Suche:the rush

Not much is known about the German session musician ensemble Studiogruppe 1 from the ‘70s and ‘80s. It’s believed that the grandfather of one member, known only as V.S., originally soundtracked silent films in theatres - although that hasn’t been proved. Studiogruppe1 never rose to prominence in the heyday of studio groups and library records, but it certainly wasn’t due to lack of trying.

Although it’s unknown who the individual members of Studiogruppe1 were, it’s clear they could find a groove within the machines. It appears the sessions were also engineered by V.S., and there’s plenty of space between the notes, which lends a heady atmosphere of anticipation to the music. Just close your eyes and you will find that the music triggers many scenes from the movies in your mind.

Take the opener Dunkler Sonnenaufgang, for example. Waves lap on the shore line of an alternate Coney Island, while the sound system of an abandoned amusement park plays arpeggios in the distance. Errinungen could complement expansive panoramic time-lapses of natural cycles and rolling clouds. The track Wenn Der Tiefe Schlaf Kommt, might accompany a documentary on REM dream cycles and flotation tanks. Sonnentanz raises the temperature, as act III in every movie narrative should, as protagonists rush to overcome their challenges. Ein Neuer Anfang would perfectly soundtrack the plot twist of any number of thrillers, film noirs, or sci-fi mysteries. Album closer War Alles Nur Ein Traum could supplement slow-motion shots of dawning realization, foreshadowing a betrayal or a cliffhanger.

V.S. and Studiogruppe1 have condensed the evocative sounds of the ’80s into something of an art form. Bringing to mind the lilting melodies and melancholy chord movements of Tangerine Dream, Vangelis or Manuel Göttsching, Studiogruppe1 manage to capture widescreen emotional flash points without the need for celluloid, or barely any visual aid, for that matter. These tracks work just as well in the furnace of your imagination or a dark room filled with dry ice and lasers.

*warehouse find** pressed in a small qty for the RH physical store in 2015..

Black Vinyl, DL Card. Following Lucy Gooch’s acclaimed ‘Rain’s Break’, her first release on Fire Records earlier this year, the artist’s acclaimed debut EP ‘Rushing’ is revisited with new artwork and a brand new track, ‘Orthione’. “Lucy’s sound marries the etheral qualities of ambient music with buoyant, effortless pop” Crack ‘Rushing’ in its original shorter five-track incarnation was heralded as a touchstone beneath the cascading torrent of modern times and an oasis for turbulent times. An intimate collection of songs built around Lucy’s emotive vocals and unique ambient dream pop, the newly added stand-out track ‘Orthione’ trips into the esoteric world of Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass; here her voice is the grounding force that travels to a space that heals and grows. “For an artist whose favourite trick is the seemingly infinite crescendo, she clearly knows the value of restraint” Pitchfork // “Expansive, upfront, spectral pop” KEXP // “The pastoral element of the music resonates more as you tune in to Lucy’s unique vocal.” Loud And Quiet

CELESTE have been breaking the outer boundaries of heavy music for over fifteen years. When they first evolved from the Lyon hardcore punk scene, they were absolutely brutal and entirely unique, delivering extremity on their own terms that they pushed further and further with each successive album. “We just wanted to get darker and more violent,” says drummer Antoine Royer, until 2017’s Infidèle(s) saw the incorporation of a more melodic streak. Their most focussed record yet, it was tremendously received, critically adored, and backed with the band’s biggest shows to date.

Its follow-up was always going to be something radical. Even by their own inordinately high standards, however, new record Assassine(s) is one hell of a step forward. Even if this album still contains cyclonic walls of guitar, of battering rhythm, and passages of blissful, rushing release. it’s unlike anything the band have ever released; embracing a modern and forward-thinking production, they're just as complex but more direct, diverse and accessible than before. “Our leitmotif here was to open our minds,” says guitarist Sébastien Ducotté. “We made a real effort to think outside of our box.”

During lockdown CELESTE’s members were forced to each write individually. “We each went further into our personal, inner views of what the songs were,” says bassist and vocalist Johan Girardeau. When eventually they began sessions under producer Chris Edrich, it was gruelling. “We ended up exhausted, physically and mentally” says Johan. “There was no break in two weeks. We didn’t see the sun at all during that time. Every night we were so tired that we didn’t enjoy being together as much as we’re used to.” Nevertheless, in the same way the hardships of isolation led to richer and more complex songwriting, it’s that relentlessness that led to the record’s razor-sharp edges.

