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Heiko Voss has earned near mythical status as a torchbearer for the emotional, deeply felt and quietly radical style of electronic music. The blissed-out radiance of his Kompakt Pop single, “I Think About You” remains one of the label catalog highlights and a stellar run of collaborative singles as Schaeben & Voss; others might know him for his stewardship of the excellent, much-underrated Firm imprint. But with his new album, 3:30 Minutes To Live, released by Michael Mayer’s label Imara, Voss returns after a long silence with a beautiful collection of songs that hymn heartbreak with a lusciously melodic touch.

There is something definitive and newly confident in 3:30 Minutes To Live that has it feeling like a real statement of intent if compared to his earlier releases. “Although it’s not, 3:30 Minutes To Live feels like my debut album,” Voss reflects. “All releases before were more song sketches or electronic dance tracks.” Bunkering down in Teary Eyes Studio, Voss worked up somewhere between thirty and forty sketches of songs, which he whittled down to the twelve collected here, all of them situated in a unique space, but very much in accord with Voss’s defining aesthetic, which he describes as “indie pop music with a lot of guitar, electronic elements and a great love for melancholic ‘80s synth-lines.”

Voss is sensitive to both variety and consistency – 3:30 Minutes To Live sits together as an assured, vibrant collection of pop songs, but it’s marked by all kinds of surprising incident, like the guitar solo that erupts out of “This Is My Life”, or the acoustic guitar-led melancholy of the closing “This Summer”. It’s all borne of the alchemy of the studio process and the intimate romance of music-making. “If you constantly feel a little bit like you’re in love while writing and producing your music – simply because of the sound of the synth flowing warmly and gently through the room, or because the sequence of notes awakens something in you, or even a randomly arising groove in the loop of a guitar lick makes you shout, ‘Ha!!’ – then it usually becomes a beautiful song,” Voss nods. “Those moments make me happy.”

There’s also a delicious tension between the push of the music, its melodic lushness and gliding, ballerina-like movement, and the darker currents that pull through Voss’s lyrics, inspired by a “short, dramatic and toxic love affair.” This may read like familiar terrain for a pop album, but the way Voss weaves language through both the extra-linguistic joys of music and the inarticulate speech of the heart somehow allows for direct communication that is simultaneously plain-spoken and deeply profound. “Say It” is a simple, devastatingly effective plaint of alienation; “She Wasn’t Lonely” a simple portrait of everyday living set to chiming, clacking guitars, the music in the bridge taking astral flight as the titular character ‘lets herself go.’

A smart and sharp collection of songs that captures you with its gorgeous melodicism just as it blindsides you with its aching heart, 3:30 Minutes To Live is Heiko Voss at his most assured and open-hearted best.

Heiko Voss hat sich als Fackelträger einer emotionalen, von ganzem Herzen kommenden und nicht auf den ersten Blick radikalen Spielart von elektronischer Musik einen nahezu mythischen Status erarbeitet. Das schiere Glück, welches seine Kompakt Pop-Single "I Think About You" aus dem Jahr 2003 immer noch ausstrahlt, macht sie nach wie vor zu einem der Highlights des Label-Katalogs, wo sie neben einer ganzen Reihe hervorragender Singles als Schaeben & Voss steht; andere kennen Heiko vielleicht durch das tolle und vielfach unterschätzte Label Firm, für das er zusammen mit Thomas Schaeben verantwortlich war. Mit seinem neuen Album “3:30 Minutes To Live”, das am 4. März 2022 auf Michael Mayers Label Imara erscheint, kehrt Voss nun nach einer langen Pause mit einer wunderschönen Sammlung von Songs zurück, die den Herzschmerz – getragen auf den Schwingen unwiderstehlicher Melodien – ausgiebig besingen.

“3:30 Minutes To Live” kommt mit einer gehörigen Portion Überzeugung und Selbstbewusstsein daher, was im Vergleich zu seinen früheren Veröffentlichungen wie ein bewusstes Statement wirkt. "Obwohl es das nicht ist, fühlt sich ‘3:30 Minutes To Live’ wie mein Debütalbum an", meint Voss. "Alle meine vorherigen Veröffentlichungen waren eher Song-Skizzen oder elektronische Dance-Tracks."

Im Teary Eyes Studio arbeitete Voss zwischen dreißig und vierzig Songskizzen aus, die er auf die zwölf hier versammelten Songs reduzierte, die alle ihren eigenen Raum einnehmen, dabei aber sehr gut mit Voss' übergeordneter Ästhetik harmonieren, die er als "Indie-Pop-Musik mit viel Gitarre, elektronischen Elementen und einer großen Liebe für melancholische 80er-Jahre-Synthies" beschreibt.

Voss ist sowohl für Abwechslung als auch für Konsistenz empfänglich - “3:30 Minutes To Live“ ist eine selbstsichere, lebendige Sammlung von Popsongs, die aber auch von allerlei Überraschungen geprägt ist, wie dem Gitarrensolo, das aus “This Is My Life” herausbricht, oder die von einer Akustikgitarre getragene Melancholie des abschließenden “This Summer”.

Das alles ist entstanden aus der besonderen Alchemie des Studioprozesses und der intimen Romantik des Musikmachens. "Wenn du beim Schreiben und Produzieren deiner Musik ständig das Gefühl hast, ein bisschen verliebt zu sein – einfach weil der Klang des Synthesizers warm und sanft durch den Raum fließt, oder weil die Notenfolge etwas in dir weckt, oder sogar ein zufällig auftauchender Groove im Loop eines Gitarren-Licks dich ein 'Ha!' ausrufen lässt – dann wird daraus meist ein schöner Song", nickt Voss. "Diese Momente machen mich glücklich."

Es entsteht eine besondere Spannung zwischen dem positiven Elan der Musik, ihrer melodischen Verschwendungssucht, den gleitenden, Ballerina-artigen Bewegungen und den dunkleren Strömungen, die durch Voss' Texte ziehen, die von einer "kurzen, dramatischen und giftigen Liebesaffäre" inspiriert sind. Das mag sich wie ein vertrautes Terrain für ein Pop-Album anhören, aber die Art und Weise, wie Voss die Sprache sowohl durch die nonverbalen Elemente der Musik als auch durch den nicht artikulierten Ausdruck des Herzens verwebt, ermöglicht eine Art direkte Kommunikation, die gleichzeitig ausgesprochen klar und trotzdem tiefgründig ist. “Say It" ist eine erschütternd einprägsame Anklage von Entfremdung; "She Wasn't Lonely" ist ein einfaches Porträt des alltäglichen Lebens, untermalt von klappernden Gitarren, in dem die Musik einen astralen Flug unternimmt, während die Titelfigur sich "gehen lässt".

“3:30 Minutes To Live“ ist eine kluge und scharfsinnige Sammlung von Songs, die den Zuhörenden mit ihren wunderschönen Melodien fesseln, aber auch mit einer Menge schmerzenden Gefühlen konfrontiert. Ein Album, auf dem Heiko Voss ganz bei sich ist und Euch dabei mehr als nur sein Herz öffnet.

Since its inception in 2007, Minimood has continued to explore the deeper, dubbier realms of techno, house and minimal, playing host to the likes of CV313, David Hausdorf, Steve O’Sullivan, Luke Hess, Sascha Dive, Delano Smith and many more. Now, label head Voltmar returns to the subseries Minimood Extra together with his good friend Polish DJ/producer Blazej Malinowski to serve up two individual atmospheric, dub-techno reworks of Russian underground duo Advanced Dreams’ ‘Blurred Trip’ pressed on transparent wax.

Inner Tension chief Blazej Malinowski’s interpretation of the aptly titled ‘Blurred Trip’ creates a complex sonic soundscape as evocative keys, subtle percussion, reverberating basslines and ethereal samples work in harmony. On the flip, Voltmar offers up a chuggy, stripped back reshape as ghostly echoes, tight snares, and a punchy bassline carry this profoundly emotive cut.

"Lloyd Stellar X The Droid - Rise of theAMachines is an exciting debut collaboration between Erik Griffioen & Ben Evans.AAn impressive maxi EP, loaded with cutting edge electro brimmingAwith musicality, sound design and expert production.A

Kicking off the release comes theAtitle track 'Rise Of The Machines', this quirky yet nuanced excursion sets the pace, allowing it's nifty ricocheting sequences, slick 808s, and tripped out ear candy to hit the clubs. 'Prisoners features a wiggly bass led jam, plastered with synths and finished with a dash of vocoded vocals. TheAduos ability to illustrate a dense sonic picture is evident once again on 'Cell Block' as intricate razor sharp drum programming holds the ship steady while ominous synths let the head wander before rich melancholic pads blast a sense of perspective and emotive depth.A
A
Onto the flip side - 'Room And Pillar'Agrabs the bull by the horns with a tough and aggressive bass line driven banger. Shrieking, twisted synth lines and FX are shattered across the track, keeping tension levels peaking, while TR808 rhythms cut through with military precision. Contrasting A'The Neutral Zone' sucks us into a deep atmospheric orbit of blissful yet inquisitive FM synthesis, distant emotive pads, fortified by warm stately bass tones. ARounding off the EP 'Coming Home' exhibits electro minimalism at its finest. An entangled, ever evolving musical conversation between bass and upper register synths leads, filled with a sense of hope and optimism, assisted by meticulous programmed electro drums, reminiscent of the best of Schatraxx.A

The mysterious trio Pandilla LTD provide the first release on Ozy, a new sub-label run by Miguel Melo from Lisbon’s Carpet & Snares family. Never ones to tread the easiest path, Pandilla show off their full range of moods and tempos on this 4-tracker, opening with the jazzy and glitchy breaks of vignette ‘Beat Untitled’. This leads into ‘aWARe’, a downtempo epic of cinematic ambience and released tension that contrasts with the more dancefloor-ready cuts on the B. With its patient dubby tick-tock, ‘Mind Trick’ feels like a long-lost Basic Channel side-project, while the more extrovert ‘Trying To Go’ closes things in style with a shimmy and a shake.

