Beats Novedades

Composer, Synthesist And Producer Matt Robertson Is Set To Release His New Album 'entology' Via Tape Club Records On 16th November 2018. It Follows His Warmly Received 2016 Album 'in Echelon', Described By Mojo As "nils Frahm's Modern Classical Meets Jon Hopkins' Grainy Techno", "an Album Of Symphonic Electronica And Leftfield Techno Thats Cinematic In Scale" In Mixmag And "magnificent Wild Sound" By The Line Of Best Fit.

As Musical Director For Björk, Cinematic Orchestra And Anohni As Well As Working With Lamb, Emiliana Torrini And Bat For Lashes, Matt Has A Wealth Of Experience Collaborating With Some Of The Most Exciting Artists In The World. Working With A Collection Of Vintage, Modern And Diy Synths, And Combining Electronic Music Production With Classical Composition And Cinematic Soundscapes - Artists, Producers And Film Composers Alike Seek His Enveloping And Distinct Sound.

"i Love The Idea That Not So Very Long Ago, The Idea That A Species Could Become Extinct At All Was Laughed At. In The 17th Century, Fossils Were Believed To Be From Mythical Creatures Like Dragons. In 1796, George Cuvier Presented The Idea That A Species Could Have Existed And Now No Longer Existed, And He Was Laughed At By Scientists. Darwin Then Suggested That Evolution Did Not Need Catastrophic Events To Explain Extinction - More That It Was Due To Perpetual Competition In An Overcrowded World.

I'm Adopting The Word "entology" To Be An Awareness Of Our Current Period Of Geological Time Being An Extinction Period, Where An Extinction Period Is Defined As A Time When A Significant Proportion Of Species Die In A Geologically Insignificant Amount Of Time. I Was Trying To Imagine The Obvious Desolate Spaces Of A Post Apocalyptic World, But Also The Slightly More Opaque Vision Of The Fact That So Many Things Are Becoming Extinct Around Us Without Us Noticing, Or Even Being Aware Of Their Existence In The First Place.

The Idea Is Of Desolation But, Because Of The Awareness, Also Of Hope."

- Matt Robertson

Brian's pioneering Ambient album from 1975 has been Half Speed Mastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, London and is now presented in a gatefold sleeve on 2 heavy weight albums which are played at 45rpm for a superior listening experience. Now housed in a gatefold sleeve with an Obi and Abbey Road Certificate. Contains a Download Voucher.

Brian's pioneering Ambient album from 1978 has been Half Speed Mastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios, London and is now presented in a gatefold sleeve on 2 heavy weight albums which are played at 45rpm for a superior listening experience. Now housed in a gatefold sleeve with an Obi and Abbey Road Certificate. Contains a Download Voucher.

Synth Wave Duo MängelExemplar from Düsseldorf creates analogue and melodic New Wave Sound in an early 80's style.

This 12' is a document of modern contemporary music, containing future artifacts made by a selection of old friends and new faces. All of them deviate from what's obvious, possessing the ability to be serene and mental at the same time. Their coming together here is a great opportunity to appreciate this kinship, while at the same time acknowledging what distinguishes them from each other in terms of sound and representation.

Released In September 1978, A Mere Two Months Before Ymo's Debut, Cochin Moon Is A Clear Precursor To The Groundbreaking Synth And Sequencer-dominated Sounds That Would Come To Define The Iconic Trio. Credited To Hosono And Pop Art Legend Tadanori Yokoo (who Created The Cover Art), Cochin Moon Is A Fictional Soundtrack To A Journey Into Unknown Worlds, Inspired By Hosono And Yokoo's Trip To India.
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The Unbelievably Prolific Haruomi Hosono Is One Of The Major Architects Of Modern Japanese Pop Music. With His Encyclopedic Knowledge Of Music And Boundless Curiosity For New Sounds, Hosono Is The Auteur Of His Own Idiosyncratic Musical World, Putting His Unmistakable Stamp On Hundreds Of Recordings As An Artist, Session Player, Songwriter And Producer. Born And Raised In Central Tokyo, His Adolescent Obsession With American Pop Culture Informed His Early Forays Into Country Music, Which He Would Revisit Later In His Career. Hosono Made His Professional Debut In 1969 As A Member Of Apryl Fool, Whose Heavy Psychedelia Was Somewhat At Odds With His Influences, Which Leaned Towards The Rootsy Sounds Of Moby Grape And Buffalo Springfield. The Latter Was One Of The Main Inspirations For His Next Group, Happy End, Whose Unique Blend Of West Coast Sounds With Japanese Lyrics Proved To Be Highly Influential Over The Course Of Three Albums. After The Band's Amicable Break Up In 1973, Hosono Began His Solo Career With Hosono House, An Intimate Slice Of Japanese Americana Recorded Inside A Rented House With Recording Gear Squeezed Into Its Tiny Bedroom. Hosono's Solo Career Would Take Many Twists And Turns From This Point Forward, With Forays Into Exotica, Electronic, Ambient, And Techno, Culminating In The Massive Success Of Techno Pop Group Yellow Magic Orchestra (ymo).

