Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield CD 277 Items

Anybody who has witnessed a live performance of Anna von Hausswolff and band can attest to the extraordinary and commanding nature of the experience. The distinctive music, as captured across five full-length albums, comes to life, shifting from hypnotic and mantra-like moods to thunderous drama, dissonance and cacophony. The musicians master playful dynamics and wield immense power.

A showcase of individual tracks from A Strangely Isolated Place's 2021 label releases and a special continuous DJ mix by todos. For last year's label compilation, I mentioned how I hoped to invite a guest DJ to compile the next edition, and here we are. Of course, it just had to be our long-term musical companion, a good friend of mine, and well-respected DJ, todos. I was first introduced to todos through his well-respected Kilchurn Mix series. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, they remain some of my favorite mixes of all time (listen to them all on the Asip site when you get a chance). His ability to craft a narrative, manipulate samples and respect the grey area between ambient and electronic music, is second-to-none.

Octobers’ other new Polytechnic Youth release represents something of a curveball for the label’s fanbase. To release any album exclusively on CD wouldn’t ordinarily place high in PY head Dom’s thought processes. But, such is the current grave situation within the vinyl pressing world, that when the opportunity arose to get out not just one, but two LPs- and package them together for a tenner in a fraction of the time and price it takes to do one vinyl instalment, of course he leapt at it; and when the music is this good- it begs to be unleashed earlier rather than later…. ‘The Prison of Winners’ is a brand new project consisting of David Mason of Listening Center and Martin Jensen of The Home Current. Between them, they have issued a range of acclaimed releases for labels such as Polytechnic Youth, Castles In Space, Ghost Box, Deep Distance and Woodford Halse, to name but a few. The collaboration’s two volume set contains a selection of music that came to life through a long-distance work routine back and forth across the Atlantic (David resides in New York and Martin is based in Luxembourg) between 2020 and 2021. Having been fans of each others’ work for years, it was only natural that they should eventually pool resources. “Volume 1” had long been earmarked for a vinyl release with PY, but with the aforementioned problems of world vinyl production currently being on its knees, and with a boom in lockdown recording seeing “Volume 2” quickly materialize; all parties quickly realized that a super value-for-money, lavish 2 x CD set might just come together perfectly. Thus, the double disc set is released late October in a beautiful sleeve featuring artwork from acclaimed photographer Geneviève Cygan and David Mason. Both volumes lean heavy on the pairs’ previous wonderful electronic experiments, minimal DIY pieces intercross with more uptempo synth workouts, which the artists themselves reckon “inhabit a space somewhere in between feeling lost in car parks and hazy memories of nights out clubbing, in what feels like a lifetime ago.”

Wickedly crude but skilful no-input mixing board business from a boss of that discipline, Toshimaru Nakamura

‘Culvert - No Input Mixing Board 10’ is the umpteenth exposition of Nakamura’s improvised and eternally inventive practice since he switched to this style from guitar noise with 2000’s self-explanatory ‘No-Input Mixing Board’ CD. Its 8 parts see him reflect on the hidden waterways that underline his home region around west Tokyo, generating discrete burbling streams of mulched feedback that metaphorically resemble the culverted streams that nobody sees underfoot, yet necessarily course with energy, as in many built environments. In his home region these hidden streams are often topped with artificial brooks that overlay their route like a “double decker river.”

While sitting on a bench beside one of the artificial brooks, Nakamura was prompted to make music that reflects these secret veins. Each of the eight parts gushes with an allegorical brownian motion apt for the concept, and also recalling K2’s torrential forms of junk metal cut-up, but also perhaps implicitly speaking to the threat of rising sea levels which would surely seep up from the Pacific thru these coastal waterways with a destructive attrition akin to this music.

Alessandro Cortini's acclaimed 'Forse' series is available for the first time on CD including an exclusive disc of 'Forse' performed live. Packaged in matte coated digipacks housed in a heavy duty tip-on style outer box. 2021 digital master by Stephan Mathieu.

Composed using only an original Buchla Music Easel, an incredibly rare electronic music instrument designed by Don Buchla, the Forse series features long, romantic compositions full of voluminous, bombastic tones and dripping with thick timbre.

With each successive release, the world of the Budapest based trio Jü seems to become exponentially larger and encompass an ever expanding range of vibrant and startling influences. The title of their latest reflects the basic fact that this is their third outing as a band and also the tripartite nature of the collective trio. But it also harkens to something mystical and elusive about the number three, a quality of arcane mystery reflected in the number's vital importance in cultures across the globe. That essential fact, rather than any specific meaning, may get at the heart of why the members of Jü - guitarist Adám Mészáros bassist Ern? Hock, and drummer András Halmos opted for the title. More than anything, their music reflects a core drive to explore traditions and ideas from farflung corners of the world, returning with a vital and pulse-quickening sound accented by countless disparate influences yet singularly possessing its own boldly uncategorizable voice.On III that sound is marked by the now - familiar whirlwind of blistering rock, dizzying prog, ferocious free jazz, mesmerizing ambient textures and alluring Eastern European rhythms. This time out, a strong influence from Southeast Asia bleeds its own way into the mix, particularly the gamelan music of Indonesia and the ecstatic devotional songs of India. The mysticism and spiritual intensity of this music melds with the band's immersive potency to conjure an overwhelming sound of compelling complexity and breathtaking vigor. The hybrid sounds become all the richer throughout III with the addition of two special guests, both of whom join the trio on several tracks. Vocalist Dóra Gy?rfi is a Hungarian singer who works primarily in the context of gamelan and wayang groups in Java. Master electronic musician Bálint Bolcsó is a regular collaborator who also joined the band for its previous release,Summa, and adds a limitless array of possibilities to the band's palette.

Note: With THE Purchase OF THE Vinyl OR THE CD YOU Will GET THE Single MP3 Files AS Well AS A Continous MIX VIA E-mail. With the cover artwork for Pop Ambient 2022, longtime Kompakt graphic artist Veronika Unland has once again outdone herself. Following the almost baroque, blood-red and jet-black, extremely physical sculptures of Pop Ambient 2021, which emerged from a dark, floral sea like bodies erect for dancing, the front of 2022 is adorned with a pastel-white form, intertwined, folded many times and crisscrossed with delicate shading, which seems to float on a pale pink background; soft, gentle waves woven from Venetian colors that leave the viewer puzzled: Is it a flower, a coral, a mollusk?

Again, the current edition of the tradition-steeped compilation series curated by Wolfgang Voigt is about the persistent and ever-necessary definition of beauty, of reduction, of electronic music of heavy lightness and light heaviness, of ambient's eternal promise of a state of physical and acoustic weightlessness and Pop's of redemption. And about the question why a never arbitrary combination of soundscape, drones, samples and loops, put together in a certain way, can create this feeling of warmth, depth and space, - something three-dimensional, where the imagination feels at home as a fish in the water or a bird in the sky. A key aesthetic stimulus that sends all the senses into a slow glide and drift, after which your synapses feel like they've been bathed in essential oil. Next to Soul, Ambient is probably the most effective musical healing plant of mankind.

Behind the aural test tubes, the who's who of Pop Ambient is once again at work, led for the first time by the highly trafficked Californian duo Blank Gloss, whose debut album "Melt" this year was certified by The Guardian as nothing less than "heartaching beauty". Yui Onodera's "Chrome" as well as "Kari", a cooperation of Markus Guentner and Joachim Spieth, could also be imagined in the score of Denis Villeneuve's new film version of Dune - however, colleague Hans Zimmer managed that quite well without the three. After such wonderful and stylish contributions by Reich & Würden, Triola and Thomas Fehlmann, the ear then lingers a bit longer on the ghostly "Weiht" by Morgen Wurde feat. Maria Estrella, a track like a temple of sound, a deep electronic immersion in a Japanese onsen. In this sea of unnameable time you could sink forever, but with the tracks of Andrew Thomas, Thore Pfeiffer and Max Würden & Pepo Galán the journey slowly comes to an end.

With about a million subscribers and millions upon millions of views, TheRealSullyG is the undisputed King of Otamatones. His lovingly-produced otamatone covers of pop-culture standards, paired with quirky and imaginative videos starring the adorable Japanese synthesizers, have proven to be a recipe for viral success. Covering roughly his first year of otamatone content, Otama-Tunes, Vol. 1 dazzles the ears and delights the senses with wahsome covers of Queen, Daft Punk, Michael Jackson, Dragonforce and more! Remastered by Angel Marcloid, TheRealSullyG’s debut on physical media is presented on two different deluxe gatefold vinyl variants as well as CD and cassette.

The psychedelic garage duo The Liminanas and French techno pioneer DJ/producer Laurent Garnier have now produced together “De Pelicula”. The result is neither a Limiñanas techno record nor a Laurent Garnier rock album . It is a record that feels like a walk on the wild side, one straight out of a film noir that was spawned from the need to write music that tells a story and rattles all traditional patterns in a (super)sonic trance. A heated road-trip spent chasing Juliette and Saul, two teenage rascals straight out of a ‘60s classic - think “Breathless” (original title: A bout de Souffle) meets Sailor and Lula - balancing on the southern border with Spain, knocked out by the heat and cheap liquor.

Hazy, gentle almost euphoric explorations and improvisations made in Leeds and Manchester throughout 2019 and 2020. Sam and Chris understand, lean in to, and translate those wonderful relationships and historic personal moments that smudge in to your DNA forever. Their language is of classic genre playing and hardware samplers, and they’ve made a record about low down personal shit; our deep trauma, beautiful platonic love, isolation, connection, it's all there; Blunches look and listen to the world around them and have created their own version of it. It’s like those summers watching skate videos, feeling upset all the time, getting into bed at 4am, being with your mates, just getting through it. This record doesn’t have a lyric in it, yet it speaks to me as a kid from a grey-ass town as clear as any pop song ever has. I dare you to play this and not feel it.

Thomas Köner is one of the most influential modernist minimal composers. Alongside Wolfgang Voigt’s “Gas” project, Köner has been centrally responsible for electronic music’s fascination with depth and reduction. His signature sound is vast, seemingly endless, which at first seems homogenous and infinite, but once exposed to it, when our senses calibrate to the fine nuances of changes, we discover and immerse into abundance of textures, richness of modulations and almost infinite range of sonic titilations. Köner’s work was inspired by his frequent travels in the Arctic, and listeners feel his music as a journey to mysterious worlds of the Arctic region. The experience of being exposed to the extreme cold, the hightening of our senses and ability to notice even the slightest changes in color, sound, light or density that creates this dangerously reductive environment, is like an immersion in the sonic world of this German artist, where masterfully crafted layers of sound open into colossal spaces, teeming with aural life, waiting to be discovered by those who venture into it. The titles of Köner’s highly regarded albums from the 90’s ever so often play with this affinity - Nunatak, Permafrost, Teimo - all reference to the world of the Artic region, just as his album Nuuk that points us to the capital of Greenland. Subdued and minimal at first glance, this album is brimming with low-end frequences, shadowy resonances and boreal ambience, but at the same time, constant fluctuation and vulnerability of sonic events.

In the fall of 2016, having overcome serious health issues, Marco Repetto – Bigeneric – begins to weave new delicate soundscapes from a place of stillness, unaware of his emerging role in the fabled magic web of the fairy queen Helva. Inspired by an encounter with the storyteller Andreas Sommer and the legend of Helva, the fairy queen who lives on the Gantrisch mountain, and another gentle message from the universe, Marco Repetto merges his electronic strands of magical sounds into a tender and mystical composition he names Helva. Helva is a cinematic work of sound with long, hypnotically mesmeric tonal progressions and subtle ambient colors, combining influences from the electronic avant-garde and the futuristic spectrum of contemporary electronic music. This is the spiritual soundtrack of the Heart Rebels Gang who ceaselessly radiate into the world a powerful and profound force of beauty

CD Jewel Case With 8 pages Booklet, Pictures , Notes In anticipation of the 35th anniversary next year one of electronic music´s most influential recordings, the legendary E2-E4, from 12.12.1981 does get an official rerelease by Manuel Göttsching on his own Label MG.ART. Carefully overseen by the Master himself

The Avalanches are set to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their debut album ‘Since I Left You’ with the release of a deluxe edition this June.

Released in Australia in 2000, and in the US and UK in 2001, ‘Since I Left You’ was hailed as a boundary-pushing release comprised of over 900 individual samples.

The forthcoming deluxe release – out June 4 – features a plethora of additional bonus tracks, including previously unreleased and fresh remixes by the late MF Doom, Black Dice, Leon Vynehall, Sinkane and Carl Craig to name a few. The CD version will also include some of The Avalanches’ remixes of Belle & Sebastian, Manic Street Preachers, Franz Ferdinand and more.

Set against the backdrop of an escape to hidden corners of the rural Southeast, prolific healing sound propagandist zake presents 'Carolina & Coppice Movements'. Suffused with manipulated field recordings, each of these pieces reenact a moment in its composer's journey. These tracks represent a solemn yet joyful paean to seclusion, and the awe beyond our doors.

Outro Tempo II: Electronic and Contemporary Music from Brazil, 1984-1996 is the second installment of Music From Memory’s Brazilian series. This volume picks up where the first Outro Tempo left off, shedding light on a new wave of experimentalism that emerged in Brazil in the late 1980s and 1990s. The twenty tracks collected uncover another area of Brazilian music that looked to the future for inspiration. This time it drifts beyond the rainforest and into the pulsating heart of Brazil’s great cities, where it meets a generation of young artists eager to radically change the face of contemporary Brazilian music. In Outro Tempo II the avant garde and pop worlds meld in a haze of percussion and electronics. It presents another uncompromising and magnetic reinterpretation of the limits of Brazilian music. Outro Tempo II is compiled again by John Gómez and features original artwork by Alice Quaresma. The CD version also includes the 2 tracks 'Bruhahá' & 'Eyes' which were released as a separate single on vinyl and were not included in the 2xLP version.

The German composer and multi-instrumentalist Secret of Elements returns with "Cassini", the entrancing first single taken from his forthcoming album 'Chronos', a musical chronicle of his moving life story. Chronos - in Greek mythology, the titanic personification of time - is the title of an album that captures Pätzold's musical work over a span of more than a decade. During this time, Pätzold saved the "Volkstheater" in his hometown of Rostock with which he now closely works, travelled to the Mediterranean to save lives during the European refugee crisis, became a father — the list could go on. In combining emotive, cinematic orchestration with warm, dense layers of synthesis, Johann Pätzold aka Secret of Elements has created a deeply moving sound picture through which to narrate his personal struggles alongside the social upheavals to which he has dedicated himself as a ‘music activist.’ "Cassini", the albums centre-piece, is a testament to Pätzold’s perseverance to complete it despite challenging circumstances. It is named after a space probe that was launched into orbit in 2004, and which, after almost thirteen years exploring Saturn, finally burned up in its upper atmosphere.

Music From Memory is excited to announce a special compilation that they’ve been working on for some time now; Mfm053 – VA – Heisei No Oto – Japanese Left-field Pop From The CD Age (1989-1996). Compiled by long-time friends of the label, Eiji Taniguchi and Norio Sato, Heisei No Oto delves into a world of music released almost exclusively on CD and brings together a fascinating selection of discoveries from a little known and overlooked part of Japan’s musical history. The last ten or so years have seen a global wave of interest in Japanese music encompassing ambient, jazz, new wave and pop records from the 1980s, some of which is increasingly considered the most innovative and visionary music of that time. Although some music from this period, in the form of ‘City Pop’ or ‘rare groove’ records, had been coveted by collectors and DJs for a number of years, most Japanese music from the time was little known outside and often even within Japan. Sometime around the mid 2000s, two Osaka record store owners, Eiji Taniguchi of Revelation Time and Norio Sato of Rare Groove, along with a handful of deep Japanese diggers such as Chee Shimizu of Organic Music records in Tokyo, began to explore beyond the typical ‘grooves’ or ‘breaks’. Much like their counterparts in Europe and the US, they began delving into home-grown ambient, jazz, new wave and pop records, discovering visionary music, often driven by synthesizers or drum computers, that broke beyond the typical confines of their genres. Spending tireless hours in local record stores and embarking on digging trips across the country, Eiji Taniguchi and Norio Sato, much like Chee Shimizu, have been at the forefront of unearthing and introducing many of the very Japanese records now loved and sought after around the world. Yet as YouTube algorithms and vinyl reissues would transport such music into the global consciousness and demand and therefore scarcity intensified for such records, so Eiji and Norio have recently begun to turn their attention to CDs. The title of the compilation Heisei No Oto refers to the sound of the Heisei era, which began in 1989 and corresponds to the reign of Emperor Akihito until his abdication in 2019. Marking the culmination of one of the most rapid economic growths in Japanese history, 1989 also coincided with the music industry’s final shift away from vinyl in favour of CDs. And, although compact discs were first introduced seven years earlier it wasn’t until late into the ‘80s that, beyond dance music labels, CDs became the exclusive format for major and independent labels in Japan and throughout the world. This however didn’t signal the end of the innovation in Japan. Many of those same musicians who have become known for their work in the ‘80s would continue to produce outstanding music well into the mid ‘90s, as greater innovation and advances in musical equipment allowed Japanese musicians and producers to refine and explore new sounds. While musicians such as the seminal Haruomi Hosono, whose productions feature on a number of tracks, would continue to push the boundaries of these new technologies, these technological advances also meant less established musicians were able to make use of increasingly affordable but state-of-the-art equipment. Including music by Haruomi Hosono as well as Yasuaki Shimizu, Toshifumi Hinata and Ichiko Hashimoto who have become known and loved around the world in recent years, Hesei No Oto also features Japanese pop star Yosui Inoue, producers Jun Sato and Keisuke Kikuchi in aaddition to less established artists from the contemporary, jazz, new wave, pop and dance music scenes. Bringing together a selection of tracks that seem to define these specific genres and in fact move fluidly between a number of them, the music on the compilation is again underscored by experimentations with synthesizers and drum computers though with something of a gentle Pop sensibility. Reimagined here then under the encompassing term ‘Left-field Pop’, this is an exciting chapter in Japanese musical history that has only just begun to be fully explored. VA - Heisei No Oto - Japanese Left-field Pop From The CD Age (1989-1996) is a 2xLP/2xCD that includes liner notes by Chee Shimizu and artwork by Hagihara Takuya and is released on February 28th.

For Böser Herbst, Thomas Fehlmann returns to the sediment of ages, drawing from a similar lexicon of sounds to that used on 2018’s ‘1929 – Das Jahr Babylon’. Like that album, Böser Herbst was produced as the soundtrack to a documentary made by Volker Heise, ‘Herbst 1929, Schatten Über Babylon’, which offers historical insight to the third season of the television series Babylon Berlin. It adds yet another string to the bow of this most forward-thinking and creative artist, whose history takes in NDW (Palais Schaumburg), techno (3mb) and psychedelic ambience (The Orb), plus a clutch of gorgeous solo albums that explore wide terrain, from the dancefloor through supine home listening to compelling soundtrack work. Fehlmann’s approach here was to ‘capture’ samples of contemporaneous music, “picking up the dirt and dust of original 1920s archive sound and music excerpts and shaping the essence into this selection of tunes,” he recalls. After delivering the material to the editing room, Fehlmann “threw all the pieces up in the air, deliberately lost the overview in consequence, researched the atmospheric thread and assembled it for this album.” That explains the singular nature of the material here, and its ability to sit together so neatly and discretely, as its own entity. For Böser Herbst is a music box of possibilities, shadowed by its historical provenance, but never crudely beholden to it, rather “keeping the references only as a distant nod, a scent.” It’s certainly an evocative listen, a cornucopia of textural pleasure and sensual, tactile assemblage. The spiralling, psychedelic cycle of “Karnickel” winds its way between the ears like thread to the needle; “Mit Ausblick” immerses the listener in deep, gaseous tones, only to be lifted into the air by the glassy drones of “Umarmt”. “Wunschwechsler” crackles with the unpredictability of weather systems while a guitar-like loop unspools across the horizon. Throughout, you can catch tiny tastes of the source material, but they’re pressed into greater service, Fehlmann using these sources for their evocative capacity and then saturating them with grain and rumble, abstracting outwards. It’s a music of temporal disjuncture and clairvoyant resonance, “speaking with the past – alert, distant and quixotic.”

Angel’s Flight is the new album from the highly acclaimed producer and composer Biosphere, due for release January 2021. It features twelve tracks that traverse the peripheries of classical and electronic composition, all based on Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14. Much of the music was initially composed for ’Uncoordinated Dog’, a dance production by the Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt in 2019 that explores the personal, the ambiguous, exposure and beauty.

FEW Copies Resurfaced FOR This 2006 Release ON THE RED Lounge Label From Germany Realized at Studio für Elektronische Musik der technischen Universität Karlsruhe in the late 1960s. Reissue of the 1970 Corona LP release.

Music From Memory is delighted to be turning 50 with a special release: Mfm050 - V/A - Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993-1997 (3xLP/2xCD). The first in a series of compilations, alongside more in depth artist-focused releases, Virtual Dreams will delve into music produced during the 1990’s that redefined the boundaries of ‘Ambient’. This was music that explored the possibilities of Ambient music within a new setting, created often by House & Techno music producers for a world beyond dance floors but made very much with the pre and post-clubbing listener in mind. When House and Techno exploded out of America in the mid 1980s a whole generation was redefined not only musically but also culturally and chemically speaking. Peaking, quite literally, with a second ‘Summer of Love’ in 1988, millions of young people across the world would experience the life-changing ups of a brave new world but with it of course came the downs; enter the concept of a ‘Chill-out’ room. Whilst early Chill-out rooms lacked a specific sound and were often soundtracked by music such as reggae and soul, slowly young Techno and House producers themselves would become increasingly interested in developing a futuristic ‘Ambient’ soundtrack to a world beyond the thud of the main room. ‘Ambient’ in this new age now though had sharper teeth than in Brian Eno's key text for ‘Music for Airports’, instead here the sounds were the mode of transport rather than the backdrop. While the melodies were pretty, the soundscape steered away from the pastoral, dreaming of outer-space and technology as opening up exciting new dimensions. Much like in the first Summer Of Love; the musicians were again exploring psychedelic, mind-altering and transcendental possibilities of music. And also much as in the first Summer Of Love, a psychedelic visual language would accompany the music. Though now the tracks could be accompanied by music videos, utilising early CGI techniques, they would look almost entirely to the future: envisioning technology, nature and humanity intertwined in a new Utopian future. Virtual Dreams of a better world. From Ambient and early Chill-out classics, to lesser known one-off projects, as well as Ambient deviations by some of House and Techno’s leading producers, Volume One of Virtual Dreams features tracks by Bedouin Ascent, LA Synthesis, LFO, Marc Hollander, Mark Pritchard & Kirsty Hawkshaw, Richard H. Kirk and more. To celebrate our 50th release the first 1000 copies include a holographic 'Virtual Dreams' sticker plus a special insert poster with artwork by Victoria Pacheco and design by Steele Bonus.

ZAUBERBERG – Wolfgang Voigt’s most fundamental (and foreboding) release under his alias GAS and perhaps of all in his untold discography – finally stands alone once again and is released in the way its original splendour.

Originally released in 1997 on the iconic Frankfurt imprint Mille Plateaux, and then reissued in 2016 as a part of GAS “BOX”, ZAUBERBERG is now released on his own label KOMPAKT on CD.

Though this narcotic symphony is not the first release under the GAS moniker, ZAUBERBERG is the first to disclose the true nature of Wolfgang Voigt’s unified sound and ideology as GAS. Layers of ominous intensity supported by muffled kick drums as classical music loops incessantly swirl with no direction, ZAUBERBERG is the definitive GAS album and a perfect starting point for those not familiar with his music.

Please note: This CD is a single release of the GAS BOX released in 2016.

POP – the album that has become widely recognized as the defining moment in which Wolfgang Voigt brought us into a clearing of his deep, psychedelic forest. A landmark release in the GAS odyssey that drew international attention, POP was originally released in 2000 on the iconic Frankfurt imprint MILLE PLATEAUX. POP was heralded by Pitchfork at the time of release as being “an exercise in sonic texture… pure sonic velvet, the layered drone radiating a palpable warmth.”

POP has since been reissued in 2016 as a part of GAS “BOX” (now out of print) and finally now, POP is released on KOMPAKT – for the first time on CD in its original artwork.

Please note: This CD is a single release of the GAS BOX released in 2016.

This is the new instalment of Soul Jazz Records’ ground-breaking Deutsche Elektronische Musik series, ‘a near-definitive guide to some of the world's most extraordinary music’ (The Guardian).

This latest edition features many of the classic German electronic and Krautrock groups from the 1970s & 80s – including Can, Amon Duul II, Harmonia, Conrad Schnitzler, Agitiation Free, Roedelius – as well as a host of lesser known artists such as Dzyan, Klauss Weiss, Gruppe Between and many more.

Deutsche Elektronische rarities unearthed on the album include Kalacakra (whose fan-base included the great Moondog!) and their superb ‘Nearby Shiras,’ taken from their super-rare spiritual/psychedelic private press concept album Crawling to Lhasa, from 1972.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 includes a wealth of German electronic experimental artists – the seminal pioneering group Harmonia (Roedelius, Moebius and Michael Rother), avant-garde guru Conrad Schnitzler as well as lesser known synthetic artists such as Klauss Weiss, Deutsche Wertarbeit, E.M.A.K. (Electronische Musik Aus Koln), Gunter Schickert and others.

Finally, the album also features an array of heavy and progressive German cosmic rock groups – Dzyan, Virus and the amazing Turkish/German tripped out sound of Alex’s ‘Patella Black’, recorded at Can’s Inner Space in 1973, produced by Holger Czukay and Jackie Liebezeit.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 comes with extensive newly commissioned sleevenotes by David Stubbs, author of the seminal books ‘Future Days: Krautrock and the building of Modern Germany’, ‘Mars By 1980: The story of Electronic Music’, and ‘Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy’.

This album comes as a heavyweight triple vinyl edition with full colour inner sleeves, as well as a deluxe double CD edition with outsize booklet and slipcase. Both formats include full liner notes and extensive rare photography.

The sleeves are DIY screen printed and the jacket is built out of wire fence! Kӣr is there with two tracks "Basamaci" on vinyl and "Altro non è'l mi'amor" on CD!

Naked feet in warm sand, a gentle breeze, a sweet taste of chocolate on the tip of your tongue - this is the moment before you jump into clear waters. JPattersson brings up eight shimmering pearls from the dubby depths of his repertoire and adds them to this chain of associations. Mood gives expression to an unquenched thirst for musical innovation and growing maturity. While the soul of JPattersson still reverberates through the frequencies of his trumpet and his voice, his third album sounds all new and different again. There are songs with clever lyrics and all the ensuing catchiness. In-between these tunes from tropical tipsiness to hypnotic depth you can hear one thing above all: musical love of detail. In consequence, it’s a wonderful album to listen to from beginning to end - and at the same time made for the dancefloor.

On the verge of their 40th and in the midst of their 20th anniversaries, respectively, HIJOKAIDAN and SISSY SPACEK merge in Tokyo for their first collaboration, featuring JOJO HIROSHIGE, JUNKO, T. MIKAWA, CHARLIE MUMMA, FUTOSHI OKANO, TENENKO (guest) and JOHN WIESE. Hijokaidan formed in 1979, marking the first wave of groups in Japan exploring extreme noise. Sissy Spacek formed in 1999, often playing in large ensembles of players, and frequently exploring grindcore as a base for creating extreme music, often while eschewing the notion of music altogether. During Sissy Spacek’s 20th anniversary tour in Japan, the recordings of “Amok Time” and “Seven Directions” were made with Hijokaidan in collaboration. While Hijokaidan’s sound has been described as a continuous climax of your entire progressive rock collection, Sissy Spacek’s “Twenty-Five Fragments” is a sequence of peak chaos from their 2018 tour, recorded on walkman for maximum effect.

Final artwork will appear with release date.

Four Tet has announced a new album, Sixteen Oceans. The record follows his last LP, 2017's New Energy, a pair of live LPs, and the threetrack
record Anna Painting. In 2018, Four Tet also shared a BBC Essential Mix featured a Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith remix, along with tracks by Selena Gomez, Britney Spears, Destiny's Child, and more. In 2016, he shared Randoms, an album comprising music from various compilation records over the years.

A download code is included. With Velvet Desert Music Vol. 2, curator Jörg Burger has intensified his vision for this new series of compilations on Kompakt. The music he’s collected here has a unique vibration, perhaps an audio equivalent to the legendary ‘acid Western’ films of the 1960s and 1970s, when the wild frontier logic of the western met the consciousness-altering psychedelia of the counterculture. ‘Velvet Desert Music’ is Burger exploring possibilities: what happens when you extract the essence from genres as diverse as spaghetti Western soundtracks, moody lamp-lit pop, downtempo, Krautrock, minimalism, classic ‘60s psychedelia, and more, and let their scents intermingle, Des Esseintes-style?

’See You Soon’ is the third album from Tokyo-based UK native submerse on the Project: Mooncircle imprint. A mélange of Slow-Jams, R&B, Hip Hop and Soul created while on a steady diet of 90’s NBA basketball and Dreamcast games. ’See You Soon’ features collaborations from fellow Tokyo-based artist Fitz Ambro$e and L.A.-based Devin Morrison and Pink Siifu.

Almost five years have passed since the last album by Flying Lotus, You're Dead! and he has had many irons in the fire. Collaborating on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, playing a key role in the production of Thundercat's Drunk, writing and directing the hallucinatory horror film Kuso, all the while working on his next afro-futurist masterpiece, Flamagra.

Drawing the lines between the galaxies of hip-hop, funk, soul, jazz, global dance music, tribal poly-rhythms, IDM and the beat scene of his hometown L.A, Lotus creates a universe that is uniquely his own. Calling on an all-star cast from the cosmos, Anderson .Paak, George Clinton, Little Dragon, Tierra Whack, Denzel Curry, David Lynch, Shabazz Palaces, Thundercat, Toro y Moi and Solange; Lotus takes these artists on an astral plane to explore his world of fire.

“I’d been working on stuff for the past five years, but it was always all over the place. I’d always had this thematic idea in mind—a lingering concept about fire, an eternal flame sitting on a hill,” Lotus says. “Some people love it, some people hate it. Some people would go on dates there and some people would burn love letters in the fire.” - Flying Lotus.

Hold tight, Fire is Coming.

JETS is the collaboration project of powerhouse producers Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Jimmy Edgar. On the first single, "PLAY," from their forthcoming full-length album, the duo teams up with boldly pioneering rapper Mykki Blanco. The sparse, yet aggressive beat slaps back and forth between Blanco's playfully sinister vocals.

Terrapin, The Modernist, Burger / Ink, The Novotones, Cologne Tape, Fantastic Twins, Rebolledo & The Novotones, Paulor, Xu Xu Fang, Sascha Funke & Cosmo Vitelli, Kenneth James Gibson. Velvet Desert Music Vol. 1 introduces a new compilation series on Kompakt, curated by one of Cologne’s leading figures in electronic music, Jörg Burger (aka The Modernist, The Bionaut, Burger/Ink and many more). Velvet Desert Music Vol. 1 combines elements of rock, folk, country, surf, krautrock and psychedelic in contemporary electronic music.

Sam Shepherd pulls from "global soul, ambient, jazz and folk" genres on the 17-track mix, according to the press release. It features four new tracks, including one from Floating points himself: a cover of Kenny Wheeler's "The Sweet Time Suite, Part I - Opening." Sarah Davachi, Toshimaru Nakamura and Lauren Laverne also contribute exclusive material, plus music by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, British jazz trio Azimuth and recent Resident Advisor feature star Kara-Lis Coverdale.

"The music is a selection of the kind of records I play to set the tone when DJing all night long," said Shepherd.

New album from Los Angeles composer/producer Henry Laufer, out March 22nd on Friends of Friends/Wedidit
“The album is vaguely about the end of the world, but from the viewpoint of smoking on the couch during the extinction event. Reading a nice book while the meteor hits. The fake peace of insularity during chaos” Shlohmo

The Cinematic Orchestra are back with a definitive new album that explores a timeless question of vital importance in 2019 - what to believe? Founding member Jason Swinscoe and longtime partner Dominic Smith have enlisted album contributions from collaborators old and new: Moses Sumney, Roots Manuva, Heidi Vogel, Grey Reverend (vocalist on Bonobo’s 'First Fires’), Dorian Concept and Tawiah (Mark Ronson, Kindness), Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (Flying Lotus, Anderson Paak, Thundercat, Hiatus Kaiyote) features on strings and photographer and visual artist Brian “B+” Cross collaborated with Swinscoe and Smith on the album’s concept. The record was mixed by multiple Grammy winner Tom Elmhirst (David Bowie, Frank Ocean, Adele) in Jimi Hendrix’s legendary Electric Lady studios. The album artwork comes courtesy of The Designers Republic™ (Aphex Twin).

Ushering in an exciting new era for the label, nightclub, and mix series, Bonobo opens the Fabric Presents series. His highly textural aesthetic translates into an ethos that looks to introduce a more open musical palette for the label. His mix features "Roach" from his rare pop-up alias Barakas and employs multi-instrumental arrangements in this 74 minutes of house, techno, electronica, and breakbeat. Features ten exclusive or unreleased tracks, including two from Bonobo and one from his Barakas alias. Bonobo's first official mix release since LateNightTales in 2013 and follows on from the world-wide success of Migration in 2017. Also features Poté, Alex Kassian, Âme, Durante, Dark Sky & Afriquoi, Olsen, O'Flynn, TSHA, Will Saul, Titeknots, Dan Kye, R. Lyle, Rhone, Laurent Garnier, Throwing Snow, Nepa Allstar, DJ Seinfeld, Earth Trax & Newborn JR, Annjet, and John Beltran.

Oh, lovely appearance of death, No sight upon earth is so fair; Not all the gay pageants that breathe, Can with a dead body compare.– Charles Wesley, A Funeral Hymn for a Believer, 1780. So begins New Atlantis, the fourth full-length album by longtime Berghain resident Efdemin aka Phillip Sollmann. The words, sung by 60s California art icon William T. Wiley and embedded in glowing drone swells, set an otherworldly tone for Sollmann’s first solo release on Ostgut Ton. Over eight tracks, New Atlantis oscillates between fast, kaleidoscopic techno, multilayered drones and acoustic instrumentation, fusing for the first time Sollmann’s deep dancefloor productions as Efdemin with his sound art and experimental music projects. The latter include 2017’s Harry Partch- inspired Monophonie performance and 2018’s Panama / Suez EP with Oren Ambarchi and Konrad Sprenger. Long drawn to utopian musical traditions, Sollmann took inspiration for New Atlantis from Francis Bacon’s unfinished 17th century novel of the same name, which describes a fictional island devoted to social progress through the synthesis of art, science, technology and fashion. In the story, Bacon imagines futuristic ‘sound houses’, which contain musical instruments capable of recreating the entirety of the sounds of the universe; a 400-year-old prophesy of today’s digital sonic reality. Through Sollmann’s lens, Bacon’s vision ebbs and flows over 50 minutes in varying speeds and colors, emerging as a tapestry of different utopian musical traditions – through billowing synth lines, early Detroit techno, resonant wooden percussion, trance, droning organs, dulcimer, electric guitars, hurdy-gurdy, just intonation, poetry, hymns and murmuring voices. Sometimes they merge into epic, rhythmic journeys like the 14-minute long title track; other times they appear as a briefly open sound portal (“Temple”), or in the forlorn human voice on “Oh, Lovely Appearance Of Death”, calling to be freed from jail of the human body and pass into the afterlife. Like previous Efdemin albums on Dial, New Atlantis veers off the techno path to explore other musical territory. Here however, Sollmann occasionally abandons the club entirely, returning only to push its boundaries with other instruments, mythologies and psychedelic story telling.

All formats contain the full version of „Rausch“. The album is meant to be heard from beginning to end as a whole. It has been track marked or separated due to format restrictions. Rausch with no name / My beautiful shine / You are the sun / This is where I want to be / Rausch with no morning / This is where we burn / The Stars sparkle / In a sea of flames / Horns and fanfares / Fanfares of joy / Fanfares of fear / The wine we drink through the eyes / The moon pours down at night in waves / Careful with that axe Eugene / Personal Jesus / No beginning no end / Eighteenth of Oktember / The night falls / The king comes / The hunt starts / Freude schöner Götterfunken / The long march through the underwood / Trust me there’s nothing / Once upon a time there was a bandit / Who loved a prince / That was long ago / Spring Summer Fall and Gas / There is a train heading to Nowhere / Drums and Trumpets / Future without mankind / Warm snow / Alles ist gut / The bells toll / You are not alone / The murmur in the forest / The murmur in the head / Light as mist / Heavy as lead / Music happens / To flow like gas / A clearing / Heavy baggage / Debut in the afterlife / Death has seven cats / World heritage Rausch / Finally infinite. Wolfgang Voigt 2018

Late night music from the back seat. ‘Are You Anywhere‘, sophomore album from Tokyo based UK native submerse blends early 90’s slow-jams and instrumental hip hop wrapped in smooth DX7 keys hybridized with his own unique sound. ‘Are You Anywhere’ is the second full length release from submerse on Project: Mooncircle with features from fellow Tokyo based beat maker fitz ambro$e.

Limited edition CD!

To forget the pursuit of harmony.
To recall the past to make a future.
Forever seeing yourself reflected, feeding back in eternal repeating cycles.
A dialog with oneself within the natural world.
Choosing a final destination as the journey ceaselessly repeats.
I hope to share what I’ve experienced in this big journey.
I hope you will feel both a sense of nostalgia, and a sense of newness.
That makes our harmony.

– Kazuomi Eshima

The publication Source Book 1 represents the beginning of a and authorized review of the past 20 years of the label Raster-Noton. A short introductory preface by olaf bender is followed by a keynote interview conducted by berlin publicist Max Dax that provides an insight into the identity and philosophy of the label heads. The main part of this first Source Book comprises the extensive catalog of all releases and series published between 1996 and 2016. Tabular listings of various formats and products that were distributed or curated by Raster-Noton complete the catalog. A further exclusive part of the publication is the accompanying Archiv 4 CD, which is only available in connection with the book. Raster-Noton‘s Archiv series was first introduced in december 2003 as a supplement to The Wire magazine and has since been continued in loose sequence with different artists related to the label. Following the idea of the label which defines itself as a platform for its artists, the releases in the catalog part are not presented according to their format, invested effort or meaning, but sorted according to their catalog number and presented on exactly one double page, whereas some series were summarized. As a continuation of this archival revision, further »source books« are planned that will document artist profiles, installations, composition techniques and sources of inspiration. The Source Book 1« is limited to 1.000 copies. Its modular design allows to remove, exchange or add pages, which makes it possible to update the content in due time. A cardboard slipcase covers the 400-page, 3-kilo book and guarantees a safe stand in the bookshelf.

New music from Simon Green aka Bonobo is always an event, but when it heralds the arrival of a whole new album (his first since 2013’s “The North Borders”), it’s really something to get excited about. The masterful, magisterial “Migration” is Green’s sixth album and it’s a record which cements his place in the very highest echelons of electronic music and beyond.
It might be difficult to imagine it, but “Migration” will take his beautiful, emotive, intricate music to an even bigger audience. “My own personal idea of identity has played into this record and the theme of migration,” Green explains. “Is home where you are or where you are from, when you move around?” The personal, it seems, can also be universal.

CD Jewel Case. In 1975 I was doing a series of concerts in France with Lutz Ulbrich, where we were presenting "Inventions for Electric Guitar” and other compositions, which we developed together that year. In August, we were invited for two concerts in the South of France, one in the wonderful Roman theater in Arles, the other at the Festival Palace in Cannes.This is where we met the musicians of the German band CAN and the singer Nico, who also played at the festival. After the concerts we stayed together a few days in the beautiful city of Arles. Nico's friend, the French director Philippe Garrel, was working at that time on a film starring Nico, Anita Pallenberg and Dominique Sanda and was looking for music to make you dream. I always recorded most of our concerts, that's how we were able to offer him the piece that we had performed as "encore” in Cannes. It became the main theme of the film. Other parts were recorded during several sessions throughout 1975 in my studio in Berlin. Instruments and electronic devices were relatively simple compared to today's technology: four-track tape recorder, an old Farfisa organ, the beautiful EKO Rhythm Computer (Italian machines controlled by punched cards), the EMS superb guitar-Synthi HiFli and of course, our "usual” guitars. All this combined with the patching, the filtering and echo has produced its own unique sound to "electronic dreams” of the 70s. , Manuel Göttsching 1993 Recorded in 1975 at Studio ROMA, Berlin, with the exception of "Le Berceau de Cristal", recorded during the concert on August 7, 1975 at the Palais du Festival in Cannes.

A darwīš is a religious monk dedicating his entire existence to the advancement of faith and meditation. Although he believes in Allah, he can be described predominantly as a mystic. Refraining from any form of material wealth and even societal appreciation, holy enlightenment is his true aim.

After finishing up their semester at University, Nicolas and Jonas – or Parra for Cuva & Senoy – decided to pack all their gear into their camper and go on a road-trip down to the eastern coast of Spain.

The car filled with all kinds of gear, from synths to speakers, guitars, and percussions amongst other tools and toys, three creative weeks ensued, creating music with a view out to the sea.

While taking everything in and doing daily trips, the two were able to create enough song ideas in three weeks to spent the rest of the year at home in the studio to finish all arrangements and mixes.

Inspired by the Spanish way of life in a small and historically rich port town, a stark contrast to life Berlin, and soaking up diverse musical influences, the individual titles are highly personal and reflect on specific emotions or intimate experiences.

During the arrangement of the title-song, the percussion track was accidentally dragged to infinity, which resulted in a trance inducing meditative sound that gave them the idea for the title. Watching turkish dervish dancers while listening should therefore enhance the listening experience.

‘Kellion’ is the story of a young boy who was born into a mysterious world he explores with his curious eyes, ears and hands. Every new experience lets him grow as a person and also expands his knowledge of the world that surrounds him. His young mind is sometimes blurrying the lines between imagination and reality, dreaming and being awake, reality and fantasy. Making sense of this world in its very own unique way, his world is filled with fantastic and surreal magical creatures and quirky characters.

Over the course of the ten songs many different little adventures unfold and await the young boy, slowly building his character while he explores nature in all its varieties and learns to appreciate it. He lives through new emotions and gets to learn about his own feelings during the process. The title track ‘Kellion’ represents the very inner world of the kid – it is his cocoon where he can always return to and be safe after his journeys and adventures.

„I was trying to live his life with him together and feel what he felt. I tried to understand and recollect what it feels like as a little boy walking around in this big world. I attempted to see the world through his eyes, to experience his fears and happiness and in doing that, just helping him to be a kid.“ – Long Arm

‘Kellion’ is the long awaited sophomore full length album by Long Arm and will come out worldwide on double vinyl in a beautiful gatefold cover as well as on CD and cassette tape, all including download codes.

The meaning of dreams usually stays hidden in stacks of abstract layers, obscuring their essence in surreal and bizarre imagery. Exploring the depths of our subconscious, they lead us from stories of lighthearted innocence to our most gruesome ghastly fantasies, making us live through multiple scenarios each and every night. While in sleeping-state, we are at our most vulnerable and at a total loss of control over mind and body. At the same time, we feel most free and safe during REM, with none of our worldly worries breathing down our neck while our minds find ways to cope with exactly these worries.

For his debut full length “Too”, My Panda Shall Fly decided to collaborate with a variety of singers from all over the globe to explore their subconscious anxieties and fears together. Giving away control over the songs himself, he was only amazed by the results of this process that took over more than a year until final realization.

Just like in Ursula K. Le Guin‘s classic sci-fi novel “The Lathe of Heaven”, you can shape your dreams by becoming aware of the inner forces that invisibly guide you every day.

‘Too’ comes out worldwide on limited 2LP red vinyl, CD, MC (including download code) and digital.

Two thrilling tracks and a bonus CD "mixtape" are three good reasons not to sleep on this.

San Francisco-based DJ/producer Nick Monaco has long been part of the Soul Clap family, releasing his first 12" on the label back in 2012. Mating Call, a double 12" set running at album length, is easily his most expansive release yet. It's typically eccentric, delivering a range of songs - featuring his own distinctive vocals - that blend numerous styles whilst retaining a loose, funky and altogether rather kaleidoscopic feel. It's rooted in Balearic pop, but also touches on dub, deep house, boogie, dub disco and a strangely deep and contemporary take on the triple-beat rhythms of glam rock. It's hard to accurately describe, but is really rather good; certainly, it's one of Soul Clap's strongest releases of recent times.

Slow Waves is a collection of multi-layered memories, stacked like grainy polaroids in an old box in the closet or under the bed while the colours fade. A young Rob at the beach or on his first day of grammar school. Images of travels across Europe and Japan, moments slipping in trains or planes while landscapes pass by. Memories so unique to his life, yet so similar to the fading memories of youth and adolescence we all have...

After a series of well acclaimed EP’s, each of them created at very specific moments in the artists life, submerse took the time and sat down to reflect and convert all these memories into his first full length album on Project: Mooncircle.

'Slow Waves' comes out worldwide on limited double vinyl, limited handmade and handpainted cassette edition (both including download code) as well as a limited edition CD including a bonus track via flau records in Japan.

A bright and colourful scenery: Shrill blinding sights, piercing foreign sounds, a fusion of disparate scents blended into a cocktail of curiosity. Fleeting attempts embrace a thousand senses in one single second. Bustling around in the shadows of buildings as high as mountains, an almost eerily overwhelming sense of contentment is omnipresent - but something doesn't appear to be right...
Stranded on a lonely island in the midst of a chaotic metropolis, disconnected - a feeling of drowning in an ocean of overstimulus and importunities of disproportionately inflated personalities, without ever even being registered or taken notice of.
What's left is nothing more than the ghost of a young soul, wandering about and curiously studying the surrounding, forever looking for answers that would otherwise seem trivial.

After “Kidsuke” the critically acclaimed collaboration project with Daisuke Tanabe, “Tokyorkshire” based producer kidkanevil continues his fascination with Japan and readies his latest solo album My Little Ghost. Inspired by a summer spent in Tokyo collaborating, exploring and generally refusing to grow up, the double vinyl is due May 2nd on Project: Mooncircle and features a wide range of guests including PMC's own submerse and Tokyo vocalist Cuushe.

'My Little Ghost' comes out worldwide on limited gatefold, double, pink vinyl (including download code) as well as a limited edition CD including a bonus track via flau records - http://www.flau.jp/ in Japan.