House News

2022 Repress of the EP that revealed the band in 2012.

Between the Zuri brannt riots and the Needle Park catastrophe, two events that occurred in the eighties in Zurich and that have been underlined in the previous two Dee Dee’s Picks releases, have unfortunately backlashed in today’s world yet have also been sublimated by others in various cultural endeavours.
On a different note: “The edible seed of the cashew fruit is native to tropical climates that is rich in tryptophan, a neurochemical that our bodies turn into serotonin.”

These two subject matters, seemingly unrelated, have been channelled into one person — coinciding to make room for relief from a transformed dystopian-like era that has not without effort risen from its depth. Found from this dark period is a modern-day character that brings to the surface these once very present issues. The music and topical form that occur simultaneously within this release have been created by Don Kashew, a self-described troubadour who acts a natural supplier of your favourite natural antidepressant as well as an eternal fanboy to music from the past, present and future.

An enthusiastic participant to the Swiss underground scene, Don Kashew can be found either helping the Zurcher community or playing obscure and classic records at a regular pace in the Zurich nightlife. The added anecdotal form that this release takes shape is the fact that Don is a city council whose department is to aid in the organisation of the clean up from the consequences of the aforementioned sociological issues. Don Kashew refutes these questions with sounds that evoke feelings of longing for another world, warm and moist, of another place, captured in a modern time. By commenting on the track titles as presented within this edition, Don Kashew’s music also refers to the irony of capitalistic studies and of the monotonous dullness that life presents. With these two aspects, merged together in a swirl, the music within this release is at the time whimsical and ironic, mature yet underlined with childlike humour. This compilation of past and contemporary works is a reflection of Don’s sound development, affected through time and change, environment and empathy, diligence and insouciance, carefully packaged and influenced by his creative procedure.

w/ Nikki Nair & Davis Galvin Remixes

Respected and prolific North American artists, Ciel and Ali Berger, come together for their first official collaboration. The three original tracks are bouncy, ebullient, fun, warm, and effervescent. The 2 remixes from Nikki Nair and Davis Galvin, are wholly unique stompers. This is truly a star-studded EP featuring the next generation of North American legends.

Klein Zage veers away from dance music and into a world of innovative alt pop with an emotional portrayal of fondness, detachment and monotony. Sage Redman (aka Klein Zage) has moved around from Seattle, to South East London, and now finds herself in upstate New York. She has always kept close a desire to reinvent herself as an artist against this backdrop of ever-changing scenery. Klein Zage established herself with previous releases on her own label, Orphan, which she runs with long term collaborator Joey G ii (real name Joe Gillick). Her previous work fuses electronic sounds with spoken social commentaries about themes of the city, femininity, and the hospitality industry. Sage’s new album, ‘Feed The Dog’ is her debut release on Rhythm Section INTL. The feel of these songs have a disassociated longing to them. A sort of serene, catatonic beauty that leaves an inwardly emotional imprint. After the music finds time to sit with the listener, Klein’s poetic vision becomes even more sublime.

Written in a combination of Seattle, a remote Washington fjord called Hood Canal, and London, her music covers a lot of ground. The album is full of songs that merge lines of ethereal dream pop over to left field synth-heavy incantations bursting with electronic energy and haunting ambience. ‘Feed The Dog’ may sound like a transformation of the former Klein Zage sound. But this is the music she’s always been making. Her career-long ambitions have come to fruition with these songs, and now seems like a perfect time for people to hear them. In her own words, Sage says the album “is about the mundane, the routines that tether you to reality, caring for a living breathing being that needs you. Defending the ones you love”. These themes, apart from being a literal ode to her dog Steves, provide a metaphor for a defining moment in Klein’s career as a musician and lyricist. ‘Feed the Dog’ is another evolution of Klein Zage’s sound as she reinterprets her own creativity once again. This constantly shifting motion is something that has always been with her through each musical endeavor. And will carry on to the next, wherever her artistic direction takes us.

