Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

Last year, after his mind-warping gig at Cafe OTO, we presented the new world of Yximalloo, and his label Sakura Wrechords, from Tokyo.

Yximalloo's (Naofumi Ishimaru) long and varied career in music covers a period as manager of Yellow Magic Orchestra back in the day, when he also started producing his own music on cassette. Later branching out into CDrs, his discography is voluminous. Sometimes collaborating with Momus, Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Sympathy Nervous (Vanity Records) and others, he has quietly put out over 70 releases, all with his undefinable catalogue of styles.

An unknown track of his was released in 2013 by Kompakt, as "Wanted". An unknown artist - they had lost the details of the CD he'd sent them - they were compelled to release it anyway. It was the only vinyl release of Yximalloo's until "Best Of". Now he returns with a second volume.

Culled from just a few points in his prolific career, this release has hints of early Residents, Hosono's jerky formative sample projects and deep- in-the-woods Texas Chainsaw Massacre vocals - just a few more glimpses of Yximalloo's dimensions. Shipping in two weeks.

‘Tribes 1.1’ by Weird Dust is the third release on Brussels-based label and vinyl purveyor Crevette Records. The six tracks reflect an eclectic taste in hardware, melding organic and heavily processed sounds into a sort of musical retro-futurism. The percussion distinguishes itself, simultaneously free-form and mathematical, and certain to make you dance. Up close, ‘Tribes’ gestures at something alien, like going back to the jungle, but on another planet. This is what the future was like; notice the weird dust all around you.

PAN welcomes back the Lifted ensemble for a second cross-continental adventure off the grid,
simply titled Lifted 2. It expands on the expression of improvised fusion that brought about the
spectrum of styles explored on their 2015 debut album for PAN.
Lifted is now a core group of Future Times boss Max D, Matt Papich aka Co La, Jeremy Hyman and
Motion Graphics., alongside Jordan GCZ, Dawit Eklund, Will DiMaggio, Beatrice Dillon and Bass Clef
“On this record we went a lot deeper into our kind of studio technique,” Lifted say. “We tried to
cultivate the sound using the studio as a primary tool, almost a member of the group in a way.”
Max D’s international crew of Future Timers play deft roles throughout Lifted 2. Jordan GCZ
and Dawit Eklund both return for ‘Lifting’ alongside 1432r’s Sami, NYC’s Will DiMaggio and Sao
Paulo’s Repetentes 2008. Beatrice Dillon and Bass Clef, two highly-decorated artists from the UK
underground, make telling contributions which mark the latest in a long line of celebrated creative
collaborations for the pair. Further input comes via Aya, vocalist and bassist for crucial Japanese
experimentalists OOIOO, and Martin Kasey, a friend of Papich with a background in Baltimore
theatre, summoned for Lifted duty to provide some striking saxophone blasts.
How do all these collaborations manifest on Lifted 2? It’s a sort of inverse process full of blind
takes with the results more bruised than polished. “The song stays fluid until the end. We pile the
ideas really high and then decimate them,” Lifted say. “We delete until the songs are crystallizing;
lay a grid of silences to organize the tracks. The breathing spaces become definitive.” These seven
tracks adroitly weave through mood and vibe, demanding heads lock in with an initial blast of
whip sharp percussive hits and contemporary no-wave blowouts before letting off steam with
soothing ambient synthesis. “Black Pepper” acts as the album centerpiece, an unhinged mangle
of SH101 basslines, freeform flute & saxophone and multiple percussive sources brought to order
by Papich’s studio dubs. “Rose 31” edges closest to the kind of jazz fusion that inspired the project
from the off, Lifted utilising the various classic instruments deployed by the greats of the game.

“Style” can be defined as that special ability to watermark every track with an instantly-recognizable identity. Local Suicide, aka Munich’s Brax Moody and Greek-born Vamparela, has it in spades. And following releases on labels such as Bordello, My Favorite Robot, Multi Culti, Roam, Duro and OMBRA, it only made sense that the duo would eventually find its way to Lumière Noire. After all, “black light” (as per the meaning of Chloé’s label’s name) could describe the way Local Suicide’s music flirts with the more troubling zones of the listener’s psyche, where danger roams and aural comfort is no longer a guarantee. The EP’s two tracks set a dark, shifty sonic tableau, in which German-American multidisciplinary artist - and a unique personality of the Berlin underground - Nicki Fehr comes to blend his voice with Vamparela’s. With its swerving bass slithering over a slow tempo, Leopard Gum is the perfect slow burner, a slice of comatose disco that will find its way to the darkest corners of nightlife - and haunt its DJ sets. The synths that come crashing across the track’s Smagghe & Cross remix add their saturated signature that provide a different kind of hook through its breathless nine-minute run. The same measured tempo is found once more on the more ethereal Already There, where Local Suicide affirm their adherence to the more captivating signatures of new wave and post disco. Permanent Vacation stalwarth Lauer adds a surprizing electro pop shimmer to the track. With Leopard Gum’s opaque and impenetrable atmosphere, Local Suicide have released one of their strongest efforts to date.

Pale Bloom finds Sarah Davachi coming full circle. After abandoning the piano studies of her youth for a series of albums utilizing everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synthesizers, this prolific Los Angeles-based composer returns to her first instrument for a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic rumination.

Recorded at Berkeley, California's famed Fantasy Studios, Pale Bloom is comprised of two delicately-arranged sides. The first – a three-part suite where Davachi's piano acts as conjurer, beckoning Hammond organ and stirring countertenor into a patiently unfolding congress – recalls Eduard Artemiev's majestic soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. "Perfumes I-III" employs the harmonically rich music of Bach as a springboard for abstract, solemn pieces that sound as haunted as they are dreamlike.

