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Marco Shuttle's third album, Cobalt Desert Oasis, features a varied collection of music recorded across a two year period. Often traveling to remote destinations, Marco would come back to Berlin with field recordings, images, and other inspirations to process in his studio and turn into sound.

The theme of the journey turns into a something more abstract than a travel diary, where environmental sounds blend in with modular synthesis, drum machines, effects and analog oscillators resulting in a cinematic listening experience where psychedelia, ritualism, and mysticism weave together in a sort of alien soundscape - that as the title of the album suggests, is reminiscent of a parallel utopian world.

The album is rich in complex rhythmics, and more than in any of his previous work, has strong acoustic elements. Amongst other percussion instruments, Marco used the Tombak, a traditional Persian hand drum capable of reaching a very wide range of frequencies - from deep round subby toms, to high pitched sharp rimshots, throughout the record.

Marco Shuttle is certainly not new to these sort of elements, but in Cobalt Desert Oasis he brings the environmental element of his sound into the forefront in a way that takes the listener into a hazy expanse where it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the machine elements from the natural - and where the music almost becomes a visual experience, which relates to Marco's own photography used throughout the cover and insert images.

4 Reworked & Reimagined tracks from Motherhood and a cover of Deftone’s “Teenager”. Clear w/ Blue Glitter Colored Cassette Shell, with full pull-out J-Card artwork. Recommended If You Like : Bjork’s Live Box, The Deftones Cate Le Bon. Montreal’s No Joy—since 2009, a noisy four-piece shoegaze band, from 2015 onward, the sonic experiments of founding member and principal vocalist Jasamine White-Gluz has rejected convention, opting to find cohesion in vast, bold, indiscernible structures. In the beginning, the group excavated melodious riffs from squalling guitars, now, White-Gluz approaches songwriting with abstract meticulousness, no longer tethered to her six-string instrument. In 2018, it was the modular electronica of No Joy / Sonic Boom, an EP collaboration with Spaceman 3’s Pete Kember. In 2020, her first full-length as a soloist and No Joy’s first album in five years, Motherhood, her guitar returned for a genre-agnostic, maximalist treatise on aging. Fertility, family, death, birth, her voice heard loud in the mix, White-Gluz became a commanding force among the many-splendored sounds of trip-hop, trance, nu-metal, dance rock, and, of course, shoegaze, delivered through banjo, vibraphone, scrap metal, slap bass, even kitchen appliances. Who knew chaos could have such lucidity? Now, White-Gluz’s ever-expansive evolution has brought forth Can My Daughter See Me From Heaven, an EP reanimation of five songs from Motherhood, transformed by new orchestral instrumentalists: an opera singer, a cellist, a harpist, French horn musician. These songs, recorded entirely remotely, are not a correction. They are a spring rebirth—an opportunity to grow those tracks, similar to the transformation they would’ve undergone live, on stage. “Songs take on a new life when I’m on tour. These songs didn’t get that chance. I still had more to say with them,” White-Gluz explains. “I probably never would’ve been like ‘let’s get a bunch of classically trained players together,’ if it wasn’t for covid-19 canceling tours. This EP was an opportunity to do something that wasn’t obvious. It’s a bedroom recording, but it doesn’t sound like we recorded this in our bedrooms. I wanted to do something that sounded bigger than Motherhood did, and Motherhood was recorded before covid.” Where many musicians used last year’s disaster to look inward, releasing solitary, insular albums, No Joy did the opposite: “It was more, ‘Let’s try everything!’ Give me something to look at!”

Third and last episode of the Generative Operation series is here. Completing the same style and vision, cinematic, technical and minimal concept trying to push forward a contemporary electro in our days. Evolving synth lines with a generative structure from new massive modular patches. Progressive minimalistic rhythms and sequenced tracks with different results as always elements can change every time they are played back again as a unique listening. A rare topic this time is that two 303 basslines have been addedd in the track GenOp10, they are interlaced with different step lenghts patterns as a tribute to put this classic synth from roland into a spacey environment and not always in the raver side of the music. The limited edition vinyl has been pressed in 180gr. keeping up theanalog character sound in this format, meanwhile the digital version will be a clearer and clinical one.

Leng Records has long admired Andrew Meecham’s work as the Emperor Machine. Last year, Meecham made his first appearance on the label via a fine remix of Harks & Mudd favourite ‘Susta’. 12 months on, Meecham returns to Leng with his first Emperor Machine outing of 2021, a typically eccentric, heavily electronic dancefloor outing featuring the seductive vocals of rising star Séverine Mouletin. Meecham is one of British dance music’s most experienced and lauded producers, with a packed history stretching right back to the acid house era. He first rose to fame as part of Bizarre Inc and Chicken Lips (both alongside long-term studio partner Dean Meredith), but over the last two decades has devoted far more time to solo work as The Emperor Machine. In the process, he’s developed a sparse, hypnotic, heavily electronic trademark sound that combines analogue and modular synthesizer sounds with nods to post-punk disco, new wave, trippy proto-house and the mind-altering experiments of the Radiophonic Workshop.



‘Dance Par Amour’, his first solo single on Leng, is typical of his now familiar personal sonic style, with echoing, alien-sounding synthesizer motifs (some reminiscent of those that marked out Chicken Lips’ club classic ‘He Not In’), with bubbly sequenced bass, unfussy machine drums, rubbery slap-bass riffs and flashes of post-punk disco guitars.



Sparse but weighty and pleasingly trippy, the EP-leading ‘Extended Vocal Mix’ is classic Emperor Machine: a near ten-minute workout in which Mouletin’s tender but confident vocals rise above Meecham’s stylish and note perfect backing track, which sits somewhere between early ‘80s ‘no wave’ New York disco, lo-fi European synth-pop and the trippy late night dancefloor dubs that were once a feature of American boogie and proto-house records. Meecham further explores his love of these sparse, effects-laden “synth-dubs” on the accompanying ‘Erotique Dub’, a thrillingly heavy, heads-down affair awash with echoing vocal snippets, hypnotic drums and synthesizer flourishes that attractively echo across the sound space. Like the best DJ-focused dubs of the early 1980s, the remix is propelled forwards by a strong bassline, around which other elements – guitar, bass guitar, sparkling synth sounds and mind-mangling electronics – appear, make their mark and then drift off into the ether. With key passages of Mouletin’s vocal appearing periodically to encourage people to dance, it’s the kind of delightfully wayward revision that will keep people dancing well into the early hours.

This double album is a new collaboration between long-time Umor Rex artists Andreas Gerth (one half of Driftmachine) and Carl Oesterhelt (11 Pieces for Synthesizer). Both developed their shared musical cosmos during their time with the now defunct Tied +Tickled Trio. Oesterhelt is also known for his solo compositions for orchestras and for collaborations with Johannes Enders and Hans-Joachim Irmler of Faust.

As futurism seems inherent to electronic music, the backward-looking view is alien to its nature – consequently, a dialectical struggle between these principles is rarely expressed with the means of electronics. Especially today, its essence as a medium of progress stands in opposition to a sceptical position. By reconnecting us with history, The Aporias of Futurism seeks to define a critical location, that stands in opposition to the postmodern concept of interpretation, deconstruction and reformulation and the belief in progress that goes with it.

The working method for the album Andreas and Carl followed was the usual musique-concrète-technique – cut/assemble/edit/process pre-recorded sounds – but instead of deconstructing the concrete noises into an abstract sound entity, they followed a different path: the organic interweaving of orchestral structures with the electronically processed noise layers into a composition in the sense of classical modernism at the beginning of the 20th century.

Carl started with sketches recorded via a broken CD player, processed through a ring modulator, which sounded like old electronic music from the 1950s. To interact with these fragments Andreas recorded and processed a plethora of everyday noises, atmospheres, tonal fragments from the modular, industrial and shortwave radio noise, percussion in the form of door slamming, falling metal sheets, ball tracks, and so on. So, while they still played within the futuristic discipline, the reference to the past is actually unmistakable. One can hear it in the tonality of the contrasting orchestral passages, in the sound character of the processed samples and the sonic electronic layers. But it is precisely here, where a narrative tension develops. Theses and antitheses, extreme (unresolved) opposites, contrasts… essentially inner contradictions, or expressed in another word aporias… … but there is another factor at play here, something that plays a subordinate, almost ostracized role in the post-modern context: beauty (albeit the beauty of ruins) – beauty, the only refuge of the pessimist.

In the course of the process, a wide range of motifs and ideas emerged from the fog of memory. Free associations of concepts, books and authors from a wide period of time, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, William Blake, Robert Graves, ancient Rome, as well as Borges and Juan Rulfo. This flood of images is also incorporated on the album cover as a "free interpretation" of cultural objects and their relations in time.

The overarching motif of a sceptical rejection of the idea of Futurism is illustrated by a quote from Emile M. Cioran, the writer who most closely embodies the common spirit of the work presented here.

"But here comes the strangest thing: the Futurist idolizes becoming only until he has enforced that order for which he fought; then the ideal conclusion of time becomes apparent to him, the ‘always’ of utopia, which concludes and crowns the historical process. The conception of the Golden Age of Paradise par excellence, thus grips believers and unbelievers alike. But between the original paradise of the religions and the eschatological of the utopia there is the whole distance that separates a nostalgia from a hope, a repentance from a delusion, an achieved from an unrealized completion."

All music composed by Andreas Gerth and Carl Oesterhelt between Berlin and Munich, Germany in 2021. Produced and mixed by Andreas Gerth in Berlin. Mastered by John Tejada in Sherman Oaks, USA. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City.

Diving into the archives of Alter Ego - the Italian experimental ensemble of Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, and Eugenio Vatta - Die Schachtel is thrilled to present Microwaves, a never before released body of recordings of works composed by Atli Ingólfsson, Giovanni Verrando, Yan Maresz, and Riccardo Nova, made with Pan Sonic (Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen) in 2005. Resting at the outer reaches of avant-garde chamber and electronic music, the LP’s blistering structures, tones, and textures - plowing forward with frenetic energy - remain radical and ahead of their time, more than 15 years after they were first laid to tape.

A modular chamber ensemble with a pointedly anti-academic approach to music, over the course of its activities - running roughly between 1990 and 2010 - Alter Ego developed a devoted following among some of the most forward thinking voices in experimental music, all the while collaborating widely with artists spanning a vast range of practices and disciplines, including Robin Rimbaud, Philip Jeck, Matmos, Gavin Bryars, Andrew Hooker, William Basinski, David Moss, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and near countless number of others.

Alter Ego’s diverse activities can be understood as interventions with the disposition toward formality within contemporary chamber music, often pairing themselves with artists working well beyond their own context as a means to develop highly original interpretations of a specific composer’s work. In 2004, this process led them to instigate a collaboration Pan Sonic, the Finnish duo of Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen, pioneers of a remarkably distinct form of rhythmic, experimental electronic music, and regarded by many as one of the most visionary and irreverent projects working in the field during the '90s and 2000s.

Initially conceived with Fausto Romitelli in 2004 before being sidelined by the composer’s untimely passing the following year, Microwaves acts, in part, a remembrance in sound, featuring four works by some of his closest friends, the composers Atli Ingólfsson, Giovanni Verrando, Yan Maresz, and Riccardo Nova. Each composition, Ingólfsson’s Snap, Verrando’s Harmonic Domains #3, Maresz’s Link, and Nova’s Thirteen13x8@Terror Generating Deity, have roots in a pallet of samples and fragments drawn by each composer from existing works by Pan Sonic. Upon completion, these compositions then entered into a collaborative process between Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen (Pan Sonic) and Alter Ego (Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, and Eugenio Vatta), and were performed collectively by both groups during an extensive tour that year.

Distinct and free-standing, while operating as a seamless whole, the four works encountered across the album’s two sides - built from the sounds of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, electronics, and further treatments - present an engrossing intersection between electronic and acoustic sound that diverges from most standing conceptions of electroacoustic music. Each composer’s carefully rendered structures rise and fall within the startling, conversant interplay between the two groups, finding perfect balance - between the frenetic and restrained - in what can only be regarded as one of the most striking and singularly unique expressions of contemporary chamber music realized during the 2000s.

Vast in scope, visionary in concept and artistry, and sonically engrossing, Die Schachtel is thrilled to present these never before heard recordings from the archives of Alter Ego. Microwaves is available on black vinyl, in a limited edition of 350 copies.

Diving into the archives of Alter Ego - the experimental ensemble of Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, Fulvia Ricevuto, and Eugenio Vatta - Die Schachtel is thrilled to present Pranam - A(Round) Giacinto Scelsi, a never before released body of recordings interpreting the works of the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, made with Matmos (Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel) in 2005. Resting at the outer reaches of avant-garde chamber and electronic music - moving at a glacial pace of tightly wound energy - Pranam’s two sides radically rethink the terms electroacoustic music in ways that still feel radically ahead of their time, more than 15 years after they were first laid to tape.

A modular chamber ensemble with a pointedly anti-academic approach to music, over the course of its activities - running roughly between 1990 and 2010 - Alter Ego developed a devoted following among some of the most forward thinking voices in experimental music, all the while collaborating widely with artists spanning a vast range of practices and disciplines, including Robin Rimbaud, Philip Jeck, Pan Sonic, Matmos, Gavin Bryars, Andrew Hooker, William Basinski, David Moss, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and near countless number of others.

Alter Ego’s diverse activities can be understood as interventions with the disposition toward formality within contemporary chamber music, often pairing themselves with artists working well beyond their own context as a means to develop highly original interpretations of a specific composer’s work. In 2005, this process led them to invite Matmos, the American duo of Drew Daniel, Martin Schmidt - acclaimed for a body of visionary albums at the vanguard of electronic process and sampling - to collaborate on a series of interpretations of works by the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi.

Realized in collaboration with The Fondazione Isabella Scelsi, which holds Giacinto Scelsi’s archives, and performed at the Festival Roma Europa and the Festival Aeterforum during May of 2005, the album’s four works - Estratti dal Quartetto per archi n.3 (1963), Ko-Lho (1966), Riti: I Funerali di Carlo Magno A.D. 814 (1976), Aitsi (1974) - shift the boundaries of 20th Century chamber music toward markedly new and contemporary terms, incorporating everything from the sounds of the Revox tape machine that Scelsi used to record his own improvisations and processed electronics, to the plastic trumpets used by fans during football matches.

From intertwining, shifting lone-tones that render startling resonances and dissonances, to passages guided by a vast pallet of electronics and flurries of acoustic sounds, joined as a single ensemble, across the two sides of Pranam, Alter Ego and Matmos infuse these four works by Scelsi with humor and playfulness, while retaining all the urgency and rigour with which they were initially composed.

