Beats News

Half of the dark synthwave duo THE HUNT ,Herbert West is a French electronic producer heavily influenced by 70’s and 80’s horror soundtracks. This artist tends to use vintage, analog and modular synths and It ́s important to point out that he has released with the Hunt two albums through the well-known labels Giallo Disco (2014) and Bordello a Parigi (2018).

Vortice Mortale is his new project in which he mixes space disco and dark synth music.It is clear as water that Herbert West loves Italian horror movies and French disco music of the past decade considering that this work “Memento Mori” is perhaps a perfect combination of powerful beats, enigmatic passages and wicked catchy melodies.

Profit Prison is the solo work of Seattle-based Parker Lautenschlager, previously in the hardcore band Marrow, power electronics act Anteinferno, and black metal cult Bhereg. Conceived in 2016, Profit Prison explores lyrical themes of isolation, estrangement, deprivation and paranoia against an aural backdrop of synthpop, post-punk and abstract industrial music. Inspired by Franz Kafka as much as Kraftwerk, Profit Prison achieves a cold minimalism that speaks to the nightmarish dystopia in which it was created. The debut Myra was released on cassette by Dominick Fernow's Hospital Productions in 2017.

On March 29 Avant! will release the 12' vinyl debut Six Strange Passions. Six tracks where Hi-NRG disco beats and 70's throbbing synths melt with trembling, reverberated vocals and dark dungeon synth passages.

Limited edition of 300.

Artwork by Italian Noise legend Matteo Castro (Lettera 22, Kam Hassah, Second Sleep label)

DESCRIPTION
Absolute madness unearthed by Paul Ebhart and Florian Stöffelbauer aka Heap for Wiener Brut's third release
Chicago-meets-Vienna-vibes - music way ahead of it's time produced in the 80s by short-lived formation Aktionskunst Gerasdorf aka Athletico Kunst Gerasdorf, a project that is well known for it's contribution to the legendary Viennese sampler ‚Die Tödliche Dosis'.

808-driven beats programmed by René Radikal (R.I.P.) backing Melanie Delval's tender voice, with multiple guest musicians (e.g. Fritz Grohs) rounding things up and adding their spice to the laidback jams alongside stand-out musical heavy hitters. A composition of sound you never heard before.

lack Truffle present In Real Life, the latest in a flurry of releases from Berlin-based guitarist and composer Julia Reidy. Having drawn acclaim for solo performances on 12-string acoustic guitar that bridge microtonality, ‘American primitive’ stylings and classic minimalism, Reidy’s recent releases have utilised an increasingly broad sonic palette, fleshing out guitar-based composition with electronics, field recordings, and – most strikingly – heavily auto-tuned vocals. On In Real Life, Reidy pushes one step further, crafting an epic LP-length suite that moves from abstracted song to lush electronics and explorations in contemporary musique concrète. Beginning with a passage of eerie electronics and creaking percussive interjections, Reidy’s heavily auto-tuned voice quickly takes centre stage. Surrounded by explosions of electric guitar and synthesised arpeggios, the auto-tuned voice delivers a melancholic ode, bringing together poetic images to reflect on the instability of experience and mutability of identity in a contemporary world saturated by digital technology. This concern with the unsettled relationship between the physical and digital is reflected musically by the constantly shifts in emphasis between Reidy’s physically demanding guitar-picking and the various forms of synthesis deployed. Similarly, the dynamic imagery of cutting, shattering, and ‘racing streams’ present in Reidy’s lyrics also serves to characterise the structure of In Real Life, which ceaselessly shifts between distinct episodes. The song-based opening, long sequences of frenetic 12-string guitar shadowed and eventually overtaken by synth tones, passages of delicate chiming harmonics, electro-acoustic cut-ups – each flows seamlessly into the next, often recurring throughout the record’s duration, which lingers over interstitial moments between these episodes.

Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Vinyl cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Suze Whaites. LP desgn by Lasse Marhaug.

Emerging slowly from understated beginnings, 'Running Into The Sun' sees Komodo deliver the kind of expansive tones that easily establish a vibe on the dancefloor, nodding to progressive house's fundamentals while borrowing plenty from earthier, more organic-sounding ends of the four-four scene.

