House News

Robert James’ Body Movement label returns with a double-header featuring the bossman himself along with Kolter. Both ‘Planet 90’ and ‘Planet Funk’ are taken from Rob’s forthcoming LP, offering a sneak peak of the full-length project which is due early next year. Meanwhile, Kolter (AKA Djoko) adds his own touch to the release with a couplet that demonstrates why he’s achieved widespread praise at such an early stage in his music career.

As with the previous 2 releases in the 3-part Grumptronix series, the A-side features the duo's most sought after tracks from their back catalogue. This concluding chapter features the futuristic-funk and vocoder-laden 'Dirty Sheets', an enigmatic electro classic that has been become almost impossible to find for collectors. This is followed by the travelling and morphing sounds of 'Lovefix' - a track that is long regarded as one of the greatest electro tracks of the era. As with the rest of the series, the two reissue tracks are featured alongside 2 previously unheard, unreleased productions that were created during the same time period, at the same studio in Tampa, Florida. The first previously unreleased track is 'Nightmoves', a potential future classic. An immediate call to the dancefloor that provides the discerning DJ with something to break through even the most monotonous of sets. The final track of the series is 'Cosmic Glide', a bouncy rhythm with purple, funk-fuelled keys that are equal parts future and past. Nightmoves #3 is last in the series, but by absolutely no means least. WORMO2's transmission is complete, over and out. All tracks have been remastered from the original DATs with care and love by the ears and hands of Simon @ The Exchange.

Welcome to the colorful and loony universe of the new Parisian label: Comics Trip Records. Each episode will highlight a multifaceted protagonist as he breaks free from the existing musical boundaries

'Rave Age' is a ballsy firecracker of an album that showcases not
just a passion for big room electro smashers and electronica, but a
broad set of influences that stretch from punk and film soundtracks
to disco and indie dance. Vitalic has done away with the vocoder,
working with a myriad of talent to add diverse and sometimes
surprising influences to his distinctive sound. A body of work that
takes many twists and turns, exploring new directions and
absorbing genres while maintaining Vitalic’s trademark sound and
energy. Repressed on purple opaque vinyl.

Inaugurating the “Albe” series— a collection of LP’s to be released on Le Cabanon Records— Fantômes is the first album by Horla.


Fantômes is a musical isthmus, a frontier seldom travelled, a sonic corridor wherein animated bodies, sounds and dreams, instrumental and woody murmurs roam. Composed over the course of two years spent in Madagascar, the writing of this record bore witness to the insolent profusion and phantasmagorical incarnations of tropical wildlife, to strange rituals, animism and other mysterious relationships to the vegetal and its sensitive phenomena. Horla breathed in the various poetics of these space-times, circumscribed them into an empty shell, to then bring them into music as one brings a subject into painting in order to reveal its drama and imperishable nature, unburdened by anecdotes and the inertia of daily life. Thus, of these worlds of passage, of cycle and permeability, the ambiguities of rhythm and time, of harmony and tone reveal themselves. Permeated by vast geographical wanderings, the sonic colours evoked in this album never truly take root in one particular place, except perhaps in the ever subtle evocation of a nature of sounds, not without links to the sounds of Nature. These colours arise from the fusion of synthetic and instrumental timbres, with physically modelled synthesis sometimes growing indistinguishable from microphonic recordings of acoustic instruments, who in their turn resemble certain sounds of more traditional forms of synthesis (FM, granular). These resonant bodies interact and entwine, dwindle and steal away amidst relative temporalities, wherein the rhythmic grids, akin to plants, grow entangled. Of these sonic idealities there remains an anchor in concreteness that awakens the mnemonic power of hearing, materialised by outdoor sound recordings: spaces where bamboos creak in the wind, where wet stones swept up by the sea and the arid echo of the ryad appear on the horizon. It is by searching for templates amidst the jungle’s polymorphous and yet unified spectacle that the composer makes use of stochastic strategies in order to characterise, direct, variate and develop his materials (rhythms, scales, envelopes) in the pre-compositional phase. These musical objects are then refined by means of a meticulous process of editing and writing, creating a tension between determinism and chance akin to the complex order incomprehensible to mankind, who when faced with the immense heterogeneity of a tropical jungle, calls it chaos. With Fantômes, Horla reveals a poetic of spaces moved by their dependence upon a multiplicity of folds and entanglements, inviting the listener to endlessly renew their way of listening; from the minute to the global, from noise to sound, from the separation of timbres to their fusion. Within this space and it’s temporal flow, we bear witness to the birth of a mythifying music from an unseizable and yet familiar elsewhere.