Delicate and meditative, while tightly wound and brooding, Pranam brings the works of Giacinto Scelsi to life in ways that almost no group ever has. Riveting and immersive from start to finish, Die Schachtel is thrilled to present these never before heard recordings from the archives of Alter Ego. Pranam is available on black vinyl, in a limited edition of 350 copies.

"Scottish multi-talented artificer Lomond Campbell has announced the release of his eagerly anticipated ‘LŪP’ album, out via One Little Independent Records on October 22nd.
‘LŪP’ came about when Campbell was commissioned to build a custom tape-looper for prolific Fife-based independent singer-songwriter King Creosote. He tells us “I wanted the machine to embody the compositional ideas of the two esteemed New York avant-garde composers – William Basinski and Steve Reich. It plays 12 second tape loops which ‘disintegrate’ over time as the tape passes near to a rotating magnetic disc. This rotating disc also provides a clock and drives two eccentric cams which sends out ever-shifting phase patterns. You can hook the machine up to a modular synthesiser and process the disintegrating tape loops while generating Reichian phase shifting patterns.” "

After a first volume released in September 2020 on Hard Fist, Argentinian Balam comes with “Chants of Pachamama (Part. 2)”, including a remix by Matias Aguayo.

This time Balam focuses on the experience around the ritual of magic plants that is practiced in the deep South-American rainforest. By mixing modular synth, stromping basslines, haunting vocals and real played percussions produced in his studio “Submarea” in Buenos AIres, he recreates a psychedelic trip from beginning to end.

The opening track “Yagé” is the name for a magic plant that can be found in many places in South America. With a tight djembe, the magician comes with his chants for starting the ceremony just before the bass bursts for a pagan dance. An irresistible lead synth takes the climax higher until the break where the magician enters the void and the psychedelic trip begins.

“El Curandero” – the chaman who leads the ritual – is the second tune of a frenetic organic and modular percussion bass driven dance stomper. Blazing synthesizers create a state of confusion and hallucinations when “el curandero” chants his icaros. The djembes and shakers move behind the heavy bassline while analog ding and dongs go crazy all over.

The second last track “Golfo”, just before the remix, is an instrumental tune, the end of the experience: heavy synthetic percussion, modular ambient sounds, a modal marimba and a very present djembe jamming until it fades in the analog night.

The closing track is a great reinterpretation of “Wakax” from “Chants of Pachamama (Part 1)” by the legend Matias Aguayo. A dark and heavy bass mixed with a tricky use of lots of the original elements makes you wanna twerk all night long.

Early member of future house label Beat X Changers, Paris based artist Takadoum drops his first release on Momo's Basement. This oddball is a spontaneous and enigmatic collaboration between ancient instruments and modular synthesis. Based on eerie cosmic grooves and immersive dubby melodic loops, the four track EP, Keep it vague, is a contemplative journey through lofihouse and early minimal techno for warm sunrise festival mornings.

Native from south of France, Ogmah is a DJ/Producer of industrial and noisy techno, embellished with hardcore influences. Founder of the label Askorn Records, his music is raw, hard hitting and harsh, and his mixing style is fast, hard and precise.

A1) This first track deserves a powerful broken beat rhythm, combined with some aggressive noises & FX and a stormy atmosphere. Sounds like an unchained monster in a disaffected metallurgic factory.

A2) Pure violence into this hard hitting 4x4 industrial track. Collapse of the business techno. Heavy hammering kick with some organic noises, perfect soundtrack for a sacrifice.

B1) Keepsakes brings his famous crazy groovy drums patterns in this one! Boxing kick, scary atmosphere & disturbing synth, perfect for dancing until you die in a gloomy & wet Berlin cellar.

B2) Noisy as hell remix with a crazy sound design by Exome! Dark & violent, this track is a fucking tank that will crush your soul and chase you in your scariest nightmares...

B3) This last remix by Alessandro Nero will make you broke into a furious gallop! Metallic noises with a recognizable modular style, this track will make you remember some good old schoolish hardcorish vibes.

Brazilian-American power trio São Paulo Underground (Rob Mazurek, Mauricio Takara & Guilherme Granado) align their chakras with Tenerife electronic pranksters Tupperwear (Mladen Kurajica & Daniel Garcia) for an anything goes EP session of tropical jazz, Chicago post rock and general head scratching psych chants.

Recorded live in 2016 in a disused kerosene tank in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands after a week long residency. Now recompiled by the Keroxen label and presented here in its ripest form, certified ready for human consumption.

Each member plays multiple roles in creating Saturno Mágico’s unique organic evolving sound. Mazurek plays cornet and modular synths; Takara’s on drums, cavaquinho and electronics, whilst Granado plays keyboards, synthesizers, and sampler. Tupperwear add to the organic flow with Kurajica on various synths and keyboards whilst Garcia excels on electronics, live sampling, guitar and voices.

Another unique document from the Keroxen Label, exponential Island music and insular collaborations spilled out onto the world – so much more to come, blink it and you’ll miss!

Analha was one of the first approaches I had with the design of analog basses and drums, to understand the way in which we can involve so many sounds and transform them to our own liking, to give it its own narrative, a sense, an identity in which it can be navigated about different styles without problem.

They are two pieces that make up totally different break paths where "Mi ama Dic K no" A1 is my own exploration and vision of the break beat, three melodies written in F # that count the subtlety, while the bass contrasts in an aggressive idea to the beat of many changing rhythms in the drums, which sorfs between a Mpc, 808, Dsm & V Modular ; Classic trip hop voices samples that guide the way this own idea progresses on the breaks and pads that generate a more complete environment with a very energetic atmosphere that is constantly on the rise in the active and natural development of the track.

Towards the B side "Run mami run" B1 is composed by a classic intro of acid cut while some seconds of drums interpose which are accompanied by a radio narration of a chase, a return change is present with a vinyl spin between voices from GTA & WU TANG CLAN which make an intro for an infusion of breaks fully aligned to the beginnings of oldskool drum and bass which are accompanied by voices recorded, treated and edited to connect more directly between the spaces interrupted by the glitch acid chords.

Among contrary structures "Analha" contains hidden but marked criticisms, it is a project that comes from 2018 and ended at the beginning of 2019 which made him think about how to involve more than music within his own sound narrative.

The sonorous identity of rachiid today is different, he understands his environment but does not believe in adapting, he tells us that each exploration and discovery during these years have led him to think how this first release was born until now but is not connected at all with what nowadays, describes his sonority today as changeable, essential and highly with IDM, experimental and breaks.

Audiophile 180glp pressing includes eight 12"x12" art print reproductions of analog film stills by renowned experimental filmmaker Daïchi Saïto. The first purely solo record by Jason Sharp - where every sound is created by his saxophone, breath, heartbeat & modular synthesis rig. Sharp's customized electroacoustic biofeedback system utilizes a heart monitor to turn his pulse into signal & tempo responsively synthesized in real time during peformance & recording. Produced by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (MATANA ROBERTS, SUUNS, BIG | BRAVE, ERIC CHENAUX, JERUSALEM IN MY HEART). For Fans of Fennesz, Christina Vantzou, Tim Hecker, Klaus Schulze, Ben Frost, Gas, Windy & Carl, Colin Stetson. Montréal saxophonist and electroacoustic composer Jason Sharp presents his third album on Constellation. The Turning Centre Of A Still World is Sharp's first purely solo record and his most lucid, poignant, integral work to date. Following two acclaimed albums composed around particular collaborators and guest players, Sharp conceived his third as an interplay strictly bounded by his own body, his acoustic instrument, and his evolving bespoke electronic system. The Turning Centre... is a singular sonic exploration of human machine calibration, interaction, expression and biofeedback. Using saxophones, foot-controlled bass pedals, and his own pulse - patched through a heart monitor routed to variegated signal paths that trigger modular synthesizers and samplers - Sharp paints with organic waves of glistening synthesis, pink noise and digitalia. Melodic strokes and harmonic shapes ripple and crest across ever-shifting seas, through an inclement cycle from dawn to dusk. The album's six main movements navigate a world where placid surfaces are always roiled and disquieted by a deeper inexorable gyre: the gravitational pull and tidal perpetuity of our bodies made of water, buffeted by terrestrial atmospheric pressures, wrung out by emotions, coursing with blood, sustained by breath, inescapably yearning for and returning to ground again and again. Sharp's heartbeat literally courses through these compositions - while only occasionally surfacing as a clearly audible pulse or rhythm, it physically feeds into a spectrum of generative synthetic processes that help constitute and conduct the music.

"King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have always greeted creative boundaries with the same respect bulldozers visit upon anything foolish enough to stray into their path. Over 11 years and across their 17 studio albums to date, the sui generis sextet have turned their many hands to luminous acid-rock daydreams (I’m In Your Mind Fuzz), gritty western horse operas (Eyes Like The Sky), never-ending science-fiction song cycles (Nonagon Infinity), dystopian death-metal epics (Infest The Rat’s Nest) and winningly mellifluous jazz-folk (Sketches Of Brunswick East). They’ve even invented their own musical instrument – a hybrid electric guitar sharing much of its DNA with the traditional Turkish bağlama – to explore the notes between the notes (a mission that’s yielded three albums thus far: Flying Microtonal Banana, K.G. and L.W.).
But their 18th album, Butterfly 3000, might be their most fearless leap into the unknown yet: a suite of ten songs that all began life as arpeggiated loops composed on modular synthesisers, before being fashioned into addictive, optimistic and utterly seductive dream-pop by the six-piece. The album sounds simultaneously like nothing they’ve ever done before, and thoroughly, unmistakeably Gizz, down to its climactic neon psych-a-tronic flourish. "

Storming modular techno set from MØLLER on the 5th episode of the Vinyl Only limited series of Lost Episodes

Schneider TM is the multidimensional music project of Dirk Dresselhaus which has been operating since the mid 90's. His latest opus is also his first for release for Editions Mego.

With an extensive catalogue under his belt, one may wonder where this one takes us? The 8 of Space orbits the realm of "pop" more overtly than the project has done for 14 years, residing in the line of works that temporarily ended with "Skoda Mluvit" from 2006. In the age of scattered streaming listening habits The 8 Of Space champions the classic album format with connected tracks that act like chapters adding up to what could be framed as an 'audio-movie'. The 'plot' revolves around a post-dystopian landscape which posits the make up of reality in the future.

The vessel is electronic pop music but one which takes inspiration from the spirit of a multitude of musical forms absorbed into a trans human sound world where biological & technological elements complement each other (We are NOT The Robots!). The music unifies the analog world of acoustic and electric instruments with electronic & digital possibilities that range from heavily processed acoustic & electric guitars and bass, tube organ, analog modular synth units, acoustic drums and percussion, analog & digital drum machines & effect units, hardware and software processing. Experimental & extended musical techniques build a world of musical elements that is sometimes upside down and mirrored. Electric guitar becomes rhythm machine & modular system, voice becomes sound object & synthesizer, effects are used as instruments, acoustic guitars are being modulated by voices etc. Reality and illusion are getting mixed up. One can hear short moments of longer recordings in the tracks which are snapshots of bigger musical pictures that lurk behind what's actually audible. Generative music, audio spirals like clockworks create ever changing musical combinations; thrown-in sounds, polyrhythms & cascades based on the concept of chance attributed to the service of the SONG.

The lyrics are a key component. Holistic, associative poetry acts as interactive trigger points for the mechanisms of existence in times of a paradigm shift that are open to the listeners discretion. Autobiographical elements combine with science fiction and dreams, protagonists shift where the 'I' or 'me' is not necessarily the voice of the artist, nor even the same person. Alongside a more naturalised voice another protagonist appears represented by a processed voice. This character, named iBot, evolved around the start of the millennium and has appeared on some previous Schneider TM recordings. It can be seen as a post-human, or even a trans-human character, a combination of human & technology, uncertain of the future, which lends iBot it's melancholic tone.

In the opening song "Light & Grace" iBot appears in an advanced form of AI, which managed to hack & hijack a commercial space travel program (eg, Virgin Galactic) to invite those rich, who profited most from the destruction of planet earth, for a holiday trip into space to unknowingly fly them directly into the middle of the sun. In this episode it seems to have developed higher ethics than humanity itself with ambition to save the planet with as much of its cooperative life as possible."Light & Grace" serves as an intro / opener for this album to be followed by 7 other tracks featuring different windows of consciousness represented by diverse characters & protagonists.

All the elements on The 8 of Space, the music, sounds, vocals and artwork fit together as a whole, creating a dazzling electro pop future questioning it's own certainty. This is experimental electroacoustic pop music featuring glorious melodies dancing along human/machine voices, each track is a small universe that triggers the physical mind and tickles the subconsciousness.

Concentric Records presents Radiant, the third compilation of its introductory release trilogy. Featuring music by ASWA, HOLOVR, Max Loderbauer, Petre Inspirescu, Supply, The Waves, William Selman, the album evokes luminous, iridescent and ethereal sonic spaces - a journey that overcomes struggles, spinning upward towards the light.

The album opens with calm, bright and assertive tonalities, evoking mental spaces prone to exploration and wondering. Molecular textures and real-world sounds bring us closer to an intimate and physical sphere, a voice. Ultimately everything dissolves into a synthetic domain of acid-like washes, in a cinematic sense of departure.

MAX LODERBAUER has been an active engineer, producer, and musician across four decades. He first came to notice in the late ‘80s as a member of Fischerman’s Friend. Known then as Daimler Max, Loderbauer’s associates included Stephan Fischer and Tom Thiel, as well as producer Thomas Fehlmann. Once the group went dormant, Loderbauer and Thiel established Sun Electric; one of the leading sources of entrancing downtempo and ambient techno through the ‘90s. During the 2000s and 2010s, Loderbauer collaborated in numerous settings, including NSI with Tobias Freund, Chica & the Folder with Paula Schopf, and Moritz von Oswald Trio with Vladislav Delay and Moritz von Oswald. Loderbauer was partly responsible for some of the most progressive and experimental electronic music released during these years. In 2011, he and contemporary Ricardo Villalobos assembled Re: ECM, a project that involved radical transformations of ECM label recordings by the likes of Bennie Maupin, Christian Wallumrød, John Abercrombie, and Arvo Pärt. More recently he consolidated the collaboration with Ricardo Villalobos via the Vilod project, and with Samuel Rohrer and Claudio Puntin as Ambiq - both described as ‘a fertile patch of inspiration, shaking up the principles of minimal techno with the loose, expressive qualities of jazz’. The album opening track - ‘Harmonic’ - feels like a glowing dream. Composed of stunning electronics in a polychromatic, blinding and shimmering light; harmonious interwoven melodies calmly wind down invoking a serene mental state and grounding peace.

