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Here comes another sucker punch to the gut via the American underground. These five DJ-ready mutant acid cuts will have you leaping out of your skin, crawling along the floor, begging for a drop of water.

Repress

Berlin's Monnom Black is back again with the King of The Sewers EP; four cuts of pulsating techno from two of electronic music's most uncompromising young figures, DAX J & UVB. Already well-known for its more fundamentally rugged take on modern electronics, the label's 19th release is another intense transmission deep from the underworld.

The menacing tone of the EP hides the friendship that's developed between these adopted Berliners, two young men who met in the city and discovered a shared passion for raw analogue audio and electronic sounds that marry starkness with depth. Although they began DJing at the same warehouses since 2014, the duo have waited until the right moment to bring together their mutual love of unique mechanised noisescapes and the high-end production values they ve developed over years of experience and experimentation. The King of The Sewers is that record, a gritty soundtrack inspired by forgotten lives beneath eastern-bloc cities.

For Monnom Black this latest release continues a run of unmistakable techno records that challenge the mainstream with a non-conformist philosophy. The label's ethos is to push boundary-testing music by artists who are unafraid to explore a chaotic, divided world in the belief that distinctive music can still create moments of grace and community. This is music for the deepest, darkest parts of the night, breaking beyond the dancefloor and into the liminal spaces where analogue and digital, body and mind meet. The King of The Sewers EP represents another step forward in the development of a record label pressing at the borders of what contemporary techno can be.

Tekvision Volume 1 was a stone cold classic, with Rolling Stone charting it at #3 in their top 20 EDM records of 2017. Two years on, Cornelius ‘Traxman’ Ferguson returns with the second instalment, featuring 7 exceptional new Footwork productions. Traxman is a bonafide OG, with a discography dating back to the halcyon era of Ghetto House in the late 80’s and early 90’s. 30 years on, Traxman is a revered figure in Chicago’s urban music scene, having presided over the evolution from Ghetto House to Juke and from Juke to Footwork culture. Originally released in 1989, Work Dat Mutha Fucker by Steven Poindexter is considered to be one of the most influential tracks from the early days of Ghetto House. Traxman remixes it brilliantly on this release, reworking the stripped back, minimalist drum beat of the original into an upfront Footwork pattern. This sense of continuity is equally evident on Let Me See You Naked feat. DJ Juicy, and Traxman’s remix of To Da Hoooz by DJ Deeon. These productions successfully capture the sexual energy and exuberance of Ghetto House, turbo charged at 160 BPM. Elsewhere on the record, Traxman explores different moods whilst always keeping the dance floor firmly in mind. The opening track It’s Lasting Bass lays an infectious vocal harmony over complex drum patterns and a fearsome bassline. Osaka opens with mellow, sultry keys before introducing a wobbling synth and diced up Orchestal samples. 4 Da Lyfe is a soulful and slightly more meditative track, with a vocal loop expressing solidarity and self-affirmation. Wildcard feat. Jana Rush, stands alone as the only track without a vocal element, instead utilising a piercing and insistent synth to create a powerful sonic intensity. Overall this is triumphant record, and a worthy successor to the original Tekvision release, proving once again that Traxman is an unrivalled exponent of MPC-driven footwork energy.

Gabe Gurnsey returns with another limited-edition, white label pressing that melds
together two of the standout moments from ‘Physical’ into one irresistible slab of nocturnal electro. Combining the tectonic sleaze of ‘I Get’ with the roll call to rave transcendence of ‘Harder Rhythm’, Gurnsey creates, naturally, ‘I Get Harder’. Mutating his work to further perfect his halcyon club sound, ‘I Get Harder’ releases a slow-crawl ecstasy that’s ideal for dark rooms and open minds. Not one for the faint hearted

Coming to the table with a fresh mutant sound, Darker Than Wax is proud to welcome Leeds-based artist Captain Over to our sonic universe with his Deep Blue EP. A solo project from one of the minds behind the band Paper Tiger, Captain Over represents a firm focus on dancefloor experimentation, blending the sounds of grime, broken beat, house, and LA beat music to create an entirely new beast. Much like the chess-playing supercomputer of the same name, ‘Deep Blue’ occupies a space between electronic weight and the human touch, fusing together icy digital synths borrowed from grime with off- kilter grooves and jazzy motifs.

Following a string of releases led by vocal tracks with grime MCs, ‘Deep Blue’ is the first fully instrumental offering from Captain Over, lending the artist a platform to make a strong statement about his creative vision and technical prowess. From the expansive arrangement of ‘4D’ to the duelling sci-fi synths on ‘Mind’s Eye’, the Deep Blue EP is a deeply creative yet functional record, signalling a bright future for the Captain Over project.

Cambridge-based beat-scientist Filter Dread presents the third release on the Tech Startup catalog, TS000003. Inspired by laboratories across the street from his studio, the four tracks take motifs from the genres of jungle, hardcore, and grime, and teleport them to alien dimensions.

The record kicks off with Rainforest, a track which mutates grime hammer kicks and classic jungle drum-rolls. The following track, Blizzard, flows like metallic ooze with its cold, cybernetic percussion and liquified pads. Tripping Up dishes a devastating jungle-tekno sequence with crushing snares and a sinister bassline. RX-4 Real brings the release to a close, bubbling and percolating with its reverb-soaked stabs and glitched out beats.

Welcome to another chrome-plated Arcola curveball, this time in the form of a trio of the moodiest cyber steppers from the shadowy LEVL.

Somewhere in an AI ether, faded pirate radio transmissions merged with drowsy half-memories of Metal Gear Solid and gained sentience. The results are subtle yet sublime, a masterful combination of percussion and atmosphere to get truly lost within.

