Cerca:new sense

The consistently innovative Catch Recordings is back with a new EP from Leipzig based producer U+00C5. As always with this label, the music is right from the cutting electronic edge and finds this stylish producer blur the boundaries between ambient, dub and techno in evocative new ways.

Cult favourite U+00C5 is focussed on new musical forms, on modern sounds and redefining the European techno sound. He consistently pushes forwards and is a master of the interplay between hypnotic repetition and otherworldly abstractionism, all while drawing on dark ambient and drone. Once again here the producer who also works as Åmethyst is in fine form across all five tracks.

Atmospheric opener 'Blutdruck' is a deep techno roller that fizzes with a sense of post-industrial dystopia. The shadowy grooves are eventually backlit by subtle chords that bring real warmth and soul. The excellent 'Empfinden' is more high tempo but just as cavernous and absorbing thanks to the rolling rubber drums, distant synth drones and sci-fi motifs that add the all important details which keep your head as engaged as your heel.

The beautiful 'Taumel' is another slice of hypnotic and tunnelling techno embellished with gorgeous ambiance from the outer edges of our galaxy. 'Nichts Ist Wahr' closes things out with suspensory pads giving you the feeling that you are floating in space before the firmly rooted drums rumble on and take you into the next dimension.

This is another fascinating EP of club ready but seriously heady sounds from Catch Recordings.

Deliberately breaking all the rules Mr. Hornby once famously outlined regarding the creation of homemade (tape) compilations, Saroos’ members indeed had the term “mixtape” on their minds while working on their latest full-length – albeit in the hip-hop sense: a sonic snack box, interconnected shots from the hip, something that just came together and immediately felt right.

Whereas hip-hop folks nowadays often use the vacuous term “project” in order to steer clear of the ontological debate caused by the almost synonymous use of album/mixtape, Florian Zimmer, Christoph Brandner, and Max Punktezahl, otherwise busy with The Notwist, Driftmachine & Lali Puna, stick to the classics: their new 16-track project “OLU” (Off Label Use) is, officially, still an album. But it’s wild and vibrant like a mixtape, interwoven like its cover: a seamless burst of ideas, impulsively combined to form a split-screen snapshot of recent moments and momentums.

Re-appropriating the term “Off Label Use” – which actually means: using prescription drugs in ways that aren’t mentioned on the instruction leaflet – in their own “off-label” way, Saroos never sounded more loose-limbed and elastic. Whereas the trio’s earlier releases were rather conceptual and homogenous, “OLU” indeed has a more loose, spur-of-the-moment feel, a spontaneous force at its core. Checking the weighty sci-fi inspirations at the door, they use that Bomb Shelter-type of freedom to reinvent themselves at every turn, chasing sounds that happened to emerge in the group’s triangular energy field.

Kicking it off “with a killer, to grab attention” (Hornby/Cusack, after all), the massive reverb-stumblin’ adjustment between beats and bass of opening track “Quarantaine” cross-fades smoothly into “Humdrum Rolloff,” an early hint at the group’s off-label practices: the underwater creepers floating around here were really voices (mostly). From majestically built oriental sound-pieces (“Looney Suite Serenade”), synth-based “End House Mario” and a triptych of speaker-boxxxing gas lamp experimentations entitled “Cord Burn 1-3,” Saroos have rarely sounded this playful and unrestricted: there’s a new energy at work that welds all the different sonic playing fields together to create one continuous 40 minute mix.

For the B-side descent, “Tatsu Jam,” at less than 4 minutes still the longest cut, billows over the kind of sizzling hi-hats you’d expect to hear on real trap tapes from Hotlanta. A prelude to a bunch of quicker-paced instrumentals (“Scratch Pets”, “24h Love Gumbo”) and ambient sun showers, until the next “Plateau” (Mo’Wax vibes!) brings the beats to the fore once again (“Tomorrow’s Kudos”), and the ultimate “Whirligig” sounds like a mix of Oktoberfest 2020 and Johnston’s “Casper The Friendly Ghost” coming apart at the seams.
Whatever you wanna call it – album, LP, mixtape, project, who cares? –, it’s definitely a double A-side tour-de-force.

