Beats Novedades

Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011), composer and concept artist, is one of the most important representatives of Germany"s electronic music avant-garde. A student of Beuys, he founded Berlin"s legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a subculture club, in 1967/68, was a member of Tangerine Dream (together with Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese) and Kluster (with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also released countless solo albums. The red album ("Rot") from 1973 was Schnitzler"s first solo LP.

blue + red marbled vinyl
"Dog Eared"! Named as such as it marks a turning point in my productions and releases. Made while moving from Bristol back to London this as a theme pops up throughout the EP.

"Ithaca Vox" is the name of my first ever favourite preset - a CMI-inspired pad from GarageBand which I've been using since I was 11 but never on a release. The track also samples the screeching of Victoria line on my way back from nights out.

"Bubble Trouble" caused many headaches to finish hence the addition of the word "Trouble". The track pops, floats and bursts into the space between simplistic cartoon sound sources and excessively over the top sound design and production.

"Dive" dives further into these production ideas swapping tight space tiny bubbles for wide grinning resonance. The twisting track cuts these resonances leaving a large valley of missing frequencies that gets suddenly filled by an unrelentingly simple bell centring the listeners balance.

"From Window to Wall" gives a not so subtle nod to one of my favourite excessive chart hits as well as a further nod to the source of some of the track samples (see if you spot them).

"Calpohol" is the first collaboration Ive released (another reason to Dog Ear this release). Made from an afternoon of recording with Delay Grounds on his custom Eurorack the track was shaped by us over the weeks that followed.

Lee Gamble’s UIQ label unveils a second album from Filipina-Australian artist Corin Ileto, deploying a brace of swarming alien chorales and rapturous digital rave noise to explore the idea of sound as a sentient being. Bold and operatic, cinematic and cybernetic.

Named after the iconic choral work by 20th Century avant-garde legend György Ligeti (as immortalised by Stanley Kubrick in 2001), ‘Lux Aeterna' explores the idea of micropolyphony, a term Ligeti described as a complex polyphony "in which harmonies do not change suddenly, but merge into one another." Like Ligeti, Corin isn't primarily concerned with melody or rhythm, but timbre: the colour and quality of sound itself.

Taking its time to unfurl, the album opens with ‘lumen naturae’, winding tonal clouds that eventually latch onto a misshapen hoover sound that curves into the abyss. Corin shows her hand more formally on 'sunta', balancing layered cybernetic drones against ratcheting metallic rhythms and unstable textures. When the track cuts to almost-silence, it reminds us of Akira Rabelais' ghosted 'Spellewauerynsherde' (itself an impressionistic granulation of vocal recordings), before being disrupted by a dynamic kick that shares DNA with club music.

But despite her occasional flirtations with the club, Ileto doesn't appear to have any interest in making functional dance music. Instead, she emphasises momentum and texture. Like a celestial opera, ecstatic trance is reimagined within the context of sacred liturgy – merging hyper-real soundscapes with Gregorian chant and medieval instrumentation. Chrome-plated clangs and growling subs highlight the album’s sci-fi leanings, tapping into a sort of retro-futurism that balances a hi-tech mindset with a feeling of deep vulnerability and alienation.

*Repress*

The fifth and final in a series of 12' releases in support of the film Bangkok Nites. Kitamura is a renowned veteran keyboardist in Japan, having worked on countless sessions from the late 80s to the present. These self-produced tracks, featuring his trademark old-school rhythm box, feature instrumental and dub versions of Rungphet Laemsing's The Countryside is Great', plus a bass music version of Angkhanang Khunchai's Lam Phloen Salab Khonsawan' and a cover of George McRae's early disco classic Rock Your Baby', with mmm (mii mai moe) on vocals. Cover art by Shinsuke Takagi of Soi48.

A trained jazz drummer, session musician and ex-resident at 2 former Belgian club institutions (Fuse & Food), Dagobert puts forward 4 weirdo IDM/electro cuts.

DJML & Jerod S. Rivera debut Later Version project with ‘Swim Domain’ EP on Third Place

Later Version is made up of Oakland-based artists Dan Letson and Jerod S. Rivera, whose debut EP lands on London-based Third Place this April.

Across the 12”, the duo’s natural flair for hi-res IDM-tinged electronica is on full display, with four colourful and playful originals accompanied by a stellar (digital only) remix from Jacktone co-owner, Dark Entries and Tartelet Records affiliate, and Beats Unlimited member Doc Sleep.

Oleksandr Yurchenko (1966—2020) was a Ukrainian musician and illustrator. In 1990s and 2000s he took part in different bands from Kyiv, such as Electricians, Yarn, Blemish, Suphina’s Little Beast etc., and he also collaborated with Svitlana Nianio and Katya Chilly. Yurchenko is one of the brightest representatives of the Ukrainian independent scene in 90s. Meanwhile, he is one of the most mysterious musicians of this era, being a private person, especially in the late 2000s, when Oleksandr had to leave music because of his illness, but he focused on doing book illustrations and graphic works. In 2010s some of his early records were published, and he was asked for an interview, but he refused, suffering from a serious disease at that time. In April 2020, Oleksandr Yurchenko died, leaving behind a great musical legacy.