Released In September 1978, A Mere Two Months Before Ymo's Debut, Cochin Moon Is A Clear Precursor To The Groundbreaking Synth And Sequencer-dominated Sounds That Would Come To Define The Iconic Trio. Credited To Hosono And Pop Art Legend Tadanori Yokoo (who Created The Cover Art), Cochin Moon Is A Fictional Soundtrack To A Journey Into Unknown Worlds, Inspired By Hosono And Yokoo's Trip To India. Initially The Album Was To Be A Kind Of Ethnographic Musical Document, Using Found Sounds And Field Recordings Made By Hosono Himself. Instead, After Yokoo Introduced Hosono To The Sounds Of Kraftwerk And Krautrock During The Trip, Cochin Moon Became Something Much Stranger. Created Almost Entirely On Synthesizers And Sequencers With The Help Of Future Ymo Collaborators Ryuichi Sakamoto And Hideki Matsutake, The Music On The Album Is The Perfect Encapsulation Of Hosono's Concept Of sightseeing Music,' Transporting The Listener To An Exotic Place That May Or May Not Exist. This Highly Sought-after Album Sees Its First-ever Official Release Outside Of Japan

Delving deep into social and political subtexts, Thomas Ragsdale bases the framework of his new album 'Self Zero' around classified mind analysis, ritualistic cults and savage primal urges.

It's as much blissful pensiveness as it is pure trance brutality. Seductive vintage string machines, thrusting 808 drum rhythms and jugular striking 'Penderecki' style vocals weave in a rainstorm of serene chaos. Thomas describes it as 'it's own world of diseased, neon-coloured sour sweets put through distortion units on volume 11: there's a warm welcoming smile, but it shrouds the grim reality of what truly lies beneath'.

'Self Zero' was pieced together in Ragsdale's basement studio in Yorkshire, where he honed his craft for writing music for commercials, feature films and documentaries. Whereas his output has varied from minimalist ambient guitar preludes to throbbing techno workouts, 'Self Zero' sees him in a particularly vicious mode with a 'when is this thing going to explode' mentality.

Thomas' resume boasts music featured on two BBC documentaries from film maker Adam Curtis ('Bitter Lake' & the highly acclaimed 'HyperNormalisation') as well as composing for the likes of BMW, Prada and Twitter. He sits alongside Luke Abbott and Jon Hopkins in Domino Publishing's esteemed and prestigious roster and his music has been praised highly by Resident Advisor, FACT, Mary Anne Hobbs and The Guardian.

Roughly said, Night Sticks is a completely obscure synthesizer duo from Sweden, to quote the protagonists. But for us, love started many moons ago. Their melodies have been floating at home for years. For years, we have been listening to the only 4 tracks available on Soundcloud. With the same exact emotion each time, like unconditional love. Anyway, we could write loads about this record, but compared to its beauty every word sounds discordant...

Mastering : Frédéric Alstadt

Sinking Into A Miracle is the debut album by Glasgow's AMOR, a quartet of musical travellers exploring the sonic open-ended-ness of dance music. Following two critically acclaimed 12-inches, this is a fully developed treatise on ecstasy and transcendence. Here, Richard Youngs, Michael Francis Duch, Paul Thomson and Luke Fowler are more honed, razor sharp in focus and timing, testing their instrumental prowess on condensed song structures and new, enlightened feelings of expansive hope and bliss. From the outset, it's an ambitious yet ultimately inclusive journey. Recorded to 24-track tape at Chem 19 and mixed by Paul Savage and Richard McMaster (Golden Teacher), this full length retains the elastic grooves of Paradise and Higher Moment, the group's previous singles, but relinquishes the classic Philadelphia International-tinged sound in favor of looser rhythmic patterns. There are new depths to the compositions: a more free-flowing approach to percussion and deft experiments in hybridity make for a full and rounded, emotionally tinged record. Indeed, there are times when AMOR sound like the lost house band from David Mancuso's Loft parties: Richard Youngs' uplifting, gospel-tinged lyrics talk about moving beyond, universal truths, sailing through the horizon. It's a wideeyed optimism Mancuso would perhaps have approved of and which is embroidered with spectral details that begs to be auditioned on large, tweaked out sound-systems.
Fantastic cover art by Robert Beatty.

