Suche:visual

LYBES DIMEM is a project by visual artist and musician Lukas Rehm. With a focus on digital sound-de- sign, elaborate beat structures and the use of error, the music plays with cognitive phenomena and abstraction while maintaining an emotional refuge. LYBES DIMEM is presented in formats ranging from spatial sound experiences to sy- nesthetic shows complementing the auditive layers with visualiza- tions of real-time data, computer graphics and moving image. Lukas Rehms installative art, and compo- sitions have been internationally presented and awarded with multi- ple emerging arts prices.

SYNCLEFT CHRONEM is the first album released by LYBES DIMEM in both digital and vinyl format and accompanied by a moving image artwork. The title reflects the pro- jects interest in the potential of difference, cognitive frictions and exertion: sync = variability in the processing of auditive and visual signals, syncleft = the synaptic cleft, which is a crucial empty spa- ce in biological neural networks, chronem = the chroneme as a the- oretical unit to measure the time of

an articulated sound. Mathemati- cally clean sounds juxtapose pat- terns and transitions familiar from the realm of organic acoustics. Multi-layered noise textures ex- plore the simulated space. A tem- porary continuity is provided by percussive and melodic elements, right until the next escalation, eventually awaiting a concluding resolution.

The visual language explores dif- ferent phenomena and techniques of cognition inspired by the rhe- torics of big science (computer graphics, discontinuity of materi- al, pop cultural references). Both the moving image artwork and the graphic design of the release pay tribute to the multi-layered appro- ach of the music. The design of the vinyl cover by studio BNAG.cc uses subtractive colour synthesis to interchange between abstract for- mality and representationalism.

SYNCLEFT CHRONEM is the first release by LYBES DIMEM on SVS Records following a first encounter at the SVS residency at the 4D Spa- tial Sound Institute in Budapest.

Transit Valley is the debut release by Joe Coghill, a multi-disciplinary artist, musician and experimental publisher based in Edinburgh. His practice incorporates sound, video, performance, social sculpture, facilitation and media distribution. Borrowing from multiple spheres of influence, his scattered output operates from a liminal position. Coghill works in an improvised and often haphazard way, incorporating disparate field recordings, modular synthesis and other sonic ambiences to create unpredictable and ephemeral multi-layer audio-visual performances. Alongside this Coghill has been producing music recreationally in his various bedroom studios over the past 14 years.

Tune after tune, Coops consistently delivers truly original and unique music, his newest single 'Jetpack' taken from
the recently announced 'No Brainer' project is no exception. Twist up a paper plane and take ight with Coops as he transports us out of the mundane into completely uncharted territory with this perfectly executed audio/visual experience. At High Focus Records, we are rm believers in artistic freedom, so when an artist as versatile as Coops delivered this 14 track project, it was a 'No Brainer' to share these highly innovative creations with the
world. 'Jetpack', alongside previous singles 'That Jazz', 'Bob Dylan' & 'What You Want' can all be found on Coops'
forthcoming 'No Brainer' project which is now available to pre order on limited edition splatter vinyl, CD, cassette tape and on all digital platforms. This forthcoming record showcases Coops' versatility and creative approach to his craft displaying a broad palette of sounds and moods. The cosmic cover art shows the two sides of the brain, representing the different approaches Coops has taken when crafting this project, ranging from experimental modern soundscapes to that classic Hip Hop sound. 'No Brainer' isn't really a album but more an experiment... I made most of these tracks alongside music I'd been making for an album... People have always tried to categorise me as a "Boom-Bap artist" but that I have never been. I am constantly making music of different styles and never work on one project at a time. Sadly some of these tracks never see the light of day, even though they are still of high quality and sick, so this time it was a 'No Brainer' that I put some of these tracks out.' - Coops
Coops - 'No Brainer' is offcially released on the 27th of April 2018 on High Focus Records.

Audio-visual artists Soundwalk Collective were granted exclusive access to the personal archive of the groundbreaking filmmaker and present their ambitious New Album and Remix EP: What We Leave Behind released on 18th & 25th May 2018.

The NYC and Berlin based group were invited to aurally explore the archive of the seminal French director Jean-Luc Godard and release their interpretations in an innovative new album What We Leave Behind. Drawing on Godard's personal collection of shot film, reel- to-reels and historical ephemera, the recordings reveal the moments before and after the camera rolls, from stage directions and on-set asides to rehearsals, false stars and outtakes.

'There are boxes filled with sounds, words, chaos, and also silence. For Godard sound is a musical composition and when I began listening to the tapes and heard his voice between takes, it was like little bits of life...each sound has its own value. It has always been part of our working practice to venture into untapped sonic territories, discover the poetics behind them, and explore how we (as humans) relate to it, it is part of a larger discourse.' - Stephan Crasneancki, Soundwalk Collective

Revealing much insight to the director's process and personality, the 6-track album will be followed by a remix EP, featuring unique reworks from Ricardo Villalobos, Jan Jelinek and Petre Inspirescu.

What We Leave Behind, and the subsequent remix EP, arrive 50 years to the day that the the Cannes Film Festival, 1968, was closed after Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Claude Lelouche, publicly announced their closing of the festival in solidarity with workers and students protesting across the country.

The LP features a conversation between Stephan Crasneanscki, of Soundwalk Collective, and Franc¸ois Musy, Jean-Luc Godard's sound engineer, printed on a translucent paper insert. The LP and Remix EP both contain imagery taken by Stephan Crasneanscki of the archives, which he has also filmed to create a series of mesmeric short music videos of original and remix tracks.

An international genre-bending group of artist-musicians with studios in New York City and Berlin, the three members of Soundwalk Collective (Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli, and Kamran Sadeghi) formed in Manhattan to produce concept albums, sound installations, and live performances, and have worked with a diverse range of collaborators, from Nan Goldin and Patti Smith to Berghain and Zaha Hadid.

The artist run gallery Schloss, inhabiting the space of a defunct Porsche repair shop in Oslo, has birthed a record label under the same name. Run by the visual artist Ida Ekblad and the DJ/ producer Karima Furuseth. The first release is by Londoner Max Fowler,who has a certain affinity for ageing samplers and dusty samples.The B-side features a remix by Stockholm mainstay and, among other, The Trilogy Tapes-affiliate Samo DJ.
Mixed and mastered by Matt Karmil.

Osaka based producer 7FO. Having previously released a cassette on RVNG International, and a 7'' single on Bokeh Versions in 2017, this is the Japanese producer's debut full length vinyl release. The tracks, recorded between 2012 and 2017, have been tweaked, remastered and recorded to vinyl for the first time.
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The mysterious figure recorded the tracks at home, processing guitar sounds, using a sampler, synthesizer and junk equipment. Following in the footsteps of the ambient giants of his native lands, 7FO's music continues this illustrious heritage whilst offering something fresh, modern and beautifully rendered. He describes his own sound as 'gorgeous sustained tones and dreamlike oscillations that drift through the inorganic/electronic world reverberating through our subconscious creating sonic fables in our minds'.

The 12'' comes with artwork designed by label head & visual artist Jack Hardwicke. To accompany the release Greek filmmaker George Kountouras, who also collaborated on the artwork, has directed a gorgeous video for the title track 'Moment'.

A thrilling 9-song set, Murmurations is as perfectly pitched for headphones as it is for clubs, named after giant cloud formations of starlings and themed around the stunning emergent behaviors that appear within them. To mirror these movements in the sonic landscape and visuals of Murmurations, SMD's James Ford and Jas Shaw collaborated with the celebrated Hackney-based vocal collective The Deep Throat Choir, as well as creative directors Kazim Rashid of ENDLESSLOVESHOW (Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawk) and Carri Munden.

Finding time in between Ford's work as a producer and Jas' club gigging last year, the duo arranged a session in Shaw's countryside studio. Via an introduction from a friend of Ford's wife, The Deep Throat Choir's director Luisa Gerstein and SMD began swapping some production and melodic ideas. They decided to bring the whole East London-based choir into the studio to experiment, and the results were intense. Jas says, 'Listening to them moving their voices around a tone, altering the timbre, making chords, was like working with an incredible new synthesiser.' Rashid and Munden explore related ideas centered on kinetic energy and communal movement throughout the visuals of Murmurations. Rashid says of the collaboration, 'We were both having discussions around the purity of collective human experience and how transcendental this can be. Techno and the dance-floor is one of the last true expressions of this euphoria.'

From the beat-less introduction 'Boids' onwards you can hear uncanny patterns and sounds rising up from the sea of voices -- not traditional chords or harmonies, but complex interference patterns that play tricks on the mind and merge perfectly with SMD's distinctive synth tonalities and instinctive dancefloor nous. At times you might hear hints of Bulgarian choral music, or Cocteau Twins, or avant-garde composers like Iannis Xenakis or Pauline Oliveiros - but really, thanks to the creative freedom of SMD's working methods, it is a sound completely of its own, something all too rare in an age of retro and reference.

Ford and Shaw still have the same love of pure sound, human harmonies and electronic possibilities that they did when they first met at university, and it's clear that their career path has allowed them to nurture this love and express it as vividly as ever before.

originally released in 1990-with Liz Lamere - Never released on vinyl-

Born in Brooklyn, Alan Vega was reared on the rock 'n' roll sound of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, but originally struck out on a career as a visual artist and light sculptor, making pieces out of electronic debris. But on the occasion of seeing Iggy Pop fronting the Stooges at The Stooges at the New York State Pavilion in 1969 was an epiphany for Vega. It showed me you didn't have to do static artworks, you could create situations,' he said. That show was the first time in my life the audience and the stage merged into one." It was that eradication of barriers between the two that Vega took to heart.

Their first two albums, 1977's Suicide and their 1980 follow-up, remain two of the era's greatest touchstones, beacons for others seeking to transform their worlds with sound. And even during the group's hiatus through the 1980s, Vega continued to pursue his singular vision across an individualistic solo output. From his 1980 self-titled debut and rockabilly-infused albums like Saturn Strip, through bracing albums like Power On to Zero Hour and IT, Vega forged his own singular path.

For all the darkness and despair that encompasses this moment in our world - and despite his work being depicted as bleak and nihilistic - for Vega there was always a sense of hope and a place for dreams to become reality. People have always told me that my music is angry,' he said. To me, it was always just an energy. It was the way I perceived the world. The key Suicide song was 'Dream Baby Dream,' which was about the need to keep our dreams alive. I knew back then that something poisonous was encroaching on our lives, on all our freedoms.' He fought to his very last breath for that freedom.

originally released in 1993 - with Ric Ocasek & Liz Lamere-Never released on vinyl-

Born in Brooklyn, Alan Vega was reared on the rock 'n' roll sound of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, but originally struck out on a career as a visual artist and light sculptor, making pieces out of electronic debris. But on the occasion of seeing Iggy Pop fronting the Stooges at The Stooges at the New York State Pavilion in 1969 was an epiphany for Vega. It showed me you didn't have to do static artworks, you could create situations,' he said. That show was the first time in my life the audience and the stage merged into one." It was that eradication of barriers between the two that Vega took to heart.

Their first two albums, 1977's Suicide and their 1980 follow-up, remain two of the era's greatest touchstones, beacons for others seeking to transform their worlds with sound. And even during the group's hiatus through the 1980s, Vega continued to pursue his singular vision across an individualistic solo output. From his 1980 self-titled debut and rockabilly-infused albums like Saturn Strip, through bracing albums like Power On to Zero Hour and IT, Vega forged his own singular path.

For all the darkness and despair that encompasses this moment in our world - and despite his work being depicted as bleak and nihilistic - for Vega there was always a sense of hope and a place for dreams to become reality. People have always told me that my music is angry,' he said. To me, it was always just an energy. It was the way I perceived the world. The key Suicide song was 'Dream Baby Dream,' which was about the need to keep our dreams alive. I knew back then that something poisonous was encroaching on our lives, on all our freedoms.' He fought to his very last breath for that freedom.

Japanese vocal performer Hatis Noit will release her enigmatic EP Illogical Dance via Erased Tapes worldwide on 23rd March 2018.
The arresting 4-track record creates unique song-worlds with transcendent vocal interpretations that at once deconstruct and recombine Western Classical, Japanese folk and nature's own ambience atmosphere. Illogical Dance also features Björk-collaborators Matmos, who were so impressed with Hatis Noit's recordings, they volunteered to edit the lead track Illogical Lullaby.

Hailing from the distant Shiretoko, a small town in Hokkaido, which is the largest island in north Japan, Hatis Noit's accomplished range is astonishingly self-taught, inspired by everything she could find from Gagaku — Japanese classical music — and operatic styles, Bulgarian and Gregorian chanting, to avant-garde and pop vocalists. The sounds she created on Illogical Dance, co-produced by Haruhisa Tanaka and Matmos, bring to mind the experimental vocal patterns of Meredith Monk with the attentive production of Holly Herndon.

It was at the age of 16, during a trek in Nepal to the Buddha's birthplace, when she realised singing was her calling. While staying at a women's temple in Lumbini, one morning on a walk Hatis Noit heard someone singing. On further investigation it was a female monk singing Buddhist chants, alone. The sound moved her so intensely she was instantly aware of the visceral power of the human voice, a primal and instinctive instrument that connects us to the very essence of humanity, nature and our universe.

The name Hatis Noit itself is taken from Japanese folklore, meaning the stem of the lotus flower. The lotus represents the living world, while its root the spirit world, therefore Hatis Noit is what connects the two. For Hatis Noit, music represents the same netherworld with its ability to move and transport us to the other side, the past, a memory, our subconscious. It is the same for Illogical Dance, a set of transformative songs that taps into our most primal instincts.

