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Mort Garson’s road to cool cultural caché and the sublimity of Plantasia meant a decades’ long journey through an underworld of sophisticated, international, string-laced dreck (i.e., your great-grandparents’ record collection) to arrive at Music from Patch Cord Productions, this set of queasy-listening you now hold.

Music from Patch Cord Productions shows that Garson’s knack was to exist in both worlds, super-commercial and waaay out. He cut delirious minute-long blasts for commercials (as to whether or not they were actually ever aired remains unknown) and spacecraft-hovering études. Were there really account managers out there in the early ’70s that gave the greenlight to these commercial compositions which seemed to anticipate everyone from John Carpenter to Suicide? What were these campaigns actually for, Soylent Green? Regardless, Mort’s jingle work laid the groundwork for the future. As Robert Moog himself noted: “The jingles were important because they domesticated the sound.” Via Garson’s wizardry, the synthesizer transcended novelty to ubiquity and dominance.

Other curios and questions abound. How did Garson’s arrangement work for Arthur Prysock’s satiny body worship album This Is My Beloved transmogrify into the body-snatcher pulses of “This is My Beloved”? Are the two pieces even related? What is the IATA code for the airport of “Realizations of an Aeropolis”? What denomination is the “Cathedral of Pleasure”? If “Son of Blob” sounds like a hallucinatory melted ice cream truck theme, what on earth does Blob’s father sound like? Every sound wrangled out of that Moog by Garson pushes things further and further out.

Of course, these are all questions that may never get answers, as Garson wasn’t the most organized modern day composer, busy as he was conjuring strange new realms with his circuit boards and synths. He worked and wrote right up until his death in 2008, his daughter and Sacred Bones still going through all of the material left behind. He wouldn’t live to see it, but his renaissance was just around the corner, the seeds that had been scattered in record bins around the world suddenly coming to bear fruit. Take a bite!

What were the skies like when you were young? These days, asking that question likely conjures disappointment in its answer. Dreams of possibility hardened by certainty. Hopes and prayers jet-cooled to brittle acquiescence. A lingering feeling that this is not what we asked for, not what we worked towards. Promises of the future replaced by sins of the father. It is in this particular light that the latest work, "Moscels," by Iranian artist and musician Ata Ebtekar, also known as Sote, arrives on Opal Tapes, British label for the sonically curious and aurally disaffected. Contrary to potential expectation, it features no rhythmic exhortations, no colloidal outbursts, and no acoustic instrumentation of any kind. Synthesized entirely from physical models and oscillators, whose union gives the record its name, "Moscels" is a haunting, beautiful, and auspicious listen. None of Ebtekar's work comes necessarily easy to the listener, but "Moscels" is suffused with a sense of wonder almost childlike in quality, and so it beckons kindly. In acertain sense, electronic music is a kind of magic, isn't it? And this is the sound of a magician at work. Dive into the sound of an otherworld, so close yet so far, where dreaming is less sweet than being, and where all that is possible remains still at hand.

In the album's music we find vintage influences, recalling the faded charm of 70s erotica, warm tones also rooted in psychedelia, disco, yéyé, and French chanson. The Montreal trio Le Couleur, created by Laurence Giroux-Do (vocals), Patrick Gosselin (bass), and Steeven Chouinard (drums), delivers rich and irresistibly danceable performances. Le Couleur polished their sound until it shined as bright as the late Studio 54's spotlights with EPs Voyage Love (2013) and Dolce Désir (2015), and then P.O.P. (2016), their critically acclaimed debut album. Thanks to precious advice from Giorgio Moroder, with whom the band had the opportunity of sharing the stage, Le Couleur recorded their new album adopting a completely different approach. Concorde takes its name from the legendary Franco-British airplane from 1965, nicknamed the "beautiful white bird" for its sleek and modern design. This avant-garde project that ended in tragedy has always held a certain fascination for Laurence Giroux-Do ; a deadly "crash" that inspired in her a sense of macabre sensuality. In the album's music we find vintage influences, recalling the faded charm of 70s erotica, warm tones also rooted in psychedelia, disco, yéyé, and French chanson.

DOWNFALL is the first album under the name SAITO created by Lena Saito, aka Galcid, and produced by accomplished analog synthesizer guru, Hisashi Saito, aka Lena’s husband. Having descended from a long line of Japanese sword-smiths, the industrial sound of smashing steel is embedded in Lena’s DNA and reflected in her music, however there are also refined, hypnotic tones showing a side with more finesse. The music itself is not scored and is predominantly improvised. Words and vocals are ad libbed as well. Sometimes the machines respond as if through telekinesis, altogether emitting a sound which can be categorized somewhere in the range between modern experimental dance music and something possibly making more sense to enlightened minds a thousand years in the future.




There is a new addition to the forge of talents of Mille Plateaux, a Japanese musician by the name of Saito whose album has been released on the label under the title of Downfall. After a whole series of releases under the signature tag clicks & cuts, there comes out a work, much more suited for a dance hall, that is different in terms of the genre from everything that has been published so far.
Like a bucket of ice-cold water poured over the head, erratic agressive hardcore rhythms pour all over the audience in the first track, interrupted only by grinding noises and minimalistic technogenic clicks.
Downfall won't fail to infect even the most experienced music connaisseur with its out-of-control energy, while offering a wide range of techniques: at times, robotic voices, one second long fragments of looped melodies and many other audio gimmicks.
Lena Saito (that is the author's name) is not afraid of conducting experiments in her chemical laboratory, freely mixing sound reagents without taking any precautions. It feels like, this new chemical substance, that she has been working on so thoroughly, contains quite a long list of ingredients, although its main component is the various rhythm breaks.
The synthesizer part of Red Hammer sounds in the best traditions of the acid style, and the rhythm section is akin to African tribal dances of the future. Downfall is absolutely unrelenting in its concept.
The melody of the composition Nucleosome is a little bit like the melancholic IDM of the 00s, finding itself secondary to the dominating, yet again convoluted rhythmical web meticulously woven by Saito.
This album can be definitely named as a big contender aspiring to start a new golden era of Mille Plateaux, and Saito as the hidden treasure of the label that can challenge even the veterans for the right to be the headliner.

Videosphere, the debut album by Kompakt’s latest signing, the London-based artist Lake Turner (aka Andrew Halford), swoons into focus with “The Sunbird”, a teasing drift of lilting, ambient tones, riding out a submerged piston-pulse rhythm. Across its brief 109 seconds, it manages to traverse evocative terrain – something mythopoetic, something both humble and grandiose, a glimpse of the other behind the sky’s curtain. “I wanted to conjure up something resembling an ancient ceremony or death procession,” Turner nods. “Like a hymn to the surroundings of a faraway hill.” It’s both sky-bound and earthen, a ritual incantation to call in the music of the spheres.

Turner was introduced to the Kompakt family by his sometime collaborator Yannis Philippakis of Foals. He’d previously made music in post-punk and indie groups Great Eskimo Hoax and Trophy Wife, but Videosphere is the first time he’s fully articulated his own vision of electronic music, aside from one limited lathe-cut 12”, 2018’s Prime Mover EP, on Algebra. The lush ambient-disco-techno dreams of Videosphere were constructed and completed in his London studio and at his parents’ arable and sheep farm in Worcestershire, which might help explain the hazy, unhurried pastoralism of the album.

“There was a slight bittersweetness in finishing the record (in Worcestershire) as my parents were in the middle of selling my childhood home,” he sighs, before quipping, “on the plus, I ended up shearing a lot of sheep over the summer.” A student of archaeology and ancient history, Turner is no doubt carefully attuned to the twisting cogs of history and memory, and it’s no surprise that Videosphere has a nostalgic, melancholic cast; much of its beauty rests in the way it tugs, gently, at the heart strings – see the tear-stained cheeks of the lush, dappled “Honeycomb”, or the sweetly sad electro-roundelay of “No Way Back Forever.”

It’s not all drift-dream hypnosis, though – Videosphere is very much grounded in the now. ““No Way Back Forever” is a nod to the linear nature of time,” Turner explains by way of example, “and the tipping point of the world climate crisis that scientists have now declared.” Jayne Powell’s vocals are sent spinning through the song, wound like candyfloss; she takes centre stage on the techno hymnal title track, too. Throughout, there’s a sense of forward movement, despite the life stasis we find ourselves collectively bound by in mid-2020; there’s also a yearning for the communal, for community, that’s captured in the album title, a nod to an object Turner encountered at London’s Geoffrey Museum, “a television set in the shape of a spaceman’s helmet from the 1970s.”

“The vision I loosely had was to make an electronic record that had a communal warmth and almost ceremonial or ritual feel. I wanted to examine the relationship of our archaic minds in the trappings of the modern world,” Turner concludes. “What the Videosphere also symbolizes for me is the oneness of humanity and community, prevailing.”
Eröffnet wird "Videosphere", das Debütalbum von Kompakts jüngstem Signing, dem in London ansässigen Künstler Lake Turner (alias Andrew Halford), mit "The Sunbird" - einem herausfordernden Strom aus Ambient Sounds, die zu schweben scheinen, um sich dann in einen subtilen, maschinellen Rhythmus zu verwandeln. In gerade mal 109 Sekunden gelingt es dem Stück, ein gewaltiges Terrain abzuschreiten - etwas Mythopoetisches, bescheiden und grandios zugleich, gibt uns eine Ahnung davon, was sich hinter dem Himmel verbirgt. "Ich wollte etwas heraufbeschwören, das einer alten Zeremonie oder Totenprozession ähnelt", sagt Turner, "wie eine Hymne an die Umgebung eines weit entfernten Hügels." Himmlisch und irdisch zugleich, eine rituelle Beschwörung von Sphärenmusik.

Der Kompakt Label-Familie wurde Turner von dessen zeitweiligen Mitarbeiter Yannis Philippakis (Foals) vorgestellt. Zuvor hatte er in den Post Punk- und Indie-Bands Great Eskimo Hoax und Trophy Wife gespielt. Bis auf eine limitierte lathe-cut 12", der "Prime Mover EP" auf Algebra von 2018, artikuliert Turner mit "Videosphere" zum ersten Mal seine eigene Vision von elektronischer Musik.