Above all else, CELESTE are innovators. Whether by pioneering French avant-garde metal when they formed at the turn of the millennium, by making their boldest leaps despite being seven albums deep into their career, or using two years away from live shows to tightly finetune their stagecraft, they refuse at all costs to rest on their laurels. There can be consequences to this instinct – fans of the band’s older work might be thrown off by their constant shifts of pace – but they’re throwing caution to the wind. A bit of backlash “would be a good thing, because it would mean that we’ve really changed,” says Guillaume . “It's not disrespectful, it's just that we never made music to please people, but just to enjoy what we're doing.” In the end, CELESTE are a band so forward-thinking that they can only be judged on the strength of their latest work. And when it comes to a record as bold as Assassine(s), they’ve hit a whole new peak entirely.

Mekong Delta waren die erste deutsche Prog-Thrash-Band, noch
ein Jahr bevor Sieges Even ihr Debüt veröffentlichten. Mit „Mekong
Delta“, 1988, machten sie es den unbedarften Metalfans nicht
leicht, es sei denn man war mit dem komplexen Material von Rush
oder den frühen Yes und Genesis vertraut, gehörte zu den wenigen
Insidern, die „Energetic Disassembly“ (1985) von Watchtower
kannten, oder wurde von einem älteren Bruder mit King Crimson
oder anspruchsvoller Klassik beschallt. Der Zweitling „The Music Of
Eric Zann“ wurde aufgrund eines differenzierterem Sound eher von
den Fans als genial und hochkarätig erkannt. Die geheimnisvollen
Mekong Delta (die Besetzung blieb zunächst im Verborgenen)
machten sich einen Namen als eine der innovativsten deutschen
Metalbands, was bis heute Gültigkeit hat. Dies zeigte auch das
aktuelle Album „Tales Of A Future Past“ (2020), welches zurecht
abgefeiert wurde. Zum vierten Album stieß Doug Lee zur Band,
der zuvor Sänger bei der US-Gruppe Siren war (und heute wieder
ist), die bei Aaarrg Records ihre zweite LP „Financial Suicide“
veröffentlichen. Und eben deren Labelboss Ralph Hubert ist nicht
nur Bassist und klassischer Gitarrist bei Mekong Delta, sondern
auch die treibende Kraft hinter der Band. Zusammen mit Drummer
Peter Haas (Krokus, Buddy Lackey, Calhoun Conquer) und Gitarrist
Uwe Baltrusch erreichte man ein erneutes Hoch und lieferte 1994
eines ihrer ambitioniertesten Werke: Visions Fugitives.
Schon zuvor haben Mekong Delta klassische Stücke im
Metalgewand zelebriert, doch auf Visions Fugitives begeistert
man mit einer eigenen Komposition namens „Suite For Group
And Orchestra“, die nun eine LP-Seite füllt. Die anderen vier
Songs zeigen die Band in ihrem gewohnten Stil. 1994 wurde
vom damaligen Label Bullet Proof (Intercord) keine Schallplatte
angefertigt, da die CD den Kampf bereits gewonnen hatte. Durch die
aktuelle Nachfrage erscheint dieses Meisterwerk nun erstmals auf
LP!

Nervous Records, the iconic label synonymous with the rise of house from the streets of New York City, will mark 30 years in the music industry by releasing the celebratory compilation LP ‘Nervous Records: 30 Years’ on October 1st (Part 1) and October 15th (Part 2).

Featuring original mixes of the label’s biggest tracks, plus remixes by some of its most celebrated acts, ‘Nervous Records: 30 Years’ is both a celebration of the past and of the future. Featuring a who’s who of electronic dance music, the long player sees names including Louie Vega, David Morales Darius Syrossian, Tensnake, Monki, Franky Rizardo, Danny Howard and more take on iconic Nervous cuts: ‘You Make Me Feel Mighty Real’, ‘Treat Me Right’, ‘Future Groove’, ‘Feel Like Singing’, ‘Get Up Everybody’, ‘Break You’, ‘Hot’, ‘End This Hate’, ‘Unspeakable Joy’, ‘Can Ya Tell Me’, ‘Jerk It’, ‘The Anthem’, ‘It Makes A Difference’, ‘Learn 2 Luv’ and ‘Don’t You Ever Give Up’.