WILLIAM SELMAN was the very first artist ever approached by Concentric Records prior to the label’s birth, back in 2018, following his defining release ‘Musica Enterrada’. A musician and multimedia artist currently based in Portland, Oregon, his work employs analogue and digital synthesis techniques, live percussion and instrumentation, and his own rich field recordings to create compositions and sound art focused on the ideas of place and environment. Selman's recent works have been released on Mysteries of the Deep and Hausu Mountain.

PETRE INSPIRESCU is an extremely versatile composer. As co-founder of the legendary RPR Soundsystem together with Rhadoo and Raresh, he mostly produced club-ready, heavily textured takes on tech-house and minimal techno. In 2015 he released his first album on Mule Musiq, considered a significant departure from his previous work, scoring piano, strings and woodwind instruments for the first time, resulting in a set that sat somewhere between ambient and neo-classical. Since then, he continued to explore further sonic territories, adding in vintage synthesizers and occasional nods to dub techno, resulting in melodious sequences of musical movements that relate to the work of classical composers, American minimalists and ambient legends. ‘The Garden’ is a dreamy, intimate and nature inspired composition, recorded in his home studio in Ibiza sometime in the Summer.

DJ and producer SUPPLY (youngest so far on the label) was born and raised in Gießen, within sight of the skyscrapers of Frankfurt am Main, and has been living in Berlin since 2017. Musically socialised through hip hop, he found his connection to electronic music produced in Chicago and Detroit in the 90s by moving to FFM in 2013. For almost 6 years he has hosted his own events in his hometown. His productions connect the dots between hip hop, retro futuristic movie soundtracks and techno, he recently released on YAY Recordings. ‘Inhale / Exhale’ was created during a time of stress and mental tension, partly self-inflicted, partly result of my surroundings, as it turned out in retrospect. The track tries to capture a moment of taking a deep breath by releasing that tension for a moment. I came up with the first sketch one night around 4am, the final arrangement found its way onto a C60 Chromoxid Cassette - inhale - exhale.’ - Supply

THE WAVES is a post-punk and synthwave-inspired project led by Maayan Nidam, that places her vocals at its front and centre. As a musician obsessed with sound and the technology behind its creation, her workflow places a strong focus on the studio environment. Triggering chain reactions between guitar pedals, drum machines, modular synths and acoustic instruments, generating sounds in unpredictable ways. Drum machines keep a steady groove as to give support to an array of guitars and synthesisers, all topped with The Waves own, mostly unmasked, lyrics and voice. ‘Hold On’ was written by Maayan during the 2020 pandemic as she dived deeply in studio work in Berlin. Her lyrics are featured as part of the art print insert, and have became a central statement to the LP and its narrative - the power to hold on and break through.

Jimmy Billingham's HOLOVR project has racked up various releases on some of the most forward-thinking electronic music labels over the past few years, including Firecracker Recordings, Likemind, Further Records, Opal Tapes and his own Indole Records. Though best known for melodic, drifting acid techno and electronica, he's equally at home crafting textured ambient soundscapes. HOLOVR's deeply emotional synth passages and pads will take you on a journey into the outer. 'Melancholy of Time came out of a period exploring ways of producing and recording outside of the grid-based structures that I was previously working with. I wanted to strip it back to what I often find to be the emotional core of a piece of electronic music - ebbing and flowing synth pads - but to push and pull it a bit to create a slight disjointedness, unpredictability and shop-worn texture, as if it's coming apart and fraying, yet retaining a sonic clarity. I recorded it live using looped and layered synth phrases, underpinned by a layer of hiss and pin-prick textures. I find reflections on time and its passing to be a recurrent feature of my work, both in a more straightforward way of harking back to music of a certain period or pieces of equipment but also in a more abstract sense of creating a feeling where time doesn't matter - a deep feeling of now; that escape that you find in music and other ecstatic experiences. Though of course we’re always in - and running out of - time, and hence the melancholy.’ - Jimmy Billingham

Hailing from the German underground scene, ASWA aka Attila Fidan has an intricate, hypnotic style of electro, techno and ambient. Coming from visual arts and not primarily a trained musician, Attila produces under various and multiple monikers: ‘I never really start out knowing which moniker the track will be made under’. Since 2017 he runs a boutique Berlin label named ‘Tape Archive’. ‘Dust Palace’ is a synthetic piece that resonates with a cinematic vastness, closing the LP in an uplifting tone that evokes new departures and new beginnings.

Glenn Astro returns to Tartelet Records with Purple, a four-tracker of minimal slow burners and futuristic dance music, marking the label’s 50th 12-inch release.

Since releasing his second album Homespun in late 2020, Glenn Astro has been quietly channeling his funky instincts towards new production approaches. Purple, a four-piece compilation of mutant future-boogie daubed in Rogers-Nelson hues, comes through with emotional heft. It also marks the 50th 12" release for Tartelet Records.

“Following up on Homespun, I wanted to try out some more dancefloor- oriented tracks again,” says Glenn Astro. “Keeping it simple and practical, while not being too predictable. I incorporated a lot of modular synth bits and experiments, with ‘Flux’ being an almost exclusively modular-based jam.”

Incorporating tricky sound design and fluid structures, Astro’s new lines of enquiry never come at the expense of the groove. From the opening thump of ‘Penduloop’ onwards it’s apparent that his rugged rhythmic kinks are present and correct to hook in the dancers, while the melodic drops later in the track edge in a little melancholic flavour to take the mind somewhere else entirely. On this opening track, the artist explores new territory with his version of early naughties minimal house – a welcome
slow burner.

The EP title track ‘Purple’ slaps with purpose, not least in the Linn-esque drums and melodic bassline, but it’s a positively dreamy piece which skips on crooked beat formations and floats upwards via a multi-timbral tapestry of yearning synth shapes and robotic vocals. On ‘Out Of Office’ Glenn Astro provides a generous dose of electro nostalgia when he amps up the heavy-hearted feeling with aching string pads and electro-informed machine logic. The track becomes alive with its deep un-synced rhythms and dark bass notes, pushing further into the abyss. ‘Flux’, with its tooly
feel, takes the electronic mantra further and sheds light on the source of much of Astro’s new sound palette.

Crucially, even in its techiest moments, an irrepressible humanity shines through across Purple. Glenn Astro’s soul is the binding agent which links his early, sample-heavy house to his more explorative new angles, and it comes through in abundance on this fully-formed release.

‘Part I’ is the debut LP from Indigo, the moniker and ongoing project of Melbourne-based composer and arranger, Nick Roder.

The first release in what will be an ongoing three-part series, Part I features nine tracks for bass guitar and tenor saxophone. Part II, an exploration of a slightly larger, more sonically diverse musical world will feature string quartet and voice. Finally, Part III will collaborate with choreographer Siobhan McKenna, who alongside Nick will develop a percussive movement work that seamlessly intertwines with the musical work.

“My aim is to create music that is sonically and musically atypical whilst still belonging to an accessible contemporary scene. Each project, album or ‘part’ will set out to explore a single ensemble or group of instruments. In the case of Part I, that ensemble is hollow body bass guitar and tenor saxophone. “ - Indigo (Nick Roder)

The Indigo project itself was inspired by Saxophone & Bass Guitar by Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, which prompted Nick to write an album of music for the same type of ensemble. Having only just purchased a bass guitar for a different project, the instrument was still very new to him.

“I was curious to see what I would write with my self-imposed rule of not being able to overdub material, and further, how my limitations as a relatively green bass guitarist would influence the writing of the material. A strong focus on harmonic movement and melodic material was where I eventually found my happy place.”

The result is a phenomenal debut. Burrowing into the space between it’s sparse instrumentation and dulcet tones, Part I is the realisation of a minimalist and concise vision of what a symbiotic relationship between two instruments can yield.

About Indigo
Indigo is the moniker and ongoing project of Melbourne-based composer and arranger, Nick Roder. The Indigo project was conceptualised in 2020 and focuses on deep sonic exploration of little-heard ensembles in a contemporary space.

Since 2018, Nick has been composing soundtracks for video games including The Invisible Hand, Roadwarden, N1NE: Splintered Mind, This Dead Winter and Miska. Nick has also played in art-rock ensemble, Tulalah, exploring sonic textures, combining contemporary jazz/rock with chamber sounds. The modular ensemble released The Flood (Equinox Recordings, 2015) and The Question (Independent, 2017).

The first release in what will be an ongoing three-part series, Part I features nine tracks for bass guitar and tenor saxophone. Part II, an exploration of a slightly larger, more sonically diverse musical world will feature string quartet and voice. Finally, Part III will collaborate with choreographer Siobhan McKenna, who alongside Nick will develop a percussive movement work that seamlessly intertwines with the musical work.

“My aim is to create music that is sonically and musically atypical whilst still belonging to an accessible contemporary scene. Each project, album or ‘part’ will set out to explore a single ensemble or group of instruments. In the case of Part I, that ensemble is hollow body bass guitar and tenor saxophone. “ - Indigo (Nick Roder)

The Indigo project itself was inspired by Saxophone & Bass Guitar by Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, which prompted Nick to write an album of music for the same type of ensemble. Having only just purchased a bass guitar for a different project, the instrument was still very new to him.

“I was curious to see what I would write with my self-imposed rule of not being able to overdub material, and further, how my limitations as a relatively green bass guitarist would influence the writing of the material. A strong focus on harmonic movement and melodic material was where I eventually found my happy place.”

The result is a phenomenal debut. Burrowing into the space between it’s sparse instrumentation and dulcet tones, Part I is the realisation of a minimalist and concise vision of what a symbiotic relationship between two instruments can yield.

About Indigo
Indigo is the moniker and ongoing project of Melbourne-based composer and arranger, Nick Roder. The Indigo project was conceptualised in 2020 and focuses on deep sonic exploration of little-heard ensembles in a contemporary space.

Since 2018, Nick has been composing soundtracks for video games including The Invisible Hand, Roadwarden, N1NE: Splintered Mind, This Dead Winter and Miska. Nick has also played in art-rock ensemble, Tulalah, exploring sonic textures, combining contemporary jazz/rock with chamber sounds. The modular ensemble released The Flood (Equinox Recordings, 2015) and The Question (Independent, 2017).

In January 2019, at the invitation of fiddler Hans Kjorstad, Alasdair
Roberts travelled from his home in Glasgow, Scotland to Oslo,
Norway, where the two men convened with five additional
Scandinavian musicians at Riksscenen, Oslo’s centre for
Norwegian traditional arts and music. Thus newly-formed, the
group worked on arrangements of songs - self-written and
traditional - from Alasdair’s back catalogue, in preparation for
performances at Riksscenen as well as at ALICE in Copenhagen,
Denmark and the bucolic western Danish island of Fanø. The
group was named Völvur (The Seeresses), a reference to the
ancient Icelandic apocalyptic text Völuspa (The Prophecy of the
Seeress).
In January 2020, Völvur visited England and Scotland, to perform
with Alasdair Roberts at Cecil Sharp House, London and at
Platform, Glasgow, the latter as part of Celtic Connections festival.
The group had new material - freshly written songs by Alasdair
and several traditional Norwegian songs sung by Marthe Lea - and
over a couple days at Sam and Rachel’s Studio in Hackney, laid
down the music which now flows forth as ‘The Old Fabled River’.
The musicians who make up Völvur - Marthe Lea, saxophone,
clarinet and voice, Fredrik Rasten, guitars and voice, Andreas
Hoem Røysum, clarinet, Egil Kalman, bass and electronics, Jan
Martin Gismervik, drums, percussion and the aforementioned
initiator of the project, Hans Kjorstad on fiddle - are a busy and
artistically inquisitive group, involved in a diverse range of projects
with a wide variety of musical interests, from folk and jazz to free
music, modular synthesis, microtonality and beyond. They make
an ideal pairing for such voyages in the alchemical world as
Alasdair pursues in his own music.
On ‘The Old Fabled River’, Alasdair Roberts og Völvur meld their
worlds: fiddle and vocal styles formed in the Norwegian valleys
blending now with exploratory clarinet, saxophone and metallic
bowed guitar drones, now fashioned into baroque folk
arrangements. In one case, instrumental accompaniment is laid
aside, as three voices locate a questing fullness harmonizing
together.

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Freddy Fresh is a legend. Period. From a plethora of 12“es on labels like Nu Groove, Drop Bass Network, Forced Nostalgia, Spaziotempo, Lone Romantic or Toolbox Killers to albums on 90s scene mainstays like Harthouse, Anodyne or Eye Q to countless releases on his own imprints like Howlin Records, Analog Records USA and Electric Music Foundation. From remixes for the likes of GusGus, Heaven 17, Kitachi, Steve Stoll, Frankie Bones and many more to hitting the UK Top 40 with the massive BigBeat smasher „Badder Badder Schwing“
produced alongside Fatboy Slim. The man has done it all. Nearly.
And therefore Intrauterin Recordings is proud to present the first ever Drum'n'Bass release in the more than 30 year spanning career of the one and only Freddy Fresh!
With „333“ Freddy Fresh is going down a twisted, hard stepping and yet positive alley of what the man himself refers to as Modular Drum'n'Bass that is unmistakably cooked up live and direct in his Minneapolis-based studio. Expect a whirlwind of swirls, swooshes, bleeps and FX alongside raw junglistic beats and the most positive Synth bass motif you've heard in a long while.
Yet the singles' main dancefloor smash is to be found on the flip side. „Watch It Go Roun Roun“ is a raw classic, a heavy original JumpUp banger driven by a killer vocal performance by Mike Gates a.k.a. Mikey Dredd. Likely better known to many for his Techno productions on labels like Kanzleramt, Creation Rebel or Howlin Records rather than for his MC skills this is the very first time Mikey Dredd's secret love for taking up the microphone as a proper Jungle / Drum'n'Bass MC is officially recognized and revealed on wax as a late tribute to and
honoration of a large scale talent which passed away way too soon in 2019. Lighter crew!
Initial pressing will be limited to 225 copies on 7“ whitelabel vinyl. Hand-stamped with stickered cover.


b B1: Watch It Go Roun Roun featuring Mikey Dredd

Orange Vinyl

"Following on our first EP, 'Collisions', we wanted to explore the use of modular synths, and also hardware, in more depth. Exordium was crafted from countless modular jams, passed back and forth between London and Liege, and polished into a piece of work that captures our love for club music, with an experimental edge. We wanted to get out for a moment from the 170 which we are a bit more known for. Hopefully you will enjoy this exploration into our shared sound and influences as much as we enjoyed creating it."
- Fearful & Mtwn

_asstnt & Roll Dann collaborate to deliver the inaugural release on their Opera 2000 imprint entitled "Back From The Morgue".

