Techno Vinyl New Releases - News

Ten years ago, Acid Test began with a simple concept—each track the label released would make use of the Roland TB-303. Like a producer purposefully paring down their studio setup, or the continuous imperative within underground electronic music to reduce, this concept engendered creativity with the introduction of what seemed to be an aesthetic limit. However, the decade that followed, which now culminates in the triple-LP compilation Ten Years Of Acid Test, proves acid is limitless.

That the Berlin-via-LA label would expand upon the classical conception of acid house and techno is no surprise considering the cast of characters that have come in fold over the past decade. Ten Years Of Acid Test gathers key material from the label's extended family of acid acolytes. There's that Vienna-via-LA maestro of sad, elegant acid Tin Man (Johannes Auvinen), whose "Afters Acid" is both a highlight within his prolific catalogue and a distillation of his symphonic approach to the 303. Detroit giants Erika and Marcellus Pittman, both of whom have released remixes on Acid Test, present their respective and singular Bass Line visions. Erika, the Interdimensional Transmissions lynchpin, crafts a dark, delicate take on broken techno on "Violet Fungus" while Pittman continues his cubist house explorations on "Unknown Species," both tracks straying from typical acid lines in favor of the intricate textures achievable on the 303.

This variation in approach applies to tempo as well. Irish-based master Lerosa, as well as Delsin affiliate VC-118A, delve into downtempo atmospherics. Meanwhile, Japanese deep techno virtuoso Wata Igarashi, SUED co-founder SW. (a regular on Acid Test's leftfield sub-label Avenue 66) and Patricia (one-half of Acid Test act Ociya) use acid as a creative jumping-off point for complex melodic concepts. Wata layers an orchestra of synth-bliss drone overtop a squelchy bassline on "Ephemeral." SW.'s "ChaIAnJAzzz" cycles through an array of dusted chords eventually landing in skewed, fuzzy rave nostalgia, anthemic chords held aloft by a wicked UK-flavour bass line. Patricia's “Higher Still” explores dreamy, IDM-flavoured acid, cinematic synthlines counterbalanced by propulsive, squelching acid.

Acid Test devotees will be thrilled at the return of various luminaries from the catalogue, including Achterbahn D'Amour, Skudge, AAAA, John Tejada and Donato Dozzy, whose memorable remix of Tin Man's "Nonneo" from Acid Test 01 served as a kind of proof of concept for the label. There's new blood too. San Francisco up-and-comer Sepehr makes his label debut with the excellent "Persian Acid Prince," as does Andreas Tilliander's beloved hardware techno project, TM404.

Like the original Hot Mix 5 Acid compilation, which highlighted the original cohort of Chicago acid innovators including Pierre, Fingers and Armando, Ten Years Of Acid Test is a valuable portrait of a group of artists linked by a dedication to innovation within acid, in line with the genre's storied roots. Over ten years, Acid Test has gracefully made a case for the 303's past, present and future, the story of acid continuing to unfurl in unpredictable, addictive patterns.

Like trudging through viscous air, I Lost All My Data is a blissed-out barrage of sub-bass that nods to a long-lasting passion for sound system culture.

Uploading turbo-charged wubs with molten glass melodies, the debut EP of Giovanni Bonelli (aka Notte Infinita) is a welcomed update for UK style broken-techno conventions. Booting-up with its title track, the record quadrisects the fabric of digital music, each cut a sonic reprogramming of its predecessor. ‘Slippery Tuff’ references off-kilter club, while on the flip, ‘Ecstatic Dub (Roller Mix)’ climaxes in an ultra-sensory faux-organic whorl. Unplugging the whole thang, ‘Oxygen’ manipulates post-dubstep textures, into a data-roused jungle tunnel.

Deciphering glitched-out signal processing and harmonic warps, I Lost All My Data is the software upgrade that every system needs – do not choose Later; Install Now.

This record has been played out/supported by...

Bambounou, Madam X, Special Guest DJ, Opium Hum/Michail Stangl (Boiler Room), Lurka, Bruce, orson (version)

-Container is the solo project of American-born, London-based musician Ren Schofield, who over the last decade has refined a signature sound combining his background in drumming and lo-fi noise with techno and rhythmic electronics, cementing himself as a distinctive and disorderly force in modern electronic music.

-‘My intentions and goals for this record were to make it way more‘rock’ oriented than ‘techno’, almost as if it could be aband or adapted by one (albeit a rather non-traditional one), and Iwanted to incorporate some potentially awkward sounding timesignatures, but do my best to disguise them as something digestibleand not without a groove.’