The human voice is our oldest, most primal yet most powerful instrument. I use it to describe nature's many sounds, a language that isn't logical. Yet it forms a beautiful conversation that isn't restricted to words like the human language is. I want my music to remind us of that.' — Hatis Noit

Wanting to interpret and mimic the sounds Hatis Noit hears in nature, Illogical Dance is as unpredictable, beautiful and mysterious as the world around us. Each track is made up from multi layers of vocals, all improvised and without words, before being carefully pieced together. Astonishingly no samples are used throughout, even the sound of crushing leaves came from Hatis Noit's own vocal chords.

The result is a stunning array of sound sculptures that see her switching between multiple styles with great ease. From the sweet operatics on Illogical Lullaby, the manipulated vocal loops duplicating electronic production on Anagram c.i.y. to the primordial chanting call to arms of Angelus Novus, a 10-minute odyssey that features whispering and leaves crunching, it showcases Hatis Noit's full range and introduces a truly original artist.

Previously only available in Japan, Illogical Dance will receive a worldwide release on 23rd March 2018 including a first edition on 12' vinyl. After participating in a ceremony for memorial and appreciation tailored to the withdrawal of the evacuation area in Fukushima on 31st March 2017, Hatis Noit collaborated with renowned visual artist Nobumichi Asai on a project titled INORI (prayer) which they premiered live as part of an Erased Tapes showcase at Mutek Japan in Tokyo.

Having recently moved to London and performed a first string of UK shows, followed by a special live performance at the Milan Fashion Week and Mutek Japan appearance, Peter Broderick has invited Hatis Noit to support him at the Jazz Cafe on April 15th. She's also been announced as part of this year's Sea Change Festival line-up, and asked to participate in a workshop with the London Contemporary Orchestra.

Using a modular system comprised of Make Noise modules (as well as a Prophet 5 synthesizer), Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith created Abstractions as a live score for the film of the same name by visual artist Harry Everett Smith. Comprised of a single track across the record's two sides, Abstractions presents a unique experimental release within Kaitlyn's stellar catalog of contemporary electronic music. This Make Noise Records release was Digitally Mastered by Shawn Hatfield at Audible Oddities
Pressed to 12" Clear (140gm) vinyl and inserted into a black inner dust sleeve and Matte Jacket featuring artwork by Harry Everett Smith (comprised of film negatives from Abstractions, licensed from the Harry Smith Archives), assembled by Sean Curtis Patrick.

Transversales Disques present a reissue of Bernard Baschet and Michel Deneuve's 4 Espaces Sonores, originally released in 1982. Rare 1979 recording of Bernard Baschet performing on his Sound Sculptures.The Baschet brothers are known worldwide as creators of Sound Sculptures, fantastic shapes of moulded metal and glass, which combine the visual arts with music.François Baschet had always been fascinated by acoustics, by the relationships between the shape and material of an intrument and the beauty of its sound.Bernard Baschet was passionately interested in contemporary music and firmly believed that such instruments were the proper tools for modern music, for they offered to the artist and performer a personal means of expression denied by electronic devices.Together the brothers began to design and produce Sound Sculptures, which could also be regarded as musical instruments.Circa 1965, Bernard worked alongside Pierre Schaeffer as a member of the GRM (Musical Research Group) on the elaboration of what was to become Schaeffer's "Traité des objets musicaux" (Treatise on Musical Objects).The Baschet brothers also created structures and instruments of all sizes, including bell towers, windmills and fountains, using the natural elements of wind and water to make music. Bernard Baschet was especially proud of his pedagogical work amongst deprived and handicapped children, with the instrumentaium made up of fourteen pieces.

td 80 copies. Numbered.
Music by Ayato
Serygraphied on 180GR glassed paper.
Visual by Raf & Chris with the help of Rom, Mathieu, Vestee, Virgi'.
I always loved Muslimgauze and Badawi's productions... This record is the result of loads of conversations with Ayato concerning these 2 musicians, who he is also feeling close to. Long time project, this finally comes out in a limited 100 copies edition, with hand made visuals from Bodega Absurd crew... With original letters and forms they created... A superb record for all oriental electro fans ! Enjoy !

"Emotional Rescue begins the first in a series of reissues looking at the music of guitarist Carl Weingarten and his Multiphase Records label, starting at his highly sought after collaborate album with Walter Whitney, Dreaming In Colors. With an early interest in photography and Super 8 film leading to a degree in cinema production, Weingarten's other, self-taught, love was the slide guitar. Taking its blues roots and merging them with his visual arts background created a unique "painting in sound" style of playing. While looking to break into the film industry he began writing and recording his own film scores and other music for modern dance companies. From this, he founded Multiphase Records in St Louis in 1980. By the time of Dreaming In Colors, the label had released a series of cassettes and vinyl albums offering abstract, experimental, jazz-fusion, new wave and increasingly, new age compositions. Throughout this period the work of engineer, keyboardist and programmer, Walter Whitney was often present and by the 1985 release of Dreaming In Colors the duo had collaborated for a number of years and released several projects together, most notably as members of the Delay Tactics band. Recorded during off days from the Delay Tactics sessions, the album came together at Whitney's Subterranean Sound studio with a focus away from the bands guitar driven instrumentals to explore a multilayered approach to synthesis, blending textures with Whitney's original samples and sound design, while Weingarten's guitar moved from shining solo moments to complimenting the overall oeuvre, all with heavy washes of delay. This ecumenical approach led to the creation of this compelling album. A masterful conceptual whole that is linked by rich melodies and a concise playing style, heavy on substance while never forgoing the uplifting vibrations. "

After a period of hibernation, aperture records awakens with a bang and a compelling program in the pipeline.
Following their first album released on aperture at the tail end of 2015 'no.3.obliate', the Italian duo T.e.s.o. bring us their second full-length album 'costruzione 04'.
As the title suggests, the album centres around an underlying theme of construction, inspired by radical architecture, brutalism and collages from Superstudio. The concept and title evolved from the nature of the album and the process of building up tracks from a number of separate samples, much like the singular elemental materials used to assemble a structure.
Alongside their music production, the duo have previously created a multimedia installation that investigated the geometric studies of Le Corbusier in parallel to the musical production of Erik Saite and Matteo Castiglioni continues to create impressive audiovisual installations such as the recent 'Freddo Flusso' and 'neon(i)', as well as a collaboration with Danilo Randazzo. T.e.s.o also continue to perform absorbing live sets of their own inimitable range of musical perspective and vision.
Intense, visual and structured, 'costruzione 04' again showcases T.e.s.o.'s complex, obscure and dominant beats and their oblique and sometimes challenging style.

Sam Vicary A.K.A Hunrosa (meaning "to dream") is an electronic music producer capturing the wild organic senses of his childhood and anchoring it with a darker 2am undercurrent. Based in Manchester, he is principally a bassist and currently a member of The Cinematic Orchestra, Paper Tiger and The Dominic J Marshall Trio, as well as performing with Manu Delago, Imogen Heap, Matthew Halsall, Anil Sebastian and Stuart Macallum.

His latest offering 'Ransome' is a heavily rhythmic journey, full of textured hand percussion and soaring strings, accompanied by the beautifully melodic vocals of Alice Higgins drifting overhead. The Clap Clap remix sees the Black Acre mainstay exploring expansive territories, polyrhythmic hand percussion and textured electronica perfectly intertwine, drenched in dub ambience, heightened by scattered arpeggios and swirling synths. The music is inspired by a coastal upbringing, represented in the music via field recordings, as well as being aided by visual stimulus throughout the writing process.

Having grown up with and on the internet, Martin Steer (1986) has transformed its pull into a concept album that is just as immediate and intangible as the digital world. Bad Stream is guitars and machines vanishing in the spaces between Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails only to reemerge amidst Ambient, Noise, and Drone. Bad Stream, then, is his modus operandi - a hybrid soundtrack to the feelings of resignation, isolation, and cynicism within neoliberal cyberspace and to that strangely numbing comfort of bodies transmuting into zeros and ones in real time.
'I look at my phone even when I play guitar,' says Martin Steer, 'and that isn't even entirely voluntary. The 2010s really changed my perception of how digital technologies and social media affect me as a musician. Through Bad Stream I want to make sense of this particular kind of anxiety, and to use sensory overstimulation as a way to develop an independent and progressive musical language.'
The past seven years took Martin and his laptop and guitar from Berlin to Mexico and Nepal and, as a founding member of Frittenbude, into the German charts and to various festival stages. And yet, Bad Stream is a true 'Berlin album,' out of Friedrichshain, Neukölln, and Kreuzberg and will be released on Martin Steers own label ANTIME. It was recorded with real drums and programmed beats, with shoegaze guitars, acid baselines, piano, smartphone synths, violins, field recordings from the darknet and his voice, whose hopeless timbre conveys reflections on systems, the future, drugs, people, and his own place. In his ever expanding A/V live shows and in the music videos, this is supplemented by complex visuals.

A Collection with An Exceptional Sound and Visual Aesthetic, In Collaboration With The British Photographer Chris Steel-Perkins, The Counter-Cultures Photograph.

Wælder are moving between ambient, industrial and pop. Their rhythms and soundscapes of voices, obscure samples and distorted field-recordings build spaces of barren material and soft ground, which teem and crawl - strange and harmonious. To present their music live, Wælder are mixing analogue and digital effects with guitar, synthesizers, vocals and loops. Rhythms and atmospheres blur, dissolve and re-assemble. Their live shows are often framed by visuals, generated in collaboration with various visual artists.

There are some records that manage to sound both of a time and utterly timeless and Bon Voyage Organisation's Jungle Quelle Jungle (a nod to Supertramp's Crisis What Crisis) is one of those albums. Its silken-smooth production, irresistible grooves, funk-tinged guitars, lush soundscapes and general glowing presence could easily lead one to believe that have dug up a lost disco gem from the 1970s. However, behind the disco-pop gleam lies eerie dystopian sci-fi ruminations of a futuristic bent and tones that can often feel as French as they do Asian or African.

This sort of cross-continental exploration is an expansion on BVO's previous two EPs, the man behind the Organisation, Adrien Durand, says. 'I tried to continue the musical expedition between dystopian Science-Fiction Haunted Africa - plus Haitian Vaudou on 'Soleil Dieu' - and futuristic Asia. Addressing, in a double entendre manner, some of the political issues that I am sensitive to.' In fact the jungle in question in the album's title is a metaphorical one and one that creates a vast series of environments for Durand to explore such subjects as world trade, utopian ideals and themes of idols, as well as of time and communication. However, one will need to speak French to decipher such explorations, as well as shake off the natural impulse to move with every glorious beat on its 13 tracks, of which are moved along by Maud Nadal and Agathe Bonitzer's golden vocals.

Durand is a full-time producer based in Paris, working with the likes of Amadou & Mariam, so it makes sense that this record would absolutely sparkle in this department. Durand feeds off the variety of musicians coming and going during recording sessions as well as the rotating members and numbers of people involved with the band but fundamentally he writes all songs on piano first before bringing them to record live. 'We recorded a rhythm section of five - drums, percussion, guitar and myself on bass/synth bass and keyboards - at La Frette which is a studio located in a mansion outside of Paris and fitted with a beautiful 1973 NEVE desk. We only used analogue gear, by taste really, and found it a pretty reliable way of doing things. This simply consists of putting good players together in a room and waiting for the right take to happen.' Two four-day sessions and a 'cooling off' period (to let the recordings settle) soon followed before Durand picked the material back up to give it a final polish.

The resulting album is one loaded with intricacies and idiosyncrasies, something that Durand puts down to his own unique approach. 'I don't consider myself much of a songwriter but I love arranging rhythm sections and I'm pretty proud of the ones on this record.' This applies when it comes to working with such musicians as Inor Sotolongo Zapata, who with Durand used traditional Cuban percussive instruments and explored Haitian rhythms. When Durand expands on some of the ideas and influences that were funnelled into the record, you begin to get a sense of the vastness of the sounds that fill his world, from Trevor Horn's production work on ABC's Lexicon of Love, to the literary work of JG Ballard to the visual flair of the original Blade Runner and even the Tuareg sounds of Tinariwen, due to the fact that his studio neighbours their manager's and he would hear their rhythms bleeding through the walls. You therefore end up with an album that offers tracks such as 'GOMA' that fuses Chinese and African rhythms as well as 'SI D'Adventure' a piece of pop music that is dazzlingly hook-laden.

As a result of this cooking pot of sounds, influences, thoughts and creations, Durand has more of a gumbo approach to making this music than a set-out scientific formula. 'There is no definite recipe for me to like the production of a record,' he says. 'Of course it really sticks out that my work is really influenced by the 1978-1983 period, the golden age and last stand of analogue studios and session musicians.' Whilst Durand adores the traditional and conventional music, he really views this as something bigger and wider. 'I have a taste for the otherworldly vibe from records coming from less sought-after musical scenes, particularly Poland, Haiti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Congo and early Cantonese pop. Languages and the rapport of the people involved in the making of those records really inspires me. I particularly hate the use of the word 'World Music' as a potpourri for everything that doesn't sound quite western enough.'

* To celebrate the second anniversary of Khemia Records we are pleased to welcome back In Aeternam Vale, the legendary French artist who inaugurated the imprint on a split Ep with Bronze Teeth in March 2016.

* This is the first single-artist Ep produced by the label, initiating a new series that will run parallel to the V/A editions.

* The tracks 'Dave' and 'Circles' form an elliptical conundrum composed of various references including Kubrick's alchemical allegory 2001 A Space Odyssey, (sampled in French) with it's existential narrative of a schizophrenic artificial intelligence lurking in the shadows. The Deus ex Machina wondering if mankind is still useful to machines, or perhaps even dangerous to them The infamous Seveso chemical disaster at the pharmaceutical laboratory ICMESA caused by human error, the glowing blood-red sphere of HAL 9000, the all-seeing eye of the sentient super-computer and the circular composition of the toxic compound 2,3,7,8 Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), released into the atmosphere at Seveso. With this cryptic feedback loop, Laurent Prot is suggesting that the new technologies we are developing now, for use in our near future could result in catastrophe when human control is lost to the self-learning of AI. The homicidal consequences of a machine take-over find visual form in the bleak, dystopian aesthetic of Evelyn Bencicova's cover artwork.