While the first half of Pale Bloom showcases Davachi's latent Romanticism, the sidelong "If It Pleased Me To Appear To You Wrapped In This Drapery" reveals the Mills College graduate's affinity for the work of avant-garde composers La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue. Softly vibrating strings rise and fall like complementary exhalations of breath. As the fluctuating pitches create overtones that pitter and pulse, the piece slowly and subtly evolves – suggesting a well-tempered stillness, yet without stasis.

Open Letter to the Government of Georgia and Madam President Salome Zurabishvili

Dear Governing Class of Georgia and dear Madam President,

I hope you will allow me to first write my sincere greetings. I will spare you the J'accuse, but I am going to delve into a sinister and shameful situation for our otherwise beautiful country.

My name is Irakli Kiziria, I was born in Georgia and I am a musician living in Germany for almost two decades. I first heard about Mikhailo two years ago through friends and activists. I listened to his music and met him during an interview with Electronic Beats that happened in 2018. To be able to meet him in prison gave me the chance to exchange with him on different projects. It is not easy to collaborate with someone alienated from “regular” society, with no access to the internet and so on, but it is also very interesting. After almost a year, I am very happy and proud to announce that my label is ready to release our record on June 15th.
I believe music is an expression of freedom and that Mikhailo expresses in his music his longing for it. Maybe if you listen to his music, you will hear the voice of our brothers and sisters in prison. Maybe you will feel and understand that he and many others do not belong there. Maybe you will find the courage to change these laws that hurt so many of our brethren. And maybe you will try to help them see their families and their friends sooner.

My name is Mikhail Todua, I am turning thirty-four this year and I was raised in Tbilisi. Music was always my passion since childhood, which is why I decided to work in this industry. Thirteen years ago I met a girl named Salome in a club, we fell in love and I married her before she gave birth to our daughter who is now nine years old. Sadly for the past six years, I have only talked to my little girl on the phone. She thinks I live very far away in the USA because we did not want to hurt her at such a young age with the truth.
On September 12, 2013, while I was driving back to Tbilisi from holiday, I was randomly stopped and taken into the local police station. After which I was sentenced to nine years for possession of the drug MDMA (for personal use). After two years in jail, I was granted the right to work on music, and the penitentiary administration allowed me to arrange one room and transform it into a music studio. Music is one of the most important things in my life and I could not be without it. I collected various parts of music gear that people sent me. It was not easy, and I had to depend on the kindness of many people to get what I needed. During my time in prison, I have managed to release five records. This is a labor of love that I craft and work on during the 5-hour blocks of time I get five times a week in the studio. I have created music for a play based on 12 Angry Men and for the documentary Facility 16. I also offer music therapy for my fellow inmates.

My name is Salome and I am Mikhailo's wife. We are preparing his music studio space that will be ready for him after his release. Of course, Mikhailo has changed, but I do not know if the reason is due to his arrest or simply time, because many people change and improve without going to prison. I do think that prison showed him a different side to everything. He uses time as productively as possible there and I believe he is using his abilities to the maximum. What he is doing there no one has done before in Georgia. In September it will be six years after his arrest and I think that this a lot of time for such an offense.

My name is Beso. A few days after I had been released from prison, after serving eight years on drugs charges, three police officers took me to the police station demanding cooperation in order to prosecute Lasha.

My name is Lasha and I was arrested in 2013 for the possession of 0.00009 grams of desomorphine found in a syringe. An amount so small, it cannot be seen with the naked eye.

His name was Demur, he was twenty-two years old and in August 2016 he committed suicide. The young man left a note which spelled the abuse he had been subjected to. A policeman had threatened him into revealing the identities of people suspected of dealing marijuana in the town of Samtredia.

We are just a few names in the thousands that have been impacted by the current Georgian legislation. Our drug policy is one of the strictest in the world. Is it right? We are not just numbers, we are lives that are destroyed, children that are left alone, futures that vanish.

Maybe Mikhailo found solace in prison and became what he was meant to be: a musician, an artist. But what about others who don't find this welfare, this strength? People with no support that are pressured by a police force who often do not see us as human beings, because the current laws do not encourage them to do so. Please Madam President and our government, think about this youth that is getting stolen away. We have seen and endured these sufferings for too long. We can no longer be prolonging these hardships that are unfair and unjust. What we are asking for is not to decriminalize or legalize the use of drugs, but to correct the political errors which have led to and caused so much pain for the children, women, and men of Georgia.

Georgia has one of the highest incarceration rates with 252.2 inmates per 100 000 inhabitants, in Europe, only Russia has a higher rate. (Source: SPACE 2018 survey)

Georgian law does not establish a threshold for small quantities, which means that possession of even particles automatically qualifies as a large amount, triggering criminal liability and a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence.

Between 2006 and 2008, the first two years of the “zero tolerance” policy, the number of registered drug offenses tripled. It also coincided with a tripling of Georgia’s prison population.

“Last night I turned into a cat. Just like that.” A Colourful Storm presents an album by Brunnen aka Freek Kinkelaar, one of the everlasting beacons of the Dutch underground. One half of fabled group Beequeen (1988-2015) with Frans de Waard and collaborator with the likes of Nurse With Wound, Paul Panhuysen, The Residents, Merzbow and Edward Ka-Spel, Kinkelaar presents The Garden of Perpetual Dreams as a newly visioned recording of a cassette from 1989. Produced with Raymond Steeg of The Legendary Pink Dots and mastered by Steeg and Peter Van Vliet (Mekanik Kommando, De Fabriek, The Use Of Ashes).

