Marc Antona has been always in the pursuit of new expressions within music as he has continually demonstrated with his work. Following the jazz-infused adventures of the Rattle Snaps EP, he finally returns to his own turf to lay down another crucial exploration of beat science. "Hanging Gardens" is a masterclass in immersive programming, fusing the natural feel of live drums with crisp electronic tones that hover in a spacious mix. It's the perfect angle at which to appreciate the subtlety of sound design that goes into every inch of Marc Antona's productions, teasing elements in and out of the mix so gracefully, it's hard to tell where the joints are. The haunting touches of chords and lingering pad are deployed with poise, the intricate percussion progressively rising and falling throughout to create a truly immersive sonic journey. Where the A side deals with angular rhythms and a shape-shifting atmosphere, "Unrestricted" takes the sound palette of organic and electronic elements and feeds them into a rolling, techno-minded focus. The tribal thrum of the beat fills out an 'in-the room-ambience' while the psychoactive synth flurries speak out the pulse of the machines. It's a combination that makes "Unrestricted" as intimate as it is exotic. In combining these disparate feelings within his tracks, Antona once again brings a human feel to the technology, pushing the music into exciting new realms in the process.
quête:process
dedicated to promote young and evolving artists and to present musical diamonds in the rough, raster-noton is curating the unun series which name refers to the chemical elements 111-119. »unalloyed, unlicensed, all night!« is jesse osborne-lanthier's first release on raster-noton, and the ninth and final release of this series.jesse osborne-lanthier is a berlin / montreal based, canadian electronic music producer and multidisciplinary artist. his erratic research process incorporates the urgency of dance music and conceptual electronics by disassembling their grammar and acting through it. refusing to follow the etiquette of a particular musical genre, he explores many creative practices in order to generate clashes of mood, expectation and technique.
»unalloyed, unlicensed, all night!« was recorded by osborne-lanthier a mere two hours before a live set in paris. its specific purpose was to generate a response from the audience, to stimulate their bodies through sound. the toolbox for this task was stocked with automatic call-and-response music tropes drawn from EDM, big-room house, trance, and online production tutorials. between the producer's idiosyncratic by-the-numbers process and the rushed nature of the composition, the final product is rendered unpredictable; each signifier transforms into a distorted ghost of itself. this allows for unexpected responses to manifest on the dance floor as well as in the listener's space of existence.
Novoline makes music with equipment that was manufactured in 1988 and 1989, controlled via midi by two ATARI STs. As a sequencer he is using an algorithmic composition program that is 25 years old. With this program he creates sequences that he modulates live by shifting numbers and settings while recording. The process is improvised and contains a good portion of randomly generated melodies and drums, carefully selected and combined by Novoline. The Result sounds a little like something between a dark 80's sci-fi soundtrack and an endless marching New Beat Extended Version. Enjoy the ride !
The artist described the EP as being inspired by many of the heavy concepts that have been concurrent in his life during the process of making the tracks. The sounds have adopted elements of the music that have been experienced during his trips to play out in Berlin's unique music scene. Key to the penning of the tracks are the loss of distinctive sounds, expressive emotion and unparalleled feeling that was once so prevalent in the many of the lesser known and iconic works produced in the earlier years of House music. Channeling the desire to bring back what has been missing in today's formulaic music production design, Traela hopes to find the listeners once again looking inside the content of the music. Finding the emotional substance displayed through healing and the release of lost love, Traela's message on the making of this release: " Many ideas were prevalent during the process of the EP but the most important during this exercise was finding yourself, learning to express and learning to love yourself in order to love others'.
A year after their impressive last album Burn It Down, Detroit techno legends Octave One are back with a nine track double EP that again shows they are masters of big hypnotic grooves.
Entitled Love by Machine, the album's name is a nod to the fact that the Burden brothers are such revered masters of their hardware. Both in the studio, where they cook up atmospheric house and techno with soaring synths and vocals and also in the live arena, where they are celebrated as one of the most accomplished and forward thinking performers in the game today. That is all the more impressive when you bear in mind they have been active since the '80s, most often releasing on their own 430 West label, which is where they appear again here.
Say Lenny: We've been exploring the theme of connection with this project. How technology gives us the illusion that we are closer to each other more than ever. At some point humanity crossed a line where the devices that we created to bring us together are the same devices that are blocking us from organic experiences.'
Technology is only a tool, which we also had in mind during the recording process.' Adds Lawrence. We decided to go back to how we used to make our records, when we didn't have so many 'sophisticated' audio devices. Back to when we interacted in the studio together as musicians.'
Things open up with the loose metallic percussive line that is In Mono, which sets the machine made tone and is filled with promise. Locator then immediately gets to action with a gallivanting techno kick and various synth lines wrapping round each other as you get sucked into the groove. Just Don't Speak (Midnight Sun Redub) is a more deep and house leaning track with big feel good piano keys and slithering synths that will get hands in the air. Proving they have real range, 7 B4 Dawn is a moody and reserved cut with subtle acid pricks, hip swinging claps and a spaced out dead of night feel.
The second half of the album offers peak time business in the form of the spectacular Bad Love II, the whirring and cosmic Sounds of Jericho and the big loops and fluid grooves of (Where) Time Collides. Pain Pressure is a wonky number with big bassline and a focus on percussive patterns as well as some vocals with real attitude and last cut 8 B4 Dawn ends things in a downbeat and sombre way with sad chords and emotive strings. It is pure Detroit, much like the whole album, and rounds out another fine release from these most revered veterans.
Jam Money is the shared musical vision of Kevin Cormack and Mathew Fowler. Mathew (Bons) and Kevin (Half Cousin, Harry Deerness) first began collaborating as part of the Blank Tape Spillage Fete, an ongoing collective project of art and music which focuses on the creation and perpetuation of small DIY exhibitions, related events and limited releases that celebrates the hobbyist nature of home recording.
Jam Money revolves around a passion for the simple and sometimes restrictive nature of four-track cassette recording. Using old half-broken guitars, clarinets, charity shop keyboards, toys, family heirlooms, zithers, home-made percussion, and household objects a shared dialogue appears, involving both mark making and musical mishaps, allowing the makers to be carried along as the music finds its own way.
Genre definitions melt away in Jam Money's music as ambient dissolves into lo-fi rock, noise into fragile naive classroom melodies. Creativity beyond easy categorisation.The first recordings titled 'Blowing Stones' were self-released in 2014. The cover and insert artwork for this record featured abstract paintings by the artist Aimée Henderson whose work and process is a great influence on their music. Having played gigs alongside kindred spirits National Bedtime and Plinth, the tail end of 2015 saw the the band travel to Germany to play with the Notwist and Le Millipede for a series of 'Alien Disko' nights organised by Alien Transistor, a label with a shared kinship of both the weird and wonderful.
'A Gathering Kind' is the second album by Jam Money: a journey of sound and colour, subliminal images and narrative. The roots of this collection found Fowler and Cormack using an earthier, more instinctive language, making it a rougher-edged sibling to their other recordings, with parallels to the home-spun worlds of Flaming Tunes, Pumice, Maher Shalal Hash Baz and World Standard. Aimée's artwork features again, both paintings and music forming a collective language of dream-like adventure.
"Poignant and exploratory. Melting together acoustic and electronic elements, the narrative throughout is one of a ghostly world heading for winter. A firm fan favourite Stephen Pastel (The Pastels & Monorail Music) on Blowing Stones.
"Created in question and answer form, their songs exist like little sculptures - wayward and peaceful, sometimes whirring into automatic life under the pair's combined attention."
"After almost 20 years of making tracks with blaringly loud kicks, you tend to start producing with the other elements first to give yourself a break from the constant pounding of monitors at point blank range. Following an analog filter shopping spree, I began working on a group of tracks where the low end was satisfied by the filtering, and realized these songs worked just fine without a bass drum. Therefore this record is called "Rareforms" since most of my other work consists of a kick drum and lots of loud effects. This record is dedicated to the brilliant synthesist and interpreter Isao Tomita, whose records always provide inspiration in the lab. Also to master storyteller Rod Serling and his frequent collaborator Bernard Hermann, whose score for the Hitchcock film Vertigo I adapted through some MIDI processes and wavetable synthesis, then sent it through a 4-foot spring reverb." - Phil Moffa
Beautiful Deluxe Artwork, Limited ot to not to is an experimental RnB project by VA native Ian Mugerwa that combines low fidelity electronic recording techniques with unconventional song structures to produce music that serves as homage to dusty old blues recordings. At 19, Ian left his hometown of Fairfax for Richmond, where he slept on friends' floors for several months while recording Goshen. During the day he would "hunt dussy" and during the night he would haul borrowed equipment over to the VCU music facilities and record until the morning. He was moderately successful on both fronts. The resultant recordings form a coming of age album, a snapshot of Ian from the ages of nineteen to twenty. Ian's goal was to explore new aesthetics in black music through use of nontraditional methods, creating less polished, less sterile RnB in the process. Such methods included layering 40+ cello tracks to create the illusion of an orchestra, or collaging four, separate, 4-minute tracks of improvised percussion into one. Most drums were recorded last. Despite the focus on experimentation, it was important to Ian that he be crafting pop music. It is his belief that an impactful artist has, at least to some degree, a moral responsibility to deliver their art to the maximum amount of people (to efficiently help art as a whole progress). In other words, if restraint can be exercised, it ought to be. Similar artists include James Blake, Phil Elvrum, Mark Hollis, and D'Angelo.
DJ and producer, co-founder of the legendary London club night Lost, Steve Bicknell returns to the fray with a brilliant new 12", 'Modes of Thought'. Comprising three full tracks and six locked grooves, the record represents the debut release on Bicknell's brand new label, 6dimensions. Art by Harumasa Kono.
Throughout his career, Steve Bicknell has retained a true groundedness, with everything he's stood behind being indelibly marked by a progressive and uncompromising attitude. Sticking firm to ideals and principles, he has remained connected to the roots of techno, eschewing the mainstream to follow an unswerving, singular vision, guided by a deep and enduring devotion to the music that inspires him and a desire to present it in the purest way possible.
Stepping out here with new material and a new venture, Bicknell's trademark raw, minimal aesthetics and conceptual underpinning have clearly been retained. He describes new release 'modes of thought' as being founded upon "the awareness of thought processes, understanding the connection between the heart and the brain through vibrations that are created via the blood-stream." Essential floor gear, 'modes of thought' introduces three tracks of taught, lean minimal techno before handing creativity over to the DJ with the inclusion of six locked groove loops.
Lean and precise, with a beautifully controlled pallette, wide dynamics and rich level of sonic detail, the record flies out of the blocks with the pumping 'harmonious balance', described by its creator as a "reflection on hatred and furthering an understanding of hate and how acceptance induces balance". Continuing to unpack the work, 'the moment I stopped' is described as "a realisation of the importance of self-preservation to balance yourself in order to take care of others close to you"; whilst on the flip, 'messenger molecules' depicts "the flow of blood and how it feeds the brain of feelings through coded information".
The Tiger is back - finally on full length again! The second studio album for Tiger & Woods not only marks a desired return to a specific format, but is also a huge leap forward in their area of expertise: their brand of fun and functional dance music gets broadened by influences from electronica, italo disco and up-tempo house, while keeping a groove that is distinctly linked to what some people refer to as boogie. After travelling the world from left to right and from top to bottom with a live-set to boot and skilful DJ sets that resemble that genre melting approach, "On The Green Again" is the result of spending valuable studio time at the "Tiger's Lair" - a carefully-built new work place that plays its own part in the creative process of one of the most prolific production teams of our days, while simultaneously starting T&W Records for all sorts of adventures that are linked to Tiger & Woods, but not narrowed to a specific sound. See "Unleashed Tapes Vol. 1" for further reference. A double A-sided 12-inch that owes as much to disco as an influence as it pays homage to the funkier and brighter sides of house and techno. Honing a craft that is rooted in edit culture as an ethos, but has since long left that bumpy road dependable on samples and their clearance, T&W make "On The Green Again" work as the second album that defies the difficulty usually attached to such ventures. 10 brand-new tracks (and three previously released bonus tracks on the CD version) make up the course between peak-time prime cuts similar to "RockMeLoveMe" or "Come And Get My Lovin" and an almost heart-aching track like "Endless Affair". Mixed with bits and pieces in-between and neatly placed between a classic intro and outro segment, those tracks are testament
UK wave funk veteran DMX Krew returns to Abstract Forms with his latest double album project. Escape-MCP features 13 tracks of synth drenched electro and elastic techno grooves drawing inspiration from a 1983 computer game where the player is trapped inside a computer by a rogue processor. Fortunately DMX Krew isn't trapped inside a computer and is still with us making killer grooves. Don't sleep!
- A1: & Roman Flügel - We Like To Party
- A2: & Burger / Voigt & Voigt - Disco Dancers
- A3: & Gui Boratto - State Of The Nation
- B1: & Ed Macfarlane - Mind Games
- B2: & Kölsch - Gemination 06 / B3 & Miss Kittin - Voyage Interieur
- C1: & Joe Goddard - For You
- C2: & Agoria - Blackbird Has Spoken
- C3: & Hauschka - La Compostela
- D1: & Prins Thomas / Irene Kalisvaart - Comfort Me
- D2: & Barnt - Und Da Stehen
- D3: & Andrew Thomas - Cicadelia
Back in stock !
Michael Mayer is one of the leading German tastemakers in dance music and his DJ sets have influenced a generation (or two) of musicians and fans.As an artist, Mayer remains tirelessly motivated to DJing, in the studio or behind his desk at KOMPAKT, the label he co-owns. His recording career spans four albums, 23 EP's, nearly 170 remixes and the legendary DJ mixes for fabric and Immer. '&' is his third full-length, a passionate and personal album that speaks as broadly as his DJ sets - embracing his genre-busting love for music, rhythm and atmosphere - and the dancefloor in front of him. '&' is the rare manifest of an established artist who is willing to risk it all and challenge himself, and the world around him. 12 tracks, 12 single narratives coming from a group of very individual minds orchestrated by Michael Mayer - the DJ, artist, A&R but most importantly, obsessed music lover. Michael describes the process of curating and creating '&' as a constant battle between his three alter egos but 'the obsessed music lover has had the final say.' As diverse as they are, all the tracks that result from this long and winding road create a cohesive story and present the elasticity of Mayer's musical galaxy. Michael gladly leaves it to the rest of the scene to discuss the different grey shapes of club culture. For him there is only one club culture - a playful and open-minded one that's easy to comprehend after you hear ‚&'.
