Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Vinyl 296 Items

This is a comp of Peter's work from the 80s and 90s with some material never released on vinyl.. More info soooon!

Michigan trumpeter Justin Walter’s solo work centers on evocative, intuitive explorations of the EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument), a rare wind-controlled analog synthesizer from the 1970s. Its unique, smeared tonality allows for an expressive range of glassy, jazz-like textures, which Walter loops and layers with hushed electronics and twilit trumpet, painting opaque landscapes of resonant beauty.

Walter’s 2013 debut, Lullabies & Nightmares, included a handful of collaborations with percussionist Quin Kirchner, but Unseen Forces finds him fully solo, refining the project to its essence: shape-shifting watercolors of pastel haze, lit by the soft synthetic glow of electric breath. It’s a sound both modern and timeless, fusing emotion and technology, gauze and melody, force and fragility.

New 2xlp of grinding beat experiments from Black Dice's Eric Copeland. Controlled chaos, chopped sample mayhem, moments of beauty and destruction over four sides.

Ambient power duo Anjou’s sophomore statement continues in the vein of their 2014 debut, unfurling a full hour of mesmeric synthetic drift and veiled melodic undertow. Comprised of Mark Nelson (of pioneering post-rock experimentalists Labradford and Pan·American) and Robert Donne (of Labradford, Aix Em Klemm, Cristal), the group works largely in long-form suites of sound, alternately spacious and dense.

Epithymia’s six pieces embrace flux and ambiguity: drones swell and shudder, hushed currents of noise glitch and dissolve, atmospheres congeal and liquify. As with the participants’ prior projects, Anjou evokes a shadowed, mysterious mood, variously melancholy and transcendent. The album is an accumulation of craftsmanship and experience, blurred forms traced in light and fog.

Death Peak cements Clark as one of the most innovative and singular artists to ever release a record on Warp, much like those that lay the foundations before; Aphex, Plaid, Autechre & Nightmares On Wax through to the subsequent new wave of ahead of their time and all those around artists, Lorenzo Senni, Hudson Mohawke, Kelela & Evian Christ. Death Peak finds Clark in the middle, one foot in the label's historic glories and one foot in the rave. A true pioneer the hypnotic groove, and constantly yet carefully constructing sounds that will lay down the blueprint for the future.

High Plains is the duo of Scott Morgan and Mark Bridges. Morgan, based in the Canadian Pacific Northwest, is predominantly known for his drifting, textured soundscapes released under the pseudonym Loscil. Bridges is an accomplished, classically-trained cellist residing in Madison, Wisconsin. The two met in Banff, Alberta, while they were there on residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2014.

In early 2016, the duo embarked on a collaborative set of compositions in the oxygen thin air of Wyoming, spending two weeks holed up in a refurbished school house in the town of Saratoga, where this album was recorded. Inspired by Schubert’s Die Winterreise and the rolling landscapes of their surroundings, the recordings evoke a shadowy, introspective and dizzying winter journey. Cinderland takes cues from classical, electronic and cinematic musical traditions but is mostly a product of the rugged, mythic landscape: vast and sprawling with a wild, uncertain edge.

The recording was made with a portable studio and all sounds were sourced on site, most notably from Bridges’ cello, the resident Steinway D piano, and field recordings collected from the local soundscape.

The results are a site-specific, wide-scope view of the high valley terrain — a mix of analog and digital, neoclassical and modern electronic sounds, a complementary series of tracks to become absorbed in, a truly deep listening experience.