Man Band returns with its second release of 2019. Newcomer Tibia makes his first contribution to the label with ‘Polypola’, an outstanding 5 track EP of otherworldly broken techno, rolling downtempo rhythms and electronica hits for spiritual awakening.

✖ INCL 7 STICKERS, 2 BUTTONS + 2 FOLDOUT POSTERS
✖ SPECIAL „GLOW IN THE DARK“ PRINTS
✖ LIMITED TO 300 RECORDS WORLDWIDE!
✖ COVERART by SCOTT ROBINSON 3D (UK)
✖ MASTERING by STAZMA THE JUNGLECHRIST (F)
✖ DESIGN + PRINTINGJOBS done by e_wann (BE)

Tim’s trash-opera ‘Time With People’ continues to be
performed around the world, past champions of which include
Object Collection, a.pe.ri.od.ic, Edges, and NEC, and he is a
co-curator of London’s longstanding ‘Music We’d Like To Hear’
series. Despite decades of fiercely independent production,
this is his only piece conceived of first and foremost as an
album.
'Pleasure Island' [SLP053] is available from 23rd May 2019 on
LP and download. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by
Rick Pushinsky. Distributed by Boomkat.


'Pleasure Island' is British composer Tim Parkinson’s
disquieting and joyous Slip debut: play time in end times.
Titled after the Disney adaptation of ‘Paese dei balocchi’ (or
the Land of Toys) in Carlo Collodi’s ‘The Adventures of
Pinocchio’ (1883), 'Pleasure Island' is a metaphysical
playground of organic and digital cohabitation, its inhabitants
pacified by toys and comforts.
Alongside Dawn Bothwell, Suze Whaites, Laurie Tompkins, and
Francesca Fargion, Parkinson exerts an uncannily emotional
pull from an unlikely but potent alliance of ultra-minimal
aesthetics, dead-beat drums, junk electronics, and mechanised
mantras.
Voices are hemmed in by electronic sound. People buffeted
around by machines.
Words surrounded by garlands of digital
interference. Time repackaged as countdown.

Moonshoe Records has bowled over first listeners by presenting this new side of their sphere - Air Space Ark’s debut, “All Rivers Lead” charts the course of divergent streams of contemporary ambient music, downtempo rhythms, and electroacoustic experimentation, arriving at a calming confluence of these sources. Across the 6 songs on these two sides, they evoke a calming and contemplative headspace

333 is an exquisite study in balance - the intermingling of bird song water sounds that could equally be field recordings or synthesized foley - the ambiguity adding a delightful trompe l'oreille effect - and crystalline keys ; these airy sounds weighted by washes of subbass.

BLANK PAGE is almost like a version of the previous track, retaining the nimble birdsongs and heavy sub, but foregrounding a lolling, stumbling hip-hop beat and placing more emphasis on the effects wizardry as abstract sounds careen across the track in wipes and wisps, before stripping down to a beautiful coda of birdsong, piano plinks and a textured backdrop.

The celestial keys, flute-like thrums and gentle chimes of WORDS BETWEEN SELF evoke the golden age of spiritual jazz, but the hazy ambiance and shuffling beats transmute the other elements around them into something more introspective and personal than jubilant praise. Lyrics aside, the subtle funk coupled with the pensive, meditative air channels the spirit of Stanley Cowell’s classic TRAVELLIN’ MAN.

LOFT IN 7 Is the most “out” moment here. It has echoes, literally, of jazz. Like decaying tape reels disintegrating in real time, we feel the tape buckling and warping under the weight of time as the sounds of a synthetic band warp and shift against electronic impulses and glitches, eventually leaving just a lingering, ghostly imprint. .

DUST SONG veers the closest towards a straightforward instrumental hip hop cut - a submerged sounding breakbeat coupled with a tender piano melody - but is buoyed by drifting pads and a dense, hallucinatory bed of effects.

CONCRETE closes proceedings. Charged with a crepuscular energy, it’s all-together as mercurial and magical as the transition from day to night. Different elements swirl and coalesce, honing in on dense, textural moments across a horizontal drift. The end effect is hypnotic yet captivating, so much so that when the track eventually blooms into silence at the end you’re struck by the brevity of the whole experience. Thankfully you can listen to it again!

Long time unsung UK techno artist Aubrey is to release Gravitational Lensing, a first artist album since 2001 and his third in all. It lands in early 2019 on Out-ER and across 12 tracks it finds him getting more personal and instinctive than ever before with jazz, techno, broken beat and house all colouring this most coherent of musical adventures.
Aubrey s discography dates back to the early nineties, when he was a key part of the UK scene on labels like Solid Groove, Textures and Mosaic. Up there with the greats from Chicago and Detroit, he has turned out a steady stream of music that marries perfect dance floor functionality with real musical invention. Always inspired by anything deep with a good groove, everything from synth band Japan to funk king George Clinton, electro break beats to Jean Michel Jarre all inform his work.

As a DJ, he cut his teeth playing the biggest raves in the UK with names like Carl Cox and Eddie C having been swept up by the acid house records that hit English stores when he was just 15. Add in a love of jazz, ambient and US house, and you have all the eclectic influences that this criminally under-the-radar artist has drawn on for his latest album.

It is one that finds him really put his personal stamp on his sound. It s a chance to be more who you are and what you feel without pressure to conform to a particular sound, it s a chance to be free, says the artist of the album process. It was partially produced at Out-ER s studio in Nard , Lecce over the course of a year s worth of studio jam sessions, and is his finest and most cinematic work to date.