Newborn Munich based label Slam City Jams comes around the corner with its first release from young gun Gonima straight outta Montreal, Canada. His Grids EP An exciting mixture of swinging distorted drums, catchy melodies and hazy atmospheres. You can definitely spot Gonima's passion for DX7 adventures, analog drums and tape hiss right here. Opener "Grids" starts off with lush synth blips, 707 drums and a bassline Bootsy Collins would give high-fives for. "Subdivided" is one of these tracks that shows you that it doesn't need more than a few elements to get you going: A rough kick drum, cowbells and a smooth pad that gets slapped by just one bass note. The last original on B2 is the ambient-like "Organ Tutorials", which shifts your mind directly to outer space. And as if all this wasn't enough, someone really special did a great remix job - Khotin from 1080p fame, who gave the A2 cut a treat with his unique trademark sound. Four house and ambient tracks both for the floor and the couch. Or as Gonima puts it: "An EP that has the sound of visiting home in the winter and rediscovering environments frequented in the past, birthing previously obscured memories. The sounds within are a ritual dance to stay warm through the procession of the seasons"
British producer Pris preps his sophomore EP for Avian.
Love, Labour, Loss marks the Berlin-based producer's second outing on Guy Brewer's Avian label, and a further refinement of a production aesthetic that pitches caustic, heads down tool Techno & greyscale IDM against more meditative Ambient & Drone recordings.
AVN026 tackles familiar themes, and the same low slung, deep-seated sense of unease found on earlier offerings, released via both Avian itself & Unbeknown To Us - the producer's own outlet, winds its way in and amongst the work. There's a lightness of touch to this most recent effort though, and experimentation with more overtly musical sequences proves fruitful, drawing on a previously untapped energy to great effect. The same goes for forays into more complex rhythmic structures - taught, processed percussion sits bright in the mix, working to generate an anxiety that is fast becoming a hallmark of the artist's work.
Whilst the material maintains a keen focus on the crushed, droning sonics that have come to characterise the label's output, Love Labour Loss, is an impressive development - offering at once both a new dimension to the artist's work, but also a congruent, streamlined addition to the Pris discography.
As Claremont 56 speeds towards its' ten-year anniversary, label founder Paul Murphy continues to champion little known producers and previously unheard artists. Over the past 12 months, the label has showcased material from rising talents
such as Bella Figura, Simon Peter, Paraiso and Oma & Amberfame. Now, Claremont 56 is adding another new name to the roster: Statues. Essex-based trio Bradley Lucke (production/bass/percussion/keys), Mark Crooks (keys/production) and Grant Carruthers (vocals/guitar) has been making music on-and-off together since they were teenagers, and last year decided to come together under the Statues alias. They submitted a number of demos to Paul Murphy, who was so impressed by what he heard that he offered to help produce and write an album with them. As debut singles go, 'Alaula' is stunning. Reminiscent of many softly spun
moments from the Claremont 56 back catalogue, it builds slowly and breezily via subtle waves of organic and electronic instrumentation. Carruthers' impassioned vocals pop in and out of the mix at opportune moments, peeping above alluring acoustic guitar, bass, synthesizer and Rhodes parts. Throw in
tumbling, life-affrming piano lines and swelling cello parts - both provided by friend-of- the-family Robin Lee of Faze Action - and you've got another near- perfect chunk of sunset-friendly, horizontal brilliance. On the fip, Murphy dons his familiar Mudd alias to provide a superb Piano Dub. Building the action around a sparse, delay-laden percussion track, Murphy teases out the track's most potent moments, in the process creating something
that lingers even longer in the memory. Lee's superb piano and cello work naturally takes pride of place, as Murphy expertly emphasizes the track's impeccably atmospheric nature.
* Since September 2015 Surgeon has been performing live improvised techno using hardware machines.
* This has been a gradual process of evolution over the 24 years that he's been performing to a point where it really can't be called Djing anymore.
* He's taken the techniques and inspiration from this live creative process and distilled them into these four tracks.
* Always pushing forward against the plague of mediocrity.
Diseño Corbusier is the avant-garde electronics duo of Javier G. Marín and Ani Zinc, formed in Granada, Spain 1981. Like Sheffield's relation to London during the punk explosion in the UK, Granada developed an experimental music scene 400 kilometers south of Madrid. As a child, there were no records in Ani's house, so she grew up listening to the radio and was hypnotized after hearing 'Remember Love', by Yoko Ono. While attending university in Granada she responded to an ad in a music magazine by Javier, If you're into bands like Cabaret Voltaire or Flying Lizards, call me'.
The duo recorded their debut album Stadia' in 1982 and self-released as a limited edition cassette on their label Auxilio de Cientos. They drew influences from contemporaries like SPK, Throbbing Gristle, Esplendor Geométrico and DAF. They employed the 'cut-up' technique William Burroughs used to write his books to splicing their magnetic tape loops. Instruments used included a Korg Lambda, Boss DR-55 drum machine, Roland SH 101, and MFB 501 drum machine. The lack of money to buy more expensive instruments forced the duo to be more creative. Everything was recorded directly to a cassette player that was plugged into a Revox B77 reel to reel tape machine to add echo. Ani manipulated and treated her naive, menacing vocals to match Javier's processed rhythms. These early sketches contain atonal, arhythmic, thick shifting curtains of synth, loops and radio samples. For this reissue we've added 7 bonus tracks taken from various cassette compilations, as well as three previously unreleased songs. Elements of industrial music, primitivistic techno and vocal manipulation are fused with a Dadaist approach utilizing modern technology.
All songs were remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The front cover is an exact replica of the band's original design, restored by Eloise Leigh. Each copy includes a 4 page xeroxed booklet with photos, press clippings and liner notes from Javier. Powerful and evocative, soundtrack music for a rising storm or revolt.' Sound of Pig magazine 1985
For their third Delicacies 12" this year, SMD take a deeper, more spaced out approach, in contrast to the strict techno of the previous two releases. "Far Away From A Distance" features hypnotic synth washes that glide slowly in and out of time with the track's rhythmic bed, stumbling over each other in a 5am haze. "Flying Or Falling" pushes into classic SMD melodies, mournful Detroit indebted warmth spilling over the groove.
Guest remixer this time is the ever excellent Lena Willikens, delivering massive club fire in the form of her own much more minimal take on 'Far Away From A Distance", stripping it back and only allowing the melody to intrude in the last third.
After a short hiatus following their modular-only, desert recorded last album 'Whorl', during which SMD's James Ford found himself on production duties for everyone and their dog, SMD are back with bunch of techno cuts on their own Delicacies label.
Over a couple of months in Jas Shaw's newly re-located synth-dense studio in leafy Kent, which saw SMD once again experiment with live jams as the basis for their production, they've pulled together a selection of eight tracks for release as a series of four singles over the coming months.
SMD fans will note that the earlier naming convention of Delicacies has fallen by the wayside - for the simple reason that we've pretty much run out of weird and wonderful food stuffs to steal names from. Instead, a semi-random automated process has been used to create the track names.
The Martinez Brothers Cuttin' Headz returns with a new EP from The Butcha, entitled '10001' and backed with two remixes from Matrixxman.Phil Moffa aka The Butcha is a New York City based musician, producer and engineer most notably known for his works alongside DJ Spider and Anthony Parasole for Sublevel Sounds / Plan B Recordings and alongside Seth Troxler for Hypercolour. Here we see him return to the fledgling Cuttin' Headz imprint with his idiosyncratic take on raw, emotive house music following his Destination Void release alongside DJ Spider and Brendon Moeller last year.Up first are two originals from The Butcha, the first of which '99 Prince St.' lays focus on echoing atmospherics, snaking Rhodes and shuffling dubbed out percussion while the latter, '6 Hubert St.' pivots towards an amalgamation an upfront organic rhythm alongside a weighty low end drive and wandering synth swells.
To complete the package San Francisco's Matrixxman delivers two interpretations, firstly the 'Acidized Mix' which as the name would suggest draws on squelching 303 lines layered over processed snippets from the original before the digital bonus 'Transhuman Mix' closes on an arpeggio fuelled Techno tip.
The Butcha's '10001' is out on Cuttin' Headz 23rd September 2016.
- A1: What We've Got (Feat. Flint Eastwood)
- A2: No Reason
- A3: Be Still (Feat. Marina Price)
- A4: Inman
- A5: Pull Me In Part 1 (Feat. Moorea Masa)
- A6: Pull Me In Part 2
- B1: Interlude
- B2: Clementine (Feat. Marina Price)
- B3: Sleeping Puzzle
- B4: The Garden Song (Feat. Moorea Masa)
- B5: Second Guess (Feat. Marina Price)
- B6: Outro
Debut album from Pacific NW rising star, named "Best Electronic Act" in 2015 by the Seattle Weekly. ** Past Press Coverage as included: A NPR Weekend Edition Feature, Spin, Stereogum, KEXP Live in studio performce, CMJ. ** Past performance highlights: Bonarroo Decibel Festical, Bumbershoot, Capitol Hill Block Party, Sasquatch Festival, What The Festival, & Bonnaroo, as well as national tours with acts like Emancipator, Blockhead, Blackbird Blackbird, Chad Valley, Yppah, ** First single from the album "What We've Got" feat. Flint Eastwood passed 500,000 Spotify plays and 135,000 Soundcloud plays in a month's time.
Amidst the lush environs of his northwest roots, Manatee Commune has fermented an organically molded electronic sound that has been teasing the synapses of audiophiles over the last few years. While not a stranger in the Pacific Northwest, Grant Eadie's tracks have grown tentacles that stretch deep into the dance floor, fueled by natural overtones that he extracts from field recordings. Following the head-turning EP 'Thistle' on Brooklyn-based label Bastard Jazz Recordings (Illa J, Lord Echo, & others) from earlier this year, he comes to the label armed with violin arrangements, nuanced programming and pressure-sensitive LED drum breaks peppering the audio-visual experience of his participatory live performances. His debut album Manatee Commune is set for a September 16th release on Bastard Jazz, and displays the elevated confidence and deft touch of a producer truly finding his footing. Already opening for Bonobo, and recently touring with Chad Valley and Blackbird Blackbird, Manatee Commune has been featured on NPR, Stereogum, and Spin, amongst other outlets.
Eadie describes the inspiration behind his approach: "Learning how to share my creative process with my friends completely revolutionized the last of year of music for me. Inviting those I trusted and loved into my studio to spend even just an hour talking or jamming opened fountains of inventive energy for me, especially from the ones who lacked any musical knowledge. I soon found myself incredibly inspired by the originality of even the smallest interactions with people, and so I pointed my field mic at anyone who had a story, a melody, or a stumbling beat they had been absentmindedly drumming, all in the hopes of capturing their individuality and framing it with my ever expanding insight into audio production."
Reimagining his musical approach by opening his studio and microphone to friends, collaborators and loved ones, Eadie was able to release fountains of inventive energy from these deeply personal interactions, inspired by anybody who had a story, a melody or a stumbling beat to share. Key elements are amplified that get Manatee Commune audiences bouncing, while cultivating his warm and textured production aesthetic to further complexity, layer by shimmering layer.
Having effortlessly chalked up 10 stunning releases, the SHADELEAF crew decided to let the catalogue do the talking loud and proud with some remixes from the cream of the Deep House crop ! Byron The Aquarius, Al Zanders, Luke Solomon & Inkswel all provide sophisticated but raw reinterpretations of some choice Shadeleaf catalogue cuts, bringing a new lease of life to these predominantly vocal jams and putting new flesh on the Soulful bones in the process An incredible start for the label, celebrated in fine style with some heavyweight re-do's - yes indeed ! Top drawer isht
Another Shadeleaf sureshot !
&apos's music veers between abstract, experimental compositions and more beat driven tracks, all held together by a defined aesthetic of sonic impurities and random patterns thrown up by algorithmic computations. In &apos's music compositional decisions are not merely reliant on himself but also on a range of processes from constrained randomness to full fledged neural networks. That is to say, the 'instruments' he creates have -to a certain extent- a mind of their own. There will always be a dynamic between the musician and something else that triggers, proposes or decides what will happen to the music.It is exactly from this human-machine interaction that &apos extrapolates his musical ideas that are both intricate and detailed while never losing an overall sense of emotional value.
His first solo project 'Lichtdrank' is a selection of four tracks made during his time studying Sonology at The Hague's Royal Conservatory and the time following. It is the third and final installment of bepotel's startupLabel trilogy. Previously, he has released music together with Walrus and Sagat under several musical projects like smaakwaterval and bepotel. The artwork of the Lichtdrank EP is based on screenshots from an interactive multiplayer video game where the musical universe of &apos can be explored.
THE ASSISTENZ is the culmination of a four year creative hot streak as vivid as any part of CRISTAN VOGEL's long career. The trio of dance oor-oriented records formed by 2012's The Inertials, 2014's Polyphonic Beings and now THE ASSISTENZ are sensual pleasures rst and foremost: a lifetime of study of frequencies and rhythms on the frontline of the world's clubs has been put into the creation of sounds that interface with the nervous system and emotional re- sponses with extraordinary immediacy. But there's much more too: together with the more ab- stracted album Eselsbru¨cke, these form an enticing sonic narrative, encoded themes running through them, each part revealing more about the whole. THE ASSISTENZ, then, is many things: a personal document, a tribute to Copenhagen where it was recorded and after whose famous cemetery it is named - but also the nal piece in this bigger puzzle, which unlocks untold secrets from the previous three records.
There's a deeper history, of course. CRISTIAN's productions going back to the start of the 1990s have woven their way into the fabric of underground culture. His own recent remasters of his early albums, and the Sub Rosa Classics 1993-1998 collections have shown just how potent his early work remains. But his new work exists in a very different world to those past works, and is far removed from the recent electronic generations who he has in uenced too. In fact, as you listen to THE ASSISTENZ, you realise that there's no point making comparisons with other elec- tronic producers at all. While you will certainly hear some of the most fundamental and enduring vectors of underground music - dub, electro, acid, funk - owing through the tracks, even those things are rebuilt from the molecular level, created completely afresh with new, precise, but some- what skewed vision.
