Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Tape 413 Items

It doesn't stop. NRW is proud to present something very special for your ears. Beautiful soft synths with vast and dynamic chords make "Fermi Paradox" an instant definitive Retrowave album. A must listen to for all synth lovers.

Earthtones is the musical identity of Serge Bandura, an electronic artist, former jazz musician, meditation teacher and ritualist based in LA. Kevin Nathaniel channels sound as a universal healing force through traditional African instruments and is a former student of legendary master musicians such as Ephat Mujuru and Chief Bey K. Sending files back and forth during the pandemic, the two artists deepened a musical friendship and began a dialog between the Mbira Nyunga Nyunga, the Kalimba and analog synthesizers. Their music is offered in the spirit of peace + healing for all.

The album "Interstitial" is a document of a musical experiment, created in collaboration of the musicians Oh No Noh, Jenny Berger Myhre and F.S.Blumm.
The title refers to the process of the album's creation, to the letting go and filling of interstices, the temporally and spatially staggered collaborative composing, the accompanying addition and omission with the foresight to leave room for the ideas of others - without knowing how they would ultimately sound.
The three musicians layered individual elements from field recordings and improvisations into new units. The music developed in this way is a trance-like snapshot and spans wide arcs of ambient, sound art and soundscapes. Oh No Noh, Jenny Berger Myhre and F.S.Blumm each composed a piece, which served as the basis for the overlays of the other two musicians. Each of the three resulting pieces was processed, directed and shaped in its timbre and structure in different ways. The titles of the tracks describe the order of the overdubs (JBM Jenny Berger Myhre, FS Frank Schültge, MR Markus Rom).

•7" vinyl •Lyric insert •Blue and pink swirled 7" •Download card

Laila’s side was recorded live at A Colourful Storm and Jolly Discs presents Thomas Bush, Princess Diana of Wales and Enchante at Cafe Oto, London on 10th July 2022. Thomas’s side was recorded live at Felt presents Laila Sakini and Thomas Bush at Ideal Bar, Copenhagen on 2nd March 2023.

Gatos Negros, aka Madrid DJs/ producers Christian C. & Iván Smoka, second album 'Hi Score' is a texture and abstraction gambling project now on sale via Vasco Ispirian's Made in Green Records label. 'Hi Score' sees the duo sailing ethereal ambient soundscapes, shady alt rock waves, experimental grooves almost horizontally danceable, acid electro-pop & avant-garde electronica- all in an utterly smart, consistent, and effective vocal fashion.

»Sucesiones« is a compilation of studies written for 53 equal divisions of the octave (53 Edo). This tuning temperament was selected after analyzing the work of Mexican researcher and visionary Augusto Novaro, one of the microtonal and just intonation pioneer theorists. Novaro claims that 53 EDO is one of rich musical qualities, which has good approximations to the harmonic series. The use of simple textures such as sine waves was a conscious decision, this in order to maintain the focus on the relationship between the frequencies and the possibilities this tuning allows, that fluctuate from aggressive beat frequencies to pure intervals

Mesmerizing live one takers from Soroosh Khavari & Will Yates recorded in Bristol, April 2022.

Long serving veterans of the electronic scene Somatic Responses are back on Acroplane Recordings with Doomsday Conduit - their 4th LP on the Irish imprint. Always looking forward, the Healy brothers have crafted an album with two distinct identities, presented on either side of a limited edition cassette.

On Side A of this run of 100 tapes, the somewhat introspective opener Other Destinations breaks the ice to make way for the heavyweight material that the Welsh duo are known so well for. The aptly named Photon Barrage features frantic acid lines and punishing breaks, followed by the title track where pulsating bass lines dominate the neo-jungle landscape. Synth layers unfurl in the fast paced The Fault Inside Us, leading to a change of velocity in the form of Slewed Diffusion where the marching percussion is pierced by hyperspace drills.

The B side sees the Somatics exploring the acid drenched, electro occupied realm of their collective output. 2Hlec kicks off with morphing mechanical breaks. Imagined Darkness (Elektro Mix) follows with the sounds of machines engaged in mutual destruction. Process Layer is stripped back in comparison, almost hypnotic, eventually decomposing into a chorus of digital lamentations. SLec has one foot in a post-apocalyptic Detroit, with the other located somewhere off-world. Closing the LP out is the dark ambient ode to the void, Tec Cymru.

The mech-scape imagery for this release has been designed by Timothée Mathelin (www.futurorg.com) and features full colour on shell printing on both sides of the LP's blue cassette.

Mastering for this release is by Alex Lennon at Ashmus Mastering.

