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New England Digital is proudly digital, containing 6 very different sound vignettes ranging from ‘style brisé’ FM harpsichord to abstract techno. At times dreamlike and detached but never without solid harmonic or rhythmical interest, New England Digital evokes scenes from New England pastoral life during the early settlement years.
In the early nineties Waelkens was involved in many dance releases on the pioneering Belgian label Elektron. Later on focusing mainly on piano composition and polyrhythmic music, staying low profile yet highly active. His new music is thematically inspired: the mini album 'New England Digital' reflects a lifelong interest in digital synthesis, Shona music, classical and electronic music in general.

This is a reissue of 'Casioworks' by Gust De Meyer, originally released as a cassette on Ding Dong Tapes and Records in 1983. This stuff has been making crooked collectors, old and young minimal-wave heads and other music lovers going bonkers for years.
At the age of 35, back in 1983, Gust De Meyer was working as an assistant at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven, were he did some groundbreaking work. He got a PhD in musical industry and introduced the study of video games.

Besides that he was busy writing texts and selecting records for a weekly 4-hour pioneering radioshow called 'Funky Town' on Belgian national radio. The show was specialized in the Afro-American dance music of the era: discofied electronics, funk, boogie and rhythm & blues. Next to brand new American records, from Chicago, Philly and New York there was also room for European stuff, sharing a likewise bouncy character or electronic groove: italo-boogie, kraut-grooves and some local danceable new-wave. Slick, glossy and commercial but also groundbreaking and goddamn funky. No wonder this radioshow became a hit in no time, even outside the national borders.

The producer of this radioshow was the now world famous composer of minimal and soft classical music Wim Mertens. Around 1981 he started up his Soft Verdict project. The first LP Wim released under this name, was in fact a collaboration with Gust: 'For amusement only', a rather radical and raw experimental album concentrating on sounds made by pinball-machines and early computer games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. It was released in 1982 on the now legendary Les Disques du Crépuscule label, that was launched just two years before in Brussels. This label was promoting a fresh and eclectic mix of ambient, post-punk, exotic electro-pop and contemporary music, all nicely dressed up in well designed sleeves.

The compositions on this 'For Amusement Only' record are very minimal and rhythmic in nature, no touch of melody in sight. These tracks were composed with both ears wide open to the heavy ambience of techy noise and locked grooves of popular game machines. You could find these so-called 'flippers' in common bars at the corner of every Belgian village in those days.

The follow up record 'Struggle for pleasure' was minimal and sharp but also very melodic and more acoustic then electronic. It already included Wim Mertens' biggest hit record 'Close Cover' but also some trancey, more rhythmic tunes like 'Salernes' and 'Gentlemen of Leisure' with a strong legacy towards the work of minimal composers, like Glass and Reich. The record was released in the same year as 'Casioworks' but without the cooperation of Gust.

Inspired by Wim, Gust was occupied by the creation and release of his own magnum opus and bold musical statement: 'Casioworks'. After which he, strangely enough, never ever released music again.
'Casioworks' was made at home with only one instrument: the then very popular and cheap Casio VL Tone 1 synthesizer. Every track was recorded in one take on a porta-sound Fostex 250 4 track cassette recorder/mixer. For a first record it's very focused and mature but also playful and heavy with urgent and visceral power.

Spirit & Form unfolds a rippling waterfall, an oceanic wave of sequenced sound to safeguard against the drowning of a city-stressed soul. Like a spa for the brain, relaxing your meditation muscles with melodies of deep dreams and high hopes. A digitech video ad for a coconut-flavored aperitivo with ice-tickling images, new age flavors, fluorescently-lighted polygon meshes and deepdark shading. Well, all these spirits are taking new form here; electronic exotica and slow burning ambient prepared from a deep-felt love for specific vibes and spaces. A very personal and perfectly paced soft swinging masterpiece.

Spirit & Form is inspired by growing up in the 80's and 90's and all that this includes and inflicts; tv news intros and animated series, never ending ambient adventures and first person gaming, office clerk cubicles and its vestimentary code, hair highlights and glossy textiles, rompler synths and video manuals, digital high sheen and synthesized reality. All this in perfect harmony with nature's high frequencies and its effect on mood and composure, like calmness in the eye of a storm.