CRISTIAN's understanding of music now is spectral. That is to say, with every step through his exploration of sound over the years, he has made more and more detailed analyses of the specif- ic frequencies that make up speci c sounds and produce speci c effects on the human mind and body. And as a result, his own sound synthesis - increasingly done via the Kyma programming platform - is more and more able to reach beyond the 'synthetic' and impact in uncanny and wonderful ways. The most obvious sense of this is the way his sounds touch on the human voice: not just in the chattering, shimmering, singing tones of THE ASSISTENZ's ghostly centrepiece 'Barefoot Agnete', in the alien radio signals of 'The Merman's Dream' or even in the subliminal 'aaah's hiding in the background of the noisy 'Vessels', but in the way any sound, anywhere in any track can sound peculiarly vocal, heard from the right angle.
And it's not just the boundary between human and non-human, or that between acoustic and synthetic, that get blurred to the point of non-existence. CRISTAN's creative methodology now is all about leaving you so uncertain about where anything came from, or what scale the sounds are operating on, that you have no choice but to let go of preconceptions and standardised criti- cal faculties and go with it. Sometimes that can take you to places where darkness and physical- ity close in on you as on 'Vessels' or 'Telemorphosis', or into haunted spaces on the edge of the void like those of 'Snowcrunch' and 'Barefoot Agnete', but even in those, there is euphoria. And in the voluptuousness of 'Hold' or the body-rocking funk of 'Cubic Haze', all the abstraction is grounded in the sheer pleasure of your own bodily responses to the sound.
So many of the science ction dreams of the 1990s are now (virtual) reality. We live in a time when social networks consciously manipulate our emotions, where data is money, where ma- chines learn, where images can't be trusted, and where the synthetic can feel more real than real. Over some 25 years, CRISTIAN's experiments have traced much of this weirdness and evolved with it, and his understanding of synthesis and algorithmic processes to create structure makes him one of the most important composers working today. But THE ASSISTENZ doesn't just ex- periment with the interfaces between mind, body and machine: it expresses those relationships in ways that are beautiful, troubling, moving and scary, and which even make you want to dance. Together with the preceding three albums it enacts a glorious, endlessly-explorable mapping of just what electronic music can do.
Ben Sun returns to Delusions for his 4th release on the label including three more tracks which show the Australian via London on his best form yet. Full Moon kicks off the Tides EP at full throttle with a muscular conga-led disco house roller. Slurping 909 hats and the most twisted of synth solos courtesy of regular collaborator Fantastic Man (and his beloved Juno 60) provide the icing on this simple bass-cake which never fails to energize the dancefloor in the most special of ways.
Star Ritual drops next, going heavy on the percussion once again for a minimal stripped back drum tool which packs a mighty punch. Dubbed out vocal hits punctuate the beautifully loose groove with subtle hints of afrobeat implied by the bassline making for a warm summer track dripping with tropical vibes.
Finally we have Glass Waves bringing the EP to a glorious close, all chiming synths, bouncing moog bass and waves of chords layering on top of a heavy drum track. Ben repping an early 90's blissed out Nu Groove mood on this one and managing to sound as fresh as ever in the process.
For the next vinyl instalment by Fokuz Recordings newcomers Air.K and Cephei return to the label with ''Just Because'', an absolute face melter with cut up heavy delayed vocals and tightly processed breaks. On the flip Need For Mirrors and Concord Dawn take things down a notch with the hypnotic ''Willow Grain''.
"2015 was probably the busiest of my career, during the course of the year I lived many hours of flights and delays at airports, stayed at hotels with wonderful views immersed in nature and others, on the contrary, very urban. I must admit that many of these scenarios were the kick start of the creative process of "Oscillators EP. This is an EP conceived strictly for the Dancefloor, and its creation was a perfect combination between air and land, as all the tracks began on a plane and were developed on land. A very important part of the creative process when youre working on a track is the mood youre in, and there is always an extra excitement before, during and after each show, the space where you work. I take advantage of that moments and translate those feelings into music." - Flug
Following the release of 2015's Animistas album on Mindtours, Steevio returns with the fourth and final volume in the Modular Techno series after starting the project in 2012.
Initially conceived as he moved his studio practice towards a purely outboard, analogue, modular synthesiser set up, the Modular Techno series has charted the development of Steevio's exploration of this working practice both on record and on stage. The work involved in live appearances across the UK and Europe over the past four years have fed into the creative process, with rehearsals for sets often yielding the material that has ended up on vinyl.
Volume 4 is arguably the darkest instalment in the series to date, dealing in a strict economy of minimalist rhythms and off-key melodic touches while still easily identified as the unmistakable tones and distinctive grooves of Steevio. In the grand tradition of techno as visionary music, the dystopian tone that lingers throughout Modular Techno Vol 4 points to a future of uncertainty, but this is far from nihilistic music; always within the darkness remains a glimmer of hope.
Poker Flat Recordings offers up another mouthwatering collaboration in the form of this EP by Mennie and Julien Sandre.
Mennie hails from Italy, and had fast been gaining a serious reputation on the underground, both as a resident at Club 999 in his home country and as a talented up and coming producer. Teaming up here with the Frenchman Julien Sandre, this is an international project that will hit home with DJs and house lovers globally.
The Night Riots EP kicks off with 'Partitions', which sees the boys in sparkling form - twisting and teasing a sick groove out of fairly simple sources.
'Darth J' follows a similar path - the devil is in the detail, and Mennie and Sandre get down to some serious beat science, punctuated with some subtle chords and vocal stabs in the process.
'In A Pixel World' reveals the pair's love of classic Chicago vibes distilled though French Touch, bringing in a super funky groove
filtered though various effects and processes, and paying homage to the timeless sounds of early Daft Punk.
'No More' closes out the EP with a yet another weapon - a ray of house sunshine that skips along on a fidgety beat offset by filtered strings and chopped up vocal stabs. It's got summer written all over it.
Immersed in the early days of the 90s midwest rave scene, Bill Converse began DJing at a young age in Lansing, Michigan. Luminaries such as Claude Young, Traxx, and Twonz were key early influences. Since moving to Texas in 1998, he has experimented with analog techniques in varied studio bunkers. Early techno, noise, ambient, tape, and paranormal processing are all part of his uncanny sound palette. Warehouse Invocation' is Converse's debut 12 release, collecting material from a cassette release on Obsolete Future plus a new unreleased song. Three of the tracks, Warehouse Invocation', Senys Magick' and Consulted Acid', were recorded in Austin TX between 2012-2013 at home and direct to tape with no overdubs or multi-tracking. Riverbank' was also recorded at home in early 2014 in one take with a mic placed outside of the window to record the the sounds of the river late at night. Bill is informed by his surroundings, influenced by scenes of desolation in nature, the sea, the desert, and places of industry, like power stations, old factories, and warehouses. The songs on this EP length reveal a sublime influence from Detroit techno, early Chicago house, and Acid. The album was recorded and mixed by Bill at his home studio in Austin and mastered by Dave Alex. All songs were EQed for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. A custom-made jacket designed by Eloise Leigh features a mystical collage by Josua Dorje Ngodup with acid yellow hues on a deep blue-purple background. Each copy includes a postcard with notes and a Buddhist mandala
Following contributions by DJ Deep and DJ Hell, Tresor Records are proud to present the third instalment in their Kern mix-series, this time headed by Berlin based producer Objekt, his first release following his 2014 debut album Flatland for PAN. In keeping with the series mission of showcasing a more personal approach to mixing Hertz describes his process as such;
Kern Vol. 3 is made up of tracks that I know I will play and love for years to come. Some of these records have been in my bag for years; others are almost as new to me as they are to you. A handful are by lesser known artists whom I admire and who I think deserve wider recognition. Planned, recorded, embellished, reworked, tweaked and chiselled away at over a period of 6 months, the mix was gradually carved out in a way that makes use of new and old techniques alike, presenting itself primarily as a DJ mix but settling in a sweet spot between live recording and studio trickery. The tracklist spans styles, decades and BPMs in an attempt to craft a mix that's unpredictable and compelling in equal measure - one that draws from the more adventurous corners of my club sets, but above all, one that's a pleasure to listen to.
Clocking in at 75min across 36 tracks, Kern Vol. 3 delivers on Objekt's promise, stitching together everything from the playful breakbeats of Beatrice Dillon's "Halfway" to Kirk DiGiorgio's classic techno "Nebula Variation" and the lightspeed IDM of Aleksi Perälä and Ueno Masaaki without missing a beat. A descent through ambient bliss, thundering cello drones and vocal contortions (courtesy of Anna Caragnano, Yair Elazar Glotman and Senyawa's Rully Shabara respectively) give way to the stoned haze of Sensational vs Sotofett and metalwork of Machine Woman and Skarn, rounding up a highly eclectic and adventurous mix which also includes previously unreleased tracks by Bristol's Shanti Celeste, rising Brooklyn producer Via App and accomplished electro technicians Clatterbox and Polzer.
Some believe that the environment in which you make music - from the studio space, to the location itself - has a profound effect on the creative process. Immerse yourself in the world around you, the theory goes, and it will shape the music you make. Listen to Gorthleck, the third album from veteran downtempo alchemists Benjamin Smith and Paul 'Mudd' Murphy, and you can almost visualize the craggy, windswept and breathtakingly beautiful environment in which it was made. Reconvening after a near seven-year hiatus last summer, the duo headed up to the Scottish Highlands to spend a week recording in the surrounds of Gorthleck House, nestled on the shore of Loch Mhor in Inverness-shire. Earlier this year, they returned to the same venue, with its' stunning views of the tranquil loch and rocky, wooded hills rising in the distance, to complete the nine-track set. Certainly, the immersive environment and famously changeable weather seems to have inspired the longtime friends and studio partners. The album's epic centrepiece, the nine-minute Mhor', sounds like an emotional love letter to the body of water they strolled alongside every day. Its' undulating synthesizer line - reminiscent of classic Tangerine Dream and the Orb's A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain' - mimics the slow ebb and flow of water across the loch, while Smith's shimmering guitar lines mimic the glint of sunlight reflecting off the surface. Elsewhere, the audio references are a little more subtle, but no less relevant. The hazy jazz guitars, twinkling pianos, rich grooves and fluttering clarinets of Nether' sound like the perfect accompaniment to a single malt whisky-fuelled sunset session at the water's edge, while the quietly foreboding aural textures, layered guitars and urgent electric violin of Enos' evoke memories of watching storm clouds gathering behind distant Highland mountains. The same could be said of Mr Coats' - a track arranged in steamy Mexico, and blessed with all the humidity you'd expect from such an excursion - while you can hear gale force winds whistling around the rafters on Dogwood'. As for Errogie', it's as bracing as a crystal clear morning in the Highlands, chilly, but hugely life affirming. The duo's previous two albums, 2007's Blue River and its' 2009 follow-up, Le Suivant, were both hugely evocative, but neither captured a distinct a sense of time and place quite like Gorthleck. Listen carefully, and you could almost be there with them, watching the sunrise and sunset.
Wolfgang Tillmans designed Cover with Innersleeve
How to introduce the first record by Wolfgang Tillmans Now considered one of the most significant visual artists working today, his very first passion in life lay with music. This record features on its B-side three songs recorded in 1986 in his home town of Remscheid. The A-side features two pieces recorded in 2015/2016. The 29-year gap in between were marked by Tillmans exploring music, pop and club culture from many different angles. 'Make It Up As You Go Along' is a pulsing dance track based on the recordings of a book printing press in a factory in Stuttgart. Morphed through various production stages, the press's syncopations and his Tillmans' serendipitouspenditous vocals merge into an intoxicating track that could become a summer festival early a.m. favourite. 'Triangle / Gong / What' is an experimental offering made up ofwhich combines the sounds of playing a special alloy triangle, a 999 fine gold gong and a vocal, fused through a particular gain manipulation during the recording process. The 1986 side features three songs which Tillmans wrote and recorded with collaborator Bert Leßmann. A single channel recording from the rehearsal room was all he had from back in the day. With the help of Tim and Klaus Knapp the recordings were filtered and eq'ed and then supported with precise reconstructions of the original instruments. Out of this production process spanning 30 years a unique time capsule emerged, which portraits a small town teenager with some ambition. 'Time Flows All Over' is a haunting reminiscence of the angst and energy of the mid-1980s, infused with surprising contemporary relevance.
All Tracks Written and Produced by S3A
Mastered by Kuniyuki Takahashi
This house project, based on the idea that electronic music is a blend of different cultures and music, started 15 years ago when Max began jamming on analog machines and samplers with different projects from techno (FriendShip Connection) to house (S3A).
It is through this project that he expresses, among other things, his taste for soul and House music. Such as his beloved artists MCDE, Floating Points... he uses the process of sampling as a basis to color his music with sounds of all his inspirations, he always add his own touch and groove to get his own vision of electronic music: dynamic, warm, emotional and dirty.
Although he discovered electronic music in 92 through UK hardcore with DJ as Tanith or Producer, his culture is based on a solid knowledge of house music, soul, funk, hip hop, making him one of the most promising house artists of the French scene since 2009.
He first came to Paris with Zadig to realize his childhood dream: building a studio and later collaboration, Frendship Connection (All is just a matter of time has actually been playlisted by Marcel Dettmann).
His residency at Concrete helped him to confirm his DJ position since the last 4 years adding as well releases on Lazare Hoche Records, Hold Youth, Concrete Music, Local Talk, Phonogramme and Faces. With these releases, his remix for Laurent Garnier on Music Large and his booking request from the French legend to play with him for his residency at Rex club and Concrete, gave him legitimacy and visibility in all over Europe.
In 2014 he decided to make his own label Sampling As An Art Records and focus on finding new-blooded artists and release his very personal music. A perfect definition between underground quality emotional house music and dancefloor efficiency!
In 2015, he released a collaborative EP on Uncanny Valley Label with Max Graef and Cuthead (whom released S3A RECORDS 03 the same year), made his first live representations and currently continue to spread his vision of music.
The warm dim light of the bedside lamp conjures up a kind of shadow theatre, sends the little stars on the ceiling into a spin, and fills the bedroom with a sense of profound peace. A small music box rounds out the evening atmosphere with soft little melodies. Perched at the side of his daughter's little bed, he watches over his little beat princess' slumber and her dreams, all while enjoying with satisfaction the unencumbered lightness of being at night...
The EP Hannah by the Leipzig-based beatmaker Duktus is a musical tribute to his three-year-old daughter and a personal instrumentalization of fatherhood.
