Cerca:the clouds

Poker Flat's Forward To The Past anthology returns in its 3rd iteration, as lean and mean as it ever was and precision-engineered to make you jack, dream and all things in between. The winning formula remains the same: task a selection of hotshot veteran and up-and-coming producers with recapturing the style and mood of early club music, paying homage to the golden years between 1985 and 1992 when Chicago House and Acid, New York House and Detroit Techno took the world and its dancefloors by storm. The result is a collection of new and exclusive tracks as addictive as the stone cold classics that influenced them - a tribute and, at the same time, the cutting edge of contemporary music production. Quell casts clouds of vocals and a repeated snippet of soul over a sinuous, undulating bassline. Anaxander gives us classic acid with Gallic attitude, fine-tuned for the dancefloor. Hard-touring DJ and Back to Basics resident Denny goes back to the old school, plunging you into the midst of a heaving dancefloor with a wobbling, fluttering acid track. Glasgow's Debukas provides another Detroit-influenced highlight, letting his imagination run riot with a heartstring-pulling chord progression and contrapuntal synth lines.

One half of Scottish duo Clouds, Perth Drug Legend tear off a solo EP of rugged, apocalyptic bloke-techno. Stunners, all of them. Freak genius at work.
What more can be said about Clouds, young prodigies who have put out as much innovative techno in the past few years than anyone. The story takes a twist with a wealth of material being released by PDL, hot off a remix of Tiga's Bugatti and releases on Resin and Westend Communications. The sound is reminiscent of Ghost Systems Rave, but there's the feeling that things have gotten even more refined, something that smacks of a real subcultural movement.

Opener Balquhidder Ruins is a stomping gate-crasher, the tempo pulled back just enough to feel the grit of industrial funk, everything restrained to it's bare essentials. Monzievaird swings heavily around a few twinkling bleeps, sparse, chunky kicks that thunder through the greased hats. Pushing things even more into the dark corners with overdriven, haunting resonance is Clackmannanshire Crusaderz, which sounds like the soundtrack to being blacked out on the ground in a Berghain tunnel. Thisistullohnottibetpal adds a mystical, multi culti dimension with some mountain flute inexplicably soaring through the air before a bell breakdown zens things into a forceful yet tranquil climax.

If that madness weren't enough, there's a digital bonus track which is an absolute bomb if you're into lower tempos and hip hop inflected bangers.

Stunners, all of them. Freak genius at work.

Blossom Kollektiv returns to vinyl once again after the success of Jepe's 'Spring Shadow,' this time around inviting House and Techno veteran Matthias Vogt to the label. The two-track EP of finely crafted melodic and emotive Techno features remixes from Oliver Gehrmann and Jepe and is sure to find its way into DJ bags world wide.

Starting the EP off on a strong note with Solace, Matthias Vogt takes us on a magical journey like we're floating in the clouds with a driving kick and lush melodies that keep us soaring through the sky into a land of beautiful and lovely emotions. Then just when we feel like we're about to fall the track uplifts us once again into a place of cosmic bliss with rich piano notes full of substance.

Playing with the rich piano notes of the original Oliver Gehrmann creates his own vision of Solace bringing a deeper and more after hours feel. The track takes us through the elements of the original but reworking it ever so slightly while never losing the strong emotional sense of the original.

Next we come back to Matthias with Fluorescence where we once again are whisked of to a fascinating place full of melody and care free attitudes. However don't let this allure fool you, powered by a heavy kick drum and tight percussion this track will work wonders on any peak hour dance floor bringing a sense of euphoria to the crowd.

After returning from our blissful land Jepe brings us right to the floor with his straightforward house version of Fluorescence. Putting his stamp all over his version using classic piano stabs and funky percussion to make the track uplifting in a rhythmic way, then subtle synths from the original peek their heads out to create a little drama and suspense until the slamming kick drum kicks back in making the crowd move.