Formats:

GONDLP037LE — (Limited 500x only edition on Clear vinyl, printed in reverse board Gatefold sleeve with printed insert)

GONDLP037 — (Double black vinyl, printed in reverse board wide Gatefold sleeve with printed insert)

GONDCD037 — (Card wallet sleeve, printed in reverse board sleeve with booklet)

"I feel like 'Home' is a second part of the same book, that the start was in 'Esja', a musical prelude to a real plot. I feel Home is a story with an ending, so the next book can tell a totally different one. I am constantly looking for new ways of expression. I am curious where 'Home' will lead me and my music". — Hania Rani

Hania Rani is a pianist, composer and musician who, was born in Gdansk and splits her life between Warsaw, where she makes her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works. Her debut album 'Esja', a beguiling collection of solo piano pieces on Gondwana Records was released to international acclaim on April 5th 2019 including nominations in 5 categories in the Polish music industries very own Grammys, the Fryderyki, and winning the Discovery of the Year 2019 in the Empik chain's Bestseller Awards and the prestigious Sanki award for the most interesting new face of Polish music chosen by Polish journalists. Rani also composed the music for her first full length movie "I Never Cry" directed by Piotr Domalewski and for the play "Nora" directed by Michał Zdunik. Her song "Eden" was used as a soundtrack of a short movie by Małgorzata Szumowska for Miu Miu's movie cycle "Women's Tales"

If the compositions on Esja were born out of a fascination with the piano as an instrument, then her follow-up, the expansive, cinematic, 'Home', finds Rani expanding her palate: adding vocals and subtle electronics to her music as well as being joined on some tracks by bassist Ziemowit Klimek and drummer Wojtek Warmijak. The album reunites her with recording engineers, Piotr Wieczorek and Ignacy Gruszecki (Monochrom Studio) and the tracks were again mixed again by Gijs van Klooster in his studio in Amsterdam and by Piotr Wieczorek in Warsaw ( Ombelico and Come Back Home). Home was mastered by Zino Mikorey in Berlin (known for his work on albums by artists such as Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds).

For Rani, 'Home', is very much a continuation of the work she started on 'Esja', "the completion of the sentence" as she puts it. The album offers a metaphorical journey: the story of places that become our home sometimes by chance, sometimes by choice. It is the story of leaving a place that is familiar and the journey that follows it. Home opens with the fragment of the short story "Loneliness" by Bruno Schulz, which can be seen as a parable of a journey that does not necessarily mean going beyond the physical door but can signify going beyond the symbolic limits of our knowledge and imagination.

"One can be lost but can find home in his inner part - which can mean many things - soul, imagination, mind, intuition, passion. I strongly believe that when being in uncertain times and living an unstable life we can still reach peace with ourselves and be able to find 'home' anywhere' This is what I would like to express with my music - one can travel the whole world but not see anything. It is not where we are going but how much we are able to see and hear things happening around us". — Hania Rani

Home is also about the inevitability of change. We never find places exactly how we left them. Time flies and life with it. Just like art and music. Once you started the trip, you will never be back really to the place where you started with. It is a sentiment that is at the heart of Home, not just its themes, but at the heart of Rani's music too. Following the success of Esja it would have been easy for her to stick to the same solo piano formula, but while Rani expresses her surprise and gratitude for the success of Esja, "I wasn't sure how this album - based on Piano and silence - will be received by the audience. The reception was a big surprise to me" it has also given her the confidence to express more of herself as an artist. On Home Rani steps into more of a producer's role, adding strings, bass and drums where needed, exploring the sounds of synths and electronica, but also creating textured layered songs made from acoustic samples, mostly from piano recordings. "I try to explore new genres and discover new artists, I don't want to be stuck in things that I know, I want to learn about things that are still new to me". But perhaps most notable is her singing, Rani has a fragile, beautiful voice, both pure and expressive. Long a feature of her live shows she uses it as another instrument, adding extra layers of melody and emotion to her already deeply expressive music.