Eric Duncan does the business on the remix, taking it into tougher territory and throwing in a cacophony of drummy intersections that help build the atmosphere, placing the whole arrangement on a knife-edge. 'Slow Burning' does what it says on the tin, growing and grooving its way through spiralling synths and acidic inflections, adding some gentle chords to bring in some welcome melody.

Latrec evidently has a different understanding of the phrase given his remix, cutting back to throbbing kick drums while allowing just enough of the harmony to enter earshot, with trance-like results.

"Second 12" in a series of forgotten FM radio hits for a parallel universe or some other dumb text to promote this amazing Belgian "synth-pop" 12". This one contains the sleazy grim "Venetian Blinds" from '84 and the underwater weirdness from "Mais Qu'est-ce Que Tu Fumes" from '90"

Dutch powerhouses Parrish Smith and Interstellar Funk team up for their debut collaboration on L.I.E.S. with a new four track ep. Striking up the perfect balance of both their signature styles, this record hits the sweet spot between metallic synthwave, slow beat industrial, and clanging EBM hybrids. The duo effortlessly weave together a sonic narrative with nods to the past but unmistakable emphasis on their ever expanding foward thinking future sound. Recommended!

Totally bonkers German synth punk!
"JPGRR (JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE, RINGO & RICHARD) is nobody but East-Germany’s neo-punk squeaker RICALETTO of PISSE with his second solo-record EASY LISTENING carved into this vinyl’s side A. On the flip-side you'll find central-Israel’s VICTOR, a guy named GUY and his second little big musical statement after releasing an infamous cassette w/ Lumpy Records."

NYC Synth master Steve Moore makes a welcome return to L.I.E.S. with his first ep on the label since 2012. Through these four tracks Moore creates a world with simplistic stripped down beauty, often using one synth and a drum machine to effectively construct alternate realities, as heard on the opener Broken Kills. This continues on the b-side opener Eigengrau, while Future 86 and Future 99 take a more dramatic komische influenced soaring arpeggiated approach. Unmissable.

Her polyrhythmic compositions integrate a wide array of musical genres, including Afrofuturistic electro and techno, classical solo piano and Detroit legacy house; all memorable journeys into deep, abstracted sound.
Hosting a monthly radio show on the renowned NTS, Afrodeutsche entrances listeners with her idiosyncratic combinations of dark electro, breaks, footwork, ghetto tech and jacking house.
Forever evolving a fully live hardware show, Afrodeutsche has already appeared alongside celebrated producers Dopplereffekt and Carl Craig, with many more to come.
Her remix of Montreal producer Marie Davidson’s ‘Day Dreaming’ was released earlier this year on Ninja Tune. 2019 sees her releasing genre-defying new material and touring across Europe, with appearances confirmed at Dekmantel (Amsterdam), SONAR (Barcelona), and Dimensions (Croatia).
Praised by the Guardian for enacting a new wave of club music, named by Dummy Mag as one of 2019’s most exciting artists, Afrodeutsche’s spectacular debut album ‘Break before Make’ will be released on all formats in the Autumn of 2019 on the legendary Skam label.

THROUGH GODS OWN EYES
MusicForSunrises&SunsetsDarkCornersOfTheDanceFloorDarkCornersOfTheMind.
FastDeepSlowRaveInspiringInspirtational&CosmicUpliftingWildPitchedHeartMelting&HeartPoundingSexMusic

Conceived in Bali as a club event to allow Phil Cooper and Indonesian DJ, Dea Barandana a chance to flex their rave potential and dig out those obscure, heavy dance floor cuts it has been hosting sporadic parties for the last 3 years, with no specific musical boundaries, it is about the late night, early morning dance floor experiences, heads down and lost in music!

A label was also planned, but when that would happen was always unclear, however a chance meeting in Croatia at Love International Festival 2018 between Phil and Carlo Bragagnini AKA La Mano has led to the inaugural release, TGOE001 La Mano 'Tana del Lupo' EP

Side A - Sirena, inspired by the classic Italo stable, a deep and driving intro that builds with a rolling, solid bass line, shimmering effects, gun fire handclaps and siren sounds before the piano line eases in to take it to a euphoric crescendo of soaring synths for maximum hands in the air vibes...

To add weight to the release, remixer options were discussed and both agreed on Man Power, and his rework has taken it to a much different place, adding a solid breakbeat to it, dirtying up the piano and extending the mix to 9+ minutes, this is HEAVY for the floor...