One year into his music production career, WHB' is the startling debut release from Brooklyn's Kellen303. A unique hybrid, the tracks are inspired by goth rock/industrial, footwork and vogue music. It's perhaps a happy but unlikely accident that they also fit into Keysound Recording's dark, rolling UK sound. Across five tracks, four cut to vinyl, Kellen303 maps out his unique but bleak vision. The title track, a relentless volley of thunderous kicks, samples a phone interview Kellen303 held with a grime MC close to Keysound's hearts. 'What's Happening Brotha' is titled such because these songs were made at a very dark time in my life,' he explains. I decided to turn my anger and frustrations into music.' There is also a visual/thematic component to my music. Specifically, within the world of 'Planet X.' Where 'Planet X' is a song about going war, the Interstellar mix is song about traveling to that war in suspended animation. The song take place in a dream state where thoughts, emotions and images from the day are passing in and out of the subconscious.' As his thoughts suggest, Kellen303 is also an intensely visual person: outside DJing, he's a filmmaker and screenwriter. He also co-founded Transit FM, a vibrant American web radio station. The EP also features a vocal from Bronx based Afro-Dominicano MC, Rainey.

A multi-platform production that explores the overlap between the digital and the organic through field recordings of Inuit throat singing may sound, on surface level, to be something that is a rather niche. However, Zoe Mc Pherson's exploration of this world on String Figures is a deeply rhythmic, immersive and forward-thinking piece of electronic- leaning music that remains just as danceable as it does experimental.
The album is fundamentally one of duality, exploring the traditional and the contemporary, organic and electronic, audio and visual, history and the future. Rooted in this duality is also a core theme around string being one of the most ancient and playful art forms and the seemingly infinite possibilities it offers in terms of shapes, structures and figures lines up with this as a trans-global art project. One that over time will involve video art, choreography, 3D motion design, macro film, instrumental and electronic sound. Although for now is being presented through an AV performance, films and a record with Mc Pherson collaborating with director Alessandra Leone.!
Over the seven tracks (which are laid out as chapters) the record explores glitchy electronics, dub-tinged grooves, polyrhythms, and a huge array of instruments that takes in quiet blasts of atonal sax alongside wonky synths. This of course cross-pollinates with the throat singing and experimental field recordings to create an utterly inimitable sonic sphere. For Mc Pherson it's about mixing worlds, histories and timeframes and she uses a 1991 quote from Laurie Spiegel to hit home how she has elaborated upon this original thought of history and future overlapping. 'Folk music is considered anonymous common property in a culture and that's what a lot of computer music and other kinds of music data may end up becoming.' However, there's also a purer reason for the exploration of these worlds and colliding them together. 'Basically I thought that electronic music that is only digital is a bit boring and as I'm connected to jazz music for many reasons, I wanted it to sound organic: real instrumentation, field recordings.'

Omar Di Bongo is an audio-visual project that melts video feedback from Hugo Saugier with two figures of french underground techno scene, Somaticae (In Paradisum, Tanzprocesz...) known for his dark cutting edge techno, and C_C (Small But Hard, Kvitnu...) master of no input mixer feedbacks, and savage analog industrial beats. Their music merges industrial music with tribal polyrythms, and makes us dive into a certain kind of psychedelia between hallucination and dementia. Reduced to the essence, their productions bring back techno to its core, the trance dimension, often fogotten in many modern musics of this genre.

Air Lows is the debut solo album by Silvia Kastel. The Italian artist has been a fixture of the underground since her precocious teens, clocking up many miles in Control Unit with Ninni Morgia ('It's like Catherine Deneuve dumped two cases of post-Repulsion psychiatric notes over Pere Ubu's Dub Housing, lit the fuse and, ahem, stood well back" - Julian Cope), including collaborations with the likes of Smegma, Factrix, Gary Smith, Aki Onda and Gate (Michael Morley of The Dead C). Both solo and in her work with others, Kastel has explored the outer limits and inner workings of no wave, industrial, dub, extreme electronics, free rock and improvisation. Air Lows is both her fullest and most refined offering to date, a work of vivid, isolationist electronics which draws deeply on her past experience but assuredly breaks new ground. Prompted by a late-flowering interest in techno and club music, Kastel sought to create something which combines a steady rhythmic pulse with the otherworldly sonorities of musique concrete, and avant-garde synth sounds inspired by Japanese minimalism and techno-pop (Haruomi Hosono's Philharmony being a particular favourite). The formal artifice of muzak / elevator music, the intros and outros of generic popular songs, the extreme light-heavy contrasts of jungle, the creative sampling of hardcore, and the very 'human' synths in the jazz of Herbie Hancock's Sextant and Sun Ra: all were touchstones for Air Lows' conception and composition, and all strains of music addressing - or complicating - the relationship between the human and the technological. By extension, visual inspirations also proved important: anime, and the avant-garde fashion of Rei Kawakubo. What does that shirt or dress sound like Though used sparingly, Kastel's voice remains her key instrument, whether subject to dissociative digital manipulations as on 'Bruell', delivering matter-of-fact spoken monologues, or providing splashes of pure tonal colour. Recorded between her expansive Italy studio and a more compact, ersatz set-up in Berlin, Air Lows gradually takes on some of the character of the German capital: you can hear the wide streets and uninhabited spaces, the seepage of never-ending nightlife, the loneliness. Air Lows is The Wizard of Oz in reverse: the glorious technicolour J-pop deconstructions of its first half leading inexorably to the icy noir of 'Spiderwebs' and 'Concrete Void'. These later tracks are reminiscent of 2015's magnificent 39 12', Kastel in the role of numbed, nihilistic chanteuse stalking dank, murky tunnels of reverb and sub-bass. But in fact there is contradiction and emotional ambiguity to Air Lows from the outset, and throughout - a sense of both infinite space and acute claustrophobia; energy and inertia; fluency and restraint.

Mellow Waves, Cornelius' first album in over 11 years will be available in a limited deluxe edition pop-up gatefold vinyl (including phenakistoscope animation insert), standard package on 180g, CD and cassette format on January 26, 2018. The album, released July 21, 2017, was previously a digital only release. Pre-orders for these formats are available now.

Cornelius announced eight North American tour dates for March 2018, including shows in Mexico City for the NRMAL Festival, New York's Irving Plaza, the Carnegie Music Hall at Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum, and LA's Fonda Theater.

Filmed live at his record release shows at Tokyo's Liquid Room, Helix / Spiral' captures the Cornelius live experience, with its Kraftwerk-esque roboticism and immersive visuals meticulously synchronized with the performance from The Cornelius Group.

For the uninitiated, Cornelius is the brainchild of Japanese multi-instrumentalist Keigo Oyamada. A performing musician since his teens, Oyamada created his creative alter-ego (the name is an homage to the Planet of the Apes), in the early 1990s from the ashes of his previous project, Flipper's Guitar.

With the 1997 release of Fantasma, Cornelius gained international recognition for his cut and paste style reminiscent of American counterparts Beck and The Beastie Boys and was released internationally by Matador Records. Being called a "modern day Brian Wilson" for his orchestral-style arrangements and production techniques, Cornelius subsequently became one of the most sought after producer/remixers in the world, working with a wide range of artists including Blur, Beck, Bloc Party, MGMT, and James Brown.

With 2002's Point, Cornelius' music took a quantum shift, going from sampling found sounds' to looping organic elements and creating lush soundscapes. Using water drops as the rhythmic backbone of Drop' on his vocoder-infused cover of Brazil', the album dazed and amazed fans and set the path for the next phase of his career.

2007 brought this philosophy to an even higher level with the release of Sensuous. Cornelius' live shows are known around the world for spectacular visuals (all perfectly synchronized to the performance), custom lighting that doesn't simply augment the performance, but becomes another instrument within it, and a full band of equally talented and diverse players.

The companion piece to the album Sensurround + B Sides, earned the nomination for Best Surround Sound Album' at the 2009 GRAMMY Awards.

The summer of 2016 saw the release of Fantasma Remastered, on Lefse Records. The package, a 2LP reissue of his classic album, also included 4 additional outtakes and earned Pitchfork's Best New Reissue'.

Cornelius has recorded music for Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, scored the anime mega-film Ghost in the Shell Arise, performed as the backbone of Yoko Ono's reformed Plastic Ono Band, played the Hollywood Bowl with Yellow Magic Orchestra, and co-wrote and produced the Japanese artist salyu x salyu.

* Fully embracing its penchant for explorative music, DAC Records invites Alex Augier.
* His work offers a cross-cutting musical perspective, allowing hybrid aesthetics that includes sound and visual components. These components interact within the stage area, taking the form of singular audiovisual performances.
* This time, Germination, his first solo EP, is purely musical work composed of organic, visceral, living sounds, both fragile and mighty. The electronic music is free of constraints imposed by the dedicated instruments. Embodied by large dynamic ranges and a constantly moving temporality, Germination tells an evolving process, in full bloom, with its share of mutations and strange directions.
* Germination is composed of four tracks, including one remix by Roly Porter. In the same vein as Alex Augier, the co-founder of Subtext Recordings explores the experimental music boundaries, both electronically and instrumentally

Visible Cloaks' Lex proposes a utopian dream language and its accompanying sound, a limitless, delicate space developed by fluid musical techniques and subconscious voices. The six pieces comprising Lex simulate a more peaceful future, their mysteries telling a new tale in an unknown but imaginable melodic language. Visible Cloaks are the Portland-based musicians Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile. Utilizing software-based composition rooted in randomization, MIDI-translation and chance operations, the duo has established an improbable humanist mode of music from esoteric processes. Following their self-titled debut album, Visible Cloaks offered Reassemblage, an album simultaneously honoring the post-Yellow Magic Orchestra school of avant musical adventure and diverging from it. Veering from the paths cleared by Japanese and Italian electronic pop and ambient artists of the mid-80s / early-90s, Reassemblage established Visible Cloaks' own camp in a forest of deep sound canopied by trees grown from synthetic seeds.The sound represented on Lex is webbed with sculptural arrangements and interpolated by the sounds of alien speech. These strange and serene utterances were created by Doran feeding a chain of multiple dialects and accents through a language translation software to create an auditory poetry of an evolved place and time.

Lex features both the final version of this process and earlier, simplified experiments with it ( Keys'). The idea - building on 'fourth world' or 'global village' type concepts - was to create a projected language that was a fusion of many,' Doran explains. The result was a very disorienting form of non-language that amplifies the lapses in meaning that occur with the inaccuracy of auto-translation software.'

Permutate Lex, a companion short film to Lex made by Visible Cloaks in collaboration with artist Brenna Murphy (who also created the artwork for Reassemblage and several virtualist videos for the album), is an integral counterpart, both visualizing an aesthetic alive with human form and guiding the sonic experience of the first five pieces: Wheel,' Frame,' Transient,' Keys,' and title track Lex.' World,' the longest piece presented on Lex, is redrawn from a generative composition originally produced for an installation Doran made with Murphy.

The original work incorporates LFOs and randomized MIDI-information, and was intended to variate indefinitely. In this 'fixed' version, World' provides a more conclusive view into the impossible musical environments Visible Cloaks make real. Longer than any track on
Reassemblage, World' expresses the deepening, patient intimations suggested by Lex.

Doran says the Lex attempts to communicate the essence of a world distant enough that it can't be captured or comprehended from the present, appearing only surreal and inscrutable.' The statement reveals a broader musical philosophy fueling this new moment, an awakened voice woven through complex melodic shapes and phrases establishes communication between listeners and the unknown, here presented by Visible Cloaks as sounds coloring the very edge of the envisionable.

The night is what makes a big city come to life. Right after sundown, the hectic buzzing of downtown makes way for adventure playgrounds, bathed in neon light, revealing their countless chances and opportunities. It's when you'll find the subway spitting out it's purpose seeking passengers by the minute. A coming and going of restless people passing through. All it takes is a few hours, before the sunrise makes it all disappear. Mental Bend captures the magic of that very moment in their dreamy soundtracks. If you close your eyes, you can see blurry pictures passing in slow motion, accompanied by their atmospheric songs. Grainy black and white snapshots, fragments of memories lighting up somewhere in the farthest corner of the cortex. 'One Step' is the Berlin-based indietronica duo's visually vivid debut album, released on Enfant Fenou. Mental Bend are all about letting go. Sissip (voc/synth/bass) and Hendrik Havekost (beats/production) know how to trust their instincts, crafting their hypnotic signature sound, somewhere in between electronica, ambient and dream pop. Before founding the band in 2013, the two were already shaping their skills in all kinds of different formations and styles of music. As soon as they got together, they had a viral mini hit with their song 'Take My Hand', praised on various tastemaker blogs and generating over 100.000 likes on Soundcloud in no time. The band's first long play record 'One Step' is all about important experiences and decisions, small as well as big steps, all a part of making progress, which in the end can even be life changing. It was a step, that recently got Mental Bend their record deal on Mo's Ferry's sub label 'Enfant Fenou'.