The album marks one of the most enduring, extraordinary legacies to grace America’s illustrious music history, not just in electronica but far beyond. Founded in 1991 by Michael and his father Sam Weiss, and recognizable immediately by its distinctive character logo, the label grew rapidly, in no small part due to Michael Weiss’ practically unmatched passion for discovering new music.

“Louie Vega and Kenny Dope woke me at 4am on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning from their studio telling me they had something really different that I needed to hear,” Michael recollects. “I asked if they could play it over the phone. They said if I wanted to hear it I had to come to the studio. So of course I got myself up, got dressed and went there. That “really different track” ended up being ‘The Nervous Track’, a tune that became our signature release and was also highly instrumental in the emergency of London’s ‘Broken Beat’ movement.”

The label’s willingness to take chances on fresh sounds and innovative concepts rising up from the melting pot sidewalks of NYC ensured a body of work that has become a living musical history of the city. House cuts ‘Unspeakable Joy’ and ‘Nitelife’ (Kim English), ‘Get Up (Everybody)’ (Byron Stingily) and ‘Feel Like Singing’ (Sandy B) bump up against hip-hop anthems like ‘Who Got Da Props’ (Black Moon) and “Bucktown” (Smif-n-Wessun) and reggae cut ‘Take It Easy’ (Mad Lion); soulful flows from Mood II Swing (Kim English ‘Learn 2 Luv’, Loni Clark “Rushing”), Armand Van Helden (‘The Anthem’) and Nuyorican Soul (‘Mind Fluid’) sit alongside seminal techno singles like Winx’ ‘Don’t Laugh’. The young artists and producers who joined the Nervous Records’ family have gone on to become some of the most hallowed and celebrated dance acts of all time: Louie Vega, Kenny Dope, David Morales, Tony Humphries, Roger Sanchez, Armand Van Helden, Kerri Chandler, Kim English, Byron Stingily, Josh Wink, to name just a handful.

“We did a release with Josh Wink under his Winx alias entitled ‘Nervous Build-Up’,” Michael said. “It did well and it was obvious how talented Josh was. Subsequent to that release I was pretty persistent in asking him to continue to play me his new demos. During one phone conversation he said, “Mike I’m gonna play you something over the phone but don’t laugh when you hear it.” That demo ended up being ‘Don’t Laugh’, which became one of our biggest international hits and still to this day is one of America’s earliest and most impactful techno hits.”

As much a celebration of the label’s future as it is of their past, Nervous Records: 30 Years is but a marker in the imprints’ history, a clear sign of where they’ve been and also where they’re going. With 30 years behind them, the label’s determination to unearth new raw diamonds in the rough is as unwavering as ever.

“I’ve always been one to look at what others are doing (the industry at large) and think, “ok, are they doing this specific thing for a reason, or doing it because everyone else is doing the same thing” and make my decision based on that,” says Nervous Records’ General Manager Andrew Salsano. “In an age where data metrics and analytics reign supreme, I remain steadfast that they should be complementary to your decision and not the sole indicator to make one. So many songs today are written with 15 second hooks in mind for social media, and while there’s nothing wrong with that business model you will always be chasing the wave instead of carving out your own path and identity.

“My primary focus for the sound of the label has and will continue to revolve around signing good songs and music that has the ability to react at the street level first. The best results come from artists that are firstly given a bit of local love that grows into a global impact. Fresh ideas that express child-like curiosity and artists showing vulnerability in their music are also something I look for, artists and producers that are not making music with certain markets in mind, but rather their own style and signature that is unique but able to straddle the fine line of underground and overground.”

Still as raw, as underground and as finely tuned to the dance floor as they ever have been, perhaps the secret to the success - and the longevity - of Nervous Records has something to do with that hard, dogged, no-holds-barred NYC edge that runs through the veins of the label. With the next generation of producers rising from the clubs of New York, one thing is certain; Nervous Records will be there to find them, nurture them and bring them to the world at large, over the next decade and beyond.

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

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

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

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

This is MindTrip!

C.Z. debuts on LA's Evar Records with the uncompromising Heat Index EP.

The Los Angeles-based producer, beatmaker and DJ sets a course through IDM, techno, jungle and trance to deliver five frenetic, emotionally-charged dancefloor cuts.

