘Motivation’ is a towering sensitive work, simultaneously haunted and emotionally moving. Get On marks another monumental work in the ongoing evolution from one of the ground zero pioneers of contemporary radical electronic music. As uncompromising as ever this is Pita in his prime. Emotion rung from the most twisted of frames.

Maybe it’s too much to ask for a moment of your attention. As we grow older and keep
diving into this era of information, disinformation, fake news and all that, we also tend to
take a step back and listen to the intents of those social media adverts that tell us to slow
down, breathe in, breathe out, enjoy everything around you a little bit. So, if it’s not too
much to ask, you can press play and start enjoying “D-A-D”. If you’re doing that, you can
even stop reading this, because you don’t need further instructions.

It’s the second time in less than two years that we release music from London based
Greek musician Tasos Stamou (Athens, 1978). The wordplay of “Musique Con Crète”
(CREP54, 2018) was a backdoor to an adventurous and ‘concrete’ experience with
sound. “D-A-D” follows up on that. Recorded between 2015-2018 as an homage to both
his Dad and the more commonly used tuning on the Greek Bouzouki, D-A-D, Stamou
delivers 40 minutes of music that explores ancient and modern languages, while crossing
his unique instrumentation with celebrations of new/old folk, field recordings and
electronics. In his music, there’s a constant flow of ideas that defy standard tonalities and
the conception of “traditional”.

Improvisation was the starting point for the creation of some of the nine pieces Tasos
Stamou wrote for “D-A-D”. The electronics often serve to interact with field recordings that
are wisely manipulated, while acoustic instruments, like a Bouzouki, build up the
connection with the tradition and the necessity to slow down.

With his unique atmospheres, Tasos is whispering some life hacks to build a better life.
Nowadays, it’s quite rare for a record to organize the way the listener wants to listen to
music, to sounds. “D-A-D” creates a beautiful systematization between old and new,
folk/traditional music and the technology in sound. There’s – still - some boldness in that.

All songs by Tasos Stamou
Mastered and Cut by Rashad Becker

Editions Mego is proud to present the latest addition to the compelling discography of Thomas Brinkmann. Throughout his career Brinkmann has focussed on the human operating amongst industry alongside rhythms that manifest as a result of technological advancement. With this new release Brinkmann makes a u-turn, looking back to the early industrial age. Comprised of recordings of various looms, Raupenbahn investigates the sonic properties and consequences of the first automatic loom as constructed by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1745. Thomas Brinkmann once again adheres to his tendency for clarity and simplicity whilst further investigating not only the sound and rhythms of the machines (looms) but also what role they serve in society and what consequences they have on the environment. Raupenbahn presents 21 tracks in total, 11 feature on the vinyl, the remaining 10 as digital bonus tracks. The majority of recordings were undertaken by Brinkmann in 2017 with a Neumann KM 184 stereo set. Additional recordings were sourced with permission from Monika W. recs. from 2014 Central Museum of Textiles Łódź, Poland. Each piece presents a diversity of material which borders on the breathtaking and beautiful in richness and complexity. The various looms unravel rhythms and patterns unexpected from machines of the early industrial age.

The loom holds a significant role in shaping our world being the catalyst for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine which, alongside the subsequent work of Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace, paved the way for modern computing. There is a linage of the loom that fits succinctly in Brinkmann's overall argument. Here we encounter a parallel between machine driven economies and the music that rose from such places, consider the Sheffield steel industries, the Manchester weaving industry or the Rhineland / Düsseldorf loom and machine industry. Is it a coincidence that the practice of such machines in the environment gave rise to today's predilection for electronic dance music, in pop, soundtracks, etc.

Raupenbahn features no treatment or processing and explicitly displays varying tempo and timbres which ascertain a wide range of acoustic structures. The artwork features Ingrid Wiener, Rosemarie Trockel and Alexandra Bircken, three different generations who would with ideas of fabric weaving, loming and the like. This exceptional release works on a number of levels alongside it's striking sonic palette.


i 9 Günne (Irmscher) BO Möhnesee / D

Previously unreleased recordings by various lineups drawn from Derek Bailey, Tristan Honsinger, Christine Jeffrey, Toshinori Kondo, Charlie Morrow, David Toop, Maarten Altena, Georgie Born, Lindsay Cooper, Steve Lacy, Radu Malfatti and Jamie Muir.

