Into The Woods returns with ITW002 produced by none other than the Legendary underground hero, Swoy. Recently signed to the Into The Woods Artist Agency and Record Label - Swoy hands over 4 previously unreleased classics, heard on club dancefloors throughout the world over. The Fairytale EP consists of 4 dreamy and dramatic dancefloor smashers ready for any occasion.
Dies Lexic is a duo by Inês Tartaruga Água and Xavier Paes. Part of Favela Discos collective and label, they explore the channelling potentialities of sound, wandering between spectrums, ethereal soundscapes and zones of sonic subduction through means of DIY electro-acoustic instruments, amplified objects, electronics and composition processes based on repetition, language, chaosmosis and error.
Lexicon Hall, the long overdue debut album by the Portuguese duo of intrepid sound explorers, is a sort of digital ayahuasca, an intense psychedelic journey guided by drums and harshly bowed strings, channelling voices from other planes and fusing them with Dies Lexic’s very own distinctive voice. If you close your eyes hard enough you can probably see Tony Conrad waving hello in the middle of a dark jungle that is inhabited by tribes of our ancestors.
Artists bio:
Inês Tartaruga Água is a multidisciplinary artist, focused on the issues of deep ecology and radical regeneration, sound explorer and practitioner of DIY philosophy as well as collaborative and participatory practices in public space. Participates in collective exhibitions since 2013, highlighting the “XIII International Biennial of Artistic Ceramics” (Aveiro, 2017), “Убежище / Suoja / Shelter Festival - Laboratory” (Helsinki, 2019), «48 часов Новосибирск» (Siberia, 2019), or “Soundscapes” (Bahrain, 2019), and has her first individual artistic residency “Méhtēr: Matter, Form and Transformation” at Júlio Dinis Museum in Ovar (2018). Recently, Água has debuted sound pieces in Casa de Serralves (Porto, 2021) and in Casa das Conchas (Spain, 2021).
Xavier Paes is a transdisciplinary artist based in Porto. He divides his practice between visual arts, sound, performance, gleaning improvisation and multi-instrumentalism, focusing on ideas such as acoustic phenomena, repetition, resonant and sympathetic bodies, echo and ecology. He has presented his work at institutions, galleries, festivals, kiosks, raves and after-parties, highlighting places such as Serralves Museum, Oliva Arts Center, Porto Municipal Gallery, Stichting Centrum (The Hague), OCCII and Vondelbunker (Amsterdam), La Pointe Lafayette and L'international (Paris), STUK (Louven), Overtoon (Brussels) and Villa Arson (Nice).
Flexi Cuts is pleased to introduce Lazy Snail's new EP, Lucky Life. A truly valuable work, the result of time and research, where Alessandro (aka Lazy Snail) wanted to explore different sides of electronic music of an inner and mature nature at the same time.
Lucky Life is like going up to the attic and finding something precious to take care of; it sums up a long musical journey, from the past to the present, in five tracks full of meaning.
The first track, Remèrcier, is a tribute to 'dance' music, an intense talk over a hypnotic moog bass.
This is followed by Vagrants, dedicated to his hometown (Cudgnola), where we find an 808 rhythmic patterns as involving and beating as a walk in the rain.
The B-side opens with One Place, which features a vocal stunning collaboration with Flicker Fox, who brings the track into a techno universe with percussion and intimate echoes.
Climbin' High was inspired by Alessandro's passion and admiration for the mountains. He composed it imagining an extreme climb, and immediately afterwards an equally dangerous but necessary descent. Just like in reality.
The record ends with No Evil, an ambient-flavoured gem that opens on the climax in a riot of expert snares and synths.
Everyone’s favourite Israeli digger is back for another round of gloriously rare edit heat on RNT!
‘Baila’ gets the party started with infectious flamenco chants and claps over a churning acidic groove, and ‘Disco Hummus’ rounds out the side with a bit of joyful disco cheek.
On the flip, ‘Sun’ turns an unlikely cover of a classic into an Afro Disco banger, and ‘Simba’ rumbles and rolls with restraint toward a hypnotic peak of brass and vocals.
