quête:ripple

Following on from 2016’s Doing It In Lagos: Boogie, Pop & Disco in 1980s Nigeria, Soundway Records return to that blistering set for the first and only officially licensed re-issue of the highly coveted debut album from Steve Monite, featuring the single ‘Only You’ that recently
seeped its way into popular culture. Lovingly restored
and remastered on 180g vinyl with liner notes.^

Shooting, space-synth sounds ripple and vibrate, incessant grooves keep the tracks in motion and Nkono Teles production, a producer often overlooked for his hand in the Nigerian boogie sound, sets the LP into orbit. An album that was largely overlooked on release in
1984, the track list includes the latter day hit ‘Only You’
and ‘Things Fall Apart’, the melody of which was lifted for
Young Franco’s 2020 single ‘Fallin’ Apart’.

In association with WaterTower Music, Mondo is proud to present Hans Zimmer's BAFTA Award-winning score to Denis Villeneuve's incredible sci-fi epic DUNE. Mixing more traditional electronic and orchestral elements with Cubase instruments created especially for this project and fused with female voices singing in a language developed by Zimmer himself. The result is nothing short of jaw-dropping. It's otherworldly and completely enveloping, Much like the sands on Arrakis. The music here is vast, open and spawling but at its core is an emotional depth few other composers come close to.

Horse Lords return with Comradely Objects, an alloy of erudite influences and approaches given frenetic gravity in pursuit of a united musical and political vision. The band's fifth album doesn't document a new utopia, so much as limn a thrilling portrait of revolution underway. Comradely Objects adheres to the essential instrumental sound documented on the previous four albums and four mixtapes by the quartet of Andrew Bernstein (saxophone, percussion, electronics), Max Eilbacher (bass, electronics), Owen Gardner (guitar, electronics), and Sam Haberman (drums). But the album refocuses that sound, pulling the disparate strands of the band's restless musical purview tightly around propulsive, rhythmic grids. Comradely Objects ripples, drones, chugs, and soars with a new abandon and steely control. This transformation came, in part, due to circumstance. Sidelined from touring their early 2020 album The Common Task in a world turned upside down, Horse Lords promptly returned to their Baltimore practice space and began piecing together the music that became Comradely Objects (Bernstein, Eilbacher, and Gardner have since relocated to Germany). Removed from their tried and true method of refining new music on the road, the quartet invested less energy ensuring live playability and more rehearsing and recording. The deliberate writing and tracking process, a rarity since the band's earliest days, led to a collection of pieces that signal a new peak of creativity and musical heft without devolving into studio sprawl or frippery. Comradely Objects reflects familiar elements of Horse Lords' established palette_the mantra-like repetition of minimalism and global traditional musics, complex counterpoint, the subtleties of microtonality, a breadth of timbres and textures drawn from all across the avant-garde_with some standout stylistic innovations. At different moments, the album veers closer to free jazz than anything else in the band's catalog, channels spectral electroacoustic tones, and throbs with unexpected yet felicitous synth. While these new elements are evidence of additional studio time and care, Comradely Objects retains the dizzying obsessive rhythmic energy that galvanizes the best moments of the band. Music for people who like Mdou Moctar, This Heat!, Battles, Ndagga Rhythm Force, Can, Captain Beefheart, Art Ensemble of Chicago, LaMonte Young.

Horse Lords return with Comradely Objects, an alloy of erudite influences and approaches given frenetic gravity in pursuit of a united musical and political vision. The band's fifth album doesn't document a new utopia, so much as limn a thrilling portrait of revolution underway. Comradely Objects adheres to the essential instrumental sound documented on the previous four albums and four mixtapes by the quartet of Andrew Bernstein (saxophone, percussion, electronics), Max Eilbacher (bass, electronics), Owen Gardner (guitar, electronics), and Sam Haberman (drums). But the album refocuses that sound, pulling the disparate strands of the band's restless musical purview tightly around propulsive, rhythmic grids. Comradely Objects ripples, drones, chugs, and soars with a new abandon and steely control. This transformation came, in part, due to circumstance. Sidelined from touring their early 2020 album The Common Task in a world turned upside down, Horse Lords promptly returned to their Baltimore practice space and began piecing together the music that became Comradely Objects (Bernstein, Eilbacher, and Gardner have since relocated to Germany). Removed from their tried and true method of refining new music on the road, the quartet invested less energy ensuring live playability and more rehearsing and recording. The deliberate writing and tracking process, a rarity since the band's earliest days, led to a collection of pieces that signal a new peak of creativity and musical heft without devolving into studio sprawl or frippery. Comradely Objects reflects familiar elements of Horse Lords' established palette_the mantra-like repetition of minimalism and global traditional musics, complex counterpoint, the subtleties of microtonality, a breadth of timbres and textures drawn from all across the avant-garde_with some standout stylistic innovations. At different moments, the album veers closer to free jazz than anything else in the band's catalog, channels spectral electroacoustic tones, and throbs with unexpected yet felicitous synth. While these new elements are evidence of additional studio time and care, Comradely Objects retains the dizzying obsessive rhythmic energy that galvanizes the best moments of the band. Music for people who like Mdou Moctar, This Heat!, Battles, Ndagga Rhythm Force, Can, Captain Beefheart, Art Ensemble of Chicago, LaMonte Young.

Balamii resident and Sticky Tapes-founder Theo Everyday arrives with a huge debut on Cheeky Sneakers, seamlessly blending the worlds of jungle, electro and trance with his signature sauce of nostalgic and futuristic hyper-funk.

Having curated the Sticky Tapes mix series and label - supporting music from artists such as Stones Taro, Om Unit, Jossy Mitsu and Lobster Theremin label head Asquith - the DJ and producer knows a thing or two about merging differing styles and energies. The Holsten FM EP plays out like a three hour club set; placing classic UK sounds at its foundation and throwing multi-coloured paint all over them.

'The Way You Feel' makes use of the pitched-vocal, SoundCloud hyper-pop aesthetic with hardcore-piano stabs and heartstring-tugging cheese wrapped within a huge low-end swinging bassline. A great lights-up tool to leave them with a smile on their face. The classic rave energy is maintained on the EP title track - a stripped-back cut of ragga jungle-step that's as meditative as it is devastating.

From golden-era rave and jungle future-mutations to heads-down club sounds, 'Every Body's Talking (Well Let's Talk)' is a strobe-light power sequence for when things are in full swing, before 90s breakbeat and trance join forces on a 'Six and Two Threes' hands-in-the-air moments.

Breaks-littered dream sequences that feel like a warm hug follow on 'Summer Lie In' - its chopped melodies and stirring atmospherics causing ripples within the pond of paradise - before 'Mod Cons' closes with a squelching cut of acid-electro on a killer digi-only exclusive.

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros—consisting of Bobby Weir, Don Was, Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti—are set to release their second batch of live recorded material this year. Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live In Colorado Vol 2 is out October 7 on Third Man Records, a follow-up to the first volume of the critically acclaimed live performance collection. Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live In Colorado, Vol 2 features more songs recorded at the band’s live performances at the historic Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado and the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado on June 8, 9, 11, 12, 2020, including classic Grateful Dead hits, "Ripple" and "Brokedown Palace" along with covers of Merle Haggard and Marvin Gaye. These shows were the group’s first live audience concerts in over a year and featured Greg Leisz on pedal steel, along with The Wolfpack: Alex Kelly, Brian Switzer, Adam Theis, Mads Tolling and Sheldon Brown. “Been too long,” Weir said of the performances, “but I can’t think of a better place to pick it back up…” Live in Colorado, Vol 1, received acclaim from LA Times, Forbes, USA Today, Billboard and more. In their review for Volume 1, Pitchfork Says, "Weir's rootsy trio offer a more intimate reimaging of his former group's historic counter cultural songbook." Weir explains “I’ve been workin’ in my spare time on expanding the sonic coloration of the songs I do. The Wolfpack is basically a step toward full orchestration - and further, I gotta say, these guys are game. We worked on the arrangements a bit but eventually we needed to trot it all out and play it for folks - and right at that moment, the folks in Colorado reached out and told us they were gonna open up. Holy Shit, WTF? Let’s Go.” Bobby Weir and Wolf Brothers will be performing four nights at the Kennedy Center in Washing DC this fall. 8/4 - Announce/Pre-order w/ IG: Ripple 9/2 - 2nd IG: Other One 10/07 - STREET DATE w/ focus track: Brokedown

This one is highly recommended for fans of Khruangbin, Lord Echo, Leon Bridges or Fat Freddy's Drop.

Open is the sixth studio album from acclaimed composer, producer, filmmaker and multi-instrumentalist, Kutiman. It is an addictive & irresistible twelve-track trip taking in elements of classic soul, Middle Eastern psychedelia, Afrobeat, Thai funk, jazz fusion, cosmic library soundscapes and more.

The uptempo “Vanishing Point” opens proceedings, recalling both Abstract Orchestra’s 2017 Dilla tribute and the lounge OST/library music flips of Tosca and DJ Vadim fame.

My Everything introduces prominent guest & frequent Kutiman collaborator, Dekel, whose soul-pop vocals coupled with jangly acoustic guitar riffs tip to contemporary indie artists such as Michael Kiwanuka and SAULT. “A Day Off passes through” Anatolian psych and Khruangbin-esque Thai funk whilst the afrobeat/jazz fusion “Confetti” pays tribute to Kutiman’s other namesake, Fela Kuti.

Dekel rejoins for the beatdown, lilting dub-soul “Believe In You” with hints of Lord Echo and the sun-inflected New Zealand dub-soul sound. The Tuareg-leaning guitar lines on “Canoe” travel across the Saharan desert easterly towards Sudan and Ethiopia by the end, whilst meditative and Coltrane-adjacent album closer “Ripples” provides a final moment of reflection from a truly global excursion of soundscapes.

Double LP documenting a realtime collaboration between Terrence Dixon (Metroplex/Tresor/Rush Hour) and Jordan GCZ (Off Minor/Minimal Detroit/Rush Hour). Finally the full results of these special sessions see the light of day (a ltd edition 12" of exclusive tracks owas released in 2020).
BIG TIP!

"In September 2019, Motor City techno legend Terrence Dixon made a rare trip to Europe. He was introduced to Jordan Czamanski AKA Jordan GCZ, a serial collaborator and electronic music improviser best known for his work as part of Juju & Jordash and, alongside David Moufang and Gal “Juju” Aner, as Magic Mountain High.

The pair hit it off immediately, so Czamanski powered up his studio and the pair began to jam. Over the following five days, the pair improvised extensively, stopping only periodically to drink coffee and discuss music, life and much more besides. While in the studio, they barely uttered a word to each other, instead responding almost psychically to the rhythms, grooves, riffs and musical motifs the other was spinning into the mix.

The results of these surprisingly magical 2019 studio sessions are showcased on Keep In Mind, I’m Out of My Mind, the pair’s first joint album and Dixon’s most significant musical collaboration since the Detroiter’s 2018 hook-up with German techno and ambient veteran Thomas Fehlmann.

In keeping with the project’s improvised roots, the six-track set is notable for its immediacy, pleasing looseness – it was mostly created using outboard equipment including synthesizers, drum machines and effects units – and sonic fluidity. It offers a neat, symmetrical blend of the two producers’ trademark styles, with Czamanski’s attractive chords, melodies and jazz-flecked motifs rising above hypnotic, cymbal-heavy rhythms that have long been the hallmark of Detroit’s sci-fi-fuelled techno sound.

This unique and appealing, dancefloor-focused sound ripples through album opener ‘Fretless’, an ultra-deep chunk of heady liquid techno, and the breathless bustle of ‘Operation Delete’, where bubbly synthesizer motifs, cascading ambient electronics and urgent bass cluster around a killer broken techno groove.

It’s there, too, throughout the surging, deliciously percussive ‘Space Chime’, an alien-sounding concoction that sounds like it was beamed down from some distant galaxy, the warming-but-intoxicating minor key swirl of ‘Axis Mundi’ – a two-part slab of techno psychedelia full of trippy electronics, dystopian jazz riffs and intergalactic intent – and the pitched-down, mind-altering oddness of closing cut ‘Above Ground’, when the pair goes all-out in pursuit of leftfield techno perfection.

Created from scratch in a few days by two of electronic music’s most accomplished improvisers, Keep In Mind, I’m Out of My Mind is an exemplary meeting of musical minds and sonic sensibilities."

Matt Annis

Comes with insert with photographs by Atelier Fantasma (Jop Verberne).

Riding the razor’s edge between bristling electroacoustic wizardry and the constrained structures and harmonic interplay of musical minimalism, »Immanent in Nervous Activity« is Die Schachtel’s new release from the creative partnership of Giovanni Di Domenico and Jim O’Rourke.

Comprising a single long-form work, divided into two movements that culminate as a second chapter to the duo’s 2015 LP, »Arco« - an album which endeavored, on visionary terms, after the potential of waiting and patience as means toward musical form - their latest adventure - recorded in Japan with further contributions by Eiko Ishibashi on flute and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto on snare - rolls at a glacial pace, deftly weaving tension into restrained sheets of tonality, texture, and harmonic dissonance that ripple with microscopic detail and a stunning sense of structure.

Starter Home was originally released November 2, 2018 on US-based
label, No Quarter
From Pitchfork, at the time: "For a decade, Canadian singer/ songwriter Doug
Paisley has turned quiet, specific moments into inquiries on life's larger struggles.
On his 2010 breakthrough, Constant Companion, Paisley used the inevitability of
endings to explore understanding oneself, the only possible constant companion.
For 2014's Strong Feelings, he mulled death and its uneasy relationship with life,
or how their juxtaposition ripples into every wave of existence. And now, on his
fourth album, Starter Home, Paisley details the chasm that separates what poet
Seamus Heaney described as getting started and getting started again. These
songs examine how the person you are never truly aligns with the person you
want to be, especially when you stumble upon a sticking point that's hard to move
past."

Fortuna Records return with a mysterious album by the anonymous artist known only as Moontribe. A deep-space journey between tribal percussion, hypnotizing organs and long echo ripples, all joining in for a snake-charming voodoo ritual of which Moontribe is the Shaman. Expect African drums, hints of cumbia, and distant galaxy exploration in unmeasured doses. An absolute must-have For fans of Sun Ra, Moondog and Idris Ackamoor.

Marbled Vinyl
In the wake of Portable’s acclaimed album My Sentient Shadow comes a trio of remixes which expand on his unique slant on techno and synth-pop. Finding three artists who reflect his own experimental
tendencies within dance music, Alan Abraham’s original productions head into unexpected new places while retaining the physical, club-ready energy he manages to instill in his own creations.
A true auteur within techno, DJ Qu brings a sense of poise and drama to ‘The Spacetime Curvature’ as he patiently builds the track into a fierce peak time monster driven by snarling bass and his signature sizzling, shuffled percussion.
Patrice Scott has a reliably smooth, immersive approach to deep Detroit house, and it lends itself beautifully to Abraham’s melancholic vocal on ‘I Feel Stronger Now’.
Leaning in on the jazz dimension of his wide-ranging electronica, Call Super revels in the sweetness of ‘Ripple Effect’ and places delicate piano playing upfront before slipping into a relaxed, sentimental kind of garage and eventually edging towards an uplifting, off-centre strain of house music.
Individual in their own right and yet naturally entwined with the emotional intention of the original versions, this is a set of remixes which pay full credit to the source material while offering something
you won’t expect, like a great remix should do.