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

Reviews

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

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

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

'Y.O.U' is an emotive album of tripped out ambient hip hop instrumentals by FROM, written and recorded in the mid 90s under Trevor Jackson's infamous production persona The Underdog. Originally planned as a vocally-led, song-based project that should've surfaced between his production for The Brotherhood's legendary British hip hop album 'Elementalz' in 1996 and his acclaimed debut PLAYGROUP release in 2001, for multiple reasons it hasn't seen the light of day, until now.
Only Available as a ultra limited edition Vinyl and CD release, the LP consists of 11 tracks. Dream-like synth lines, ambient melodies, blissful guitars, raw beats and soft, fractured vocals draw you into a hallucinatory 12bit world. Drawing on Jackson's progressive and jazz rock influences as well as psychedelia and early electronics, the album closes with 'Belladonna'- a piano-sampled homage to the east coast golden age hip hop pioneers. NB: The CD features a longer version of 'Veratrum' not available on the vinyl version. All created on an Akai S950 mono sampler (limited to only 20 seconds sampling time), an Akai MG1212 12 channel mixer (which recorded on Betamax style tapes) and primitive outboard gear, Jackson honed his skills from his bedroom, where he produced the majority of his output at the time. With a huge collection of obscure vinyl, he dug deep into uncharted territories for samples and sound clips
- using material no one knew about (or would think about touching) in the mid 90s. The Underdog's initial releases were on Jackson's own Bite It! recordings label, which was started in 1991. A unique platform for UK hip hop with a visual aesthetic and ethos more akin to ECM and Factory
than other rap labels, its mission was to push artists beyond musical and cultural limitations prevalent at the time.
Home to artists like The Brotherhood, Scientists of Sound, Little Pauly Ryan and Lewis Parker (who later signed to Massive Attack's Melancholic label), Bite It! became a great success;
finally British rap had artists and releases that looked and sounded as good as their revered American counterparts. In 1993 Richard Russell (who had just started running XL recordings) asked Trevor to remix House of Pain, resulting in a top ten record, which helped launch Jackson's musical career via further remixes Massive Attack, Run DMC, U2, The Cure and countless others. Off the back of his remix success, The Brotherhood signed a deal in 1994 with Virgin Records. Their 'ELEMENTALZ' album was produced by Jackson and is still lauded by many as one of the finest British hip hop albums of all time.
Jackson continued to remix and produce as The Underdog until managerial issues forced him out of the project he'd been instrumental in instigating.
Soon after his close friend and manager tragically passed away - which when combined with the UK hip hop scene becoming increasingly volatile and the moral demise of rap culture in general - convinced Trevor to hang up his hip hop hat for good.
After leaving The Brotherhood he started Output Recordings. Internationally and sonically diverse, it gave Jackson a free reign to do as he pleased, with genre twisting releases from the likes of Fridge, Four Tet, Sonovac, Colder, his own PLAYGROUP project, The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem. With a non-compromising attitude, strong DIY aesthetic and consistently groundbreaking releases across its ten year life between 1996 and 2006, it became one of the most important and respected independent labels in the world.

Drummer/producer Teppo Mäkynen (of Teddy's West Coasters, The Stance Brothers, The Five Corners Quintet) presents his new major work during the fall of 2017. 3TM is a trio formation including Mäkynen, tenor sax man Jussi Kannaste and bassist Antti Lötjönen. Mäkynen, manning the drum seat in the combo, is using samples and sounds here to break off from the standard aural image of the jazz trio. What we have instead, is a new world of sound rooted somewhere in between acoustic jazz and abstract electronic music, blurring the lines of genre and time.

The 180g heavyweight 2LP version of the album comes with gatefold sleeve, digital download and 12" source book featuring photography by Teppo Mäkynen. These images serve as the visual roadmap into the world of 3TM, at times abstract and spacious, at times intense and swinging.

Berlin based Japanese industrial synth duo group A make their debut on Mannequin Records with a killer 3-tracks self titled EP.
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Tommi Tokyo (synth, drum machine, vocals) and Sayaka Botanic (violin, tapes and sampler) released 2 studio albums and 1 live album in Tokyo, before to move in Berlin in 2016. With their mixture of dark minimal synth, avant-noise, striking visuals and performance art, the duo still carries on the very breath of early industrial pioneers such as Throbbing Gristle, Die Form, Klinik, Cabaret Voltaire.

The EP was recorded in Tommi's bedroom and later mixed together with Mannequin Records head Alessandro Adriani in his own studio in Berlin. The first two tracks of the EP, 'T.O.P.' and 'Ketabali' represents the duo personal reaction against the current economy, an up yours to capitalism, news and politics, all permeated by industrial rhytmic-noises and words with no meaning.
The B2 'Alibi' instead was inspired by an autobiography of Hi-Red Centre(Japanese avant-grade art group in the 60-70's) written by one of the members, Genpei Akasegawa. Tommi found the word "Alibi" in the book and she just started singing about the group. As she never wrote lyrics for that, during their live performances they are always improvised, so changing and mutating every time.

Finnish visual artist and filmmaker Hannu Karjalainen's music draws inspiration from ambient, drone, modern classical and dream pop. His first album Worms In My Piano was released in 2007 on Osaka Records and the second album, Hintergarten in 2009 on Simon Scott's Kesh Recordings. A Handful Of Dust Is A Desert, his third album - and the first under his full given name - arrives after a prolonged break.

Hannu Karjalainen's association with Karaoke Kalk started with his remix of Dakota Suite's The End Of Trying Part III on The Night Just Keeps Coming In in 2009 which also featured remixes by the likes of Hauschka, Deaf Center, Loscil and many more. Now, luckily for all concerned, Hannu is releasing a full length album on the label in the form of the exquisite record A Handful Of Dust Is A Desert.

The album opens with the track Angel which is a truly heavenly composition reminiscent of Boards of Canada's finest work. The Emigrant makes effective use of sinister synth-lines and delicate glockenspiel patterns to invoke a kind of science-fiction soundtrack atmosphere. Throughout the record, our ears are graced with truly sublime sound-scapes and transcendent textures.

The title track is actually the shortest tune on the album, but in no way less evocative. It's looped piano melodies are comparable with Susumo Yokota's later recordings in their minimalism and poise. A Year In a Day continues to walk the fine line between ambient and electronica - which is one of the albums great virtues: it shows how lively and eventful ambient music can be. Certainly ambient music benefits from having a strong pulse as Karjalainen demonstrates in various tracks on the album. The song Love Is A Black Lion features a sample from the afore mentioned Dakota Suite tune The End Of Trying Part III, and therefore somehow closes a circle.

This powerfully contemplative album comes to a controlled landing with the majestic Breaks My Heart She Aria, another in a long line of mesmerizing drifts, with a floating choral voice delicately enveloped in strings and pitched percussion.

A Handful of Dust Is A Desert is instantly captivating and for lovers of ambient music, dream listening. As an artist who trained in photography and is mostly active in the world of visual art, Hannu Karjalainen clearly enjoys a great deal of creative freedom in his music. This is the kind of desert you won't mind getting lost in and even take pleasure in roaming through the expansive sonic landscapes and horizons it embodies.

Moullinex is back with his finest album up to date, HYPERSEX, a collective love letter to club culture and its celebration of difference, freedom and love. In his third length, Moullinex reached out to several guest singers: Fritz Helder (Azari & III), Georgia Anne Muldrow (Flying Lotus, Mos Def), Iwona Skwarek (Rebeka), Best Youth, Marta Ren, Da Chick, UhAhUh and Tee Flowers, crafting a uniquely fresh piece that combines many of his musical influences, from the funk, groove and sunshine of his debut "Flora" to the psychedelia and tropicalia of 'Elsewhere'. Moullinex is the alter ego of the Portuguese producer and multiinstrumentalist Luis Clara Gomes. He's established himself as one of the leading artists in the modern disco scene, with several singles such as 'Take My Pain Away' and 'Maniac' ft. Peaches, and remixes of acts like Røyksopp, Cut Copy, Two Door Cinema Club and Grammyawarded artist RAC. The road to HYPERSEX has been paved by various singles and videos in 2017, expanding the spirit of collaboration to directors and visual artists, and gathered wide support from international tastemakers across the globe, including Vice, NPR, KCRW, Triple J, Majestic Casual, Les Inrockuptibles and Tsugi Mag. HYPERSEX is like Hypertext between humans, a system designed to multiply ideas and connections between people. The dance floor is the perfect medium.

Awake at an undefined hour. Floating between the realm of dreams and open awareness. Accept it — you're a headspace passenger. Talking to a machine is a thrill for a moment or two. You want to go out, need to get lost. It's still yet all under the surface ... but you know it's going to happen, eventually. What you need to do is: return to the same old place. What you think is:

I hope the roof flies off, and I get sucked up into space.

This is the debut album by Berlin-based musician and futurist Andre´ Uhl. Crackling noise, moody arpeggios, and haunting melodies tell tales of the hazy past, moving into the twilight of the future. Each of the 13 songs is a dark and cinematic piece on it's own - altogether combined a compelling story, here for the listener to explore.

The album is available digitally and on vinyl in a limited edition of 300 copies, including a booklet of 13 short stories by different writers like the Czech visual artist and poet Katarina Hruskova, Berlin-based subcultural magickian Daniel Jones, and the British novelist Chris Brownsword - each story inspired by one of the 13 songs. I hope the roof flies off, and I get sucked up into space is the first trueness presented by Neofakt, a new label for audio, text and visual art.

Juris Boiko (1954-2002) and Hardijs Ledinš (1955-2004) were the core members of the NSRD, which is best known as Latvian avant-garde, postmodern, experimental and underground music group active in 1980s. BIG TIP! STROOM BRINGING IT...! comes with download code.
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Their activities were widely multidisciplinary and they can not be considered as purely musicians since none of them had a professional musical education. Their creativity was manifested through variety of media - music, performance and action art, visual arts, poetry, samizdat, the introduction video art in Latvia etc. NSRD also made a significant contribution to the explanation of the theoretical aspects of art in the interpretation of the postmodernist movement, and developed the independent concept of 'Approximate Art'. At the end of the 80s, NSRD got connected and performed with several artists and musicians living in West Germany, including Indulis Bilzens, Micky Remann and Maximilian Lenz aka Westbam and others.

Mnestic Pressure' is Lee Gamble's first album since 2014 and his first with Hyperdub, a reset that sees a noticeable change in his sound and the concepts that feed into his music. Lee says 'From Diversions 1994-1996' (2012) through to Koch' (2014) - my music felt like I was dealing with signals from elsewhere - signals from the unconscious, sub-aqua, hallucinated, dreamt. Mnestic Pressure' feels like their decoded offspring, a terra interpretation.' The title Mnestic Pressure' comes from Lee's thinking about how our contemporary memory is pressured, individually, but also collectively. 'We live in these strobing, visual times, like a constant subliminal advertisement but, also over the last few years the world seems to have become more and more dreamlike, alien, and parodic itself and there was this part of me that wanted to drag my music back from this Shangri-La, but fully drenched and infected by its ghosts.' Mnestic Pressure' as a whole is a simulation of this experience, a flow of targeted information, through contrasting and quickly changing terrain, from one track to another you're dragged into a new space. The pressure to move is intrinsic to the flow of the album, one thing morphologically transforms into another, zooming in and out from wide angle to detail, reshaping into new forms at a speed Lee's music hasn't before. The music on Mnestic Pressure' has a hardness, with a structure and melody that was sublimated in Lee's previous LPs. It builds on his more recent experiments with more functional dancefloor forms. Here his hypermodern production and crunchy, dissembled beats feel like they could be malfunctioning holograms projected onto the hallucinated memories of his early work.

Musique par Andrew Chalk & Timo van Luijk

avec:

Tom James Scott - piano

Jean-Noël Rebilly - clarinette

Daniel Morris - guitare pedal steel

Mastered & cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin 0417.

Having been entranced by both Andrew Chalk's work with MIRROR (and back to his solo works as FERIAL CONFINE, plus multiple collaborations with David Jackman, The New Blockaders, Daisuke Suzuki, etc ) and Timo van Luijk (as Af Ursin, In Camera, La Poupée Vivante, and collaborations with Kris Vanderstraeten and others) for many years, I was naturally intrigued to hear about and hear their duo project ELODIE. The project formed in 2010, and has spanned eleven beautiful albums already, to date.

"Vieux Silence" for Ideologic Organ is their first release presented outside of their own record publishing nook, Faraway Press & La Scie Dorée. However this is not the first encounter between Ideologic Organ & ELODIE, they performed at a night in London I curated in February 2012, alongside Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang. Elodie's performance was among the most delicately engaging and savant I have witnessed... so very quiet, with snow falling in London outside Cafe Oto's windows, the audience palpably entered a high intensity listening focus. The impression of this vivid memory is striking, considering how spare each of the individual elements present that night were.

"Vieux Silence", and ELODIE in general provoke a visual imagination in an instant, perhaps filtered through aged watercolour, tape grain, antique lenses, forgotten levels of listening and observational patience. On this gorgeous album Chalk & van Luijk also collaborate with piano, pedal steel and clarinet (played by , Tom James Scott, Daniel Morris and Jean-Noel Rebilly, respectively).

Each detail carefully considered and colouring step by step, like an impressionist watercolour.

- Stephen O'Malley, Les Lilas 2017

Excise is a vinyl-focused label based out of San Francisco, California. Each release pairs a regional Californian techno artist and a local visual artist, thus serving as a platform to fuse the two local creative scenes. Its first release features label co-owner Muon with 3 hypnotic raw analog tracks. Many of these tracks received heavy play time in the San Francisco underground, and now are seeing a broader release for the first time.

Artist biography:

US based artist, Muon (real name Marc Kelechava) spent his formative musical years in Brooklyn, NYC, but has resided in Northern California since 2013. His initial release on Excise is an attempt to combine hypnotic synth work with heavier dance floor elements: music to get lost to.

As a DJ, he now co-manages the iconic Direct to Earth crew, which started as an Oakland underground rave in 2011. The group's primary goal is to help bring international stars to the San Francisco community for the first time. This year alone they've hosted (or will host) Phase, Cosmin TRG, Yan Cook, Ansome, Marla Singer, and Ben Sims. Muon's an opening mainstay with his hypno-aggressive mixing work.