Things kick off with the ambient synth modulations of Aerglo Visible before exquisitely loose jazz drums and sci-fi pads suspend you in the cosmos on Floating to Rigel. There is an experimental feel to the off grid drums, rippling chords and drunken keys of Doctor Portia that keeps you brilliantly off balance, and the first deep techno trip is Journey To the Blue Planet , which has gorgeous ambience swirling over rolling, dubby kicks and soulful Detroit synth work. Carrying on through more lush, musical synth work and inventive drums, there are moments of heads down dance floor power and hi-tech soul, serene techno landscaping and chord-laced deep house that is superbly cerebral throughout the album.

In all, it makes for a complete and storytelling record that draws on a rich variety of genres and reworks them into something deep, multi-layered and hugely emotional that works as well in headphones, at home, as it will in the club.

Experimental / Ambient Album by antonio.

Photo by Francesca Frattini

Discom proudly presents Du Du A- Du Du Archive 1984-1989 LP, a collection of previously unpublished and rare tracks of Belgrade's cult band Du Du A. Discover the music of the group whose leaders Dejan Kostic and Zoran Zagorcic primed for their never-released second album and find out why they earned a cult status among DJs and collectors worldwide!

In his third release on Editions Mego, Jung An Tagen continues to expand his unique vision of oblique electronic music mixed with future dance club sound. In "Proxy States" techno is evolving into another realm.

"Proxy States" is his most formulated attempt to combine modern composition techniques with ritualistic techno aesthetics. Here he takes his obsession with structure to a more narrative build-up, creating new paths and textures around his infectious beats. With this structure, Jung An Tagen develops an emotional relationship between repetition and dissonance.

It's addictive music. Music in constant explosion. The 12 seconds of the first track, "Spill (False)" sound like a recreation of The Big Bang, creating the perfect intro for this molecular-polyrhythm adventure. It also creates the connection/disconnection with his previous work, "Agent Im Objekt", bridging the two but also creating a space to embark on a new sonic trip. This self-contained explosion offers the right coordinates and propels the listener to Jung An Tagen's sonic realm.

All of this is done with his usual fearless but mindful approach. His unique exercises with structure, time and sound create an ecstatic familiarity with the sounds while at the same time inducing a creeping physical alienation. In other words, some parts may be rhythmically infectious, others will give you no chance to immerse. The stimulation is astute and continuous, encouraging an out-of-this-world experience.

The main arc of "Proxy States" consists of a 16 against 17 poly-rhythmic synth line that through different intonations of the kick drum always transforms its syntax. This synth line always scales up 1 key, in the middle of the track, foreseeing the upcoming structure. While these tracks (3, 4, 5, 6: "Wreath Products") follow an almost obsessive-compulsive order, the remaining tracks seem to blow up the structure entirely like the last scenes of the 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Zabriskie Point", creating an event inside the event.

"Proxy States" was impossible to press on vinyl but the fast, sharp and wild grooves of Jung An Tagen's new album are incredibly synched with the concept of an ever accelerating future.











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Cassette edition of Death Is Not The End's contribution to the Blowing Up The Workshop mix series.

"A trip across the frequencies of Bristol's pirate radio stations via cut-ups of broadcasts, taken from the late 1980s to the early 2000s ~ also a love-letter to my childhood, an audio document of the years I spent growing up in the city."

Cassette edition of Death Is Not The End's contribution to the Blowing Up The Workshop mix series.

"A trip across the frequencies of Bristol's pirate radio stations via cut-ups of broadcasts, taken from the late 1980s to the early 2000s ~ also a love-letter to my childhood, an audio document of the years I spent growing up in the city."

New Fly-Lo.. First outing since 5 years!

Drawing the lines between the galaxies of hip-hop, funk, soul, jazz, global dance music, tribal poly-rhythms, IDM and the beat scene of his hometown L.A, Lotus creates a universe that is uniquely his own. Calling on an all-star cast from the cosmos, Anderson .Paak, George Clinton, Little Dragon, Tierra Whack, Denzel Curry, David Lynch, Shabazz Palaces, Thundercat, Toro y Moi and Solange; Lotus takes these artists on an astral plane to explore his world of fire.

Luke Younger returns to PAN with an eight-track album of his most direct work to date.
Composed alone at NO studio in the Essex countryside, to start an album with a piece called
‘Capital Crisis (New City Loop)’ seems an intentional misnomer. Long, sustained periods in the
rural studio setting see Younger working with an array of fragmented, disassociated sound
sourcesto build upon 2015’s ‘Olympic Mess’. It shares a similarly inclined vision of the urban
environment, but here ‘Chemical Flowers’ makes reference to paradoxical notions of authenticity
and creative practice by way of questioning the structures around us.
Collages are assembled and dismantled, temporal and spatial boundaries fluctuate and movement
is an overarching theme. Surrealist drowned world atmospheres sculpted far enough away from
the source of inspiration leave plenty of room for ambiguity. The nocturnal nature of the recording
process is self-evident, and pieces like ‘Leave Them All Behind’ tap into a deep psychedelic
undercurrent. Confused narratives, emotions and aleatory hallucinations ebb and flow throughout.
‘I Knew You Would Respond’ evokes murky soundtrack terrain with eerie repetitive strings and
ambient respite, disrupted periodically by brief bursts of granular noise. It’s one of the records
most unnerving moments, possibly as it’s one of the most recognisably human.
The album navigates dense passages with recurring signifiers. Hollow percussion, modulating
delay and curious field recordings come and go, maintaining a perpetual state of flux where
nnothing stays the same for long. The drowned world theatricals return on the swamp-like
‘Lizard in Fear’ whilst string rhythms creep in on the penultimate track to incite momentary
electroacoustic harmony. Floating synthesis slowly washes over and the title track unfolds - five
minutes of reverb-laced portamento, visions of decay and Editions EG influenced world-building.
‘Movement is key’..