Die üppigen Ambient-Disco-Techno-Träume von "Videosphere" hat Turner in seinem Londoner Studio und auf der Schaffarm seiner Eltern in Worcestershire produziert, was den nebulösen, gemächlichen und beinahe pastoralen Charakter des Albums erklären könnte.

"Es gab einen bittersüßen Moment als ich mit der Platte (in Worcestershire) fertig geworden war, da meine Eltern gerade dabei waren, das Haus meiner Kindheit zu verkaufen", seufzt er, bevor er witzelt, "das Positive war, dass ich im Laufe des Sommers eine Menge Schafe geschoren habe". Als Student der Archäologie und der Geschichte des Altertums ist Turner zweifellos mit den sich unaufhörlich drehenden Rädern der Geschichte und der daran geknüpften Erinnerungen vertraut, und es ist keine Überraschung, dass "Videosphere" einen nostalgischen, melancholischen Einschlag hat; viel von seiner Schönheit liegt in der Art und Weise, wie es einem sanft ans Herz geht - die Tränen benetzten Wangen von "Honeycomb" oder der ambivalente Elektro-Reigen von "No Way Back Forever".

Trotz allem hypnotischen Driften und Träumen - Videosphere ist sehr stark im Jetzt verankert. "`No Way Back Forever`ist eine Anspielung auf die lineare Natur der Zeit", erklärt Turner beispielhaft, "und auf den Wendepunkt der globalen Klimakrise, den Wissenschaftler gerade ausgerufen haben". Jayne Powells Gesang wirbelt dabei wie Zuckerwatte durch den Song und steht auch im Mittelpunkt des technoid hymnischen Titelstücks. Überall ist ein Gefühl der Vorwärtsbewegung zu spüren, trotz der Stagnation, in der wir uns Mitte 2020 kollektiv befinden; trotzdem existiert eine Sehnsucht nach dem Gemeinsamen, nach Gemeinschaft, die im Albumtitel eingefangen ist - eine Referenz an ein Objekt, dem Turner im Londoner Geoffrey-Museum begegnete, "ein Fernsehgerät in Form eines Raumfahrerhelms aus den 1970er Jahren".

„Die lose Vision, die ich hatte, bestand darin, eine elektronische Platte zu machen, die eine soziale Wärme und eine fast zeremonielle oder rituelle Atmosphäre ausstrahlt. Ich wollte die Beziehung unseres archaischen Geistes in den Fallstricken der modernen Welt untersuchen", so Turner abschließend. "Was `Videosphere` für mich auch symbolisiert, ist die Einheit von Menschlichkeit und Gemeinschaft, die am Ende obsiegt".

Two years in the making, Future Ruins, TOM And His Computer’s debut album, will be released on Trentemøller’s In My Room label in October 20th. As a 20 year veteran of the Copenhagen music scene, Thomas Bertelsen has been releasing music under the sobriquet of TOM And His Computer for five years, merging the newest technologies with the old, while squeezing fresh sounds out of equipment that’s not only obsolete, sometimes it’s barely functioning at all. “I switch back and forth between the digital and the analog worlds. I’ll utilize old guitar pedals as well as the newest software,” says Thomas Bertelsen, producer behind TOM And His Computer. “It’s never about the gear, though, but rather finding that one little sound that can trigger an idea for an entire track.” Future Ruins was also co-produced and mixed by Trentemøller. While previous offerings have taken listeners to the outer boundaries of what can be considered “electronic music,” including nods to dark wave, dream pop, krautrock and modern psych rock, Future Ruins presents those influences in a new way and represents a great leap forward for the Copenhagen based producer.
The result is a genre-less collection of songs showcasing TOM’s obsession with propelling sounds of the past into the present, and future, combining noise and edginess with his “commitment to fresh ideas with a clear sense of melodies,” according to Clash Magazine. “My tastes are eclectic and I like to flirt with many different sub genres,” says TOM. “The aim was to combine various styles while trying to maintain a common denominator,” which committing to a full-length offered as an opportunity.

“Joe McPhee is a legend of modern music, which from the release of the classic "Nation Time" album almost 50 years ago has had an incredibly diverse career that's spanned a wide range of expressions, from jazz and improvised music to experimental and electronic free music. McPhee's life in music could basically be read as a map of leftfield music of our time, but after all these years he refuses to stand still or lock back with any sense of nostalgia.

After 30 years of making electronic music Lasse Marhaug is now synonymous with Norwegian noise music, with hundreds of releases and countless collaborations and projects to his name, including music for film, theatre and dance. In the last ten years he has also made a name as a producer for other artists, including Jenny Hval and Okkyung Lee.

McPhee and Marhaug has known each other since the early 2000s, but only in 2015 did they find time to record together as a duo. The result is "Harmonia Macrocosmica", an album that the two considers a science fiction inspired work. For McPhee it can be read in the linage of his 70s work with John Snyder, as well as collaborations with Pauline Oliveros and the Nihilist Spams Band. Marhaug of course is well versed in this field, but McPhee's sax and voice puts his electronics in a whole new perspective. The pair also found inspiration in early electronic music and vintage science fiction films, with McPhee describing going to the cinema in the 50s as a kid to see "Forbidden Planet" and being blown away by its electronic score as the start of a lifelong love of cosmic music.”

West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She's continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body's relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her most recent full-length, The Mosaic of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself. "I guess in one sentence, this album is my expression of love and appreciation for electricity," says Smith. While writing and recording, she embraced a daily practice of physical movement, passing electricity through her body and into motion, in ways reflecting her audio practice, which sends currents through modular synthesizers and into the air through speakers. Not a dancer by any traditional definition, she taught herself improvisatory movement realizing flexibility, strength, and unexpectedly, a "visual language" stemming from the human body and comprised of vibrational shapes. Understood as cymatics, as Smith says, "as a reference for how frequencies can be visualized," much like a mosaic. Smith describes her first encounters with this mosaic; "the inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other...My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday...into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself." As it has arrived, in a completed state, The Mosaic of Transformation is a holistic manifestation of embodied motions. Smith's signature textural curiosity that fans have grown to adore pivots naturally into a proprioceptive study of melody and timbre. Airy organ and voice interweave with burbling Buchla-spawned harmonic bubbles. "The Steady Heart" quivers to life, peppering blasts of wooden organ between winding vocal affirmations. As with a body, moving one portion requires a balance and counterbalance; here, subtle tonal twitchy signals fire in conjunction with coiling arias to create a mesmeric core. When the beat arrives at the midway mark, a swooping and jittery waltz, a sense of stasis in motion, a flow state, is sonically achieved. As soon as it syncs, it disappears back into the swirling ebbs of electric force. Other tracks stray into more ruminative physical realms. "Carrying Gravity" is built around string-like pads that expand and contract like a solar plexus, becoming taught and then loose. If the record could be summarized in a single movement, it is the 10-minute closing suite, a rapturous collage called "Expanding Electricity." Symphonic phrases establish the piece before washes of glittering electric peals and synthesized vibraphone helix into focus. Soon, Smith's voice grounds it all with an intuitive vocal hook, harmonized and augmented by concentric spirals of harp-and-horn-like sounds. Smith's music doesn't capture a specific emotion as much as it captures the joys of possessing a body, and the ability to, with devotion and a steady open heart, maneuver that vessel in space by way of electricity to euphoric degrees.

Caiphus Semenya, AKA Mr Letta Mbulu, is a South African legend, and Listen To The Wind, his iconic debut album, is simply a superb modern-soul/boogie album. It’s also incredibly rare, especially in good condition, so Be With is delighted to present this reissue.

Now a revered composer, musician, and arranger, Caiphus left apartheid South Africa in the 60s for self-imposed exile in Southern California together with his wife, Letta Mbulu. Settling in Los Angeles he started working with the likes of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba and other exiled and semi-exiled South african artists, as well as, of course, his wife Letta.

Caiphus also found himself working with and composing for a broad range of jazz and pop artists, including Lou Rawls, Nina Simone and Cannonball Adderley. His facility with both jazz and African forms served him well. His LA stay was also the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with Quincy Jones, the fruits of which can be tasted in Caiphus’s African compositions for the scores to Roots and Spielberg’s adaptation of The Color Purple.

Given his decades of work behind the scenes, it’s no surprise that it took until 1982 for Caiphus to get around to putting out the first album of his own. But all that experience shows. Listen To The Wind is a deeply impressive synthesis of early 80s US production and instrumentation together with his traditional South African musical roots.

It’s stylistically diverse but the ingredients are never diluted. There are elements of boogie, soul, funk and jazz, all shot through with pan-African flavour, and moving effortlessly from uptempo floor fillers to more meditative, slower soulful tracks. Produced by Caiphus himself, he makes full use of a stellar line up of session musicians including Nathan East, Michael Stanton, Sonny Burke and Paulinho DaCosta. And of course, there are Letta’s show-stopping vocals. To our ears, Listen To The Wind is just one big party, and lord knows we need that more than ever right now.

Opener “Angelina” is one of Caiphus’s most beloved tracks at Be With HQ. It’s a breezy, feel-good SA boogie-funk classic. Harmonic and horn heavy, it sounds as fresh today as it would’ve done in the early 80s. If this one doesn’t make you move, you may need your pulse taking. The drum breakdown alone, a little over halfway through, is sensational.

It’s followed by the gentle reggae lilt of “Play With Fire”. A real melodic slo-mo delight, carried by the tropical vibes and, above all else, by the extraordinary performance of Caiphus himself and his backing singers.

Closing out side one, the spectacular “Umoya” is driven by triumphant horns and slick bass. With its proto-Graceland vibes, we reckon Paul Simon must’ve been listening. Hard. Caiphus trades verses with the unmistakable tones of Letta, and it sounds divine. Yes, it’s as good as anything on Letta’s canonical In The Music… The Village Never Ends. A wide-eyed wonder, made for unity and togetherness, it’s all infectious, smiling faces for nearly nine minutes. But never mind nine, we could party to this for ninety minutes and “Umoya” would leave us re-energised for ninety more.