Array expresses the experience of a remote Antarctic research station through the convergence of sound, site and performance. The result is an immersive and affective experience of the spaces, protocols and conditions comprising the bracing polar environment. Array is a companion piece to Polar Force, a performance-installation work by Philip Samartzis and Eugene Ughetti, presented by Speak Percussion.

Array features recordings of radar and scientific instrumentation used for upper atmospheric research and terrestrial communication. These sounds reveal the sophisticated technology and architecture used and heard within the Australian Antarctic Territory. Many of the recordings focus on the way the built environment is transformed through stress and fatigue caused by extreme climate and weather events including freezing temperatures and high velocity winds.

Together with the field recordings are layers of live performance using custom built instrumentation to produce a unique series of textures, rhythmic cycles, resonances and timbral phenomena. The application of tension and pressure upon the assorted instruments recalls the distressed state of highly specialised infrastructure found within the perimeters of a research station.

A polar research station comprises many types and volumes of prefabricated space. In dialogue with this are the unique spaces used to record the instrumental performance. By merging different spaces Array brings into focus various industrial resonances, spatial characteristics, timbres of metal and concrete, and sonic artefacts produced by hard and permeable materials and surfaces.

In three parts, Array presents Antarctica as a liminal space oscillating between representation and abstraction to challenge often repeated tropes. The intent is to blur the relationship between the recorded and performed to produce a hyper-realistic encounter of the powerful forces that operate at the margins of our planet. One hears the precariousness of a remote research station contorted by unrelenting stress, compressed air forced through waterborne fipples and the volatility of weather events.

Life on remote research stations is progressively resembling the broader contemporary experience, in which strict protocols are used to govern and preserve life. The resilient communities who live and work in these places have learnt how to co-exist with an increasingly hostile environment, along with its unknowns and necessity for hyper-vigilance. Rather than consider it as a place on the edge of elsewhere, Antarctica and its assemblage of durable, super modern colonies provides an archetype for an uncertain future in anticipation of the volatility that awaits.

"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)

Marcel Fengler's IMF begins 2022 with IMF011, the beginning of a new era of the label's outlook, which will combine a focus on new talent, established remixers and a design overhaul.

Belgian artist Milo Spykers is first out of the traps for 2022, with his "Hier & Nu" EP (complete with a remix from Fengler) delivering a four-track punch of modern techno. Spyker's use of dense synths across the EP imbue his tracks with a memorable character that leaps out of the speakers.

From the jagged and oppressive leads of "Hier & Nu" to the outright anthemic riffs of "The Helicity" via the cascading stabs of "Happex", the "Hier & Nu" EP is a boisterous work of controlled chaos. Fengler's remix of "Hier Nu" extracts Spyker's synths, and with clinical precision, reconstructs them around a lean, muscular rhythm track that oozes tension.

"Milo's a very talented young producer. He's got an uncomrpimising taste in techno and that convinced me that he's both a DJ and producer I want to support. I'm really happy to welcome him to the IMF Family." (Marcel Fengler, Jan 2022)

The label owners NX1 team up with the British techno head Rommek to configure a pure class four tracks EP entitled "Foreign Bodies".

The A-side starts with "Foreign Bodies 1", a dense broken piece with fat bass, tense pads and layered whispers that trap you from the very beginning; next is "Foreign Bodies 2", pure, raw & incisive yet hypnotic with a reminiscent of a classic techno pad.

On the B-side "Foreign Bodies 3" keep the tension, ultra shape synths and percussions, simple and powerful with an industrial touch; last one "Foreign Bodies 4" is going even harder, a perfect "closing to the core" to finish this high voltage collaboration EP.

Big Crown Records is proud to present Piece of Me, the sophomore full length offering from Lady Wray. This is something of a homecoming for Nicole. Where her 2016 solo debut Queen Alone leaned more towards Soul and R&B with tinges of hip-hop, this record changes the mixture. It's still R&B with the textures of analog Soul, but there is a heavy Hip Hop influence that brings the sum of Nicole's career together in a new sound that will de ne her future. Boom-bap drums and chunky bass lines are front-and-center creating a perfect head-nodding backdrop for Lady Wray to take on the good, the bad, the difficult, and the joyful on her most personal collection of songs to date. The title track, "Piece of Me," which has already become a classic since it's 2019 release is about the people in your life who need more than you are willing to give. This tune and the B side of the 7" "Come On In" were the first songs put to tape for this album and they were recorded with Nicole sitting in a chair 8 months pregnant with her daughter. Her voice is so powerful, so raw, so thorough on these initial songs - it's wild to think that they were recorded this way. And even wilder to know that she knocked them all out in one take. Longtime collaborator and producer Leon Michels keeps the musical backing restrained and expertly executed, setting up Lady Wray for the full spotlight and setting the tone for the rest of the album. While the upbeat energies of "Under The Sun" and "Through It All" are sure to become hits that reconnect Lady Wray with her 90s R&B fanbase, "Where Were You" offers a behind the scenes look at what those days of stardom in her youth were really like. Nicole takes on the racial tension in America with her poetic and powerful "Beauty In The Fire" and leans heavy into her faith and church upbringing on the showstopper, "Thank You". She gushes about the profound love she's come to know for her daughter on "Melody" and celebrates life's ups and downs on "Joy & Pain". In 2021 it is rare to hear a varied yet cohesive album with no "skippers", but that is what you have here in spades. The tried and true chemistry between Lady Wray and Leon Michels has undeniably found a higher level and this album stands as a testament to conviction and dedication for all of us to enjoy and be inspired by.

There's naturally much to enjoy on the latest volume in Africa Seven's A7 Edits series, which pairs original - and usually obscure - old Afro-disco and Afro-boogie gems with fresh 21st century edits.

This time round, the A-side is all about Kemayo & K System's piano and horn-heavy disco-funk jam 'Biram', a two-minute blast of dancefloor exuberance that Phillip Lauer cleverly re-imagines as loopy, locked-in chunk of Afro-disco/disco house fusion.

Over on the flip there's a chance to savour Afro National's heavy, low-slung stomper 'Push Forward', a cut that brilliantly adds chanted vocals and Hendrix style guitar solos to a sweaty, non-stop groove. Al Zanders does a great job in ratcheting up the tension and heaviness on his accompanying club-ready extension.

As songwriters we spend a lot of our lives trying to bottle up a feeling into a song, and often, the biggest feelings, the best ones... the complicated, detailed, messy, incredible ones... just aren’t going to fit. Line by Line is our recognition of that... of how one song just isn’t enough to capture it all, but how we’re just going to keep writing, futilely and lovingly, anyway". - JP Saxe ABOUT JP SAXE Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter, JP Saxe always finds a way to cut beyond the surface, tapping into a deep connectivity with universal emotion and human experience. His powerful duet with Julia Michaels titled “If The World Was Ending,” led to his late-night TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last November. JP and Julia also performed the song while quarantined for The Late Late Show With James Corden. Idolator proclaimed the song ‘packs a strong emotional punch,’ and PEOPLE Magazine praised the song as a “beautifully stripped back piano ballad.” JP has also amassed fans at The FADER, following his single “Women Who Look Like You”, featuring rapper Guapdad 4000. In February, JP released his anticipated six-track debut EP, Hold It Together. TIME Magazine praised the project for “exploring the weird – sometimes lovely – sometimes painful – emotions that bubble up in relationships” and included “3 Minutes” off the EP in their ‘5 Best Songs of the Week’ roundup. Over the last year, JP completed a nationwide summer/fall tour with Noah Kahan and joined Lennon Stella on her European tour.