Spirit & Form is the brainchild of co-conspirators David Edren and Bent Von Bent, who both released soloalbums as DSR Lines and Ōgon Batto, respectively. S&F is a next step in their path of exploring various works of output. This new project breaks their initial setup of improvisation to explore a more compositional modus operandi.

Spirit & Form is the result of numerous programming and production sessions between 2017 and 2019, one being a week at a reclusive residence in the outskirts of Zeelandic Flanders (next to the renowned Drowned lands of Saeftinghe) where most of the album's tracks came together.

xpressed by synthetic voices, they present a futuristic take on modern electronic music.
Lush sounds of classic analog synths, modular drum machines, and digital sources merge into unheard soundscapes within their voltage driven root system. Six tracks combining various paths of the electronic landform into a musical journey framed by Kris Wellings’
uncanny chants. Garden Scene is a trip from the aesthetics of Detroit electro to complexity of IDM to harmonic outbursts from the abyss of contemporary pop culture.

Anadol is a psychedelic synth folk project by Gözen Atila, a Turkish sound artist and photographer based in Berlin. Her third album Uzun Havalar is based on collective improvisations of middle eastern folk songs called „uzun hava“. They turn out as rich, atmospheric synth ballads. A diverse roster of improvising musicians creates their fascinating complexity. Anadol recorded them during extensive sessions in Istanbul. You can hear drummers laughing and playing guitars, composers howling, announcements in French and screams in no language, record collectors playing oscillators, and trumpets through spacious echoes. Anadol represents Gözen Atila’s liberation from a rather academic approach to electronic composition which she pursued during her music technology studies in Istanbul. She calls her education the „darkness of serious music“ where she first tried to belong, then to break free with the help of lo-fi synth pop. As a producer of radio plays and an expert field recording artist she has developed a distinct sense of timing, editing and sound design. Her Anadol project walks in the footsteps of lone synth experimentalists like Bruce Haack and The Space Lady with their childlike curiosity for electronic sounds, pushing the boundaries of minimal equipment. On Uzun Havalar she translates her experimental background into these floating folk ballads. The album was originally released on tape via Kinship in 2018.

Pelvis and Burning Rose Records present the debut 12” from producer and vocalist Purient. Her voice floats over tough production on three original tracks, pushing from an icy cool to blistering heat.
It’s page one for Purient, and exceptional remixes from Eartheater and Varg²™ further pull the curtain back on her expanded universe.

East Coast minimal wave institution Xeno & Oaklander’s seventh full-length further distills their iconic noir synth pop into a streamlined suite of gleaming, graceful retrofuturism. Inspired by ideas of synesthesia, scent, star worship, and obsolescent technologies, the duo of Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride began conceiving the blueprint of Vi/deo while sequestered at their Southern Connecticut home studio during the pandemic. The context of isolation, streaming, and remote dreaming seeped into their chemistry, manifesting as both homage to and meditation on a certain cinematic strain of technicolor fantasy: the screen as stage, distance disguised as intimacy, where tragedy and glamor crossfade into one.



Opening with the precision synthetic melancholy of “Infinite Sadness,” the album marks a peak fluidity between the pair’s fusion of analog electronics and poetic melody, both refined and oblique, classic but contemporary. Wendelbo modeled her singing on “a young boy in a choir,” alternately holding notes and whispering them, with the lyrics clear, the voice elevated. McBride’s synthesizers serve as the perfect counterpart, tiered and polished, threading fluorescent architectures of a lost audio-visual age. Theirs is a... more

The Forbidden Dance label is marking their first year of existence and with already top-notch names (Vick Lavender, Alton Miller, The Mechanical Man) with the first three releases, they are celebrating the one year mark with another global gem, disco and house finest - Ilija Rudman!
Where Wild Horses Go is conveying an unquestionable sense of 80's electro and synth boogie filled with smooth and heavily reverberated rhythmics drenched in strong snares. Aligned with catchy and spaced-out disco pads, the album is riddled with ever strong analogue elements processed in a light, quirky and summerish way but with enough groove in some tracks easily applicable on the dancefloors in the late hours.
Dead Horse Gang is a brainchild music band/brand by Ilija Rudman dedicated to cinematic dance concept laying on the Los Angeles funk attitude, Art Of Noise perception of sound and raw 12-bit grooves making a statement of mid 80's culture with surf vibe of California summer.
"Dead Horse Gang Music is more than music, it's a way of life, a way of thinking, a path to a maximum freedom of the one, who can accept it."
-Ilija Rudman