Come Away With "ESG". 35-year anniversary release of the classic genre-busting debut album by the Bronx sisters ESG. The sample-friendly opus that's the inspiration for hip-hop, house and post punk. Music that falls outside of the no wave, new wave and post punk library, it's for the dance floor but it's not funk, there's no horns, no driving organ; it's the opposite of Sly And The Family Stone but no less cool and no less groovy. 'A lasting document of their unique brand of minimal funk that would influence subsequent post-punk, hip-hop, and dance music acts. Stripped down to the most basic of drumbeats and rudimentary bass lines, 'Come Away' confirms the notion that the real rhythm is what happens between the beats. - AllMusic // 'This is dub disco with a punk edge.' Paste // 'Uncut punk-funk straight off the streets of the South Bronx.' Record Collector // 'ESG are that rare thing' Guardian // 'Come Away with ESG sounds so shockingly current.' Paste // 'A musical snapshot of New York City at the beginning of the '80s.' - Allmusic.

Another win for the Glowing Pin as Müller & Wandt drop a fresh new age groover on a killer club dub tip. Elsewhere Phazer Boys, Suzanne Kraft, Philipp Otterbach and River Yarra remix the pscht out of their favourite tracks from ‘Instrumentalmusik..’. Expect Goan hits, cosmic trips, loved up rave and chilled out wave on this flawless five tracker.

Growing Bin becomes Glowing Pin for the most anticipated rematch of the century. Back at the beginning of 2018, Wolf Müller and Niklas Wandt went head to head for a box office smash, throwing a high school percussion tray, wall of hardware and voodoo skull into the ring for the tribal trip of ‘Instrumentalmusik Von Der Mitte Der World’. Now the multi-instrumental duo face off once again, but this time it’s a royal rumble with Phazer Boys, Suzanne Kraft, Phillip Otterbach and River Yarra all bringing the noise to the Glowing Pin.

Müller and Wandt dominate the action on the A1, playing loose with sampler vox, serene pads and future primitive rhythms on the unreleased ‘Fun Dub’ of the also unreleased ‘Dub Dub’. Imagine Ferris Bueller’s trampoline tumble trading Chicago to the Weissenhof and you’ll sense the mood of this New Age groove. Germany’s number one party dudes, those freaky Phazer Boys take a break from dropping killer Candomblé cuts to reach for the lasers on the A2, taking ‘Ahu’ to another dimension. Dripping in neon body paint and armed with fire poi, the Düsseldorf duo power up progressive house sequences, didgeridoo bass and thumping tribal house percussion for a wall-shaking, speaker-breaking remix.

The B1 belongs to synth whiz Suzanne Kraft who revels in glistening, gliding glory on an expansive remix of ‘Auflösung’. Sleek, serene and futuristic, the track shimmers like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, free from inequality and rendered with the 5D(ub?) majesty of a DMT breakthrough.
B2 hears Salon associate and serious talent Philipp Otterbach take over on a stripped back and psychedelic post punk dub of ‘Expedition’. Angular bass by Süne Große and a stuttering rhythm underpin astral flourishes and the hazy vocals of Lucas Croon before the African elements begin to move to the forefront.
Last man standing is Australian outlier River Yarra, who leads us into the Krautback with a chugging dub of ‘Weltraumsandalen’. Lent a lysergic sparkle by a percolating one-note bassline, this slow motion stunner masters perpetual motion amid the eerie echoes of the bush, organic percussion and electronic animal cries fading into the night. Let the pins glow again.

Patrick Ryder

“The combined forces of Frederik Valentin & Loke Rahbek first found a way into the world in 2017 with the album 'Buy Corals Online'. Together they now present 'Elephant', an eight-track album that composes an inquisitive space with it's parts.

The economy of movement across Rahbek and Valentin's new collaborative album makes for a gentle transmission of its abstract intimacies. This presence, which we caught glimpses of on their previous work 'Buy Corals Online', is shaped by the delicate interplay between acoustic instrumentation and synthetically rendered sounds. Hauntingly melodic at times, the album feels like a suite of uncanny lullabies that grant access to realities that can only be found in dreams.

Rahbek and Valentin are always leading us somewhere and showing us something—one piece of the scene at a time, coming and going with different parts of a puzzle that eventually settles into a complete form. And through all this we perceive an inviting restlessness on their behalf, encouraging us to stray further and further into the private space of 'Elephant'. Valentin is perhaps best known for his work in the exquisite atypical pop group Kyo, though his widereaching music and videography practices covertly underpin his flagship projects.