Journalists often make the brief history of Free Improvisation conform to the idea that the history of music is a nice straight line from past to present: Beethoven… Brahms… Boulez. Thus Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and John Stevens — together with Brötzmann and co across the Channel — were the trailblazing ‘first generation’, forging a wholly new language alongside contemporary avant-garde and free jazz. Figures like Toshinori Kondo and David Toop, willing as they were to incorporate snippets of all kinds of music, were the pesky ‘second generation’, happily cocking a snook at the ‘ideological purity’ of Bailey’s non-idiomatic improvisation.
‘Company 1981’ shows up the foolishness — the wrongness — of such storylines. Check the eclectic collection of guests Bailey invited to Company Weeks over the years. He had clear ideas about the music, but he was no ideological purist.

One of the founders of Fluxus, Charlie Morrow injects blasts of Cageian fun into half the recordings here, whether blurting military fanfares from his trumpet, or intoning far-flung scraps of speech. Cellist Tristan Honsinger and vocalist Christine Jeffrey join in the joyful glossolalia, while Bailey, Toop and Kondo contribute delicious, delicate, hooligan arabesques, by turns.
The remainder are performed by a different ensemble: Bailey, bassist Maarten Altena, former Henry Cow members Georgie Born and Lindsay Cooper on cello and bassoon, the insanely inventive Jamie Muir on percussion, and trombonist Radu Malfatti, showing his mastery of extended technique. Were that not enough, there’s the inimitable purity of Steve Lacy’s soprano ringing high and clear above the melee. Glorious!

There’s always been this idea that Free Improvisation is somehow Difficult Listening, but when the doors of perception are thrown open and prejudice cast aside, you realise that it’s not difficult at all. “Is it that easy?” chirps Morrow, at one point. Indeed it is.
Enjoy yourself.

Repress

Building from a reputation of arresting live performances and critically acclaimed releases
Puce Mary breaks new ground with The Drought, evolving from the tropes of industrial and
power electronics to forge a complex story of adapting to new realities. Remnants of noise still
exist, sustaining the penetrative viscerality offered on previous records, however The Drought
demonstrates an intention to expand on the vocabulary of confrontational music and into a
grander narrative defined by technical and emotional growth.
Bringing together introspective examination with literary frameworks by writers such as Charles
Baudelaire and Jean Genet, Puce Mary’s compositions manifest an ongoing power struggle within
the self towards preservation. The traumatised body serves as a dry landscape of which obscured
memories and escape mechanisms fold reality into fiction, making sense of desire, loss and
control. The Drought presents both danger and opportunity; through rebuilding a creative practice
centred on first person narrative and a deliberate collage of field recordings and sound sources
Puce Mary injects an acute urgency across the album seeking resilience.
“To Possess Is To Be In Control” makes use of lyrical repetition as an ambiguity of two selves, or
a divided self, attempting to consume one another, while “Red Desert,” named after Michelangelo
Antonioni’s 1964 film, portrays the individual subsumed by surrounding environmental forces.
The seven-minute epic “The Size of Our Desires” acts as the emotional tipping point of the record;
amongst the ominous drone and dense feedback flutters almost-beatific melodies, while the lyrics
reveal a romantic call to be swept up in the midst of an increasingly uninhabitable world.
Rather than escape, The Drought dramatises a metamorphosis in which vulnerability is confronted
through regeneration. Noise and aggression no longer act as an affront to react against but part
of a ‘corporeal architecture’ where space, harmony and lyricism surface from the harsh tropes of
industrial music. The Drought chronologises the artist’s transformation through a psychological
famine, new ways of coping akin to plant survival in a desert – to live without drying out.

John Chandler expands his timbral horizons with a subtly dynamic suite recorded at INA-GRM, Paris; Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; and 1703, Stockholm. “Australian born, Sweden based artist John Chantler returns to Room40 with his fifth solo edition.
‘Tomorrow Is Too Late’ was commissioned by INA GRM for their Présences Électronique festival in 2018 and sees Chantler significantly expand the horizons of his acoustic palette.
Moving from subtle microtonal movements to passages of intense harmonic saturation, Tomorrow Is Too Late is his most dynamic work to date. A powerhouse of reductive intensity that bares
witness to Chantler’s uncompromising sonic articulations.”