His main work, “Count to 100. Symphony #1,” was documented in August 1994. Oleksandr used strings instrument of his own invention. Yurchenko took the longboard to make the instrument, installed guitar pickups and 4 strings, and played on it with a bow. It was lost in the 2000s, but the musician remembered that it looked like a long zither. The recording session was held by Oleksandr at home, using guitar delay effects, loops, and Oreadna portable cassette recorder. He tuned the instrument in a special tone, improvising on it for 25 minutes. This drone symphony can be compared with the works of such avant-garde composers as Glenn Branca. However, it sounds innovative, especially for Ukrainian music. Despite it, Yurchenko could not publish this work officially in the 90s and made only a few copies for his own friends. At the beginning of the 2000s, he decided to edit the original version of the symphony. Oleksandr tried to restore the recording a bit, using some effects to make the sound more massive and clear. At the end of the work on this project, Yurchenko left this version in his archive but decided to publish the original recording in the late 2010s.

“Intro” is the most mysterious recording from Yurchenko’s archive. Nobody could remember where and when it was recorded, so we can assume that it was made at the beginning of the 90s like a sound experiment because it was found on cassette tape with others recordings of the band Yarn. Also, there is a suggestion that it might be a Casio SK-1 sampler and some old Soviet keyboards.

Merta Zara was a family project of Yurchenko and his wife, Svitlana Neznal. They had only one home recording session in 1994. Oleksandr was playing an electric cello of his own invention, and Svitlana was playing on mandolin and singing. As a result, they recorded only one track, "Dress," which appeared on the cassette compilation "Skhovaysya" in 1995. Apart from it, they recorded a few instrumental playbacks, which were found on cassette tape in 2021. Yurchenko was a big appreciator and knower of Central Asia’s music, and it influenced his own music, including Merta Zara, where traditional music and his melodist skills are intertwined.
Playbacks were recorded in the beginning of 1995. It was also a home session, making instrumental playbacks for the album “Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy” (Know How? Tell Me), recorded in collaboration with Svitlana Nianio. It should be assumed that Oleksandr used the same instrument and effects as he used during the “Count To 100” session. Some of these playbacks survived in his archive, but the rest of them were lost. The first one is an 8 minutes drone composition, which was played on a string instrument with a female voice on the background, and the second is the weird track where whirligig was used as an accompaniment. So, we can consider these recordings not only as playbacks but as Yurchenko’s solo stuff.

Solo recordings of Oleksandr Yurchenko, made in 1994—1995, are paying attention, especially in experimenting with sound, searching the new ways of creative freedom, and they give a possibility to learn more about the Ukrainian experimental scene in the 90s.

Chicago's Jana Rush returns with "Painful Enlightenment", an intense emotional rollercoaster of disfigured samples, quivering electronics and vagrant percussion. As implied by the title, the album is a document of her own personal growth through struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, a glimpse into a dark period of her life amid learning the art of letting go. Her debut for Planet Mu is the follow-up to her twisted "Pariah" LP on Objects Limited. It's euphonic and uplifting, even blissful, yet equally chilling, and at times a difficult listening experience. Jana says "This album is not a footwork album. It's more like dark experimental listening music, an opportunity to be myself without judgement!" The album opens up with the pessimistic "Moanin’", its gorgeous, blazing sax solo pulled back and forth like it was being played through a possessed tape recorder. Baneful bass pulsates over dozens of maniacal vocal samples on "Suicidal Ideation", an absolutely mesmerizing collage of beauty and terror with a runtime of nine minutes. Moody guitar plucks cry over an intricate bed of micropercussion and erratic low-end blasts on the title track, one of the more sombre moments of the album. At the halfway mark, the record takes a dark, twisted turn, as "Disorientation" well, disorients, with its thick layers of untraceable alien sounds unfolding andcontracting back into themselves. Thick layers of time-stretched textures and bewildering rhythms meet masterfully placed snares on "Intergalactic Battle", featuring Teklife’s DJ Paypal. On "Drivin’ Me Insane", Jana and collaborator Nancy Fortune stretch three words back and forth and inside-out over the course of three minutes, using every last gasp and sibilance possible. The album closes with Paypal making his second appearance. "Just a Taste" is an encore featuring many of the fundamental sonics that make up the LP, haunting horns and paranoid voices struggle to speak over fluctuating low-end harmonics. An established veteran from the world of ghetto house and juke who cut her teeth on Dance Mania records in the late nineties, Jana has the stripes, so to call her an outsider would be fictitious, yet she is a true unicorn within the history of that realm and becomes more and more alienated from formulas and trends on each new record she creates. "Painful Enlightenment" is full of dense, intricate abstractions, paired with rapidly moving structures and is unlikely to sound the same twice, as everylisten exposes new layers of its vibrant, transcendental details.

Box Set w/ Hand-stamped LP, 36 page riso-printed book, Riso-printed fold-out poster, Stickers

"Phantom Seance Ballett is a boombox orchestra, Nō mimes, Vicky’s protection spells, Detlef’s psychic shuffles, a smoke machine, a strobe light chamber, painting, Margit Carstensen’s chiffre, Susie Greene’s insults, Schleim, Ebichu’s echoes and Anna Oppermann’s limbo."

Thus we welcome Lena Willikens & Sarah Szczesny's ethereal Phantom Kino Ballett project to Utter with 'Phantom Seance Ballett', an unusually tangible manifestation of what has become an on-going series of live performances and installations that incorporate sound, video, costume, still imagery and beyond. The themes explored weave in and out of grasp, touching on the otherworldly and mysterious, on hypnotic rites and ceremonies, on the fetishisation of cultural tropes and curios.