Most recently, Valentin has been working with Yung Lean as both producer on his 'Nectar' album as Jonatan Leandoer127 as well as on their commission for Sweden's Cullberg Ballet. As Croatian Amor, Rahbek has made similar forays into unworldly pop and his work with Christian Stadsgaard as Damien Dubrovnik has been as critical as their cofounding of Posh Isolation.

Modest interventions from processed field-recordings and semi-erupting synths invite you to zoom in enough to hear the human hand. An attention to listening, to how sounds cradle the small movements and gestures that naturally accompany the playing of guitar, piano, and viola, is acutely developed by Rahbek and Valentin.

It's in this way that 'Elephant' persuades us that even small stories unfurl into the most intricate and tremendous of sagas"

Having released his last fantastic EP Melodius Hubbub a year previous, ED1999 is back with his newest project, named Moving Glow on Porpax records, illustrated by Graphic Designer Oliver SPERL, representing Belgiums best talent. Remaining serious in sentiment but developing his sound, ED1999 uses elements of light to contrast with the dark. As his previous EP followed the theme of interpreting pathways, this EP isn’t all too much different, as it captures the autonomous and excitable nature of light. Even though the speed of light is the fastest most constant definitive, ED1999 manages to bend, warp and interpret light itself through each track’s alternate paces and elements.

That makes it no surprise that Beam of Light starts us off with a full-body feeling of suspense. His classic momentous techno beat with a gratifying and anchoring kick drives the track the entire way through. Then, as the title foreshadows, the glimmers of light - in the form of synthesisers - manage to push their way through the cracks and eventually bleed out until they’re completed absorbed by the beats and become one.

Unknown Luminescence is nothing short of a fun, intense and gyrating episode; in true groovy techno fashion, it’s designed to get any listener’s shoulders swinging and body’s sweating. The repetition of the light ambient melody throughout gives the sense of a far off signal call, drawing in techno lovers from far and wide to enjoy the experience in synchronicity.

Darker again with more sinister undertones, Flamboyant Ray is an assertive approach to techno, yet cloaked in mystery thanks to its muffled kick drums and reverbs. As a more consistent track meant to maintain intensity, it’s style and confidence hardly alters throughout its duration.

The final track on the EP, Photonic Energy, embodies the environment of electrical currents swimming through dark and damp corridors; reacting and gurgling as electricity meets moisture. Distant murmurs give the effect that the space is alive and every inch of existence is thanks

”Are you ready to take your turn now?” asks a mischievous voice at the beginning of DJ Marcelle’s new album. But by this point you don’t have a choice: you better buckle up for a joyride through the wild, unpredictable imagination of a true electronic music auteur. ‘Saturate The Market, Now!’ is stuffed with the kind of raw, rhythmic workouts and playful humour we’ve come to know and love from the long-serving Dutch artist. Let’s start with the music: Marcelle pinballs between pumping outsider house, brilliantly weird acid and musique concrète experiments where anything could happen at any given time. Then there are her famous track titles, which take another aim at nightclub patriarchy (‘Technicians And Their Light Effects’, the successor to last year's 'Technicians And Their Smoke Machines') at the same time as displaying a keen sense of satire (‘I Fell In My Own Cesspit!’) and revealing a difficult relationship with the sour, massive rock that for her is ‘German Bread’. With artwork featuring a collage of puppets found in her Amsterdam house and Marcelle’s own on-the-road photography, this is yet another album that sets her a mile apart from the paint-by-numbers dance music producers - or “accountants” as she’s witheringly described them.

Marcelle arrived via punk, post-punk, avant garde and dub and lives by the independent, forward-thinking spirit inherent in those scenes. A sense of freedom is imbued in her work, unsurprising given that this album was written in two weeks and was made entirely on her own collection of machines (save a few choice vocal samples). It’s Marcelle’s eighth vinyl-only release for Jahmoni Music from Munich and follows on from last year’s ‘One Place For The First Time’ which swiftly sold-out and is now onto a repress. The vinyl is released alongside a 10” featuring extended and dub versions of triumphant album-cut ‘Everything Not Yet’.

