Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Tape 486 Items

IIIII (Five Eyes) aka Eugene Chistyakov is a young talent from Ukraine, currently living in riot shaken Kiev. This February we will be releasing his debut album ‘Mother Love’ on limited chrome cassettes and digitally. The album is dedicated to his late mother, who was a great music enthusiast and passed on her appreciation, dedication and talent to him. Soaking in his surroundings like an ethnologist, he used interaction with friends and strangers as inspiration. His music is his way to vent out and deal with negativity wherefore the titles usually give away the events that led to their creation.

Hot suite of crucial House. TIP!

NYC's Sweater on Polo delivers a hammering six track mini lp for L.I.E.S. indebted to the sounds of early-90s psychedelic Chicago house, names like Gherkin and Pierre come to mind but the young producer tastefully and effectively puts his own vision to the forefront with this release.

In the confused world of modern dance music production, Sweater on Polo, throws all trends aside and sticking to the bare essentials...letting the 808s,303s,727s do the job and making this one of the most crucial modern House records to come out of New York City in many years. Many producers these days stake a claim to this music and it falls short, plain and simple, Sweater on Polo is the most promising young producer in the city these days and this record puts it on display. Highly recommended!

Infant joins Warm Winters Ltd. with "sigla, sone", an album of strikingly personal and diaristic sound postcards. It's an album conveying the most intimate of moments and memories, encapsulating the feelings of entanglement and interdependence. The Michigan-based producer utilises various field recordings from his personal archives (sounds of a burning garage, conversations, Lake Michigan waves, crunching beach shells, starlings nesting in a bathroom vent…) alongside various treatments of the human voice and reworked/resampled work of his to create music that's both tender and unassuming, as well as fascinating and complex. The whimsical and the deeply touching sit side by side on an album that exhibits the magic of what ambient music can mean in 2023.

Infinity Machine is a duo comprised of JuanMacLean - as in the Juan MacLean, longtimeDFA traveler - and Gee Dee, also known as GregDroggitis, a producer and DJ based in Brooklynand 1/3 of the Earth Beat DJ troupe.The project name stems from a series ofgatherings the two began hosting in variousprivate spaces around New York City shortlyafter lockdown, though that description is abit innocuous for the journeys traveled by itsattendees.These events, billed as "psychedelic danceceremonies" lasting 8 or 9 hours, began witha sound meditation to vibrational and acousticinstruments before eventually segueing into a"dance" soundtracked by a DJ set from Juan andGreg.Something clicked - that ceremonial tea! - andso Juan and Greg began playing and recordingin their studio using the same approach:improvisation with equal attention placed ontraditional acoustic (flute, guitar, gong) and morecontemporary electronic (Yamaha DX-7) sounds.After awhile, there was literally three albumsworth of material, each of them a voyage into thewarm, liminal space between new age, ambient,drone and psychedelia. None of those genresquite fully describe what's across 001, 002, and003 - available from DFA digitally and on a verylimited run of cassettes (150 each!) - but if you'veread this far then you're either the right kind ofcurious or just forgot what you were doing.

Infinity Machine is a duo comprised of JuanMacLean - as in the Juan MacLean, longtimeDFA traveler - and Gee Dee, also known as GregDroggitis, a producer and DJ based in Brooklynand 1/3 of the Earth Beat DJ troupe.The project name stems from a series ofgatherings the two began hosting in variousprivate spaces around New York City shortlyafter lockdown, though that description is abit innocuous for the journeys traveled by itsattendees.These events, billed as "psychedelic danceceremonies" lasting 8 or 9 hours, began witha sound meditation to vibrational and acousticinstruments before eventually segueing into a"dance" soundtracked by a DJ set from Juan andGreg.Something clicked - that ceremonial tea! - andso Juan and Greg began playing and recordingin their studio using the same approach:improvisation with equal attention placed ontraditional acoustic (flute, guitar, gong) and morecontemporary electronic (Yamaha DX-7) sounds.After awhile, there was literally three albumsworth of material, each of them a voyage into thewarm, liminal space between new age, ambient,drone and psychedelia. None of those genresquite fully describe what's across 001, 002, and003 - available from DFA digitally and on a verylimited run of cassettes (150 each!) - but if you'veread this far then you're either the right kind ofcurious or just forgot what you were doing.