Roll Dann has been in contact with music from a very young age and picked up inspiration from the destructive techno sound that invaded Spain between 2005 and 2010. With releases on the likes AINE, PoleGroup, Modularz and Clergy the young producer is quickly leaving his imprint on the techno world which hasn't gone unnoticed seeing him being signed to Slam's Soma imprint in 2019. "Back From The Morgue" sees him team up with _asstnt on their new Madrid based techno project, Opera 2000 for his first full EP following their track together on a compilation celebrating five years of Involve Records. _asstnt's sound comes from the heart of a passionate artist conveying romanticism, truth and dedication within his music and philosophy.

"Back From The Morgue" kicks things off with blistering drums scattered around growling modulations and twisted vocals keeping the atmosphere weird yet wonderful before "The Hill of Hanged" continues with resonating kicks fused with undulating, grime-influenced strings and sinister elements throughout. On the flip, "Coalescence" maintains the effervescent moods through storming grooves, dramatic soundscapes and powerful oscillations while "Dirty Mistress" features heavy, syncopated percussion peppered with distortion and dystopian leaning oscillations to bring this beautifully dramatic EP to a close.
Order OPR001 now
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Madrid's Roll Dann keeps up the high quality of his first few releases with a new EP on his Opera 2000 label that offers four fine cuts.

Roll Dann has already impressed with outings on Modularz, Soma and PoleGroup. It is the direct nature of his floor facing techno that appeals, and it comes infused with the inspirations he has picked up from a stint living in Berlin, as well as with the legacy of his teenage love of hardtechno-schranz. The start of Roll Dann & _asstnt's Opera 2000 marks a shift Roll Dann's creative direction where he focuses on an aggressive yet beautifully emotive style which is displayed wonderfully in his first solo release on the imprint entitled "Oppression Dance".

Big opener "When The Hate Goes Away" is a frazzled, over driven techno monster with slamming kick drums and fizzing synths that will rewire any dance floor. The brilliant "Break The Dance" then hammers you over the head with its brutal drums and big synth walls, but a more thoughtful pad also smears over the groove to bring some tenderness. "Oppression" is quick and slick, with a kinetic sense of techno funk getting you on your toes. Last of all "The Club" is another winner, this time with its eerie pads, acerbic textures and rusty hits all racing along on powerful drum programming as a distorted voice is trapped in its midst.

“May Kun Bass” is a play on the Arabic expression ما يكون باس which, affectionately, means “may you come to no harm.”

Newcomer OACEM bends homemade sounds into jagged industrial rhythms that pop, lock, jiggle and stomp. Nodding to dub, electro, minimal, glitch and techno palettes, forged into saturated, twisted chunks of super-heated noise, May Kun Bass exudes a special energy that rewards the active listener. On remix duty: Technique Nado with a downtempo modular dub interpretation (also her first work on wax) and Vertigo Inc on the B3.

limited to 100 copies, 12 inch vinyl in matte white jackets with unique hand-stamped artwork.

xpressed by synthetic voices, they present a futuristic take on modern electronic music.
Lush sounds of classic analog synths, modular drum machines, and digital sources merge into unheard soundscapes within their voltage driven root system. Six tracks combining various paths of the electronic landform into a musical journey framed by Kris Wellings’
uncanny chants. Garden Scene is a trip from the aesthetics of Detroit electro to complexity of IDM to harmonic outbursts from the abyss of contemporary pop culture.

This album was originally composed in October 2017, performed and recorded live in Kasteliotissa Medieval Hall, Nicosia, on the 19th of November 2017 as an accompanying soundtrack to Fritz Lang's two hour-long edit of the film Metropolis (1927). Commissioned by the the curators of the 'German expressionism in Cinema exhibition' to compose and perform a live soundtrack, Panagiotis and Yiannis employed a hardware heavy arsenal to produce one of their longest pieces. modular synthesizers, guitars, drum samplers and drum machines are all protagonists. The performance lasted for two hours and was recorded in its entirety. It was later edited down to preserve all sound design qualities and a somewhat live feel. The title is an homage to the main actress of the film.


Panagiotis Mina and Yiannis Eliades, longstanding members of 'do it together' collective Honest Electronics and producers of their own material as Panayotis and Isel respectively, often collaborate on projects such as Brigitte. Panagiotis Mina is a producer, musician and visual artist. He lives and works in Cyprus from Pyrgatory studios, his out in the country home diy studio project. Yiannis Eliades produces and performs music using a blend of analog and digital synthesizers, drum machines and twisted recordings, on his own or as part of duos (MYHN, Carnal Throes).

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DDS catch enduringly absorbing sonic alchemist Jim O’Rourke at his knottiest and most ingenious in a wormholing suite of amorphous rhythm and psychedelic electronics - a massive RIYL Autechre, Roland Kayn, Bernard Parmegiani, NYZ, Keith Fullerton Whitman.
Playing up to and into DDS’ freeform aesthetics, O’Rourke renders 40 minutes shearing hyaline synth tones and ruptured rhythm generated at his Steamroom facilities in Tokyo, a modular outzone trawling that harks back to his iconic Mego releases and some of the more recent Steamroom experiments. It’s an ideal addition to the ever expanding DDS cosmos, following Demdike’s recent ‘Drum Machine’ expo with a slice of purist and screwed modular magick that transcends early
electronics and modern styles in pursuit of musical sensations that defy stylistic brackets.
‘Too Compliment’ was assembled using a bespoke Hordijk modular system, a rare West Coast-style setup hand made by Dutch engineer Rob Hordijk. O’Rourke focuses on the frequency shifter here, using it to coax out fluxing tone thickets, haphazard frequencies and elongated drone corridors.
It’s transportive stuff, harking back to the early days of private press academic synth music but also sitting on edge alongside Autechre’s recent long-form work, as well as O’Rourke’s classic “I’m Happy, And I’m Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4” In O’Rourke’s hands, the mass of electronics takes on throbbing, organic dimensions, congealing
grey matter and purplish veins of fluid in viscous transitions that glisten and spark with invention as they form new tissue. What comes out is as unearthly as the earliest electronic music, but also
blessed with a psychedelc spirit in a way that’s long kept O’Rourke right out on his own, teetering between paradigms yet never settling into any single style. If you’ve always been keen on finding a way into that sprawling soundworld, ‘Too Compliment’ is a perfect entry point into a highly rewarding creative macrocosm.

Crystal Clear Vinyl
Limited
Cellist Maarten Vos and pianist Nils Davidse became close friends over a shared love for modular synthesizers. Two musicians with a taste for contemporary electronic music, Vos and Davidse began experimenting and constantly extending each other’s boundaries in hour-long colourful improvisations in the studio. Both of them being occupied with other projects, their monthly recording sessions became moments of pure freedom. Most of the album was composed and recorded in and around a forest cabin tucked away in the Dutch riparian woodlands. Intuitively following its surroundings, Superbloom is a true jungle of vivid and organic sounds that reflect both Vos’s and Davidse’s musical backgrounds intertwined in a melodic and harmonically rich soundscape. It’s a many layered affair, created with analog and digital synths, some hints of piano and cello, field recordings and processing through different kinds of tape machines.

Beautiful orange & yellow sunburst vinyl - Solstice '21 sees twelve bright lights of independent electronic music mark the coming Summer Solstice. In such dark days, the age-old practice of celebrating the move from shadow to light, feels steeped in a renewed symbolic power. Solstice '21 marks this significant moment with a rich array of musical offerings. Reflective, lively, and always powerful, this collection is spun with modern twists of an ancient thread. Rotator - This is the first outing under this moniker from Justin Owen, also known under the alias Licit, as well as being a protagonist in the world of modular synthesis as the man behind the Abstract Data modules; Letters from Mouse - "Bubbling analogue synthesis from Scotland." This analogue synth maestro and inimitable broadcaster (aka The Magic Window), boasts a string of quality releases, including the recent highly acclaimed album An gàrradh, also on Subexotic; Cub/cub - "Cub/cub explores the world in-between nostalgia and nihilism, analogue and digital, real and false; creating evocative and mournful musical collages." First discovered on Boards of Canada forum Twoism, Cub/cub's two debut releases with Subexotic demonstrated his considerable talent to mix fascinating texture with beguiling melody. With an astonishing follow-up album coming soon, his rising star feels unstoppable; Orbury Common - "aural ephemera from the home of the orbs." This mysterious duo from the West of England are blessed with delightful musical cunning; their brilliant debut on Subexotic lifted the lid, and this offering reaffirms exciting times lie ahead; Onepointwo - "Minimal electronics, abstract radio signals and dystopian soundscapes are proceeded from both digital and analogue sources." A creator of intricate yet powerful collage, with finely wrought motifs that repeat and build to create a shimmering psychedelic impact. This is Onepointwo's glorious trademark. Spell-binding releases already exist on Woodford Halse, Poeta Negra, Lotus, as well as an imminent powerhouse album forthcoming on Subexotic; Giants of Discovery - "Experimental electronica with the occasional noisy guitar thrown in." Giants of Discovery's ability to get to grips with the musicality of his subject, has lead to previous exquisite sojourns into realms such as Victorian cosmic horror and Greek mythology, as well as an equally fantastical, towering follow up album on Woodford Halse; Wonderful Beasts - "A Wonderful collaboration between boycalledcrow and Xqui." Their playful interaction finds ways of crafting acoustic fragments into unexpected kaleidoscopes of sound. With beguiling debuts on cult label Wormhole World (soon to be followed up by an extraordinary new album on Subexotic), there is a kind of breathless magic about everything they do; Dogs versus Shadows - Electronic Sound Magazine says "A rare example of gamekeeper turned poacher...a welter of impressive electronica." Lee Pylon's ability to straddle a wealth of uncompromisingly inventive creations, and his broadcasting prowess as the much loved Kites & Pylons, is already the stuff of legend. A multitude of releases across many labels including Subexotic, Woodford Halse, Miracle Pond, Third Kind, Submarine Broadcasting, Sensory Leakage, provide a glittering treasure trove of work; Counter Silence - A stalwart of Subexotic, Counter Silence's sparkling and wistful musical work very much stands alone in temperament and style. 2020's Pathways EP on Subexotic remains a precious oasis, imbued with a haunting solitude that lives on in the memory; Transient Visitor - "All music unlocked by Alex Cargill (C.O.I. Central Office of Information) and Martin Jensen (The Home Current)." These two intercontinental maestros (well Sidcup & Luxembourg) boast impressive solo back catalogues across many labels (including Castles in Space, Polytechnic Youth, Woodford Halse). Their newly conceived collaborative Transient Visitor project, brought about the superb TV1 album in 2020 - we can see the sparks fly again in this welcome 2021 return; Simon Klee - "Natural, Electric, Organic Psychedelic - Sounds, noise and psychedelic beats." Klee's playful alchemy engages the mind and spirit, as witnessed in a flurry of top quality releases in recent times (e.g. Subexotic, ANR, Woodford Halse), and there is a visceral joy in his work that is perfectly placed for a midsummer celebration. Klee also produces a truly excellent mixcast and increasingly essential tape label, both under the guise of Anticipating Nowhere; Rupert Lally - "Hailing originally from England but now based in Switzerland, Guitarist, Percussionist and Electronic Musician Rupert Lally began his career as a Sound Designer and Composer for Theatre and TV, before launching his solo career in 2005. Since then his releases have blurred the boundaries between electronic and acoustic music." Lally's consistently brilliant work is always a highlight of the electronic music calendar, including recent stellar works across many labels such as Spun Out Of Control, Third Kind, Woodford Halse, and Modern Aviation.

Cloudwalker was entirely written and produced between March and November 2020. The album is a welcome return of Martin Haidinger's more notable style after the floating tranquility of the ambient/drone series of albums like Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles. What's contained within Cloudwalker mirrors its name. Haidinger takes Gimmik on a somewhat weightless journey above the clouds floating between the electronic music he nurtured in the Toytronic years.
These new tracks represent a production concept where Martin saw himself more like a witness of a moving organism than a planning architect. This approach gave the music the space to evolve more freely, like clouds. It broadened the emotional sound pallet of Gimmik's style without denying its heritage. The same philosophy was implemented when choosing the produc- tion tools, representing technology from 1958 to 2019, including field recording and manipulated real instruments.
The emphasis is clearly on songwriting rather than nano edits and ball bearings down stairs beats. The result is clean melodic electronica, bouncy Electro, engaging maternal downtempo, and expertly crafted modular synthesis. Every detail has the technical Haidinger approach with a strong focus on telling a story, leaving a lot of emotional space for the imagination of the listener. Cloudwalker is a confident and warm return to form from an artist that was sorely missed in his time away.

Ever effervescent producer Kangding Ray continues to connect experimentalism and dancefloor, hitting home hard on his newest EP on Figure.
Storming out of the gate, Doppler Shift packs the momentum to take off, its dry-thumping arp-ride raising the levels from zero to hero. Meditating on murky sounds, Branches displays the producer’s extraordinary skills at splicing together seemingly disparate DNA of sounds to create otherworldly but compelling tapestries of rhythm.
Turning things for the flip, from colourful dub chords emerges Terra, a driving tune reminiscent of the 90’s spacey chill-out-rooms of. Taking it a notch deeper, Robust builds its lively groove around modular experimentations, the machines ultimately becoming an extension of the artist himself.
A special bonus for the digital version, final track Deeper begins unassumingly beatless, only to pick up the pace for a blissfully trancey journey.