These three shots of cave-dwelling soundsystem mutation are as evocative as they are insular and in the midst of these uncertain days you may just find you need them in your life.

7am. Tilburg. Black room. Strobe light. Dutch Soundsystem Wirwar. "Party Like It's '96" celebrates 23 years of musical debauchery, rinsing BPMs and battering bodies in forests, squats or wherever a PA system could be plugged in. Five tracks from five different aliases make up this descent into drum beat battery. Noses are up against sweat drenched wall from the needle drop, the thundering pace of Trippy D's maniacal offering being elbowed in the ribs by Bart Bral's nosebleed inducing "No Shit, Sherlock!" Distortion slices into squalid acid lines in the blazing "Water On Mars" by RAF before broken beats are blended and blitzed by Just So Nah. The night, or morning, comes to an end in Roel's nightmarish fairground ride. "Wurlitzer Express" minces chiptune cuteness with splintered snares, cracked kicks and mutated percussion to leave hearts, minds and souls thoroughly stained.

Phosphene describes vision without stimulus, which is a fitting metaphor for this artist debut on Pomelo. Sparse mathematical patterns form the backbone of its four tracks, creating sensory impact through subtle mutations and tense arrangements. Mimikry and Metro’s stark rhythms and strict tonality take a nod from Robert Hood and Terry Riley, while Math and Ak-ki on the flip-side evoke the more grounded moments of Mika Vainio, with grumbling, bassy grooves and brief flashes of cathartic enlightenment.

Always one to explore, Shipwrec have set sail and discovered a new isle of musical experimentation. Phainomena is a terrain for ambient introspection, dream-filled drone and stunning soundscapes. An old friend returns to the fold to inaugurate this venture, Julian Edwardes. Seven works of abstract immersion coalesce to create "Consonance." The Dutch artist journeys into far-flung realms and worlds, sweet silken synthlines and juddering noise being his transportation tools of choice. Off-centre echo and muted delay swirl in these audio planets. Mountains, oceans, unending skies are conjured as notes bulge, expand and disperse. Wildlife buzzes, chirps and trills in this land of sonic undulations, plants are given musical form with modulated ruffles as bleeps of cloud scud across an expanse of frequencies. An album of brilliant brightness, shifting shapes and unearthed undercurrents where expression is as ephemeral as it is eternal, a sentiment captured in Rob van Hoesel's sublime cover work.

Eduardo De La Calle s recent Distortion Theory III EP on Abstract Reasoning was another impressive piece of work from the prolific producer. Now come four diverse remixes of the title track, each with their own unique twist on the warped machinations of the original.

J - Keel kicks off proceedings with a droning, tense interpretation which toughens up the original considerably. Reversed chord stabs pitch up and down as ominous bass bores a steady course through the track s underbelly, with ticking percussive elements ensuring a motorik pulse.

The masterful Roman Fl gel teases out the chime motif of the original and supplements them with muted marimba-esque arpeggios for a soothing, underwater feel. The beats are kept to a succinct minimum, with subtle swathes of strings bringing a majestic, dreamlike tinge to this refined, minimalistic production.

Fellow Spaniard ORBE brings an ambient feel to the hazy, delicate melodics of his mix, with the delayed, warped synth patterns that struggle to be heard and beautiful atmospherics recalling Carl Craig. Moments of distorted pressure seep through and remind us of the buggedout flavour of the original.

Holland s Conforce rounds things off with plump low end throbs and sparse synth pulses reminiscent of Basic Channel, with gently shuffling hi-hats underpinning the murky yet warm textures and broad, heavily reverbed swathes of chord drama.

“Ta Da” is the debut full length from J. McFarlane Reality Guest, the collective name for the trio headed by the eponymous McFarlane. As a member of the group Twerps, McFarlane has traversed guitar-centric, melodic pop music for some years while honing a highly unique, personal musical language. Ta Da is the first recorded unveiling of McFarlane’s affecting, oblique songwriting panache. Originally released in her native Australia on Hobbies Galore, Ta Da will be released worldwide by Night School in June 2019.

Wheezing into view with a troubled reed instrument set against a s of whoozy synth lines, Human Tissue Act is a foggy curtain the listener is invited to peel back. The dissonant notes are left to dance entwined, with clarinet heralding a Harry Partch-esque mallet percussion interlude. It’s a mood. With no resolution in sight, an audience dragged closer into uncertainty is suddenly drenched with the light of inter-weaving wah wah synth and saxophone. I Am A Toy introduces us to McFarlane’s vocal, an effortless and matter-of-fact, accented statement that quietly takes the reins. While McFarlane’s previous work in Twerps might reference 80s UK and antipodean guitar pop, Ta Da showcases a different influences immersed in psychedelic music and synths. It’s a brilliant, deft concoction swimming in Young Marble Giants-type minimalism washed with bare pop and harmony similar to Kevin Ayers making sense of a Melbourne suburb full of faces half-recognised in the blanching sun.

What Has He Bought begins with a Casio-keyboard rhythm pattern, palm-muted guitars and immaculately enunciated vocal give way to a burnt melodica part that elevates the spirits. Simple patterns repeated, like a well-tempered pop song that does what it needs to do and no more, build into the sound of summer leaking orange juice. They’re moments of joy, layered on top of each other like a melting cake. Do You Like What I’m Sayin’ recalls Marine Girls covering a classic ‘66 Garage nugget, organ lines fighting funk with guitar chords played just behind the percussion. “In a talking world, meanings are the same. Words want to hold on to the people they contain. Do you like what I’m sayin’?” We’re in a Beckett play perhaps, obtuse absurdities rendered pretty. Alien Ceremony is a heart-melter, given a melancholic timbre by bowed double bass it’s a tragi-comic piece that almost reeks of Robert Wyatt at his mid-whimsical twisting a fugue completely out of shape. Beneath the layers of harmony and twinkling instrumentation you sense there’s a genuine sadness somewhere even if it remains veiled.