Elado has done it again…Mazel Tov!
Nearly 10 years on since his last solo LP, Berlin techno icon Marcel Dettmann arrives on Dekmantel with an expansive album captured in a flash of inspiration.
In many ways Fear Of Programming is a reflection on the artistic process – the critical hurdles one has to overcome, the constant strive for originality, the ability to capture inspiration in its pure moment of inception. Bar the closing title track (and we all know Marcel loves a surprise closing), these 13 tracks came together during a period in which our hirsute host was able to immerse himself in studio practice and set the intention to record an album’s worth of material every single day. From the resulting mass of work there were many options to choose from, and Fear Of Programming stood out as one of the most complete statements on Dettmann’s approach in the here and now.
Unconcerned with an overarching concept, it was the work in the studio which drove the musical direction. No labouring over knotty arrangements, no painstaking mix downs – just honest expression, a moment caught, a groove locked, a stroke of synth sent pirouetting over a cavernous bed of texture. The results are varied, and while you might well hear plenty of bruising machinations in line with the techno Dettmann has made his name on, there are plenty of other shades expressed across the album.
Ambient sojourns, beatless epics and angular electronica have equal footing with strident, floor-friendly workouts. Standout piece ‘Water’ offers an icy ballet of swinging minimal and drip-drop melodics fronted by Ryan Elliott on lesser-spotted vocal duties, urging, ‘give me a sign, just a little something to let me know that you’re mine’. It’s playful, but still underpinned with the sincerity that comes with Dettmann’s work.
Running on instinct, Dettmann presents an honest version of himself in the here and now, speaking through the sonics and not over-thinking the results. His decades of experience helming a thousand techno parties speak for themselves, while his evolution as a musical entity through collaboration and his own BAD MANNERS label demonstrate his appetite for change. Indeed, the working method which resulted in the album also spurred him on to create a live set beyond his well-established DJ practice. Without resorting to a conceited overhaul, Fear Of Programming opens up the idea of what Dettmann represents in the modern techno landscape.
Finger Prince recordings debut with the ‘Make U Feel Project’
A four tracker with the same assignment handed to four artists including some of the original Music For Freaks and Classic Music Company recording artists.
The first release is a close-knit affair with Lil’Mark handing out the project to who he regards as three close family members. No brief was given with the material so that all versions were unique. No spoilers either.
First up on side A, Mark provides a true groove with the swing he’s renowned for. Chords, catchy muting, stabs of vocal and a heavy rolling bassline sets the scene. Straight up house.
Track 2 is from Pale People who takes a great dub approach looping the bass and keys beneath the Vox adding tight percussion reminiscent of his Phonic Crunch collab’s with Mark. After a long hiatus it's great to have him back.
Side B Track 1 comes from Rob Mello doing his ’No Ears’ spectacular. It’s the Classic No Ears sound making great use of original elements and sounding fantastic as always.
Belgium’s export to Ibiza Bart Ricardo gets the final say on track 2. Taking it deeper Bart brings stretched chords into focus over a HEAVY kick and big bottom end. This track has a relentless groove with some well executed breaks.
SAISEI founder Junki Inoue continues his vital archival work uncovering the riches of Japan’s distinctive electronic music scene and bringing them to new audiences around the world.
The PMA EP compiles four dynamic tracks recorded around 30 years ago by the duo of Shigeru Nakamura (drums/vocals) and Mikio Kato (synths) aka B-2DEP’T.
Nakamura and Kato’s first album as B-2DEP’T, Products Plus, appeared on cassette in 1993 on Trigger Records, the predecessor label to Transonic (given a retrospective on SAIS004). Its bright yellow and blue retro-futurist artwork – which is echoed in the design for this reissue on SAISEI – matched the sounds held within: inventive, out-of-the-box dance music blending overseas influences with an idiosyncratic Japanese sensibility.