Elegantly firing up side two is perhaps the album’s best known track. “Without You” is a heavenly slice of modern soul, an end-of-nighter to end them all. Smooth strutting, disco-fied funk with that unmistakably South African sound, it’s just sublime, with those lyrics that keep coming back to smiling faces and community, “without You the sun won’t shine”. Big with the likes of Rush Hour’s Antal, this is aural perfection.

“Ziph’inkomo” is a soul-soothing, swooning epic. Gently building throughout, its final few minutes are genuinely stirring as the backing vocals and instrumentation swell. Jaw-dropping. The irresistible groove of frantic, percussive workout “Gumba Boogie” closes out what must surely be one of the greatest artistic statements of the 1980s. If his friend Quincy wasn’t feverishly taking notes for Thriller, then you could’ve fooled us.

With Simon Francis handling the mastering of this Be With edition, you know it sounds as fantastic as ever. The cover art, as breezy as the music, has been faithfully restored. All that’s missing is you.

Welcome to the curious world of Peter Graf York: a world full of city centre safaris and epic train journeys, Soviet cosmonauts and Oakland rappers, filtered synths and plucked mbiras. It's a wild ride inspired as much by Jamaican dub sorcery as by playful minimalism outta the Pacific Northwest.

Many of these tracks were composed on the hoof - literally en route across sections of the ever-reliable Deutsche Bahn network. As such, there’s a certain travellin-without-moving dynamic across this collection, capturing that cinematic feel of window frames flickering past graffiti'd signal exchanges, morphing into rolling hills and green forests. Expedition Bahn is the sound of ideas being set in motion, each track heralding the arrival of an uncanny destination. Blazed beats give way to acid-fuelled electro, and dub rhythms step aside for 4th world meditations as readily as sleepers on a train track.

We can leave the last word to heroic USSR cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who spent the final moments of his fateful re-entry giving the administration an earful of righteous proportions (regarding the technical failures of the spacecraft). Taking his place as the first martyr of space travel, Komarov accepted the Soyuz mission despite safety concerns, in order to protect the other cosmonauts. It's an attitude that echoes throughout PGY’s sonic universe - make the most of the trip you're on... ‘cause you never know just which way it will go.

Gear used: Tascam MIDISTUDIO 644, MPC1000, Roland JX-3P, MODE MACHINES DT200, Electro-Harmonix MEMORY BOY analog delay, Nord Drum 3P, MacBook Pro, Logic Pro 9

Two years after he strikingly entered the world stage with Iron, a luminous track with a truly iconic video - Woodkid released The Golden Age, his first ever album, crafted and shaped in the utmost secrecy during the year 2012. While some might have just let the media hype do its work, Woodkid also known as Yoann Lemoine, chose to reverse the rules of the game. Following the release of a second single Run Boy Run, which became a classic in a matter of weeks - with the accompanying video nominated at the prestigious
Grammy Award in 2013, Woodkid decided to bring out his first album. A record with incredible ambition for this young Frenchman who America was already crazy about, picking up the momentum for his rise. The Golden Age is an epic quest, a beautiful and surprising adventure. The foundations of the Woodkid staple are of course all on display : percussions, string and brass arrangements, piano, programming and - of course - this powerful and sensitive voice that delicately runs through the melodies with great magnitude. A few months after its release The Golden Age was certified Platinum and
Woodkid went on to collect the Prize for “Best Live New Act” at the French Music Awards on February 14th 2014. As a multi-talented artist, Woodkid thought out his project with all aspects in mind. Initially working as a video director for the greatest (Lana Del Rey,
Drake and Rihanna), he then directs his own videos and starts creating the visuals and stage-design for his own live performances.
Since then, this gifted all-rounder has continued to explore multiple paths. In 2014 he works alongside contemporary artist JR on an original piece commissioned by the New York City Ballet (JR creating and Woodkid producing the music), takes the artistic reins of Pharrell Williams’ live shows and co-writes an original soundtrack with Hans Zimmer.

In 2015, Nils Frahm performs the soundtrack that Woodkid wrote for a
documentary on Ellis Island, directed by JR with commentaries from Robert De Niro.

The same year, cinematographer Jonas Cuaron (creator of gravity) asks him to write the music for his feature film “Desierto” a gruelling thriller set in the Mexican-American desert. Woodkid comes up with a radical and organic piece halfway between sound-design and film score, released in April 2016. He is to this day one of the most sought-after artists, a visionary and altruistic creator whose modern and powerful body of work continues to shape itself with every new encounter.

Hoshina Anniversary returns to MUSAR Recordings under a new cloak, Shifting Gears.

Toyko's Hoshina Anniversary has risen to particular prominence in recent years with his self-titled brand of 'Watechno'. Stylistically fusing traditional Japanese instrumentation with Chicago and Detroit sensibilities, his works have found homes on ESP Institute, Young Marco's Safe Trip and Amsterdam-based MUSAR Recordings.

Landing on the latter, MUSAR, little over a year ago with 'Zangai' EP, Hoshina returns under a new cloak, Shifting Gears, to present 'Evil' EP.

Named after the 1975 'Gears' LP of jazz and hard bop organist, Johnny Hammond, the Shifting Gears moniker focuses heavily on principles of Jazz and raw musicianship, with a continued exploration of machine-reared club sounds. How the two can take shape as one.

Across 'Evil' EP, Hoshina's native culture remains, as heard on 'Miyatsukomaro', where traditional Japanese strings harmonise with crisp hats and jazz keys. Inspired by the early works of keyboardist and composer, Bob James, all is underpinned by intrinsic Chicago synth work.

A recurrent theme throughout, the Chicago vibe most notably takes hold on title track 'Evil'. An insidious
march, the floor-pummeling kick and shoulder-tickling toms marry seamlessly with dracula-esque chords and dizzying piano arrangements. Nodding to the mischievous bassist Jaco Pastorius of jazz fusion band, Weather Report.

Informed by the pacey creations of a revered duo, The Brecker Brothers and the 70's rock music that soundtracked Hoshina's youth, opener, 'Senor Senorita' wraps swathing reverb around a raucous melody and jiving percussion. Meanwhile, the seedy 'Syndicate' closes out amid eerie synth sneers and quirky, funk-flecked modulations.

Queried on his favourite word in the German language, Masayoshi Fujita will pick ‘getragen’ – without a sliver of hesitation. Further questioning will reveal that he loves the term’s semantic signifiers, its inherent sense of “expansive, deep, quiet and sombre.” And yet, ‘getragen’ leaves plenty of room for interpretation: depending on context, it might also indicate wearing apparel or the state of being carried – two more mundane interpretations that I would rather keep from him. Does Masayoshi’s own definition, however, apply to ‘Bird, Lake, Objects’? Only to a limited extent. Compared to previous Faitiche releases, ‘Bird, Lake, Objects’ is certainly the most ‘getragen’ of them all. Nevertheless, this is by far not the first association that comes to mind. From a distance, these tracks seem rather introspective, cautious even – and reflect the recording situation: deliberately pared down, reduced to a single microphone in space and a separate track for all other instruments, each movement and action is chronicled by the treacherous mike. This confronted me with some unexpected and unfamiliar problems. For example, we had to swap out the seating in the studio as my favoured chair had a characteristic creak. Other, external influences were proved our control: fire engine klaxons, street noise and footfall became part of the recordings and their improvisatory nature. Each movement required careful orchestration, fully aware of its irrevocable nature. Space itself was always present and an audible entity, except on ‘Stripped to RM’ (recorded without a microphone or vibraphone track). After extensive deliberations, we decided to forgo the vibes on this piece – a very similar version had already been released in 2008 (on the compilation ‘Enjoy The Silence’, Mule Electronic, 2008). Jan Jelinek, February 2010

2020 reboot for Detroit's legendary Metroplex.

The Label Say "Cologne based producer Bas Grossfeldt has crafted an outstanding release perfectly aligned with Juan Atkin’s brilliant Metroplex aesthetic. As a relatively new name in the scene, Bas Grossfeldt’s music sounds as if it were the results of decades of focused experience in the studio.

With a background in installation, choreography and performance art, Bas Grossfeldt is the artists alias to focus on the musical side of things. His deeply rooted interest in the relation of space and body is also translated into his music. The fusion of spaced-out textures, rhythmical distortions, cold waves of synthesis, and enough modern production prowess ensures a release saturated with innovation and abundant imagination. A rare release for the seminal Detroit label, which also represents Juan Atkins’ interest in the arts world and new, different approaches.

The exchange between the label head and the artist, initially came to life because internationally renown conceptual artist Mischa Kuball, knowing Juan from a joint project, sent him the demo of Bas Grossfeldt. Especially intrigued by the track „Lost In Translation“, Juan and Bas started exchanging, approaching the record as an „art project“ and a classical EP at the same time, for example leading into the cover being made by Bas Grossfeldt/Søren Siebel himself and including numerous hidden references to the sound.

Each track embraces an incredible array of sounds and styles, from soundscapes to mind-bending Techno – all equally as effective for the brain as the dancefloor.

“Lost In Translation” opens the release with a cinematic piece of electronica permeating with frozen emotion and melancholic soul. The beautiful track captures a foggy morning’s haze, the first chill of winter with only a gentle kick-drum keeping the cold from completely taking over. It is also accompanied with a hypnotizing abstract video by film-artist Svenja Voß.

Continuing in a dubby, winter haze is “Lost In Sensation” which floats alongside a sharp, metallic rhythmic arrangement and a gentle, ever-present kick drum. Deep, heavily saturated atmospheric textures sleep underneath the sounds while lucid melodies float in and out.