While carefully documented, these happenings had not been distilled or presented in a cohesive format until now. Of course, an attempt to harness and package such an experience required an imaginative leap beyond the traditional 'record-in-sleeve' approach and Lena and Sarah have overseen every aspect of this remarkable collection themselves.

Working with designer Till Sperrle, Lena and Sarah have conjured up a fold-out box containing an LP, a riso-printed credits poster detailing the samples and snippets collaged into the sound, a 36 page book with imagery from various shows and an essay by Thomas Vorreyer plus sticker pack. The limited 50 copy artist edition contains an additional 10 special riso-prints within an artist stamped hand-numbered box. For all, the LP contains twenty hidden locked grooves cut into the run-out on each side presenting snippets from the artists' archive.

The first of these pieces - 'Identikit Arkaden Seance' - took place on the 2nd of October 2019 at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein and is a live recording. This performance was part of their exhibition "Chambers of Phantom Kino Ballett", where they showed new video works and displayed the now infamous costumes and slippers worn by Lena, Sarah and a rotating cast of guest phantoms.

At this performance, the seven performers carried boomboxes playing individual audio tracks inside and outside the Kunstverein, while Viktoria Wehrmeister and Detlef Weinrich improvised music alongside the phantoms' moving soundtracks of sonic snippets, poetry, field recordings and soundscapes.

The second piece - 'Studio Chamber Seance' - contains diverse audio tracks of performances that were held by Willikens and Szczesny in collaboration with Wehrmeister and Weinrich. It has been deconstructed and rearranged with additional sound material from the Lena Willikens & Sarah Szczesny archive, then edited and mixed by Lena and Sarah in Amsterdam and Cologne last year. Additional music by Detlef Weinrich and Viktoria Wehrmeister features throughout, recorded live in Aachen 2019 and Frankfurt 2020.

Mastered by Gordon Pohl. Transfer, additional mastering & lacquer cut by Helmut Erler at D&M.

Alluring Stripped Down Dribblers

To prepare for "That Who Remembers", Dorisburg (aka Alexander Berg) and Sebastian Mullaert set up their equipment in Malmo's empty Inkonst venue, spending several days immersed in its atmosphere, using the lights, smoke machine, and Soundsystem to create an authentic club environment where they could freely improvise.

The result is a suite of free-flowing sounds that draws on both artists' backgrounds in reduced techno and ambient music, sailing thoughtfully through near-future landscapes and punctuating them with shimmering, kosmische textures, decaying sonic memories, and fragile rhythms.

Not dance music exactly, it's music that instead considers the spirit of an empty dancefloor, wondering which elements might remain when feet have left the building entirely. It's hardly surprising that the record is coming via Donato Dozzy and Neel's adventurous Spazio Disponibile imprint.

"We recorded at full club volume with massive bass, but our references had gradually shifted to the point where just adding a soft kick drum would feel like peak-time techno. So even though the final recordings are quite soft and ambient, the energy we felt during the recording was often quite intense."

Gacha Bakradze releases his third album on Lapsus entitled "Pancakes", and while the name may appear conventional at first glance, it actually contains esoteric philosophical concepts.

The Georgian producer perceives the making of pancakes -a transformative and healing parental activity that he loves to partake in with his son- as a metaphor for alteration, metamorphosis and change. A reflection that also accentuates the importance of balance during each process of preparing a simple recipe, which in turn highlights key human attributes such as patience, attention to detail and willingness to adapt to shifting circumstances.

On a sonic level, Gacha’s new album embodies precisely that: the contextual reworking of his music, while maintaining the essence of his previous work. "Pancakes" provides the typically melancholic yet vibrant genetics already recognisable in his music, but also embraces new genres, including his unique and personal take on hyper-pop and trance. It is an album of contrasting elements, where bucolic interludes make way for heavier tracks that are more suited to a club environment, an aural universe that hybridises IDM, electro, bass music and cutting edge techno, and once again demonstrates that trying to pigeonhole Gacha Bakradze's sound is a somewhat fruitless task.

Obsessive tekno/grime experiment from London's lostdomain producer Leeway following the great great Krevet EP. Very compatible with ~160 BPM hardtek/trance. Grainy desaturated claustrophobic sound progressing to full, crisp and dreamy with alien salival textures...

Whole album varies on two or three circling themes. Super zoney and subdued and spiritual but then jumps right out of the speakers with violence.

Hailing from Boeatia, Greece shadow operator Audioplagio
presents a previously unseen collection of tracks recorded between 2014 and 2016

Embedded into the tape underworld while nodding to dubbed out experiments. Boeatian Chants presents 12 tracks in the DIY tradition blending opiated atmospheres with palpitating drums.

Acclaimed musician, sound designer and creative Max Cooper announces his first new music of 2023.

As he continues to cut a unique and noteworthy path, the intensely explorative Motif EP see’s the London based audio-visual artist breathe impressive life in multiple directions, and requests our own imagination to see the full picture.

Released on his own Mesh platform, Motif EP is composed by a producer capable of dismantling genres to render them brighter, bolder and ultimately more personal, demonstrating the rich purity of his craft and how his music can be expressed as both a flagrant and elegant listening experience at once.

The first single "Vertebrae / Forgotten Places” featuring Australian singer/songwriter Kathrin deBoer, also known for fronting electro-soul outfit Belleruche demonstrating remarkable control and detail in her haunting voice set amidst a transfixing blend of glitchy electronica and uncompromising drum and bass.