Not Glass is the debut collaboration between Alessio Natalizia (Not Waving) and his longtime
correspondent Dimitris Papadatos (Jay Glass Dubs), paying tribute to Latin and Greek authors Ovid
and Heraclitus in a suite of dramatic electronics and cryptic rhythms comparable to a theatrical
soundtrack.
Knowingly, ironically pretentious, yet serious with it, ‘Forma’ is the result of years of daily
Facebook chats between the London and Athens-based artists where they cemented the album’s
concept around key quotes by the legendary poet/philosophers, who hail from their respective
homelands of Italy and Greece. The results are in effect a spellbinding attempt to transmute those
notions within the collaborative, contemporary framework of their music, using patented palettes
of hardware, vocals, and FX to render and reflect core classical mythological and philosophical
ideas about drama, love, metaphysics, cosmology and the “unity of opposites”.
On this timeless plane, Natalizia and Papadatos both step outside of themselves to find “what
opposes unites”, spaciously consolidating their typical, yet contrasting, rhythm-driven approaches
in a reverberant, often beatless sphere of exploration. Removed from their usual handrails, the
artists operate at their most open-ended and subtly suggestive, amorphously shapeshifting from
gloaming shadowplays of synth and keys to investigate arcane percussive impulses and iridescent
ambient whorls.
The result is a perfect, finely shaded marriage of their mutually esoteric, outsider Southern
European energies, which intuitively acknowledges and inhabits the paradoxes of their respective
styles. The illusively static yet mercurial ebb and flow of the atmospheric intro ‘Fallite fallentes’
sets the scene, where ‘Dum loquor, hora fugit’ invokes a viscous but brittle tangle of wide bass
and pointillist rhythms beside a stately cello vignette ‘Ludicrum’ that recalls aspects of Scott
Walker’s mystic charm ’Soused’. The rapid arps and slow moving, glassy pads of ‘Pauper ubique
iacet’ conjure a sublime tension that becomes diffused into the cavernous, hollow dub dread of
‘Ut ameris, amabilis esto’, possessed with its throaty, processed vocal, and the lonely strings and
plasmic electronics of ‘Forma bonum fragile est’ connotes a psychedelic coming-to-terms with
their artistic/philosophic duality.

After a 5 year pause for breath, Rainer Veil return with their debut full length for Modern
Love; an immersive, kinematic tumble through electronic forms from hyper trance to
tape dub experiments and loose polyrhythms - a summoning of ‘ardcore spirits in flux.
A hypnotic soundworld tempered by weighty bass and angular construction, ‘Vanity’
marks a breaking away from the binds of overthinking, an embrace of imperfection. It’s
a brighter set of tracks then anything we’ve heard from Rainer Veil before, discarding the
foggy filters and guitar pedals that were the signature of their first two EP’s in pursuit of
a more loose-limbed and swung ideal.
Opening on the skeletal Trance vapour-trail ‘Sim Screen’ and the agitated ‘Repatterning’,
we head into a ferociously asymmetric warehouse swerve ‘In Gold Mills’ conjuring an
uncanny, nighttime vision of suburban bass riddled with tension and bliss. ‘Shallows’
retreats through isolation dub, echoing ‘Change Is Never Easy’, a re-worked House
template fractured to its bare percussive core, while ‘FM2’ entwines a double helix of DX7
patches with a heart wrench, and ‘Gauze’ dismantles a mosaic of Kwaito patterns, buried
under a haze of smoke.
Tracing rapidly mutating electronic forms, from ringtone hooks to latinate rhythms
and Razor synth edits, ‘Vanity’ explores an instinctive swell of ideas and influences in
perpetual and unstoppable forward motion, a sequence of flash frames captured and
distilled for posterity.

The time-stopping tract of ’In Demons In!’ is a naturally elemental drone collaboration between
eminent experimentalists Jim O’Rourke and CM Von Hausswolf for their eternal admirers at iDEAL
Recordings
Offering a transfixing peek behind the curtain of pure black hole drone dynamics, ‘In Demons In!’
finds the American in Japanese exile and the proclaimed monarch of the imaginary kingdoms of
Elgaland-Vargaland meeting on common ground after 26 years of international correspondence.
Initiated in Tokyo 2016 and completed over the proceeding two years in Japan and Sweden, the
uncompromisingly adventurous results are galactic in scope and viscerally metaphysical in
presence, conjuring scales of abyssal bass and diffused, atomised, abstract dark matter that make
the listener feel like a speck of stardust floating in infinity.
Using sound as a magickal tool for psychic transport and to finely model notions of the
metaphysical that typically elude human comprehension, the near 40’ work feels to collapse
billions of years into a glacial moment. Location recordings made in Kathmandu lend an barely
there iridescence, like microbial filaments flickering in the endless darkness, to their plunging,
subharmonic basses and vaporised mid-upper registers, where spectral forces comb thru the
piece, only very gradually altering the weightless keen of its planetary mass and mental traction.
Ultimately, and fans are likely to agree, ‘In Demons In!’ amounts to a vitally definitive entry in both
artists’ catalogues, marking right up there with the most abstract wonders of O’Rourke’s electro-
acoustic Steamroom volumes, while manifesting some of the most fascinating results from Von
Hausswolff’s ongoing investigations into drone music’s paranormal properties. In other words: it’s
Grade A+ zoner music.