A musical journey with Emile Parisien is an adventure, something way out of the
ordinary. The soprano saxophonist’s sound is instantly recognisable - as is the way
with the greats - and you know that you are in the best possible company to set off
for a destination shrouded in uncertainty.
 For the past twenty years, the one-time child prodigy of Marciac has found ways to
astonish, to shake up and to enchant listeners with colourful and productive
experiments. His driving force is a passion which seems physically to take hold of
him as he plays.
 Anyone who has seen his development as a performer knows what he’s about; there
is an element of the dance but also the tension of a coiled spring. And among the
musicians who seek him out are not only the very best of his own generation but also
the jazz masters, such is his reputation both as a leader and as an inspirational
partner.
 As a musician he is one of a kind, with a power to be evocative and to bring
convincing shape to the unpredictable. His musical language can express sudden
frenzy, keeping the listener completely on tenterhooks, but there are also outbursts of
tenderness and a palpable emotional honesty.
 ‘Louise’ takes its title from Louise Bourgeois and more specifically her sculpture of a
spider, ‘Maman’. Her monumental work has motherhood as its theme, also conveyed
through the metaphor of weaving, an underlying thread that runs through Emile
Parisien’s creation.
 He has assembled a group of musicians who bridge the two sides of the Atlantic. The
saxophonist has set out to combine the essence of jazz with his own purposes; so,
what shines through here are both his kaleidoscopic imagination and his appetite for
breaking down barriers. Three American musicians are in the group, all of them
friends whom he has got to know over time.
 Their eagerness to engage in fruitful conversations with a trio consisting of Parisien
himself and two of his closest colleagues from France is miraculous. All kinds of
nuances and a confluence of influences are to be heard here. We find variations of
pace from skittering syncopations to the softly majestic.
 Textures are meticulously calibrated, with a broad palette of instrumental colours
both in the original compositions and in a burning cover of Joe Zawinul’s
‘Madagascar’. This collective endeavour leaves plenty of room for individual
inventiveness, yet there is a happy balance between the different personalities as
well. Emile Parisien, always hyperalert, knows when to step back and to leave the
initiative to his partners, but will then re-enter authoritatively and be the catalyst who
completely re-energise them.
 ‘Louise’ is just magnificent in its twists and turns, and in the way it celebrates the
sheer joy of the groove. ACT have taken a path towards intoxicating freedom with a
team of artists in complete balance both individually and collectively. Through its
subtle amalgamation of diffidence and affirmation, this pellucid music tells us the
truth about life.

Deluxe LP features 140g virgin vinyl; heavy-duty board jacket, artwork by Art Rosenbaum + DL. RIYL: Bob Dylan, John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Ry Cooder, Michael Chapman, Michael Hurley, The Youngbloods & Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Jake Xerxes Fussell’s 4th album finds the acclaimed folksong interpreter, guitarist, and singer navigating fresh sonic and compositional landscapes on the most conceptually focused, breathtakingly rendered, and enigmatically poignant record of his wondrous catalog. Produced by James Elkington and featuring formidable players both familiar (Casey Toll, Libby Rodenbough) and new (Joe Westerlund, Bonnie “Prince” Billy), it includes Jake’s first original compositions; atmospheric arrangements with pedal steel, horns, and strings. One of the most striking and strangely moving moments on Jake Xerxes Fussell’s gorgeous Good and Green Again an album, his fourth and most recent, replete with such dazzling moments arrives at its very end, with the brief words to the final song “Washington.” “General Washington/Noblest of men/His house, his horse, his cherry tree, and him,” Fussell sings, after a hushed introductory passage in which his trademark percussively fingerpicked Telecaster converses lacily with James Elkington’s parlor piano. That’s the entire lyrical content of the song, which proceeds to float away on orchestral clouds of French horn, trumpet, and strings, until it simply stops, suddenly evaporating, vanishing with no fade or trace, no resolution to its sorrowful minor-key chord progression, just silence and stillness and stark presidential absence. It feels like the end of a film, or the cold departure of a ghost, and is unlike anything else Jake has recorded. In all his work Jake humanizes his material with his own profound curatorial and interpretive gifts, unmooring stories and melodies from their specific eras and origins and setting them adrift in our own waterways. The robust burr of his voice, which periodically melts and catches at a particularly tender turn of phrase, and the swung rhythmic undertow of exquisite, seemingly effortless guitar-playing here he plays more acoustic than ever before pull new valences of meaning from ostensibly antique songs and subjects. On Good and Green Again, Jake not only ventures beyond his established mastery of songcatching and songmaking into songwriting, but likewise navigates fresh sonic and compositional landscapes, going green with lusher, more atmospheric and ambitious arrangements. The result is the most conceptually focused, breathtakingly rendered, and enigmatically poignant record of his wondrous catalog. It’s also his most deliberately premeditated album, representing his fruitful return to a producer partnership after two self-produced projects, What in the Natural World (2017) and Out of Sight (2019) (William Tyler produced his friend’s self-titled 2015 debut.) This time James Elkington produced and played a panoply of instruments, bringing to Jake’s arcane song choices his own peerless sense of harmony and orchestration, balance and dramatic tension. The pair enlisted a group of formidable players including regular bandmembers Casey Toll (Mt. Moriah, Nathan Bowles) on upright bass, Libby Rodenbough (Mipso) on strings, and Nathan Golub on pedal steel. They were joined by welcome newcomers Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Joseph Decosimo on fiddle, Anna Jacobson on brass, and veteran collaborator and avowed Fussell fan Bonnie “Prince” Billy, who contributes additional vocals. Album opener “Love Farewell” (featuring some beautiful singing by Bonnie “Prince” Billy), an elliptical tale of the folly of war, set to the world’s most heartbreaking goodbye march for a lover left behind. “Carriebelle” and “Breast of Glass” each similarly concerns, in its own way, romantic love and leavings. All three songs highlight Jacobson’s diaphanous, understated brass parts, tying them together in a true lover’s knot. “Rolling Mills Are Burning Down,” with its distant keening strings and capacious sense of space, observes and mourns the loss of work and community in the wake of elemental disaster. Nine-minute tour de force “The Golden Willow Tree,” the sole explicitly narrative song herein, is a hypnotic, minimalist rendering of a tragic maritime ballad about scuttling an enemy ship in exchange for wealth and glory and a captain’s inevitable betrayal. “Fussell is creating his own legacy within the long lineage of traditional folk musicians and storytellers that have come before him.” The New York Times // “So elegant … It’s relaxing in the way that pondering a Zen koan is relaxing, and sweet in the way that the wounded, honey-voiced blues of Mississippi John Hurt are sweet.” Pitchfork // “Music that resides at the seams of Appalachia and the cosmos.”

Big Crown Records is proud to present Piece of Me, the sophomore full length offering from Lady Wray. This is something of a homecoming for Nicole. Where her 2016 solo debut Queen Alone leaned more towards Soul and R&B with tinges of hip-hop, this record changes the mixture. It's still R&B with the textures of analog Soul, but there is a heavy Hip Hop influence that brings the sum of Nicole's career together in a new sound that will de ne her future. Boom-bap drums and chunky bass lines are front-and-center creating a perfect head-nodding backdrop for Lady Wray to take on the good, the bad, the difficult, and the joyful on her most personal collection of songs to date. The title track, "Piece of Me," which has already become a classic since it's 2019 release is about the people in your life who need more than you are willing to give. This tune and the B side of the 7" "Come On In" were the first songs put to tape for this album and they were recorded with Nicole sitting in a chair 8 months pregnant with her daughter. Her voice is so powerful, so raw, so thorough on these initial songs - it's wild to think that they were recorded this way. And even wilder to know that she knocked them all out in one take. Longtime collaborator and producer Leon Michels keeps the musical backing restrained and expertly executed, setting up Lady Wray for the full spotlight and setting the tone for the rest of the album. While the upbeat energies of "Under The Sun" and "Through It All" are sure to become hits that reconnect Lady Wray with her 90s R&B fanbase, "Where Were You" offers a behind the scenes look at what those days of stardom in her youth were really like. Nicole takes on the racial tension in America with her poetic and powerful "Beauty In The Fire" and leans heavy into her faith and church upbringing on the showstopper, "Thank You". She gushes about the profound love she's come to know for her daughter on "Melody" and celebrates life's ups and downs on "Joy & Pain". In 2021 it is rare to hear a varied yet cohesive album with no "skippers", but that is what you have here in spades. The tried and true chemistry between Lady Wray and Leon Michels has undeniably found a higher level and this album stands as a testament to conviction and dedication for all of us to enjoy and be inspired by.

Hypernatural, comprises of Dan Whitford, better known as one of the pillars of Melbourne heavyweights Cut Copy, Mirko Vogel, the engineer extraordinaire who has recorded for Modular and Room40, and Mike Gamwell, also known as Knightlife, who’s racked up several releases on Cut Copy’s own Cutters Records. You could say their roots are in Melbourne, Australia, but it seems unfair to pinpoint the trio to any specific location.

That’s because their sound lies somewhere deep in misty forests, or half-remembered dreams and subconscious wells of ancestral emotion. The transformative power of these 7 tracks was no accident however. The music was pieced together during two trips - one to the remote Swedish coast and another to the Scottish highlands. The three producers used a set of guidelines that allowed each of them to compose and arrange tracks separately yet collectively, like a connected Oblique Strategy. They took inspiration from the stark beauty of their natural surroundings, which had a huge effect on the music they were making.

The resulting tracks inhabit a world of their own, full of shimmering arpeggios and drifting pads, taut drums and sound effects. The opening track Longboat cruises into view with white noise washes and galley master rhythms, conjuring Old Norse battleships and a sense of sailing the open sea, destination unknown. The single Stormfront is a depth-charged deep house burner, bristling with atmospheric energy and rolling like thunder. With its cascading synth arpeggios and weighty drops, it swells like moody clouds on the horizon and releases tension like the first rain of a summer storm.

Hypernatural particularly succeeds in its world-building, and there’s a cohesion to the tracks despite their many differences in tempo and style. Spirit Walk joins marimbas with modular pulses, as well as slide guitar and snappy shakers, to bring out some Ry Cooder swagger. Unknown Caller taps into the phone line at the speed of 5G, sending breakbeats down the wire on a cold calling mission to recruit ravers for the next after hours. But there are also tracks nodding to blissed-out comedowns and daydreams. Both Changing Tides and New Dawn slow down time to an introspective moment, a catch of the breath, the witness to a beautiful moment. Album closer Valley harks back to classic rave-era ambient, an avalanche of optimism down a majestic mountainside.