Through out Ta Da, McFarlane plays with counterpoint and contrast to sometimes delirious effect. On Your Torturer, a simple, upbeat chord progression is hard panned, underpinning a flute solo which seems out of place, hence making it completely in place on this warmly surreal album. My Enemy is a slowly swinging eulogy to a failed relationship punctuated by analogue synth burbles, with our protagonist simply asking, in the aftermath, “can we be nice?” Here McFarlane’s vocal is straight forward, lyrically conversational but still not completely in focus, a surreal kitchen sink drama filtered through a dream where everything is in the wrong place. It’s a fine precursor to Heartburn, which similarly borrows BBC Radiophonic Workshop-style noise synths and the use of space to carve up the simple “You Will Make My Heart Burn” line. At this point, the listener has been in such close proximity to McFarlane’s show, the reality guest in a performance where they’re the sole audience member, that when Where Are You My Love rises on the horizon as a sleepy, psychedelic send off it’s uplifting. The vocal drifts away into the sunset, simple and direct. It leaves the listener slightly confused, perhaps, but grateful for the gentle surprise.

180gr vinyl. Recorded in 1987 and now released for the first time ever with artwork by Sarah Yu Zeebroek.In 1987 Gerry Vergult (Aroma Di Amore ) and Gerrit Valckenaers (Adult Fantasies) created an abstract universe where minimal post-punk basslines blend together with dub, tropical vibes, jazz, and dreamy electronica.
Most of the october nights in 1987 you could find Gerry Vergult (Aroma Di Amore / Fred A. / Adult Fantasies) and Gerrit Valckenaers (Adult Fantasies /The Colorist Orchestra / multi-instrumentalist) in a desolated Top studio in Gent. At that time and place they sneakily crafted and shaped this Nasca record while they were supposed to finish a new Fred A. record. They created an abstract universe where minimal post-punk basslines blend together with radio sounds in 'Nothing Toulouse', tropical tribal vibes oscillates between futuristic nostalgia and hunted dreams in 'Ketama' and 'Ritz', a sampled heartbeat slowly mutates in mesmerising midnight jazz and a drugged out dub groove of 'Kamayacha' transforms into the inner city blues of 'Josaphat'.


All tracks composed, arranged and performed by Gerry Vergult & Gerrit Valckenaers

Gerrit Valckenaers: piano, saxophone, clarinet, synths, samples, electronics

Gerry Vergult: guitar, bass, synths, samples, electronics

Produced by Koen Van Regenmortel

For people who like Jah Wobble, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno & David Byrne, dub, world, jazz, and dreamy electronica

Recorded in 1987 and now released for the first time ever with artwork by Sarah Yu Zeebroek.

The tempo picks up with Exuberant Gambit, a jungle-tekkno hybrid that flexes a rugged, mutant "Think" break under porous beats and an eerie aerobic melody. Mae Geri delivers the final forward thrust with abbrasive percussion underlining a paranoid sequence reminiscent of '90s era NYC warehouse material. Packed with olympic energy, Sportiv 005 is a high-intensity, dance floor-optimised escapade.

Soft Machine is a surreal wander through the mystical sonic forest. A vision curated and designed by Chicago native Justin Aulis Long. A Cyclopian point of view while gazing through a wide lensed scope, which exists in the liminal spaces where light meets dark and angelic forces bath in the sludge and stardust of unfiltered eroticism.

Eye of the Minotaur - collage 001 is a collection of artists working in varying musical practices that are channeling the solitude of mutantness, strolling through the familiar yet unfamiliar halls of the uncanny, refusing ordinary structures of the mundane, grasping the cold humor of cynicism, basking in the dichotomy of cosmos and chaos, and invoking the energies of Eris and Eros.

Setting the ground is Ciarra Black, a Berlin based New Yorker who makes no apologies for her bare knuckled soundscapes. DuPont Street is a ritualistic unification of discordant entities that summons visions of Pazuzu (lord of the demons) and Inanna (goddess of love) fornicating beneath The Tree of Life. Razor edged synthesizers slice through the atmosphere with the precision of an avenging angel’s flaming sword, while a psychedelic drum code activates ritual movement of the body.

As the needle passes beyond the next threshold it is met by a towering totem, bristling with the illuminated light of the sonic astral plane. Erected from the foundational matter that birthed the Detroit electro punk sound, Eyes Up continues to add to the narrative that is drenched in deranged electronics intuitively mangled in a post punk tradition. Dystopian percussive rhythms generate an unorthodox domain where muffled utterances present an aural Rorschach test. Could this be the riddle of the Sphinx, or an ancient spectral being that possesses secret knowledge? Only its creator, Stallone the Reducer, holds the key.

Fixed at the axis of the journey, Perfect Headache Forever, a mystic operating within the DIY spaces of Chicago, levitates on a transcendental mass that is equally melancholic and optimistic. Her voice hosts a strength equal to a pantheon of titans. Armed with a magical electronic musical box, she weaves narratives that are prophetic. Itself Ecstatic is a voyage through a misty soundscape that begins at one point, but ends in a distant other, in accordance with a system of divination.