Fictional larger than life characters come in all forms and ways but no one expected East Rome acid minimal synth-punk duo Holiday Inn to spread their cult in such a distinctive manner, overthrowing all sets of rules in the peninsula’s stuffy DIY circuit and uniting techno-industrial enthusiasts, hardcore noisers and theatrical dark wavers. At some point though someone just had to do it!

Co-released by Avant! Records and Maple Death Records, Torbido is Holiday Inn’s debut full-length and by all accounts their strongest manifesto yet. A collaboration between Gabor (Aktion, Metro Crowd) on voice and Frenchman Bob Junior (Trans Upper Egypt, Bobsleigh Baby, Hiss) on synth and drum machine, they leave their best on stage, live shows have cemented their ill reputation: Gabor is a lanky dude and struts onstage with a boxer’s pre match ritual dance, ready to vomit words in your face while Bob’s composure never fails to spread misery and mystery through his vintage noise assault setup.

Torbido kicks off with She, a hallucinogenic dub infused punk anthem, Dirty Town is an industrial boogie for wide eyed dreamers, Feel Free! is an electro jungle b-boys rhythmic speed induced breakbeat tune for the future. The feverish magic happens on No Speaking, where Holiday Inn turns an acid techno tune into a circuit breaking warped frenzy.

Holiday Inn are shaped and scarred by the unauthorized development of buildings once considered a sign of gleaming growth in the Roman suburbs. It’s nostalgic and nasty, and will not have a bright future and let’s not forget that Torbido means murky and sinister, so come on and take a plunge into Tevere’s mudbanks.

Pavel Fedoseev is KIKOK. As one of the few remaining members of the Komi tribe, he used the Komi words Ki (= arm) and Kok (= leg) as his brandname "Pretty important elements for a human being, aren't they?" he says of the name. Born in Kudymkar (capital of the Komi-Permyak nation) , now lives in Perm, no less than a 22-hour train journey east of Moscow, placing Fedoseev in what, he says, feels like cultural and social isolation.This 10 track album acts as a means to escape the monotonous cycle of his hometown. The end result is a record that sounds both propulsive and hypnotic, an album that sounds like moving forward and in circles at the same time. Rich lashings of synthesisers pulse over beats that switch between techno thump and restrained ambience, with tracks seamlessly moving from dance floor stomp to woozy comedown let-up. Russian Rave Pop at it's best. Perm is a disgusting city," says KIKOK's Pavel of his hometown. "It's dirty, boring and rough. I'm afraid of walking outside; that's why I sit at home and watch movies and make music." Comes in yellow vinyl.

The 1980s in the West saw the widespread use of synthesized sound technology, previously largely unobtainable for amateurs because of its price.
At that time in Great Britain synthesizers - cheaper and produced in bigger batches - found their way into the hands of youth raised on punk rock. In the US, the first samplers were already being used in hip hop, Roland's mass-produced drum machines and bass synthesizers were about to target suburban adolescents, while techno and acid house were emerging.

In communist Poland - then part of the Eastern Bloc - access to electronic instruments was still a different story. They were mostly only to be found in the recording studios of the state-run radio and television, some units were imported by western diplomats or Poles working on foreign contracts, and Soviet-made instruments were brought by soldiers of the Red Army stationed in Poland.

The album titled "Echo Wielkiej Plyty" (eng. The Echoes of Plattenbau) features a number of long-forgotten or never before released recordings of electronic music created in the mid 1980s.
These are unique and characteristic of the Polish scene, yet difficult to categorise, often hovering between the world-chasing trend of 'el-music', as it was dubbed in Poland, and muzak, often reduced to merely a background role in television programmes on science and computers.