Autotomy is a collaboration between Belgium's Sleeperhold Publications, Brooklyn-based musician Patricia (Max Ravitz) and the Dutch artist Louis Reith. This output is the result of a long process of contemplation, discussion and elimination which gave us a record that encapsulates both Patricia's sense for hardware production and dance floor rawness. Describing this release is not a simple task. So we'll just tell it like it is: it's a record that slows down and, in this process, reveals its mystery. Referencing the title of this release, wunderkind Max Ravitz seems to provide the listener with the possibility of transformation, a way to shed part of your own being.When running though the tracks, one discovers the essentials of Patricia's sound architecture: the presence of lightness, of longing, mixed with the ability to deny it in the next instant. Sonically, there's a careful balance in these productions that belies their fundamental function as body music. It's ambient yet danceable, approachable despite it's often deconstructed layout, and ultimately warm and inviting.The entire record is made using Ravitz collection of hardware, which gives it its uncompromising texture. The presence of kicks, beats and soundscapes does not originate from a clean digital source but from a physical action, an excerpt of movement, a tick of the human hand. It is floating versus rhythmical movement, visceral versus strict. But above all, it is alive.The artwork used for Autotomy's sleeve design and the etching on the B-side was provided by Louis Reith. (All three tracks feature on the record's A-side.) Just as Patricia, Reith tries to resist technology in favour of physical and craft-based media, though the contrast between digital and analog is always present.Dutch artist Louis Reith produces works through a variety of different media, ranging from collages to wood sculptures, to paper objects and ink on paper works, always keeping an interest in simple abstract shapes and their combination. With an interest in materiality Louis resurrects found footage and creates new landscapes of shape and color, celebrating the human hand at work. Deliberate compositions form an illegible visual language where hidden words are portrayed as abstract sculptures.Reith also co-runs Jordskred, an independent publishing company worth checking out.Ravitz certainly is unstoppable and releases in a relentless and uncompromising fashion.Besides many collaborative projects with an array of artists (released under monikers such as Masks, Pulpo, Inhalants, DSR.MR...) he's released music on labels like Opal Tapes, L.I.E.S., Russian Torrent Versions, Ghostly Intl.,... 2017 has been quite a year for him so far. He not only founded his own imprint, Active Cultures, but also released a triple LP. Ghostly Intl. describes the release as a 'kaleidoscopic, a multi-faceted techno trip' and we couldn't agree more.

Nexe means 'nexus' in our language.

Nexe is our link with the music and the scene.

Nexe gets involved with the techno and its origins, adding our experiences, our vision and evolution.

Nexe is a union between music, visual and graphic arts.

Nexe Records have two sub-labels: 'NX1', with which we start the project,and 'A-Nexe' yet to come.

Nexe is the juntion between those who sympathize our doctrine and help to expand it.

Nexe is above all, an independent electronic music label.

2DIY4 ("to die for"), the sublabel of Diynamic Music, is embarking onto a new journey. With this forthcoming release 2DIY4 is starting a new chapter in its history, turning away from the classic 4/4 House formula and towards new, outstanding and sincere Indie Downtempo Electronica music.

With a highly artistic approach, it aims to paint a holistic picture that shapes its identity with all inherent components - sonic and visual. The golden thread that runs through it all is the question "what would you die for" - creatively replied to by the artists.

The first artist under the label's new identity is Lunar Plane, consisting of identical twin brothers Emre and Mert from Istanbul. They answered: "We would die for each other, so the first thing comes to mind is twinhood." Together with LA-based October's Child on the vocals, they deliver the first of many chilling Electronica EPs for 2DIY4.

a splashing, refreshing new series from RSS Disco's Mireia Records. On this second entry Marcus Worgull and Johannes Klingebiel scout out the most euphoric and simultaneously intimate moments of the night. Double A! Visually, Mireia records is always on the lookout for the extraordinary. We'll Sea' offers beautifully marbled turquoise vinyl, housed in a heavy clear sleeve, hand stamped labels and a sticker. Sales Points - you know Marcus from his work as a part of Innervisions and the band Vermont (together with Motor City Drum Ensemble) - you know Johannes from his hit-release Nightlife' on Mireia Records earlier this year and the bands Vimes and C.A.R. you know the record is going to be great

Alternatively titled: 'Homoswavesailors', Jack Cccoy's 1984 film about the birth of windsurfing details, through the gaze of the sport as a pre-historic ancient ritual, the exploits of a few of the sports originators. Backing up the clear 80's blue visuals of waves white washed wind blasted FX, is a variety of original pop and synth music made by the films' composer, Chris Eggleton. There are no song titles, rather each track is spiced-up with wind and wave sound fx, which were originally meant to act as sound accents for wave sail action in the film. The pop songs are beach-spiked hits, sounding like New Zealand's flying nun rock, or blasted out prince chorus funk, but with added film sound fx, the essence of the silver screen begins to creep into the medium of audio disc! The synth music on Tradewinds sounds as if Tangerine Dream made inspirational beach movie tracks during the height of their 'Firestarter' period. The mix is arranged by Pacific City, so that the summer doesn't crash and burn. For the first time in history, Pacific City Sound Visions presents: the original motion picture soundtrack to 'Tradewinds' on vinyl LP. Break down..... shake down..... ya busted......

The debut vinyl release from label Supervoid Records, out August 21st, 2017, has already made some waves, with two of its three tracks finding their way onto several prominent mixes, including Ben Sims' Run It Red' and Resident Advisor's 513th podcast, performed by Markus Suckut. The release has also been given the nod by other heavy-hitters, including members of the Droid Behavior crew and a Berghain resident. Label owner and artist Dustmite has been remixed by Audio Injection and long ago, Distance. His track Bare appeared on Photek's DJ Kicks.

The music of 7073 was largely inspired by the experience of an intimate, 6+ hour set by Jeff Mills in a US warehouse some years back. There is a feeling one can get in such a setting, with the right sound, the right DJ and the right people - a feeling that anyone who is reading this is probably familiar with - where at some point in the night, when people are in their own worlds, it feels as though at any moment the building could just lift into the sky. Simply put, the track entitled '7073' is Dustmite's attempt to capture some of that magic. Tracks 'Advanced Persistent Threat' and 'Lightwall' stand out as fast, sci-fi-inspired techno drivers, a modern take on early 2000's fast-paced, irreverent but melodic bangers.

Having worked in the video game industry for over a decade, Dustmite has taken a unique approach to pushing his vinyl-based label apart from the rest: each record has its own unique QR code, which, when scanned, will contribute to the unlocking of bonus content via a modern, interactive visual experience on the Supervoid website. Not only does this mean each record has its own distinct identity, which can be used in interesting ways, but those who purchase a future Supervoid release will have a singular narrative across their collection, which the label can use as a seed for generating content, experiences and rewards, unique to each individual.

Species Of Fishes was created in 1993 in Moscow during the experimental home sessions of Igor Kolyadny and Vitaly Stern, which resulted in the recording of the Songs Of A Dumb World, a sampledelic album, published on the sublabel of the Dutch Staalplaat - Kormplastics in 1994. It was followed by the album Trip Trap (1996) on the domestic label Exotica, which immediately affirmed Species of Fishes as one of the leading electronic groups in Russia. It is this seminal album that marks the first release of Nina Kraviz's new label GALAXIID.
GALAXIID runs as a sub label of , illuminating the listening side of Nina's musical taste with a focus on experimental, ambient and psychedelia. As with , GALAXIID has a strong connection to art through it's visual identity, with all the cover artworks drawn by psychedelic artists.
Trip Trap was so ahead of its time upon initial release and still sounds modernistic as it is rereleased almost 20 years later. Here, Species Of Fishes explore different genres of electronics, somehow interpreting them and creating their own unique out-of-genre stylistics, marrying different styles such as breaks and experimental in 'Health 100%', electro and ambient in 'Crash Recovery', IDM and techno in 'Bfg9000 vs. Barons Of Hell'. The 10 tracks range from short interludes '(Backspace)' and (Alt+Tab) to more lengthy tracks '(The Web)' and 'Access Depth'.

Mini Album with very high quality packaging. printed clear pvc sleeve over printed outer wich creates a stunning grafic effect when pulled out!

shadowy multidisciplinary artist & videographer denial.of.service returns to FILM for an extended EP of wrought iron electronics, channeling the spirit of classic electro, Industrial & Noise. the artist, active since the 1980's producing video work for a host of high profile names - including not least david bowie, currently transmits sporadically from an undisclosed location, though contemporary work has appeared on the creators project, as well as making the vimeo staff picks on an almost regular basis. recently, video commissions for minimal wave & jealous god affiliate In aeternam vale have ap-peared online, showcasing the artist's trademark crushed, hallucinatory visual aesthetic. If 2015's sensou EP communicated a more brooding, emotive side to denial.of.service - then contour & shape works in stark contrast. the palette remains relatively unchanged, with the 808 providing the back-bone for most of the compositions, paired with the same warped vox and heady synth leads - but this time around the production aesthetic is harsh and abrasive and there's a powerful, burning immediacy to the work. gone are the delicate, introspective leads & gently saturated drums, and in their place bursts of caustic, high energy noise and twisted drum machine strikes - and though much of the more tentatively dance floor material sticks to a stepping half time rhythm, 4x4 moments make a welcome appearance. contour & shape is bold and direct - a thunderous, high-energy salvo from a true creative with a rich and unique electronic music heritage.

4x12 LP, Limited to 150. Deluxe Outersleeve with Punched Out Centerpiece 'Window' and 4 Printed Innersleeves. Deltawerk is the newly Amsterdam based project of Pascal Terstappen aka Applescal and Polynation member Hessel Stuut. Together they are releasing their debut full length LP, entitled 'Passages",
Applescal has to date released on labels including Ghostly International and Traum Schallplatten, while the efforts for his own label Atomnation have seen him welcome music from the likes of Gidge, Weval, David Douglas and Sau Poler, amongst others. Voted at a very respectable #03 for XLR8R's coveted 'Best New Act' in 2015, Hessel Stuut is a member of Polynation and has significant experience not only playing live music, but as a producer, visual artist and designer too. Together, they form Deltawerk, a dynamically electronic duo whom when united create human and lucid music, which feels as much at home in an underground rave as it does in an open-air live performance. While there is a faint echo of artistic collision, the album undoubtedly provides an eerie sense of unity for both Pascal and Hessel's own discography, conserving the warm subculture of
analog and modular instrumentation.

Panorama Bar resident Nick Ho¨ppner gets to Work on his second solo album on Ostgut Ton, connecting the territories of House music with the ease of Alt-Pop.
Work as in labor. An axiom that fuels the capitalist system just as the Techno/House scene economy says that one needs to keep oneself busy to make a living. As a musician, things are complicated of course. It's a long way from the romantic idea of creating music simply for the sake of art to becoming a full time musician. Those who have accomplished this feat often find themselves in a professional loop of writing the music, producing it, promoting it (with an info text like this), releasing it and then hopefully selling it. After leaving his full time job as Ostgut Ton's label manager in 2012, Nick Ho¨ppner went fully freelance, focusing on his musically diverse, deep and dynamic DJing in and outside Berghain's Panorama Bar, but more importantly spending more time in the studio. The result was his critically acclaimed debut album Folk (Ostgut Ton, 2015), various 12' releases and remixes, and now his sophomore LP, Work, which, more than ever, lays out his refined production skills and his talent to work the machines until they reveal their inner ghosts: nine new songs that now dodge the dance floor, then fully embrace it.
Work as in body of work. A record is more than the sum of clocked up hours at the studio, but the result of an artistic-creative process. On Work, Ho¨ppner shows his everlasting lust for musical detail, his increasing technical skills and compositional finesse. Work is a very personal, soulful and deep record that breaks through the usual club/dancefloor narrative by documenting Nick's interest for hybrid sounds and combining elements from varying musical genres. Work's lead single 'All By Themselves (My Belle)' is a very atmospheric, intimate and steadily unfurling IDM piece with ethereal synth and vocal pads; on the album it's contrasted by 'Clean Living' with Tram 78, a modern Ho¨ppner club classic: powerful, kick-heavy, muscular, cheerful and uplifting. It's a very personal track resulting from a recent reencounter with an old friend. Having spent countless hours together in Berlin's clubs in ever changing states of mind a decade ago or longer, things have since changed for both towards a more - clean living'. Connecting to this musical vibe 'In My Mind' follows with a slightly darker tone putting emphasis on bassline, percussion and squeaky sound detailing. 'Hole Head' pays tongue-in-cheek homage to Nick's love for UK club music, when a dashing melody of synths and vibraphone is matched with clattering breaks and syncopation. The dubby, mesmerizing 'The Dark Segment' not only impresses with its hypnotic synth figurines, but also by morphing to a shuffling Jazz rhythm towards it's middle part; 'Forced Resonance' uses Oberheim synth brass stabs to dramatic effect; the percussion- and clap-laden 'Fly Your Colours' comes with an irresistible piano melody atop an energetic kick; and finally the album-closing, shuffling but rhythmic, noisy yet bluesy 'Three Is A Charm' featuring the duo Randweg on clarinet, cajo´n and acoustic guitar is a coherent departure heading towards Indie Pop territory. It sees Nick collaborating with acoustic instrumentalists for the first time in his ten-year- spanning Ostgut Ton release catalogue.
Work as in artwork. Staying in line with the Folk album, the visual companion for this record comes from German collage artist Frank Bubenzer. As with the artwork at hand, Bankentsunami, and his other works, Bubenzer cuts up print magazine advertisements and recontextualizes them into new motifs, removing all human depiction from the source material, here as a commentary on the world of business, big money and the banking crisis.
Work as in work it. As a slogan 'work' has always been one of the genre's most utilized paroles, coined and put on wax by pioneers like LNR, Blake Baxter or Steve Poindexter, to name a few. Not only calling for the crowds to get moving on the floor but also to fully express themselves and their unique individuality inside an all embracing environment. A mindset rooted in House Music that has been an integral part of Nick Ho¨ppner's identity as a DJ and producer from the beginning and all through his decade-spanning residency at Panorama Bar. Work it!

