Beats News

A compilation of contemporary Italian tape electroacoustic and musique concrete artists featuring Valerio Tricoli, Mercury Hall, Ezio Piermattei, SEC_, Giovanni Lami, Giulio Nocera, kNN.

»Italia Synthetica 1981-1985« represents the musical mutation that occurred after the post-punk hangover gave way to more frigid emotional shores, in-line with the synth-wave moment that was sweeping Europe and the white cliffs of Albion. This scene flourished in Italy between 1981-1985, and the musicians that came out of it are still revered today (particularly in the US).

Robotic rhythms and intuitions that, besides sharing common ground with the electronic movements that had come before, also knew how to fill up the dancefloor. Featuring four previously unreleased tracks by Der Blaue Reiter, along with tracks by Modo, Actor's Studio, and La Maison, as well as the still fresh sounding contributions by true pioneers of the genre Neon and Naif Orchestra. Also features Ein-st-ein, Scortilla, Eurotunes, Oh Oh Art, and 2+2=5 featuring Paolo Mauri.

Insanely productive Pieter Kock of Berlin’s OTannenbaum serves up an album full of polyrhythmic collages, hovering ostinatos and explosions.

General aesthetics of sound: flying marble in an underground scenario totally overground. Planet of the Superapes, being a soundtrack of now, is composed of the following chapters:

Night Clubs: hard grooving eight and a half minutes, gently topped with cosmic synths and distant choirs.

Phillipines: strings and weightless vocals telling of hope and loneliness over a driving beat.

Oedipus Listen: euphorically floating atmosphere. ecstasy.
Planet of the Superapes: title track: dark, ghostly, naked, melancholic, dramatic. With a good pinch of optimistic fun.

Page 25–30: total apocalyptic drama, agressive rhythm.
A warm and inviting yet alienating record for an interesting summer.

G of D welcomes back to the catalogue its co-founder Sabla, back to his spiritual home, with a collaborative ep alongside one of the most revered and transcendental artists out there, Donato Dozzy.

Crono is a collection of 4 tracks made in the span of 2019-2022, following each other in chronological order of creation.
In an era where information runs fast, and just one year ago feels like ages ago, the music inside this ep comfortably sits in a time bubble, absorbing old and new influences and melting them organically.

Dozzy’s signature enchanting synth sequences, created with iconic synthesizers Buchla and Ems Synthi, steadily flow in and out with digital sounds and editing by Sabla.
The core of this collaboration is the exploration of these steady flows, which is a peculiarity easily found in both artists’ works. The 4 Flusso flow like water, like thoughts, like energy, lifting up with no specific intention if not the simple act of moving forward.

Artwork by Jonathan Castro Alejos and Tom Volkaert
Mastering by Neel at Enisslab Studio


The Berlin musician, visual artist, and label owner Lasse Winkler aka ACUD has attracted attention with titles such as MATJESFILET or VERBRENNUNGSMOTOR. He shows that electronic dance music can also have a sense of humor without ending in slapstick. Creaking basses and swinging rhythms meet warm synth chords and complement his bright voice. The microphone, always ready, replaces the notepad. Succinct, spontaneous keywords and sentences are created, snapping up everyday life. On the 10-track album VERDAMMT NOCHMAL, the musicians are accompanied over a creative period of three years.

'Be A Rebel Remixed' versammelt erstmals alle offiziellen Versionen des New Order Tracks 'Be A Rebel' auf einer physischen Veröffentlichung, ergänzt um brandneue Remixe von Arthur Baker, JakoJako, Mark Reeder und Melawati. Außerdem dabei sind Mixe der Bandmitglieder Bernard Sumner und Stephen Morris, plus Club Mixe von Maceao Plex und Paul Woolford.
New Orders Single 'Be A Rebel' war die erste neuveröffentlichte Musik der Band seit ihres von der Kritik in höchsten Tönen gelobten 2015er Albums 'Music Complete'. 'Be A Rebel Remixed' wird es auf transparentem Doppelvinyl geben.

M Parent's penchant for texture is laid bare on this searing and arresting new EP for Zement. It opens with 'Gravel Pit' which sounds like an audio diary from a car-wrecking plant. Twisted metal, fizzing battery acid, and crushed glass all feature over a distorted baseline and broken rhythm. Those same scuzzy sounds define the rest of the EP from the acid-laced 'Ideal Future' to the coruscated funk of 'Acid Thirst' via the caustic intensity of closer Climb These Walls'. An impressively unique offering that very much has its own singularly sound palette.

self described as library music for modern times, think downtempo acid infusions.