Gazing into the murky waters of the oracle’s cauldron, Circling Vultures, (a collaborative effort by Justin Aulis Long and Kenneth Zawacki) channel and evoke the spirits of Antonin Artaud and Geroges Bataille. The poet’s voice, engaged in an act of mutilation and self cannibalization, howls while projecting visions of sacred conspiracies, sensations of vertigo while peaking over the edge of the abyss, and the looming weight acquired from the solitude of the Minotaur alone, sitting silently at the center of the labyrinth. Accompanying the mystical bard’s verbal declaration is a triggered mechanized synth that roars with the vitality of Cold War era Wave music, which is then juxtaposed against applications of loose keyboard playing. The artist’s hand is revealed against the calculated actions of machines.

Bringing the document to its finale, Libby Del Barrio, a multi disciplinary artist based in San Antonio, performs a closing ritual in a manner that only she knows. Setting fire to the Elysium Fields while personified as Moze Pray, Del Barrio rejects plastic narratives that aim to pacify. No Tears, is an unapologetic account of life’s feedback loop around the Wheel of Fortune. Sacrificial actions through ceremonial performance reveals a gateway founded on truth and torment. Moze Pray’s ability to combine musical production, poetic vocalization and ritualistic body performance is charged by chaos and amalgamates into a product of pure expression that defies the rose colored filters aiming to conceal harsh realities.

Temporary linearity in a lysergic world.

Imagination and reality, science and humanity: SPIME.IM weave their audiovisual tales from the ethereal textures that shape our worlds. Their album "Exaland" synthesizes reality by combining human expression with technological potentialities in an infinitely changeable virtual world. The seven tracks are defined by razor-like sounds, crystal textures and digital overload, captured in those weightless seconds on a parabolic flight. Just as SPIME.IM's live performances, this album is a temporarily linear journey through a narrative space shaped by psychedelic landscapes, synthetic colors, mutating objects and transient life-forms.

SPIME.IM was born as a word pun between the concept theorized by Bruce Sterling - the spime for the note, an object that can be traced through space and time for the duration of its existence - and the contraction of English "I am". If the Being is therefore the object of the intertwining between the real and the virtual, then it becomes possible to create new imaginaries that turn into immersive environments and narrative spaces in which artificial and natural, science and humanity, imagination and reality interpenetrate, giving life to new boundaries to be explored, to experience the own consciousness and what, while invisible to our eyes, surrounds and influences us.

Affirming digital reality, the Turin-based media art collective SPIME.IM explores the boundaries and possibilities of identity and perception in a world where virtual doppelgängers take on an all-encompassing position. SPIME.IM use technology, 3D art and electronic music to weave immersive audio-video experiences.

Two years ago, Ferdi Schuster was a young multi-instrumentalist and producer
daydreaming of releasing his music on Claremont 56, one of his favourite labels.
Now he’s set to release his stunning debut album, “All One”, on Paul Murphy’s
long-running imprint.
It’s been a long time between drinks for the German producer, who last graced
C56 with his superb double A-side single, “Little River/Befreit”, in the autumn of
2017. Fittingly, it’s “Little River” – a babbling brook of audio bliss rich in samba
influenced drums, soothing acoustic guitars and spacey synthesizer licks – that
kicks off “All One”, a seductive set in which every drumbeat, piano note, guitar
riff, synthesizer flourish and freside-warm bassline was played by the man
himself.
Throughout, it’s easy to see why Murphy decided to snap up Schuster and
push the producer to record a debut album. Check, for example, the dubbed
out shuffle of “Thinking of You”, where ghostly chords, soft-focus guitar solos
and ethereal vocals drift across the soundscape, and the slowly unfurling bliss
of “The Good Fight”, an effortlessly Balearic workout rich in sun-kissed guitars,
bubbly synth lines and chords so snugly they could probably be used as a
comfort blanket.
Schuster’s greatest strength is undoubtedly the evocative and enveloping nature
of his instrumental music, which draws on a variety of complimentary influences
but never sounds anything less than original and fresh. Some listeners may be
enchanted by the loose and languid pulse of “Fading Away” or the lo-f reggae
jazz of dusty closing cut “Night Talk”, though others may prefer the stoned funk
shuffle of “Interaction” or the spacey vibrations of “Pulsa”, where intergalactic
synthesizer lines wind their way around heady bass guitar and sparse, off-kilter
deep electro drums.
“All One” is that kind of set; an atmospheric and musically accomplished
collection of cuts capable of muting the mundane and distracting from the stress
of 21st century life. As debut albums go, it’s something of a stunner

Bristol stalwarts October & Borai join forces once again for their second outing on Happy Skull. The pair join the dots between sleazy EBM and rugged, hardcore atmospherics.

Lead track 'Fatal Rumba' is a titanium plated slab of latin funk for freakier, late night dance floors. On the B-Side 'Swipe Left' drops the tempo but turns the pressure up to boiling point, a chugging drum machine workout complete with pulsating 303's and dub techno chords. To round things off, Conch bosses Bash & T give 'Swipe Left' the full UK treatment, flipping it to a mutant funky roller.

Schmer Schmer has been looking for the next Prototype 909 since 1995. While they may never be found, we have instead found a few artists that with the same spirit of adventure have taken electronic music to new frontiers of unimaginable creativity. Primary among them is Lena aka Galcid aka Lenacid.

Lena's electrifying live performances utilizing eurorack modular synths with vintage and modern machines follow three simple 3 rules:

NO PCs, NO Presets, NO Preparation!

She has been called Jeanne d'Arc of modular because her style her appearance and her fearlessness.

For Schmer, Lena has created an EP made for the melting of your mind, if it doesn't first melt your speakers.