Hypernatural evokes panoramic vistas and serene countryside, and you could certainly imagine it soundtracking a hike along coastal hills, or a field at a festival. But it also resides beyond the pastoral, finding a home in airport departure lounges and autobahn service stations, until it eventually settles down inside us - even without the headphones on.

Stormfront
Hypernatural’s single Stormfront is a depth-charged house-tempo burner, bristling with atmospheric energy and rolling like thunder. With its cascading synth arpeggios, raindance incantation and weighty drops, it swells like moody clouds on the horizon, and releases tension like the first rain of a summer storm.

Sudi Wachspress returns to Tartelet Records with Dance Planet, a third LP of emotionally-charged house music to welcome us back to the dancefloor. The spirit of true house runs deep in the sound of Space Ghost. Oakland native Sudi Wachspress is intuitively plugged into the romantic, mystical energy of 4/4 club music as a unifying force of empowerment and liberation, carrying the torch from vital forebears like Larry Heard, Alton Miller, and Blaze.

His new album, Dance Planet, carries a greater responsibility to spread spiritual affirmations. As the global dancefloor community emerges from a mentally-taxing recess and confronts their social self like it’s the first day of school, Space Ghost’s message couldn’t be more supportive.

“Don’t be afraid to be yourself, don’t be afraid to let go,” he intones on “Be Yourself.” More than just a beat and a hook, his music is pointedly created to heal and energize. “I’m a big fan of old-school house vocals that have a positive message,” says Space Ghost, “tracks that can perhaps enhance your mood or strengthen your confidence in yourself.”

Wachspress has always represented a beacon of musical uplift, both on his previous Endless Light and Aquarium Nightclub LPs for Tartelet and on his swathes of self-released music and last year’s Free 2 B on Apron. Compared to most house-oriented artists, he places emphasis on the long-player format to create an encircling experience for the listener, smoothing out psychic wrinkles and massaging areas of tension for a fully holistic hit.

The latest thrilling incarnation of master rock'n'roll storyteller Tex Perkins (The Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon, Thug, Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, Tex, Don et Charlie.) and the Fat Rubber Band began with a rare vinyl copy of Link Wray's Beans and Fatback album, recorded in 1971. Perkins and his respected musician, songwriter, producer and bandmate Matt Walker share a mutual admiration of the American electric guitar innovator, whose iconic power chords in his signature 50s rock'n'roll instrumentals, had a profound influence on the evolution of rock guitar. The Fat Rubber Band is borned with this rare vinyl, the pair have enjoyed countless musical conversations over the decade while hanging out backstage and on the road. Walker offered the debut album's opening track, the wide-screen drama of "Pay The Devil's Due". Perkins responded with the plaintive blues of "My Philosophy". Walker replied with the album's fuzz driven debut single "Danger Has Been Kind" and Perkins countered with the glacially-paced, intimate "Poor Simple Minded Fool". The pair road-tested their works in progress as a duo before enlisting bassist Steve Hadley, drummer Roger Bergodaz and Evan Richards on percussion to complete the Fat Rubber Band line-up to record the album's ten tracks at Walker's Stovepipe Studios in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges. "At Matt's studio - you open the door to the studio and nature floods in," Perkins says. "We wanted it to sound rural, to feel the dirt and the grass and the leaves." Even after all these decades, when you think you know that gravelly baritone inside out, Perkins finds new emotional tones in the service of the Fat Rubber Band's songs vivid narratives, with their characters wrestling, but sometimes dancing, with the tougher, darker qualities of the human condition. This is truly existential blues. Bubbling underneath those upfront vocals and raw harmonies are intricately entwined guitar conversations and unexpected percussive flourishes. "Another aspect that we wanted was for the sound to be sometimes a collision and sometimes a marriage of acoustic and electric instruments. We wanted that tension between mandolins and bouzoukis meeting fuzz guitars." "We also considered percussion to be a vital element of the sound we were going for; we noticed in the recordings we loved from the 50s and 60s that often the tambourine hit, or the maracas, or whatever percussion, was right up there in the mix, right next to the vocal," Perkins says.

‘Feelings’ took shape amidst the months of anxious tension that 2020 laid upon us, written and produced by Turkish artist Ekin Fil, it took around 1 year for the album to manifest in its final form.

Yet underneath the opaque veneer of swooning drones, timeworn chords and verbal lamentations, glimpses of sanguinity and optimism flicker through the fabric of the work, mirroring the perpetual state of uncertainty and isolation we collectively faced in 2020; suspended between minute, optimistic spur and months of dissolute ambivalence.

Multi Culti launch a new quarterly 12" series in step with the seasons beginning with SOLSTICE I:

Post-pandemic lockdown inspiration can be found in the great planetary balancing act that has taken place since a cataclysmic impact with an asteroid caused mass extinction and set our earth’s orbit off axis. This AXIAL TILT, or obliquity, is responsible for the seasons, and life as we know it has evolved around these unleashed forces. As our lives and for many, careers, have spun dramatically off axis as of late, we look ahead to the coming seasons, with the hope that we can weather the changes, and maintain inner stability. To aid in this quest, Multi Culti promises to deliver sonic support with utmost regularity at the peak moments of cosmic significance, with each Solstice and Equinox.

Beginning this journey are some of the label’s most beloved artists. Israeli duo RED AXES provide a chakra-elevating soundtrack with their inimitable blend of psych-garage-tronica, a sun-kissed banger that signals a long-awaited return to the togetherness of the dancefloor.

ZILLAS ON ACID turn in a robustly wiggly jam that electrifies, frazzling zaps and frenetic percussion recall the fritzy tension of the past year, a cathartic shock-treatment for traumatized dancers looking to get back to prime spine-shaking shape.

Mexico managed to stay open for the most part, and TYU seems to have not skipped a beat here, still in perfect form after breaking out as one of the hottest young producers to emerge in recent years. Dark disco, Mexi-chug, call it what you want, but the emergent genre is never better represented than here… spooky, phosphorescent tribal dance, Tulumminati-tested and approved.

Finally, the big guy - MANFREDAS - whose remixes and edits have been highlight-reel material the past couple of years, delivers a long awaited original track with his requisite heavy-weight swag. Wonky tunings and a chunky downtempo beat underpin Manny’s trademark masterful arrangement style, building patiently, with breakdowns that managed to wring every last drop of impact out of an odd, other-worldy assortment of sounds.

If it wasn't for the global lockdown, we might never have had the chance to hear one of this year's most intriguing and inventive albums. Lonely Guest was conceived and put together over the last 18 months by one of British music's true innovators: Tricky. Bu tas he's keen to make clear: this ain't noTricky album. Rather it's a thrilling meeting of musical mavericks, with the likes Idles' JoeTalbot pitting his unique approaches to songwriting against Tricky's otherworldly production. From an unsettling tale of isolation courtesy of Maxïmo Park's Paul Smith ('Christmas Trees') to the grunge stylings of Marta's 'Move Me', via the tense storytelling of London rapper Kway's 'On A Move', these diverse statements come together as a bold artistic statement of their own. The late artistic visionary and legend Lee "Scratch" Perry features vocals on 'Atmosphere' with Tricky and Marta. It is with great sadness that Tricky and the False Idols team acknowledge and honour Lee "Scratch"Perry's passing.

On his new EP Three Colours for Couldn’t Care More the ever-searching RVDS (Golden Pudel Club, Bureau B, It's) keeps his senses wide open and comes up with three amazing tracks as diverse as coherent:

While Clicks in Pink House is enthusiastic warm House Music with a big bassline, Blue Signals in Space' flow of hypnotic meditation has a strange tension underneath that effortlessly connects with the delicate elegance of Purple Dreams in March’s playful piano chords. Three quite different colours that make a beautiful whole.

**LIMITED BLACK VINYL** Rival Consoles returns with a resonant
and explorative soundscape of original
music, composed for renowned
choreographer Alexander Whitley’s
contemporary dance production
Overflow.

Exploring themes of the human and emotional
consequences of life surrounded by data, the piece
echoes the concept of social media, advertising,
marketing companies and political factions
exploiting our data to gain wealth, political
advantage and sow division. Key reading for the
project was based around the contemporary
philosophical work Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism
and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul
Han.
“The piece opens with Monster which has a kind of
drunken madness to it, highly repetitive to mirror the
repetitive nature of how we as humans engage with
technology such as social media. It’s sometimes
edging towards chaos but yet always returning back
to the same starting point, but eventually giving way
to exhaustion. I wanted to create a bold opening
piece for Overflow,” states West.

I Like features the mapping of data from dancer Tia
Hockey’s personal monologue, which allows chords
to be heard - but only based on the activity of her
voice, drawing attention to things happening behind
the curtain, invisible systems, algorithms.
The album also features the previously released
standalone slice of euphoria, Pulses of Information
— described by UK mag Clash as “typically
entrancing, Pulses of Information seems to
encourage a form of internal dialogue, between our
inner and outer selves.”

Overflow was premiered by the Alexander Whitley
Dance Company in May 2021 at the Sadler’s Wells
in London and is scheduled to tour through theatres
in Europe in spring 2022. The score will be released
by Erased Tapes on limited edition vinyl and CD as
well as digital formats on December 3.