“Your Orbit” rounds out the release with the most club-ready production. Disorienting melodies and gritty synths capture a dreamlike perception while a tough kick drum and clattering percussion drives the music deeper into undiscovered dancing territories just left of center. "

Queried on his favourite word in the German language, Masayoshi Fujita will pick 'getragen' - without a sliver of hesitation. Further questioning will reveal that he loves the term's semantic signifiers, its inherent sense of "expansive, deep, quiet and sombre." And yet, 'getragen' leaves plenty of room for interpretation: depending on context, it might also indicate wearing apparel or the state of being carried - two more mundane interpretations that I would rather keep from him. Does Masayoshi's own definition, however, apply to 'Bird, Lake, Objects'? Only to a limited extent. Compared to previous Faitiche releases, 'Bird, Lake, Objects' is certainly the most 'getragen' of them all. Nevertheless, this is by far not the first association that comes to mind. From a distance, these tracks seem rather introspective, cautious even - and reflect the recording situation: deliberately pared down, reduced to a single microphone in space and a separate track for all other instruments, each movement and action is chronicled by the treacherous mike. This confronted me with some unexpected and unfamiliar problems. For example, we had to swap out the seating in the studio as my favoured chair had a characteristic creak. Other, external influences were proved our control: fire engine klaxons, street noise and footfall became part of the recordings and their improvisatory nature. Each movement required careful orchestration, fully aware of its irrevocable nature. Space itself was always present and an audible entity, except on 'Stripped to RM' (recorded without a microphone or vibraphone track). After extensive deliberations, we decided to forgo the vibes on this piece - a very similar version had already been released in 2008 (on the compilation 'Enjoy The Silence', Mule Electronic, 2008). Jan Jelinek, February 2010

AD and Worldline deliver Toy Opulent’s third release - and it’s first vinyl imprint.

Soft Serve Angel projects a clear and present sense of techno drive and a delightful symphony of melodic synths. The beginning is minimal and evolves into a full cacophony of beauty and craftsmanship, layered with the vocals of the mysterious Crisis Luxury. Here, meanderings of childhood tones echo from an East L.A. ice cream truck. From the hailed vehicle emerges the soft serve angel - with a vanilla cake cone prepared, just for you, on a sunny California day. This track is incredibly versatile.


A Soft Serve Angel remix is presented to us by a master of his art, Persuader. He shows us, once again, that minimal drive that we can all count on to provoke thought and movement with modern engineering skills and a familiar old school flair.


Bubble Gum Eyes is minimal perfectly pitched protocol of TR-909 love with a morphing bassline and epic-scale science-synth work. The track addresses both a question and an answer.


Rocket POP! I mean, who don’t love a good rocket pop? This dubby dub dub mix contains fragments of the entire release that sums it up, and finishes it off perfectly - the cherry on top of the soft-serve angel.

For their sophomore album, Chemical Reaction, Galaxians have stripped back the music and pumped up the vocals. Emma Mason's unstoppable voice elevates the group to a fully-formed musical act. This new LP is all about her voice.

Mason's powerhouse vocal on the West End Records-inspired Chemical Reaction beckons you onto the dancefloor. Jed Skinner's bright and breezy synth melodies allow the song to really breathe, whilst Sam Bell's front-and-centre conga groove (straight out of Double Exposure's My Love Is Free) and Matt Woodward's intricate rolls ramp up the track's energy and momentum. The shorter Mama Ghetto Vogue Edit is brought to life by Darren Pritchard, vogue dancer and mother of Manchester's House of Ghetto, who meets a neon wonderland in the electrifying video.

Elsewhere on the album, Heartbreaker champions female empowerment and personal freedom over a pounding boogie groove. It's a tight arrangement which drops into a delay-drenched Levanesque drum break before crescendoing back into a final chorus via one of Skinner's trademark JX-3P synth solos.

On the proto-house funk of Fight For Love, where Emma flexes her vocal chords to jaw-dropping effect, a failing relationship is thrust into the spotlight over a punchy Linn Drum groove. On the silky shuffle of after-hours jam Work It Out, which brings to mind the classic Sly & Robbie Compass Point productions, Emma croons about a lover, her voice cast in a softer, more subdued glow. Heat of the City sizzles with the essence of an urban summer, and is peppered with heart-stopping hand claps.

Third single Horizon sees the band in more reflective low-key mode, and could be their minor hit of the summer. There's some neat drum programming here, intertwined with Woodward's intricate fills and hi-hat playing.

On Not The Money, Mason's vocal shifts to a lower register in the mid-section, bringing to mind Grace Jones at her most commanding.

All in all it's a life-affirming experience, one born out of a sense of community and collaboration. Seven years on from their early explorations Chemical Reaction sees Galaxians retain sight of the principles that make their output, and dance music as a whole, so vital - commonality of experience, singular moments shared by a crowd, and rhythm as the best medicine.

All sounds recorded at various locations in Europe, South America and at EMS, Stockholm using the Buchla 200 modular synthesizer.

soar, all sounds recorded with Klara Lewis in Montreal 2018


Mastered by Russell Haswell. January 2020

Cut at Schnittstelle, Berlin by Andreas Kauffelt, January 2020


Image : Mark Hogben

Layout: Nik Void

The last two years have seen me maintaining an association with an unusual bedfellow, death. The loss of Mika Vainio, as well as three members of my own family, has had a profound effect on me and spurred a lengthy reflection on life, death, and everything in between.

Parallelly, while studying the philosophy of science, I came across shadow photons:


"Tangible photons are the ones we can see or detect with instruments whereas shadow photons are intangible (invisible) detectable only indirectly through the interference effects on the tangible photons.

There is no intrinsic difference between tangible and shadow photons: each photon is tangible in one universe and intangible in all the other parallel universes.

They travel at the speed of light, bounce off mirrors, are refracted by lenses, and are stopped by opaque barriers or filters of the wrong colour. Yet, they do not trigger even the most sensitive detectors. The only thing in the universe that a shadow photon can be observed to affect is the tangible photon that it accompanies. This is the phenomenon of interference.

Shadow photons would go entirely unnoticed, were it not for this phenomenon and the strange pattern of shadows by which we observe it.

Thus the existence of a seething, prodigiously complicated hidden world of shadow photons has been inferred."*


I have drawn a parallel between shadow photons and death. The interference phenomena, parallel universes, and how shadow photons affect tangible photons they accompany, offer, in my opinion, similarities, an unknown universe which is death and how we, remaining tangible human beings, are affected. This quest has led me to be more willing to accept chaos in my life and to conclude that Death is perfection, everything else is relative.

Re-Release

Black Truffle is honoured to present the premier recordings of two recent works by legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. A friend and contemporary of pioneers like Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, and Christian Wolff, Lucier has been crafting elegant explorations of the behavior of sound in physical space since the 1960s. Lucier is perhaps best known for I Am Sitting in a Room (1970), in which he repeatedly re-recorded his own speaking voice being played back into a room until the room's resonant frequencies entirely obscure the spoken text. Beginning in the early 1970s, he has written a remarkable catalogue of instrumental works that focus on phenomena produced by the interference between closely tuned pitches, such as audible beating, often using pure electronic tones produced by oscillators in combination with single instruments.

Demonstrating the restless creative drive of an artist now in his 80s, the two recent works presented here both feature the electric guitar, an instrument Lucier has just recently begun to explore. In Criss-Cross, Lucier's first composition for electric guitars, two guitarists using e-bows sweep slowly up and down a single semitone, beginning at opposite ends of the pitch range. The piece is a model of simplicity, exemplifying Lucier's desire not to 'compose' in the conventional sense, but rather to eliminate everything that 'distracts from the acoustical unfolding of the idea'. In this immaculately controlled performance of Criss-Cross by Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley, (for whom the piece was written in 2013), a seemingly simple idea creates a rich array of sonic effects - not simply beating patterns, which gradually slow down as the two tones reach unison and accelerate as they move further apart, but also the remarkable phenomenon of sound waves spinning in elliptical patterns through space between the two guitar amps.

In the comparatively lush Hanover, Lucier draws inspiration from the beautiful photograph that provides the LP with its cover, an image of the Dartmouth Jazz Band taken in 1918 featuring Lucier's father on violin. Using the instrumentation present in the photograph, Lucier creates an unearthly sound world of sliding tones from violin, alto and tenor saxophones, piano, vibraphone (bowed) and three electric guitars (which take the place of the banjos present in the photograph). Waves of slow glissandi create thick, complex beating patterns, gently punctuated by repeated single notes from the piano. The result is a piece that, like much of Lucier's instrumental music, is simultaneously both unperturbably calm and constantly in motion.
Stunning LP design by Stephen O'Malley including an inner sleeve with a portrait of Alvin Lucier by Kris Serafin.
Criss-Cross' recorded at Studios Ina GRM, Paris by Francois Bonnet and mixed by Alvin Lucier. Hanover' recorded in Zurich and mixed by Alvin Lucier.
Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M Belin.
Criss-Cross' recorded at Studios Ina GRM, Paris by Francois Bonnet and mixed by Alvin Lucier. Hanover' recorded in Zurich and mixed by Alvin Lucier.
Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M Berlin.

For the last 20 years London-based author and party organiser Tim Lawrence has dedicated himself to excavating the history of New York City party culture and bringing some of the most powerful aspects of that culture to London’s dance scene, from where it has ricocheted around the world.

Having conducted the first and set of major interviews with David Mancuso of the New York City Loft, Lawrence started to host Loft-style Lucky Cloud Sound System parties with David and friends in London in June 2003. In February 2004 he published the first of three published three pioneering histories that have excavated and championed the previously overlooked foundations of contemporary party culture: Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music (1970-79), Hold on to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene (1973-92), and Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor (1980-83). Since 2018 Lawrence has hosted and DJed at the community audiophile party "All Our Friends. Paper Magazine describes him as the “reigning authority on the history of dance music in New York”.

With knowledge to share, and a readership as well as a dance floor to feed, Lawrence released Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor as the debut imprint on Reappearing Records. A year in the making, a compilation featuring rare and iconic tracks that appear in his much-loved and heavily-thumbed classic Love Saves the Day amounts to the follow-up. The collection features several tracks selected regularly by Mancuso, the party host who exerted a prophetic and unparalleled influence on New York City party culture, as charted by Lawrence. It also includes choice picks from groundbreaking DJs such as Michael Cappello, Steve D’Acquisto, Francis Grasso, Richie Kaczor, Larry Levan and Nicky Siano, whose expressive contributions are faithfully recorded in Love Saves the Day. The compilation traces how disco grew out of the record collections and intuitive sensibility of these and other DJs, offering a unique survey of the era’s expansive sonic palette.