Side B - La Mano, the ying to the yang of Sirena, this is a much more progressive track, subtle in the arpeggio build up and layered to create a big sound culminating in a swirling series of dreamy chords and synth lines.
The Ambiente mix takes away the kick and percussion to allow the full dream like state to take effect, one for sunrises and sunsets across the globe...

Faitiche welcomes two young artists from Canada: Jonathan Scherk and Daniel Majer hail from the post-rock and experimental scene in Vancouver, where they shared a studio for several years. In artistic terms, too, there is a surprising coherence: on 'It's Counterpart', their solo work naturally blends to create a joint album, making it hard to distinguish between their contributions. Majer describes his part as a shadow-like reflection to Scherk’s brightly meandering collages. The album’s title refers to this: 'It's Counterpart' presents two solo artists who have met their match in one another.

Scherk and Majer produce contemporary sound collages on samplers, laptops etc. using raw material drawn from YouTube videos, field recordings, cassettes, and LPs from the dollar bin – the kind of rightly forgotten obscurities that have long since lost their audience, if they ever had one. In the hands of Scherk and Majer, they become abstract sound objects. The two artists don't concern themselves with the material's original context – the sound's character is most important. This sets them apart from other collage artists. Their work might be called a contemporary upgrade of the classic tape collage: here, channelling a wealth of information is the main focus. So are these collages that trigger neither associations nor contexts? Au contraire! 'It's Counterpart' is like an overheated centrifuge whose spinning extracts and joins together all of the harmonies ever pressed on vinyl. Melodies run amok.

Deriving from the acclaimed performance and exhibition—staged by Anne Imhof at the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation— the album Faust is part documentation and part elaboration, the sonic capture and extrapolation of the gestures, intensities, and durations of the live event.

Serving as the dramatic backbone of a several-hour long performance seen by thousands over the course of the Biennial, the soundtrack was a product of the collective and its individuals, animating and organising the performers while immersing the audience in the potent images of power and paradise. The music for Faust was written in a band-like process by Imhof and her close collaborators Billy Bultheel, Eliza Douglas, and Franziska Aigner during the months leading up to
its premiere at the opening of the German Pavilion in Venice.

From the chaos of the performative, the album is constructed out of live recordings and original arrangements, teasing out the most potent strands and weaving them into a new composition of brutal feeling and baroque intricacy, each track a testament to the energy that brought it into being.

Faust is anchored around three pieces—Medusa’s Song, O.W.E.N., and Queen Song—written and sung by performers Eliza Douglas and Franziska Aigner, whose sonorous and elegiac voices imbue the work as a whole with their crushing depths and dolorous moods. Between these urgent vocal interventions march and twist the winding fugues and electronic abstractions of Billy Bultheel, who has dismantled and reassembled the sonic landscapes of the pavilion, crafting new
arrangements that couple the forcefulness of the physical encounter with the artifice of the studio Throughout the album and culminating in it's closing act — the brutal chorus of Douglas’ Faust’s Last
Song, a pulsing canon of looped and layered voice pierced by black metal screams.

Faust is the record of a lost event and the promise of a new creation. The release of Faust illustrates the centrality of music to Imhof’s artistic practice. Her musical collaborations with Bultheel began
in 2013, and this generative constellation expanded to include the contributions of Douglas and Aigner, together scoring Imhof’s Angst (2016) and recently her performance trilogy Sex (2019).

Oráculo Records proudly presents “OMBRA FESTIVAL Unusual Sounds Gathering Volume 1”, a vinyl compilation created to celebrate the very upcoming second edition of OMBRA FESTIVAL, that will take place next november 29th and 30th in different spots of Barcelona. Released in a one-off limited edition of 300 copies it includes unreleased material by some of the artists that joined OMBRA FESTIVAL project and that majorly will be part of the scheduled OMBRA FESTIVAL live shows. Featuring new music by THE PRESENT MOMENT, CELLDÖD, PSYCHE, RNXRX and WE ARE NOT BROTHERS. All tracks has been specially remastered by Eric Van Wonterghem at Prodam Berlin.

A mind-bending blend of modular synth performance, Anthony Baldino’s dynamic Twelve Twenty Two LP is a treat for all ears. Baldino’s transcendent album is available both digitally and on vinyl on Thursday, October 24 via MethLab Recordings.