DUMBO TRACKS ist das Projekt des Kölner Produzenten Jan Philipp Janzen (Von Spar, Die Sterne, Urlaub in Polen). Auf seinem selbstbetitelten Debütalbum sind Beiträge von Markus Acher (The Notwist), Portable, Roosevelt, Marker Starling, Julian Knoth (Die Nerven), Indra Dunis (Peaking Lights), Eiko Ishibashi, Julene und DJ Koze. Zusammen werden die verschiedenen Facetten von Dub und seinen Möglichkeiten ausgetestet. Das klingt manchmal wie direkt aus den Black Ark Studios; sehr viel häufiger aber transatlantisch vermittelt über The Specials und DJs wie Don Letts, Andrew Weatherall oder Adrian Sherwood.

- 140 Gramm schwarzes Vinyl inklusive bedrucker Innenhülle

Auf der 'Fantasy EP' trieb Jacques Greene seine Downtempo- und Ambient-Einflüsse weiter als je zuvor voran. Jetzt meldet er sich mit einem speziellen, clubtauglichen Extended Edit des EP-Haupttracks 'Relay' zurück - zusammen mit einem unglaublichen Skee Mask-Remix. Limitiert auf 500 Exemplare weltweit.

Die 'Vertical Jamming' Longform-Instrumentals erschienen erstmals 2016 auf einer selbstveröffentlichten Tour-CD und später in einer Mailorder-Kassettenedition auf Disciples. Sie wurden nun von Phew speziell für diese Clear-Vinyl-Pressung zu ihren neuen Liveshows bearbeitet und von Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin geschnitten. Die hypnotische Ausdehnung der Musik schlägt eine Brücke zwischen den dystopischen Sci-Fi-Soundlandschaften von Edward Artemivs Stalker-Soundtrack und dem ungebundenen generativen Labyrinth zeitgenössischer Autechre-Produktionen, während sie immer noch Flecken menschlicher Wärme beibehält, die das Hörerlebnis verankern: eine primitive, an Suicide erinnernde Drum-Machine, die das Brummen und Piepen des Synthesizers vorantreibt, oder ein Drone, der in Krächzen und Trillern zusammenbricht, ähnlich wie ein Vogelschwarm.

Since his debut album “Transsiberian”, Thylacine has developed a taste for composing through travel, an initiatory project that led him to compose during his journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway. A seminal album that allowed the young electro prodigy to make a name for himself on the electronic scene.

With the aim to combine music and image and to make us discover his world through travel, Thylacine has continued to climb the ladder and has racked up no less than 121 million streams. Whether it's "Anatolia", "Olatu", or "War Dance", Thylacine has made a name for himself by writing real hits.

Through "9 Pieces », Thylacine wanted to pay tribute to some iconic tracks that are currently only released digitally and independently and to let us discover his new compositions, all of which are just as transporting and refreshing. His new opus “9 Pieces” will contain unreleased tracks from his latest travels and encounters, pieces to be assembled in order to reconstitute a puzzle and immerse oneself in the universe of Thylacine.

Like this object, each musical piece will find its place alongside his greatest hits. "9 Pieces" will be released the 21st of October on Intuitive Records.

Clear Vinyl

Future music duo Second Woman's sophomore full-length for Spectrum Spools further hones their distinctive fusion of shapeshifting software sculpture and tessellated footwork. Shivering digital textures oscillate with and against algorithmically mapped percussion samples, smeared synthetic chords levitate in the distance, stabs of digital noise punctuate the mix in twitchy, time-distorting patterns. Their anamorphosis verges on ascetic: stark, splintered waveforms rendered into unique fiber optic hieroglyphs.
Multi-instrumentalists Josh Eustis and Turk Dietrich share a deep history going back to their days in the New Orleans ambient electronic community, as part of Telefon Tel Aviv and Belong, respectively. Even so, S/W pushes beyond their combined discographies to date, flexing impossibilities, building rhythms from arrhythmia, teasing veiled emotion from bold iterations of cold code.

Estonian label MIDA serves it's second summery seven (of three, as promised) & it's by Rotrum.

Rotrum has functioned anonymously under the moniker for a decade or so. The selection on this 7” is as laid back as you'll probably ever hear him. “Panko” moves responsibly in the 100 BPM range with a punchy gallop & lovely phased synthwork. Ethereal “Tutelary” & its vibrant drums are clearly lost somewhere, if not the desert it can easily be a South Estonian bog he throws us into.

repressed !