New solo record from Philip Frobos of Omni (Sub Pop, Trouble in Mind), this record is released in conjunction with a novel by Philip of the same name.

Philip Frobos' ‘Vague Enough to Satisfy’ will be released on 180g black vinyl - Only 500 Pressed Worldwide October 1st 2021. The novel will be published by Hex Enduction Books in Seattle on the same day.

‘Vague Enough to Satisfy’, is Philip Frobos’ debut solo album, it is also the original soundtrack to his debut novel of the same title. This lounge-inspired punk album acts as the musical bedrock for the story of a young man who revels in the day to day details (both romantic and mundane) of his experiences in Leipzig and Atlanta. The tone of the record reflects the tides of the protagonist’s confidence and self-doubt throughout the novel.
‘Vague Enough to Satisfy’ rushes straight to the point with it's bossa nova beat and seductive lo-fi musings. ‘Vague Theme’ opens the album with a groove reminiscent of ‘Whammy’ era B-52s while the vocals tell the story of a young romantic confused of his place within a relationship and the city around him.

‘Vacant Street’ proceeds with a hooky bassline, the revolving, cryptic sort that Frobos is known for as a member of Atlanta post-punks Omni. ‘No Packages Today’ is similarly sprightly and circuitous, sounding like the Au Pairs refining an obsession with Bowie’s ‘Lodger’. “I’m afraid that you need more than I can offer” opines Frobos bedecked by shuffling beats and burgeoning waves of saxophone. ‘Never Noticed’ and ‘Through with Buzz’ introduce notes of tension and intrigue to the frisson of the story, “you’re stuck in the same day” confesses Frobos in the former.

Instrumental tracks help to prolong an uneasy feeling of ambiguity too, with compositions like ‘Pool Disturbance’ and ‘Inflatable Flamingo’ taking their musical cue from Henry Mancini. Curious flourishes, a metronomic headiness and shuddering xylophones bring to life the intensely vivid imagery and cynical humor that suffuse the novel.

‘Pathetic’ collides the casual, magnetism of Serge Gainsbourg with tight Cars-style vocals and choruses. Meanwhile ‘Singer Not The Song’ and ‘Saturn Return’ showcase a more sedate approach, languid and arch. ‘Vague Enough to Satisfy’ is a trip, plunging you into a curious world populated by the unexpected.

Intercepts is a brand new sub-label from London's Frequency Domain.

Frequency Domain has soundtracked late-night astral travelling since 2015, releasing drone, ambient and offbeat electronics from the likes of Forest Drive West, Plant43, Datassette, Matt Whitehead, Anthony Child, Jo Johnson and Ali Wade.

Intercepts indulges the parent label's more unruly and percussive leanings with a series of EPs drawn up from an anonymous pool of Frequency Domain artists and newcomers. Intercepts releases are served two at a time, with two separate strands - X and Y - each exploring their own sonic trajectory.

The first 'X' series EP delivers three tracks of skewed, mutant techno, landing some place between Livity Sound's cerebral rollers and Dynamic Tension's disorienting clunk.

Fine Place is a new duo comprising Frankie Rose (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls) and Matthew Hord (Running, Pop. 1280, Brandy). Based in Brooklyn, NYC together they’ve crafted a crystalline full length of nocturnal, electronic pop music that charts a way out the post-global, cyberpunk dystopian environment it was crafted in. Their debut album This New Heaven drenches minimalist song structures in post-industrial washes of sixstring delay and gothic post-punk synths. Presiding over it is the most evocative, emotive vocal performance Frankie
Rose has committed to tape to date.

Following Hord’s relocation from Chicago, the pair wanted to explore new avenues apart from their respective bands or solo projects. “The sound we were going for was an attempt to capture the dystopian feel of New York during a period of desertion by the wealthy. It was produced in a time-frame saturated in both uncertainty and serenity, and the soundscapes we created felt fitting and almost organic as a response to our surroundings. The title also reflects this in an arguably literal, maybe even satirical way.” Sonically, Fine Place references the pioneering mid-to-late 80s pioneers of icy melodrama The Cure and Cocteau Twins, while reflecting both the individuals’; music trajectories thus far. Modular synthesis triggers rhythm boxes and fluttery arps chirp around clanging 808-patterning as Rose’s reverb-laden vocal layering envelops the remaining headroom. The result is massive; a towering, shadowy music that embraces darkness while offering Rose’s bright vocal as chinks of light in the cracks; the production filling the head space of the beholder with preternatural imagery and emotional resonances that are real but not quite defined.

The title song propels forth out of the fog, scintillating with delayed guitar before the reverb-immersed vocal injects the human drama. The chorus constantly teases a big release but holds back creating a taut, dynamic tension. Cover Blind’s slow march makes full use of Rose’s layered vocal sinking and emerging from Hord’s bank of synths. Stand out It’s Your House is pure honey pouring from the speaker on a bank of of arps and near-hymnal vocal layering, a syrupy light offering in the mist. It’s an emotive highlight that only increases as the album progresses; Impressions Of Me is the Lynchian ballad that glides onward into the sunset. The album finishes on a choice re-interpretation of the 1989 track The Party Is Over by Belgian group Adult Fantasies, one of the great over-looked ballads of the era given an almost ecclesiastical makeover by Matthew Hord and Frankie Rose in 2021.

Says Hord: “This record was an incredibly challenging endeavor to make, as I had just come home from a European tour with another music project and wanted to invest into and focus on this collaboration with Frankie. I essentially reimagined how to approach writing basic sequences with the synthesizers I had been rehearsing and performing with for months prior to make something more accessible and pop- like for Frankie to build upon. Frankie is an unsung hero when it comes to mixing, and she was constantly mixing down and processing elements of the tracks to create different atmospheres as we forged forward with every song.”

This New Heaven is an ecstasy of sorts, a half-dream in the border between sleep and daylight.

REPRESSED !!

Wolfsheim are a synthpop duo from Hamburg, Germany consisting of Markus Reinhardt (music) and Peter Heppner (lyrics and vocals). The band was founded in 1987 by Markus Reinhardt and Pompejo Ricciardi and was named after Meyer Wolfsheim, a fictional character from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel 'The Great Gatsby'. Ricciardi soon left the band and was replaced by Peter Heppner, a childhood friend of Reinhardt's. Together they produced their first demo tape, Ken Manage', in 1988.

After making a second demo tape, Any But Pretty', in 1989, Wolfsheim applied at various labels until they caught the attention of independent record label Strange Ways Records. They are best known for their debut breakthrough single, "The Sparrows and the Nightingales', the first single to be released on Strange Ways in 1991. The band's musical style takes cues from the 1980s New Romantics, new wave, synthpop, and darkwave. The track's sombre synths were produced by Carlos Peron of Yello. Reinhardt says the lyric was inspired by 'The Great Gatsby', "in the 'onomatopoeic tension' between predator and security." Over six minutes, the narrator describes being lost, unsure of where his life is heading, using highly metaphorical language. On the flip is a brand new remix by German producer Ancient Methods, a pseudonym of Michael 'Trias' Wollenhaupt, who provides a driving, EBM-leaning, amphetamine-laced club ready cut.

All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Designer Eloise Leigh has updated the record's original design with two sparrows enclosed in a blood moon circle against a deep black purple backdrop. Each copy comes with a black and white photo postcard notes by Carlos Peron and the song's lyrics. This release comes in time to celebrate the single's 25th anniversary.

Bill Withers created mellow, downhome-style soul for barely more than a decade before electively retreating from the industry to pursue craftsman interests. Yet over the course of the handful of albums he made for Sussex and CBS, the Appalachian native struck lasting emotional chords in legends ranging from Booker T. Jones to Stephen Stills—not to mention the millions of listeners that fell under the spell of now-standard tracks such as “Lean on Me,” “Use Me,” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.” The antithesis of the sweaty R&B shouter that prowled the edge of stages, Withers dealt in calm and vulnerability. Serving as a template for modern British soul contemporaries like Sam Smith and an extension of the timeless fare explored by Van Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, and Al Green, Bill Withers’ Greatest Hits belongs in every music lover’s library.



Mobile Fidelity’s reissues of the 1981 compilation provide a transparent view of Withers’ relaxing timbre and the subtle grooves underlining his arrangements. Characteristics ranging from the tension of the guitars, funky bends of the bass, whisper-soft coo of the formal strings, airiness of the backing harmonies, and sharpness of the snare drum emerge with utmost clarity and lifelike presence. Always prized for its naked honesty and pure conviction, Withers’ music positively caresses the senses on this LP and SACD, the unadulterated production and beautiful soundscapes revealed anew with each listen. You won’t find a better-sounding roots R&B collection.

52 Beats is project initially started on Bandcamp with Snips uploading 1 beat per week over the course of a year with an accompanying behind the scenes video. This is the final release of the entire project as a limited run cassette. Musically Snips stays true to his Hip Hop roots chopping samples and keeping the sound rooted in traditonal Boom Bap which birthed his style

ALTER- : A REACTION TO THE ALTERMODERNISM IN SOUND ART
For the Automatisme - Alter- album. I am inspired by how the art historian Nicolas Bourriaud defines the Altermodernism. Bourriaud understands the term "Alter" as a way to mean "other". The altermodernism would be another modernity that is different from the avant-garde modernism and post-modernism. More precisely, this is a new paradigm from the XXIe century with alternative ways to motivate artists to be more radical in art by traveling in the physical and digital world, by cutting the frontiers and by creating other time lines. I apply the "alter" subject to time and to landscape and those, to the rhythmic and the ambient glitch music.