2x12"

Parisian label Another Moon are pleased to announce the imminent release of the second collaborative album by Scott Monteith aka Deadbeat and Paul St Hilaire aka Tikiman entitled 4 Quarters of Love and Modern Lash. When asked about about the album's motivations and production process, Monteith had the following to say: “I first heard Paul's voice back in 1996 when I stumbled upon the first Burial Mix 10 inch in a local shop, and it would be no exaggeration to say it has echoed in my mind ever since. We began working together in 2008, and it's fair to say the experience of performing and learning from him has left an indelible mark on my artistic process and my outlook on life in general. He is possessed of a truly electrifying spirit. I’ve had a folder on my hard drive called “For Tiki” for 14 years now, for those more often than not late night studio moments when I stumble upon a rhythmic or musical phrase and hear that unmistakable voice bubbling up in my mind. When that folder fills up with enough of those little magic moments I know it's time to call him, though strangely enough, he more often than not ends up calling me around those times. Such is his deep universal awareness.” “I wrote the initial sketches for what would eventually become this new album over the course of last year to a large extent as a way of trying to process what I perceived as a creeping darkness and sickness in both my own life and the world in general that desperately needed exorcising. When I received his initial responses I nearly fell off my chair. It goes without saying that Paul is a lyricist and poet second to none, and anyone familiar with his enormous body of work can attest to that. And yet, there was something in these latest pieces that hammered the proverbial nail clean through the wood. They perfectly captured this sense of rising tension, of a world that was getting almost psychedelically weirder and darker by the day, and both held a mirror up to this and offered some much needed release. Little did we know, nor could we possibly have imagined, that by the time the record actually hit the shelves, things would get exponentially weirder and darker still.” “It is my great hope that at some point in the coming months we will be able to get back on the road and share these new pieces with people in a live setting, as performing with Tiki is truly one of my greatest joys, and I think it’s where the fire in our work together truly burns brightest. In the meantime, it is my great hope that these 4 long form meditations might provide a little solace for people in their isolation, be it quietly, eyes closed lying on the coach, or cranked up, full on raving in their living rooms.”

The premise for Quindi Records is simple – to represent music with a universality at its core.
Without adhering to specific genre tropes, the releases are intended to have a meaning and purpose in all kinds of situations – a social soundtrack as much as a stimulating experience,
feeding emotions and the psyche with a sentimental palette of sounds. Lovers’ music, loners’ music, music for friends and family alike.
Woo makes for a perfect choice to meet this loose concept head-on – the music of Clive and Mark Ives straddles disparate worlds and finds its own peculiar balance. On one hand it’s delicate synthesizer music with a minimalist bent, while on the other their joyous, twinkling harmonies have an immediacy that speaks to the soul. You can detect privacy in their craft – the brothers originally recorded their music in relative isolation in London in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. It’s only in recent years their sublime work has enjoyed a wider audience through an extensive run of reissues.
Arcturian Corridor ? presents a rare, previously unreleased piece of music from Woo – the expansive suite of the title track that unfurls across five parts. It’s an enchanting listen that shows a new breadth and depth to the duo – detailed drum programming and a broader palette of synth tones cascading in elegant unison. The name refers to Arcturus, the fourth brighteststar in the night sky. As Woo themselves explain, “The Arcturian Corridor is said to be a channel of light that brings unconditional love and wisdom from Arcturus to Earth.”
In addition to the 20-minute A-side piece, Woo also presents a new version of “Love On Other Planets”, a standout piece from their 1990 album ?Into The Heart of Love? . The fragile subtlety of the original has been embellished here with rich new passages that turn it into a kind of electronica epic, although still marked out with the sensitivity one expects from a Woo record.
Two remixes complete the set, both furthering Quindi’s modus operandi as a genre-agnostic force for cosmically charged music. Dublin’s Wah Wah Wino collective present their Wino Wagon manifestation for a tastefully strange house version of the fifth part of “Arcturian Corridor” that channels the freakiness of Pepe Bradock, the robo-funk of Metro Area and a soupcon of pop nous. British duo Ultramarine maintain the stylistic ambiguity as they channel decades of expressive experimentation between live band dynamics and machine soul on their version of the title track’s second chapter.

‘Reality Tunnels’ is a concept that was originally introduced by Robert Anton Wilson in his 1983 book ‘Prometheus Rising’. In essence, the concept of a reality tunnel relates to an idea on how we create our own perspective – the subjective filter that we each apply to the world around us; the things we perceive and what our consciousness deems worthy of attention, IE what we see and hear is entirely relative to what we do not.

At points angular and uncompromising with levels in the red, frequencies pushed out and EQ curves stretched into strange new shapes, Pinch mixes both low and hi fi on this boldly distinct sonic statement. It sees him flexing years of production skills – but unconventionally so – knowing well that safe predictability and rounded polish don’t get the most interesting results.
Dark trip hop Bristolia segues into blistering jungle on album opener ‘Entangled Particles’, before planet-hopping onto the spiky insidious grimestep of ‘All Man Got’, featuring the rugged rasp of OG warhorse Trim.
Beginning a triptych of future techno, ‘Accelerated Culture’ offers the album’s most relatively straightforward moment, albeit one of scorching, anthemic dancefloor heat. Delving deeper into the vortex is the synapse sparking wobbler ‘Returnity’, before ‘Finding Space’ reaches to the cosmos’ far-flung, glowing outlands.
Back to an urban reality is ‘Party’, where a subtly menacing sense of dread is ignited by Killa P’s incremental flow, which ramps-up and pairs-back the intensity in unexpected ways. Still moving freely between different realities, ‘Back To Beyond’ is beautiful gloaming ambience, executed with equal fine-tuned grace as the genre’s masters.


Jamaican vocalist Inezi lends sweet tones to the slow burning, roots-meets-modern-bass spiritual ‘Change Is A Must’, and on ‘Non-Terrestrial Forms’ an atmospheric, misty steppers intro segues stealthily into fiercely dystopian, amen-fuelled jungle tekno; marking one of several surprise attacks on the album, where a subtle-slight-of hand shoots the intensity level dynamically up.Closing as it begins, the album is bookended by a piece that recalls the dark, intricate soundscapes of Massive Attack’s ‘Mezzanine’ and Tricky’s ‘Maxinquaye’ – found here in ‘The Last One’s scorched, smoky rocker.

Hit the vinyl double pack for an exclusive and quite unique sounding 120bpm glitchy techno roller featuring man like Trim once again and live cello recordings.

‘Reality Tunnels’ is a concept that was originally introduced by Robert Anton Wilson in his 1983 book ‘Prometheus Rising’. In essence, the concept of a reality tunnel relates to an idea on how we create our own perspective – the subjective filter that we each apply to the world around us; the things we perceive and what our consciousness deems worthy of attention, IE what we see and hear is entirely relative to what we do not.

At points angular and uncompromising with levels in the red, frequencies pushed out and EQ curves stretched into strange new shapes, Pinch mixes both low and hi fi on this boldly distinct sonic statement. It sees him flexing years of production skills – but unconventionally so – knowing well that safe predictability and rounded polish don’t get the most interesting results.
Dark trip hop Bristolia segues into blistering jungle on album opener ‘Entangled Particles’, before planet-hopping onto the spiky insidious grimestep of ‘All Man Got’, featuring the rugged rasp of OG warhorse Trim.
Beginning a triptych of future techno, ‘Accelerated Culture’ offers the album’s most relatively straightforward moment, albeit one of scorching, anthemic dancefloor heat. Delving deeper into the vortex is the synapse sparking wobbler ‘Returnity’, before ‘Finding Space’ reaches to the cosmos’ far-flung, glowing outlands.
Back to an urban reality is ‘Party’, where a subtly menacing sense of dread is ignited by Killa P’s incremental flow, which ramps-up and pairs-back the intensity in unexpected ways. Still moving freely between different realities, ‘Back To Beyond’ is beautiful gloaming ambience, executed with equal fine-tuned grace as the genre’s masters.


Jamaican vocalist Inezi lends sweet tones to the slow burning, roots-meets-modern-bass spiritual ‘Change Is A Must’, and on ‘Non-Terrestrial Forms’ an atmospheric, misty steppers intro segues stealthily into fiercely dystopian, amen-fuelled jungle tekno; marking one of several surprise attacks on the album, where a subtle-slight-of hand shoots the intensity level dynamically up.Closing as it begins, the album is bookended by a piece that recalls the dark, intricate soundscapes of Massive Attack’s ‘Mezzanine’ and Tricky’s ‘Maxinquaye’ – found here in ‘The Last One’s scorched, smoky rocker.

Hit the vinyl double pack for an exclusive and quite unique sounding 120bpm glitchy techno roller featuring man like Trim once again and live cello recordings.

After years of searching for the elusive sensation of heart-rending beauty, Avondlicht releases his debut album on 3 April, 2020 on all digital platforms. The LP will be out on 8/4.

Hyperromance is the culmination of an emotional and geographical journey, as Belgian producer Matthias Dziwak sought to find and examine idealised moments of true romance within the less-than-romantic reality of existence.

Having already achieved a great deal with his initial run of EPs for labels like PIAS, Fog Mountain and Unit Delta Plus, Antwerp-based Dziwak became obsessed with the concept of Hyperromance – “a moment or idea so heavily romanticised that it seems impossible to be really experienced.” The melancholic feeling it sparked in his heart set him off on a journey through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, via a month-long stay in Amsterdam and finally to settling for six months in Portugal. Throughout this time he made field recordings and began writing pieces that would feed into the finished album. Along the way he found a full spectrum of moments that allowed him to view the world in a truly romantic way, from the majesty of the Andean mountains and the snow falling on the Amsterdamse Grachten to encountering love in Lisbon. At other times he found himself lost, adrift and heartbroken, pulled back to Earth, as is the cyclical nature of the human experience.

Musically, Hyperromance’s grapple with day-to-day reality and rose-tinted fantasy is embodied through the contrast between organic instrumentation and high-definition electronics. Dziwak began writing his songs as simple piano pieces, which then transferred to a staple of synths and sound processing as they became more wholly defined. Sonically, the sound sweeps from modern classical and bombastic electronica to evocative ambient, even touching on jungle and techno along the way. Rather than being defined by genre associations though, Hyperromance is shaped by the swooning beauty of its composition, as the music pulls you in and out of richly rendered moments of joy and pain following Dziwak on his personal journey of truth and beauty. With visceral life experiences woven into the fabric of the record, Hyperromance is expressive on the most intimate level. It’s a record that dazzles with searing bright wonderment and casts creeping shadows as the time passes – a journey as nuanced as life itself, elevated by romance and grounded by reality, beautifully told by Avondlicht.