After a longer Break here we go , with two very well known edits that are now finally on Vinyl! Remastered for best Dancefloor Satisfaction! Vinyl Only!

Formal yet experimental, each track plays with textural contrasts, gossamer lightness brushing up against uncompromising density. The result is a thing of austere beauty: from the cinematic opener to the climactic rush of the finale you will find shimmering arpeggios, industrial polyrhythms and, at one point, even an unabashedly 80s synth lead.

Felix Laband’s The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story.

Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband’s first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015. It is heralded by the single “Derek and Me”, and is being pressed on vinyl for distribution globally.

In The Soft White Hand Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records – Thin Shoes in June (2001), 4/4 Down the Stairs (2002), Dark Days Exit (2005) and especially Deaf Safari which reached deep into the South Africa scene and its political culture to inspire its vocal and music sampling. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album’s creation – an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like “Death of a Migrant” – is perceptible in Laband’s desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life.

“For this album, my source material became almost autobiographical as opposed to African statements I’ve worked with previously,” says the artist. “I have sampled a lot from documentaries from the 80s crack epidemic in impoverished African American communities and believe my work speaks unapologetically for the lost and marginalised, for those who are the forgotten casualties of the war on drugs. In the past, I have had my issues with substance abuse, and I know first-hand about the nightmares and fears, what it feels like to be isolated and abandoned.”

Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like “5 Seconds Ago”, “They Call Me Shorty” and in the strange and meditative “Dreams of Loneliness”. “I’ve been building this weird, autobiographical story using other people talking. It’s kind of humorous but it is also sad and beautiful,” says Laband.

Yet, as in all of Laband’s recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in “Prelude” or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in “Derek and Me”. The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song “Fanta and Felix” imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband.

Laband’s eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in “We Know Major Tom’s a Junkie” is another thrilling aspect of the new record. “I’ve been properly exploring classical music on this album,” explains Laband, “taking melodies from classical compositions and reinterpreting them”. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer’s AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations.

The Soft White Hand is Laband’s most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. A song that summons the sunrise and all the hope of a new day could also be about the final dipping down of the sun that portends a troubled night ahead. Interludes are invitations to expand outwards or shift inwards. Mistakes and “weird fuckups” in the sound are cherished as convincing statements against what Laband calls the “grossness” of perfect sound in modern music.

For this world-leading electronic artist, the boundaries are unfixed. He is inspired by the German Dada artist, Hannah Höch, who memorably declared: “I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.” His music consequently reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband’s considerable visual art output as seen recently in several solo exhibitions such as that held in the No End Gallery in Johannesburg in 2019 and in the works he produced during his 2018 Nirox Foundation Artists Residency. “My music is always about collage, as is my art,’’ he affirms. “Everything I do is collage. It is a medium I find very interesting because you are taking history and distorting it and changing its meaning and turning it upside down and back to front.” In her book Recollections of My Non-Existence, Rebecca Solnit calls collage “literally a border art”; it is “an art of what happens when two things confront each other or spill onto each other”.

With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one. He is also affirming his belief that an album of music should be more than a collection of unrelated tracks, but should unfold a fully integrated, cohesive story as in the song cycles of the great classical composers. In doing so, he claims his position as one of the most significant artists working today.

Artist Statement – Felix Laband – August 2022

When the Khmer Rouge took their captives for processing, they identified their class enemies by looking at their hands. If they were sunburned, rough and calloused, they were those of a peasant, a proletarian to be spared. But if they were soft and white, then they were those of a city-dweller, an intellectual or bourgeois, an adversary to be liquidated.

In calling this album The Soft White Hand, I was reflecting on the Cambodian genocide and how it resonates in contemporary South Africa. The apartheid era is over, and gone with it is white political domination. Yet economic and social privilege is still held in soft white hands. But those who grasp it know just how tenuous is their hold, how it singles them out, and my music reflects their subconscious fears, the stress and guilt of clinging on to what others envy and desire.

The soft white hand of the title suggests to me a further image, one that relates to all of postcolonial Africa. In my mind’s eye, I see the soft, duplicitous handshake of the smooth representatives of the superpowers making deals and promising gifts that benefit only them, and not their African dupes.
Yet, soaring above the wailing of sirens sampled from the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, my music is also about love gained and passion lost. It is about the tender caress of a soft white hand that conducts you into a place of dreams to be enfolded by nocturnal melodies.