Ekoplekz returns with his fourth album for Planet Mu, in the shape of 10-tracker "Bioprodukt". The unique lo-fi, woozy sound of Bristol's Nick Edwards stays intact while he veers towards the nineties for inspiration: the bleep and bass sound of the north of England is one touchpoint and the acid gurgles of the 303 are another. While the murky lo-fi production levels and evocative melodies remain, they are now bolstered by a more muscular rhythmic chassis. Snappier kicks and snares mingle with dense layers of percussion and deep undulating sub-basslines adding a funkier edge, as typified by opening track "Elevation" where playful beats interlock with breezy keyboard flourishes to create something uncharacteristically upbeat. Similarly, the gentle, fluid motion of "Slipstream" and "Calypzoid" represent some of the most appealingly chilled grooves in the Ekoplekz canon to date. But the darker-edged material remains. "Expedition" has a pensive, percussion-heavy feel whilst "Acrid Acid" is a dirt-encrusted slow-mo techno meltdown. "Transcience" displays the Ekoplekz trademark dub-fx in full flight over a driving lo-end, before "Descent" leads down to the final section, where the beats fade out, replaced by rippling layers of spectral ferric ambience on the epic "Low-X Over", before finishing with the radiant looped stasis of "Denier Daze". The albums shifting, mperfect patterns and muted colours are visually mirrored in the beautifully realised sleeve by the Print Project.

Current Value stands as one of the producers at the very forefront of experimentation - a creator truly reaching the top of his game and one who has walked an unmistakable path across the Drum and Bass landscape.

Consistently delivering a style so unique that it sets him far ahead of the pack, his unique aesthetic is evident in both his unmatched experimentations in synthesis and his trademark finely crafted percussion, combined to deliver a heavy but stripped down modern sound that carries serious weight.

May 5th brings CV's unique sound to Doc Scott's 31 Recordings with the Scalar EP.

Also look out for the CVAV project a 60 minute audio visual showcase of Current Value's work that sets a new bar in electronic music with a mind-shattering sensory experience that changes the context of one of the most unique artists of our time.

3xLP+CD Artbook
(en) - Nearly two decades after the last official GAS album release, Wolfgang Voigt returns to his iconic Ambient project with a brandnew full-length.
- NARKOPOP continues the classic GAS aesthetic of symphonic scope and subtle variation, taking the listener on an otherworldly journey to the depths of rapture and reverie.
- Available as luxurious hardcover CD incl. 24 pages booklet.

In the body of work of Cologne artist Wolfgang Voigt - who, like few others, has informed, shaped and influenced the world of electronic music with countless different projects since the early 1990s -, GAS stands out in particular as a saturnine sound cosmos based on heavily condensed classic sequences. Even after nearly 20 years, the sound of GAS doesn't seem to have lost any of its luster, as shown by the commanding success of Kompakt's fall 2016 re-release of the essential back catalogue as a 10xLP/4xCD box set.

The overwhelming feedback from a loyal international fan community and worldwide media outlets attests once again to the sheer timelessness of GAS. Which is why it will feel like hardly a day has passed since the release of the last official album 'Pop' nearly two decades ago, when Wolfgang Voigt resumes this specific creative path with the upcoming new full-length NARKOPOP.

Even in the here and now, the unmistakable vibe of GAS immediately hits home, taking the listener on an otherworldly journey with the very first sounds, drawing him or her into an impervious sonic thicket, down to the depths of rapture and reverie. From wafts of dense symphonic mist emerges a floating and whirling feeling of weightlessness, before the listener steps into an eerily beautiful forest of fantasy, pulled in by the allure of a narcotic bass drum.

While earlier GAS tracks were often based on the hypnotic effects of looping techniques, the 10 new pieces on NARKOPOP unfold their magic in a more entwined manner, sometimes with the sonic might of an entire philharmonic orchestra, sometimes as subtle and fragile as the most delicate branch of a tree with many. A main characteristic of Voigt's oeuvre, the coalescence of seemingly contradictory stylistic aspects such as harmonious and atonal, concrete and abstract, light and heavy, near and far is also a decisive feature of NARKOPOP.

In accordance with the transgressive spirit of his collective work, Voigt carries the aesthetic conceptions of his music over to the realm of the visual. Based on his abstract forest pictures, the GAS artwork addresses Voigt's artistic affinity to romanticism and the forest as a place of yearning. For the first time, a closer look at the cover of NARKOPOP reveals signs of architectural fragments which hint at another, maybe parallel world behind Voigt's forest. Truth is the prettiest illusion.
(de) - Fast zwei Jahrzehnte nach dem letzten offiziellen GAS-Albumrelease kehrt Wolfgang Voigt mit einem brandneuen Langspieler zu seinem legendären Ambientprojekt zurück.
- NARKOPOP setzt die klassische GAS-Ästhetik zwischen symphonischer Grösse und subtiler Variation fort, eine Reise zu den Untiefen von Rausch und Entrücktheit.
- Erhältlich als luxuriöse Hardcover CD- Erhältlich als luxuriöse Hardcover CD inkl. 24-seitigem Booklet.


Aus dem Gesamtwerk des Kölner Künstlers Wolfgang Voigt, der mit seinen unzähligen unterschiedlichen musikalischen Projekten seit den frühen 1990er Jahren wie kaum ein Zweiter die elektronische Musikwelt geprägt, gestaltet und beinflusst hat, ragt sein Projekt GAS, ein auf stark verdichteten Klassiksequenzen basierendes, düsteres Klangkunstwerk, in ganz besonderem Maße heraus. Dass der Sound von GAS auch nach fast 20 Jahren scheinbar nichts von seinem Zauber und seiner Kraft verloren hat, zeigte eindrucksvoll der große Erfolg des im Herbst 2016 als 10xVinyl/4xCD Box auf Kompakt wieder veröffentlichten Backkatalogs.
Die überwältigende Resonanz, sowohl seitens der treuen internationalen Fangemeinde als auch der weltweiten Presse, bezeugte einmal mehr die schiere Zeitlosigkeit von GAS. Daher fühlt es sich auch an, als sei kaum ein Tag vergangen, wenn Wolfgang Voigt nun mit NARKOPOP genau da den künstlerischen Faden wieder aufnimmt, wo das letzte offizielle Album »Pop« ihn vor fast zwei Jahrzehnten hat fallen lassen.


Auch hier und heute verfängt der unverwechselbare Geist von GAS unmittelbar und nimmt den Hörer bereits mit den ersten Tönen mit in eine andere Welt, zieht ihn hinein in ein undurchdringliches Dickicht aus Klang, hinunter in die Untiefen von Rausch und Entrücktheit.
Aus dichten sinfonischen Nebelschwaden entsteht ein Schweben und Taumeln, ein Gefühl der Schwerelosigkeit, bevor der Zuhörer von der Anziehungskraft einer narkotischen Bassdrum wieder hinunter in den schaurig-schönen Fantasie-Wald gelockt wird.

Während frühere GAS Tracks oft auf der hypnotischen Wirkung des Loops basierten, entfalten die 10 neuen Stücke auf NARKOPOP ihre Magie auf verschlungeneren Pfaden, mal mit der klanglichen Wucht eines ganzen Philharmonieorchesters, dann wieder so zart und zerbrechlich wie der feinste Ast eines weit verzweigten Baumes. Das für Voigts Arbeiten so typische Ineinanderfließen scheinbar widersprüchlicher stilistischer Aspekte wie harmonisch und atonal, konkret und abstrakt, leicht und schwer, nah und fern ist auch auf NARKOPOP essenziell.

Im Sinne seines grenzüberschreitenden Schaffens, überträgt Voigt die ästhetischen Konzeptionen seiner Musik auch auf die Ebene des Visuellen. Das auf seinen abstrakten Waldbildern basierende GAS Artwork thematisiert Voigts künstlerischen Nähe zur Romantik und dem Wald als Sehnsuchtsort. Wer einen genaueren Blick auf das Cover von NARKOPOP wirft, der wird erstmalig Andeutungen architektonischer Fragmente entdecken, die eine andere, vielleicht parallele Welt hinter dem voigt'schen Wald erahnen lassen. Wahrheit ist der schönste Schein.

In this space between chaos and conformity disorderly moments welcome new phases into existence, leading to the awakening of an elevated version of the self. Between highs and lows, Transitions of Life remain; the concept behind Synthek's first solo full length sound narrative on his Natch Records imprint. Unfolding across a vexing two-year transformation phase, Synthek's crossings along rough roads are the tribulations to reveal this intimate personal journey of reve- lation through emotional downshift, spiritual upheaval and cerebral quandary. In this dominion, Synthek shapes the eleven track escapade along a sophisticated array of synths and warm analog drums, while contrasting the build and decline of atmosphere through deep bass soundscapes.
Pivotal turning points execute the programming of the album's three part sound design; beginning from darkness and repression, evolving to a more colourful aerial majesty of lucid dream state, morphing into the developed nature of life lessons learned; Transitions of Life making its incarnation into the discovery of the self and re-entry into reality.

*Transitions of Life is a 2x12' release made available through Natch Elements, intro- spective extension to the Natch Records imprint. Visual embodiment of the project artfully presented with photographic time capsule by Salar Kheradpejouh of Berlin, Germany with graphic work curated by Jacopo Saveritano, co-founder of Natch Records.

Coloured Vinyl Only
The latest release from Serbia's Soul Print Recordings brings together the two L's, Leonid and Laak. Up first is Leonid on the A side with two tracks Urania 1 and 2, possibly named after the muse of astronomy, which makes sense, as both tracks have a cosmic feel about them. Urania 1 starts off with a nice string sound that permeates the space before the drums start to really take effect half way through. Urania 2 has a more house feel about it, with the acid bass line sitting nicely along the deep pads. Over to the b side and Laak takes control. Delving into late night territory with haunting layered leads & pads these tracks are typical quality by Laak. Featuring label artwork once again by fellow Serb, Bratislav Milenkovic and pressed on a beautiful sky blue, Yesterday For Tomorrow is a thing of aural and visual beauty.

Max Cooper is releasing an EP of remixes by friends and other artists he admires, on a DJ friendly 12" vinyl with 6 remixes.

It takes the LP from an incredible home listening experience and onto the dance floor. On the 12" will be the remixes from Vessels, Rival Consoles, Tom Hodge, Kimyan Law, Christian Loffler and Ash Koosha.

In November last year Max Cooper released EMERGENCE , an epic, operatic, amalgamation between audio-visual show, scientific research project, art installation and IDM record. EMERGENCE is the story of the development of the universe, the way in which, very complex things like human beings were created from the immaterial by the action of simple laws.

Newly launced Samo Records is setting out to explore the depths of the dancefloor by celebrating the darker, moodier facets of electronic music.The NYC label's first release comes from Pixelife (Sean Dack), a highly accomplished visual artist and veteran of NYC's underground. In addition to releasing on such respected labels as Throne of Blood, Horn Wax, and Let's Play House, he also makes up half of GHOST COP, a band known for its textured synths, iconic vocals, dissonant beats, and captivating live sets. Incorporating the same expert sonic-layering techniques he employs in his live analog sets, he's created a dynamic EP that's both intimate in feel and broad in scope.'Omega Block' stomps out of the gate, all driving rhythms and throbbing basslines with an underlying element of frenetic foreboding — aptly reflecting these geopolitically tense times, while still remaining suitable for losing yourself on the dancefloor. The track gets the remix treatment by Bristol, U.K.-born, Berlin-based Antoni Maiovvi, a self-described 'electrodisco horror mindmelt DJ/live performer/film composer' who heads up Giallo Disco Records with Vercetti Technicolor. Here, he trades his trademark horror elements for successions of staccato beats and a stripped-down sensibility that successfully translates to perfect late-night-at-a-warehouse vibes.Chimeras in the Matrix' soars with gorgeous dystopian melodies overlaying squelchy undertones, revealing labyrinthine layers and anxious crescendos before building to a full-on acid frenzy. Producer/remixer/DJ Tronik Youth (who, like Maiovvi, also hails from the U.K. and currently lives in Berlin) is co-head of the prolific (averaging nearly a release a week in 2016) NEIN Records, which he founded five years ago with Ian Considine; the label has released music from the likes of Rodion, Curses, In Flagranti, Heretic, Man Power, Daniele Baldelli, The Emperor Machine, and Moscoman, to name but a few. He is also a member of Permanent Wave, a spooky, pitched-down, dark-wave-inspired disco project with French singer Justine. He brings a chuggy, bleepy edge to his take on 'Chimeras in the Matrix' with bouncy rhythms, multiple breakdowns, and echoing robo-vocals, taking the original's intensity down while upping the dancefloor quotient.

Bartellow has long been associated with the ESP Institute though Tambien, a trio formed alongside Bavarian cohorts Marvin and Valentino, who have released seminal dancefloor material over recent years. With his debut album Panokorama, we are invited into a completely different world of Bartellow's creation—a place where influences become a melting pot of mood, nuance and texture, and where instrumentation is abstracted from a variety of cultures, including those that exist solely within his imagination. Bartellow has found a way to merge Primitivism with Retrofuturism, identifying their point of intersection and reveling in their union across ten songs. While his academic background as a Jazz musician certainly informs both his progressive approach to composition and non-linear production, it is his obsession with electronics and synthesis that shape his current musical climate. The title Panokorama stems from Bartellow's visualization of the album, a surreal landscape with a foreign presence centrally embedded, a 'panorama' punctuated by a 'ko'—although a hybrid word that reads as nonsense, it somehow feels and sounds just right.