Featuring work by a group of 7 international artists, poets, scientists and designers, this record offers a look at the concept of Transparency from a variety of cultural, creative and scientific perspectives. In conversation with Research of Waves curatorial team, 6 of the contributors synthesised their interpretation of the theme within a 5 minute long audio piece, many of them working within the medium for the first time. The front and back cover of the album are designed by graphic designer and digital artist Galina Kruzhilina, creating a visual response to the 6 sound pieces.

Or:la's newly founded Cead imprint is back for its second outing with an EP from the enigmatic Blu Terra, due out in October.

Coming out of Warsaw and with a couple of aliases already under his belt, Blu Terra delivers three tracks spanning aquatic soundscapes and unexpected rave elements.

The A1, Person Sans, mobilises moving pads and punchy synths. 20,000 is a detailed acid exercise with animalistic overtones. Lastly, Western/Eastern is a hard hitting incendiary track which patiently builds to a raving crescendo.

twisted, healing, dark, enlightening. space drum meditation is back with four airy slash pushing cuts driven by otherworldly riddims. expect that breathe-in-breathe-out kinda vibe for both spesh dancefloors and transcendental listening adventures.

Alex Albrecht returns to the Analogue Attic imprint this October under his Melquíades guise; delivering a five-track package in the shape of 'Lanterns'.

Albrecht explains "The concept is a continuation of my last release with AAR and aims to take the listener on a journey to a strange place - Falling asleep, it leads one down a rainy, lantern-lit path and into another world.
At the end of the record, the listener is finally awoken by a familiar voice."

All of the compositions are improvised explorations with field recordings at their core as the framework.
'Lanterns Pt. 1 & Pt. 2' lead, easing you into the project with swirling, hazy atmospherics and ethereal piano melodies floating atop rounded subs and soft percussion.
'Neon Canal' follows, bringing the rhythm to the forefront whilst bubbling bell chimes, warm chords and expansive delays ebb and flow within.
Up next is ‘Cockatoo Horizon’ a Balearic tinged cut employing off-kilter organic percussion, soft guitar licks and airy atmospherics before 'Embers ft. James Harbard' strips things back to floaty chords, bumpy drums and jazzy guitar melodies subtly unfolding throughout.
'Federation Bells' then rounds out the release on beatless tip, laid out over six minutes with otherworldly tones, melancholic piano chords and textural

Between a secluded cabin sanctuary, tucked away in the vast the stillness of Topanga Canyon, California, and a remote 18th century finca on the Balearic island of Mallorca, Spain, BATO BATO's debut album was patiently guided into being.

Three years writing and recording between these two locations brought the group's collaborators - Julian Smith and Henrik Jakobsson, with Balearic legend Nestor Casas Oche on trumpet - to their most natural sound conclusion.
The music of Bato Bato does not just reflect its organic sound habitats; it absorbs them - the duo set up studio and outdoor field sessions capturing various local environments including percussive field recordings and ambient cave sounds.
The album is an exploration in sound somewhere between the influence of exotica, psych, and dub - metered with latin / afro rhythms merged with experimental studio process and mixing.

2x12" Purple Vinyl

Ascendant star of the new global underground, Slikback wraps up his first two digital-only EPs with three killer bonus cuts on a vinyl premiere for Hakuna Kulala, his prized sublabel of Nyege Nyege Tapes.
Hailing from Nairobi, Kenya via Kampala, Uganda, Slikback has rapidly attracted a wave of attention to his undulating mutations of current club styles, as found on the ‘Lasakaneka’ and ‘Tomo’ EPs between 2018-2019. Due to popular demand both those EPs now make their vinyl debut, packaged along with three previously unreleased zingers to weigh in the most significant showcase of Slikback’s acclaimed style and pattern in club circulation right now.
Distilling a range of inspirations from local East African hip hop to Congolese rhythms and Gqom’s cold percussion, plus influence from US trap and footwork, and the subbass common to JA and UK soundsystem cultures; Slikback’s music has arrived at a grippingly powerful sound which, while singular, is also entirely symptomatic of the thrilling styles emerging from Central Africa right now, and after many years of underrepresentation in the shadow of West and South African styles which have been popularised around the world.
On his debut ‘Lasakaneka’ EP Slikback swaggers from icy, robotic dancehall in ‘Acid’ to a gripping fusion of footwork and Gqom with a jungle bent in ‘Bantu Zen’, and dancehall techno drill on ‘Ascension’, along with the palpitating footwork pressure of ‘Venom’, and a nervy new ace in the itchy step of ’Shell.’ The follow-up of 2019’s ’Tomo’ meanwhile represents a mean progression of his sound; exerting a firmer control of his scudding bass rudeness in ‘Sonshitsu’, and the dissonant synth tone of ‘Gemini’, while the syncopated gabber styles of ‘Zuhura’ and ‘Rage’ give way to almighty exclusive joints in the hard seam of trap called ‘Kite’, and the Equiknoxx-gone-psycho styles of ‘Senshi.’
If you’re new to Slikback, trust this 2LP is the perfect place to get acquainted with his lucid, hi-tech madness, before checking for the full frontal futurism of his two new EPs in collaboration with Svbkvlt’s Hyph11e, Yen Tech, and Osheyack. But if you’ve already heard Slikback’s EPs, his Boiler Room at Nyege Nyege Festival, or witnessed his European tour dates, there’s surely no need to overstate the crucial nature of this “early years” 2LP comp.