Following on from acclaimed recent releases on Hallow Ground and Boomkat’s Documenting Sound series, NOISEEM is a major new work from Japanese sound artist/instrument inventor Yosuke Fujita, who performs under the name FUJIIIIIIIIIIIITA. Where Fujita’s recent recorded output has focussed primarily on documentation of his remarkable self-built pipe organ, NOISEEM is the culmination of half a decade of work with highly amplified water. The evocative and timbrally rich sound of water has inspired concrete and experimental music practices since ground-breaking works such as Hugh Le Cain’s ‘Dripsody’ and Knud Viktor’s obsessively aquatic ‘Images’. However, other than his compatriot Tomoko Sauvage, few have explored the possibilities of water in live performance to the extent that Fujita has, constructing a series of water tanks that, with their pumps and amplification controlled by the performer, become a new musical instrument. The recordings contained here are drawn from live performances in Tokyo and London, edited and mixed by Fujita into two side-length pieces dominated by water, pipe organ, voice and subtle electronics. On ‘AWA’, which occupies the LP’s first side, the listener is immediately immersed in an aqueous world of recognisable drips and splashes, as well as more mysterious squeaks and squawks. While the liberal use of delay at times conjures up the sound world of early electronic music, the sparklingly clear amplification is unmistakably contemporary, lending the music a stunning weight and tactility. Building over several minutes, the piece eventually comes to a rapid boil, criss-crossed by washes of white noise splashes of electronics, before the untempered long tones of the pipe organ enter. The slowly shifting harmonies lend the remainder of the side a meditative, almost oneiric quality, inviting listeners to lose themselves in the aquatic layers that ripple across the harmonic foundation. On the second side, ‘UZU’ begins more starkly, with a single rapid bubble, quickly joined by full-spectrum wooshes and silvery, ringing tones. After a few minutes, the music undergoes a radical, entirely unexpected shift with the entry of a distorted, auto-tuned voice that repeatedly cycles through ascending and descending melodies. Left alone at times to be heard acapella, this mysterious element at times takes an odd resemblance to dhrupad singing. Eventually joined by rich, sonorous chords from the organ, the high tones of Fujita’s voice, and water, the piece takes on an ecstatic quality, channelling the sublime expansiveness of the natural element on which it is built. Disappearing as abruptly as they entered, the voices then make way for a haunted coda of isolated drips and distant whistles. Far from the intellectualised abstraction of much sound art, NOISEEM is strikingly immediate, both rigorously experimental in its explorations and unashamedly direct in its musicality. Tracklist 1. Awa 2. Uzu

In 2020, a year shaped by stringent COVID-19 restrictions, many of us paused for thought about our collective futures. For First Light Records, this reflection, plus the support of Sound and Music's Composer-Curator programme, led to the development of Unbuilt Sound, a new series of commissions centred around acoustic ecology; the relationship between listener and environment. The first iteration of the Unbuilt Sound series sees Flora Yin-Wong retreat to an isolated cabin outside Machynlleth, North Wales, to collect the field recordings that provide the basis for her folklore-inspired album, The Sacrifice.

A collage of twisted field recordings, rich waves of synth, and whispered vocals, The Sacrifice oscillates between gentle familiarity and dreamlike distortions, inspiring a folkloric sense of place that extends across time. Softly dissonant drones envelop the sounds of rocks underfoot and rippling pools, a continuous call and response between artist and landscape. These themes are perhaps best captured on 'Willow Bends', which features spoken word written and performed by Berlin's Rachel Lyn. "Ride," she says, "these ancient and contemporary currents, carrying their secrets from up-stream. Wanderwaves, when pebbles skip across the ripples, I reflect upon it, this water mirror..."

Beabadoobee’s thrillingly diverse and experimental second album Beatopia is a fantastical yet deeply personal world housing Bea's most impressive work to date. Marking a huge progression, in 14 songs she traverses fuzzy rock, classic singer-songwriter, psychedelia, midwest emo and outright pop whilst remaining undeniably herself throughout. Born in the Philippines and raised in London, Bea Kristi began recording music as beabadoobee in 2017. At just 21 years old, beabadoobee already has a debut album and five sonically diverse EPs under her belt, while also receiving BRIT Award and BBC Sound Of nominations. She has accumulated 4.6 billion streams worldwide and has a 3 million+ social reach, with a huge, dedicated Gen-Z fan base. beabadoobee’s highly anticipated debut album Fake It Flowers was released in 2020 to widespread critical acclaim (“a thrilling debut from Gen-Z’s newest guitar hero”, NME 5*, “the charismatic star of the indie revival”, The Times 4*, “at once raw and confessional, yet at the same time anthemic in scale”, Dazed), and debuted in the top 10 of the UK charts.

Limited 300 COPIES


PHONOREM: ITALIAN DJ, RECORD COLLECTOR AND BEAT-MAKER HE SPROUTS HIS ROOTS INTO GOLDEN-ERA HIP HOP. SINCE 2017 HE LEADS THE PHAT! RADIO SHOW, AT ROCKET RADIO VERONA, OCCASIONALLY WITH INTERNATIONAL HOSTS.

IN 2020 PHONOREM RELEASED A CASSETTE ALBUM “CRUISE CONTROL”, FUSING DOWNTEMPO BEATS, SYNTH AND SAMPLES MANIPULATIONS, INCLUDED ALSO A REMIX BY MAX GRAEF (TAX FREE RECORDS).

ALGORYTHM SHINES LIGHT ON HIS BACKGROUND IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC: SYNTH-WAVE SOUNDS ON WONKY HOMEMADE DOWNTEMPO BEATS, FUSED TOWARDS AMBIENT AND CINEMATIC ATMOSPHERES, WITH LIVE DRUM RECORDINGS, DRUM MACHINES AND FEW SAMPLES.

Music Produced by PHONOREM
Master by REEL MASTERING
Cover Artwork by AYCE BIO
Distributed by RUBADUB

All Rights Reserved to FUNCLAB RECORDS

When the whole world collapses around you, sometimes the only thing you can do is stomp it all loose. Erin Anne's second album, the gleaming, electrified Do Your Worst, charts that uninhibited romp through disaster. Written amid the rubble of personal grief and professional disappointment, later exacerbated by the devastation of a global pandemic, the record deepens Erin's venture into the blur between human and machine, adding a new roster of digital instruments to the mix. Drawing on dark, glossy '80s synthpop as well as the unabashed bombast of bands like The Killers, the L.A.-based songwriter deploys a cyborg persona to articulate a feeling of displacement from the world as a queer artist struggling to survive the machinations of late capitalism. With bright, interweaving synthesizers and ripples of Auto-Tuned vocals, Do Your Worst poses a dare to the world: Whatever you have in store, I'll take it standing.

Erin began writing her second album not long after adding a MIDI keyboard and vocal processing hardware to her home studio setup. While exploring her new gear, she found that she could work in the same vein as the artists and producers she loved the most. Do Your Worst takes inspiration from the music of Patrick Cowley, the disco and hi-NRG producer best known for working alongside Sylvester. Erin was taken by Cowley's use of vocoder on the 1982 album Mind Warp, where his distorted vocals create a queer, mutant subjectivity. That album rang out against the cataclysm of the AIDS epidemic; Erin found resonance in Cowley's music during the present-day pandemic. "I have found the most catharsis and the most safety in listening to the music of people in really, really horrific circumstances making something lasting and profoundly beautiful," she says.

Throughout Do Your Worst, which was mixed by Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, songs like "Typhoid Mary" and "Florida" reckon with loss, despair, and abjection. "This Hungry Body" sears through pandemic-era touch starvation, while "Mirror Mirror" attends to the noxious but necessary funhouse of social media. On the playful, guitar-driven “Eve Polastri’s Last Two Brain Cells Have a Debate,” Erin uses the spy thriller TV show Killing Eve to explore queer codependency and masochism. Among these fraught subjects, Erin Anne finds opportunities for release. She stages internal conflict on a scale so massive that its details start to become clear; if they don't resolve, they at least become palpable.

"I’m very much a maximalist when it comes to production. I like vast landscapes. I like a stratosphere and a core -- I want the bass to be beneath the floor," Erin says. "This record is, in a lot of ways, a collection of some of the first moments that I was technologically able to achieve accurate renderings of how I hear my own emotional world."

Grizfolk is an album by Grizfolk, released in 2022
Grizfolk includes a.o. the following tracks: "Fumes", "California High", "Howlin",
"Stargazer" and more.

Strictly limited to 10,000 numbered copies, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at RTI, and mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's ultra-hi-fi UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP collector's edition enhances the blockbuster work for today – and the ages to come. Surpassing the sonics of any prior version, it peels away any remaining limitations to provide a transparent, lively, ultra-nuanced presentation of a record that won six Grammy Awards – including prizes for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song. The expanse and depth of the soundstage, fullness of tones, natural snap and extension of the guitar strings, realistic rise and decay of individual notes, and roll of Clapton's vocals all attain demonstration-grade levels.

Housed in a deluxe box, the UD1S Unplugged pressing features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording and the reissue's premium quality. No expense has been spared. Aurally and visually, this UD1S reissue exists as a curatorial artifact meant to be preserved, touched, and examined. It is made for discerning listeners that prize sound quality and production, and who desire to fully immerse themselves in the art – and everything involved with the album, from the images to the finishes.

Truly, everything about Unplugged matters. Having sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. and more than 26 million copies worldwide, the 1992 work resonates with listeners of all generations and speaks a universal language. Recorded for MTV before a very small audience on January 16, 1992, the 14-track set became the signpost for future acoustic-based endeavours that witnessed artists of all stripes re-examining their catalogues and, in many instances, as Clapton does here, placing familiar originals in fresh contexts and unveiling spirited versions of cover material. Needless to say, Clapton's session turned MTV's series into can't-miss programming for which the likes of Rod Stewart, Tony Bennett, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and more would soon participate.

Kicking off his performance with a spirited instrumental to establish the mood, Clapton immediately wades into the style that originally caught his attention as a British teenager in the early 1960s: American blues. Backed by a superb band that includes guitarist Andy Fairweather Low, pianist Chuck Leavell, bassist Nathan East, and drummer Steve Ferrone, Slowhand delivers a rhythmic, toe-tapping rendition of Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" that announces he's come to reconnect with his muse. What follows over the course of nearly the next hour stirs the heart, shakes the soul, moves the mind, and invigorates the senses.

Of course, there's no talking about Unplugged without keying in on "Tears in Heaven," the striking ballad Clapton penned about the death of his four-year-old son. More emotional, direct, spare, and healing than the studio version released a year prior, it crackles with an intimacy, maturity, poignancy, honesty, sweetness, and integrity that inform the entire concert. Indeed, how Clapton frames other favorites here – transforming "Layla" into a relaxed, comfortable stroll and ruminating on the seasoned ripples flowing throughout "Old Love," for example – indicate both a creative rebirth and gleeful acceptance of the next phase of his career.

And that very direction (two of Clapton's next three albums would be all-blues projects) is what really makes Unplugged so indispensable. Equivalent in mastery if not in volume to the output that earned him his "God" nickname, interpretations of Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues" (complete with kazoo!), Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey," Robert Johnson's "Walkin' Blues" and "Malted Milk," and Muddy Waters' "Rollin' & Tumblin'" showcase a learned professor in his element and all the wheels turning.

In every regard, Clapton's Unplugged session was appointment listening when it came out in August 1992. With the arrival of MoFi's UD1S pressing, that sensation is more urgent than before.

More About Mobile Fidelity UltraDisc One-Step and Why It Is Superior

Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. The exclusive nature of these very limited pressings guarantees that every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master tape. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.

MoFi SuperVinyl

Developed by NEOTECH and RTI, MoFi SuperVinyl is the most exacting-to-specification vinyl compound ever devised. Analog lovers have never seen (or heard) anything like it. Extraordinarily expensive and extremely painstaking to produce, the special proprietary compound addresses two specific areas of improvement: noise floor reduction and enhanced groove definition. The vinyl composition features a new carbonless dye (hold the disc up to the light and see) and produces the world's quietest surfaces. This high-definition formula also allows for the creation of cleaner grooves that are indistinguishable from the original lacquer. MoFi SuperVinyl provides the closest approximation of what the label's engineers hear in the mastering lab.



SACD



Mastered from the original master tapes, Mobile Fidelity's numbered hybrid SACD enhances the blockbuster work for today – and the ages to come. Peeling away remaining sonic limitations to provide a transparent, lively, ultra-nuanced presentation of a record that won six Grammy Awards (including prizes for Album of the Year, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song), it places Clapton and company in your room. The expanse and depth of the soundstage, fullness of tones, natural snap and extension of the guitar strings, realistic rise and decay of individual notes, and roll of Clapton's vocals all attain demonstration-grade levels. A perennial audiophile favourite, Unplugged now tosses its hat into the ring as a demonstration disc.

Jon Porras draws a staggering array of atmospheres out of even the simplest instrumentation. Across his work as one-half of psych-drone duo Barn Owl and his solo releases, Porras welds monoliths and ether into propulsive music that is deeply felt. Arroyo, named for the Spanish word for "stream" in a nod to Porras' heritage as a first generation ColombianJapanese American, drifts gently from one tributary to the next in unhurried contemplation and euphoria. The portentous weight and abrasive textures of Porras' previous work give way to the trickle of richly detailed acoustic instruments slipping in and out of the fold. On Arroyo, Jon Porras evokes a distinct sense of resplendent anticipation and calm with a fathomless flow and softly gorgeous colors. For Porras, Arroyo became a rumination on simplicity and simple truths, a work of complete immersion and continuous motion where separate elements coalesce into an ever-changing whole. Porras spent the year leading up to 2020 living nomadically across Europe where he was able to soak in a deep appreciation for the effortless beauty of overgrown gardens, the basic principles of classical architecture and a more transient sensibility. The album was written and recorded in a time of even more change for Porras: after the birth of his daughter. Like a stream's steady glide across bedrock that waxes and wanes with each gradual turn, the music of Arroyo exhibits a transportive stillness. The compositions take on a light, gaseous buoyancy as discreet drones swell with measured fluctuations and ripples of piano rest atop the surface.