Two tracks from Products Plus appear on this EP, All tracks re-edited by Junki Inoue and regular collaborator Yuzo Iwata for vinyl extended play and available now for the first time on vinyl. ‘Clockwork Giant Panda’ appearing in a version co-produced with Yoshinori Sunahara (ex - Denki Groove), merges a breezy US house groove and bassline with twinkling, almost parodic Japanese keys that act as a kind of meta commentary on Western perceptions of Japan (a concept pioneered by Yellow Magic Orchestra). The two parts of ‘BSMH’, or Body Sonic Mental Health from ‘Products Plus’, were originally remixed by Daishi Hisakawa of Tanzmuzik, who draws on darker sounds from Europe and the UK: restless Depeche Mode synth harmonies spiral above a pacy EBM pulse, with robot vocals intoning the titular slogan. The package is completed by the unreleased track ‘PMA’, whose driving, bass-heavy mood falls somewhere between Sheffield bleep and the ambient techno of early Biosphere.
SAISEI is a Japanese word which translates to ‘reproduction’ and ‘to play’ (as in playing records). Japanese culture is widely known for its traditional nature just as much as it is for being forward into the future and this label’s concept does justice to exactly that. Having started digging for records as early as 16 years old, Inoue delved into productions from 1990s Japan to uncover these native gems. SAISEI’s core concept is to recapture and reintroduce unique pieces of Japanese electronic music onto vinyl, to an audience it never reached before as most of this music was only released in Japan.
Green Splatter Vinyl
Attention… There has been a sighting of an unidentified spinning object in the area. It’s splattered green and black, waxy, 12 inch in diameter and contains two extremely dangerous peak time recordings that have been causing destruction on dancefloors the world over. Proceed with caution, as these are two super slick takes on tracks you may or may not have heard before, you’re mind is at risk of reaching pure euphoria.
DJ Support: Marco Carola, Sepp, Arapu, Nu Zao, Bodeler, Ben Sterling, Archie Hamilton, Rossi.
'Hidden Gem' is the Zenmenn's first full album produced together with songwriter and vocalist John Moods and follows their much-loved debut record, 'Enter The Zenmenn'. Named after a country song that didn't quite make it to the final selection, 'Hidden Gem' is the result of an extended jam session at a friend’s studio, in a field of mystical meadows somewhere south of Hamburg, in which the band would experience a series of inexplicable phenomena.
It was their earlier collaboration on the future classic, 'Homage To A Friend' that kickstarted their idea to team up with John Moods again, and in the late summer of 2021 the band set to work on a full album of material together. Using The Zenmenn's trusted drum kit, good old DX7, an unusual Ukrainian bass and an almost discarded pedal steel guitar, combined with Moods’ uniquely fragile voice, the outcome resulted in six timeless songs. The resulting harmonic sound is, as the band put it, “something like Adult Oriented Rock with a teaspoon of Celtic sentimentalism, a pinch of big city Country wrapped in a late night '70s style jam”.
'Hidden Gem’, much like their previous LP, was recorded without pre-arranged songs or any fixed musical concept. Instead, it captures fleeting moments of creativity and reflects the joint musical sentiments of the band members at the time. “Some artists are amazing at vision and curating, our work-flow is opposite to that. We are pretty messy and all over the place in our creation, as in life. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but hopefully it comes out all right in the end.”