"I consider voice as another instrument. Maybe if I wasn't so often alone on the stage, I would take another instrument to play the melody that I have in my mind. But while I am alone, singing allows me to have more possibilities at the same time. The human voice has a real magic, nothing carries emotions as easily and powerfully as the voice, and I think being able to bring this atmosphere on stage opens up new possibilities of expression for me". — Hania Rani


Home also features Rani's new band, bassist Ziemowit Klimek and drummer Wojtek Warmijak who appear on some of the albums stand out tracks, the beguiling single 'Leaving', the title track 'Home', atmospheric 'Tennen' and the beautiful 'I'll Never Find Your Soul'. After working and touring alone Rani begin to feel stuck with her own ideas and thoughts, and sounds. It was a prolific period for her compositionally, writing the music on Home, but also a film score and music for the theatre, but she felt that someone else's vision might bring new ideas to things that she already knew. Shortly before she was about to record Home she attended a concert of the young Polish jazz trio, Immortal Onion, in Gdańsk, her hometown. She liked what she heard and sked the double bassist and a drummer if they wanted to meet and something clicked. They spent most of the next week improvising and jamming on her music. This gave a whole new insight for some of the songs and brought new ideas for arrangements. And having enjoyed working together on the album Rani is looking forward to touring with the boys.

"Touring with band is a totally different thing, way more challenging technically, but it also brings a new energy and new sound possibilities. I am very curious how we will manage to bring the album to life. I would like to keep the show balanced - mixing the new textures of Home with the atmosphere of minimalistic songs from Esja." — Hania Rani

For Rani, this sense of exploring is a key part of her art. But it isn't only the music, Rani is keenly interested in art and architecture (as anyone who follows her exquisitely curated Instagram feed will know) and how her music works in the wider world.

"I try to keep my eyes and ears wide open. What I want to master in my art is how to build the right atmosphere on stage, in recordings. To do this you need to be aware of many aspects - not only music, but also the full range of gestures, acoustics, visual aspect. I want to learn how to bring particular atmosphere and bring people to a specific space. I observe how music works in different contexts, how the feeling of sound changes in different acoustics, space, light conditions. The same thing happens with artwork that I share. I feel like everything of what I am bringing to the the world and sharing with others has an impact of reception my music. If we are an inseparable part of the ecosystem, then the music should be considered similarly." — Hania Rani

The album's distinctive cover artwork was designed by the architect Łukasz Pałczyński, who combined his sketches with the stills from the music video for the song Leaving shot by her regular collaborators Mateusz Miszczyński and Jakub Stoszek in Greece and together with Rani's music and vision it is this sense of collaboration that gives Home it's power as Rani starts to give full expression to her own unique vision and perhaps the most exciting thing is that it is just another step on her journey, one that we are all lucky to be a part of!

Foul Play is definitely a suitable title for this EP as Kessler has brought the big guns to the tea party for this one. Really getting to the heart of what Holding Hands is all about I love how straight up in the face these bangers are.

Expect a lot of gun fingers and shouts of “this one’s a stinky wiiiiiiinky” when these get dropped in the club. That’s probably the best way of describing the vibe here...

Tokyo based artist machina debuts on UTTU! Fresh from appearing on Bicep’s Mercury Award nominated album Isles & dropping her 3rd studio album ’Compass Point’. Here the South Korean artist showcases 4 tracks absorbing a more intense leftfield dance floor sound.

"Finally, Zach Witness' sought after rework of The Purple One's '17 Days' is available physically and on hand-stamped purple vinyl no less !"

In the studio of the small Italian town of Cremona, some of the famous but early representatives of a not-yet-named- music style called Italo Disco get together to record a song. Among them are the most active and influential singers, producers and arrangers of this musical movement from Cesare Pasquali to Jimmy Mc Foy including Ottavio Bacciocchi.

Most importantly, two friends, Larry Pignagnoli and the famous Ivana Spagna, were writing a song together. It has been unnoticed so far, but always had the power and stamina to make the dead dance.

Pardonnez-nous, but here it is !

For our third release on The Secret Sun series, we compiled a second volume of previously unreleased material from the DATs archive of Ballet Mechanique. Produced between 1992 and 1999 and spanning thru different styles all the tracks have Ballet Mechanique’s distinctive and very unique sound: emotive, epic, ravey, funky, uplifting, romantic… some of our favourite adjectives to describe Jeroen Borrenbergs’ music.