Infinity Machine is a duo comprised of JuanMacLean - as in the Juan MacLean, longtimeDFA traveler - and Gee Dee, also known as GregDroggitis, a producer and DJ based in Brooklynand 1/3 of the Earth Beat DJ troupe.The project name stems from a series ofgatherings the two began hosting in variousprivate spaces around New York City shortlyafter lockdown, though that description is abit innocuous for the journeys traveled by itsattendees.These events, billed as "psychedelic danceceremonies" lasting 8 or 9 hours, began witha sound meditation to vibrational and acousticinstruments before eventually segueing into a"dance" soundtracked by a DJ set from Juan andGreg.Something clicked - that ceremonial tea! - andso Juan and Greg began playing and recordingin their studio using the same approach:improvisation with equal attention placed ontraditional acoustic (flute, guitar, gong) and morecontemporary electronic (Yamaha DX-7) sounds.After awhile, there was literally three albumsworth of material, each of them a voyage into thewarm, liminal space between new age, ambient,drone and psychedelia. None of those genresquite fully describe what's across 001, 002, and003 - available from DFA digitally and on a verylimited run of cassettes (150 each!) - but if you'veread this far then you're either the right kind ofcurious or just forgot what you were doing.

Collins Dictionary Example sentence: „Other ocular signs include involuntary rhythmic movement of the eyeball.“ Someone in the editorial department wasn‘t paying attention and involuntarily spoke a deeply buried truth: The movement from the eye to rhythm and from there to sound is sometimes a small, puny one. Now Infuso Giallo provides the proof at the same time and implements his live show for last year‘s debut album „Ocular Soda“ as an audio-visual show, as intertwined senses. Visible sound, audible images. Such ideas only last when they are put to the test and scrutinised by several experts.

The duo Globus, which consists of 2/5 of the post-hardcore band Pttrns, examines the synth hook of the second part of the double-opener „Every Waking Hour Pt.2“ by playing it, varying it, letting it sway.

In contrast, Anatolian Weapons from Athens can‘t help but immerse the ambient, Soft Machine-production-like first minutes of „Every Waking Hour Pt.1“ in a sinister black light. Staggering into a basement club filled with nocturnal shadow people and indulge in carousing. Cautiously at first, then more and more determinedly.

From Hamburg and Berlin, the „Mole Gaze“ gets a special treatment. The trio Love-Songs drags the number off to Hamburg harbour, packs it onto a steamer, deep into the bow and lets it operate the sonar there. Conrad Schnitzler would have been delighted. Infuso Giallo, meanwhile, realises that there is nothing more boring than standing still, so he revamps „Hello World“ and gives it a rear spoiler that keeps this number in lane even at club speed. Speaking of „keeping in lane“: Niklas Wandt, the magician, doesn‘t even try such tricks. He simply throws an acid bolt on the closer „Ocular Soda“ and waits to see what happens. Alongside breakbeats from nowhere, Albert Hoffmann himself appears on a bicycle. „Ocular Soda Remixes“ is the first tape on the Kame House label, so there‘s only one thing to do: open your eyes and listen!

Artificial Dance founder Interstellar Funk releases Live At The Rest Is Noise - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Limited to 150 cassettes, the recording documents Interstellar Funk’s performance at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw concert hall in October 2021. The 45-minute set ebbs and pulses, leaving behind Interstellar Funk’s penchant for hardwearing club sounds in favour of melody and texture. Some passages mirror elements from the studio album Into The Echo (Dekmantel, 2022), but the live setting allows Interstellar Funk to expand and explore richly detailed sonic spaces that highlight his skills as a composer-performer.