For it’s inaugural release, label boss Sepehr provides the first electrified soundtrack for Shaytoon records with “Crown Jewel”. Listeners should expect visions of monoliths, obsidian mountains underneath blood-red soaked skies and freaky soundwaves while listening. “Crown Jewel” EP should be listened to while hitchhiking across the country with only a bottle of wine in a knapsack, dreaming of dancing to the drum. Do not go gently

Repress

Arad, real name Dara Smith, first joined the VOITAX catalogue in June 2020. Back then, the Irish artist served us up with "Radiance Haze" - a 6-track EP, spanning from heavy-hitting breaks to the ethereal ambience, with heavy features of Smith's vocals. Known for his multidisciplinary vision on music, he has also previously made seminal moves with his work as one half of Lakker, alongside Eomac, dropping groundbreaking music on heavyweight labels such as R&S, Blueprint and Stroboscopic Artefacts. For his second EP on VOITAX, Smith now returns with five beautifully crafted tracks that he titles "Augmented Fantasy". While following a similar approach, he does not fail to expand his repertoire of celestial dream-like atmospheres, which he carefully surrounds with a whole variety of vocals, and accurately placed broken drum patterns. In addition to his own singing, Arad also presents two impressive collaboration tracks, in which one of them features the voice of Stine Omar, also widely known as one half the Berlin-based pop duo EASTER. Driving rhythmics and processed, grainy vocals turn this piece into guaranteed hit material. Another collaboration with the befriended vocalist and music producer Nina Hynes serves as a touching closing chapter for this brilliantly produced, eclectic 5-tracker. All pieces are perfectly glued together while keeping their very individual character and soundscapes. The listener is certainly left with an augmented fantasy, as well as a curiosity to hear more to come from the Irish talent.

Healing Force Project intertwines jazz and electronics to form something truly psychedelic and unique.

Grand St., the upcoming release on NYC's Maddjazz Recordings, is a 7-track EP from the duo Pharma - the musical group of long time friends, Sam Katz & Milo McBride. While they’ve spent the past years operating in different musical landscapes, Pharma is their most recent collaboration and features guest performances by rising stars, anaïs + Wati Heru.

At its heart, Grand St. is pop music, but performed through a dusty lens of bittersweet melancholy. The release is offered both in digital formats on all platforms and as a limited 12" Vinyl (100 copies only). The artwork + design was done in collaboration with Phil Wong and Lucas Mascatello.

Our first release of 2020 is a deluxe 2xLP reissue of Severed Heads’ debut 1981 album ‘Clean’. One of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene, they began in Sydney in 1979. Severed Heads is basically a nom- de-plum for Tom Ellard, who incorporates elements of ‘industrial’ noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis.
As the project developed song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style.

‘Clean’ was amongst the first vinyl releases under the Dogfood Productions banner of Terse Tapes, previously a cassette-only label. For this records Tom used an array of synthesizers (Kawai 100F, Casiotone, Roland CR78+SH1+CSQ100), sequencers, tapes and occasional guitar and violin played by Garry Bradbury. Severed Heads have a language of their own, music that juxtaposes all sorts of noise, in all sorts of ways so that a structure evolves, (fragmented) melody and rhythm being almost a by-product. As one reviewer said in 1981, “It is an ugly album that you simply cannot ignore, it thuds and screeches and makes you stare just to wonder what kind of people would procure such an album.” For this deluxe reissue we’ve included a bonus disc featuring 13 songs, 5 of which have never been released before, culled from live performances, the ‘Side 3’ cassette and a ‘Clean’ demo tape that only surfaced last year, plus "Food City" missing from previous reissues.

All songs have been remastered by Tom Ellard, with vinyl EQ and lacquer cutting by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Each copy is housed in a gatefold jacket featuring black and white xeroxed artwork from the first vinyl edition. Inside the gatefold are liner notes by Tom Ellard plus photos and press clippings from the period. “‘Clean’ is original and powerful and everybody should listen to it at least once, just so they know where the boundaries lie.” Ashley Crawford, Virgin Press 1981. 25% of proceeds will be donated to the Australian Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities, that offers specific direct support to some of those communities with critical costs to cover expenses.

Aura Dinamica continues its exploration into hypnotic, wide angle Techno with a dense eight track missive from Italian producer Matteo Ghiringhelli’s new project Atoloi. In equal parts subdued & transcendental, the album pairs intricate, polyrhythmic drum work with carefully executed and gently undulating atmospheric motifs to generate a moving and immersive listening experience.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — a haunted city. The dead look out from the bullet holes which scar the public squares and back streets, presided over by the monumental ruin of the Holiday Inn, overlooking the city from its seafront cathedra.

Broken Britain Cassettes advances its World Service campaign eastward with an anatopic release from Frenchman Couronne de Merde, who became preoccupied by the Lebanese Civil War after repeated visits to Beirut. Recorded over a week in Paris, these tracks are an exorcism of the ghosts who followed him back.