'Water Temple' is the debut album of the Berlin-based group Property. Comprised of Marijn Degenaar (NL) and Vivant de Non (AUS), the group use the theme of hydromancy to straddle the poetics of reverb from a post-punk perspective. The album wanders through dense end-of-world sensations without keeping away from piercing melodic instrumentation. As hazy as 'Water Temple' can get, Property just as easily trade the murky side of their post-punk sound for analogue synthesisers that feel almost celestial. Used to striking effect on 'Water Temple', the chorus-heavy bassline is interwoven with a strident melody that punctures the rhythm and accents the Neue Deutsche Welle energy that the pair play on at certain moments. Similarly, the vocals on 'Water Tempel' flirt with our cracked times from another angle, rendering a remarkable first transmission from this new duo. Foggy synthesisers fill the cavities of every track, though the driving leads ensure the ambience never overtakes the song-structures across the album. This tendency is best captured on the downer-anthem Blood Cube with its sharp drum machine rhythm, just as Clear Boys reprises this rowdy pop edge for a forceful album closer. The burning melancholy of 'Water Temple' is as shadowy as it is enlivening Track list: 1. Empty Leather Spell 2. Diet Of Worms 3. Water Tempel 4. Sea Wall 5. Blood Cube 6. Verbreek d Eed Niet 7. Het Oerslijm 8. Clear Boys
''Fact & Fiction" The second Tranquil Eyes album delivers poignant & exciting synthwave songs. Drenched in an eternal 80s feel, well crafted & complete.Tranquil Eyes is a Dutch minimal synth band formed in 1982. Lex Grauwen and Paul Oosterbaan had worked together for about 8 years before they formed the band. They decided to turn their back to stage performances and started experimenting with home-taping. Using an array of electronics, they recorded a great amount of songs and made a fine selection on Walks. Their first and only release. Today, after digging into the archives, a lot of restoring, recording & re-mastering, there�s Fact & Fiction. The album is an extension to the Walks album both in genre and in spirit. Comprising a selection of lost tracks, compilation only releases, unreleased songs and even two newly recorded songs, Fact & Fiction gives a great view on the bands musical abilities & influences over the years.
Blue / Yellow Vinyl in PicCover
(THIS ALBUM IS DIRECT ACTION: ALL REVENUE GOES TO THE ARTISTS IN ODESA. YOU ARE PARTICIPATING IN KEEPING UKRAINIAN ARTISTS WORKING AND EARNING MONEY DURING THIS TIME. Слава Україні!) BE:AT WAR is the new album from Odessa’s MEDIUM, who released the acclaimed Evolution of the Universe on Ohm Resistance in 2017. They have been writing drum and bass for over 15 years and released on labels such as Ohm Resistance, Sonic Terror, Hardline, Close2Death Recordings, Distortion Records, Combat Records and more. This follow up album is made under adversely different conditions - the approach of war to their home city, the assault on their native land. Yet these men are making music happen in the midst of it, recording their artistic and emotional reactions as chaos unfolds around them. Guest starring London MC Flowdan, Godflesh’s Justin K Broadrick, SIMM and Submerged. BE:AT WAR is a full spectrum image of the horror, uncertainty, and perseverance surrounding these Ukraine-based producers.
Keinemusik’s Reznik once again is pairing up with long time friend and kindred spirit Good Guy Mikesh to lay down One More EP. The like-titled A-side is captioned with the tagline „Let’s give it one more try.“ - emotively crooned by Mikesh himself. We’ve all said it at some point in our life’s, right? Be it over a post-breakup coffee with the ex, be it at the black jack-table, be it in an early stage of a juggle practice. And it might cross our minds even now in the DJ booth, loading this very tune onto the player, curious if its heartfelt yearning might resonate with the crowd. Chances are it’ll resonate quite well. This sensitive yet grooving, string and piano-kissed tune shows all qualities of a future anthem. And so does the B-side „Read The Room“ - yet another directive one should always be aware of, in or outside the DJ-booth. Chances are, with this übermelodic, suspenseful, synth-hook-laden choon it’ll be almost impossible to misread the dancefloor. The vinyl version of this release comes with one exclusive bonus track.
Dutch master of aethereal atmospheres Bohm is back on EYA’s sister label Lonewolf with the missing piece of his ‘Leaving Earth’ series. A1 ‘Stars and the Sun’ is a slow-break meditative number, while “Move over” is bleepy and playful.
B1 “Phasmofonia” is a spooky, haunting and nervous ready-for-dancefloor track. Closing the artist’s journey to vast galaxies is “Robot Heaven”, an emotional electro trip of the highest order.