Ground is an Osaka native, but his soul is truly that of a nomad, traversing the planet, befriending kindred spirits found in humans, animals and plants. He is exceptionally receptive to the beauty in everything that surrounds him—the incidental music of a city street, the orchestral chaos of a scrambling radio, the syncopated grace of migrating birds, the simplicity of an isolated hand clap—and as his roadmap continuously unfolds, he accumulates a vast catalogue of visceral tools to musically recount his experiences. 'Sunizm' is a cross section of the artist’s process—an array of complex microcosms overlapping to comprise a thematic whole—gathering field recordings, found instruments, jagged electronics, synthesized chanting, and weaving all into a dense narrative that appears obsessively constructed yet divinely improvised. 'Follow Me', the second of two singles surrounding the album, is complimented with a pseudo drum’n’bass treatment by enigmatic Greek artist Jay Glass Dubs, as well as a massively triumphant b-side entitled 'Ozone House', which is exclusive to this single release. Attention all humans, animals and plants, Ground and the ESP Institute present, 'Sunizm'.

Time is Local is a project by Danish collective We like We and sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard built around a 12-hour live sound installation and performance at Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.

The piece was initiated and performed by the artists during the G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival in 2017. As they slowly wandered the halls and rooms of the museum for a whole day, they performed extended sound compositions for a visiting audience at each of the 12 chambers for a longer session - a haunting experience as the outside world disappeared and the focus was on quiet sonic moments unfolding in midst of the grand, reverberous space. For this album they have collected 12 fragments revolving around the chambers in the museum. Each chamber is being represented by its own handful of tones, instruments and voice. The statues within, depicted by neo-classicist sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen get their own soundtrack of quiet emanating gusts. Barely heard frequencies reflect through the walls. The marble carved busts of Greek gods that line the museum hallways gaze eternally with a blank stare as decades pass and new audience arrives.

Although We like We should need no introduction to followers of the Sonic Pieces label, the Danish all female sound quartet consists of Katrine Grarup Elbo (violin), Josefine Opsahl (cello), Sara Nigard Rosendal (percussion) and Katinka Fogh Vindelev (voice). Together they have forged a dynamic and intuitional sound beyond genres through the last decade. Only two years ago they released the nordic neo-classical opus Next to the entire All. This time they emerge in collaboration with sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard. Jacob’s works are sonic reflections on complex aspects of the human civilisation, treating themes such as radioactivity, melting ice, border walls and tones emitted by the ears. Through the last decades he has released records and sound documents through labels such as Touch, Important Records and more. As a document of their 12h performance, Time is Local is a beautiful sonic evocation that shines as a bright line of sun through the cracks of a tomb.

'Earrings Off!' arrives next month via Tri Angle, and it's another searing blast of originality from a group who seem to operate without boundaries.

REPRESSED !!
Hellfire funk from the spirit world. The city weeps for it will never again know a man as righteous as Eduardo Unz.

Katsoulis has been making avant-garde electronic pop steadily since the early '80s, but it wasn't until 2014 that he transcended cult status. That year, Into The Light issued a collection of Katsoulis' early and unreleased material, The Sleeping Beauties.

In October, Alex Bradley's Utopia Records will handle a new record from the low-key artist. The press release says of the opener, "All The Blue Skies," "Katsoulis and his accompanying musicians deliver a diverse and contemporary work with a level of sophistication that will challenge the current electronic musical landscape." The label adds that "'Grand Delusions' sounds like it could work in a Berlin techno club, from a man that has probably never been to one."