Over the course of an intensely productive career, Colby Zinser (aka C.Z.) has made music spanning genres like pop, rap, hardcore and jungle. As well as releasing music as C.Z., he's operated multiple aliases, including the prolific Ice Underlord. Drawing from a longstanding fascination with breaks, trance and the IDM of artists like Warp Records' Clark, he's developed his own rich and eclectic style of club music - a sound that crystalized on his 2020 debut album Hyperfocus.

C.Z. emerged from 2020 armed with a mass of new dancefloor tracks, freshly inspired to make club music a central focus, after years of smuggling techno, trance and breaks elements into the rap beats he was making for others. As he explains: 'It's great to come back to music and just make what I love, I don't want to be someone else's secret weapon, I want to be my own.' Heat Index refuses to toe a line, steering skillfully through genres and setting a tone that oscillates between club-fuelled euphoria, heartbreak and the looming threat of planetary crisis.

Opener 'Midnight' rattles along at a breathless 160 BPM, transporting you to a breakdown in the middle of a pounding hard trance set. Within a minute the rushing neon trance synths collide with huge, sub destroying kicks. The title track 'Heat Index' follows, with brooding pads bolted onto a tight breakbeat, leaving space open for the razor sharp, searching synth line.

Moving rapidly through the gears, 'Hurricane' is an aptly titled exercise in precision programmed classic jungle breaks, carried forward by bubbling earworm melodies. 'Retrograde' shifts the focus again - a pitch-black, dark, fast and seething techno track ripe for warehouses and dungeons, before 'Radial Lens', a melodic, anthemic set-closer built on a muscular, downtempo break.

C.Z.'s first appearance on Evar Records, the LA label founded in 2020 by Trickfinger and Aura T-09, follows a series of hard-hitting releases from Speed Dealer Moms, Limewax and Kilbourne, all artists who like C.Z., are able to traverse twisted electronica, club music and pure abstraction with ease. 'I want to help encourage a more open electronic music space, less pretentious, and encompassing all genres.' C.Z. says. 'It's an important goal of mine, and one the label shares.' Heat Index is a wide-ranging EP from a versatile producer, and a celebration of unfettered expression, for minds and dancefloors free from inhibition or genre restriction.

Tape

The Forbidden Dance label is marking their first year of existence and with already top-notch names (Vick Lavender, Alton Miller, The Mechanical Man) with the first three releases, they are celebrating the one year mark with another global gem, disco and house finest - Ilija Rudman!
Where Wild Horses Go is conveying an unquestionable sense of 80's electro and synth boogie filled with smooth and heavily reverberated rhythmics drenched in strong snares. Aligned with catchy and spaced-out disco pads, the album is riddled with ever strong analogue elements processed in a light, quirky and summerish way but with enough groove in some tracks easily applicable on the dancefloors in the late hours.
Dead Horse Gang is a brainchild music band/brand by Ilija Rudman dedicated to cinematic dance concept laying on the Los Angeles funk attitude, Art Of Noise perception of sound and raw 12-bit grooves making a statement of mid 80's culture with surf vibe of California summer.
"Dead Horse Gang Music is more than music, it's a way of life, a way of thinking, a path to a maximum freedom of the one, who can accept it."
-Ilija Rudman