In line with his recent body of work, Uwe Zahn bundled minimal compositions telling narratives situating in the melodic realm of ambient music. On first sight, it seems common that one can enter or construct such stories through the melodies these compositions offer. However, melodies never stand on their own – maybe only theoretically – but in fact truly reveal their magic through the sonical context they’re embedded in. To Zahn, a crucial part of his practice is all about this latter notion. Finding the sweet – and sometimes hidden – spots in sound-design that allow him to express the narratives he wants to share. »Seismograf« could be seen as an ode to this exploration and devoted to the practice of listening - to hear sounds that are otherwise inaudible.

Drapizdat is the umbrella banner for Russian producer Vladislav Godzevich’s rogue gallery of musical identities. Its name derives from a fusion of samizdat (illegally reproduced publications of censored materials within repressive regimes) and drap (slang for marijuana; an early beat music alias was Papa Drap), which aptly evokes his ethos of covert altered state transmissions. МИФ presents a constellation of tracks spanning five projects, four years, and 73-minutes; taken together it fully delivers on the hidden acronym of its title: M = music, И = elected, Ф = fragments [combined = ‘Myth’].

Each entity spelunks its own vibrant catacomb: Сам Себе Па (“tropical industrial 5th world dada”), Ито Кумаре (“metaphysical ambient music”), Jeans Escape (rhythmic liberations from reality), Reather Weport (“free form music of the spheres, vibrations beyond the universal caves”), Drapula (“black moon feasts on the blood of soul and funk”), Клаксон Гансон (“psychedelic ethno-mutant punk”).

Godzevich describes his process as a metamorphosis, created at night, “with minimal light.” Percolating loops of percussion, texture, and melody, summoned into warped trances of alien grace. Elements align and obscure like celestial phenomena half-glimpsed, half-dreamed: “I plunge deeper and deeper to gather golden sand from the bottom of time and show it to the world, building islands in this dilapidated world.”

Far Rainbow is the London-based duo of Emily Mary Barnett and Bobby Barry. The Blue Hugeness begins with bubbling sounds which Barnett’s cymbals splash through, taking on a gait somewhere between Jack DeJohnette and a leaky pipe. Later, flickering drones emerge that seem more electrical than instrumental – which might be true as previous releases have seen Barry credited with playing electric toothbrush and various small motors. Submerged in it all are eerie field recordings, the most beguiling sounding like a baby cooing in the distance. It’s seldom clear where any sound comes from on this tape. Even where the drums begin and end gets a little hazy, while the lush reverb that glistens off everything is a source of intrigue in itself. It’s a spooky and hypnotic zone, one where machines seem to live in ghostly spaces. Every sound on ‘The Blue Hugeness’ is a riddle, slipping along the boundary between familiar and unfamiliar to find an alluring place in the in-between. - THE Quietus

Nico Niquo’s ‘Esperanto’ sees the Australian artist return to Orange Milk Records six years since his album ‘In A Silent Way’

You can always rely on zake to serve up some of the most magnificent ambient of the moment. He does it at an almost unbelievably frequent rate, too. This latest project is a seance part of the Orchestral Tape Studies series he minted back in 2019 and finds him paying homage to minimalist symphonic composers and orchestras through a series of pieces that focus on tone and timbre, with subtly shifting layers of carefully manipulated sounds, absorbing drones, field recordings and fragmented orchestral loops. Soundscapes shift subtly and manipulate your emotions just as deftly. This is a limited cassette version with several different vinyl versions also available.

These recordings weren't intended for release, they aren't even demos, but rather exercises – process tracks in an attempt to mirror the influences of an aspiring artist as they oriented their emerging work. Most of the tracks were constructed in single sittings and recorded to cassette at home in Glasgow through a Philips Aw-7694 boombox. That they feel finished, even iconic amid the shortlived confluence between Detroit techno and intelligent dance music, is a testament to what was materialising, but also to our collective nostalgia, revisionism, and thirst to understand how we've arrived here and why. Übungen has that youthful and pre-internet utopian aura, without being tethered to the phony maxed-out optimism ricocheting across the Atlantic in a 4G pollution. That I first came to Dave Clark's earliest work in the anxiety-ripening stage of the pandemic while I was becoming chronically sick – a time when it was all too easy to glide through dystopian nightmares and realities alike – only speaks to the work's presence and its allowance to dream, ahistoricism or splice into the affect of histories, and to dismantle the contemporary, not in an arsy or nihilistic way, but to appreciate (questioningly) the passage of time.