The first compilation in the catalog of The Very Polish Cut Outs label is surely an attempt to acquaint listeners all over the world with some of the less known or completely forgotten representatives of the Polish electronic music scene, who in the 80s, despite limited access to equipment, created truly fascinating and diverse compositions.

All pieces were dug up and hand-picked by Maciej Zambon and Norbert Borzym, both of whom are also responsible for Renata Lewandowska's amazing album "Dotyk", release last year.

The album's launch scheduled for mid-May will be the crowning moment of their over two year long archival work put into the compilation. This double vinyl album will be released in a limited edition of 800 copies.
Artwork designed by Bartosz Szymkiewicz.

Mimsy describes himself as someone with many interests and few skills, and sure, you can put it that way. But more precisely, he is a seeker and finder who has always felt more at home in the intermediary spaces. Since his first releases on Karaoke Kalk under the names Saucer, Motel and Wunder in 1997, he has mostly been active as Wechsel Garland, working with samples beyond recognition and thus blurring the lines between his own songwriting and the musical material he uses.

In 2011, he ended the project with the album »Dreams Become Things« and is now opening a new chapter as Mimsy with »Ormeology.« The album was ten years in the making and saw the producer work with sounds, voices and text fragments that were gathered over time. The twelve pieces—based on guitar pickings, looped textural sounds, rhythm boxes and shimmering organ sounds—install themselves in the unconscious through sound, melody and subtle rhythmic shifts to send the listener’s perception on a journey into the unknown.

The name Mimsy is a nonce word coined by Lewis Carroll in his famous nonsense poem »Jabberwocky,« a combination of »miserable« and »flimsy,« while the term »Ormeology« refers to the Italian film »Le Orme« (»Footprints on the Moon«), in which the main character is haunted by memories of a fictional film of the same name. While this alone creates a rich thematic frame of references for the album, it does not at all define its themes. Instead, the references are reflected in the methods with which the pieces on »Ormeology« were designed—sound and language orbit freely around one another, images within images are being layered, following their path unconsciously. In »Sans mobile apparent,« the lyrics get to the heart of this: »die Widersprüche aushalten / die Folien übereinanderlegen« (»enduring the contradictions / laying the foils on top of each other.«) Creative frictions emerge not out of binary decision-making patterns, but from additive layering.

Mimsy followed traces forth and back through time and space, collaborating for a few tracks with set designer and musician Lydia Schmidt and letting Wolfram Wire record various lyrics based on automatic writing that were gathered by Mimsy. Furthermore, he asked the photo blogger Lilia Katherine from Brazil and the Canada-based Andrea Hernandez to translate and record his lyrics in their own respective languages. Human global coincidences resulted in collaborations which are presented as discrete and thus make the album as a whole and even more complex meditation on the interplay of the concrete and the abstract. This is best exemplified by the song »Ginster,« throughout which Schmidt and Mimsy’s voices overlap more and more until they enter a sort of call and response pattern, although they never seem to address each other directly.

»Ormeology« is an album that whirrs and flickers, seeking to mediate between the tangible world and the intangible by blurring the boundaries between words and sounds and space. It is an archipelago that is in many ways connected to what surrounds it, while at the same time opening up a space of its own.

Dora Exp is a new label exploring the intersections between gritty MPC drums, opalescent synths, outer space soul and acid grooves, managed by dj and producer Andrea Passenger.

‘Hi Power’ is an intense gospel-infused stomper, delivered both in ‘regular’ and acid versions. Is it House? Disco? Undoubtedly it’s unique and challenging. “Begin’n” moves in faster techno-ish territory, while B.Monk rounds the edges with its smooth midtempo boogie tones.

After his electronic works for Icon Of Desire, Ai Records, Electronique.it, Tabernacle, and his groove-oriented edits for Light Touches and Rain&Shine, Andrea Passenger is back again with something quite diverse and outstanding.