Jon Porras draws a staggering array of atmospheres out of even the simplest instrumentation. Across his work as one-half of psych-drone duo Barn Owl and his solo releases, Porras welds monoliths and ether into propulsive music that is deeply felt. Arroyo, named for the Spanish word for "stream" in a nod to Porras' heritage as a first generation Colombian?Japanese American, drifts gently from one tributary to the next in unhurried contemplation and euphoria. The portentous weight and abrasive textures of Porras' previous work give way to the trickle of richly detailed acoustic instruments slipping in and out of the fold. On Arroyo, Jon Porras evokes a distinct sense of resplendent anticipation and calm with a fathomless flow and softly gorgeous colors. For Porras, Arroyo became a rumination on simplicity and simple truths, a work of complete immersion and continuous motion where separate elements coalesce into an ever-changing whole. Porras spent the year leading up to 2020 living nomadically across Europe where he was able to soak in a deep appreciation for the effortless beauty of overgrown gardens, the basic principles of classical architecture and a more transient sensibility. The album was written and recorded in a time of even more change for Porras: after the birth of his daughter. Like a stream's steady glide across bedrock that waxes and wanes with each gradual turn, the music of Arroyo exhibits a transportive stillness. The compositions take on a light, gaseous buoyancy as discreet drones swell with measured fluctuations and ripples of piano rest atop the surface. Arroyo borrows harmonic concepts from modal jazz to create a unique sense of ease and endlessness. Each of the four pieces on the album centers around a single suspended chord, a chord most commonly associated with devotional music which embodies a space between harmonic tension and resolution. Porras embellishes that liminality with arrangements that feel less like distinguishable layers of instruments and more like one undulating nebula of sound. In the past decade of Porras' solo work, his music has grown increasingly engaged with elaborate synth textures and detailed processing. With Arroyo, Porras consciously takes a step back from those more intricate compositions and focuses on more organic, unadorned textures and places each sound with the same precision. Stark piano and guitar patiently hover over modest currents of Hammond organ and Yamaha DX7 with the sustain of each chord and phrase acting as a natural guide to the album's subtle rhythm. The four pieces that comprise Arroyo each encompass their own idyllic channel, slowly weaving their way in and out of the album's elegant stir. Porras' reflections on simplified elements take shape in gorgeous arrangements that impart clarity amidst a tranquil mist. Arroyo is an album that unearths splendor in a unified feeling of space, serenity in perpetual renewal

2020 erschien mit "KiCk i" der Grammy nominierte Auftakt zur Serie; auch nominiert bei den Latin Grammy Awards als "Best Alternative Music Album". 2021 setzt Arca mit "KICK ii" bis "IIIII" nun die "KiCk"-Serie auf XL Recordings fort. Jetzt erscheinen diese auch physisch auf CD und Vinyl! Als Künstlerin war Arca schon immer eine Gestaltenwandlerin - äußerlich wie musikalisch. Sie produzierte Musik für Lady Gaga, Frank Ocean, Björk, Kanye West und FKA twigs, komponierte Musik für das MoMA, trat 2020 mit den Labèque Schwestern, zwei fantastischen Pianistinnen, bei der Burberry Fashion-Show auf, schrieb einen Soundtrack-Beitrag für die HBO-Serie "Euphoria", erschuf gewaltige Noise-Skulpturen oder gab sich auf Partys als exaltierte Diva. Arca wurde für einen GLAAD Media Award nominiert und ist die erste nicht-binäre Künstlerin, die schließlich für einen GRAMMY nominiert wurde. Sie hat ihr eigenes Album-Artwork entworfen und gemalt, für Bottega Venetta, Calvin Klein und Loewe gemodelt, Musikinstrumente der nächsten Generation mitentwickelt und auch mit KI experimentiert. Alejandra Ghersi Rodriguez, wie Arca eigentlich heißt, wurde erst vor kurzem von Publikationen wie dem Time Magazine, Guardian, DAZED, Billboard, Pitchfork, Stereogum und der Los Angeles Times zur einer der innovativsten Künstlerinnen des 21. Jahrhundert ernannt. Als nonbinäre Latinx-Transfrau will Doña Arca die Rolle des Popstars für kommende Generation neu definieren - mit "KICK ii bis IIIII" entführt sie uns in diese Zukunft und öffnet die Tür in eine neue und nonbinäre Soundwelt.

Cologne-based, multi-instrumentalist and creative jazz powerhouse
Gianni Brezzo presents his full-length LP “Tutto Passa,” arriving via
Berlin’s Jakarta Records May 5th.
Gianni Brezzo is the jazz affiliated band / studio project headed by
Cologne-based producer & creative maestro Marvin Horsch, whose diverse musical profile is reflected both in his scene-hopping as well as his creative output. Besides producing cologne bands like Keshavara, Woman and Xul Zolar, Gianni has released a number of EP and LP’s since 2017, culminating most recently with “The Awakening” EP in 2021 on Jakarta Records. While Gianni’s works are usually instrumental only, “The Awakening” featured vocal appearances from Berlin/Tel Aviv based singer / producer J.Lamotta and soul singer Otis Junior from Louisville, Kentucky. Gianni’s tracks have consistently placed on Editorial Lists including Spotify’s “State Of Jazz” and “Café / Croissant”, and most recently was synced in an episode of Gossip Girl for HBO US.

Gianni’s new LP, “Tutto Passa” is a meditation around Marvin’s relationship to Italian culture, accompanied by research into Italian composers of the 60’s / 70’s such as Piero Umiliani, Stelvio Cipriani, Piero Piccioni and Armando Trovajoli to more recent work by Sven Wunder. Sonically rich, the album rides a sonic wave similar to some Matthew Halsall, Surprise Chef, El Michels Affair and BadBadNotGood all rolled into one beautifully luscious work. Jakarta is ecstatic to share such a career-defining work, arriving May 6th, 2022.

The albums 1st single, “Il Sole” will be released Wednesday, March 2nd with the LP pre-order announcement that Friday, March 4th to capitalize on Bandcamp Friday. The track is a perfect sonic voyage that encapsulates the growth of Gianni’s sound and gives a sonic peak into the LP. Subtle, yet lush layers of synths, horns, keys and strong, beat-driven percussion all ebb and flow together, bringing to mind the finest Library Themes of Umiliani, Sven Wunder, Janko Nilovic and others. Visualizer accompaniments for all singles provided by Robert Winter and his DIE OTTOS crew that perfectly captures the sonic mood.

The LP’s 2nd single, “Capture This,” will be released March 30th and is a splash of pure, groovy, jazz-funk. Instantly catchy, the track will have you imagining yourself in a movie that perfectly captures the musical themes: playful flutes, crisp, fluid guitar riffs, heart-pulling strings, all held together by a strong, swingin’ drum groove.

The third single is the stunning, swirling, thematic track “Rising Of My
Mind.” Careful layers of harmonized brass, flutes, percussion ebb & flow, bubbling up to the acoustic surface like sonic ripples effortlessly bursting from Gianni’s auditory palette. Only reaching the tracks full crescendo more than 2 minutes in, “Rising Of My Mind” is on that finest jazz tip, raising Gianni’s musical caliber into the skies.

Focus track is the effortlessly smooth, soulful jazz-funk piece, “Torino.” Certified fresh, the progression gives you that euphoric, elated feeling, like you’re finally arrived at that special place you never knew existed, but were always meant to find.

“Tutto Passa” is a project with a variety of moods ranging from Arthur
Verocai and David Axelrod inspired arrangements to lush, thematic jazz progressions with a swingin’ percussive edge. It’s a timeless release, one that would sit just as well in 1972 as it does in 2022, and one that, as Gianni says:
“…reflects exactly the feeling I had last year when I was in Italy with my own family. As a musician, I was looking for the challenge of a more orchestral approach on this album, which I hoped to achieve with my arsenal from the Cologne jazz scene and the support of musicians from around the world.”
Besides online promotion from the label and artist profiles, the album will further be promoted by external agencies within the US, UK & Italy

20 years ago, US heavy and hard rock titans Mos
Generator took the heavy (stoner) rock music scene by
storm with the release of their first self-titled album. To
celebrate this special anniversary in style, the band’s
charismatic frontman Tony Reed himself has revised and
remastered this vinyl reissue of their pathbreaking debut
album.
 Mos Generator - who formed in 2000 in Port Orchard,
Washington from the ashes of a ten year off and on
collaboration between its three members, all of which
are long time veterans of road and studio - have inspired
the heavy music scene since decades. The band have
released nine full length studio albums, two live albums
as well as several singles and split albums over their
impressive career by labels as Stickman, Ripple, Heavy
Psych Sounds, Roadburn, Small Stone and Listenable.
 Touring has been just as important to the profile of the
band as making records has. Over the years Mos
Generator has shared the stage with many big heavy
rock names across Europe and North America including
extensive tours with Saint Vitus, Fu Manchu, Melvins,
Pentagram, Elder, Spirit Caravan and Atomic Bitchwax.
They have also played prestigious festivals throughout
the world, fusing soul with doom metal into a great loud,
funky and psychedelic concoction of heavy rock.
 Their 2002 debut album was the starting point, and this
hand-numbered clear vinyl 20th Anniversary edition of
‘The Mos Generator’ release is a must have for fans old
and new.
 For fans of Orange Goblin, Fu Manchu, Sheavy, Mind
Funk, Kyuss, Mountain, Nebula, Black Sabbath and
Monster Magnet.

General Ludd sculpt bizarre auditory mazes built within the fracturing constraints of western dance musics. These tremors ripple from the dear green place of Glasgow, Scotland; beguiling a physical cathartic experience for the dancer disillusioned with the horror and folly of our times.

"Même Soleil" is the result of a dialog between the French photographer Gaël Bonnefon and the French musician Frédéric D. Oberland initiated by IIKKI, between December 2019 and June 2021.

Self-taught multi-instrumentalist & photographer, Frédéric D. Oberland finds himself at the crossroads of image and sound, favoring a synesthetic approach. He articulates different modes of narration, combining the raw character of the documentary form with the transfigured reality of myth and poetry, allowing him to question notions such as the sacred, the monstrous, the fraternity, while at the same time returning to the political news of the present. Attentive to the pulse of the body, his work is willingly itinerant, modulating between the ripples of dreams, watching the points of incandescence and the bursts of electricity that act as revelations of our presence in the world, here and now. He’s the co-founder of leading bands such as Oiseaux-Tempête, FOUDRE!, Le Réveil des Tropiques, FareWell Poetry and is co-curating the label NAHAL Recordings.

"Fueled by travels and their emanations, Frédéric D. Oberland’s music had to build new horizons this year, outlined by the curves of semi-modular synthesizers, the avalanches of effect pedals and the zigzagging paths of electric circuits. Même Soleil, his third solo album, manages to merge mystical visions of the unconscious and the absurdity of an apocalyptic present in a sensory whirlwind, operating an astonishing mutation with tones still unexplored in his previous releases. A visual as well as a musical journey that takes shape in a book and a record of the same title, Même Soleil is the result of a collaboration with the photographer Gaël Bonnefon. Seeking the tension between the blinding light of day and the glittering visions of saturated night skies, the two pieces in dialogue transcend reality to deliver their own truth, as bright as the first light of the sought-after morning." (Alice Butterlin)

Gaël Bonnefon graduated with highest honours from the Fine Arts School of Toulouse (Isdat) in 2008. He has exhibited at Villa Pérochon, at the Eté photographique in Lectoure, at the 104 in Paris during Jeune Création 2012, at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles and at PhotoEspaña, at the Abattoirs Museum in Toulouse in 2014, at the Château d’Eau Gallery in 2012 and 2019 and in the Vitrine of Frac Île-de-France in 2020. His work is part of the collections of Frac Midi-Pyrénées, Château d'Eau gallery, Kulturamt in Dusseldorf and Kiyosato Museum in Japan ; he participated in Temps Zero projects Berlin, Braga, Rome, Bucarest, Groningen and Thessaloniki. He has also been granted artist’s residencies in Germany, France and Israel. His first book Elegy for the Mundane was published by La Main Donne in 2019. He continues his intimate and dense journey and presents his second publishing, Même Soleil with photographic works from 2009 to 2021.

"At first brutal and declining, the substance of Gaël Bonnefon's photography is just like a gaze that fears being one day extinguished and that is always looking to be born again. In photography as in love, recoil and desire, tension and easement, repetition, wandering and rest, flight and pursuit. Here photography allows itself to be traversed by flashes of life, renewed forces, echoes of far-off kindnesses and lost joys. It sings silently, lover of a thousand faces from which the thread of a single and same image is born, followed without relent, from the snowy peaks of childhood to the lost worlds of the present." (Michaël Soyez)

Following hot on the heels of lead single and recent mind-body tantalizer “I Feel Stronger Now,” we are now truly proud to present you with Portable’s latest full-length My Sentient Shadow. Filled to the brim with all of the inventiveness the sonic auteur has commanded we expect from his sizable and consistent body of work on worldrenown labels such as Perlon, ~scape, !K7, and his own Süd Electronic and Khoikhoi imprints, and dare we say offering us perhaps the most cohesive, emotive, and balanced of his highly-admirable catalog here to date. By using the analogy of a shadow that possesses its own consciousness, the theme of light and its distortion vs balance with the inherent and necessary darkness that surrounds it is in clear vision.
Immediately from the warmly bizarre vibes of opening cut “The Simulacrum”, it’s clear Portable is requesting clearance to other worlds of funk and ingenuity. The delightfully trippy, smoky, back-room of the Tattooine Cantina feel sets the stage just right to curb expectations and let the carefully constructed noise movements wash over us.
Elsewhere amongst the generous set we find tracks like “Cages” and “Ripple Effect” continue in the direction of horizontally-maximized aural tapestries oozing with texture, while at the other end of the energy spectrum pieces such as “The Self-Assembling” and “We Exist..” roll and bounce with all the sci-fi gyrations and slick synth layers hinting at a hypnotic halfway rendezvous point to his Bodycode moniker. And of course, no proper Portable outing would be complete without his own robust tenor vocal tone, which feels right at home front-and-center on the space travel anthem “The Spacetime Curvature” and used in more calculated micro-doses on “Analogue World”, as well as the gorgeous “Foreign to You” whose meta-title features a rare guest starring vocalist NiQ.E, and brings to hearts some of Herbert’s finer moments with dear friend Dani Siciliano, albeit done-up entirely in some distant yet alluring parallel dimension. The LP journey finishes with the frenetically-charged closer “Fractal Distortion” which will no doubt please many-a cosmic techno purist while making percussion masters from the afterlife such as Jaki Liebezeit and Tony Allen proud, and is quite possibly the closest thing to a danceable musical take on the current state of cognitive dissonance in the world that surrounds us, offering us a one-way
ticket out from the not-too-distant future. Please join us in welcoming and celebrating this wonderful album from Portable on Circus Company.

For more than 20 years, Brad Barr has been counting the number 216. It’s a mysterious number that seems to show up everywhere—from clocks and license plates to Ouija boards and receipts—and now it’s also sewn the fabric of his new album, like the 216 stitches on a baseball. The Barr Brothers frontman has set aside his band, his microphone and even his lyric-sheet—picking up his instrument for a solo guitar album that ripples with immediacy, vulnerability, and the spell of six-cubed.

Barr spent decades developing his visceral approach to the guitar, first with The Slip and then across three LPs with the Barr Brothers. The Winter Mission—the follow-up to The Fall Apartment, Barr’s 2009 solo debut—had its origins in an instrumental commission for New York City’s All For One Theater. It “felt like a gift,” Barr recalls—to have a sound he could explore all by himself, away from the road, during COVID’s strange intermission.

What is techno if not a powerful conduit for energy? The movement of a sequence, the surge of an effects rush, the respondent reaction in every individual dancer and the moving mass of the crowd as a whole. Whether the frequencies transmit directly into the brain through the intimacy of a headphone reverie, reverberate through the architecture of a space or fill the formless void of the open air, techno’s potency to initiate and stimulate energetic events is profound. This is something Pfirter understands intimately, having spent more than 15 years exploring ways of manipulating the energy on a dancefloor.