A story told from Duktus' point of view in six different pieces, we can become part of little Hannah's world, as she plays in her room and runs around the playground, goes on adventures during the day and dreams at night.
In EP Hannah, Duktus casts his musical gaze backward in two different ways - both in terms of the experience of being a father and the moments, great and small, that this involves, as well as in terms of his musical influences over the past three years. This produces an atmosphere which, however, does not waver from Duktus' musical direction between uptempo broken beats and downbeat house grooves.
The EP Hannah cover was painted by Hannah herself at the age of two. And it is being produced in a complicated silk-screen process, printed in purple - Lila's favorite color! - on uncoated paper, making for a tactile homage to the little beat princess.
It is only a matter of time before Hannah discovers the record for herself as well. She already got her own record player as a present - from her dad, of course - and is a big fan of old fairy tale records. In the eyes and ears of a DJ and beatmaker, this is all a matter of early musical education.
- I dedicate this record to my daughter Hannah'
- Duktus -
Zipper is Zemi17's second release on The Bunker New York, and sees him expanding his musical palette considerably, in which his gamelan-derived sound design pushes further out towards the expanses of techno's realm.
Zipper is the product of years of work. "The tracks on this record began as field recordings taken from Indonesia — insect sounds, gamelan, found sounds," says Kuffner. "Each of these tracks comes from a different stage of my music-writing process over the years. I eventually developed a kind of 'sketch and improv' technique, re-arranging groupings and arrangements of a series of elements. Zipper reflects a culmination of this technique, and in my opinion, it's representative of some of my best work."
Supernovas originally formed the basic chemical elements which subsequently merged in a myriad of variations, creating life as well.
All the components of our world descend from that single original replicating molecule.
In a primitive stage, a functional distribution of energy was regulating the self-selection as the only workable explanation for the design and variety of all life on this planet. Such harmony meant prosperity of hearth as a whole unique entity, a perpetual thriving of life cycles.
Meanwhile, humans developed their own ego to the point to think that they were fallen angels rather than risen apes. Their unique highly developed intelligence made humans the only rational beings on the planet, but it is by rational choice that they consciously keep inflicting pain and humiliation, a planetary torture running through the ages.
Proliferation of humans doomed the dynamics, tampering with the energy fluxes and distorting the relationships amongst the entities. By rationally choosing to ignore their native compassion, humans become guilty and they self-sentence their own end. We have gone too far and sacrificed too much to disdain the future that we designed now, while the metastasizing process of the planet grows, the past increases and the future recedes.
James K is a stranger to obviousness. Over the past few years the New York native has quietly honed her sound and peculiar aesthetic. Equally organic and electronic, her sound is a combination of odd dreams, industrial beats and vocals, both incomprehensible and appealing, with a thick layer of glitter on top of it. James K is a concentrated dose of emotion mixed with sorrowful iciness, which in turn ties together ripped, broken, morphed and enchanted samples. James K stands for a fusion of visual and sonic elements, deeply rooted in conscious art practice and downright freak-out. James K creates a mythology of her own.
'PET,' her first LP due out in early 2016, will be a co-release with Dial and her own label, She Rocks! A special edition of the album with added bonus tracks and interludes with be released on cassette through Canadian label 1080p.
In James K's words: 'The underlying desire of 'PET' divides into two parts: an escape into ethereality and a mischievous denial of my own experience. It narrates my search for honest expression by means of the premature denial- a childish excursion into a world of monstrosity and innocence.
PET reflects my mental state during its production - as a person, I was owned, objectified and hurt by other, and that wound I then unwillingly internalized. I turned to my music as a way to dissect these thoughts. The product became my possession, or 'pet.' In retrospective, this process gives me strength over myself; love—knowledge and wisdom enacted. The arrangement of the music and the PET itself relates to my endless struggle, namely, my attempts to reclaim myself.'
Her 'Sokit' 7' is a double track single for her album, which she released last Spring. James K is featured on the recent compilation released by Dial Records for their 15-year anniversary, and a mini LP of her noise pop project SETH (along with producer Gobby), was also recently released by label 1080p in June, in cassette and digital form. She rocks.
You can call them a »supergroup«, but Moderat understands that it's the »group« aspect that makes them interesting.
Gernot Bronsert, Sebastian Szary (aka Modeselektor) and Sascha Ring (aka Apparat) have been working together as a trio almost as long as their two separate projects have existed. We've seen their collaboration grow from »laptop boy-band,« (as Ring playfully puts it) in 2003—with computers synched using software Ring himself had written, because at the time, »there was just no live performance software around.«
Ring confesses that Moderat wasn't »really meant to be a recording act ,« with Bronsert agreeing that, »it was really just about fun.« This maybe explains the six-year break that followed Moderat's first EP before they finally returned in 2009 with their selftitled debut album. Intent on creating something that contrasted with their own projects, the group started the cycle which blossoms on their second album, aptly titled II, culminating now in the trilogy's completion, III. Whereas I was the combination of two separate entities, II brought the members closer together, and in III, the final chapter in the trilogy, Moderat sounds like one band.
Both Szary and Ring will tell you that Moderat moved progressively from making tracks towards a more traditional writing approach of making songs - a process more fully realized on III. That's partly why the vocals have become more prominent. Mostly, you hear Ring singing (there are no guests this time), as he so often does as Apparat, but listen closely to »Ghostmother« to hear Bronsert and Szary backing him up. Stepping out of their comfort zone is the kind of thing that helped create their interplay between pop and electronics; doing it right won them the Resident Advisor Best Live Act honor as early as 2009, and they continue to gain popularity while remaining independent and underground.
Szary describes the idea behind Moderat as, »imagin(ing) yourself sitting in the cinema and watching a movie with an incredible soundtrack.« This is true with Moderat in general, but III in particular pairs an emotional pull with sensual imagery, creating dynamic sound and depth with lyrics such as »the calming scent of lavender fills the air,« or »burning bridges light my way.« You'd have
to ask them whether they're intending to manipulate the listener in the same way that John Williams or Hans Zimmer might with traditional orchestras.
One of the best parts of Moderat is their use of electronics to achieve orchestral diversity. They update the songwriting tradition with an intriguing palette, borne of careful attention and skill, informed by their »experiences with sounds of nearly 25 years of suband club culture.«
Let's not forget that these three were brought together by Berlin's now legendary rave scene. With this as their common foundation as individuals, III signifies Moderat's maturation in modern pop — an achievement shared under their collective belt.
Bronsert explains that, »the new album isn't based on jams. We went into the studio and knew exactly what we needed to do.« This is reflected in the sophisticated themes explored in the music. Take »Ghostmother,« which ponders inner peace, acceptance, fear of the unknown and how facing that fear often reveals something not so scary. Or »Running,« which is about being part of a mass that constantly needs to move to function, but doesn't have the power to decide the direction of motion. Or how about the wisdom of »Reminder,« which recognizes the world for its flaws and our role we've each played in that, but choosing to act differently and light the way to something better.
Given that, it's a bit of an understatement when Bronsert says, »I'd say our music has definitely matured.« Successful in their own endeavors, now they've mastered the »group«. It doesn't mean the end of Moderat, but it does mean they'll have to find something else to excel in.
MONOS/UD is Opcion´s debut album under this moniker, released on the austrian vinyl-label for contemporary music GOD Records.
MONOS (Side A) offers three solo works of heavily processed dark ambience and swelling noises, accompanied by harsh stammering beats.
On each track of UD (Side B) Opcion joins forces with one of the guest instrumentalists Maja Osojnik (Paetzold Bass Recorder), Bernhard Loibner (E-Bass) and Kurt Bauer (Violin), to create three works based on ruptured improvisational recordings which were later edited to become fully constructed pieces.
Beautifully Designed 1LP, 180g Vinyl Press kit: Following his Extended Play EP on Other People last year, Jream House is the turbulent and spiritual debut LP of Mark Hurst aka A Pleasure. Blending mathematical composition with an unrestrained studio experimentalism, the sound of A Pleasure charts a space where formative influences confront the most immediate performative impulse. Using a process of numerical transposition, the names of personally significant bands and composers are converted into drum patterns. He then lets loose, improvising around these structures with a variety of traditional and unorthodox instruments: bass and guitar, bowed cymbals, drum machines juggled like turntables, blowtorch on aluminium, to name but a few. With his influences as start-points, he builds rhythmic structures literally in their namesake, blasting their hulls with walls of noise, monolithic basslines and any other jam-yielded shrapnel. Despite the chaos and complexity of the process, the results sound neither clinical, nor garbled. The tracks always find their way to an emotive melody or strong groove. Lush guitar strums and yearning keys ride the high-speed beat of Slow Channel", which seems to soar through cloud-cover as one snaking mass. The Order of Things' folds a cosmic guitar-part into a backdrop of heavily side-chained noise. Arthur Russell' features a neck-snapping rim-shot and crushed snare that splash up the bits of an elegiac vocal part. Through violent and idyllic atmospheres, Jream House jettisons its inspirations like landing shuttles, always in search of new ground. These are songs, not just experiments.
A collection of nine reworks crafted by fans and selected by Nils himself form the 'Screws Reworked' re-issue, also featuring his original 'Screws'. The 2012 album 'Screws' by Nils Frahm, was the result of inspiration from his fans and friends while he recovered from an unfortunate accident, which saw him fall from his bunk bed located directly above his studio, which resulted in a broken thumb.
These nine intimate recordings were offered to fans to download for free and in return fans thanked Nils by sending him their audio and visual reinterpretations. Fascinated by the results, Nils then publicly asked his fans to submit their reworks or any form of art that was inspired by the release and all these submissions have been collected since on a dedicated website: It gave birth to the 'Screws Reworked' project from which Nils selected nine reworks to feature on a special edition re-issue which also includes his original 'Screws'.
'Whenever you have to decide between two things, you end up favouring one over the other. In the case of this record, I had to choose nine out of hundreds of songs - but I didn't want to follow this logic, I didn't want the songs to compete against each other. I never liked music competitions, neither when I was a kid playing classical music contests nor today when the best album of 2015 is awarded.
Having been in the situation to pick my own tracks for my own records, I knew that the only way to manage this tough job is to concentrate on the cohesiveness of listening to the songs all together. Screws Reworked should sound like a record, not like a random collection of tracks.
The motivation to make such a record came with the release of Screws in 2012 as a gift to my listeners. I thought about it as a starting point for people to make their own interpretations of the songs. The feedback was overwhelming. A couple of months later, we counted over 300 contributions. Without going through a selection process, they were all available only online until now.
It seemed essential to make it a real record as I imagined how happy it must make those who would find their names - in most cases for the first time - on a real record.
Now is the time to thank you all for your numerous and beautiful contributions. In case you don't find your track here, please don't think it stands behind the others. This record means, in fact, that some of the most beautiful songs couldn't be included as they simply weren't 'good neighbours' and because there is only one rework for each of my original compositions.
However all of you opened your hearts and minds and shared your uniqueness with us and I feel incredibly blessed by each and every single rework of Screws. Thank you!' - Nils Frahm.
- 1: In My Heart For A While 06:44
- 2: Omens 03:46
- 3: Once Upon A Time 0:26
- 4: Tomorrow's Plan 06:39
- 5: A Safe Place 03:42
- 6: Sweet Motherfucker Blues 0:5
- 7: Life Beyond The Wall 04:1
- 8: No More Prohibited Games 06:17
This 8 track acoustic guitar album is a big change for the experimental musician Maurizio Abate. After many years of psychedelic albums in which improvisation was combined with a creative recording process, he composed an entire album based on a more traditional method: acoustic guitar solo.
During winter 2014 he organized a series of italian screenings preview of the documentary ' In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey' and that occasion encouraged Maurizio to experience the guitar solo language.
After playing these compositions at live shows, Maurizio decided to record the tracks in an almost definitive way, nevertheless the live interpretation of the songs is always different and mutating.
He recorded alone in his house between Christmas 2014 and new year's day on a reel tape recorder, performing acoustic guitar and, in a couple of songs, electric guitar and harmonica. "Loneliness, Desire and Revenge" it's an intimate and confidential album, it evokes moods and emotions of the musician during the past 2 years.
Single sleeve glossy LP jacket with double sided euro sleeve art insert and Dropcard w/ free digital download.
When Lindsay Pitts and Clifford John Usher first met, their connection was instantaneous. That bond still fuels their art. As GEMS, they self-released the Medusa EP in 2013, a debut with a remarkably mature sound. On Medusa, Lindsay's haunting and deeply emotive vocals provide the backbone for Clifford's dark and dreamy production, balancing gauzy atmospherics with emotional heft. That mix finds new tension and release on GEMS' first full-length album, Kill the One You Love.
The record more deeply indulges in the group's evocative shadow pop, influenced by R&B production and shoegaze. At the core of GEMS' music is existential longing. Lindsay and Clifford try to capture the intangible and they arrive closest with Kill the One You Love. Music is a never-ending process of learning and growing and reaching,' Clifford says. Of stepping outside of what is familiar and moving into a place where there aren't answers.'
- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
- 12 new compositions by Gesaffelstein
- Pressed on two 180gram heavyweight vinyl
- Screenprinted gold on black gatefold & inner sleeves
- Musical score art print on X-Ray paper
- Limited to 1000 copies worldwide
Having changed the face of electronic music with his hard-edged and uncompromising but brilliantly persuasive sound, Gesaffelstein returns with 10 original compositions created for the motion picture soundtrack of new thriller Maryland, which also comprises three classic tracks from his discography.
Pressed on double 180-gram heavyweight vinyl, housed in screen printed gatefold and inner sleeves with one of his musical scores printed on X-Ray paper, this beautiful vinyl edition is limited to 1000 copies.
Gesaffelstein is already an electronic music icon, having conquered dance floors and festivals across the world with the sound of his outstanding 2013 album Aleph, which also spawned two incredible music videos clocking up millions of views in the process.
Acclaimed at Cannes, and starring Diane Kruger and Mathieu Schoenaerts, Maryland is set to become a cult classic.
Welcoming the fourth vinyl only instalment from FarFromNormal Features an excellent 3 track EP from the up and coming Julian. After a long process Julian has come up with 3 great original tracks which FarFromNormal where happily to take on board and put together Julian's very first vinyl release. This record grabs your attention from the start with track 1 Resorave. Resorave is a very psychedelic track with dark drums and beautiful slow atmospheres and a tripping vocal. Track 2 Grunge is much more on the groovy side to with fantastic production and pads that take you on a great journey. Track 3 Chorale is the title track and the one track to leave you on a high, with the heavy kicks and bass lines mixing between a tripping vocal and beautifully placed instruments, this is perfect for the peak hours.