180g audiophile vinyl pressing. Tip-On Gatefold packaging.
A fascinating solo album from the Swiss pianist, composer and
conceptualist best known as leader of the bands Ronin and Mobile,
‘Entendre’ offers deeper insight into Nik B rtch’s musical thinking.
As the album title implies ‘Entendre’ is about hearing as a creative process,
referencing the patient unfolding of B rtch’s modular polymetric pieces, with
alertness to the dynamics of touch, finding freedom in aesthetic restriction,
serving the flow of each piece’s development while also taking the music to
new places.
Recorded at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano, in September 2020, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Nik Bartsch: piano
Press:
“Entendre - his first album entirely played on solo acoustic piano, with no
overdubs - might be his finest yet.” - **** The Guardian
“Nik Bärtsch feels a long way from jazz, but a lot closer to a freewheeling
rhythmic spontaneity on this unexpectedly action-packed set.” - **** (Editor’s
Choice) Jazzwise
“There is nothing lost when Nik Bärtsch, bandleader, becomes Nik Bärtsch,
solo pianist. It’s the same, captivating music, only played through the single
vessel of a piano. Through this prism, more is revealed about the genius of
Bärtsch’s ‘ritual groove music,’ not less.” - Somethin’ Else
“Entendre is a fascinating solo album from Swiss pianist, composer and conceptualist Nik Bärtsch... In these six solo realisations, Bärtsch’s creative music
unfolds with heightened alertness and dexterity as the pieces develop and unfurl with texture and subtlety of touch. The pianist finds freedom in aesthetic
restriction, while also seizing opportunities to guide the music to new places
of discovery.” - UK Vibe
“Manfred Eicher’s production captures the sound of the piano and the room
with forensic clarity. Entendre is, literally, classic Bärtsch. It is also classic
ECM.” - All About Jazz

What began as a challenge to fight creative stagnation, soon grew into a fully-fledged audio-visual project for Belgian DJ, producer and live artist, Biesmans. Setting himself the goal of making three tracks per week for a month, he re-scored ‘80s pop culture moments – including films, TV shows and games, resulting in a brilliant 12-track work encompassing new wave, indie, dark wave, electro and
disco.
Moving his modular-heavy studio to Berlin in 2014, the ensuring years saw Joris Biesmans drop heat on Correspondent, Disco Halal, AEON, 17 Steps and Future Disco. He’s been a core member of Watergate
family since his arrival in the capital, working as the club’s sound technician. He made his debut on Watergate Records in 2020 with the well-received ‘Electric Love’ EP.
The ‘Planes, Trains & Automobiles’ album took shape in April last year as the lockdown was starting to take grip and Biesmans needed a positive distraction. Ensconced in the music of his childhood and ‘80s
pop cultural fodder, he locked himself in his studio and set about creating, later digging through archival footage to match the music. Biesmans, who previously undertook work scoring films, was so absorbed by the process, he’d sometimes do it in reverse; allowing the vintage media be the guide. Throughout the period, the clips were shared each Monday, Wednesday and Friday on his Instagram, building up a firm following from fans, friends and colleagues. And thus, the project found its wings, developing into an album.
Throughout the dozen tracks, highlights are plentiful; from the neon ambience of the Kraftwerk-inspired ‘ ‘Cosmic Cruise’, which later accompanied a smoky scene between Tom Cruise and Rebecca de Mornay in ‘Risky Business’; the sun-soaked, retro-pop title track, which became the album’s first single, and was paired with a jubilant dance scene from the Breakfast Club; ‘Cold Void’, the album’s second single, which saw Biesmans link up with fellow Belgians Boi Wonder and Tom the Bomb for a dark wave creation built around a heavy guitar solo and set against a backdrop of Blade Runner clips; and the silky electro funk of ‘Another World’ that soundtracks scenes from Miami Vice.
Biesmans explains about ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’: “I started this as a lockdown challenge, in which I would make three tracks per week for a month, alongside providing videos where I re-scored
footage of 80s pop culture moments. Inspired by the movie of the same name, I picked the title because it ties to the theme of ‘mobility’. Our society is based upon being mobile and when Corona hit us, we
could taste a bit of being immobile. As an artist that meant, I could focus on making music 100%. No distractions, no weekend gigs, no parties just making music. This new lifestyle resulted in my first album.
A journey into the past but looking forward to the future, experimenting with other genres and techniques to make a real album that goes beyond club music.”

Audio visual sculptor Kero operates the multidisciplinary arts collective Detroit Underground record label and continues to produce bit crushed experimental electronic music with over two decades under his belt.

Demo Vectors showcases Kero's sonic range—bouncing back and forth between IDM fractures, broken electro shapes and an all around low-end forcefield. Splicing machined modular tunes with syncopated rhythms and Detroit-inspired slivers, Kero's fingerprints can be found on imprints like Blueprint, Wild oats, Ghostly International, Shitkatapult, Semantica, Touchin' Bass, BPitch Control, and many others.

Using different studio setups from 1998 to 2021, Demo Vectors culminated from many different locations including Detroit, Windsor, Barcelona, Berlin and Los Angeles and reveals Kero's curriculum vitae packaged in a 60 minute robust collection.

The downtempo groove of "ABSTR_B&B" offers a classic bricolage of collapsed mechanical percussion straight from the foundry as the definitive sound design and glitchy bits of "BLISS" take shape. Fluid robotics and bass jabs progress on "GROUNDZEROBACK" pushing each pixel to their breaking point. You'll also find stark industrial elements on tracks like "PREFREAK.EPS" and spastic acid on "COMOFFICE-1" displaying the wide angle lens Kero employs to capture improvised dark drill'n bass techniques with a Squarepusher sheen. From the slow burning "PILL'LATHE2" humming its way across laid back digitized acrobatics to the aptly titled "COLOR_CUB" that clicks, cuts and collects subtle low frequency modulations, Demo Vectors is a tightly compacted and forward thinking IDM album.

Sandblasted electronics mixed with shattered glass and corrosive blips'n bleeps, Demo Vectors acts as Kero's raison d'etre as each piece eclipses itself.

From Ernst Thoma's secret vaults. First 2 chapters of Mr. Thoma's fun with the Serge Modular Music System and TMS Synthesizer, accompanied by Knut Remond on weird "laced square drum"

Live recorded at Raum 2 and at Koprod Studio Zürich in 1981 and 1982

Lotus Wash drops his debut album on LBD Sounds, bringing a whole load of fresh material which came out from his experience as a session musician, and performing his experimental live sets around the Czech Republic. He connects the dots between classically trained musician and modular synth-head, working in Prague's DIY shop and creative community Noise Kitchen. The album spans across 6 original tracks of pure analogue bliss and live ideas, alongside three remixes from his closest allies, local producers Oliver Torr, Vision of 1994, and Hrtl.

The Field Theory was created during a period of deep fascination with quantum physics, with the tracks being conceptually and aesthetically inspired by some of its phenomena. Acoustically, it's mostly a slow and dark affair, with Lotus Wash only letting the light in very briefly when the sun is young (Magnetic Moment), keeping the shutter firmly closed for the rest of the record. His music does not rely on banging beats to drive it, instead letting intense grooves do the job from deep underground, just like on earth-shattering album opener Vacuum Fluctuation. He masters his craft of building atmosphere, a skill learnt during multiple collaborations with various Czech theatres. Of course, he lets the steam out occasionally, and always with devastating effect (Higgs Field, Casimir Force), but mostly choses to keep it capped, humming and hissing. When the sky clears, he opts for a minimalistic and hypnotic approach, only to disturb this peace with a killer bassline in one of the album's highlights – Spooky Action in A Distance – later re-imagined and re-electrified by Oliver Torr. Standard Model is anything but your standard techno, while Hrtl's remix of Magic Moment flirts with techno too, but on a dubbier and brighter side. Bringing the album to a close is Vision of 1994's downtempo take on the same track, finally letting you breathe out.

Sub Rosa presents in their Early Electronic series, the final chapter of music by Beglian key composer of early electronic experiments, André Stordeur (1941-2020). Side A features a previously unreleased, stark and poignant composition from 1979; while the B side is vibrant and almost playful of pieces from the 2000s.

André Stordeur His musical career started in 1973 with a tape composition for the soundtrack to a film on Gordon Matta-Clark titled Office Baroque. Later in the 1970s, he participated to avantgarde music ensemble Studio voor Experimentele Muziek, founded in Antwerp, Flanders, by Joris De Laet. Since 1980, Stordeur composes exclusively on Serge synthesizer, either a Serge series 79 and a Serge prototype 1980, which was especially built for him by Serge Tcherepnin himself. In 1981, Stordeur composed the music of Belgian film director Christian Mesnil's documentary Du Zaïre au Congo. He studied at IRCAM in 1981 with David Wessel and then flew to the US to study with Morton Subotnick. Stordeur became an influential sound synthesis teacher and, in 1997, completed his Art of Analog Modular Synthesis by Voltage Control,4 a guide to everything modular.

Oberheim While 'Oberheim' is the centerpiece of this LP, we pressed for the first time on vinyl three pieces from the session André called 'Synthesis Studies,' previously featuring on Complete Analog and Digital Electronic Music, 1978-2000. 'I was helped in my studies by a must-have book: The Techniques of Electronic Music, by Thomas Wells and Eric Vogel (University Stores, 1974). That book aside, I learned synthesis on my own. After a trip to India in 1968, I discovered Indian music and took tabla and sitar classes in New Delhi; my teachers were students of Chatur Lal and Ravi Shankar. Later, in the 2000s, while living in the US, I tried to recreate through synthesis all the Indian musical instruments I loved so much.' 'Drone' is one of his most spectacular works.

Label Text "Dekmantel once again teams up with RE:VIVE, the cultural initiative setup by the The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, to pair modern electronic talent with Dutch archival footage. The third EP in the Scores series sees Interstellar Funk and Italian producer Guenter Råler create innovative, modular soundscapes to the graceful visual arts unearthed from the EYE Filmmuseum archives.

As Interstellar Funk, Olf van Elden uses his production competency to craft a heavenly arpeggiated, synth composition to the amateur aquarium movies by J.L. Clement which are edited for this project by Sjoerd Martens. Filmed in the 1940’s, the video’s turn-of-the-century black-and-white style aquatic footage is reanimated through van Elden’s tacit polyphonic, modular sonic soundtrack. Layering together multiple sequences, van Elden pieces together the music as a whole, to mimic the way in which the film was created.

On the B-Side, Italian abstract artist and Dutch native Guenter Raler concocts a deeply introspective, and perfectly choreographed, ambient soundtrack to a select series of pieced together clips from the Collectie Natuurbeelden, the Institute’s Collection of Natural Images. The music plays against the depiction of multiple biological communities in transition; what is referred to as an ecotone. The title itself not only recalls that of a musical tone, but represents the ever-evolving aspect of life and nature as similar colours, along with movements of animals and plants pass on from one image to the next.

Within their own right, the new scores not only give the age-old films new context and sonic character, but exist as creative works as their own, full of resonance and individualism that highlight the retrospective artists’ voices to their fullest."

Steevio is perhaps one of the most influential electronic artists you’ve never come across. With more than forty years of knob-twiddling experience, this modular magician boasts enough cable to bring you to the moon and back. Away from the blinking racks, Steevio runs music festivals, like Freerotation, manages record labels and generally paves the way. Now this pioneer and Firescope are teaming up for a very special EP.

With Acatalepsy, this veteran dives deep into his machines before resurfacing with four tracks of melting organic techno. “Tarantism” comes to life with drums, percussive textures that prove fertile ground for ever more intricate patterns while orange blossom keys bloom. From understated chatter, a hive of beats soon forms around “Cynefin” as dewy notes float on the warmth of a new dawn. The natural world is an integral part of these compositions, the industrious movement of rhythms, the change and reshaping that comes with growth. Another presence on the 12” is the musician himself and his own influences. These early inspirations come to the fore in the hazy hi-hats of “Oxytocin” with its satellite-like bleeps and dreamy basslines that echo both the armchair and club of sounds of 90s techno. Those bleeps grow ever more distant in the fragile finale of “Intonation.” A melody precariously perches, thawing like ice, above delicate echoes that ghost behind modular bulges as drums fade.

Acatalepsy encapsulates the ephemeral nature of sound. Through this selection of one-off recordings, through these live jam sessions, Steevio captures a palpable and primal energy with an expert’s ear. An EP that casts spells from beginning to end, an EP from a true waveform wizard.

With this fifth release on the catalogue's main series, we continue to care about rising talents and extend to new musical borders. Siwei is an Antwerp based producer who made his specialty to blend ambient and techno with moody waves of distortion and fidgeting modular patterns.

The A side takes you on an industrial tinged techno trip while the other takes the direction of beat science, and the dark side of dub. A1 feels like a head-on charge in a dusky and smokey room. It starts with a rolling bassline, introducing the full-on energy of a mighty steady kick drum stomping over howling pads. An ambitious track to lose oneself and the ordinary sense of time.

B1 is in the lineage of far-out dub explorations and forward-thinking dance experiments. This fractured cutting-edge aesthetic blends ideally with the reverberating synths and the eastern vibe of the lead melody. B2 is an epic broken beat stepper, a secret game for adults, with cinematically engineered sci-fi synths and a ruthless palette of sounds. It's not just dreadful, but also playful, thrilling for the mind, challenging for the body.

Tape

'Verzamelen II' is the second volume in a retrospective series in which we look back at the work of Wouter van Veldhoven (Netherlands). Throughout the past decade, the Dutch composer built an impressive catalogue of music in which tape loop and modular synthesis experiments hold a central place. Both collaborations and solo-work saw the light through some distinctive labels such as Slaapwel, The Tapeworm, Umor Rex and Digitalis among others.

With this series we want to dive into some work which slightly went under the radar. The pieces are collected from several releases and are re-mastered for the occasion. Some of them were never physically released before.

Peter Broderick and Hainbach kindly joined this trip by offering two new reworks which close this second volume.

Songs taken from ‘A head stuck in tapes’, ‘Een paar schetjes en optredens 2005-2006’ & other found unreleased tracks.

'Verzamelen II' is the second volume in a retrospective series in which we look back at the work of Wouter van Veldhoven (Netherlands). Throughout the past decade, the Dutch composer built an impressive catalogue of music in which tape loop and modular synthesis experiments hold a central place. Both collaborations and solo-work saw the light through some distinctive labels such as Slaapwel, The Tapeworm, Umor Rex and Digitalis among others.

With this series we want to dive into some work which slightly went under the radar. The pieces are collected from several releases and are re-mastered for the occasion. Some of them were never physically released before.

Peter Broderick and Hainbach kindly joined this trip by offering two new reworks which close this second volume.

Songs taken from ‘A head stuck in tapes’, ‘Een paar schetjes en optredens 2005-2006’ & other found unreleased tracks.

“Some of the most extraordinary songs I’ve heard in years.” Brian Eno

Les Disques du Crepuscule presents The Salt Garden (Landscaped), an album of extended pieces by acclaimed quiet music ensemble Fovea Hex, featuring longform remixes by British songwriter and producer Steven Wilson and Serbian soundscape artist Abul Mogard, as well as a previously unreleased mix by Peter Chilvers.

Formed in 2005 by Irish musician Clodagh Simonds, Fovea Hex have since released 3 albums (Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent, Here Is Where We Used to Sing and The Salt Garden), drawing favourable comparisons with Nico, This Mortal Coil, Ligeti and even Schubert.

The Salt Garden (Landscaped) is pressed on crystal clear vinyl, and comes packaged with a CD version featuring 4 tracks in total. The outer sleeve is printed in white reverse board and features an image taken by Crepuscule designer Joel Van Audenhaege during a recent trip to Greenland. The inner bag offers detailed liner notes as well as an interview with Clodagh.