Fantastic first album of Tunisian producer Azu Tiwaline, melting psychedelic dub, industrial and hypnotic techno deeply rooted in her berber culture, supported by Lena Willikens, Nicola Cruz, Toma Kami and Violet, to name a few!

Azu Tiwaline is a new name for a new spirit: one of a producer inspired by the need to explore her origins, rooted in the Tunisian Sahara. The Call to a different sound, organic and raw, vibrating in the great spaces of the African desert where trance music resonates... Ecstatic ritual.

Her first album, Draw Me A Silence, conceived as a diptych, reveals the multiple facets of her identity. Uniting the bonds that connect Berber music, dub culture and techno hypnosis, Azu Tiwaline invites us to refocus on our senses and our Nature. She knows how to use contrasts between light and the invisible, exploring the complexity of our emotions and the mystery that emanates from them, in a polyrhythmic chiaroscuro that runs through each one of her tracks, and of which we discover, as we go along, all the outlines.

Draw Me A Silence Part. I (to be released in February 2020), delivers the most hypnotic variant of her music, centered on dark percussive rhythms and a skillful use of repetition; each of the 5 tracks ineluctably carrying the listener into a trance. Two major tunes particularly illustrate the artist's imagination: "Itrik" and "Berbeka", perfectly synthesizing the heritage of Berber trance music and her techniques derived from minimalist and repetitive electronic music.

The continuation, Draw Me A Silence Part. II (to be released in April 2020), gives prominence to a deep heritage drawn from the dub culture and its numerous bass music filiations. This second part thus gives a new breath in the use of sound space, exploited in a much broader way, leaving all their space to complex syncopated percussive lines, supported by massive basslines dedicated to the best sound-systems. Omok, the first of the five tracks of this Part II is the perfect demonstration of this, playing here the essential role of a bridge to the darker waters of this album's end.

Each of these two parts exist as an Entity, and it is only when they are united that they will reveal their full meaning. Thus, in May, Draw Me A Silence will find its final form in a double-vinyl unifying them. Listening to this album in its entirety offers us a wide panorama of the sound landscapes visited by Azu Tiwaline, who seems to breathe primitive sounds of a faraway desert into a music with modern tones - and vice versa. A resolutely hybrid sound and a singular experience, playing with contrasts and nuances to catch the listener in vast and so far unexplored territories.

Long-time collaborators, longer-time best friends, lifelong analog appreciators; the German duo Iron Curtis & Johannes Albert join cosmic forces once again for another LP mission 'Moon II', a heartfelt voyage through the sounds, movements, styles and machines that created this music in the first place.
Think late 80s New York, early 90s Sheffield and the perennial sounds of Italo and Detroit, 'Moon II' is a lunar safari that celebrates the deepest foundations of house, techno and electronic soul while resolutely refusing to get nostalgic. Written and recorded during an intense two-and-a-half month session in Berlin last autumn, there's a consistency and tangible narrative running throughout as the pair play inspiration ping-pong over the course of 10 tracks.
A little Drexcyian glacial nod here, a hazy Boards Of Canada wink there. The Other People Place, Kerrier District, Environ Records, the Hacienda, Sub Club, Heaven 17, classic electro… All these ingredients are constantly bubbling in the mix for both Curtis and Albert (as individuals and even more so as a duo) and the end result is an album that works as a proper album should. Peaks, troughs, dreamy departures and all beautiful things in between.
Taking off where their debut collaborative album 'Industrie & Zärtlichkeit' (soon to be retitled 'Moon I') left us three years ago, the opening modem sounds on the intro track 'Canggu Laundry Club' dial us into a special sense of time and space.
It's a space where anything feels possible; Visual-inspired acid lines on 'Tiger Trek', lino-spinning body pops and windmills to the street sounds electro style of 'The Ultimate Seduction', the club-focused, Traxx-style Cutie Schamuthie collaboration 'Hurting', the melancholy plucks and struts of 'Feingold', the provocative, slinky, smoky finale piece 'Nektar'… The list of intergenerational and cross-genre landmarks on this adventurous body of work go and on, each track complementing the last as they fuse to create a bigger collective picture. A picture that's charmed together through the consistent use of key classic studio machines.
They call it Introverted Electronic Body Music, we call it warm, free-spirited and ultimately timeless. Perfect for your sets, your afterhours or your headphones alike; it's time to let Iron Curtis and Johannes Albert take you to the Moon and back… Once again.

With a hybrid jazz based on African grooves, Ethio-oriental melodies and psychedelic dub this Belgian five-piece creates an atmosphere where ancient and modern sounds fuse into a powerful, hypnotic and groovy sensation.

Receiving critical acclaim for their second album 'Artifacts' (2017), the Belgian quintet are pleased to announce the release of their much-anticipated third album entitled 'Future Flora', released 12th April via Sdban Ultra on vinyl / cd / digital.

Piloted by saxophonist/flutist/composer Nathan Daems (Ragini Trio, Dijf Sanders, Echoes of Zoo), the input of notorious musicians, drummer Simon Segers (MDC III, De Beren Gieren, Stadt), cornet player Jon Birdsong (dEUS, Beck, Calexico), keyboardist Wouter Haest (Voodoo Boogie) and bassist Filip Vandebril (Lady Linn, The Valerie Solanas) leads to the specific universe that only Black Flower is able to create.

Where debut album 'Abyssinia Afterlife' (2014) and 'Artifacts' (2017) bathed in an atmosphere of psychedelics, mythical figures, ancient sounds and modern cultures, new album 'Future Flora' refers to the power of plants and their importance for the future.

"'Future Flora' is a metaphor for the importance of feeding and watering powerful and revolutionary ideas and initiatives that can save our world. You can compare it with plants that fight between the paving stones of the city for their future. These "urban warriors" need water to survive and grow. Their future and ours depends entirely on how we look at the plant world", says Daems.

Black Flower's musical cross-pollination of sounds and rhythms remain on 'Future Flora', but there is still room for a more Western touch with Romanian and Maloya (Réunion) influences. Daems developed his own arrangements where Western, Oriental and Ethiopian scales and chords are fused together to create a real mix of traditional instrumentation and modern electrical vibrations.

The strong underlying groove is omnipresent, but the room for psychedelics, folklore and experimentation grows. Songs like new single 'Hora de Aksum' combine modern western rhythms with doses of Balkan eccentricities while 'Future Flora' takes you on a psyche-delicious 21th century Ethio-dub-jazz trip with echoes of Mulatu Astatke and Fela Kuti.

"The general feeling that dominates is that of strength and perseverance. The feeling that we have to fight for our future and that we have to do it now! The whole album is interspersed with this atmosphere and sounds swirling, haunting and ecstatic. For those who once saw Black Flower live at work, this energy will be extremely recognizable", he adds.

Chris Korda's new album "Polymeter" is unique as entirely composed in complex polymeter sequences, a unique way to compose music with a new generation of algorithm, inside which Chris injects DNA of neo classical, ambient and jazz music.

This refreshing album will please both those who are into complex musical composition, conceptual music and who are just seeking for a beautiful, emotional and accessible, unique, musical moment.

This is a "In your hearts not the charts" album, as Irdial Discs once said.

Chris Korda is a transgender, vegan and relentless critic of consumerism, leader of The Church of Euthanasia (willing to halt the overpopulation through suicide, sodomy, abortion and cannibalism) and composer/performer of electronic dance music. She has previously released albums on Kevorkian, International Deejay Gigolo Records and Perlon.


Please read below Chris Korda's introduction to his new album "Polymeter":

Polymeter is an album of virtual solo instrumental performances. They're mostly piano pieces, along with a couple of guitar pieces. They sound uncannily similar to human performances, but they aren't. On the contrary, they are algorithmic music, pure applied mathematics.


The compositions are generated by elaborate networks of polymeter modulation. This sounds complicated and will need some explaining. But the most important point is that these are compositions I didn't write in any usual sense of the word. I created systems of rules, and the compositions emerged from those rules. The rules that generated these pieces can be conceptualized as kinetic sculptures that produce intricate non-random patterns of musical interference. The resulting patterns repeat themselves over long periods, measured in hours, days, or in some cases years.


In order to create this album, I had to write my own MIDI sequencer from scratch, because commercial MIDI sequencers lack the necessary degrees of freedom. My sequencer is also called Polymeter, and I started writing it in 1994. I used a relatively primitive version of it to create my earlier techno and electro releases, but the rapid evolution of computer technology made my original so ware hopelessly obsolete by the 21st century. Like its immediate predecessor "Akoko Ajeji" (Perlon) this album was created using a much more sophisticated version of my sequencer. It took me many years to learn the programming skills I needed to modernize my sequencer, which is one reason why such a long hiatus occurred between my older and newer releases.


Chris Korda

Following up on the waves made by his latest Diaphragm EP, Cri Du Coeur injects his signature high-octane sound into another techno venture. This one comes in the form of the electrifying 4-track EP Warning on the Belgian producer’s fledgling-but- headstrong label Arkham Audio. Featuring three remixes interweaving threatening cosmic soundscapes with pounding industrial beats, this latest EP pulls no punches in delivering a menacing wall of sound. The A-side opens with Cri’s original mix for Warning, showing off his signature style of making jumpy, liquid 303 basslines bounce around a consistent dark pad sound. The combination emanates a lingering sense of dread intensified by warped delayed vocal samples and high-voltage buzzing underpinning the whole experience. Following up is a remix from American producer Dustin Zahn, who delivers a pulsa- ting battleground of modular noise. The essence of the track is the controlled chaos of the abstract mechanical whirring and wailing born from Zahn’s extensive synthesis experience, having worked as a remixer for Adam Beyer, Chris Liebing, Dubfire and many other high-profile acts. UK producer Mark Broom dedicates two remixes for the B-side of the EP. The first is a dark, atmospheric groove with expert attention to detail paid to the percussive effects and the controlled movement of the synth parts, creating a powerful ebb and flow of soundscapes and textures and a set of unique builds and drops. Closing off the EP, Mark Broom’s second track is a track more faithful to Cri’s original, opting to beef up the kick and switch up the pattern for an original clap intonation and, naturally, Broom’s own signature offer of complex intertwined synth effects. The result is an anthemic warehouse filler that feels saturated with organic layers of electronic foliage.