An anonymous collection of imagined Devotional Musics commissioned by Dramatic over the last two years. Listeners are briefed just as the original artists apparently were: 13 'Invisible Cities' and an accompanying 'belief statement' of appropriate enigma.

"Their City Tessellates Infinitely" "Their God Is Ugly" "No Two Chants Can Repeat" (repeat until unimaginably portentous…)

These 'songs' play out like the products of a delirious ethnography. Their palette, all deranged chorales and Globalisch instrumentation, calls to mind everything from Michael Nyman to Demdike Stare, Ghostbox to Angelo Badalamenti… perhaps even Broadcast on a particularly awkward day (rip).

Few things induce tunnel-vision like human loss. Revelries - Isak Gaines’ debut pair of releases with Inner Ocean - explores the tunnel from entrance to exit through the lens of a relationship that was doomed to fail from the onset. Airy vocal melodies draped over jagged sample collages, loose textural washes, and intricately layered drum programming lead the way through the selfish, confused entryway of Pt. I to an exit in Pt. II that is both more reflective and outward-looking.

Part-producer, part-improviser, part-composer, and part-visual artist, Isak Gaines has a creative identity that isn’t easily categorized. Between densely-layered sample manipulations, intricate chamber arrangements, and multi-instrumental improvisations, his work focuses on experimentation in search of the point where they all intersect.

The Berlin based duo Itchy Spots combine falling words with tricky rhythms. Their music concerns the simultaneity of intensity and nonchalance, feverish high speed drumming, static sounds and tribal hypnosis. The vocal performance seems to stand alone, it is independent from whats happening rhythmically, yet it all melts together perfectly. Grooving skeletons of songs, rituals and shamanism. Itchy Spots are James Main (former singer and lyricist with Wild Daughter) and Ansgar Wilken (Ilse Lau, Feedbackorchester, Happy Zloty).

Pioneering Parisian weirdo and member of acclaimed, enigmatic collective Ssabæ, Iueke throws down his first “album” for Demdike Stare’s DDS label, following a trio of mixtapes with an hour of warped goo that defies easy categorisation. ​

Photogenic dandy Gwen Jamois, aka Iueke, returns with his queasiest, most lysergic release yet, featuring close to an hour of rubbery, rippling electronics, laconic cinematics and free-falling rhythms frozen somewhere between Autechre, Cluster and Rashad Becker.

Gwen has been immersed in all sorts of fringe business for decades at this point, heading up the Antinote label, releasing on Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S, and contributing to those shadowy Ssabæ records we can't stop banging on about. His trio of mixtapes fully took us to the core of his psyche, all off-kilter blends that puzzled out the covalent bonds between tongue dissolving acid, folk music and discarded sonic debris. He follows that same frayed thread on this boundless, off-the-cuff performance, recorded last year at Saint-Étienne's Positive Education festival using a sparse setup of synths and drum machines, fine-tuned to gatecrash the pineal dimension. Plenty of pros have tried making this kind of trippy racket before, but trust that few have ever managed to get anywhere near the level of puckered lunacy you’ll find inside.

Brain-combing Asmr oscillations and anxious strings draw us in, clouded by hissing white noise that obscures an unnatural rhythm lurking somewhere down there in the grot. There are palpable links to Cluster's earliest experiments and the muckiest basement club workouts, but Iueke focuses on pure texture, using seesawing rhythms to scrape out new neural pathways rather than lock into the grid. It all feels a bit mechanical too, bolting together elements that are as corporeal as a lead pipe - thick, rusty-edged and aggy in a way that sounds a bit like Einsturzende Neubauten on mushies.

On the flip, unbalanced rhythms chase their own tail into a fizzing swamp of viscous bass and shepard tones like some imploding firework, eventually plonging off along impulse vectors only to collapse at half speed into the sort of acrid high-register business Whitehouse would be proud of.

Prize yr third eye open for this, it’s a real one.