1- THE ALBUM HAS A RHYTHMIC SIDE AND A LANDSCAPE SIDE.
1- a : The rhythmic tracks are named Alter-Rate. That means that I offer other types of rhythms by calculating beats with time rate experimentations. The form of the rhytmic tracks, expresses a course, a wandering, which, in the altermodern life, is not just in a standard 4/4 , or just grid based or non-grid based, but it's in a complex hybrid of all of those.

1- b : The ambient tracks are named Alter-Scape. That means that I offer another type of landScapes by a paused temporality and not by a random time or by the time of the nature. Alter-Scape tracks mimic the saturated globalized soundscapes of the XXIe century.

2- THE GLOBALISED AND SATURATED TIME
For Bourriaud, the artists respond to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expressions and communications1. The Alter- album tracks have saturated rhythms Rates and static ambient soundScapes. The specific context within which we live is the age of globalisation2. In this album, it means that globalised or always evolving rhythm Rates are in constant movements and are also different every time an Alter-Rate track is exported or performed. On the other hand, a globalised landScape is an ambient track with a motionless temporality. In the era of the altermodern, displacement has become a method of depiction3. The movement of the sound in the Alter- album is two sound spaces. The first is the rhythms that make time movement become apparent and the second is an ambient paused or static time that makes possible to feel and to analyze the movement effect of our surroundings.

3- THE CONSTANT TENSION STATE OF ART
For Gilles Deleuze, art is in a constant state of tension, in as much as it oscillates between the poles of chaos and order4. The Alter- album is a tension between chaos and order in rhythmic beat tracks and ambient soundscapes tracks. It is a deterritorialization of the rhythms and the ambiences of today's natural and digital landscapes and it brings them into the computer glitch music format.

By pushing new softwares to their limits, I push at the extreme the software capacity to calculate and to generate sounds. The Alter-Rate tracks are experimentations with time rates and rhythms with the use of probability and artificial intelligence based sequencers. The partition signal starts from a master sequencer that gets into all instruments on a track. Each instrument receives this signal and modulates it with other sequencers that are each programmed differently for every instrument. Finally, all the instruments signals return to a master output that contains a stutter effect. This master channel is sequencing all other channels into one single rhythm. In short, a single rate merges and expands into a vast archipelago of rates and the transformed signal becomes a new single rate. The Alter-Scape tracks are experimentations with midi triggers that give the sensation of a timelessness. Multiple reverb effects are also routed into each other to create soundscapes of continuity. About the type of sounds created in this album, I do experimentations with deep frequency modulation synthesises (FM) on all Alter-Rate and Alter-Scape tracks.

I put a few layers in the tracks to be able to focus on the time space and perception. The tracks are generative and every parameter uses probabilities to be programmed. This is something that was not possible some years ago. The computers are enough powerful to generate that now. I export many times the tracks and i push the computers to their limits by making hard for them to calculate and to generate the tracks with a deep, a pointillist and an extreme software programming. These techniques do different versions every time that I export or perform a track and in my opinion, that opens a fresh and innovative way to do new experimental club music and ambient music. The computer has its own limits too.


Reviews in The Wire, Gonzo, A Closer Listen, Datacide, African Paper, Silent and Sound, and more

Since her debut onto the techno scene with the 2018 release of her EP 'Post-Traumatic Rave Syndrome' on Paula Temple's "Noise Manifesto" and a string of international festival and club appearances, Femanyst has gained a reputation for militant individuality. Akua Grant sets herself apart from the crowd with her aggressive & unrelenting industrial techno sets tinged with elements of Hardcore and Gabber. She has become known for her rebellious and innovative style in her adopted home of Berlin. Her self-assured approach to gripping and brawling techno tension sees her perform a fast paced and fervent flow on the dance floor. Femanyst continues to bring her unapologetically bold signature sound with her own techno imprint "Dark Carousel" as an extension to her much revered DJ sets of twisted and aggressive, high octane electronic music.


A2 Fluid - Post Industrial Transformation
Fluid is a queer DJ and producer based in Berlin. Supporting FLINTA* DJs, producers and party events are one of his priorities. His first release begun in January 2021 and he is still modelling his sound. His interest in electronic music goes from industrial techno to ebm to trance to hypnotic techno.

Post Industrial Transformation is a track which combines aggressive sounds and a lot of industrial elements. The transformation refers to Fluid's evolving own path. This evolution is similar to the tension that builds up all through the track. This track evokes change, modification, passage from one form to another.


B1 Hybral - Unheard Voices
Hybral is a Berlin-based non-binary DJ and producer drawn to eerie energetic industrial techno. They mix and produce haunting techno, EBM, and noisy-driven experimental sounds. Hybral's productions are made of dark atmospheric patterns linked with pushing percussions and basslines as well as heavily distorted kicks and harsh industrial noises. Mixing DJ sets the track selection is ranging from contemplative ambient to stern and fast techno - connecting vast influences from Hybral's personal experiences of spending days and nights on Berlin's dancefloors. They are founder of the queer label, podcast, and event series 'Subverted' which focuses on a distinct program aiming to lead dance music back to its roots of resistance and diversity.


B2 Marsch - Mrs. Jones
Marsch is a Berlin-based dj and producer from France, who initially began 8 years ago as a music curator and selector. She started to produce when she moved to Berlin, and has mostly been focusing on this for the past few years. She would define her music as a balance between melody, energy and texture, with a blend of minimalistic elements, rhythmic and percussions, and voices and futuristic synths.


DURCH BLN/TLV is a queer collective with a clear vision of solidarity and community building. DURCH operates in Tel Aviv and Berlin trying to bring queer people together, building a culture of inclusion, diversity and tolerance. In the tradition of original raves DURCH organizes solidarity events ranging from parties, to art and community events, with the strong belief that raves are a much needed place for people to come together, celebrate their diversity and learn to respect each other. Musically DURCH is eclectic inspired by hardcore, straight forward techno, ghetto and scouse house and 90s acid.

We proudly announce the release of our first vinyl record "dogged boldness". This is a long held dream by the entire crew. With Femanyst, Hybral, Marsch and Fluid we are happy to showcase four artists that are close and dear to DURCH BLN/TLV. The record is a compilation of four hard-hitting, inciting techno tracks. Rough, bold and aggravating, just the way we like it. We are proud that we are able to continuously work with queer artists and to be a platform to further queer artists visibility.


Disclaimer: The world needs more queer artist, more queer music, more queer techno, more queer perspectives, more queer love and more queer intimacy.
No place for any racist, sexist, trans- or homophobic shit.

Artwork by Rory Midhani
Mastering by Chlar

There are records with empathy, records which are your friends and then there's the others... There might be little difference between them, a certain "je ne sais quoi", an "almost nothing but still something" which makes the difference between almost pointless and vital records. Despite, or rather thanks to his cynical despair, Matt Elliott's music never holds up a moralizing mirror to us - on the contrary, it creates a compassionate dialogue with listeners like the rhythm of two steps that synchronize to become as one. In 2016, Matt Elliot brought out his seventh solo album The Calm Before whose obscure title is neither exactly threatening nor comforting... the calm before what? Before the storm for sure but maybe also before the great record, the immediate classic we felt might be coming for a long time in the dual discography of the Bristol-born artist working under his own name and his electronic alias Third Eye Foundation. The elegant details and perspectives of Little Lost Soul (2000) already hinted at the upcoming masterpiece from the English singer-songwriter. The Mess We Made (2003) was Matt Elliott's first solo album and portrayed a universe in a kind of flight towards Balkan horizons made up of visceral despair. With the Songs trilogy, he put aside the electronic side of his work to continue working with a minimalist, stark and lucid style of writing. The Broken Man (2012) was full of tears and long laments sometimes carried by Katia Labèque's piano on a record which painted new shades of grey. On this record Matt began working with the producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist David Chalmin (La Terre Invisible) who has kept on collaborating with the Bristol-born singer since then. Their partnership continued on Only Myocardial Infection Can Break Your Heart (2013) and The Calm Before (2016). Stéphane Grégoire is the head of the Ici D'Ailleurs label which has accompanied Matt Elliott since 2005 and perhaps he describes this album the best: "This new record by Matt is without a doubt his best album to date, a record that takes him into another dimension where he fully asserts himself as a songwriter and singer of the calibre of artists like Bill Callahan, Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash." Matt Elliott's other records all seemed like empathic links between each other. Farewell To All We Know is an instant classic based on the sensitive piano and superb arrangements of David Chalmin, the sensitive cello of Gaspar Claus, the subtle bass of Jeff Hallam (who has also played with Dominique A and John Parish). There is a clear form of alchemy in all of this and still we find Matt Elliott's usual atmospheres and scenery, the same Eastern European folk music, long songs that take time to settle over time. Everything is the same but also is transfigured. By making his music stark and purifying and redefining the subject matter, Matt Elliott's work became so much more delicate. However this work is never frail nor really turned in on himself and thus becomes like a vital tune that vibrates and unfolds. The opening song Farewell To All We Know seems torn between the fear of what tomorrow may bring, inevitability and hope for the future in a permanent and progressive dramatic tension expressed by his Spanish guitar, the impressionist style piano and Matt's voice teetering on the edge of whispers. A funereal tribute to endless twilights and the dawns we all dream of seeing. There are touches of Leonard Cohen from Songs from a Room or Thanks For The Dance in The Day After That with Gaspar Claus's counterpoint cello. There is no spirit of resignation in Matt Elliott's work - life's path has to be followed against all odds. We have to follow the river's flow to reach the immense ocean and its infinite freedom. The haunted instrumental Guidance Is Internal harks back to the atmospheres of Howling Songs (2008) with its guitar parts full of scansions and muted threats. The music is transcendental but never seems afraid of the risk of falling. This is also what Bye Now tells us with its quasi-obsolete simplicity and sunburst melancholy reminiscent of the work of Luiz Bonfá, Bill Evans on Peace Piece or laidback crooners of the 50s. In Farewell To All We Know, Matt Elliott incessantly alternates between the dual desires to face up to the world or to protect himself from it. Hating The Player, Hating The Game is a lucid statement about the dullness of our daily lives sometimes, our right to get out of the game and no longer want to be part of it. Matt Elliott is tender but spares no one, particularly himself. Aboulia speaks of the tiredness of living and of looming death while Crisis Apparition says that there is always a time for reconstruction after chaos. This is like initially wearying wandering in the ruins of Aleppo with the slow dilution of the melody into a hallucinated drone. However the smell of great fires always fades and the earth always regenerates. Matt Elliott seems to suggest that the survival instinct is stronger than any cold winds could ever be. Matt Elliott never sings of certainties and prefers possibilities. Possibly the worst is over? Maybe... Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again. Farewell To All We Know shows us the distance that still needs to be walked and he walks next to you - right next to you, he is the friend who doesn't spare you the truth like all true friends really do.