While the presence of integrated thinking around releasing music has long distinguished Max Cooper, it is the notion of performance and entertainment grafted into his style which really admits Max to charge into new territory.

A collection of his influences and a set of motifs from a life in electronic music, Motif EP is equipped with purpose and emotional intimacy. Far from a dark moment of introspection but a diverse collection of audio-visual ideas, each playing a particular role in his live shows which traverse all of his musical passions combined with being alive at this time; immersed in shared history and experience.

Six impressively contemplative and powerful songs that oscillate between Max’s calm, heartfelt reminiscences and youthful remnants of 90’s rave, and a playful precision of dancefloor spirit as he incorporates the sounds of breakbeat, drum and bass and techno.

Reassuringly direct and familiar, fans will recognise signature sound motifs from over a decade of producing, performing and DJing. But more distinctively, Cooper seems disinterested in solely capturing the present and is more concerned with investigating his music's history and investing in crafting its future.

“The mixture of genres on this record might make more sense looking at my life in electronic music. Beginning in the 90’s with an upbringing on classic synth pop and classical music, then my first tape “Prodigy Experience”, and first night out at their Breathe Tour ahead of a delve deep into the Trance, Techno and remnants of Rave of the late 90’s in Northern Ireland and Ibiza. I then moved to Nottingham in ‘99 and went to my first Drum and Bass night at the Marcus Garvey Ballroom, after which I started integrating those records into my collection”
Max Cooper

Playing on the idea of motifs, the cover art was created by Mykola Haleta and features the graphic artist's distinctive textile patterning design.

There is a fresh utilitarian layer to the new EP as it experiments with the interplay between rolled melodies that form a loose web of pensive sound around a more aggressive club-driven production and performance-led frequencies.

Whether serving as an empathetic foil to his new immersive 3D/AV shows or a reinterpretation of his own musical education, Max Cooper’s bold electronic compositions feel excited and increasingly like part of a longer, more timeless story.

Mammoth industrial & noise tracks from the illustrious B. Rupp on the outer-worldly Accidental Meetings.. Tip!

There's not much about B. Rupp, an outstanding LP on Opal Tapes sticks out, but the artist stays very much behind closed doors. They're the latest on the Accidental Meetings discography, a label whose fast growing catalogue shows no signs of stopping with challenging and forward releases.

Within the LP, the narrative is focused on fierce & noisy hardware, crunched out vocals, moody bass lines and swampy beats. All orchestrated by B. Rupp, it's a deeply personal album exploring his take on teetering the line between emotional home listening & noised out club bangers. We're keeping this short and sweet as the LP is so unique, words don't really do it justice - dig in and give it some ears.

Shiftyman is a slider. He slides through his world like butter. People know him in his town. But only as a slider. What hardly anyone knows is that he also likes to listen to music. A few of his favorite songs can be found on this record. When you play this, it’s like Shiftyman’s day.

The four slider friends Andreas, Lutger, Michael and Raphael have painstakingly put together the songs over the past few years. They slid through Shiftyman’s world and felt good.

Written and performed by Andreas Haslacher, Lutger Lonin, Michael Roggon and Raphael Schindler. Mastered by Quendolin Fender.

Portage Garage Sounds is proud to present the label's first LP, "Capturing Animals" (PGS 017) by Charles Trees. Recorded over a two year period, Capturing Animals preserves the isolation and individual atomization experienced by all over recent years as well as the jubilance of humanity's reconnection.

The 11 track album presents itself as an interconnected work--the listener is guided through the album's narrative and sequential structure effortlessly by Trees' arrangement and showcase of his production and composition talents. The album offerses glimpses of early Detroit techno, flashes of EBM, drips of acid (and full-on doses in "FRQDNK"), stripped-down electro, UK RNB, prominent vocals (as heard in "Stave I" and a Sophie cover), and composed works of live strings.

Capturing Animals is a high point for Trees' and Portage Garage Sounds. The raw talent and dedication is unmistakable. The artist and the label are moving onto higher ground and reaching upwards.

In 2016, After Reissuing Two Bruce Haack Albums, Haackula And Electric Lucifer Book Ii, Telephone Explosion Began Speaking With Ted Pandel (bruce's Lifelong Friend And Business Partner) About Working On The 1970 Masterpiece The Electric Lucifer. It Turned Out There Was Another Matter That He Wanted To Discuss: Finding A Final Resting Place For The Bruce Haack Archive.

We Were Shown Test-pressings Of The Electric Lucifer Board Mixes From His Columbia Studio Sessions, Countless Pieces Of Written Music, A Large Number Of Personal Photos, An Invitation From Raymond Scott Inviting Bruce To Play His Newly Created Electronium
Instrument (now Owned By Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh), Poems, Press Clippings, And, Most Importantly, A Heavyduty Shelf Containing 213 Reel-to-reel Tapes. All Of The Chosen Material On The Preservation Tapes Is Unreleased, Has Only Been Heard By A Handful Of People And Showcases A Relatively Unknown Period In Bruce's
Musical Career Where Bruce Was Recording For Sparrow Records (who Billed Themselves As "america's Best Christian Music Record Label'). Bruce's Signature Farad Vocoder Continues To Feature Prominently, But The Lyrical Content Is Decidedly More Religious.
The Bruce Haack Archive Is Now Resting In The Provincial Archives Of Alberta, In Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada.