So are you sitting comfortably? Well Marcelle would prefer if you weren’t. Because this is music for misfits to move to. The very opposite of business techno. A missive from a cult DJ with an enviable record collection and a fearless artist who couldn’t give a flying fuck about dance music norms. Saturate the market with pure energy – let’s do this!Seb Wheeler, Mixmag

Canadian born, Berlin based producer Aquarian makes his full length album debutThe Snake That Eats Itselfon Bedouin Records.
This record follows his collaborative EPs with Deapmash as 'AQXDM" and is his first solo release since his 2016 experimental mixtape for Quiet Time. Nearly five years in the making, 'The Snake That Eats Itself' is Aquarian's most complex, diverse and emotive work to date, plunging his trademark UK sound-system/techno hybrids into a self-contained, cinematic universe streaked with heavy influences from industrial, IDM, drone and dark pop music.

It's written in Brooklyn, New York, in a deeply transitional, yet seemingly endless period preceding his relocation to Berlin, the title of the album refers to the Ouroboros, a mythological serpent symbolizing the cycle of birth and death and infinity itself.
'The Snake That Eats Itself' pits Aquarian's most abrasive and brutal moments next to his most wistful and introspective.

Viscerally thick layers of tape saturation envelop the album as sludgy synths ooze against brittle atmospheres; breakbeats fragment, explode and disintegrate into swarms of delay and noise; scorched, metallic percussion - sampled from a year-long demolition and construction project next to his apartment - forge the rhythmic backbone of the album. These elements, however, seamlessly make way to startlingly crystalline and shimmering ambient passages, offering a sense of reprieve and balance.

B-tracks, the duo of Soren Jahan and John Barera, return with their first release together in many years. Unfolding across these six tunes is an extended EP of hard rocking, raw and rough house trax in the immutable b-tracks style – with no weak links. This loop digging, spliff making, track building duo have always been trying to channel the vibe of “real” and “proper” house and techno. B-Tracks are known for very successful and out of print club bombs like ìSpecializeî and ìCome Backî – as well as many headier and more techno oriented tracks. Here, they make their much welcome return to producing together.
Recorded in New York City and Berlin across a period of five years, these musicians were in no hurry to make this record. Rather, as always, they sought to make something timeless and classy that will make a lasting contribution to listeners and dancers. This record is a celebratory occasion, centered around the energy that could only come with two old friends working together, having fun and letting loose. ìWhat a Shameî is the B-Tracks vocal club bomb for 2020, hardwired to go off, catchy and bursting with energy. ìAlwaysî is vintage B-tracks – thumping, goosebump inducing house that expands and contracts. “What You Areî closes out side A with an introspective, yet still bumping slice of music.
On the flip, “Earth” unpacks their refined sense of melody, drama, and groove. ìSend Cashî is a pure beatdown for the DJs, and “Witness” closes out the EP in high style, with a soaring leads and strings, a celestial tune and a perfect end to this chapter. Don’t expect new releases to come very often from this Transatlantic duo, but when they do – it is something to really savor.

As the world turns the page towards yet another decade the Two Swedes from SpaceTM in MLU embraces new beginnings and paves the way for their very first, and very own musical outlet. MLU Private Press is their new label-not-label and the result of years of joint music making. “We looked ourselves in the mirror and all we saw was us” - it’s a vanity label in the truest sense. An audial outlet candidly and simply releasing streams of future and past sounds flowing through a crack from their Stockholmian mountain and out into the world.

The first release features three tracks of MLU-matic electronics, spanning in making over the last decade. From the energetic rave-sentimentality of “Blue...” eloquently dreaming of approaching future skylines to the sound of breakbeats, to the nostalgic arpeggios of “Astro Travelling Pt. 2”. A track which got lost but recently resurfaced in the MLU lost-and-found bin, recorded almost 10 years ago and sound-wise very reminiscent of their earliest work. The aptly named “Madame of the Magic Mushroom” with it’s mix of acoustic drums and shroomy synthesis ends the 12” in weightless psychedelia recollecting memoria of ecstatic driven 70’s loft-rock.

Jungletrain resident Trainspotter debuts on Vivid’s first black label
series release. Spaced out ambient pads, noisescapes, and sparse
percussion take you far out and bring you to a place entirely new and
yet somehow familiar. This series is dedicated to individual, abstract
conceptualizations of the jungle / drum n bass landscape, exploring
freedom from formulaic beats while taking you to the fringe of
160-170+ bpm music. Fading Train EP is a truly unique take on this and excellent for bringing a sense of space to busy mixes.