WRWTFWW Records is very happy to announce the official reissue of Motohiko Hamase’s astounding ambient house album Technodrome (1993). The album is sourced from original masters and available on vinyl for the first time ever as well as on CD. It comes with liner notes from the artist. This marks the fourth release from the ESPLANADE SERIES which focuses on the works of Yoshio Ojima, Motohiko Hamase and Satsuki Shibano. Inspired by John Cage, Jon Hassel, Brian Eno, and the emergence of house and techno music, Technodrome is jazz bassist turned electronic experimentalist Motohiko Hamase’s foray into what he calls ambient house or, as he explains, “using the gritty sensation inherent to the core of house music” to create an ambient record “aiming to express inverted images, optical illusions, and the sense of déjà vu that modern people can get in the city". Technodrome is constructed around innovative minimalism, a robotic funk orchestrated by bass lines and percussions, and monochrome moods. It’s the most intriguing project in Hamase’s discography, a ghostly ride set in 90s urban landscape, where repetition sets the groove and brings things to life, echoing Hamase’s deeper subtext for his compositions: “and attempt to recreate (as metaphor) the time in our mother’s womb". The album was initially released in 1993 by Newsic, the cult label started by Tokyo’s Wacoal Art Center (also known as Spiral), home, notably, of Yoshio Ojima who co-produced the album. It is now reissued in conjunction with Motohiko Hamase’s #Notes of Forestry and Anecdote albums.

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It’s taken Yotam Avni a little while to get to his debut album; almost a decade, really, since his debut 12”, “That’s What The World Needs”, on California’s Seasons Limited imprint. During that time, the Tel-Aviv based producer has refined his productions, tightening the groove and paring everything back to bare essentials; the power in an Avni cut is its combination of piston-pulse propulsion and a deep, but gently applied, musicality. This combination gives his techno productions added heft on the dance floor, but also a lyrical sensibility that places him squarely in a tradition of techno legends who somehow manage to make the four-to-the-floor a space of poetic intensity, of rigorous joy.

Avni’s been on Kompakt’s radar for a while, first appearing on the label last year, with his Speicher contribution, “Mañana Mañana”. (“Track For Agoria”, from that EP, also appeared on Total 19.) The connection immediately made sense – dance music that managed to feel both lush and streamlined across the same great gasp of late-night energy. But with Yotam Avni Was Here, he’s taken a huge leap. After a brief intro, Avni sets his stall with “Beyond The Dance”, which features slow-moving vocal melisma over sculptural, melting tonalities, a tintinnabulating, harpsichord-like two-note phrase pacing out the track. Then “It Was What It Was” comes into view, its strip-light textures suddenly placed into sharp relief by a muted trumpet figure that hangs in the air, melancholy and pensive.

It’s no surprise, at this point, to discover that Avni’s inspirations for Was Here took in the histories of both techno and jazz. “I wanted to try something more around Detroit Techno meets ECM,” he reflects, when explaining the motivating forces behind the album. “Carl Craig’s Just Another Day EP and Kenny Larkin’s Keys, Strings, Tambourines came out during my high school years and had huge impact on me.” Avni’s also appeared on Transmat compilations, and remixed artists like the Midwest’s Titonton Duvanté, and Orlando Voorn – the latter particularly important for the way he connected the Detroit and Amsterdam techno scenes – his career path is marked by ongoing connections, direct and indirect, to Detroit’s storied history.

“I always wanted to go back to those hi-tek soul roots on a full album,” he continues, and he’s definitely exploring that terrain here, with the sky-strafing brass on “Free Darius Now”, morse-code keys on “Vortex” and glitchy, microhouse tickles of “Know Hope” all contributing to an oblique narrative that seems to arc across Was Here – one fleshed out by guest musicians, who include dop and Gerog Levin on vocals, and trumpets by Greg Paulus (of Beirut and No Regular Play). The cover art makes the jazz connection explicit, riffing on the text-based, minimal design of The Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1955 album for Prestige, Concorde. But the way Avni has gathered around him both inspiring musicians and intriguing reference points makes me think of his broader career as well, the collectivism behind his AVADON nights in Tel-Aviv, his many and wide-ranging releases on labels like Innervisions, Hotflush and Stroboscopic Artefacts, and the openness of his productions, which seem to be all about the multiple, the possibilities of cross-pollination, of fusing this with that, of adding and subtracting, all under the pulsating thumbprint of techno.

Good things, after all, are worth waiting for.

Tyyni is the third album by Finnish-born sound artist and musician Cucina Povera aka Maria Rossi. The second album recorded using a more studio-based scenario – as opposed to last year’s Zoom, a collection of in-situ, spontaneous recordings – Tyyni feels like a slowly unfurling mediation on the clash between nature and mechanical living, a rumination on the complexities of modern life that begin to unveil more about the inner landscape of the artist as it progresses. A Finnish word referring to still, serene weather, the title belies a new note of turmoil in Cucina Povera’s soundworld. Tyyni represents a more detailed focus on the sculpting of sounds that curl around Rossi’s hymnal vocal performances. It’s a more adventurous work than Rossi’s previous output that goes further into noise elements and vocal abstraction while maintaining the balance and ecclesiastical ecstasy of her debut Hilja.

While tension at the core of Cucina Povera is always prevalent, previously it was organic sounds that were used to counterpoint Rossi’s singing but on Tyyni these are often replaced with aggressive synths and distortion, profane clashes with the seemingly sacred hymns. Whether close mic’d and intoning in a loop or in full flight, Maria Rossi’s voice remains in the foreground, set here against a more synthetic backdrop. This development builds new worlds for Cucina Povera, a digital environment which brings in a sense of the alien for Rossi’s vocal to duel. The effect is often dazzling. On Salvia Salvatrix, an ode to the medicinal plant used to ward off evil spirits, Rossi’s invocation is encircled by a distorted synth sound tearing at the fabric of the composition. It’s an inspired juxtaposition, leaving the listener to appreciate both sounds as separate and as a duet. Anarkian kuvajainen embraces a sense of chaos, an accidental transmitting mobile phone’s pulse is swept up gently with looped synth swells as Rossi’s prayer-like vocal rhythmically teases the composition into loops that embrace and then drift apart. Teerenpeli flirts with a minimal beat rendered by sampler and processed, layered field recordings of capercaillies, while Side A ends with one of Rossi’s most beautiful, simple tracks yet recorded. Varjokuvatanssi is an a cappela recording built on top of a wordless glossolalia, a shadowy interplay which foregrounds the solo vocal.

Pölytön nurkka is the most melodic song yet recorded by Cucina Povera. While it still maintains an off-the-cuff performance style, the synthesized chimes and 4/4 beat are smothered by a distorted synthesizer which almost replicates the bravado of an electric guitar feedbacking into the night. Rossi’s subject matter talks of trying to start anew, getting rid of extraneous material, perhaps still feeling powerless to affect positive change. On Haaksirikkoutunut, the protagonist vocal is lost, a vessel rudderless on the ocean, buffeted by waves metaphorical or real, digital, atonal chords gurgling and splashing against the bow, a storm forever brewing on the horizon. Saniaiset recalls Coil in its eldritch, nocturnal tone and digital-bell like synth, Rossi’s half-spoken/half-sung voice attaining a creepy tone before flipping into flight. Album closer Jolkottelureitti uses an escalating, sequenced synth that splinters into both abrasive tones and harmonising chords creating a kosmische effect, reminding the listener of Kluster or synth-era Popol Vuh, all the while elevated by Rossi’s searching vocalising.

For an artist with such a singularly unique musical language, Cucina Povera is continually teasing new strands and emotive tones from an evolving palette. Most importantly, Tyyni appears to be pulling back the veil to uncover an artist finding a synergy between her own emotional inner world and practice. As such, on her third album, Maria Rossi has found a third way between abstraction and extraneous emotion, personal experience turned inside out to reveal more about the listener.

The 7' versions of Keep the Fire Burning and Funky Sensation by Gwen McCrae, two tracks synonymous with the soul, boogie, rare groove and modern disco scenes, are finally being reissued on Expansion Records. Keep the Fire Burning has been one of the most sought after records of the past decade, seamlessly bridging the gap between rare-groove and underground dance-music. What's more, recent price-hikes on online vinyl-distribution websites denote the way in which the market for this record has grown exponentially, a testament to its new-found popularity among the worldwide dance-music diaspora. Funky Sensation, moreover, possesses a timeless and universal groove, a song which has cemented itself as a darling of the boogie-scene, while gaining traction from the likes of Dam Funk and Nu Guinea. Furthermore, Funky Sensation is a traditionally popular record amongst the UK Soul scene, after seeing airtime on London Pirate-Radio stations during the 1980's. Keep the Fire Burning has since been sampled by Star Slimlinger, Marcus Gauntlett and the Hustlers Convention among others and has seen heavy rotation within the underground circuit, owing to its popularity among certain U.S and European DJ's such as Ron Trent, Marcellus Pittmann, and Sam Shepherd. Funky sensation is well-affiliated within the Hip-Hop scene, after providing the musical framework for songs produced by Africa Bambaata, Ghostface Killah and L.L Cool J to name a few. Original copies of this 7' single have exchanged hands for over £100.

Pacific Shore makes modern melancholy hip-hop-soul-jazz with love. The duo’s "road music” evokes a dreamlike and cinematic musical journey. In the studio and on stage, the duo shows that machines, live instruments, and vocals can make electronic music organic, warm, and alive.


Immersed in the studio for a while, the duo are back with the album "Two Kingdoms", their biggest project so far. Without complex, these 17 tracks transport us between vaporous pop/funk groove and hybrid experimentations. A lively, moving and poetic work in search of a certain sense of life on Earth.