Of course, energy is not just about volume and aggression. Tonality, spatial processing and composition can have just as profound an effect as the thump of the kick drum. On his new album Altered States, Pfirter proves that point by zeroing in on the cerebral, psychedelic elements of his craft across 10 incisive tracks. The Argentine producer consciously approached his second album (following 2019’s The Empty Space) with a minimal mindset, using a very focused set of drum machines and synths to achieve a consistency across the record. Captured over a short burst of creativity, it’s the sound of an artist pushing a limited array of tools as far as possible. Despite this concise palette, it’s not an album that repeats itself, but rather an extended trip that flows from one detailed, textured immersion to the next.

The dense, febrile waves of hard-oscillating ripples in ‘A Future In Chaos’ and the sparkling, off-key chimes adorning ‘Yearn’ all speak to Pfirter’s gift for extravagant, surrealist expression within his tracks. ‘Altered States’, by way of contrast, succeeds in its absolute immediacy – a piledriving statement of bleep-driven intent. ‘Boiler’ and ‘Convergence’ land somewhere in between, coiling around kinked rhythmic incantations which still push forwards with precision while offering a different angle from which to approach the dancefloor. Cementing the idea of the whole album as a listening experience, Altered States is bookended by ‘Venus’ and ‘Dissolution’, two minimal exercises in drone-oriented mood setting.

Pfirter understands the role of his music, and his own instincts as a performing artist. It’s crafted to be captivating for DJs as much as the attentive listener. Spanning linear rhythms and broken beats, moments of calm and writhing intensity, Altered States offers a multitude of energetic possibilities in the mix or as a standalone piece of music. Ultimately, it’s a masterful return from a leading light of the contemporary techno scene.

This is MindTrip!

Copenhagen based label Escho release “Escho 15 år: Burgers for my new life” - an extensive compilation of exclusive material for their 15th anniversary (2005-2020). The compilation gathers music by all the currently active artists of Escho - both Danish and international - 27 artists in total. Contributing artists for the compilation are (in alphabetical order): Anders P Jensen, August Rosenbaum, Astrid Sonne, Baby In Vain, BishBusch, The Bleeder Group, Bona Fide, Collider, Dane TS Hawk, Eric Copeland, Excepter, First Hate, Gullo Gullo, Homies, iB101, Iceage, Joanne Robertson, Kh Marie, Liss, Puyain Sanati, Small White Man, Smerz, Søren Kjærgaard, Thulebasen, Varnrable, Yangze and Ydegirl. About Escho and the compilation: The Escho sound was born 15 years ago in small apartments around Enghave Plads, a slightly run-down square at the west end of Vesterbro, Copenhagen, past the kebab shops and the porno shops and the drunks. A few years earlier, as teenagers, several members of the Escho crew had made extremely strange, crisp metal in a very popular band. Escho was a promoter and booking agent as much as it was a label in the early days. They put on small shows to foster and hype the local scene and they brought important performers from all over the world to Copenhagen for the first time. Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance, White Magic, Excepter, Hype Williams, Boredoms, Charles Hayward, they rippled through Copenhagen after they came. Eric Copeland stayed for months. Lorenzo Senni, now well known as a vanguard dance producer, brought his high-school hardcore band to Copenhagen. Escho found and asked these artists to play. And Escho played their humble part in giving sound back to the world. Iceage, Posh Isolation and the Mayhem scene went global. Escho is a lot about being in Denmark, what that sounds like, and projecting it for anyone to hear. Across its releases, Escho’s aesthetic has allowed for the amateurish and the obsessive, the soft and the hard. Escho is about the power of shared experimental experience. Escho has been going for such a long time that the kids who started it are now twice as old as they were when they came up with the name, the idea, the desire to start something. Much younger people, generations younger, work at the label. The world has transformed since then. Escho was born in a period of time where alternative and underground music existed on a private, separate plane to mass culture, and it now finds itself in a time where mass culture and the underground are porous. Tribalism and niche knowledge has been blended by the internet, erasing the border between mainstream and underground modes. Alternative thinking takes many forms now, and new artists continue to expand and interpret the sound of Escho, carrying with them the same curiosity that lit the first Escho sparks 15 years ago. As a whole, this compilation — it is important to note — is jagged in form and tone. It is not even close to a conventional scene compilation, where the sound of a clan flows together. This record doesn’t flow like that. And this, fittingly, makes this anniversary album a ‘classic’ Escho release, because conventions about form and presentation are thrown out the window and new conventions proposed. It is a reminder that Escho quietly remains an ongoing art project as much as anything else. More than its form and tone, however, this compilation is jagged because it is a document of today. It is not final, or conclusive in any way, because the contours of contemporary music are boundless. It’s jagged because Escho has been to a million shows, and put on a million shows, and still loves going to shows. It is a picture of pluralism, discovery and openness. It makes a case for having ears, and making art, and propagating this so that successive generations of young people do it too. This is exactly as it was in the beginning






















[v] 22 First Hate – Vampire Boy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [2020 Demo]

From its earliest utterances, experimental music has been particularly disposed to transnational and cross-cultural collaboration. Seeking the answer for a fundamental problem - how to transcend the boundaries of difference, distance, and time - it presents a means to find common ground and communicate through the elemental form of sound. Over the last 5 years, this precisely what the duo of Félicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has achieved, intertwining sublime sonorities across the geographic expanses between their respective homes in France and the United States. Their third album for Shelter Press, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ (‘A winter in the middle of summer’) - the first to have been largely recorded by Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma together in the same space - distills a mesmerizing pallet of acoustic and electronic sources into an open discourse of radically poetic forms, offering glimpses of warmth and intimacy waiting in the post-covid world to come.

Both veteran experimentalists with celebrated bodies of solo work behind them - each traversing the challenges of electroacoustic practice in their own singular ways - prior to their first recorded outing in 2016, Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma had only crossed paths in person once, initially meeting in San Fransisco during 2009. The mutual bond formed during that brief encounter flowered into their first LP, ‘Comme Un Seul Narcisse’, followed two years later by 2018’s ‘Limpid As The Solitudes’. Both recorded remotely - sending files back and forth, fortified by conversations on a vast range of subjects - these two albums were guided by impassioned conceptual nods to Guy Debord, Baudelaire, Brion Gysin and Sylvia Plath, while seeking resolutions for the challenges and unique possibilities that working at a distance provoked.

Where the triumphs of its predecessors rose from the bridging of disparate moments and divergent spaces, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ culminates as a celebration of closeness, a result of Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma working together in the studio, responsively in real time, for the first time. Recorded in Brooklyn during August of 2019 - a handful of months before the pandemic would impose chasmic distances across the globe - its six discrete works, carefully crafted and finalized over the ensuing year, evolve seamlessly across the album’s two sides, weaving a sprawling tapestry of sonority, within which both artists retaining their own voices and visions, while drawing each other towards uncharted ground.

Atkinson likens the recording of ‘Un hiver en plein été’ to have been akin to “a playground”, each artist “hungry for each sound, a bit like the rush in the Louvre in Godard’s Bande à part”, to which Cantu-Ledesma adds that the process seemed to have had “a mind of its own”, with both “along for the ride”. This organic sense of entropy and enthusiasm - a joyous exploration of the unknown - guides the momentum of the album’s evolving arc, as unfolding chasms of ambient space ripple with humanity, life, and fleeting glimpses of the actions that led to its material core.

Crafted from deconstructed melodic elements and drifting long-tones - laden with subtle nods to Indian classical ragas and free jazz - searching patterns of speech, textural elements captured within the studio and the outside world, and searching tonal and percussive interventions, ‘Un hiver en plein été’ coheres as a multi-faceted series of electroacoustic dialogues; nesting conversations between two artists working at the juncture of abstraction and narration, field recording and harmony, and the philosophical and phenomenological, in search for the meaning of friendship, and its manifestation in pure sound.

A swiss army knife of an album, Zander Hulme's Windbound shifts effortlessly between beautiful, sweeping piano melodies, energetic calls to adventure, and the occasional throat singing for good measure.

Featuring watercolor inspired jacket and inner sleeve artwork by Jennifer A. Reuter, this release is a whirlwind of color packed into a single square foot. Presented in two variants, "Seashore" Blue Marble and "Cloudy Skies" White in Clear Marble.

'There is a sense of mirth rising within me as I riddle these notes down. I'm here at the Cube Cinema in Bristol with John Stevens from Qu Junktions in the garden talking music, while Rhodri Karim whizzes through setting up gear for Matana Roberts and Kelly Jayne Jones. They are in situ for three days for another playthecube.

All the while I lounge back and time-travel back to Dec '17, picturing the times we all shared with the musicians you hear in these
recordings. To slow things down a wee touch is such a powerful gesture, it feels. Ali and Jamie Lindsay (from the Cube) where so gentle in setting up the framework for Tartine de Clous and Neil to
join in and and spend five epic days and nights with us. Showing old and new films, talking, singing tight together around a table and then en masse with the Bristol Sacred Harp group, everything weaved around the Microplexian complex. The ad hoc series playthecube is inspired by olden-day folks stopping by settlements to sing, jest and make love for a hazy period, as well as urban fairytale jazz residencies and the desire to jig up the connections that frizzle between The Cube's curious volunteer workforce, visiting artists and our audiences when you have a little more time on your hands.

Over the two nights, Tartine de Clous, Alasdair Roberts and Neil McDermott entertained plenty. The computer capturing the music at the back of the auditorium and the exquisitely placed hanging mics, like flowers at a fête, all added to the recording angel ritual. On the first evening every breath, every track and each chair inch mattered; they shuffled things round and, on the second evening, the suite of song swept the crowd and the musicians together into a fine fettle.

To have this album and to hear these songs is to taste the stews we ate, the stories we swapped, the technology we manipulated and the people we touched. The cubic circles rippled and we all loosed a little, and the way I figure it, you can hear it.'

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Live Hubris, documenting the hypnotic and electrifying live performance of Oren Ambarchi’s 2016 LP Hubris by a fifteen-strong band at London’s Café Oto. Over three days in May 2019, Oto toasted Oren Ambarchi at 50/Black Truffle at 10 with Ambarchi and a large group of close friends and collaborators in a series of performances that interspersed existing projects with new collective endeavours, culminating with this: fourteen members of the extended Black Truffle family together on stage, joined by one special virtual guest, to translate the intricately studio-constructed layers of Hubris into a muscular live band workout.

Operating with only the bare minimum of pre-gig preparation after the planned afternoon rehearsal had to be wrapped up prematurely due to noise complaints, the gargantuan group lurches into motion with a 21-minute rendition of ‘Hubris Part 1’, powered by the pulsating electronics of Konrad Sprenger (the ‘ringmaster’ at the ensemble’s core) and no less than seven electric guitars spinning a web of intricately interlocking palm-muted polyrhythms. The layers of closely related but metrically distinct lines create ripples of shifting accents, flickering changes in emphasis that ricochet along the endless central pulse. Gradually building in density, this motorik continuum becomes the backdrop for the haunting tones of Eiko Ishibashi’s processed flute and an extended feature from long-distance guest Jim O’Rourke on guitar synth.

After the brief interlude of the second part, where Albert Marcoeur-esque guitar arpeggios accompany a halting attempt at phone conversation, the full ensemble gears up for the epic side-long rendition of ‘Hubris Part 3’. Now joined by the astonishing triple drum line-up of Joe Talia, Will Guthrie and Andreas Werliin, the layered pulse of the opening piece becomes a burning funk-fusion groove. Beginning on a medium simmer, the ensemble initially stick to its pulsating one-note mantra, over which Ambarchi unfurls a beautiful example of his signature shimmering Leslie-toned guitar harmonics, eventually joined by Ishibashi’s flute and some brooding, distorted dissonance from Julia Reidy’s guitar. Building steadily for the first nine minutes, the heat then rises dramatically with a first, gloriously loose chord change: with the all drummers now rolling and tumbling like a twice-cloned Jack DeJohnette circa 1970, Mats Gustafsson enters on baritone, his tortured roars and shrieks driving the band to peaks of insane intensity. Finally, the exhausted ensemble drops out, leaving only the jagged, skittering fuzz of Ambarchi’s guitar, brought to an abrupt conclusion at the command of crys cole. Arriving on hot pink vinyl with artwork by Lasse Marhaug and an extensive selection of live photos by Ivan Weiss and Fabio Lugaro, Live Hubris brings this ambitious and outrageous evening of music to the safety of the home stereo.

Channeling her innermost depths, Oshana reveals her widest body of work to date, “Disciples of Dystopia;” a multi-faceted expression of the emotions, influences, and sounds that have guided her on her musical journey. The album aptly marks the fourth release on her very own, Psionic label, and is the first double 12” in the catalogue.

As you lift into orbit, “Disciples Of Dystopia”, seduces your senses with an ominous vocal of what lies ahead. The opening track simmers gently with a progressively rising atmosphere as the down tempo vibe flows inside you-Automatic connection. “Mind Over Matter” is a futuristic breaks experience, familiar nostalgic hip hop scratches flash in and out, winding into a spiraled synth labyrinth that introduces you to dimensions unknown. Slowing the pace down a notch is “Labor Of Love;” emotional chords and floaty melodies work their way around the steady and pitched down body of the track.

As we coast into the B side, “Embrace The Wave” offers some italo energy; clean disco kicks meld into retro synths; this one cruises on a loose, irresistible, and unrelenting groove. “Take Me Away” sweeps you right off your feet and includes a feature from long time collaborative partner, Anthea. Anthea’s transcending vocals set the tone for a harmonious quest, enriched with positive and imaginative energy; the type you want to absorb as the night concludes. However, the night is far from over.

As we coast into part two, we’re introduced to “Odyssey,” a slow rising track that takes you from the intergalactic ocean all the way to the techno tides. As the track progresses, all of the mechanical cogs converse in absolute harmony. Who doesn’t enjoy a “Heated Moment?” Crisp and punchy drums drive the track as a trance bassline ripples throughout, making an impression on the most discerning of dancefloors.

Riding a squelchy, arpeggiated acid line from the start is “Astral Flight”, a psychedelic club room charmer that revolves around warm and direct bass. The closing track of the LP “Automated Beats,” is a raw, animated affair structured around chunky 808 arrangements and hip hop percussion; playful with a pinch of ghetto booty charm for good measure.

“Disciples Of Dystopia” is more than just an LP; each of the tracks feed off of the next, and Oshana’s never-ending creative energy shines as she bends through genres with effortless ease.

Red Vinyl

A decade since he first appeared on LUCKYME, Lunice brings
special editions of his first three EPs, with raided archives and
unreleased tracks available for the first time. LUCKYME have
also added significant remixes from the likes of Rustie and Girl
Unit to these new expanded deluxe versions.

Celebrating these influential EPs which first introduced the
world to this Québécois beatmaker. Recorded prior to his
breakthrough as half of TNGHT with Hudson Mohawke. These
are the tracks that first launched Lunice from his Montreal
bedroom to travelling the globe with his incendiary live
performances.

From producing Kanye West’s ‘Blood On The Leaves’ to touring
with Madonna, these tracks are the blueprint for everything that
came after. Flitting between minimalist electronic workouts to
heavyweight rap beats and merging those worlds in a way few
had before him.