Introducing the first volume on the “Aquapelagos" series - a collection of split LPs where selected artists offer their own take into water surrounded cultures and communities. After the initial release of the Anthology compilation Aquapelago in 2022 (Discrepant ,CREP91) this first volume opens up the series with a sound journey inspired by the majestic and sometimes furious Atlantic Ocean. The music was recorded throughout special artists residencies held during the Keroxen Festival in 2020 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife where throughout a week each band recorded their own free vision of an aquapelagic Atlantic culture. Philip Hayward, the Australian researcher who coined the term Aquapelago also joins the proceedings with extensive sleeve notes.

Side 1 is provided by LAGOSS – a band comprised of Tenerife based veteran producers, Gonçalo F. Cardoso, Mladen Kurajica and Daniel García while Side 2 is provided by Banha da Cobra, comprising Lisbon-based musicians Mestre André and Carlos Godinho. Both ensembles have addressed aquatic themes in their prior work, LAGOSS having represented phantom islands on a series of vivid cameo tracks released as Imaginary Island Music Volume 1 (Discrepant, 2020) and Banha da Cobra having staged a performance within the Mãe D'Água reservoir in Lisbon in 2018, drawing on recordings of place and objects within it to conjure the liquid history of the city.

After a recent, acclaimed EP on Madrid’s Analogical Force label, Suction Records is thrilled to announce “Grey With Breaks,” the 8th full-length album by Lowfish. The electro veteran, who’s been programming 808s since the early ‘90s, returns to Suction Records, the label he co-founded and debuted on in 1997.

“Grey With Breaks” is an electro record, with thick analog basslines and TR-808 boom tschak front & centre, but Lowfish’s electro-style stands out from the pack. Not only is the LP devoid of the Drexciya/Dopplereffekt worship that permeates the scene these days, it also rarely hits above 110bpm, oozing with melancholic melody.

One of the most beautiful albums of this decade gets a re-issue on 2-vinyl in 2014 the Swedish duo Gidge released their debut: Autumn Bells.

The very beginning of I Fell in Love are the most passionate and emotional couple of notes i have heard.

An incredibly organic listen from start to finish, 'Autumn Bells' is the season's distilled feeling put in song. Gidge successfully captures microscopic moments of decay and beauty within the framework of pop and ambient-inflected techno.

An utterly captivating piece of work. Each new listen only enriches the songs.

One of the finest, most enjoyable electronic albums I have heard in recent times. Every sound is so well thought out and sculpted, some seriously head-tingling music.












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Synthetic Music From Yugoslavia 1980-1989

"The galloping technical progress in the second half of the last century dominated all spheres of daily life, art and culture. In the music industry machines took over the role of classical instruments and did not stop at RnR, punk nor industrial music. No one could resist the challenge, but also the prevailing trends in the 80s. The music industry was influenced by the electronic virus globally, not sparing even the remotest corners of the planet, producing bands like Depeche Mode, New Order, Soft Cell or lesser known ones like Liquid Liquid, Section 25, The Wake as well as the pioneers of the electronic music Silver Apples, Pierre Henry,etc .
What was going on in the music industry of former Yugoslavia and at Jugoton, the biggest YU music label at that time? The all over answer is given by a new release of Everland Music: Electronic Jugoton - Synthetic music from Yugoslavia 1964. - 1989. Vol. 1

Electronic Jugoton is the first part of two double albums, where the second part will even go back to pre-electronic music from 1964. Both double albums were initially released by Croatia Records (ex-Jugoton) in 2014 on a 2CD set with no less than two and a half hours of material (47 songs, 35 performers), showing the contemporary trend of Jugoton at that time towards avant-garde and provocative directions in electronic music. This untimely compilation is released for the first time on vinyl now on two double LPs, housed in gatefold sleeves by Everland Music, where part 2 will be released in 2023.
The brave and insightful creators of the compilation Electronic Jugoton, veteran crate diggers Višeslav Laboš and Zeljko Luketić, have excelled at reconstructing the musical past of electronic music in Yugoslavia from 1964 – 1989. Jugoton's extensive research included the most exciting and progressive moments of pop and disco music, early rap, electronic responses of new wave, RnR, post punk and industrial bands to the current trend of the 80s, but also pioneers of avant-garde electronic music.