Up and coming Belgium-born activist Philippe Petit, operator of the Knotweed and Decision Making Theory labels, returns to Figure SPC with a delightfully versatile four tracker. Spanning cold-wavesynth electronics, purist club techno and up-building melodic zones, its perhaps Petits strongest effort yet. Capturing a neo-classical, archaic mood in >Mist Solaris Negative Zone Suspended< closes the EP with a joyful, above the clouds journey, lifting up weightlessly into the ether.

Streetlight Soul' is the inaugural release on new imprint Gnosis. This four track EP is the fifth Myriadd record, following 12"s for Crème organization, Pinkman and Signals. The past decade has seen releases from the artist under a variety of pseudonyms including Acid Phreex (Djax-Up-Beats), Mantra (Bunker, Abstract Acid, Solar One Music) and Monofonix (Iwari, Cataclyst). Across the EP, Myriadd remoulds the template of vintage Chicago house, acid and deep house into his vision of modern house music. Opening with 'Midnight Obsession'; working a dark hypnotic bassline into an endless groove of crisp jacking drums and soul stirring melody, all primed for maximum effect at 4AM when lost in the smoke and strobes. 'Visions Of Love' is driven by a Juno bassline, a classic palette of tumbling, infectiously funky drums, warm, enveloping synth atmospherics and elevated by lush, celestial string work which comes off like some fantasy Mr Fingers + Virgo psychedelic jam. The EP's titular track goes deeper into the night with 909 claps, off-kilter snare hits, melancholy synth and ethereal melodies that ascend and dissolve into neon clouds. Closer 'Back To Nature' is a trip into blissed out, tropical house sounding like a lost Balearic classic re-tweaked for the 21st Century..

Federsen returns to Fifth Interval for another sublime instalment of dance floor friendly dub-techno. Dewpoint is an altogether tighter affair when compared to the label's first release, Point Reyes.

The drums are taut and razor-sharp, propelling the listener effortlessly through a dense fog of ferric clouds, swelling to fill the outer-reaches of the echo chamber. A highly polished metallic production style that can be compared to some of Andy Stott's early and classic works.

Tomas Rubek remixes Dewpoint for the B-side, remaining faithful to the original track's structure but viewing it through a tinted lens. Dewpoint's chords become iridescent, kick drums fall into a straighter pattern and are backed by further dusty percussion, shifting the original into spheres inhabited by the likes of Rod Modell and Fluxion.

12" 180g vinyl with printed sleeve.

Mastered by Lewis at Stardelta.

"Original mix is dope." - Brendon Moeller (Beat Pharmacy)

"Really digging this remix. It's been on repeat this morning." - Silent Season

"Full support, I will play it, love Federsen's work!" - Fingers in the Noise

"Played on BBC Radio" - Steve Barker (The Wire)

Footsteps,
savage smile.
Strap the damage to my face.
Iron fist,
it was never loaded.
We care no more,
we don't.


Early support by: Luke Slater, Oscar Mulero, Ben Sims, Marcel Dettmann, Perc, Clouds, Tommy Four Seven, Pfirter, Truncate, Max M, Thomas Hessler, Killawatt, Radial, AnD, Roberto, Paul Birken, Sigha, The Public Stand, Samuli Kemppi, NX1, Rebekah, Bas Mooy, Gary Beck, Ansome, Wire, The Advent, Nuno dos Santos, Unbalance, Blind Spot, Mark Morris, Erphun, Sebastian Kokow, Juho Kusti, Markus Suckut, Par Grindvik, The Black Dog, Darko Esser, Joachim Spieth, Happa, Martyn Hare, Sawf, J. Tijn, Doka, Lag, Luis Ruiz, Exium, Takaaki Itoh, Ryuji Takeuchi, Inigo Kennedy, Operator, Jeff Rushin, Shards, Darkfloor , Kriz, Exium, Ben Long, Fran Hartnett, Octave, Henning Baer, Dimi Angelis, Paul Mac, Jeroen Search, P.E.A.R.L., Dax J, Mike Humphries..