One of the masterworks of 20th century electronic music, "The Electric Lucifer" by Bruce Haack. Originally recorded in 1968 and 1969 (and released in 1970) it is an album both unique in conception and superb in realization. Your your gateway to the profound yet playful universe of Bruce Haack, a "far-out" place where flower-power and inner-space electronics collide!

"Growing up as a kid in 70’s London, I once unearthed an early 60’s proto plastic toy motorway playset at a suburban jumble sale. The cars themselves were missing, but that did not matter. I instantly wanted the set. The road sections which slotted together to form a figure of 8, were bitumen-black and basic. Devoid of decals, signposts or any sort of detail at all, in many ways the assembled track resembled a satisfyingly minimal, mobius strip sculpture. But it was the evocative box artwork I loved the most. An illustration reminiscent of the bright, futuristic world portrayed in the ladybird books of the time showed a broad 4-lane blacktop with a series of identical untarnished cast concrete overpasses cutting through the rolling green landscape. Down the left-hand side of the box in bright yellow - the single word MOTORWAY in block capitals. The box art spoke of unknown journeys, of the safe efficient expediency and hypnotic, repetitive sights and sounds of the major arterial road.

The playset artwork must have resonated deeply as the same sensations unexpectedly resurfaced a decade or so later when I first encountered Kraftwerk’s seminal Gesamtkunstwerk ‘Autobahn’. Both the artwork and the recording are perfect of course and need no further discussion here. The record oozes what seemed unattainable and romantic; a vision of far-off European cities defining the future through design and speed.

A third epiphany occurred reading J.G. Ballard’s classic novel ‘Concrete Island’; in which a blown tyre sends architect Robert Maitland’s Jaguar plunging down an embankment, ending up on a patch of wasteland hemmed in by three roads. Injured and dazed, Maitland is stranded, unable to attract the attention of drivers above, unable to find a way out. Through Ballard’s words, I came to understand that there were similarities in the uncanny disconnect these non-places evoke the world over: Motorways are spaces we know intimately but will also never set foot on. The ‘no-man’s land’ we see between motorway lanes and intersections are familiar, but unreachable. We pass them regularly, but do not notice them in detail.

Crashing onto the island, Maitland becomes a ‘no-man’; he enters a void and becomes invisible himself.

I wanted to make a record which somehow brought together and reflected these influences and the feelings they evoke in me. And which paid unabashed homage to the sources. This record MOTORWAY is it. I hope you enjoy the journey."

Bruce Falkian is a world famous contemporary artist who exhibits at the world's most prestigious art galleries and fairs. Bruce Falkian moonlights as an agent of espionage against the Terrorism Industrial Complex. Wait... what?

To understand Bruce Falkian we first must understand the link between image and war. In the late 1800s the precursor to the video camera was invented. It was directly inspired by guns, specifically, Samuel Colt's Revolver. It borrowed not only its barrel mechanics, swapping bullets for exposures, but its terminology too. Load, point, scope, aim, shoot, flash. The camera and the gun, united by cordite, would go on to prove the most efficacious tools in shaping the modern world.

The 20th century was a laboratory when it comes to killing and image making, glorified through Hollywood and the Western genre. Propaganda would prove highly effective in creating and sustaining support for militaries fighting for ideological global control. Devised first in the aptly title 'Propaganda' (1928) by Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, Advertising and Public Relations became the leading media industries, learning how to control the population through images, usually just to buy random crap they didn't need, but other times to overthrow democratically elected politicians in foreign countries. Eventually Western Liberal Democracy assumed domination, built of course on the enslavement of all peoples and nations who didn't fall in line with its specific ideas of living. The Red Scare inspired countless anti-leftist, anti-communist works of art throughout the Cold War, notably and most bizarre, funding the abstract expressionist movement as a non-ideological alternative to socialist realism art. When the Soviet Union fell, Western Liberal Democracy was able to promulgate its unhindered views around the world through its various media empires and actor states. Is it a coincidence that a third of the almost $85 billion dollar global camera equipment market is represented by the greatest propaganda beast the world has ever seen, the USA?

Guns are dangerous because of the obvious. Images are dangerous because we are bad at perceiving what is real (as any jump scare, deepfake, newsreel will attest to.) Videos aren't technically real, they are only a collection of rapidly changing static images which give the illusion of movement. It's easy for us to collectively decide that a video is real, because that's the way our brains perceive reality. People who lead the world of media understand this, which is how they are able to control us, make us invade foreign countries, vote for specific politicians, feel ugly or fat etc. However, ubiquitous as they are, it seems that the image is in crisis. It seems that we've run out of them. Or perhaps our understanding of an image is changing, with the aid of near instantaneous text-to-image AI technology. So what does this mean for guns? What does this mean for war? How will images be used as an aid to war in the 21st century? It remains to be seen, but Bruce Falkian will be a useful agent.

More than a decade after the release of ´Land Lines', the mythical Humboldt County, California based duo of Brian Pyle and Merrick McKinlay reappears seemingly out of nowhere with 'Atheistsaregods'. With past releases on such cult-like labels as Root Strata, Weird Forest, Blackest Rainbow or Digitalis, Starving Weirdos were an indelible part of a sprawling and loose network of artists in Northern America whose DIY work ethic and extreme activity revolved around shoestring-budget constant touring, numerous limited editions on CDR, tape and vinyl and a relentless drive to push the boundaries of genre.