Electronic Jugoton part 1 is officially opened by the band Laboratorija with the song Devica 69, which opens a window to a completely new and experimental world in former Yugoslavia.Laboš and Luketić have boldly chosen the material without reservations, suggesting that for the first time in one place we have a section of forgotten, unique underground bands like Beograd, Data, Brazil, The Master Scratch band, DU DU A and beyond.
Besides the excellent underground bands, we find popular performers of the time performing less well-known songs: Denis & Denis, Oliver Mandić, Slađana & Neutral Design.

Electronic Jugoton part 2 is partly dedicated to unique electronic music in the performance of important Yugoslav punk, new wave, RnR and industrial bands: Zana, Pekinška patka, Električni orgazam and Borghesia, while the second part of the material is focused on avant-garde early electronic music in Yugoslavia, where the works of composers Igor Savin, Branimir Sakac, Igor Kuljerić and Miroslav Miletić were presented. Luketić and Laboš rescued the obscure electronic tune Elektra by Zdenka Kovačiček, who was at that time Jugoslovska Soul and funk diva.

The uniqueness and quality of this compilation are also audio stories for children, which were extremely fertile ground for an experimentation with electronic sounds, as they should be highly imaginative to attract the attention of the childrens. Electronic Jugoton is also the first compilation in which the listener will find fragments of interviews with actors from the time gave for Jugoton Express. This was a series of promo vinyls printed in extremely small quantities in the 80's and intended to be exclusively for radio stations. An average of 30 minutes of promotion material and interviews with musicians were available for the first time through this compilation.

The value of this compilation is time and priceless. The only question is whether you will be fast enough to catch your copy of the limited double vinyl editions!"

On his debut album producer and Squama co-founder Martin Brugger hovers through Ambient, (upbeat) Downbeat and unfulfilled build-ups.
Conceptualized as a blank soundtrack, the music was sent to fellow artists who shared their visual and verbal associations which became the source for the artwork and tracktitles, effectively making the album a collective effort.
Evident in all of his recent projects is Brugger's passion for working and thriving within closely set limits.
The only audio sources in the process of making the album were his record player and a Dave Smith Prophet 08 synthesizer. In an antithesis to most sample-based music, Brugger takes the more ephemeral moments of recorded music and uses pitching tools as a magnifying glass to dive deeper into the sound and bare layers that normally remain unheard.

In a true celebration of Italian electronic music from across the generations, Bosconi is honoured to present unreleased works from the legendary Alexander Robotnick. A true titan of Florentine music who helped define the Italo disco scene with a glittering run of evergreen club classics, Robotnick is still as creative now in his 70s as he was when first firing off his trademark arpeggios in the early 1980s.
For a few years now Robotnick, real name Maurizio Dami, has mainly released new or previously unreleased music via his own Hot Elephant Music. As such, we're thrilled to present three original tracks on vinyl, cut hot and ready to set a disco alight. Transcending the trappings of retro-fetishism, vintage this or old-skool that, the tracks on this 12" could be called techno or electro as easily as Italo - it's quite simply impeccable dance music as delivered by a master craftsman.
Adding to the sense of occasion celebrating the foundations of the Italian scene, we're equally thrilled to welcome Marco Passarani to remix Robotnick's 'The Hidden Game'. His appropriately titled 'Legacy' mix operates as an alternate version in the traditional style, holding true to the essence of the original while offering a slightly altered perspective. It's a distinct mix with Passarani's own distinctive Italo flair plain to hear - if anything his version sounds more retro than the original - but it's still very much invested in what Robotnick created to begin with.
Given the influence both these artists have had on the musical culture our own label is built on, this release holds a special place in our hearts, and we're excited to be sharing it with the world, where the throbbing basslines and sparkling pads can work their magic under the disco ball in a thousand dimly lit dance spots.

Introducing Marc Codsi's new Arabic infused synth oriented album, 'Songs from the Aftermath'.
Lebanese musician and composer Marc Codsi has released numerous albums with various projects
such as Scrambled Eggs, Lumi, Zalfa and many others whilst maintaining a very active career as asolo artist and film composer. 'Songs from the Aftermath' is his 5th album and presented as a natural
continuation to his 2019 opus work, ‘A New World’ (Annihaya Records).
Codsi continues his personal exploration of Arabic music codes, mainly investigating quarter tones
scales in an fully electronic environment in order to create new harmonies and textures that still
convey a feeling of familiarity whilst keeping a certain aura of strangeness and mystery.
The album was recorded between during 2021 and 2022 and the music eventually comes as a very
personal quest for transcendence. A sort of speculative answer to the world’s ongoing absurdity and
what seems to be an incessant array of conflicts, disasters and tragedies.
From these dark alleys may we still arise to proclaim a sense of beauty, poetry and elevation!