The album is his first for Oakland-based emotive experimental label n5MD, and it finds Ohadi taking inspiration from Adam Curtis' Oh Dearism shorts reflecting on the globes' modern-day state of turmoil.
As of late, n5MD has focused more on harboring artists with a more visceral take on ambient, eschewing background music or music for concentration or respite for ambient that requires deep listening.
COLDSTREAM is another such fibrous collection. Ohadi utilizes dark ambient, drone, glitch, and even industrial motifs to aid Idlefon's grainy ideology. COLDSTREAM is boundless, with moments of tension that swirl in and out of view, making it a perfectly ascending aural view of our ever declining society.

Portico Quartet announce Monument, the electronic driven follow-up to their acclaimed ambient-minimalist suite Terrain, presenting the band at their most direct

It's rare that a band releases two albums within six months of each other, rarer too that while both are so different, they are both as epochal in terms of the band's output as Terrain and Monument are to Portico Quartet. The irony is that Monument, a stripped-back, intentionally direct album, was the album that the band set out to write in May 2020, before the dream like long-form Terrain came into focus. Briefly they were two halves of the same record, but the band ended up developing these two distinct bodies of work concurrently. And although they were written side-by-side and recorded at the same sessions, they are records best understood as distinct from each other, each with opposing ideas and forms.

Monument is one of Portico Quartet's most accessible, direct records to date. If Terrain addressed the darker side of how Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie made sense of the pandemic, then Monument resonates as an ode to better times. If not quite a dance record, it nonetheless pulses with an energy, radiance and a scalpel sharp focus. Jack Wyllie explains: "It's possibly our most direct album to date. It's melodic, structured and there's an economy to it that is very efficient. There's not much searching or wastage within the music itself, it is all finalised ideas, precisely sculpted and presented as a polished artefact."

Bellamy expands "Monument sits somewhere between our albums Portico Quartet and Art in the Age of Automation. It has perhaps a more overtly electronic edge to its sound – there are more synthesisers and electronic elements than we have used before and the music is often streamlined and rhythmic".

After the ethereal, stage-setting of Opening, the album kicks into overdrive with Impressions, a short energetic track that pairs a club influenced groove with hang drum and close, delicate saxophone. It's the balance between these elements that push and pull the track through a selection of melodic and rhythmic re-configurations, contrasting human touch with a machine-like focus. Ultraviolet is a kaleidoscopic, krautrock inspired track with a haunting introduction and an insistent pulse. The wistful Ever Present builds from a simple piano refrain; a nostalgic melody line floats over the top as drums and bass groove insistently underneath, before reaching a euphoric peak. The title track Monument builds around a looping vocal sample, drums and an enigmatic melody, the ending giving way to a gauzy, weaving synth line. The power here is in its economy and luminosity. AOE flips back and forth, like a dial that's been switched. Mining the tension between a pastoral inflected cello and saxophone melody, with an abrupt shift to jilted live drums, wailing delayed saxophone and a flickering synth line. Warm Data comes straight from the same Portico Quartet tradition as older tracks like Current History and Laker-Boo. It's a marriage of instrumental minimalism with drum machines and synths. Finally, the album closes with On The Light, a track that transmits a sense of suspense and freedom, driven by the twitching drums of Bellamy and evocative sax of Wyllie. It offers the perfect bitter-sweet and evocative ending to Portico Quartet's latest Monument.

Empty surrounds all of me. It’s a poignant line from the third album by Blackwater Holylight that encapsulates the search for self when suddenly everything has changed. There’s a theme of processing vast personal trauma throughout Silence/Motion that eloquently — both lyrically and musically — and simultaneously embodies the crushing emptiness, sorrow, strength and rebuilding of recovering from personal devastation.

“There was so much grief both in the world and interpersonally during the process of creating Silence/Motion,” says vocalist/bassist Allison “Sunny” Faris. “The four of us gave one another more space to be ourselves, to experiment with each other’s ideas and to be gentle with one another more than we ever have before. So, we knew this tenderness would manifest in extremely honest arrangements, and I think that you can hear that throughout the record.”

Curiously, considering the dark times in which it was created, this is the band’s most melodic and catchy music so far. Blackwater Holylight, as the name suggests, is all about contrasts: It’s a fluid convergence of sound that’s heavy, psychedelic, melodic, terrifying and beautiful all at once. And, Silence/Motion finds the band honing those contrasts, letting ideas and moods fully develop from song to song, rather than filling every song with a full range of their capabilities. It allows the band to go fully prog-rock here, and simply stay hushed and intimate there. There’s a new confidence to the band in how seamlessly they wield their stylistic amalgam.

“Writing this album was extraordinarily difficult emotionally, however it did come to fruition fairly quickly,” Faris says. “In the past, the theme of vulnerability has always been a big player and it definitely showed up full force while writing this album.”

Blackwater Holylight recorded the album as a four piece: Faris on vocals and guitar (on “Silence/Motion”, “MDIII”, “Around You” and “Every Corner”) and bass for the remainder, Sarah McKenna on synths, Mikayla Mayhew on guitar (and bass when Faris plays guitar) and drummer Eliese Dorsay. New second guitarist Erika Osterhout will perform the songs with them live. For Silence/Motion the band chose to work with a producer for the first time, bringing in A.L.N. (of Mizmor, Hell) to produce, along with recording engineer Dylan White — who also helmed their previous album Veils of Winter (2019) — at Odessa Recording Studio in Portland, OR. Guest vocals on album opener “Delusional” are by Bryan Funck (Thou.) Mike Paparo (Inter Arma) and A.LN. (Mizmor, Hell) lend guest vocals to album closer “Every Corner.”

Silence/Motion opens softly with interwoven folky single note guitars over an ominous sounding drone for the first minute, akin to moments from Pink Floyd’s Echoes. Suddenly an irresistibly head-nodding, groovy droptuned riff kicks in with the drums and it’s a full on blackened rocker with soaring synths and Funck’s witchy whispers over the top. “Who The Hell,” the track quoted above, takes proceedings into a Krautrock direction, centered around McKenna’s arpeggiated synth loop and Dorsay’s tom-tom triplets, while 16-note guitar strums add tension as Faris wearily sings, “So tell me who the hell would want to live this way — so afraid/ To feel this void, to dwell in it… I can’t describe this pain I wear/ It suffocates and you left it here.” It’s an incredibly powerful 6 minutes. The title track delivers the 1-2-3 punch of the album’s brilliant opening trilogy. It starts with lightly plucked acoustic guitar, plaintive piano chords and Faris’ voice gliding so softly it sounds more like a Mellotron. The song builds slowly toward crescendo, led by a swinging tom pattern, that abruptly switches back to a heavier version of the opening melody.“Silence/Motion” is about digesting and healing from sexual assault. As Faris explains, “It is an ode to the juxtaposition of feeling paralyzingly blank and and like your entire life is moving through you simultaneously.” Elsewhere, Black Metal guitars collide with dreamlike melodies. “Around You” brandishes a hopeful, hummable synth melody and shimmering shoegaze guitars like throwing down a gauntlet. In the end, it becomes undeniably clear just how completely into their own Blackwater Holylight has come.

“The analogy is that with our first record (Blackwater Holylight, 2018) we were getting into to the car and buckling up,” Faris says. “The second (Veils of Winter, 2019) we were turning the car on, and with this third we have kicked into drive toward our destination. Our destination is a bit mysterious and has the ability to change from day to day, but we’re on our way.”