We continue The Orb's Sin In Space remix EP series with a third volume focussing on the duo's latest full-length, the highly acclaimed COW / Chill Out, World! (KOMPAKT 354 CD 134). The spontaneous, organic vibe and sample artistry of the album is reflected in three distinct reworks from highly respected Kompakt mainstays The Field, Dave DK and Jörg Burger - all of them informed with surprising twists and displaying a clear lineage to the source material. The Field's remix of 9 Elms Over River Eno takes the original's percussive part and unfolds it to a swirling, tropical epic that alludes as much to The Orb's multifaceted sound collages as it does to the hypnotic, looping flow of The Field's own output. Meanwhile, DAVE DK turns in a club-friendly revamp of 4am Exhale with the fittingly titled Accellerator Mix, indulging in exquisitely lyrical glitches and the magic of the straight bassdrum. Jörg Burger takes a shot at the beatless 5th Dimensions with the excellent Dschungeloper Mix - its loose pop jam feeling and flirty shuffle rhythm recall Burger's lush lounge core efforts under his Triola monicker.

Limited to 500 copies.

The acoustic debut album Udopeia created by the band Pilots On Dope was issued by the Verve label in June 2014. The sound has its roots in Brazil’s broad-ranging musical traditions, including bossa, samba and Afro Brazil, and evoking the golden age of the sixties. Consequently, the album went on to serve as the starting point for well-known mixers from the Pilots On Dope milieu.

Taking this development to a second stage, Udopeia – The Remixes is aimed at an audience accustomed to electronic beats but also with an interest in musical reflexes and retro influences. The new remix album cleverly covers this musical spectrum, from exotic Latin sounds through to contemporary electronic remix culture.

The Vienna Electronic movement, popular in the nineties, was a counterpart to the Nu Jazz movement which was emerging in Germany at the same time, and itself strongly influenced by offshoots of Acid Jazz. During the epoch-making close of the long-lasting Acid Jazz trend, a series of producers became established in Germany and England, drawing on elements of Latin, Brazil, easy listening, jazz and soul, and creating a veritable boom which went on to influence and inspire producers in Italy and France. Their Austrian equivalent was certainly the Vienna Electronic movement which triggered a literal downbeat cult, creating a distinctive genre with its striking funk riffs. Sampling, a by-product of Hip Hop, was certainly a key element in the resounding success of Kruder & Dorfmeister, the pioneers of Vienna Electronic.

Despite the reduced tempo, this trend would conquer the dancefloor, generating its own identity and a musical code - light and raunchy, underpinned with an atmospheric soundscape, and overlaid with a pulsing rhythm in the heartbeat of flickering sound densities.

The remix project brings together a wide range of producers who made history with Vienna Electronic, in particular past master Richard Dorfmeister and artists from his G-Stone label including Stereotyp, Makossa & Megablast and Gümix. They are joined by fellow remixers such as Shanti Roots and the Pilots Gerald Tomez (Vienna Scientists) and Gerhard Gigler (DJ Bunani). The newcomers Shantisan, Ksawa and Corrado Bucci from Brescia bring with them promising credentials and refreshing contributions. Enriched with further remixes by well-known producers including Rainer Trüby (Freiburg), Farrapo (Bologna) and Trotter (São Paolo), the result is a magnificent cross-section of remixes which have found their ideal home on the ultimate Verve label.

Established in 2006, Bing & Ruth is an ever-evolving collective steered by composer David Moore. A pianist from Kansas and graduate of New York’s school of Jazz and Contemporary Music at the New School, Moore’s work follows in the great tradition of fellow alumni John Cage and Steve Reich, albeit looking past the more studied repetition of the style’s forerunners toward a meditative form built on feeling.
With Moore at its nucleus, Bing & Ruth’s line-up has transmuted from the eleven-strong line-up that created debut album City Lake (“A stunning, humble record built on traditions we all understand, yet, somehow feels dizzyingly new.” – The Quietus) to a cast of seven for 2014’s Tomorrow Was The Golden Age (“One of the finest leftfield releases of the year.” – Pitchfork). With No Home of the Mind, the ensemble has been streamlined to a five-person unit, exploring the piano’s percussive qualities alongside running woodwinds, warbling tape delays and splattered upright bass lines that stare out with a wide-eyed transcendence, taking so-called “classical” music to new limits.