As well as Steven Wilson and Abul Mogard, other high-profile admirers include film director David Lynch, who invited the group to play at his Cartier Foundation exhibition in Paris in 2007, and Brian Eno, who has described Clodagh’s work as “some of the most extraordinary songs I’ve heard in years.”

The Salt Garden (Landscaped) gathers together 3 long ambient remixes of tracks from the Salt Garden EP trilogy, originally released between 2016 and 2019. The core album is pressed on crystal clear vinyl and showcases ‘Solace’ and ‘Is Lanza Light & Given’, both re-worked by musical polymath Steven Wilson. “I’ve long been a fan of Fovea Hex,” explains Steven, “which for me is some of the most sublimely beautiful music ever recorded. It’s a mix of electronic and acoustic sounds played on instruments ranging from state-of-the-art to ancient and arcane.”

As well as the two tracks reworked by Steven, the bonus CD enclosed with the vinyl album also finds room for ‘We Dream All the Dark Away’, the widely-acclaimed re-interpretation by Abul Mogard of ‘All Those Signs’ from the Salt Garden II EP. By turns haunting and sinister, but always beautiful, the piece features vocals by both Clodagh and Brian Eno, as well as cello by Kate Ellis, and modular synth and effects by mysterious soundscaper Mogard.

An additional special bonus track on the CD is an unreleased remix of lesser -known 2015 digital single ‘By the Glacial Lake’ made by musician Peter Chilvers, best known for his collaborations with Brian Eno, Karl Hyde, Chris Martin and Tim Bowness.

“I feel truly honoured!” says Clodagh Simons, who began her career in cult folk-psyche band Mellow Candle, and since then has guested on albums by Mike Oldfield, Thin Lizzy, Russell Mills, Matmos, Current 93 and Steven Wilson. “It’s been fascinating to witness how these pieces have been so imaginatively and skilfully revisioned in the hands of Steven, Abul and Peter. Each piece has emerged into a completely fresh new light, with a different vibrancy, yet remains grounded in what was there before.”

Anml Mthr is an unstoppable Acid Techno wizard who performs live with two 303 machines, modular synths and hardware sampler.
Inspired by his latest appearance at HÖR Berlin he recorded 4 tracks exclusively for FLASH Recordings.

KNTXT kicks off 2021 by welcoming exciting new talent ONYVAA to its ranks. The much vaunted DJ and producer debuts with her Lost Angeles EP, a superbly powerful four tracker that is perfectly at home on this agenda setting label.

ONYVAA is an LA based artist who has been on a swift rise up through the global techno ranks in the last couple of years. She brings classy Detroit, melodic and dub influences to her music, and her raw analog aesthetic always helps ensure her stylish tracks bring plenty of atmosphere to go alongside her strong modular live-sets. Now, she steps up with a much anticipated debut on Charlotte de Witte's KNTXT label having struck up a personal friendship with the influential artist.

Says ONYVAA, "Lost Angeles was inspired by my time back home in LA and things feeling a bit foreign to my everyday life pre-covid. I’m super grateful for all of Charlotte’s support and really proud to be a part of the KNTXT family. Hoping to play these tracks out on the dance floor soon!"

Opener 'The Way It Is' wastes no time in laying down a heavyweight techno groove that is run through with edgy, laser-like synth riffs. It's an all consuming wall rattler that will blow clubs away. 'Lucid' is a darkened techno roller again lit up with expertly designed synths that are bright yet menacing as distant vocal sounds add another layer of tension. It's an all out acid attack on 'LXD' which places you at the heart of a rave, strobe lights flashing, smoke in the air, darkness enveloping you. The title track closes out at hyper speed, with turbocharged drum programming, interwoven bass and clanking industrial motifs all getting you thoroughly in the zone.

Says Charlotte, "I met Shelby for the first time after a show in Athens. We visited the city the day after and instantly became friends. Whenever the opportunity would arise, we’d spend time together. I love being around the ball of energy that is Shelby and I’m beyond excited to have her and her music on my label. Expecting big things from her!”

This is a fantastic new signing for KNTXT and surely the start of even bigger things for ONYVAA.

Julien Sénélas, Jérôme Vassereau and Soia present a new version of In C, Terry Riley's seminal work : a musical interpretation with two modular synthesizers (11 oscillators) and a graphic interpretation of the original score (53 shapes). Composed in 1964 by Terry Riley, In C is considered as the founding work of the minimalist movement. Like the 11 acoustic instruments that can be heard on the most famous version recorded in 1968, 11 oscillators from two modular synthesizers are used here. The illustrator and visual artist Soia has created an alphabet of shapes, which represents each of the 53 musical cells that make up In C. A visual and electronic reinterpretation of this evolving composition, among the most accessible and generous of contemporary music.

Toronto’s infamous psychedelic multimedia collective, Intersystems, make a surprise return with a new full-length LP, #IV. Coming via Waveshaper Media, #IV is Intersystems’ first new material since 1968! Intersystems’ pioneering avant/electronic music sounded positively alien in the 1960s, and more than 50 years later, this latest body of work sounds just as otherworldly.

When they arrived on the scene in the late 1960s, Intersystems stood out from their peers. Comprised of architect Dik Zander, light sculptor Michael Hayden, poet Blake Parker, and musician John Mills-Cockell (of Syrinx, Kensington Market and more), the group mounted groundbreaking pan-sensory events and released a trilogy of defiantly disorienting records.

Where more conventional purveyors of sonic psychedelia were content with fuzztone guitar and orientalist tropes, Intersystems managed to approximate the full psychedelic experience in all its euphoric wonder and terror. Initially wrangling homespun gadgetry, feverishly spliced-together tapes, and mutant beat poetry, Intersystems were also among the very first to deploy a Moog Synthesizer; their Moog modular system was the first to be imported into Canada. Intersystems’ three vinyl LP recordings, meanwhile, justifiably became coveted collector's items given their scarce quantity and singular unsettling vision.

The reissue of Intersystems’ full discography in 2015 prompted acclaim from a number of major outlets. Among them, PopMatters hailed the set as "one of those great lost recordings (three of 'em actually) that comes from the lysergic era..." Mills-Cockell’s work in Syrinx has also been reissued to great acclaim in recent years.

Fifty-plus years after their 1968 album Free Psychedelic Poster Inside, Hayden and Mills-Cockell decided to revive the long-dormant project with a series of sessions at Hamilton's storied Grant Avenue Studio. The resultant music remains remarkably congruent with the project's original vision while clearly emerging from the present moment. With original poet/lyricist Blake Parker now deceased, Hayden and Mills-Cockell made the counterintuitive (yet strangely apt) decision to render Parker's words electronically. As the computer-synthesized voice alternates between an eerily life-like delivery and slurred cybernetic faltering, it brings a new dystopian tint to the group's anxious surrealism. Taking cues from its predecessor, Free Psychedelic Poster Inside, a modular Moog Synthesizer system is the primary instrument, yet here it offers a dynamic blend of different sonorities: barbed wire basslines, Subotnickesque chirping, gestural plumes of colour and percussive filigree.

While the group cut their teeth in the 1960s, make no mistake these new Intersystems recordings aren't a “comeback" or an attempt to rehash the "good old days". What one hears instead is the sound of Mills-Cockell and Hayden re-energizing the project, bringing with them the myriad experience they’ve accumulated in the intervening 50 years. These aural concoctions—no less perplexing than their 1960s predecessors—build upon the Intersystems foundation but very decidedly reside in the present moment, reminding listeners of just how forward-looking this group was in the first place.

Veteran NYC based Scottish electronic musician Drew McDowall's latest work is his loftiest, most liturgical, and least industrial outing to date —and potentially the apex of his recent discography.Named after an ancient Greek word for votive offering, Agalmaexudes a hooded, devotional aura, creaking and keeling under vast rafters of stone, stained glass, and shredded wires. It's a music of majesty and mystery but also modernity, McDowall's refined modular system shape-shifting strings, piano, pipe organ, and choral masses into disorienting synthetic mirages of the sacred. He cites the intersection of “joy, terror, and the elegiac” as a centering inspiration –or, phrased more bluntly, “that 'what the fuck is going on' feeling.”



As a career collaborator himself, with stints in Coil, Psychic TV, and countless other shorter-lived partnerships, it's telling that McDowall chose this project to gather such an impressive spectrum of peers. Italian synthesist Caterina Barbieri, American drone organist Kali Malone, prolific multi-instrumentalistRobert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, operatic Humanbeast vocalist Maralie Armstrong-Rial, Saudi producer MSYLMA, and warped futurist beat-makers Bashar Suleiman and Elvin Brandhi cameo across the album's 42 minutes, contouring McDowall's nuanced negative spaces with shudders, shadows, and shivering flickers of serenity. Each of them shines in their spotlight, elevating these elusive alchemical states into surreal revelations of texture and transcendence.



McDowall's original working title for the record is revealing: Ritual Music.He speaks of his creative practice in ceremonial terms, negating binaries by seeking the middle path to anuminousequilibrium that erases the distinction between the inner and outer worlds.These compositions feel similarly processional and intuitive, at the crossroads of holiness and hallucination, the sacred vertigo of yawning naves rising into untouchable night skies. It's a vision of industrial music as enigma and invocation, cryptic hymnals of shroudedbeautysummoned in catacombs and crumbling cathedrals.



Despite its depths, Agalmais also an album of immediacy and emotion. Celestial laments of and for times of unrest and suffering. McDowall characterizes his initial intention for this music as an to attempt to convey experiences he felt incapable of putting into words: “To try and approach sublimity, or at least acknowledge it in some way.”Agalmamore than acknowledges the ineffable –it embodies it.

After their debut last year on Cymawax, Ancestral Revolt is back now both as a production duo and a label. Still mysteriously anonymous and rhythmically mischievous...

The title track (A1) Changa Maranga is a percussive, slightly latin flavored ode to the ancient rituals of tryptamine inhalation.

The legendary British producer Aubrey has delivered a superb remix (A2) of this by keeping the spacey pads but turning it into his own signature deep and quirky techno sound.

(B1) Peak Hipster will make any hipster peak with pleasure while getting penetrated with the sounds of the latest modular gear while (B2) Pijos Piojosos takes it down into the dungeon and slaps you senseless while fiddling with your pleasure points.

neon candy vinyl incl. 24"x12" poster

To Sonic Boom’s Pete Kember, re-imagining the past can lead to ways forward on life’s natural, interconnected path. In April of 2020, he released his first album in over 20 years called All Things Being Equal, a lush and psychedelic record full of interwoven synthesizers and droning vocal melodies, concerned with the state of humanity and the natural world. An entire year later, Kember has re-imagined his last release and created an album of self-remixed tracks called Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough, inspired by the spirit of late 70s, early 80s records by artists like Kraftwerk, Blondie and Eddy Grant. His new album is hypnotic and moody, holding onto the existential framework of the original, but exposes a fresh, beating realm of possibility.

In his last album, All Things Being Equal, Kember told regenerative stories backwards and forwards as he explored dichotomies zen and fearsome, reverential of his analog toolkit and protective of the plants and trees that support our lives. His work is always complex, both in its instrumentation built using modular synthesizers, and with his attempts to observe the many variables that exist in the universe that are intrinsically connected. Kember takes his existential and musical curiosity even further in Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough, explaining “how we interact now is especially critical.” Written while the world endures many environmental and human crises, the album is both a balm and a reminder to nurture our own relationships, both natural and personal.

Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough includes remixes of six tracks from All Things Being Equaland two tracks previously released exclusively in Japan. The album opens just like the original, with “Just Imagine”in its remixed form. The modular synthesizer at its foundation sounds familiar, but as the song progresses it branches out into various veins of sparkling embellishments and deep humming to truly expand the world that the song attempts to envision. On the albums’title track “Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough,” Kember’s instrumentation mirrors the interactions he wishes to inspire; synthesizers responding and building on one another, a conversation of sorts that the human world currently seems to avoid.

Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough sets itself up to be a grooving, night-time record, while carrying on Sonic Boom’s sense of urgency to assess our relationship with the world. As Sonic Boom revisits his last album, he exposes the arteries and bones of his past work and shares its raw, exciting potential. The result is a re-textured and re-colored new set of songs, emphasizing Sonic Boom’s ability to make a sonically expansive album feel distinctly impactful for anyone who listens closely.

The Moscow’s dancefloor burners are back with the new single “ ANZARE”. Offering again their usual modular sonic artillery and their lovely blend of electro, dark techno and body music with 2 new tracks that are insured/guaranteed floor-fillers. TANZARE Ltd. Edition EP comes presented in a ONE-OFF truly limited edition of 200 copies lacquered pressed on 180 gr. high quality MAGENTA vinyl. All tracks have been specially remastered for LONG CUT vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young and Cold Studios.

Avont is a music project by Amsterdam based artist Arjan Timmermans The music on Avont's #1 EP was mainly created with the use of a four-track tape machine, guitar, hardware synths and a eurorack modular synthesizer. Avont juxtaposes the element of chance and the glitches that are inherent in the use of tape loops, with meticulous sound design and synthesizer programming.

Genres that influenced this collection of recordings range from krautrock and noise to jazz and ambient. This resulted in combining atmospheric tape loops with the lush Rhodes piano improvisations of Onno Beukenhorst on "Camtas", while the ambient of "Even" is based on a classic jazz chord progression. Arjan Timmermans studied music at London's Middlesex University, has been a successful sound designer for creative brands such as Van Gogh Museum and Bas Kosters and gained notoriety with new wave and electro infused solo performances in European clubs in the early 00's. For the music on this EP, he was equally influenced by electronic acts like Bitchin Bajas, the krautrock of Harmonia and jazz artists such as Jakob Bro and The Necks.

Unobvious Creative Studio created the concept & design for the cover. They asked Amsterdam based collage artist Dewy Karouw to create artwork. Dewy combined fragments of black and white photo's from vintage adult magazines. By omitting the genitals of the original photos, she prevents an explicit sexual image, in favour of sensual, organic shapes. By adding geometric shapes and colour to these images, Unobvious found a way to underpin the contrast of organic and artificial sounds found in the music.

Warning: don't pull off the fluorescent sticker! Enjoy!

Giordano arrives on Savy Records with one of his strongest EPs to date - an emotional four tracker carrying on the label's theme from its sold-out first release. 'Into Your Mind' sees the producer combining analog and digital tools to create raw hybrid energy consisting of energetic drums that sit in a perfect balance with rich modular pads. The EP neatly weaves together ambient, techno and UK breaks, with dynamics that make the Berlin-based Italian producer stand out from the crowd.