Empty surrounds all of me. It’s a poignant line from the third album by Blackwater Holylight that encapsulates the search for self when suddenly everything has changed. There’s a theme of processing vast personal trauma throughout Silence/Motion that eloquently — both lyrically and musically — and simultaneously embodies the crushing emptiness, sorrow, strength and rebuilding of recovering from personal devastation.

“There was so much grief both in the world and interpersonally during the process of creating Silence/Motion,” says vocalist/bassist Allison “Sunny” Faris. “The four of us gave one another more space to be ourselves, to experiment with each other’s ideas and to be gentle with one another more than we ever have before. So, we knew this tenderness would manifest in extremely honest arrangements, and I think that you can hear that throughout the record.”

Curiously, considering the dark times in which it was created, this is the band’s most melodic and catchy music so far. Blackwater Holylight, as the name suggests, is all about contrasts: It’s a fluid convergence of sound that’s heavy, psychedelic, melodic, terrifying and beautiful all at once. And, Silence/Motion finds the band honing those contrasts, letting ideas and moods fully develop from song to song, rather than filling every song with a full range of their capabilities. It allows the band to go fully prog-rock here, and simply stay hushed and intimate there. There’s a new confidence to the band in how seamlessly they wield their stylistic amalgam.

“Writing this album was extraordinarily difficult emotionally, however it did come to fruition fairly quickly,” Faris says. “In the past, the theme of vulnerability has always been a big player and it definitely showed up full force while writing this album.”

Blackwater Holylight recorded the album as a four piece: Faris on vocals and guitar (on “Silence/Motion”, “MDIII”, “Around You” and “Every Corner”) and bass for the remainder, Sarah McKenna on synths, Mikayla Mayhew on guitar (and bass when Faris plays guitar) and drummer Eliese Dorsay. New second guitarist Erika Osterhout will perform the songs with them live. For Silence/Motion the band chose to work with a producer for the first time, bringing in A.L.N. (of Mizmor, Hell) to produce, along with recording engineer Dylan White — who also helmed their previous album Veils of Winter (2019) — at Odessa Recording Studio in Portland, OR. Guest vocals on album opener “Delusional” are by Bryan Funck (Thou.) Mike Paparo (Inter Arma) and A.LN. (Mizmor, Hell) lend guest vocals to album closer “Every Corner.”

Silence/Motion opens softly with interwoven folky single note guitars over an ominous sounding drone for the first minute, akin to moments from Pink Floyd’s Echoes. Suddenly an irresistibly head-nodding, groovy droptuned riff kicks in with the drums and it’s a full on blackened rocker with soaring synths and Funck’s witchy whispers over the top. “Who The Hell,” the track quoted above, takes proceedings into a Krautrock direction, centered around McKenna’s arpeggiated synth loop and Dorsay’s tom-tom triplets, while 16-note guitar strums add tension as Faris wearily sings, “So tell me who the hell would want to live this way — so afraid/ To feel this void, to dwell in it… I can’t describe this pain I wear/ It suffocates and you left it here.” It’s an incredibly powerful 6 minutes. The title track delivers the 1-2-3 punch of the album’s brilliant opening trilogy. It starts with lightly plucked acoustic guitar, plaintive piano chords and Faris’ voice gliding so softly it sounds more like a Mellotron. The song builds slowly toward crescendo, led by a swinging tom pattern, that abruptly switches back to a heavier version of the opening melody.“Silence/Motion” is about digesting and healing from sexual assault. As Faris explains, “It is an ode to the juxtaposition of feeling paralyzingly blank and and like your entire life is moving through you simultaneously.” Elsewhere, Black Metal guitars collide with dreamlike melodies. “Around You” brandishes a hopeful, hummable synth melody and shimmering shoegaze guitars like throwing down a gauntlet. In the end, it becomes undeniably clear just how completely into their own Blackwater Holylight has come.

“The analogy is that with our first record (Blackwater Holylight, 2018) we were getting into to the car and buckling up,” Faris says. “The second (Veils of Winter, 2019) we were turning the car on, and with this third we have kicked into drive toward our destination. Our destination is a bit mysterious and has the ability to change from day to day, but we’re on our way.”

Featuring Squirrel Flower and Liam O’Neill (SUUNS). Recommended If You Like: Mount Eerie, Low, Richard Swift, the Weather Station, Lomelda, Fleet Foxes, Squirrel Flower, L’Rain. Cedric Noel is a songwriter, bassist, collaborator and producer currently based in Montréal, Québec. The newest longplayer from Tio'tiá:ke/Montreal staple Cedric Noel lands with a stunning sense of surety and self. Hang Time stands as a high water mark for a songwriter who's spent the past decade quietly expanding the borders of his music. Longtime fans will recognize the fluid elements of the album’s open-ended rock formations: reflective strumming, soaring choruses, searing guitar lines, subtle bass grooves; all occasionally dissolving into pools of pure ambience. New listeners will find surprises throughout: threads of folk pop, ambient and sound collage fasten the foundations of this expressive whole. However, what’s most striking on Hang Time is Noel’s newfound sense of voice, both literal and metaphorical. Written primarily in 2017-18 during an intense period of self-reflection, this collection of songs finds Noel wrestling profoundly with his sense of identity, self and place. The album’s material was captured faithfully at The Pines, a beloved downtown Montreal studio whose doors shuttered shortly after amidst the strain of the pandemic. Noel worked closely and patiently with friend and engineer Steve Newton, ensuring the songs had the time and space needed to come fully to fruition. Hang Time features subtle rhythm work from drummer Liam O’Neill (SUUNS) and guest spots from Brigitte Naggar (Common Holly) and Tim Crabtree (Paper Beat Scissors) among others. The album opens in mid-air with ‘Comuu’, a song that implores a becoming-more while hovering triumphantly. Then follows a suite of songs (‘Headspace’, ‘Keep’, ‘Stilling’) that recall the heart-rending power of y2k-era Low, albeit with a more vigorous beat. On ‘Bass Song’, an intimate duet with musician Ella Williams (Squirrel Flower) that explores the depths of interpersonal constriction. At the crux of the album sits ‘Born’, a deceptively pleasant-sounding song that explores the confounding emotionality of adoption before fading into a distended soundfield. Throughout the back half of the album, Noel double’s down on this commitment to his genuine, proud, Black self. The most confrontational track, ‘Allies’ finds him refraining “Are you on my side?” as a trailing guitar solo interweaves a Malcolm X soundbite, eventually engulfing the composition. Glorious lead single ‘Nighttime (Skin)’ traces the artist’s sense of ancestral dissociation through to a triumphant moment of pride in self-acceptance. Throughout Hang Time, Noel finds a way to ask hard questions (both of the listener and himself) in ways that are compassionate, open and honest. The ebb and flow of tension and tenderness that moves within these tracks helps to grow the heart and redefine what Black music can be in 2021.

Walking through a forest and paying attention to our surroundings revitalizes the senses enough to ease the drive to do something and is calming enough to allow us a moment of peace and tension release. Mindfulness and meditation come naturally when you allow your senses to focus on the slight and subtle changes around you. Take a deep breath of fragrant air, soak in the feeling of the textured ground and enjoy the sights of the slowly shaking treetops in the sky. Touch the moss-green, soft ground carpeting the shaded stones, sense the abrasive bark on the trees and smell the versatile odors of pure nature. Let the stillness around you influence your state of mind and make you forget the constant motion of society. Take a timeout, immerse yourself in the forest, use all of your five senses to experience everything to the fullest and surround yourself with life existing in this environment - you will realize that you are indeed a part of nature. Shinrin Yoku helps to rejuvenate the exhausted body and balances the body and mind. This is a sensory and intimate experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With the release of their new single ‘R&B’, the ever-exciting
English Teacher prove they could be your new favourite band.
 As far as Northern cities go, Leeds probably isn’t the first place
you’d think of as a burgeoning hotbed of fiercely independent
and DIY bands. Often overshadowed by its neighbours further
along the M62, it’s precisely because of this that Leeds’ music
scene is as vehemently independent and self-sufficient as it is.
 The latest band to emerge from the city are four-piece English
Teacher. Keeping Leeds’ longstanding tradition of
uncompromising post-punk alive, the quartet’s latest single
‘R&B’ is three minutes of clattering bass and crisp percussion,
sporadic guitar occasionally punctuating the tension as
frontwoman Lily Fontaine explores ideas of imposter syndrome
and lethargy throughout the creative process.
 Lethargic is one thing ‘R&B’ isn’t, however. Fraught and frantic
perhaps. Imbued with a dry wit and self-awareness certainly,
but no one’s about to level any accusations of indifference at
English Teacher. The band explain, “the song is about the
cyclical, productivity-diminishing paradox of low self-esteem and
imposter syndrome-induced writer’s block that then fuels low
self-esteem and imposter syndrome. It’s also about racial
identity and putting the love that you have to offer a potential
romantic partner back into yourself.”
 Harbouring a cloying sense of paranoia that only increases as
the track progresses, there are elements of bands such as Slint
and Sonic Youth at play. Rather than feel like a ‘90s throwback,
however, ‘R&B’ succeeds feeling not just contemporary but vital.
Providing both a short, sharp gut punch and insight into Leeds’
ever-growing indie scene.
 Recently supported Sports Team on tour.
 Dan Carey is set to produce a forthcoming album and also
plans to release a single on Speedy Wundergound.