Ivor Cutler is loved by generations of fans - including Paul McCartney, Billy Connolly and Alex Kapranos - for his unique music and poetic humour. A phenomenal stage presence for 50 years, with a prolific output. Championed by legendary DJ John Peel for whom Cutler recorded 21 sessions. 'Privilege' was produced as a vinyl LP for Rough Trade Records in 1983 and has been unavailable for decades. The album is only one of two where Cutler collaborates with other artists. It is unique in that there is a second voice - singer Linda Hirst. Musicians Steve Beresford and David Toop play several instruments and produced the record.
• Gil Scott-Heron’s “Pieces Of A Man” is one of the most important albums in the history of black American music. Although it didn’t set the charts alight, it stands as a masterpiece alongside contemporary works such as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”, Curtis Mayfield’s debut LP, Funkadelic's “Maggot Brain” and Isaac Hayes’ “Shaft”. All were brilliant in their way, but lyrically Scott-Heron was on a different level from almost every other writer.
• It was a landmark album with its bold, poetic lyrical content allied to progressive and melodic music, and it saw producer Bob Thiele help Gil and his musical partner Brian Jackson paint the picture they needed to get their message across. Thiele put Gil and Brian together with Ron Carter, Hubert Laws and Bernard Purdie, giving them the musical heft they wanted.
• For many years the focus was on ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, which was included in the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 2014, but this focus sometimes overshadowed the heights which Gil reached throughout the album. Today ‘Home Is Where The Hatred Is’ and ‘Lady Day And John Coltrane’ are also considered standards, whilst the album’s title track is a prescient and heart-breaking warning about the way in which big business dehumanises its workers.
• The album reached its landmark 50th year in 2021 and we decided that we would create this special edition to celebrate its incredible sound. The original master tape was taken to Frank Merritt at The Carvery in London, who cut it as a double disc 2 x 45 RPM record, in an all-analogue chain. The original record - especially side two - was long, and serving it up this way allowed the music a greater level of fidelity.
• The release is packaged in the original album’s gatefold sleeve.
Moments is a music company organizing remarkable events, releasing groundbreaking productions, and daring to push innovations in underground dance music. The number seven symbolizes a quest for knowledge, and the seventh edition of Moments represents another step towards new horizons. Come Closer is a relatively new project on the global music scene. However, its mature artistic expression demonstrates the highest level of skills. The two- track material consists of over thirteen minutes of sounds that transcends genre divisions. Come Closer's music does not hesitate to include ethnic elements, funk, and even rock influences in the electronic dance structure. Both in its harmonious and production statements, Come Closer leaves nothing indisputable.
repressed !
Label head Setaoc Mass returns to his own fledgling SK_Eleven imprint with the much-anticipated Second Chapter EP. True to form, the release deals in bleeps and melodic Sci-Fi indebted elements, yet with a harder impact and a sense of urgency calibrated for the main room floor. B-side cut Thunder Bay ventures into new territory for the artist, diffusing coarse, broken rhythms over ominous call and response synth riffs.
3xLP, Widespine Jacket
Yellow & Black Translucent Smoke Vinyl
Yellow Tape 2 is the follow-up to Key Glock's 2020 debut album, Yellow Tape, and like it's predecessor, remains distinctly featureless. The album showcases Glock, at times alongside his alter ego, Glizock, floating over trap-heavy production with the authentic tone his fans have come to know. Featuring the singles, "Toolie," "Ambition for Cash," & "Da Truth," the album sees production from Tay Keith, Juicy J, Sosa 808, Budda Bless and more. The Deluxe version features 10 new tracks, including the standout single, Proud, dedicated to the late Young Dolph.
(Produced, Arranged and Conducted by Claus Ogerman)
Not long after the dawn of her career, as a teenager in Rio de Janeiro, Joyce was declared “one of the greatest singers” by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Yet despite reputable accolades and the fact that she has since recorded over thirty acclaimed albums, Joyce never quite achieved the international recognition of the likes of Jobim, João Gilberto and Sergio Mendes, all of whom became global stars after releasing with major labels in the US.