“The record focuses heavily on the modular synth as a composition tool and instrument. I originally approached this as a collection of tracks that were recorded straight out of the machine with little to no editing. The work flow of generating a complex patch and then figuring out the overall arch and performance of the piece was really exciting. The Tip Top Audio Circadian Rhythms was a key compositional tool in this process and was used to organize the overall structure of these pieces. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a patch, the opening synths in ‘Fading Quickly Now,’ that I went back to how I used to write and shifted to harvesting sounds and rhythms from the modular and arranging and editing them in the box. That patch was originally created for a different track on the album, which I’ll let you find, but IH ad accidentally changed the clock rate before tearing the patch down. Hearing it in that new way triggered a whole new thought process and emotional reaction for me.” - Anthony Baldino

Originally approached as a collection of tracks recorded straight out of Baldino’s machine with little editing, Twelve Twenty Two is a complex piece of thoughtful modular work. A truly stunning display of masterful sound design, Baldino’s sound resonates with listeners from first note to last. Existing in a unique space where ambient sounds meet vivacious bass, Baldino seemingly exists in an impressive league of his own, with Twelve Twenty Two standing apart powerfully from the masses. With an already powerful arsenal of artists and releases, MethLab Recordings adds a brilliant 10-track addition to their already wild playbook.

“From the beginning, it was important for me to keep this record musical and emotional and not just an exercise in technicality, so using both the modular and the computer to arrange felt really good both emotionally and sonically and created a different balance to the record that I really liked. Switching the process up a bit halfway through kept things interesting and I think the body of work really benefits from it. This record is split in half with performance based/straight out of the machine tracks and the other half organized in the box. But when listening back, the two approaches overlap so much that it’s hard to tell where one approach ends and the other begins.” - Anthony Baldino


About Anthony Baldino:
Born and raised in New York, Anthony Baldino is an LA-based composer and sound designer whose work spans an enormous range of production avenues. The likelihood that you haven’t heard his world is nearly impossible, with music and sound design in too many trailer campaigns to list, including Prometheus, Interstellar, Ex-Machina, Star Wars: Rogue One, and Avengers: Infinity War and End Game just to name a few. From there, his work ventures to the opposite pole of production with custom sound design based compositions for Dolby Labs mixed in Atmos, beautifully glitched out remixes, and continues on to mind-bending modular synthesizer performances.

With his debut artist release, he delivers a devastatingly beautiful album grounded in IDM that focuses on modular synthesizers/ While a vast amount of modular synth music is currently being released, this album goes far beyond the typical beeps and boops that one may expect when they hear “modular IDM record.” This record is as technical as it is emotive. Tasteful and incredibly detailed, Twelve Twenty Two bridges the gap between sound-design laden beats and cinematic motifs and ambiences. This record does not disappoint and is sure to become a favorite of electronic music fans.

The album opens up with a slowly unfolding melody that seems to be within grasp, but never actually repeats itself. Incredibly tasteful glitchy sound design leads us into a build that one would only expect to be in a movie, and then drops into a full-on sonic assault of impeccable drums and rich synths. From there, the record traverses a wide array of texture, time and technique. Closing with a track that makes you feel like you could actually reach out and touch the sound and float in its space, the sonic landscape created in Twelve Twenty Two is a true treat for ears.

Citizen Records, run by the artist formerly known as Vitalic, link with unique vinyl pressing service Diggers Factory to present a new EP from Karabine, a fresh project from a seasoned French producer.

This new pseudonym is to allow the artist to make music free from any genre constraint and explore electronic, techno, IDM, industrial, breaks, ambient and whatever else, often with influences from British artists such as Aphex Twin, Luke Slater and Daniel Avery. There is a maturity to his music, which is made using hardware machines, and it comes with a real intensity and personality that mixes up restrained violence, industrial tones and raw melodies.

The opener on this latest EP is ‘Red October (MK-Delta Project)’, a seven-minute techno sizzler with frazzled synths and glitchy percussion stitched into a driving groove that rises ever higher. The perfectly raw ‘Riot Congas’ has heavy, hard hitting drums and more intense synths and sound designs that are constructed for maximum impact in the club, while ‘Boom’ is an edgy number with sirens and unsettling vocal samples all soundtracking a cosmic emergency. Dynamic closer ‘Prisoner’ has searching synths circling round the drums and building to intense peaks that will have the floor in a rapture.