N5MD is proud to present Fall Into Fire, the new LP from Dag Rosenqvist. Fall Into Fire is Rosenqvist's first album since the self-inflicted conclusion to his Jasper TX nom de plume in 2013 with the stunning An Index of Failure LP (HANDMADE BIRDS). While no longer veiled behind a moniker Rosenqvist fittingly presents his most personal and arrestingly raw release to date. There are threadbare echoes of loss, fleeting moments of rage, and a restless undercurrent of remorse that Rosenqvist presents with few concessions. Fall Into Fire finds Rosenqvist at his most achingly radiant while displaying some of the most contrastingly vast passages of any of his discography. Fall Into Fire is out May 6th on LP and download formats.
* Jon Gurd's Birth Right EP is the first material from the Portsmouth based Techno producer in more than 2
years since his ventures on Octopus recordings, 8 Sided Dice and Quartz. The EP therefore indicates an
audible step change not just in the approach to production but also in the mindset and emotive feeling
behind each texture and layer. Having emerged unscathed from a traumatic family related drama Jon
communicates a tortuous and re-evaluated life message across all 3 tracks, and is dedicated to his brother
with a hidden meaning conveying, Tomorrow Is - Promised - To No One'.
* Dissecting the EP further the educated are blessed with field recordings, analogue rumbling and modular
synthesis exiting from almost 24 months of lab driven experimentation. No real process has been applied or
extant formulae followed and the EP's resounding success is that this now exudes what Jon feels' innately
rather than what the industry wants, therefore the journey, endless noise making and experimentation gives
a balanced and exciting offering. Jon comments seriously my process for producing this has been all over
the place, literally stumbling on shit, slipping over my own creative vomit, workflow went out the studio
window on day one'.
* Having spent two years asking himself why he makes music, I think on first listen of Birth Right EP we will all begin to empathise why. Remixes kindly provided by Messrs Dave Clarke and Ancestral Voices (new project from Liam Blackburn formerly Indigo / Akkord).
* A long time-friend and recording partner of Alan Fitzpatrick, as well as one third of Mister Woo with Dave from Reset Robot, Jon Gurd is best known for his work on the likes of Octopus Recordings, 8 Sided Dice and Quartz. Abundant with field recordings, analogue rumbling and modular synthesis, his latest signing to Derelicht is a result of almost 24 months of lab driven experimentation, and marks an auspicious return from a musical hiatus that stemmed from a personal tragedy. From the off, 'Tomorrow Is' is a driving piece of techno complete with sinister undertones and menacing atmospherics, meanwhile 'Promised' focuses on a low-slung groove as tantalising synths operate on top. The last original, 'To No One', then exhibits a deeper vibe with ebbing pads and spectral chords. Dave Clarke's decadent rendition of 'Promised' ups the tempo whilst demonstrating commanding kicks, until Ancestral Voices, the new project from Liam Blackburn (Indigo / Akkord), strips back the beats of 'To No One' for a subdued subterranean workout.
* Press / Promotion: 3 x Co-ordinated PR Campaigns (In House campaign by Derelicht, Dispersion PR and EPM Music, 100 vinyl hand-distributed to leading editors, artists and tastemakers. Key editorials through Resident Advisor, Inverted Audio, Ran$om Note, Beat Vision, Slate The Disco, Magnetic Magazine, DJ Mag, Noise Porn, Mind Grub Audio, Portals, Elevated Culture. 1 x videos produced to support Dave Clarke remix
Tiefschwarz - 'Just Beautiful!'
Alan Fitzpatrick - Yeah massively into this, will play a lot. Thanks for sending.
Dustin Zahn - Feeling the original of "To No One." the chord/pads are hitting the right spot for me this morning! The remix is also a nice take on the original
Baikal - to no one and Derelicht are dope
Kirk Degiorgio - Dave's mix for me!
Bas Mooy - yep! A1 for me mate!
Ben Sims - a1 is the cut for me, heavy and heady but still has the groove
Benjamin Damage - Thanks for sending this, top work!
Bryan Chapman - really feeling this EP, fav is the Ancestral Voices remix, that downbeat vibe
Bryan Zentz - Wonderful, moody, and emotive...LOVE it
Carlo Lio - Actually feeling all of them. Something for every time of the night. Can see myself playing a few of these for sure
Lo Shea - Tomorrow is sick! Dave Clarke's remix is dope too.
The Summer of Sangaile is a rare film that takes you by surprise with the honesty of its performances, the poetry of its narrative, and the crispness of its cinematography, which captures the beauty of the girls and the unique Lithuanian scenery equally well. Writer/director Alante Kavaite uses transfixing imagery and exquisite casting to bring to life her distinctly layered story of young love and big dreams. The end result is a rapturous film experience. The Summer of Sangaile won the 'World Cinema Dramatic' Directing Award at Sundance Film Festival - the worlds most important independent film festival and is featured globally in theaters over this summer /autumn. The Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic was presented by Taika Waititi to: Alanté Kavaïtéfor The Summer of Sangaile / Lithuania, France, The Netherlands (Director and screenwriter: Alanté Kavaïté) - Seventeen-year-old Sangaile is fascinated by stunt planes. She meets a girl her age at the summer aeronautical show, near her parents' lakeside villa. Sangaile allows Auste to discover her most intimate secret and, in the process, finds in her teenage love, the only person that truly encourages her to fly.
Introverted Dancefloor is Bevan Smith, a New Zealander who has released music under names like Signer and Aspen, and who has played in the Ruby Suns and Skallander throughout the last decade. His prior output has been spread over many international labels and has touched on sundry genres (like techno, IDM, folk, ambient) while featuring restraint and sophistication as compositional hallmarks.
As Introverted Dancefloor, Smith has kept those features as guiding principles while allowing a more propulsive low end to dominate the construction of this music, winding up with understated but energetic dance tracks. Gestation, too, is a prominent attribute of this music, though not necessarily an obvious one. Smith started these songs with hundreds of layers, which he then pared down to a few core elements before rebuilding again.
For Introverted Dancefloor, Smith limited himself to the use of two synthesizers, one mic, one filter, and one effects processer. This constraint is not obvious upon listening as the album works across the idioms of electro, Detroit techno, pop house, and leftfield disco, playing with the line between fluid melody and drum machine programming. Each track has a playlist as its scaffolding, Smith's goal being to filter a certain set of varied influences through just a couple of instruments. Metro Area's Miura' (Original Mix) turned into Introverted Dancefloor's Happiness is such a mess/Pipedream.' If there can be such a thing as a subtle banger, then Smith may have earned that distinction here. Take it high' seems to be a constant ascent with its climbing bass and layers of chords, relying on no hackneyed drops or releases for its crescendo. Smith's layering practices show their precision on tracks like Even if you try' and Tiger bones,' in which disparate elements contribute to pointed melodies, an unidentifiable percussive part entering the same expressive plane as a sung line.
One of the record's most striking features is Smith's inclusion of certain elements of a song in a neighboring one (vocals from Pipedream' in Happiness is such a mess,' a synth line from Even if you try' in Always turn your head') to lend a phantasmagorical effect to the procession, blurring the distinction between a track and its reprise. The result is a song cycle wrought from painstaking labor, while nonetheless retaining core values of amorphousness and motion.
Auntie Flo returns with his 'Theory of Flo' LP masterpiece, his
first release on H+P in over 3 years!
Following his critically acclaimed 'Future Rhythm Machine' LP,
'Theory of Flo' is a bold step ahead from FRM, as it takes us on
the trip of a lifetime, spanning continents, genres, languages and
cultures to create a wholly unique listening experience, and one
which is only possible in 2015.
Teaming up with long term collaborator, Esa Williams, the album
also features collaborations with the incredible Ghanaian singer,
Anbuley (who last appeared on the Autonomous Africa hit
'Daabi'), Shingai Showina (of The Noisettes / Matthew Herbert /
Dennis Ferrer fame) and has experienced a lengthy recording
process between Havana, London and Glasgow - with outstand-
ing results.
'Theory of Flo' lands this November, in the meantime, his 'So In
Love' smasher and the spellbinding 'Waiting For A (Woman)' drop
on limited 10'..
"Aquatic System"" is the second installment of the series, written and composed in two remote geographical places - namely at waters in Finland and Fuerteventura. Inspired by the complexity of water, its movement, various forms, inhabitants and hidden energy, the album was assembled mainly using synthesizers and processed field recordings of the ponds, streams, lakes and oceans of the different locations. With a vibrant story and conceptualization the focus lies in taking the listener on a observing, thoughtful and reflective journey through the aquatic system of our waters. Aquatic System opens with an impression of a frozen surface imagining icy and calm underwater movements underneath. Soon a slow process of melting begins and while the water starts to move in tiny streams of sound, small lifeforms evolve, curiously sending out small pulses in their flowing and constantly moving habitat. The aquatic nature awakens. Zooming out to larger waters high frequencies arise and colliding forms become audible. Larger marine life forms can be faintly heard when entering a much wilder environment, sensing sound-swirls of wind, foaming water tops and impressive large waves crashing on dark rocks. Finally ending at the shore, where the great ocean appears on the horizon, the environment is surrounded with moisture. From the calm reflective landscape derives an inward moment, recalling the organic and atmospheric quality of the sound journey. ""Aquatic System"" has been developed into an audiovisual performance together with visual artist Emilia Kwiatkowska and was performed several times in Spain and Finland, before the music has been finalized for the tracks.
MR G's forthcoming effort on the Phoenix G imprint is somewhat of a dark one. With crazy amounts of white noise processed as hats and some of the fattest kicks you'll ever hear, this is definitely one of those acey warehouse releases that will fit perfect in the modern trend of raw but touching house.
With releases on established labels like Force Inc., Cytrax, Lo-Fi Stereo, Morris / Audio, Delay or Background, he made his way with his tricky electronic sound. He started his own label, Edit that embraces the concepts of reuse and redefinition. Components are generated, arranged and fine-tuned. They are stripped apart, processed and rearranged. Sophisticated editing techniques enable this process to continue without end. The resulting audio productions become remixes of themselves.
Tough, to the point, no-nonsense machine music is a longstanding Midwestern tradition.
Drawing a line all the way back to the old guard, The Bunker New York's latest EP is Walk The Distance, courtesy of Mark Verbos, a techno veteran and New Yorker by way of Milwaukee who put together four pieces of heavyweight dancefloor artillery, informed by an intimate, inside-out knowledge of the machinery used in the production of these tracks.
"I've been doing this for a long time. In the beginning, there was only hardware, and it feels better to make music with physical objects. Plus, I make hardware, too," says Verbos, recounting his production processes. Verbos not only produces music, he also produces the hardware he uses to make music—his company, Verbos Electronics, manufactures Eurorack synthesizer modules with a vintage sensibility. When he's making music, Verbos says, "I try to get to know the devices I use well enough that whatever I imagine can come from them. Techno is machine music. When I'm recording, it's just me and the machines."
The music, however, speaks for itself. No punches are pulled here—the record starts in top gear with "Start Up Drive," a devastating techno bomb centered around a throbbing, repeating bassline and a meaty kick drum that builds to a massive climax in the span of five minutes. "In The Back Room" kicks the tempo up a notch, featuring spaced-out atmospheric synth leads floating atop syncopated percussion. "Just A Little Late" is funkier than the other two, built around a rubbery, insistent synthesizer groove that worms its way deep into your head and doesn't let go.
The aforementioned three tracks alone would comprise a solid techno EP suitable for any number of dancefloors. But the last track on the record—its namesake—shifts gears entirely. "Walk The Distance" is a moody, pulsing slow burner, introspective and emotional. It's a haunting listen that adds remarkable depth and complexity to the record. "Walk The Distance, the track, is a reference to the fact that music is not a career. Any advice you could offer someone on how to have a successful career doesn't really apply to a career in music. By that I mean to say, process is everything, and the results don't really matter."
Sage advice indeed, but judging by Walk The Distance, Mark Verbos has figured out how to produce results that matter.
Hlanganani Music proudly presents its second release from young fast-rising producer Deep Sixty. Although his name is little known outside of Soweto and Johannesburg, already Thabiso Mamogwa has shown the determination to reach beyond his immediate world and make his musical message heard. In 2010 he made it to London to take part in the Red Bull Music Academy, which is when the HLANG team first heard the tracks that make up the Mme Hayo EP. From the same momentous trip, Mamogwa managed to get into a studio with Todd Osborn (a.k.a. Osborne, Soundmurderer), resulting in the "Thursday Nights" track which Mamogwa has self-released.
The purpose of Hlanganani is to provide a channel for the talented producers of South Africa to present their craft beyond the limited reach of their own country, opening their music up to collaboration and cultural crossover in the process. With his tenacious attitude and distinctive fusion of African traditions and contemporary techno influences, Mamogwa represents the perfect example of what the label is striving for, hence they waited five years to be able to release Mme Hayo.
For more than a decade, The Bunker New York has been a nexus point for the transnational techno community.
A chance meeting at The Bunker in 2011 brought together Gunnar Haslam and Johannes Auvinen (also known as Tin Man), who became fast friends and collaborators soon after, conceiving a joint project called Romans. The Bunker New York is proud to present Romans' Ambulare Aude, a collection of atmospheric acid techno tracks following the project's debut on Auvinen's own Global A in 2014."The Roman theme opens a world to explore beyond both of our past endeavours," says Auvinen, explaining
the conceptual genesis of the collaboration. "In the same way Ennio Morricone may have conceived the 'Spaghetti Western' genre by fusing together various contemporary motifs and moods to conjure the spirit of a past era, we're imagining stories and scenes from the Roman era, trying to manifest narratives while celebrating the distortions we see looking through the murky lens of time." And while Morricone may be a conceptual reference point for Romans, their sound is anything but—instead offering up a pair of murky, psychedelic acid-etched cuts (Emona, Delmenium) buffered by a gradually unfolding up-tempo floor-burner
(Coptos).
The record is the result of several extended improvisational jam sessions in Vienna and Brooklyn in which both
artists would play off of each other in the studio. Accordingly, each of the three tracks have a slight aleatory
air about them, as though both artists are being led down an unforeseen musical path, not entirely certain of
where it leads. This culminates in Delmenium, the record's B-side, a true techno journey, featuring an emotional, metallic synthesizer coruscating against a melancholy background.