Spectral voices lurk behind the shell-shocked synths and an urgent battery of percussion. Proceedings move forward and backwards in time - at once observing the event and recalling it afterward. Disparate scenes and incidents are conflated in a trans-historical bloodbath, underscored by a sorrowful ambience which longs for meaning in Sacrifice.

اتمنى لو ان الریاح .Couronne de Merde casts an unflinching gaze at theocratic and political contradictions is a poetic documentation and dramatisation of a modern conflict, this late iteration of ancient تجلي الرماد struggles between Religion and Secularity, Christianity and Islam, Dominance and Freedom.

This release is part of special double vinyl pack, sold separately.
Drone slow techno and 4x4 experiments by the owners of the label, F-on and Urtzi.

KRAMP is the solo project of Stijn Wybouw, a young artist involved in numerous visual and musical projects that often overlap and which share an unflinchingly honest approach, as well as penchant for crimson hues. As KRAMP, Wybouw assumes a red-faced identity to unleash raw machinations that take on ceremonial underpinnings through coarse compositions, murky drones, and warped vocalizations, all churned through the marshy fuzz of various tape recorders. After a slew of self-releases, KRAMP’s first wax outing
remains bound to a DIY ethos reminiscent of early 2000s noise and freakfolk undercurrents. On Nervous Rattles, the core is shaped by the original tapes themselves, their materiality evident through the process of flipping, tampering, layering and collaging, resulting in muddled interweaving textures that form a deranged tapestry of a near-ritualistic order. Chanting, breathing, moaning, howling and other bodily elements enter into a free-form dialogue with an indiscriminate array of instruments to create an open-ended, hypnotically shifting structure. A return to primordial zones, hearkening to the ungraspable eeriness of something both
familiar and mystifying.

Already a renowned live band on the London gig circuit, Lunch Money Life make apocalypse music, impossible to categorise, rich in texture, immersing the listener in a world of disgust and yearning. Their debut album 'Immersion Chamber' is the perfect embodiment of that. Full of foreboding energy, restless beats and agitated noise: it's mardy electronics married with tense jazz-tinged and combative drumming.

Lunch Money Life are Stewart Hughes (drums) Sean Keating (guitar) Luke Mills-Pettigrew (bass) Jack Martin (electronics/trombone) Spencer Martin (electronics/saxophone). A few years ago, Spencer wrote to 50 churches in East London looking for a job as an organist - one responded, All Saints Haggerston, where he still plays every Sunday. In a city where traditional rehearsal is near unaffordable, this was a lifeline for the band during its early, experimental period. It is the results of this period that make up 'Immersion Chamber'.

The band initially featured 10 members, a loose collective now (somewhat) sharpened ahead of album release, as documented in an electric Boiler Room set at the end of 2019.

Bubbling on the fringes of the London music scene for years, between them creating & sculpting Church of Sound, Total Refreshment Centre, Touching Bass & Tiff’s Joints. In the wake of 2018’s sold-out collaboration with Jamaican outfit Equiknoxx - Living3000 EP - the group has released lunchmoneylife STYLES™, a label compilation in the form of a cereal box, and Unlimited Ice Cream Palace EP on Kaya Kaya Records, featuring remixes by King Knut and Captain Terence McDonagh.

The album is coming out via Scenic Route. A label that started in October 2019 after beginning life as a regular south London party. Previous releases include Desert Sound Colony: expect more releases, parties and, in their own words, "there'll be a melancholic and introspective thread running through everything we release".

Stewart Hughes - drums
Sean Keating - guitar
Luke Mills-Pettigrew - bass
Jack Martin - electronics / trombone
Spencer Martin - electronics / saxophone

Mixed by Danalogue the Conqueror
Mastered by Frank Merritt
Artwork by Aurelie Michaud

Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek needs no introduction - a hugely prolific electronic experimenter who has recorded for labels such as Type, Digitalis, Dekorder, Western Vinyl, and many many more, Where To Now Records are truly humbled to handle his latest collaborative work ‘Oehoe’. Produced in collaboration with viola / violinist Anne Bakker, a classically trained solo artist in her own right, and currently performing strings as part of Agnes Obel’s band, Machinefabriek here has sown a landscape of Anne’s raw violin, viola, and vocal improvisations into a stirring body of work which merges tradition, experimentation, and whimsical curiosity to create a distinctively unique album which is both deeply moving and playfully dissonant in equal measure.

Given that Anne’s improvised vocals are wordless throughout, it is to Rutger’s absolute credit that he has assembled and transcended these intonations to often devastating emotional effect. Anne’s vocal experiments exude a classical polyphonic antiquity, they lushly hover above her own Reichian minimalist string arrangements, and Machinefabriek’s deeply brooding, cacophonic synthesized soundscapes. Across these 10 pieces we delve into a world which seamlessly moves between a state of harmonious contentment; or a very murky calm, to moments of lively ecstasy, and deep deep down to a vast and brooding melancholy.