Out of that cauldron, Starving Weirdos stood out as one of the most persistent and visionary acts, developing a mind altering body of work that went from warm soundscapes through droney digressions, freeform improvisation and raucous noise summoned from a myriad of instrumentation and low budget processing - vocals, keyboards, violin, flute, percussion and an assortment of less identifiable sound sources. 10 years on their legacy remains a timeless and wildly under-appreciated one, but hopefully this new album will shine a light on their idiosyncratic approach. As time itself was never a constraint. This is music suspended outside of it.

Right from the start with the echoing percussion, dissonant keys and processed vocals of 'Haiku Nagasaki', 'Atheistsaregods' draws a continuous flux of psychedelic elevation that goes from the gloomy electronic motifs not unlike the early Cluster vibes of 'Invocation' into the dank percussive maze of the appropriately titled 'Barulho do Samba'. The self titled track induces a sense of post-apocalyptic vertigo via hallucinatory scraps of voice, suspended synth tones and reverberating field recordings, connecting into the droney mystics of 'Dudukahar (Reed Prayer)'. Coming full circle, 'For Vinny' brings back the echoing percussion amidst hypnotic cello lines until it drifts off into the unknown. With the same palpable sense of urgency, Starving Weirdos feel as vital as ever. And even if we didn't realize it we were in need of them. Welcome back.

»Nifbin Circle« is the fourth release by Detlef Funder, aka Konrad Kraft, on the Cologne label aufabwegen. Sounds generated with two apps on the iPad,provided the basic structures and the sound space. The strangely enraptured textures created in this way, with a subtle percussive touch, were partly combined with supporting beats in the course of further processing. Thus, after more than 30 years, tracks with rudimentary melodies and rhythms were created again.

»Nifbin Circle« is the fourth release by Detlef Funder, aka Konrad Kraft, on the Cologne label aufabwegen. Sounds generated with two apps on the iPad,provided the basic structures and the sound space. The strangely enraptured textures created in this way, with a subtle percussive touch, were partly combined with supporting beats in the course of further processing. Thus, after more than 30 years, tracks with rudimentary melodies and rhythms were created again.

Mysterious Belgian experimental electronics duo Suumhow returns with their third album, Years Failed Successfully.


The album opens with the duo's signature melodicism and broken glitched-up beatwork. It then ebbs into more sinewy territory with swaths of pulsing static and overarching widescreen vivid ambiance. It's new ground for the duo that displays some rather aurally fitting symbolism to the state of the pandemic era, with ambient music on the edge of hysterical hope and arrested emotions.


It's a gripping album that displays fine detail in its coarseness and somehow relief in its muted melodicism. When things seem like they might be getting too ominous, the duo boomerangs the listener back to their harmonious and glitched-up world as a means of much needed escapism.

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

Disciple of the god Apollo, Terpsichore was the Muse of the dance, and it was known to be the most enigmatic of the nine Greek muses.

She was the mother of the sirens, and she would lure sailors to shipwreck on their island with their music and hypnotic, beautiful singing.

Terpsichore has been invoked as a metaphor for rhythm and ordered movement in the universe.

The planets orbit the sun and the sun, with other stars, orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The planets go through the Milankovitch cycles in which their orbits around the sun adjust in very regular, periodic, or rhythmic, ways.

Terpsichore’s influence goes beyond just the humane, as It can also be seen in the observable universe.

She is now the Muse not just of human dance but also the cosmic dance in which the whole universe participates.

Music by Anna VS June, Steve Pepe, Francesca Colombo, Bear Bones, Lay Low, Pannotia, Nixxon, Tassilo Vanhoefen, Yuto Takei, Amerza, Orestt, The Dude Of Stratosphear, Anatolian Weapons, Théo Muller, Konsistent, Vidock & Ghassen Chiba

Design by Vanja Rakic

Label run by Pako Vega

Mastered by Sam Smith at Green Door Studio in Glasgow

Marc Richter aka Black To Comm released his debut record 20 years ago. In 2023 he is still busy releasing music under various disguises and is currently signed to the Thrill Jockey label. To celebrate this anniversary his own Cellule 75 label is re-releasing some classic out-of-print vinyl albums that originally came out on the defunct Type and De Stijl labels. The LP will feature a full-colour lyric sheet / poster exclusive to this edition.

After releasing the critically acclaimed Alphabet 1968 on the seminal Type label (Grouper, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Yellow Swans), Richter chose De Stijl for this 2012 album, an American label that had just put out future classics by the likes of Circuit Des Yeux, Hype Williams and Wolf Eyes.

EARTH is a 2009 silent film by Ho Tzu Nyen, one of Singapore's foremost visual artists. After hearing Black To Comm's Alphabet 1968 Ho Tzu Nyen invited Richter to accompany the film at Berlin's Asian Film Festival, Unsound in Krakow and several other art biennals and music festivals around the world.

In his own words: "Most of the music was composed under the influence of heavy pain killers while recovering from a broken leg (the recordings literally took place in bed). The music (like the film) is about slowness and decay, states of unconsciousness, sleeping and waking up, dying and being reborn. The film is a post-apocalyptic collage based on paintings by classical European painters (Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Gericault) -- the music translates this concept employing corresponding collage-based sampling techniques using loops made from vintage vinyl and shellac records combined with acoustic and electronic instrumentation and voice."