Born out of shattered dreams and an obscured vision of the future, Skelektikon is a delirious yet lucid exploration of the farthest and most conflicted reaches of the heart, teeming with confusion, passion, and ghostly shadows. Inhabited by the bizarre and the beautiful, Marcus's music is a blurred yet encouraging representation of how you can never trust your own feelings – or eyes and ears for that matter. And yet, we can't shake the idea that the truth is to be found somewhere within this alien language, as delivered to us through the speakers.

City Slang presents Hauschka's new album “What If”.

A live set recorded at the Controindicazioni Festival of Improvised Music in Rome in 2003. The music moves very slowly through four movements: 'Reluctant Swimmer', 'Movies Is Magic', 'Virtual Swimmer' and 'Dolphins'. Floating in out of the exotic ether and disappearing like smoke, engulfed in the alien hugeness of nature... a very elegant set by a visionary artist.

The 2016 album by these influential Spanish industrial pioneers of pulsating, hypnotic and tribal rhythms. They continue the line developed since 'Pulsión' (2009), but there also are references to their most harsh and noisy sound of the '90s. Limited to 700 copies.

A download code is included. Following their much-acclaimed surprise debut album Vermont from 2014, Motor City Drum Ensemble’s Danilo Plessow and Innervisions' Marcus Worgull reunite for more synth daydreaming on the suitably titled “II”. The new outing continues where the first full-length left off, strolling further down the luminous and undulating path that the duo turned into, influenced in equal measures by kosmische, krautrock, minimal wave and synth soundtracks.

La Luna 001 is back with a limited repress on 180gram vinyl and a hand stamped outer sleeve!

La Luna is a Berlin based record label that focuses on merging music and art. Belfast based producer, Maricopa, starts of the label with his first release in over three years. This is his first mini LP and consists of 7 tracks, with three deep melodic tracks on the A side and 4 downtempo tracks on the B side. This record also features artist, Exit 47. The art work was done by Berlin based artist, Memo Vithana and is printed on the highest quality mat sleeve and pressed on 180 gram vinyl.

This is the stunning debut album from Laraaji. ‘Celestial Vibration’ was originally released in 1978 under the name Edward Larry Gordon, and then first issued by Soul Jazz Records/Universal Sound in 2010.
Soul Jazz Records are now issuing this hypnotic piece newly re-mastered album once again in a very limited vinyl edition of 1000 and new CD as a full Laraaji release.
‘Celestial Vibration’ is a cosmic journey sounding unlike anything else when it was first released in 1978.
Laraaji’s album was first issued in New York as a private-pressing record with only very minimal distribution. His distinctive use of the harp-like open-stringed zither and kalimba creates a hypnotic trance like musical landscape.
Laraaji first came to fame in the 1980s as a worldwide ambient artist working with Brian Eno on EG Records. At this time Laraaji worked with a wide range of experimental musicians - Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, Michael Brook, Bill Nelson, Roger Eno, Nana Vasconcelos and Bill Laswell.
Since Soul Jazz Records/Universal Sound first released ‘Celestial Vibration’ seven years ago (now long deleted), Laraaji’s career has had a renaissance, releasing a string of new albums including a fascinating collaboration with Blues Control for the FRKYWS label, as well as reissues of earlier albums including a three-album cassette only release last year.
Today Gordon continues his unique musical and spiritual path - performing his music mainly for meditation at yoga global retreats. He runs his own ‘Therapeutic Laughter Workshop’ where he coaches people in the mindful use of laughing for its health benefits.

"New polyrhythmic and psychedelic incarnation. Sounding like the music of forgotten people from Venus." (IRM)

Welcoming back our early label recrute Maoupa Mazzocchetti delivering the long-awaited follow-up to both his debut releases on Unknown Precept. Emerging back in 2014 to then become an esteemed music maker in the inner-circles of the underground community, the Brussels’ based sound artisan quickly established himself as a complete artist made of a peculiar and inexhaustible surge of inspiration — always making sure to stay off the beaten paths while exploring the nooks and crannies of his disturbed and facetious mindset throughout his latest productions. Infinite Glance Court is a condensation of this diverse inventiveness, an intimate and minimalist journey borrowing as much from John Bender as the European dance tradition of the late 1980s. It shows the French producer asserting once again the essence of what makes his brazen style thanks to the dancing jokes and corroded ballads which he alone holds the secret of.