Nanocluster Vol 1. is an album with some serious pedigree. It sees Immersion (aka Malka Spigel and Colin Newman of influential groups Minimal Compact and Wire respectively) collaborating with some of the finest left field artists of our era: Tarwater, Laetitia Sadier, Ulrich Schnauss and Scanner. The project was born out of a Brighton based club night, also called Nanocluster, run by Spigel and Newman alongside writer, broadcaster and DJ Graham Duff, and promoter Andy Rossiter. The club features a range of influential and cutting edge music acts. But the unique aspect of the evenings is that each show climaxes with a one off collaboration between Immersion and the headliners. The songs having been written and recorded in the studio in just three days prior to the performance - or one day in the case of Schnauss. "It could have just been a series of performances." Says Newman.? "But the fact that we had built the tracks in the studio for the performances means we had these recordings." Says Spigel. The recordings have since been developed with Immersion heading up pro- duction duties. The result is a beautiful and unique album.? "I think the really interesting thing is how different everybody is," says Spigel. "Both as people and creatively." - Immersion and Tarwater: The German duo of Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram have created an impressive body of work. Yet their involvement with Immersion has opened out their sound, creating a more panoramic soundscape. The opening instrumental 'Ripples' is a gentle breathe of optimism, all purring tones and sun dazzled synths. Meanwhile, 'Mrs. Wood' is a dubby psychedelic shuffle, Lippok's vocal cool and assured over a fat bass line and skybound eastern melodics. It feels like a more spacious take on the Tarwater of albums such as 'Suns, Animals and Atoms'. The four musicians' 3rd collaboration is Nanocluster's most pop moment: with a heartfelt yet unsentimental lyric unfurling over feline rhythms, 'All You Cat Lovers' is a feel-good anthem for cat lovers everywhere. - Immersion and Laetitia Sadier: An original and distinctive presence in contemporary music, Sadier made her name with the inimitable Stereolab, but she's also created several impressive solo works. The instrumental 'Unclustered' sees Sadier's spidery guitar weaving through Immersion's lush web of synths drones. The following 'Uncensored' has a subtle melodic tug with a classic Spigel guitar line underpinning Sadier's sweet yet worldly wise vocal. 'Riding the Wave' is another feel good song, swapping between Newman's plaintive vocal, and Spigel's vocal and Sadier's backing vocals. With its uplifting chorus: 'Things have a way of working out' 'Riding The Wave' feels like it might be the sound of the summer we've all been waiting for. - Immersion & Ulrich Schnauss: A highly respected solo artist, as well as being a member of Tangerine Dream, Schnauss' skill with electronics is legendary. The opening 'Remember Those Days On The Road' skips along on a rimshot rhythm with Spigel's honeyed vocal telling a tale of life on tour. Yet it is far removed from such usual fare. This feels vulnerable and flecked with melancholy. 'Skylarks' opens with a lattice of arpeggios before a gently nag- ging guitar enters and everything takes a turn for the sublime. 'So Much Green' is everything you'd hope a collaboration between Newman, Spigel and Schnauss could be. A constantly spiralling urban-kosmisch, with Spigel's plangent bass anchoring the celestial sounds. The addition of her wordless backing vocals and recordings of real birdsong only serve to elevate the mood further. - Immersion & Scanner: Scanner - aka Robin Rimbaud - is one of the most prolific and diverse artists currently working in contemporary music. Spigel and Newman have of course collaborated extensively with Rimbaud before: alongside Max Franken in the art-pop group Githead. But this is something very different. Their opening piece together: 'Cataliz' is the album's moodiest moment. With its serpentine synth drones it sounds like the soundtrack to a mysterious thriller. The rich pulsing 'Metrosphere' recalls Immersion's early work whilst adding another layer of grainy uncertainty. The closing 'The Mundane and the Profound' opens with a "Rimbaud scanned" recording of an irritated flight attendant but this is eventually subsumed by a simple yet emotive piano figure: a gentle and touching end to a unique collection of songs. Nanocluster Vol.1 is a testament to a remarkable synergy between a diverse assembly of strongly individual talents. The fact that it not only succeeds, but excels should be cause for celebration.

Freestyle Records will release Dan Berkson's debut LP, Dialogues, on September 17th on LP & digital.

Following a move to London and an immersion in the city's deep house scene, Dan Berkson's subsequent rediscovery of his earliest musical foundations and the drawing of inspiration from London's buzzing contemporary jazz scene would lead to Dialogues - an accomplished and rewarding body of work pulled together during his final days in London before relocation to California.

"It was inevitable that Dan Berkson would make a jazz album like Dialogues: joyful, danceable, entertaining, driven by the pleasure principle, and filled with virtuosity. It represents Berkson's experiences in London, where jazz is a living, breathing, dancing scene. It's his love letter to the city, bristling with British talent such as bassist Andrea di Biase (Heidi Vogell, Maria Chiara Argiro, Bruno Heinen) and drummer Jon Scott (Kairos 4Tet, Sons Of Kemet, Mulatu Astatke) and recorded in his final days in the city before relocating to California. It's also rich with history: the musical journey that brought him to this point covers almost 40 years and 4,000 miles.

Berkson received lessons from Chicago boogie-woogie veteran Erwin Helfer - who in turn had learned alongside foundational legends such as Mahalia Jackson and Glover Compton. In 2001 he came to the UK, throwing himself into the deep house scene of East London, his duo with James What signing to Steve Bug's legendary Poker Flat.

But eventually he felt that he'd achieved what he could in the house format. Rediscovering the piano and discovering that jazz provided him the opportunity to keep learning, he enrolled in Trinity College in South London just as South London's jazz scene was exploding into the public consciousness.

Dialogues is a jazz album, not an electronic one – but all the groove-based influences, from the rootsy blues and ragtime of his youth, through the funk he played at college and the house he imbibed in London can be heard, as can his love of the studio as an instrument and mixdowns that suit a club soundsystem. Detroit dons Theo Parrish and Moodymann are every bit as important to this record as Charlie Haden, Carla Bley, Keith Jarrett, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Giuffre, and Herbie Hancock. There's 50s and 60s cool modernism (just listen to the elegant ripples of "Sketches"), there's 70s funk fusion ("Unity" kicks things off with a spring in its step), and of course there's the pumping blues heart of "Live Bait". Above all else, though, it's a personal document: a life of music and collaboration crystalised in a magical, transitional moment. Where Dan goes next musically is as uncertain as anything in these times... but this one record tells you everything you need to know about where he's been."

Ben Bertrand weaves transverse waves into otherworldly compositions. He embodies the singular motion of these melodic and harmonic forms in order to draft new sonic possibilities freed from the laws of the physical plane. Pulsating at the kernel of Ben Bertrand’s musical universe are vivid dreams generating the fabric of these tapestries. Dokkaebi is deeply familiar yet refreshingly unknown, like a comforting whisper from your subconscious. It gently drifts into perception, glistening like the sun sparkling off a glacier gliding along the edge of your vision.

Deep listening to these tonal sculptures is enriching. By opening oneself to their deliberate unfolding, you will discover new principles for sound organization far afield from common modes of operation. The gradual, rhythmic progression of his compositions are ever-shifting grains, which upon thoughtful contemplation, reveal astonishing worlds. Bertrand’s music is constructed from blueprints drafted with honest intentions aspiring to bring humans closer to a sense of wonder.

Ben Bertrand welcomes each listener to discover his music anew from their own perspectives. It is infinitely in time with your time. These are the ripples in the wake of successive revolutions of universal evolution. Dokkaebi is an example of musical expressions adapting to the contours of the human psyche through gentle reflection of multiplicity. They are sounds reshaping themselves to suit the contours of each individual’s subconscious—sonic entities projected simultaneously as molecular and holistic.

Dokkaebi is an oceanic expression softly set in motion by honest aims that echo and grow. Ben Bertrand beckons you to listen up and look in. There is great reward in this generous flow.

Ben Bertrand was accompanied by Christina Vantzou, Geoffrey Burton, Indré Jurgeleviciuté, Echo Collective: Margaret Hermant & Neil Leiter, Otto Lindholm.

Italian experimental music is notoriously resistant to definition and location. If ever there was an object to encapsulate the spirit of that movement, it is the composer and musician Roberto Musci’s debut album from 1984 - The Loa Of Music. Recorded after a decade travelling the world - drifting between African, Indian, and the Near & Far East - studying music, making field recordings, and collecting instruments, not only is it a perfect culmination of such an experience, but a lens into the rigorously democratic and international spirit of the generation of artists to which Musci belongs. Phenomenally ambitious,The Loa Of Music entirely refuses the well trod path - distilling a remarkable range of sonic reference and reality. A work of field recording, musique concrète, electronics, synthesis, and instrumentation, pulling from countless musics from across the globe, the result is nothing short of brilliant and stunningly beautiful. A near perfect work - an egoless gesture, which rather than attempting to find consensus, offers every voice equity and cohabitation - harnessing the history music, with all of its cultural diversity, as a vision for a more ideal future. Geographies and their sounds intertwine, while Musci’s interventions and instrumentation thread a path. Ambiences ripple, sounds and voices converse in a vision of unity that may only exist within sonic realms. Unquestionably seminal, and one of the most important works to emerge from Italy in the last 50 years. Never before issued on vinyl since it’s original release, and surely not to be around for long, this is one not to miss.

Continuing to deliver Sounds From The Void, XVI Records are proud to welcome London based Producer Delonte Rivers back to the label, with his brand new EP ‘Delonte In Dub’ Having previously released his ‘Midnight Congas’ EP back in 2018 (as well as a slew of edits and releases with Banana Hill, Love Above Recordings and more) Delonte now channels an elevated state of consciousness into a new dubbed out, subterranean sonic offering.

Returning with the galvanising track ‘Rise Again’, Delonte enlists the vocals of Sir Moon (also the voice of local hellraisers Muckspreader) giving a furious manifesto on the state of the union. Psyched out guitar stabs reverberate ripple across a turbulent sea of low end frequencies, as a rock-steady rhythm section holds the line. ‘Dub Again’ unsurprisingly strips back the original into a state of ethereal and reverb soaked hypnosis. ‘Cosmic Frequencies’ bring a cosmic slice of bass weight, whilst ‘One For Road’ injects a surreal, eerie atmosphere into the proceedings. This record is one for a hazed-summer in a strange dystopian world.

According to the artist himself, zake's first solo album of 2020 was recorded and produced during "a four-day excursion in several secluded areas" in South Carolina. As a result, listeners can expect to hear babbling brooks, birdsong and the gentle rustling of leaves beneath Zake's alluring mixture of enveloping ambient chords, unearthly drone tones, opaque electronics and slowly-shifting, heavily processed neo-classical movements. The results are hugely immersive and undeniably enjoyable, with each of the four tracks delivering a head-in-the-clouds journey that ripples with becalmed, atmospheric intent. In other words, it's the kind of ambient music you can get lost in. More please!

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

‘Medieval Femme’, Fatima Al Qadiri’s new ten track suite inspired by the classical poems of Arab women, invokes a daydream through the metaphor of an Islamic garden, at the border between depression and desire, where the present temporarily dissolves, leaving only past and future. Mixing neon drones and the faint outlines of Arabesque melody, ‘Medieval Femme’ reveals a fully-realised, dreamlike setting, shaded with colour and subtle friction. Conveying a thematic state of melancholic longing, Fatima seeks to transport the listener to a place of reverie and desolation, to question the line between two seemingly opposite states and rejoice in celestial sorrow. ‘Medieval Femme’ takes instrumentation from music of the Middle Ages, recast in a futuristic setting; soft-synth lutes, organs and pipes reverberate in space while gauzy pulses ripple in response. Fatima's vocals of repeated, mantra-like phrases are sometimes pitched and altered, drawing out increasingly intense peaks, angelic choruses and yearning incantations. On ‘Tasakuba’, Kaltham Jassim’s recitation of a couplet from the 7th century poet Al-Khansa', the sorrow of her words are given a turbulent, hallucinatory setting, before the album resolves on the final song, the limpid, airy ‘Zandaq’.

"His desperate need for a torrent, a precipice, a railroad track - no matter what, but instantly - made him appeal for the very last time to the topography of his past. And when, in front of him, a grinding whine came from behind the hump of the side street, swelling to full growth when it had overcome the grade, distending the night, already illuminating the descent with two ovals of yellowish light, about to hurtle downward - then, as if it were a dance, as if the ripple of that dance had carried him to stage centre, under this growing, grinning, megathundering mass, his partner in a crashing cracovienne, this thundering iron thing, this instantaneous cinema of dismemberment - that's it, drag me under, tear at my frailty - I'm travelling flattened, on my smacked-down face - hey, you're spinning me, don't rip me to pieces - you're shredding me, I've had enough...Zigzag gymnastics of lightning, spectogram of a thunderbolt's split seconds - and the film of life had burst." One-time vinyl pressing (no digital). Recommended for fans of Werkbund, Main, General Elektro, Heith, Experimental Audio Research.

2023 Repress

This latest limited 7" from Mr. K features two incomparable baroque soul masterworks, one from a Chicago-based band that defied categorization and the other a deep cut from a living legend songwriter and performer.

The psychedelic soul of Rotary Connection’s “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun” still sounds revolutionary and unlike anything else, a full fifty years after it was originally released in 1971. Swathed in ethereal ripples of strings (courtesy the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) innovatively arranged by unsung genius Charles Stepney, and rooted in a rock solid foundation provided by the cream of Chicago’s cutting edge session musicians (among them guitarist Phil Upchurch and drummer Morris Jennings, veterans of countless soul jazz cuts), “Black Gold” sits in uncharted territory somewhere between soul, rock, jazz and classical chamber music. It’s a gorgeous territory, a fantasy land where Minnie Riperton and Sidney Barnes’s vocals transmit mystical, uplifting vibes, the entire affair anchored throughout by an addictive piano riff—a mixture that proved irresistible to Masters at Work, who covered it for their Nuyorican Soul project in 1997. Mr. K’s edit doesn’t try to force anything fancy on this masterpiece, simply tightening it up and taking advantage of the lush remastering to present this progressive classic on 45 for the first time.

In keeping with the orchestral soul mood, Mr. K turns to Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” for the flip. Whereas “Black Gold” paints a portrait of a magical land, Stevie’s lyrics on “Pastime Paradise,” originally issued in 1976, are a penetrating look at the very earthbound concerns of modern society and its follies, an urgent message to look ahead rather than languish in dreams of the past. The sensitive string accompaniment provides just the right amount of gravitas and emphasis to Stevie’s voice without overwhelming it, while the hare krishna-inspired tambourine keeps the rhythm effectively. Mr. K’s edit again keeps things true to the original, simply providing a subtle intro that uses the tambourine rhythm to lead into the body of the song.

Indie Retail Exclusive Water Spirits color vinyl LP More Energy Fields, Current is a definitive new peak in the recorded continuum of prolific producer/percussionist Carlos Niño. Featuring contributions from more than a dozen exciting voices in the creative music constellation of Los Angeles (of which Niño's has been a central force for over 2 decades), including Sam Gendel, Nate Mercereau, Jamael Dean, and Jamire Williams, the album collects 10 pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by the Southern Californian sage, elegantly presented in his unique "Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Collage" style. The album is ripe with "ambient" passages that function like open portals between moments of consonance and clarity, and epic post-hip hop opuses like the heavy/heady "Thanking the Earth." But even in the occasional absence of drums, there is a powerful pulse implicit in the program's frequency of consciousness. It's a testament to Niño's foundations as a DJ. His distinct ability to craft a kinetic, cinematic sonic experience from dozens of independent, often rhythmically-ambiguous improvisational memories is more fluently displayed on More Energy Fields, Current than anything we've heard from him to date. It resonates, lucidly, with the way Niño's mentor Iasos - who is known to the world as an original founder of New Age music - has described his work: "Real Time Interactive Imagination, Flow Texturization." On More Energy Fields, Current, Niño immerses us in the watery depths of his world, spiriting us like a submarine through exotic nether-leagues of untouched sound. And when we arrive at the final, bookending piece "Please, Wake Up." (an extended version of the opening theme, featuring saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings), it's like a return, safely to shore.