For the new Arma release Ena explores different, distinct facets of his sound across three productions. “Pale” distills his vision of techno as a minimalist, repetitive construct. Working around non-standard time signatures, he creates a densely woven lattice of percussive pulses, which cut a polyrhythmic path through nightmarish sheets of noise. “Secondary Color” uses a broader palette that opens the Ena sound up to the light,,, “Wired” heads further away from the grid in pursuit of sound design exploration, as a rack of pipes and chambers strike, boom and chime against artful distortion and cavernous reverb. While Ena has historically been hesitant about remixes of his material, he warmed to the idea of long-time Arma friend JASSS reworking “Wired”. Taking the track into her own fiercely individual sound world, she uses the harmonic tonality of the original as a jump-off point for an epic, emotionally forthright chiller loaded with coldwave bombast, trap hats and Silvia’ own voice. Coming from entirely different angles of approach, Ena and JASSS are bound together by their fearless individuality. You can sense the slithers of pre-existing music somewhere in their constructions, but such familiarities are no more than faint echoes of places they passed through on their way to somewhere new.

Samuel Rohrer CONTINUAL DECENTERING
With his Arjunamusic label and a growing catalog of categorydefying releases, Samuel Rohrer continues to quietly, yet confidently, make a name for himself as a genuinely unique Gigure within the European electronic music realm. In the current era, talk of blurring boundaries between musical genres and attitudes is more the rule than the exception, but not always something done with any degree of success. Rohrer is one of those rare alchemical explorers to have truly created a hybrid which is all his own, one that does not just exist to melt distinctions for its own sake, but is a natural result of years of experimentation with both the determination of electronic music and the ludic spirit of ‘free improvisation.’ On his newest offering, Continual Decentering, this vision is applied to a set of mostly in real time (live) performed explorations. 
In keeping with his many years’ worth of fruitful collaborations, the tonal palette on this new record is one that is expectedly rich for those familiar with his work, yet still surprising in terms of how exactly the differing tonal colors come together. Representative tracks like Spondee and The Fringe are brimming with dub pulses, noir shivers and blooming timbral variations that are in many places carefully isolated / focused and in other places blended together in vivid fusions. In terms of the emotional atmosphere created here, the pensive and questioning tone hearkens back to the ‘wide open’ state of electronic music in the mid-late 1990s, yet with a greater clarity and maturity of vision that makes this music feel like a possible answer to aesthetic questions being raised at that time. As with Rohrer’s most recent solo work, like the Range of Regularity LP, Continual Decentering showcases the artist’s skill in turning the drum kit into a lead instrument. While the term “lead instrument” denotes a kind of exuberant “Glash,” or a clear separation from the rest of the voices in an ensemble, we can take the term to mean something different throughout this listening program of 13 short vignettes: that is to say, everything else within the audible environment exists to complement the character of the percussive playing rather than to stand apart from it. It helps that Rohrer has, in fact, developed a unique and complex hybrid system in which drum hits trigger modular synthesizer processes, the use of which makes for an incredibly fluid response time between distinct sonic events. In contrast to the previous Range... LP, this new offering is propelled less by interlacing threads of intensity and more by a shared sense of deep listening. As displayed on pieces like All Too Human, there is a profound sense of attention to silences or thoughtful pauses that maybe hints at another crucial aspect of Rohrer’s style: over the course of this program, we tend to hear the player not only playing but listening, an activity which makes perfect sense given the sense of instrumental dialogue already mentioned. All of the above come together to give Continual Decentering a “live”-ness that will easily translate from recorded document to dynamic performance.

Velvet May returns on “Tears on Waves” with his third and latest EP “Phoebe’s White Skin” to be released on January 2020. The new record comes out with a new touch and research of new sounds, making this EP a well done bond among.

Phoebe is the venal muse, her hollow eyes are full of nocturnal visions. In this record she takes part of a story of pain and pleasure, horror and madness where the passion burns all thru the night, taking her to the edge of the daylight. She screams and, with heavy breathing and not bold enough, tries to connect her state of mind to something that got stolen already, causing an immense sense of drowning.

Picture by Alex Aptsiauri Design by Jacopo Severitano.