Perc's second album 'The Power And The Glory' despite being released in mid-February has already been predicted to be one of the standout releases of 2014, receiving excellent reviews, DJ feedback and radio support. Now Perc Trax is proud to announce the remix EP for the album, featuring remixes by three UK artists who all make their Perc Trax debuts on this release. Each remixer was given free rein to manipulate the source material as they wished and the results speak for themselves, as Perc's original mixes are transformed into something new yet still retaining the innovative, forward looking attitude of 'The Power And The Glory'

First up is R&S artist and Poly Kicks label owner Tessela, who thanks to 'Hackney Parrot' and his new BBC Radio 1 residency has been making huge waves recently. Already previewed on his debut Radio 1 broadcast and in Perc's FACT Magazine mix, the Tessela remix of 'Take Your Body Off' is a heavily swung, bass heavy take on the track, still featuring the unforgettable screaming vocal of the original mix.

Next up Hemlock main man Untold, who himself been enjoying a great reaction to his own recent album provides an experimental take on the already out there 'Bleeding Colours'. Sounding like a lost cut from his album the track revolves around a foundation of ever morphing layers of bass.

Finally Scotland's Clouds get their hands on 'Dumpster' and focus more on groove than big room dynamics as they show off another side of their already impressive production talents with a deeper than expected remix to close off the EP...

Franc Spangler is back with three brand new cuts to form the Painted Lady EP. Spangler, also known as Jamie Odell also known as Jimpster returns to Delusions Of Grandeur following something of a hiatus since his 2010 EP Forever And A Day. Not that there hasn't been demand (following his brilliant remix of Norm De Plume for vinyl only label Kolour Limited) but with a busy gig schedule and two labels to keep on top of, the Spangler moniker has always been seen as a bit of a special side project where quality presides over quantity.

Title track Painted Lady kicks things off in fine style with warm, deep house being the order of the day. Franc gets just enough dust in amongst the layering keyboards and echoing stabs to keep things the right side of smooth, the overall vibe is rolling with subtle FX and sounds poking through every now and then bringing a new element to latch onto.

Up next we have Lumpsucker, which brings us a lovely, blissed out, slice of electronica underpinned by classic TR707 beats adding just the right amount of jack to the track. We're getting hints of YMO and Balil with a lingering note of Larry Heard on the finish.

Finally, we're treated to the epic closer that is Camberwell Beauty. Mid tempo boogie beats with crunchy claps and steady hats lay the bedrock for a loping CS5 bassline whilst lush keys shimmer and swirl like little fluffy clouds in a bright summer's sky.

Lighting more cigarettes,
pouring more,
drinks.

It has been a beautiful
fight.

Still
is.

Early support by : Blawan, Surgeon, Dave Clarke, Tommy Four Seven, Marcel Dettmann, Speedy J, Perc, Truncate, Truss, Lucy, Drumcell, AnD, Sawf, Mark Broom, Paul Mac, NX1, Jamie Bissmire, Clouds, Joachim Spieth, Paula Temple, Octave, Kriz, Cassegrain, Max M, Radial, Developer, Charlton, Takaaki Itoh, Bas Mooy, Rebekah, Samuli Kemmpi, The Public Stand, Agony Forces, Chris Finke, Luis Ruiz, J. Tijn, Wire, Jeff Derringer, Joe Farr, Inigo Kennedy, Thomas Hessler, Dave Ellesmere, Sunil Sharpe, Raiz, Mr. Jones, Bodyjack...

Once upon a time...in the midst of masked identities, artist pseudonyms and the like, Midnight Shift introduces a creature not even of human form.

Tapirus conjures music reflecting the duality of his soul. On one hand, rough and acidic to tell of the terrain of his past. And on the other, pure ethereal sounds borne of another place. This EP, showcasing 3 songs of the Tapirus alongside a remix by label artist Basic Soul Unit, is just the introduction to his tale.

The wiggly 'Acid Love Story' enters the room with its tight drum programming and infectious bassline commanding attention. A voice speaks of a love lost: 'She left...she left. Dark time ahead. Dark times in my head.' But perhaps the story is not yet over.