From the original De Stijl one-sheet:
"Richter’s already formidable expressive power stretches over all of EARTH. Reflecting the countless cyclical forces that make up, oh, more or less everything we know and are, the music on EARTH is bracing, lovely, bustling and still, and at times bittersweet, a commingling of sensations and emotions that can’t be neatly separated from one another. (EARTH is complex, as you know.) Guests on EARTH include David Aird, a.k.a Vindicatrix (on the Mordant Music label), contributing startling vocal work; Renate Nikolaus on an array of instruments and noise devices; Rutger Zuydervelt (singing bowls); and Christopher Kline (singing saw). EARTH is Black to Comm’s seventh album and his debut for De Stijl, following the acclaimed Alphabet 1968 (on Type) and last year’s vinyl-only collaboration with Mike Kelley of Destroy All Monsters (on the En/Of label)."

Alex Neilson in The Wire:
"The most marked aspect of Earth is the voice of David Aird, aka Vindicatrix. Imperious and dolorous, he has the gravity of post-Climate Of Hunter Scott Walker, David Sylvain or Klaus Nomi stripped of the pathetic ritz. This is something that's easy to do badly, but Aird pulls it off with aplomb. On "The Children" he breaks into a morose yodel, rolling the words around his palate and colouring each syllable black before gifting them to the air. The meaning isn't understood verbally as much as viscerally. Beneath Aird's ululations, Richter casts handfuls of angelic debris from keyboards and digital devices, generating a celestial electronic tapestry reminiscent of Japanese musician Nobukazu Takemura. Sounds vie and twist at frequencies you can't so much hear as feel in the bridge of your nose, and the variety and full-bloodedness of the accompaniment is what prevents Aird's vocal from occassionally lapsing into shtick."

After some time of laying in the dark, the Warsaw-based Syntetyk label and club night series emits waves yet again with their very first cassette release by various friends from the local and global underground.

Tape starts with a pathos ambient track by Mchy i Porosty, followed by a desert night drive dub by Rapha. The A side continues with a wavy melodic thumper by Olivia, accompanied by a nostalgic club diver by Czech maestro Exhausted Modern and a punkish fast paced hymn done by the Colombian prodigy – Filmmaker.

The B side opens with Dogpatrol’s broken jungle track and carries on with Astma’s industrial dub-driven tune. Album slowly comes to a close with a nasty distorted wave by Dyktando, dystopian radiation emitter by Chino and ends with Mala Herba’s folk inspired epic ambient drone.

The NID Tapes’ presents a collection of early Indian electronic music uncovered at the archives of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Recorded between 1969-1972 the compilation chronicles electronic works from the previously unknown Indian composers Gita Sarabhai, I.S. Mathur, Atul Desai, S.C. Shama and Jinraj Joshipura who worked at the nation’s first electronic music studio founded at the NID during the utopian years following India’s independence - a radical period of visionary experimentation and artistic freethought.

The studio was founded with support from the New York composer David Tudor who personally set up a Moog modular system and tape machine in the autumn of 1969, and The NID Tapes also includes an excerpt from Tudor’s work discovered amongst the collection of tapes. The release developed from a long-term research project by the British artist and electronic musician Paul Purgas who travelled to Ahmedabad over many years to explore the origins of electronic music in India. This resulted in the discovery of the electronic music archive at the NID and its eventual restoration and digitising, which featured in the acclaimed BBC radio documentary Electronic India.

The compilation presents excerpts from the 27 reels of archive tape spanning the three years of the studio's operational history, showcasing work from the pioneering electronic composers which included the musician and poet Atul Desai, NID teachers and technicians I.S. Mathur and S.C. Shama, Gita Sarabhai who had previously studied with John Cage in New York in the 1940's and the young architecture student Jinraj Joshipura who was just 19 years old at the time of first composing with the Moog synthesiser. The audio showcases their various visions for electronic music production, exploring analogue synthesis, tape collages, voice experiments and field recordings revealing a meeting point of Western and Indian avant-garde traditions, and offering a unique insight into South Asia’s post-colonial sonic imaginary. The vinyl and digital is a collaborative release by Strange Attractor Press and The state51 Conspiracy and has been mastered by Hari Shankar Kishore (HVAD) with design for the release and a vinyl etching created by Shreya Aurora a recent graduate from the National Institute of Design.

Launching at the same time through Strange Attractor Press will be a book titled ‘Suncontentinental Synthesis: Electronic Music at the National Institute of Design, India 1969–1972’. Edited by Paul Purgas this collection of critical essays will reflect on the larger cultural and political dialogues surrounding the studio as well as written contributions by Geeta Dayal, You Nakai, Rahila Haque and Jinraj Joshipura the last surviving composer from the NID.

Latincore is a musical journey that begins with this compilation. latincore is a virtual club. latincore is an attempt to reflect with artists whose origins share the same soil.

This compilation brings together 14 sound propositions, offering a snapshot of a latinx, political, migrant and diasporic underground scene. Curated by Marion Stucky Callañaupa and Juan José Moreno Izquierdo.

Get inside the gambling den.
Das Wettbüro is the new music on candomblé that will make you want to never stop playing. Toggling between love infested disco and droner Krautrock, leaning into Kosmische and Late 80s House - it is a pleasure to be surprised as their vision unfolds. These men don’t play for free. And they always win. Now bet your Money on this record

Best Available Technology’s Kevin Palmer keeps a backpack full of cassette tapes in his car to play at random and in their entirety. The Florist’s Mum release of Inscape Routes is an amalgamation of these long coastal drives, a high moon beaming through the windshield as a reverberating guitar plucking, structured rhythms of the highway’s rumble strips, a red light, and an indicator signalling left all take place within the tonal monastery of this metal box at 60 mph. Best Available Technology reasserts himself as a ruthless pioneer within his own field, a tree-lined pavement between ambience and dub, a dreamy drive down a barren city.