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1
Breach One
9' 36''
2
Interlude One
3' 26''
3
Breach Two
7' 05''
4
Breach Three
9' 32''
5
Interlude Two
2' 29''
6
Breach Four
7' 34''
Breach dives into chaotic systems and reflects on the recent events of protests and riots in the world, exploring the build up and release of tension and energy in a new form of pitch black metal electronics and polyrhythmic structures.

Zeno van den Broek is a Dutch-born, Copenhagen-based composer and artist. Van den Broek works in a multi-sensory way to research and express physical, social and acoustic notions. He utilises audiovisual means to create site and concept specific works. This trans-disciplinary method has a strong conceptual foundation, originating from a background in architecture, which enables Zeno to comprehend and reveal the richness and complexity of spatial, visceral and physical perception. He works with a characteristic artistic language based on minimalist and fundamental elements such as sine waves, lines, noise and grids.

Released on the occasion of Thomas Baldischwyler's booth in the collaboration section at ART COLOGNE 2019.Through a Soundcloud mix by London Crew Front Left Life, Baldischwyler was pointed to the mysterious Laton 12" VI AUX by the Austrian project FON (Formation ohne Namen) which was released in 1997. The project consisted of Johann Groiss und Manfred Söllner, but it was mainly Söllner who was responsible for the production. Baldischwyler got in contact with Söllner in 2018 when he stayed in Vienna and asked him if he could release some of his recent productions, for the second time - after 20 years - on vinyl. While reading a documentation about the SS division "Feldherrenhalle" burning some of the most important works of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (Especially "Schubert at the piano" from 1899) on the last day (May 8th, 1945) of the second world war in the Austrian manor house Immendorf, with this idea, Baldischwyler started to make the artwork and Söllner selected the tracks which are now in the "hidden" grooves beside the recording of a 1969 workshop for fire safety in California, USA.

Repress available in early May.

Faitiche releases a new collaboration between the Japanese sound artist ASUNA and Jan Jelinek: the album Signals Bulletin brings together joint improvisations and compositions made over a period of three years in Berlin, Kyoto and Kanazawa. ASUNA’s meandering organ drones merge with Jelinek’s pulsating synthesizer and field recording loops to create dense superclusters that span broad harmonic arcs.

"Watching the Japanese sound artist ASUNA playing the organ, some people might be surprised. ASUNA is no virtuoso flying over the keyboard in a rage. Instead, with the calm gestures of an office worker, he cuts strips of adhesive tape to the correct length before sticking them onto the keys of his instrument. In this way, large clusters of keys are held down, creating a dense and sustained range of frequencies, while the sound artist continually prepares further sets of keys or removes tape again. I have rarely seen a more convincing performance concept, with such a power to fascinate.

I first met ASUNA when we both gave a concert at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, his home city. He performed the organ drones as described above and I immediately knew I wanted to collaborate with him. Six years and five meetings later, we completed Signals Bulletin. The album includes both joint improvisations and compositions, recorded in Berlin, Kanazawa and Kyoto.

Whether using prepared organ, Casio keyboards or mechanical plastic toys, ASUNA creates rich textures of sound that barely change over long stretches of time. It is a music without breaks. For a while, I was unsure how my loops made using modular synthesizers and live sampling fitted here – until I realized the role I had to take in this duet: I would provide the rhythmically pulsating foundation over which his dense continuums could unfold.

The result is harmonically drifting superclusters that put us into a meditation-like state. It can perhaps be compared to Automatic Writing – a mode of creative expression floating somewhere between concentration and distraction. Both the structure of our pieces and our approach to our instruments allow a similar “absence”: we let the machines play and repeat themselves – while we, in a mild form of trance, adopt the role of observers, intervening only occasionally.

It is no coincidence that ASUNA owns a collection of Doodle Art – drawings jotted down during conversations or while talking on the phone. It is said that works made like this point to the unconscious and reveal pet motifs – because a doodler always inadvertently returns to his or her favourite themes. The artwork for Signals Bulletin features pictures from the collection, in this case sheets of paper from the pads provided in stationery shops to test out pens. The special quality of such doodles is that the jumble of drawings is the work of a collective whose individual members do not know each other. Layer by layer is added, by someone different each time – until it becomes a dense cluster of lines and symbols ..."

Jan Jelinek, Berlin 2018

"Mannequin Records and Platform 23 come together to start a series of stand-alone reissues of the music of post-punk / industrialists Bourbonese Qualk, starting with their 1983 album Laughing Afternoon. Formed in Southport during the late-70s, the band came to prominence out of South London's squat scene via their own Recloose Organisation. Early releases including the band's first experiments put to tape and the now highly sought after Sudden Departure compilation featuring luminaries Colin Potter, Eg Oblique Graph (Bryan Jones) and Lol Coxhill, laid the foundations of their burgeoning sound.
Recorded and produced at the Recloose Studios in Camberwell in 1983, Simon Crab, Julian Gilbert and Steven Tanza infused their music with politically charged atmospherics, instrumental exploration, heavily laden reverb and dub, all projected by drum machine rhythms to assemble a musical collage which encapsulated strands beyond contemporary music.
Track titles decipher little, as with the music, a discourse not belonging to a set style or movement, but crossing boundaries of supposition, pushing distortion and outernational leanings towards something else, a primordial discant. While tape loops warp the ears and spoken vocals propel songs like Blood Orange Bargain Day and To Hell With The Consequences and contrasting guitar acoustics pierce the mood on Qualk Street and Spanner In The Works, the overall embrace is claustrophobic, embedding a foreboding for the times. This unique, indulgent, cross genre melting pot where pounding rhythms, wailing trumpets, mournful melodica and electronic pulses all spiral in a contagious dissonance that heralded Bourbonese Qualk to the wider world.