Lena uses her electronics in the most effective way possible. The classic acid machines are deployed to establish the themes the modular synths bring in sounds that take these tracks to another level. The eponymous track will hypnotize you into the state of focus necessary to allow you to go deep inside. Then the Acid Police show up! A funky drum machine rocker sure wake you out of your trance. Steel Vein has the intensity to rewire your modular mind. bpmf provides an hard driving aggressive take on Melting to help us turn on the switch.
Legendary DJ and producer Hisashi Saito has been making acid and techno since the early 90s. Using his unique
skills this EP has a rare clarity of sound not often heard on such ambitious recordings. Lenacid “Melting EP” opens up a new frontier for acid, for Schmer and for Lena that you are invited to explore with us this spring.

As Galcid, she has played alongside world renowned artists such as Nina Kraviz, Daniel Miller, Oval, DJ Nobu, Isao Tomita, Takkyu Ishino, Ken Ishii, G-man (LFO) among others. In 2016, she was invited by the Japan Media Art Festival to play at the special exhibition, held at the Eyemyth Media Arts Festival in Mumbai, India. Her 1st album “Hertz" received a worldwide release in digital format on the Detroit Underground label. The release attracted the attention of Karl Hyde (Underworld), Chris Carter (Throbbing Gristle) among other well-known musicians the world over. Shortly thereafter, Galcid played at "Boiler Room Tokyo". In July 2017, she embarked on her first EU tour playing shows in Barcelona, London, and Madrid, after she came back, she participated in Iron Island Festival and Mutek Japan garnering high praise in the media. In December 2017, she was invited to headline Future Mix's 20th Anniversary event and workshop in Shenzhen where she performed and held a talk with techno pioneer Mijk Van Dijk.

Spatial Cues releases split singles and solo EPs that sound out main(void)’s and Kon Janson’s shared musical space. Operating out of Berlin and London, the two artists join forces to showcase their mutual vision of techno music.

CUES005 aligns itself with the deep and hypnotic side of the series by inserting repetitive themes into flowing soundscapes and subtly shifting rhythms.

Spiralling deeper and deeper into a slowly evolving vortex of sound, CUES005 A emits gleaming signals into the expansive space emanating from its mesmerising bass line.

Held together by the gravitational pull of its sub-heavy kick drum, CUES005 B’s swirling drums orbit around a minimalistic synth pattern that echoes back in bleepy accents.

Alex Jann returns to Censor for the label’s second excursion into the unknown with three direct communications and a mix of the title track from Rotterdam’s Animistic Beliefs.

The EP’s title track Computoid.Transmission.X is a pulsating drum workout laced with dystopian pads, laser-cut leads, anxious bass lines and an evocative mutant vocal from an A.I. system gaining consciousness.

Animistic Beliefs create a darker texture in their Electric Eye Mix of the title track, sending the vocal and lead sound straight through the stratosphere via complex bass and arp phrases that filter and stalk around the lead bringing a deeper and more contrasting A2.

Firewall Culture comes as an intoxicating trip on the B1 with off-world FX, feral acid lines and a spacetime-defying style of vocal that haunt Alex’s work.

Jupiter Storms on the B2 ascends the EP to a higher plane with deep washes created from evolving pads adding space and movement to the final track of the release, all accented with glacial micro drops, syncopated beats and tight trickling synth sections. The release was mastered by Keith Tenniswood at Curve Pusher.

Electronic Body Music, abbreviated as EBM, is a term whose origin stems from the Belgian group Front 242, chosen to describe their electronic music; cold and dancing, free of the dominant influences of the time. Powerful, cold and minimalist electronic rhythms were the hallmarks of this new genre.

The movement quickly garnered followers with the British group Nitzer Ebb but also in the rest of Europe, with the likes of Borghesia and The Neon Judgment, later signed to labels like PIAS, Antler- Subway, Wax Trax!, Mute, Off Beat, Zoth Ommog, Pendragon and Metropolis.

EBM’s popularity grew rapidly in the underground scene during the 1980s and early 1990s, especially in Europe, before breaking through in the rest of the world, also influencing the subsequent electro-industrial scene.
‘Dancing In Darkness: EBM, Black Synth & Dark Beats From The 80s’ - to give it its full title - is a compilation of some of these bands; bands that changed contemporary music in terms of ideology, politics and aesthetics.

CD version in digipack with poster booklet. 2LP version in gatefold sleeve.

Originally released on Illuminated Records in 1983, "Viral Shedding" is surely one of the most important references for the industrial/funk dance music.

Between pure noise and electronic beats, 'Viral Shedding' is creating a twisted and percussive rhythmic urge, a funky disco sound permeated by digital industrial beats. Nigel Ayers and Caroline K take their inaccessible best and thrown it into the melting pot with a set of pumping rhythms. The result is the frustrated son of mutant disco, swimming in the same waters of Cabaret Voltaire, 23 Skidoo, Tackhead, Meat Beat Manifesto and Hula.

As Nigel Ayers recalls, "Popular music picked up on what we were doing 1983-1984, which helps explain why records such as -Viral Shedding- sound clubbier today than they did at the time, but the technology of music making locked in a seat of aesthetics in those days that shaped pop as a whole more than industrial music itself did. Whether by synthesizer manufacturers' musical design or through engineering limitations, the more automated a band allowed their music to become, the dancer it was likely to be."

Features the classics 'Suffering Stinks', 'Going Under' and 'No Separation'.