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

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

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

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

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

Hot on the heels of his preliminary EP on Stroboscopic Artefacts, Embryo, which paved the way to the present album, and two years after the landing of his 2016-released inaugural LP, Montagne Trasparenti, Mannequin helmsman Alessandro Adriani returns with his highly anticipated full-length debut for SA, Morphic Dreams. Throughout eleven cuts painstakingly executed but lacking not an iota of the fresh, spontaneous oomph that made his sound stand out of the crowd of techno producers to have emerged over the past decade, Adriani lays the foundations to a suspended sound imaginarium, governed by its own rules and principles of gravity. Revolving around the notions of sublimation and quest for inner balance, Morphic Dreams is comprised of four distinct sequences, conceived and designed as reflections of four mental states, each of them linked to the four alchemical elements i.e. Water, Earth, Air and Fire here represented by the A, B, C and D-sides. Fluid and enveloping, the A-side bathes the listener in some zero-G uterine vortex, pitching and rolling from the slo-burning exotic sensuality and tribal spell of The Tropical Year to the trunk-bending, arpeggiated fast-track pulse of Storm Trees, through Raindances feverish electro swing. Entering a further abrasive, minerally rich phase, the B-side unleashes Adrianis dark side with optimum conviction. Deeply anchored in earthly materiality, this new evolution stage starts off to the frantic Italo bass of Dissolving Images, rushing headlong into a kaleidoscopic maelstrom of fractured reflections and nasty Giallo-like ambience. The delirious body stretch sequence then rather abruptly swerves onto a calmer flux with Dust/Mist, a much enticingly hip-swaying collaboration with Simon Crab, ex-member of the seminal 80s UK industrial-experimental band Bourbonese Qualk, before Casting The Runes engulfs us into a tormented world of swollen eeriness and disquieting esoterism. Back to a widescreen showcase of droney distortions, nasty acid swashes and other quirky drum programming, Hors De Combat opens a new chapter, shortly followed by the playful bass intricacies and modular jeu-de-piste of Invisible Seekers, featuring Avian affiliate and longtime friend Shawn OSullivan. A further mind-expanding piece, C-side closer Crow deploys its blackened wings wide and high as a chaos of martial percussions and liquefying synths slivers crash past the red-hot skyline. A fluttering melodic interlude, Things About To Disappear blazes a clean trail for Make Words Split And Crack to flourish, slowly but surely blooming into a nonstop grandiose twelve minute-shy finale geared up with the stirring cacophonic force of a Ligetian symphony and something of an epic-scale Kubrickian soundtrack.

Integrating equal parts black metal savagery and rock n' roll defiance, Vancouver’s WORMWITCH saw their debut album, "Strike Mortal Soil", released worldwide through Prosthetic Records on May 12th, 2017. Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, an early incarnation of the group was more of a hardcore/punk band but as the band’s influence of Celtic Frost, Darkthrone and Disfear started showing up more in their music, they chose to rebrand themselves as Wormwitch. In October of 2015, they released their first EP, The Long Defeat. In early 2016, No Clean Signing premiered a new track, Coffin Birth, describing it as a “high-octane rush of deep, grinding riffs, piston-driven drumming, and thundering bass, with a heavy-as-hell production.” It was then that they caught the attention of Prosthetic Records and soon a worldwide deal was struck.

The second release in January to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Frank de Groodts career as a recording artist is a re-press of his legendary Sonar Bases 4 10 double 12 . Exactly 21 years ago, in January 1997, Frank elevated to electro stardom with this astonishing combination of dark electronica and electro beats.

Frank at the time lived just outside the city of Amersfoort, which is where he was born and lives again these days, some 30 minutes northwest of Utrecht. His first ever release in January 1994 was a techno EP on U-TRAX, as Pieces of a Pensive State of Mind. Later that year, he released his first 12"-es on Djax records as The Optic Crux, and he continued to keep making up artists names in the following 25 years, like Fastgraph and The Operator. He is also one half of the live outfit Random XS (together with DJ Zero One), collaborated with Arno Peeters (a.k.a. Spasms) as Urban Electro and with Detroit's Dennis Richardson as Ultradyne. And that s not even all of his alter egos.

The sound of these eight unique tracks called for a new moniker back in the nineties: Sonar Base (ironically misspelled on the original release as Sonar Bass). All track on this re-press have been remastered for maximum impact. The double vinyl goodness kicks off with Earth Probe, that very subtly creeps towards us, before it kicks in with a rather obese bassdrum. As if Frank wanted to ease his listeners into his then new sound, this track basically is in techno/acid style, but has the slower tempo that characterizes the rest of the electro tracks of this release.

Immediately following, is the unrivaled beauty of Welcome To Sonar Base #4, a track that slowly builds up before it takes us on a deep space journey at two thirds. The 11 minute Sonar Base #5 has been a DJ favorite for 21 years, reaching out to both electro and techno lovers, while Sonar Base #6 is the type of ultra-pure electro that really puts your woofers to the test.

Arrival At Dwell Probe is another one of our favorites, with superfine beats, desolate voice samples and deep and moody synths. Very musical, truly a top piece that will leave you totally unprepared for Blunted. This track has the rolling type of hiphop-style beats that mix well with LL Cool J's Mama Said Knock You Out, but of course has the space-station atmosphere that makes it unmistakably a Sonar Base track.

The fast pace and merciless beats of Intergalactic Anecdote rush us to the finale: Sonar Base #10, a worthy closing track, with deep bassdrum patterns and melancholic strings that also please fans of broken beats. It stops and goes and keeps demanding your attention, making you wanting to go back again to the first track disc and start your Sonar Base trip all over again.