Espen Beranek Holm is a Norwegian musician and comedian, born 1960 and began his music career as a clarinetist. Inspired by early synthesizer bands Kraftwerk and The Residents, he began making experimental pop music. His debut single Dra te' hælvete' was released in 1981 and was immediately banned by national TV/radio channel NRK due to explicit lyrics. This gave the young artist tons of publicity, helping the single spend almost 6 months on the national charts.

Beranek returned to the Starholm Studios in Oslo from June - September 1981 to record nine new compositions. His debut album, Sound of Danger', was released on Mind Expanding Records in November 1981. Nowhere near as accessible as the previous single, the album fared poorly commercially. Withdrawing from the single's fun, kitsch pop, the album is cool and static, driven by thin rhythm boxes, cold synths, and glacial guitars. Taking heavy cues from David Bowie, all of the songs are sung in a nasally English accent, a rare occurrence in Norway at the time. The lyrics are melancholic, but tinged with paranoia. There are also upbeat tracks that evoke a prog or glam sensibility a la King Crimson, Alan Parsons, or Roxy Music.

All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Housed in the original jacket featuring red, black, and white lines that evoke a visualized Richter Scale designed by Monica Moltzau. Each copy includes a 2-sided 8x11' insert with lyrics and an autographed press photo of Beranek.

For their next release, Freeride Millenium once again link up with Pauls Musique for a perfectly formed new EP from Raphael Danilo feat. George Pappos. Both Danilo and Pappos reside in the rough edges of the greek mountain Parnassos, their musical approach takes cues from their proximity to the ancient sanctuary of Delphi and sees them cook up one fine cut which then gets remixed by Innellea and Nikkname. That lead single is 'Strangers', eight spiritual and spooky minutes of spine tingling and eerie synth music that really takes you on a trip. It operates on another dimension, with pixelated lines and undulating pads all suspending you in space. Perfect for an epic set opening or to really reset the dancefloor with an attention grabbing and emotive piece, it is a truly classy track full of musicality and suspense and atmosphere. German pair Innellea then step up to remix and brilliantly flip the cut into something just as epic and enchanting but with a mid tempo, rubbery house beat down low helping you slip into the deep and colourful groove. Last of all, Nikkname then re-works the whole thing into something minimal and absorbing. The whole thing is riddled with intricate sound design, tender piano keys and the sound of static. It is a real symphony of the organic and the electronic and as such cannot fail to make its mark. This is an artful package that demands close listening with suitably eye catching visuals supplied once again by artist Daniel Rajcsanyi. Thanks for purchasing a real copy!

Visible Cloaks' Reassemblage is a collection of delicately rendered passages of silence and sound that invokes - and invites - consciousness. The foundation of the duo's second album is gently poured upon the ground their musical predecessors explored, using the materials of chance operations, MIDI translation,' and other generative principles that favor inclusive musical environments over the narrowly constrained.

In 2010, Spencer Doran, one part of Visible Cloaks alongside Ryan Carlile, prepared the first volume of Fairlights, Mallets, and Bamboo, a mixtape indicated by Doran as an investigation into fourth-world undercurrents in Japanese ambient and pop music, years 1980 - 1986.' These mixes contextualized the outré orbit of Yellow Magic Orchestra-related solo projects and their abstract, radiant forays as forever futuristic modes of music.

Reassemblage evokes similar musical futures celebrated on the Fairlights mixes, but does so observantly rather than reverently. The title Reassemblage, for example, is taken from a film essay by Trinh T. Minh-ha, which explores the impossibility of ascribing meaning to ethnographic images. The author aims to speak nearby' rather than speak about.' In other words, to embrace lapses of understanding, and realize that the impulse to map direct meaning across a cultural gap often results in further disconnect.

In an effort to speak nearby' rather than speak about,' Visible Cloaks filters and forms source material to become young again. Often the duo strip tonal elements of their specificity or randomize melodies so they become stirring and lucid. Essential patterns emerge, conscious experience heightens. In these moments, the musical language of Reassemblage finds unlimited resonance and presents a path to uninhabited realities.

The origin of this language could be described as translingual or polyglottal, working within the eastern / western feedback loop of influence, Fourth World ambiguity, and the universality of human emotion. Incorporating an international array of virtual instruments to advance the idea of panglobalism through digital simulation, tones and colors cohere into a living, breathing pool of sensorial experience in Visible Cloaks' environs.

Beyond embracing the fluidity of worldly musical influences, Visible Cloaks works fluently between mediums. The contribution of stalwart digital and installation artist Brenna Murphy's dream dimensions to Reassemblage's cover artwork and surrounding videos extends the album's exploration of global headspace into a visual, visceral reality.

Singer, Producer and DJ Seven Davis Jr returns to his underground Soulful and House roots while fusing flavors from various eras in this uptempo sophomore album. "Live From The Other Side", plays like the soundtrack to a lovely weekend with visual designs inspired by underground festival culture and contemporary art. Dedicated to his fans, Sev hopes this album will conjure up good vibes and enhance sessions, from living room to club, for generations.

Six years after his last album on Miasmah, Schattenspieler, it's great to find Marcus Fjellström resurrected after several long years spent composing his audio-visual opera Boris Christ.

Born out of shattered dreams and an obscured vision of the future, Skelektikon is a delirious yet lucid exploration of the farthest and most conflicted reaches of the heart, teeming with confusion, passion, and ghostly shadows. Being no conventional composer in any way, Marcus stumbles further down his musical domain of detuned orchestral (re-)arrangements and pain-inducing synth passages, arriving at a most unique and personal result. Where Schattenspieler gave way to noir filled alleyways, Skelektikon fills them with paranoia. It's the sound of Limbo, of dancing amoebas, of deviant skeletons, nostalgia and futurism, or quite possibly none of that.

Inhabited by the bizarre and the beautiful, Marcus's music is a blurred yet encouraging representation of how you can never trust your own feelings - or eyes and ears for that matter. And yet, we can't shake the idea that the truth is to be found somewhere within this alien language, as delivered to us through the speakers. Opening our eyes after the final track has dissipated, we wouldn't be surprised to find someone or something there, staring at us, in silent and unsettling knowledge.

Vanta Series is the new series for Killekill's dancefloor music. The releases come in series, every series comes with a theme and one artwork which is being split in several parts to go with each release. The first series is called THE END IS NEAR' and features four records. It comes with an artwork by French visual artist Elzo Durt.
Vanta 003 comes from Eomac under his alias EeOo.
EeOo is a side project for what is, in Eomac's mind, straight up, techno-rave-house-jungle- disco influenced, dancefloor material. It draws influence from classic styles of dance music. Less dense, less conceptual than the Eomac-music. Less focussed on texture and atmosphere, a more direct approach for sweaty ravers and moving bodies.

EMERGENCE is an epic, operatic, ambitious amalgamation between audio-visual show, scientific research project, art installation and IDM record, the debut release on Max Cooper's Mesh label and his second full-length release.2 LPs housed in a gatefold sleeve, featuring black and gold ink printed onto silver laminated board to create a unique and beautiful effect.The record was conceived as a soundtrack to a new series of 11 pieces of video art, each exploring a different facet of the concept of 'emergence'. The full A/V live show will premiere at Mutek, Japan on November 2nd 2016. Together the work is a marriage between the cosmic awe of a Carl Sagan film and the musical wonderment of Sigur Ros, made for meditating on the mystery of our emotional connection to fundamental natural form.
Cooper collaborated with film composer Tom Hodge and vocalist Kathrin deBoer to put together a rich piece of music that incorporates post-rock, Warp-y brain-dance, hi-def digital techno and shimmering neo-classical. Few musicians are as qualified as Max to tackle as profound an idea as 'emergence' through electronic music. Emergence is the story of the development of the universe, the way in which, very complex things like human beings where created from the immaterial by the action of simple laws.Max has synthesised his skill as a producer and his deep interests in science to create a Hadron Collider-grade ambient techno world, in the lineage of The Future Sounds of London's 'Lifeforms' for 2016. It's also one of the most beautiful records you'll hear all year. Early support at radio pledged from Lauren Laverne and Mary Anne Hobbs.

Following the recent reissue of Vox Populi!s Aither album, Emotional Rescue further explores the more discerning, esoteric sounds of the French 80s avant-garde scene in coute Visual artist, sound designer, musician, label founder and emotional tree consultant Ramuntcho Matta is a man of shifting, relentless talents. Diagnosed with autism at a young age. Therapy based on yoga and music set him on a path, leading to learn from the likes of composter Cuarteto Cedrn. Discovering avant-music at an early age, he moved to New York to study in the "Third Street School of Music", meeting John Cage and going on to work on projects with Laurie Anderson, Brion Gysin and Don Cherry. His architectural concepts applied to composition were explored on his 3 solo LPs from the 1980s. The middle of these, coute, is possibly his most cohesive, exploring the use of extra-European musicians, especially African and Brazilian percussion, jazz horn playing, as well as Uruguayan singer Elie Meideros. Mexicos Cacau de Queirozs performance on saxophone and flute is stunning, former Gipsy Kings member, Jorge Negrito Trasante attributes much of the LPs Brazilian percussive flavour, while Magmas bassist Jannick Top brings gravitas, including performing a water claps duet alongside Matta on the exquisite O Clapo. As one piece, coute endlessly avoids standard musical formulas, seeking textures of far-flung elements; alchemy against a background of freedom to experiment that would be the theme throughout Mattas career, whether setting up SSR records under the alias Michael Pope or in his more recent output, teaching methodology of doubt

After releasing records on L.I.E.S. and its offspring Russian Torrent Versions labels, Caserta (close to Neaples, Italy) native Domenico Crisci quickly rose to prominence among purveyors of timeless Techno. A third record on Eerie cemented his reputation as a careful engineer of effective, crafty dance floor cuts that comfortably sit next to early works of the genre's pioneers. August of 2016 sees Domenico's sonic determination surprisingly rematerializing on Silent Servant, Regis and James Ruskin's Jealous God label with a new, strong EP crowning the distinct quality of this limited series. Through such particular path Domenico got inspiration to start his own SUMMA CUM LAUDE label project, where his most forward thinking works and brand new, surprising talents will have the first chance to get properly published. Domenico himself is inaugurating the label by The Violinist EP, including 3 peak-time techno tracks anticipating the strongest emotive intensities, carefully finalized by the valuable experience of a mastering engineer like Matt Colton. To visualize Domenico's particular, straightforward sound, we'll find the kind intervention of the Neapolitan artist Mariangela Levita.

2024 Repress
"Apodiktische Gewissheit" ("apodeictic certainty") is the title of an audio-visual cooperative project from Berlin-based artist Gerhard Mantz and Wolfgang Voigt. The project is premised on a digital video piece from Gerhard Mantz. Steadily flowing geometric forms and themes move evenly around a fixed center towards the viewer. A hypnotic undertow-like effect of seductive beauty emerges - impossible to elude, whether you want to or not. Wolfgang Voigt seizes on the digital aesthetic and the mechanical flow of the images, giving them a musical equivalent. The result is a successful amalgamation of imagery and music that generates maximum intensity with minimum motion. An Impression of concurrency between loop-ish continuity and a constant forward thrust, always the same and always different, beginninglessness and endlessness is created.
The vinyl release at hand is a part of the audio-visual art installation "Apodiktische Gewissheit", developed in cooperation with Cologne-based gallery Hammelehle and Ahrens at Cologne's Gertrudenkirche and starting on Friday, November 4th 2016.

At the junction of electronics, electroacoustic, noise and contemporary music, Franck Vigroux explores sound territories, continuously pushing boundaries. He faces his practices with other forms of art, creating trans-disciplinary projects. Several tracks in Rapport sur le Désordre can be found in Centaure, the
performative audio-visual show created with video producer and Werktank founder Kurt D'Haeseleer . 
The pieces Centaure and Rapport sur le Désordre are the final chapters of a  dense series on dystopia,
implemented  over several years:  the radio piece D503 which is inspired by the novel of Eugène Zamiatine,  the albums Camera Police and We, as well as  the two trans-disciplinary shows  Nous
Autres and Aucun Lieu.

Debut album from Pacific NW rising star, named "Best Electronic Act" in 2015 by the Seattle Weekly. ** Past Press Coverage as included: A NPR Weekend Edition Feature, Spin, Stereogum, KEXP Live in studio performce, CMJ. ** Past performance highlights: Bonarroo Decibel Festical, Bumbershoot, Capitol Hill Block Party, Sasquatch Festival, What The Festival, & Bonnaroo, as well as national tours with acts like Emancipator, Blockhead, Blackbird Blackbird, Chad Valley, Yppah, ** First single from the album "What We've Got" feat. Flint Eastwood passed 500,000 Spotify plays and 135,000 Soundcloud plays in a month's time.

Amidst the lush environs of his northwest roots, Manatee Commune has fermented an organically molded electronic sound that has been teasing the synapses of audiophiles over the last few years. While not a stranger in the Pacific Northwest, Grant Eadie's tracks have grown tentacles that stretch deep into the dance floor, fueled by natural overtones that he extracts from field recordings. Following the head-turning EP 'Thistle' on Brooklyn-based label Bastard Jazz Recordings (Illa J, Lord Echo, & others) from earlier this year, he comes to the label armed with violin arrangements, nuanced programming and pressure-sensitive LED drum breaks peppering the audio-visual experience of his participatory live performances. His debut album Manatee Commune is set for a September 16th release on Bastard Jazz, and displays the elevated confidence and deft touch of a producer truly finding his footing. Already opening for Bonobo, and recently touring with Chad Valley and Blackbird Blackbird, Manatee Commune has been featured on NPR, Stereogum, and Spin, amongst other outlets.