Anthems for misty trottoirs and empty clubs.

Milan W's new lp is here and it sounds like a comedown-classic which is way too funky to be an ambient record and has the power to cut as deep as any decent delta blues album.

His early nineties exotica creeps up on you in a good way. These sounds let your melted brain walk towards every light you can find in that dark tunnel. Every jam on this lp is well constructed and a bit more complex then usual. No worries, tracks are moving with their own elegant logic. Excess is trimmed away and the crispy rhythm programming is pulling you deeper and deeper into the melodic fog of heavenly layered synths. A certain songlike chemistry is never far away in these jams.

Sweet memories of early Warp-classics and Rephlex good old freshness come to mind (think early Autechre, Bochum Welt,...). The feel is less krauty and much more UK but definitely Milan’s. Digesting the old into something completely fresh. Ghosts of new beat are lingering on. Slowly but clearly Milan W slips away from the bar towards the floor. The groove is more uptempo and these tracks are built to make you move in both ways. You can definitely start smelling the club in here. Smooth but raw and pretty far from any big room stylistics. Ocean-dwelling atmosphere included.

Crystalline, surging IDM with a modern UK techno sensibility', upcoming Brighton-based producer qgb presents his debut LP 'Hornets' via his own Present Tense imprint.Produced over a two-year period, the album glides with lucidity between eight tracks of shimmering ambience and crisp polyrhythmic glitches. The title itself referring to poetic connections between the micro-world of insects and the intricate sound design/aesthetic of qgb's music. Throughout the record a crossbreed of UK techno influences emerge, blending approaches from 90's stalwarts (Autechre, Cristian Vogel and Mosquito Records) with the stylistic-leanings of more contemporary labels (e.g. Hessle Audio and Livity Sound). Aoki Takamasa, Alva Noto and Team Doyobi are also cited as inspirations. In adherence with the album concept, it takes form in a limited run of 100 custom-built USB sticks frozen in synthetic amber designed by designer Samuel Illife.

Produced in the beginning of 2019 in Huehuetenango(Guatemala) and final mix down and additional production in spring 2019 in Verona(Italy), the 2x12" LP draws on the project's roots in order to locate itself in the modern day. string of club bangers combined with convulsive breaks and bleepy motifs dive into electro-acid-wave. The 10 tracks includes a collaboration with 80s italian new wave band Victola. Victrola is the duo of Antonio "Eze" Cuscinà and Carlo Smeriglio from Messina, Italy. The band formed in 1979 but shortly thereafter relocated to Florence take part in a rich musical scene alongside Neon, Pankow, Alexander Robotnick, and Diaframma. Since the launch of his imprint Istheway in 2015, Verona-based producer Omar Contri aka Shinoby has laid the foundations to a fruitful body of work that defies categories and easy classification.

Soviet Space Research Institute (SSRI) is a musical scheme led by Vladimiros Peilivanidis under the moniker Heinz Kammler. Similar to other HK by-products such as ITPDWIP (Instant Teleportation Process Detected While In Progress), SSRI is influenced by early Soviet and Western electronix of the likes of Detroit, Bristol, Munich, and St. Petersburg.

ARPA Spatial Industries is a fictional exotic tech R&D firm operating from 2036. The SSR Institute is exploring the cosmic endeavours of ARPA S.I. as presented through a series of public commercials.

In this episode, we cover three particular commercials released between April and September 2036.

“ Xerum 525 “
A marvelous piece of exotic chemistry, Xerum 525 is an artificial compound developed by ARPA Industries in association with Bend Systems, the only company run entirely by Homos and not Digital Twins, or Self-Centered Intelligence.
While its source genetic code is blurry, speculations suggest that Xerum 525 originates from a combination of research conducted between the Hermetic and the Nazi eras.

In addition, it is yet unknown how this compound is being utilized by the tech giant, although most schematics, algorithms and patent filings subjecting Xerum 525 involve some sort of timestamp mutation protocols, hence Bend Systems is involved, a legal entity known to be tackling with molecular dispatch technology distributed through time “checkpoints”.

“ ARPA Interceptor ”
One of the most controversial spacecraft developments of this year was the proposed ARPA Interceptor blueprint, designed by the award- winning space- dynamics engineer Alexei Cherepanov.

Dubbed as the first commercial one-seater spacecraft, the ARPA interceptor is capable of performing a full cycle around our solar system in less than 11 earth- days and with only a single charge of its graphene- powered cells.
While the Interceptor is designed for those willing to pay the extra mile in order to enjoy private space rides, it is said that the autonomous aircraft will be able to intercommunicate with various ARPA stations all over the solar system, essentially providing metrics every time an Interceptor is at use by its owner.