Fold Unfold is the debut album by violinist Katrine Grarup Elbo from the Danish collective We like We. As a solo artist she steps out from the safety of group performance and presents a vulnerable portrait using only her classical training and analogue electronic setup.

Peaceful scenarios of natural beauty that hover like calm mist over cold streams are interrupted by spine chilling forces. Naked passages and electroacoustic electronics together create ripples in time as the pieces mold into flowers reaching for the outer edge. Elbo summons the most time stopping affairs using only the most basic of ingredients, as a true master. Clouds of uncertainty and reason echoes infinitely into the ether as she moves in and out of acoustic and manipulated sonic landscapes. Imagine Jocelyn Pook´s captivating Masked Ball piece from Kubrick´s Eyes Wide Shut with its clouds of mystery, suddenly turning unmasked and fragile, as if abruptly standing vulnerable in the shadows listening only to the reverb of the room and ones own breath.

The album was recorded and mixed at Saal 3, Funkhaus, Berlin with Antonio Pulli. In the 29 minutes runtime, we are presented with transportations through silent, almost Baroque sounding pieces towards overpowering, processed alterations of her violin that vibrates like echoes springing off the stars. A stunning debut with all its natural purity and intimacy.

Pera Sta Ori is the pseudonym of greek sound artist and producer, George Kontogiannidis. Professing a futuristic style, his music blends senses from DnB, IDM and bleep. Bursting into the general consciousness back in 2017, time has only seen this promising artist grow with releases on brokntoys, Furthur Electronix and Yellow Machines. He now readies his next EP with us at MUSAR, titled 'IMMI'.
Short for 'Immigrant', 'IMMI' EP is dedicated to uprooted people. Within, Pera Sta Ori explores an imaginary world in which misery is erased from memory. Projecting into vast expanses, each track forms an echo chamber. From the urgent and frenetic vocals of 'SCATTER 0^', layered with crunching percussion and swarming bass, to the ambience of 'Bouncing/Lassitude' and downtempo quirks of 'CIN1', Pera Sta Ori provides a variance of headscapes to slip into.
Chilean celestial spark Kamila Govorcin creates her own world on the remix of 'CIN1'. Jagged percussion ripple and ricochet with near-industrial inflections. Peppered with openings of etherealism, the samples of the original glide whilst Govorcin keeps things driving with four-to-thefloor punches.

PM Warson grew up in an English town, in a post 9/11 world, drifting into financial crisis, against the staple suburban musical landscape of heavy rock, the ghost of the New Wave, and the fading star of the Indie Boom of the Noughties. He found his own fit in the form of Rhythm & Blues from half-a-century before, drawn in by records in the family collection, engaging at a visceral level, abstract from any subcultural connotations. While an outlier stylistically, he found camaraderie and direction among musically inclined peers, saving up two summers straight for a Rickenbacker guitar, getting the taste for playing live with an archetypal teenage power trio. After a move to London to study, he was without a band for a while. The Rickenbacker was sold for an archtop, and he delved deeper into his musical vocabulary - delta blues, Americana, early jazz and Rock'n'Roll. Meanwhile, via the capital's blues clubs and soul nights, he discovered a new setting for the music that had enticed him the first place, existing, not in a vacuum, but alive and in the moment.

A chance audition thrust him into full-time work as a touring musician. He found himself, blissfully under-qualified, serving an apprenticeship alongside conservatoire-trained jazz musicians and session pros. Meanwhile, the inevitable downtime in new cities on the road allowed for significant crate-digging between coffee spots and sound checks, while feeding off the knowledge of the players around him. Becoming more and more interested in production, ever-drawn to the Golden Era of record-making, he befriended the proprietors of Soup Studio, then an all-analogue facility based on Cable Street. He started moonlighting on production projects and learning the inner workings of a studio environment. A network was building, and when it was time to break out on his own, everything was in place.

Shedding the construct of a 'band' or a 'singer-songwriter', and perhaps the monoculture of contemporary music-making, he started cutting sides with a band of friends and acquaintances found along the way. Without any wider ambition, it was as much about the process as the outcome, evoking the R'n'B records of the '50s and '60s in practice rather than emulation. His first effort, the ramshackle "You Gotta Tell Me" became a de facto single, and after being urged to press a few copies to vinyl by a friend, it began to cause a few ripples on the local DJ scene. Meanwhile, a wild, off-the-cuff cover of 'Hit The Road Jack' caught the attention of a London music agency, giving his lineup an outlet for playing out. This included house-band sets at London establishments such as the Blues Kitchen, Old Street Records and notably at the opening of the Mary Quant Fashion Exhibition at the V&A Museum.

“WOLF KING” have returned with a follow up to 2018’s blistering release, Loyal To The Soil. Having lost none of their bite, everyone’s favorite Bay Area blackened heavy metal band has crafted a twelve track opus that will set 2021 off to a smouldering start. The Path of Wrath tells real life tales of existential struggles and explorations of life and death. This abrasive take on mortality and the afterlife traverses themes of judgement, salvation, and looking ‘beyond the veil’. As they pick over the weight of sin and uncover the burdens of both damnation and forgiveness, ripples of pure darkness infiltrate every crevice of the album. Few do blackened heavy metal better than WOLF KING. For an uncompromising, filth-drenched, smoke-infused take on the genre, The Path of Wrath delivers the goods and then some.

Priest=Aura is the eighth studio album by Australian alternative rock band The Church. The album was named after front man Steve Kilbey’s misreading of a Spanish fan’s English vocabulary notes (since ‘priest’ is translated as ‘cura’ in Spanish). It is the first record they recorded with drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, famous for his work with Patti Smith. His addition to the band brought a fresh, almost jazz-like sound to their music. The album was heavily influenced by psychedelic rock and dream pop, and features the songs “Dome”, “Ripple” and “Feel”. Both the band as well as their fans consider Priest=Aura to be an artistic high point for The Church.

This 2-LP set is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on white & black swirled vinyl.

Baroque Sunburst co-founder and Honest Jon’s team member, Big Hands displays his potent production prowess on the next Oscilla Sound release with three tracks touching on organic soundscapes, illbience and muddy bass oddities. In the old city of Lakamha ancient tombs stand tall and ruined, woven with moss. Birds as old as time beat their wings over tropical forests; their cries bouncing off wet rock lassoed with carvings of Mayan symbols. ‘1346’ begins with stirring synths and dub-echoing, low frequencies encompassing both spatiality and aberration before the heads-down atmospheric roller ‘Calix’s Head’ lays down sharp, acid flutters and ghostly ripples. ‘Louis H theme’ is an ode to the radical minimalist composer Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin), whose experiments with polyrhythms continue to influence numerous generations of musicians. The track features swampy bass that balances weightlessly with the hypnotic sonics and breezy rhythms.

Utter presents the debut album ‘Taiyō’ by Vādin, a new collaborative project from Lucie Štěpánková (Avsluta) and Christian Duka.

They describe the record:

“Vādin is a shapeshifter formed through sound, a seismic energy. ‘Taiyō’ is Vādin’s first word. It was improvised and recorded in the Welsh wilderness over three days within a makeshift yurt studio using analogue and digital synthesizers, voice, location field recordings and amplified objects. ‘Taiyō’ is an entity emerging from the process of opening up, inviting, curiously exploring and being vulnerable; it is inspired by the flow of life in all its finite magic, intangibility and imperfection.

The album opens with the drizzling drone scenery interweaved with shivering whispers of ‘The Seven Laws’ followed by the disintegrated rhythms and warm ripples of ‘First Contact’. ‘Merging’ is a multi-layered organism of spiralling undulations, astral droplets and hypnotic pulsations while ‘The Forest’ narrates a sensuous connection with the world where the suggestive monologue and extra-terrestrial pearls float atop galloping liquid rhythms. ‘Sufi Trance’ is a slow-burning cyclone, an ecstatic rite, a hypnotic pilgrimage into the centre of the Sun - ‘Taiyō’ - which brings the journey to a stirring climax with its morphing drops and electrifying trills.”

Ocean Moon is a solo project from Jon Tye of Seahawks. A long time explorer of the sounds of spaciousness, having released the ambient classic LP iO in 1994 as MLO, Crystal Harmonics is a document of Jon’s latest discoveries. An ambient/new age/modern classical library suite for KPM, this is inter-dimensional music for mind, body and spirit.

Island Visions, the recent collection of music from Seahawks for KPM, touched on the deeper, more spatial side of music and led to Jon exploring this territory in greater depth, again for KPM, under his Ocean Moon alter ego. This time he brought along some of today’s most visionary musicians: Jon Brooks (The Advisory Circle / Ghostbox) for his intuitive melodic mastery, Seaming To (Graham Massey’s Toolshed) for her extraordinary vocal talents, Steve Moore (Zombi) for his sophisticated and inventive rhythmic sensibility and Richard Norris (The Grid) for his sensitive and deeply resonant ambience. The initial recordings were made at The Centre Of Sound in Cornwall, with the collaborators various contributions coming from London, Derbyshire and the US.

The supremely serene electronic flute and bells of “Crystal Drift” ease us into our journey and we take our next steps with “Rainbow Ripples” as it gently folds space with arpeggiated synth swells and delicate machine beats. Light vocal tones, bells and breath FX on “And Breathe” keep us going, accompanied by synth drones and billows of electric piano.

We travel through the synth-space-surf haze of “Lost Oceans”, with soft bass and warm ambience, to reach the “New Infinity” of revolving melody, spacious pads and light electronic beats. The celestial tone floats of “White Mirror” close out the first side.

Temple bells ring out to running water flowing together with deep resonant vocal tones as the second side opens with “Peace Bells”. “Revolving and Evolving” follows, a tranquil electronic meadow of lush pastoral synth tones where we rest for a while for “Mountain Dreaming”, a light rhythmic dance of zither and birdsong.

The undulating “Forest Motion” ripples with synth arpeggios, dreamy Solina strings and percussive modular electronics before allowing the crackling ambience and Cantonese whispers of “Sleep Golden” to wash over us. Finally we find ourselves on “The Long Path”, its warm temple ambience of drones and chants guiding us home.

Crystal Harmonics is inspired by four particular albums from KPM’s catalogue. There’s The Electronic Light Orchestra by Adrian Wagner from 1975 and then Temple Of The Stars, Breath Of Life and finally Keith Mansfield’s Circles, these last three coming from KPM’s mid-1980s run of modern classical/New Age gems. For Jon, “making library music can be very liberating. I really enjoyed the additional focus it brought to the music working on different facets of composition with each collaborator”.

But Crystal Harmonics is no mere exercise in vulger pastiche. As the past, present and future sound of paradise, this fresh exploration of mid-90s ambient and original New Age sounds exists outside of our linear experience of time.

The cover started as a collage Jon made a couple of years ago, a different expression of the same impulses that guided the music. As a nod to the records that provided seeds of inspiration, the collage was framed by KPM’s house style of the 1980s for the finished sleeve by Richard Robinson.

Mastered for vinyl by Be With’s sonic shaman Simon Francis, cut by the legendary Pete Norman and pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry, Ocean Moon’s Crystal Harmonics is the tranquil balm for these turbulent times.

Barcelona to Brooklyn via UK: following two very special releases from Beartrax, for their third release (and second of 2020) hot new NYC label Melodize welcome one of Spain’s most consistent electronic ambassadors, Factor City co-boss Undo, and Cin Cin bossman Fort Romeau for remix duties.

Hot on the heels of his stunning ‘Dark Woods’ EP earlier this summer, Undo comes packing some stunning electronic tackle. Sitting somewhere between Border Community and Underworld, both cuts are lavishly layered as myriad synths bubble and ripple away in their own little co-existing worlds.

Baggy, charming and just nicely off-grid, both sides of the coin can be flipped; those looking for a darker jam will be all over ‘Sixty Days’, a powerful cut where the basses melt into swaggering loose kicks. Need things even darker? Then jump on Fort Romeau’s remix where the kicks are cemented into place with a stark acidic twist.

Meanwhile those of us hungrier for more of a cosmic head trip will find serious pots of gold at the end of the rainbow that is ‘Just One Day’. A twinkling, shimmering odyssey, tracks like these don’t come round all that often. Melodize realise total bliss once again.

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ONE AND NONE IS N TRANS HUMAN OBJECT (THO) //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// THE SUPERIOR FUNCTION ************************************************ X1N SAYS: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// IN THE VAST SURFACE OF ALL MATHEMATICAL EQUATIONS, ONE CAN SENSE EVENTS WHICH SEEM TO COME FROM OTHER DIMENSIONS - RIPPLES AND PATTERNS. THE ZERO POINT NINE INFINITE NUMBER LINE NEVER REACHES ONE, YET IS ONE, NONETHELESS. 0.9999... READ THAT SEQUENCE LIKE A MANTRA. A MANTRA OF DEATH. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// “I TALK IN ALPHA NUMERALS” ************************************************ ### denotes “end”. No more messages to follow.

Following January’s acclaimed vinyl debut from Exterior and summer’s much-loved Kota Motomura EP, Edinburgh’s Hobbes Music label ends 2019 with its first album release, also a debut, from GAMING, a fresh new braindance electronica project straight outta Glasgow, from producer and musician Alan Bryden.

GAMING is a new solo outing that brings together a lifelong love of music and technology and creating left field, rhythmic electronica. It’s the sound of IDM, nineties techno and mensch maschine computer music that is as spontaneous as it is programmed.

“Scenes From A Deserted City is a collection of tracks that started as a set of riffs, loops, rhythms and grooves and unfurled around a sense of growing unease about the future of the urban environment around me.
It’s an album that started out as sound…and ended up as a way of telling stories about the age of anxiety we live in, how our world is changing, and how we find a way through that.
This is DIY electronica from Glasgow – it was made on a growing collection of digital and analogue synths and FX units, including a bunch of modular racks, each with its own idiosyncrasies and character that belies the assumption of the binary.
The studio where it was recorded – an abandoned, and often very cold, school building reclaimed by the community some twenty years ago – offered up stories of resilience, even when all seems lost. (I’m not sure what the mice contributed but they definitely climbed in and out of some synths).
This album is ultimately about my changing relationship with Glasgow, a city I’ve lived in for more than 25 years. It’s about how I feel now about the increasing sense of urban decay and how the city can be a very isolating place. It’s about how I reflect on my younger creative self trying to find a direction but mainly feeling a sense of dislocation and not fitting in. And it’s about the questions I have about how that relationship is changing, how it will be forced to move forward.
The result is a soundtrack for walking home on your own, in that headphone bubble when it’s just you focusing on that music that makes sense to you alone. It’s for early in the morning, after the night before, or going to work with the memories of that slipping and sliding inside your head. It’s about how it feels to be both elated and lonely, to be lost in the familiar, despairingly hopeful.”
ALAN BRYDEN (Glasgow, August ‘19)

The globe-trotting Robert Millis returns to Helen Scarsdale for this beautifully fragile album of dissolved glass rendered as a collage of recontextualized minimalism. To astute listeners, Millis should be a household name due to his work in the unpredictably diverse Climax Golden Twins as well as his impeccable curations for Sublime Frequencies (collections include the Deben Bhattacharya: Men and Music on the Desert Road and Indian Talking Machine books). Hie previous solo work include Relief (released here on The Helen Scarsdale Agency in 2013) and The Lonesome High for the Sun City Girls’ Abduction Records in 2016. His scholarship into the hidden corners of music across the world has also earned him Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships.