Cathedral Pinesʼ is Joseph Lawerence Clarkʼs debut album under his maiden name.
After having quietly self released a handful of compositions in the past, The Rochester, NY native steps up on Vaknar with a compelling barrage of immersive and impactful soundscapes, created using tape looped guitars, violin and synths processed through various samplers and pedals (many of which were built through his own company, Adventure Audio).

Cathedral Pines is made up of two, 20 minute long pieces of densely interwoven ambient, synth and noise laden layers, resulting in an enthralling debut that feels compellingly versatile, cerebral and substantially in-depth.

In the beginning of the summer of 2019, AM returns with four exotic edits and reworks to dance to on grass. Solima is a pitched down lush and spatial Afro gem that will cause instant euphoria on any dance floor, followed by a faster and uplifting African jam called Ali Baba. Both have that late 80’s synthetic vibe we dig so much.On the flip there are two tracks which are constructed upon respectively an Egyptian and a Turkish sample. Badaouiah reminds of Carl Craig’s edit of Congo Man, builds up slowly and gets highly hypnotic and deep, while the second track Mustapha rolls out a quirky rhythm pattern with a hysteric Turkish clarinet sample.

Comes in a disco bag, hand stamped with a new drawing by Frank Koedood.

After showcasing his unique electronic output via the 'Surging Waves' compilation on Vaknar last year, Japanese native yolabmi steps up for his first solo release on the label.
Presented here is the A side of the cassette release, for which a selection of yolabmi's recent compositions have been chosen, complied and mixed by the label, resulting in a comprehensive glimpse into the artist's unconventional sonic spectrum that seems to be situated somewhere between tranquil field recordings, improvised analogue electronics and digital interference.

Starting off Otomatik Muziek in 2016 as a means to release music and working together with friends, S.U.V. aka Franz Joseph Kaputt went on a long journey since then. After the brutal no-input-noise of „New Dark Age“ and excursions in the realms of dark, psychedelic folk on 2018’s „Sterben/Shifting“, he began working with synthesizers, mostly because they…synthesize. With the pragmatic approach to replace a merzbau of pedals by using synths as multi-faceted tools for live shows, Kaputt started recording, and after some fondling around, these 5 new songs emerged from a convolute of over 30 recordings.

Musically, S.U.V. is centered around darker timbres, drones of different sources, distilling harsh aesthetics from genres folk to noise (for a beginner’s guide, check out the parallel release „Nullproblem. The Life And Struggles Of Franz Joseph Kaputt in His Pursuit Of Bread, Knowledge And Freedom“, a collection of unreleased songs 2013-2019 that will wash up parallel to this release as a self-released tape). And yet, there’s a commonality within all of S.U.V.‘s records – the approach to bring together disparate elements, working on a language of its own. One can hear the thread woven through his work especially on „F65.5“, a track first recorded around 2012, which was re-recorded for this release and which features no synths at all, but fits perfectly with the other songs.

Besides these technicalities, regarding the content, „Our Complex Pleasures“ has a clear main theme. All of the songs rotate around interpersonal relationships, sexuality, gender and the diversity within. It is as well a celebration of queerness, post-romanticism and widening hegemonial discourses, as it is a meditation on limitations, fatigue and letting go. „Warm Animals“ is based on an improvisational performance where two people face each other and try to hit the same note, over and over again – a practice involving a lot of laughter, passion and exhaustion. „Bull“ and „F65.5“ are clear allusions to kink culture, while „Emotional Yoga“ and the near side-long „Compersion“ deal with themes of polyamory – with struggling to live love in a non-toxic way. „A Drug That Never Works“? – read that one for yourself.

In comparison, „Our Complex Pleasures“ is a pop album with most of its harshness buried underneath the surface. But as it is also taking a clear political stand (look into the booklet!), there’s much more to discover. It’s a reckoning with masculinity, as well as coming to terms with the fact that there isn’t one way of living in a body and loving others. And it is a clear middlefinger to the toxic traditionalism of the alt right movement.

The tape is accompanied by a mini-book, yet again and of course designed by Dicey Studios, where the complex pleasures find a very physical transfer; in the fabric as well as in the lettering, there’s a sensitivity within that even amazed ourselves when it got back from copy factory.