“ A black cat’s journey to the other side ”
The initial propagation material is showcasing the first successful instant teleportation process as detected by the SSRI observatory. In this case, ARPA managed to transfer the physical representation of a black lab cat called “Pierrot” to one of ARPA’s MAS1-mission stations on Mars.

The technique used in the successful operation involved photonic technology, quantum entanglement principles and molecular-scale 3D printers.

Furthermore, the operation was a joint effort between ARPA, the space logistics giant Hermes 3 (H3 Interstellar), and Harvester Inc., a leading mining venture operating independently from Mars and the first legal entity run entirely by machines.

Additional telecommunications infrastructure was provided by Orion Industries, the company behind the popular TAF-1S smart hand-held device.

While critics suggested that the incident cannot be confirmed as “teleportation” since in essence the original subject was scanned, erased from existence, and reprinted on ‘the other side of the line’, adding that such a scenario holds bioethical concerns about whether we’re really transferring the real thing, or we create an identical replica, ARPA cits that this is the first step towards near- instant physical, digital, and biological data transfer over extraterrestrial distances.

“ Cold Summer ”
This is not an ode to the Aussies enjoying sunny beaches during December, but an audible set of frequencies tailored to transmit a Cold Summer Vibe on Mars’ capital Cydonia.

During the six-month long summer on the red planet, Synths enjoy the hills of the Southern hemisphere where temperatures can remind somewhat of planet Gaia (former Earth). The Sun is on a heating spree, cleaving the planet with gold-red rays of thermal radiation.

At that period of the year, the hills are a popular destination for romantic engagements, and hard-resets. Additionally, the hills are considered a must experience while on Mars for all interstellar intelligence.

Collaborative work from Wilted Woman and Christoph De Babalon.

Instrumental music is supposed to be asemantic and yet a rich language of rhetorical gestures has grown up around it.
None of them may have a specific meaning but they easily lead the listener towards an emotion, a sensation, an embryonic story. Does any of this mean that music is abstract Or does it, to the contrary, mean that music tells a story There is no abstraction without a story. Is there a story without an abstraction The composition on this album, is it a radio play Tropa Macaca = André Abel and Joana da Conceição

Check out their earlier albums, they're just as great.

This album is presented in collaboration with Funclab Records. Turenne collected tracks from his past and present, combining them into a spacey mix of samples that bounce between Deep House and Power House with a hint of Ambient. You can spot the tender heart in the gloomy synths, reaching its highest with the last track where he used his sister’s sampled voice.

After having released an initial set of smoked-out grooves, Agonis shifts focus towards the nerve tingling aspects of his craft. On "Neutropia", Agonis' first full-length effort, the artist devotes his attention to the outer rim, shedding all earthbound notions in the process. Listeners are presented with 50 minutes of lysergic experimentation, effortlessly gliding between cerebral rhythms and more forceful frequencies.

one per customer - limited to 150 copies on black vinyl

CiM returns to Delsin with a nine track LP crafted out of his personal Amiga archives. Simon Walley started off in the early 90s trying to write Amiga demo scene music. Influenced and inspired by the blossoming techno electronica sounds in the UK around that time, he tried to replicate those sounds via old school tracker techniques. Learning through ripping modules by Romeo Knight, Audiomonster, Firefox and Mantronix from demo disks, and writing/re-writing in Protracker resulted in a unique style, creating fresh clashing beats out of tweaked Amiga samples. A 386 PC that drifted in tempo was sync'd by ear to add pads and melodies that the MIDI-less Amiga couldn't generate. Recording most of it on the fly, fooling around in Protracker and leaving all mistakes in and un-edited. All tracks written between '96-98.

For their upcoming album TRIP (their first trio album since 2017) Elektro Guzzi return to their core competence of creating driving techno on the spot. Through their impulsiv interplay and the heavy use of effect circuits they create an energetic and unique form of dance music. More directly than ever before, all tracks on this album capture Elektro Guzzi's live sound and energy.
TRIP will be the first vinyl release on their very own Palazzo imprint and it will be the purest
Elektro Guzzi record so far.

Alterazione presents a critical statement – distinguished by its technical execution and breathtaking artistry. The album itself is a cathedral of sound, each cavernous chamber an exploration of space and consciousness. Presented in four movements (one track per side), altogether they extend as a transportive experience of evolution for the listener.

Iniziazione – a steady departure that unfurls like the opening of a portal; a process of molecular transfiguration commences. Panoramic landscapes begin to stretch wide, glistening with an exotic beauty, before the shamanic incantations of Rituale draws things deeper. Pulsating rotations push through the next phase of transformation, now drenched in hyperspace white-noise. The procedure continues through the quiet ethereal orbit of Metamorfosi, before finishing with the three-part Evocazione/Contatto/Risveglio; uplifting synth motifs drive forward with optimism, before fading back into the great expanse.

Alterazione is both cerebral and meditative, and one cannot help but be pulled at the core by its potency.