Related Ephemera is an album composed mostly from the hiss, the crackle, the surface noise of 78rpm shellacs and wax cylinders. “Horrifying,” Millis explains “is the concept to record collectors that vinyl degrades and can be easily damaged. however, initially records were considered ephemeral, especially 78rpm records. They were novelties. Fleeting. Entertainment.” Millis intends for the album to be a feedback loop whereby the patina of handling, playing, living with the record will circle back to the original source material. Furthering that metaphor, Millis amplifies and dilates feedback tones generated from his collection of vintage gramophones.

That said, Millis does cite the intrusion of exactly one field recording, a broken toy, and a few notes from a cello. But the construction of these rarified tones, crispy textures, ghostly rattles, and fluid resonance that ripples through all of Related Ephemera has its origins in the tactile nature of the vinyl medium. It’s hardly the stuff of sentimental nostalgia though. Related Ephemera is more an act of time travel, slipping backwards and forwards with the scratch of a needle (Watch out! What pre-recorded needle jump sound is not your turntable going haywire!). The emotional core to the album is that of a resigned melancholy, almost Bergman-esque in its starkness but not without a brief moment of dark humor.

Here is an album that aligns itself aesthetically with Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith, Philip Jeck’s more languid collages, and even some of Harry Bertoia’s sculptural atmospherics.

The vinyl was mastered and cut by Helmut Ehler at D&M Berlin, whose expertise was necessary given that part of the original compositions from Millis’ reworked surface noise were exceedingly problematic to cut. The D&M cut does temper the composition into a mysterious, diaphanous cloud; where the digital-only mastering provides a cascade of insects gnawing within your inner ear. Two facets. One piece of music.

Mooring the 'Train Of Thought' at Hamburger Hafen, Latvia's R_R_ delivers aquatic ambience, buoyant electronics and tidal rhythms on the Growing Bin. Hold this shell(ac) to your ears and you’ll hear the sea…

As we hasten towards the inevitable Waterworld of the next century, Latvian composer, sound artist and lecturer Reinis Semēvics charts our safe passage to dry land with his debut album 'Train Of Thought'. Inspired by the rhythmic movement of water and how its rippled reflections bend our perception, Reinis sculpts an immersive sound collage - a precise mixture of field recordings and self-made sounds which swell and swirl as we bathe in their beauty.

Bookended by the Baltic's roar at the Bay of Rīga, 'Train Of Thought' drifts from the harbour to the open sea, conveying the restful calm and frenetic power of a body of water throughout. Misty pads and delicate piano conjure lapping waves and blue skies, bubbling sequences ripple up from the deep and cascading melodies fall around hypnotic rhythms, each distinct droplet offering a different feeling and mood. One moment flows into the next, nine rivers pouring into a single ocean of sonic bliss.
The alias R_R_ is a tribute to his grandfather, the composer Ģederts Ramans, whose influence helped set Reinis' sonic journey in motion. We're very happy he's decided to stop off in the Growing Bin, and we're sure you will be too.
Patrick Ryder

A spiritual successor to our last Sleazy McQueen 12", Daikaya is a slab of buttery, slow-burn disco that coats the dance floor in molasses, making the party move with a certain sensuality.

The four-track vinyl EP includes three originals, all by Sleazy McQueen and Terry Grant, and one remix, courtesy of Versatile chief, Gilb’R, who turns the title track inside out and gives it a creeping, alien presence while not letting go of its starry-eyed, luscious warmth. For the digital edition, a second version, stripped down and dubby, is tacked on as a bonus.

Following January’s acclaimed vinyl debut from Exterior and summer’s much-loved Kota Motomura EP, Edinburgh’s Hobbes Music label ends 2019 with its first album release, also a debut, from GAMING, a fresh new braindance electronica project straight outta Glasgow.

GAMING is a new solo outing that brings together a lifelong love of music and technology and creating left field, rhythmic electronica. It’s the sound of IDM, nineties techno and mensch maschine computer music that is as spontaneous as it is programmed. It's a bit of a grower and may take time to get under your skin....

“Scenes From A Deserted City is a collection of tracks that started as a set of riffs, loops, rhythms and grooves and unfurled around a sense of growing unease about the future of the urban environment around me.

It’s an album that started out as sound…and ended up as a way of telling stories about the age of anxiety we live in, how our world is changing, and how we find a way through that.

This is DIY electronica from Glasgow – it was made on a growing collection of digital and analogue synths and FX units, including a bunch of modular racks, each with its own idiosyncrasies and character that belies the assumption of the binary.

The studio where it was recorded – an abandoned, and often very cold, school building reclaimed by the community some twenty years ago – offered up stories of resilience, even when all seems lost. (I’m not sure what the mice contributed but they definitely climbed in and out of some synths).

This album is ultimately about my changing relationship with Glasgow, a city I’ve lived in for more than 25 years. It’s about how I feel now about the increasing sense of urban decay and how the city can be a very isolating place. It’s about how I reflect on my younger creative self trying to find a direction but mainly feeling a sense of dislocation and not fitting in. And it’s about the questions I have about how that relationship is changing, how it will be forced to move forward.
The result is a soundtrack for walking home on your own, in that headphone bubble when it’s just you focusing on that music that makes sense to you alone. It’s for early in the morning, after the night before, or going to work with the memories of that slipping and sliding inside your head. It’s about how it feels to be both elated and lonely, to be lost in the familiar, despairingly hopeful.”

The Galleria is a project from Morgan Geist (Storm Queen, Metro Area) that ripples with echoes of the indigenous music of long-dead suburban New Jersey shopping malls and NYC radio stations: bombastic freestyle, club dubs, razor-edits and bubblegum-pop R&B. The newest single, Stop & Go, is the second release since the 2015 debut, Calling Card/Mezzanine. Vocals are once again provided by Jessy Lanza, whose two solo albums on Hyperdub were met with critical acclaim and were both shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. Stop & Go features a drum-a-pella for creative mixing, plus an extended, dancefloor-friendly dub.

Following the Stardancer EP and his remix for All I Need To Get High by Damian Lazarus & The Ancient Moons, Ae:ther unveils his most accomplished and daring work yet on the highly anticipated debut album Me released on Crosstown Rebels. Blazing a trail with his natural aptitude for crafting emotive, captivating compositions that have landed him releases on Crosstown Rebels Afterlife and Fabric, Ae:ther presents his debut LP. The album is a painstakingly produced collection of haunting melodies and narcotic rhythms that display his love and inspiration for ambient electronica, deep underground music and introspective atmospheres, culminating in dreamlike soundscapes programmed with taut percussion. The album begins on Stardancer, setting the tone with gentle keys and space influenced licks that portray a cosmonaut ascending into the stratosphere. This moves into the glistening, atmospheric Finferli, where synths depict aliens conversing in a distant, just-discovered world. Sub-aquatic ambient fills We’ll be Together, boosts of energy and intricate melodies weave in and out of the vocal, locked to the dubby groove. Ice cold subtlety and the otherworldly electronics of Costes drip slowly like water down a pane of glass. A mood of relaxation and weightlessness continues on Tina, a tender beat combined with pattering echoed chimes. N.62, a special ethereal piece, features warm chords and reduced percussion, gradually developing like the morning sun rising. Mysterious, playful charm unfurls on Elf, progressive harmony teases towards a crescendo before dropping back into the hypnotic beat. Clark is light and airy, funky melody constructing an interplanetary anthem. Stimulating a brooding mood, fuzzy clicks and glitches dance on the deep bass of Spektre II, conveying dust spraying off the surface of a moon landing. The shimmering ripples of electronica on title track Me fuse with delicate human vocals creating a heart-warming, personal account of Ae:ther’s relationship with his instruments. Trademark bleeps and blips wash over natural broken beats in one last final call to his utopia in the album outro.

The two collaborators, known separately for contemporary electronic music & free clarinet experimentations team up to create the delirious trip, Footfalls.

Two scenes are presented here, seemingly taken from different sides of the same desolated seaside setting, loosly inspired by poet and novalist T.S Elliot and Samuel Becket. In Towards the Door, Gareth Davis´ bass clarinet breathes slow, wave-like tones that merge with the oft-rythmic electronic textures from his counterpart. A third of the way in, Robin Rimbaud´s synth erupts into a Blade Runner-esque epic harmonic section that disappears as suddenly as it arrives - leaving ripples of oscillation in its wake, slowly unfolding into the sound of waves, as it arrives back where it begun : as a full circle, drawn in echo´s of sound.

Smokefall begins with the words „Invisible choirs“, subtly spoken by a woman’s voice among a blurred distant conversation, as textural sound effects creep forwards to the point where a slow progressing but steady LFO rhythm enters. Water, metal & smoke are absorbed into a creeping tribal passage, acompanied by long clarinet tones. The piece expands further and further into a state of ecstatic harmonic noise that fulfills all parts of your body – if played loud. Both artists from here on move into full on crushing electronics, all while Rimbaud´s Kilpatrick Phenol synth drives the background with its pulses and repetative bassline. The piece has an ellipse like rotation that makes one feel a sort of blissful vertigo that reverberates in your mind after the piece has ended.

Footfalls is an euphoric trip from two artists that – although prolific - manages to arrive at the perfect meeting point to deliver two hard to shake pieces of dizzying electro-acoustic perfection.

Three 1982 disco classics from boogie trio Plush formed under the guidance of Angela Winbush, René Moore and Bobby Watson get the official, remastered reissue treatment from the original tapes.

Opening up the EP, an Angela & Rene original 'Free & Easy' is taken on by the Plush troupe, with the legendary Tee Scott providing a trademark extended mix. It kicks off with cosmic synths that dissipate into heavy funk, electric bass riffs, whilst scorching top lines and choice guitar licks trade off over the top. Scott's magic is clear to see in the composition of this extended mix. A man who clearly knew how to work a dancefloor, his use of breakdowns especially, extending the anticipation and power the track commands on its dancers. From the bass breaks that weave in modulated synths, to those that utilise the glorious sustained piano chords, cutting to just vocals and percussion before everything is added back in for ultimate dancefloor elation.

First up on the B side, 'We Got The Love', a more soulful, slowed down tip where staccato guitar plucks and chunky slap bass marries with warm Rhodes chords, and lush vocal harmonies blend with the power of Siedah Garrett commanding the lead vocals. A passion ingrained in their voices that cannot be taught, hanging in the air, as they hang onto their phrases.

Lastly, 'Livin For Your Love' a boogie-based serenade written by Herman Chainey and Tony L. Phillips, intertwines Phillips' deep dulcet tones with Plush's backing. Add in a dose of pure '80s bass synth, twanging funk flashes and juicy bass guitar ripples and you've got a recipe sure to woo any wandering hearts out there.

Ian Brown has released a brand new single, 'First World Problems', his first solo material in nine years. The single precedes the new album 'Ripples', which will be released on March 1, 2019. Record Of The Week on Virgin Radio and Radio X (5/11). Added to Absolute Radio Daytime and Radio X Daytime.

Loya is a new project by French producer Sébastien Lejeune, which allows him to research his
own cultural heritage, as a native of La Réunion.
For the past five years, Loya has been exploring the musical environment of the sister islands of the
Mascarenes (Indian Ocean), breaking down the boundaries between electronic music and
traditional music in a globalized world. Growing up in the great melting pot of La Reunion, Loya was
exposed to a number of cultures and rhythms that fueled his curiosity.
Settling in metropolitan France in the mid-90s, Loya's first encounter with electronic music
happened upon discovering acts such as Autechre, Plaid and Boards of Canada. Soon, Loya was
drawing from Intelligent Dance Music and bleep techno to build complex rhythm arrangements and
ethereal melodies. Throughout this research, Loya gradually managed to tame the erratic nature of
his machines to summon states of trance that reminded him of the music he grew up listening to as
native of the Mascarene.
From this route through the meanders of contemporary electronic music, Loya developed a
trademark sound based on triple time beats, pointillist sound design and a taste for experimentation.
Such distinctive features can already be heard on his first self-produced album Eruption, released
in 2014 and the EP Indian Ocean, released in 2016 on Mawimbi Records, although Corail is his
most accomplished work and a testament of his clear talent.
Exploring the blue depths of the Indian Ocean with the fluency of a native, the ten compositions of
Corail unfold like an archipelago. Showcasing the talents of traditional musicians such as Mauritius
ravanne icon Menwar and Madagascan accordion master Régis Gizavo, Corail finds a fine balance
between the soft, velvety ripples of modular synthesizers and the rawness of frantic percussion
motifs and local field recordings.

Jerome Derradji + Still Music are proud to present Let's Dance Records - Mike Macharello & Duane Thamm Jr. Chicago 1983-85. The origin of house music, at least in a commercial sense, is generally associated with young African American producers from Chicago's South Side, but one of the first Chicago house music labels was started by a young, white, gay DJ from the far west suburbs.
The Let's Dance story will take you back to the beginnings of Mike Macherello and Duane Thamm Jr. when Chicago's house music was in its infancy.
Back then, after starting as young roller disco Dj in the late seventies, Mike Macherello gradually made its way to the best radio station in 1981 - WBMX - and started a movement that still ripples through the city today. Let's Dance's founder, Mike Macharello, was a DJ who bridged diverse music scenes, from rock clubs to discos. The Let's Dance record label helped establish Chicago's dance music industry between 1983 and 1985, before becoming Play House Records (which will be reissued by Still Music in an upcoming set). Macharello's pal, DJ Duane Thamm Jr., also from the 'burbs, became the label's main producer and one of house music's most important studio engineers and producers. Mike and Duane went on to release a few legendary singles for Let's Dance that are still to this day considered to be the earliest House music records coming from Chicago.The 12' pack includes faithful reissues of Selenia's 'Single Girl', Duane Thamm Jr. 'Jump Trax', the insane Knight Action 'R-Trax/D-Rail' 12's along with a 5 tracks 12' compilation and an accompanying poster insert including rare pictures and artifacts with the story of the label.

The new OHM compilation from Ambidextrous Records features some top drawer electronic acts such as Norken (Delsin, Skam, Clear) and Christ. (Formerly Boards Of Canada) and has support from BBC Radio 1 in Scotland - New Music In Scotland, Kiss FM Australia - Brain Food, Annie Mac - Radio 1 UK, Orde Meikle (Slam DJs), Amazing Beats Show - Amazing Radio & many others.

Granny13 opens with Nicola Ratti's 'Odd Doubt'. With the use of a modular system and tape loops, a broken rhythm is obtained by parallelism between single sound signals as LFO one or processed tapes.On the second side, Giovanni Lami's 'Johnny Leech' is made with a small bunch of equipment, just a chaotic hand-made synth (cacophonator) and a memoryman, working mainly on static electricity and leakage current in the synth used without any kind of power supply.