"I like to think what we make sounds simultaneously like both of us and neither of us. We both push each other
in different ways," Haslam says, recounting their production process. Auvinen adds that "(Collaboration) offers a chance to hear from someone else's perspective. Working with others, I'm often reminded of how radically different the way people hear things, and relate to them in a musical context, can be."
After releases for Discos Capablanca and Moon Glyth, Food Pyramid join Especial for a remix EP of their album-only track Oh Mercy. Updated by the inhouse team Apophenia, before being given the full italo treatment by SF's Inhalt and a true Especial twisted FX double mix by the man, the myth, Jamie Paton.
Minneapolis collective, Food Pyramid are welcomed to the label with the twisted psychedelic electronics of Oh Mercy. Taken from their Mango Sunrise album of 2012, its warped breakbeat jam-fusion has long been a secret favourite of the label, so it seemed right to present it on a unique EP.
Starting with a 2015 rework at the hands of the label's in-house production team of Apophenia, the original is extended with respect, keeping much and taking out little (the horns) so that the originals groove can ride and ride.
This is followed by a superb remix from Inhalt. After themselves appearing in the form a remix EP (EES009) it seemed now was the right time to get on board with their own take and in the process creating a pumping Italoesque classic. In the same way Timmy Regisford turned NOIA's Rules To Survive in to a mid-80s Chicago all time top 10, this remix harks to all that was good of that time, notably replaying much of the
instrumentation, while keeping it aimed squarely at today's floor. Who said Razormaid
On the flip are killer remixes from the label's main man Jamie Paton. Locked in an increasingly modular headspace, he digs deep and expansive. Premiered on the recent Beats In Space showcase, the Remix kicks far and wide, pushing club systems to the max, this yearns to be played at 7am Panorama. Sliding straight (and you'll miss it) in to the Dub, stripping it wayyy back, let the drums do the talking. Oh baby, have mercy on me.
The enigmatic Amara Touré from Guinée Conakry finally getting a well deserved compilation showcasing all of the 10 songs ever released between 1973 and 1980. Cuban influenced music of a different kind featuring amazing spaced-out guitar works!! Analog Africa compiles a complete collection of Amara Touré's Afro-Cuban compositions, originally released between 1973 and 1980."Lamento Cubana and Temedy are the two finest Afro-Cuban compositions ever recorded. As if they were played in a smokey, poorly lit ballroom where dark rum was sipped ever so slowly" - Vikram Sohonie - Ostinato Records
Analog Africa to release a compilation by Amara Toure, the enigmatic Afro-Cuban musician from Guinea-Conakry, showcasing all of the 10 songs he ever released between 1973 and 1980.
"Latin music, is it really foreign to us Africans I don't think so. Listen to the drums, to the rhythm. It all seems very close to us - it feels like it's our own culture," declared enigmatic singer Amara Toure. It is the late 50s, and Senegal is going crazy to the groove of Son Montuno and Patchanga. Brought to West Africa by Cuban sailors in the early 40s, these styles were immediately adopted by a flourishing music scene that did not hesitate to embrace the Caribbean sound, mixed it with their own Folklore, and, in the process, created something new. Through the unique cultural fusion of West African and Caribbean influences, Latin music took on a new and unique sound - the format was reinvented. Producer Ibra Kasseì and his Miami nightclub acted as the spearheads of this movement. They brought a breath of fresh air into Dakar's nightlife, further energising one of West Africa's most exciting cities. The demand for ballroom parties and live acts exploded, attracting numerous musicians from surrounding countries. One of the musicians who answered this call was percussionist and singer Amara Toureì, from Guinea-Conakry. Spotted by Kasseì while performing with Dexter Johnson, Toureì was asked if he would like to be part of a new project. Little did he know that this project would become a phenomenon.Immensely important for the development of Senegalese modern music, Le Star Band de Dakar, led by Mady Konate, became a sort of musical incubator and workshop, where many musicians learned and practiced their trade before moving on to become stars in their own right. Toureì's talent on percussion was undeniable, but it was his powerful and raw voice that captivated the producer. The fascinating way Toure interpreted Cuban music was unparalleled, and it was this feature that encouraged Kasse to recruit the unknown artist.
Although already brimming with incredible talent, Amara Toure's joining of Le Star Band de Dakar in 1958 began the band's meteoric rise to the top. The band quickly became Dakar's number one orchestra, and it cemented the reputation of the Miami nightclub as the hottest spot in the country. The place was packed nightly, and Dakar was boiling.
Amara Toure's Senegalese adventure lasted for ten years when he received an irrefutable offer and in 1968, joined by a few talented Senegalese musicians, headed to Cameroon and immediately formed the Black and White ensemble. Many live gigs later and it was time for the first songs to be recorded. A total of three singles were produced between 1973 and 1976. These singles, representing the first six songs on this compilation, fully epitomise and distill the essence of what Toureì had learned during his career. His Mandingue roots fused with the Senegalese sound that he had mastered - the perfect foundation for the Toureì's Cuban interpretations.
If Toure's intention was to create the most sensual music ever recorded in Africa, he might very well have reached this goal. The musicians on the recording sound like they are playing in a smokey, poorly lit juke joint, where dark rum was sipped ever so slowly, and the pulse of the music took up a life of its own. How many couples have danced, swayed, and melted together to the distinct sound of Amara Toure Nobody can say for sure ...
Amara Toureì's success poured across the borders of Cameroon, and in 1980 he went to Libreville, Gabon, to team up with the powerful Orchestre Massako. Toureì recorded an LP at that time which is hailed by many music aficionados as one of the very best African albums. The songs from that LP are the last four on this compilation. It took only ten songs for Amara Toureì to become a legend. These ten treasures, representing Toure ìs complete discography, have been carefully re-mastered from original session tapes and vinyl records, and will be released by Analog Africa on 22 June 2015. After the release of his LP in 1980, Toureì seems to have disappeared. Apparently he was last seen in Cameroon but it is unknown if he is still alive today. His music though is definitely alive.
The Bunker New York is proud to announce the second EP from Mehmet Irdel, also known as Løt.te (pronounced Loat-tey), following his debut release on our label in 2014.
Løt.te's 'History of Discipline' EP features two distinct moods and detailed, industrial-inspired sound design with a firm focus on the dancefloor.
"When I discovered the heavy, dark techno coming out of the U.K. and Japan in the '90s and '00s, like Regis, Surgeon, Female, and Takaaki Itoh, it was a revelation," Irdel says. "Until then, I hadn't realized that techno could reference the grittiness and physicality of industrial music and make it work so well, and feel natural on the dancefloor." These muscular, upbeat techno artists are the perfect reference point for Løt.te's music, but Irdel takes his work one step further, featuring an emotional complexity that many other producers lack. "I'm interested in techno that feels both masculine and feminine at the same time," says Irdel. "These days, most techno feels either very intricate and clean, or very noisy and macho. What interests me is finding an in-between."
True to its name, "History of Discipline" is the darker track here. Built on a foundation of heavy, swinging kick drums and shuffling hi-hats, the track builds to an enormous climax before winding down into a rattle of metallic percussion. "A Mutable Constant" is more ambiguous, featuring a rubbery bassline and steadily-building background percussion - until a moody, longing synthesizer pad begins to take center stage. "I don't honestly know where the emotion in 'A Mutable Constant' came from. That wasn't the plan when I started working on it," recalls Irdel, "but I incorporate a mix of analog synths into my productions, like the Korg MS-20 or Doepfer Dark Energy, and their sounds sometimes surprise me. My production process begins and ends with a computer, but I love being able to have that '90s analog sound' in my work. I'm very conscious of not having any 'overly digital' sounds in my tracks."
Løt.te's latest EP embodies the spirit of techno while simultaneously pushing its sound forward. "Techno, for me, is an experiment in human perception. A way to find the fringes of perception in rhythm, melody, and emotion, to push all the way to the edge, to find the breaking point. I'm trying to push techno's boundaries without ever losing sight of 'what makes techno techno': its restraint and groove."
Ruede Hagelstein and Watergate go hand in hand. Not only is Ruede one of the longest running residents at the club, but he's also the man behind some of the label's most acclaimed music and the curator responsible for lucky number 13 in the illustrious Watergate mix series. With this, it seemed obvious to put Ruede up to his next task: an album. It is with great anticipation and excitement that we bring you the first LP for both Ruede and Watergate Records, Apophenia. Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data, and for Ruede, this is the perfect interpretation to describe his writing process, in which ideas appear from the empty, chaotic darkness. A random chord progression or percussion arrangement opens the door to the imagination where structures appear and begin to take shape. Unlike most of his previous work, Apophenia is not strictly attached to the dance floor, but created to fit just as seamless while listening at home as it is in the club. For over a year, Ruede collected ideas and visualized his plan. It was important not to mimic his earlier work, but to focus on a certain sound. While staying minimalistic yet extremely organic and melodic he has created a timeless long player. While the LP spans a range of emotions, it is always grounded in Ruede's unparalleled, singular sound. Pair that with some notable features from artists like PillowTalk, Hollis P. Monroe & Overnite, Justin Evans and C.A.R. and you have a plethora of dazzling music.
He is not so easy to find. You have to follow the kilometres of pipes down and along a labyrinth of corridors, to enter in the basement den of Romain Turzi. This once cavernous space has been metamorphosised into a recording studio for the purpose of creating and completing the A & B albums trilogy with the latest LP release: C. Closed off from the world, without natural light and water supply, but full of consoles, synthesizers and old guitars, Romain cocooned himself here for several months to perfect his music and sonically construct the soundtrack that is C, with tracks entitled by nine types of birds, to glide you through this treasure hunt through the complexities of his musical mind.
After Turzi's sophomore album: B, recorded under the Corsican sun, the change of conditions is quite radical. Closing off from the world in a place where you can only do one thing, make music, Turzi was able to gain the greatest luxury within this process: time.
LP version comes with free download card.
Radio support from Benji B & B Traits (BBC Radio 1), Nemone (BBC 6 Music), . DJ support from Ben UFO, Joy Orbison, Caribou, Tessela, Mosca, Kowton, Ron Morelli, Bok Bok
Print features confirmed in Groove, Beat Mag, Faze (DE), Tsugi (FR), DJ Mag (IT), Volkskrant (NL), The Gap (Austria)
Print reviews confirmed in Mixmag, The Wire, Crack, DJ Mag, Uncut (UK), Blow Up, Rumore, Rockerilla (IT), Irish Times (IE), Musikexpress, Doppelpunkt, Westzeit (DE), Exclaim (CA)
Online features / premieres: The Fader, NPR, XLR8r (USA), The Quietus, Dummy (UK), Wasabeat (JP),
Hessle Audio are excited to announce the release of the self-titled debut album by Pearson Sound, aka label co-head David Kennedy. Characteristically minimalist in approach, its nine tracks use a handful of elements to craft mesmerising, self-contained worlds, alive with motion and near-subliminal detail: from vast and inky landscapes, to electrifying rhythm tracks, where layers of percussion and bass tumble over one another like rocks in a landslide. Recorded between 2013-4, Pearson Sound documents a distinct phase of Kennedy's studio explorations. "I had a signal chain set up that I was really happy with, and I started sending my machines through the same processes" he says. Expanding upon the techniques underpinning his recent REM and Starburst 12"s, its tracks emerged swiftly through improvised jam sessions, some were captured in a minimum of takes, while others later took shape through extensive sculpting and post-processing. "A lot of it was made by feeding the the same sounds between two different pieces of equipment and they'd end up feeding back between each other and snowballing. On some tracks it's about harnessing that and taking it to the brink before it disintegrates, and some of them are about just letting it go full-blown out of control." The result is a record of striking contrasts: bold, stark and visceral, yet also subtle, harmonically complex and deceptively playful. While Pearson Sound's livewire percussive energy remains inextricably rooted in the club, this exploratory studio process has created Kennedy's most wide-ranging yet coherent body of work to date: a suite of thrillingly impulsive, expressive and open-ended music, untethered from restrictions of form.