There was a moment when it seemed she might be on the cusp of an international breakthrough. While living in New York, Joyce was approached by the great German producer Claus Ogerman. Ogerman had already played a pivotal role in the development and popularisation of Brazilian music in the 1960s, recording with some of the all-time greats like Jobim and João Gilberto, as well as North American idols like Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Bill Evans.
"I met him in New York City, in 1977”, recalls Joyce. “I was living and playing there, and João Palma, Brazilian drummer who used to play with Jobim, introduced me to Claus. We had an audition, he liked what we were doing and decided to produce an album with us.”
Featuring fellow Brazilian musicians Mauricio Maestro (who wrote/co-wrote four of the songs), Nana Vasconcelos and Tutty Moreno, and some of the most in-demand stateside players including Michael Brecker, Joe Farrell and Buster Williams, the recordings for Natureza took place at Columbia Studios and Ogerman produced the album, provided the arrangements and conducted the orchestra.
But mysteriously, Natureza was never released, and what should have been Joyce’s big moment never happened. As Joyce remembers, “I returned home, but Claus and I remained in contact, by letters and phone calls. He was very enthusiastic about the album and tried to hook me up with Michael Franks. He wanted me to go back to NYC in order to re-record the vocals in English with new lyrics, which I actually wasn’t too happy about. But then I got pregnant with my third child and could not leave Brazil. And little by little our contact became rare, until I lost track of him completely. And that was it. I never heard from him again."
While Claus was known to be something of an elusive character, the album’s disappearance might also have been a result of timing. The Brazilian craze was coming to an end, making way for disco and new wave at the end of the seventies, and Ogerman struggled to find a major label interested in a new Brazilian sensation. Additionally, as Joyce mentions, it wasn’t quite finished. Ogerman wanted to add finishing touches to the mix and to record alternative English lyrics for the US and international markets - a critical artistic difference between Joyce and Ogerman.
As the military dictatorship’s grip on Brazil began to subside in the 1980s, Joyce had a handful of hits in her home county, including a tribute to her daughters ‘Clareana’, and the iconic ‘Feminina’ - an intergenerational conversation between mother and daughter about what it means to be a woman. But already a feminist pioneer, these successes were hard fought. Joyce had caused controversy as a nineteen-year-old when she became the first in Brazil to sing from the first-person feminine perspective, and the institutional sexism she faced was worsened by the dictatorship who would often censor her music. Even once the Junta was out of the way, Joyce found herself up against the male-dominated major record companies in Brazil, who sought to dictate her career and sexualise her image, before dropping her for refusing to play along.
A few years after the success of her albums Feminina and Agua E Luz in Brazil, Joyce’s music began to find its way to the UK, Europe and Japan, and “Feminina” and “Aldeia de Ogum” became classics on the underground jazz-dance scenes of the mid to late-eighties and early-nineties.
The full-length version of “Feminina” from the Natureza sessions was first heard on a Brazilian Jazz compilation in 1999 and “Descompassadamente” was licensed for a CD compiling the work of Claus Ogerman in 2002. Following these, word began to get out about an unreleased Joyce album with Claus Ogerman and the legend of Natureza grew.
Forty-five years since it was recorded, Natureza finally sees the light of day, as Joyce intended: with her own Portuguese lyrics and vocals. Featuring the fabled 11-minute version of ‘Feminina’, as well as the never before heard ‘Coração Sonhador’ composed and performed by Mauricio Maestro, Natureza’s release is a landmark in Brazilian music history and represents a triumphant, if overdue victory for Joyce as an outspoken female artist who has consistently refused to bow to patriarchal pressure.
***Disclaimer! While “Feminina” and “Descompassadamente'' were mixed by legendary engineer Al Schmitt and mastered from the original master tapes, the remaining five tracks are unmixed. Due to significant deterioration of the master-tapes, the best audio source for these tracks was an unmixed tape copy Joyce had kept of the recordings. The best care has been taken in the restoration and mastering of this release, but the sound quality may differ from other releases on Far Out Recordings. We advise listening to sound clips before buying where possible.