Imagine for a minute that Klein MBO would return from the Italo heaven to deliver a brand new EP. How amazing would that be? Sometimes such miracles lay just around the corner. Nijmegen based Luca Dell’Orso found some sort of time machine that brought him back to the days of Disco Magic and Il Discotto; a time where wobbly synths, heart felt handclaps and sweet melodies flled the air. After appearances on Red Laser Records, Bordello A Parigi and Shmlss’ label XXX it’s time for his debut on Utrecht based SoHaSo sublabel OOSSHA. Filled to the rims with stylish Italo-disco, the Eternal Waves-EP has it all. Slow motion Gaz Nevada-esque disco on Common Occurrence (which comes with two beautiful Cosmo Vitelli-remixes); sun blissed and fast paced happiness on Return Of You and stark new wave- vibes on Constriction. Closer Bont & Blauw proves that Luca understands the essence of the genre. It has the same fnesse of the best Gazebo-records, back in the day. If you have a heart for italo, you don’t want to miss this perfect wave.

"Neon Lies" started as a synth-wave bedroom one-man project in late 2015 by Goran Lautar while he was still singing and playing guitar in Modern Delusion and The Celetoids, prominent bands from Zagreb D.I.Y. punk and post-punk scene. Soon after that initial period, the project already became a full-time one-man-band adventure.

Since then, Neon Lies toured and played shows endlessly, releasing two albums (“Neon Lies” and “II”) and now presenting his third full-length album “Loveless Adventures”. The 9-track album is a result of one-year making and relentless touring and it’s a perfect blend of minimalistic lo-fi darkwave sound of Neon Lies’ early stages when Goran was revisiting his teenage crush for early minimal synth-punk and proto-industrial, and the second album, when he was more into exploring experimentation with repetition, noise, electro and up to date sounds and ideas from European underground dance floors.

This album, recorded and mixed, as always, directly on tape by the man himself, finally brings all of this together in one deeply moving and authentic intimate disclosure of personal loss and gain, euphoria, happiness, and sadness. But no matter how much this journey was loveless, it was profoundly loveful. Dedicated to all the loners and their dealers.

Jimmy Tamborello returns with a collection of 10 pop-infused vocal hymns – simultaneously perfect dance floor fillers and lullabies. "Away" is the second of two Dntel albums to be released in 2021 by Morr Music in collaboration with Les Albums Claus. While "The Seas Trees See" showcased Tamborello's more intricate and quiet side, "Away" embraces his love for pop music. A genre which like no other has been resonating the advancements of technology from the very beginning. Songwriting was sequenced and computerized on such a large scale that it would change the sonic aesthetics of the charts forever.

Dntel is a musician who changed pop music forever – and still works in this never-ending labour of love, both effortless and highly focused, constantly tweaking the universe of our musical perception. Whether beatless or uncompromisingly embracing the limelight of collective ecstasy with one of his most remembered tunes "(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan", his almost forgotten anthem "Don’t Get Your Hopes Up" or his work as James Figurine. "Away" features 10 of these extravaganzas – uniting his audience once more in hope and future-bound optimism.

"I grew up with 80s techno-pop – these influences always come through in my music", Jimmy writes from Los Angeles. For this album, though, "I was thinking more of 80s indie pop or labels like 4AD. It is a mix of those influences along with trying to figure out what elements of my own discography I still connect with. I wanted it to reflect old Dntel records as well as the techno-pop band Figurine I used to be in. I have always considered my music basically being techno-pop, but not referring to pop as popular music – I just like pretty melodies. But with the Dntel moniker, I never had the ambition to produce music for a really big audience.”

It is exactly that looseness in approaching music which makes Tamborello’s style of composing so unique. On "Away" he combines a healthy dose of distortion with the most-sticking melodies, vocals and bitter-sweet lyrics he ever came up with – performing all vocals himself, with the help of technology. "My voice has a limited range. When I applied this vocal processing it seemed to bring out the emotions more. I don’t see it as the same as the more artificial, autotuned style of modern pop music. I think it still sounds like it could be a real person singing, just not me."

Using this technique, Dntel disembodies himself from his own art, welcoming all kinds of interpretations re. his current state as an artist. "Somehow this processed voice feels closer to how I see myself than my normal voice, for better or worse…", he writes. Pop music is a fragile entity, making its kingpins vulnerable. Many emotions reveal a lot of the originator’s personality –this is something one has to be prepared for. On "Away", Jimmy Tamborello finds the perfect way of marrying his unique musical personality with both the demands and possibilities of pop music. Just listen to "Connect" and you’ll know what we’re talking about. A perfect, yet timeless album for less than perfect times.