Japanese maverick ALTZ teams up with relative newcomer IGAXX for a wonderful debut on the new LADYBUG imprint...

Having released the superb 'Permanent Vacation' on ALTZMUZICA a few years back, the two made a musical connection that has come to fruition with their celebrated Star Child parties & this collection of mesmerising cuts.

Osaka born ALTZ has forged a genre-defying career both behind the decks and in the studio, always unconventional, he combines a wealth of influences into something genuinely fresh.

He capably takes the A side here, with 'Ottie' a loose, musical and low-end heavy Theo style jam, while 'Sly' is a gurgling synth-out.

Tokyo's IGAXX steps up for the flip, with the atmospheric and intricately realised 'Sonorama' leading the charge. 'Minotaur's Dish' presents us with another exquisitely layered number, with aquatic undertones and a hypnotic appeal. Finally 'Unnn' leaves us with another beatless synth exchange, ending what has to be one of the strongest debut 12's we've heard in a while !

June Records presents their seventeenth release, ”Diataxis" by Ioannis Savvaidis, which is comprised of 4 recordings and their accompanying texts.

Diataxis is an audio interplay between Optical Networks terminology and the main artwork of the release. The sound is transmitted throughout abstractly and emotionally structured spaces.

Recorded live in Savvaidis’ studio in Athens between July and December 2018.

“Le Lisse et le Strié is a new work by french composer François J. Bonnet, released under his project name Kassel Jaeger. Based in Paris, Bonnet is the Director of INA GRM. He is also a writer and theoretician (The Order of Sounds, a sonorous Archipelago and The Infra-World have been published in english by Urbanomic). As a musician, Bonnet has been collaborating with artists such as Stephen O’Malley, Oren Ambarchi or Jim O’Rourke and most of his recent work has been published by Editions Mego.

Le Lisse et le Strié has been conceived as an exploration of the two antagonist concepts of “smooth” and “striated”, applied to the realm of electroacoustic sounds. If the “smooth” is linked to “nomos” as an open space of organic distribution, the “striated”, on the contrary, is associated to “logos”, as an enclosed space defined by a grid.

Elaborating a dialogue between these aspects, Kassel Jaeger draws here an intermediary space where pulsations become textures and layers, and where rhythmic elements are found in the qualities and bodies of sounds instead of being functionnalised, pre-determined sound objects, abstracted and frozen onto a temporal grid. The concept of “striated” is made audible only through the sonic landscape it inhabits, like the stripes of the camouflage fur of wild animals only exist as such in the woods and long grass, disappearing into a potentially uselessness in a desert plain.”

Some Became Hollow Tubes floating in the ocean.

6 self recorded improvised drone rock waves from Eric Quach (thisquietarmy - relentless DIY powerhouse) and Aidan Girt (Godspeed You! Black Emperor).

Chords loop, pedals get pushed, pounding drum parts get added and subtracted, it starts quiet and gets loud. Eric no longer needs to worry about the rhythm, Aidan no longer has to worry about the song structure. All four ears stay cocked and listening even if neither of them are very good at keeping eye contact.

One life to live, pound drone and loop this moment into the present, hahaha let’s keep joking, it's ok.... the music has our sadness. This world is dying, the machines are getting better and better at eating material things to create nothing and all we can do is make wordless music in response.

The album was mastered by Harris Newman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tindersticks etc).

HATEAU: O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself—projecting me;
O solitary me, listening—nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you;
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous’d—the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me. O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,) O if I am to have so much, let me have more!

Lee Gamble signs up HXE (fka HEX) for a tightly coiled, hard-edged quartet of deco-rave recces in
the space between sound designer techno, mutant Latinx styles, and polluted megatropolis vapour
noise
Run out 3 years since the London-based duo’s debut with Liberation Technologies, and proceeding
their 2017 EP for Antifur, the ‘INDS’ EP is loosely structured around the practice and aesthetics of
modern, large scale industry. Its 4 tracks are brutalist in resolve and construction, but each derive
a sense of (perhaps perverse) pleasure and sensuality from the warped virtual/physical tension
and crunching industrial intensity of their sounds.
‘Rozay’ opens the A-side with an alarming sort of Industrial dancehall smackdown, all panic-
station strings and pummelling, off-kilter bass with unyielding effect, while the reticulated
writhe of ‘Worm’ synchs breathless synthetic gasps with mechanically reclaimed rhythm with
‘floor-flailing force, and ’Spill’ alternately sustains and vents the tension with lurching, gnashing
dembow dynamics.
Following Zuli’s ‘Terminal’, which ranked highly in the Wire’s AOTY chart, and Nkisi’s resoundingly
acclaimed ‘7 Directions’ album, HXE are a fierce new addition to UIQ’s gang of dancefloor mutants.
In a stark reflection of the music, ’INDS’ will be accompanied by artwork and video in collaboration
with Paris-based sculpture artist Anita Molinero, whose process of salvaging and irreversibly
deforming industrial objects and materials patently mirrors the process and abrasive, malformed
nature of HXE’s music.