Another week another lovely electronic/synth album, this time from Brooklyn based Faten Kanaan. To me these 13 shimmering tracks conjure up images of Medieval scenes in old video games, baths of mercury or other such things - think a new-age Mira Calix or more lo-fi Kara Lis-Coverdale.

The title is symbolic: an homage to the wild, untamed/unedited spirit. It's an album of uninhibited expression, a balance between playfulness and nuanced intentionality. Foxes is loosely inspired by early Surrealist automatism, made-up languages, Middle-Eastern Hakawati storytellers, and the minimalist poignancy of mimes. Here, Kanaan uses sound as an intuitive gesture to tell a wordless story.

More Than Human are based in Canada and have previously released records by Pye Corner Audio, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and Ekoplekz.

Les Editions Japonais, is a new label to showcase Japanese artists new and old, the first release is by Tokyo based band Kufuki.

Kufuki, was formed in 2010 by Ryuichiro Konno (electronics), Motomasa Saito (electronics), Tosimasa Matsumoto (vocals), and Yudai Nobunaga Kogawa (vocals,VJ, electronics), hailing from various musical genres, ranging from techno, rock, blues and hip-hop. Tired of formulaic club music, they set out to create their own electronic ethnic music, firstly taking influences from places they had travelled, but more recently concentrating on electrifying minyo, or traditional Japanese folk music.

MInyo has an ageless tradition in Japanese culture, mainly work songs - for example, sung by field workers and fishermen - and regional tributes. Passed down over the centuries by performance at seasonal festivals, they are often accompanied by dance. These traditions prevail, and many songs are familiar to a large proportion of Japan's population, young and old.

Kufuki have already released two albums, the self-released "Fukamidori" (2010), and "Kufuki', on the Wonderyou label (2012). Favourable reviews appeared in Japanese, American and European web magazines: Bad Alchemy Magazin (Germany), Loop (Chile), Sound & Recording Magazine (Japan), Hemisferia (Colombia) and more. They toured South Korea in 2013 and Europe in 2014, taking in Germany, Portugal and the UK. This year they are planning another European tour.

The band's singular sound is a rollicking rendition of minyo, using the driving work-song rhythms as a background to their call and response vocals, and phalanx of decaying synthesizers, all in a pentatonic key.

Torobayashi is a 20th century folk song, originally released in the early 60s by Masao Suzuki, as part of the original wave of popularised minyo. Akusejima is much older, named after the tiny remote volcanic island in Kagoshima. And, tucked away on the B side is a cheeky dancehall-tinged re-work of Torobayashi by Japan Blues.

The 4 track 12' comes in black disco bag, with label artwork by Motomasa Saito, and with a washi (Japanese paper) New Minyo sticker.

Mind Records Are Extremely Proud To Announce Their Next Release: Onyx Complete Works.

Onyx Was An Early 1980's Boston Based New Wave / Avant-garde Band, An International Duo Of American Songwriter And Instrumentalist Judd Stone, And British Vocalist (and Then Boston Fashion Model) Beveur. They Released Two Singles And A Cassette.

All Of The Instruments Are Played, There Is No Syncing Or Sequencers Used On Any Of The Recordings.

A Dread Combination Of Primitive Sci-fi, Beatboxes, Live Drums, Organ And Synths, Interspersed With Beveur's Ice Cold Chat And Vocals.

Hosono's solo career would take many twists and turns from this point forward, with forays into exotica, electronic, ambient, and techno, culminating in the massive success of techno pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), who made their debut in 1978. Admired by artists ranging from Van Dyke Parks to Mac DeMarco, Hosono continues to forge ahead as he heads into his fifth decade as a musician. With the re-release of his key albums for the first time outside of Japan, his genius will be discovered by a whole new generation of fans around the world.
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The unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono is the auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world, putting his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as an artist, session player, songwriter and producer.

Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit later in his career. Hosono made his professional debut in 1969 as a member of Apryl Fool, whose heavy psychedelia was somewhat at odds with his influences, which leaned towards the rootsy sounds of Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield. The latter was one of the main inspirations for his next group, Happy End, whose unique blend of West Coast sounds with Japanese lyrics proved to be highly influential over the course of three albums. After the band’s amicable break up in 1973, Hosono began his solo career with Hosono House, an intimate slice of Japanese Americana recorded inside a rented house with recording gear squeezed into its tiny bedroom.

A compilation dedicated to the early 80's Spanish Synth Wave and Post Punk scene ! First to be published outside Spain, this anthology explores the electronic music side of the independent music produced in the days in the Iberian Peninsula: Synthetic pop music with industrial sounds including futurist Art Rock, dance-floor productions and low-fi experiments on cassettes. Classics or true hidden treasures, this selection of nineteen songs is symbolic of the musical dawn that Spain experienced during the decade marked by the return of democracy and by the creative freedom initiated by Punk music.

For the fourth instalment of SCB remix EPs from Hotflush, Mor Elian and Hammer step up for their own interpretations of tracks from Caibu. Fish Tubes is out 21st September.

Fever AM label co-founder and hybrid club producer Mor Elian provides a spaced out take on 'Fish Bowl' full of angular drums and woozy synths. For his take on 'Test Tubes', Hammer formulates a steady groover for the after hours.

Musique Plastique (Visible Cloaks, Pedro) rescue a nearly lost soundtrack to a Belgian avant-theatrical work from the 80s. For fans of Nuno Canavarro, Roberto Musci and Vito Ricci.

Incognito Amsterdam house music...

Transversales is very glad to announce the release of Mémoire Magnétique, vol.1 spanning 1966-1990, revelatory collection of commercial and secret music by electronic music pionneer Bernard Parmegiani.

Herbert Bodzin's Revival II' is the next exciting vinyl highlight on this young label. It features completely unreleased electronic music which was recorded between 1979 and 1982. Check!
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On the album you can hear the sounds of legendary machines like the ARP 2600, the Korg PS-3300, the Roland System-700 Modular synthesizer, the PPG Waveterm and the PPG Wave 2.2 as well as classic synths like the Roland Jupiter-8, the Polymoog and the Prophet-5 - the same equipment used by big names of the German and international avantgarde electronics scene at that time. For example, the ambient Red Ocean' was recorded entirely with the polyphonic Korg PS 3300, one of the most desired and biggest synths of all time. The project features Bernd Hollendiek, as well as Bodzin's two sons, Stephan and Oliver Bodzin on additional synthesizers and partly on drums. The songs are a mixture of mostly ambient, deep, psychedelic, yet experimental and futuristic sounds as well as two more vibrant synth rock recordings with drumming.
We hope that this album will find its way to the hearts and collections of electronic music lovers - somewhere in between the classic albums of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Cluster or Eberhard Schoener. As a side note, the album may also show early musical influences of Stephan Bodzin, who became world famous in the 1990s as one of the leading techno producers. Without any doubt, Revival II' should be an exciting lost masterpiece of German electronic music and a must have for synth music lovers - revived and finally alive!

Dark Entries present the first ever vinyl issue of Jon Krocker's debut album 'Monolog' originally released on cassette in 1983. Jon is from Winnipeg, Canada and got his start as half of the synth noise duo Dialog. In 1981-82, while studying for a BA in Film Studies, he would go to the studio and practice. No writing or patch memories, composing on the fly. His set up consisted of a Minimoog, Oberheim Two Voice, Roland RS-202, Roland Space Echo, EML 400, Roland DR 55, Roland System 100 mixer. After playing some of the songs to Impulse Records store owner Roman Panchyshsyn, he agreed release the album on cassette on Contagious Records. Primarily influenced by the German school typified by artists such as Conrad Schnitzler and Kraftwerk, Jon's music exhibits the cold machine ethic of the neumusik. The 12 instrumental tracks are stark and minimal, at times anxious but overall space orientated and flexible.

All songs are remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Each copy includes an 8-page newsprint zine featuring ephemera, press clippings, photos and liner notes by Jon.

Cat.no.: DE 228
Format: LP

Tracklisting