Armellodie Records is proud to present 'whence, the', the new album from Thirty Pounds of Bone aka, Johny Lamb. 'whence, the' is the sixth full-length album by Thirty Pounds of Bone and the third in a series of records that play deliberately with the affordances and problems of studio recording. 2015's 'The Taxidermist' was awash with huge, constructed ensemble pieces, 2019's critically-acclaimed, 'Still Every Year They Went' was recorded live, at sea, on a commercial fishing boat, and this last takes Johny Lamb's fascination with analogue synths further than before using Eurorack modular synths as the bedrock for each song. The result of working in this way is of course, that many of the parts on the record are all but impossible to recreate; the nature of the patches being built in the moment, captured, and undocumented. This time around Johny has focused on the tiny details of sadness, largely inspired by the events of 'A Story of Long' where the central moment of the song is observing a close friend pouring his husband a glass of water in a hospice, just some few hours before his death. This was an intimacy and time that Johny did not expect to be a part of (the album is dedicated to the couple in question). But this stirred a way of thinking about how huge events are often typified or defined by very small gestures or happenings, and each of the tracks here comes from that place. Be it the existential crisis brought on by stripping wallpaper in 'Woodchip', how a single day might signify the end of a long relationship ('A Note to Myself'), or the miniature resignations to compromise we make in professional life which eventually overwhelm our very identity ('The Cynical Start to a Jaded Career #1'). Johny's lyricism and composition remain oblique but touching, and these songs of little moments of sadness, regret and grief are built to remain small. They are paradoxically content in their sorrow and should perhaps be kept as companions to similar feelings. "Organic and immediate. Music you can touch with your fingertips" The Irish Times // "Talent to appeal far more than only folk fans alone" Record Collector // "Exquisite index of gin-soaked desolation.... Lamb sings like a man unable to see beyond keeping a stiff upper lip to the end of the song. Even if he manages it, you might not." Mojo

Daniel Szlajnda (aka Daniel Drumz) and Piotr Kalinski (aka Hatti Vatti) are one of the most famouse and experienced Polish producers and this album is another step forward for them.

It started with the EP "Krzyżacy", which was released exactly two years ago. Two well-known producers - Daniel Drumz & Hatti Vatti - joined their forces to release an EP, which later on was appreciated by the worldwide listeners, journalists and festival audience. JANKA, which I am talking about, hit the stages of the best Polish festivals such as Opener, Spring Break, Tauron, Slovenian MENT and Moscow Music Week. But that happened in 2019.

On March 8th 2021 the duo's debut album, "MIDI Life Crisis" will be released. Daniel Szlajnda and Piotr Kaliński once again prove that there is much more than just musical chemistry between them. What we can hear there are fascinations from dubby minimalism and IDM to jungle and rave - it's hard to label this unique mature album which should be a pleasant surprise for people open to electronic music. "Modern vintage" might be a good description of what we experience there, music is pressed on modular and analog synths and unusual sampling is drowned in delays and reverbs. However it's not from the late '90s, nothing is typical or obvious, the sound and the style of JANKA are unique.

On the album, you hear two guest voices - Sujka (i.e. Iwona Król - known from the projects Kobieta z Wydm, Lauda, and Król) and Kacha Kowalczyk (i.e. the voice of Coals), the album was mastered by Kwazar. The unique graphic was designed and created by Zosia Paśnik on the analogue gear (as a diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice). The album is released in analog form in two color versions, the 180-gram vinyl edition also includes three inserts with Zosia's graphics.

Daniel Szlajnda (aka Daniel Drumz) and Piotr Kalinski (aka Hatti Vatti) are one of the most famouse and experienced Polish producers and this album is another step forward for them.

It started with the EP "Krzyżacy", which was released exactly two years ago. Two well-known producers - Daniel Drumz & Hatti Vatti - joined their forces to release an EP, which later on was appreciated by the worldwide listeners, journalists and festival audience. JANKA, which I am talking about, hit the stages of the best Polish festivals such as Opener, Spring Break, Tauron, Slovenian MENT and Moscow Music Week. But that happened in 2019.

On March 8th 2021 the duo's debut album, "MIDI Life Crisis" will be released. Daniel Szlajnda and Piotr Kaliński once again prove that there is much more than just musical chemistry between them. What we can hear there are fascinations from dubby minimalism and IDM to jungle and rave - it's hard to label this unique mature album which should be a pleasant surprise for people open to electronic music. "Modern vintage" might be a good description of what we experience there, music is pressed on modular and analog synths and unusual sampling is drowned in delays and reverbs. However it's not from the late '90s, nothing is typical or obvious, the sound and the style of JANKA are unique.

On the album, you hear two guest voices - Sujka (i.e. Iwona Król - known from the projects Kobieta z Wydm, Lauda, and Król) and Kacha Kowalczyk (i.e. the voice of Coals), the album was mastered by Kwazar. The unique graphic was designed and created by Zosia Paśnik on the analogue gear (as a diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice). The album is released in analog form in two color versions, the 180-gram vinyl edition also includes three inserts with Zosia's graphics.

Ceramic’s 2nd EP presents New Delhi based artist Shantam’s wonky and groovy take on beat. 4 diverse and swirling tracks make up 3fer-disco. I hear a lot of Luke Vibert and early Warp/ IDM influences channeled into modern modular techniques.

Children Of Tomorrow will celebrate soon its 10 years anniversary. The label was created by Emmanuel Ternois back in the day and being joined by Arnaud Le Texier in 2011. Since then they focused on Techno producing amazing artists, to name few: Terrence Dixon, Zadig, Tensal, Antigone, Oscar Mulero, Jonas Kopp, Samuli Kemppi etc... Children Of Tomorrow is now presenting the first album from Arnaud Le Texier. After almost 30 years Dj-ing around the world and almost 20 years producing. Signing many releases over the years and always busy delivering dance floor releases, it's been a long wait to finally get an album from ArnaudOn his first album we can feel that he wanted to tell a story and to express something deeper with his production experience. There is a different variety of Techno that stretches from ambient / broken beat / hypnotic / raw Techno along with subtles grooves, wondrous atmospheres & sonic textures. On A side the album opens with Dusk, an ambient atmospheric mid-tempo track with sonic sounds that is a perfect intro.Pattern 2 starts with drones and blip sounds and a broken beat groove follows with a pad that sounds like a voice coming from the space. The track ends with some modular click sounds that make the whole track clever. Followed by the album title Granular Therapy, a deep techno track with modular bass line and melancholic pad. A perfect track to play in after or to warm up a party.The B Side is more dedicated to the dance floor with Black Nympheas that is a proper dark modern techno with a grinding bass line and magic drones. A simple beat makes the track evolve in a nice way. Blade Pass frequency is 4/4 effective Techno with a 909 kick, a syncope acid bass line and a pad that sends you to another dimension. It is a powerful track but with a sense of deepness and sensibility that Arnaud can achieve sometimes. This side closes with Binary Sun Dawn which is an ambient track with melody that has a jazz feeling mixed with dark atmospheres, sonic drones and water drops. The C side opens with Mono Driver, a minimal track with a little synth that stays until the end repetitively until it makes you travel and lose your mind. Deep and dance floor at the same time.

Then Snapper is a more percussive track with some shinning bells and a grinding modular bass line.

The last track Virgo Consortium is a cosmic broken beat with dark atmospheric drone, simple bass and phasing efx. The D Side starts with Midi overdub which is a beauty. A mix between ambient and broken beat. The pad has the deepness that transports you somewhere else with an angel choir on top. The beat is spacial and groovy at the same time with smart high hats. This reminds Arnaud's past ambient production but with a modern approach. Surely a special track of the album.

Hideous Engine is more dance floor with metallic bass line and 4'4 beat going towards a sonic pad that closes the track.The last track Dawn is ambient with drones and blip sounds and an acid bass line modulate. A perfect end of the album.This album is an accomplished journey that makes you dance and travel from dusk till dawn. Arnaud Le Texier shows a coherent vision and illustrates his vast diversity in the techno world. Hopefully we won't have to wait 20 years to get another one.

The 15th chapter of Eclectic has been signed by the talented young artist Salvatore Foglia. He crafted 3 powerful and energetic tracks with his fantastic modular system. Completely analog the "Involved " EP is a product of the new Techno wave. To complete this special project, we are honored to host the spectacular Techno soldier Stanislav Tolkachev with a stellar remix.

Watching Abul Mogard’s Live performance in Atonal Festival 2017 and his releases on Not Waving’s Ecstatic record label were somewhat of a milestone in Malka Tuti’s sonic aesthetics. His ability to touch us with those pulsating sonic textures com-ing out of his modular machine inspired us in MTHQ for years to come. We were more then happy that Mogard chose to contact Tapan about their album and eventually deciding to remix not one but two track from the Belgrade duo… It was like a circle coming to a close.

On the A-side Mogard take the original 17 minute sax infused piece that is EUROPA and drenches it with drones and low freq pulses and atmosphere, creating a some sort of a post apoca-lyptic intense atmospheric soundtrack. The effect of drowning the horns from the original track in a sea of drones and pads, contributes to the over all impression of listening to a distant memory of music… fitting for days like these....

On the B-side Mogard takes it to the next level, capturing a line from Tapan's original collaboration with Jerusalem In My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, and passing it through his modular system, amalgamating an epic piece of tension build ups and repetitive movements...

The original artwork was made by artist Marja de Sanctis and adapted, as always, to the sleeve by Morey Talmor.

‘I envisioned the record as a journey through human expression over the course of one day,’ says Chicago composer and ONO member Jordan Reyes.
When planning the album, Reyes wanted to consider the trajectory of American music, drawing a throughline from the oral traditions enmeshed in blues, country, folk to contemporary underground music, splicing together acoustic instrumentation with an experimental, electronic sensibility. The album begins with human-constructed wind on opening song ‘The Pre-Dawn Light.’.
From there, Reyes adds acoustic guitar, electric guitar, lap-steel guitar, trombone, keyboards, and an electronic drum to the compositional mix.’I wanted to push myself compositionally,’ he says. ‘My first album Close was all eurorack synthesizer, a lot of which was automated by control voltage, but Sand Like Stardust has no modular synthesizers, seeking to channel the warmth, immediacy, and vulnerability of hand-played instruments and voice.’

Developer Archive returns with its Twelfth release. The EP is made up of four groove based techno bangers tailor-made for floor-filling. The moods differ on each track and it's mostly in-your-face beats, growing looped riffs, haunting modular electronics, and occasional mind-altering synth lines. Huge TIP!

You could think of the collection of tracks here as a library record of sorts, and each track inhabits its own universe. Tropical fits various moods and situations, and it could soundtrack any number of activities at home or on a dancefloor - whether real, imaginary, or hallucinated. Strangely enough, it sounds like it could have been constructed from obscure Italian library breaks, when instead every instrument has been played and panned, several times over, across magnetic tape.

The genesis of many of these tracks began when CV Vision moved to Berlin in 2014. His flat had a small chamber where he could fit a drum set, so he treated the walls with foam, and in true DIY style, dived headfirst into recording these tracks. It was the natural next step on an audio adventure that first began when CV Vision picked up the guitar in his teens, and a couple years later started recording with friends in his home town of Bayreuth. Fast forward ten years and here is his debut - a culmination of practising chops and learning instruments, mastering recording techniques and fine-tuning the CV Vision sound.

It’s a sound that condenses elements of acid rock, psych soul, library funk and new wave oddities into a movie soundtrack for your mind. It’s a journey from ‘60s west coast LSD-drenched excursions to ‘80s synth and post-punk mutations. Tropical is a plunge into another time, another music you can simply swim around in and explore.

Side A opens up with Tropical Tune In, which rides in on a clave and a warm wind, blowing a distinctly herbal aroma and recalling exotica dons like Les Baxter and Martin Denny. Following on with the aural equivalent of a sea breeze through your mind, Spaziergang am Meer blows away the cobwebs and conjures some nice library moments like Stringtronics or F eelings . Next, Ba_c_k(Lava) bounces out of a cold wave post-punk melting pot and crashes through the speakers like a blazed Zebedee, with some sweet eastern synths for added flavour, before the rolling bass licks of Der Böse Schamane take us into another dimension, landing somewhere between a psych rock freak out and a Black Ark dub session. Mr Maze channels the arpeggiators of synth outsiders like Mort Garson and Bruce Haack, creating a glorious interlock of robotic electronics and freakbeat vocals. The side comes to a close with the guitars of Der Strand (außer Rand und Band) letting loose like syrupy springs, and setting a languid mood like the bedroom scene in Bedazzled (1967 version). Side B kicks off with Parallel Universum, which comes through like a woozy krautrock workout, all ducking synths with big chord shifts to create an epic deranged beehive of a soundtrack. Im Land der Ameisen evokes the spirit if not the sound of White Rabbit, when logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead, before waking up and wandering through the side alleys of Marrakech with the West Coast Pop Art Ensemble and the Electric Prunes, as Ritual (No. 4) blares out the speakers of passing tuk tuks. Ein Wasserfall plumbs the deep synth depths, like Raymond Scott in scuba gear, modular rack strapped to his back delivering oxygen as he swims between connector cables and seaweed forests through a watery underworld. Banana King sounds like a lost soundtrack to Donkey Kong or Mario Cart, if the cart radio was tuned into a synth

documentary hosted by James Pants, while Das Kloster am Berg takes the baton from Brenda Ray and her Naffi cohorts, all dubbed-out niceness and post punk swagger. The LP closes out with Tropical Drop Out, a dreamscape rather than a wake up call, coaxing you deeper into the trek across the desert of your mind.

And that’s Tropical in its essence: capsules from another time, snapshots of another sound, messages from another mind - all in the service of inducing the visions in your head.

written by Max Cole

Close is the debut album from American Dreams Records founder & ONO member Jordan Reyes.
The album is comprised of six songs composed on modular synthesizer working in a rhythmic ambient, electronic realm - songs like ‘Quicksand’ are glacial and melodic while others like ‘Lost Machine’ skew to the kinetic.
On this album, Reyes mused on idea of sobriety, endurance, and being in a state of trance - wading deep in the patch cords of the eurorack synthesizer allowed him to reach a state of non-attachment, similar to running or biking a long distance. This kind of tunnel vision allowed him to perceive himself fading from the day-to-day and exist wholly inside the machine, becoming a more cybernetic organism.

Though synthesizers are the backbone of Shen’s music, while performing live, she plays self-made synths, invented instruments, and even acoustic objects like a bull whip.
Her live show vacillates between moments of restraint and swells of frenetic and confrontational movement. Her sound is dynamic with a sensitivity to texture and structure throughout. This sensitivity is maintained in her debut LP
Hair Birth, the result of several weekends locked in a studio creating cacophonous, wondrous synth noise with Harvard’s Buchla 100 and Serge modular systems.
She tracked hours of stems before cloistering herself in a painstaking editing process. Songs like ‘Under The Stall Door’ sound like a cybernetic rollercoaster with rumbles and shrieks that hurtle the listener through virtual space. Others, like ‘Bolete,’ are tense, dense mood pieces that move from the queasy to the tranquil to the surreal.