The release of Marc‘s album „Voyage de la planète“ in 2017 marked a new era of his career. With ten rather beatless tracks where he combined his definition of electronica with classical instruments like violine, cello, double bass and piano Marc began to walk the path of fresh sounding music for the brain.

The title track has been the most successful one so that Marc called no one else than Erased Tape‘s poster boy Ben Lukas Boysen from Berlin to contribute his very own interpretation. Ben created a typical and unique version which comes along with a, believe it or not, 4/4 kick pattetn towards the end. But listen yourself, it totally makes sense. And Bordeaux‘s best Ocoeur made a short but epic ambient version you also should not miss.

Visible Spectrum is the newly launched creative playground of Yuri Boselie, also known as Cinnaman. Since donning the Cinnaman alias nearly two decades ago, he’s become a well known figure of the Amsterdam nightlife scene with long running residencies at the city's most lauded clubbing institutions like Club 11, Trouw and most recently De School. Next to his DJ sets, he's made early moves in label curation with A&R work for Rush Hour and Kindred Spirits offshoot Nod Navigators, and with his own Beat Dimensions compilations in the late 00s. With Visible Spectrum — defined as the electromagnetic frequencies visible by the human eye — a new chapter is born. It is an outlet for electronic music in the widest sense. Each sleeve will have its own unique screen printed artwork by Marilyn Sonneveld.

The first EP comes from Mor Elian, the Berlin based artist and owner of the Fever AM label. Here she offers the loose and hypnotic rhythms of 'Clairvoyant Frog' which is deep and atmospheric, like some sort of primordial techno soup. 'Shoshana's Roses' then picks up the pace with layers of rumbling drums, wooden hits and snaking synths taking you into a steamy, humid jungle before closer 'Planet Kismet' is a much quicker and more urgent bit of enchanting break-beat techno with pummeling minimal drums and warped synths and perc getting you under their sci-fi spell. A fascinating first outing that sets a high standard from the off.

Since relocating from Amsterdam to Bergen on the Netherlands’ north west coast, Tom Trago has gone back to basics. Every day he jams out tracks in his home studio using a small selection of electronic instruments, drum computers and effects units, a process that allows him to quickly capture ideas, emotions and the intense moments he experiences while making music.

It’s these diverse and sometimes surprising musical moments that will be showcased on Trago’s new DIY record label, Jong Nederland. The imprint is named after the building where he now lives and works, an historic and storied place that has been home to artists of all descriptions since the 1960s. Each vinyl release will feature tracks made by Trago using his improvised, straight-to-tape technique, packaged in handcrafted sleeves illustrated by internationally renowned Dutch artist – and fellow Bergen resident – Pieter Bijwaard.

The Jong Nederland story begins with two tracks of undulating, slowly shifting dancefloor voodoo rich in crunchy drum machine hits, lilting electronic melodies and instinctive dancefloor warmth. On the A-side you’ll find “Whisper”, a hypnotic but fluid affair where hushed melodies tumble down over off-kilter polyrhythmic machine drums, spaced out effects and bubbly, ever-changing analogue electronics.

B-side “Belltower” sees Trago up the tempo a little and bounce us towards the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Utilizing a rubbery rhythm track full of sturdy but supple kick-drums and hissing cymbals, Trago layers up fizzing synthesizer lines, poignant minor key chords, wiggling acid-style motifs and starburst electronics to fire the synapses and stir the senses. Like its’ A-side companion, “Belltower” gently twists and turns throughout, reflecting the real time, hands-on changes made by its creator during the spontaneous sessions that led to its creation.

Repress

2x12"

TRIP presents 'Locus Error', a new double vinyl concept album. Moving beyond the scope of the traditional, arbitrarily compiled VA, TRIP's conceptual approach brings together a range of artists around a uniting theme, supplying a sense of cohesion and narrative thrust. Like Noel Saavedra's accompanying artwork, the narrative is vibrant yet nightmarish, a vision of classic trance music, including it's psy side, refracted through TRIP's fearless, oddball aesthetic.

French duo Double Mixte bring their digital thunderstorm of neon lit noire to the Italians Do It Better family on their debut EP. Mixed and produced by label head Johnny Jewel, Romance Noire opens the door to a new wave of Italians Do It Better artists coming in 2019.