The first full length album from renowned electronic dance artists Benoit & Sergio.

The next album announced from FourFour Records, the new label from Jonathan Galkin, co-founder of DFA Records.

Mixed by Beatriz Artola (Fleet Foxes, Adele, A$AP Rocky) and Mastered by Heba Kadry (Bjork, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nicolas Jaar).

Benoit & Sergio have previously released music on DFA, Ghostly, Hot Creations & Soul Clap Records.

ssabæ is a nebula of friends gathering in studios, meadows and tiny apartments all over France : the tracks of azurescens were recorded during those sessions. We’d like to send love to all the friends involved in this project, it’s a special one (and it’s been in our head and in production for a f… long time)

Guitar : Étienne Chaigne

Voice : Margaux Delatour

Synths : Michael Ruellan

Percussions : Oedipa Maas

Saxophone : Gwen Jamois

Effects : Erwan Birib

Mixing : Paul Stamets

Production : Antoine Fountain

Photo : Béatrice de Ventadour

Design : Arthur Nolaw

Das neue Album des in Osaka ansässigen Elektronikproduzenten Takahiro Kinoshita alias 99Letters basiert auf dem Sampling und der Verarbeitung traditioneller japanischer Instrumente. Die Klänge von Koto und Shakuhachi werden durch räumliche Effekte und Geräusche transformiert, um betörende Ambient-Drones und ausgeprägte Dancefloor-Knaller zu schaffen. Der Titel 'Kaibou Zukan' bedeutet übersetzt 'Bilderbuch' und dient als eine Art Audiotagebuch des Künstlers, der zu Hause eingeschlossen ist und über seinen Platz in seinem Heimatland, seiner Landschaft und seiner Kultur nachdenkt.

Now in 2013 shortly after Koze dropped his sophomore album - Amygdala' Pampa Records is proud to finally re-release the soldout masterpiece "Kosi Comes Around" on vinyl!

It was back in 2005, shortly after having erupted over the past year with a slew of 12" singles that have captivated DJ's world-wide, the current insanity over his alterego ADOLF NOISE, and least we forget, one of the most adventurous mix- CD's of all time, 2004's "All People Is My Friends", DJ KOZE moved forward with his highly anticipated, solo debut full length entitled "Kosi Comes Around". This may sound overly dramatic to state, but DJ KOZE was truly there to give the world a piece of his mind - and the facts were blatantly presented there on this album. Stefan Kozalla aka DJ KOZE was a revolutionist and proved beyond reasonable doubt on "Kosi Comes Around" that nobody else was able to load music up with so much madness yet balance it gingerly with love and warmth. He felt there are promises that must have given surrounding the multitude of "new lies" that existed in this world back then (and today) and a true determination of bringing House back to it's utopian place once again. A Spirits Hunter chased by Fear who was known to conjure the Phantom of the Old School and bring color to it's face. DJ KOZE felt that fear is always justifiable - if one cannot understand fear then one cannot fight it. DJ KOZE was (and still is) a fear expert - truly the world's most notorious one-man-army we've witnessed since John Rambo. And "Kosi Comes Around" was his maifesto. It was a call for all Miquetoasts of the world to stand up and unite - after all, to be above this is so '90's....

South-east Turkey born DJ, sound artist and producer Banu uses music as a political tool. For her, the strong message carried through sound is a vehicle to express emotions as well as a means of fighting against oppression. Using participation, social design, ecology, feminist and queer theory to create multimedia installations with sound as a main element, Banu‘s practice is closer to contemporary art and activist spaces than the club realm.

Banu‘s debut album TransSoundScapes is an exercise in female solidarity between her as a migrant woman and her sisters from the trans community, where an artist from one marginalised group is showing support towards her trans sisters, using her platform to help them amplify their voices and building a bridge towards a mutual understanding of femininity.

Conceptually, TransSoundScapes comes in continuation of Banu‘s previous research-based work, using music as a positive tool for change while working with various marginalised communities. The album originated from the very real experience of being confronted with verbal harassment in Berlin on a daily basis, particularly aimed at her transfeminine friends and companions. As a queer woman of Turkish and Kurdish origin, Banu did not only observe the verbal aggression directed at her friends, but also understood most of the insults shouted in languages such as Arabic. Seeing how she got signifi cantly more verbal violence directed at them when in company of trans people made a lasting impression on her, so she wanted to try and use her relative privilege to amplify transfeminine voices through her music.