From the minds of Direct Beat and Detroit Bass Classics, comes the first initial compilation of electro/techno heat... "Electro In The Key Of Detroit: Volume 1"...Proven dance floor dope & record crate staples that provide the hungry ears of masses the groove to move: World-Wide. 'DJ K1's "Erase The Time" (featured on Detroit's WGPR TV "New Dance Show" in the 1990s) rocked the airwaves and global clubs with its signature thumping style laced beneath alien-like melody and repetitive vocal structure. 'Posatronix' mutant-rhythm mantra, "Pure Techno Sound" pulls the weight of Detroit's street dance roots down to the origin of how to boogie in space. A sure-fire stepper that also shared popularity on TV dance show platforms from Techno City. 'Blaktony's tempo-pushing "Holla Holla" , direct from the documentary soundtrack: "AUX88: Portrait Of An Electronic Band" dvd box set (a radio Dj/mix show favorite) sees the light of day on this wax collectable, giving praise to Motor City footwork culture. Also included in this monster EP is the rare 'AUX88' voyage entitled: "Phantom Power"...a gem and collector's choice. Crafted exclusively for the laid-back option away from the party or to enjoy accompanying a night's drive. This collection of re-issued jams and new explorations 'IS' the must-have for the electro/techno & bass aficionado...See it as either a DJ's weapon of choice, or the gift from vault

As a musical act, Xeno & Oaklander (Sean McBride and Liz Wendelbo) conflate a rich love of analog synths, melody, and mythology with eloquent nuance and a nod to the heritage they draw from. While that construct is the duo's immediate kiss and crush, there's a deeper importance to their collaboration which began in 2004. As evidenced in their debut Vigils (2004), McBride and Wendelbo's artistic dynamic is more than just a mutual love for electronics but a contrast between architectural precision and painterly expression. From the film scores to the traditional albums they've recorded in their Brooklyn studio, they've both spurred and fostered the global synth wave revival through a commitment to analog-only production and performance as well as a strident respect for the medium.

On their latest album Hypnos and first for the Dais imprint, the duo leveraged the talents of visual artist and live sound engineer Egan Frantz to mix the album. It's a touch that adds both punch and balance, allowing their inherent conceptual voices to converge into a collage with defined edges and warm, synapses of frequency and beat.

'Musically, Hypnos is a return to polyphony after several years of using strictly monophonic synthesizers,' McBride says about the album's ethos. 'This has brought dense harmonies and a more complex counterpoint to the composition. Staying with the same equipment and processes without the inveterate compulsion to update and refashion allows for a clearly perceivable genealogy with our previous work.'

'I felt the desire to tell mythical stories, I also wanted my voice to sit strongly in the mix,' Wendelbo explains. 'I channeled the spirits of 60s French Pop chanteuse Françoise Hardy and 80s New Wave New York icon Tina Weymouth.' Her intentions are best evidenced on the tracks 'Angelique,'and 'Insomnia,' the former a spry track sung in French, against a springy rhythm. Laden with expanding and contrasting frequency and a penchant for strategic rhythm, Hypnos juxtaposes dance with distance, creating an immersive oeuvre that exudes contrast and control.









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MUTANT- TECHNO TRACKS FROM SHINOBY.
FRAK DELIVERS A REMIX OF A BIZARRE BRAND OF SCANDINAVIAN TECHNO. IT'S WIDE ARRAY OF DANCEFLOOR FOCUSED ANALOGUE MAYHEM! TIP!

Mar & Sol presents the new album of the legendary band África Negra,"Alia cu Omali". New songs and some popular classics recorded between Lisbon and S.Tomé.
This album Its a reflection of the old rumba and soukous music that this epic band of São Tomé e Príncipe got us used to. They are an icon and one of the main bands of this island, representing in their music the authenticity and culture of the former Portuguese colony on the equatorial meridian.

It is our mission to expand this culture and here it is the testimony in our series of Luso Afro music which could best represent São Tomé.

Jason Letkiewicz has always swum against the musical tides, flitting between different solo pseudonyms (including Steve Summers, Death Commando and Alan Hurst) and collaborative projects (most notably Mutant Beat Dance) in order to explore different aspects of his leftfield inspirations. With his latest release, a first full-length outing for Artificial Dance entitled Mirage Information, the Chicago-based artist is operating under an alias that celebrates this approach: Opposing Currents.

It's an alias he's used once before - for a track featured on Chronditic Sound's 2015 cassette compilation Non-Christian Referent - but Mirage Information sounds like an artistic rebirth. Densely layered, mind-altering and often intense, the album's seven tracks update the Cold War paranoia and pulsating electronics of EBM and industrial music for today's complex and chaotic political climate.

Throughout, Letkiewicz smothers off-kilter drum machine rhythms and throbbing, body-jacking synthesizer basslines in untold layers of hazy audio detail, creating a dystopian sound soup out of which alien electronic melodies, psychedelic acid lines and barely audible vocals emerge. At times, such as on angry opener 'Lying Awake', the extra-terrestrial 'Dissolve' and foreboding 'Shallow Grave', we're invited to dance in the darkness in celebration of impending doom. On other occasions, such as the poignant and melancholic closing cut 'It Awaits', Letkiewicz simply seems exasperated at the chaos that is life in the 21st century. It makes for a genuinely arresting and thought-provoking listen.

A cat may have nine lives, but Peter Cat Recording Co. has a multitude of dimensions. Formed in New Delhi around 2010 by the crooner Suryakant Sawhney, it's a group that's mutated over time, shedding members and accruing more, always evolving musically with each album: from gypsy jazz to psychedelic cabaret; ballroom waltzes to epic space disco; bossa supernova to uneasy listening. What's more they play jajj, which you've almost certainly never heard of. 
'Gypsy jazz is the description we used around the time of our first album Cinema that we sound nothing like now,' says Sawhney, before adding: 'At the time I was really into Strauss.' 