Fresh Blood. New Tears. The title track arpeggiates and boils as waves of bass flow beneath. Rhythms are carried to the ceiling by a searing cascade of disintegrating color. A heavy backbeat anchors Clara Apolit’s poetry, ready to wear for a night in the face of oblivion.

The cinematic “Arlette” is a call for discovery through a darkness lit only by the glare of headlights in digital rain. Through all of this, Thomas Maan’s incantations search for the lonely, lost in the void of electronic fog. “November” finds in Clara an Anglophonic chanteuse, meditating on the cycles of time.

A blend of suspended sound and an uncertain melody contracts and expands before dissolving. Romance Noire is art that both contemplates and tanscends time’s firm grip. It’s a filmic journey inducing a vague sense of future nostalgia. Happy Valentine’s Day. Double Mixte is Clara Apolit and Thomas Maan.

The duo met in Paris and there was an immediate pull to create music together. They pooled their combined interest in powerful narrative & dark 70’s French film music to write lyrically vivid songs. In 2017, Thomas reached out to Johnny Jewel for what soon became a collaboration that expanded their vision into a haunting debut EP, out today on Italians Do It Better.

repress

2LP 140G VINYL + 12 PAGE BOOKLET.

"Space Echo - The mystery behind the "Cosmic Sound" of Cabo Verde finally revealed!" is the 20th release by the fabulous Analog Africa Label.

In the spring of 1968 a cargo ship was preparing to leave the port of Baltimore with an important shipment of musical instruments. Its final destination was Rio De Janeiro, where the EMSE Exhibition (Exposição Mundial Do Son Eletrônico) was going to be held.

It was the first expo of its kind to take place in the Southern Hemisphere and many of the leading companies in were all eager to present their newest synthesisers and other gadgets to a growing and promising South American market, spearheaded by Brazil and Colombia.

The ship with the goods set sail on the 20th of March on a calm morning and mysteriously disappeared from the radar on the very same day.

One can only imagine the surprise of the villagers of Cachaço, on the Sao Nicolau island of Cabo Verde, when a few months later they woke up and found a ship stranded in their fields, in the middle of nowhere, 8 km from any coastline.

After consulting with the village elders, the locals had decided to open the containers to see what was inside - however gossip as scintillating as this travels fast and colonial police had already arrived and secured the area.

Portuguese scientists and physicians were ordered to the scene and after weeks of thorough studies and research, it was concluded that the ship had fallen from the sky. One of the less plausible theories was that it might have fallen from a Russian military air carrier. The locals joked that again the government had wasted their tax money on a useless exercise, as a simple look at the crater generated by the impact could explain the phenomena. "No need for Portuguese rocket scientists to explain this!" they laughed.

What the villagers didn't know, was that traces of cosmic particles were discovered on the boat. The bow of the ship showed traces of extreme heat, very similar to traces found on meteors, suggesting that the ship had penetrated the hemisphere at high speed. That theory also didn't make sense as such an impact would have reduced the ship to dust. Mystery permeated the event.

Finally, a team of welders arrived to open the containers and the whole village waited impatiently.

The atmosphere, which had been filled with joy and excitement, quickly gave way to astonishment. Hundreds of boxes conjured, all containing keyboards and other instruments which they had never seen before: and all useless in an area devoid of electricity. Disappointment was palpable. The goods were temporarily stored in the local church and the women of the village had insisted a solution be found before Sunday mass.

It is said that charismatic anti-colonial leader Amílcar Cabral had ordered for the instruments to be distributed equally in places that had access to electricity, which placed them mainly in schools.

This distribution was best thing that could have happened - keyboards found fertile grounds in the hands of curious children, born with an innate sense of rhythm who picked up the ready-to-use instruments. This in turn facilitated the modernisation of local rhythms such as Mornas, Coladeras and the highly danceable music style called Funaná, which had been banned by the Portuguese colonial rulers until 1975 due to its sensuality!

The observation was made that the children who came into contact with the instruments found on the ship inherited prodigious capabilities to understand music and learn instruments. One of them was the musical genius Paulino Vieira, who by the end of the 70s would become the country´s most important music arranger. 8 out of the 15 songs presented in this compilation had been recorded with the backing of the band Voz de Cabo Verde, lead by Paulino Vieira, the mastermind behind the creation and promulgation of what is known today as "The Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde".

The field of electronic music were involved. Rhodes, Moog, Farfisa, Hammond and Korg, just to name a few.