Pelvis and Burning Rose Records present the debut 12” from producer and vocalist Purient. Her voice floats over tough production on three original tracks, pushing from an icy cool to blistering heat.
It’s page one for Purient, and exceptional remixes from Eartheater and Varg²™ further pull the curtain back on her expanded universe.

While meditating on the concept of our next album, we listened to the soundtracks of our favorite movies and dreamed of composing our music for the films. What could the film be like, what would be the story, what would be the idea? What would we like to say this time? 
 And one day such work appeared and suddenly for us, it was not a movie. The book “Star Corsair” by Ukrainian science fiction writer, philosopher, and dissident Oles’ Berdnyk emerged from our distant memories. We even remembered the original cover of the old edition of 1971, a copy of which was immediately found, as if sanctifying our idea and adding a touch of eternity to the process. We decided to read the book again and right after that make our soundtrack to it. 
 

 
 We began to dive. And it immediately became clear that in the case of Berdnyk it is impossible only to read his works without reading about his life. Therefore, the reading of “Star Corsair” and its sequel “Kamerton Dazhboga” turned into an in-depth study of a unique phenomenon in the Ukrainian spiritual, art, and political space – Oles’ Berdnyk.
 
 From the first pages, the book resonated as much as possible with our ideas about true freedom and personal development. An incredible concentration of powerful ideas, subtly set on multilevel spirals of the modeled future intersected with the myth-created past, in projections of bright explosions and degradations of societies and civilizations, in the unconditional possibility of impossible revolutions and eternal deep struggle with systems, in the fire and explosions of liberation ignited by the freethinkers. 
 
 “Star Corsair” naturally intersected with our feelings and understanding of the interdependence of personal development and inner freedom, with the vision of the world around us and the direct action. It naturally complemented our vision of how, through the inner realization, we can contribute to the implementation of freedom, and then live it in our own lives.
 
 And so, this album became not only music for the novel, but also our reflection of the work, observation of our own transformation in the process, and what new ideas and vectors we will formulate for ourselves and offer to those who want to listen to the album.

Asyncro presents the second release of the series - a collection of tracks produced by OL between 2017 & 2020. In addition to solo works the record includes collaborations with Sensational, Flaty and Micxail. These interactions emphasize the author's interest in communicating with other artists through the music recording process. "Wildlife Processing" is an archive of compositions reflecting OL's trajectory and personal vision of electronic music over the past years.

With this collection of deeply personal tracks, I wanted to reconnect to my inner emotions and to my love of melody, showing my most introspective and passionate side. Locking myself away in my studio, surrounded by vintage analog machines and acoustic instruments, my desire was to create a late night journey of contemplative experiences in music.

Drifting away from the harder, dancefloor oriented sound, this concept album reveals a thoughtful observation on the state of our world today and on these times of turmoil and uncertainty, ending with a positive message of hope and peacefulness".

Presenting 'Envelope'. Album written, produced & mixed by Milan W. and pressed on 180g vinyl, by Ekster. Coming out on the 6th of June 2018, with foil-stamped cover-drawing by Gerard Herman. Mastered & cut by Helmut Erler at Dubplates & Mastering.
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Milan W (AKA Milan Warmoeskerken) is an Antwerp-based musician. In 2015 he released the Slo Mo cassette, on local label JJ Funhouse. The Intact LP a year later. Compositions constructed from gentle, yet persistent, rhythms. Intricately textured downtempo echoes. Brain-dancing, rather than four-to-the-floor raving. 2017`s split with Ekolalis, for The Hague`s BAKK, made clear the direction Milan`s headed in. His contribution being a seventeen minute float. The kick largely removed. The textures cut-up, expanded and magnified. Envelope, for Ekster, builds on this work.

The harlequin turns the handle. The contraption sucks in air, and breathes. Blows out tone poems. Wordless ballads that soundtrack enchanted scenarios. Issues forth magic. A sorcerer`s apprentice casting its spell. Animating the inanimate. To everything a life. Sets the frozen fluttering. Pirouetting in red shoes. Illuminates what was dark. Astma sings a Gamelan lullaby. Summons comforting angels to a post-Industrial landscape. Glaasjes has Jazz ghosts inhabit an empty bar room. Spirits stealing excuse-me`s under its deserted spot. In Limbo amplifies their whispers. Lead soldiers court jewellery-box ballerinas behind shuttered shop fronts. On Heraldic Snippets, a tin infantry marches. Ten thousand men up to the top, and back down again. Keys make-believing that they are massed brass and fife.