The sixth release on Phoq U Phonogrammen, the sordid and rash U-TRAX sublabel, may be from its least known artist, but it is our personal favorite Phoq U release. The style can perhaps best be described as acid funk. Though the drums and bass lines generally are rather tight, all tracks have these quirky synth lines that give them a rather funky, dark 'cyborg feel'.
Lynx is Reyer Caderius van Veen - and he didn't chose that name himself. Reyer is from Groningen, the mayor city in the most northern region of The Netherlands. It's a vibrant student town, with lots of music going on.

In the 90s, Reyer participated in a techno-foundation, together with Thee J. Johanz (Ballyhoo Records) and Johan Sagel, who released a 12" as Jo-I on U-TRAX in 1995. Together with Johan, Reyer also formed a band called L.A.P. 01 (Live Acid Performance), which released a 12", a 10" and a remix on Jan Liefhebber's Highland Beats and a track on Ballyhoo Records (BALL 100).
Harsh starts off with some terribly hard and high tones, that sound like a nuclear plant is going to melt down. The ferocious bassdrum and grunting acid bass line add to the uncomfortable mood.
What makes us really happy is Sex On Jupiter. It's a rushed track that completely opens up around the 1:20 mark with a desolate, yet funky sawtooth 303 bassline.

On the flipside, Changes brings a nice pumping rhythm combined with a rolling bassline with all sorts of disturbing sounds on top.
The EP closes off with another highlight of darkness: Dark Mission. The track has a lovely flow, but really starts to space you out as soon as a hoarse sounding pulsating synth spreads it wings across the deliciously bubbling 303.
To be short: this is an uncomfortable record, and we love it!

Original release date: August 1996.

The second and, as later would turn out, also the last release in Heinrich Tillack's critically acclaimed Tick Trax-series. The first Tick Trax-release by this talented producer from Braunschweig (Germany) was released as Volume 1 on U-TRAX in 1994 (cat. no.: 13 UTR SYS 1). It was a very successful record, however a bit too 'rough' for U-TRAX. Therefore, Volume II is launched on the U-TRAX sublabel Phoq U Phonogrammen, that has a more raw approach to techno, acid and electro.

Heinrich is a bit of an enigma. Having released some 12"s on Detroit's Plus 8 Records (as Sysex), Force Inc. Music Works (as Absolute) and Disko B (as Festival) and his own label Jakpot (both as Festival, as well as Co-Jack, together with Olivier Bondzio aka Hardfloor), he more or less disappeared from the face of the earth. It is said that he is a developer of children's apps for mobile phones nowadays.

This second Tick Trax release has 6 tracks, all in the distinctive raw Chicago-style that Heinrich uses only in his Tick Trax-identity. For minimalists, the CR-78 orientated beats on 'Samba Track' (from '93!) will be the track to go for. For heavy pounding floor fillers you can rely on 'Heavy Weight Track' and 'Super Heavy Weight Track'. Our personal favorite is 'Rush Track', another minimal track, but heavy and dark at the same time. The power is the drive in this one!

Original release date: October 1995.

* taken from the digital version of bio-rhythm 3 and not included on the vinyl version of the album.

Network’s two groundbreaking bio-rhythm albums in 1990 were each accompanied by much loved 12” preview samplers of tracks from the iconic compilations.

For the third release - a mere 31 years after the first sets - Network have added a fresh twist. The sampler this time around contains 2 tracks from the bio-rhythm 3 vinyl release and 2 that will only be otherwise available on digital format.

It makes the sampler a must have for all electronica vinyl junkies.

Nexus 21 “Silicon”, a mainstay of the duo’s much acclaimed live sets, was recorded in 1991 but not released at the time. Memories are thin as it why such a gem was ignored but the most probable explanation is that the transformation of Nexus 21 into Altern 8 took attention away from the track. After being found in the tape vaults it has been remastered for the bio-rhythm 3 project.

It is joined on side A by the Octave One remix of 10th Planet “Strings Of Life” - which is not on the album vinyl. There is a proper labyrinthe story behind this remake of the Rhythim Is Rhythim classic of classics. Kool Kat, the predecessor to Network, arranged for Rhythim Is Rhythim to play live supporting Inner City at a London Town And Country Club concert in September 1989. The label recorded the show which featured Derrick May and his guest Carl Craig.