'Trying to Make Something of Life' continues the monologue, conveying an acidic almost bitter experience. Freaked out and haunting, this track is literally inspired by the dead. It lays as atribute to losing yet another close companion in life.

On the flipside, 'To Live in the Hearts...' and its remix comes through. Ascending the scales of life, its Asianic influence and soaring chords take one beyond the clouds. Basic Soul Unit's transforms the track helter-skelter, a frantic pace turning the peaceful tune into beautiful art of war.

Away from the hypnotic mayhem of the floating roofscapes, we see fractured images cycling faster.
Just as clouds follow the wind, airy soundscapes track the low-end groundwork with grainy artifacts bursting in amongst the thick.
Lost in this surrounding ambience, the B side carves its way with a resonant materiality where shattering hi-hats pull you out of a hypnotic semi-dormant state.
(B2) enters a sound voyage, an intimate balance between gloomy atmospheres, dark sirens and repeated upcoming unidentified melodies, that play against the ceaseless motion of the hi-hat motive.

Up and away / To your journey to the sun / Drink your rocket juice / Fly away (Hey, Shooter).
High up in the skies, amongst the clouds, Rocket Juice & The Moon was born. Literally. It happened back in 2008, when Damon Albarn, Flea and Tony Allen convened on the same Lagos flight, to play and exchange musical ideas in that city as part of the Africa Express collective. Relishing a shared enthusiasm for one another's work, and bonding immediately, there and then the triumvirate laid down the blueprint for Rocket Juice.
Still, more than a year passed before conditions were set for three weeks together at Albarn's West London studio, recording and refining two-dozen startlingly out and deeply funky instrumental grooves. The next stage was to invite onboard some extremely talented friends, with further sessions in Dallas, New York, Chicago and Paris... Erykah Badu, no less, queen of contemporary soul. Three companions from Africa Express: Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, whose debut album has topped World Music charts since its release last Autumn; her multi-talented compatriot Cheick Tidiane Seck, whose prodigious keyboardism has lit up releases by artists ranging from Youssou N'Dour to Hank Jones; the young, Ghanaian rapper M.anifest, quizzically existential, switching seamlessly between Twi and English. And the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, long-time stalwarts in the Honest Jon's set-up — since one of the team discovered them busking near the shop in Portobello Road, on his lunchbreak — with a second album for the label due in May... Finally, the tracks were dispatched for mixing to Berlin, to be meticulously honed, polished and envenomed by Mark Ernestus, one half of the legendary Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound partnerships.
The result is Rocket Juice & The Moon — out March 26, 2012, on Honest Jon's Records — a triumphant exploration and proliferation of kinetic Afro-funk rhythms: organic, exuberant, communal music-making, evidenced by the project's live debut on stage as part of the Honest Jon's Chop Up in late 2011, which hit London, Marseille, Dublin, and Cork to such great acclaim (witness the flurry of smart-phone film-clips uploaded in the days thereafter).
From the inaugural bars — that absurdly funky slice of instructional timekeeping, 1-2-3-4-5-6 — the liquid pulse of Fela Kuti's classic recordings drives the action through a suite of 18 shape-shifting compositions. The greatest drummer in the world has never sounded so good as he does here. His intricate cross-patterns jostle and lock with Flea's nimble, rumbling bass riffs. Joined by Seck on There and Extinguished — 'when you dispose of something burning, be sure it's out' — Albarn's keyboards spray synth fusillades up top, over, and under... splicing into the mess of wires running between the freaked Afro-disco of William Onyeabor and the space-jazz-moog of Sun Ra. The HBE brings extra intensity and drama to Leave-Taking — likewise Flea's trumpet to Rotary Connection — teasing out the haunting melody coiled in the mix.
Where the best of vintage Afrobeat sides sustained their concentrated energies over the course of sprawling, marathon jams, RJ & TM manages something altogether different: the group bottles the idiom into capsules of funk... and real songs. Beautifully buoyed by Erykah Badu's unmistakable vocals, Hey, Shooter brilliantly traverses metaphysical spaceways sans any semblance of noodling. Lolo and Follow-Fashion — featuring the open-hearted sensuality of Diawara's singing, M.anifest's quick, brawny science, and more brass blasts — play like its musical cousins or codas. Indeed, the album's shrewd sequencing creates the composite effect of tracks working both individually or within the context of an extended song-cycle.
The lovely ballad, Poison, is bittersweet and ruminative: 'If you're looking for love, beware the signs / They will paralyze you one by one / Poison, it will only break your heart.' Down-tempo and dubby, Check Out and Worries amplify the range of styles and moods. And by the time of Fatherless — a chugging Afro blues that evokes John Lee Hooker lost in Lagos, one gets the sneaking suspicion there's very little outside the reach of this collective's inventive musical grasp.
There is, in fact, a palpable openness pervading Rocket Juice & The Moon — the sense of a limber willingness to follow creative impulse — right down to how the group acquired its name. When Ogunajo Ademola — the Lagotian commissioned to do the album's cover artwork — dubbed his submission 'Rocket Juice & The Moon', it quickly morphed into the formal name of the project, like trying to hold onto mercury.
Surely, the stars above also approved.