Recorded in one mystical night during Ramadan in 1983, The Night of Power (Laylatu'l Qadri) is a prophetic tapestry of politically and spiritually conscious poetry and revelatory home-studio electronic jazz.

The label recommend for fans of: Amiri Baraka, Sun Ra Akestra’s Disco 3000, Roland Young, Otis G. Johnson, Jeff Phelps, TJ Hustler

The 1st volume of »San Francisco Moog: 1968-72« introduced the world to a trove of recordings from a little-known hinge point in electronic-music history. Vol. 2 brings to light the rest of tapes—and the rest of the story. In 1968, Bay Area native Doug McKechnie got hold of one the very first modular Moog synthesizers ever made and began finding his own way to play it. Soon, he was hauling the finicky instrument around to perform improvised concerts at colleges and psychedelic ballrooms, as well as an ill-fated appearance on the bill at Altamont. Some of the performances were recorded, and the surviving tapes—never before released—capture a free-flowing, transportive sound that fills in the gap between the austere mid-century academic avant-garde and the expansive cosmic suites of Tangerine Dream and the rest of the Berlin School in the ’70s.

Vol. 2 captures a wider range of sounds and moods, encompassing austere sonic experiments, early sequenced pulses, and melodic etudes.

“These pieces represent amazingly fully formed early approaches to the very idea of musical synthesis...arresting even to modern ears.” — Goldmine

“Presages both Tangerine Dream’s soundtracks and, in its most grimy moments, Acid Tracks.” — The Wire

KUF create emotion-laden dialogues across layers of time and dimensions of sound. With three albums the Berlin trio pioneered an astonishing inversion of the typical electronic band set up, by
pairing a plethora of disembodied, sampled voices with acoustic real-time interaction on bass, drums and keys.
'Yield', their fourth album, presents a shift in focus. Less weight on the vocal core – lots of new integrations of sampling, synthesis and band action in different constellations. This diversification of
sources pulls the conceptual stops out and yields a dazzling array of magical instrumentalism. Bold.
Catchy. Flourishing.
From 'Gold' to 'Universe', KUF solidified an irresistible marriage of android vocal cords and highly energetic beats. Their third album 'Re:Re:Re' applied the concept to remix/cover version hybrids of
classics from Macro's stellar back catalog, tackling originals by the likes of rRoxymore, KiNK, Patrick Cowley, Santiago Salazar and Stefan Goldmann. With proof that the concept could be applied with
supremely gratifying results to such diverse contexts, time was ripe to go back to the drawing board and reimagine the perimeter.
Now 'Yield' breathes the freedom of playful reassembly of the main ingredients. A sampler's cut-up capabilities triggered by frisky fingers. Persistent bass. Adamant drums. Rough soul, intertwined by
improvised outbursts and shaped with the aesthetics of raw MPC-based chunky techno. Twelve slices of hyper-integrated realtime magic.

Wistful, quietly positive, and a little bit melancholic; ambient artist Umber is set to release kaleidoscopic new album ‘Sometimes that light, that shine, seemed like a pretty nice thing’ on 17th March 2023. Focused on melodies that engage the heart as much as the mind, the album brings his electronic influences to the fore, combining shimmering soundscapes with a throbbing pulse of movement.

Umber, the project of Nottingham based Alex Steward, has been steadily releasing sublime music since 2011. Living in a small town provides Alex with a balance between the peace of rolling green fields and the energy of community. This life on the edge of the countryside comes across in his music, which finds the verve of night life enveloped in organic textures and environments.

Wistful, quietly positive, and a little bit melancholic; ambient artist Umber is set to release kaleidoscopic new album ‘Sometimes that light, that shine, seemed like a pretty nice thing’ on 21st April 2023. Focused on melodies that engage the heart as much as the mind, the album brings his electronic influences to the fore, combining shimmering soundscapes with a throbbing pulse of movement.