Portrait of a Time 2010 - 2016 is the first taste many Europeans will have of this highly original, musically capricious and deeply inscrutable New Delhi four-piece. The compilation helps you get to know a band who are essentially unknowable, not that that will stop you from trying. Furthermore, in a capital city known for its mystery, madness and mayhem, Peter Cat Recording Co. is something of ananomaly there too. 

While Suryakant's crooning is spookily reminiscent of a hipster 50's Sinatra, it was more his intention to ape legendary Bollywood playback singers like Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and especially Hemant Kumar. There are diverse American influences in the mix too, including Sam Cooke, Etta James and even Tom Waits, and time spent in San Francisco studying film may have contributed to the cinematic melange. Thrown together it becomes something unique that equates less to a listening experience and more to an out-of-body experience. 

They were signed to new French record company Panache after label boss Alexandre Rabia was trawling through YouTube one day and happened upon their remarkable promo for 'Love Demons'. It's a mind-blowing eight minute epic featuring the desert, one camel, a movie theatre, swirly organs over coruscating beats, dancing girls, more police and a cavernous pit that then-bassist Rohan Kulshreshtha falls into. 

You can try to compartmentalize them all you want, but just when you think you've got them pegged, they will evolve and transmogrify and the description you have in your hand will slip through your fingers like sand. Who knows if Peter Cat Recording Co. has nine lives, but you can listen to a past life on Portrait of a Time, and a future incarnation - much of it recorded in Paris - will be available in the autumn. Just remember, unlike a cat, you'll never put them in a box. 

Wehbba collaborates with ghetto tech legend DJ Deeon, to deliver another superlative EP on Drumcode.

Since his debut on Drumcode in 2017, Brazil's Wehbba has become one of the most dependable and impressive artists on the roster. Last year saw two standout EP's 'Eclipse' and 'Catarse' drop on the imprint, alongside 'Just', his strong contribution to A-Sides Vol.7. He also made his mark playing Drumcode events at OFF Week, Resistance Ibiza and the much talked about double header in Manchester and Bristol when DC took over Warehouse Project and Motion respectively.

A true master craftsman in the studio, his first contribution for 2019 is typically impressive. A huge inspiration to Wehbba since his nascent raver days, ghetto tech icon DJ Deeon contributes a fierce vocal to 'We Have Bass', after a serendipitous hook up in São Paulo. A peak career moment collaborating with one of his original heroes and the artist responsible for the classic 'Freak Like Me', the resulting percussive-heavy cut kicks like a rodeo bull. 'Third Wave' is coffee geek Wehbba's homage to his favourite brew, constructing the production to mirror the experience of a caffeine fix, as a loopy trance-inducing groove leads to powerful synth stabs that are heavy on impact. 'Steamroller' is a stripped back slice of techno driven by the Brazilian's Korg MS-20 and found form after it initially begun as a studio jam inspired by Richie Hawtin's 'Minus Orange'.

A Jean-Michel Jarre fan stretching back to his childhood, 'Another Mistake' was conceived after Wehbba saw the French legend in concert last year and was subsequently able to meet him backstage through a mutual friend. While creating the track, the producer imagined Jarre playing the main layers of the hook on his famous Laser-harp, eliciting an almost celestial quality with the melody. This is a stirring slice of techno fit for stadiums. The EP ends with 'Purge', the artist's stream-of-consciousness expression recorded in one-take and a beautiful beat-less way to conclude the work.

In the last few years London has become the centre of the Jazz Renaissance. A

new burst of energy and attitude brought by young musicians, equally inspired

by the likes of John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders or Sun Ra, as well as

Madvillain, J Dilla, Flying Lotus and Floating Points, has brought a welcomed

freshness to the London Scene. This exciting new environment brought a group

of young musicians together, all with a mutual desire to discover a new form of

expression. Together they created Cykada.

InFiné reissues Murcof`s seminal soundtrack for 'La Sangre Iluminada' in red-vinyl Version. The soundtrack produced by Murcof was originally released by Mexican label 'Intolerancia Records". This version by InFiné includes new editing of the original recordings, remastering by Rashad Becker. It features Murcof´s classic rework for Los Angeles Negro´s Como Quisiera Decirte. 'La Sangre Illuminada' is a feature film directed by Ivàn Dueñas in 2009 and inspired by Jose Carlos Becerra's poems. It tells the story of six characters who mutate into new bodies.

serenitatem, the fifteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.'s collaboration series pairing intergenerational artists in creative conversation, joins Visible Cloaks with Yoshio Ojima and Satsuki Shibano, two trailblazers of the Japanese avantgarde music and visual arts scenes of the 1980s and 90s.

Yoshio Ojima began his career as a composer of environmental and ambient music, with a particular interest, and optimism, in the possibilities of generative software. His compositional pursuit of human synthesis with computerized forms was realized in its fullest potential alongside Satsuki Shibano, a pianist renowned for her interpretations of Erik Satie and Claude Debussy. Together, they were among a handful of influential Japanese artists whose innovations still resonate, if not more vibrantly than ever, well beyond the tightly-knit scene's original core. In the early 90s, Ojima was among the programmers of the influential satellite radio experiment St. Giga, a constantly-evolving sonic landscape that combined field recordings and sound collage with occasional readings of Japanese poetry. Satsuki was a regular reader for the station. This musical terrarium bloomed out of sight in a small Tokyo studio, a greenhouse of sound with no set start or finish time that audiences could tune into, absorb, and immerse.