EMS Hallucinations was crafted as two magnetic side-long compositions
that gurgle, hiss, bounce, and invite - the first consists of Buchla 200
recordings, and the second the Buchla in conjunction
with the Serge Modular.
Following Naucke’s tracking, he painstakingly arranged stems in his home studio across seven months. Within the side-long tracks are shorter songs that
transform into each other. For album teasers, Naucke edited two sections from
side one into singles - kinetic electronic nuggets that suggest trance, house, and
other forms of floor-ready music, while showcasing cascading synth lines and
rich analog tones.

Clash lands once again on his very own label with a powerful statement: "Nuevo Orden Mundial" (spanish for "New World Order"), a taste of the singular and trademark sound from the Madrid-based producer, but in a very particular way... A release fully oriented to the dancefloor!

Five cuts of raw techno and modular sounds with a rave touch, influences that come together to give shape to this EP. The release includes three original productions by Clash: "Overflow", "Alone" and "Pills"; along with two totally killer remixes.

The first one by the Russian duo PTU (formed by Alina Izolenta and Kamil Ea) who took “Overflow” and dismantled it and then blended it back together to leave their characteristic stamp, a strong and energetic sound, a proof of frenetic rhythms. This track has been an essential part of the shows the duo has been doing live during the last few months.


The second remix comes by the berlin-based italian techno veteran Davide Carbone, better known as D.Carbone. In his "Pills" remix, Carbone injected all of his industrial techno power and translated the track to a rave oriented atmosphere. There's no doubt his remix will definitely be considered a dancefloor anthem for this post-pandemic times to come.

“The Vale” is in immersive electronic album of dark soundtrack work. It’s the first of several Everyday Dust releases scheduled for Castles in Space in 2021.

Everyday Dust is RJ McConnell. Based in Scotland, RJ ditched piano lessons when he realised I had no interest in being an instrumentalist. Instead he wanted to create his own musical works from the ground up. He goes on, “I was much happier working my way through music theory books on my own and applying my learning to my own music. We had a little home studio when I was a child. My Dad was also a musician and was involved in local amateur theatre where he prepared and operated all the sound cues on reel to reel tape. So from an early age I was messing around with tape machines, making tape loops and recording music. For years I tried to make the most interesting tones I could from a Yamaha home keyboard by passing it through my Dad’s guitar pedals, or recording to tape and playing it back at different speeds etc. My first proper synth was the Roland SH101.” He went on to study music and sound for theatre and worked for many years as a theatre composer before branching into larger events and eventually film and documentary work.

The Vale story starts in 2018. RJ again, “I was brought in as composer for an independent horror short that was being filmed in Istanbul. The film was a vampire movie, very atmospheric and beautifully shot. I was aware of being a Scottish composer on a Turkish film and therefore didn’t want to attempt in any way to make anything that sounded traditionally Turkish. I wanted to represent the idea of these ancient beings who had existed in one of the oldest cities in the world for centuries. I wondered how I could imply this “ancient” world with the instruments I had to hand. I recorded various old metal whistles, which were slowed right down to become eerie arcane horn blasts that sounded like they had come from another time. I also recorded lots of melodica, which was again slowed down to sound like wheezing old harmonium drones. I spent another day recording inside an old piano, plucking individual strings and also hammering them percussively with wooden beaters. Using synthesizers and effects as the “glue” to bring these sounds together I started to work on the cues for the film. I had scored most of the film by the time I heard it was being cancelled. The concept and story had been taken over by a streaming site who wanted to make it into a series - with a drastically different tone and style.

“Later that same year I had worked on a project that incorporated the folklore of a celtic water sprite who kept the waterfalls and streams running smoothly so they could turn the mills of the local village. In return the villagers would bring the water sprite bannocks (Scottish flatbreads) each day. I started to daydream about a darker, Lovecraftian twist on this story. Some Ancient One dwelling in the forests and controlling the water - the very life essence of the village - in return for offerings of the soul. The concept was filed away in the back of my mind for some months.

“The following year I was on a flight to visit my friend in Bodrum. He had been the producer and editor on the original disbanded Vampire film, and I found myself thinking about the project again. I wondered if the sound cue files were still on my laptop, which they were. It had been a year since I’d even heard them. Hearing the eldritch folk-tinged sounds of the whistles and plucked strings my mind instantly returned to the idea of the Lovecraftian folk horror story. I started jotting down notes and musical ideas and by the time I landed in Bodrum I already had the album title - The Vale. Having the album concept and prototype ideas to work with was a huge head start in making the album. Although all of the original cues were so dramatically developed and transformed that they really just served as the initial clay on the wheel.

“I used a Doepfer A100 modular synth to create the animalistic yelps, conches and horns that were improvised over the original cues as a response to the arcane “folk” world of the acoustic instruments. This half-acoustic half-modular landscape was the sonic scene-setter I needed to move onto the composition and musical journey of the album. I composed and developed most of the musical parts on an Oberheim Matrix 6 synthesizer. However all the percussion, rhythmic sequences and ornamental synth sounds were created from improvised modular sessions multitrack recorded. A lot of editing later, the soundtrack to the movie in my mind was finally there.

St Leonard’s premier manipulator of drones, loops and echoes delivers his most buzzed out, kosmische and beat driven work to date in a deluxe white vinyl album release for Castles in Space.

Here, Kieran explains the genesis and production of his masterwork:

“Eternal Return was unusual for me in that I actually set out to make an album, rather than find myself with a set of tunes that evolved into a project.

The “Eternal Return” is a concept I have been inspired by before. However it clicked with me in a more profound way recently. Far from seeing the prospect of living life over, unknowingly, on an endless loop as depressing, I suddenly felt amazing comfort in the theory. The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” Far from being trapped in the loop I am elated to feel that it's simply about living the best life you can. One that you wouldn't fear having to live again.

To place the album in context against this newly realised perception, I think of the Side One as the battle to get to that realisation and enlightenment and Side Two represents the acceptance and the decision on how to proceed. The turning point is from thinking about the things I love most and what I would want to experience over and over again. I hope it is an uplifting listening experience. As it happens, the album originally had a darker ending. I think I actually learned a bit about my point of view during the process. There are drums, which wouldn’t often feature in my music (there are in fact more drums on this LP than in my combined output over the last 8 years) and the pieces are noticeably shorter, more focussed and concise than my usual longer form work.

Musically this album is probably the least clearly influenced by anything I regularly listened to. The main outcome was wanting to challenge myself and to add whatever the pieces needed and go with that. I think I was also probably pushed on by the wealth of amazing music being made by my peers across Bandcamp and social media. 2020 was an incredible year in this particular sphere of electronic music. The album was made as I started to transition from a semi-modular to a modular synth set up. I think that this was a key driving force, since a lot of the time I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. It is nice to be surprised by what you’re creating.

Finally, whilst this is in no way a “lockdown album”, the period of time in which much of it was recorded definitely had a bearing on how it sounds. For one thing I spent a lot more time around my studio space when working from home. In keeping with the album's theme, the lockdown also helped consolidate my feelings on what is important in life and what isn’t. One piece was in fact sketched out as a first draft while I sat on mute during a Zoom meeting.

Unique composer duo Rebekka Karijord & Jon Ekstrand create compelling, hybrid score to intimate portrait of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg `I Am Greta', the intimate Hulu documentary by Swedish director Nathan Gross-man, tells the story of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg through compel-ling, never-before-seen-footage. Starting with her one-person school strike for cli-mate action outside the Swedish Parliament, Grossman follows Greta in her rise to prominence. The film culminates with the extraordinary wind-powered voyage across the Atlantic to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York. To musically accompany Greta and the children of the Fridays for Future movement on their journey, composers Rebekka Karijord and Jon Ekstrand spent time searching for the right balance when it comes to how much emotional triggers the music should of-fer: "With the music for `I Am Greta' we aimed to find a sonic counterpoint to the friction between the shy, contemplative inner world of Greta, and the unbounded ener-gy of the natural world and climate change movement. From the start we found it useful to separate the score into three distinct voices: Greta's Voice, the voice of the natural world, and the voice of the climate change movement." "We choose to work with repetition and persistent musical patterns, often illustrated through energetic string arpeggios. This we felt helped underline the remarkable persistence and focus of Greta has on the climate issue, as well as that of the re-lentlessness of nature. Then we found a few places throughout the score, where more melodic aspects could be introduced and carry the story through its dramaturgical journey. It allowed the melodic aspects to shine through when they are introduced." "The score consists of a string octet, modular synthesisers and a voice instrument built by Rebekka of 25 unique singers sampled in their full range. Our soloist on the soundtrack is the cellist Linnea Olsson, whom has a very specific airy and organ-ic tone." "Rebekka and Jon's dynamic score to `I Am Greta' is huge and intimate, uplifting and melancholic, and manages to carry the emotional nuance of Greta's story. The score forms a musical parallel to Greta's journey and narrative voice throughout the film. It's energy, urgency and emotional depth reminds us that the time for climate action is now." - Nathan Grossman, director of `I Am Greta'

Tim Gick's already-warped patchwork editing of the entire Crazy Doberman output thus far turns increasingly glitched out across the splattered quiltwork of a nine track LP on Aguirre. Any coherent sense of time departs early on the A-side; kicked off with the familiar sound of the Dobes' synth throb and Love-cry woodwinds on top of completely fried electric guitar squiggling, all suspended in spiritual foam; then battered to bits on the greasy flat top of the record's b-side.

Ringing modular synth sirens evoke alarmingly huge Southern watersnakes swimming on top of Oconee river. Total trip zone across two sides: brownouts in the sequence of events, dubby fadeouts, and bright jump cuts in space. Teases of cartoon barrlehouse tickling on the keys of a farmhouse piano and tape melt psychedelia. The recording session in Athens, Georgia was a total "CHUGFEST" recalls Frank Hurricane, the Appalachian juggalo folkie king, who joined the session with the Lafayette, Indiana crew. The presence of Hurricane's own "Life is Spiritual" mirth bulworks the record with a muddy, barefoot hippy hopefullness, steadying the log flume through the notcturnal psychic murk toward the holy morning dew. (J. Russ)

Repress

While our precious scene is going through high restrictions, Marco Bailey who fights for the techno scene since dot one of techno history, strikes back to MATERIA with his new EP "Fight For The Oppressed" featuring 4 high-octane modular analog productions. Currently limited for public expression but fueled with time, space and his usual never-ending motivation, MATERIA's main man keeps giving the one message we all should never stop sharing; techno is a way of life, techno never ends.

Nèg Ginen is a song composed by Jean Claude Dorvil on a traditional Nago rhythm (from Benin). Nèg in Haitian creole means “the dude“, “the guy“. It is about pride of being Haitians with solid African roots. As a matter of fact, when we mention Ginen, we talk about Africa. Like the majority of Chouk Bwa’s songs, this one is full of references mentioning Haitian voodoo rituals and spiritual /igures. For instance, Simbi Ganga is a lwa (voodoo spirit) from the Lakou Soukri Danach (voodoo temple) that lives in the water. Wild and brutal when he is chained up, he faithfully represents the Iwa Kongos, notorious for being real party-starters! Kebyesou is an Iwa who lives in the Lakou Souvnans (another temple). He is a royal /igure, like the Dahomey Iwas in general. The voodoo families are, so to speak, all present in this project!

Biography
After a /irst European performance in 2015 at Roskilde Festival leading to many other performances all around Europe, including WOMEX and WOMAD, Haitian traditionnal vodou band Chouk Bwa met the Brussels based duo The Ångströmers in 2016. Their new project combines a renewed dub sensitivity and Haitian rhythm science and spirituality. The ensemble has performed in Haiti and in European festivals including Trans Musicales de Rennes before releasing their /irst album Vodou Alé via Bongo Joe in 2020.
Modular synths and other vintage electronic instruments bring another dimension to Chouk Bwa’s music, although obviously it is always the band’s groove and /luent tempo that leads the energy of the ensemble: no laptops, no drum machines. There are certain freedoms that cannot be coerced. Even more, the electronic instruments are wired directly to the drums that feed them with impacts and caresses. All the Vodou families are there with their many rhythms and songs. Radical Vodou roots for urban audiences.

The release consists of dense floor slammers from Bionoid, modular synths enthusiasts based in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Every track is recorded at once during a jam session on analogue setup. They do not bear any signs of 'rave' or 'trance', but the cyclic and raw sound with minimalistic groove typical for Detroit techno.

All these pressed onto a thick 180gm crystal clear tasty piece.

The album 'Balance' by Frank Bretschneider & Taylor Deupree was originally released in 2002 by Mille Plateaux on CD only. The 9 tracks on 'Balance' are a perfect example for the aesthetics to arise within the Click & Cuts scene and (ambient-)glitch music movement of the late 90s and early 2000s.

The two masters of microscopic sounds and sine wave/white noise-based music constructed these seamlessly mixed pieces around rhythms and melodies, which grants the album plenty of dynamics. The wide variety of carefully chosen ambient sounds throughout the whole work endows 'Balance' warmth and intimacy.

The recordings are now available for the first time on vinyl within the KeplarRev series, presented in a new updated artwork based on the original layout with photographs by Taylor Deupree.

From the original press release in 2002:

"Balance is the first and so far only collaborative release from Frank Bretschneider (Berlin) and Taylor Deupree (Brooklyn). Both of these artists are no strangers to the ears of many; Taylor Deupree is one of New York's most vibrant electronic producers. From his early techno days as a member of Prototype 909 to his current status as one of N. America's key "microscopic" electronic composers and to add runs the prestigious 12K and LINE labels. Frank Bretschneider is a key member and founder of the prestigious Raster Music label, he has critically acclaimed releases under the names Komet and Produkt. It's easy to say that Frank Bretschneider has created some of the most influential spatial electronics of the late 90's.

Utilizing both artists keen ears for carefully crafted sounds, Balance blends the clean sine wave / white noise of Bretschneider with the defined grit of Deupree's granular synthesis. Realized entirely on Nord Modular synthesizers, Bretschneider and Deupree exchanged patch files through email and began constructing foundation loops. Bretschneider then created initial mixes of 9 songs and then sent them to Deupree who remixed and re-processed them. This digital exchange allowed for them to work using their own methods and aesthetic while combining the similarities of each others interests. The result is a looping and churning rhythmic work that is both synthetic, warm, dubby and tonally challenging. Thus Balance creates an engaging balance between the 2 artists aesthetics."