The bellows pump, and the pipes all the while wheezing. An automaton philharmonic at the bidding of a steam-punk master. Analogue and digital. Clockwork and glitch. Malady finds sounds isolated, extrapolated, mutated. Orchestral`s organ-grinder moves with urgency, and alchemy. Spinning straw into gold. Snare rolls become bubbling mercury. Metallic, yet fluid. Racing at the speed of flight and escape. Slope is the music of water chasing through crystal caves. Slow Runner, a funeral crawl. Shoved into motion by a drama of strings remembered.
Like the charismatic Rat-Catcher of Hamelin, the harlequin turns the handle, and we bang the cup.

Summer was conceived as an entry point for Sonae to access and wrestle with difficult themes, to engage with them authentically, artfully, personally. It was also the starting point for a collaborative audio-visual project with video artist Jennifer Trees (the confronting multimedia installation that premiers in September 2021 at Stadtgarten, Cologne).

Summer articulates these ideas using the unique musical and sonic language that Sonae has been developing across previous releases. The expressive textures and tender melodics of 2015’s Far Away is Right Around the Corner; the atmospheric noise and brute unease of 2018’s I Started Wearing Black; the vicious edges of her 2019 remix-tape Music For People Who Shave Their Heads. Summer is haunted by blistered cellos and spectral string drones, the elegant and emotive movement around diatonic harmonies that echo the classicism and bucolic themes of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (1775). Like Vivaldi, Sonae’s work is programmatic, presenting a progressive, intensifying narrative and suggesting aural phenomena of the natural world - buzzing insects, breaking rocks, waves crashing, dust and heat rising - and characterising the seasonal spirit as capricious, volatile and punishing. In these ways, Summer is related to pastoral traditions of European classicism, evoking the aura of doomed and dust-blown gothic grandiosity. It also has feet firmly planted within the lean, sound worlds of underground techno - pulsating four-on-the-floor beats with deep, vibrational sine-wave sub kicks; elegantly bleak, distorted atmospherics that straddle the uncanny space between corrosion and euphoria. The result is a visceral and poetic listening experience. Original, highly affecting, fully engaging body, mind and soul. (…)

Sonae’s music evokes imagination, provokes emotion, and disrupts and defies expectations. She explores the edges and intensities of experience, creating audible and embodied sensations that suggest the physical, atmospheric, and psychological effects of global warming on a living organism. We feel the fatigue, the slowness, sweatiness, dizziness, the sensations of uncomfortable warmth and burning; the atmospheres are hazy, dark and heavy, articulations are brutish and tactile, crunchy and sharp; there is restlessness and resignation, desolation and awe.

Summer is not a warning. It is not an explanation or an argument. It offers no answers. Summer simply holds up a mirror and asks us to experience and behold both the beauty and the brutality of our present reality. It is a work of protest, grief and hope, and it functions as a space for the listener to reckon with these truths and sensations for themselves. (Leah Kardos, London, June 2021)

Sonae (Sonia Güttler) is a German electronic producer and DJ, based in Cologne. Her acclaimed debut album was released in 2015 with Monika Enterprise (Berlin) followed on the same label with her second album in 2018 : ‘’I Started Wearing Black’’. Her Third album ‘’Music For People Who Shave Their Heads’’ has been released in 2019 with bit-phalanx (London).
Sonae plays live solo and with the label collective Monika Werkstatt at places like Institut Für Zukunft (Leipzig), Meakusma Festival (Eupen), Ausland (Berlin), Pop Kultur Festival (Berlin), Fusion Festival (Germany), Uh-Fest (Budapest), Cafe Oto (London), 23rpm Festival (London) The Cube (Bristol) and more on the same bill with Squarepusher, Plaid, Darkstar, Kyoka, Frank Bretschneider, Tim Exile.

Grey Marbled Vinyl

VARIÁT is the new experimental metal one-man band of Ukrainian artist Dmytro Fedorenko. Through dissonant noise poetry, corrosive synthesis, and subtle seeds of interiority and folk song, VARIÁT creates a sound world of austere urban psychedelia, invoking themes of primitivism and mysticism within the volatile currents of a contemporary digital era.

Conceived in 2020 as a provocative creative outlet, VARIÁT is founded on ideas of transgression, reinvention, and liberation, the consequence of observing prescribed artistic boundaries and pursuing new depths of aesthetic freedom. The project began as an exploration of new recording techniques: metallic materials used as percussion and channelled through blown amps, toms played with a hammer, drilled cymbals, raw, dimensional textures produced from found objects.

For the project’s debut album ‘I Can See Everything From Here’ a library of recordings rooted in musique concrète initiated countless sessions of seismic, discordant guitar noise and overloaded detonations of low end. Synthesizers calibrated and treated to sound like traditional instrumentation, rhythms of deluge and disarray. Compositions constructed with an intent to preserve their original modality; the chaotic spark of their inception.

The artwork created for ‘I Can See Everything From Here’ is an aquarelle (watercolour) painting, an ink-based projection which mirrors the sound of the album with dense, fragmentary shades of black and extensive tendrils of detail. A microcosmic depiction of the graphic power that defines ‘I Can See Everything From Here’.