Venerable avant-garde composer John Duncan follows his prized cycle of cover versions ‘Bitter
Earth’ [2016] with ‘Conventional Wisdom’; a truly beguiling new suite of original, stony avant-blooz
songs produced in collaboration with iDEAL boss Joachim Nordwall, and marking another high
point in both of their catalogues After coming out as a vocalist to memorably striking effect in
2016, Duncan compounds the effect with ‘Conventional Wisdom’, placing his original lyrics in stark
arrangements ranging from shortwave radio-streaked dark ambient settings and Mika Vainio-
esque isolationism, to deathly dubs driven by Nordwall’s rugged rhythms in a style that heavily
recalls Jay Glass Dubs’ recent ‘Epitaph’ LP.
An original and close associate of LAFMS co-founder Tom Recchion, and collaborator with
everyone from Chris & Cosey to Asmus Tietchens, Merzbow and Andrew Mckenzie (The Hafler
Trio), Duncan is well versed in the art of f*cking with music. Doing so since the ‘70s, it’s only in
recent years that more “typical” song structures have crept into his style with most transfixing
effect, gathering the attention of many who previously weren’t necessarily exposed to his music.
Whether stemming from a perverse pleasure in twisting popular music, or a matter of changing
with age (dude is 65), we’re just not sure, but either way Duncan is now coming out with some of
the most broadly appealing, yet incomparable work in his 50 year-wide catalogue.
Aided by Joachim Nordwall, the pair convene a set of songs every bit as fascinating, eerie as
the cover image of a birdcage mask bound in barbed wire. The title track emphasises the stark
mystery with nothing more than meditative vocals, gamelan strikes and daubs of shortwave,
before ‘Hard Swallow’ catches him huskily channelling Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at a spooky distance,
while the disembodied dub tropes of ’Soft Eyes’ come uncannily close to aspects of Jay Glass Dubs,
and ‘Say No’ says it in the bluntest, most bluesy terms. The most desiccated, strung-out material
however is saved for the B-side, with the sferic resonance and stereo-strafing vocal of ‘The Joke’
planing out into the cracked hush of ‘The Beautiful Attempt’, before he and Nordwall effectively
duet in the finale ‘The Red Hot Alternative’, where Nordwall also supplies pranging percussion and
Coil-esque synth abstraction.

Banlieue Records presents LAKERDA, an LP by ALTKAT.

No stranger to records that side-step club conventions, Banlieue’s latest release truly stands out from the rest of its catalogue.

Altkat is a Turkish-Armenian musician born in the late 40s and active since the 60s when he first started experimenting with an Anatolian saz, a two track tape recorder, and a fluegelhorn. Today, the saz is still there, the bugle is gone and the tape recorder has turned into a computer. Altkat, who spends most of his time working as a percussionist for sephardic and balkanic bands, is above all interested in the transformation of noise into music and does not shy away from using synthesizers and drum machines, along with his saz, to create his music.

LAKERDA exists somewhere beyond the “traditional” and “non traditional” realms. It is marked by hybridity and the encounter of seemingly opposite notions, such as tradition and modernity, East and West, past and future, but also acoustic and electronic and more abstractly, here and there. This album takes the listener beyond these oppositions and invites him or her to approach Altkat’s music not on ultimately fallacious “either/or” terms, but simply to receive it as it is, a fourth world record, with each track on the album a palimpsest that encapsulates previously mentioned oppositions and transcends them in the process.

Full of morphing textures, metallic resonance, layered arrangements, plucked saz strings, pitch-sliding winds, shimmering melodies, bleeps and blops, peculiar samples and other disorienting sounds, this album seems indebted to the aesthetics of private press albums from the late 20th century. While some of these have recently been reissued by labels such as Music From Memory, Into The Light and Stroom to name but a few, Lakerda also feels more contemporary, and it is certainly not out of place in Banlieue’s catalogue.

It therefore seems apt to conclude this presentation of the record with a paragraph written by Joe Muggs after listening to LAKERDA and which has been printed on the LP’s labels.

'Causality moves differently in the fourth world. The flows of generational influence can be altered or even reversed. Exotic is normal and normal is just another shifting layer among many. Continents rediscover each other in new orders, distant stars loom close, and strange music like this comes not from far off but inside your mind.'
Joe Muggs

Pedro Zopelar and Benjamim Sallum started jamming and performing live sets in São Paulo in 2016, when Ben was only 15 years old. At that time they where doing freaky improvised live perfomances in tribute to a popular youtube video called “My Girlfriend Is Programming The Roland TR-909, Making a House Beat”. Using that huge name the duo performed live before Theo Parrish at the RBMA festival in São Paulo 2017, and was the first that the track GIDI was played. In 2018 “My Girlfriend” releases their first record dropped by Subsubtropics, (a Brazilian label that previously released “Dreams”, “Design a Wave”, “Seixlack & Zopelar” and more).

The Apron EP is a compilation of My Girlfriend’s tracks there are more influenced by a Brazilian approach on neo-soul, house and funk. From the first raw jams to these particular vision from “what is Brazilian music from nowadays”, the duo represents a fresh sample about what is happening into the club music scene there. Benjamim Sallum is resident at the famous party “Mamba Negra” headed by Cashu and Laura Diaz (Teto Preto, Carneosso), and since his 15yo developed a fast progress on the art of making tracks and DJing. He runs his own label “OXI”, where he often drops some crazy cassettes EPs from himself and his friends. Zopelar is multi instrumentist, DJ and producer based in SP, responsible for the keyboards, synths and basslines of the record. He studied piano on his youth and made music college in rio with 18 yo. Based in SP after his studies till now, he runs another well known party named “ODD”, where Funkineven played in 2017 (both Rio and Sao Paulo editions) and knew all that crew.

The opening track “piercing”brings pads and strings recorded and manipulated on a MPC sampler with some dreamy lead synths on top. GIDI is a tribute to all the church keyboard players in the world. And there is also another tribute to a specific music school from late 70’s in Brazil called club da esquina (“B2 Corner Club”), headed by legendary singer and composer “Milton nascimento”, is a typical sound from Minas Gerais, State where Pedro was born and raised till his 17 years old.