Katsoulis is becoming more active in the underground electronic music scene as of late. He performed at the inaugural Strange Sounds From Beyond festival in Amsterdam in June. A 2015 remix EP featured Young Marco, Max D and Telephones interpreting tracks off The Sleeping Beauties.

To co-incide with 4 new albums on the label, Morphine gives a surprise RE-DOSE with label friends and heroes on re-flip duty.
More info soon

Pregnant Void returns with another of their deeply involving and thought-provoking albums, this time from Berlin based sound designer and live-performer Francesco Devincenti.

Devincenti has been making music all of his life and quickly established himself back home in Northern Italy. To further his talents he headed to Berlin to study at the S.A.E. Institute and soon went on to a job at Analogcut mastering studio. As such he is a sound design wizard with an exceptional ear for detail and someone who can get real meaning and soul of out the machines he often solders together himself. He is part of a couple of live hardware duos - MORK and TDV - and always fuses ambient, techno, distorted grooves, jungle beats and dub moods into his immersive recordings.

This new album draws on ten years of life experiences and uses music as a way of telling his own autobiographical story. "With the album I try to explain what I have inside in a way I cannot using only simple verbal communication: those moments of Brutal Reality where you lose something very important and cannot fully express yourself." Though always obsessed with finding his own musical voice, Devincenti is also inspired by studio masters like King Tubby, Adrian Sherwood and Mark Ernestus. His experimental music follows no existing path and is made on modular systems that result in unpredictable and unconventional ambience and rhythms. A number of collaborations add more flavours to this most rich and rewarding album, including friend Hi.Mo, label boss Simone Gatto and vocalist Alice Lobo.

Brutal Reality is filled with truly freeform electronic music - sounds without borders, but with very real narrative and an absorbing sense of emotion that makes it a moving listen in more ways than one.

The return of the returner. 6 track Mini LP. Produced By William Burnett, New York. Sleeve design by Art Crime. Mixed & Mastered by Gordon Pohl, Dusseldorf. TIP!

Marie Davidson veröffentlicht 12' mit einem unveröffentlichten Song und Remixen von John Talabot & Silent Servant auf Ninja Tune!

Kurz nach der Veröffentlichung ihres neuen Album's 'Working Class Woman' legt die Produzentin & Spoken Word Künstlerin Marie Davidson jetzt eine 12' EP mit einer neuen Version der Album-Single 'So Right' und einem exklusiven John Talabot Remix auf der A-Seite nach. Auf der B-Seite findet sich der bisher unveröffentlichte Song 'La Ecstase' (eine Kollaboration mit Lamusa II) und einem großartigen Silent Servant Remix!!

Bristol–based composer Ryan Teague presents Recursive Iterations, a suite of seven extended compositions that incorporate cinematic arrangements and cutting edge sound design within an algorithmic framework to striking effect. The resulting pieces combine elements of neo-classical, post–rave, and soundtrack music, to create an utterly compelling contemporary soundscape balanced by a calculated, almost architectural use of space and restraint.

The musical structure is derived from a custom–written algorithmic system that sequences harmonic and rhythmic events in ever–shifting patterns. Hyperreal electro-acoustic phrases and digitally synthesised fragments come and go in continual rotation, re-framed and re-contextualised by their proximity to other events in the sequence as the compositions evolve. The effect evokes a minimalist bricolage, hypnotic and kaleidoscopic in nature, and calls to mind artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never, The Haxan Cloak and Ital Tek.

At the same time, a core theme running throughout the record is a masterly use of absence and inertia influenced by the Japanese concepts of ma (間 - negative space) and the enso (円相 - circle), which serve to complement and counterbalance the diverse sound palette. By integrating these qualities, tension is built and resolved in equal measure, creating a dramatic sonic impression where fragmented rhythms, dynamic textures, subsonic basses, and delicate ambience all coexist. Recursive Iterations is a bold, powerful, and unique work that pushes sonic boundaries whilst revealing more with each listen.

audioMER is honoured to announce the release of a new LP Make Visible The Ghosts with music by Aki Onda (US/JP) and artwork by Paul Clipson (US). This album is the follow-up of Aki Onda’s Cinemage project Lost City - with Loren Connors and Alan Licht - released on audioMER in 2015.