As Ying and Yang the album is a combination of two interdependent chapters, we find the voice of their faithful friend and collaborator Sarah Linhares on the tracks Overboard, Knees Wet, Borders among others. As well as the very intriguing Majin Blobfish on Light & Shade and the appearance of a new voice from Pacific Shore on several titles: Two Kingdoms, Home, A Part of Me...

After much anticipation, our Belgian disco diamonds Rheinzand present their debut full-length album. On their self-titled record, The Belgian trio wraps the human heart in synthetic threads of modular electronic disco. 9 songs writhing on timeless dancefloors, morphing in and out of shapes of luxuriant melody and vivid instrumentation.

The album is full of classic disco and electro sounds, wielded with imposing prowess by multi-instrumentalist Reinhard Vanbergen. It’s both an exploration ofdance music’s electronic genealogy and the vintage cool that has defined its different eras. Still, an organic atmosphere pervades as the blend of real instrumentation fixes a sort of retro-futurism, imagining an alternative timeline that’s a bit more exciting, more sensuous and libidinal, maybe more human, too, than our current outlook.

We start the engines with Break of Dawn, a compelling beat rises from the basement and soon we’re submerged by the pulsing bassline. Dark sunglasses on, we cruise through the night, letting flashing city lights flow into unbroken torrents of color. Blind awakens us, a splash of handclaps in the face, vivid strings and Charlotte’s trademark slick vocals enter the stage. Tantalizing sunbeams power up circuits of electronic synths blipping and beeping away.

Later down the road, we hit the Latin part of town. Porque fits enchanting vocal spells in beautiful Spanish on playful flamenco rhythms. Fourteen Again is a throwback to early electro, playing around with knobs and buttons. An oscillating synth imagines new worlds of plastic emotion. Still disco and still very cool, though. A constant velocity is sustained throughout the album bythis recurring locomotive synth, trudging away beneath the action. Once in a while, we hear the deep, mighty, trembling voice of Mr. Rheinzand speaking to us in incantations. Someone’s pulling the strings here.

On Slippery People, the trio cover the Talking Heads classic in a characteristic procedure of bouncy funk. We’re swirled around by the delirious glasswork of You Don’t Know Me into the hypnagogic funk noir of Strange World. Drifting through the house of mirrors after the fourth mojito.

Obey collects all these threads in a full-bodied future classic disco anthem, before Queen of The Dawn wraps up the show with a sky-bound epic of operatic choirs and ceremonious drums that lands somewhere between Kate Bush’s Aerial and Peter Gabriel’s most bombastic.

Golden Days is the late completion of Ethimm’s EP trilogy on Light of Other Days and it continues exactly where the group left off 4 years ago. What started as the groups signature „tension music“, oscillating between dark repetition and moody improvisations is slowly morphing into a production style that features a heavy pop sensibility infused with conciliatory optimism.

The opener and title track of the EP recounts the meeting of a new lover in an autumn sunset. Starting with dreamy piano chords, a rhythmic bass and handclaps, it provides a beautiful musical backdrop for Tizi’s longing voice. During the course of the track, modulating synths and plucked guitars join her vocals as she sings about the „Golden Days“ spent with her lover.

Over & Out starts off in typical Ethimm fashion. Dubbed guitars, minimal beats and a sparse piano melody sets the tone for Elisabeth Thimm’s fragile vocal. In Over & Out Elisabeth negotiates her wish for freedom and how she breaks with her daily constraints. Albeit initially being drained in melancholy, the track ends on a musically hopeful note when a beautiful chord progression suddenly appears, colliding with an extended synth solo from outer space.
On Echoes in the Distance, glorious arpeggios accompany a sophisticated 303-style bass line and haunting vocals. The track follows one of Elisabeth’s dreams into a frantic, nondescript, deserted backdrop and slowly morphes into the most ecstatic piece of the EP. The multi-layered arrangement combined with Ethimm’s yearning voice on top, sound like about 3 tracks seamlessly sticked together. The track ends in pure ecstasy and the listener is left with the exciting feeling of wanting more.

The EPs finale is made up of the hopeful and minimalistic Day by Day, a track reminiscent of the balearic pop from the 1980ies. Gracefully and drained in beachside sunshine, Ethimm reminds us not to waste our days with unnecessary actions and focus on the beautiful small things in life.

Nils Frahm, born in 1982, had an early introduction to music. During his childhood he was taught to play piano by Nahum Brodski a student of the last scholar of Tschaikowski. It was through this that Nils began to immerse himself in the styles of the classical pianists before him as well as contemporary composers. Today Nils Frahm works as an accomplished composer and producer in Berlin. In early 2008 he founded Durton Studio, where he has worked with Peter Broderick and Dustin O' Halloran amongst other fellow musicians.

The three instrumentals, which make up his debut release 'Wintermusik' are piano led pieces, coloured with occasional celeste and reed organ parts. The record's equal measures of sorrowful refrains and uplifting passages, combined with a real intimacy that makes for an album you'll want to return to again and again.

The songs were originally intended as a Christmas present for friends and family, hence its winter release via London-based cinematic music label Erased Tapes. As the curator of the Swedish boutique label Kning Disk's Piano Series, Peter Broderick invited Nils to record a new Nils Frahm, born in 1982, had an early introduction to music.

During his childhood he was taught to play piano by Nahum Brodski a student of the last scholar of Tschaikowski. It was through this that Nils began to immerse himself in the styles of the classical pianists before him as well as contemporary composers. Today Nils Frahm works as an accomplished composer and producer in Berlin. In early 2008 he founded Durton Studio, where he has worked with Peter Broderick and Dustin O' Halloran amongst other fellow musicians.

The three instrumentals, which make up his debut release 'Wintermusik' are piano led pieces, coloured with occasional celeste and reed organ parts. The record's equal measures of sorrowful refrains and uplifting passages, combined with a real intimacy that makes for an album you'll want to return to again and again. The songs were originally intended as a Christmas present for friends and family, hence its winter release via London-based cinematic music label Erased Tapes.

As the curator of the Swedish boutique label Kning Disk's Piano Series, Peter Broderick invited Nils to record a new album of piano improvisations the result is 'The Bells', which will now be released on Erased Tapes in the UK, Ireland and North America. Perhaps the most stunning aspect of what on the surface appears to be an entirely pre-planned and composed body of work comes with the discovery that these pieces were in fact improvised.

These two friends share a common affinity in that they both possess an absolute mastery of melody, composition and performance able to deliver with devastating effect. The modest Mr. Broderick states 'I remember thinking to myself as I lay there stunned, that I could spend ten years trying to write an amazing piece of piano music, and still it would never be half as good as these improvisations!'

Recorded in a rented, beautiful old church in the heart of Berlin over two nights, Nils 'just played' with the occasional instruction from Peter 'I spouted "Make a song using only the notes C, E, and G", or "Make a song that you could imagine me rapping over the top of" (Track 8 'My Things'). At one point I was even inside the piano, laying on the strings, asking him to make a song called 'Peter Is Dead In The Piano'. The resultant work 'The Bells' shares the same excitement and air of playfulness.

For a musician this early in his career, Frahm displays an incredibly developed sense of control and restraint in his work. As the recognition continues to grow for both, 'Wintermusik' and 'The Bells', we are pleased to announce that 2010 will also see his next album release on Erased Tapes.

We’ve worked with Ian Willson to reissue his insanely good, self-released West Coast classic “Straight From The Heart”. Privately pressed and originally released in 1985, this is the only album Ian ever put out. A magical blend of AOR/sophisticated funk/synth-boogie/spiritual jazz and modern soul, it’s a spellbinding record of many colours.

You might already know “Straight From The Heart” for the dubby-disco paranoid-balearic anthem “Four In The Morning”, and it’s easy to assume this is probably just another one of those one-track LPs. But trust us when we say it’s definitely not. This is an impressively slick record from start to finish, just ask those modern soul DJs and AOR collectors who’ve managed to find a rare copy in the last 35 years. It could’ve (should’ve?) been number 1 all over the world back in 1985.

Album opener “Think About It” is all sorts of right. It’s emotional. It’s tops-off. It’s funk in its purest form. And take the proto-modern-funk of the title track (half Dâm-Funk / half Dâd-Funk).

The shimmering, spiritual Bossa-Jazz of “If I Were You” serves as the album’s soaring centrepiece. A gorgeous suite of Cosmic vibes to get Gilles frothing, it sounds like nothing else on the record which makes sense given that it was recorded a couple of years earlier, and is the only track on the LP that wasn’t recorded in Ian’s own studio.

Side B opens with the propulsive ode to love that is “Two Is Better Than One”. Wonderfully sparse when it needs to be, it’s also richly percussive and that special kind of California-warm. Frenetic, speaker smashing synth and horn workout “Funk Invasion” dares you not to dance and “A Game Called Love” is heavily indebted to Prince with its lush, deep funk stylings. The sweeping sax-drenched instrumental “Song For Katelyn” is head-nod, beat-heavy AOR for that melancholic magic hour we spend our days longing for. It all adds up to the ultimate BBQ record.

Almost all of “Straight From The Heart” was recorded over a few months between 1983 and 1984 on Ian’s brand new Otari 8 track in the Oakland, California studio he built just the year before. Only “If I Were You” was recorded elsewhere, at Bay Sound in 1982.

A “full time poor musician” at the time (and he says he still is), Ian produced the album himself and played all of the instruments, except for guitar. That’s Peter Fujii you can hear, his good friend from growing up together.

Tower Of Power, Average White Band, Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder was the list of influences Ian gave us when we asked. No wonder the record’s just so easy on the ears.

And why did he put the record out himself? Simple, he had no idea how to go about getting a record deal.

When we first got in touch with Ian he had no idea that “Straight From The Heart” had become something of a cult record, let alone that there were those of us out there that thought the album deserved to be pressed again. The original tapes have long since been lost so this re-issue was only made possible by remastering Ian’s one and only pristine copy of the finished LP.

The end results have been worth the work, including reproducing the original’s unmistakeable sleeve. Ian Willson’s “Straight From The Heart” is yet another Be With release that will find an easy home on the shelves of those of you who up to now have only dreamt of finding a copy and also those of you who who never knew it even existed.