Before Disco, and before the transcendent echoes, Arthur wanted to be a composer.

His journey began in 1972, leaving home in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Heading west to Northern California, Arthur studied Indian classical composition at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music followed by western orchestral music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, before ending two years later in New York at the Manhattan School of Music.

Traversing the popular and the serious, Arthur composed “Instrumentals” in 1974, inspired by the photography of his Buddhist teacher, Yuko Nonomura, as Arthur described, “I was awakened, or re-awakened to the bright-sound and magical qualities of the bubblegum and easy-listening currents in American popular music”.

Initially intended to be performed in one 48 hour cycle, “Instrumentals” was in fact only performed in excerpts a handful of times as a work in progress.

The legendary performances captured live in New York at The Kitchen (1975 and 1978) and Franklin St. Arts Center (1977) feature the cream of that eras downtown new music scene including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Julius Eastman, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Garrett List, Andy Paley, Bill Ruyle, Dave Van Tieghem, and Peter Zummo.

Pitchfork lauded “Instrumentals” Vol. 1 as a masterpiece and one of Arthur’s “greatest achievements”. Americana touching on Copeland, Ives, and maybe even Brian Wilson. “Instrumentals” Vol. 2 is a moving, deeply pastoral work performed by the CETA Orchestra and conducted by Julius Eastman.

Also included are two of Arthur’s most elusive compositions, Reach One, and Sketch For “Face Of Helen”. Recorded live in 1975 at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Reach One is a minimal, hypnotic ambient soundscape written and performed for two Fender Rhodes pianos. Sketch For “Face Of Helen” was inspired by Arthur’s work with friend and composer Arnold Dreyblatt, recorded with an electronic tone generator, keyboard and ambient recordings of a rumbling tugboat from the Hudson River.

For this remastered vinyl edition, a key part of Arthur’s musical life has been restored. The sparkling, multidimensional results take the listener closer to Arthur’s coast-to-coast journey: his iconoclastic determination to combine pop and art music; and his desire to make music that would resonate in the present and, ultimately, across time.

The remastered double LP comes with a 12-page booklet including liner notes by Tim Lawrence, Ernie Brooks and Arthur Russell.

Dieter Moebius (1944–2015) was one of the most important protagonists of avant-garde electronic music in Germany. He was founder member of Kluster/Cluster (with Conrad Schnitzer and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and Harmonia (with Michael Rother and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and worked together with several artists such as Brian Eno, Conny Plank, Mayo Thompson, Hellmut Hattler, Asmus Tietchens, Gerd Beerbohm, Karl Renziehausen, Mani Neumeier, Arno Steffen, Jürgen Engler, Jean Hervé Peron, Zappi Diermaier, and Chris Karrer. On July 20th, 2015 Dieter Moebius died.

In 2012 Dieter Moebius was invited to perform music to Fritz Lang’s legendary silent film “Metropolis”. For this purpose he produced pre-arranged tracks and samples to be treated with effects and combined during live improvisation according to the dramaturgical setting of the film. His impressive work reveals its full power and depth in combination with the images from the film.

It was his plan to create an album-length version of this music for release. Unfortunately, Dieter Moebius passed away on July 20, 2015 and was not able to complete the project. With the help and support of Dieter Moebius’ widow Irene and two longtime musical partners, Tim Story and Jon Leidecker, the Berlin musician Jonas Förster finished the remaining work and completed the production.

Cover with beginning of seam split on top spine and creasing on corner, close to VG+

Still in shrink but opened with hype sticker. Numbered copy. Clear vinyl seems unplayed. Tiny corner wear. Limited edition.