Eadie describes the inspiration behind his approach: "Learning how to share my creative process with my friends completely revolutionized the last of year of music for me. Inviting those I trusted and loved into my studio to spend even just an hour talking or jamming opened fountains of inventive energy for me, especially from the ones who lacked any musical knowledge. I soon found myself incredibly inspired by the originality of even the smallest interactions with people, and so I pointed my field mic at anyone who had a story, a melody, or a stumbling beat they had been absentmindedly drumming, all in the hopes of capturing their individuality and framing it with my ever expanding insight into audio production."

Reimagining his musical approach by opening his studio and microphone to friends, collaborators and loved ones, Eadie was able to release fountains of inventive energy from these deeply personal interactions, inspired by anybody who had a story, a melody or a stumbling beat to share. Key elements are amplified that get Manatee Commune audiences bouncing, while cultivating his warm and textured production aesthetic to further complexity, layer by shimmering layer.

One month after the release of 981 Mb RSD EP, we are glad to introduce you to the new Molecule's album: 60° 43' Nord (Deluxe Edition). Some would associate the sounds of the waves to heat and relaxation and rest assured, we're part of them. That being so, some others visualize the sea as a wide playground from which they can pick up the echos to turn them into a deep sound. That is precisely the case of Molecule who decided to record the wild voices of the Atlantic Ocean aboard a 90 metres long fishing boat. The result is made of powerful and danceable techno beats ("8 ZL 40), tracks that will take you directly to the Atlantic's depths ("Abysses"), and harmonious moments of time off ("Le Jardin' or Soleil Bleu"). The whole of the tracks is captivating and flows naturally as we listen to it. You'll find the song Hébrides, present on the 981 Mb EP, as well as the original version of Rockall that you might have heard already as a live version. If you never had the chance to jump onto a 90 metres fishing boat, take your chance, Molecule is inviting you to get on his... The CD included in the LP version features the 10 tracks of the album.

Berlin Atonal Recordings is happy to announce two forthcoming releases, both featuring live cuts from two of the most talked about performances at the 2015 edition of the festival.

Peder Mannerfelt supplies four jams fashioned out of his own exceptional live show at the festival. Raw, unsoftened, brutely analog sound from an EMS Synthi AKS punctures space in an oddly futuristic rhythmic experiment, gesturing at a brand new way of thinking about electronic music.

The cuts are also packaged in a special 12" featuring artwork based on his own breathtaking live audio- visual show.

Tobias. explores space and gasiform substances with his Helium Sessions on Ostgut Ton. Following his recent image and sound collaboration with visual artist Valentina Berthelon as Recent Arts, Tobias. now delves into the idea of music reminiscing gas leaking into space with four new tracks.
While we all agree that there can't be sound in a vacuum, Science Fiction taught us the opposite, that space can potentially sound hyperfuturistic, hostile yet exciting. And since the Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the deepest sound in the universe near a supermassive black hole - why should analogue synth jams with the stars seem impossible
With Helium Sessions Tobias. proposes an acoustic representation of the gaseous state of matter in space. LAGEOS 1' on A1 already sets the tone with meandering drones atop a gnawing synth pad and distorted flickering percussion. The title refers to the satellite LAGEOS-1 which will continue to orbit planet earth in 5,860 kilometers altitude for another 8.4 million years (or 4,418064E+12 minutes) - we'll let you do the maths of how often the 6:03-minute LAGEOS 1' could be played until the satellite's returnal.
Nucleon' on A2 comes with a more dubby, deep and throbbing feeling, Helios' on the flip features epic noise textures with shimmering melodic synth leads and a multi-layered break beat vibe, while Spectrum V' on B2 closes this 12 with another dub cut, detailed synth explorations and alienated vocal bits.
Helium Sessions offers four new zero-g tracks from Tobias. spread out over 27 minutes on this extended EP, his third full-length album will be landing in 2017.

Matthew Dear's Audion project stands proudly at the intersection between art and hedonism, realised over a decade long dedication to powerful and relevant dance music. Growing out of the vibrant DIY Detroit underground, Audion and his contemporaries were free to feed off the energy reverberating from UK and European dancefloors, but singular in their desire to create their own sound and spirit. An Audion release is techno in it's purest sense - whether it's pushing the bombastic limits, spinning the dancefloor out of control or elegantly toying with just a few sonic elements. 'Alpha' is Audion's first artist album in 10 years and comes at the end of a period of fevered activity. The collective body of work standing as a marker in time and a defining moment in the life of the artist. Drowning out the noise of the outside world, 'Alpha' was a puzzle pieced together sonically in the shadows and wildly brought to life in a matter of weeks. The artwork for 'Alpha' has again been realised by Will Calcutt, Dear's long time collaborator, who has a visual plan for the music that matches the sonic vision, completing the final critical piece of the puzzle. Taken from the album, Gut Man Cometh and Destroyer get the remix treatment from UK producers Matthew Herbert and FOLD

Some believe that the environment in which you make music - from the studio space, to the location itself - has a profound effect on the creative process. Immerse yourself in the world around you, the theory goes, and it will shape the music you make. Listen to Gorthleck, the third album from veteran downtempo alchemists Benjamin Smith and Paul 'Mudd' Murphy, and you can almost visualize the craggy, windswept and breathtakingly beautiful environment in which it was made. Reconvening after a near seven-year hiatus last summer, the duo headed up to the Scottish Highlands to spend a week recording in the surrounds of Gorthleck House, nestled on the shore of Loch Mhor in Inverness-shire. Earlier this year, they returned to the same venue, with its' stunning views of the tranquil loch and rocky, wooded hills rising in the distance, to complete the nine-track set. Certainly, the immersive environment and famously changeable weather seems to have inspired the longtime friends and studio partners. The album's epic centrepiece, the nine-minute Mhor', sounds like an emotional love letter to the body of water they strolled alongside every day. Its' undulating synthesizer line - reminiscent of classic Tangerine Dream and the Orb's A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain' - mimics the slow ebb and flow of water across the loch, while Smith's shimmering guitar lines mimic the glint of sunlight reflecting off the surface. Elsewhere, the audio references are a little more subtle, but no less relevant. The hazy jazz guitars, twinkling pianos, rich grooves and fluttering clarinets of Nether' sound like the perfect accompaniment to a single malt whisky-fuelled sunset session at the water's edge, while the quietly foreboding aural textures, layered guitars and urgent electric violin of Enos' evoke memories of watching storm clouds gathering behind distant Highland mountains. The same could be said of Mr Coats' - a track arranged in steamy Mexico, and blessed with all the humidity you'd expect from such an excursion - while you can hear gale force winds whistling around the rafters on Dogwood'. As for Errogie', it's as bracing as a crystal clear morning in the Highlands, chilly, but hugely life affirming. The duo's previous two albums, 2007's Blue River and its' 2009 follow-up, Le Suivant, were both hugely evocative, but neither captured a distinct a sense of time and place quite like Gorthleck. Listen carefully, and you could almost be there with them, watching the sunrise and sunset.

Wolfgang Tillmans designed Cover with Innersleeve

How to introduce the first record by Wolfgang Tillmans Now considered one of the most significant visual artists working today, his very first passion in life lay with music. This record features on its B-side three songs recorded in 1986 in his home town of Remscheid. The A-side features two pieces recorded in 2015/2016. The 29-year gap in between were marked by Tillmans exploring music, pop and club culture from many different angles. 'Make It Up As You Go Along' is a pulsing dance track based on the recordings of a book printing press in a factory in Stuttgart. Morphed through various production stages, the press's syncopations and his Tillmans' serendipitouspenditous vocals merge into an intoxicating track that could become a summer festival early a.m. favourite. 'Triangle / Gong / What' is an experimental offering made up ofwhich combines the sounds of playing a special alloy triangle, a 999 fine gold gong and a vocal, fused through a particular gain manipulation during the recording process. The 1986 side features three songs which Tillmans wrote and recorded with collaborator Bert Leßmann. A single channel recording from the rehearsal room was all he had from back in the day. With the help of Tim and Klaus Knapp the recordings were filtered and eq'ed and then supported with precise reconstructions of the original instruments. Out of this production process spanning 30 years a unique time capsule emerged, which portraits a small town teenager with some ambition. 'Time Flows All Over' is a haunting reminiscence of the angst and energy of the mid-1980s, infused with surprising contemporary relevance.

Michigan's ambient and soundtrack specialist John Beltran introduces a new LP that will be co-released by Delsin and his digital only label Dado Records. Entitled Through the Blinds, it features ten tracks by Blair French (who also appeared on his Music For Machine compilation on Delsin last year) and will be released on January 18th 2016. Blair French aka Dial.81 is an experimental producer and visual artist who won an award for his score of Detropia--a documentary about his home city of Detroit--and now makes his ambient debut. As you would expect of such a project, it boasts suspensory and near spiritual pieces of ambient music with angelic chords and glassy textures. There are also more frosty cuts that sound like a chilly Autumn walk, tracks that feature emotive neo-classical piano pieces and suggestively rhythmic compositions that sooth your mind. The second half of the record touches on church like passages of synth heavy sounds, strikingly sad violins and lo-fi arrangements that sound, one hopes, a little like what you might hear as you pass from this life to the next.

Italy via Shanghai is the route taken for the debut E.P of Neapolitan producer Altieri, aka Eugenio Altieri. A designer living in Shanghai, Eugenio started to make music back in 2004, mixing music and visuals to create his weirdo production' sessions. After traveling east he founded the DesToys duo, a live project that channelled space disco and 80s commercial music.

Edo is a personal view over the modern Asia, Japan in this case. Inspired by the street sounds and bugged out day to day world of Tokyo his debut EP is four tracks of slippery head music. Chiseled from the deep seams of an intergalactic mine and informed by the dark heart of house and no wave disco this is club music from the oily underbelly.

James K is a stranger to obviousness. Over the past few years the New York native has quietly honed her sound and peculiar aesthetic. Equally organic and electronic, her sound is a combination of odd dreams, industrial beats and vocals, both incomprehensible and appealing, with a thick layer of glitter on top of it. James K is a concentrated dose of emotion mixed with sorrowful iciness, which in turn ties together ripped, broken, morphed and enchanted samples. James K stands for a fusion of visual and sonic elements, deeply rooted in conscious art practice and downright freak-out. James K creates a mythology of her own.
'PET,' her first LP due out in early 2016, will be a co-release with Dial and her own label, She Rocks! A special edition of the album with added bonus tracks and interludes with be released on cassette through Canadian label 1080p.
In James K's words: 'The underlying desire of 'PET' divides into two parts: an escape into ethereality and a mischievous denial of my own experience. It narrates my search for honest expression by means of the premature denial- a childish excursion into a world of monstrosity and innocence.
PET reflects my mental state during its production - as a person, I was owned, objectified and hurt by other, and that wound I then unwillingly internalized. I turned to my music as a way to dissect these thoughts. The product became my possession, or 'pet.' In retrospective, this process gives me strength over myself; love—knowledge and wisdom enacted. The arrangement of the music and the PET itself relates to my endless struggle, namely, my attempts to reclaim myself.'
Her 'Sokit' 7' is a double track single for her album, which she released last Spring. James K is featured on the recent compilation released by Dial Records for their 15-year anniversary, and a mini LP of her noise pop project SETH (along with producer Gobby), was also recently released by label 1080p in June, in cassette and digital form. She rocks.

Bret Winans (aka CB-R & CB Radio) produces music out of a studio in Brooklyn. Using a variety of gear that has been amassed over the past decade, he's experimented with house, italo, techno and more. 2014 saw the release of CB-R's Inside Existence, an EP of dub techno and ambient textures that launched the S//P//A imprint. He's also appeared on the 100% Silk 2015 label comp, Sunset Silk, as CB Radio with the more italo leaning Pacific Ocean Blues.' With each release we're opened up to another side of the producer's world. Available on Full Color Jacket LP by New York based visual artist and musician Jay Goitia.

The perfect Christmas gift for discerning fans of cutting edge analogue electronica. And Kraftwerk!

Radioland was initially devised as a breathtaking audio-visual live experience by the Anglo-French trio of Matthew Bourne (synthesisers, voice), Franck Vigroux (electronics) and visual artist Antoine Schmitt.

The original music has been transformed with hurricanes of modulated electronics, earth-shattering bass frequencies, vocoders ebbing and throbbing and the occasional drop into periods of eerie near-silence.

Using a variety of vintage analogue synthesisers and electronics, they have recreated the futuristic, industrial world of ominous darkness and dazzling light imagined by Kraftwerk in 1975 and reconstructed in this bold new manifestation for 2015.

The album is mastered by Denis Blackham, who mastered Kraftwerk's classic 1974 album Autobahn

The LP edition is limited to just 1,000 copies for the world in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with a CD included

Both versions include liner notes by David Stubbs, author of Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany, and photographs and images from the project

The album cover artwork is taken from the video work of Antoine Schmitt, creator of the captivating visuals that are a vital component of the Radioland performance

Matthew Bourne and Franck Vigroux's impressive collective CV boasts collaborations with artists such as John Zorn, Nostalgia 77, Marc Ribot, Annette Peacock, Elliot Sharp, Mika Vainio, Ben Miller and Zeena Parkins

More Radioland shows are expected to follow the release in 2016

"Don't Touch My Sister" is Romain Azzaro's Rouge Mécanique début Album. Cinematic hazy instrumentals and a heady mix of post-punk, Italo disco, ambient and noise shine through Azzaro's dedication to his signature Telecaster slide-guitar, bringing acoustic life to electronica. Citing the visual realm as a strong influence on his music, Rouge Mécanique's releases are often accompanied by short films and hand picked design. The 'Prelude' video for 'Don't Touch My Sister' was born of a collaboration between Romain Azzaro and the film maker Louis Vignat, as inspired by the cover artwork of Les Beaux Arts de Paris artist Jeanne Briand.