If ever talking about a 'ghost' of an Austrian record, both in terms of getting info about and getting your hands on, the only output of short-lived band „Mad Voice“ would be a prime example of such. It took a couple of years to track original band members and the master tape down, which in the end made for Wiener Brut being able to carry out an exclusive re-release of this 7 inch. Perfect blend of minimalistic Pop, Synthwave and NDW!

A native of Poznan, the multi-instrumentalist composer/producer Waclaw Zimpel has steadily been gaining recognition as one of the most singular and original talents to have emerged from Poland in contemporary times. His second solo album 'Massive Oscillations' is set for release on January 31st, and is his first for the Amsterdam-based label Ongehoord. At various points Waclaw deploys bass clarinet, alto clarinet, electronics, prepared upright piano and Yuri Landman guitar object. Wojciech Traczyk adds double bass and Holly Hock provides vocals to 'Release', whist all tracks were mixed by James Holden, who according to Zimpel "added his magic touch". 'Massive Oscillations' is Zimpel's most accomplished album to date - a hypnotic and beguiling work given to moments of subtle euphoria. Gently rhythmic, repetetive but morphing grooves are decorated with elegant musical flourishes. An exquisite vertical listening experience, tracks rev like ignition on a motor. They swell, undulate and breathe in a non linear motion, hovering more than moving, or steadily levitating heavenwards. 'Massive Oscillations' is the result of a nine-day residency at the Willem Twee studio in Den Bosch, Netherlands. The longplayer is not only a consolidation of Zimpel's previous experiments, but is also driven by his curiosity and desire to explore new avenues and possibilities, striving to create an innovative musical vernacular. Inspired as much by jazz as electronics, minimalism and roots music from across the world, he doesn't so much blur boundaries as eradicate them altogether. "I was looking for new kinds of sounds and had an idea of where I wanted 'Massive Oscillations' to go," says Zimpel, "but that all changed the moment I started playing with the studio's collection of vintage synthesizers and electronic equipment." In keeping with his restless improvisational spirit, Zimpel jettisoned previous ideas and set about using the studio's array of oscillators, generators, sequencers, tape recorders and filters (alongside his beloved clarinet) to capitalize on opportunities the facility offered him. Subliminal factors were also at play: Having tuned the oscillators by ear for 'Sine Tapes' and title track 'Massive Oscillations', whilst attempting to work out melodies on his clarinet, Zimpel found he'd inadvertently arrived at a lower frequency than intended. By a happy accident, he realized he'd subconsciously been tuning in to the bells of St Jan's Cathedral, which is located close to the studio. "It was this kind of magical coincidence that really helped shape the recording", he recalls.

repress on black vinyl

Aborted At Line 6 was a project that emerged from the inside of a Swiss company which sold electronic equipment and batteries. Carlos Perón (founder of Yello) sat on the same desk as the later publisher Urs Steiger. The other members Martin Sturzenegger, Moritz Faccin and Andrea Fürer sat separately through a glass pane in their own office and sold TEAK products. Chris Lunch was the only not employed in this company. He was working on some stuff at the Slatt Studio owned by Carlos Perón. They all had a ritual to drink a bottle of Mumm champagne early in the mornings. Since it was not allowed to drink in the workplace, the glasses were disguised as a coffee mug and used the winged word “Mümmli”.
It’s in this situation that Aborted At Line 6 developed into a “crazy idea”. They did some recordings in the studio of Andrea Fürer and mixed everything in just one go. The equipment used included one 808 Roland Drumcomputer, a Roland Drumatix, a Roland Bassline, one EMS Synthi A1, a Duke guitar and a Roland SH 3A operated and programmed by Carlos Perón and Chris Lunch. All this took place in 1982 and a 12″ single was released by Off Course Records (home of Grauzone and Stephan Eicher).
This iconic and very hard-to-find single is re-issued included the original tracks. Limited run of 350 copies on pink vinyl with a postcard.