Since his last outing on Control Freak with the sold-out Bunzunkunzun EP, Syz has built a reputation as one of the UKs most distinctive club producers, weaving playful, percussive techno with soundsystem-driven bass music. Releases via Shanti Celeste’s Peach Discs and more recently on Banoffee Pies have cemented his position as a rising star of the UK scene.

Much of this acclaim started with 2020’s Mindforms - a self-released mini-LP which saw the young producer step away from the dancefloor to explore an expansive sonic world, ‘balancing the tranquility of the ecological world with the immediacy of the digital one. Tropical botany meets ethereal cyberspace through a fusion of styles, influenced by UK techno, hip hop, ambient, acid, and sound-system-driven bass music’.

The original release was accompanied by a highly limited run of just 10 dubplates. Deeming this 6-tracker too good not to receive a proper pressing, Control Freak are proud to present the first ever complete vinyl run for Mindforms, housed in full-colour centre-cut sleeves featuring an adaptation of the original artwork by Jamie Fallon (Ghost Cell), reworked by London-based designer Blixa Aguerreberry.

Alongside the record, Syz & Control Freak have curated Clubforms, a collection of remixes available digitally from some of our favourite producers, each bringing the original release firmly onto the dancefloor with their own production flourishes.

Artwork made in The Designers Republic™

«Tom and I started recording Music for Open Spaces during our travels to Joshua Tree, just at the edge of the desert. Other tracks were recorded while on a trip to Cornwall. We loaded the car with tape machines, a couple of synths and Tom’s bass. When we arrived we set up a small studio in the living room of a rented house, facing the ocean. The last pieces were made in our familiar places, in London.

All the tracks are mostly spontaneously improvised, influenced and inspired by the landscapes in which we were immersed at the time, those being both physical spaces and metaphysical ones, but always open.

After Tom passed away, I finished this record on my own, carrying both of us in my heart. I have left these compositions unaltered, unmixed. Just as they were the last time we listened to them together. To me, these “open spaces” are where Tom is now, unconstrained by form.

Together with Morgan Cuinet’s collages, conceived as a visual mirroring of each track, the artwork consists of a blue map Tom made and that I have only recently discovered. This internal map, as he called it, is scratched with his fingernails to create pathways. I wanted to include it in the album, feeling it could be used to navigate these “open spaces”. Or just let yourself drift and wander, as you wish».

- Marta Salogni

Music for Open Spaces is more than a collection of eleven masterly composed pieces of experimental music inspired by moving landscapes such as the Joshua Tree desert, the Cornwall coastline or the inward Londoner abode: it is an adventure into a compelling intellectual landscape that involves the listener while opening unexpected perspectives at every step towards a new beginning.

Listening to the tracks induces us to find our own way beyond the consuetudinary geometries through which we decipher our interaction with the ambient, offering us the chance of a true discipline of perception.

All tracks written, performed and produced by Marta Salogni and Tom Relleen.

Recorded at Stella’s Studios in Joshua Tree, Cornwall and London

Mixing by Marta Salogni at Studio Zona, London

Mastered by Heba Kadry, NYC

Cutting by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios, London

Artwork: collages by Morgan Cuinet; Internal Map by Tom Relleen

It all started with waiting music for the city of Ghent information telephone line.


City composer Fulco Ottervanger (Cruise Lento) envisioned a music in which waiting time would serve as an invitation to stillness and presence. Long-term friend and producer Lieven Van Pée (Vectrex) turned out to be the ideal companion.


However, the music was never used, yet it had not missed its magical effect. The two gentlemen were now determined to make a full ambient album in which silence would play a leading role, both intuitive as well as elaborated down to the smallest unit of time... An additional approach was to make music to lull their newborn sons to sleep. With melodies simple, sounds sweet and silences deep.

Inspiration came from Haruomi Hosono's 1984 obscure classic Watering a flower, Eric Satie's Vexations and how could it be otherwise, John Cage's 3'44. What these progressive yet universal compositions have in common is a refinement of repetition and both a soothing and stimulating character.


As a listener you can't help but dive into the silence and experience an certain sweetness. The ideal record to rest to, to wake up to and enter a wider field.

KESSWA is the interdisciplinary artist Kesiena Wanogho.
Her work integrates performance, video, music and spoken word to function as a resource for emotional healing.

Portage Garage Sounds and KESSWA's collaboration started with a chance encounter in 2019, leading to film scores, performances with the Live Ensemble, a striking vocal duet with John FM on 2Lanes's "Baby's Born To Fish...", and the pandemic-era multimedia video / performance "Is My Mind A Machine Gun?" (with Shigeto and Vinnie Massimino).

In the past year, KESSWA provided backing vocals on the Sudan Archives single "Home Maker", appeared on Theo Parrish's DJ-Kicks with "Chasing Delerium" (feat. Nova Zai), received the prestigious Kresge Artist Fellowship in Film & Music, and was featured in Season 7 of Google's Creator Labs.

Vladislav Delay presents the second EP in his "Hide Behind The Silence" series with five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton".