2010s 234 Items

Formed in Madrid in 1979. Influenced equally by Dadaism and Futurist ideas as by the contemporary sounds of bands such as DEVO, THROBBING GRISTLE or CABARET VOLTAIRE, they started creating their own brand of electronic music. Soon after the band won the third prize of a local Battle of The Bands show and were given a record deal as a prize that resulted in La Chica De Plexiglás 7" (Movieplay-1980) and La Vision 7" (Movieplay-1981) both of which were recorded at the same session with a third 7" recorded but not released at the time. Faced with the total lack of interest showed by the label and feeling alienated in a Music World which wasn't the one they dreamed of, they decided to do what dozens of their peers were doing worldwide; They started their own label, Discos Radioactivos Organizados (DRO) following the steps of Factory or Industrial Records. Faced with the exit of three members who left the band to form a more radical band (ESPLENDOR GEOMETRICO), AVIADOR DRO entered Doublewtronix studios to record Nuclear ,Sí, marking the birth of the Independent Music Industry in Spain. The four tracks on the EP became instant classics with Nuclear Sí being the absolute standout track, while Varsovia en Llamas, Sintonia Del Refugio Atomico and Godzilla were perfect nuggets of Synth-punk who remain amongst the greatest Spanish Pop songs ever. Originally hand-assembled, hand-coloured, self-released and distributed in the total DIY spirit, the first release of DRO remains a perfect example of what a bunch of teenagers can achieve armed with just their youthful energy and idealism. Nuclear, Si, was repressed three times and has been out of print since the early 80's.

Midnight Embassy is a ping­pong project by songwriter Angela Aux and producer Sam Irl. During nightly sessions and on walks together, the two artists have created a palette of timeless tracks and futuristic sculptures from pop music flotsam. Like if two archive junkies had synchronized their sketch collections and notebooks so that the different genres and decades seem to effortlessly swirl through each other: Dub, Folk, Beatnik literature, Afrobeat & Electronica. Aux & Irl celebrate a gentle escapism, both cosmopolitan and aloof. This island mentality sparkles unobtrusively through all five tracks of the debut EP. No fireworks, no illuminated advertisements, no selfie thunderstorms: they come at dusk, set shimmering beacons and disappear on a reverberation trail behind the curtain of the night.

Cold Beat is a San Francisco-based quartet fronted by Hannah Lew (synths, vocals) with Kyle King (synths, guitar), Luciano Talpini Aita (synths) and Sean Monaghan (guitar). Formed in 2013 the band has released three albums and two EPs. A Simple Reflection is a 7-song collection of Eurythmics covers, yet feels just as personal as any of their original material. While digging through a collection of 12"s for her record shop Contact Records, Lew stumbled across the earliest Eurythmics B-sides and was floored. This lead to the discovery of their debut album In The Garden. Annie Lennox’s abstract and poetic lyrics really struck a chord with Hannah. What had started out as a single cover quickly snowballed into a full blown obsession. The synth and drum programming resonated with her songwriting process, so reimagining them was very creatively fulfilling. The covers on this EP are simultaneously dynamic and atmospheric post-punk that plays to Lew's ethereal vocals and King’s crystalline guitar. All songs have been mixed by Mikey Young (Total Control) and mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The record is housed in a jacket designed by Eloise Leigh, which features pink and purple clouds that evoke a dreamy softness and DIY playfulness and photos Lew in her best Lennox-inspired drag. Each copy includes a postcard with photos and notes.

Clouds Clouds Clouds. With a weightiness the color of amethyst. Light on the horizon. A sun. No point, no pane, no space, no rainbow. A stripe. A circular course. A bee loop. Honey-colored amber. Words. Our glistening white glider jumps through with ease.

Her new album "Keys" shows Berlin-based musician Masha Qrella elegantly fusing disco-pop and songwriting. Written and produced by Qrella in her studio within one year, the album’s eleven songs feature well-known elements of fragility, perfection and understatement, while walking a fine line between laconic coolness and passionate uptempo melancholia.

Much-needed re-issue of this privately released 2007 album. Martial Canterel’s Sean McBride is the progenitor of American cold synth sounds of the 21st Century. He began under the moniker Moravagine before he started releasing limited edition cassettes and playing Brooklyn dives as Martial Canterel in 2002. Since then, McBride’s bleak intellectual exercises in the dark and danceable have flooded North America and Europe through the frosty fairwaves paved by Pieter Schoolwerth’s Wierd Records. With an inimitable minimal style merging bright, urgent melodies ornamented and punctuated by the noises of industry and McBride’s sonorous, stern vocals, Martial Canterel’s earlier releases (You Today, Refuge Underneath) have garnered both critical acclaim and a rapidly growing rabid fan base. Sean is also one half of the duo Xeno & Oaklander together with Miss Liz Wendelbo.

The album Austerton consists of some of his earliest work recorded in 2003. The ten minimal synth songs on the LP are reminiscent of music by bands like Dark Day, Snowy Red, A Blaze Colour, League Of Nations. Through the collision of a uniquely humanistic means of production via live analogue synthcraft expertly paired with vocals and lyrics that reflect the pitfalls and pleasures of our age, Martial Canterel provides a visceral kick best felt on the dancefloor, amidst a flurry of flesh in motion.

Limited to 1000 copies.

The sound of Spirit was born out of falling in love with playing the piano again. About a year and a half ago, my girlfriend surprised me with a borrowed piano. It wasn’t in the best shape, but it made itself at home in my apartment and I started playing it every morning… just messing around at first, but it slowly became a morning ritual I couldn’t shake.

As our Secular Sabbath events developed and moved around the world, we were fortunate to be able to meet and experiment with some inspiring musicians. Out of these experiments, new ideas were born and turned into songs with artists like Thomas Bartlett and Ólafur Arnalds, whose musical genius now grace this record. When I worked with each of them, both happened to play 80’s era Yamaha pianos. At a certain point, I knew I needed to get one for myself:

the tone was speaking to me, through me. The first piano shop I wandered into in Koreatown, Los Angeles, and the first piano I see is an ’84 Yamaha U3 (a special edition hybrid!) It was the very piano I was looking for. It was fate.

My morning piano ritual met my new piano in my favorite studio. I made a rule for myself that I would start something brand new every day, work on that for 2 hours without judgement and just see what I came up with. Out of the many sketches, Spirit started to take shape: a collection of songs that I did alone in the studio with just a piano, intertwined
with collaborations with some of my favourite piano-based musicians. These are songs about love in my life, but also about the love for piano brought back into my life.

Sóley is back with her third solo album, Endless Summer. Written over the period of one year together with her long-time friend and collaborator Albert Finnbogason, the new full-length sees the acclaimed musician from Iceland explore the more optimistic, sun-drenched corners of her songwriting.

Since the release of Solo Piano II, Chilly Gonzales composed the best-selling
book of easy piano pieces Re-Introduction Etudes, produced and released Octave
Minds, the piano-meets-electronica album with Boys Noize and, most
importantly, devoted himself to finding a modern take on chamber music.
The result is "Chambers", an album for piano and string quartet (and a few
surprises along the way). Inspired by the deepening relationship with Hamburg's
Kaiser Quartett, the album re-imagines Romantic-era chamber music as today's
addictive pop. Gestures from rap, ambient, easy listening and the avant-garde co- exist as always in Chilly Gonzales’ musical universe - this time with strings
attached.
Known equally for his intimate piano touch as for his showmanship, "Gonzo"
aims to be a man of his time, approaching the piano with classical and jazz
training but with the attitude of a rapper.
Chilly Gonzales holds the Guinness world record for the longest solo concert at
over 27 hours. He performs and writes songs with Jarvis Cocker, Feist and Drake,
among others. In 2014 he won a Grammy for his collaboration on Daft Punk’s
Best Album of the Year. With "Never Stop", Chilly Gonzales composed a global
hit for the inaugural Apple iPad campaign.

Cryosleep is the debut album from Null + Void, the alias of prolific New York producer Kurt Uenala. It's an album of contrasts and tension, where darkness is pierced by blinding light, and where moody new wave bleeds into stark electronics. In one moment, joyful memories give way to isolation and regret, and in the next, Cryosleep explores the catharsis of crowded dancefloors. Throughout the record, Uenala matches his dynamic production with incredible vocalists-from Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan and the inimitable Shannon Funchess, to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Big Pink. Null + Void's take on dark pop meshes with his love for Detroit electro, poignant synth melodies, and cold atmospheres. With the cinematic opener "Falling Down" and brooding instrumentals like "Come To Me", Cryosleep can feel like the soundtrack to a lost space epic. No doubt, the album evokes Blade Runner, dystopian landscapes, and the splendor of far-off galaxies. As Uenala puts it, Cryosleep is inspired by "classic sci-fi stuff," images of futuristic machines sustaining humans frozen in a dreamstate. The melancholy "Foreverness" explores what they might be thinking: "A collection of fragments, memories of a life lived-preserved, but incomplete and jumbled." Meanwhile, "Into The Void" paints a peaceful, otherworldly picture, "like soaring towards a white light."

A sum of Benny's real-life observations and insights on love, held together by his soft rock inspired songwriting, jazz instrumentation, leading piano and distinctive vocal. The album was inspired by and written in cities all over the world, including New York, LA, Tokyo, Paris and Benny's hometown of Amsterdam. The album celebrates collaboration, with Mayer Hawthorne, Cornelius, Sukimaswitch (the Japanese Steely Dan), Mocky and Faberyayo among the featured artists.

Heavyweight WHITE vinyl, Gatefold sleeve, black paper inner bag, 12’ x 24’ insert (folded in half), download card

11 tracks with influences trip hop, Arabic music, soul or delta blues, whose proposals give rise to a lively psychedelism and an ardent shamanism. An experimental album of a rare eclecticism of the unclassifiable Dutch trio My Baby.

It is actually unbelievable what the 27-year-old producer from Cologne has achieved in the last two years. His debut album "Roosevelt" released on August 19, 2016, immediately made it into the top 100 of the German album charts and is considered to be one of the most important new pop albums in the German music scene and one of the few albums that also caused a sensation internationally. "He has the potential to go around the world," the Spiegel magazine attested, and he did.
With his debut album Roosevelt also managed to break into the US market, as well as the UK, France, Holland and Italy - even Mexico. Festivals around the world compete for him: Primavera Sound, The Governors Ball Music Festival (New York), Sónar Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival, Sziget Festival, Lollapalooza Festival and many others. Radio stations at home and abroad still play "Fever" and "Moving On" up and down. His listeners drive him to almost 80 million streams at Spotify. Everyone wants him to remix their songs (Chvrches, Glass Animals, RHYE, Who Made Who, Blossoms and Sinkane) And what does he do? He records a cover version of "Teardrops" and becomes subsequently a honorary member of the Womack & Womack family.

Reissue of ‘Yr Body is Nothing’, originally released by DKA (2016).

Her second full-length album, Look Up Sharp , on her own Kallista records. Look Up Sharp is an evolutionary leap from the thick fog and pastoral stillness of her Blackest Ever Black missives, You Know What It's Like (2016) and The Garden EP (2017). Three years since her plain-speaking debut album, the Melbourne-via-Berlin artist finds herself absorbed in London's sprawling mess. The small-town dreams and inertia that preoccupied dal Forno's first album have dissolved into the chaotic city, its shifting identities, far-flung surroundings and blank faces. Look Up Sharp is the story of this life in flux, longing for intimacy, falling short and embracing the unfamiliar. Dal Forno connects with kindred spirits and finds refuge in darkened alleys, secret gardens and wherever else she dares to look. In her own territory between plaintive pop, folk and post-punk dal Forno conjures the ghosts of AC Marias, Virginia Astley and Broadcast through her brushwork of art-damaged fx and spectral atmospheres. The first half of the record is filled with dubbed-out humid bass lines, which tether stoned hazes of psychedelic synth work as on 'Took A Long Time' and 'No Trace.' These contrast with songs like 'I'm Conscious and 'So Much better' that channel the lilting power of YMG and are clear sequels-in-waiting to dead-eyed classics like 'Fast Moving Cars.' The B-side begins with the feverish bass and meandering melody of 'Don't Follow Me,' which takes The Cure's 'A Forest' as its conceptual springboard. It's the clearest lyrical example since 'The Garden' of dal Forno's unmatched ability to unpick the masculine void of post-punk and new wave nostalgia to reflect contemporary nuance. Look Up Sharp reaches its satisfying conclusion with 'Push On' - dal Forno's most explicit foray into an undiscovered trip hop universe between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn. The album's last gasp finds personal validation in fragility: 'I push on / I'm the Place I'm Going,' a self discovery lifted by reverberant broken beats and glass-blown...

Cold Cave's "Confetti" 7" featuring the alternate radio edit of the song available on heavy baby pink virgin vinyl backed with the original version. Originally released in 2012 by Heartworm Press, the record was only available to those in attendance at the band's Guggenheim Museum performance that year. Edition of 500.

COMA’s new album, Voyage Voyage, casts a sweet and heavy-hearted hypnagogic glow that tells the story of these complicated moments through its complex web of sonics. Across ten pristine tracks, the pair meld piano, guitar, drums, synths and electronic flourishes to futuristic vocal harmonies that amp up the melancholic pop factor and capture life’s fleeting moments, moods and adventures. One of the album’s standout tracks, “Snurrebassen”, was written during a fishing trip to the Baltic Sea. Fusing a pop sensibility with dance music’s communal properties, the German duo of Georg Conrad and Marius Bubat create music rich in melody and often melancholy. COMA’s repertoire occupies an emotionally-driven corner of the electronic music spectrum, where dynamic soundscapes collide with honest lyrics. Having initially signed to Cologne’s electronic label Kompakt, COMA may have their roots firmly in the city’s fabled club scene, but their effervescent, groove-tipped synth-pop blurs boundaries and strays outside the lines. Their new home of City Slang (Caribou, Gold Panda, Tindersticks) is the perfect fit for their hypnotic brand of indie-electro. “We’ve never been ravers,'' says COMA’s Marius Bubat. “Although we have definitely been inspired by the energy of club music”