This EP was made during a period where my whole outlook on everything was transforming. The Voidloss project started as an investigation, I was conducting a lot of research and study on the mind, the occult, on different thought modes, and the Voidloss project represented this. The idea was about a leap in to the void. A leap of abandonment into the dark, with total acceptance, total commitment. The idea was to lose myself to the void. This was mainly a spiritual journey for me, and could be best explained by 3 things, the void of Miyamoto Musashi from Go Rin No Sho, The concept of the Tao from the writings of Lao Tzu, and the concept of the abyss from the works of Aleister Crowley. Part of this journey deep inside the self was frightening and horrific, the total loss of self, of all identity and ego, and part of it was beautiful and enlightening. I wanted the music to reflect this, and I wanted the music to change as I changed, as I went to and through all these interesting places. In essence this was about freedom. So fast forward some years and I felt I had sharpened my mind quite effectively, the music had twisted and changed and flowed with me. At the point I began making the music for this EP, I had grown quite angry with the amount of conformity I was perceiving in life. Politically, socially, musically, there was this drive of conformity in the world. I think part of it, and only a part, comes from the prevalence of social media, the need to belong and to be liked, the idea of judging yourself and your works through the perception of others. Musically I felt that within techno there was a tendency for the music to fit within a set of confines dictated by fashion and hype, and this was reducing the diversity of the music, it seemed also that the practices of commercial music were seeping in to techno as the music became more popular. Hype and business driven decisions, brand building and so on. I always felt techno was more about art, and I began to get frustrated. Equally I felt that politically there was less and less choice, as all decisions seemed to lead to the same outcomes. I became more interested in the concept of anarchism, of the idea that government was no longer needed. I have always in my life had a drive to question everything. I've always been 'naughty' and rebellious and done things my way, to my advantage or my disadvantage, I could never accept being anything other than myself all the way. If everyone walks in one direction, I will walk the other way, even if it takes me over the edge of a precipice, just to see what is there. All this stuff influences my music, and during the period of making this EP I was angry, kicking against the things I no longer liked or wanted, screaming dissent. There is a lot of anger and rage, and of course rebellion. I wanted the music to capture that unbridled fury you have when you are in your late teens, when you just start learning about yourself and you start rebelling and questioning things around the time the world is really pushing you to conform. I was soundtracking my own philosophical riot. Previous to this my Voidloss stuff had been more introverted, more pensive and melancholy, more self destructive, more cerebral. For this new music I wanted something more immediate but without being too obvious. In terms of the choices I made I still leaned more towards broken rhythms for beat structure. I find it very difficult to do anything interesting with 4x4 kicks any more, it's too rigid for me, it limits my freedom. I like the looseness you get from more 'drummer' like beats, I guess probably because I have been playing drums all my life. The challenge is to get the same rolling power from broken rhythms as you get from 4 to the floor. It's not easy, there is a ridiculous amount of trial and error and the rejection percentage is high. I also was trying to use less 'synthy' sounds. I wanted to try to take a more acousmatic approach to sound design. With the current modular synth revival in techno I was hearing a lot of 'old' synth sounds re-emerging, and this didn't seem like a progression to me. I wanted to make sounds that were hard to source for the listener, where they weren't sure if it was synth or real world sample, digital or analogue. This involved a lot of experimentation. My process involved a lot of field recording, especially with contact microphones, which open up a whole new world of interesting sounds. You are effectively recording sounds through objects in the environment, 'hearing' the world as these objects hear them, I was using guitars, feedback loops, handmade instruments as well. So I was combining this with different synthesis, granular synthesis, sample synthesis, physical modelling, FM synthesis and of course analogue. Everything was reprocessed and re-synthesised, I tried hard to obscure the source and make something new as much as possible. The stuff on this EP was part of my live PA for some time, so as I learned how the music worked live I could go back and make changes, sometimes the environment I was playing in transformed the sound as well, and so I would try to go back an incorporate this in to the music. For remixes I wanted to choose artists that I respected for their vision as well as for their output, so my list of people I wanted was extremely short. Inigo Kennedy has always been an artist I have respected greatly. His music has always been unique to himself, he remains outside of fashions and trends even though his name has become very big recently. He takes risks with his work, experimenting and exploring, yet remaining relevant to the club, and just tirelessly forging ahead, seemingly for the sake of art above all else. And he's just a really nice guy to deal with. His remix is everything I expected it to be in that it is the unexpected. Regis is another artist who forges his own path in music, you cant really even begin to discuss the avantgarde in techno without including his name, he is one of the foundation stones for artistry and the outsider mentality in techno. His music is always unique to his own vision, and along with it comes an interesting artistic philosophy taking in situationism, post punk and industrial ideology and a good dose of tricksterism ala PT Barnum, all of which comes out in his music and the way it is presented. The man is a truly singular force and it is an honour to have him on this record. Overall the concept here is that of rebellion and dissent. Of asking questions, following your own path, of maintaining some place in yourself that burns like a forest fire.
Whether or not I have succeeded I guess is down to the listener, I'm never happy with my music, I keep wanting to move forwards, or somewhere else, and am constantly trying and failing to capture some essence of perfection. But like Bukowski said
'It's the only good fight there is'
Soma mainstay Deepchord returns with part 2 of the Luxury Series. This Double A release feature Deepchord's signature atmosphere rich tones and lush environments and also mark a slight upturn in terms of pressing on a more Techno vibe.
Luxury 3 opens as spacious as can be as the dynamic Modell crafts otherworldly pads and haunting tones, driven by muted kicks and driving subs. His effective use of delay and reverb knows no bounds as he subtly shifts synth stabs and background noise through the dimensional barrier, creating rhythms so refined they defy the natural law. His usual percussive wizardry is at work here that, whilst vigorous, retains a light atmospheric feeling keeping fully in line with the melancholic tones of the track. Clocking in around 14minutes, this is Modell as his most immersive.
Luxury 4 has a distinct Detroit heart to it. Those almost instantly recognisable saw waves, moulded by layers upon layers of processing, swirls and evolve and Deepchord slowly works in various elements of the track to unparalleled levels. Fairly reminiscent of earlier, more stripped work, subtle percussion brings things to life fairly quickly as Modell allows the layers of ethereal synths and processing to blend and fuse naturally, creating a cohesive background to which the listener can easily spend hours listening to, every time finding ever so slight nuances to each cycle of the track.
Deepchord never fails to impress with every release and can easily change his style up from previous incarnations based in pure atmospherics to his own unique brand of legendary Dub Techno.
Heidi Lord Wife of Rephlex/WeMe artist Jodey Kendrick 3 of Heidi's tracks are featured on the famous "EDM" Compilation Albums This is the Debut album from Heidi Using a unique pallet of sounds from MRI machines to modular synthersizers to conversations in a super market to her own processed voice Co produced by her Husband "I could describe what the album means to me, But i would much rather leave it to listener to experience and feel and to interpret how they see fit"
London based artist Cleric originally started sending us over material a couple of years back. As his sound developed and improved more scope was created to start looking at putting together his debut first release on EarToGround. We feel this is his best release to date and have very much enjoyed putting it together.
ETG011 SYNTHETIC TALES features four brand new original tracks with two mid positioned Locked Grooves and bespoke artwork as standard...
Audiojack's Gruuv label returns this October with a four-track package from French producer Okain, featuring a remix from Tuccillo. Parisian artist Samuel Thalman aka Okain has quite the standing in contemporary electronic music having been a prominent name as a DJ and producer for the past fifteen years. Playing at some of the leading nightclubs across the globe such as Fabric, Watergate, Space Ibiza, Rex Club and Electric Pickle to name but a few. Thalman's also built quite the respectable back-catalogue in his time, releasing material via the likes of Tsuba, BPitch, Memento and Cadenza, and here we see him add Gruuv to his affiliations.
Kicking off the release is 'Down the Block', seeing Okain offer up a rugged percussion and bass led house cut, fuelled by swinging rhythms, rumbling sub tones, sporadic sax licks and processed vocal lines, opening up the EP on an energetic tip.
'RZ One' follows this, retaining a similar aesthetic with an insistent drive and penetrative low-end, though Okain opts for a grittier production feel here, distorting the drum sounds, instilling expansive, atmospheric reverb tails and drawn out delays alongside hip-hop imbued vocal lines.
On the latter half of the release we have two versions of 'By Your Side', the first of which is the original mix from Okain, which takes on a more stripped-back approach in comparison to the preceding composition's, laying its focus on fluttering synth sounds, a stab-led bass hook and warm motown style vocal chops. 2020Vision artist Tuccillo then rounds off the package with his mix of 'By Your Side', turning in his signature percussive-led style on the mix with intricately programmed drums and a subtle underlying tension that softly bubbles away in the depths over the cuts seven minute duration.
After one year from the foundation of ARTS, label boss Emmanuel focused on giving space for all the other sonic artists that he found on his road. He is back to give directives for the label, and give more sonic spectrum for the people. Mentality is the result of a long process, it focus on mechanical quality and precision, Scenario is a picture of something you do not know, but would like to see.
Mark Henning returns to Soma with yet more jacked up machine funk in Titan. Mark has firmly established him self within the Soma mainstays and continues to further his sound on the label. This latest EP sees him take to the street with two energetic drum workouts laden with his unique flavour.
Title track Titan is very typical Henning, keeping the ingredients simple yet effect and created live. A solid groove from his trusty 909 that just oozes dance floor compatibility hooked up with a quirky synth stab, weird vocals and a eerie organ-like riff all rounded off with a fantastic arrangement makes for one seriously infectious track
Roots gives of a real ghetto-tech feel, as once again a 909 groove is enough to get things going while squelchy synth hits bounce of rimshots working up to a subtle rolling bass line. Mark's skill in the arrangement process take hold as he allows the tracks to develop into a full drum workout with mutes here and there and the simple addition of more stuttering percussion help to pick up the pace.
Henning as the enviable talent of being able to create dance floor burners with the simplest of elements, a task he delivers of with blinding result on this EP.
The Viennese duo, otherwise known as Tosca, confound expectations on their new album, 'Outta Here'. The sonic collages and smooth downbeat jams with which they made their name are replaced with a soul/jazz/blues confection that's closer to a band like Brand New Heavies than anything else. 'It's called 'Outta Here' for a reason,' explains Rupert Huber. 'The title stands for change, a change to the concept we've had so far. It refers to a change in energy and dynamic. We've been know for an almost ambient sounds. The new songs are much more beatoriented and direct. Basically, it's just a lot more energetic.' it certainly is that. See tracks such as 'Crazy Love' for evidence. Built on a muscular bassline, it sees Rob Gallagher (ex-Galliano) doing his slinky, soulful thing, while keyboards and muted sound effects flare in the background. The rare groove revival starts here. 'Swimswimswim' reworks the same elements, with the addition of Cath Coffey (Stereo MCs) into a irresistible pulse of feel good vibes. Meanwhile, the title track, 'Outta Here', sounds like a lost gem from the early '90s acid jazz era. 'It was a natural evolution,' says Richard Dorfmeister. 'In the past, we were very focussed internally because we were in a studio on our own, working slowly making sonic collages. This time, because we were working more with singers the process was naturally quicker and the results more instant and upbeat. In that sense the title 'Outta Here' literally means that we got out of our studio.'
Do Tosca think the new sound will wrong foot their fans 'It's not completely different. It's still our style and mood, it's just more direct,' says Richard Dorfmeister. 'People always have a picture of you and it can take a long time to change that. You stand for something and that's how they see you. I think people see us in that laid-back and chilled kind of way. Over the last 20 years we've been described as lounge, chill out, downbeat. We always ignored it because we felt it was more about the music. We've always seen ourselves more in terms of being an alternative to commercial music. That's still what we're doing, just in a different, more direct kind of way.'
- A1: Ngalopkha
- A2: Kaiowá
- A3: Rainfall
- B1: Zareba
- B2: Old Tupi
- B3: Yapeyú
My Panda Shall Fly AKA musician and visual artist Suren Seneviratne, is set to release 'Tropical' It's a brand new 6 track vinyl release.
A kaleidoscope of rainbow textures and rhythms disperse into the exotic soundscape of 'Tropical'. Electronics, real folk instruments and noise-making objects feature here generously on this six-track concept album, blending together a sonic palette influenced by a rich variety of music, people and places.
The material was initially written over the course of a few months during what Seneviratne called "a beautiful burst of inspiration". Working with veteran producer Asier Leatxe Ibanez d'Opakoa (Electric Lady Studios, NYC), Seneviratne then set about disassembling all the songs and re-working them meticulously, enriching the sounds by adding a huge range of live instrumentation, before processing the audio through vintage analogue studio gear.
Suren Seneviratne, born in Sri Lanka before settling in London in 1996, first caught the attention of the music world with a remix that featured on Pitchfork back in 2010. Since then he has released a plethora of diverse records, gaining support from the likes of Clash Magazine, The Fader, Mixmag and Dazed Digital, as well as regularly touring internationally. He has also remixed the likes of The Weeknd, Stay Positive & Little Boots as well as appearing at festivals like BBC Hackney Weekender, Outlook Croatia & Glade as well as performing at prestigious venues such as The Design Museum, Tate Modern & Barbican.
With the release of 'Tropical', My Panda Shall Fly has yet again set himself apart as one of the most unique contemporary electronic musicians around today.
Great music extends father than your ears can hear. Listening to resent recordings of Peder Mannerfelts music is listening to recordings of a complete creative flow. Superb tracks created inside of Peder Mannerfelts Villa Nellcôte.
Opener "Rhythm Inflection" is similar to a heartbeat but rebuilt using a parade of machines and biting ice-cold sounds that implies a climax that never comes.
Repetitive thuds are the wrecking ball of "Technology As Apathy" while saw waves continuously crunch until your ear are obliterated on "Failed Grammar". "Titled" is the centerpiece, however. Its sonic gears grind into hollowed-out spheres. A voice from the heavens echoes "Reset, reduce, turn up, repeat" until the words lose all meaning and are battered into the metal walls by distilled rhythms.
EP2 is the last ashes of a manuscript that's been waiting for ages to be turned into dust. It is the final nail in the coffin of his past that began with EP1 and Lines Describing Circles. Peder Mannerfelts music is gradual and always on the move, the process spans over the whole production.
The Hamburg based Hannes Rasmus released a record in 2013 called "Analog Ist Besser" on Gold Panda's precious label Notown which also featured Luke Abbott from Border Community. This put him on the map for minimal electronic melodic music with a lot of tastemakers and friends of melodic techno. Hannes Rasmus who can be described as a shy person who has eveloped a big knowledge for vintage synthesizers over the years. His challenge has been to write music with hardware, sequence und synths. This may sound not so much of a challenge but for "people who know" the analog sound can bear as much beauty as it can be disastrous since it can be pretty much unpredictable and hard to handle as well. So we are talking here about a person who really loves and lives with analogue g
Time led him through various forms/genres of electronic music making, going step by step towards minimal electronic techno and house music. Meanwhile his aim alongside writing music is to build in Hamburg according to his personal demands, so this is as much of a process as doing music and time as he says. When he is not making music you can see him with a soldering iron building synth
with DIY kits or fixing old synths.
His EP on Traum "Musik Für Fünf Maschinen" refers to the equipment he used to write the music... the tracks however refer to swimming pools.
The label Bond is the brainchild of Swedish techno DJ and producer Petter B. The concept of the label is 'music by DJs for DJs'. The label focuses on releasing tracks that enable the DJ, rather than the producer, to be creative. It is based on that special bond which is created every time a DJ combines tracks, loops and sounds live into something new and unique.
This third release is a special collab release. The first track Petter B has joined forces with two producers from his hometown Gothenburg. John H and M.E.E.O have been part of the Swedish underground scene since they learned how to spell 303 and are both addicted to hardware gear. With their skillful crafting of the melodic parts and Petters feel for drums and arrangement this track was born. It is a melodic monster with a simple yet
effective arrangement.On the flip side there are two tracks made by Stockholm based producer Kimono. A familiar name to those fond of that Stockholm sound. He has done releases on famous labels such as H-Productions, ISL and BEK Audio. These two tracks are best described as tooly and effective weapons to be used and abused by any DJ wanting to spice up the mix. The two tracks made it in to Petter Bs crate immediately as demos. From that point they went through the same refinement process as his own tracks usually experience. Tweaking the sound and doing some fine tuning after testing it in his sets, something that has become known as 'that bond treatment'.