Sitting somewhere between an EP and a full-length, these six pieces predate Dave's other archival release – Sparky's 94Archive2/8 [Rubadub, 2015], which also features cassette transfers originally recorded in stereo without overdubs. As a sound archivist myself, it was a welcome experience first listening to Dave's transfers on headphones while walking around the canals of Maryhill rather than handling the digital captures in a studio. I've been enamored with the music ever since and despite the original utilitarian intention, shifting contexts and the chance to listen afresh decades on allows for clearance (dare I say recuperation). It is, for this reason, and the sardonic re-opening of archival material perverted into something on the ground, that's not merely dog shit, that I am very pleased to finally share this collection.

Each of the titles provides the recording year and is initialed by the respective influence: Carl Craig, Aphex Twin (you'll recognise the shimmering hi-hats), Yellow Magic Orchestra, Black Dog, Polygon Window, and Drexycia.

All music was produced by Dave Clark, except "1993cc" produced by Dave Clark & Graeme Slater, and "1992pw" produced by Dave Clark & Roger Elliott.

Paisajes Para Torcer al Reloj (“landscapes for bending the clock”) is a collection of six collaborative improvisations between keyboardist / DJ Lorena Álvarez and multi-instrumentalist Alejandro Palacios recorded at the Nieve & Smog arts residency in Santiago, Chile in the spring of 2022. Theirs is a wispy, whispered chemistry, softly thrumming Rhodes laced with trumpet, guitar, and golden dust. The pieces unspool with a daydream logic of “hazy clocks and floating doors,” inspired by the holy trinity of Hassell, Riley, and Cherry.

Both Álvarez and Palacios have carved eclectic bodies of work – the former as part of minimalist dance trios Cuerpo Docente and Los Bárbara Blade, the latter via psychedelic lounge-dub suites for Nonlocal Research. Yet Paisajes finds their common ground in more hushed, hidden terrain. Lulling, electro-acoustic landscapes of texture and resonance, shaded in wood, brass, and batteries, flowering at late hours in dimly lit rooms.

Music performed, recorded and mixed by Till Hormann. Mastered by René Huthwelker. Cover photograph by Raphael Dillhof.

Pro-dubbed C-42 Tape with a Letter-press J-Card / Pro-dubbed C-42 Tape with a Letter-press J-Card

Performing in the panoramic splendour of Capela Imaculada do Seminário Menor, Braga, Pardon
spellbinds the attendant audience, and now you at home, across nearly an hour of plangent keys
and synths that elegantly reverberate the space’s stone walls in arcing spirals with a fine grasp of
sublime tension and resolution.
Replete with the sound of audience appreciation in classic live album fashion, the performance
begins with the gentle lift of ‘Beneath the Surface’, with simple piano phrasing buoyed by a bed of
choral loops and strings, and the placid ‘Unsettled Beginnings’ leads to a centrepiece of gloaming
Nordic tension with ‘Blood in the water’ resembling Scandi noir soundtrack taken to further, icier
degrees. The tension resolves with the soothing pastoral wist of ‘April 13th’ appearing like some
spectral reflection on AFX’s ‘Avril 14th’, and ’Silent Rumble’ underscores his melancholic train of
piano thought with a rolling bass menace recalling The Necks via John Carpenter

Two Form a Click (DJ Snaffy, Wretchen Redspiders) collide with Horatio Pollard to deliver two sides of beautifully coalesced psychedelic synthesis, heavy with dub's production values and freed from the grid of analog electronics.

OKO DJ’s first mixtape, landing on Accidental Meetings. 90 minutes of head banging rock & metal, screwed up saxophone & weirdo dub.

The fourth album by Vilnius-based composer Aleksandra Evseeva aka Andra Ljos is as runic and ritualistic as the Bronze Age monoliths for which it’s named: Megalithic Statues of Vishapakar. Found mainly in the Armenian Highlands, vishaps are cigar-shaped slabs of stone carved with fish heads or snakes, depicting a sacred serpent of Armenian folklore thought to protect sources of water from drought and ruin. The music evokes a similarly arcane and devotional air, between raga, séance, and 4th world hallucination.

The track titles allude to significant vishap discovery sites, spanning lakes, bays, mountains, and temples. Wood block percussion wobbles beneath lattices of looped keys, golden organ, synthetic strings and flutes, distant birds, muffled voices, and the soft wash of restless waters. Evseeva’s muse may be mined from her Armenian heritage but the songs conjure a mood more elusive and expansive – pensive pastorals for a land of long shadows and ancient fears, strewn with cryptic relics swiftly dissipating into myth.