The perpetual flow state of St. Giga — recordings of which Ojima shared with Visible Cloaks — would be highly influential to serenitatem's constitution. As Visible Cloaks, the Portland, Oregon duo of Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile have developed their own set of creative strategies that form an aesthetic fuse point between human intention, aleatoric composition, and improvisation.

These are notions most recently reflected in 2017's Reassemblage and Lex, a respective album and EP in which the duo combined generative software and virtual representations of global instruments into lacy, interlocking patterns. Long time admirers of Ojima's work on albums like 1988's Une Collection Des Chainons, Doran and Carlile discovered after an online introduction that they shared with Yoshio and Satsuki an abiding interest in pre-classical composers, the Lovely Music, Ltd. label, and the British avant-garde, as well as a mutual respect for one another's techniques and processes.

The four musicians met in Tokyo, Japan at Sounduno Studios in December 2017, at the tail end of Visible Cloaks' first Japanese tour, to commence work on serenitatem. Leading up to the studio sessions, Doran and Carlile sent Ojima processed sound sketches recorded while on a European tour, which Yoshio would add to and return. Visible Cloaks would then fold Yoshio's edits back into the original compositions, which Doran and Carlile brought to the exploratory recording session. During that week together in Tokyo, the quartet made use of a number of creative strategies — 'echoing sound together,' as Yoshio puts it. Among the strategies, MIDI randomization gave the quartet melodic lines and what Doran calls 'randomized clouds,' or 'tightly grouped notes that become smeared tonal clusters functioning more like chords in themselves.' Carlile would also feed Ojima and Satsuki's text into Wotja, a generative music software which produced a MIDI language around which the quartet expanded their compositions.

'The aim,' Doran says of serenitatem, 'was to make a work that was not specifically ambient (or environmental), but something more multi-hued, weaving these deconstructive concepts into an album that has a deeper architecture underpinning it.' Accordingly, serenitatem is a marvelously sharp record, its sutures between human and machine virtually impossible to find but suggested everywhere you turn. The collaboration among Ojima, Satsuki, and Visible Cloaks is both musically and conceptually inseparable from the technology that made it possible. Throughout the album, Shibano's playing resonates like Satie's, her rhythms cascading like drops from leaves an hour after the rain. Overtones are stretched and warped like modeling clay, then spun around and shown off from multiple angles.

A single soaring note might seem to be suddenly plunged underwater, its richness of sound made shallow and its sharp edges blunted. Pittering chimes and rapidly warping vocal samples hang in the luxuriously glossy space, water trickles from ear-toear, familiar melodies rise from nothing and dissolve before they can be traced. With the depth of its emotional charge, serenitatem burns away the easy cynicism of the day, presenting itself as the kind of delocalized work of art the internet promised us decades ago — a synthesis of artistic visions, technological sophistication, futurist ambition, and, occasionally, ancient polyphony. Listening to it can feel a bit like tuning in to a 21st Century version of St. Giga: It's a place where the future still grows.

Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima, and Satsuki Shibano's serenitatem, FRKWYS Vol. 15, will be available across LP, CD, and digital formats on April 5, 2019. The quartet will perform select live shows throughout 2019.

Multiple Man is comprised of twin duo Chris & Sean Campion. Originally operating from Brisbane, Australia their four track EP for Fleisch represents their first record written since Chris's relocation to New York City. 'High On The Hog' finds Multiple Man at a disconnect. Spread between different continents and time zones, the record's direction is a marked progression from previous sounds.

Paranoid atmospherics, sheet metal percussion and unhinged mutant sampling, the record finds the twins wallowing in the muck and the mire. The junk funk is still there but it's bathed in machine age voodoo. This is not a record for the post-apocalypse but an end of history banger for the psycho rollerball time we live in.

Counting down every weird minute until the bombs drop, it represents a grotesque vision of end-times razorback EBM. Continuing the evolution in Multiple Man's discography and contributing to the Berlin label's vision, 'High On The Hog' throws another piece of meat into the Fleisch grinder.

Sink into ESO002, the debut EP from Canadian life collaborators Mutually Feeling (Ariana Molly and Pulsum). Produced across multiple continents, ESO002 is a truly international affair. Mutually Feeling have provided us with 5 tracks of gorgeous, sensual electro and ambient music. If you're longing for someone or something, this is the record to yearn to.

Glacial Industries return for 2019 with a club focused 12' from Cork born, Berlin based composer ELLLL. ELLLL follows up outings on Art For Blind and First Second Label with 'CONFECTIONARY', a trio of technoid mutations. 'PEPSI' + 'SKITTLES' provide club ammo with their pulsing hard drums, whilst the eerie, off-kilter 'JAWBREAKER' rounds off the release. 'CONFECTIONARY' releases worldwide on Glacial Industries digitally and with a limited edition, full colour sleeved white 12'.

Ltd. Ed. 180 units w/ Special Poster Cover

Syncope is concept EP, a mutant musical and visual project
initiated in 2018, promoting the inherent link between music and graphic design. It takes roots in Isaac Newton's Opticks treatise, which for the first time addresses a relationship between audible and visible. Syncope aims to explore the diversity and affinity of distinct phenomena such as frequencies, colors, synesthesia, polyrhythm ...Each exploration takes the form of a visual and musical narrative. This duality emerges on all visual and musical media, mixing plastic and technological elements, organic and synthetic, exploring the intimate relationship between man and machine. Dual nature also existing within the object, both a cover and a poster. A particular interest is giving to printing, using offset, with bronze and purple Pantone colors.This EP is the first object resulting from this project. Oil thief is an ambient track with synthetic and bestial sounds. Jungle is a rite of passage integrating African percussion and polyrhythms. Mengele Zoo close this EP with a progressive and psychedelic guitar slick.