Fast forward to 1995 and the tapes were handed over to Ashley Beedle to reconstruct and remix for a release on Network under Ashley’s 10th Plane moniker, . On to 2003 and Network’s Neil Rushton was running the suSU label where an attempt to record a vocal of Strings Of Life with none other than Shara Nelson on vocals was made using the 10th Planet parts. That never came to completion, but at the time Neil was working with Octave One and they conjured up this recreation, which has only ever been previously released as a track on a suSU compilation. FIRST TIME ON VINYL ANYWHERE FOR THIS AMAZING VERSION OF “STRINGS OF LIFE”.

“Neurosilence” - Doggy is previously unreleased recording by Birmingham’s Peter Duggal. His bleep classic “Labyrinthine” would have been totally at home on Kool Kat/Network and in recent months both label and artist have both been shaking their heads as to how it didn’t happen. The release of the stark “Neuroslince” finally sees an 0121 alliance bond together.

The 4th track “In The Presence Of Beauty” is taken from the digital release of bio-rhythm 3 and is a truly beautiful “Reprise” take on the version on the vinyl album.

You need to go hunt this down. They’re making incredible music!” Tony Minvielle – Jazz FM

Vertaal’s debut double LP, “Paradigm Shifting” was released earlier this year to wide acclaim from the international jazz community and sold out on initial pressings.

Featuring 4 singles including the atmospheric “Alcazar” and live favourite “Drop Off’, the album was subsequently re-pressed on limited edition black vinyl which is also at the point of selling out.

2020’s lock down and subsequent cancellation of the band’s tour schedule led to extended periods recording in their home studio, on a barge on the River Stort near Stansted Airport.

The duo, comprising keyboard player and producer Theo Howarth and drummer Ajit Gill recorded “live”

versions of some of the Paradigm Shifting album tracks for various radio shows, joined online by guest bassist Severin Bruhin, guitarist

Luca Gianassi, conga player Simon Todd and saxophonist Loren Hignall.

Some of those recordings have now been made available on a special limited edition cassette EP featuring 4 tracks live studio tracks

– three previously unreleased versions from the album “Paradigm Shifting”, “Drop Off”, “Paradigm Shifting” and “Alcazar” and a completely new track “NDY”

Designed to look a box of Swan Vesta matches, the tape itself is pink with an onbody sticker of a collection of pink-headed matches.

Rush-released for Christmas, The Lockdown Tapes will make a nice stocking filler for jazz aficionados!

Vertaal have been an increasingly notable presence in the nu-jazz scene over the past 3 years.
Tipped as “ones to watch for 2019” by Jazz Re:freshed, in 2021 Vertaal have played an exclusive pick of sold out shows at prestigious venues such as

Ronnie Scott’s, Pizza Express Soho and the Jazz Café, along with festival appearances at Standon Calling, High Tide Festival and Lost Village.

They have also supported the likes of Mark Guiliana (David Bowie), & Pete Ray Biggin (Level 42) Richard Spaven

and this year embarked on a tour of the UK’s record stores playing tracks from the album.

Repress

Second release on Nina Kraviz (pronounced 'trip') label is another double-EP compilation this time entitled 'De Niro Is Concerned'.

'The idea of this compiled album/concept compilation is about one of those moments when you suddenly realise that you can't continue as you did before and there is no way back. I was in a 4am facebook chat with Reynier (Deniro) and we both thought Robert De Niro might have had a moment like that. Most of the tracks in TRP002 are live recordings, which is a key part of the label's concept: to release music that is abstract and very specific in texture, yet very human, unplanned and organic, because I really believe in music that captures the emotional moment of when it was made." Nina Kraviz

Featuring a great introductory track from the Icelandic wunderkind Bjarki, a superb collaboration between Nina and the seminal Exos, the legendary Steve Stoll delivers a brilliant acid groover, two classic techno tracks from Amsterdam based Reiyner Hooft AKA Deniro, the wonderful trance induced 'L'Importance De Doute' by Parrish Smith, a slice of melancholic techno from Nikita Zabelin and a welcome re-release of the legendary, highly sought after secret weapon Barcode Population - Barcode Population (which will be on the vinyl only) . An eight-track no-holes barred barnstormer of a double-pack.. !!

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.