Varuna return to amenthia recordings with a fresh batch of their trademark hypno trips. Slow paced syncopated techno energy entangled in their iconic mystical dreaminess.

It’s been a decade since Andy Stott released ‘Passed Me By’, a radical re-imagining of dance music as an expression of “physical and spiritual exhaustion” (Pitchfork). What followed was a process of rapid remodelling: ‘We Stay Together’ (2011 / slow and fucked,
for the club), ‘Luxury Problems’ (2012 / greyscale romance), ‘Faith In Strangers’ (2014 / destroyed love songs), ’Too Many Voices’ (2016 / 4th world Triton shimmers) and ‘It Should Be Us’ (2019 / the club, collapsed) - a run of releases that gradually untangled complex ideas into a singular, chaotic body of work - somewhere between sound-art,
techno and pop.
In early 2020 - with a new album almost done and an offer to produce for a completely mainstream artist on the table - personal upheaval brought everything to a sudden standstill. Months of withdrawal eventually triggered renewed curiosity, a different approach. Stott began to record hours of raw material; slow horns, sibilance, delayed
drums, wondering flutes - whatever, whenever. And although software made it possible to iron out every kink and knot, Stott tirelessly looked for them - in pursuit of a sound that was human in all its awkward asymmetry.
With vocals recorded by Alison Skidmore, the album was finally completed late in the year - taking on a completely different shape. Its songs were desolate, melancholy, defiant, beautiful - often all at once. The sounds echoed music around Stott during those months:
Prince, Gavin Bryars, A.R. Kane, Bohren & der Club of Gore, Robert Turman, Cindy Lee, Leila, Catherine Christer Hennix, Junior Boys, László Hortobágyi, Nídia, Prefab Sprout - the unusual, the familiar.
And echoing that mix of new and old, each of the songs on ’Never The Right Time’ seem woven from the same thread despite following different trajectories; from the lovelorn shimmer of opener ‘Away not gone’, to the clattering linndrum pop of ‘The beginning’, through ‘Answers’ angular club haze, and the city-at-night end-credits ‘Hard to Tell’. These are songs fuelled by nostalgia and soul searching, but all hold true to a vision of music making as a form of renewal and reinvention.
A 10 year cycle, complete.

due.sound introduces the first catalog of the label releasing an EP by NDR including remixes from Neel and Antonio De Angelis.

Repressed!

Nowadays family member Love Letters delivers the next record on Mister Saturday Night records. The Vermont native turned New Yorker delivers a beautiful 5 track release that meanders effortlessly from peak time banger to delicate experimental passages to off kilter poly rhythms. A thoroughly enjoyable listening experience from start to end and the sound of an artist finding their voice and perfecting their craft.

The Oystercatcher is the first collaborative LP from Cucina Povera (Maria Rossi) and ELS (Edward Simpson)

Recorded in London over two days, hours' worth of improvisations have been edited down to form these six tracks.

A fragile interplay is at work between Maria's drifting vocals and the ominous churn of Edward's modular synth. Each sonic element takes a turn at leading the way.

The opening track 'Mantle' is formed from sparse, monolithic electronics, woven gently with a thread of vocals. In the closing track 'Eon' Maria's voice shepherds spontaneous bursts of sounds, almost Rave-like if order were imposed, through 15 minutes of turmoil and resplendent until the end.

Maria's vocals make their own trails amongst the noise, bringing to mind the the exploratory language from Ursula K. Le Guin's album 'Music and Poetry from the Kesh', recalling the same understated mystery.

The overall effect of this collaboration is a completely unique creation albeit within a recognisable lineage of predecessors.

The artwork reflects the vision of these two artists, collaged together. Both images are from a trip to Helsinki. Edward's photograph of Tulips caught after dark are reviled by a flash. Maria's seemingly abstract drawing is a graphite rubbing taken from a granite slab of a pavement somewhere in Kallio. Together the two images represent two different methods for capturing a city's haptic landscape.

The album moves with a feeling of transience, which is no surprise given that the idea to collaborate was formed in Helsinki, realised in London and edited together in Rotterdam.

The Oystercatcher tells a fragile tale, one that spins out into the unknown. A cold union of voice and machine, still tentative and probing, learning to co-exist. A kind of fundamental shift whereby shared moments have been turned to sound.

The Oystercatcher is a bird that can freely travel between the earth, sea and sky. The motif is taken from a Tove Jansson short story. A dead bird washes ashore, two different versions of events are presented to how the bird came to die. The album feels like two different stories being presented on top of one another but ultimately coming to the same tragic conclusion.

Cucina Povera is Maria Rossi - Vocals
ELS is Edward Simpson - Synthesisers
Recorded in London across two days during the Summer of 2019
Mastered by Russell Haswell