Reviews

The Wire
''Two Italian mucisians share a split single of glitchy fun and everyone goes some happy. Lami s piece uses a defective unplugged synthesizer to make huzzing chitters that have a kind of rhythm in spots. Ratti s contribution is a bit more structured it sounds like a record of accordion miniatures broken into pieces, then glued back together with little pieces of felt stuck onto it. Which would definitely be a pretty hep thing to hear.''

Textura
''Some releases qualify as art objects as much as musical collections, a case in point this recent seven-inch vinyl outing featuring material by Nicola Ratti on one side and Giovanni Lami on the other. That shouldn't be interpreted to mean that the musical content isn't worthy of one's time, as it assuredly is, but more to emphasize how striking the sleeve artwork by Opora is and how effectively it complements the musical content.Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and issued in an edition of 150 copies, the release opens with Odd Doubt, a concise experimental setting by the Milan-born Ratti, who's issued material on labels such as Anticipate, Preservation, Die Schachtel, and Entr'acte and who's presently working with Ielasi in the project Bellows, with Attila Faravelli as Faravelliratti, and with Enrico Malatesta and Faravelli in ~Tilde. Though Ratti started out as a guitar player, his current focus is more on beat-analog experimentation and sound installation. In Odd Doubt, Ratti's modular system and tape loops generate broken rhythms that varyingly call to mind dub-techno, even if dub-techno of an extremely wonky variety. Off-beat chords, crackle, and snare strikes add to the dubwise flavour of the material, though ultimately it registers as more of an experimental exploration than straight-up dub exercise.The flip side features Johnny Leech by Lami, a one-time photographer now known as both a field recordist and a musician focusing on soundscaping and sound-ecology. In his contribution to the seven-inch, Lami's chaotic hand-made synth (cacophonator) and memoryman give birth to blustery smears of static electricity that ultimately mutate into an Oval-like array of ripples and scratches. Johnny Leech is so removed from anything conventionally musical, it makes Odd Doubt sound like a Top 40 pop song. Like Ratti's piece, Lami's is short, so short, in fact, it gives the impression of being an excerpt from a larger sound art work. Here's a release where the abstract nature of the musical content matches its visual presentation.December 2014''

Vital Weekly 951
''Granny Records is from Greece, but the two musicians here are from Italy, of which I don't I heard from Giovanni Lami before. His piece is called 'Johnny Leech' and he uses a hand-made synth known as the cacophonator and a memory man (a delay machine), 'working mainly on static electricity and leakage current in the synth used without any kind of power supply'. It makes up for a nice piece of chaotic lo-fi sound, which is put forward through methods of improvisation. Quite a nice piece and it fits the format very well. The crackling of vinyl surely adds an extra layer. Nicola Ratti uses a modular synth and tape loops, of what seems to be percussive material, but the rhythm is broken down and the whole thing has a nice gentle feel to it, even when it bumps, clicks and glides, but the synth makes it more subtle. Here too one could say this perfect for a 7": one doesn't have the idea that this is cut from a longer part as is not unusual with this kind music. Especially Ratti seems to have worked out his music as a composition, which is very nice. (FdW)''Vital Weekly 951''Granny Records is from Greece, but the two musicians here are from Italy, of which I don't I heard from Giovanni Lami before. His piece is called 'Johnny Leech' and he uses a hand-made synth known as the cacophonator and a memory man (a delay machine), 'working mainly on static electricity and leakage current in the synth used without any kind of power supply'. It makes up for a nice piece of chaotic lo-fi sound, which is put forward through methods of improvisation. Quite a nice piece and it fits the format very well. The crackling of vinyl surely adds an extra layer. Nicola Ratti uses a modular synth and tape loops, of what seems to be percussive material, but the rhythm is broken down and the whole thing has a nice gentle feel to it, even when it bumps, clicks and glides, but the synth makes it more subtle. Here too one could say this perfect for a 7": one doesn't have the idea that this is cut from a longer part as is not unusual with this kind music. Especially Ratti seems to have worked out his music as a composition, which is very nice. (FdW)''Vital Weekly 951''Granny Records is from Greece, but the two musicians here are from Italy, of which I don't I heard from Giovanni Lami before. His piece is called 'Johnny Leech' and he uses a hand-made synth known as the cacophonator and a memory man (a delay machine), 'working mainly on static electricity and leakage current in the synth used without any kind of power supply'. It makes up for a nice piece of chaotic lo-fi sound, which is put forward through methods of improvisation. Quite a nice piece and it fits the format very well. The crackling of vinyl surely adds an extra layer. Nicola Ratti uses a modular synth and tape loops, of what seems to be percussive material, but the rhythm is broken down and the whole thing has a nice gentle feel to it, even when it bumps, clicks and glides, but the synth makes it more subtle. Here too one could say this perfect for a 7": one doesn't have the idea that this is cut from a longer part as is not unusual with this kind music. Especially Ratti seems to have worked out his music as a composition, which is very nice. (FdW)''

Bursting through the vapour trails of previous Solar Phenomena pilot Antonio Ruscito, London's Roberto is invited to the take the controls of the forward-thrusting new label's third adventure.

With turbine pads raising hairs at 20 paces, opening track 'Into The Blue' is an alluring statement. Adorned with breathing atmospherics and stately kicks, it builds perfectly on Roberto's previous work both on his own highly respected label Fossil Archives and other eminent imprints such as Emmanuel's Arts and Dehnert's Fachwerk as a fusion of contrasts and shades.

'DX Waves' takes us up a gear as it heads nose-first into a techno vortex. Relentless, driving and hypnotic, there's a pneumatic funk to the drums while the riff ripples and stimulates with a warmth and fluidity that instantly recalls the legacy of Motor City while remaining plotted to a path of its own.

This sense of unbridled drive and energy continues on Roberto's final original of the EP: 'Chord Recall'. Here the drums take more of a central position on the stage as the warped, melting tones and textures wrap themselves around the punctuated kicks and occasional deep-splash cymbals. Laced with a deep sense of space and a bewildering sensation of an unknown destination, it s another innovative voyage for Solar Phenomena that's brought home with an exciting revision conclusion from the one and only Peverelist.

A Bristol beat explorer who needs no introduction, Peverelist's take on 'Chord Recall' takes off where his recent album 'Tessellations' left us at the start of the summer. With his loose broken drum signature, Peverelist provides space for Roberto's original textured elements to take place at the centre of the stage and roam and evolve freely and hypnotically. A fitting end to another exceptional and innovative exploration, both Roberto's originals and Peverelist's remix set us up eagerly for the next Solar Phenomena chapter

Silencio celebrates the first year of the label with a double-pack vinyl aptly titled Uno.
Comprising of new and established artists, the tracks on Uno collectively summarize the the feel of this label's year, while giving us a hint of what to expect in the year to come.
Click Box & Stefan Dichev kick off the release with 'Memories'. Presenting a collaborative production that will prove over and over again why sound is one of the strongest senses tied to memory. Engineered with emotionally responsive rhythms that roll into a rocksteady baseline, this track evokes feelings with finesse. "Memories" also features funky squiggle sounds and trailing even-tempered tones to punctuate its procession. This is one you'll want to relive every time the opportunity arises.
New comer Wave Particle Singularity has done it again. 'Virtue' is a tremendous track that will quickly establish itself as one of your new favorite things. The drum sequence, accented by beguiling background sounds and curious vocals, gallops throughout this selection with all its feet off the ground together in each smooth stride. Plus, it also comes fully equipped with a pleasingly unpredictable pace in the form of some moody, well-orchestrated changes that result in a perfectly adjusted attitude. Never a dull moment on the dance floor.
Guaranteed.
Kepler.'s latest offering 'Tool A' possess all the qualities one would normally associate with a fine wine because the taste left on the palate after its consumption is both complex and satisfying. During its ascent, effects that compress a thousand echoes into a single sample ride alongside an active baseline that ripples accordingly. Subtle, flavorful snippets bleep and bloop in complete balance, giving this cut a coordinated, contemplative vibe that brings everything into focus.
With his first track on Silencio, Yuuki Hori's 'Scene 5' is truly a unique item. This electromechanicaly exotic sounding export from Japan makes an impression with layers that are neatly stacked and minimal to the max. Its main feature, a sample that seemingly mimics the mating call of a male bullfrog, rhythmically ribbits in harmony with the beat, bellowing over the entirety of this track. All the various elements of this composition come together in a natural way that feels symbiotic and sounds superb.
Another Silencio first, Jorge Ciccioli's 'TD8' has a deliberate intention to create momentum, with a deep, penetrating baseline that rises to the occasion by descending the darkest depths of its own digital horizon. In the midst of the mix the listener is greeted with a clever chorus that effectively sounds like air vibrating, or in layman's terms "blowing", within an empty glass bottle. As it goes through the motions, observe how every note is noticeably nuanced in an effort to reflect the subtle changes that take place.
Closing out the release and year for Silencio, is Laughing Man with 'Reach Out'. Hard, heavyand heavenly are all terms that could be used to express the sentiment of this selection.
Notice how right from the get go this production profoundly pounds out its agenda with a solid, speedy beat that relentlessly rocks throughout the recording. Accompanied by aseries of wavy, spirited vocal layers, ringing bells and an inspired intersection of cymbals,this track is one hell of a ride that will enable you to make contact with the other side.

This record is meant to be enjoyed like a seascape. It offers a Mediterranean journey, one that Ulysses, Aeneas, and Jason with his Argonauts charted first and Valencian artist, Pep Llopis, retraced and retread — from the islands of Menorca to Santorini. All of his experiences are aboard this vessel of sound: no format in mind, no course but the chasm within self. While Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes materializes at this moment as an album, another object suits Pep's project: Lewis Carroll's Map of the Ocean' from his The Hunting of the Snark. It's a simple illustration: the thin outline of a blank rectangle that represents the sea with no trace of land. Carroll offers this empty space as an object that all can understand, a container for possibility. Likewise, Poiemusia offers a musical language that any listener can understand. Untethered to the meaning of words, one is set adrift and free in minimalist sound and traditional music. Llopis, who often composed for dance, originally wrote Poiemusia for a performance at the Poiemusia festival (the Greek contraction of poetry and music). Peer composers, Carles Santos and Wim Mertens, also participated in the festival, which took place over several days at the Teatro Princesa in Valencia. Llopis paired his newly formed avant-garde compositions with the poems of fellow Valencian, Salvador Jàfer.

In the studio presentation of Poiemusia, voices softly converse, only to evaporate. The poetry is incanted by the poet himself. Jàfer enunciates at the verge of song, drawing dimension from his Mediterranean travels. He is accompanied by Montse Anfruns' vaporous voice. She extends the roll of her r's and the hiss of each s as if casting a spell of Salacia. Pep bathes their conversational performance in slight delays and reverb, allowing their voices to dissolve into an ocean of sound.

Llopis was influenced by minimal American composers like Steve Reich and La Monte Young. He embraces the melodic sides of these masters in the winds of El Vell Rei De La Serp' and the tender piano on Nits de cristall.' You will find yourself submerged in tonality on tracks like Jardins Aquàtics' and La Nau Dels Argonautes' which have a kinship to Philip Glass or Daniel Lentz. Each piece extends from 5 to almost 14 minutes. The music gently laps against listening skin— sometimes placid, sometimes shimmering. Ripples of sound swell and quicken. Flutes like schools of fish. The spray of chimes. Taught strings break like the shore. Tingling, undulating synths. The record cover acts as a map, tracing the forms of the original art and providing the poems in Catalana and Spanish. Once bathed in these sounds one will emerge like Carroll's map: a perfect and absolute blank.' Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonaute emerges in vinyl and digital formats on May 19, 2017 through Freedom To Spend.

The first time I heard of Mattes Schwarz, someone called him 'Stecken-Mattes'. Stecken was a defining, if almost secret, Cologne dance music venue of the 2000s and early 2010s, a minuscule basement without curfew and seemingly any other restrictions, where the up to twelve hour long DJ-sets felt like a tightly knit circle of friends just playing records to each other: The selectors from the night before and the one after reliably sitting right in front of the just over one meter long stretch of the bar that formed its booth, never missing out on a chance to see their mates play, heads nodding and hands clapping through the smoke-filled air, until someone started to sing along, and eventually everyone got up for a few hours of moves on the 15 square meter dancefloor, on a grey Wednesday or Saturday morning at 7 or just as well 10 am.
Mattes Schwarz started DJing in 1982 at age twelve, inspired by, as many West-German kids, the GI-DJs of the roller skating rinks around US army bases. While he got heavily involved in Cologne's BMX scene of the 90s, he never really stopped, and during the main years of being known as Stecken-Mattes and playing there each Friday night, he coincidently lived in Magazine record's homebase, North- Eastern Cologne's old harbour.
One day after Stecken's closure had sent restructuring ripples through the city - I imagine him getting up in the morning and taking a deep breath - he decided to send Magazine a few tracks.
'I Don't Know' is Mattes Schwarz' first release.

A regular contributor to Figure SPC, it was Jeroen Search who both started the series and also put an end to its story. With this creative chapter neatly closed, he is now bringing his ever-impressive work back to the main label. Across the EP the Dutch artist doesn't stick to one style, instead he lets his infamous machines roam about freely. They take us for a smooth ride along swaying dub chords and gentle ripples until bellowing eches slowly rise above a hypnotic groove.On the B-side Search then pulls out all the stops and barges right in with fidgety claps and whirling bleeps, leaving the track itself gasping for air. This is the renowned ferocity of his live act - carved into wax! Ensuing the sonic assault, a simple synth figure emerges stoically over an almost housy bounce as nostalgic rave strings bring the EP to an epic ending. Firmly rooted in the past while always looking forward, Jeroen Search clearly is still on the top of his game. He simply keeps coming up with timeless techno - time and time again.

Storming into our fifth release from the dirty shores of New Jersey, Green Village is proud to present Village Elders 001, a compilation EP featuring new material from artists who have already flown the flag for GV. The A-side is held down by the Plan B duo of DJ Spider and Dakini9, purveyors of the Metro Area's dirtiest and deepest house sounds. Spider gets toxic a second time, following his 2013 Instruction drop with 'Toxic Trace 2', a thickly layered deep house cut whose seedy percussion underbelly contrasts vividly with the more traditional deep house pads that accompany it. Dakini9's 'Lost Paradise' is dark and mysterious like its title, the hats, trumpets, and vocals emerging in tangled webs of dub effects, a strong follow-up to her dope EP for the label. Disaroen, a duo from Toronto, half of which previously appeared on GV, turns in the most barren of the four tracks, 'Serious Doorman', heads-down techno that crackles to life halfway in and an auspicious debut for a promising new group. Last is NJ heavyweight Nicuri, a rising star whose 'Ripples of Time' closes the EP in his signature searching, melodic style.

Gone beyond. That's what they say when an (astro) pilot crashes to earth and takes the journey into the big sky.

When Juan Trippe took that last flight little did he know that his re-incarnated self would be an electronic pioneer. In tandem with his co-pilot Guido Zen (his own father also a pilot) and Kyle Martin (from the Land Of Light) they formed Brain Machine and scaled the highest Peaks to bring back music both unearthly and intensely human.

Are we all not stardust anyway This music proves it, takes you out flips you over and rolls you in stardust. Don't try and think it through, make sense of it, grasp it - just wander in wonder and bask in beauty.
Get lost again.