Blank Code start 2014 off strong with their latest EP Rituals of Submission, produced by Luis Flores, with remixes by Black Asteroid and DJ Hyperactive. The opening track Discipline starts off with a nice creepy atmosphere supported by a solid kick and just the right amount of percussion to hook you into the tracks core rhythm, which stays consistent while the supporting percussion keeps the intensity of the track in constant motion. Black Asteroid's Discipline remix gives the track a whole new perspective, while staying true to the original's excellent use of classic elements. The straightforward kick and upbeats work perfect with this track's industrial bassline, while cleverly programmed analog synths carry the track with slow triplet rhythms, and quirky stabs that drift off to space.
Luis Flores' second original composition, The Word, follows the same philosophy as Discipline, with many elements coming together to form one solid rhythm. This is a huge sounding track with intricate metal percussion and pitch modulated stabs that form a dark and inciting hook which is overtaken by filtered claps as the track progresses. DJ Hyperactive gets down to business with his remix of The Word and lets his Chicago roots shine through as hats on all fours and hard hitting claps are used to raise the energy sparked by the deep kick and well processed stab.
Six years have passed since the last album by Andi Otto alias Springintgut, ("Park and Ride", City Centre Offices, 2007). In this period, Otto has done nothing less than inventing a new instru- ment: His "Fello" is a cello with movement sensors attached to the bow and a corresponding software. The development has been kicked off at STEIM in Amsterdam already in 2007. Since then, Otto has achieved vital refinements of the system, cooperated with artists of various fields as diverse as choreographers in Macedonia, theatre in Nigeria and Techno DJs in the Berghain Kantine in Berlin or the Fusion Festival. He even played solo with his instrument on different continents. For this third album, "Where We Need No Map" Otto takes the "Fello" to his studio in Hamburg for the first time. He records his instrument which has until today only been presented live on stage. In these Fello Sessions, the bow gestures immediate- ly modulate and process the amplified cello sound. In the subsequent editings he selects and cuts these sessions and merges them with other styles, such as Skweee, House and Jazz. Springintgut's trademark sound, this unique playfulness, is pre- sent throughout, while the live-processed cello adds an unrivaled deepness. The artist's expeditions even add more colour. Two tracks have been recorded in India. The lead voi- ce in "Bangalore Kids" is a field recording of a schoolboy in Cubbon Park, Bangalore. Andi Otto spends three months in Japan as artist- in-residence in the Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto. Du- ring this concentrated period he produces the more contemplative tracks of the album, like "Ka- mogawa Cycling" and "Western Kyoto". In Sri Lan- ka, finally, he meets Sasha Perera, the voice of Berlin's Dub Techno band Jahcoozi. They record two songs together. Especially in "Bullet" one can sense the lazy, muggy, peaceful heat of the after- noons in which this beautiful track has been com- posed. These stories may help to locate the music's orig- ins but still the sound of "Where We Need No Map" points us to unknown territories. The journey itself is the reward, let's listen!
Sechs Jahre sind seit dem letzten Album "Park and Ride" (City Centre Offices, 2007) von Andi Otto alias Springintgut bereits vergangen. Diese Zeit hat der Pingipung-Mitinhaber genutzt, nicht weni- ger als ein eigenes Instrument zu erfinden: das "Fello", ein Cello mit Bewegungssensoren auf dem Bogen und einer dazu gehörigen Soft- ware. Die Grundlagen dafür entstehen bereits 2007 am STEIM in Amsterdam. In der Folgezeit gelingt es Otto, das Instrument immer weiter zu verfeinern, mit unterschiedlichen Künstlern zu kooperieren und international aufzutreten. Für "Where We Need No Map" trägt Otto das Fello erstmals ins Hamburger Studio und nimmt unzählige Sessions auf, in denen die Gesten des Bogens direkt den verstärkten Sound des Cellos verändern und neu formen. Diese Fello-Sitzungen werden anschließend editiert und mit anderen Ein- flüssen vermengt, die von Skweee über House bis hin zum Jazz reichen. Der Markenzeichen-Sound von Springintgut, diese ureigene Verspieltheit, ist weiterhin vorhanden, gewinnt durch das live-pro- zessierte Cello aber eine bisher unerreichte Tiefe. Weitere Farbe erhält das Album durch Ottos zahl- reiche Tourneen in ferne Länder. Zwei Stücke ent- stehen in Indien. Die Stimme von "Bangalore Kids" ist eine Feldaufnahme eines Schuljungen im Cubbon Park in Bangalore. In Japan verbringt Andi Otto drei Monate als "Artist in Residence" in der Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto. Während dieser kon- zentrierten Zeit entstehen die ruhigeren Tracks des Albums wie "Kamogawa Cycling" und "Western Kyoto". In Sri Lanka lernt er dann Sasha Perera kennen, die Stimme von Jahcoozi. Sie nehmen zwei Songs zusammen auf. Vor allem in "Bullet" kann man der faulen Nachmittagshitze nachspü- ren, in der die Stücke entstanden sind. So lassen sich die vielfältigen Entstehungspunk- te von "Where We Need No Map" zwar karto- graphieren, aber der Sound des Albums schickt einen trotzdem in unbekanntes Terrain. "Der Weg ist das Ziel, frag nicht viel, hör mal..."
*Presenting a new collaboration featuring Oren Ambarchi on guitar, the electronics of Robin Fox, and both performing on various other instruments. The music on this album came about as the result of the two being asked to co-compose the soundtrack for a new production by renowned Australian contemporary dance company Chunky Move for their Connected production.
" Chunky Move's artistic director Gideon Obarzanek was drawn to the organic and deeply musical qualities of Ambarchi's work and the digital, almost scientic quality of Fox's sound. Over a process of many weeks these two aesthetics were merged. Working both in the Chunky Move studio and Head-gap studio in Melbourne, new works were forged from both digital and analog sources.
" This release brings together two of the most extraordinary artist/musicians working in Australia today. Both are renowned internationally for their individual practices, and here they join forces to produce powerful music that fuses Ambarchi's legendary guitar sound with Fox's mathematically rigorous tones and textures. This fusion results in sound works that stretch in scope from the sublime and spacious to the intensely dense and foreboding. Treading a precarious line between music and abstract sound, between organic and inorganic tones, this collaboration is a must listen for anyone interested in contemporary soundworks.
This 12" heralds Desire's vinyl reissue of Ike Yard's self-titled album in Autumn. Originally released on Factory America in 1982, Ike Yard was a product of the New York no wave scene, but also stood very much apart from it, then as now. Propulsive, paranoid, aggressive electro minimalism, with as much attention paid to the mixing board and effects processors as to vocals, guitar and synth. At once starker and more fully-formed than virtually all other contemporaneous post-punk music. Desire's 2012 edition represents the first ever vinyl reissue of this classic, prophetic album.
Played and Supported by Chris Liebing, DVS1, Marcel Fengler, Inigo Kennedy, Bas Mooy, Oscar Mulero, Truncate, Markus Suckut and more. Kike Pravda presents his first release on his own label called 'Senoid Recordings', including a remix of Ben Sims. The vinyl starts with the track 'Exalt' .It includes a Roland 909 very processed, aggressive and distorted sound until the end, accompanied by a sequence of a dark bassline and dynamic,which Kike Pravda takes it to the limit of its frequencies in constant evolution.A track that makes it the letter of introduction of Senoid. In B side, Ben Sims remix 'Scared' to the most pure style of Mr Ben. Hi-hats unstoppable, unmistakable grooves, giving back to the sounds of the original, essential for its most faithful followers. Closes the record the original version of 'Scared', a continuous arpeggio with an accompaniment of a 909 ride pure, brilliant, subtle.Scared evolves from beginning to end, with touches of dark, analogic, atmospheres and glitches, which turns it into a space trip.
Hochwertiges Digi-Pack des Debut-Album !!!
A solitary shed by a lake. Surrounded by woods coated in ice. It's the deepest winter and the Pentatones quartet finds itself in the deserted nature of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern County. They are searching for sounds pulsating beyond instruments and machines. Inaudible Music this is, made sound by them only. By night the four move over the frosted lake, play the clarinet and put themselves in a chilly trance. Months later they will remember dimly these moments in the woods and cast them atmospherically into their album debut 'The Devil's Hand' with icy romance. Highly attentive to details, they have worked on it for 3 years. Since 2006 the Pentatones tinker with their tessellate electroacoustic sound, in whose center the voice of singer Delhia de France is floating. To friends of club music she might be known from her collabs with techno producers such as Marlow, Douglas Greed or Robag Whrume. With the Pentatones she combines her emotional timbre in various forms with the raw basslines by Hannes Waldschütz and the analog and electronic beats and samples by Julian Hetztel a.k.a. Le Schnigg. Albrecht Ziepert creates melodic moods on the keys, whose appeal one can hardly elude. Their kaleidoscopic arrangements dance between susceptibility and experiment. Enticing pop structures melt with crackling analog electronics - a mixture laid out to make dance at times, at times to chill. The ambiance of her compositions is gloomy, yet light-flooded in a certain way. It is most notably Delhias voice, which outshines everything, never standing still, meandering and spinning, opening up a new emotional space with every breath. The computer with its infinite production possibilities is used in its function as another instrument. Together with the sampler it forms the center of action, processing everything, from voice to keys, which needs an artistic distancing effect. A contrabass is setting the pace at times, then again the brass accelerates the tracks highly emotively. In stylistic regards their compositions are never predictable. A touch of organic jazz here, a subtle hip-hop allusion there, accompanied by a moving club rhythm structure and Delhias captivating voice, which sings, then talks, and whispers in the next moment.
It's not only the infinite world of sound, which inspires them to their adventurously twisted compositions. For all members being equally active in the visual field, art plays an important role in the act of creating and in the overall concept of the Pentatones. This is being reflected in their life shows, acknowledged with much applause on festivals like 'Sonne, Mond und Sterne', the 'Fusion Festival' or 'Ars Electronica'. When they sample themselves during their concerts, modify their sound in real time and vividly interpret their songs, Delhia dances audaciously in extravagant, self-designed costumes in haughty reserve and effuses eccentric pop magic. Sometimes she takes the megaphone and by hereby altering her voice, she infuses her music with another exotic tone. With their self-produced videos the Leipzig residents by choice create an artistic universe, which stages the dramatic lyrics of the lead singer in a sublime way. After all they see themselves as an artificial band, operating beyond the conventional patterns of presentation, bypassing intuitively and creatively common pop stereotypes. Twisted-Pop which gets straight under your skin, without ever grooving streamlined. You can dance to it, lose yourself in it or step into new worlds. There is only one thing difficult to deal with after you enjoyed 'The Devil's Hand' and that's to release yourself from its overwhelming emotional impact.
All titles composed by Mark Van Hoen
Recorded in Brooklyn & Woodstock NY USA 2011
All instruments & processing by Mark Van Hoen with additional vocals by Georgia Belmont
Cover art by Stephen O' Malley
Over the last few years we have all seen an emergence of new methods of spreading and accessing music. Some might say this is normal market evolution, we say we keep enjoying music as we always have, on vinyl that is!We love vinyl; we love its sound, we love its shape & we love the feel of it in our hands.. Our goal is to offer a medium, paying particular attention to the recording process, which will not only conserve the cherished ritual of music listening, but will also deliver a properly put-together abundance of well made, richly defined ear snacks, from genres of all sorts both old and new.
Averse to any easy classification, Rainbow Arabia's continent-trekking, kaleidoscope pop is rooted in no particular time or place, employing modern technological processes to an array of musical cultures and eras.
Sunday Money welcomes 'Grusti' to the label - the collaborative effort of Argentinian musician Guti, and Russian producer Roustam. The background of the project and process of creation is described by Roustam: 'This EP was recorded in Guti's legendary loft studio in Barcelona. I was feeling down and out and just flew in for a week to raise my spirits to visit Guti for the first time. We spent a week living together making this EP, just making music non-stop, breaking for awesome tapas and wine and rolling a lot of spliffs. It features a lot of our influences from different sides of the world — Guti's a passionate fiery Argentinian and I'm more of a reserved and calculating Russian from up north but together we make some funky stuff. Also showcases our big love for breakbeat and similar deconstructed 4 x 4 material. Dedicated to the women we love!'
Hui Terra. The dreamlike shape of the half-heard word, abstracts with faint impressions of bucolic landscape, or handfuls of translucent and brightly-colored gemstones that hold odd, elusive, asymmetrical form. This enchanting, gently surreal debut album from Alex Cobb's Etelin project explores the power and playfulness of impulsive action diffused through electro-acoustic and ambient sound.
This music was created with digital synthesizers and a sampler in the four months immediately following the birth of his first child, a hazy period marked by a lack of regular sleep and a diet of INA-GRM, Nuno Canavarro's "Plux Quba", and Microstoria's "Init Ding" - records that appeared to produce both stimulating and soothing effects on a newborn's nascent consciousness. Recorded and arranged at all hours, this is an album that reflects on moments of tumult and fragility. Cobb sews small sharpnesses and surprises into its movements to uncover different aspects of each sound source, doubling as hypnic starts cast to advance and variate the narrative in subtle and unexpected ways. Sound and atmosphere manifest in eccentric, alchemical fashion, as though forming in processes of sublimation - solids dissipating into vapor - and deposition - clouds resolving and dropping to the ground in piles - to an obscure and domestic rhythm. There's the purveying sense of moving within the boundaries of small, hermetic ecosystem. This is underscored and doused by a slow, blooming sense of warmth; growing joy without bombast. Even the more startling textures conceal this same truth and emphasis, such as the alien, sour salt-butter electronic babble in "Little Rig", largely sampled from Cobb's son's voice at just a week old. It is emotional music - devoted, affectionate, and playful.
"Actoma" is the new full length record by New York–based musician James Emrick. Emrick may be best known for his work with Kinet Media, handling sound design and scoring for a number of their projects. He utilizes an array of granular and feedback processes within Max/MSP environments to arrive at an idiosyncratic form of computer music that feels willfully opposed to operating within the sediments of the genre. Techniques such as real-time granulation of samples, Shepard tones, grain diffusion, and complex windowing allow Emrick to dramatize his source material in fascinating ways, and each moment of "Actoma" teems with widescreen textural allure. Perhaps Emrick’s greatest accomplishment is creating a music that remains rigorously committed to severe levels of abstraction while avoiding sterility and coldness entirely. It is a strange and otherworldly landscape indeed, but there is a consciousness there to perceive and record it.
























































