Coming from a very conservative family, making music has been her lifelong dream. It was the moment she had the opportunity to work with the iconic Arp 2600 synthesiser (a younger sibling to Eliane Radigue‘s infamous 2500 machine) that all her disparate interests came into place to create an empowering soundscape with the aid of analogue drum machines. TransSoundScapes has a very full, porous sound, where every element that comes into play sounds soft yet clear. Across the 7 tracks, Banu conjures pounding subterraneous bassy techno („Surgery“), slithering tentacular EBM („First Time“) and pulsating cavernous soundscapes („Harem“), where oversized dancefl oor elements are woven with poetic spoken word passages, resulting in sensusous yet political anthems. Banu artfully merges loosely related genres such as techno, electro, dub and sound poems into a sound that is at once deeply personal and extremely compelling.

All of the tracks are collaborative efforts, Banu seeing the process as an exchange of care and shared experiences, while integrating research into her writing process. The lyrics in „Transition (part 1+2)‘‘ are an adaptation of Sara Ahmed’s “Living a Feminist Life”, while „Surgery“ was born out of series of interviews with trans people, channeling the metallic sounds of a surgery room to refer to society‘s perception of transness as a medical condition. Tracks like „First Time feat. Patricia“, „Harem feat. Prince Emrah“ or „We feat. Aérea Negrot“ document her encounters with various trans women, centering their life experiences while also developing a deep dialogue through the process of making music together.

The darkest and perhaps the most emblematic track is ‚‘Bianka (In Memory Of)‘‘, dedicated to the late Bianka Shigurova, a 22-year old Georgian actress found dead in her apartment. It was her Tbilisi photographer friend George Nebriedze who told her Bianka‘s tragic story, whose death is suspected to be an assasination due to transphobia. Banu chose one of Nebriedze‘s analogue photos of Bianka as the album‘s cover art.

deep cover ventures beyond borders once again, luring a pair of perfect peaches from the hands of two welcome wanderers who have strayed far from their homeland... imagination is knee-deep at this, the dream station, though our companions in dub are around the corner

repress !

Bianca Binky only ever made a handful of records, the majority of which have long been forgotten by all but the most dedicated fans of late-‘80s European synth-pop and crossover house. ‘Tabu’, her final solo single from 1990, is different: a gorgeous, tactile chunk of piano-sporting Balearic house from the time when dancing under the stars at Amnesia was a rite of passage for clubbers from all over Europe, has undoubtedly stood the test of time. Something of a sought-after classic, with keen collectors willing to spend hundreds of Euros on an original 12” single, ‘Tabu’ remains a loved-up, life-affirming dance-floor gem.

It also happens to be a firm favourite of NuNorthern Soul founder Phil Cooper, who has gone to great lengths to produce a deluxe reissue of the hard-to-find Balearic anthem. Original producer Felix B Mangione, head of Blanco Y Negro Records, had long since lost the original master tapes, so Cooper flew from Ibiza to Barcelona to pick up one of the only mint copies still available, before forwarding high-quality digital transfers on to Robin Lee for remastering.

The results speak for themselves. The original mix, a breezy, sun-soaked fusion of synthesised marimba melodies, spine-tingling piano riffs, dreamy chords, Chicago-style TB-303 bass and Binky’s sensual spoken word vocals, naturally opens proceedings, and is joined on the A-side of the 12” by the original, alternative ‘House Mix’ - more club friendly version that beefs up the beats, emphasises the undulating bassline and offers occasional blasts of spacey synth.

This reissue edition also includes an exclusive, never-before-heard re-edit of the legendary ‘Caribbean Dub’ – first featured on the flip-side of the original release - from Manchester’s finest, Ruf Dug. Tough, effects-laden, bass-heavy and positively epic, Ruffy’s version is arguably the ultimate version of a piano-laden, TB-303 driven Balearic house classic: ten minutes of rising and falling, saucer-eyed dance-floor bliss that’s surely destined to be one of the most-played tracks of summer 2022.