On Make Visible The Ghosts, New York-based musician Aki Onda composed the soundtrack for the images of the San Francisco experimental filmmaker Paul Clipson, who suddenly passed away on February 3, 2018.

In 2009, Clipson and Onda met at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for the first time and shared a ride to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where they presented audio-visual works in the same bill. Since then, the two artists - known for their highly personal approach with Super 8, 16mm, cassette Walkman and radio – maintained a close friendship over the next nine years. Their works deal with memory, time, space, and those reflections, and they had a lot to share.

Onda and Clipson completed their collaboration work Make Visible The Ghosts, a combination of vinyl LP of Onda’s music and large-size collage artwork by Clipson, a few months before Clipson’s departure from life. The work is composed of the materials they used for their performance in New York in 2012 and developed over the three years from 2015 to 2017.

Onda notes: “The loss of Paul has left a huge hole in our mind including his friends and collaborators. Paul is no longer here, and this is a chance to remember him and his images that extended and expanded our perception of how the world can be seen and heard.”

Heaven is a work of contemporary church music. Centrally occupied with the subject of death, its conceptualisation was catalysed by Spiluttini’s discovering his mother’s preparations both for her own death and for his. He arrived at her home in 2015 to be led into the local church and shown the two adjacent places she had reserved for their urns. The tracks on Heaven together consist of an analogously personal and anticipatory negotiation with death.

Partly derived from organ recordings made in the same church, the album frequently enlists Arvo Pärt’s compositional method of tintinnabuli. Aside from the thematic logic of its sacred associations, the method suits Spiluttini’s tendency, in spite of heavy and dynamic passages, to minimise tonal complexity. His characteristic uses of gnashing bass, restlessly irregular pacing and serrated distortion return. This time, they combine with pads, harps, fluttering organs and swooping choirs.

Track titles throughout Heaven conjure intense emotional conflicts, especially those arising from experiences of embodiment. Touch isolation is a term for the toxic masculine stigma against platonic touch between men. If such a reference on an album preoccupied with death and afterlife raises the question of whether Spiluttini considers any touch – let alone platonic – to be possible in Heaven, the title ‘Flesh Angel’ perhaps answers it. As with ‘Body at War’ and ‘Weakened Centurion’, such a title positions the agitation of its music among ongoing struggles with body acceptance. Meanwhile, ‘Rainbow Bridge’ recalls the 1980s prose poem promising an eternal reunion in death with one’s beloved lost pets. In context, these various indices seem to capture the yearning speculation that, as the nexuses of experience, bodies are not discarded in death; on the contrary, they achieve a state of perfection.

Heaven revolves within dramatic and ever-changing vignettes. As church music, it lacks real communal participation or fidelity to hymnal text. Instead, it must come to terms with negation and eternity as dependable threats to generational and spatial distance, to personal struggles with earthly embodiment and to the anxious, hyperactive navigation of identity in late modernity.

(Edward Trethowan)

Milan Knizak 1979's masterpiece never re-released before. Presented as a gatefold with the original design.

Milan Knizak (born 19 April 1940) is a Czech performance artist, sculptor, musician, installation artist, dissident, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art. Before everyone else - Christian Marclay, Philip Jeck, eRikm, Martin Tétreault, Otomo Yoshihide - there was Milan Knizak.

In 1964, Milan Knizak, a member of Fluxus from behind the Iron Curtain, sat down on a sidewalk near the Charles Bridge in Prague, laid down a paper carpet right into the street, and starts tearing pages out of books and burning them. Around the same time, he began to create music from defective, worn, damaged or broken LP's. These Broken Music compositions, his classic collages of noises created during performances and happenings, are widely regarded as important sound art documents on record.

"In 1963-64 I used to play records both too slowly and too fast and thus changed the quality of the music, thereby creating new compositions. In 1965 I started to destroy records: scratch them, punch holes in them, break them. By playing them over and over again (which destroyed the needle and often the record player too) an entirely new music was created - unexpected, nerve-racking, aggressive and even humorous. Compositions lasting one second or almost infinitely long (as when the needle got stuck in a deep groove and played the same phrase over and over). I developed this system further. I began sticking tape on top of records, painting over them, burning them, cutting them up and gluing different parts of records back together, etc. to achieve the widest possible variety of sounds." Milan Knízak, Broken Music