Umber, the project of Nottingham based Alex Steward, has been steadily releasing sublime music since 2011. Living in a small town provides Alex with a balance between the peace of rolling green fields and the energy of community. This life on the edge of the countryside comes across in his music, which finds the verve of night life enveloped in organic textures and environments.

Alex draws from his experience as a part time palliative care giver, which has had a significant impact on this record. He says, “Through caring for elderly patients, whose time is in short supply, I have discovered that life needs to be celebrated. Even if it’s just playing a game of Scrabble or the way that the shadows of trees dance on a living room wall on a sunny day; there is beauty everywhere. Sometimes we just need to slow down and look a little harder.”

The evocative track titles stem from phrases Alex has heard or read, with the album’s title taken from Stephen King’s book The Shining. They range from the literal (‘It Is Going To Be Ok’, ‘The Last Perfect Day’) to the oblique (‘Hologram Shut Stability’, ‘Sun House Chant’), bestowing the everydayness of fleeting inputs and thought processes to more conscious mantras.

“I feel that my music taps into a part of who we all are”, says Alex. “I try to create music that will emotionally resonate with the listener. Ultimately the album is about finding hope in the smallest actions, something that can often be overlooked or discarded in a world that doesn’t always make a lot of sense.”

Umber’s ‘Sometimes that light, that shine, seemed like a pretty nice thing’ is set to be released on vinyl and digital formats via California-based label Subtempo on 17th March 2023.

We can safely say that some of the past Italian library music masterpieces will hardly reach the export levels of mainstream Italian pop music. However, there is no doubt that the recent rediscovery operation led by some record labels such as Schema, Sonor, Four Flies, Intervallo and many others, has helped to create a lively and passionate record collectors’ market where names such as Umiliani, Brugnolini, Torossi, Tommasi, Braen, Iacoucci, Alessandroni are the watchwords for entering a wonderful and relatively unknown musical territory.
It is probably better to avoid comparing library music to the world of movie soundtracks, even if most of the aforementioned names were working across both fields. A prestigious name like that of Ennio Morricone is the perfect example of someone involved both in library music and soundtracks - but his imprint is too established to give the idea of the purpose of Italian library music, which was mainly to add sonorization to television programs that were lacking visual substance.
For a great number of years these compositions were placed in artistic oblivion and only in recent times a group of enthusiasts around the world started sharing their passion for Italian library music. Among these enthusiasts the main character of this (our) story is Lorenzo Morresi, Italian producer, musician and DJ working between Milan and London where he collaborated with several artists from around the world. Driven by a strong passion for jazz, funk and disco, Lorenzo met Italian record producer and musician Luciano Cantone (aka ‘Le Isole’) many years ago. Luciano played Lorenzo some rare Italian library music gems that he was repressing; laying the first bricks of their mutual passion for this genre.
Soon after Lorenzo started producing music in that genre; combining jazz and funk grooves, Italian synth melodies and vintage electronic sounds. Last year, to much critical acclaim, he released the album ‘Cosmica Italiana’, made in collaboration with British multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ Ed ‘Tenderlonious’ Cawthorne, and released via his record label 22a, one of the most respected contemporary jazz labels.
In March 2022 Lorenzo and Luciano started pre-producing ‘Pop Flop’ at Schema Records headquarters in Milan. Part of the album has also been produced at ‘Museo Del Synth Marchigiano & Italiano’, an incredible collection of rare Italian vintage synthesizers located in Le Marche region where Lorenzo was born. These Italian synthesizers (manufacturers such as Farfisa, Crumar and Elka) were very popular in the 1970s for library music and soundtracks, and they were also used outside of Italy by the likes of John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, Keith Emerson, Jean-Michel Jarre and Ray Manzarek from the Doors. As Morresi himself explains, “I tried as a form of respect and love to avoid an album that simply imitates those fifty year old masterpieces, so my idea has been to add contemporary musical elements and genres together with modern production techniques to create something original”.
Pop Flop has a warm, cinematic and philological feel; well balanced between tradition and innovation, fusing elements of funk, classical, acid jazz, afrobeat, trip hop - to name a few - and all whilst paying homage to those fantastic years.
The song titles sound like we’ve been transported back to 1972 in a time machine: “Odeon," "Slalom," "Savana Urbana", "Beta Erotica”, “Allegro Funerario," "Rio De Janeiro Filter," and so on.
We are sure that masters like Umiliani, Tommasi and Brugnolini will be pleased with the end result and will undoubtedly be smiling down from the sky. Stefano Gilardino