GREENER RECORDS was founded in January 2008 by Andrés Zacco. The label is the channel through which Andres expresses his vision about techno music. It was also created for the purpose of bringing together his close family of fellow artists who share a similar style and approach to music: Lucas Mari, Franco Cinelli, Leonel Castillo or Lineas De Nazca.

Shadow Play, the brand new label owned by Parisian artist Le Loup and his partner Pura, drops its second release courtesy of the bossman himself alongside Chris Carrier. The two men got together in the studio and cooked up some tasty goodness. The first of four tracks on this release is the intergalactic opus 'Phoenix Lights', which works off serene pads that transport you out into the cosmos, along with a warm, soothing bassline and electronic chirps and bleeps. 'Research Programm (Outro)' takes us into more obscure realms, as Chris Carrier and Le Loup sample a scientific vocal and create a mesmerising bed of sounds underneath it. On the flip we kick off with 'Clouds Reflection', another track which features a sample from an old instructional video. This track has minimal composition, with dreamy astral pads, shuffling beats and a grumbling low end. In the second half Chris and Le Loup introduce more twinkling FX, to engage and hypnotise you... To bring the EP to a close we're presented with 'V-Shape', which begins with a layer of clever drum programming aimed straight at the hips. Once you're moving get ready for the juicy bassline, and a sultry top end that grips you and gripping progression. The perfect to end an utterly fresh EP...

Hui Terra. The dreamlike shape of the half-heard word, abstracts with faint impressions of bucolic landscape, or handfuls of translucent and brightly-colored gemstones that hold odd, elusive, asymmetrical form. This enchanting, gently surreal debut album from Alex Cobb's Etelin project explores the power and playfulness of impulsive action diffused through electro-acoustic and ambient sound.

This music was created with digital synthesizers and a sampler in the four months immediately following the birth of his first child, a hazy period marked by a lack of regular sleep and a diet of INA-GRM, Nuno Canavarro's "Plux Quba", and Microstoria's "Init Ding" - records that appeared to produce both stimulating and soothing effects on a newborn's nascent consciousness. Recorded and arranged at all hours, this is an album that reflects on moments of tumult and fragility. Cobb sews small sharpnesses and surprises into its movements to uncover different aspects of each sound source, doubling as hypnic starts cast to advance and variate the narrative in subtle and unexpected ways. Sound and atmosphere manifest in eccentric, alchemical fashion, as though forming in processes of sublimation - solids dissipating into vapor - and deposition - clouds resolving and dropping to the ground in piles - to an obscure and domestic rhythm. There's the purveying sense of moving within the boundaries of small, hermetic ecosystem. This is underscored and doused by a slow, blooming sense of warmth; growing joy without bombast. Even the more startling textures conceal this same truth and emphasis, such as the alien, sour salt-butter electronic babble in "Little Rig", largely sampled from Cobb's son's voice at just a week old. It is emotional music - devoted, affectionate, and playful.