Kanot is Jesper Jarold and Anton Kolbe. With their wide open ears and sharp sense of adaptation they have been involved in some of the last year’s most interesting Swedish musical acts - Fontän, Tross, Uran Gbg, Ultra Satan among others. With the help of Lindha Kallerdahl’s expressive vocals, Jarold and Kolbe weave an eclectic yet durable sonic textile. Call it music for psychadelic hiking, primitive dance beats or speculative folk music - most of all, it is unrestrained music, for the smartest and the dumbest kid in the classroom. In the dense, and at the same time airy production, some drums anchor themselves steadily into the ground while others lash out like reverberating rhythmic gunshots. The tones from Jesper’s guitar and fretless bass float like leaves on the Drangme Chhu River, at times almost drowning in effects only to resurface in surprising and skillfully chiseled melodies that could play forever. This Höga Nord Rekords 7” is just a teaser of an exciting collaboration of which we have yet only seen the opening credits!

The debut Pact Infernal LP gets a well deserved re press on all new coloured vinyl.

Jono Podmore writes… "After the release of our 7" single 'Miss Slipper'/'Lewes' on Psychomat Records in 2017 it was time for another release in keeping with our spirit of adventure and interrogation of established forms. We'd played a few improvised shows which lead us to think of combining the anvil of the audience with the hammer of recording. A plan was hatched to create an event that would lead to an artefact–both an open recording session and a recorded event: a site-specific incident and a time-specific document. A number of venues between our homes and workplaces in London, Köln and Düsseldorf were mooted. Suddenly Swantje found herself in possession of the keys to the Hallraum...

10th August 2018 was a balmy night on Worringerplatz. The good, bad and the ugly of Düsseldorf were out in force; promenading their profusion of languages, habits, needs and grudges. The architect of the platz built benches (Bänke in German) into the design, so the homeless that gather on the Bänke to put their tired feet up and have a drink, have become known as the "Bankers". Nestling under the trees on the northern corner of the platz is the Hallraum: a wee glasshouse that functions as a gallery, a venue and as a piece of public sculpture in its own right.

We set up our gear, a PA system and an array of microphones amidst an installation in the Hallraum, opened up the doors and windows, then played for the peoples of Worringerplatz, gathering an audience as we went along. Setting the panes of glass rattling, accompanying the trams, serenading the bankers and those hungry for Pizza und Kultur, we played karaoke to the sounds of the platz. As we busied ourselves in the Hallraum, fellow traveller Kai Winter, armed with a digital recorder and synchronized to the master clock, prowled Worringerplatz and beyond to capture the environment mingling with our sound writing and wave shaping. Later, all the sources were brought together and mixed exactly as they happened in time and place to produce these pieces.

The artwork takes a similar trajectory: photos from the event are mixed, printed, collaged, balanced, re-processed, enhanced and degraded to produce a unique and enigmatic image." – Jono Podmore, London, 16 August 2019.

WRWTFWW Records is immensely happy to announce the reissue of impossible-to-find cult album Lady Maid by Japanese outfit Normal Brain, available on vinyl, digipack CD (for the first time ever), cassette, and digital, with liner notes by acclaimed sound artist and mastermind behind the project, Yukio Fujimoto.

Originally released in 1981 as a limited vinyl pressing of 300 copies on Agi Yuzurus fabled experimental label Vanity Records (R.N.A. Organism, Dada, Sympathy Nervous, Tolerance), Lady Maid is a testament to the creativity of the early 80s Japanese electronic and experimental scene, encapsulating a prolific era when audio gear became affordable for musicians to explore sounds in the comfort of their home, free from studio time pressure and major label rules.

Entirely imagined and brought to life by an inspired Yukio Fujimoto, the 6-track opus was conceived with a Korg MS-20, a Korg SQ-10, a Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-55, anda Texas Instruments Speak & Spell! Its elegantly minimalist, honest and witty, very playful, cleverly pop, and downright fascinating. The a-side captures the fun side of avant-garde electronica, lo-fi wave, proto-glitch, and IDM, a joyful ride beautifully interrupted by the cinematic mood switch of the b-side - a 20 minute ambient piece flirting with sci-fi, melancholy, and hints of metallic darkness. Unclassifiable and marvelous!

BIG TIP - TBZ is the MF DON around here. Too slept on...if you ask us.
" Another hardcore mini-lp from our favourite madman. Sink some Kölsch and vibe to this.."