Fabio Vinuesa returns to District 91 to deliver the fourth installment of the label. A five-track EP with essential club material.

On side A we have "Analog Activity" a track focused on the dancefloor with speedy drums, raw basslines and dreamy pads. "Acid Pepa" immerses us into retro style using classic synths and acid hits.

Side B begins with "Self-Programming" heating our instinct showing the most darkest track on the record."Corrupted Data" bring us the electro-cybernetic sound mixing acid basslines and vocal-glitches from Google´s I.A. And finally closing the album “28045” with an evocative ambient sequence.

*Repress*

Dutch producer Danny Wolfers aka Legowelt needs little introduction unless you’ve spent the past two decades buried beneath a Mont Blanc avalanche. His enormous collection of synthesizers, as well as his unwavering love for analogue production tools, justifiably places him in the synth music “Hall of Fame”. Since releasing his first material in the early 1990s, Legowelt has incessantly produced music and continues to display seemingly limitless creativity. As a result he has built an unparalleled discography that also includes an assortment of artist aliases.

Legowelt’s new EP ‘System Shapeshift’ will be released on Lapsus sub label C.E.E., specializing in more club-oriented sounds. The label returns to action after a two-year hiatus, during which time its intrepid explorers failed twice to scale the dizzy heights of Nanga Parbat. Now back at sea level C.E.E.’s head honchos have confirmed the release of Legowelt’s new five-track EP, bursting at the seams with 30 minutes of unrelenting old-school techno, synth house and snaking electro bathed in pure acid. The EP is a genuine time bomb, ideal for the most discerning of electronic music lovers.

"Slim Media Player returns to Pacific Rhythm with a wonderfully original EP, Quicksand, his first new material since 2016's Rhythms Of The Pacific Volume 3. The EP is the product of Slim Media Player & DJ D.DEE culling through 20+ hours of live jams recorded in Vancouver at Deep Blue Studios from 2016 to 2018.

The EP opens with the records namesake Quicksand, a playful piece of peak-time material that's quirky, uplifting, and dare we say a touch heart-warming. Mouthfeel comes through swinging but plays a touch more koi than the opener, serving as an effective tension-builder on the dancefloor that builds into a thoughtful groover with some light at the end of tunnel.

On the b-side S.M.P explores deeper territory with Memory Bias (Nostalgia Mix), an aquatic roller blanketed with warmth and a contemplative aire that stretches for nearly 9 minutes. The EP fades out with the gentle drift of Tschüs, a warm swaddle that will quell your anxieties and affirm that there are indeed some things that are right in this world, this track being one of them."

In 2022 Listen is presenting its very first compilation as an extension of its year-round Our Scene platform. This release unites a wide spectrum of electronic music on a double gate-folded vinyl. With 12 artists serving up anything from ruff techno to ambient, the Our Scene Compilation sketches a profile of the diversity that characterizes Brussels’ music scene.

For the third record on Club Glow we have our very own breaksmith LMajor, stepping up with a hard hitting 4 tracker, brimming with B-lines and expertly crafted breaks.

The title track ‘Tear My Heart’ has been doing the rounds for a while now, anyone who’s been to a Club Glow show in the last 18 months will undoubtably recognise that hook and those vocals. Certified ear-worm material!

The flip-side features a collaboration with the ever talented Decibella. One of our core crew members, she has shut down the dance at most of our events this last year. ‘Waiting’ has been a staple of all of our sets and we are glad to finally be able to release it to the world!

The EP draws as much influence from 1992 as it does 2022, brining the original sounds and ideas of Hardcore-rave music bang up to date, in a way that few others can manage.

Shadow Work is Alex Cargill's (The Central Office Of Information) debut solo album on Subexotic Records (although he is no stranger to the label, having previously released the co-written TV1 as Transient Visitor, as well as the split release Passing cars In The Rain with hyacinth). With previous titles on such highly prized cult labels as Castles In Space, Woodford Halse & Colander, Subexotic are delighted to get in on some COI action with this intriguing new chapter in Alex's musical journey. Describing his current influences, Alex sites genres including synthwave, vaporwave, early 90s hardcore and techno, as well as recent work from the likes of Dalham, Plone, Moon Wiring Club, Polypores, Field Lines Cartographer, The Night Monitor and the Clay Pipe Music label.